Hollie

The cavern didn’t seem overly large. A quick swing from left to right revealed the extent of it. There were stalagmites rising up here and there from the ground, while the ceiling also had a few small stalactites hanging down from it. Off to her left what appeared to be a crashed one was scattered across the ground. Perhaps it had fallen when they’d drilled into the opening.

Hollie was no expert on geology, but she figured that this cavern had never been exposed to the outside world before. So why were the cone-shaped deposits so small? Another question to be answered, this time by someone more qualified than herself.

The only other thing of note in the cavern was the school bus-sized hunk of rock. The odd and lumpy formation must have fallen from the ceiling. Perhaps its fall had been enough to shake loose most of the larger stalactite formations? She shrugged. Certainly nothing that would explain the pervasive feeling of fear that had affected her entire team.

“Odd,” she said. In the utter silence even her voice sounded loud. Much louder than the wind, that was for sure.

Hollie froze.

Wind? What wind? We’re two miles under the mountain. There’s no wind here.

But sure enough, even as she listened, the audible noise of air moving through the cavern reached her ears. She swallowed nervously, and it stopped.

Must have been a figment of my imagination.

Just as she was about to dismiss it as her dreaming things up, it started again, though this time it sounded different. Almost like it was…

“Breathing,” she gasped.

There was a sound from off to her left. Hollie spun, losing her footing and going down for the second time in the span of ten minutes. She’d never been the most graceful person ever, but that was embarrassing.

What was worse was the fact that she smashed the flashlight off one of the mini stalagmites. The bulb shattered and the cavern was plunged into darkness. The only source of light now was from the hole her borer had made. The glow wasn’t much, but it provided her with enough light to go on so that she could make it back out.

There was another noise, this time from over near the fallen rock boulder. Hollie went still once more. When nothing else happened, she started scrambling toward the hole on all fours. But before she was twenty feet away she heard the noise again. Looking over her shoulder, she tried to pick out what it was in the darkness, but she couldn’t.

Visions of movies where climbers and spelunkers had become trapped underground with horrifying creatures started playing out in her head, and she turned to continue running for the light of the tunnel. But it was gone.

“Oh no,” she whispered in horror.

The light was gone.

Had more rock fallen that she hadn’t noticed? That had to be the answer. If not, it meant one of two things. First, that someone had shut down all the power to the borer so it couldn’t emit any light. She supposed that someone could have come back down the tunnel to investigate at last, but she felt that unlikely. The fear she’d been able to keep at bay was seeping back into her bones as the darkness grew more intense. Hollie doubted anyone would be coming back into the tunnel anytime soon. Which left her with only one other unpleasant option.

Someone, or something was blocking the light.

She called out. “Hello?” Swallowing nervously, she waited for a reply.

A voice spoke in a language that she didn’t understand. The words were harsh and sibilant, reminding her of the snake language she’d heard in one of those wizard movies everyone raved about. Hollie didn’t bother trying to speak back to it. Instead, she did what any sane person would have done.

She screamed at the top of her lungs in terror and scrambled across the cave floor on all fours, hoping she could find the exit from the cavern and escape before whatever was in there with her ate her brains. Rocks scraped her hands and knees, and at one point she barely missed a mineral outcropping, shuffling just around it. Her eyes detected a faint line of light along the cavern floor as she got closer to what she hoped was the right place. Whatever it was that was blocking her exit, it wasn’t quite complete. Somewhere above her something was moving and Hollie shuddered, moving faster. When she reached the block she reached her hand out before jerking it back in surprise.

Where she’d expected to feel cloth or some sort of fabric that had been pulled across the front of the door, she felt a leathery membrane. Something hard and unyielding, but without the firmness of solid rock. Frowning, she backed up, gathered her legs under her, and launched herself at the barrier in an attempt to get through by sheer force of will. Hollie screamed, this time in an attempt to spur herself on to greater speeds as she flew at the barrier.

And bounced right off it, spilling herself back onto the floor. The room echoed with what sounded like laughter.

“Please don’t kill me!” she pleaded, somehow maintaining enough wits not to try and break through again. She had exactly no chance of that, it was clear now.

“If you didn’t wish to die, then you shouldn’t have come here.”

Hollie frowned. “Come where? I’m in the middle of a mountain. It’s not like I followed a map saying ‘Come here if you wish to die.’”

She clapped a hand over her mouth, cursing herself. The sass that had already held her back from several promotions was resurfacing at the perfect time to get her killed. It was ridiculous! “I’m sorry,” she added. “I didn’t mean that.”

“You should not have come here.” The voice was deep and thunderous, echoing off the chamber walls until it reverberated at her core.

“Then let me go? I promise, I’ll leave.”

Something that sounded suspiciously like a snort followed her words. “Yes, I suspect you would. But that’s not the issue. Now you would have to tell someone what you’ve found.”

“What, a voice in the dark? Nobody would believe me. Hell, I don’t believe me. I’m pretty sure I’m going crazy right now. Dreaming this entire thing up! They’ll just drug me and put me in a mental institute.”

There was a decided pause before the voice spoke again. “I…do not know what those things are. But you are not going crazy. I am real, and you are in my den.”

She frowned. “Your den? What are you, a wolf that learned to speak English?”

A crack shook the entire cavern and she heard rock being shattered. Hollie buttoned up her lips and stayed as absolutely still as she could manage, even keeping her eyes looking straight ahead into the darkness. Whatever it was she’d said, the creature seemed to take offense to it. The noise went on for some time until it eventually stopped. At that point she finally let herself exhale. She was still alive. That was good, right?

“Do not compare me with those swine,” the voice spat. “Ever.”

“Will do. But, um, since you definitely, completely, one-hundred percent aren’t one of those…uh, what are you?”

In response a light began to glow from deeper in the cavern. It was so faint at first she thought she was imagining it, but then it grew a little brighter and stayed there, like a couple of faint stars in the sky overhead.

“Now you see.”

Hollie shook her head. “You’re a ball of dim light? I don’t understand.”

The…thing…huffed in impatience. “I am not a ball of light. What is your problem?”

“Well, all I can see is a ball of light,” she shot back. “So since that was your grand reveal, how was I supposed to know there’s more if you can’t light the place properly? That’s not my fault, jeez. Maybe you’re an alien or something. They sometimes are balls of light in the movies and such.”

Anger thrummed through the unknown things voice. “You wish for more light? Very well. You shall have more LIGHT!”

The room exploded into orange-yellow brightness, forcing Hollie to shade her eyes while she screamed as his voice assaulted her ears. Instinct forced her into a tight ball as she cried and prepared for the end to reach her.

“Now you can see!” the voice continued. “What say you now?”

But Hollie was too busy crying and cowering to look.

“Oh for…you. Human. Look at me. I’m not going to kill you yet.”

Nervously at first, but eventually with a bit more confidence she opened her eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the sudden change in brightness.

The cave was awash with light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. But that wasn’t the craziest thing. What was crazier was that filling the room, its wings spread wide, one of them blocking the passage back to her borer, was what could only be described as something out of myth.

“A dragon,” she whispered. “I am going crazy. Because I’m seeing a dragon. An honest to goodness, fire-breathing, winged, snouted, scale-covered dragon. Oh boy. I’m losing it.”

The metallic bronze scales reflected the light and gleamed with brilliance. The snout was easily large enough to snap her up in one bite. The whole thing had a body almost as big as a school bus, though the tail and head made it slightly longer. Perhaps sixty feet from tail to snout, maybe a couple more, she wasn’t sure. The wings were…much larger. The cavern looked like it would be unable to support them fully spread, but if she had to guess, she might say they were—

STOP IT! You’re in a cave with a fucking dragon! His wingspan doesn’t matter. You need to GTFO and NOW, girl. Come to your senses. He just said he was going to kill you later. Your goal is to make that much, much later, by running the fuck away. Right now. Go.

But his wing was still blocking her passage.

“I’m dreaming.”

“I already told you, you aren’t dreaming,” the dragon said as the light began to dim somewhat. “I am real. I have been awakened from my slumber, and now I shall wreak a wrath on all those who have disturbed me. It would appear that my last lesson wasn’t learned. I shall have to remind your silly duke or whatever his name was that this is my mountain. Not yours.” He snorted. “I shall save you for later though. Couldn’t even wear any armor. Pathetic.”

With that the dragon disappeared and suddenly a human was striding through the cavern. He was swiftly lost as the light disappeared, but he reappeared again walking toward her as the light from beyond spilled inside.

“Wait!” she shouted as he was silhouetted in the opening, the lights from her borer revealing a tall, lean figure with long hair. The rest she couldn’t make out in the darkness.

“What?”

“Where are you going?”

The shoulders of the dragon-man seemed to slump. “Did you not listen to my speech? About the waking me up, the wrath and the death and the destruction? The part where it’s my mountain? Did you listen to none of that?”

“Oh,” she squeaked in a very tiny-sounding voice. “Right. That. Um…” She was at a loss for words.

The man turned to go, stepping through the opening.

Unsure of just what the hell she thought she was doing, Hollie climbed to her feet and raced after him. He was walking swiftly, but she easily ran up to him, past him, and planted herself in his path.

Hollie heard herself speak, still unsure of who was in command of her body. But her voice came out clear and confident like a clarion call in the silence.

“No.”