1061 of the New Era.
150 years before the birth of Geralt of Rivia.
Mahakam.
Mount Carbon.
A few minutes later.
Merinelteratsin, also known as — Merlin.
Glancing at Nimue, who, after returning to her elven form, was noticeably grinning at the sight of the dwarves’ pale faces, I could only shake my head.
Dragons do have some inner passion for instilling fear in others.
I suspect it’s something in the realm of instincts, developed over time due to their size superiority over almost all creatures of the Continent…
Or over all of them.
Is there anyone bigger than dragons?..
Well, anyway, that’s not important right now.
“You’ve really fried everything here quite thoroughly, esteemed dragons who turn into elves…” Gunnrad Fuchs surveyed the area ahead of us, who, by virtue of his position, was starting to re-establish diplomatic relations with us.
But due to the rarity of metamorph dragons, for him we were still not much different from mighty sorcerers.
He probably even thought we just knew how to turn into huge reptiles, rather than being them by default…
Such are the quirks of the psyche of sentient beings, which for most races aren’t that different in such moments.
“So, are we dragons or what?
We shouldn’t be weak,” I involuntarily echoed the dragoness’s satisfied grin, looking at the same place as the dwarf.
And there was plenty to see!
From the rock in the Depths of Davor (that’s what the Fuchs clan calls this quarry), where a circular road had been carved downward, literally emanated hot steam from the heat of the stone and everything else.
I don’t know if that’s even physically possible, or if the magical aspect of our flame played a part (well really, it doesn’t appear from pure physics, does it?), but we had to wait a while before moving forward.
And along the way, we started coming across roasted monsters.
All sorts of things were there…
Most notably, of course, were the hot, charred corpses of sharleys, huge underground monsters whose maws vaguely, very distantly, reminded me of enormous upright wolves…
And at the same time, something else from my past life…
Right!
Wendigo.
That’s what the sharleys’ faces reminded me of — the ones that can turn into a spherical stone-like form.
Which is how we baked them…
But why am I saying this?
“What the!..” exclaimed one of the dwarves, poking at the dead bodies with his halberd, when one of the sharleys suddenly came to life and tried to bite the warrior.
He might have even succeeded, given the surprise, but a lightning bolt crashing into him — the fastest spell in my arsenal — made the monster freeze and tremble under the electricity’s effect on its nerves.
The shorty I’d saved didn’t waste any time either and quickly drove his halberd right under the creature’s scorched snout.
The sharley shuddered one last time, then fell without even a twitch.
The dwarf barely managed to pull his halberd out and get out of the way of the cave-dweller’s falling body — it risked burying the bearded man under its not-insignificant bulk.
“Hey…
What a tenacious creature…” shook his head Ertruhlf, the same commander of the warriors accompanying us.
“Survived after all that fiery hell…”
“Most likely it just didn’t get caught in the direct stream of fire…
Lucky one,” I offered my guess, since we really hadn’t been aiming carefully.
Try doing that when your vision is blocked by the light and heat of the flame coming out of your mouth, which is also wide open, thus changing the position of your eyes.
Which, by the way, are on the sides…
In short, this was yet another not-so-obvious weakness of dragons — and if I don’t want to die from some non-sorcerers, I need to take all of this into account.
Ekh-heh, my brains are boiling from all this information…
“This is a Locus of the Force…
It’s unstable…
It’s become even stronger…” Nimue ran her palms through the air, frowning.
“Like a cracked and wobbling jug, about to break and spill the water…”
“I can feel it,” I confirmed, since dragons, who absorb magic from their entire surroundings, like cats, are especially sensitive to such fluctuations.
But while mindless fluffies just like to settle and sleep on Loci of the Force, we dragons, as sentient beings, could sense much more.
And my companion’s analogy was correct…
For some reason, this Crossroads, the intersection of planetary magical currents running both through the air and underground, was damn unstable.
An explosion isn’t even theoretically possible, but…
Ordinary sorcerers would already be seriously warped in this place.
We can choose not to connect to the Locus of the Force and absorb energy from nature in a passive state, but the others…
Let’s just say, it’s not that we were lucky to meet a dwarf clan with problems…
It’s that they were lucky to meet dragons, not sorcerers.
“Is this dangerous?” the head of the said clan asked in a tense voice.
“You, esteemed dragon, are incredibly strong and mighty, but we…” Gunnrad couldn’t force himself to admit his weakness out loud, but even the silent acknowledgment of his inferior capabilities was a display of incredible prudence on his part.
“Dwarves and gnomes are surprisingly strongly detached from sorcery…
To put it briefly and without long explanations — no, you’re definitely not in any danger,” realizing that delving into magical theory was completely unnecessary for my companions, I answered to the point and received a grateful, thoughtful nod.
“But the nuance lies elsewhere.
This couldn’t have happened on its own because of your quarry — therefore, there is something here that started this process.
And that something could already be dangerous.”
“I wasn’t expecting a simple walk, even when I decided to come myself,” the clan head shook his head, reflexively placing his palm on the hilt of his spiked mace.
“I like that attitude…” I said with satisfaction, rolling my shoulder.
After a few more minutes of descent, we reached the lower levels of the quarry, where sunlight barely reached.
Only in patches.
We only noticed the small circular holes in the rock thanks to the lit torches illuminating the openings…
From which our enemies emerged before we could discuss the further actions of our cleansing group.
“Ho-o-o…” I drawled at the sight of large, leopard-sized spider-like creatures…
And if they had their own name in Elvish, then translated into the common tongue…
Prysgirnik. Get faster updates on g.com.
Something like that these creatures would be called.
Br-r-r-r…
I hate insects.
D-disgusting.
Goosebumps run down my body every time, so strongly that a chill passes through me.
Even in my past life, I couldn’t stand them, and I didn’t care that it looked strange for an adult man…
Now it looks even more surreal, given my current form…
But the understanding that no insect is a threat to me — which was somewhat true in my past life too — doesn’t make my little phobia go away!
Disgusting creatures!
…Oh, how much it cost me not to return to my dragon form right here and burn them to hell.
“What’s wrong?” Nimue noticed my shoulders twitching, tearing her gaze away from the sight of the dwarves, with organized and coordinated actions, easily dealing with these creatures.
“M-m-m…” I didn’t even know what to tell her.
“I was thinking about what if, during a long sleep in a lair, such disgusting creatures crawl into it.”
“They…” the golden-haired woman shot a quick glance at the holes from which these spider-like creatures had emerged.
“Make passages in the rock…” not necessarily a fact, but I didn’t say that, just glad her thoughts had jumped elsewhere.
“We need to provide protective measures in the lair against such creatures.”
“I think…
After today…” I bared my teeth slightly, trying not to catch the insectoids with my gaze any more than necessary.
“The dwarves will understand the need for that…”
“Speaking of them and the lair.
I was thinking…
Merlin, won’t they send hunters after us?
For our treasures…” the girl’s eyes flashed with elongated pupils.
“Well, first, the local isolationists are one thing.
They don’t give a damn about their surface comrades, and this quarry has enough diamonds not to bother with a battle against two dragons…
And besides, can’t we later change the locks on the future doors to our lair, which I also included in the sketches?” I snorted confidently, waving my hand, and soon watched as the last insectoid bastard died under the powerful blows of halberds.
“Still…”
“Esteemed dra…
Merlin!” came the voice of the head dwarf, and we moved toward him.
“What is it, esteemed Fuchs?” I mirrored his neutral address once again.
No lords, masters, comrades…
Just “esteemed.”
“Well, it’s like this, in short…
Here.” He pointed at one of the largest creatures, from which…
Damn it!
From the corpse of the spider-like creature, a whole bunch of small black worms were crawling out…
Only with tiny legs and mouths more like leeches.
They writhed, crawled, a-a-and…
I didn’t even realize how I hit the whole disgusting mess with a fireball.
They burned well…
With squeaking, crackling, and crunching.
The last was unexpected — but I knew nothing about the structure of these little bastards, so I didn’t care.
And I definitely don’t want to find out, because even touching such filth, ble-e-e…
Even Nimue wrinkled her nose.
“Are there more of these creatures in any of the spider-like bastards?” I turned to Gunnrad, not even having fully turned around to him.
“No,” the dwarf shook his head and beard.
“Only in this one…
That’s why we were surprised by such a miracle…
Just think!
We’ve lived in these mountains for centuries, and we don’t know a damn thing about them!”
“We don’t know everything about the world, even we dragons.
And we were here before the Vranas, before the gnomes…
Before you.
And certainly before the elves and humans…” I shrugged, simultaneously calming Gunnrad a little and making Nimue proudly lift her nose.
Heh, in moments like this, she’s very cute, yeah…
Ekh-heh…
It’s getting harder and harder to deny the likelihood of the outcome planned by our parents…
Since there are no other girls around capable of calmly being with a dragon and not dying of old age in the future…
Even Francesca is more interested in a pointless confrontation with humans.
And there are no sorceresses in sight, because they’re in no hurry to go one-on-one against a dragon flying in the sky.
And I have nothing to do in human cities in my humanoid form yet…
Although I wouldn’t mind checking out Novigrad…
Purely as a tourist, yeah.
So, Merlin, don’t get distracted.
The quarry-dungeon comes first.
“…So, here’s the deal,” after a few seconds of silence, I finally continued.
“As soon as you find creatures like these, who for some unknown reason have settled in such numbers in one of these spiders — call me immediately.
We’ll do a decontamination.
“What are you talking about?” the clan head didn’t quite understand me, furrowing his mighty brows.
“Probably…” I tilted my head to the side, then glanced at the smoldering remains of those worms.
“These worm-like creatures…
They were somehow controlling the group of these spider-like beings.
I doubt the latter would have crawled on their own into a place where dragon fire had just passed.”
“And you think…
That these fucking little creatures can crawl into us?” the dwarf shuddered all over his sturdy but short body, looking anew at the fading magical fire.
“I suspect that possibility…” I didn’t deny it, trying with all my might to hide my shortness of breath.
The considerable amount of flame I’d released in my true dragon form was taking its toll…
I’m recovering, of course, but because of the instability of this Locus of the Force, I have to draw energy not from it, but from nature…
And that’s a slower process, though stable and constant.
In short, I need to be more careful with my half-empty, hm, magical reservoir.
“That’s all we needed…” the dwarf exhaled, gripping his mace tighter.
“If these things crawl into me, try to save me…
Or burn me with fire.
I don’t want to feel these fucking creatures squirming in my guts.”
“No one does.
However, it seems to me…
It’s time to stop talking.
Whatever the source of all the problems in your quarry is, we shouldn’t give it time to prepare,” I concluded, and since my thought was reasonable from all sides, we moved forward.
Ideally, we should have taken even more troops, but…
This was the personal domain of the Fuchs clan, bringing them a ton of diamonds and being the pillar of their power.
Dwarves can be as friendly as they like to those who follow their traditions and are polite, but don’t forget that they can be incredibly proud and greedy if there’s even a hint that they might be deprived of their wealth.
It’s one thing when they voluntarily give something away, as a reward for a contract, to a stranger from distant lands who, by definition, isn’t a competitor in the culture of the underground isolationists; it’s another thing entirely when it’s to their own neighbors.
Such interesting quirks of the psyche.
I wonder if I should write a treatise on the peculiarities of thinking of different races?
I feel it, I just feel that it will be pelted with metaphorical tomatoes, and each race will furiously deny most of its own peculiarities, even though they would just be the personal observations, comparisons, and analysis of one modest fire-breathing reptile.
…Our advance continued.
From the quarry territory, we entered one of the natural caves, slightly reinforced with wooden beams and special supports to prevent a sudden collapse.
And along the way, we started encountering more and more monsters, acting in a strange, pack-like manner, despite all the differences in their species.
Big and small, centipedes several meters long, and certain goblin-like creatures — gremlins.
They were only the size of a large cat, and conditionally sentient…
But they charged at us head-on with monstrous fury, completely inconsistent with their usual ambush tactics.
In fact…
In all of them, we found those same worms with disgusting little legs that I had burned the previous time.
“Tân, Llosgi Popeth!” my reaction wasn’t long in coming, and after uttering the spell and swinging both arms from top to bottom, I sent fire straight at the remaining creatures, incidentally burning the corpses swarming with mutant worms.
“Dŵr, Nofio Yno!” several precise streams of water burst from Nimue’s palms almost immediately, quickly extinguishing the wooden beams that had started to burn.
“Everything here is so…
fragile,” the dragoness didn’t miss the chance to comment on the burning beams.
“Well, you know…” the clan head said, slightly offended.
“They weren’t designed for the magical fire of elf-dragons!..”
“He’s right, Nimue…” I shrugged, frowning at the half-burnt corpses of the unknown insects, which were definitely responsible for the mind control.
I have a feeling that today we’ll discover a new species of creature…
And one that might be more dangerous than most of the known ones, yeah.
Oh god, the dwarves were lucky twice!
They could have become the same kind of subjugated creatures, and, probably…
Head for the surface.
Judging by what I’ve seen, sunlight doesn’t particularly affect these worms with legs…
Maybe they just don’t like it…
Hah.
Is this how witchers feel when they encounter unknown creatures they don’t know what to do with?..
“Hm…
Expansion?” I muttered thoughtfully, slowly walking in the middle of the guard of several dwarves.
They still thought we were physically weak and weren’t going to let monsters get to those who had made their advance here a hundred times easier.
To defeat that many monsters, they would have needed to lose about two groups like the one that came with us.
As for the cave…
The passage itself was quite large and wide, enough to fit a dozen dwarves in a row.
Well, or a little less.
…In fact, the inhabitants of these caves must be just as big.
A giant, simply monstrously sized centipede raised its long, trembling antennae above itself, catching our scent and heat…
And sensed us.
It sharply raised the front part of its long, segmented body, encased in a durable chitinous shell, very difficult to penetrate with both swords and most basic magic.
One of the most dangerous underground creatures — Yghern, or in the common tongue — Scolopendromorph.
And while I was shuddering all over at the sight of yet another disgusting creature, it managed to lurch forward sharply and grab one of the dwarves in the vanguard — scattering the neighboring ones like bowling pins.
Their halberds left only deep notches on its shell, nothing more.
“Gwaywffon Tân, Taro Fy Ngelyn Gyda’ch Fflam!” even though I was reciting the long spell in a practiced patter, creating a fiery spear in front of my hands, but…
The insectoid was too fast, and soon a disgusting crunch rang out — neither the chainmail nor the physical strength of the fucking centipede helped it compress, breaking everything that could be broken.
Vengeance followed instantly — the creature tried to bite into the crushed corpse with its mandibles, and immediately got a fiery spear in that face.
The resulting explosion made the centipede screech angrily, and it stuck its burned and even charred head out of the smoke — such wounds shouldn’t allow it to survive, but…
I noticed again in its head those same black things that we had already found several times…
Damn it, what the hell is going on here?
What terrible creature have the locals dug up?..