| With Fred and Astra at the lead, the group of humans and dwarves made
their way up the rocky passage. It wound its way steadily upwards and had
only a few side passages connecting to it at irregular and lengthy intervals.
Unlike Velus' Southern Caves, Minestus' Goth lair was not a maze of intersecting
passages and caverns. While some of the bypassed corridors seemed like
natural formations, tunneled through the rock of the mountain by long dried
up streams, others were not only obviously handmade but had been bricked
and plastered as well. But the group did not stray from the main tunnel
and kept on following it until they found the cavern with the rotting remains
of the two dead dragons.
The opening leading into the cavern was partly blocked by rubble fallen
from the fractured ceiling above. Within, a scene of destruction presented
itself. What had once been a spacious, rock hewn chamber, filled with thick,
marble colonnades and wide, stone steps, was now just a crater, scorched
and cracked. The countless shelves and bookcases which had held the dragon's
magical scrolls and texts were broken and crushed underneath the weight
of tons of fallen rock. Crumbling stone-sand and dust had settled in huge
mounds across the room, trapping half of the chamber beneath its dry grasp.
And jutting out from underneath one such mound was the body of a very dead
dragon. Across the room, sprawled on a stone floor that had melted around
its burned and battered form, was the other dragon. The smell of their
decomposing flesh hung heavy in the air.
The dwarves stared with satisfaction at the carnage, but only for a
moment. Even the sight of dead dragons could not distract them from the
piles of gold and gems that were scattered about what was left of the cavern.
Fred on the other hand couldn't stop staring at the dead monsters. They
were no longer exactly the way he and Astra had left them. If Astra noticed
this, she didn't seem to care but simply stood there, her arms folded across
her chest. But then, what was there to care about? It's just that Fred
found it a bit of a mystery, and mysteries always made him curious. And
for the life of him he couldn't imagine why anyone would want to steal
a dragon's head.
But a fact was a fact. Neither dragon had a head anymore, and their
bellies had been split open as well. He stepped over to what he assumed
had once been Minestus. Fred's silent dwarf guard followed him. Whoever
had taken the dragon's head had chopped it off with surgical precision.
On closer inspection he saw that the fingers of the claws were missing
too.
-
 Obviously, someone else
had been here since Fred and Astra had escaped.
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