I frowned at the others. ‘It’s just a dragon.’
‘Just a free baledragon,’ Bastille said with alarm, ‘who – unlike Tzoctinatin – is not serving a prison sentence, and who is perfectly free to roast us because we’re invading his den and violating the draco-human treaty!’ She slammed her sword back in its sheath, plunging us into darkness.
‘Oh,’ I said.
A light appeared in front of us, illuminating the inside of the dragon’s mouth as fire gathered in its throat and began to blast toward us.
‘Reason number two hundred and fifty-seven why it’s better to be a short person that a tall person!’ Kaz exclaimed. ‘Standing next to a tall person gives you a really great shield for dragon’s breath!’
Bastille grabbed me by the collar and yanked me hard after her, and everything spun. I felt a strange force around me, a lurching feeling as Kaz activated his Talent, getting us lost. The dragon’s flames vanished.
I recognized that force – the force of the Talent – immediately, though I’d never experienced it before when Kaz had used his Talent. It was hard to explain. It felt like I could see the warping of the air, could tell what was going on as Kaz saved us.
It almost seemed familiar. Like Kaz wasn’t just getting us lost, like he was . . . well, like he was breaking the way that motion worked. Deconstructing the natural, linear progression of the world and rebuilding it so that we could move in directions we shouldn’t have been able to.
In that moment, I thought I saw something. An enormous, magnificent stone disk, full of carvings and etchings, divided into four different quadrants. And at the very center, a patch of black rock. There was something crouching there in the center, invisible because of how dark it was. A patch of midnight itself. And it reached tentacles out to the other quadrants, like black vines growing over a wall.
The Bane of Incarna. That which twists . . . that which corrupts . . . that which destroys . . .
The Dark Talent. Of which all others are shadows.
The vision vanished, gone so quickly that I wasn’t certain I’d even seen it. Everything was dark again, and I stumbled, tripping. When I hit the ground, I hit something wet, soft, and squishy.
‘Ew!’ I said, trying to push myself to my feet. The floor undulated beneath me, pulsing, quivering. It was like I’d fallen onto a massive trampoline covered with slick grease. And the stench was terrible. Like someone had pelted a skunk with rotten eggs.
Bastille made a gagging noise, pulling her sword from its sheath to give us light. The three of us were crowded together inside of a pink room, the walls and ceiling all made of the same soft, quivering material. It was like we were trapped in some kind of sack. There wasn’t even room enough to sit up, and we were coated with a slick, goolike substance.
‘Aw, sparrows,’ Kaz swore.
‘I think I’m going to be sick!’ Bastille said. ‘Are we . . .?’
‘My Talent transported us into the dragon’s stomach, it appears,’ Kaz said, scratching his head, trying to stand up on the fleshy surface. ‘Whoops.’
‘Whoops?’ I cried, realizing that the liquidy stuff had to be some kind of bile or phlegm. ‘That’s all you can say? Whoops?’
‘Ew!’ Bastille said.
‘Well, if we’re going to be eaten by a dragon,’ he noted, ‘this is the way to do it. Bypassing the teeth and all.’
‘I’d rather not be eaten at all!’
‘Ew!’ Bastille repeated.
‘Hide the sword,’ Kaz said, finally getting to his feet. He was short enough to stand upright. ‘I’ll get us out of here.’
‘Great,’ I said, the light winking out. ‘Maybe you could get us a bath too, and – gruble-garb-burgle!’
I was suddenly underwater.
I thrashed about in the dark, terrified, suffocating. The water was horribly cold, and my skin grew numb in a few heartbeats. I opened my mouth to cry out—
Which, mind you, was a pretty stoopidalicious thing to do.
And then I washed out into open air, water rushing around me as I fell through an open doorway. Kaz stood to the side, gasping, holding the door open. He’d managed to get us to Keep Smedry; a familiar black stone hallway led in either direction.
I sat up, holding my head, my clothing wet. We appeared to have fallen out of the cleaning closet, and the floor of the hallway was now soaked with salty seawater. A few small, white-eyed fish flopped around on the stones. Bastille lay in front of me, hair a soggy silver mass. She groaned and sat up, flipping her hair back.
‘Where were we?’ I asked.