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Whatever the half buried building had been before the sea took the Drownway, Adalai presumed it wasn’t intended as a living space. Although the doors that had once occupied the entrance were now long rotted away the sheer size of the opening they left behind suggested it was some kind of public building with grandiose double doors. There were no windows at ground level. The handful that were visible in the poor light were all located overhead, near the point where the walls met the roof.

Other than a hole the size of a barrel in the front wall, about ten feet from the doorway, said doorway was the only way to see the world outside. Much of the building’s interior was just as obscured. A little light came in through the doorway and a touch more peeked through holes in the tiled roof. At least the contrast in the lighting was in their favor. The rain was beginning to let up and, although it was hardly bright, the skies outside were still lighter than things inside. So Adalai posted himself by the break in the wall and peered out, watching for the Benthic to make themselves known again.

While he waited he found himself absently rummaging through his bag. His fingers had just closed on a packet of jerky when a clatter of stones inside the building caught his attention. He blinked twice as he turned his attention inward. His eyes rapidly adjusted to the change in lighting and he discovered that Cassian was digging through a pile of dirty reddish rocks as Marta held a lantern aloft to illuminate his work. As far as Adalai could tell there was nothing particularly important about the rocks. He glanced at Verina but she was watching the doorway.

“Cassian,” he hissed. “What are you doing?”

“Do you know where this is?” Cassian threw down the stones he’d been rummaging through, got to his feet and dashed towards the back of the cavernous structure.

A moment of panic washed over him. Up until this point the Ironhand had been a remarkably clear headed decision maker. Now it looked almost like a madness had taken hold at him. Adalai was not the only one who had noticed there was something off with the other man. Marta followed closely behind him, a lantern she’d just lit in one hand.

“Cassian?” She caught up to him before had gone more than fifteen feet and stopped him with a hand on the shoulder. “Where are you going?”

Instead of answering he took the arm holding the lantern and pushed it upwards to illuminate more of the ceiling. Adalai sucked in a deep breath as it revealed a set of heavy timbers bracing up not a stone tiled roof but a dirt tunnel at the back of the building.

Cassian put a finger to his lips and they stoool in silence for a long moment. As his heartbeat quieted Adalai caught the soft sloshing sound of waves drifting out of the passage behind them. “This is an old iron mine,” Cassian whispered. “The tunnels go deep enough that they must have flooded when the ocean overtook it.”

“We’re outflanked,” Marta replied in the same tone. “Even if the dragon can’t fit through whatever passages lead in here his pet Benthic can.”

Adalai glanced back out through the hole in the wall. “They haven’t come this way yet.”

“What was that?” Cassian sounded bewilderd. “Chew your food. Is this really the time to stop for a snack?”

Adalai started, suddenly aware that he had a hunk of jerky in his hands and more of it between his teeth. He chewed twice more and swallowed. “What…”

“It’s the dragon’s presence,” Verina said, never taking her eyes off the doorway. “They are hunger incarnate and the power of their need manifests in mortal creatures near them in the form of insatiable gluttony. There may be a way here underwater but the dragon is coming by land. The Linnorm is watching it.”

With an effort of will Adalai shoved the jerky back into his bag saying, “Does that mean you can manifest him again?”

“No. But he’s still here and able to see the world even if he cannot influence our part of it.”

“Well tell him to watch the mine shaft then,” Cassian said. “Just because the dragon isn’t coming that way doesn’t mean its minions aren’t. The last thing we need is getting caught in a pincer.”

Adalai cast a quick glance out the doorway, made sure there were no signs of the creatures approaching, then knelt down by the Slavic woman. “Are you well? I’ve never seen an Invoker who reacts like you when a spirit they’ve Invoked is injured.”

“Few bind a spirit to themselves as the yagas do, and for exactly that reason,” she explained, a hand absently rubbing her shoulder at the place her tattoo ran over it. “I’ll recover, assuming we survive the night. Even with the Linnorm weakened he does much for me. I am sure I don’t feel the influence of the hunger to the same extent you do, for example.”

“Adalai,” Cassian hissed, “they’re here.”

Moving quickly, Adalai joined him at the entrance, taking position on the opposite side of the empty doorway. If the sea dragon had sent any of its servants around to the sunken mineshaft it wasn’t evident. There were at least twenty Benthic massing at the bottom of the hill, although it was still impossible to get a full count of the number in the faint light. More concerning than the numbers was the massive globe of water two of the Benthic levitated above them.

“Do we have away to avoid getting washed away by that?” Adalai asked.

Cassian glanced at Marta, who had left the lantern at the back of the building behind one of the rock pile and moved over to the hole in the wall. “What’s our Shieldbearer’s opinion?”

“Not possible for me. I’ve never been good at creating barriers that last for a long period of time, maybe fifteen seconds, though I can make one big enough to cover the building if that helps.”

“Not particularly,” Cassian said. “Switch places with me. Use the shield to keep they from swarming the door so Adalai can fight them one on one or two at a time. I’ll do my best to pick one or two off from over there.”

It was a good plan. Adalai had worked with other bravo captains in the past and he found the speed and decisiveness Cassian displayed to be better than the average. He made good use of people’s abilities as well. However the legends say that the dragon is a creature more cunning than any man. The sea dragon that had pursued them put the proof to those tales.

As the Benthic grouped together and came charging forward in their bizarre crawling run there was a deafening crash and the building’s roof shook in under the weight of the dragon’s coils suddenly slamming into its tiles. One of the holes overhead caved in further as the dragon’s head shoved the tiles out of the way.

For a breathless moment Adalai watched the debris fall in slow motion, his mind scrambling to come up with some idea of what he should be doing. Stone tiles were raining down towards Verina. The sea dragon’s neck bulged with water as it prepared an attack. The Benthic continued towards them, heedless of the danger from man or beast.

A flash of terror lit Verina’s face for an instant before a brighter light subsumed it in verdant luminescence. The heat haze silhouette of the Linnorm filled the room for a brief second. One head swatted the debris from the air while the other butted the sea dragon on the chin, spoiling the serpent’s aim. Then the green light was gone again, and the Great Linnorm with it.

In that moment Adalai clearly saw what had to happen. He grabbed Marta and spun her around, pushing her shield up at an angle with his free hand while frantically gesturing from the dragon to the doorway with the point of his sword. There wasn’t time for anything more but thankfully Marta understood what he was getting at.

The dragon had already begun spewing water but, with its head out of position, the torrent flew uselessly towards the corner of the room. As the serpent swung its head back towards them the dome of Marta’s shield appeared, sending most of the water cascading off and out the doorway towards the encroaching Benthic. Cassian threw his remaining daggers at them – in the conventional fashion, not with his Gift – and dashed towards Verina. She had collapsed again and this time she wasn’t even twitching.

The sea dragon ran out of water but this time it wasn’t done. Instead of closing its mouth it lunged forward and did its best to sink its fangs into Marta’s shield dome. Adalai expected its teeth to just slide off the dome but he’d underestimated the abilities of a dragon. A sickly gray shadow spread through the dome’s bright white light from the points where the teeth touched it. Marta cried out and the dome vanished.

The after image of the dome was still fading when the dragon struck again, diving towards Marta, its teeth snapping. She managed to get her physical shield between them as she tried to dodge but the dragon’s horse sized head still struck a glancing blow. Adalai braced her and she kept her feet but he heard a sickening popping sound in the process. There wasn’t time to worry about that.

By reaching down into the building the dragon had left itself exposed. Long, pulsing gills flapped open and closed along its neck. Adalai put the tip of his sword against the dragon’s flank and pushed it forward, scraping along the creature’s gleaming pearlescent scales until it caught in the gills. As soon as the blade was in place he put both hands on the hilt and shoved as hard as he could. The sword plunged in up to the hilt.

Adalai left it there. He sprinted towards the back of the building, Marta already a half step in front of him. Cassian was shaking Verina but she remained unresponsive. Adalai came in and scooped her into a shoulder carry. Once she was off his hands Cassian pulled out his vial of quicksilver and broke it open. As the dragon thrashed around in agony, tearing the roof apart and threatening to topple the whole building, Cassian twitched a finger twice and pulled the quicksilver out of its container and shot it at the serpent in a trio of deadly droplets that splattered across the creature’s gills with an odd hissing sound. Or maybe that was also the dragon expressing its agony.

“To the mineshafts,” Cassian declared.

They hurried deeper into the building as quickly as they could. As they passed the lantern Marta had set down she slung her mace and took it up again, illuminating their path down into the depths. They had not gone very deep into the mines before. Now they discovered that there was not much deeper to go. They barely ran ten seconds before they came to a deep hole at the end of the tunnel.

There might have been more tunnel beyond the downward shaft but rubble and rotted timber filled it, blocking the way. The downward shaft ended in a dark sheet of water some fifteen feet below. As they stared at it Adalai felt his stomach rumble.

Cassian looked around, considering the tunnel, looking for something, though Adalai couldn’t guess what. Adalai adjusted Verina slightly and tried to unbuckle one of the extra swords he’d strapped to his pack. As he worked he said, “Quicksilver is a poison, yes?”

“If you breath it, yes,” Cassian said. “It can kill a man after a few hours or days, though dragons can supposedly eat anything so I doubt they’d be poisoned easily, especially by a kind of silver.”

Nerona hadn’t discovered the table of elements and Adalai didn’t think it was the time to try and explain it to a blacksmith. “Then I suppose we just have to stab it.”

Cassian looked back at Marta. “How’s your arm? Can you make a shield to block the tunnel for a few seconds?”

She looked down at her shield arm, which hung at an unnatural angle. She set the lantern down and put her free hand on the shield’s edge. “A few.”

“Help me with this, Adalai.” Cassian gestured to a fallen timber and together they dragged it over to a wall and braced it there. Cassian climbed up the timber, stripped off his gloves, placed his two hands on the timber holding up the ceiling and closed his eyes.

Adalai’s stomach growled fiercely, the noise almost enough to drown out the sound of scales scraping over stone. The eel head of the sea dragon pushed into the small circle of light cast by the lantern. Marta held up her shield, lifting it as much by the rim as by the arm it was strapped to. The dragon’s lips spat a small globe of water at her and knocked her flat. A second and third attack were fired at Adalai, though he avoided them by ducking behind some of the rubble from the cave in.

The dragon turned it’s attention to Cassian. With a yell he pulled his hands away from the timber and scrambled away from the dragon. It lunged after him, hissing. The Ironhand took three steps, turned back and throw the nails in his hands at the dragon. The timber overhead he’d taken them from groaned then collapsed.

For a brief moment Adalai saw fear in the dragon’s eyes. Then it vanished under the crushing weight of stone.