Blood Witch Dragon: Dragon Fae Book I by K. Panikian

Author:K. Panikian [Panikian, K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The space, about the size of a two-car garage, lit with faint phosphorescence that brightened as I stepped inside, revealing heaps of glimmering gold and jewels interspersed with stacks of books. The smell of cinnamon intensified. I swallowed a sneeze and gazed with wonder.

“A hoard,” Kalo murmured, stepping around me and crouching to lift a gold coin. He inspected it and said, “Roman.” He dropped it to grab another. “Gupta.” Digging his fingers through another pile, he added, “A very old hoard.”

“A dragon hoard?”

Kalo nodded. “Likely the dragon died on the surface. If they’d gone west, they would have taken the riches. This is good. This is what we wanted to find.” He stood and swept calculating eyes around the room.

“How much do you think it’s worth?” With a pointed toe, I poked at a green gem—an emerald?—the size of my fist.

Shrugging, Kalo said, “To the goblins or High Fae? Not much. Jewels and gold mean little in the Green Lands where many have illusion magic. And I have no idea how to calculate human wealth. But those”—he pointed to a stack of books—“are priceless.”

He plucked the topmost book from the pile and opened it with careful fingers. The smell of cinnamon exploded into the room. “Preserved,” Kalo gloated.

Kneeling, I found a tube and opened the top. Inside, a scroll lay curled up like a snail.

“Dragon history?”

“Dragon, fae, goblin, and other creatures we’ve since lost. The dragons collected priceless objects, and nothing is as priceless as knowledge.”

“This is what you wanted us to find?”

“I’d hoped. It’s been some years since an intact hoard was uncovered. We will spend the night here and dig out all the books and scrolls. In the morning, we’ll return to the Crystal Caves, and I’ll send my people back for them.”

Kalo paced reverently around the hoard, kicking priceless gems out of the way to examine one book, then another.

A wry smile crossed my lips, and I cleared my own space and sat, opening the scroll in my hands. Carefully unrolling it, I found words in a language I didn’t recognize alongside beautifully colored images of monsters and creatures. No, I corrected myself. Not monsters—fae.

A blue dragon hovered in the air over a field of battle. On one side, humanoid creatures cowered under shields, their lances bristling toward the flying beast. On the other, a phalanx of white-robed women stood, their arms linked.

I rolled the scroll back up and set it aside, grabbing a book next. The pages, thick and heavy, separated slowly as I flipped through. Another language I didn’t recognize scrawled across the paper, which I thought might be papyrus, and showed more depictions of dragons. In one picture, a red dragon stood on a green field, a man crouched before the magnificent creature. The man looked pale as death; his hands ended in sharp claws, and his mouth glowed with red paint.

“Are there vampire fae?” I asked, the air suddenly too thin in my lungs.

Kalo’s voice echoed from the far side of the room.

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