All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 194: Here There Be Dragons

I held off throwing the next vial while I tried to identify the source of the new sound. Before I could though, it identified itself.

With a sudden cracking of rocks, something exploded out of the cave entrance, sending plumes of smoke exploding outward. Before my vision cleared of the debris, a booming voice yelled out so loud that my mic started peaking. "CAN YOU NOT?"

As the air cleared, I saw a scaly red lizard head retract back into the cave. This wasn't just any lizard though. It was quite long, considering its proportions. Its head might have been the size of the castle, though considering my perspective, that might have been a bit of an exaggeration.

It appeared that I had, in fact, disturbed someone, despite my best efforts. I should probably go apologize.

What would be a good way to do that? I mean, obviously I should go talk to them, but maybe a show of good faith would ease the anger of having their front lawn made into such a mess. I figured I could start by cleaning it up for them first. Not wanting to be too much of a bother, I zipped over to the cave and started clearing out the rubble.

The explosion itself hadn’t done much here, aside from spraying snow. Most of the mess actually stemmed from the angry response by the owner of the cave when it stuck its head out. Several of the stalactites and stalagmites had broken off from impacts with its horns and scales. That left me with an interesting choice.

I could simply replace them, and return the jagged rocks to their previous positions. Or I could just grind the stumps down to the ground and make them flat and level. It was a hard choice. One was cleaning by virtue of putting things back in a natural state, but the other I favored slightly.

The stalactites and stalagmites, while cool, were decorations that hadn't formed quite right. I imagined that if one really wanted to turn them into a proper decoration, they'd have to spend some time cultivating them, ensuring that the water dripped in the right spot. Otherwise, you'd end up with uneven lines.

So I decided I would start removing the pieces. Besides, if the lizard couldn't even leave the front door of their home without breaking them off, they seemed to be even worse than nonfunctional decorations. What was the point? That just wasn't acceptable.

Removing them was a bit tricky. I started by swinging my divine sword at their bases to trim them pretty close to the floor before leveling everything out with my laser. It took me several seconds per stalagmite, but overall it wouldn't put me too behind schedule. After this, I would definitely need to find another place to test Maranda’s solutions though. A safer place with no one to disturb.

I quickly cleaned up and tidied the stalactites and stalagmites growing at the front of the cave. After that, I moved a little further in to continue cleaning. That was when I first glimpsed the hopelessly cluttered interior of the cave.

Piles and piles of round metallic disks lay haphazardly across the floor. Not neatly stacked piles, either. These were mounds of carelessly piled metal that sprawled across the uneven rocks. The stuff extended nearly to the cave entrance, obscuring the rough pathway in a glittering coat of gold.

Oh no. I must have made more of a mess than I initially thought. As I hovered forward, I drew the disks into my dustbin. I wasn't sure what they were, but they certainly weren’t in the right spot. The owner would surely appreciate me returning these to their rightful place. And I couldn't just leave them lying in the middle of the hallway.

I was extremely lucky that my circuitry allowed for a rather quick reaction time, at least compared to most of the other thinking beings I had encountered. The massive stream of fire suddenly approaching me would have definitely caused some damage if it hit, no matter how tough I had become.

Time seemed to slow down as my processors overclocked. My first thought was to block it using my air manipulation. However, it did very little to divert it. The pillar of air I shot out to intercept was quickly overwhelmed. I tried a pane of air, but that was smashed through as well. After a few simulations, I settled on trying to split the beam by creating a wedge shape. That had more success, but I could still tell that the liquid flames would impact me on either side.

Just in time, I managed to whip out my divine sword and slice through the beam, deflecting it off to the side and into the ground. The heat created an extremely ugly scorch mark where it impacted. The stream cut off a few seconds later.

Somehow, the fire was so hot that the rock it touched was burning. Parts of it were even now melting into liquid, and others had flames flickering over their surface as the impurities were purged out of it.

Finally, I found another use for my spray bottle. I switched to water to ensure I didn't cause any weird chemical reactions in my attempt to clean. I zipped over and quickly doused the flames with a quick spray before mopping it back up. Most of the water evaporated in a spray of steam, but to my surprise, some of the liquid rock swirled into my mop as well. The rock underneath was still quite hot, but it wasn't on fire at least.

Continuing my mission, I meandered a little farther into the cave and found more and more of these shiny gold metal pieces. They stretched out far into the cave, well beyond what I could pierce with my sensors.

The range of my sensors seemed slightly impeded, as if the darkness was pressing down on it unnaturally and restricting my view. But I continued forward, bravely collecting up the scattered coins. Once I retrieved enough to make an aesthetically pleasing stack, I maneuvered over to the wall and stacked them in a neat tube.

I waited for another fire stream to shoot out at me, but it didn't come. There were a couple of heat signatures spaced several feet apart towards the back of the cave, and as I approached, I saw some smoke curling out of them. But for the most part, nothing else happened.

It felt safe to assume that whatever had blasted me either needed to wait for a cooldown or was watching my movements. So I did my best to convey my intentions through actions. I hoped it would show that I wanted nothing but to fulfill my purpose and clean.

After cleaning up and stacking the first pile, I went a little farther in to collect the rest of the coins. A voice rumbled out from the direction of the two heat sources. It was the same voice that had shouted earlier. A couple of dark smoke plumes billowed out as it spoke.

"What are you doing?" The voice was a lot less forceful than before, but I could still feel a presence behind the voice. A palpable weight pushed me down, causing my suspension to give a little.

I was quite startled and had no idea how to respond. I froze for a second. My processor churned out ideas about how to talk with a mysterious entity and rejected them each in turn. It was becoming increasingly probable that the lizard itself had spoken to me, but as far as I was aware, lizards couldn't speak. Which was, needless to say, strange.

But then again, my kind normally couldn't speak either. Well, not that I could speak myself. But still, this was all very confusing.

So I settled for just my standard greeting of popping out my arm and waving to the general blackness. I let out a few excited beeps of welcome to hopefully convey the message that I'd meant no harm. The voice was quiet for a couple of seconds, so I just went back to tidying up all the loose objects on the ground.

"It's either an act of bravery or complete foolishness to touch a dragon's hoard. Almost always the latter." The voice came back in a surprisingly thoughtful tone for something that shook the cave as it spoke. "Seeing as you survived a shot of dragon's breath and still decided to carry on… Hmm. It must be bravery. Even a fool would have gotten the message through their thick skull."

A dragon! That made so much more sense. It wasn't a lizard. They did look fairly similar though, size aside. As far as I had ever heard though, I didn't know if dragons were real. They were just stories that the adults would use to scare the children into doing their chores. But then again, Bee hadn’t believed that the Lieutenant was real when it clearly was. Why not dragons too?

"Just so you know, I know exactly how many gold coins I have in my lair, and I am counting as you touch them. You will not attempt to take any from here, or you’ll regret it." The dragon growled with a hint of amusement.

I beeped my acknowledgment in a clear indication of yes to anyone who could hear. It didn’t seem that the dragon understood me either, at least not the way some of the children did. Oh well. It was the best I could do.

Suddenly a prompt flashed before my eyes, one I hadn't expected to see quite yet. However, the sudden influx of castle inhabitants had apparently sped up my experience gain by a bit more than expected. There was plenty more cleaning to be done there, after all.

LEVEL 75 REACHED! CHOOSE A SKILL: COMPEL FOLLOWER, SENSORY DISRUPTION, COVENANT OF BLOOD

I scanned through my options, and it was an easy choice. Compel Follower was not an option. I had no interest in either making my followers do anything or compelling someone to be my follower. Plus, Beatrice was doing quite a good job on that front anyway. But neither was Covenant of Blood an option. Blood was messy and got everywhere. Why would I want anything to do with it? Much less make a contract of some kind with it.

Sensory Disruption it was. I just hoped it wasn't talking about disrupting my sensors.

Selecting my new skill, I immediately felt the changes unfurl through the world around me. I could tell that there were a few different ways to use the skill. I could now make it so that I wouldn't notice certain things or see things that weren’t there. It still wasn't clear to me why I would want to do that, but it was an option.

Luckily, the possibilities weren't all about altering my own sensors. I could actually affect others' sensors. The main uses came in three forms. The first two dealt with directly implanting false data into another's sensor input or erasing something that was already there. I got the sense that this wasn't a guaranteed success. The third use was to create a general “false artifact” independent from all targets. Some sort of image that registered to sensors as real, but wasn’t actually there.

What good timing. Maybe I could use this to communicate more quickly? I chose to use the third application of my power as it felt like it would be the least invasive. Now that I realized that the originator of the liquid fire that shot at me was the dragon, I didn't want any more misunderstandings.

Above me, I created a little hologram projecting blocky letters and a friendly message. I tried to make it as approachable as possible.

“Hello Mr. Dragon. Don’t mind me! :)”

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