Page 36 of Season of Naga: Volume 2
Lurok makes a sound that might be agreement. "Closer, yes. But we still have far to travel."
I cling to his voice, its deep rumble echoing as I watch him twist through a tight bend. My smaller frame should help me, yet I contort awkwardly, muscles screaming, while he flows through the mountain like water.
The path steepens, nearly vertical in places. I'm forced to climb more than walk now, using cracks and protrusions as handholds. Lurok moves ahead with surprising agility, his tail providing leverage where my legs struggle to find purchase.
"This was easier when I was younger," he mutters, and I catch a rare note of humor in his voice as he squeezes through a particularly tight bend.
"I imagine everything was," I reply, surprised by the lightness in my own tone despite our dire circumstances.
Lurok doesn't pause his steady ascent, his silver scales whisper-soft against the rock. "I was perhaps seven seasons old when I found these tunnels. My mother had forbidden me from wandering beyond our den, which naturally meant I snuck away and spent every unguarded moment exploring where I was not allowed.”
I smile at the image of a young Lurok, rebellious and curious, slithering through forbidden passages. "You were a troublemaker."
"I preferred to think of myself as an explorer." There's a warmth to his voice I haven't heard before, something almost fond beneath his usual severity. "This particular passage Idiscovered after following a strange draft that should not have existed so deep within the mountain. None of the younglings my age would accompany me. They feared their own mother's wrath too much."
"But not you?"
"Mother’s punishment was worth the discovery." He pauses at a particularly narrow section, his massive shoulders barely squeezing through. Once past it, he turns to check my progress, the heartglass illuminating concern in his pale eyes. "Are you managing?"
I nod, though my limbs tremble with effort, every muscle protesting the steep climb after days of captivity and abuse. The stone scrapes my palms raw as I pull myself up toward him. My breath comes in shallow pants, each inhalation bringing the scent of mineral dust and Lurok's exotic musk.
Finally, we emerge into a small cavern where the passage finally widens enough for both of us to remain upright. My legs shake with the effort of the climb, but relief washes over me at no longer feeling stone pressing in from all sides.
I sink to my knees on the rough floor, letting my burning muscles rest as Lurok circles, his massive coils moving with practiced efficiency as he examines our surroundings. The heartglass throws a blue-green glow over walls etched with ancient symbols I can't read, illuminating a chamber water carved from the mountain's heart centuries ago.
Lurok's vertical pupils dilate as they fix on me, his expression unreadable. The scales along his neck flatten, then rise again as he watches me trembling on the stone floor. He unslings the pack from his shoulder and extracts a waterskin, his movements deliberate as he approaches. "We will rest here," he says, voice softer than usual as he extends the waterskin toward me.
I drink greedily of the cool liquid, rivulets escaping down my chin. When I finally lower the waterskin, I drag the back of myhand across my mouth, feeling the grit of dirt against my lips. "Don't stop on my account. I can keep up."
Lurok's gaze drops to where the shackles had bitten into my flesh, leaving raw, weeping rings around my wrists. "We need to eat," he says, "and those wounds require treatment.”
Lurok coils his massive tail beneath him, settling into a position that seems both relaxed and ready to spring in an instant. I notice the wounds I'd dressed days ago have already knitted together and are barely visible.
“Your shoulder," I say, gesturing to where the joint had been grotesquely dislocated. "It looks completely healed."
He rolls the joint in a fluid motion, silver scales rippling like liquid mercury beneath the heartglass light. Not even a flicker of discomfort crosses his chiseled features. "Naga medicine," he explains, his deep voice rumbling through the cavern. "Our healers have perfected remedies over centuries that accelerate the body's natural restoration."
He turns to the pack and rummages inside, extracting a square, matte-finished metal container. Opening it reveals a healer's arsenal: tiny glass vials filled with luminous liquids in hues of amber, sapphire, and emerald that catch the heartglass light and shimmer like trapped fireflies. Beside them, rolled bandages wait in neat bundles, and small metal tins of ointment gleam dully from their compartments.
"You think naga medicine will work on me?” I ask, studying this softer side of him with newfound curiosity.
“We will soon see.”
The air around him shifts subtly, and I blink, wondering if I'm imagining the way his hair lifts at the ends, as though caught in a breeze that touches him alone. I noticed this same phenomenon when he saw the cavern where I was tortured, but had dismissed it then, blaming my exhaustion and pain for the strange sight.
The loose, uneven strands seem to float with a faint luminosity, neither silver nor white but something in between, like mist parting around unseen currents. Even in this still cavern, something invisible stirs around him, an energy that wasn't there when he was injured, returning now with his strength.
"Give me your arms," he says, extending his hands, palms up, waiting. "I need to see what they did to you."
I hesitate, self-conscious of my filthy state and the ugliness of my injuries. The shock rod burns a trace of angry patterns up my arms and across my ribs, each mark a perfect circle where the metal touched my skin. Some are blistered, others weeping clear fluid, all of them throbbing in time with my pulse.
"They're not that bad," I lie, extending my arms reluctantly.
Lurok makes a low, dangerous sound deep in his chest, something between a growl and a hiss that raises the fine hairs on my neck. His pupils contract to thin slits as he examines the methodical pattern of burns, the careful spacing that speaks of intentional, calculated torture.
"I will kill them for this," he says simply, as though stating an undeniable fact rather than making a threat. The air stirs around him again, a cold current that carries the scent of ozone.
"Not them, only a him," I say. "There was only one naga who questioned me."
