Page 58 of The Dungeon Book

The door was made of an unknown metal, all covered with a patina of green like the roof of an old church – except for the places where someone had, long ago, tried to break in. There were deep scrapes in the green, the marks of claw or axe, but to no avail. The door had resisted the assault. Nala might have identified it as the ceremonial temple gate of the old city; the RAS maps marked it as the Wychwood Door, and noted that it was locked and unopenable.

With shaking hands, Sir Rudyard lit a torch and held it aloft. His courage wavered more than the torch flame. In that moment he would have dearly loved for the door to be shut, as it had been for countless centuries.

It was open.

In that moment, he feared it was a trap.

It was. But not for him.

Bait had found Neb in the same wood where they’d first met – nearly two years ago, now, two long years for both of them. They’d met as children, but those years had changed them. Bait had learned and lost her destiny, experienced the sort of life she might have on the surface and rejected it.

Neb was now the head of his household. His father Gyul, always nervous, was so overwhelmed by the threat of dragonfire that he’d taken to his bed, where he sat clutching a bucket of water, vibrating in readiness to hurl it in the direction of any flames until he exhausted himself and fell into unconsciousness. Diligent Neb would change the soaked blanket, rearrange Gyul into a more comfortable posture and refill the bucket.

There had been other sorrows, but Neb did not speak of them then. The wounds were too fresh.

“You came back,” he said when he first met Bait in the wood.

It took her a moment to find the human words. “There’s a dragon.”

“I noticed.”

“I know how to get to his lair. I can show you.”

Neb sat down on a convenient stump. He was not in the mood for wonders that day.

“I’ve seen as much of the dragon as I care to . . . Bait?” He said the name tentatively, and she nodded. “I’ve no desire to see it from any closer.”

“You can kill it.” She shivered a little when she said that. Guiding adventurers into the Dungeon was the worst of transgressions, but she told herself that the dragon could not have it both ways – if she wasn’t protected by the Rules, she wasn’t bound by them either.

“Can I now?” Neb considered the mightiest weapon he had to hand, which was the reeve’s cudgel, a sturdy stick supposed to be used in the extraction of rent and other dues. Gyul had never put it to use, and neither had Neb. “I can slay it, like Valourentius of old?”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t slay a dragon, Bait, no matter how close I get.”

“Not you, then. Tell someone else. Nala and the RAS.”

“They haven’t come back. There’s war over yonder.” Neb waved the cudgel behind him, in the vague direction of, in order, the river, the village, Dunshelm, Lastease, the lands of Eskerlund, Vellisport, all the other provinces of the kingdom, the northern gap, and all the other lands of men. As gestures went, it was less than specific, but it got his point across.

“Someone else, then! Adventurers!” Bait bit her lip in frustration. “Sir Breakfast!”

“Rudyard,” said Neb.

“Him.”

“I don’t think he’d listen to either of us.”

Bait sat down beside him on the tree stump. She poked at a patch of ash with her foot. “He wants to eat me.”

“Sir Rudyard?”

“Nithscalpa. The dragon.”

Neb was unsurprised that his friend was on first-name terms with dragons.

“You could leave. You’re out of the Dungeon. I’ll be taking the cart to the castle in a few days – stay with us until then, and I’ll bring you as far as Lastease. And then . . . then go where you want.”

Bait shook her head. “It’s not just me. It’s—”