Page 11 of Caveman Alien’s Terror (Caveman Aliens #25)

11

- Praxigor -

Astrid leans carefully into the primitive structure. It makes her round behind stand out.

As I lean into the building beside her, I can’t resist putting my hand on it. “Not as open as I prefer it.”

She looks up at me, but doesn’t move to push my hand away. “You like that part?”

I pat the roundness. “I like opening certain things, yes.”

“Mhm. I meant— never mind. Do you want to explore this place?”

Her behind is warm and soft, but firm when I squeeze it. It’s an exciting combination. “I really want to, Astrid.”

“Now?” There’s an interesting rasp in her voice.

I look down. “Let’s examine the dome first. It looks empty.”

“It probably is. But it hasn't been opened since someone put that slab of stone there to cover the entrance. Why did they close it so carefully, if there's nothing in it?”

I think back to the last time I left my hoard. I was extremely careful to lock it up, the way I always am. “Because there is something down here, obviously.”

She looks up at me. “Shall we go down there?”

“We shall,” I decide. “I've seen much worse places on this planet.”

“We’ll need torches. Wait. I mean, please wait,” she catches herself before I’d have to correct her insolence.

She walks fast away towards the camp.

And I follow, because this place is dangerous for her at all times and I don’t like it when she’s out of my sight.

“Oh,” she says when she spots me behind her. “You didn’t have to come.”

“I don’t actually have to do anything,” I inform her. “But I sometimes choose to do things. Do you see the difference?”

She picks up the old torches from last night. “It must be wonderful to never have to do anything.”

I lean against a tree. “It’s the privilege of the superior being. To me, it’s the way things always are. To you, it appears wonderful.”

She looks at the cold torches in her hand. “Do you have an easy way to light these?”

“In my real form, I could burn them all to dust in a single breath,” I tell her truthfully. “As it is, no, I can’t. How can anyone live like this?”

“We just do our best,” she says as she kneels by the old campfire and digs into its cold ashes. “What is your real form like?”

I get an unfinished piece of stone out of my hoard pouch and continue carving it. It’s a crude imitation of the Thimble of Derey, a famous artifact that I personally looted from the treasury of King Batt. “Surely you have heard of dragons? We’re very ancient, and we’re known to every species.”

“We do have legends and myths about dragons on my planet,” Astrid says as she locates a small piece of glowing ember and puts it inside a ball of dry grass, blowing on it. “But I didn’t think they were real.”

I flex my arm. The strenuous work with the shovel made it sore, and that's somewhat alarming. The weakness is spreading through me. “Lucky planet. Dragons must have been there before, but so long ago that we’re almost forgotten. It won’t last.”

Having built a small fire, she adds straw and wood to it. “The dragons in our legends have scales and long, flowing tails and wings. They have hoards of gold, and they breathe fire. Is that what you will be like when you Change?”

“How poor and barren those words are to describe me in my real form!” I groan. “You may just have to wait and see. I promise you will be impressed. And scared out of your mind.”

She lights two torches in the fire and gets to her feet. “I don’t know how long these will burn. Do you see well in the dark?”

“I see well enough to spot intruders in my lair in pitch blackness. Do your legends not say anything about that?”

“They’re old legends. They may not catch everything. Shall we go?”

Back at the dome, Astrid extinguishes one torch. “I will light it with the other one when it’s about to go out.”

I go inside the dome and stand by the wall. There’s a big hole where the stone I pushed hit the floor and crashed through it. “It’s very deep. And the air from below smells… different.”

“There are stairs!” Astrid says and points.

Sauntering over to them, I look down. “No gold visible.”

If there were a large amount of gold here, I would know it by now. It would brighten my mind with its presence. But there could still be smaller pieces. Or lesser items not of gold, but made with great care over a long time.

“Oh, look!” Astrid exclaims behind me. “It's painted!”

Indeed the inside of the dome has been painted in many colors. There are symbols and lines and figures that I’m not inclined to understand or care about. “Yes, very nice. Come on now.”

“Those don’t look like caveman paintings,” she says as she tiptoes around the broken hole in the floor. “Whoever built this place thought it was important. Where did they get those colors, anyway? There’s bright red and blue, too. Those are hard paints to make!”

“No gold, then,” I comment as I saunter down the stairs. The steps are shallow and short, so half my foot sticks out even when I place my heel at the very backs of them. “That’s not promising.”

“But there’s yellow,” Astrid says as she follows me down. “That might symbolize gold. But probably not.”

I step onto the floor of the next level down. The ceiling is low, and I have to bend my neck in an undignified way.

“Dwarfs built this,” I growl. “The smallest beings in the world.”

Astrid has no problem standing upright. “More paintings,” she says, illuminating the round wall with the torch. “Not as colorful this time. But much more red. Is that a raptor?” She points.

“It does look like one of those ridiculous things,” I agree after a quick glance. “That picture has been made with some care, but not much skill. Worthless.”

She walks over to the opposite wall, again avoiding the jagged hole in the floor. “What is this?” She raises the torch almost to the ceiling to get light to see by. “Is it a?—”

Her sentence is cut off by a strange hiss coming from the ceiling. A thin mist is being sprayed down on us.

In one long step I’m beside her. At the same moment, there’s a soft ‘pop’ as her torch ignites the mist and we’re surrounded by blue flames.

Astrid squeals in terror and drops the torch.

I pull her into me while it lasts, enjoying her impossibly fast heartbeat and quick breathing, as well as the warm scent of scared woman.

The flames burn out as quickly as they came.

“Not too hot a fire, but a good try,” I observe as I unbend as much as the ceiling will allow. “I imagine it would have discouraged most beings.”

Astrid slowly straightens and takes her arms off her face. “Is it over?”

I look up at the ceiling, where the small holes that the mist came out of are now obvious because the liquid is still dripping from it. “The builders didn’t want us to be cold. Most considerate!”

Astrid checks herself for burns. “That must have been a trap. They knew anyone who entered would want to look closely at that part of the wall. The torch somehow triggered the fire.” Her voice trembles with fear.

“No, you brought the fire yourself,” I tell her and nod at the torch. “They just gave you something that would burn well.”

She looks up and points with a small finger. “The heat from the torch melted a plug placed right there. Just above the most interesting part of the wall, which anyone would want to study closer. Then the torch ignited the liquid that came out. That’s… devious!”

“‘Devious’ is my name,” I tell her. “And this was nothing of the kind. It could never work too well.”

She turns to me, eyes wide. “Oh my, Praxigor! How are you?! You must be burned— oh, wait. No, you’re fireproof, of course.”

“This was barely a fire,” I scoff. “The flames were much too cold to do anything but warm me up pleasantly.”

She takes my hand with both of hers. “It would have burned me, though. But you shielded me.”

“So it seems,” I agree, mildly puzzled at the urgency with which I came to her aid. “Your craziness must be rubbing off on me.”

She lifts my hand to her face and kisses it, then places my palm on her own cheek. “Thank you for protecting me. You probably don’t know how much I appreciate it.”

The gesture confuses me. Certainly her cheek is soft and warm against my hand, but it’s hard to think of her as a servant like this. “Probably not. But I’m sure you’ll show me.”

Her eyes glint. “I will.”

I pinch her chin. “And while we wait for that, this fire trap is encouraging. It might mean there’s something here worth protecting.”

She picks up the torch. “That’s what I was thinking, too.” She puts the torch back up at the ceiling where the flammable liquid came out, gathers a few drops of it, and manages to get the thing burning again.

We go down the next set of stairs and find ourselves in a confusing place. While the other levels were empty, this one is all walls in some kind of chaotic pattern.

“A maze,” I immediately realize. “Old Nunkapax the Angry had something like this at the entrance to his lair. It was all made of metal, very hard and heavy. I couldn’t break through it, so I walked around inside it for days before I found Nunkapax himself, dead on the floor. He’d gotten lost in his own maze and was separated from his gold. He must have been lost there for years, dying from a lack of gold despite being so close to his hoard. The walls were full of his claw marks. But I continued for many days more until I found the way to his unguarded hoard. One of my easiest plunders. Nearly doubled my hoard. Then it took me seven months to get back out.”

Astrid stops. “Oh. Maybe we shouldn’t enter it. We might get lost.”

I size up the stone wall, made from carefully cut stones. “We could do this.” I place my palm on one promising-looking stone and push at it. With a scraping sound, it slowly lets me push it in until it falls down on the other side, taking more loose stones with it. “They didn’t use mortar to keep the stones together.”

I continue like that until I reach the middle of the level and the hole made from the stone slab breaking through it.

Astrid looks down through the hole. “This is the last floor it broke through.”

I drop through the hole and land on the stone slab below. My head still pokes up above the floor that Astrid is standing on. “Come on.”

“Help me down?”

I grab her and lift her down through the hole to the next level. “I’ve seen this way of making a secure place before. Tengala the Crass had a lair like this. It was a deep lake that she had her slaves drain, then fill up with stone levels and mazes and such. Her lair was on the very bottom, protected by all kinds of traps. It took centuries to build. But it only took me a day to get through. When I finally got down to her, she first tried to flirt with me and offered to willingly let me ravish her. But I knew it was a trick, so I simply fought her and killed her. Not the greatest hoard, but it had one or two pieces that became favorites.”

“Do you think this was a lake?” Astrid asks, raising her torch. “”It feels too dry.”

“I do not,” I tell her. “This was just a small valley that they built up and filled in. But the thinking is the same. Perhaps there was some water at the very bottom.”

“Seen from up top, it just looks like a village,” Astrid ponders. “But it is really only the highest level of a structure that goes much deeper.”

I don’t reply. I’m starting to get hoarse from all the talking. I have never talked this much or told anyone about my hoard plunders or fights with other dragons. Somehow Astrid makes me let my guard down. It should not be possible, but I can’t deny that it’s the first time in my long life that I’ve spent this long in close company with a lesser creature without either scaring it away, killing it, or just dismissing it from my service.

It’s the weakness, of course. My gold-less existence is making me so weak that I’m not being vigilant, not on my guard for when Astrid will turn on me and try to murder me for… well, for what? I have no hoard.

I groan. Is that what I’m reduced to now? So hoard-less and pitiful that I’m not worth killing, even for her?

“Are you all right, Praxigor?” Astrid looks up at me.

“I’m perfectly fine,” I snap. “I want less talk and more searching!”