Page 21 of Caveman Alien’s Terror (Caveman Aliens #25)

21

- Praxigor -

A gasp goes through the whole crowd. It’s Tarat’ex, of course, worried that this tribe of slayers won’t kill me after all.

There’s no need for him to worry. They will kill me, either with a blade or just by keeping me starved of gold. Now I think it will be the former. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Astrid held the blade. She must be furious after I left her.

I open my eyes. I see everything through a green haze, which must mean that my goldlessness is in its final phase.

Gold. Oh, but this whole cage is made from it! I grab a bar to feel its warmth. But it’s just dead wood, cold and devoid of life.

But the ground I sit on is gold! I dig into it with my claws. But they only come up with sand and dirt, not even a speck of gold. In a flash I remember the claw marks on the wall of Nunkapax’s maze. He must have seen gold everywhere, too, right before he died.

I laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all. A dragon without gold! Without a hoard! It can’t be real.

“A woman shaman has other ways of turning an agent of Darkness into a friend,” Astrid defends herself. “Mating with him is one of the ways. See how weak he is!”

“He was weak anyway,” Tarat’ex seethes. “He has no gold! That’s why. It had nothing to do with you, female .”

“It did,” I mutter to myself. “I wasn’t this weak before Astrid. It should have taken longer to get me into this state! She weakened me.”

Of course that was her plan the whole time. She tricked me with her light touches and her beautiful face and irresistible body. She tricked me , Praxigor the Devious! This was her plan all along, to put me in a cage. Why else would she be here? Even her wild story about another woman was a part of her plan. She wanted me to think there was gold to be stolen, making sure I stayed with her so she could weaken me further. It worked beautifully. I even got myself injured while protecting her from herself and the dangers on the planet. In flashes I even imagined staying on Xren with her, forgetting my hoard.

“She’s a witch,” I mutter. “Even more devious than me.”

My eyes widen. Through the green haze I suddenly see that the hut straight ahead is made of pure gold! Why didn’t I see that before?

I crawl to the other side of the cage and stretch my arms out between the bars. But when I look again, the hut is an ordinary construction of mud and straw and wood. There’s no gold in it.

Everyone laughs when they see me move. Except Astrid. All she does is whimper. In contempt, I’m sure. She would have no reason to sympathize with me.

I slowly get up, knees wobbling, and pick my pitiful hoard pouch out of my pocket. One by one I take out the carved rocks and look at them. They all look like gold now, despite being made of all kinds of different rocks. I squeeze them in my hand. But none of them give me any warmth or strength, not even the useless copy of the Chalice of the Sun, so I drop them to the ground and crush them with my foot to make them worthless as trophies for the slayers. The last one is the newest one, the one I just finished.

I squeeze it, too. And some warmth goes up my arm. Nowhere near enough, of course. But it’s there. “Strange,” I ponder to myself, “that you ?—”

A rock hits the back of my head, making stars appear in front of my eyes.

“You should listen, Darkness,” a caveman says. “We’re talking about how to best kill you.”

I’ve already noticed that it annoys them when I turn my back and ignore them.

But now Astrid is there. So I turn.

“The whole tribe is here,” I comment. “Looking silly, as usual.”

Another rock hits me, this time in the chest.

“Stop it!” Astrid yells in her thin, female voice. “Stop throwing rocks!”

She looks magnificent in her old, stained dress. Her hair is as black as night, yet with a curious sheen that is hard to capture. There’s fire in her eyes, despite their darkness. And for some reason, I can see her clearly. There’s no green haze in front of her. She shines like gold.

I grin. “Told you they were dragon slayers.”