Role

Chapter 2

Pause. Wait. Dash. Pause again.

They made their way from in shadow and flicker from torch to torch, dodging
the detection of jade elves occupied with finishing their work before the
winter snows made construction impossible. It was a strange sight, and an
even stranger urgency. Why the jade elves ferried in some bodies wrapped in
bandages with accompanying magical artifacts before the tombs were complete,
she did not understand, except that they seemed to be completing the lower
levels first and storing those items that would go there as if they were of
most importance.

This made for an odd site with the top level being open to the world and yet
unfinished in most places. This left only the jade cornerstones in place
along with the clearly outlined patterns of future tunnels running east,
west, and north beyond the first plaza they came to.

They halted. Stunned.

Her and Llewyn stood frozen like a black cat who had just seen a cooshie.
There in the unfinished plaza was a dragon, but only it wasn't. A giant egg
sat there and she could not discern if it was brass or bronze, but it would
BECOME a dragon. It was alive, and already ancient in its incubation. Jade
stones lined its base and emitted an artificial heat to speed the process.

Oh what a prize for their hoard. They looked at each other and shrugged. It
was too big to carry.

They moved on, the training of the Glor'Draconis instinctively pointing
them to the unfinished northern tunnel and the deeper jade vaults. That is
where the best artifacts would lay.

Perhaps if they would have inhabited less of the spirit of the gold dragon
they worshipped, they would have been less focused on the magical additions
to their treasure hoard. Perhaps they would have even noticed the conjuration
and necromantic traps left incomplete without their circles of warding yet
finalized... and the dangers that presented.

But they did not.