“I’ve never seen it myself, but I hear it’s pretty big.”

The creature nodded, her long neck exaggerating the gesture. “Thank you.”

She dropped the prince and walked over to Darnak, who handed over his map. A few minutes later, she was gone, leaving Jig to collapse as the excitement wore off and his legs gave out.

Barius didn’t kill him, though it was a close thing. There was a limit to how much humiliation the prince could tolerate, and Jig had obviously pushed far beyond those limits. Being told that a goblin had done more to kill Straum than the prince himself had been the breaking point, and finding himself helpless in the dragonchild’s strong grip had added humiliation to rage. As soon as the creature left, Barius lunged to his feet with murder in his eyes.

Thankfully, Darnak intervened. As the prince stormed toward Jig, the dwarf shouted at top volume, “Your brother’s awake!”

Ryslind looked as bad as Jig felt. His pinched features were more sunken than usual, and dark smears underlined his eyes. His eyes no longer glowed. Strangely, Jig found Ryslind’s beady brown eyes even more disconcerting. He had gotten used to those twin points of red.

After a bit more healing from Darnak, Ryslind managed to stand up under his own power. He could talk, though his voice was raw, and he sounded exhausted. He could remember nothing beyond their encounter with the Necromancer, a fact that made Jig infinitely grateful, as it meant he wouldn’t remember his oath to kill Jig.

They decided to rest for a while. With the dragonchildren gone, hopefully for good, this was probably the safest place in the whole mountain. As Darnak pointed out, “Would you go poking around in a dragon’s lair?”

When Riana pointed out that this was exactly what they had done, Darnak merely laughed and said most monsters had more sense.

So they rested. Darnak shared a bit of his ale, which helped immensely. Ryslind found that he could still cast small spells, but most of his power had vanished with Straum’s death. This also contributed to Jig’s cheerfulness.

Smudge sat happily on Jig’s shoulder, munching a small chunk of dragon meat Jig had cut from Straum’s body. He had considered trying a bit of dragon for himself, thinking it couldn’t be worse than human food, but decided against it. Even retrieving this small chunk had nearly broken his sword. Those scales were tougher than they looked.

Hours later, Barius decided it was time to depart. “Everyone carry as much treasure as you can. We will need to make at least a dozen trips to retrieve our wealth, but we must take the most valuable items now, to insure their safety.”