“You do. You need to go in the tomb and you can’t do that, only I can. But I can’t see the doors. So this is a substitute for me.” He smiles now. Like this is great fun. “Well”—he holds up one finger—“we need one more thing.”
I look down at my feet. “Tomas?”
“Yep.” He pauses. “No. We don’t actually need Tomas for you to enter the tombs. We just need a few of his scales.”
“Dragon’s scales? This spell calls for dragon’s scales?”
“And bloodhorn.” He points to the flower.
“Wait. How come you can’t just go get this book? Tarq is your friend. You seem to know what you’re doing and—”
“I can’t see the doors.”
“But I can’t walk through them!”
“You can’t walk through them without me.” Once again, he points to the flowers. “This is how you do that. And the scales.”
“So why can’t you just use that stuff and go in yourself?”
He shoots me a look that says, Yesterday I thought you were cute, but today I think you’re being slow on purpose. “It’s not a spell to see doors, Pie. It’s a spell to walk through them. How can I walk through them if I can’t see them?”
I want to keep this fight going and insist this makes no sense, but unfortunately for me, it kinda does. “Well, this sucks. Why isn’t there a spell to see doors?”
“Take it up with whoever makes the rules around here. When you find that asshole, let me know. I have a few complaints myself. Now, let’s go. We need to have this spell ready before the sheriff comes back.”
Pell leads me towards the back of this side of the sanctuary. It’s the same direction as the dining room and the kitchen, but we end up at the top of a winding spiral stairwell made up of stone.
It leads to a dungeon.
The rumble under my feet is stronger here at the entrance to Tomas’s lair. But that’s not even the most concerning thing about this little dragon scale hunt.
It’s the smell.
I have to stop breathing, that’s how bad it is.
Pell pauses at the top of the stairs and looks over his shoulder at me. “Are you OK?”
I’m covering my mouth with my hand, trying my best not to breathe through my nose. I just nod. Because I can’t even lie. I’m not ready for this, I decide. I’m not ready for what Tomas really is.
Pell puts a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t think of it as him. It’s not him. He will not recognize you. And he won’t even remember this when we see him again.”
I swallow hard. “OK.”
“I would go down and get them myself, but this is a two-person job.”
I nearly piss myself when I realize he needs my help here. Because up until this very moment I had figured that I’d just be here for moral support.
“Pie?”
“Pell.”
“Did you hear me?”
I nod.
“I’m gonna need you to distract him so I can get close enough to grab the scales.”
This is when I notice he’s holding a giant pair of… “What are those?” I point to the tool he’s holding.
“Scale extractors.”
“Mmm-hmm.” I just nod. Because I got nothing for that.
“Don’t worry.” He holds them up in front of me and snicks them open and closed a few times. “I got this part.”
My composure breaks. “You’d better, Pell! Because what the actual fuck is happening right now? I’m supposed to distract a dragon while you yank out its scales! It breathes fire, right? It’s gonna fry me, isn’t it? And oh, my fucking God, that smell! What is it?”
“It’s old eggs,” Pell says.
I actually gag on his words. Pell pats me on the back. “Just… breathe through your mouth. We can get this done, Pie. I’m pretty sure we got this.”
“Pretty sure?”
“Come on. We’ll be fine.” Then he grabs a torch off the wall and we begin our descent.
What we’re doing is a very bad idea.
And that thought just keeps running through my mind as we go down, down, down into the depths of the sanctuary. The smell is freaking bad and I spend most of the trip holding my breath, so that by the time we pause on the bottom, I’m lightheaded from lack of oxygen.
But that rumble—no. That growl….
I let my breath out and for a moment I can’t even remember how to breathe in.
Then, the next thing I know, flames are shooting out towards us.
Pell throws his torch and yells, “Pick it up! Distract it! I’m going on the—”
But I can no longer hear his words. Because the monster in front of me right now is no hot guy working out on a balcony. He’s no dragon chimera getting high with us and playing truth or dare. He’s not the man who showed me how to use Grant’s kitchen spells, or the friend who made steaks for dinner.