Wings of Fire: Forest of Shadows

Chapter Twelve

Dawn blinked her eyes open sleepily. She was lying down with her tail entwined with Beetle's and her back pressed against a cold stone wall.

"Ack!" Dawn yelped, rolling away. The only dragon she ever wanted to have her tail entwined with was Dewdrop.

"Hrm?" Beetle asked sleepily.

"Oh, sorry Beetle," Dawn said.

"Don't be," she said, heaving herself to her feet.

Dawn sighed and raised her claw. She poised it directly over Pomegranate's shoulder. She then poked her.

"IIIIEEEEEE! DAWWWNNN!" Pomegranate yelled, jumping awake.

"What?" Dawn asked innocently.

"Oh, don't give me that look. I know it was you," she said shrewdly.

"Alright, we better get moving," Beetle announced, ignoring them.

"Why?" Dawn asked, against her better judgment.

"Where we're going, it's better to get there before there are a lot of dragons."

"Where are we going?" Dawn asked stupidly.

"The Underground Market," Beetle explained, grabbing the bundle, with a few fish left in it. "A place of thugs and con artists."

"Then why are we going?" Pomegranate asked.

"Because it's the place we'll find The Seer."

"The Seer?" Dawn asked, painfully aware of how cold it was out in the tunnel.

"Yes, she can find any dragon or any place. It's weird."

"Okay, that's great. But, what are we going to do, it isn't like we can just charge in and demand they give us our friends back," Pomegranate pointed out.

"Pish, we'll think of something," Beetle said.

If only Dawn could believe her.

*  *  *

"So... Where are we again?"

"The Water Pipe room," Beetle said cheerfully.

Dawn glanced around the room. It was filled with rusted valves, twisted tangles of pipes, and rusty bolts.

"I don't see a market," she said doubtfully.

"Oh, you will soon enough," Beetle said cheerfully.

"But, didn't you say it's an illegal market? So it's illegal to be in here?" Dawn asked.

"Oh, no one comes down here anymore. We all take the water pipes for granted. Are you coming or not?" Beetle ducked underneath a pipe as wide as her body and disappeared from sight.

Dawn followed hesitantly. There was a metallic scrape, and a cloud of steam bloomed in front of her, coming from out of a narrow pipe right by her head. Dawn sneezed and waved the vapor away.

The room was filled with metallic junk. They wove and clambered their way through the room. It was also wet, and beads of moisture collected on the walls and ran onto their scales.

Beetle stopped at the back wall.

Dawn pressed her ears back. The biggest pipe she had ever seen was wedged in between the walls and the floor, only a quarter of it showing.

"What's the point of a pipe that big," Pomegranate grumbled, stepping up beside Dawn.

"Oh, this is the main water canal, it contains all of the dragons in the burrow's drinking water," Beetle explained.