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.
"Oh, but I still don't see a market," Dawn said.
She could distantly hear the roaring sounds of a river and the chatter of voices.
"Prepare to be amazed!" Beetle said. She walked along the side of the pipe and, right where the pipe disappeared into the wall, there was a jagged hole in the pipe. She disappeared into it.
"Are you coming?" She called, her voice muffled coming from somewhere in the pipe.
Dawn glanced at Pomegranate and ducked into the tunnel.
Then she stopped.
She was standing on a rickety metal platform, next to Beetle. She stared.
Behind them, Pomegranate slipped from the hole and stopped next to them. Beneath them, in the most pointlessly massive water pipe, was a market of sprawling stalls.
Dawn knew that markets were a thing of the past. The only place where anything like it still existed, even slightly, was the town of Possibility and the research town Sanctuary.
Possibility was a town on the Great Five-Tail River, but it was an extremely dangerous place to live. Terrorist groups, thieves, and soldiers ran rampant through the street. Sanctuary was probably the only place where the war had never really reached. It was a research town high in the mountains.
But still, somewhere deep in the heart of Pyrrhia, markets had returned. Build on wooden and metal platforms, right above the water, stalls sprawled willy-nilly. Lining the walls of the water pipe.
"Welcome to the Underground Market," the Beetle said proudly. Her gaze was fixed on Dawn as she spoke.
Dawn opened and closed her wings uneasily. Beetle seemed so eager to get her attention. Did she... like her?
"It's amazing," she breathed. "I thought places like this disappeared years ago."
"Oh, they did, for the rest of the tribes, anyway. Us RainWings have no need for war," Beetle explained, spreading her four, butterfly-like wings.
Dawn spread her wings as well. "Where are going?" She asked.
"To the exchange post, then we'll get on a raft."
Many rafts weaved up and down the water. Somewhere far below, a RainWing advertised his business. "RIDES! RIDES ALL THE WAY UP TO THE WATERFALL!"
Dawn had a sudden thought. "Do the dragons in the burrows know what's floating around in their drinking water?"
Beetle let out a soft laugh. "No, although it's probably for the best."
Dawn smiled. Beetle lept off of the platform and drifted to the ground, Dawn and Pomegranate followed.
She glanced around, her eyes wide.
"We're going to get some Tokens," Beetle said, making her way through the crowd.
"Tokens?" Dawn asked.
"Tokens are the currency down here in the Underground Market."
"Oh," Pomegranate said, speaking for the first time in a while.
Beetle walked up to a simple, pale silk tent. She dumped the dried fish onto the table. The RainWing behind the table glanced up from the scroll she was reading.
"Oh, hey, Beetle! Haven't seen you in a while," he said, counting the fish.
"Sorry, Caracal. I would have visited sooner, but the monthly negotiations got complicated."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Caracal said gruffly, not taking his eyes off of the fish.
"Yeah, Queen Lotus drew out. Something about extra conflicts between them and the SkyWings."
Dawn blinked. The MudWings had withdrawn from being a donor. She hadn't heard about that, but then again, most news about the burrows only reached her weeks after it was relevant, and this seemed relatively new.
"Yeah, she said she wanted to focus on helping her own tribe, anyway, it was this whole mess, that I had to sort out," Beetle said, that hint of 'listen to me, love me, I'm special' getting into her voice. She glanced expectantly over at Dawn, making her feel even more uncomfortable.
Dawn allowed a blank mask to slide over her face, to hide her panic. Does she know about me and Dewdrop?! Does she realize she's working to reunite us?!
Caracal slid over a pile of bone-white Tokens. It took Dawn a half second to realize they were bone. Tiny bone disks, the marrow had been carved out and replaced with metal. Stamped into the metal was a tiny flower.
Beetle nodded her head gratefully and took the Tokens. Then she headed towards the river, beckoning for Dawn and Pomegranate to follow. They did.
Beetle stopped at the river and waited. Up ahead, the raft came closer and closer. "RIDES! RIDES ALL THE WAY UP TO THE WATERFALL!" The dragon called.
His passengers disembarked and hurried away. "Oh, hey Anole," Beetle called, tossing a single Token in the air and stepping onto the wooden raft.
Anole snatched the token and nodded. "Beetle! Haven't seen you in a while! What're you doing here?"
"We have someone to visit," Beetle explained, as Dawn and Pomegranate stepped onto the raft.
"Oh, you better not be seeing that Seer dragon. Ya know she's creepy," Anole pointed out, before bellowing for customers again. "RIDES! RIDES ALL THE WAY UP TO THE WATERFALL!"
Beetle rolled her eyes and made her way to the back of the raft. Dawn and Pomegranate followed, not quite sure what to do. More dragons began to flow on, and Dawn realized something.
"Why don't they just use their wings, like, I mean, isn't that what our wings are for?" Dawn asked.
"Yeah, but things work differently down here. Dragons who are tired of rotting away in cold tunnels can go down and make a living, get good food, and just generally make a life for themselves."
Dawn nodded. Behind them, Anole cried out one last time and pushed off of the bank. She watched as the water began to swirl and move beneath her.
"Where do all these dragons live?" Pomegranate wondered aloud.
"Oh, most of them only work day jobs down here in the Market. But some live in networks of tunnels carved into the walls, you'll see them soon enough."
The raft made quick progress, and it soon stopped. "RIDES! RIDES ALL THE WAY UP TO THE WATERFALL!" Anole called.
"Are we getting off?" Dawn asked.
"Um, no. We're the next stop," Beetle explained. "Anole runs a scheduled three stops in a certain area of the Underground Market. Then, at the end of the day, he rows his way down to his Sceel."
Dawn blinked slowly as she unpacked the information. "What's a 'Sceel'?" She asked.
"Oh, I didn't mention? That's what the living units are called down here. I hear they're actually much better than the units we get in the burrows."
The raft began to move again.
"Is that one?"
Dawn looked up. A neet set of grooves and holes had been carved out of the wall. A few dragons moved along the grooves, and some poked their heads out of the holes.
"Yes, that's one."
Dawn focused on the water. It was hard to believe that it contained all the burrow's drinking water.
The raft drifted out into a large open space, which Dawn realized was a part where the water pipe turned into a giant X. All along the water pipe, the stalls continued with no sign of ever ending.
"How big is this market?" Dawn asked, under the din of Anole's bellowing. They stepped off of the raft, and she noticed that the wooden docks had been built directly above the water, not high above. The waves lapped gently over the wood.
Beetle started off through the stalls without even stopping and glancing at any of the other stalls.
Then, they stopped in front of The Seer's store.
A/N
Another chapter? It's that time again? Yes, I hope you like it because it took me a hell of a long time to write and is a whole 600+ words longer than most of my other chapters.
Also, people are bugging me about how Orange's name is cannon. But it's only mentioned once, and they're both such minor characters. I don't give a crap whether it's canon or not.