Tears For The Dragon Ch. 01

Author's Note: There is quite a bit of plot in this one before the smut starts, so...fair warning. This story contains: (Some) Non-consensual, (Gentle) Femdom, Fellatio, Cunnilingus, Hot Dragon-on-Human Action, and Cherry-Cheese Danishes. Okay, maybe not so much of the latter.

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Tibor Sarkany was beginning to regret coming to this distant part of civilization. But it was the farthest from the capital that he could get without going into the wilds. He needed that distance to avoid King Bognar's forces. His grandiose schemes of revenge also required significant capital on his part, and he had heard that this town of Arany had need of skilled people.

But so far his efforts at honest work had come to nothing. And so he'd begun to turn to less honest means of using his considerable education. It was easy work for the most part. A rich merchant's wards taken down here, a marker spell put on a juicy caravan there. It made him feel a little pang of regret now and then, especially when he thought of Natalia. She would have hated to see him stooping so low. But she wasn't there to pass judgment, was she? And that was why he had sworn an oath, one that he would fulfill no matter how much figurative or even literal muck he had to wade through.

Tibor hunched forward on his stool and regarded the nearly untouched ale in front of him. The tavern was starting to become more bustling as night approached. He ignored the yelling and laughter around him as he gritted his teeth. His potential 'employer' was late.

At last, a big callused hand slapped across from him on the table. Tibor looked up and saw a pair of amused blue eyes look back. The fair-skinned man had a pretty impressive scar across one side of his face. It meandered from his scalp, down one side of his nose, and then across one side of his mouth. The scar made the man look like he was perpetually frowning. He had short-cropped gray hair.

"You Sarkany?" he grunted.

The young mage nodded. "You're Vilmos?"

The man gave an answering nod as he seated himself. "Sorry I'm late. Hadda little trouble with some bandits on the way into town."

Tibor sat up and took a small sip of ale. "Trouble for you or for them?"

Vilmos smiled. Only one side of his face actually got involved in the smile; the side with the scar remained inert. He leaned forward and his broad shoulders strained at his sleeveless leather jerkin. "What do you think?"

Tibor smiled while Vilmos gave him an appraising eye. The young man gave back his friendliest non-expression and kept his light hazel eyes neutral. Tibor knew he didn't look like much, and he took great pains to keep it that way. The only thing that set him apart from the native northern folk was his light-brown complexion. He wore his usual outfit of a gray shirt and black breeches with calfskin boots. His dark brown hair fell behind him in a neat ponytail that reached to his shoulder blades.

A frazzle-haired server paused next to their table. "Can I get you boys anything?" she asked.

Vilmos gave the woman a one-sided leer. "Well, I can think of many things, darlin'. But an ale will do for now." As she walked away, the scarred man tried to give her backside a rough pinch. She twitched her rear away in a practiced maneuver and didn't even look back.

Vilmos snorted and looked back at Tibor. "So, our mutual friend with the broken nose told me I should see you. I gotta job fer ya."

In spite of himself, Tibor was interested. This was not his usual customer; they were mostly ratty little thieves or shady merchants looking to make life difficult for the competition.

"How much are you paying?" asked Tibor.

The scarred man shook his head. "Nothing up front. Equal split of the haul."

Tibor sighed. "I have rules, as I'm sure our nosy acquaintance told you. I take a fixed fee only. I get paid half at the start, half on completion. I don't care how much you make off of my services. If you happen to make out ten times more than what you pay me, well that's wonderful for you."

The answer seemed to amuse the scarred man. "Yer not the greedy type, eh? Good." He leaned forward. "The problem is, I ain't got much coin right now. What I do got is information that could lead to a really big payday for both of us."

The server came back and thumped a wooden mug onto the tabletop, causing a little of the ale within to slosh out. Vilmos' hand shot out like lightning and gripped her wrist. As her eyes widened a little in fear, he made a great show of placing a coin into her trapped hand. He gave her an unsubtle wink before releasing her wrist. The server rolled her eyes and stalked off.

In the meantime, Tibor took a sip of his own ale and pondered the offer. Two things worried him. One, it was a departure from his usual method of doing business. He hated doing work on speculation. Two, he wasn't pleased with the notion of partnering with Vilmos. Tibor could sense a cruel violence in him that lurked just below the surface. The man reminded him a little of Metternich, the chief spy for King Bognar. And Metternich had nearly killed Tibor the one and only time they'd met.

On the other hand, Tibor didn't have anything else lined up at the moment. It wouldn't hurt to at least hear more about the offer...as long as it played to his strengths.

Tibor said, "Just to be clear, I'm not a battle-mage. So if this is a frontal assault I won't be of much use."

Vilmos gave another lopsided smile. "We shouldn't need to raise a sword at all for this job. Y'see, I'm a soldier that recently...retired from a mercenary company that I won't name. We were doin' a sweep for rebels not too far from here, and I came across somethin'. A tomb."

The mage took another sip. "You need someone to look out for wards and get past them."

The mercenary pointed a finger at Tibor in a 'you-got-it' gesture. "If it's who I think it is...it might be Duke Konrad's real tomb."

Tibor resisted the urge to scoff. "That's an old, old story." The Duke had been one of the more legendarily wealthy nobles in the old realms, before they had become 'unified' under King Bognar. Upon the Duke's death, there had been rumors that the riches bequeathed to his sons had been less than expected. That led to more fantastical tales that Konrad's official crypt was not his 'true' final resting place. Instead, there was some mythical 'real' tomb where a fabulous pile of gold and jewels awaited the lucky discoverer.

Vilmos shrugged. "Yeah, it's an old story. But a lotta stories have a, whaddyacall, grain of truth in them." He leaned closer. "Look, maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's just a cave in a hillside. I went in just far enough to see worked stone and then retreated. I didn't want to trip any ward spells."

Tibor drank a larger swig of ale. The brewers in this particular region liked to add juniper berries on top of the usual ingredients, and he found that he welcomed the extra tang it added. His long-suppressed and more academic side began to surface. "Worked stone...were the stones squares or rectangles?"

Vilmos scratched his ear. "Nah they were, whaddyacall the six-sided dinguses?"

The mage's eyes widened. "Hexagons?" He sketched out a rough six-sided shape in the spilled beer on the tabletop.

The mercenary nodded. "Yeah, that. What does it mean?"

Tibor set his mug down. "It means it isn't Duke Konrad's tomb." He smiled, and this time it was genuine. "You, my friend, have found a ruin from the First Empire."

Off of a puzzled look by Vilmos, Tibor continued. "You see, nobody has ever reported a First Empire ruin this far north. If they had, you would have seen a dedicated outpost from one of the big southern universities. This is a ruin that nobody knows about." His center began to grow warm, more from excitement than from the ale.

Vilmos looked a little deflated. "Crap. I was hoping for a nice untouched tomb."

"It might be a tomb. But even if it isn't, there will be artifacts in there that many collectors will pay handsomely to get their hands on."

The mercenary looked a little more upbeat at that news. "How, er, 'handsomely'?"

"There are only six known ruins that survived the fall of the First Empire. If this is number seven...just for the location itself we could literally name our price." Tibor felt that warm glow burn brighter. This could be it, the money that got him established. And then he could proceed with his plans to burn King Bognar's reign right down to the ground.

"What about ward spells?" asked Vilmos. "I was gonna have you along to take 'em down, but if they're that old it sounds like they might be too powerful."

Tibor shook his head. "That's a common misconception. Older spells do not mean harder to bypass. First Empire magic was strong but very uncomplicated. We've gotten a lot more sophisticated in the two thousand years since. If there's any wards there, I can handle 'em no problem."

The mercenary gave another lopsided smile and held out his mug towards Tibor. The young man bumped his own against it in a muted thunk.

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The trip to the ruin was uneventful. The only bad thing that happened was a non-stop bout of cold rain that lasted for two days. At least it was the summertime; in the winter, they'd be trudging through thigh-deep snow. But now they were finally here. Tibor regarded the nondescript cave entrance with some trepidation. It was almost easy to miss, since it was half covered over by sod drooping down from above.

He looked up at the crag of stone that crowned the mountain above them. The summit was the highest of those around them. And that worried him. This location was nowhere near as remote as he'd imagined. There was a hamlet with some small farms only a few miles distant from here. There was no way that this ruin should have remained undiscovered. A curious wandering shepherd and his flock would have been enough to find it.

"Let's get to it!" said Vilmos with enthusiasm. He shrugged his pack off and set it aside. They had no mules on this trip, since neither of them had the money to afford them.

"Yes, let's," said Tibor as he took off his own pack. "Just remember, this is a survey run. We just go in, take an inventory of what's there..."

"Grab a few choice bits 'n bobs, sell 'em, use the coin to buy mules and come back for the rest," replied Vilmos. "I heard ya the first twenty times." He buckled a short sword to his waist. Its leather scabbard was cracked and stained from long use. He picked up a torch and lit it. The mercenary gestured at the entrance. "After you, Mr. Ward Expert."

Tibor gripped his own lit torch and touched Natalia's locket where it hung beneath his shirt. He closed his eyes and began breathing softly and slowly. The familiar meditative trance began in his brain as he summoned his Second Sight. When he opened his eyes again, the world had changed.

'Normal' things were now muted and almost monochrome. Sounds were distorted, as if heard from a great distance. He looked carefully around the hole. Apart from the sod dangling down from above, there was nothing visible. Certainly no magic.

"I don't see anything out here," he said aloud. "Follow me. Watch my steps, and place your feet exactly where mine have been. Understand?"

"Got it," came the reply.

Tibor took another slow breath and walked forward into the cave. The opening was smaller than he'd expected, as a great deal of earth had fallen from the ceiling of the cave. It had clearly been a long time since anything large had passed through here.

Past the earthen front of the cave, the passage became rough stone and much wider. Even though it looked natural, Tibor was certain that this tunnel had been made by somebody. The cave was much too round and regular to be otherwise. It sloped downwards into the earth at a shallow angle.

He paced along slowly, scanning with his enhanced sight all the while. Fifty yards in, the tunnel came to a bend. As he peeked around the corner Tibor saw his first ward. It looked like a white band of glowing curlicue script painted on the walls of the tunnel. And beyond the band of glowing script he could see the rough walls of the cave turn into smooth hexagonal tiles.

"Hold up," he said. "I see something."

Vilmos sounded nervous. "Really? I didn't go much farther than this corner."

"That's good," replied Tibor absently. "You would have tripped that ward for sure. Wait at the corner while I take care of this."

The mage carefully walked closer to the ward spell. He took his time to examine it thoroughly. What he saw gave him pause.

"This ward is much newer," he said. "It's not from the First Empire."

"Shit," said Vilmos. "I guess somebody else found this place, then?"

"Maybe," replied Tibor. "This is...yes, it's a just simple auditory ward. If you cross it, you get a warning to leave on pain of death." He gave a little humph of bemusement as his long fingers began sketching rapidly in the air around him. A glowing red counter-ward rapidly grew above the existing ward. He knew that Vilmos would have seen nothing; such visions were only available to those who had a trained Second Sight. After he completed sketching around the circumference of the tunnel, the initial ward and his red counterpart merged and dissipated in a silent flash.

He nodded. "It's down." Vilmos made an impatient gesture towards the tunnel ahead, and they both proceeded downward.

The rough stone under Tibor's boots gave way to smooth granite. This section of the tunnel sloped more steeply that the previous, rougher section. He looked in amazement around him at the hexagonal tiles of stone that were cunningly laid to create a perfectly round cylinder. It was wide enough for three men to easily walk abreast. Such stone-craft was beyond even the finest masons now living. The First Empire might have been cruder in terms of spell-craft, but when it came to any other area of expertise they surpassed the best efforts of modern civilization.

The two men came around another corner to see a smooth downward-sloping section of tunnel about a hundred yards long. The far end opened out into a larger space. There were lights in that space, but no wards visible to his Second Sight.

"There's a large room at the end there," he said. "But I still don't see any wards in the tunnel. If there were any, they were taken down long ago."

Vilmos sounded unhappy at the news. "Damn and blast. The place has probably been picked clean."

"I don't think so," replied Tibor, "Or else they wouldn't have bothered leaving that first ward in place. But why just an auditory warning?" He pondered further. "Something doesn't add up here. We should back off and think this through..."

There was a sudden and pointed pressure in the small of his back. "Fuck that," said Vilmos in a snarl. "You back off now, boy, an' you'll get my sword through yer kidney. Move it."

Tibor swallowed his sudden panic. If he had been many yards from Vilmos and had sufficient warning, he might have been able to get off a leg-entangling spell. But right now he knew that any suspicious gestures would result in a painful and bloody end. He kept walking forward, careful to keep his hands in sight as he continued his scanning.

They reached the opening and the tunnel opened up into a huge space. It was an incredible vista even thorough the distortion of Tibor's Second Sight. He was reminded of one of the great southern cathedrals as he stared up at the ceiling far above. This was no natural cavern; the hexagonal tiling extended everywhere, including up the walls and roof. He stopped and stared in wonder, the peril at his back forgotten in the majestic scale of this place.

From the tunnel, a set of broad and shallow steps led down to a wide expanse of floor. Two large walls extended into the center of that floor and created a narrow passageway leading to the other, still invisible half of the space. The walls were more like partitions; they didn't rise up to meet the ceiling. The space was filled with a golden, gentle light that came from a multitude of glowing braziers scattered on the floor as well as from similarly glowing sconces on the walls.

"Bloody hell," said Vilmos. "That's a sight, fer sure."

Tibor took one last look around. There was nothing visible, no wards at all. He finally relaxed and stopped concentrating on his Second Sight. The mage took a deep ragged breath in relief. He looked sideways at the mercenary. The scarred man didn't seem to be particularly surprised at the sight before him. "I don't see any spells or wards," said Tibor.

Vilmos shrugged. "Guess we can start lookin' fer treasure, then." He pointed at one of the braziers. "What is that? Sure don't look like fire. Or even magical fire. It's just a glow. I can't believe it would still be burnin' after all this time."

"That's a light made by the First Empire," replied Tibor. "It isn't magic, it's...something else. The sages are still arguing about what exactly they are." He took another deep breath. "And just one of those lights is worth a fortune. I'm telling you, something isn't right here. Whoever left that first ward would have stripped the place of all of these lights. But they didn't. Please, we need to stop and think this over."

Vilmos' sword pointed over at Tibor. "I'll open up your belly if you even think about stoppin'. We keep movin'. You first. Keep lookin' with yer magic-y sense stuff."

Tibor opened his mouth to protest but felt a warning jab at his side. He dropped back into his meditative state and again looked with his Sight. There was still nothing visible, but he made a great show of looking around to satisfy the suddenly hostile mercenary behind him.

The two of them walked up to the passageway which led to the other half of this huge room. It was about ten yards long, and there was another golden glow at the far end. There still weren't any visible wards. Tibor kept a careful eye on the floor as he crept forward. No matter how subtle the magic was, any spells would light up like a beacon in his Sight. He could hear Vilmos close behind him. His mind was still primarily focused on keeping his Second Sight up, but in a distant corner of his mind he wondered if the bastard was planning to simply slit his throat when this was all done.

He moved out into the next part of the space. Off to his right was a huge depression in the floor. It was well over ten yards across. The depression had a great many cushions piled in it. He took a quick look into the far corners of the room. There were a few large passageways out of the space, but still no visible magic. He relaxed and dropped his Sight again. The strain of keeping it up for that long of a stretch had given him a little throb of a headache.

"There's no spells in here," said the mage. "But that depression almost looks like a bed. Or a nest."

"And that looks like what we came for," said Vilmos in a lustful tone.

Tibor spun. Tucked around the corner from where they'd entered was a literal mound of gold and jewels twenty yards across. He stared at it in growing fear. This was not a random sprawl; every item had been placed for maximum visual impact. Rubies the size of a fist glittered next to ornate golden goblets. There were diamonds, gem-encrusted armor pieces, even the hilt of a sword or two poking its way out of the mound of wealth. The foundation of the pile was a profusion of gold coins of every size and vintage. Some of the coins spilled in an artful little swirl that trailed off towards the two men. It was riches beyond imagining; not even the fabled Duke Konrad could boast such a treasury.

And Tibor knew that this treasure pile meant that he was a dead man.

They were both dead men.