Whatever the truth was, the troll didn’t seem to care one way or the other. It lunged at Dax, coming so close to the warrior’s throat with its long claws as to almost take his head off his shoulders. Dax gave a yelp and jumped back, opting to retreat a few paces rather than stay in range of the monster’s attacks. All the while, the drums from outside grew louder. They were almost at the cave’s mouth.

“It’s okay,” came a voice from deep inside the fissure. Sarah’s heart leaped when she realized the voice belonged to Kay. “I’m okay, and I have the spellbook! I’ll take care of everything now.”

Sarah heard a few muffled words from inside the mountain, and realized that Kay was speaking a few magic words that he thought would save the day. Sarah didn’t get her hopes up. By now, she already knew how Kay’s spells usually turned out. There was a flash of light from below, and thick gray smoke billowed out from the crack in the ground. Nothing else happened, except for a mutter from Kay: “Wait a minute…that’s not right.”

The troll smiled cruelly, realizing that he had a potential three-course meal trapped in front of him.

“Keeley has had enough,” came the voice in Sarah’s ear. She cocked her head to see the dragon beating her hummingbird-sized wings and taking to the air. “Her friends have been bullied and attacked everywhere. Now Keeley the dragon is saying stop!”

The tiny white dragon flew straight at the troll. The monster snapped at her, trying to swallow her whole as she flew by. But what Keeley lacked in size she more than made up for with speed. She wheeled away from the troll’s tusks, darting just out of its reach. When she got past the creature’s long pointed nose, she lashed out with her claws, scratching the monster right between the eyes. The attack didn’t seem to hurt the troll any more than a mosquito bite might sting a normal person, but it got the troll angry enough to forget the other two people in the cave. It swatted at Keeley, trying to catch her between its thick gray fingers and squash the dragon like a bug. Keeley flew to the top of the cave, just out of reach.

“Enough is enough! Keeley is a dragon, and now she’s going to show it!”

Taking a deep breath in, she held her breath until her face turned rosy pink. Then she breathed out, spitting a mouthful of flame at the troll. It wasn’t nearly as strong as the fire she had accidentally breathed at the circus – like Kay, Keeley didn’t seem entirely control of her own impressive talents. Really, the fire created more smoke than actual flame, but it did seem to bother the troll. The creature roared and flailed around angrily, trying to catch the dragon. Again, though, Keeley was fast enough and nimble enough to stay out of reach. Finally, the troll broke off its attack and tried a new tactic. Grabbing a corner of the cave wall, it ripped apart the cavern itself, pulling a massive chunk of stone from the mountain to use as a thrown weapon. The cave, already weakened by the troll’s stomping, shuddered dangerously. More rubble fell from the ceiling. This time, it didn’t look like it was going to stop.

“We’d better head into the fissure with Kay,” shouted Sarah. “It doesn’t look like this place will hold much longer.”

“That’s all well and good,” responded Dax, “but what happens when we’re deep underground and covered by a few tons of rubble?” Nonetheless, the warrior moved toward the crack in the ground, preparing to slip after the wizard.

Neither Sarah nor Dax needed to get to the fissure, though. Another rumbling came from under the ground, greater even than the chaos caused by the mountain troll. The earth shook, and it knocked Sarah and Dax right off their feet. The crack in the ground grew into a huge fissure. Suddenly, instead of running toward the hole in the ground, Sarah found herself trying to get away from the widening gap. She grabbed stones and tried to pull herself along, but the crevice opened faster than she could move. The ground swallowed her up, and she felt herself falling.

She landed with a thump and a groan on a rocky ledge. The cavern around her was dark – too dark for her to see anything. She felt her way along the ground until she touched some robes.

“Kay? Are you all right?”

“Of course I am,” came the boy’s voice. “I just had a little…mishap with my spellbook. It’s hard to read the words when it’s so dark.”

“I’m here, too,” came Dax’s woeful voice. “Not that anyone cares about an old man like me.”

The three blind companions heard a roar and a scream above. The troll’s bellow was quickly joined by the others of its band that joined it.

“What about them?” asked Sarah. “Do you think they’ll be able to find us?”

Another roar cave from somewhere in the cavern, echoing off unseen mountain walls and drowning out any answer to Sarah’s question. This roar was larger and louder than anything Sarah had heard before, either from the trolls or even from Aries himself. She clapped her hands to her ears to drown out the noise of the bellow. Then she closed her eyes and gave a surprised squeal as a sudden burst of fire lit of the cavern. The fireball was almost as large as a house. Its heat tanned Sarah’s skin and caused blisters to form on her arms. The smell of smoke and sulfur filled the cavern. Despite her watering eyes and sore arms, Sarah was thankful to find when she uncovered her ears that the trolls’ roars had fallen silent.

“Keeley? Was that you?”

Sarah heard a fluttering near her left ear. In another moment, she felt a familiar figure perch on her shoulder.

“Keeley did well, didn’t she?”

“You sure did,” said Sarah after another few seconds of listening convinced her that the trolls were gone. “I didn’t know you could hold that much fire in your little body.”

“What are you talking about?” The dragon’s voice sounded confused. “Keeley was talking about the way she distracted the troll. She thought Kay made the fireball with his spell.”

“No, that wasn’t me,” came Kay’s voice. “All my spell did was…well, let’s say it didn’t do quite what I expected of it.”

“Then where did the fire come from?” asked Sarah.

She didn’t have to wait long for an answer. The ground shifted, and the companions nearly fell over from the movement. They were traveling downward, being carried by the ground itself like it was an elevator. But there wasn’t any sound of shifting rock or any sort of pulleys and machinery. Deeper in the mountain, the rocks seemed to have a light of their own. Plants and crystals and insects gave up glows and flashes of their own, giving some small light for the travelers to see by. Sarah looked at Kay and had to stifle a laugh when she saw that his spell had grown a thick, bushy beard on him that almost touched his toes.

“I told you, the spell didn’t do what I expected,” said Kay. “But I don’t think that’s what we should be thinking about right now.”

The bottom of the mountain was a huge cavern that opened next to an underground lake. In the distance, Sarah could see some fires burning, although she didn’t know what type of creatures might make camp this deep underground. She only gave the campfires a passing glance, though. Something else had caught her attention.

The rock that the companions were on wasn’t really a rock at all. It was a hand. Long clawed fingers stretched out past the group, each one as big as a full-grown person. The hand itself was black and covered in lizard-like scales. Each scale seemed more like a boulder to Sarah. She held her breath and looked cautiously upwards, tracing the long shadowy form of the massive lizard that literally held them in the palm of its hand.

Far above her head, maybe even a hundred feet away, Sarah saw a pair of glowing red eyes looking down at the companions. The creature’s breaths sounded like growls. A trail of smoke still drifted from its nostrils. It had its mouth half open, and Sarah could see the light of another fire building in the monster’s throat. This was what Sarah expected when she looked at a dragon. She had started to think that all dragons in Greystone Valley were as small as Keeley – no bigger than the horse-sized creatures Aries led on leashes, at the very least. But this on was as tall as a building, with a mouth that could swallow a grown person whole. Sarah swallowed and held her breath as she waited to see what the dragon would do.

Each of the companions watched as the dragon regarded them. It looked at them curiously, as though it had forgotten what humans looked like. The glowing eyes grew closer, casting their light on the tiny creatures the dragon had caught. Sarah, Kay, and Dax each stayed perfectly silent, afraid to even move lest they accidentally anger the curious dragon. Keeley, being a dragon herself, didn’t seem to have any fears of the creature.

“Uncle Azal!” The tiny white dragon darted off of Sarah’s shoulder and flew straight at the larger creature. To the massive black dragon, Keeley looked like nothing more than a gnat. Nonetheless, it squinted at her and looked her over carefully. Then, much to Sarah’s surprise – or at least it would have been to her surprise if she hadn’t started expecting weird things to happen – the black dragon smiled.

“Keeley?” The dragon’s voice was so booming that Sarah worried he’d start an earthquake. “Well I’ll be! You’ve grown so much since I last saw you!”

Azal turned his glowing eyes back to the companions. “And who are your friends here?”

Keeley darted around the companions, cheerfully calling out each of their names. She had to shout to make sure her faint voice could be heard over her “uncle’s” breathing.

“So you three have been keeping little Keeley company, have you? Well, you’ve earned a dragon’s hospitality then.”

“Thank you very much, Mister Azal,” called Sarah, “but we don’t really—”

“Come along, now. I’ll introduce you to the others.”

Without waiting for a response, Azal rose up on his back legs and began walking toward the fires in the distance. Sarah and her friends had no choice but to sit and let the dragon’s claws carry them away. None of the humans were about to risk upsetting the dragon, and Keeley was already winging her way next to the dragon’s ear, chattering away like a buzzing bee.

“Looks like we’re the guests of honor,” whispered Kay to Sarah. “I just hope the others he mentioned are closer to Keeley in size than Azal here.”