Nihion
The kobold cave made a sound from deep inside — a high, repetitive crying, too consistent to be an animal in distress, too plaintive to ignore. They heard it from the entrance and looked at each other.
"Something's in there," Vinx said.
"Yes," Arya said.
The kobolds were not friendly, which was on-brand. They came out of the side passages in numbers that made the corridor feel smaller, fast and defensive, protecting whatever was making that sound. The fight moved through the cave the way fights in enclosed spaces do — in close, no room to maneuver, a lot of improvisation. They won by moving forward, which is most of how cave fighting works.
The crying got louder as they went deeper. Clearer.
At the end of the cave: a small clutch. One egg remaining, cracked and emptied not long ago. And beside it, curled on the stone, a dragonling. Small, copper-scaled, bright-eyed, and very much upset about something.
It wasn't injured. It wasn't cold. It looked at them with the clarity of a creature that had recently come into existence and found the world immediately insufficient in one specific way.
Vinx crouched down to look at it. "It doesn't know its name," she said, with the certainty of someone who had grown up in a culture that took these things seriously. "Dragons know their names before anything else. It's the anchor. Without it, they can't settle."
The dragonling turned its eyes toward Elaazar. Not toward the group — toward Elaazar specifically, with the directness of a creature that had already decided.
Elaazar walked forward and crouched to its level. He thought for a moment, turning the name over in his mind the way names should be turned over before they're given. Then he spoke it:
"Nihion."
It was a name from an older dialect — copper-tongue, the language of copper dragons, a word that meant something like clear sight in dark places or the one who sees first. A name for a creature that would be small before it was large, and would notice things in the small time that others would miss later.
The dragonling went completely still.
Then it moved — up Elaazar's hand, along his arm, across his chest with the purposeful certainty of something following a path it already knew. It settled around his neck with its tail looped through the necklace of his holy symbol, radiating warmth that went straight through the fabric.
Something shifted in Elaazar's chest. A gift, offered freely: Draconic Divination. In the days that followed, he would find he could sometimes read a situation before it arrived, sense a danger at the edge of things, hear something in the quality of silence that told him which silence was safe. It came in a voice like embers — not words, exactly, but meaning.
Nihion settled against his neck and closed his eyes, content in a way that copper dragonlings are rarely content for long, which meant this feeling was worth noting.
The next cave had a new occupant.
Where Hogdag had sat in the dim, a red dragon now occupied the space with the absolute comfort of something that has found new property and is not inclined to discuss its title. Young adult, fire-bright scales, coiled with theatrical ease on the ogre's old belongings like they were specifically intended for him.
He looked at the party. At Nihion on Elaazar's neck. Back at the party, with the faintly contemptuous interest of a creature that found everything slightly beneath it but was occasionally curious about what it was beneath.
"Trespassers," he said. The voice had the richness of something that spent a lot of time speaking and enjoyed it.
The negotiations were careful and slightly humiliating. He wanted treasure — which they had, gathered from the ooze chamber and the kobold cave. They gave it over with the good grace of people who had no leverage and knew it. Then Arya made the ask: help. Some form of it. Anything he was willing to offer.
The dragon considered this with theatrical deliberation. Then he named his terms: more treasure, magic items included, in exchange for one day's use of his breath. Dragon fire, breathed through human and elven lungs, usable until dawn.
The trade was made. The breath settled into them like swallowed heat — not painful, but very present, a pressure behind the ribs that would release as fire when needed.
Nihion watched the red dragon with the clear-eyed assessment of something that had formed an immediate opinion and kept it to itself. The red dragon did not appear to notice Nihion, or chose not to appear to.
Next episode: Gnolls are looking for something in a hidden room — and when the party finds it, the skeletons they have to fight won't stay down.