Page 49 of The Dungeon Book

The dragon’s eye blazed. “What are you?” Suddenly, his head was right next to Bait. His tongue slithered and scraped over her skin, tasting her. “Human. Who are you?”

She kept walking up the slope. “I live in the Dungeon. Rules say I can. Rules say this kill’s mine.”

“How,” asked Nithscalpa, “did a human come to dwell in my Dungeon?” There was still amusement in his voice, but the joke was wearing thin.

“I don’t know,” said Bait. “I grew up below.” She was past the dragon now, clambering over the rocks. The Dungeon Door in sight.

“A human child.” Behind her, Nithscalpa licked his lips again.

“That’s my lair,” she said, without looking back. “The Entrance Hall.” By the Rules of the Dungeon, she would be safe there.

But she’d have to cross the threshold first. Corridors – and Outside – don’t count.

“Your lair, is it? You’re the guardian of my Dungeon?” Nithscalpa chuckled. “Oh, there will be changes, now I am awake.” He licked his lips a third time, and a shudder ran through him. “You! I know you. I remember that taste. Old Throte lied. Him I will deal with later. But you, mortal – you have been my kill to devour all these years, and I—”

Bait spun around and flung the rabbit’s head at Nithscalpa’s good eye. He flinched, just for an instant, and she ran.

She dodged to the side, into his blind spot.

His claws scored the mountainside inches away from her.

She sprinted for the threshold and the safety of the Dungeon. Only a few feet away from me, now, and the dragon rearing behind her, all flame and fury.

Had I a heart, it would have been in my throat, had I a throat.

I remember her grabbing me as she ran, catching me by the eye socket, gathering me to her as she flung herself to the right, into one of the niches in the wall of the Entrance Hall that had until recently been occupied by a gargoyle.

I remember seeing Third-Sister rousing from her slumber, lifting her head in bleary confusion, her face so very human even as she untangled her lion limbs from her bat wings and scorpion tail.

I remember hearing Gloop bubble with anticipation of some treat, for Bait always brought scraps when she came back from hunting.

Then—

Fire.

I survived.

You might say, “of course you survived, Cornelius, you’re telling this tale”. But I was already dead then, so it’s worth clarifying. Battered, chipped, cracked, scorched, but intact. Bait shielded me with her body. She saved me. Others she could not save.

Third-Sister was directly in front of the Door, and took the blast right in her human face. Human face, lion’s body, bat wings, scorpion tail, all reduced in a heartbeat to fine white ash.

Bait threw herself – and myself – into a side alcove, in the hopes of sheltering from the blast. No doubt the shelter helped a little, but the flames came roaring around the corner in a torrent of fire. What protected us was Gloop. I do not know if the slime was instinctively seeking out its usual scraps and treats, or if it genuinely rushed to defend its mistress against a far greater threat. But the cool gelatinous bulk of the corridor slime slithered between Bait and the fires at just the right moment.

Gloop did not burn. It sublimed, turning from semi-solid to hissing steam in a flash. The poor thing bubbled and thrashed as most of it evaporated in the impossible flame. Bait’s back and legs were scalded, but those were minor injuries compared to what might have been.

Dragonfire blasted the Dungeon Door to cinders. It scorched the hall, shattered the pillars, licked the stairs to the second level. A peal of thunder rolled through the dungeon, echoing through the labyrinth, on and on through endless corridors, through unplumbed depths, until it was swallowed at last by the immemorial silence of the roots of the world. Stones split, the earth quivered, the mountain stumbled.

Bait, stunned and terrified, cradled me as rocks and a few equally stunned spikers fell from the ceiling. The air was too hot to breathe; Bait whimpered with each inhalation.

A terrible silence.

Then –

“I can hear your breathing, human.”

“Don’t move,” I whispered.

“I smell your burnt skin. I taste fear in your sweat.” The Entrance Hall flooded with golden light as Nithscalpa pressed his good eye to the doorway. “Where are you?”