Chapter 8: The Graveyard

Caden finished his incantation, the swirling strands of energy coalescing to form the shape of a tiny butterfly. The magical construct emerged from the light at the end of his staff, fluttering as though blown by a breeze as it flew off down the tunnel ahead of them.

“We did it!” he exclaimed, pumping his fist in the air triumphantly. “We must be near another exit! All we have to do now is follow the butterfly, and we should come out on the other side of the ridge.” He turned to look at Kadal, his wide smile faltering as he saw that she wasn’t joining him in his celebration. “What’s wrong?”

“I ... have not been truthful,” she replied, her tail flicking back and forth on the cave floor. “After all that has happened, you deserve to know what awaits you.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked warily.

“I make no excuses for my behavior,” she continued, avoiding looking him in the eye as she examined the far wall intently. “When it became clear that I could not defeat you by my own hand, and that I could not return home without your head, I devised a plan to trap you. You must understand,” she added hurriedly, “I felt that I had no other choice. The headhunters who are tracking us are not from my tribe, they do not know me. They have been following the trails of two people, a battlemage, and a hunter who has been traveling in his company. What other conclusion could they come to other than betrayal? The only way for me to find safe passage back to my village would be to present them with your head, to prove my loyalty beyond any doubt.”

She looked miserable, Caden could see that she deeply regretted her decision, but he waited for her to elaborate before offering his forgiveness. What exactly had she done?

“Beyond this ridge lies the Whale Graveyard,” she continued. “It is a sacred place to my people, where our ancestors sourced the ivory for their blessed weapons. The land is inhabited by a savage beast of immense strength, a fiend that we call The Eater of Bones. It was my intention to lead you into its lair so that you might meet your fate at its hands.”

“You were going to feed me to a monster?” he asked, raising an eyebrow incredulously. “Is it some kind of animal? What does it look like? Why would you imagine that an animal would be able to stop me when organized hunting parties and a magic-wielder couldn’t?”

“I have never seen it with my own eyes,” she admitted, “but I have heard tell of its immensity. It is said to be covered in a carapace of bone so thick that no spear can pierce it, and it feeds on the bones of both the living and the dead.”

“Wait a second,” Caden said, scratching his stubbly chin pensively. “I think I know what you’re talking about. I read about it somewhere, in an old bestiary that I found in the library. You’re describing a Borophage, a cousin of the dragon family. How old is this legend, exactly?”

“Old,” she replied. “My people dare not go there anymore.”

“Then, I take it nobody has been to check on it for a good long while? Dragons are extinct, Kadal. There hasn’t been one sighted for centuries. They were purged by a knightly order that was formed for that very purpose.”

“Maybe where you come from,” she replied, “but no knights have ventured so deep into the Coral Sea. My ancestors made sure of that.”

“Even so, I think it highly unlikely that a dragon subspecies has survived for so long in such a remote location. It would need a viable population to keep reproducing,” he began, counting off on his fingers. “Enough food to sustain it, enough territory for hunting. I can’t imagine that.”

“It is a magical creature,” she insisted, “they live for hundreds of years.”

“Let me tell you, while life-sustaining magic exists, the process required to create and maintain it is an extremely complicated and technical one. No thoughtless beast would be capable of such a feat.”

“Your knowledge of magic is more limited than you know,” Kadal chided, her frill fluttering with what might be irritation. “All magic draws from the same well, and I have felt its power. When I drank of the Shaman’s potion and went on my vision quest, I felt the barrier that separates me from its influence melt away, until the two of us were as one. It is life, it is nature, and its breadth is beyond comprehension. If your sorcerers have found a way to draw from this power through guile and study, then why should a product of nature not tap into it?”

“If you want to debate magical theory, I could go on about it all day,” Caden said. “But I can tell you with the utmost certainty that no dragon has ever performed an enchantment that takes an entire team of master sorcerers to pull off.”

“You must take the threat seriously,” she pleaded. “Do you think that I would wager my future, my very life, on nothing but a myth? You should take me at my word when it comes to matters of the Coral Sea, Caden. I have spent my life here, my very survival has depended on my intimate knowledge of this land.”

Caden felt like he should be angrier with her, that he should feel more betrayed than he did. Kadal was certainly behaving as though she expected him to be outraged by her admission, he could see the guilt in her eyes, the fear that their shaky friendship would be ended by her treachery. She believed the Borophage to be real with all her heart, even if they had been made extinct long before either of them were born, and maybe her intent was all that mattered.

“Very well,” he conceded. “I will treat the threat as though it were a real one. Preparing to fight a Borophage will be an interesting exercise, even if I don’t believe it to be necessary.”

“Then ... you are not angry with me?” she asked, cocking her head at him.

“I don’t know, Kadal,” he sighed, starting to follow the ethereal butterfly down the tunnel. She walked behind him, wringing her hands nervously, her frill fluttering around her neck. “If you’d told me that you were planning to push me into a mine shaft, I might take it a little more personally. I suppose the important thing is that you told me.”

She seemed relieved by his reaction, but she remained uneasy, trailing a couple of feet behind him as he made his way up the tunnel.

Sunlight bled in through the cave mouth ahead, Caden feeling the warm breeze on his face as he climbed towards the opening. The cold and damp of the tunnels was finally giving way to the dry heat of the desert, and Kadal’s relief was palpable.

“I cannot wait to feel the sun’s warmth on my scales again,” she said, matching pace with him as he made his way up the coral passage. “Only in its absence have I come to truly appreciate it.”

They emerged at the base of the ridge, the magical butterfly seeming to dissolve into the sunlight, Caden blinking his eyes against the glare. He turned to glance up at the sheer rock face, covered in great shelves of fossilized coral beds. It had really worked, they had traveled beneath the obstacle, and there was no sign of their pursuers.

“The headhunters,” Caden began, turning back to Kadal. “Will they go around?”

“They will make their way down to the Southern pass,” she explained, setting off into the desert. “It will take them many days to make the journey, they will not be able to catch up to us before we reach the city.”

“That’s a relief,” he said, watching her clamber up one of the reefs. “It seems that your shortcut paid off, I would never have made it this far without your help.”

“Caden!” she called to him, waving from atop the reef. “You must see this!”

He made his way up the rocks to join her, his pace far slower and more cautious, taking a good couple of minutes before he arrived at her side. From these heights, he could see the reefs laid out in a labyrinthine pattern in the red sand ahead, broken up by the occasional towering spire. It was much the same as the terrain that they had left behind. In the distance, at the limits of his vision, the land began to slope upwards. That must be the far shore, it was finally in sight. More than that, he could make out something that was glittering above the haze, reflecting the sunlight as it rose high above ground level. What could that be?

“You look upon the spires of the sacred city,” Kadal marveled, shielding her eyes from the sun. “I saw them in my vision, great towers made from twisted glass that shone across the desert like beacons. We are but a few days’ walk from our destination.”

“Finally,” he sighed, following her gaze. She might have better vision than him, she seemed to be able to see them more clearly. “I should feel relieved, but the most difficult task still lies ahead. Decoding the secrets of an ancient relic is going to be no small task. I wish the result was as certain as simply walking from point A to point B...”

“The Graveyard lies between us and the shore,” Kadal added, starting to look guilty again as her head drooped. “We could attempt to skirt its borders, go around, but it would add days to our journey.”

“Days that we cannot afford,” Caden replied. “No, we go through. If this Borophage actually exists as you claim, then I will deal with it.”

“You sound confident,” Kadal mused, looking him up and down as he stood on the reef beside her. “Are you so sure that you could handle it?”

“Dragons were just animals,” he explained. “Magical animals, but animals, none the less. If I remember correctly, the Borophage was a species that hunted primarily using scent and magiception, the sense that makes one sensitive to the auras of living things. I’ve imbued myself with a similar sense using a spell, that was how I was able to sense the presence of you and your hunters from such a distance.”

“And how we were able to penetrate your invisible shroud,” Kadal added. “Our Shamans know of this enchantment also.”

“I should cast that spell on the both of us before we proceed,” he said, “just in case. When we stop to rest for the night, I’ll brush up on some combat spells that might help us if we should encounter ... resistance.”

The pair made their way through the corals, leaving the shadow of the ridge far behind them. It towered above the reefs and spires, always visible in the distance, forming a natural barrier to their backs. Eventually, strange structures started to come into view, Caden pausing to marvel at them. This must be the Whale Graveyard that Kadal had described. Eons ago, the corpses of whales must have fallen to the seafloor in this area. Like elephants, perhaps something had compelled them to journey to the same location when they sensed that their time was near, some deeply ingrained instinct or primitive ritual that might be proof of rudimentary culture in the majestic animals.

Their titanic skeletons were draped over the corals, filling the clearings between them, partially-intact spinal cords and jutting ribs peppering the landscape. Their bones had not been petrified as the corals had, there must be some kind of magic in them, likely the same reason that the reptiles sought them out for their enchanted weapons. The sun had bleached them a pale white, making them stand out against the red sand and worn rock. Caden had read about whales, he had seen depictions of them in his books, but he had never seen one with his own eyes before. The stories did not do their size justice. They were immense, even their ribs were taller than Kadal, their strange skulls larger than dining tables. There must have been hundreds of skeletons, he couldn’t turn his head without seeing one.

He glanced over at Kadal, seeing that her eyes were darting about nervously, her head on a swivel. She really believed that the Borophage was lurking out here, but Caden would eat his staff if they didn’t come across similar carcasses left by the beasts themselves. With such an abundance of bones, this would indeed have made an admiral stalking ground for the bone-eating dragons, but there was no way that they could have survived for so long.

As soon as they found a suitable place to rest, the first thing that Kadal wanted to do was bask, lying atop a nearby rock. She seemed less concerned about privacy this time, staying close to Caden. At first, he thought that it might be fear of the fabled Bone Eater that motivated her, but she seemed comfortable enough around him now that she felt no need to clothe herself. He didn’t take advantage of the situation, focusing on his book as she lay splayed on a boulder, trying to occupy his mind with learning new incantations. He kept his word to Kadal, preparing as though he might actually be faced with a Borophage. There were many protective and offensive spells to memorize. They differed from his usual fare in that one could not take ten minutes to leaf through a book and read off a spell in the heat of battle. They had to be committed to memory, and they seemed to have been designed with that in mind. They were shorter, somehow harsher, making him feel like he was speaking curses in a language that he didn’t understand.

His concentration was eventually broken by a scaly hand that pushed the book down, Caden turning his head to see Kadal looming over his shoulder, crouching low on her long legs to reach him. She was fully clothed again, much to his relief, or at least as clothed as she usually was. He turned his eyes back to his page again, avoiding looking straight down her cleavage.

“You are always so engrossed in your book,” she teased, “have you nothing else to occupy yourself with?”

“You seem to be feeling energized,” he replied, raising the old tome again and turning a page.

“I feel so much better now,” she sighed, lying down on the sand beside him. Her body was so long and sinewy, Kadal stretching her arms above her head, her spine arching off the ground as she stretched, the motion pushing her ample chest into the air. Her amber eyes flashed in the sunlight, her scaly lips curling into a smile as he buried his face between the yellowed pages.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I have more salted pork if you’d like some.”

“I think that my people eat far less than yours do,” she chuckled, her tail winding on the sand like a snake. “I would call you greedy, but you’re so small. If anything, you should be eating more.”

In one smooth motion, she pushed herself off the ground, leaping to her feet in a display of strength and flexibility that left Caden in awe of her.

“Shall we continue?” she asked, Caden nodding his head silently as he watched the sun reflect off her scales.

“Kadal!” Caden called, “I think I’ve found your Bone Eater!”

She leapt down from the reef that she had been climbing, darting over to his side, her eyes wide. As she turned a corner in the maze of rocks and corals, she saw what he had found, her feet skidding in the sand as she came to a halt.

“Is it...”

“Long dead,” he announced, making no attempt to conceal his satisfaction at being proven right.

Ahead of them, nestled between two large reefs, was the skeleton of a massive creature. This was no whale, however. Its body was perfectly preserved, all but mummified by the arid environment, the remnants of sunken, scaly skin clinging to its bleached bones. Its shape was that of a giant lizard, or perhaps a crocodile, a good thirty feet from nose to tail. Its forelimbs were the same length as its hindlimbs, suggesting that it had walked on all-fours in life, their position revealing that its gait had been more like that of a bear than a belly-dragging reptile. It had wicked talons like a bird of prey, curved into cruel hooks that must have been used to rend the flesh of its living victims.

Its skull was large in proportion to its body, flatter and broader than that of a crocodile, a robust jaw full of intimidating teeth lying partially buried in the sand. It had serrated, upward-facing tusks that jutted from its mouth, fangs like butcher’s knives on display. They were not all sharpened to a point, however. Towards the back of its jaws were flat molars that were covered in odd grooves, likely used to crush the bones from which it got its namesake. Those jaw muscles must have bulged from its cheeks before they had decayed into dust. The bite force required to crush a whale’s vertebra was beyond any surviving animal.

Even that was not its most striking feature. Just as Kadal had described, its body was covered in a layer of overlapping, bony plates that made it looks as though it was clad in a suit of natural armor. It protected the head with a helmet-like covering of pale bone, the armor extending down the back of its neck. It draped over the beast’s back and shoulders, almost like the shell of a giant turtle, but articulated so as not to hinder its movement. It covered the tops of the thighs, too, running all the way down to the tip of its tail. Some of the plates had sloughed off during its decomposition, and they looked far too heavy for a single man to move.

“Here’s your monster,” Caden said, gesturing to the desiccated corpse. Kadal edged closer, hesitating as though wary that it might somehow spring back to life. “Looks like it died a long time ago, a dry environment like this could have preserved it for hundreds of years.”

“Perhaps ... you were right,” Kadal conceded as she walked along the length of the remains. “I cannot believe its size. How powerful it must have been in life. No wonder my ancestors feared it so.”

Caden made his way over to its skull, then lifted his staff, beginning to jab at one of its fangs with the tip.

“What are you doing?” Kadal asked, cocking her head quizzically.

“Taking back a souvenir,” he grunted, succeeding in dislodging one of the teeth. He stooped to pick it up, turning it over in his hand. It was huge, so large that it could have been used as a knife in its own right, one side serrated like a saw. “My Master will love this, maybe it has some alchemic or magical application.”

“It seems strange that in such a vast territory, we should come across its body so quickly,” Kadal muttered.

“There was likely a late-surviving population living here until relatively recently,” Caden posited, appraising the skull. “I’m sure there are more carcasses scattered about the area. I wish we could stop and examine the beast further. What a rare opportunity, to find one in such good condition. Maybe on the way back...”

They left the carcass behind them, continuing on their way, weaving through reefs and bones as they went. Caden noted that some of the whale skeletons had been gnawed on. There were tooth marks on the jutting ribs, some of them snapped to expose the nutritious bone marrow that had once been contained within.

As he had predicted, it wasn’t long before they came across another example. This one was considerably smaller, a juvenile, by the looks of it. It had not lived to adulthood, likely due to competition and dwindling resources in the region.

“It’s almost sad,” Caden mused, stepping around the partially-buried remains. “These creatures must have been magnificent in their prime.”

“You said that your people hunted dragons,” Kadal said. “Why did they do that?”

“They were too dangerous to be allowed to exist,” he replied as he trudged through the red sand. “They would kill livestock and travelers, and their magical properties made them far harder to deal with than a rogue bear or a pack of wolves. The kingdoms eventually formed a knightly order to end their reign of terror, and the battlemages were involved, of course. I’m actually surprised by how many anti-dragon spells were recorded in my book, they had developed quite the repertoire.”

After walking for a while longer, Kadal stopped in her tracks, gesturing for Caden to do the same as her forked tongue flicking out to taste the air.

“I sense it too,” Caden said, gripping his staff with both hands. There was something at the limits of his magical perception, a large aura, which indicated an abundance of life. It lay somewhere ahead of them, but it was impossible to tell exactly what the aura originated from.

“Can you ... tell if it’s moving?” she whispered, as though she might somehow be overheard.

“I don’t think so,” he replied.

“Should we double back? Try to go around it?”

“If it were a Borophage, it would be able to see us as clearly as we can see it,” he explained. “They hunted through magiception. I say we stay the course.”

“Are you mad?” Kadal hissed. “For all you know, we could be walking straight into the maw of a Bone Eater!”

“And for all you know, it could be a simple oasis where we might rest,” he replied. “Look around you, Kadal, the Borophages are all dead. What else could create such a large concentration of magical energy if not a thriving oasis?”

She looked like she wanted to argue, but thought better of it, following behind Caden as he continued on. It didn’t take long for them to close in on the troubling aura, which quickly grew beyond what could have been possible for a Borophage. As they climbed up a reef to get a look at the land ahead of them, they came upon a verdant ring of dense foliage that overflowed from the bounds of what must be an oasis, the plant life obscuring the water from view.

“See? What did I tell you?” Caden gloated, carefully climbing back down to the sand as Kadal waited for him with a less than pleased expression on her face. They made their way towards the ring of ferns and palm trees, the allure of sitting in the shade for a while putting a spring in Caden’s step. “With the simple application of logic, we can overcome the fear wrought by myths and superstitions.”

“I should be relieved,” she replied with a flutter of her frill that matched the sarcastic tone of her voice, “but your smugness almost makes me wish that you were wrong.”

“All I’m saying is that we live in a world based on natural principles,” he continued, pushing through the trees. They entered the shadow of the sparse canopy, the leafy fronds waving in the breeze above their heads, the carpet of ferns rising to Caden’s knees. “When we understand and apply those principles, we can-”

As they emerged from the cover of the palms, they stopped dead in their tracks. Crouched at the opposite bank of the oasis was a massive shape, an armored head rising to peer at them as water sloughed from its tusked maw. It was a Borophage, just as alive as they were, its thick layers of natural armor catching the glare of the sun. It must have been thirty feet long, powerful muscles rippling beneath its black scales as it shifted its weight on four stout legs, its clawed toes digging into the red sand. From beneath the bony plate that protected its skull, a pair of beady eyes looked out at them, tiny when compared to the immensity of its wide head.

Caden and Kadal stood frozen for a moment, then the thing loosed a growl, a low rumble that had more in common with the sound of an earthquake than anything produced by an animal. They unfroze, bolting back the way they had come, dashing into the trees as though death itself was on their heels. Caden caught a glimpse of the beast as it waded into the pool, giving chase, its enormous mass displacing the water like the launching of a ship. It was fast, far moreso than its size would have suggested.

All that Caden could hear was his blood rushing in his ears and the rustling of the ferns as he ran, his boots pounding on the sand. Facing off against another person had been frightening enough, but this was something else entirely, a distinctly primal fear filling his blood with adrenaline.

Kadal was flying, far faster and more agile than he was, her winding tail vanishing through the trunks of the palms ahead of him. She waited for him on the sand beyond the oasis, her eyes wide with fear as she took cover in the corals.

“Caden!” she wailed, “we have to find a place to hide!”

“There has to be a cave around here, some kind of gap that thing can’t fit through. Don’t worry about me, Kadal, just run!”

He could see the conflict in her. Although she was far faster than he was, she didn’t want to leave him, her tail whipping through the air indecisively. The decision was soon made for them as the Borophage came crashing through the trees behind them, snapping their sturdy trunks as if they were toothpicks, splintered wood flying through the air. It kicked up a spray of sand as it skidded, struggling to change direction, its claws tearing up the earth like the blades of a plow. It was so clumsy, moving like a giant bulldog, great slabs of muscle quivering beneath its leathery hide. Those beady eyes locked onto its quarry, their unthinking stare conveying a dull, primitive violence.

Kadal bolted first, winding between the rocks like a frightened snake, something about the way that she moved seeming to attract it. Caden leapt into the cover of some nearby corals as it wheeled about, kicking up great torrents of sand, its footsteps shaking the ground beneath his feet as it gave chase. His first reaction was a kind of guilty relief, but he quickly overcame it, gripping his staff in hand as he left the safety of his hiding place to follow behind it.

It barreled through the reefs, smashing into them as it threw its immense weight around, the collisions posing no threat to the armored beast. Its ferocity was palpable, the Bone Eater pursuing Kadal like a cat with a mouse, leaving fragments of broken coral scattered in its wake.

Caden glimpsed the end of its armored tail as it turned another corner, the sound of Kadal’s terrified cries filling him with a kind of frantic desperation. What if he turned the corner and she was already...

He emerged into a small clearing, a bowl of red sand surrounded by reefs, finding the thing tearing at the corals with its claws. Kadal had slipped into a crevice between the rocks, a space barely wide enough to accommodate her, and the Borophage was scrabbling to get at her. Like a dog digging for a field mouse, it tore at the obstacle with its powerful forelimbs, its wicked talons scoring the stone. Caden had never heard someone scream in terror before, and he never wanted to hear it again.

“No!” he bellowed, his fingers wrapping around his staff. The artifact reacted to his emotions, creating a blast of wind that sent the red sand swirling through the air, its energy pouring into him. He could feel those silvery strands coursing through his blood, boiling it, his heart pumping magma through his veins.

The beast abandoned its hunt, slowly turning to face him, its thirty-foot body seeming to quiver with every step that it took. It could sense magic just as he could, and right now, Caden was a wellspring of surging energy. Everything that he gave his staff was amplified, returned to him tenfold, the very air around him seeming to crackle with magic.

He could see Kadal behind it, her eyes wide with terror as she pressed herself into the crack in the rock. The Borophage was standing between them, its attention now completely focused on him, the creature bellowing a challenge as it stamped its feet.

More than energy, his staff was feeding him something else. That familiar bloodlust returned, an almost irresistible impulse to inflict violence, a willingness to fight that bordered on glee. He embraced that seething rage, letting it flow through him, consuming him. There was no hiding from this thing, no outrunning it. It was going to take a monster to kill another monster.

The Borophage launched into a run, quickly covering the fifty feet between them in a few steps, racing towards him like an avalanche of bone and scale. Caden stood firm, spitting a short, harsh incantation as he drove his staff into the ground.

There was a flash of light as bright as the sun, emanating from the end of his stave, the creature bellowing in pain and alarm as he blinded it. Caden leapt out of its path, the monster’s momentum carrying it into the reef behind him, the sound of bone impacting stone echoing across the desert. The thing drew back, sending crumbling pieces of rock falling to the sand beneath its forelimbs, shaking its head like a bull that had just run into a tree. It barely seemed dazed, turning to face him again, its jaws opening to reveal rows of pearly teeth.

Caden was vaguely aware of Kadal calling out to him from what seemed like miles away, but his mind was focused on the fight, on the pair of reptilian eyes that were peering back at him. He was no knight, he had no sword, no pike. If he was going to fell this thing, then magic was his only weapon.

Swirling flame coalesced around the bronze figurehead, the metal glowing red-hot, the fire reflecting in the beast’s eyes as it lunged at him. Caden loosed a jet of flame, sending them washing over the Borophage’s armored head, dark smoke billowing. The Borophage didn’t falter, its open maw emerging through the swirling smoke, its tusks glinting in the sunlight. Caden scarcely had time to react, but his body almost seemed to move of its own accord, muscles imbued with magic swinging his staff with enough force to shatter rock. It connected with the thing’s scaly jaw, the impact enough to knock it aside as though it had been punched by a being of its own size and power. He felt the wood in his hands vibrate, the weight and momentum that he had created pulling him along with it, making him stumble.

The Borophage recovered quickly, loosing a roar of frustration that shook the earth, swiping at him with one of its clawed forelimbs. Caden dodged the blow, the speed of his reactions seeming to increase the more he surrendered to the staff’s powers, his muscles becoming as hard as iron as they flexed to send him leaping clear.