Patha took a calming breath and replied. “Your lair is under a human town. You have caused earthquakes. Someone will find you here. It's not safe for you or them. You must leave or they will kill you here,” she advised the monster.
“I was born here. This is my home, not man's.”
“How long ago were you here? You cannot have been here in hundreds of years. Man has been here…”
“I was hatched here. It belongs to me.”
Hatched? Abruptly Patha's mind leaped to a conclusion. The metal shape that filled the tunnel was an egg the creature protected. This animal had come back home to lay her egg in her home soil, no matter that it had been a millennium since this mother had been here. Nothing resembling this creature made it into the human history books Lar had shown her. Mankind had colonized thi
