And Ruin Followed Behind Her

Chapter 5-1

Chapter 5

Over the past two years, I hadn’t had anywhere to call a proper home. It didn’t make sense to keep up a house or an apartment when I was just going to leave the next day for another country halfway around the world. It’s not that I couldn’t afford it, either. I could have afforded a hundred houses if I wanted them, but I didn’t think that would be a good use of Aziolith’s money. He had more money than Queen Elizabeth, but I still tried to use it wisely. Aside from Mama’s house and the block around it, which I kept up more for sentimental reasons than anything, there was no reason to keep a home anywhere.

But I needed a place to rest, and whenever I needed to rest, I returned to Aziolith’s cave. After rescuing him from an eternity in Hell, he had taken me there. Travelers and explorers had tried to find it for generations with no luck. Rumor was that it was filled with enough gold and treasure to rival a small country.

The rumors were mistaken. They so undervalued the amount of treasure locked inside Aziolith’s cave that it was laughable. Gold mountains stacked to the ceiling like Richie Rich, but with coffers so vast it makes that rich, little, white boy look like a pauper. If Aziolith were a country, his wealth would dwarf all of the richest kingdoms on Earth several times over.

I reappeared inside the walls of the cavern to the loud sounds of the slumbering dragon. Aziolith had been asleep—for the full two years since the day I brought him here—after drinking a potion to repair his broken wing and overcome the effects of Hell. No matter how loud I was, it never disturbed his slumber. I never saw him twitch, adjust, or move in any way, aside from the rising and falling of his chest, and the flaring of his nostrils as he snored.

Mama and I bought beds from Paris and placed them along the back wall of the cavern. Often, we would spend days cataloging and rearranging Aziolith’s wealth as we recovered from extravagant trips across the globe.

Aziolith didn’t seem to care about what kind of wealth he had, just that he had a vast collection of shiny things. Golden armor laid in the same piles as rubies and gold. Deeds were stuffed inside priceless books. Once I found the property rights to the country of Iceland carelessly tossed onto a mound of gems.

My favorite things to scour for, though, were the ancient, leather-bound books that Aziolith collected. First edition leather-bound books from thousands of years ago were worth a small fortune, and yet I read through them as if they were mass market paperbacks from the grocery store. Among those ancient tomes was one filled with illustrations about different types of monsters, and one picture reminded me of the shrill children I encountered.

Before I could find it, though, I had to check on Aziolith. He was curled up in the center of the room, just like always. His once thick, robust frame was frailer now; his body had eaten much of the fat that was stored around him, like a bear in hibernation, and bones poked through his scaly skin.

I placed my ear onto his chest and listened for a beat. His strong heart thumped loudly, and his chest rose rhythmically up and down. It was weird that I had grown so close to the dragon over the past two years and he probably wouldn’t even remember me. Aziolith had only known me for one night before he fell asleep.

Satisfied that the dragon was alive and healthy, I walked toward the back of the cave. All around me were mounds of gold and treasure. I lived very well with only a handful of gold at a time. A few coins could sustain me for months. I had taken a couple hundred coins over the last two years and hadn’t even begun to make a dent in a single stack of Aziolith’s gold, let alone the entire cavern.

“Where did I put that book?” I said to myself as I neared my bed. Stacks of books littered the floor around my mattress. Hand-woven tapestries rested on top of my sheets. I’d found them in the cavern’s riches. They were warmer and more comfortable than the designer duvet I’d bought in Paris. Mama still preferred the fancy sheet, even though it wasn’t nearly as warm, because it looked newer than my tattered ones.

Her bed stood next to mine. The sight of it brought memories of her flooding back, and the tears came. I missed her so much. Especially her wisdom. She would never approve of me risking my life to find Kimberly. Truth be told, if she was alive I would never have agreed to help Adelaide, but without her, there was no reason to refuse. If I didn’t have something to take my mind off my pain of her death, I would lay catatonic in bed all day until I withered away.

I couldn’t live like that. Mama wanted me to embrace the long life ahead of me. That meant moving on, not wallowing in pain. I let the tears flow for a few more seconds before I wiped them away.

I knelt on the edge of my bed and flipped through my collection of books. They were ancient and fragile, some of them so old they were scrolls and not bound books as we know them now. It wasn’t as if I could sift through covers on the shelf until I found what I was looking for. I had to open each one until I found the right one. I went through some early manuscripts of Gilgamesh and Beowulf and assorted fairy tales. While I enjoyed those books, they couldn’t help me now.

The next was a journal of recipes. I promised myself that I would cook more, but I never did. When you have more money than god it’s hard to get into cooking for yourself. Finally, I opened a book and found the title Monsters, Where to Find Them, and How to Avoid Them.

It was filled with facts, figures, drawings, and measurements from monsters of all types from water nymphs to trolls. Somebody who cared deeply about monsters put a lot of love into its pages, and I turned them delicately as I searched for answers.

I flipped through the book, looking for any information on the sharp-toothed screechers I’d found in that basement. It took a few turns of the page before I realized the book was the only sound in the cavern—that and my own breathing. I froze. A low growl, like that of a tiger stalking its prey, emanated from the center of the cave. I turned to see the great dragon Aziolith stomping toward me.

“Who are you?” he shouted.

I stood up. “Easy, Aziolith. I’m just—”

“What? Here to steal my gold?”

“That’s not—no! Aziolith,” I said, walking toward him with my hands up in the air, “it’s me.”

The dragon shot a fireball out of his nose. I had no choice but to vanish, abandoning my beloved collection of books to escape the fire.

I reappeared on the other side of the cavern. “Stop it, buddy! It’s me? Don’t you remember?”

Aziolith’s fire breath plumed across the cavern as he turned in my direction. I ducked behind a pile of gold coins.

“I remember fighting you, pixie! You will not win a second time!”

I let my wings flutter out behind me and rose into the air. “I didn’t beat you. We did fight, but then I saved you from Hell. Don’t you remember?”

The dragon shot another fireball and it exploded on the pile of coins, which cascaded into the air and rained down on me as I fluttered away. “I remember your ilk, and your brethren killing me.”

“That was thousands of years ago! Listen, you have to remember. We were in Chandler, Colorado. You came through a portal to Hell. The national guard wanted to kill you, and I brought you here.”

A glint of recognition filled Aziolith’s eyes for a moment but fizzled out before it could take hold. “Lies! You are taking advantage of me!”

I disappeared to avoid yet another fireball and reappeared on the ceiling. “Damn it, Aziolith! I’ve been taking care of you these past two years, making sure you were okay, and generally being nice. Snap out of it! I am Julia Freeman. I saved your life.”

Another glint of recognition, longer this time, as the dragon’s eyes settled on me. The dragon’s angry lip dropped, and his furrowed brow calmed. “Julia...that name...it sounds familiar.”

“It should,” I said, touching back down onto the ground. “That’s because it is familiar. Look at my face. I was the person who brought you the healing potion.” I placed my hand on the dragon’s wing. “How are you feeling?”

“Mmmmm...better,” the dragon grumbled. “I was never very good upon waking up. I tend to forget things when I sleep.”

“Is there . . . coffee—or something like, dragon coffee that I can get you to bring you back to the land of the living?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It just takes time. Perhaps...you can tell me what happened over the last years while I get my head together.”

I smiled. “Gladly.”

*