Heln blamed Bel.

He barely had enough time to realize just how immense the dragon was before Rhyss yanked him behind one of the pillars. The head alone was colossal and so, so far above them.  A clicking sound echoed through the cave before the neck twisted around. A stream of fire so hot it was almost white screamed down the tunnel, scorching the place they had been standing moments ago, the rock cracking with a loud snap. Ghosts of steam and smoke swirled into the tunnel and the temperature rose so sharply and suddenly it was hard to breathe.

Rhyss's illumination bubble hurtled into the middle of the room and exploded, lighting up the entire space.

Illustrations of dragons were common enough and he'd read plenty of heroic adventures about slaying the beasts and saving kingdoms, but that seemed very unrealistic.

His books said dragons were huge. Massive. Absolutely enormous.

Somehow none of those words seemed to really encompass the actual creature, because it was so large it didn't look like it could possibly be moving.

The dragon was the color of smoke, eyes glittering like pale gems. It was on all fours in front of the stairs, wings spread nearly the entire width of the chamber, tattered and beaten, the tips scraping against the pillars. Its head swayed back and forth on its long neck in a way that would have been serpentine if it weren't for the almost clockwork jitter of the movement, its eyes staring straight ahead. The glow they had seen was a red gem imbedded deep in its chest, the plates of its scales almost overlapping across it. It glowed sullenly like a dim star.

Each pillar was inscribed with an insane amount of magic script, and the two tallest had large chains attached to them, running to a thick collar nearly the same color as the dragon's plating that encircled its neck.

"It's a flesh construct." Bel had a death grip on Heln's sleeve, her voice barely above a breath. "Someone… someone made a dragon into a flesh construct."

The dragon’s head swiveled around.  It let out a horrible noise, something between a scream and a roar that Heln felt in his bones, made him press his hands against his ears, just as the light died.

He blinked furiously, but the light had done its damage and he couldn't see anything. It was too late, anyway, with a rattle of chain and a thrumming sound the dragon was moving, slamming itself into the pillar right next to him.

All of the script lit up at once, extending beyond the pillar to the next, until the entire chamber was bathed in blue light. The pillars formed a massive, incredibly powerful barrier, like the stone bars of a cage.

"Thank Eleti and Jasmerne and Fola…" Bel was busy naming every single hero from the war and Rhyss was dragging them along because the dragon was rearing back, its chest glowing with a radiance that spilled through the gem like blood.

Fire streamed around the pillar they had just been cowering behind and Rhyss threw them both forward, pulling her cloak up around all of them as best as she could. Even with the tattered and torn edges some of the scripts must have held.

"Go!" Rhyss screeched when the fire died down to blackened, smoking rock. "Go go go go!"

Heln didn't need to be told twice, let alone five times. The chamber had been warm, now it was boiling hot and he couldn't seem to get enough air into his lungs. What he did breathe in was searing.

They ran along the outside of the pillars and up to the door, taking the steps two at a time.

"Knock it over!" Bel yelled. Rhyss already had her dagger out and slammed the pommel into the stone.

Nothing happened.

"Okay. Okay okay." Heln tried to pull down his shields and remain calm, doing his best to not notice how the dragon had recovered from hitting the barrier and was already getting to its feet. It was still moving in short bursts, despite one of its legs dragging limply behind it.

The sealing magic on the door was much, much stronger than the one at the end of the tunnel. Several scripts had been placed on it, the signatures of each one overlapping, covering any weak points.

There were still weak points.

"Here." He jabbed his finger at the top right corner, then at a point closer to the left side. "And here. Hit there, I—"

"Down!"

Rhyss shoved him off of the stairs and if he hadn't been ready for it he probably would have cracked his head open. He landed well enough and was already halfway to his feet before Rhyss landed beside him and was finishing hauling him up by his shredded hood. Heln didn't see Bel, but it was too late, the clicking behind him motivating him to move forward much more effectively than Rhyss's hand shoving him between his shoulder blades.

He glanced back just as flames washed over the door. With the barrier lit up it was easy to see the dragon, how the fire in its throat shone through where the scaled plating on it was nearly worn through, how part of its jaw was eroded away. The eyes stared blindly straight ahead. Despite their opalescence, there was no intelligence behind them. Every motion the dragon made originated from the gem in its chest.

The dragon had been dead for a very, very long time.

"Bel got out." Rhyss told him. "I think. It needs a minute between blasts, once it's done we run up the — now!"

She was hauling him back to the stairs the moment the fire died down, ignoring the heat rising from the stone. Bel was next to them a moment later. The dragon's jaws snapped once, twice, like it was trying to find fire, the clicking coming from the back of its throat. When nothing happened, it pressed against the barrier, hot and huge and terrifyingly close. So close that Heln could have counted the scales on its shoulder if he wanted to. The links on the chain, each one probably roughly the size of Heln himself, clattered and rustled together.

The barrier actually flickered.

Heln felt like his heart was flickering, too, but Rhyss was already at the blackened door and smashing at the two points he had shown her.

The door trembled, but held.

"Hit it harder, Rhyss! Like you mean it!" Bel was screaming again, her voice a full octave above normal.

Rhyss didn't waste energy replying. Her dagger glowed, the light washed over her hand, and she hit the door with all of her magic behind it.

The door moved maybe two inches. Rhyss stepped back, panting slightly, her eyes wide and wild. Bel shoved on the door ineffectively.

"The barrier isn't going to hold!" Heln watched, horrified, as the dragon slammed up against the barrier again. When the barrier had been established, there was no way the dragon could have gotten out. Time had weakened it and from what Heln could tell the gem that made the power core in its chest was draining magic, siphoning it off of everything, including the script that were supposed to keep it in place. "We have to go back!"

"We'll never make it." Rhyss still had her dagger out. "I… I have a plan. Just trust me. Do you trust me?"

Heln supposed that he did, but he didn't have much choice, because one more impact would probably weaken the barrier enough that the dragon could get through it. He nodded.

"Great. The dragon is—"

Whatever Rhyss's plan was, it was lost in a horribly loud scream from the dragon that made them all flinch back. She just nodded when it was over, like they understood. Her face was pale and determined, a smudge of soot on one cheek.

Heln didn't understand, but he nodded back anyway.

The dragon hit the barrier again and the glowing blue magic stuttered. One of the pillars it had been chained to made a groaning noise, then began slowly toppling towards them like a felled tree.

Heln had time to think two things.

One, the pillar was much bigger than the dragon.

Two, it was heading straight for him.

"Heln! Move!"

He wasn't even sure who had screamed that, it was high pitched with hysteria, but it did get him moving, because the pillar was falling faster than he had thought, gaining momentum. When it crashed against the wall with a terrific boom, he was surprised that no part of him had been turned into paste.

Dust and debris exploded around him. He covered his head and tried to make himself as small as possible against the onslaught.

When the world stopped ending and the ground stopped shaking he looked up. He was absolutely coated in rock powder. Something had clipped his shoulder. It felt hot and damp, but it hadn't started to hurt yet. He knew it would.

He stood up, yanking his shirt out from under his jacket at the bottom in a near fruitless attempt to clean his glasses. They had been enchanted to stay clean. He'd never realized that there was an upper threshold to that particular script, so of course that meant he discovered it when he needed to see to run away from an immense fire breathing undead dragon. They were clean enough when he put them back on that he could at least make out what had happened.

The pillar had dismantled any script the wall had to keep it intact. Large cracks ran up the side of the wall and the door had been slammed. The pillar had broken into two pieces, one of them so close that he just had to reach out a hand to touch it, angled up against the hole in the wall. When the dust settled slightly he saw the other had landed a few feet away on his other side. The chain had landed in front of him, leaving him in a small empty triangle of floor space. Pieces of pillar and wall fanned out across the floor in front of him.

Which would explain all of the screaming on the other side of the pillar, tinny and odd after all of the noise.

"I'm okay!" Heln managed before he started coughing. He had no idea how much dust he had inhaled. "I'm… I'm less okay."

The dragon had loomed out of the dust, unperturbed by a piece of its neck being torn away by the collar hanging much loosely from its ruined throat. The power core throbbed like a heartbeat. Without the barrier Heln felt the power core at full force, like a spike to his brain, and he couldn't stop coughing.

"Hey! Hey, ugly!" A piece of rock flew out from the other side of the pillar and smacked the dragon in the eye. It must have been Rhyss doing the throwing, even though Bel was the one yelling.

The dragon whipped around to face her.

"Yeah! I'm talking to you, you big undead lizard! Come and get some!"

The next rock was imbued with magic, Heln could see it glowing from where he was standing. That was too much for the dragon to ignore, and it moved towards them. The chain snapped tight and the pillar started to move.

Heln crawled under the links as fast as he could before he really was crushed. Rhyss grabbed his arm and yanked him behind the pillar. She was gray with dust and had lost a good six inches of her braid, the rest coming loose around her shoulders.

"Where's Bel?"

"She's distracting the dragon."

Heln's heart stopped. Maybe the entire world stopped.

"No."

"She's fine, she'll be okay, we need to get you out so I can get her out." Rhyss dragged him to the hole and he stumbled after her.

Heln had never felt so stupidly useless in his entire life.

But this was Rhyss's job, she had trained for it and he just needed to trust her. Maybe if it had just been him he would have, but it was his sister who was putting herself in danger right now.

The door had been knocked just ajar enough that they could get into the area beyond. It was bigger than the size of the door would have suggested. The wall wasn't natural at all. He pulled out his light stick and let the warm light wash over the cold, dark steps.

Rhyss nodded and ran back down the stairs.

He couldn't actually see anything. The door was angled at just the wrong way and the hole from the pillar was a little too high. For all he knew they were both dead and he was waiting in the dark for nothing. The dragon was still moving around, though. That had to be a good sign.

If he was honest, he hadn't given a lot of thought to his father since they'd been down there. What would he do if they never made it out? What if, by some horrible twist of fate, he made it and Bel didn't?

He didn't think he wanted to find out.

Luckily, he didn't have to. Bel crawled through the hole and nearly collapsed on the stairs. She looked up at him, her eyes so wide there was white ringing her irises.

"Are you okay?" She crawled up the steps to where Heln was sitting. She was covered in soot and dust, but she didn't seem to be hurt. She brushed some dust from Heln's hair. That settled it, she was real and alive. "Eleti alive when that pillar fell I thought—"

"You distracted a dragon," Heln blurted out before he hugged her.

Bel hugged him back, too tightly, and he felt every bruise and bump, but he didn't even care. He was probably holding his sister even tighter. She was alive. She was breathing. Well, mostly.

"Ow." Bel leaned back after a full minute and gave him a bit of a grin. She had tears in her eyes and Heln realized that his own were stinging. "Sorry. Had a hard week. You really okay? I thought I lost you."

"When Rhyss said — where is Rhyss?" Heln looked at the door in alarm.

"I thought she was… she isn't right behind me?" Bel's voice cracked and she looked back and forth, her ponytail nearly whipping Heln in the face. She started down the stairs and he grabbed her by the elbow. "Let me go!"

"We need to be smart about this-"

Bel shook his hand off of her arm, glaring at him. "I'm always smart about everything. Let's go save her."