A single torch light moved through the narrow cavern, reflected in the water coating the stone walls. The young girl who gripped the burning stick flinched with every drop of water that fell from over head onto her skin and sizzled against the flame. She was no older than seventeen, her heart barely restrained by her ribcage, but she persisted and traversed further and further into the cave, weaving through the limestone stalagmites that had built up over the millennia. These caves were beyond living memory, and the magic that kept them a mystery was older than the town's oral history. Yet many a tale was told about what lurked in the stone maze, stories of lost human remains and monsters with limbs longer than her cot back home that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle upright. But nothing could compare to what was said to slumber in the deepest parts of the Forbidden Caves; a creature of the ancient ways, harbinger of storm and devastation— the dragon of Hathorn. Despite her fear of the unknown lurking in the darkness of the cave, Melusine continued on as if fate was a physical thing pulling her along and closing the path behind her with each step.

The more time passed with nothing but an endless tunnel ahead and behind, the more Melusine's muscles stiffened. She wondered if the sun had already risen outside, or if her mother had discovered the note that she left behind. Maybe their old hen would lay her final egg today, and they'd finally have to put her to the chopping block for meat. Melusine was letting her mind veer off course again. That was what happened when she was suffering maddening anxiety. The cave was said to be a maze, technically a series of twisting caverns that were impossible to navigate and map, yet there hadn't been a single fork or turn.

What if the stories were a load of horse dung and it was a cover for the village head's illicit dealings? Would she stumble upon a laboratory where humans were experimented on if she kept going? No, no, her imagination was running wild again. Damned darkness, damned anxiety. Perhaps the tunnels simply led into an underground tributary of the Serpent's Tail river. It was no secret that her village saw plenty of smuggling into the northern empire through the river. Fantasies of horror and death were ridiculous, Melusine told herself, but they made for a good cover to protect a smuggling operation.

The girl glanced down at her feet, which she could barely see. The light from her torch was dim, casting mottled shadows on the dips and bumps of the stone. She should probably mind her step. Yes, that would be smart. She pushed ever onward.

Melusine put her free hand on a wall, wondering if she missed the exit and had gone in circles. The light of her makeshift torch dimmed further, and she stuffed her hand into her coat pocket for another lard covered rag to wrap around the end of her stick. All of a sudden her footing slipped, and her heart dropped to her stomach. How?! She'd taken her eyes off the ground for a mere moment! Such a steep slope certainly hadn't been there a moment before! Now Melusine was sliding down, down, down, screeching like a banshee. She grappled for anything to hold onto, forced to let her torch slip from her grasp. Within seconds, she was tumbling off a ledge. Her own death came to her mind as a snapping maw, a single image that froze her limbs and breath as she fell.

But then... nothing. No death, no impact on her fragile and willowed body. Melusine's dark brown hair hung down around her face like a curtain. She kicked her feet up into the air and waved her arms in circles but didn't make contact with anything. Indeed, Melusine felt nothing that could be holding her from above or below, no pinch or prick of her clothes or flesh. One hazel eye opened to peek out into the darkness that surrounded her— a vain attempt to get her bearings.

A deep, terrible chuckle reverberated around Melusine, coming from all directions. Melusine made a sound that was more mouse than human. She heard pebbles rattle against the floor a foot below her, like a drum roll for whatever was down in the pit with her. It hissed through teeth between breaths, and its throat clicked with a clock's rhythm. Whatever was finding its amusement in her suspended state couldn't be human.

"Who's there?" Melusine asked with a voice that cracked, used before her vocal cords had a chance to relax.

The creature only laughed more. The delayed impact with the uneven rocky ground finally came. Melusine fell face first on the floor, yelping and wincing. The bridge of her nose stung, nausea hitting her and Melusine grunted in pain.

"It's been so very long since someone was foolish enough to wander their way to me..." Its voice rumbled from high above her head. The hissing and clicking still echoed all around her, but now the monster audibly shifted as Melusine pushed herself onto her hands and knees. The floor under her hands was cold, and the ridges were so sharp that her skin bled from the sharp dips and valleys. It was the kind of rock that only came about when the earth had been melted by intense heat and cooled by time over and over again. A breeze hit Melusine's face, stinking of acrid meat and black powder. Above her, a single golden eye the size of her head was glowing in the shadows, the dark slitted pupil focused square on her.

A shiver of fear ran down Melusine's spine, and she swallowed the bile that rose from her stomach. She scrambled to her feet, her focus locked onto that eye.

"I'm not foolish," Melusine objected, surprised that her voice didn't falter but at the same time kicked herself for not thinking her response through. "The way I found you wasn't planned, but I think I'm right where I wanted to be." Its hissing chuckle was so deep and came from such a massive beast that Melusine swore she could feel the force of sound itself envelope her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and her arms prickled with goosebumps.

"No, not foolish at all." The pit creature rattled out, its tone both saccharine and condescending. "Amuse me for a bit longer, in that case. Why are you here? Have you not heard all the terrible tales of Ekaitz and the Dragon's Labyrinth?"

Melusine shifted her weight on her other foot. Had she found her reward for her nightly venture, or just another arrogant noble so bored off his own fumes he'd turned to dalliances with common folk? Unless of course the spider-wolf said to roam the caverns could somehow speak. Her entire purpose for braving the caverns choked her heart and mind once more. When she gulped she strained the tense muscles in her throat and her palms grew slick with sweat.

"Do you grant wishes?" She blurted out before her anxiety could completely seize her tongue. Ekaitz's chuckling grew louder. Melusine's cheeks burned, and her hands clenched at her sides. "W-what I mean is... is it true? That you grant wishes, I mean?"

"A cheeky, impudent human, aren't you?" The pebbles on the almost volcanic ground rattled from the weight of Ekaitz's massive body laying down.

"Some people would agree," Melusine muttered. Her arms wrapped around her own waist, and her head lowered. "If you don't grant wishes, I'll leave."

Ekaitz's breath hissed through its teeth. A thought occurred to Melusine that such a muted hiss might be a dragon's version of a musing hum.

"You might find that harder to do than you think, little human. At least not without my help."

"It is a pit," Melusine muttered, leaning her head back to stare at the vast darkness above. "I suppose that means there isn't a tunnel leading out. I came for a wish, but I might have to waste your good will on my escape, then."

"It being an inescapable pit isn't your only problem. Even if you get out of the heart of my prison, you won't find the exit of the cave. I might not be able to leave this damnable place, but I can exert enough control over it to keep or release you."

"What? Why would you want to keep me?" Melusine's voice cracked again, and she felt her sweat slide down between her shoulder blades.

"I believe I did say already that it has been a very long time since someone has been down here. Perhaps I might decide to make you into entertainment. Misery loves company, does it not?"

"But—!"

"Despite whatever nonsense time has allotted wagging tongues to drum up, I am not a charity nor am I a miracle worker. For that matter, I do not dole out favors to whining children. If you have a boon you wish of me, I demand recompense!"

"Payment?" Melusine reiterated, her panic risen to the point that her breathing turned quick and shallow. What in the hells could she offer? Was this where a more faithful person would pray to the Divine Twenty-one? Who was the goddess of wisdom and intuition again? Melusine hadn't stepped foot in the chapel since she was six.

While the girl's mind was running like a mill wheel with a river flooding in cuss words, Ekaitz watched her. Even as distracted as she was, Melusine could sense that he found amusement watching her panicked eyes flicker along the darkness.

"There is something I want, if the demanding brat is plum out of ideas."

"What is it?" She latched onto this olive branch, even while knowing she was blind and desperate.

The monster in the dark laughed outright at her hasty grasp at mercy. A sickly green light the size of a bonfire briefly illuminated the pit. It bounced off of the floor and reflected in the walls before it faded. Melusine barely had the wherewithal to realize that the source came from the dragon's throat and chest.

"What are you doing?!" Melusine gasped, stumbling away from the flames. She shielded her face from the heat so intense she worried her skin would melt. "I thought you were going to help me, not burn me alive!"

"Ooh, you're such an arrogant, prideful, and nasty little thing." Ekaitz slithered to her left in the darkness, the hiss to its voice more pronounced. "I could just eat you, you know."

Melusine's muscles and heart froze. The harbinger's presence pressed down on her from above and her lungs felt heavy. When it chuckled low and deep, its breath gusted down on the top of her head. Melusine gagged and coughed from the horrid smell.

"But you haven't," she stuttered. Melusine's head felt like there was a clamp prying her thoughts out of her mind, a faint and cool tingling sensation spreading from the top of her scalp.

"Indeed, I haven't." The golden eye bared down upon her, getting so close the girl was forced to shrink away. "Any idea why, lost little human?"

"Because you," she trailed off, "are lonely?" The dragon's choice of words might've been arrogant, but his first thought of what to do with her had been to keep Melusine around for conversation. Or at least she hoped it had been conversation on his mind. It's obvious to anyone with a brain, isn't it? Melusine thought as she chanced a glance up at Ekaitz.

Ekaitz was frozen, still as a statue. His breath had stopped circulating in the pit entirely.

"That isn't true," he denied, his once insidious tone now cold and harsh. The youth squinted up at the dragon's eye, her brow deeply furrowed. Surely he doesn't expect me to believe such a pathetic denial. No, he must be joking. Or at least putting on airs with no expectation he'll be taken seriously, she reasoned. Her lips quirked up into a smile. Or a dragon's arrogance knew no bounds. And Ekaitz had called her prideful.

"I think it is," she insisted. The pit rattled and shook with the sheer volume of the monster's bellowing roar. A burst of fire as green as an algae filled marsh fell upon and reached for the floor and walls. The light was more than enough to give Melusine her first good look at the creature in the pit. It was enough to shock her and make her tumble back down onto the ground, a sharp ache now stung her hip bone and made her head spin.

Its head stood taller than Hathorn's church bell tower, taller than the trees of the woods that surrounded her home, and taller still. It had sharp stubby protrusions of bone jutting out of its jaw and an ox's deadly horns sticking out of its temples. Its build was full of lithe power and muscle, more like a wild cat than a stocky reptile. The beast's pigmentation was difficult to make out with the brief inferno that spewed from its maw full of fangs. But the way the light reflected off of its scales created the impression that Ekaitz was made of malachite. Then the flames sputtered out, and the beast was only a single golden eye once more, its massive head turned to peer down at her.

"Enough of your nonsense, you ingrate," the dragon hissed out between clenched teeth. "How dare you suggest that one such as I would succumb to loneliness?"

All the tension in Melusine's body released like a plug had been pulled on a drain. She smirked even bigger this time and rested her cheek on her knee. Who wouldn't find something so proud cute? Even if that thing happened to be a dragon of legend. Melusine even felt a kinship forming in her heart for the monster, seeing herself in how it was putting on airs.

"But you're so eager to talk with surprise guests," she teased the towering myth.

"Oh-ho, would you look at how it sniggers. You've the arrogant sneer that only a cocky, conceited fool would give me." The eye lowered and drew ever closer. "You're merely a dirty runt wearing rags, your hair is a wild mess, you stink of pig and hens, and your body is little more than a twig. On second thought, what could you possibly give me, you sniveling wretch?" The more insults Ekaitz threw at Melusine, the harsher its tone became.

"It's not a matter of what I could give, but what you want, isn't it?" She gestured up to the dragon, palm up and fingers splayed.

"And what if I want freedom? What if I give you the impossible task of breaking my binds?" The eye lowered close enough that she could almost touch it. Melusine could make out a tint of green in the shadows with marginally better clarity, shaping the horned head of the bringer of storms from legend. She didn't allow herself to flinch, though a cold sweat did break out on her clammy skin.

"I'd find a way. Anything for my wish." Her eyes burned, reflecting Ekaitz's golden gaze. Getting out of the pit and the cave would be a matter for later. If the great and lonesome Ekaitz wanted so badly to be free, he would need to let her go.