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When Elias awoke, he was cold. Different. Wrong in a way he could not place.
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For a while Elias laid there with his eyes shut, listening to the slow drip of water nearby and the far hush of air moving through the cavern. His whole body felt strange. Too light. Too small. He opened his eyes.
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The cavern was quieter now and the great shape at the far end was gone. In it's place lay a scatter of pale ash drifting over black stone and, near where Kheledryn’s chest had been, sat a single scale the size of a dinner plate. It was as blue as deep water and glowing faintly from within.
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Elias pushed himself up. His shirt slid off his shoulder. He blinked and then looked down. His clothes were on him, technically, but only in the sense that blankets were on furniture.
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His old trousers had collapsed around his legs. While his tunic hung off him like borrowed cloth from a giant, his armor pieces lay twisted and scattered nearby on the ground. A slow, unpleasant understanding crawled up his spine.
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“No,” Elias said as his voice cracked higher than it should have.
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He froze. Then, very carefully, Elias raised both hands and looked at them. Small. Not merely thin. Small. The hands of a child. He stared for one long second noticing how soft they were. Then another noticing his previous scars had disappeared.
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“This,” he said to the empty cavern in a voice that absolutely did not belong to a grown man, “is unacceptable!”
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He got unsteadily to his feet and nearly tripped over the pooled fabric around his ankles. The old shirt dropped entirely off one shoulder. He snatched it up and wrapped it around himself as best he could.
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Elias snatched up the glowing dragon scale from the ash and nearly dropped it when warmth ran through his arm at the touch. It pulsed once, brightening.
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Then Kheledryn’s voice spoke from it, faint now, distant as if from very deep water, “You live.”
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Elias clutched the scale in both hands and stared at it, “What did you do?”
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“I gave what remained of my strength.”
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“You made me small.”
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There was a pause, “I did not foresee the exact shape.”
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Elias let out a sharp sound halfway between a laugh and a complaint, “That is not reassuring.”
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The scale glowed again, softer, “Your body could not have taken it otherwise,” Kheledryn explained, “You were remade to endure what was given.”
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Remade?
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Elias stood there in the dragon’s cavern wrapped in his own oversized shirt like a disgraced sheet ghost and tried not to lose what little dignity he still owned. He looked toward the pool. There was no point delaying it.
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He walked there on bare feet, the stone cold under him, and looked down into still reflective water. A child looked back. A boy of perhaps ten years, maybe a little older in the face if not the body. Lean where Elias had once been average. Hair dark as navy cloth soaked in rain, no longer black like before. His eyes were wrong too, yellow-tinted and bright in a way his old blues never were. The face was his only in a technical sense, as if some higher force had skimmed a description of Elias.
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He stared, “That is not me.”
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“It is now,” came Kheledryn’s fading voice.
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Elias bared his teeth at the reflection, “I did not look like this when I was ten.”
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“No,” said Kheledryn, “I imagine you did not.”
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Elias stood there in silence another moment thinking about his past self while looking at the stranger in the water. Not chubby. Not black-haired. Not blue-eyed. Not the child he had been. Some draconic nonsense.
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He hated how quickly the practical part of his mind pushed past shock. Small body. No fitting clothes. Armor useless. Sword likely too heavy. Low coin. Dragon dead. What is the rational thing to do?
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Elias held and looked at the scale in his hands, big but light and apparently the last living piece of the dragon, “What exactly did you give me?”
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“Opportunity,” Kheledryn said simply.
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“That is a suspicious answer.”
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“Remember. A better future.”
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Elias opened his mouth to demand something more useful than that, but the light in the scale dimmed, “Kheledryn?”
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No answer as the glow faded further.
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“Kheledryn!”
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A long silence spread through the cavern. Then even the last trace of warmth inside the scale disappeared. Elias was alone.
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After a while he wrapped the shirt tighter around himself and breathed out through his nose. “Fine,” he muttered, “Wonderful. Excellent. I have been murdered into childhood by a philosophical dragon.”
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He tucked the scale under the folds of the shirt and went to gather what little he still could.
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The coin purse survived. Light, but not empty. His pack was now half his size and not worth the trouble. The armor he did not even try with beyond one disgusted look. The sword he picked up with both hands, managed a clumsy lift, and immediately understood this was no longer a weapon he could use like before.
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“Right,” he said, dropping it with a clang, “Humiliating.”
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Elias kept the coin purse and left the rest. He made his way back through the mountain the way he had come.
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The path seemed longer now. Bigger. The climb steeper. He hated that too. By the time he reached the broken crack where he had fallen through, Elias knew his legs would be aching, but it seemed that he was perfectly fine. Not even tired, and at least the new body was light and small enough to squeeze into gaps his adult self could never have fit. He climbed upwards and wriggled through a smaller break in the stone under the hole he fell through. He shortly found himself back out onto the mountain slope under a late afternoon sky.
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The cold hit Elias immediately, but not as bad as he would have thought. He clutched the oversized shirt tighter around his thin frame and looked around. There was no sign of the others, but also no sign of the dead skulks either.
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The mountain seemed too quiet as Elias started down the slope carefully, one hand braced to the stone. He had gone no more than fifty paces when he heard the scrape of claws.
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“Of course,” Elias sighed.
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The surviving mountain skulk emerged from behind a jut of rock ahead with it's white eyes fixed on him. Black blood still clung to one side of its jaw from the earlier fight. It crouched low, confused for only an instant by what it smelled compared to what it saw. Ultimately, it decided a small child was easy prey.
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Elias, wide eyed and frozen, stared as the skulk lunged. He had no sword, or way of outrunning it. Then something in him moved. Not thought nor a planned decision, but some new instinct.
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The world sharpened in a way he had never known before. Elias felt a rush under his skin, bright and violent, like cold water turned to fire in his veins. The air in front of him bent. Blue light flashed from nowhere and gathered on his raised arm with a sound like glass cracking under ice.
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The creature slammed into a wall of pale force and recoiled with a shriek, claws skidding uselessly over light. Elias stared at the barrier. The skulk came again with a shriek, maddened. On this lunge, a broad axe split its skull open from the side.
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Black blood sprayed across stone, and the creature dropped in a heap at Elias’s feet. He looked up.
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The scarred axeman from the adventurer's group stood there breathing hard, weapon buried deep in the monster’s head. Behind him the spearwoman and two of the others came scrambling over the rise.
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Then the younger man pointed at Elias, “There’s a kid.”
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“Yes,” Elias said dryly, “Thank you for the field report.”
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The axeman yanked his weapon free of the corpse and frowned down at him, “Where the hell did you come from?”
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Elias looked past them toward the higher slope, “I fell.”
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“We noticed that part,” the spearwoman said. Her eyes swept over him, his bare legs under the wrapped shirt, his dirt-smeared face, the blood on one sleeve too large for him, “Are you alone out here?”
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That was an interesting question. Elias glanced once toward the mountain behind him. Thinking of the dragon, but saw only stone. He looked back at them, “Seems that way.”
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The younger man rubbed the back of his neck, “What about that other guy?”
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“What other guy?” Elias asked.
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“There was an adventurer who got separated from us. Scruffy. Miserable-looking and acting… if I'm being honest.”
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Elias said nothing as the axeman grunted, “We found blood and broken rock. Figure the idiot slipped and broke his neck somewhere lower down.”
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“Probably,” Elias said,.”Either way, I never saw anyone else.”
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The axeman planted the butt of the axe down, “Mission’s done. We’re not chasing dragon rumors after this mess. Not with missing bodies and monsters stirred up all over the slope. We need to take the kid back. Priority.”
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The younger man nodded, “If he’s from Draemharrow, someone’ll know him.”
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Elias nearly laughed at that. Nobody knew him in Draemharrow. Still, it beat freezing to death wrapped in a shirt on a mountainside. So he let them guide him back down.
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The walk back to town was slower. Not because of danger. Because every few minutes one of them looked at Elias as if still trying to work out where he had come from and why he sounded irritated instead of frightened.
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He learned their names by being too tired not to hear them now. The axeman was Brann. The spearwoman, Tessa. The younger fool with the too-easy grin, Colm. There had been two others with them at dawn. One had gone back early with a twisted ankle. The other, a bowman, had died to the skulks before Elias fell, but nobody spoke much about him.
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The walls of Draemharrow came into view under the reddening evening sky, and the others got him through the gate without issue. While the guards asked a few questions, Brann answered most of them. Tessa did the rest. Colm bought Elias a skewer from a street stand without asking, then seemed deeply offended when Elias took it with a muttered thanks and immediately started eating like a starved animal.
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“What?” Colm said in disbelief.
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“I was hungry,” Elias replied around the second bite.
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“Alright. Well, don't choke kid.”
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They got him a set of cheap clothes from a lower market stall after that. Simple shirt. Trousers. Small boots that pinched a little. Children’s clothing was, as Elias learned with fresh bitterness, insultingly inexpensive compared to adult gear. Tessa paid for it with barely a complaint. Brann added in a wool cloak as well. Nobody asked for repayment. That almost annoyed Elias more.
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They were not friends. They were not kind in any lofty way. They were just decent enough not to leave a strange child in rags at the gate after watching one adventurer die and another vanish in the same day. It was irritating for Elias to think about, but why?
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When they finally left him near the lower square, Brann clapped one rough hand on his shoulder and said, “Try not to wander off into monster country again.”
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“I’ll do my worst,” Elias retorted as Brann snorted once and walked off with the others.
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Elias stood there alone as evening settled over Draemharrow. Lanterns lit along the black stone streets, their glow reflecting off damp patches and old frost. The town was as grim as he remembered. Hard-edged buildings. Smoke from chimneys. Smith noise from the lower forge rows. Adventurers moving in clusters. Merchants shutting doors before the night winds got worse.
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He reached into the cloak and checked the coin purse. Pathetic. He felt the dragon scale tucked under the new clothes, hidden and cool against him.
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A dragon scale! He was carrying a dragon scale. That should have solved at least one problem. Elias lifted his head and looked toward the merchant lane.
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“Right,” he muttered, “Let's get some money.”
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The appraiser’s stall near the guild quarter was still open, half because men like him loved late business and half because adventurers had poor hours. Elias went there first, climbed onto a crate because the counter was suddenly rude in ways it had never been before, and unwrapped the scale from under his shirt.
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The merchant looked up from his ledger from the noise. Then down. Down further. His mouth twitched as Elias presented his trophy.
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“And what,” the merchant spoke unimpressed, “is this supposed to be?”
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Elias set the scale on the counter. It took up most of the space. Even dimmed, it held a depth of blue no ordinary material quite matched. “A scale,” Elias said, “From a dragon.”
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The merchant stared at him and then laughed. Not even politely. Not even uncertainly. Just laughed outright, but Elias waited.
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When the man finally caught enough breath to speak, he wiped at one eye and said, “Kid, if you’re going to lie to me, at least wash first. You look like you lost a fight in a horse stable.”
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Elias’s expression flattened, because at least he had actual clothes now, “That is an unrelated problem. I need money to be able to stay somewhere to clean myself.”
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The merchant nudged the scale with two fingers, still grinning, “Blue drake lizard, maybe. Or polished horn if someone got artsy. Dragon? Right. And I’m emperor of Orlienne.”
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“It is a dragon scale.”
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“Then I’m sure the dragon misses it terribly.”
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Elias stared at him in disdain for a long moment. Realizing nothing was going to happen, he gathered the scale back up, dropping back down. Grumbling as he walked away.
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The square outside the guild was busy even at this hour. Light spilled through the big front windows, warm and loud with voices, tankards, boots, and the usual energy of tired people pretending exhaustion was social. Elias stood at the edge of it for a moment, one hand on his nearly empty coin purse.
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He had a little money, but not enough, a dragon scale nobody would believe in, and no real plan. He looked up at the guild sign, walking toward the doors. If he could not sell the scale, then he needed work.
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Elias started toward the entrance, muttering under his breath, “Fine. One step at a time.”
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