Forty-Three
Elias’s chest squeezed.He is showing me his hoard.
He didn’t know much about hoards, but he knew that generally their location was kept secret.
The air cooled as they entered the earth. Orange light from the torches flickered on the dark stone. Then, all of a sudden, the cave opened up and out.
Elias looked around, trying to comprehend what it was he was seeing. “What are …” He paused. “What am I looking at?”
Light flickered on strange white rock sculptures of varying shapes and sizes placed around the cave. Elias walked towards several of them. Some stood sort of straight. Some arched. Some spiralled and twisted. He’d never seen anything like them.
He leaned closer to one that was probably the length of his arm and just as wide. The white exterior looked rough and hard. It had a gentle curve to it. Knobs appeared along the length. The end appeared to have broken off.
Elias leaned closer and peered inside. He held his torchso he could see the interior. It looked almost hollow. And like it was lined with something shiny and smooth.
“You don’t know what they are?” Gerard chuckled. “Really?” He put the torch in a sconce on a wall.
Elias shook his head. He saw several sconces along the walls. He placed his torch into one of them as well. The large cave had very little other obvious adaptations that Elias could see. Just these strange sculptures everywhere and sconces on the walls for torches.
But what was Gerard hoarding? Elias had no idea.
“Well, you probably should know what they are, since it was lightning sorcerers who created them,” Gerard said.
“What? How?” He scanned the objects once again. But still he did not recognise them.
“Apparently, this is what happens when lightning hits sand.” Gerard gestured to the figures. “The lightning causes the grains to fuse together and melts the core into glass. That’s what you see here.”
Elias looked around with new eyes. “Huh.”
“I found one that first time I visited. I showed it to an alchemist. He told me they are called fulgurites. Or fossilised lightning.” Gerard picked up the one Elias had been looking at. “They are quite rare. Apparently, they need the correct conditions to form. And they are fragile.”
He held it out to Elias. He took it and touched the rough, sandy texture. He stuck his finger inside. He laughed to feel the hollow tube surrounded by smooth glass.
“Incredible.” Elias carefully put it back on the rocky ground. “So you hoard this fossilised lightning?”
Gerard nodded and sat on a boulder. He looked out over his hoard, eyes glinting. “The moment I found them, I was obsessed. They were so strange and at the same time so beautiful.”
He smiled, and something in his expression made him look so much younger. For a second, Elias could see the teenage dragon who’d come across this valley and found these unusual objects years ago.
“Whenever I had a break from my training, I’d fly here and search for more. I’d walk up and down the valley, scouring the sand. It was not easy work.” Gerard hummed as he once again gazed at his hoard. “But every time I found one”—he smiled—“it was glorious.
“I found this cave by chance one day. At the time, I’d been coming here for months and had never seen the entrance. It seemed the perfect place to hide my hoard. It felt destined for me.”
Elias tilted his head. “But why did you tell me you hoarded weapons?”
Gerard exhaled. His body sagged, and the joy disappeared from his face. Elias wished he could take the question back.
“When I first came across the fulgurites, I had no idea what this place was. Only once I became obsessed did I find out the location name and its history. After that, I figured out what probably happened. During the battle, lightning sorcerers missed the dragons with their strikes and hit the sand instead, creating fossilised lightning. That’s why there are so many fulgurites in the Valley of Death.”
He grimaced. “It did not seem appropriate for the dragon warrior prince to have a hoard that had been caused by a battle where so many dragons died. Especially since our countries were currently at war when I started hoarding fulgurites.”
Elias nodded. “That makes sense.”
“Only Senta knows what I hoard, and she has never been here,” Gerard said.
Elias sat on the boulder beside Gerard. “Thank you for showing me this. It’s beautiful. Strange and beautiful.” He placed his hand on top of Gerard’s.
Then Elias laughed. “But now I don’t know what to do with that sword.” He’d spent a lot of time finding it. And it had cost a small fortune too.
