Page 17 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

They descended through the atmosphere. The heat hit immediately. There was a wall of dry, sulfuric warmth that made Marina cough and press her face into his shoulder. He angled them toward the Colony's main entrance; a massive cave mouth carved into the base of the capital volcano. The entrance was flanked by carved stone pillars that rose a hundred feet high, covered in the geometric patterns that Weredragon artisans had been cutting into rock for centuries.

"Oh," Marina breathed when she saw them. "Those are beautiful."

"They tell the history of the Colony. Each pattern represents a generation. The oldest are at the bottom." He pointed to the base of the left pillar, where the carvings were worn almost smooth by time. "Those were carved before we had written language. The stories were in the stone."

They landed on the entrance platform. Marina's legs were shaking when she slid off his back, from the flight, the adrenaline and from the heat. She steadied herself against his arm, and the contact sent a pulse of warmth through his scales that had nothing to do with temperature.

"I'm fine," she said before he could ask. "Just getting my land legs back."

"Take your time. The Colony isn't going anywhere."

The rest of the team landed behind them. Patel staggered off Auren's back, kissed the ground, and immediately pulled out her data tablet to record observations. Peter stood beside Athena, looking pale but composed. Athena looked exactly the same as she always looked; ready for a fight and vaguely annoyed that one hadn't started yet.

Khrelan moved to the front. "I'll go ahead and inform the guards," he said. It was the most cooperative thing he'd said since the mission began. Toren nodded, grateful for the gesture.

"Is he warming up to us?" Marina asked quietly.

"He saved your ship from a Drog and flew your sister across a solar system. For Khrelan, that's practically a marriage proposal."

*** Toren ***

The Colony was everything Toren had described and nothing Marina had imagined. He could see it in her face as they descended through the entrance tunnels into the inhabited levels. The wonder was hitting her in waves as each new cavern opened up around them.

The bioluminescent light came first. Not the harsh, artificial illumination she was used to on the Vulcana, but a living light that pulsed in slow rhythms along the cave walls. There was a blue-green, amber, soft violet. The organisms that produced it had evolved over millennia to fill the underground with a glow that was gentle enough to sleep by and bright enough to work by.

"The light is alive?" Marina whispered, reaching toward the wall but stopping short of touching it.

"Bioluminescent organisms. They feed on the minerals in the stone and produce light as a metabolic byproduct. Every cavern has a different color depending on the mineral composition of the walls." Toren led her through a junction where three tunnels met, and the light shifted from blue to a warm amber that made the stone look like it was glowing from within.

"It's like being inside a sunset," Patel murmured behind them, and for once, the scientific language failed her and she just stared.

The waterfalls were next. Underground rivers fed by geothermal springs, cascading through carved channels into pools that generated power for the Colony's systems. The sound of falling water filled the caverns with a constant, soothing roar that Toren hadn't realized he'd missed until he heard it again. The mist caught the bioluminescent light and scattered it into tiny rainbows that drifted through the air.

Marina stopped walking. She stood at the edge of a viewing platform and looked down at the main waterfall. It was a hundred-foot cascade that disappeared into the depths of the Colony, its mist rising in great clouds of light-scattered moisture.

"This is what you were trying to describe," she said. "When you talked about the crystal arrays and the waterfalls. I thought I understood. I didn't. I couldn't have."

"Words aren't enough for some things."

"No," she agreed. "They're not."

She looked at him, and her green eyes were bright with the reflected light of his world, and the expression on her face was the one he'd been hoping to see since he first imagined bringing a human to Dobromia. Not pity for a dying planet. Not clinical interest in an alien ecosystem. Wonder. Genuine wonder at something beautiful, offered by someone who wanted to share it.

The guards at the Colony's inner gate were not expecting them.

The first sign of trouble was the weapons. Four Weredragon soldiers stepped out of an alcove with energy staffs leveled and expressions that suggested they'd been given very specific instructions about aliens. Behind them, a fifth guard was already activating a comm panel.

"Halt," the lead guard commanded. His scales were dark green, and his voice carried the flat authority of someone following orders he didn't fully understand. "Identify yourselves and your purpose."

"I am Toren, son of Boradrith," Toren replied. He kept his voice calm. He'd known this moment was coming. "I've returned from the Ceylara expedition with guests. They're human. They're here under my protection and my invitation."

The guard's eyes flicked to Marina, then to Athena, then to Peter and Patel. The weapons didn't lower. "No aliens are permitted inside the Colony without the D'Karr's authorization."

"Which is why I'm requesting an audience with the D'Karr. Immediately."

"The D'Karr doesn't see anyone immediately."

"He'll see his son." Toren stepped forward. He didn't use the height advantage, didn't spread his wings, didn't do anything that could be interpreted as a threat display. But he held the guard's gaze with the quiet certainty of someone who knew exactly who he was and exactly how much authority that carried. "Send the message. Tell my father that Toren has returned from Ceylara, and that he's brought something the D'Karr needs to see."