Soren emerged from the staircase into a wide space, so much so that he could see neither the ceiling nor any walls, his torch light not reaching far enough. The rock underfoot was bumpy and precarious, the loose stone slippery and easy to trip up on.

  Soren edged his way forward, curious to see how big the space was and if he could find the boundary. He had taken only a few steps when something crunched under his foot. Glancing down he was taken aback to realise he had stepped on bone. Never one for being particularly squeamish, Soren lifted his foot off the now broken bone and crouched down bringing his torch to bear.

  It was undoubtedly the remains of a human body, the tattered clothes that had once adorned the person ripped and flaking away, the musky air down in the cavern having not been kind to the fabric.

  Soren edged his way around the body and carefully moved pieces of clothing, looking for any signs that could identify who this body was. He didn’t expect to be able to name the person, but he was curious if he could identify whether the person was Tarwinian or Aviori, or from somewhere else.

  Unfortunately, Soren couldn’t identify the clothing or anything familiar about the person. Much of the fabric was crumbling away and Soren thought he could see charred edges to the fabric, leading Soren to assume that fire had somehow played a role in this person's death.

  Soren sat back on his feet and looked down at the body, contemplating. Maybe this is Seraphel, he thought. He had no way of knowing of course, but it seemed a reasonable conclusion to make given what he had found above. Well that solves one riddle I guess. Soren stood and raised his torch high again, preparing to move on and search the space more.

  Before he did so, he closed his eyes and focused on the fuzzy feeling in his chest, locating it in his chest and pointing himself on a central bearing towards the feeling. He had followed it this far so he figured he may as well continue doing so.

  The feeling took him on a path in a straight line from the staircase from which he had emerged. He took maybe 40 paces before he reached the cave wall, the stone rocky but smooth to the touch. He was slightly untrusting of walls now, given his experience above, but he could see no symbols and the wall appeared to be just that, a wall.

  It's definitely telling me to go this way, he thought. At random, Soren turned to the left and skirted along the wall in search of a way through. He found nothing so returned and made his way to the right. As he did so, although the feeling was telling him to go through the middle still, he felt the feeling grow stronger, and before he knew what was happening he was doubled over on his knees, the edges of his vision blurring.

  DOWN! Screamed a voice in his head.

  Soren flinched and dropped the torch, the voice catching him completely off guard.

  “Who's there?!” he shouted.

  No response.

  Soren blinked his eyes, trying to stave off the dizziness. “ Did you say down?”, he asked.

  No response.

  Soren’s stomach was churning, the dizziness and a voice in his head too confusing for his mind to process. Then, as quickly as it had come, the dizziness faded and was gone.

  Soren lay down on his back, staring up into the blackness, the light of his torch stifled slightly by the floor. He took a few minutes to gather himself before sitting up. Did I imagine that?, he thought. No, something definitely shouted down.

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  Soren reached within himself to check the feeling again and realised with a start that he felt nothing. This was the first time since he had entered the staircase from the first cavern that he couldn’t feel the fuzziness embracing his chest. That's curious, he thought.

  Standing up, Soren made his way back to where he thought the middle of the wall was and turned around intending to head back to the stairs. As he walked, he kept his eyes on the ground, the word ‘down’ playing over in his mind.

  He could just make out the body he had discovered before when something caught his eye. Elsewhere the rock had been very natural looking, smooth but rough and jagged, clearly naturally made. This patch of stone however, was slightly raised and circular, clearly not naturally made. Soren approached it and crouched down.

  In its centre was the same small symbol, a circle with a flame in the middle, that he had seen on the stairs and in the cavern above. The very same symbol which, after he had touched, turned the wall into, well, not a wall.

  I may as well, thought Soren, as he reached out his hand and placed a finger on the symbol. At first nothing happened, and then his eyes caught sight of the faintly glowing symbol, before the floor underneath him was no more, and Soren started falling.

  Soren let out a yelp and threw out his arms, hopelessly trying to grab onto something. For a few seconds he was touching nothing but air, and then he landed hard onto rock again and began sliding uncontrollably downwards.

  Soren desperately tried to grab onto something, anything to slow his descent. He had no idea how long he was sliding for but it felt like an age. Luckily for Soren, he didn’t drop again, he just came to a gradual stop as the floor beneath him levelled out. With horror, Soren realised he had come to rest next to his now extinguished torch. “No no no no”, he said, panic setting in.

  It took Soren a few seconds to realise that he could see the torch in his hands even though it was extinguished. Looking around, he realised he could see the walls of the cavern that were glowing slightly, a green mossy substance covering their surface, the source of the light.

  Well that could have been bad, thought Soren as he again sat back to take in his new surroundings. He glanced back the way he had just come to see the sloped tunnel leading upwards, but the lack of glowing moss and incline making it impossible to see any more.

  The rest of the space was relatively small, the cavern about 15 paces across and 15 paces tall. He could see the entire space thanks to the Moss, which meant that he could clearly see the 3 openings on the opposite side of the room that led elsewhere.

  It also meant he could see what he first thought was a dead lizard that lay on the floor in front of the opening on the right hand side. It was only when Soren saw that the lizard had wings stretched out across the floor that he realised it wasn’t in fact a lizard.

  Holy shit, he thought, is that a dragon?

  The dragon had scales that were for the most part a light blue colour, like that of a glacier, with edges of black, like the dark of night, sprinkled all over. It was a small thing, no bigger than a baby sheep, yet its sinuous wings extended almost twice that length and were sprawled on the floor on either side. Soren noted cautiously that the dragon had sharp claws the length of his fingers and pale white teeth that looked sharp as knives.

  Soren couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. He had heard all about dragons in the stories of old. He had thought about them a lot recently after having read Seraphel’s letter, but dragons were supposed to be extinct and even though the letter had mentioned dragon eggs, he never expected to actually meet one.

  The only trouble was, to Soren’s eyes, the dragon didn’t look like it was very alive. Its eyes were closed and he saw no movement coming from its chest to indicate that it was breathing. Cautiously, Soren stood and approached the dragon.

  It was even more impressive up close, the thick blue scales glimmering in the moss light, like how moonlight hits the surface of a still lake. Soren saw on its head, which he had not noticed before, two small horns protruding just above its ears. Sprawled out behind the dragon was a pointed tail which gradually faded from blue flecked with black all the way to pure black at the tip.

  Soren crouched by its head and held its hand out to check if he could feel any breath, now convinced that it was not alive so not believing himself to be in much danger from a dead dragon.

  As expected he felt nothing. Curiosity getting the better of him, Soren reached out and placed his fingers on the dragon's scales, feeling them cold and solid to the touch. Seconds after he had placed his hand on the scales, the dragon's eyes shot open and Soren felt a searing pain extend up his arm and into his chest. Then, his vision went completely white and Soren felt himself lose consciousness as his head hit the ground hard.