I Want to Live, Part Three

As I was saying, Useful… sorry almost puked. Titan, I hate that name. Anyway, she finished telling me where I needed to go and I was out of the room as fast as I could go, and went down the hall to the left towards the main entrance that served as Zoltuce’s launch and landing tunnel.

The entrance was on a high cliff, the face looking out over a massive swampy forest below. The tunnel was about five hundred feet long and was about two hundred feet from the bottom of the cliff. All the stalactites and stalagmites in this tunnel had been completely cleared out. I remember walking along this route with my father, as he had pointed out to me and my siblings which stalagmites he had personally chopped down and chiseled away to make the whole tunnel perfectly smooth. This main tunnel had numerous offshoots, some of them larger for Zoltuce and some of them smaller for us Sckaens to use. At the end of the tunnel was Zoltuce’s main chamber. From here, if you continued straight, you would enter Zoltuce’s audience chamber. The largest cavern we had dug out, it could easily fit him and another Titan if he wished to have some company. Two large benches had been carved out of the massive chamber on opposite sides, but curved and almost connected towards the back. In the center of the ceiling was a massive vent that kept the chamber smelling fresh and cool. Below the vent was a large shallow bowl, where we were able to amass Zoltuce’s treasures when he was hosting another Titan. In front of the large benches were fairly deep troughs where we could put snacks for Zoltuce and any guest.

To the left of the hallway was a large treasury, down a set of totally-not-trapped stairs, a circular vault that is seventy-five feet in diameter, and full of treasures, currency, gems, magical items that Zoltuce has made, and near a hundred books containing Zoltcue’s accumulated knowledge. To the right of the hallway was Zoltuce’s Deep Dream room. This room’s walls were painted by our best artist, and show many of the wonderous triumphs that Zoltuce had achieved. My favorite painting on that wall is Zoltuce’s first meeting of humans and their ponies. I can still hear his voice, “ponies are the singular most delicious meat one could ever have.” Hence why we don’t eat horse, that is Titan food. When the humans met him, he had struck terror into them, making them scatter beneath his wings and he snatched up all of the ponies.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t heading to those three rooms, which we were only allowed into if we were escorted in by a Chosen of Zoltuce. I began to think, what if Zoltuce was going to make me one of his Chosen? They weren’t anointed in the three rooms, because they weren’t allowed in them until they were Chosen. That meant that they must not be made his Chosen there, the process had to happen somewhere else. I would be bathed in the thunder and lightning of Zoltuce’s wings and if I lived, I would be covered in an electrical current similar to Zoltuce. He already had two Chosen, but maybe he wanted more, there were three chambers. It wasn’t that crazy an idea.

I made a hard left at the fifth tunnel and went down the large and wide side passage, clearly built for Zoltuce to use. This tunnel led to the dungeons, which did of course make me a little nervous, as I had never been there before. Each step made me more nervous, but I couldn’t refuse a direct order from Zoltuce, especially since I desperately wanted a name. I skidded to a stop at one of the smaller chambers, with chains attached to the walls and hanging from the ceiling. There, in front of me, was the gorgeous yellow-scaled Hybrid Titan. Bolts of multiple colors flashed from scale to horn and back, to claws, to spiked frill, to the single long and curved, almost scythe-like blade on Zoltuce’s tail. His eyes were just flashes of blue or yellow, that he could choose to alternate or maintain as he desired. He stood almost fifteen feet tall, and was about twenty feet from head to tail, with a wingspan of nearly fifty feet. He could lift a dolphin or walrus right off the coast, or easily bring down one of the large sloths in the marshes below.

I looked around the room, noticing that there were three red-scaled Sckaens huddled together. They were obviously older than me, and had been servants to Smolder before he abandoned them and Zoltuce took them in. I puffed out my chest, holding myself to my full height of 3 feet and 4 whole inches, proud of my size and yellow scales. I was standing before our master. I was in front of Zoltuce. I mustered all the courage I had, and with a booming voice I called out, “Please great Zoltuce, bestow on your lowly servant a name that he may be remembered.” His head turned towards me, his scales grinding across each other, causing more friction and more zaps and zips of those yellow and blue zig zags of light. I swallowed hard and stood at attention, listening for the next words with bated breath. “Never You Mind,” came the response. I almost passed out. Zoltuce, our master, had just honored me with three names. I couldn’t think of anyone then or now who has three names. I did outlaw the practice when I became King, so that might have had something to do with the present numbers. I remember how jealous the other three were, how they just rolled their eyes as my tail smacked around with excitement. I bet they didn’t have three names, well, three dragon names.