Adventure of Slaan 1

Dust churns over the shattered slope, hiding the drop below. Slaan stands at the edge of the collapse with the Sun-Eater records tucked close, while loose stone skitters under every breath.

The Paladin braces uphill, scanning the gray haze where faint shapes move beyond the debris. He raises one hand, warning of the scouts drawing nearer.

Slaan picks a route across the jagged shelf, testing each step before committing weight. Pebbles tumble into the fog, and the slope answers with a low grind.

Ahead, the ridge splits around a dark cleft, a possible way down away from the chapel line. The scouts' silhouettes sharpen through the dust, and the group has its answer, descend now or be caught on the broken crest.

Slaan leaves Saint Morlon's temple behind and arrives at Drake's Den.

Dust gives way to hard-packed ground as Slaan drops into the hollow below. The ridge behind her vanishes into gray, while the open breeding grounds of Drake's Den spread ahead in broken terraces, heat and old ash rising from the earth.

Below, several drakes shift in their pens, long necks lifting at the noise. Farther off, a pair of wyverns beat their wings against leather restraints, snapping the air with nervous power.

Slaan keeps the records tight to her side and moves with the slope, using the den's stone ridges as cover. Loose shale slides behind her boots, but the descent holds.

A sharp call carries from deeper in the den, and one of the wyverns lashes its tail against the rails. The nearest drake turns its head toward Slaan, watching her with bright, wary eyes.

Slaan lifts a finger for silence, and the warning lands before either man can speak. Her voice stays low, dry with a hint of mischief, and the den seems to listen with her.

Bram’s mouth twitches despite himself. The Paladin eases his shield down a handspan, taking in the pens, the rails, and the egg-sized stones clustered near the grit.

Slaan’s smile flickers, brief and real. Bram leans in closer to the wall, and the Paladin angles himself between the group and the upper ridge, all three of them settling into the den’s wary hush.

Slaan leads them off the ledge in a slow, measured drift between the stone pens. Bram falls in behind her, and the Paladin mirrors her pace, each step placed where grit will not crunch.

A low drake huffs from behind a rail, but Slaan angles her hand once, and the sound dies under the hollow’s hush. The trio slips past a stack of leather straps and a spill of warm straw without disturbing a stone.

The den opens into a narrow service cut between two pens, half shadow and half ash light. Slaan threads them through it, keeping her shoulders loose and her breath shallow while the Paladin watches the ridge instead of the floor.

Bram catches a glimpse of movement above and freezes. Slaan does not. She presses on, and the movement proves to be only a drake shifting its weight on a far ledge, not a scout on the ridge.

They reach a slanted spill of rubble where the hollow dips lower. Beneath it, a cramped gap opens into darkness, hidden behind a hanging curtain of broken slate and reed matting.

Slaan pauses at the mouth of it, one hand on the stones, reading the drop. The hidden way is there, quiet and waiting, but it vanishes into black below.