An Empty Hoard

“Not enough. Still too much, open space. Never enough. There needs to be more,” Grimswaborg muttered distractedly as he tore open yet another adventurers void space, the meagre contents spilling dejectedly in the gaping chasm that yawned menacingly a bare twelve hundred feet away from where he stood now.

“Their fault, not mine. If they really cared about all those villagers, they would be helping me. Not posting their hurtfully inaccurate notices and arming their sons and daughters with pitchforks and rusty pot lids.”

Something ticked at his senses as he spoke out loud, causing him to advance, edging cautiously around the sinister line of darkness that occupied the otherwise well-lit stone floor. A slight feeling of pressure was coming from below and to the left of the cave entrance, another righteous adventurer no doubt.

Grimswaborg snorted dismissively, then winced as the sudden outtake of breath disturbed a darksteel tower shield that had been leaning precariously against one wall. It fell to the floor with a horrendous clatter that proved, once and for all that dragons were not, in fact creatures that excelled in the arts of stealth and general sneakiness.

Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Grimswaborg had to admit that on this one particular point, his Aunt Grestle had been right. Not that he would ever admit it to her face, or the faces of anyone who might even be remotely likely to come into contact with her in the future. She was already insufferable enough and anyway, now there was another ‘brave’ adventurer to deal with.

He briefly considered curling up in the only shadowy corner of the cave, a side effect of what the humans ignorantly called an open ‘treasure pit’, and pretending to be asleep but decided that, given the amount of noise that puny piece of metal had managed to create it was unlikely to fool the adventurer, even if he was an exceptionally stupid adventurer. Which is almost all of them.

Frankly, Grimswaborg was beginning to wonder if the older generation of humans was doing this on purpose, deliberately weeding out the worst and most incompetent of their newest human crop before they could bring down further troubles upon their respective villages. Afterall, a dragon was relatively harmless to an established village like those that populated the tumultuous verdant hills below his mountain home, a slitherwyrm or a stormbeast on the other hand…

With a soft whistling sound an arrow flew through the air and struck him full on in the face. Once again, his minds tendency to wander had cost him…absolutely nothing. The arrow bounced harmlessly off his scaly hide, and it amused him to see the confidence and pride on the archer’s face turn swiftly into shock and concern. That concern quickly morphed into fear as Grimswaborg lazily swept one claw at the adventurer, forcing him to jump back to avoid being torn in half.

Did they really believe that a dragon would be so easy to kill? Grimswaborg exhaled, drawing deep upon a series of small secondary chambers contained within his reptilian body to fill the cave with a thick, black smoke. A gasp and the scuffing of footsteps reached his outer ears, a slight twitch of his glittering mottled tail and the cave was no longer a shared occupancy, save for the gradually fading screams as yet another adventure tumbled his way down into utter darkness.

“Maybe the humans are trying to help me after all,” he mused as silence once more fell blessedly over his large form. “It is in their own best interest to seal this tear. Although it would be considered dereliction of duty by the rest of the clan, I would have a far easier time finding a new lair than they would trying to relocate eleven or twelve villages worth of people and livestock.”

Grimswaborg scratched at his chin with one curved, viciously sharp claw. Wishing for the umpteenth time he had kept ahold of that monk’s magically reinforced fighting staff. It had made for an excellent scratching implement.

“If that is true though, it is a bit heartless, even for humans. Deliberately sacrificing their young for their magical potential. What do you think George?” Grimswaborg’s question was directed towards a small, metallic statue of some unknown humanoid creature that stood on a shallow rock shelf Grimswaborg had built into the wall especially for it.

“It’s okay. I know you are just a little shy, I’ll get you out of your shell eventually.” Chuckling at his own joke, Grimswaborg reached out into the Myst, searching for any anomalies, or rather any new anomalies that may have appeared since the overconfident archer’s death.

After a few minutes of searching, he found what he was looking for, a small self-contained pocket of energy, already fracturing now that the life source tied to its creation was out of reach. A small exertion of will caused a minute crack to open up several feet above the ravenous pit of treasure.

Focusing a bit more carefully now Grimswaborg surrounded the crack with his own energy, taking extra care to isolate the dark void in the corner of the cave from the fractured space above it. Pushing outward with his mind the crack grew slowly, objects starting to tumble out one by one as he did so into the pit below.

A handful of silver coins, courtesy of those cheapskate village elders no doubt, a few changes of clothing, a bottle of scented healing lotion, three quivers of extra arrows, a tokwheel and a single black stone. The black stone and the tokwheel were useful, they had the highest magic concentration out of all the adventurer’s belongings.

One of the quivers actually contained several poorly enchanted arrows as well, Grimswaborg was glad the archer had decided not to use them for that first attack. Although it would have harmed him no more than an ordinary arrow would of right now, it would have been a shameful waste of resources.

Magical items were much more effective when thrown into the pit than ordinary materials. Otherwise, every dragon would just fill their lairs with chunks of stone and metal to fill any cracks that formed in the fabric of the Myst. Humans might be ungrateful, but at least they provided a reasonably predicable supply of magical items when required.

All a dragon had to do was make an appearance at the nearest village or let out a few angry roars from the edge of his lair from time to time and they would come running, bringing their magical items along with them.

That kind of external magic was difficult for a dragon, otherwise they would seal the tears themselves and this world would have no need of humans. Pesky things. Just as troublesome and necessary as Aunt Grestle had said during his teachings. Much like Aunt Grestle herself, Grimswaborg supposed.