"Probably I am just mistaken about the amount and coolness of stuff in there and we should go look at it and correct my wrongness! . . . Possibly I am a little bit hung up on the dragon having gotten away and feeling like we shouldn't get the treasure until it's defeated once and for all, but that's stupid video game logic."

Lucia takes Sergia's hand, if Sergia is amenable to this, and starts practically skipping towards the cave. "You should always look at the cool piles of loot! If someone else finds something that's just a perfect fit for you then usually they'll come and get you, but that's so much less awesome than stumbling on a glowing object in a cave and feeling it calling you! Some of my stuff was like, wow, big blaze of holy light, instant attachment to friend shield, it's not a moment you want to have in a random storage unit."

Sergia is happy to hold hands! "Oh wow, that's so awesome! I hadn't realized it could actually be like that, I thought if I was going to get anything out of this it would take a week and involve a bunch of analysis and people swapping stuff around."

"It takes a week to sort out all the final details of anything, that doesn't mean I don't want to be there for the cool part!"

Lucia tugs Sergia along by the hand and approaches the cave with excitement. 

Groups have already gone ahead of them to clear out the cave and check whether it is actually safe. There's a few people sitting by the entrance who insist on handing Lucia a water bottle as she walks past, and then they can go in.

The entrance looks much more like a normal cave - it's a muddy, rocky hole in the ground with roots in the ceiling and a trickle of water running along the floor.

Not long after they get inside, there's a corner, and after they turn the corner it opens up into something far more alien and draconic. The walls and ceilings are a sort of fire-blasted sculpted rock, all dark volcanic red and obsidian, and the floor is marked with the gigantic scratches and gouges of claws. From the ceiling hang pale crystalline stalagtites which seem to be lit with a soft greenish glow wherever lamplight hits them. 

The glittering twisted spires of the matching stalagmites jut out from the piles of... what looks like mostly books. Scrolls and notebooks and heaps of discarded paper and folded pamphlets and leaflets and unopened envelopes are scattered in haphazard, disorganised fashion over the piles and piles and piles of books. 

There's also a few scattered gold coins, bones, helmets, jewellery and the standard sorts of things that a dragon hoard ought to have. But the overwhelming impression is of torch beams picking out tiny glimpses of a library in the yawning darkness beyond.

"Oh wow, it was hoarding books." Somehow this, and not the earlier mention of Master Isenburn negotiating with the dragon, is what drives home that the dragon isn't a mindless beast, for all it (they?) wanted to burn a city. Unfortunate how looting the hoard is probably going to wreck any hope of reopening negotiations on the strength of "we clearly have the ability to fuck you up so how about you not trying to attack anyone". Probably if the royalty and the diplomats thought there was a snowball's chance of that they'd've already told everyone not to loot.

Sergia considers saying any of that to Lucy, decides that it might be too tragic to be a Lucy-safe topic, and picks up a couple of books at random on the off chance any of them are in English.

One of them is in Latin. The other is in Chichewa. Does Sergia speak either? 

"Oh," Lucia says softly, marvelling at the hoard. "I hope we can donate these anonymously to libraries, and schools and hospitals and - oh what language is this?"

She's holding a book in Laotian. "This is so, so pretty... Cináed is going to absolutely adore this." 

Sergia speaks enough Spanish and is good enough at English that she can often deduce the meaning of miscellaneous bits of Latin, but a whole book of it is beyond her. It's still very cool. 

"And museums! Some of these look old enough that historians would drool over them. I have no idea what that one you've got is in but the alphabet is super pretty." She sets down the ones she was looking at and heads just a bit deeper into the cave. She should help sort the books and ask someone what's going to be done with the bones, but she wants to do more exploring first. 

To head deeper into the cave, she'll need to walk into deep shadow. In the darkness loom bigger and bigger piles of books and scrolls, joining forces with the stalagtites to form monstrous shapes and cast jagged moving shadows as the Atlantians' torches and lanterns move.

Does she have a light source? 

"Maybe! I wonder why it was guarding the cave so hard?"

Lucy for some reason suddenly feels the urge to speak in a hushed whisper. It is rude to excitedly squeal in a library, even if the library is in a spooky draconic cave. Conspiratorially, she adds: "Do you think there's secrets in the books?" 

Being in a spooky draconic cave is if anything an additional reason to whisper! "There's so many books here that the public hasn't been able to read that I feel like there have to be secrets. Or at least things nobody except the dragon knows." She doesn't have a light source but she has pretty good night vision and picks her footing carefully.

Cináed's banner is about two hundred feet below Sergia and thirty feet off to her left.

This fact simply becomes obvious, as though it is the sort of thing that anyone ought to know and she's just been reminded of it. An image of the banner comes into her mind's eye, barely visible in dim firelight, fluttering slightly despite the totally still air so far underground.

There's an odd sense of urgency attached to the knowledge - as though she just remembered about an appointment that she's very late to. The banner demands she pay attention right now. 

"Cináed's down there?" 

Oh shit, she hasn't seen Cináed since he said "summon me if you know where the banner is"! What if he's having a spelunking problem! Sergia drops her helmet on the ground and fishes the Veil of Loyal Calling out and flops it over her face and looks in That Direction for Cináed's outline. Can she even see him from here, that far away with all that rock in between?

His outline, very faint but shining clearly, is the only thing visible through the stone floor. It's immediately obvious what he's doing; retreating while parrying, and blocking, and parrying again, and sidestepping, and what looks like sweeping away a thrust, and backing up several more steps... 

"Cináed my loyal friend and fellow Atlantian return to me!"

Cináed appears with his eyebrows scorched halfway off, the edge of his cloak smouldering, and his sword slashing wildly at the air. His eyes widen, his breath hitches, and he manages to pull his blade back just before he would have cut through a stack of books.

He drops to one knee, breathing heavily, and pulls his helmet off. 

"...Baby dragon," he says flatly, while he wipes soot and ash carefully off his sword using the edge of his cloak. "There's a baby dragon."

"Oh shit! I'll go tell people--do you think it'll come up here?" She's whipping the veil off and tucking it back into its helmet-bucket as she speaks.