Free Sovereign Stone by David Wells

He opened the door to the long arching pathway that led to the giant platform and stepped out into the sky. The views of the Keep were spectacular from the bridge. They could see towers and spires rising high above them and hundreds of grandly constructed buildings covering the surface below. The place was truly a city of vast and magnificent complexity. Alexander still found wonders at every turn. He hoped the platform wouldn’t be an exception.
    Where the bridge met the edge of the giant platform, the stone melded together as if it were all cut from the same giant block. The platform’s surface was made of the same ubiquitous black granite as the rest of the mountain and it was smooth and level. The edges had no railing or even a curb, and the fall was hundreds of feet to the buildings below. Aside from multiple towers rising up into the sky, this was the highest place on the mountain.
    “What do you suppose this was used for?” Alexander asked.
    “It might have been an assembly area,” Anatoly said. “But I’m not sure why they would have picked the highest part of the Keep to assemble their troops.”
    They spent a few minutes walking around on the huge platform before they found an open area. As they drew closer, they discovered that it was at least a hundred-foot square cut into the surface. The floor below was over a hundred feet down. A staircase led from the top, down along one wall, around the corner and down to the floor.
    They descended with caution and curiosity. Once they were outside the field of sunlight that fell through the opening, Alexander took his vial of night-wisp dust from its tube and held it high as they made their way into the dark, giant chamber. They found huge stalls, one after the other, lining corridors easily a hundred feet wide and almost as tall. In the first stall was another hole leading down to another level. Alexander made a note to come back and inspect that area later.
    They pressed on into the darkness and found that most of the place was nearly empty. The floors of each stall were littered with the desiccated remains of some form of structures, but from what little was left, it was nearly impossible to determine what had once been there. They found an occasional bone from a cow or a horse and sometimes a deer or an elk, but those bones were old and brittle from centuries of exposure.
    When they reached the far end of the long corridor, they discovered a second giant passage leading down to the level below. Around the corner was another passage up to the platform above. They took the stairs down and found that the south end of the second level was open to the sky.
    Light poured in, making it easier to explore the nearby stalls. In the first stall, Alexander saw the shape of something that caught his imagination, and he pulled it from the decayed debris. It looked like a giant scale nearly two feet long and a foot and a half wide and reddish brown in color. It was lightweight, yet strong. The outer surface flaked away easily, but the core of the scale was intact and looked like reddish-black metal. With a jolt of excitement and awe, Alexander knew what used to live here.
    “Dragons,” he whispered as a chill raced through him.
    Anatoly and Isabel looked at him, and he offered them a look at the metal that was at the core of the scale. Their eyes grew wide at the truth of Alexander’s statement. He pulled up his tunic to look at the dragon-scale chain shirt he wore underneath. The color and quality of the metal was identical to the core of the giant scale that he held.
    “Kelvin will want to see this,” Alexander said excitedly. “We’ll have to find another way to the paddock that doesn’t involve the central tower. I want to keep that off-limits for the time being, but we need to get some Rangers up here to search for more scales.”
    They made their way back down another long, wide corridor looking into each stall with renewed interest. Now that they knew what they