Free Azurite (Daughter of the Mountain Book 1) by Megan Dent Nagle Page A

fingers along its walls to feel for any carvings or etchings that meant a drawing was present.  The lantern cast a dim, exiguous path of light along the wall as she ventured further away from her set up location. 
    Zora cried out in excitement when the flame light unveiled a new cave drawing that she’d yet to discover.  Thrilled, she lifted the lamp up higher to examine her ancestors’ pictorial representation of their daily life.  But Zora’s smile of delight slowly began to fade as she parsed the drawings, completely baffled as to what her ancestors were trying to depict.
    The illustration was of a monster.  Zora could think of no other way to describe the grotesque being.  It looked like a disturbingly aberrant mix between a human and a beast, having the physique of a man with two sets of layered bird wings that grew from its upper back.  Its goat face sprouted an elongated snout and no eyes.  The tail was that of a reptile; if Zora could guess she’d choose a dragon.  It was long, scaled, and thick with muscle.  Curious as to why the being had no eyes, Zora leaned in closer with the lamp to examine the drawing better.  She gasped out loud.  Thousands upon thousands of bleeding red eyes covered the being’s massive wings, as if that was the only thing they were made up of.  Zora stumbled back out of fear, as if the fiend drawn on the wall was going to come alive any second.  She’d never seen anything like this in any of the hundreds of drawings she’d recorded in her journals.
    What does it mean?  Zora thought. 
    It was then that she felt it, the deep agonizing pain that emanated from the scar on her midsection.  It was the scar she’d received three years ago as a child.  She winced as her hand went reflexively to her abdomen, waiting for the fit to pass like normal .  The beast provoked something so revolting in Zora that it triggered the reaction of her scar.  She shook her head vigorously to clear the pain away and turned to make her way back to the cave mouth and out of sight of the strange painting.
      She had been down in the caves for several hours now, and her eyes swam with fatigue.  This new cave drawing had unnerved her, and the old injury on her midsection was aching terribly, so she decided to pack up for the day.  It would take another hour to exit the caves to the northwest, and then she’d be able to head back to Alumhy. 
    The area where the alpine Anion peaks began to transform into rocky hills was known as the Shoulder, and there was something of Zora’s located there that she needed to tend to.  She made her way back to the main mine passages and moved forward until she heard the chipping and hacking of mountain rock and the groaning and grunting of the miners as they chiseled out their resources.  She had entered the most recent mining location set up by Talan Leatherby.  Pale light from the outside brightened the dark mine as supplies were lowered by rope and pulley down the numerous vertical shafts carved into the surface of the mountain.  She passed by several miners who went about their work with a tired monotony, not even noticing the presence of a female, much less the Samarian Princess, in their midst. 
    This mine was set up like a squared hallway, with wooden beams built along the ceiling and sides to keep the mountain from imploding on the miners.  A cloudy blue dust filled the hallway as the build up of mountain rock over thousands of years was slowly chiseled away.  Large wagons lined the walls and were dragged in and out of the mine by the men as they filled them with gemstones.  Usually, the wagons were overflowing with myriads of gem rock waiting to be taken to the gem piece makers for cutting and polishing, but today there was hardly anything in them. 
    Without warning, a deafening boom resonated through the mine followed by a deep convulsing of the earth that threw Zora, and every one around her, to the ground.  Shards of rock and dust rained