Free The Path to Loss (Approaching Infinity Book 4) by Chris Eisenlauer

the limits of the island continent and that it formed a kind of basement to the castle city.
    Something caught his eye at the bend up ahead where the stream turned out of view. He steadied himself and moved to investigate. On his bank and the opposite were statues of dragons in miniature, only slightly taller than himself. Each was carved of a different stone, one bluish, the other white. They were similar, but as with Shields, maintained their individuality. Carved wings were folded on their backs, and their postures were mirror images of each other. Both stood erect and held in their claws the bottom halves of broken-open eggshells. Peshil drew close to the blue one on his bank and peered into the broken eggshell. There was nothing remarkable about it, but Peshil thought there must be some significance. He stared at the white statue across the wide stream for a while, then followed the curve of the flow, intrigued by these idols and somehow certain that there would be more of them.
    He encountered several and stopped counting after the first ten. All were housed in natural nooks in the rock and though he at first considered them to have been carved or sculpted, close examination showed no chisel work, no marks of tools of any sort. He smiled at the thought that they may have occurred naturally—or supernaturally, though Thrax Palonis had abandoned superstition long before Peshil’s grandfather’s grandfather. Some he thought he recognized, or were at least reminiscent of Shields he had known. His breath stopped when he approached one that was all too familiar.
    Peshil knew his own outline while transformed and here it was staring back at him, “carved” in quartz that seemed to glow yellow at the edges. It was, like the others, much smaller than true Shields, but he had no doubt that this was the representation of his own Shield, that the broken egg, which every figure so far also held, was the source of his Shield, given to one of his ancestors unknown ages ago. He stared open-mouthed and raised a tentative hand to it, brushing his fingers lightly over its surface. He half-expected to receive a shock at the touch, but there was nothing. He hesitated to leave his own image—or the image of what he had been given the power to become—behind, but moved on.
    He followed the bends and twists along the lava stream, sure that he heard the noise of men farther ahead. He chuckled aloud when he passed the effigy of the Shadow Thief, and then checked himself, thinking that it was somehow wrong to gloat or mock in a place like this.
    He stopped again, this time intrigued by an unbroken egg held by a green dragon, one he certainly did not recognize. He wondered if the state of the egg meant that there was a Shield inside ready for a host or if the—magic?—was exhausted after so long. He placed his fingers on the smooth cream-green shell and this time he did feel a shock.
    “That is not for you!” the voice from before boomed.
    From the lava stream, a great corpse-gray dragon rose. Smoking orange runnels trailed down the crags and valleys of its head and face as it filled the immediate space in the cavern to tower above Peshil. Thick drops of molten stone fell upon the bank, splattering there and forcing Peshil to hop away.
    When far enough away from the lava splash, Peshil bowed and cried out, “Chan Fa, the Everliving! Please, hear me! I come in friendship, with news of peril that threatens all of Thrax Palonis.”
    “I have been following your progress through the Shrine Hall. You are the Light Smith, but far more daring than accounts maintain,” Chan Fa said, his voice accusing.
    “I-I am. I must be, considering what has come to Thrax Palonis.”
    Chan Fa turned in the direction of the lava flow, and before flying off in that direction under the power of skeletal wings, he said without room for argument, “Come.”
    Peshil obeyed. As he continued along the bank, he was torn between a desire to transform, to meet Chan