Chapter 14
Night was falling as the squadron reached the shoreline. At that point it was too dark to see anything with the naked eye. The last bit of daylight sunk into the horizon and the lights inside the helicopter remained off. I had to put on my helmet and switch on the night vision goggles to see anything.
After doing so I was able to see again. The vision through the goggles generated a typical green, grainy view that resulted in unsharp images of everything around me. It was impossible to recognise small details from a bigger distance.
Turning around in my seat, I was able to look through the window behind me. The shoreline was now already behind us and mountains portrayed the landscape. Above the mountains, close to the helicopter, Khivven was flying parallel to it. I saw that he turned his head in my direction every now and then. I recognised that the dragon also did it a few times when there was still enough light to see, after we took off from the aircraft carrier.
I toyed around with the night vision goggles for a bit and felt that there were two buttons on the side. The first one I already used because that was the button to switch it on. The other one I didn't notice before. Pressing it appeared to switch the vision of the goggles. Everything around me was now in a black and white instead of a green hue. The silhouettes of the soldiers and some parts of the helicopter were the brightest. For that reason it took me only a second to find out that the new mode was for thermal vision.
I looked outside through the window again. Practically everything was the same, dark colour. There were only two things that stood out in a lighter colour. One of them was the engine of the helicopter and it's emissions. The other thing that stood out also seemed to be some sort of emission. I only could not recognise where it came from. Switching back to night vision mode, it turned out to be Khivven! He was not emitting any heat through his skin at all. The only way that he released his built-up energy from flying was through his breath.
This was once again a reminder that the dragons were fantastic predators. I remembered my first encounters with Zera, where she seemed to come from nowhere each time. Now that I also learned that they are practically invisible to thermal cameras, I realised that the dragons were much more difficult to deal with if we would not be aware of their presence. I could only hope that our element of surprise could work in our favour when we would reach the city.
"Do you see something?" the man on my left asked me.
"I just found out that our thermal vision probably won't work on the dragons" I answered.
"Good to now, but we will only need night vision when we are underground" he told me.
The man who spoke to me was sergeant Shostakovich. He was assigned as the leader of team Alpha. As far as I'm aware he was the only person in the back of the helicopter who was able to speak English. Although his command of the English language was far from good, the sergeant was an easy person to speak to. He kindly introduced me to the rest of the team and told me some things about how the Rusish navy functioned.
At first I feared that the team would have difficulty accepting it when I joined the mission, but it turned out to be much less the case. In the beginning there was an informal atmosphere among the soldiers, which was typical for what I imagined the navy would be. The closer we came to the destination, the more serious and tense the atmosphere became.
Perhaps the soldiers saw me as some sort of guide to the city. I was the only one who has been there before, after all. Even Khivven hasn't visited the city in his whole life. The only thing that they didn't know was that I was feeling too tired to remember all the stairs and corners that we took.
The sergeant gave me a punch on the shoulder when he saw me yawning.
"You need to stay sharp" he mentioned.
"You bet that I will be when we step into the cold tunnels" I said. "I just have to take some time to relax my mind. It has been a long day, you know. I find it hard to realize that I have been flying exactly here when the sun came up this morning."
"Don't ask too much of yourself" Shostakovich adviced. "The only thing that you have to do is stay behind my team and watch our back. You can do that, right?"
"Absolutely!" I said convinced.
Because the sergeant knew that I was somewhat tired, he remained mostly silent for the rest of the flight. There was some chatter among the other soldiers, but that became less notable the closer we came to the city.
Nearly one hour after we departed from the aircraft carrier the sky was completely dark. The stars were clearly visible, both with and without the night vision. There were no human cities beyond the divide so there was zero pollution from artificial lights.
I noticed that Khivven was not flying alongside our helicopter anymore. By that time I felt that the helicopter started to descend. It looked like we finally reached the valley. The dragon must have flown in front of the squadron to guide them through the valley.
This was the moment from which the chance was big that we could run into other dragons. I looked at my hands and saw that I subconsciously held tight on the rail of the seats. My heart started to beat faster as my body was producing an increasing amount of adrenaline. Finally I was fully focussed. It couldn't be much longer before we would enter the city and face whatever we would run into there.
The helicopter started to vibrate more intensively as it got closer and closer to the ground. After a few minutes of flying through the valley the pilots tilted the helicopter backward and started to make a left turn. Before I knew it, we landed on the stone platform that was constructed in front of one of the entrances to the city.
Exactly at the moment that the helicopter touched the ground the ramp at the back opened. Sergeant Shostakovich shouted a sentence in Rusish to his team and everyone stood up from their seats, making their way out of the helicopter. I did the same and followed the soldiers off the ramp.
With my night vision equipped I gazed around me. The helicopters containing team Bravo and Charlie were landing on the same platform as that we stood on. The others had to land on a platform that was a bit higher than this one. Khivven now also landed on the platform that I stood on. I saluted at him when he looked around to see if he could recognise me.
The soldiers that got out immediately assumed a defensive position around the helicopter. Luckily there were no dragons around the entrance. The sergeant waited for me to tie the end of the rope around a hook on the ramp before moving out. With the rope tool in my hand I followed the team, which was in turn following the dragon into the city.
The two other teams that landed on this platform also jumped out of their helicopters and rushed after me, trying not to lag behind.
After making my way through the large entrance I could finally see what the streets of the city looked like. They appeared just as cold and unstructured as the entrance was. Arches and pillars were in place only where they had to be. Stone was the only material used in the construction. It once again reminded me that the city was built purely for efficience. There were no lavish decorations, no warm lights, no doors or windows on the holes in the walls. But most importantly, there were no dragons.
The streets were completely desolate. No movement could be seen, no sound could be heard other than that of boots stepping on the stone floor and water dripping from the ceiling. A few soldiers ahead of me checked the entrances to rooms behind them, but they appeared to be empty as well.
"What are these spaces used for?" I heard the sergeant ask Khivven ahead of me.
"If you ask me, sleeping places probably" he answered.
"Do you know if she is here!?" I called in their direction, switching the topic.
The dragon turned around. Even from the distance I saw that he had a hopeful look on his face.
"She can't be too far now!" he called back.
"What about the humans?" sergeant Shostakovich asked.
"The same goes for them" Khivven replied.
The dragon took a few steps further and halted again.
"We must be careful from now on" he added. "I can feel that the city isn't completely empty. They must already know that we are here."
"How?" someone behind me asked.
"Us dragons can smell you humans from miles away" he said.
"Great to be aware of that, now that we are inside..." the sergeant said vexated. "Let's move on and be especially aware of our surroundings then."
He called some more things in his own language, whereafter the whole team moved on, deeper into the underground city.
The further we walked, the narrower the streets started to become. Their appearance remained bleak and emotionless. I found it difficult to recognise a structure in the street pattern. Maybe there was a logic for the way that they were dug, but I couldn't recognise it. Intersections seemed to be at the most random places possible, and sometimes we had to take a narrow street to reach a much wider one. Stairs that curved in many directions led to even more layers of streets. 
At every street that we crossed a soldier would check a random room, but each time there was no one to be found. I wondered why they didn't trust Khivven, because he could sense it if one of his people would be close by.
I checked the rope tool as I walked and saw that less than half of the rope remained. I couldn't imagine that it would take much longer to reach the dungeon or the place where Zera was held. From what I remembered it took a long time to reach the dungeon the day before, but I was too unfocussed to relate the length of that journey to the one that I was walking at the moment.
While toying around with the tool and not paying attention to my surroundings I accidentally bumped into a soldier who stood still. Looking around me, I saw that everyone suddenly froze in place.
"What's going on?" the sergeant asked the dragon.
"We have to split here" Khivven answered, carefully paying attention to his surroundings. "I can feel that your people are very close now. They are somewhere down the stairs on our left."
"Okay then" Shostakovich said before commanding the other teams to move forward in Rusish.
Khivven remained standing in his position, continuing to focus.
"Wait!" he called. "One is here..."
Everyone remained dead quiet and focussed down the street as well. However useless against a big dragon, some soldiers loaded their weapons while others picked explosives from their pockets, knowing that that would be their best chance for survival.
After a few seconds I could hear soft steps coming from the distance. I was not the only one to notice it. Soldiers around me started to act more tense. With every step the sound became increasingly loud. When we felt that the dragon almost reached us we realized that he was not coming from further in the tunnel, but the stairway on our left that led to the dungeon.
The second that everyone looked towards the stairway, a big head appeared behind the corner that the stairs took. When the sergeant saw that the dragon looked back in his eyes, all he had to do was scream "shoot!" before the soldiers around him started to pull their triggers. Their bullets made only little impact on the massive beast. Some soldiers started to throw grenades in it's direction. When they exploded they seemed to cause more damage to the dragon than the bullets did. It started to roar loudly, indicating that it felt the pain from the blasts, but persevered in making his way to the end of the stairway.
A soldier who stood in front of me was already occupied with loading a missle into his portable launcher. As soon as it was loaded he kneeled and lifted the launcher over his shoulder, firing the missile at the huge dragon. It was standing relatively close to us. When the other soldiers heard the launcher shooting the missile they instantly knew that they had to duck for cover. I didn't realize that, but I did manage to look away before the missile struck the dragon. The blast from the explosion was so big that I got kicked off my feet, falling on my back.
The first thing I noticed after the explosion was the deafening sound of the explosion echoeing many times through the deep, dark tunnels of the city. When I lifted my head I saw that the dragon was down. There appeared to be big cracks in the walls of the stairway, but to my surprise the structures of the streets and tunnels managed to keep up as much as they did. I imagined that it would take a nuclear bomb to let the tunnels collapse.
I stood up from the ground. Luckily I was wearing the helmet, otherwise I could have suffered from a concussion when I hit the stone floor.
I saw that the other soldiers also stood up, relieved by the defeat of the dragon. Some of them gave each other a handshake. Taking down the dragon felt like a huge victory. As far as we were aware, we were the first humans in history to do so.
I approached the large beast to take a closer look at it. It was about the same size as a hunter. It was a different breed, but it was one that was looking just as fierce as the hunters were. When I closely examined his head, I felt like I have seen this specific individual before. Given the fact that we were close to the dungeon where the humans were held prisoner, I remembered that it was the one who was also present in the dungeon the day before.
"That was madness!" Khivven shouted as he ran towards me. "I never knew that your species was capable of that level of destruction."
"This was nothing compared to our bigger bombs" I mentioned shocked, imagining how much damage they could deal.
"With such power you can actually match up to the king's army" he said.
Khivven stepped closer to the dead creature in front of us.
"Such a waste of life, isn't it?" the dragon remarked as he gazed over the body of his congener. "I hope that you understand that not all of us are like him."
"Do you mean that we won't be attacked instantly if we run into a dragon of another breed?" I asked, looking at him.
"Well, in the end all of them are under the king's command" he answered, looking back. "It is always possible that dragons from any breed attack when they see humans. I just hope that your friends here don't judge so quickly next time by using their heaviest tools against my people. I am sure that there are some dragons out there who could change their mind if they see that they are about to be defeated."
To my left, soldiers of the two other teams squeezed around the dead  dragon's body and proceeded down the stairway.
"Let's move!" the sergeant called to me and Khivven after commanding his team to follow him.
"It won't be much longer until we get to see her again" the dragon assured me softly, tapping me on my arm with his claw. 
As the other two teams disappeared behind the curve of the stairway, our team moved on, deeper into the street. After we crossed some more intersections and stairways we were surprised by strong vibrations in the tunnels. The entire team instantly halted and kneeled in order not to fall over because of the vibrations.
The vibrations became decreasingly intensive only a second after they started. Shortly after that the deafening sound of another explosion echoed through the tunnels.
"It sounded like the other team ran into another one" Khivven said to me as he stood by my side.
"Sounds like something we don't have to be worried about" sergeant Shostakovich said, looking in our direction and picking up what Khivven said.
Suddenly, a soldier in the team shouted something in Rusish, leading to everyone looking in his direction. When we saw that the soldier pointed deeper down the tunnel everyone gazed over there.
Because we were distracted by the explosion from the other teams we missed the fact that another dragon approached us from behind a corner. Luckily, the missile specialist had his launcher prepared for such a moment. As soon as the soldier had the dragon in his sight he launched the missile at the oversized creature.
Because the dragon was much further away this time, there was no need to duck for cover from the explosion. We still had to look away and cover our ears so we wouldn't be blinded and deafened by the energy that it released.
Everyone seemed relieved when we thought that the dragon was taken down. It became dead silent when our relief was broken by a loud roaring sound coming from behind the smoke. I was startled when the beast emerged through the thick fumes that were the result of the explosion. It rushed towards us, causing panic among some of the soldiers. Others started firing at the dragon, hoping that it would make any difference.
The missile specialist reloaded his launcher as soon as he could. The soldiers who were still around him knew that they had to find cover as fast as possible. This time I realized that I had to do the same. When the dragon almost reached our team the missile specialist could finally launch the missile at the beast, right in his face. Again an explosion lit the streets of the underground city, causing the stone to vibrate, rubble to fall down from the ceiling and an earsplitting sound to fill the atmosphere, echoeing many times through the endless tunnels.
When I felt that I was still alive a few seconds after the blast I knew that the dragon had to be defeated this time. As I stood up and saw that the dust cleared, my suspicion was confirmed. Looking around me, Khivven was the only one who was still standing.
"We have to hurry!" he said out loud. "I feel that he released a warning call right before he died. Not just all the dragons in the city know where we are now, but everyone in the whole region knows it as well!"
"How much longer do we have!?" the sergeant asked as he got up.
"It's hard to tell at this point" Khivven answered. "What I can assure you is that the dragon which we are looking for is very close now. She should be somewhere at the end of this street."
"That sounds like fantastic news" the sergeant replied. "Let's not wait any longer and get over with this operation then!"
When the entire team stood ready to move they started rushing deeper into the tunnel. Excited, I made my way around the dead dragon and sprinted after the others.
Towards the end the street curved over to the right and ended in a smaller stairway. Down the spiral stairway there appeared to be the beginning of a tunnel system that appeared to be awfully similar to the one where I was held prisoner before. The biggest difference was that there were no torches burning, and it appeared to be completely empty.
Khivven sprinted ahead of us, down the main tunnel. I recognised that he knew that Zera was here. I rushed ahead of the rest of the team in an attempt to catch up with the dragon. After crossing a dozen cells he halted and gazed through the bars of one of them before looking at me with a concerned look in his eyes.
When I reached him he didn't need to ask me to help him lift the heavy locking mechanism of the gate. I knew that I had to get it open as soon as I could. When the barrier was out of the way Khivven opened the gate and stepped inside.
I looked around the corner of the stone pillar and saw that Zera lay there on the cold stone floor. She appeared to be asleep, not moving any muscle at all. When I also got inside I kneeled to get close to her, placing my hand on her arm and shaking her to wake her up. Khivven lowered his head and pressed the tip of his snout agains her head with a sad expression..
Whatever Khivven and I tried, Zera did not respond. Anxiously, I examined the rest of her body. That was when I recognised that there were deep cutting wounds on many parts of her torso and limbs. Khivven was also shocked to see that.
"How could they do that to one of their own species!?" he wondered out loud with a lump in his throat.
I turned my head around, screaming "get a medic!" with tears in my eyes.
The sergeant was the first to reach the cell. Shortly after he did a soldier rushed around him and dropped her weapon at the gate, lowering herself to get close to the wounded dragon as well. The medic first checked if she could recognise a pulse and called something in Rusish to the team leader.
"She is still alive!" the sergeant shouted relieved.
The medic then proceeded to examine the wounds before looking up and telling some more things to the sergeant.
"She is badly wounded" he translated. "There is nothing we can do for her here. She needs professional treatment as soon as possible."
"We have to carry her back" Khivven said to me.
"Do you think that we can make it?" I asked.
He looked me in the eyes and nodded. The dragon then proceeded to pick up one of Zera's arms and wrapped it around his neck. I picked up the other one and took it over my shoulders. She was less heavy than I'd expected. I guess that that was because Khivven also took some of the wheight. 
The dragon and looked at each other again, signalling that it was time to move out. We exited the cell and made our way out of the cell as soon as we could. Two soldiers of the team went ahead of us to make sure that we wouldn't run into another dragon. The others followed us.
Running up the stairway, back through the street and around the dead dragon, we followed the rope that I left behind to find our way back. We struggled to move forward when another explosion caused the ground to vibrate again. I was sure that the echo of the blast came from the direction of the exit, which would mean that the other teams were on their way out before us. It also gave me more hope that we wouldn't run into any other dragons ourselves ahead of us.
As we continued to follow the rope towards the exit two more explosions caused us to slow down. To my surprise, the second one sounded like it came from behind us. Carrying Zera the entire distance and running at the same time was very exhausting. I had to pause for a moment.
"Are you still holding up?" Khivven asked me.
"I just... have to catch my breath..." I said frazzled.
I bent over and rested my hands on my knees to inhale and exhale deeply while Zera's arm was still wrapped over my shoulders. Khivven looked around him to look for the others, but only the two soldiers who ran before us were still in sight.
"Where did the rest go!?" he called towards them.
One of the soldiers responed with something in Rusish. The dragon looked at me in confusion, hoping that I could make out any of it, but right at that moment the soft sound of boots running on the stone floor behind us caught our attention. The sound became increasingly loud, until we were able to see the rest of the team sprinting from behind a curve in our direction.
Sergeant Shostakovich was in front of the group. "Run!" he shouted repeatedly. A missile was shot towards the back of the tunnel, exploding right behind the curve. From our point of view, the team running away from the blast behind them would have been perfect for an action film.
Without hesitation I stood upright again and continued to drag Zera towards the exit, together with Khivven. As we did so we could hear multiple roars coming from behind us. It would be too difficult for only one missile specialist to take them all down. Fearing for our lives, we followed the rope as fast as we could. After a few more corners and stairs the sergeant caught up with us.
"We are out of missiles!" he shouted as he ran alongside me. "We can't keep them away from us without making sacrifices!"
"I recognise this part!" I shouted back, almost out of breath. "We are close to the exit now!"
"I will try to reach the helicopters and tell them to be ready!" Shostakovich called.
The sergeant picked his mobile radio from his waistband and held it in front of his face. He screamed at it and started to swear when he only heard static noise coming from the speaker.
"We are still too deep!" he shouted.
"Try it again when we are on the next street!" Khivven called, sounding like he was also struggling to keep up the pace.
As we reached the end of the current street we took one more corner and ran up one more stairway. At that time the soldiers who were running behind us also caught up with us, some of them even overtaking us. At the end of the stairway the sergeant screamed at the radio again. This time he started laughing when he vaguely recognised a voice among the grainy noise that came out of the radio. He commanded some things through the microphone and placed the radio back on his waistband after the person on the other side of the radio said something back.
"The other teams have made it back!" Shostakovich called relieved. "It is just us who have to reach the exit!"
After running down the large street for a few more seconds I finally saw a bright light emerging from behind the curve. By that time the heavy footsteps and roaring behind us sounded like they were very close.
"I know what you are thinking!" Khivven shouted at me. "Don't look behind you! We are almost there! Keep it up and we will make it!"
As we ran further, the heavy footsteps became inaudible because the noise of the helicopter engines outside overruled their sound. A few meters before the exit I was blinded by the bright light coming from outside. When my eyes were able to focus again I saw that one of the attack helicopters was flying in front of the entrance with it's front directed at us and the flashlight illuminating the whole area. The helicopter that carried us towards the city was waiting for us with an open ramp, ready to take off as soon as we would board. The last soldiers ahead of us were boarding it by the time that Khivven, the sergeant and me exited the city.
When we almost reached the rest of the team the attack helicopter above us started launching a shower of missiles at the city entrance. It didn't stop doing so for a little while. As much as I wanted to see what was going on, I had to focus and reach the helicopter.
All of us entered the helicopter it without hesitation as soon as we reached the ramp. Even Khivven, who wasn't a fan of flying on human aircraft did so. As soon as we placed Zera down on the floor the helicopter departed from the ground. The loadmaster pressed a button to close the ramp. I held onto a railing that was attached to the ceiling and looked trough the opening for as long as it wasn't closed yet.
The first thing I noticed that the attack helicopter stopped firing. There was too much smoke and dust for me to recognise if the chasing dragons were defeated. At least they didn't emerge from the cloud of dust, like previously happened inside the city.
Right before the ramp closed I saw that the helicopters containing the other teams followed our helicopter and the second attack helicopter started bombarding the other city entrances, so they would collapse and it would be impossible to get in or out of the city in the near future.
I turned around, seeing the poor, wounded dragon lie on the floor in front of me. I kneeled by Zera, stroking her along her forehead and snout. Khivven also came closer and sat down next to me. I felt someone placing their hand on my shoulder. At first I thought that it was Khivven's claw, but when the person started talking I recognised it to be the sergeant.
"I'm certain that our people are able to get her back on her feet" he assured me. "They have to, otherwise the mission would be a failure."
I was feeling sad to have Zera by me in this state, but I was still hopeful about her recovery. It was good to hear the sergeant said that to me. With my hand still on Zera's face, I sat down on the floor and leaned against the seat behind me. With the amount of adrenaline in my body rapidly decreasing, I was becoming so tired that I couldn't prevent my eyes from closing. My mind sunk away in a deep sleep within only one minute, unaffected by the loud noise from the helicopter's engines as it flew back to the fleet.