As George sat off to one side, chomping on the best cooked sausage he’d ever tasted, Axus trudged past the fire to sit down beside him, sausage and bread in one hand, mug of water in the other.
"No bloody wine again," he moaned. "I know, I know. Need to be sharp and on the lookout. What's an old man supposed to do?"
George grinned at those words. He knew more than most just how ridiculous it was for the engineer to refer to himself as an old man. On two occasions he'd had the pleasure of meeting Axus in his natural form, and he was as colossal a dragon as he was an engineer. Just the thought of him being old and toothless made no sense whatsoever.
As they sat eating, Axus gave a nod towards the dragon at the centre of the camp.
"Slightly ironic that you were sent to bring him back I suppose, what with the two of you growing up in the same nursery ring and then being in the King's Guard together."
A very awkward silence fell over the two human shaped dragons against the reassuring sound of the fire crackling, roasted meat sizzling and the odd whispered conversation. Not normally one to worry about holding back for fear of offending someone, Axus started to have serious misgivings about the situation because of the silence that had now stretched into minutes. For his part, George just sat there with a faraway look on his face. After only a few more moments, the city's hero let out a deep breath, the look on his face having turned to relief.
"It was no coincidence that I was sent to confront him and bring him back. The Council knew after what happened in Panama that it had to be me. Not only that, but apparently there are prophecy mantras that predicted that all of this would one day happen, depending on who you believe."
Axus, visibly stunned, sat on the ground shaking his head as George continued.
"What I don't understand Axus, is how anyone is capable of what he's done. As you said, we practically grew up together. I've fought alongside him for decades on the battlefield, letting him watch my back, while I covered his. I would have laid down my life for him in the blink of an eye. Not anymore. Believing he was capable of that level of deception and those atrocities was never really an option for me, until I witnessed firsthand what happened at Panama. It had to be me that confronted him and returned him to the others. I never really believed it before, but I know it now."
The noise in the camp had died down, with only the sound of the surrounding torches and the dying embers from the fire for company. After finishing their meagre meal quietly, George piped up with a question, moving all thoughts of the past, very much onto the future.
"Can I ask about the area in Antarctica?"
Axus, clearly happier talking about something engineering related replied,
"What would you like to know?"
"I know it's a containment area only to be used as a last resort, but that's all I really do know. If there's a chance we might have to go down that road, I'd really like to learn all about it."
Axus stroked his dishevelled beard as he composed his response.
"About fifty years ago, some of our top geologists were in southern Chile, scouting out new laminium deposits. They were looking at two volcanoes in particular, Monte Burney and the more southerly Fueguino. Although successful in finding the new deposits they were looking for, the state of the art equipment that they carried with them kept on giving off very strange readings. Instead of putting it down as a fault with the instruments as most would have done, the expedition decided to investigate and made a startling discovery. Running from southern Chile out towards the Falkland Islands, was a large underground channel. About half a mile wide, running approximately two miles under the ocean's surface, just before it reached the Falkland Islands, the channel divided, with one branch leading to a secluded surface entrance on the Islands themselves, while the other twisted sharply heading directly towards Antarctica. Staggered at the sheer size of the thing, the geologists had never seen anything remotely like it. Most bewildering of all to these highly skilled individuals was the fact that they couldn't tell whether or not the phenomenon was naturally occurring. Intrigued, the group followed the channel south and eventually came up against a problem they were not equipped, or prepared, to deal with."
"Of course," said George quick-wittedly, "the temperature."
Axus grinned wildly.
"That's right. And with low temperatures having such a detrimental effect on us dragons, sapping our strength, energy and stamina, as well as clouding our judgement and minds, wisely the group stopped before the temperature plummeted too low. At that point, they decided to set up camp, while two of them returned to collect specialist protective mantras. After discussions with all the leading experts (and more than one visit to Gee Tee's Mantra Emporium) appropriate mantras were found and were deemed most effective in human (mutatio) form. Once everything they needed was procured and the Council informed, the geologists set off into the channel in the direction of Antarctica, continuing for many days and nights, only able to survive because they were in human form, protected from the cold that would almost certainly have cost their lives, solely by the magical aura of the specialist mantras they had returned to get.
As the collective trudged on, temperatures plummeted even further and the channel became more precarious. Two of the team succumbed to frostbite in their feet and had to turn back, escorted by one of their healthy colleagues to make sure they returned safely. By now, things were looking really bleak, but their curiosity pushed them ever forward, determined to find out as much as they could about the phenomenon. Sitting around a makeshift fire, wolfing down the last of their provisions, they concluded that they could only travel for another day or so before having to turn back. Setting off early in what their body clocks told them was morning, quite quickly, the floor of the channel started to descend steeply into the darkness. Weaving their way around giant stalagmites growing up out of the floor and ducking down at times to avoid even bigger stalactites hanging from the ceiling, to the few remaining dragons left the entire route looked like gigantic jaws about to swallow them whole. At the point of no return, with defeat looming over them, the path ahead opened out into a vast cavern, like nothing any of them had ever seen before. This was as far as they got on that first expedition."
George let out a long breath that crystallised in what had become very chilly air, as he contemplated everything Axus had said.
"Any tales that have something to do with cold always send shivers down my tail, no matter what form I'm in."
"Aye," chuckled Axus, "but that's not the end of it. After that startling discovery, more expeditions, better equipped, were sent to explore and document the place. Six missions over a fifteen year period finally revealed all. The cavern that the original geologists came to the entrance of below Antarctica is believed to be the biggest of its kind on the planet. In excess of five hundred square miles, it has a depth in places of over two miles. Unusually it has half a dozen underground fresh water streams running through it, the source of which has yet to be determined. Another odd fact is that there is no geothermal activity whatsoever, with not a single trace of any known mineral deposit anywhere in or around the entire cavern system. Ideal for the purpose the Council has in mind, the channel appears to be the only entrance and the temperature never gets above -10°C."