She smiles softly at his awe. "It is a wonder," she says. "Hidden here, beneath the ground. The kings must have been wealthy, powerful, secure, to have built such as this."

She holds his hand as they approach a massive doorway. The great bronze doors that stood there for countless centuries are torn from their places, torn by something Kreyu's size with dreadful claws. The scenes shaped into the bronze of the door all feature a particular dragon, their scales coated in gold leaf, their eyes polished emeralds. The dragon's image has been defaced, over and over again, by those same claws.