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Inside the cave the darkness was an impenetrable blanket that cloaked the creature sleeping within. Only its breath gave it away—this raspy and uneven, echoing hauntingly against the stone walls and escaping as a breeze to tease the coppery curls of the child who stood just beyond the entrance. She was no more than five or six, cherubic and clothed in a diaphanous dress that at first glance appeared to be fashioned of pale flower petals, but on closer inspection seemed instead to shimmer as if it were made of magic. The fingers of her left hand were clenched about the haft of a glaive, an axe-bladed pole-arm more than twice her height that looked far too unwieldy for her to manage. The fingers of her right hand playfully stroked the giant fern leaves that helped to conceal the cave mouth.

The green of the ferns was intense, brightened by a fiery late afternoon sun and made slick with humidity. Droplets of water beaded and gleamed like diamonds.

“Mumummmm-ummm,” she sang when she spotted a furry caterpillar, striped orange and goldenbrown, standing out starkly against a diamond-dotted frond. She stared at it for several long moments, then gently picked it up and held it before her wide, blue eyes. “Soft,” she pronounced.

“Very pretty. ” The thing slowly wriggled, and in response she laughed in a voice that was not at all childlike. She popped the caterpillar into her mouth and swallowed it, just as she stepped inside the cave and was swallowed by the darkness.

“Master?” she whispered, as she instinctively padded forward, her bare feet slapping against the stone. It was an enormous cave, whose depths she couldn’t guess, no matter if dozens of torches had been merrily burning. It was one of several the creature had in this part of Krynn, all connected through underground tunnels that the child was occasionally permitted to wander. This particular cave was the most familiar to her.

Though well shielded from the sun, the interior was stifling, the air damp and close and filled with the strong, sweet-sour stench of decay. The child inhaled deeply, holding and relishing the scent, then almost reluctantly releasing it.

“Master?”

A pause, then again she repeated the word, no longer a question now, as she effortlessly tossed the glaive to the floor, its blade clanging against the stone. In response, twin globes of dull yellow appeared in the middle of the blackness. They were eyes, larger than wagon wheels and cut through by murky catlike slits. Though there was a thick film on them, they gave off a faint light, eerie and just enough to illuminate the creature’s massive snout and the child who was dwarfed by it. The girl stood on her toes and reverently stretched a hand up to graze the edge of the creature’s jaw.