There was no time to talk, and the rumbling of the volcano was now loud enough to drown out any attempt at conversation anyway. The heat increased as they went down, and the noise grew and the walls seemed to shake even more.
We’re going to die down here, Starflight thought with absolute certainty.
He stopped at each niche on the stairs, feeling gingerly around the coals and singeing his talons more than once. Finally, in the last one, he felt something metal and heavy hanging from a hook inside the opening, and when he tugged on it, he found keys resting in his claws.
In the dungeon, Splendor was awake, shaking like a leaf in the middle of her cell, with her wings over her head.
“It’s all right,” Starflight called through the bars, trying keys in the lock one after another. “We’re here; we’re rescuing you. You’re going home.”
Splendor looked up, blinking. Her scales were bright acid-green and her expression was dazed with fear.
Starflight glanced around and realized that Glory had gone right past them. She was at Deathbringer’s cage, grabbing the bars. As he watched, Deathbringer reached his talons through the bars and wrapped them around hers, and they exchanged a look that said “thank you” and a whole lot more.
The lock finally turned under his claws and the door swung open. Splendor stumbled toward him.
“Wait here,” he told her, hurrying to Deathbringer’s door.
“Why aren’t we leaving?” Splendor wailed.
Glory grabbed the keys from him and started trying them. It was hard to tell whether her talons were shaking from nerves, too, or whether it just looked that way because the whole mountain was quaking now without stopping.
“You don’t have to do this,” Deathbringer said, his gaze fixed on Glory.
“Oh, I don’t?” Glory said without looking up from the keys. “That’ll save me some time; good luck with the volcano, then.”
Starflight glanced up at the ominous cracks appearing in the ceiling. He spotted a symbol at the top of Deathbringer’s cage — a symbol he’d seen on one of the keys.
“Try this one,” he said, reaching over and taking the keys from Glory. He stuck the key with the symbol on it in the lock and turned it. The door swung open.
Deathbringer yanked on his chains as they hurried into the cell. Splendor ran in behind them, flapping her wings in a frantic whirl of green.
“Something is coming through the walls!” she shrieked. “We’re all going to die!”
Starflight looked out at the dungeon hallway and saw lava glowing in the cracks of the walls.
“She’s right,” he said quietly to Glory.
“You two go ahead,” she said, concentrating on the keys and Deathbringer’s chains. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Splendor cried.
“One more minute,” Starflight told her. He held his breath as Glory tried key after key.
“We don’t have any more minutes,” Splendor sobbed. “We’re going to be exploded and covered in lava and melted and dead!”
A ferocious rumble answered her, knocking them all off their feet. Glory scrambled up and stuck the last key in the lock around Deathbringer’s chains.
“That’s it!” she cried as they fell off, clanking and clattering like living things on the quaking floor. “Come on!” She seized Deathbringer’s forearm and yanked him up. They took off down the hallway with Starflight and Splendor right behind them.
The mountain was shaking so violently now that it was hard to run; Starflight kept getting thrown into walls or the other dragons. He concentrated on the stairs up ahead.
“Watch your feet,” Deathbringer called. Hot coals were scattered across the steps where they had fallen from their niches. Glory swept several aside with her tail, wincing as even that brief contact burned her scales.
They raced up the steps, covering their heads with their wings as bits of rock plummeted from the ceiling. Starflight stepped on a coal and bit back a yowl of pain. The stairs felt endless, like they were staggering upward for days, but finally they burst out onto a level floor.
“This way!” Deathbringer hurtled down the hall in a direction Starflight hadn’t been before.
A loud crash sounded from the direction of the council chamber, and Starflight thought he heard a dragon screaming. He shoved Splendor ahead of him. Even Glory was green now; neither RainWing could camouflage their scales while their fear was so strong. They all raced after Deathbringer, twisting through the fortress labyrinth, until up ahead they saw the sky — or at least, the dense cloud of ash and smoke that now surrounded the volcano.
“Try not to breathe,” Glory said to Splendor. “It’s not far to the tunnel.”
Starflight flung his wings open and leaped off the ledge, flapping furiously through the thick air. He could see the lava river glowing and churning below him, faster and wider than ever. He could also see a growing crowd of black dragons down on the beach, some of them fighting one another tooth and claw.