by Paul Cude
"For someone who's been locked up for so long, you still show a tremendous amount of courage and guile. It's a real shame you couldn't join us. More like you would enhance our forces beyond measure. Unfortunately I sense you'd rather die than take up arms against your kin. Am I right?"
Inside, Fredric was deeply shocked by what he'd just heard, however he remained motionless. Not a flicker of recognition crossed his face.
"I thought so," guessed the human shaped whatever-he-was. "We never did find out what it was you did for your kind. All this time and we still have no idea. I have my suspicions of course, but I don't think there's any way that I could get you to tell me the truth. You'd rather die of course, something that can be arranged, by the way."
Fredric puffed out his well honed chest just slightly in a gesture of defiance. Long ago he'd faced up to the fact that he might just die in here without any of his friends or family ever knowing what had happened to him. That's why he was able to take the beatings and the torture, thinking of himself as dead, but never giving up hope that one singular opportunity might present itself to earn back his life.
His captor chuckled as he slowly limped around him, again staying just out of range. Although depleted of dragon magic due to the severe cold, he knew that the prisoner was more than capable of inflicting serious damage with just his physical strength if need be.
"I do respect your bravery and courage. Part of me really does wish it could be different. You're the sort of warrior I would pride myself in fighting alongside."
Fredric gave no reaction at all.
'There's something about this being that's very dangerous,' he thought. 'And boy, do I know dangerous.'
"Why do you continue, dragon?" asked the human guise in front of him. "Why do you exercise your muscles? Why do you plot and scheme? Why, oh why, do you continue to believe escape or rescue is even possible? Please enlighten me... dragon?"
Every atom in Fredric's body wanted to break free from the chains and snap the human shaped whatever-he-was in half at the way he said 'dragon,' wiping the smug grin off his sneaky looking face forever.
"Ahhhh... you want to hurt me... I can feel how angry you are... dragon."
Still he didn't react.
"I admire your restraint. I don't think I would be able to control myself as you do if our roles were reversed. Perhaps a little reward is in order, particularly in light of the fact that you're not going anywhere any time soon."
Fredric wasn't quite sure what the human shaped whatever-he-was was playing at, but he was pretty sure it was a game of some sort and was determined to remain vigilant against some sort of information trap.
"Do you know where you are?"
Fredric remained totally silent.
"Come now dragon, why so coy? You won't be giving away any information to me. Why not just answer my question? Do you know where you are?"
Against his better judgement, Fredric responded.
"No," he whispered.
"There, that wasn't so bad was it?"
Fredric had no idea where on earth they were. Oh he could guess, and he had, countless times, but it was just that... a guess, figuring probably in or around the Arctic Circle somewhere, or maybe deep beneath the Alps in Europe. Realistically though, he could be anywhere in the world where it was cold.
'At least if he's going to reveal where we are, it might help if I ever do manage to escape,' he thought, still more than a little weary of whatever the being in front of him was up to. It was then that his mind shot back decades to the mission he'd been sent on by his friend, the king. In Germany, with two of his trusty comrades, they'd been tasked to retrieve something that had been taken from them. It should have been relatively easy really, certainly with all their dragon powers. But right from the start, little things started to go wrong. Equipment failed... odd in itself. The phones in the hotel they shared would ring for no apparent reason, and when answered, no one would be on the other end, it just cut off. Strange noises emanated from the other rooms, and there was just something odd about some of the members of staff there, not least the manager who always seemed to have his eye on them. One of his comrades had expressed doubts, urging him to call off the mission, but stubbornly he'd refused to listen, putting it all down to coincidence and an active imagination on the part of all three of them. As it turned out, he couldn't have been more wrong. They'd walked into a trap, a trap that had been planned specifically for them, or for dragons at least. In an attempt to fight, his two comrades had been killed, cut down by machine gun fire, not three feet from where he'd stood. Despite overwhelming odds, he'd almost got away, but something, or someone, had surprised him from behind, something he wouldn't have believed possible, and from what little he could remember, had rendered him unconscious.
Looking back now, it was all more than a little hazy, particularly in light of the length of time he'd been stuck in here. But one thing was for sure, and he'd had decades to go over and over it in his mind, whatever it was that had surprised him, he hadn't sensed it... not even a little. A being of some sort had sneaked up on him just when he'd thought he'd escaped, and had knocked him out, without him ever getting a sniff of anyone ever being there. To this day, he still couldn't explain what had happened that night. All that he remembered after that was waking up in this frozen hellhole, and the rest as they say is... history.
A sharp cough startled Fredric out from under the shroud of his dark memories.
"You are in actual fact, deep beneath... Antarctica, the South Pole," boasted the human whatever-he-was. "In part of the very same chamber that your kind entombed those with a radically different view of the world. How ironic don't you think?"
Fredric's control faded as a look of total and utter shock creased his cold and haggard face.
'The South Pole,' he thought to himself. 'But that's where... Troydenn, oh my God... please no... not that, anything but that.'
"You begin to understand now; I can sense it in you. But know this. What you see and what you can guess are just the tip of the iceberg. Your kind will pay for what they did here, pay with their lives and the lives of all the humans on the planet. Events are unfolding even as we speak. In a relatively short space of time, you could be one of only a handful of dragons left alive on the planet. A comforting thought, don't you agree?"
Fredric's face was a mixture of anger and puzzlement as he glared at the monster disguised as a human that stood before him.
"I sense you have a question... dragon."
In his anger and confusion, Fredric had given up on staying silent, instead deciding to press ahead in the hope of gaining as much information as possible.
"It just isn't possible that anyone could have survived this long in this... environment!" shouted Fredric.
"Ahhh... but we did survive and now, now it's time to fight back, to reclaim what's rightfully ours and bring scum like you to your knees."
Shaking his head in frustration, his matted, icy hair swaying from side to side as he did so, Fredric refused to believe what he'd just heard, hoping against hope that it was just a desperate ploy to somehow wrangle information out of him. But however hard he tried, he just couldn't see how. With pent up anger threatening to overwhelm him, he lost his cool and screamed at the beast in front of him.
"What part do you play in all of this? You're certainly not a dragon, so don't try and tell me that you were encased in this icy prison all those years ago. Also, if what you say is true, all the dragons here would either be dead, or so old that they would present little or no threat to the king, the council or the dragon domain."
It felt good to Fredric to vent some steam, so to speak, and he could tell by the murderous expression on the being's face that he had provoked a reaction. He just hoped that he hadn't gone too far and signed his own death warrant. Taking stock, he carefully reined in his temper, remembering how important it was to stay alive, while the human shaped whatever-he-was sneered in contempt at him.
"You can be very sur
e of one thing... dragon. Those that are left here are a very serious threat to everything on the planet. And best of all, your kind have no idea what's going on, and by the time they do... it will all be too late. The planet will be ours to do with as we please."
From a distance, the naga king looked on, but had managed to listen in on every single word, thanks to his excellent hearing.
Fredric, meanwhile, was only just starting to grasp the seriousness of what was going on. At first he thought the being was all bluster, trying to lure HIM into a trap. But the way the being was talking now... that was something different altogether. Not mad as such... Fredric was sure of that. And it wasn't so much what he said, although that in itself could send shivers down a being's spine, even in a place like this. No, it was the way he'd said those things, with purpose, truth and conviction. Over the course of his career he'd met and defeated enough mad men, women and dragons to distinguish between those deluded about their ideas and those with the power to follow through on what they said. Here was a purely evil being, his orders to put to death the human shaped dragon scientist proved that beyond any doubt, but the way he spoke and carried himself clinched it. Fredric knew a real threat when he saw one, and he was a hundred percent sure that the threat from this one was real enough, even though he only had one small part of the puzzle that formed the whole picture. From whatever madness was being plotted here, the entire dragon domain and the world itself faced a terrible danger, a danger that couldn't be allowed to go on unchecked. He had to escape... and soon.
"As for my part in all of this... let's just say that if I told you, you wouldn't believe me," bragged the human shaped imposter.
"Try me," prompted Fredric, desperate to find out anything that could be of use.
The human shaped whatever-he-was seemed to consider Fredric's request. Moments later, he responded.
"This... place," he said, waving his arm around to signify the whole cavern and beyond, "is all I ever really knew. You see I was born here, and grew up here."
Fredric's legs nearly buckled. It was all he could do to remain upright.
'Impossible,' he thought. 'It's just too damn cold, he must be lying.'
"You don't believe me... dragon, do you?" the human shaped being spat. "But you see... it's true. Look around you. This was my nursery, my school, my playground. It was all I knew. Oh I was told about the outside world. It was described to me in graphic detail, but it might as well have been a fairy story for all it was worth. I knew nothing but this frozen, desolate cavern. You think you've had it bad, decades here. That's nothing compared with my time here... NOTHING!" Scratching madly at the stubble occupying most of his face, thoughtful about whether to continue or not, the being eventually decided, much to Fredric's relief, to carry on.
"I was stuck here, the first of my kind, lonely, helpless and with no chance of escape. Until one day, one of his kind," the human shaped whatever-he-was gestured towards the naga king with his thumb, stopping to glare in the same direction, "one of his kind came out of the stream, just over there. Just exploring, or so he claimed, he was shocked to find a whole colony of dragons living under the ice. Ahhh what a day that was... the day we started to take back the planet," mused the human shape.
Fredric looked on in astonishment as his breath froze in front of his face.
"Luckily for us, they're not very intelligent creatures," continued his captor, referring to the nagas. "It took very little ingenuity to convince them to meet with us, spinning them a tale about what dastardly plans the dragon king and his council had for them. With this in mind, a meeting with their king was hastily arranged," recalled the being, turning and grinning in the direction of the naga king, who was listening to everything. "As soon as he arrived, we ambushed them, killed the rest of the contingent and captured their beloved king, and he's been here ever since. His loyal subjects do pretty much whatever we want, because if they don't, we'll send him back to them, a piece at a time."
Fredric caught the naga king's gaze out of the corner of one eye, knowing only too well that the king was biding his time, another one waiting for the right opportunity. The human shaped whatever-he-was continued, almost unable to stop boasting about his part in the wicked events of the past.
"Of course the first thing we got them to do was take a couple of us out of this frozen wasteland. It wasn't easy, but it's amazing how quickly they managed to come up with some magic to help us breathe and keep us dry and warm underwater, under the threat of violence towards their king. After that... well, a quick hop off this continent, up to America and Europe, enlisting a whole host of allies and Bob's your uncle. One ready-made army, fit to take back the planet. Even to this very day, the nagas still do our bidding, disguising themselves as humans, infiltrating every community on the planet. It has taken decades to get ourselves into a position to be able to bring our plan to fruition. But very shortly everything will start to take shape and the world that orbits the sun then, will be very different to how it is now."
With the naga king looking on, Fredric faced the being disguised as a human, the bubbling water of the underground stream almost deafening in volume. Throwing caution to the wind, Fredric pressed on, determined to learn more.
"What I don't understand," he said tugging out ice from part of his matted hair, "is how on earth you can have been born here? Surely that isn't possible. The council built this place as a last refuge, a prison, somewhere no being could thrive."
Drawing back his head, the human shaped whatever-he-was cackled madly, the sound reverberating around the cavern as if it were an exclusive nightclub.
"It was soooo easy. Your king and his council thought they'd planned everything, every little detail, when in fact the scale of their ineptitude was enormous. It was, of course, way too cold for dragons to breed, because for them it has to be positively sweltering. But in their haste to capture and contain those dragons whose ideas they disagreed with, they overlooked something so obvious that at first it was hard for those stuck here to believe that their captors had been so stupid. But oh yes, they had. You see, when Troydenn was originally captured and incapacitated in the city of Salisbridge, the current dragon monarch did something so unbelievably stupid and naive that it's hard to fathom just how he went on to rule your domain. In his haste, he cast a mantra designed to repress any residual magic inside his prisoner. My understanding is that at the time, it left him encompassed by a deep purple glow. Sounds sensible, doesn't it, until you realise just how badly it backfired. What it actually did was lock a miniscule amount of magic deep within Troydenn, something he would go on to use to great effect, much later on in this icy hellhole. Although it was far too cold for dragons to mate and reproduce in their natural form, what your naive dragons overlooked though, was the fact that with even a little of their power, the prisoners were still able to manipulate their DNA. Yes, it was difficult and took an amazing amount of time to do, but don't forget, they had centuries to get it right. And they did. With the help of Troydenn's locked away powers and the combined knowledge of all the prisoners, a select few had their DNA manipulated so that they were fully human. Once they were fully human, what do you think they did? That's right. They did it the old fashioned way... the human way. And what you see in front of you," announced the false human figure, spreading his arms wide and whirling around in a circle, "is the product of that very first union. While the world is full of dragons that can take human form and often do, I'm the very first human able to take dragon form. And because of who I am and just how I was created, you can't sense me, or my abilities. Tell me... dragon, how does that feel?"
Fredric had thought he couldn't get any colder. It turns out he was wrong. A shiver of epic proportions ran through his innards like a great white shark chasing the scent of blood. Everything that this human hybrid dragon had said kind of made sense. All of it seemed unlikely of course, implausible even, but still entirely possible. And if even a hint of it was true, the danger to the dragons and the wider world was
much greater than Fredric had thought possible. His friends, the king, his grandson Peter, they were all in incredible danger, a danger they had little or no idea was coming.
'Human dragons,' he thought. 'Worse still, human dragons with a grudge, who think they should be ruling the world... how much worse can it get?' he mused, before something rather worrying popped into his cold and foggy brain. Knowing where he was now: trapped here in this cavern, the place where all those despicable evil dragons had been incarcerated all those years ago, some of whom he'd helped to capture and bring to justice. If, as the human dragon claimed, some were still alive... would they recognise him, and if so... how much worse could things get? More than ever, he wished to escape, or die trying.
'But what can I do?' he wondered, as the human dragon turned round, all the time smiling, and called the evil jailer over, before they both wandered off into the darkness. As he looked across to the naga king, he too wore a grim expression, one that said exactly what Fredric had been thinking. Time was indeed running out.
13 Nelly the Elephant Packed Her...?
Sprouting out over the edge of the sink and onto the floor, he'd put too much washing up liquid in the bowl and now the bubbles had a life of their own. Only having gotten home twenty minutes earlier, this was the state he was getting himself into. The trouble was... he was too excited. It was one of those nights to look forward to. It wasn't hockey, or a trip to the pub or a meal, much as he loved all of those things. It was something quite literally out of this world. It was of course... laminium ball!
'Yippee' he thought as he started to gather up all the escaping bubbles, only to be rudely interrupted by a spark of pain blossoming deep within his shoulder. 'Damn!' he thought to no one but himself. After all this time his wounds from fighting Manson should have been fully healed, but they weren't. Regularly a mysterious pain sprang into life somewhere within him. Having been passed fit to return to Cropptech by the dragon physicians he'd been under, they had gone on to explain that the pain he was experiencing might well remain with him for the rest of his life.