by V. Moody
“The children all die in a train crash and go to heaven, except for Susan. She stopped believing in Narnia so she gets to end up as a mangled corpse in twisted wreckage while the others are all, ‘Hurray! Off to the promised land!’ Ruined my childhood.”
Claire turned away from consoling Flossie. “Can you two stop complaining about dead Christians for one second and do something about Dudley?”
When it comes to helping, the only thing worse than vague encouragement is generic nagging. Do something? What kind of request is that? I turned to Hitokag who was surveying the scene but didn’t look like he had any intentions of going down there.
“Couldn’t a couple of your guys swoop down there and pull Dudley out before anyone has a chance to do anything about it?”
“That would be foolish,” said Hitokag, which was a fair point.
“What if I can blind most of them?” The Temple was fairly large and I probably wouldn’t be able to get all of them with my balls of light, but a fair proportion would be affected
“The Intui can see with their tongues.”
“Really? And you didn’t think this was worth mentioning earlier?”
“What difference would it have made?”
Okay, it wouldn’t have changed anything, but he didn’t know that. I might have come up with a brilliant plan involving tastebuds.
“What about your balls?” said Maurice. The three acid-covered balls were bobbing up and down behind me.
“What do you suggest I do with them?”
Maurice shrugged. “Chuck them down a worm’s throat.”
In a movie, this would probably cause the worm to explode (for no apparent reason) wiping out all the bad guys and somehow leaving Dudley untouched. In real life, it would probably have no effect. Or be disastrous.
Still, it wasn’t like we had a bunch of other options, and at least it didn’t require me to get closer to the action.
I selected one of the balls and sent it drifting around the edge of the Temple towards the jabberwock furthest from Dudley, just in case it did explode in Michael Bay fashion.
The jabberwock had its mouth wide open so it wasn’t hard to get a hole-in-one. The ball disappeared down its gullet. Nothing happened. I snapped my fingers which would normally pop the ball, but at this distance I didn’t know if it would work.
The jabberwock stopped moving. Then its entire body convulsed and an object shot out of its mouth. It looked like a half-digested carcass of some animal, maybe a deer.
The carcass flew across the Temple, skidded across the ground and wiped out half a dozen very surprised lizardmen. It didn’t kill them, but it probably didn’t do them any good either.
After firing this missile, the jabberwock remained very still. I might even suggest it was thinking. Then it reared up, its body rippled, and another carcass came shooting out.
This one hit a small group of lizardmen who were thrown in all directions. Only two got back on their feet.
The ground beneath me trembled. Not like it had when the jabberwocky first arrived, this was more controlled, like a continuous pulse. The other two worms paused—listening?— and then began firing the contents of their stomachs just as the first had. It seemed I had inspired them to use projectile vomiting as a form of artillery.
The Intui were in disarray, unable to avoid the sustained barrage from three directions. This was both good and bad from my point of view. Good that the lizards were being slowly whittled down without my intervention, but bad because a direct hit on Dudley would probably kill him.
Flossie was only too aware of the danger to her beloved and began to lose it. “Ahm begging you, go get him,” she pleaded to Hitokag.
“We can’t. If he wasn’t tied down, maybe…”
I had two acid balls left. If I could target the ropes binding Dudley they might dissolve, but it would require very precise control and there was a very good chance the acid would get on Dudley’s skin.
I drew a ball close to me and split it into four smaller ones. Then I sent them towards the stone table.
Bodies were flying in all directions. The jabberwocky had found their range and had apparently had a big lunch. The Intui were scattered and focused on not getting blasted to pieces. My balls floated down unnoticed, but the further they got from me the harder they were to control.
Perhaps I should have sent them down as one and split them when they got there, but there was no way to know if I would be able to do that at such a great distance. In any case, it was obvious I wouldn’t be able to target the ropes binding Dudley.
Keezy was the only person still near the stone table. He was busy trying to free his brother. It would be fairly simple for him to untie Dudley, and he did owe me a favour.
I redirected the balls towards him in a row and then burst them one by one. The first was near enough to attract his attention, and the rest led him in a line to Dudley.
He looked up and around, then back at Dudley. I didn’t know how else to tell him what I wanted, but he got the message regardless. He ripped away the binds around Dudley’s hand and feet.
“Now!” I said to Hitokag.
He nodded at two of his men who leapt off the wall and dived into the Temple. A couple of the Intui spotted them but were too busy dodging flying corpses to do anything.
The Mezzik landed on either end of the stone table, grabbed Dudley by the feet and hands, and then with a single flap of their wings they launched into the air carrying him between them.
As this was happening, the Intui suddenly rushed towards them, but their target wasn’t the escaping sacrifice, it was Kungen. They grabbed him and shoved him towards the nearest jabberwock. I suppose they figured the best way to stop the attack was to go on the offence, and they did have a big lump of fuck you to use against the worms.
The jabberwock responded by going kamikaze. It jumped from the rockface, mouth wide open and landed on top of Kungen and the lizardmen surrounding him. And kept going straight down.
Since it already planned to swallow Kungen I suppose diving into the poisoned earth was not that big a deal. As far as I could tell it had decided to take one for the team, burrowing into the depths with Kungen trapped inside. It would die, but no more Worm King.
Dudley landed in a heap next to us as the Mezzik dropped him. Flossie threw herself on top of him, bawling like a baby.
The walls surrounding the Temple began to collapse and the other two jabberwocky fell. Keezy disappeared under falling rubble.
“We should go,” I said to everyone. I didn’t wait to see if they agreed, I turned and legged it back towards the dragon.
All things considered, the rescue had been very successful. My favourite part was how I didn’t have to fight any large monsters. If we could just get the fuck out of there, I’d be happy to go see Cheng and do whatever he wanted us to do.
I scrambled down the shuddering slope to the plateau where we had left the dragon, but nothing ever goes smoothly all the way to the end. The dragon was lying with its wings awkwardly under it. Its body was covered in welts and stings. Hovering over its body were a lot of large, angry-looking wasps.
And things had been going so well.
20. King Worm
There must have been twenty wasps, at least. Only half a dozen had riders on their backs, but all had bits of wood held by their six legs. I don’t know what they needed the wood for—something to do with whatever they had planned to do in the Temple, I suppose—but they dropped everything when they saw us.
“Oh ho,” said the lead Intui. Now that I was close enough to see clearly, I could tell this one was Meeth, the one we had encountered earlier. See, I’m not racist, I just have poor eyesight. “Come to rescue your friend, have you?”
The wasps spread out before us ready to attack, but Meeth’s smug leer turned into shock, then rage, when he saw Dudley standing with us, rather than tied to the sacrificial altar.
“How did…” His eyes went beyond us, probably concerned about what
had happened in his absence. And rightly so.
It was oddly quiet. I’d have expected all the falling rocks and screaming lizardmen to have made a lot more noise but for some reason the sound didn’t carry out of the Temple.
“Get out of our way,” said Hitokag. “When Cheng finds out about this—”
“How will he find out if you are all dead?” asked Meeth with excellent logic.
The buzz of wasps began to get more intense. But there was another sound, or at least a vibration, coming from below us. Meeth and his cohorts couldn’t feel it because they were airborne, but the soles of my boots prickled under me.
I looked at the others and it was obvious they could feel it too.
Seeing us exchange glances put Meeth on alert, but he didn’t know what the threat was. Neither did we. It was just as likely to be a problem for us as it was for him.
“What’s going on?” he screamed at us. “What are you up to?
We didn’t have any answers for him, but we didn’t need them as the vibrations turned into a rumble and then the ground shook, knocking us all off our feet.
A jabberwock smashed through the rock and shot into the air. But this worm was a little different to the ones we had seen in the Temple. It was about the same size, but its skin wasn’t smooth and slimy, it was hard like a crust had formed over it. The texture and craggy pattern were very reminiscent of troll-skin.
Another feature of this particular jabberwock was that it had eyes. They weren’t very big, but they were familiar. The whole head, in fact, looked very much like Kungen.
More tremors shook the mountainside and jabberwocky—the regular kind—burst out. Six. Ten. Twelve. They just kept coming, rising around us like a forest.
Meeth and his wasps were surrounded. “What is this? What is this?” Meeth kept shrieking.
Kungen-worm opened its mouth, which peeled back like the worms we had encountered before, and sucked in the air. Wasps tried to fly away but were drawn in, riders and all. The other worms followed suit. They might not have been able to see or hear, but thrashing about like out-of-control vacuum cleaners was very effective in dealing with the wasps.
You might think that this was game over. Wasps had the upper hand for a moment, then the cavalry arrived with the perfect countermeasure, and it’s Goodnight Vienna. However, a mouthful of wasps is still a mouthful of wasps.
The jabberwocky started flailing about like they’d just found out their lucky numbers had come up on the lottery but the wife forgot to buy the ticket this week. They smashed and slapped their swollen mouths against the ground as the wasps stung for all they were worth.
We all dived out of the way to avoid the gigantic bodies flopping from side to side, threatening to crush anything caught in their path.
The only one not affected like this was the Kungen-worm. It watched, very much the worm in charge. If a wasp or Intui managed to somehow avoid the crossfire, he struck like a viper, snatching the escapee out of the air.
Within a few minutes, the wasps were all gone, as were the Intui lizardmen. Two jabberwocky lay still and lifeless, the others simply retracted into their holes.
The last to leave was Kungen-worm. I thought he might say something, but he didn’t. Was he the same Kungen in a different form, or a completely new entity? He had definitely controlled the other jabberwocky, and even forced them to come out in daylight, so he could rightly be called Worm King now, but what that meant was hard to tell.
“Kungen?” I said to the towering rock snake. There was no response, not even a flicker of recognition.
Keezy probably would have had a better chance to communicate, but there was no sign of him. I didn’t think the falling rocks would have killed him, and he could dig his way out, but I was in no mood to form a search party.
Despite helping us free Dudley, he had still intended to bring us here knowing it would require a sacrifice. He might have a reasonable explanation, but the Temple was no longer a factor so I considered it best to call it quits and get out of here.
Kungen-worm sank back into the mountain like a train thundering into a tunnel. Dust flew out as he disappeared.
Everyone got back to their feet. We were still on top of a mountain and night was approaching. The Mezzik could probably carry us down the precipitous mountainside, but then we still had to get to wherever Cheng had his castle. What we really needed was another dragon.
Once everyone had confirmed they were alive and unharmed, Flossie ran over to the dragon and wrapped her arms around its head. The head moved.
“Ah think he’s still alive,” said Flossie, turning her watery eyes towards me. She was quickly turning into my biggest pain, and that’s saying something considering the fierce competition.
Still, in this particular case I wasn’t averse to healing the dragon even if it cost me a few months of my life to do it. Having a dragon in my debt could be very useful. Not that I’d be as influential as Flossie, but not everyone gets to be Mother of Dragons. I’d settle for uncle. You don’t get your clothes burned off and have to walk around with your tits out all the time, you just come around on the weekend for a barbecue. Much more manageable.
Mind you, that whole parable where Androcles takes the thorn out of the lion’s paw and then they later face off in the amphitheatre to find the winner of Roman Idol sounds a lot like bullshit to me.
Would the lion really let Androcles off? Or would he see the other lions all looking at him and think, “I know I owe you, but I can’t let you show me up in front of my mates”?
It probably depends on the animal. Dogs, strong possibility. Snakes, not so much. I imagine it would make an excellent reality tv show. Save various animals from certain death, see if they return the favour. Chuck in a couple of celebs you’ve never heard of—ratings gold. Who wouldn’t want to watch a chicken ignore Piers Morgan as he drowned?
At the very least, the Mezzik would be grateful. They had been distraught when they thought the dragon was dead and rushed to help when Flossie declared the beast still breathing. If you’re the Draconic Guard I suppose it’s poor form to let a dragon die on your watch.
“What are you doing?” said Jenny. She had jumped in front of me as I walked towards the dragon.
“I’m going to heal the dragon,” I said.
“No,” said Jenny. “You can’t. Look how big it is. You’ll have to use up too much energy.”
“Yeah, whatever. Don’t think of it as me getting older, think of it as me maturing.”
I tried to walk past her, but she shimmied across to stay in my way. “No.”
I knew at some point we would come to this situation, I just hadn’t expected it so soon. Jenny would decide what was best for me and then insist I do it her way. For the best of reasons, of course. But once you give into someone like that, even if they’re right, you set a precedent.
We could discuss it and come to a compromise, but fuck that.
“It’s not up to you, Jenny. Now get out of the way.”
Her mouth tightened. Her eyes welled up. I couldn’t tell which way she was going to go, anger or tears.
“I’m begging you, please don’t do this,” she said with great restraint, although whether that restraint was to stop herself from shouting or sobbing, I couldn’t tell.
On some level, I’m sure her concern was for my wellbeing. If I kept using up whatever time I had, eventually I would run out. But it was still a form of control. And I didn’t want to be under anyone’s thumb.
“Just because you say, ‘I’m begging,’ doesn’t actually count as begging.” I put my hand on her shoulders to shift her out of the way.
She dropped to her knees. “Please. I’ll do anything you say, just don’t do this.”
Smooth. On her knees, offering to do anything, what would that indicate to you? Classic pretty girl move. She doesn’t actually make any specific proposition, but subliminally there’s the notion that maybe if I do what she wants, I’ll get a bit of the old quid pro quo.
I bent down and kissed her on the nose. “No. You don’t have to do anything I say unless you really want to.”
Tears fell from her eyes now, but these I recognised. Tears of frustration at not getting your way.
I felt quite pleased with myself as I kneeled down next to the dragon. One-Nil to the home team.
“You think you can heal something this big?” said Hitokag, not sounding very convinced.
“I’ll give it a shot.”
The warmth in my hand spread out across the vast body. The stings had left behind vicious red sores. They receded as I poured my energy into the creature.