Monster School

by Green Dc

  Greta scowled. ‘How did something so hideous happen?’

  ‘Know that there is a pestilence in the world, though this one cannot define its source. The sickness has not only consumed magic, but threatens to devour what life still clings to this plateau turned island. At first, this one fathomed humanity responsible. Yet the disease has spread beyond even the humans’ capacity for madness. It must be delicately excised.’

  ‘You mean, like a tiptoe jog to the hippocow pizzeria?’ asked Bruce.

  ‘Not exercised, moron spider,’ said Greta. ‘Excised. Surgically removed.’

  ‘So Big K’s gonna operate on Monstro City?’ Bruce made sawing motions with his serrated legs. ‘Gnarly.’

  ‘Silence, arachnid. This one refers to the subtle and fundamental healing that is required for the world, and of which she is incapable alone, not the potent statistical amputation that looms momentarily.’

  Bruce scratched his head. ‘And in dumb-ass English, that means …?’

  ‘Vengeance.’

  My blood chilled.

  ‘Know that, for true healing, this world requires the complete restoration of magic. Magical acts are the antibodies of the planetary immune system, the only force capable of restoring the Earth and reversing the floods. Know that such a restoration may already be too late. The equilibrium has shifted irrevocably.’

  Wow. That was a lot of factoids to take in. ‘Um, thanks, Kalthazari. But how can magic be restored? And what has that to do with us?’

  ‘Know that there is a time for words and that such times expire.’

  We waited, but the great dragon spoke no more into our minds.

  ‘Did anyone dig any of that?’ whispered Bruce.

  ‘I wish I did not.’ Greta nodded earthward. ‘We pass now the border wall.’

  ‘Already?’ My mind spun at how rapidly we’d crossed an entire city quarter. While the Mythic territories behind us were sparsely lit, the Goblin Quarter beyond the border twinkled like an illuminated holiday tree. Lamps glowed along every street of every suburb, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder against other suburbs, forming a veined grid.

  ‘Below lies Klusk Turf,’ said Greta.

  Zorg muttered darkly.

  ‘And to the right,’ Greta nodded at a smaller, high-walled territory, ‘spreads the land of the Vemrins.’

  ‘The slayers?’ asked Jaak. ‘You know, of the elves?’

  ‘As in, Professor Vemrin?’ I asked.

  Greta nodded. ‘Ahead lies Viethe Turf.’

  On the horizon, a skyscraper shaped like a curved knife-blade jutted several hundred metres above the earth. Kalthazari whooshed unerringly towards it.

  ‘Viethe Blade,’ said Greta. ‘The castle surrounded by gardens is Viethe Palace.’

  ‘Mega Scaly ain’t paying no social visit,’ said Bruce. ‘She ain’t packing blood tea or hippocow scones.’

  ‘Just.’ Jaak swallowed. ‘You know, us.’

  I gulped, dreading my friends were right. Vengeance.

  Kalthazari’s flapping style changed. Instead of hurtling forward, we hovered above the Viethe capital.

  ‘I wish I’d bought,’ said Jaak, ‘you know? Travel insurance!’

  Kalthazari spoke – aloud! ‘Know, goblins, that your leaders have betrayed this one, and thus betrayed you all.’

  The dragon’s first syllables set my ear drums trampolining. I pressed my hands against my ears, but her words continued as sonic booms.

  ‘Feel now Kalthazari’s wrath!’

  I imagined the city trembling.

  ‘Die, gobbinz!’ Zorg cried.

  Kalthazari dived towards Viethe Blade.

  The air twanged.

  ‘The plains morons are firing on Kalthazari!’ yelled Greta. ‘Talk about optimistic.’

  Kalthazari’s outer scales sparked. Bullets, arrows and explosive warheads bounced off her like beetles. I ducked lower behind the pouch edge. Kalthazari was missile-proof, but my noggin was not.

  A bullet echoed into the pouch. Ping! It ricocheted off dragonium walls.

  Zorg twitched. The stench of rancid insides assaulted my nostrils. ‘Zorg iz bleeding!’ the zombie groaned.

  As if sensing the injury’s cause, the edges of Kalthazari’s pouch drew shut, shielding us. Somehow, we could still see what was happening outside, reflected in multiple angles on the pouch scales. Other scales magnified the awe and horror scrawled across our faces. Both visions – outer reality and inner reaction – seared.

  Kalthazari’s talons dug into the base of Viethe Blade. Glass shattered. Concrete crumbled. Her wings thrashed, generating cyclonic winds. For kilometres in every direction, buildings flattened like sliver cat houses built of playing cards. The dragon’s task seemed impossible, for the blade stood taller than her, at least 100 storeys high.

  Cracks gashed the earth. Foundations ruptured. Clutching the severed blade, Kalthazari beat towards the stars.

  Goblins screamed, plunging from windows.

  Hovering over Viethe Palace, Kalthazari leaned back, raising the blade above her head. The twanging on her scales intensified.

  I gaped.

  We all gaped.

  The dragon hurled the blade.

  The world gaped.

  Viethe Blade shattered on impact, crushing the palace.

  Survivors crawled from the wreckage like mangled ants.

  Kalthazari inhaled. The pouch walls drew towards each other. Scales pressed beneath our feet, against our backs, into our heads, crushing us together.

  ‘I’m gonna pop like one of Tessa’s zits!’ croaked Bruce.

  Kalthazari exhaled fire. The pouch walls heaved back. Reflected in the scales around us, her gaseous lava-trail was a brilliant super-highway of death. Viethe Palace exploded. For hundreds of metres in all directions, sprinting goblins burst into flames.

  Kalthazari swooped, breathing obliteration at the towers and factories of Viethe City.

  ‘Listen to them.’

  In my mind, hundreds of goblins’ deaths screamed.

  Thousands.

  Tens of thousands.

  Every scale inside the pouch, every thought inside my mind, screamed images of blood and fire.

  My nightmare had come true.

  Another voice chanted, ‘Where you venture, blood will follow. So much blood in your footsteps!’

  The phantom boy had been right.

  The blame was mine. ‘It is done.’ Kalthazari’s attack ended as abruptly as it had begun.

  She spoke into my mind. ‘You sought to play the chess of politics, youngling king, to free humans from their well-earned debt. Know that you have now witnessed the cost. Are you pleased?’

  The word ‘no’ choked in my throat.

  With a flick of her wings, Kalthazari turned towards Fire Mountain. Her pouch opened once more, inviting us to contemplate all she had wrought upon goblin-kind.

  No one spoke.

  I barely registered the twin guard walls running parallel below, signifying our passing from the turf of one goblin family to another. A single flower of light glinted towards us.

  Greta recoiled. ‘Are the Klusks firing on us now? Are they as moronic as a cave of mountain goblins?’

  Kalthazari took no evasive action. Why should she? The missile clanged against her underside. By poking my noggin out and looking down and back, I saw the point of impact. Incredibly, several metres away, the missile was stuck to the dragon’s stomach scales!

  ‘What the web is that thing?’ jabbered Bruce.

  The missile was divided into two room-sized metallic blocks. A central point rose perpendicularly, like a giant needle.

  With a crackle of blue energy, the blocks whirred to life.

  My right hand jerked towards the missile.

  My bionic hand! ‘Magnets!’ gasped Greta.

  The pulling force intensified, drawing me out of my belt. ‘No!’

  Greta grabbed my leg. Bruce blasted me with webs. But the magnets exerted such multiplying force, I was dr
agged from Kalthazari’s pouch. Hand-first, I flew across the gap.

  Clang!

  My metallic hand lay horizontally across the closest magnet. My body dangled at right angles, thousands of metres above Monstro City!

  Humming ever louder, the magnets edged apart. Their pull was so powerful, I felt the iron in my blood strain to burst from my veins. Trembling, the magnets eased two of Kalthazari’s overlapping scales apart.

  I gaped as the magnet needle, mounted on springs and tipped with a pointed, hollow diamond, began to rotate. Was the plan to inject something into the dragon’s belly?

  ‘Kalthazari!’ I cried.

  The empress of dragons made no reply.

  The humming increased. Spitting sparks, the magnets’ power was clearly burning out, but two dragonium scales had been sufficiently drawn apart to expose a sliver of green-blue dragon skin.

  ‘No!’ I cried.

  The needle plunged, driving into Kalthazari’s flesh. Springs activated, ramming a dark liquid down the needle.

  A tremor rippled through Kalthazari’s body.

  The magnets spat a final time and blackened. Kalthazari’s scales sprang back into place, shearing the diamond-tipped needle like a piece of straw.

  The magnets dropped away, two dead ticks.

  With me still attached!

  Whoosh!

  23: REVERBERATIONS

  I wrenched my hand free from the lifeless magnet. For all the good that did me! I–

  Thwip! A weird sensation, like eggs exploding, pattered upon my back. The magnets plummeted on, towards the earth, away from me. I swung wildly across the sky, whisked by winds.

  Then it hit me. Literally. I’d been webbed!

  Bruce hoisted me up to Kalthazari’s pouch. Sticky pincers poked me, hauling me over the lip into safety.

  ‘Bruce, you saved me!’

  ‘Gnarly, huh?’ The giant spider grinned, belting me in. ‘Your falling weight almost yanked my butt straight outta my exoskeleton!’

  ‘You’re the best– Whoa!’

  Kalthazari spasmed, twisting as if wrestling another dragon.

  We bounced between the walls and our belts.

  A single word echoed through our minds. ‘Poisoned.’ And a second. ‘Dying.’

  Frantically, I yelled, ‘Kalthazari, can we help?’

  ‘Perhaps. Yet may you?’

  The dragon tumbled through the sky. We alternately strained against our belts and slammed against the dragonium wall.

  ‘Kalthazari! Forget the grammar lesson! We’ll help!’

  ‘Thus shall it be. Know that this one requires your essences. You must lend them freely, for this one may not draw upon them otherwise.’

  ‘Um, okay, I guess. I agree,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t!’ Bruce squawked. ‘I ain’t lending my essence, whatever the web-hole that is. I don’t even dig lending my pencil!’

  ‘Kalthazari needs our help! All our helps!’ I cried. ‘We’ll splat like vampire mozzies if we do nothing!’

  ‘Top-notch argument.’ Bruce peered out of the pouch. ‘Okay. Whatta we gotta lose, apart from our brunches?’

  ‘Everyone else?’

  Jaak, Zorg and Greta nodded or mumbled their agreement.

  ‘Okay! Um, what now, Kalthazari?’

  ‘Breathe deeply. Relax your minds. Do not block this one.’

  I breathed deeply. Immediately, my eyelids drooped as if 1,000 leeches had drained my blood.

  Hard to think … All sense of body and space … gone. Thoughts … not my own …

  Doors opening …

  Still alive!

  What the hairy leg?

  Traitor!

  Never expected …

  Trained to kill!

  Must be telling!

  So much … magic!

  Was I … hallucinating? Or were my thoughts mingling with the rest of the gang? Mingling and swimming through the veins of Kalthazari!

  Words unreadable, purpose unshakeable, this one/I feel her/my wings trembling/straightening. She/we bank into a gentle turn, until the ground streaks below. Not flapping, this one/we/I coasts across the sky. Gradually losing/bleeding speed. Burning minimal essence. Prolonging life/death.

  So the prophecies are correct … Zcarab never loving me … The bravest badass in any webbed quarter!

  Behind the jumble of thoughts and sensations, I smelt loamy forest litter and worm-burrowed dirt. Descending through endless tiers of rock, I felt an exhaling that stretched over millennia. Was that hypnotic beating an unimaginably large heart? And that flash a glimpse of the glowing, liquid orb at the centre of the world? A background keening echoed through these mind-bending layers, dull and low, as if the earth itself wept and … mourned?

  I sagged into my rubber belt.

  The horizon glowed. Fire Mountain?

  ‘Blood will follow, King Thomas. So much blood in your footsteps!’

  I jolted.

  I’d been dreaming?

  Lumps of rock hurtled past. A wall of stone blurred by.

  My eyes flew wide. Kalthazari skidded down the volcano’s rim! Her legs, impossibly scrawny, scrambled for purchase.

  CLASH!

  I landed on top of Greta; Bruce, on top of me.

  The pouch tilted sideways. The walls and roof sagged and folded as if deflating, blocking our exit. Scales pressed against our heads.

  Kalthazari, it seemed, lay on her side, unmoving.

  My muscles tingled. I felt my energy – my essence – returning, but weaker than before. My thoughts, all my own again, felt weirdly lonely.

  I guess not everyone felt the same, judging by Greta’s punch to my kidney. ‘Lift your bleeding, stinking human body off me!’

  I unhitched my belt and wormed into an empty pouch fold to catch my breath. At least everyone seemed okay – all things considered. Or, at least, alive.

  ‘Dudes, that was gnarrrrrrly!’ Bruce whistled. ‘We just peeped into each others’ brain-drains! For a non-kick-ass moment, I squinted at the world through the measly two-eyes of a grumpy gob-gal … ’cept I couldn’t peep the forest for the trees!’

  ‘Be quiet, spider,’ said Greta.

  ‘But seriously,’ said Bruce, ‘surely I ain’t the only fine-looking dude who felt that sense of – I dunno – crazy cosmic joining? Like we really were just one mega funky, mind-melded gang.’

  ‘Spider, I desire the exit!’ Greta growled.

  ‘Bummer,’ said Bruce. ‘Exit’s blocked. And I ain’t scored all my ass-ence back.’

  ‘I felt the sense of joining too,’ said Jaak. ‘My organs? You know, they tingled with trust.’

  ‘Trust?’ Greta looked ready to punch someone, or possibly everyone. ‘Why in the names of the gods of the earth and sky would I trust you, spider, with your open racism against my kind? Or you, shape-shifter? Besides being a “chum” of the spider, you’re an ancient and creepy parasite whose life is defined by lying and deceiving. Perhaps you’d rather I confess the secrets of my people to the fly-blown, love-struck, guilt-riddled, goblin-hating zombie who is plainly hiding something? Or should I make my new confidant the handsome yet doomed boy-king of humes who is so out of his depth and such a magnet for mayhem that every minute he stays alive is a miracle? You morons–’

  ‘Aheh,’ Bruce chortled. ‘Did you just call PT “handsome”?’

  ‘I meant, of course, handsome by hideous human standards!’ Greta’s face flushed – with rage, embarrassment, or both? ‘The fact is: surrounded by a sea of enemies, we forest goblins have endured only by grasping our secrets tight. And none of you have inspired me to do otherwise. Now out of my path, spider, before I carve a tunnel through your abdomen!’

  Bruce whistled. ‘And I thought Mega Scaly had anger management problems!’

  ‘Greta’s right,’ I said, blushing slightly myself. ‘Without trust, we’re nothing. Surely the best way to build trust is through common courtesy and– Ow!’ Greta kicked me in the ankle!

  The forest goblin
growled, ‘I do not require you to fight my battles.’

  ‘Handsome.’ Bruce shook his head. ‘I gotta bust outta this killer hall of mirrors. Nrrrrrgh!’ The spider strained to lift the fold of scales blocking the pouch opening. ‘Zorgie! Get your sorry, bullet-riddled ass of dumbness over here.’

  Zorg crawled to Bruce’s side.

  ‘One. Two. Wait for it … Lift!’ The spider and zombie heaved. Lava light billowed through. ‘Hurry, dudes and … dudette.’

  ‘Go, Greta,’ I said.

  The grumbling goblin slid through the gap. Jaak dived after her. Before I could follow, Greta rammed a shield from Kalthazari’s treasure pile into the opening, and then a second, wedging the pouch open. Zorg and I clambered through.

  Bruce bent low and squinted through the opening. ‘I ain’t squeezing my shapely butt through that mail-slot!’

  We rummaged through the dragon’s hoard until Jaak found a pair of antique lances. The four of us levered the opening wide enough for the giant spider to squeeze the top sections of his body through.

  ‘Nrrrrgh!’ Bruce strained. ‘I’m secreting on over-drive to lube these dumb-ass scales … NRRRRGH!’

  Puuuuck!

  The spider popped like a champagne cork, tumbled and twisted to inspect his backside. ‘NOOO!’ he cried. ‘All my sexy butt-hairs … GONE TO BRAZIL!’

  ‘You’re in all right shape, chum,’ said Jaak. ‘You know, compared to some.’

  Standing in the crook of Kalthazari’s neck, we all knew to whom the shape-shifter referred. The dragon’s scales were bunched and over-lapping, jutting at weird angles, indicating the body beneath them was much reduced. As one, we trudged towards her head.

  I gasped. Through her translucent lids, Kalthazari’s eyes seemed devoid of inner light, staring blankly into eternity. Of all the terrible things I’d seen that night, those life-less eyes rocked me hardest.

  Greta wept.

  Was the alpha dragon dead? Had she burned up the last of her life essence returning us safely? But why?

  Jaak crouched by Kalthazari’s lower nostril. ‘No fire down there. You know, and no breeze.’

  ‘Please, no,’ I moaned. ‘So many goblins have died tonight. We can’t lose the last dragon on Earth!’