by GARY DARBY
We flash downward through the sky. For a moment, I think the golden is going to crash us into the oncoming boats, but at the last instant Golden Wind spreads her wings, just a bit and we level off in a wild dash just above the tips of the ships’ masts.
We’re moving so fast that the force of our passing blasts sails, masts and dart-throwing machines into pieces, hurling them through the air as if we had used a giant hammer to crush them into tiny shards of timber and cloth.
We speed on, our passage marked by whole ships being lifted from the sea and flung onto nearby vessels, sinking both under the frothing water.
Bodies of drogs and blue-clad Sung Dar cartwheel through the sky, landing on nearby seacraft as if they had fallen like hailstones from the clouds.
The golden wheels in the sky, now coming at the ship’s from the opposite direction. She slows ever so slightly and spews her fire on those ships not caught by her whirlwind.
Ship after ship explodes in a rain of burning embers. Shipmasters try to turn their craft away from the inferno, but there’s no room for them to maneuver, no place for them to go, no safe harbor from this firestorm.
Then, from the beach, balls of orange fire spew into the sky. Phigby’s “surprise.”
They seem to dance and jitter on the wind before they begin to touch sails, which burst into scarlet flames. The fireballs go deep into the fleet, from sail to sail, mast to mast, leaving behind a roaring hellfire of ships.
Screeching down from the heavens, Rover, Glory, and Wind Song spew sun-hot torrents of fire on those vessels not yet burning.
Those ship’s crews who had thought of bringing their weapons to bear on us now frantically try to extinguish the blazes or more likely than not, seek their own escape from the roaring flames.
The growing firestorm begins to consume the vessels farther back not caught by our dragon fire, those that didn’t feel the initial awful scourge of dragon breath. Only those lucky enough to be last in line are able to turn their vessels and catch the wind in a desperate attempt to escape.
Suddenly, I see Helmar frantically wave at me, and I turn Golden Wind in his direction. “Drogs!” he calls out. “Some made it onto the beach, but Glory is out of fire.”
Golden Wind gives a little shake of her head and I call back, “Same here.”
Helmar nods in understanding and heels his dragon over and together we speed up the beach. Up ahead, I can see a dozen or more drogs running toward Amil and Phigby, their intent plain to see.
“Golden Wind,” I shout, “set me down near Phigby and then you get away. I don’t want you anywhere near those Proga lances.”
She dives down sharply, levels, then with powerful downward beats of her wings, lands. I push myself off and fall heavily on the sandy ground.
The golden lifts off and soars aloft as I pick myself up from the gritty dirt. Helmar is off his dragon, limping painfully toward Amil and Phigby. I don’t know where Cara or Master Boren are, but I don’t wait around to see.
Pushing myself as hard as I can, I trundle up to the small group just as the drogs crest a small, sandy knoll and stop.
My heart thuds in my chest.
Leading the band of howling drogs is none other than Sorg, my nemesis from Draconstead. He must have seen me at the same time I spot him, for a wide leer lifts his thin lips.
His warty, bulbous face screws up in a scowl. He brings his Proga lance up to point straight at me. “This time, boy, you be drog meat for sure.”
“Phigby,” I mutter, “now would be a good time for some of those dancing fireballs of yours.”
“Lad,” he whispers in return, “there are times for waltzing fireballs and there are times for swordplay. I’m afraid this is the latter.”
I give Phigby a wide-eyed look and together, we draw our swords. Amil comes to stand beside us, twirling his great ax between his hands while Helmar notches an arrow in his bowstring.
Soot and ash from the burning ships rain down from the sky while gray, dark smoke sweeps across the beach as if a fog were rolling in from the sea. For just a moment, the two groups stare hard-eyed at each other before Sorg bellows and the drogs charge.
The brutes race across the ground, their feet spraying sand with each step. Sorg has his squinty dark eyes centered on me and his lance never wavers from pointing squarely at my chest.
I rise up on the balls of my feet, gripping the hilt of my emerald sword tightly in both hands. I know I’ll have but one chance to sever Sorg’s spear. If I swing too early, or if I miss, he’ll run me through, and my life fluid will drain into the sand.
The crazed drogs are almost upon us when a gust of wind throws a thick blanket of smoke between us. The brutes, confused by the haze, slow, before the smoke lifts and they bellow in rage as they charge again. They’re only a heartbeat away when suddenly, I hear bowstrings go thruungg!
Drog heads snap back, an arrow buried deep between their eyes. They spin, crashing into their fellows. For a moment, Sorg and the drogs, bewildered by the abrupt death of their companions, stumble in their rush.
Amil and Phigby jump into the fray, taking the fight to them. They slash at the Proga lances, neither of them giving the drogs a chance to recover from their initial shock.
Sorg, too, seems to be baffled by the sudden turn of events and turns slightly toward where Amil swings his blade as if it were a whirling windmill. I instantly realize that this is my chance.
Leaping forward, my gleaming sword held high, I slash downward, shattering Sorg’s lance in half. The crack of splintering wood stuns him, and he staggers back, holding the blunted end of his Proga lance out as if he can’t believe that he holds but a fragment of his fearsome spear.
His hesitation is his undoing. I spring forward, my sword a green blur slicing through the air.
Sorg’s decapitated head sits atop his body for an instant before it tilts to one side and falls to the ground. His body slowly topples backward, throwing up a puff of sand when it hits the ground.
Sorg’s death brings the other drogs to a complete standstill. More arrows cut through the air, and more drogs scream out in death.
Amil and Phigby spin and slash, cutting off hands and arms. The other brutes have seen enough. They bolt back down the beach toward the few ships that managed to make it to the shoreline.
However, their respite is short-lived as Cara and Helmar, from atop their dragons, send arrow after arrow into the fleeing drogs.
Standing over Sorg’s body, my face and voice are hard. “And that too was for the honored one, the King of the Great Forest.”
I hold my sword up; thinking that I would wash Sorg’s filthy blood off in the sea, when I stop and turn it over repeatedly in my hand, my amazement growing with each moment.
A heavily breathing Phigby comes up. “Are you all right, Hooper? That was quite a scrape.”
I nod slowly in answer. “Yes, Phigby, I’m fine.” I hold my sword out, my eyes running the gleaming emerald blade’s length.
“Phigby, I was going to dip it into the sea and remove the filth of drog blood. But look, there’s not a drop on it.”
He peers at the sword for a moment before he nods in understanding. “No, I imagine there wouldn’t be. Not on this sword anyway. He would not have wanted the obscenity of such filthiness to cling to it whatsoever.”
He turns and walks away, and as he does, I mumble, “He?”
I feel a rush of wind at my back and turn to find Golden Wind and the other dragons settling gently onto the sand. We stand next to our dragons and watch the inferno that is now the Sung Dar fleet.
Cara’s nervous laugh borders on disbelieving. “We did it. Somehow, we did it.”
“It was their own undoing,” Phigby mutters in a hard tone. “In their arrogance of being the ocean’s master, they placed their ships too close together. They did not think that the Golians would have a defense against such numbers or that the dragons they met would not be their allies.”
Amil places a hand on my sh
oulder. “Don’t forget Hooper, Phigby—if he had not turned back to warn us, we would have been caught by surprise.”
“Yes, indeed,” Master Boren speaks up. He faces me squarely and gets a strange look on his face. “Not only that, but I’m beginning to wonder just who is the Dragon Master around here.”
I feel a warmth start from my neck and creep up to my face. I duck my head in embarrassment.
Master Boren laughs at my obvious discomfort. “Not to worry, Hooper, I won’t be handing over my title just yet.”
“Phigby,” Amil says, “those dancing fireballs, how did you do that?”
Helmar holds up a quick hand. “I know. Just simple alchemy, right, Phigby?”
Phigby sniffs. “Of course, nothing more than a bit of fireweed along with a few pinches of butterfly wings added to—”
He stops when Master Boren lays a hand on his forearm and says, “Later, if you please, Phigby.”
Boren gestures toward the burning derelicts and floating hulks of the Sung Dar ships. “We are finished here, but let us hurry, for there is still another enemy that we must meet. One, I’m afraid that is far more formidable than the Sung Dar and will need more than a few pinches of butterfly wings to counter.”
“Maybe,” Amil mutters, “they’ll give us a blunder to exploit like the Sung Dar.”
“Not likely,” Phigby replies as everyone heads for their dragons.
As I climb aboard Golden Wind, Scamper is chittering angrily. Gwaayyy!
“Yes, yes, I know,” I acknowledge. “But I couldn’t let Amil and Phigby face the drogs alone. Besides, you were safe with Golden Wind.”
He scrunches up his face as if he’s not quite satisfied with my answer before he climbs up to take his place on the golden’s carapace.
The other dragons lift off the ground before I ask, “How are the sprogs?”
“Scared, but otherwise doing well,” Golden Wind answers. She lifts her wings and a moment later, we’re in the air.
I lean over and say, “Well, Golden Wind, as Cara said, somehow, we did it.”
Golden Wind doesn’t answer, but when she does, it sends a shudder through my body. “Yes, Hooper, we did. But what we faced in the Sung Dar is nothing compared to what we face now.”
Her wings dip and lift several more times before she voices slowly, “Something is coming, something that I’ve never seen before, nor has the world. A dragon unlike any other, it fills the sky, and its fire is like a volcano that spews lava and brimstone down upon the land.”
She pauses and then declares, “A dragon born and bred just for this moment—to destroy all in its path, including you and me.”
32
Billowing dark smoke rises so high that it blots out the towering mountains. Fed by tongues of flames, it fills the sky. We speed toward the roiling black cloud which hides not only the peaks beyond but Golden Wind’s feared nemesis.
From a distance, I can see scarlet dragons bursting through the smoky tapestry as if they’re winged demons rising from the fire and smoke of Hades to spew flame and death upon the hapless city below.
“We need to find Queen Alonya or General Katus,” Master Boren shouts. “One or the other will tell us where we can do the most good.”
We dip to the left, to parallel the churning curtain, our eyes on the ground, not only seeking Alonya and Katus but to avoid any Amazos that might mistake us for the enemy.
Suddenly, Golden Wind rears in the air as if she’s flown into a wall.
“What’s wrong?” I call out.
Almost in a whisper, she only says, “Look.”
My eyes follow the direction of her staring. As if a Titan reached out with both hands and grasped the smoldering curtain, the black cloud rips apart. Winging slowly, almost lazily through the haze is the behemoth of all dragons.
My eyes tell me what I’m seeing, but my mind refuses to accept that something this immense, this massive could not only exist but could sky through the air like any other dragon.
With every downward stroke of its four monstrous wings the air seems to shudder, as if a wave passes through the sky. It would take twenty, no thirty reds to match its girth and wingspread. Its scales are a dull red, and its plated head is like crimson fire.
Four glistening ebony eyes stare at us while talons the color of flames and large enough that each could easily pick up several Sung Dar sailing ships in each claw hang below its bloated body. Its charcoal-colored tail is so long that it could smash to bits a whole row of houses in Dronopolis with one terrifying swipe.
Atop its massive head sits Prince Aster in an ornate, high-backed gilded throne. The chair’s gilt framing seems to glisten around the man like a yellow halo.
To his side stands none other than Daron Dracon, who balances himself by holding onto a golden chain that’s riveted to the monster’s scales.
The monstrous form seems to float toward us until it stops and languidly flaps its wings to hover in the air. Prince Aster leans forward, sneering, one arm on his knee.
He wears no crown, but the leering gaze on his thin face, the way he carries himself tells me that he thinks himself a king. And one who believes that he’s the king of all above and below.
He rises to his feet. His long, dark locks fall to his shoulders. A scarlet tinted jerkin covers his torso to his waist. Over his tunic is a thick, open vest that seems to be made of lamb’s wool streaked with silver and gold strands. Tucked into gleaming black boots are crimson corsair pants.
He wears a Wilder’s scimitar now, and not the thin blade that he attacked me with back in the birthing barn, but he carries no bow. It’s clear that he considers his dragon to be his armament.
And well he should.
Daron strides forward to stand on the beast’s enormous head just above the monster’s brow and between two massive horns. The wind whips his hair as he holds an arm up as if in greeting and calls out, “Father, tell me, what do you think of our creation? A beauty, is he not?”
Wind Rover holds her place, hovering just a few body lengths from the monster dragon. The rest of us bring our dragons in line with Rover.
“No,” Master Boren sharply retorts. “That is a monstrosity and an affront to every Dragon Master in the realm.”
“Father, Father,” Daron calls back, with a smug smile. “I’m disappointed. With my help, look at what they’ve created.”
He leans forward, his eyes full of a self-satisfied gleam. “And this is only a start.”
“I thought you wanted nothing to do with dragons,” Helmar scoffs.
“Ordinary dragons, yes,” Daron retorts with a flash of anger. “But this—this is no ordinary dragon as you can see.”
He spreads his arms expansively as he gazes down at the immense creature below him. “With this wondrous creation, the world is ours for the taking.”
He glances sideways as if he sees me for the first time. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Hooper the pooper scooper.”
He laughs loudly while he spreads his arms again. “How would you like to spend your days behind this dragon? I’m sure we could find a shovel big enough for you to work your mastery with this dragon dung.”
His laugh is loud and sharp before his face becomes serious and he addresses Boren. “Father, come with us, bring the golden with you. This is only the beginning of what’s possible. With your knowledge and skill, we’ll create dragons the likes of which the world has never seen or will ever see again.”
He takes another step forward on the behemoth’s massive head. “Together, we can become the greatest Dragon Masters of all time.”
“And what of me?” Cara calls over. “Is your invitation only for Father?”
Just then, Prince Aster strides forward and pushes Daron aside. “Of course not, Cara,” he avows in silky tones. “I for one would be most happy if you would join our cause. I would like to dance with you again—it was a most pleasurable evening as I recall.”
“Yes,” Cara angrily responds, “pleasurable for yo
u after you used me to gain the information you needed to attack Draconstead.”
The prince shrugs nonchalantly in answer. “No, my dear, that wasn’t all that made it enjoyable I assure you.”
His face hardens, and he places hands on hips. “Now while you might enjoy the family reunion and making small talk, I have more important matters at hand.”
Aster motions toward Master Boren. “Boren Dracon, the choice is simple,” he all but growls, “since you will not listen to your son’s appeal, then perhaps you will listen to this.”
He sweeps a hand toward Dronopolis. “I am willing to forgo destroying all this and will even allow your little troop to live in exchange for three simple things.
“First, you agree to come with me as my Dragon Master. Second, the golden comes, too, of course. Third, Golian swears allegiance to me.”
Master Boren rumbles in a sarcastic tone, “Is that all?”
He shakes his head, straightens, and in an authoritative voice answers, “I cannot speak for the Golians, but as for me, cut off my hands, my feet. Rip my heart from my body, I will not do your filthy bidding. And as for you, my son, I know not who you are. Perhaps you are possessed by some demon.”
He pauses and then asserts, “Or maybe you are possessed by the ultimate evil. That which turns even the best of us into foul creatures with the desire to enslave others as if they are worthless dross to be crushed underfoot.”
Daron starts to speak, but Aster snaps up his hand to silence him. “A lovely speech, Boren, but your words are wasted. I give you one final chance. Agree and I will live up to my part of our bargain.”
He strokes one of the beast’s towering horns. “If not, my pet hungers and he is not choosy whether it be dragon, Drachen, or Golian flesh that he feasts on this day.”
He glares and for a moment, I’m held by what I see as a shadowy aura that seems to surround the prince, a darkness that has shape but no substance.