Plob Fights Back

by Craig Zerf

  Her breasts were large and well formed and they set off her large dark green eyes to perfection. They also set off her feet, her hands and the small mole on her cheek to perfection. What could one say - they were perfection enhancing breasts.

  She splashed water through her short hair causing it to stand up in raggedly chopped bunches, reached for a towel, dried herself and donned her leather flying outfit.

  Her dragon stood outside the front door already saddled up. She stroked its eye-ridges and it crooned back at her.

  ‘So, Tempest, we’re all alone.’

  The dragon butted her with its wagon-sized head and whickered. Spice patted the dragon again and then climbed aboard. She kicked her heels and Tempest flapped its wings and rose up above the log cabin. The two hovered there for a while and then Spice pulled back on Tempest’s firing reins and the dragon spat a ball of fire at the cottage. It struck with the force of a lightning bolt and immediately reduced the wooden abode to cinders.

  ‘Come on, Tempest. Let’s go and start our new lives.’

  And they climbed high into the sky and headed towards the capital city of Maudlin, hoping for good things and new beginnings.

  Chapter 9

  King Bravad had called a council of war and his major, his generals and other various notables sat with him in his chambers. The unexpected dragon raid had cost the lives of twenty-three people including ten children.

  He had declared a day of mourning. But the people did not want to mourn. They wanted revenge. And answers.

  ‘Master Smegly. Do have any idea why this happened?’ Asked the king.

  The magician shook his head. ‘Bravad, not only do I have no idea why they did this; I also have no idea who did it. I have never seen the like of those dragons that they rode. I have no idea how they got them to shoot fire like that. Their flying skills were beyond those that I have seen before and, most disturbingly, I conjured a number of seeking spells and all that I got was that they are from very, very, very far away.’ The master magician slumped down in his seat. ‘I wish that I could be of more help.’

  The king turned to Plob. ‘My friend. Anything to add, after all, you were closest to them.’

  Plob shrugged. ‘I was too busy trying not to be dead to notice much. I did get the feeling that the amount of fire that they produce is limited in some way. They had me cold near the end but didn’t fire. I can only assume that their dragons ran out of burn…fire…whatever.’

  ‘Alright,’ continued the king. ‘I am going to declare a state of emergency. I will call up all of the standing army and civilian militia. I want every longbow, crossbow, catapult and ballista that we have on the tops of Maudlin’s city walls and all of the high buildings. I also want water troughs and barrels of water distributed to key points in the city and firemen rosters set up amongst the locals. Master Smegly, can you put together any spells that could help?’

  Smegly harrumphed. ‘The usual thunderbolts etcetera won’t do much good. You see, when it comes down to it, an attack spell is still merely a hand-launched missile, albeit very powerful. Also, it is a well-known fact that dragons themselves are very resistant to magiks. Part of the reason that such a huge beast can fly so fast is that it generates its own small magical field that helps to keep it airborne. This tends to negate most spells. I think that I can put together a net of spells that might give us some sort of prior warning as to when they arrive. Assuming that they do come again.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll come again,’ said the king. ‘They will definitely come again.’

  ‘I’ll help the master with the spells,’ said Plob.

  ‘No,’ said Bravad. ‘I have something else for you. I need you to find out how they did what they did. How they managed to produce such hot flames from their dragons. Once you have done that then we will talk again. Right, everyone, to your tasks.’

  The meeting adjourned and all filed out of the royal chambers.

  ‘Plob,’ called the king. ‘Don’t sleep and eat only when necessary. The kingdom is relying on you, my boy.’

  Wow, thought Plob to himself as he left the room. No pressure.

  It was nighttime and the young magician sat in the middle of the landing field, on a three-legged stool, and stared at Nim. He had absolutely no idea where to start. He had only seen his dragon flame before on two separate occasions. And both times had been sooty little flames that wouldn’t even singe ones hair let alone destroy entire buildings.

  The dragon sensed its owner’s mood and bumped him with his head. Plob scratched him and he made a series of small plopping noises and then started to purr.

  Suddenly an idea came to Plob. He stood up and tore one of the legs off the stool. Then he mumbled a quick incantation, gestured, and the end of the wooden leg burst into flame.

  He held the flame in front of Nim. ‘Here, Nim. See this?’ Can you do this?’ Plob waved the leg around making circles of flame in the air. Then he pushed it in Nim’s face. ‘Come on, Nim. Do something.’

  The dragon looked at him with huge soulful eyes and then it opened its mouth and drew a huge breath.

  ‘Yes,’ encouraged Plob. ‘Do it.’

  Nim stood up, arched his back and with one mighty gust…blew out the fire. Then he sat back down, closed his eyes and promptly went to sleep.

  Plob dropped the charred piece of wood and stood still. Shoulders down in a perfect pose of dejection.

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘Wa ye doin?’

  Plob turned to see Boy. He had a paper bag full of what seemed to be fried chicken, he also had a piece in his hand and was eating it like a corn on the cob, rolling and biting and chewing at the same time. Once again showing his efficiency in oral consumption.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Plob. ‘Making a fool of myself.’

  ‘Ah weel, if you need ta make a fool of yournself then you’re definitely the best one ta do it. Da ya want some fried chikkie. It’s reet good. I got it from Biggest.’

  Plob took a leg. It was good, moist with a crisp batter.

  ‘So, what’s wit the burnt stool?’

  ‘I was trying to get Nim to produce a hotter flame.’

  ‘Oh, is tha’ all? Tha’s easy, you jist feed yon dragon with Natrium crystals. They fire up a treat mon, a reet treat,’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Natrium.’

  ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘Och, Natrium’s a crystal. Ye find it in caves in big blocks. Looks lik’ ice. You dig it oop and smash it and feed it to yon dragons. They love it; it’s like sweeties to them. Makes their flames awful hot. Like the sun.’

  ‘Boy, why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  Boy shrugged. ‘Ye didna ask.’

  ‘So, let me get this straight. I feed these crystals to the dragon and then I can fight back against those flyers and their dragons?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you said…’

  ‘Aye. They flame hot but so what. They only flame when they feel lik’ it. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. All depends. So ye’ll be flyin’ up there, beggin’ yon dragon to flame and next thing, bam, thay got ye and ye’s crispy fried like this.’ Boy held up a chicken thigh.

  ‘So you don’t know how to make them flame on demand.’

  ‘Nay. Ne’er seen it done. It’s nae possible.’

  ‘They did it.’

  ‘Aye, but them’s not us, is them?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Plob with a sigh. ‘Them is not us. But it’s a start. Let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll get some of these crystals that you’re talking about and start again.’

  The two trudged back to Plob’s dwellings, heavy of heart and foot and dripping with chicken grease.

  Chapter 10

  Not everybody knows this but; moving dragons from one reality to the next does really bad things to the space-time continuum. There are a number of reasons for this but for the purposes of this novel let us assume that we don’t really care about the whys. Well…oka
y, quickly now - just to clarify things.

  When the Vagoths go from their universe to the next they do not do so instantaneously, however, they do go from place to place very, very (keep saying very for about another half an hour) quickly. Unbelievably massive distances are travelled at speed approaching the speed of light. At these speeds something called Time Dilation occurs. In other words, time goes by slower the faster that you are moving. Now, if this were allowed to happen to the Vagoths then, when they got home everybody would be...like…umm…a thousand years older than them. So - to negate this effect (theory by Einstein, by the way. Very bright man. Odd hair, dubious hygiene. When he died a Dr. Harvey stole his brain and put it in a pickle jar and kept it for forty three years - true story…I promise), anyway…to negate this, Typhon’s spell took this extra time and dumped it randomly into the cosmos. Now - time is very (again many, many verys) very heavy. So heavy, in fact, that this much of it will create a black hole. This is not a problem specifically, unless, of course, you are being dragged into said black hole. Still - it shows a complete lack of caring and a general disregard for the universe on the whole. Typical Typhonic behaviour.

  Unfortunately for captain Chole Bhature, his space ship, the Paratha, was at this very moment being dragged into a black hole that was there due to Typhon’s random time dumping.

  Klaxons blared, lights flashed red and computer generated voices warned warnings of consequences most dire.

  Captain Bhature pressed the intercom button and leant forwards. ‘Engineering, where is Subji?’

  ‘He’s crossing the wefts, captain. He thinks that we may get more output from the woof drives if he gets it right.’

  ‘Tell him I need more power.’

  ‘Captain, it’s Subji here. I’m pushing her harder than defunct merchandise at a summer sale. She’ll break up if I push her any harder.’

  ‘We have no choice, Subji. I want you to go to woof speed nine.’

  ‘Okydoky, captain. But I’m warning you of consequences most dire.’

  ‘Too late, Subji, the computers have already done so.’

  The ship rocked violently from side to side. Diodes blinked on and off, crewmen staggered from side to side and sparks flew from monitors.

  ‘Damage report mister Roti.’

  ‘Shields are down to ten percent, captain. If this continues we’re going to have to shut the engines down and go onto Urge power.’

  ‘If we do that, mister Roti, we’ll be dragged into that black hole and the pudding will definitely turn to poo. Give me woof factor ten.’

  But the gravitational pull of a black hole is somewhere around the same as the pull of one thousand million million Saturn V space rockets and, as a result, woof factor ten or not, it was less than a minute before the Paratha class A fully-armoured space ship passed the event horizon and was sucked in.

  And captain Chole Bhature was entirely correct, because the proof of the pudding is in the eating and this pudding had most definitely become decidedly unpalatable.

  The Vagoths arrived again at a little before dusk. The light in the air was thin and grey, and partial cloud cover hid them from view until they were directly over the city of Maudlin.

  There were three fighter dragons and four two-headed Belend bomber dragons. The bomber dragons were massive beasts that needed two flyers to control them.

  The heavies struck first, spitting out huge slow burning balls of red flame that spun into the city and crashed through buildings, setting fire to all in their paths.

  The bowmen and crossbowmen that had been posted around the high points of the city immediately fired back and scores of arrows and bolts filled the skies like swarms of evil, iron-tipped insects. But the dragons flew high and fast and their thick scaly skin caused most of their arrows to bounce off. The odd few missiles that struck hard enough barely penetrated the skin deeply enough to do aught else but hang there like feathered earrings. More decorative than damaging.

  In the streets below, fire fighters scurried along the streets carrying buckets of water to douse the plethora of blazes. Then the fighters dropped down, strafing the streets with fast-moving white-hot balls of plasma.

  Biggest ran out into the middle of the street, took careful aim with a crossbow, and fired. The bolt bounced harmlessly off the fighter’s scales. With a bellow of rage the towering trogre grabbed a pawful of his remaining bolts and threw them as hard as he could at the next dragon.

  The bundle of ten quarrels powered through the air with many times more force than mere wood and string could impart. They spread as they flew and the dragon cruised straight into them. Seven or eight of the steel tipped missiles buried themselves deep in the dragon’s flesh.

  With a high-pitched screech the beast tumbled to the ground, throwing its flyer high into the air and straight into a burning building.

  ‘Yee-hah, you motherless sons of dogs of the female persuasion,’ Biggest shouted. ‘Eat steel and die. Waits ‘till I brings my brothers here, youse is all going to be in deep faeces.’

  The rest of the dragons peeled away, climbed quickly into the smoke filled sky. And disappeared.

  In the star cruiser, Paratha - time stretched. I mean really stretched. Until it was as thin as a rubber band and as long as forever. Then, because time prefers to exist as an all-encompassing four-dimensional continuum as opposed to a three-dimensional lateral extension, it snapped back.

  This resulted in captain Chole Bhature and the rest of the crew of the Paratha all screaming, ‘Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt that hurt like buggery,’ or some similarly vociferate expletive.

  And the Paratha, a class A starship, appeared, without warning, in the night skies of a hereto uncharted planet in the UDFj-39546284 galaxy. Well, one says uncharted, it had been charted, just not on a star chart. There is no will nor way to chart your relative position in space when you have no space to travel, you tend to simply make a map and assume that you are all…well…there. So - when the mapmakers of Maudlin city had drawn their maps, complete with ‘there be dragons’ pictures, they had no idea that they were even in the UDFj-39546284 galaxy.

  Similarly, the star-charters of the planet Aloo-Matar had no idea that the city of Maudlin was on the planet that was fourth from the sun in the three hundredth solar system from the left in the UDFj-39546284 galaxy.

  As a result of this, captain Chole Bhature had no idea that he had appeared in the atmosphere some twenty miles South of the city of Maudlin that was presently under attack by dragons.

  He also had no idea that his life, and that of his crew, was about to become the benchmark example of the old adage - ‘They went from the frying pan into the fire.’

  Nim touched down on the side of the craggy mountain and Plob and Boy climbed down from his back and stretched and stamped and made general stiff-from-long-journey sounds.

  Boy pointed at the yawning mouth of a cave about one hundred feet away. ‘We’ll find all the crystals that we need in there,’ he said.

  They trudged over to the entrance, both carrying picks and spades and a gross of sisal sacks.

  When they got to the cave, Plob conjured up a light spell in the form of a glittering blue ball that danced ahead of them wherever they walked. He did this because Boy had warned him that you couldn’t carry flaming torches into caves that held Natrium. Well, strictly speaking that statement wasn’t true, you could actually carry flaming torches into a Natrium cave - you simply couldn’t carry them out again as a result of being dead. And burnt to a crisp. And dead. (I know - I said dead twice, I’m making a point here). So, blue flickery light it was then.

  They walked into the depths of the cave for a while.

  ‘Ye know,’ said Boy. ‘In th' auld days men used tae carry a chicken wi' thaim whin thay mined.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that,’ answered Plob. ‘It was to warn them if there was gas.’

  Boy looked at him as if he were mad. ‘Na, 'twas fur whin thay
git hungry. Thay wid scoff th' chicken.’

  ‘Oh, well maybe the chicken gave them gas.’

  ‘Aye, maybe. A’m hungert.’

  ‘You’re always hungry.’

  ‘Tha’s true. We’re here, look.’ Boy pointed up at the roof of the cave. It was covered in crystals of what looked like ice. ‘We just chip yon crystals away and pat thaim in the sacks and Robert’s your mother’s bother.’

  The two of them chipped and hacked and shovelled for about half an hour and then dragged the full sacks back to the dragon and strapped them to the saddle.

  Boy pointed at something in the undergrowth. ‘Look ower thare, tis a talking-fox.’

  ‘What do you mean, a talking fox?’

  ‘Weel, it didna reely talk, but when it barks it sounds jus’ lik’ it’s saying Hello. Come, we’ll sneak up reel quite on it and I’ll show ye.’

  They got down on their hands and knees and snuck forward.

  Chapter 11

  All things considered, the ship and its crew had come through the black hole remarkably well. The woof drives were toast but the Urge drive was still intact and all of the shields and weapons systems seemed to be functioning.

  ‘Captain,’ said mister Roti. ‘I have taken a sample of the atmosphere and it seems compatible to our own. There are large deposits of water and enough raw materials to effect repairs of the woof drive.’

  Captain Bhature looked at the monitor and took in the vista. A mountainous terrain, green and verdant with what looked like massive flowered trees and broad bladed bushes. ‘Any signs of life?’

  ‘Plenty, captain. The sensors are giving us multiple readings but we haven’t seen any as yet.’

  The captain stood up. ‘Right, let’s ready a landing party. I will lead, mister Roti, you, crewman Daal, crewman Masala and crewman Pickle will come with.’

  The captain strode from the bridge, pushing aside the beaded curtain that led to the hangers. The rest of the landing party followed.