by Tony Abbott
“Oww, my head! Keeah! Julie? Guys —”
They didn’t answer.
Blinking his eyes and rubbing his nose, he sat up and looked around.
“What —” he whispered.
He wasn’t by the riverbank anymore. His friends were gone. So was the daylight. He was sitting on dark, wet ground in the middle of a starless, moonless night.
Eric staggered to his feet. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he began to make out the shapes of giant boulders and broken rocks strewn all around.
“This isn’t good,” he said. “Where am I?”
A mass of twisted trees loomed on his right, while on his left a flaming stump bloomed with dense smoke. Far away, he could see the dim outlines of a seacoast with wild black waves crashing.
Closing his eyes, Eric rubbed his forehead.
Then he remembered the explosion.
And it all made sense.
“Of course! I’m having a vision. I hit my head and now I’m seeing … the Dark Lands!”
The Dark Lands.
Smelly, smoky, always foggy, always scary, the Dark Lands had been the center of evil in Droon for centuries.
Waving the smoke away, he turned, stumbled over a low stump, and nearly fell again. “The Dark Lands! What a mess! How can anybody live like this?”
“You tell me!” hissed a sudden voice.
Eric whirled around.
Out of the haze stepped an eight-foot-tall, black-scaled dragon with four sharp wings jutting up from its shoulders. Raising its massive head, the dragon grinned at him.
Eric stepped back. “Gethwing?”
“The one and only!” said the moon dragon.
Eric narrowed his eyes. “Wait. My visions tell the future. You’re supposed to be in my world. Why are you back here in the Dark Lands —”
Drool from the dragon’s fangs hissed as it struck the ground. “The Dark Lands? Oh, no, no, no. Take another look, Wizard Boy….”
“What?” Eric turned completely around, then back again. He saw a forest, a field, a dip in the land, and a coast in the distance.
Eric’s head hurt again suddenly.
Closing his eyes, he blinked them open and squinted more carefully this time.
He took several steps forward through the rocks. Then he turned, looked left, then right, stumbled another few steps, and stopped.
His heart thudded in his chest.
“Impossible,” he said.
But there was no mistaking it. He was standing just a few feet away from … from where his house was supposed to be!
From where it should have been.
From where it would have been. Unless …
The sound of his blood thundered in his ears. “But my parents? My town? What did you do?”
Gethwing grinned. “I huffed and I puffed and, well, you know the rest.”
Eric’s fingertips sprinkled hot silver sparks. “This can’t be true. No way. If this is the future, I can change it. And I’m going to change it right now. I’m going to get rid of you!”
“But this is a vision. You can’t hurt me,” said the dragon. “Besides, I’m up here in your world, and you’re really down there in Droon. You can’t be in two places at once —”
“No, no, no!”
Just as Eric raised his sparking hands …
… BLAMMM! The air exploded again, and he was flat on his back once more.
When he opened his eyes, it was day again, and his friends were dragging him behind the large rock.
“Dude, I did say, ‘Duck,’ ” said Neal. “You nearly got fried.”
He blinked. “Uh … wow!”
“Is your head okay?” asked Keeah.
“You took a nasty tumble!” chirped Max.
Eric gazed at his friends, then squinted down the river. The lions were still charging, sending blazing beams from their eyes.
Blam! Blammm!
“Whoa, guys,” he said. “I had a vision. I was in the Upper World, only there was nothing left. Gethwing had destroyed it all!”
Blam! Chunks of rock fell on the kids.
“If it was only a vision,” said Julie, “it hasn’t happened yet. But these beasts are here right now, and you have to blast back —”
Suddenly, they heard the sound of hooves splashing up the river behind them. A trio of shaggy white pilkas was coming up fast.
“Reinforcements!” cried Neal. “Yay!”
Queen Relna, King Zello, and Khan were galloping at the head of an enormous troop of blue-clad, bow-toting soldiers.
“Archers — fire!” boomed Zello.
From their saddles, the soldiers shot a sizzling barrage of arrows at the gray lions.
Thwink-thwink-thwink! The arrows formed a wall in front of the beasts, halting their attack.
“Mother, Father,” said Keeah, running to them. “You came just in time —”
“We hope we’re in time,” said Relna. She hopped down from her pilka and opened her saddlebag. “While we were chasing Ko, a messenger came to us from the Guardians. They have been searching for you for the last hour.”
“Bodo and Vasa?” asked Julie.
The two Guardians lived in the flying city of Ro, which soared over Droon invisibly, except for one day a year, when it landed in the Kalahar Valley.
Khan nodded. “They asked you to come at once. The city is landing today. The Guardians know how to restore the staircase —”
“They do?” gasped Eric. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
The archers rode up the embankment and fired yet another round of arrows. Howling, the beasts retreated even farther.
“We’ll send these lions packing, then meet you in Ro,” said Zello. “Before we lost sight of the emperor’s floating palace, he was heading for Ro, too. Relna?”
The queen quickly took four bundles from her backpack. In a twinkling, each bundle unwrapped itself into a colorful little carpet.
Keeah beamed. “Pasha’s Mini-Speeders. They’re very fast. Faster than fast, in fact!”
“I call the one with stars,” said Neal, plopping onto a bright little rug.
“Max, you can come with me,” said Julie.
“Gladly,” he said. “Keeah, lead the way!”
Eric jumped onto a small maroon rug. “If there’s any way to bring back the staircase, we have to do it,” he said. “We need to get home before my vision becomes real.”
“We will,” Keeah vowed.
“Beware of wingsnakes,” said Khan. “Ko’s fiery snakes are always first to attack!”
“We’ll watch out,” said Julie. “Carpets, go!”
Whoosh! The magic carpets lifted up from the riverbank, wobbled for a second, then shot away across the sky.
Text copyright © 2004 by Robert T. Abbott.
Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.
SCHOLASTIC, LITTLE APPLE, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First printing, January 2004
Cover art by Tim Jessell
e-ISBN 978-0-545-41859-1
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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