by Gabe Hudson
WarWings has won the Inter-Academy Slave-Catching Championships for the last ten years in a row. Our closest competition is the ScalesOfDeath Academy, which is located on a suborbital space station. And each year virtually every dragon on the planet tunes in to watch as the WarWings and ScalesOfDeath Slave-Catching teams go head-to-head.
The WarWings team and the ScalesOfDeath team land on an unsuspecting planet filled with a proud and fierce race of beings. There are twelve players on each team, and each team member is armed with an array of weapons and cages. Squatting on the Designated Foreign Planet, the two opposing Slave-Catching teams line up with their backs to each other.
Then the referee drops his raised wings. And the invasion begins.
Now each team sets off flying in the opposite direction from the other team. The idea being that each team will fly all the way around the planet until they arrive at their original starting point. And all the while each team member tries to catch as many of the proud and fierce race of indigenous beings as possible on that planet and then put them in cages.
So whichever team ends up with the most indigenous slaves wins. The winning team takes their place on a gold dais and the conquered race of indigenous species kneel before their new Evil Intergalactic Dragon Overlords, with all of dragondom watching them on TV.
Of course this last part is more pageantry than sport. But it’s a huge hit with the dragons on our planet.
Even dragons who normally don’t dig watching sports will watch the Championship. Because it’s a good excuse to gather round the TV with their friends on a Sunday and get real freaking high by shooting each other with PartyBullets.
“You got a problem, Weak Sauce?” Twelk flies in real close to me and snorts flamestreams out his nostrils. “You feeling tough today?”
I quietly tell him no I do not have a problem today. And I make sure to keep my eyes staring forward as I say it, so as not to rile him up even more.
These flying dragon fools in our immediate area start snorting and hooting with laughter, on account of how I’m backing down from this jerk Twelk.
“What was that, Weak Sauce?” roars Twelk. “Speak louder, Weak Sauce!”
And then all the other treacherous cadets flying around us snort some more at hearing Twelk call me by my nickname. And the humiliation is definitely a little more keen than usual because of me being a senior and all, and this jerk Twelk is just a sophomore.
Don’t rile him up any more. Just stay calm and he’ll go away. He’s just trying to have a laugh. He’s not really going to hurt you.
Now I know Dr. Terrible would tell me that I should fry this scoundrel Twelk’s scaly green face with a mega firestream right this second. But I remind myself that I’m on my Queen Quest and I can’t let some little stupid sophomore derail my plans. Plus there’s the fact of the offending sophomore’s giant horns. Because those things look downright brutal.
So I just flap my wings and scoot far away from Twelk.
“That’s what I thought, Weak Sauce!” snarls Twelk. “You better fly away, Weak Sauce!”
And fly away I do. But stupid me, well I’m so busy clocking Twelk shouting threats at me from behind that I don’t keep an eye on what’s in front of me.
And suddenly up ahead I hear a familiar voice shout, “There he is! Get that bastard with the little horns!”
I whip my head around and peer down the corridor and:
Oh my God! It’s that bastard Rexro with some of his security goons!
I instantly close my wings and drop to the ground.
Rexro is crouched there on his powerful green haunches, blowing fire out his nostrils.
He’s flanked on either side by a couple of his Security Commando dragons. Because of the flaming torches mounted on the walls, Rexro’s shadow falls all the way down the corridor and stops right in front of my webbed feet.
But how did he find me?! Was it that Datalizard Trenx?! Did that robot rat my ass out?! It had to have been Trenx!
[ 18 ]
REXRO GOES FULL PSYCHO, PLUS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I ENCOUNTER A MYSTERIOUS WORMHOLE
Rexro points his powerstaff at me.
His tail is twitching around over his head in a murderous Threat Display.
“First I’m gonna eat your heart!” he roars. “Then you’re gonna die! And I’m going to enjoy watching you watch me eat your heart right before you die!”
Twelk and all his buddies come flying up from behind and drop to the ground and they circle around me like assassins, closing in. They’re all snorting and hooting with laughter.
“We’ll get him for you, sir!” shouts Twelk.
So as I stand here under Rexro’s horn-wilting glare, I can feel panic grip my big stupid over-large heart.
And without really thinking it through I tilt my scaly head back and shout:
“What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?”
Then, as if summoned by my cry for help, a small mirrored triangle appears in the air several feet in front of me.
Now even though I’ve never seen one before, I know in my bones that what I’m looking at is a rip in the space-time continuum.
And I know that this mirrored triangle hovering here in the air is an honest-to-goodness wormhole.
But I don’t have time to think about this because at that moment an insanely long red tongue comes zooming out of the mirrored triangle and then wraps around my neck and cinches itself tight like a noose.
My eyeballs bulge.
The sudden sensation of having this long insidious tongue wrapped tight around my neck is grotesque in the extreme.
Then the tongue yanks back and I’m whipped off my webbed feet and I go flying headfirst through the wormhole. And at the time I can’t make sense of what’s happening but I do notice when I shoot through the wormhole that I hear the same noise you hear when you come flying down out of the sky at top speed and then dive into the ocean.
Splash.
[ 19 ]
SPLASH, TURNS OUT MY SCALY GREEN ASS WAS WRONG
Splash.
But I’m wrong. Turns out it isn’t a wormhole. Though considering what the mirrored triangle turns out to be, a wormhole would’ve been a welcome alternative.
Professor Nog.
Underworld.
I should’ve known. The mirrored triangle is a portal to Professor Nog’s lair in the Underworld. The Realm of the Dead.
This is another one of WarWings’ claims to fame. We’re the only military academy in the galaxy whose campus extends to the Underworld and whose curriculum prepares cadets for battling and conquering hideous creatures and spirits from the Realm of the Dead.
Some of our notable alumni have made a real name for themselves by doing mega damage in the twisted hellscapes of the Abyss. And because of our alumni’s battles with deranged ghost armies and warlord spirits and whatnot, there’s plenty of demons and deadlings who when they see a WarWings grad coming down the street on a dark night will cross to the other side.
Professor Nog’s the only member of the WarWings faculty who is actually dead, though. And so going to his lair is never exactly a picnic. No matter how many times you’ve been there, it always manages to give you a fresh case of the heebie-jeebies.
So it was Professor Nog’s cold dead tongue that had looped around my long neck and then yanked me into the Realm of the Dead.
Now as I squat here in his repulsive lair in the Underworld, I take one look at crusty old Professor Nog soaking himself in a LavaTub and grinning at me with a beakful of fangs, and decide I want to get out of here pronto.
Nog looks at me from the LavaTub and he squirts blacksmoke out his nostrils. “Welcome, Gork. Nice of you to drop in this morning.”
But because of all the deranged voices floating through the air, and their weird moaning and spooky cries, I’m having a hard time focusing on Professor Nog. That’s the first thing you notice down here, the constant cries for help.
In the Underworld, there’s all these
crazy disembodied voices howling and screaming for all of eternity. And the chorus of these hideous voices will fray your nerve endings in a heartbeat. And what with all this moaning plus the ethereal presence of those ghosts and demons and deadlings swooshing around in Nog’s lair, well it makes the scales on the back of my long green neck stand up.
I hiss and spray sparks out my beak. And I lash my tail around behind me.
But Nog doesn’t even seem to notice my hiss. You’d be amazed at the stuff you can get away with when it comes to the dead. Maybe it’s because their eyes and earholes are so old and crusty, I don’t know. But you can take my word for it, the dead aren’t nearly as perceptive as they’d have you believe. And while Nog’s powers are immense, his actual talon-eye coordination is rotten. Downright pathetic, if you want to know the truth.
Then my horns start tingling like crazy. But that’s to be expected, really. Any dragon with a pulse is gonna have tingly horns while they’re down here in the Underworld. Tingly horns just come with the territory. I whip my tail around behind me, trying to shake off the big freakout that’s building up inside me.
“Good morning, Professor! What an unexpected pleasure to see you, sir!” I say.
Of course I’m lying through my fangs. Because being down here in the Underworld is about as pleasurable as getting a lava enema.
But the thing you always have to keep in mind when it comes to Professor Nog is he is the sole dragon who has the power to send you back up to the World of the Living. And so you’d be a real fool not to be extra polite and all to Nog.
Earlier this semester there’d been a smart-aleck dragon named Torp who kept spitting lavaloogies at the rest of us cadets during Professor Nog’s class. And finally one day in the middle of his lecture, Professor Nog walked over to Torp and, while continuing his lecture, just clamped a metal collar around Torp’s long green neck and tossed him in a cage. And then Professor Nog got one of his pet demons to come wheel Torp’s cage away, and that was the last any of us ever saw of that dragon fool Torp again.
None of us were crazy enough to ask Nog what’d become of Torp, and it was just generally understood that Torp’s was a heinous and demented fate beyond reckoning.
The word around WarWings is that Professor Nog’s at least five thousand years old. Whereas Dr. Terrible is only six hundred and eighty-four years old. Shoot, compared to Nog, my scaly grandpa is a mere baby dragon.
“Well Gork, I couldn’t help but notice that you seemed like you were in a real bind up there,” says Professor Nog, squirting blacksmoke out his nostrils. “I watched the whole thing from down here in my lair. And since Rexro is such a brute I thought why not give Gork a few minutes for his WILL TO POWER to reboot! Plus we might as well take this opportunity to consider your final grade, so you don’t come crying to me later and make a fuss.”
“Yes sir,” I say. “Very kind of you to think of me, Professor.”
I’ve been taking Nog’s Conquering and Ruling Over Demons course this semester. So on some level I’m happy to discuss my grade. Because the truth is I surprised myself by how well I’ve performed when it comes to battling deranged ghosts and twisted spirits and demons in Professor Nog’s class.
Just last week in class, Professor Nog had tossed me in a giant fiery pit full of melting bones and I’d savagely fought and defeated a platoon of blue Kethlethrop demons right there in the pit. I’d actually shown considerable WILL TO POWER that day in class, because I’d gone on a demented rampage and ripped the arms right off of those fleeing demons.
It was all pretty fiendish and ghastly of me, if I do say so myself.
And the rest of my dragon classmates had gathered around the edge of the fiery pit, cheering me on as I went full beasty on those blue demons.
Anyway, like I said, old Nog is the only WarWings faculty member who is actually dead. And if Professor Nog has any advanced degrees, I sure don’t know about them.
As far as I can tell, his sole qualification for the position of professor is the fact that he’s dead. Instead of a diploma on the wall, he’s got his death certificate up there.
Now one cadet who loves Professor Nog is Fribby. Nog is Fribby’s faculty adviser and she pretty much thinks he’s the most righteous dragon in the universe. I am sure you can guess why.
Professor Nog grabs a timer on the side of the LavaTub and flips it upside down and the sand starts pouring down into the lower glass tube.
“In order to get you down here, I had to put a Time Freeze up there,” says Professor Nog and points up with his talon in the general direction of the WarWings campus, which is several thousand leagues above us. “We don’t have much time to discuss your grade. Five minutes tops.” He nods at the timer where the sand in the top glass container is streaming down into the bottom glass container. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. So let’s get started,” he says. “Please lie down on the couch over there.”
I peer across the room and see the couch he’s talking about and it sure doesn’t look like anybody’s idea of a good time. This hideous couch is made of flaming hot coals.
“Make yourself comfortable, Gork,” says Professor Nog, grinning a beakful of fangs.
Now I’m not exactly sure why I do what I do next. That’s the way it is with me sometimes. I guess the pressure of being in the Underworld just gets to me and I sort of lose my mind. Goodness knows I wouldn’t be the first dragon to do so down here.
Anyway, I take one more look at this demented couch made of flaming hot coals and shout, “Are you crazy? Heck no, I’m not getting on that couch! I’m on my Queen Quest! Maybe some other time, Professor!”
Then I turn and bound off on my green webbed feet and get a running start and leap into the air and flap my wings—thwack-thwack—and try to fly away as fast as I can.
Which isn’t very fast, it turns out.
Because one of Nog’s pets, a giant red demon, rises up out of the floor in front of me and roars a mouthful of flames. Now the weird part is this demon is two-dimensional. He’s flat as a sheet of paper, but that doesn’t prevent him from being insanely scary.
And at the last second, I recognize the demon as that former dragon Torp I was telling you about. The maniac who had the gall to cut up and spit lavaloogies in Professor Nog’s class.
My God, how he has changed.
Well I guess that answers the question as to what Professor Nog does with his delinquent students. He turns them into pets.
If you consider a demon a pet, I don’t know.
Now I’m sure not proud to have to be telling you this, but when that hideous demon Torp pops up right in front of my face, well I just shriek and faint in midflight.
[ 20 ]
HERE IN THE UNDERWORLD, PROFESSOR NOG SHOWS ME MY MORTAL FORECAST
I have no idea how long I’m out.
It could be a few seconds.
Or it could be a thousand years.
I really wouldn’t know the difference.
That’s how hard I fainted.
Anyway, when I finally come to, I slowly stand up on my trembling haunches.
“Tsk tsk tsk,” says Professor Nog, still lounging in his LavaTub. “Well we sure are tightly wound today, aren’t we, Gork? Now go lie down on that couch over there so we can discuss your grade.”
I reach up and feel a giant knot on my scaly head. I’m woozy. I flick my powerstaff and a small mirror pops up in front of my beak and I study my scaly green reflection and see five nasty-looking slashes in my forehead from where that demon Torp has swiped me with his claws.
“Not bad, Professor,” I say, looking at the slashes. “These could make some nice scars.”
Now in case you don’t know, teenage dragons love scars.
We love scars even more than tattoos. Because there’s nothing that says mega WILL TO POWER like having a bunch of boss scars all over your scaly green ass, especially if you’ve got a fiendish story to go with your scars. And picking up some legit claw scars on your forehead while you
’re down in the Underworld, well that’s something that’s guaranteed to get the dragonettes’ attention, if you know what I mean.
So I’m feeling better already.
“So far so good, Professor. What’s next on the agenda?” I say.
The professor looks at me and shakes his scaly green head like I’m an idiot. “You have no idea how much trouble you’re in, do you, son?” he says. “Have you looked at today’s Forecast? Have you even looked at The Digital Fire-Breather? Do you know what the Oddsmakers have your death at for today, Gork?”
Hearing this, I instantly feel the confidence drain right out of me. The Oddsmakers are a secret syndicate of blind faculty who keep track of which cadets are most likely to die on a given day. And my earholes start quivering at the mere mention of the Oddsmakers.
The Oddsmakers are able to look into the future and see multiple possibilities for how any circumstance could work out. And using some complex and mysterious system of metrics and analytics and talon throwing and ash reading, each morning the Oddsmakers give the Mortal Forecast. And each morning they post these results up on The Digital Fire-Breather.
How could I forget to check the Mortal Forecast this morning? You idiot!
I guess with it being Crown Day and all, it must’ve slipped my mind to click to the back of The Digital Fire-Breather and check. Plus I was probably so busy reading that post about Dr. Terrible’s disappearance that I’d been sort of distracted.
Now Professor Nog flicks his powerstaff and a colorful graph image of the Oddsmakers’ Mortal Forecast appears in the air. And above the graph I see my name in bold red letters. And there’s a diagonal slash through my name, as if I’ve already been crossed off the List of the Living.
“Read it and weep, Cadet Gork. 99.9% chance of you dying today,” says Professor Nog. “You’ve got a 0.1% chance of making it through Crown Day alive! Down here when a dragon only has a 0.1% chance of living, that means it’s pretty much game over. There’s already a nest down here with your name on it.”