Cave of Nightmares

by V. St. Clair

  “Bonk needs it,” Hayden muttered, thinking that the little dragon would be lucky to be able to fly after all the snacks he’d been plied with over the last two weeks.

  They made a game of sneaking into the house undetected, on the off-chance that Zane’s mother was waiting to assign them more chores, tip-toeing up the wooden stairwell and hopping over the stair that creaked. They stopped just outside of Maybelle and Victoria’s room, hearing voices from within.

  Carefully, Zane opened the door about an inch and peered in through the crack. Hayden, who was slightly taller, stood on his tip-toes to look over his friend’s head. Zane’s sisters were playing with Felix, Victoria brushing the fox’s red hair with a large paddle hairbrush while Maybelle attempted to secure a barrette to it. Bonk was lying belly-up on a pile of cushions, either asleep or dead.

  “It’s no good, we’ll never get Felix free from them,” Zane whispered darkly, smirking when the fox shook off the hair barrette.

  “Casualty of war,” Hayden said with pity. “Psst, Bonk!” he whispered as loudly as he dared, hoping to catch the dragon’s attention. “Bonk, wake up!”

  The little dragon’s ears perked up in interest, and Bonk hopped to his feet and looked around for the source of the noise.

  “Over here,” Hayden whispered, feeling like an idiot for hiding from two girls like this, but he knew they’d never relinquish his familiar to him if he asked.

  Bonk caught sight of him and walked quietly towards the door, which Zane nudged gently open. Without being asked, Bonk took flight and perched upon Hayden’s shoulder. He was a little surprised at how much he missed that in recent days.

  They snuck back out of the house and took off at a near-run until they were hidden behind a cluster of trees on the neighbor’s property.

  “Okay Bonk, get some exercise, you’re free now.” Hayden leaned over to catch his breath and Bonk took flight, soaring into the air and making a wide sweeping circle overhead. He almost immediately dove back to the ground, his tiny claws clamped around a struggling mouse as he lifted off again.

  “Figures, first thing he does is go hunting for food.” Hayden sighed and watched his dragon take roost in a tree, turning away before he could hear the sounds of tearing that usually made him queasy.

  “Come on, I haven’t shown you the Abelard’s orchards yet. They’ve got so many trees you can barely walk two feet without running into one,” Zane explained cheerfully. “They might even let us have an apple if they’re in a neighborly mood today.”

  “And if they’re not in a neighborly mood?” Hayden asked curiously.

  Zane shrugged. “Then they’ll probably chase us away with broomsticks like they always do. You’re fine as long as you can run fast.”

  The two of them stepped carefully over a wooden picket that divided the properties and continued on through the ankle-high grass across a wide field. A few miles in the distance Hayden could see rocky formations, possibly a cave, and when he asked about them his friend said, “Oh yeah, when I was a kid, Maybelle and I would climb around those rocks all the time. We never did find a cave, though.” He sounded disappointed about it.

  The sun was still high in the sky, and with casual interest Hayden removed a prism from his belt at random (he and Zane still wore their equipment for school out of habit) and twisted it into his circlet.

  “What are you doing?” his friend asked curiously.

  “Just admiring the sunlight.” Hayden tilted his face upwards and closed his left eye to avoid being blinded by direct sunlight. The prism over his right eye lit up magnificently with dozens of arrays. “I know I sound like a loser for saying this, but I kind of miss school.”

  Zane sighed. “Yeah, me too. It’s nice to be home and all, but all these days without practicing conjury just makes me feel like I’m getting rusty.”

  “Mm,” Hayden agreed, still admiring the play of colors in front of him as he studied their surroundings. “I wonder how many more major alignments I haven’t discovered yet in this thing.” He lifted the eyepiece so he could see normally and resumed walking alongside Zane. “Just when I think I’ve found them all, Asher shows us another spell hidden within it and I feel like a chump for missing it all this time.”

  “I don’t know how you make heads or tails of it at all,” Zane said with admiration. “I’d be lucky to avoid poking myself in the eye with the pointy end.”

  Hayden laughed. “I nearly did that once, on accident.” He grimaced at the memory. “I was in a hurry during one of our arenas and tried to put the dumb thing in backwards; nearly gouged my eye out before I realized my mistake.”

  They shared a laugh over that as Zane led him over another low fence and into an apple orchard. He’d been right about the description: there were so many trees that Hayden could barely wind a path around them. Most of the apples growing overhead were red and ripe, and a few littered the ground near their feet.

  “Wow, must be a good harvest this year,” Hayden said admiringly.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Zane whistled as they cut through the orchard, eventually emerging near the far end of the property, furthest from the house. “Don’t suppose they’d notice if we helped ourselves…” he leaned down and picked up a fallen apple, inspecting it briefly for worms before shining it on his shirt and taking a bite. “Mm, delicious.”

  Hayden was about to follow his example when a large shadow passed overhead, catching him off-guard. It was gone by the time he looked up, and a feeling of unease settled over him.

  “Zane? What was that big shadow that just passed over us?”

  “Hmm?” His friend was too focused on eating to notice. “I dunno, probably a cloud or something.”

  “It’s not cloudy out at all…” Hayden pursed his lips, nerves tingling unpleasantly as he looked around. Was he imagining the loud thump he just heard inside the orchard?

  Apparently not, because Zane said, “Whoa, what was that?” and turned to look in the same direction.

  “Dunno. Maybe we’d…better go….”

  Zane dropped his apple and turned to follow him just as they heard a loud, inhuman snort from inside the cluster of trees, accompanied by the sound of sticks snapping.

  “Uhh…faster would be better than slower,” Zane took off running along the perimeter of the orchard, taking the longer but hopefully safer route back towards his house.

  Hayden was right beside him, glancing back only when he heard a loud thumping noise but seeing nothing there.

  It’s probably nothing…we’re just being twitchy…

  The dark shadow passed overhead again, and this time Hayden had time to look up and see what it was before he stumbled and fell to the ground, skinning his knees. Zane stopped dead in his tracks, but not because he’d fallen.

  It was because their path was blocked by a twenty-foot dragon.

  If Bonk was cute and cuddly, this larger reproduction was anything but. It was a dark green color, each of its spiked teeth the length of Hayden’s forearm, its claws big enough to carry a horse. It’s long, sweeping tail was spiked at the end, and the slitted yellow eyes that stared at them were void of any sort of human intelligence. Where Bonk seemed to have some primitive level of understanding, this creature was nothing but a feral beast.

  “Oh…well…” Zane muttered softly, voice shaking with terror. “I believe we’ve found the dragon that’s been terrorizing the town….”

  Hayden scrambled to his feet, taking a few measured steps backward in time with his friend.

  “Well, you did say you wished some mages would get on it.”

  Zane let out a helpless, high-pitched giggle. “Yeah, but I’d kind of meant ones who graduated from the second year.”

  Almost subconsciously, Hayden lifted his hand and lowered the eyepiece with the prism in front of his eye, preparing for a fight.

  “Hayden, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Zane muttered, still stepping backwards while the dragon watched them with ominous interest. �
�We can’t fight a fully-grown dragon…”

  “It seems we might have to,” Hayden hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. For some reason he was having a hard time remembering all the spells he knew at this critical moment.

  Why didn’t they throw me up against dragons in the challenge arenas instead of stupid hydras?

  “Almost nothing will penetrate their thick skin…” Zane was whispering, wincing when the dragon took a lumbering step closer to them. “They’re really fast, and strong, and headed right towards us…” he squeaked out the last part as the dragon began to walk almost lazily at them.

  “We could run for it?” Hayden suggested weakly, not knowing what else to do.

  “That’ll probably just excite it and make it tear us apart faster.”

  “Okay, well, what’s the plan then?” They were trying to speed up their retreat in time with the dragon’s advances, but the dragon’s strides were much longer.

  “Uh…die a horrible death?”

  “Can’t you conjure a spear or something?” Hayden asked desperately.

  “Sure, what do you suggest I draw on?” He gestured around at the empty field. The dragon seemed to grow tired of waiting for them to make a move, unfurling its massive wings and lunging towards them without any further warning.

  Hayden and Zane dove in opposite directions, narrowly avoiding the beast’s jaws as they rolled back to their feet and took off running in the direction of Zane’s house, though he had no idea what they’d do when they got there. This thing could probably tear the roof off if it wanted to get to them badly enough, and then the whole family would be doomed.

  The dragon outpaced them and landed in front of them once more, blocking their path. It hissed menacingly and launched itself at them again, claws outstretched to grab them, and once more they had to roll across the ground to avoid being hit.

  Hayden spun the prism desperately around in his eyepiece, praying for inspiration.

  “Fire!” he screamed, taking careful aim. A burst of flame engulfed the dragon, which gave a satisfied roar.

  “Fire!? You IDIOT!” Zane cried out, scrambling to his feet. “Fire is a dragon’s best friend! You just made it more powerful!”

  “Oh, I forgot.” Hayden winced and dove out of the way as the dragon spit poison at them. He felt some splash against the back of his shirt and he hurried to rip it off before it could seep into his skin.

  The dragon dove again and Zane let out a truly terrifying scream. Hayden whirled around, heart plummeting when he saw his friend locked in the dragon’s clutches, claws raising him up into the air as though about to toss him into its mouth.

  Panicking, Hayden pulled out his amber prism and held it in front of the clear one, confronted with hundreds of arrays in the light of the sun as his mind struggled to translate them. He remembered Master Asher’s words to him, almost hauntingly. You’re not permitted to compound your prisms unless you’re in imminent danger of death—and not in the arena.

  Well, he was fairly certain Zane was going to be eaten by a dragon if he didn’t try something desperate, so surely this qualified as ‘imminent death’. His eye caught a familiar array and he focused his will more intently than he ever had before as he shouted, “BREAK!”

  The dragon’s leg didn’t break, as he’d hoped, but it obviously felt some sort of pain because it dropped Zane and let out a roar of rage. The two prisms vanished in a puff of dust, entirely consumed by the single spell.

  Zane was trying to scramble away from the dragon, his leg bleeding through his pants as he limped towards Hayden. The dragon was rearing up for another attack, and he was completely out of ideas for how to fight it now that his prisms were spent. He closed his eyes and prepared for the worst as another—much smaller—shadow flew over his head.

  Hayden opened his eyes in time to see Bonk fly towards his much larger counterpart, and he let out a wail of dismay.

  Not Bonk too!

  “Run away, you stupid dragon! He’ll eat you!”

  In fact, that’s exactly what the larger dragon did. It opened its mouth and swallowed Bonk in one gulp, chomping down on him once for good measure. Hayden heard his poor familiar let out a devastating shriek as he disappeared inside the larger creature, and choked back a sob at the unexpected loss of his poor, stupid companion, who died trying to save him.

  Zane managed to make it back to him, though there was really nowhere for the two of them to go. They were nowhere near shelter and no one was coming to save them. He remembered Master Asher telling him he’d have his back, both inside Mizzenwald and out.

  Where are you now, Asher?

  Of course, the Prism Master likely didn’t think Hayden would be battling fully-grown dragons on holiday, but it was still depressing to know that he and Zane would die here in a field, utterly alone.

  The dragon lumbered towards them, sensing their helplessness, jaws opened wide.

  Well, looks like I’ll be seeing Bonk soon enough.

  The dragon snapped its jaws shut and stopped in its tracks, looking suddenly confused. It shook its head several times and then started towards them again, but almost immediately wobbled to one side as though dizzy.

  “What’s happening to it?” Zane asked, his voice a croak.

  “I don’t know…” Hayden grabbed his friend’s shoulder and pulled him back a few feet, alert for another attack.

  The dragon took a few steps sideways, roaring and shaking its head viciously. It let out an agonized wail and collapsed on its stomach in front of them, shuddering for a few seconds but eventually becoming still.

  “What in the world just happened?” Zane limped forward, one hand clasped over his injured leg. “Is it dead?”

  “I don’t know, but we probably shouldn’t touch it….It might be faking.”

  Zane gave him a strange look. “Since when have dragons ever played dead?”

  Hayden had no idea, but this entire thing seemed fishy to him. Still, he couldn’t let Zane approach the creature alone and injured, so he followed hesitantly, drawing his cherry wand because it made him feel safer to have it in his hand.

  “I can still hear something from inside it…it must not be quite finished yet,” he grimaced, hearing a muffled wail.

  “No, wait, I think it’s—” Zane grabbed the dragon’s bottom jaw with both hands and pried it open. “It is! It’s Bonk!”

  “WHAT!?” Hayden scrambled to help, and together they managed to pry the dragon’s mouth open without getting poisoned. Bonk waddled out of the dragon’s gullet, took a few teetering steps on the ground, and then fell onto his side, panting.

  “Bonk!” Hayden lifted him up gently, examining the puncture marks in his side from where the larger dragon bit him. “He’s hurt! We’ve got to get him to Torin—”

  “Torin’s not here…”

  “Then someone LIKE Torin!” Hayden shouted, panicked beyond measure. “Come on, hurry.” He took off running in the direction of Zane’s house, desperate to save his familiar in any way possible. Zane was struggling to keep up with his injured leg, and fell behind until Hayden barged through the back door of the house shouting for help.

  Zane’s parents and all five sisters came running at his shouts, looking shocked and scared when they saw a shirtless Hayden with Bonk’s limp body in his arms and Zane bleeding. Maybelle, the second oldest of his sisters, was sent running into town to find someone who could help Bonk, while the others started treating Zane. Sera, his oldest sister and the only one in the family with magic beside him, began examining Hayden’s dragon in the meantime.

  The cut on Zane’s leg was long but not terribly deep, though it had gotten quite dirty during the scuffle with the dragon. Hayden was pleasantly surprised to discover that he still had a level-two rose-and-ethyl infused salve in one of the pouches of his belt. He’d gotten an eight out of ten on that assignment.

  Zane clenched his teeth to bite back a scream as he applied the salve, which he knew must sting horribly but would act as a di
sinfectant. Dressing his friend’s wound helped take his mind off of Bonk, who was lying on a couch cushion panting pitifully while Sera fussed over him without actually accomplishing anything.

  Don’t die…please don’t die…

  It felt like a year passed before Maybelle returned with a young woman with dark hair and an apron full of herbs and ointments. Hayden wasn’t positive that he trusted someone so young with the care of his familiar, but he didn’t have a lot of options at the moment. Even if he could find someone with the skill to translocate them to Mizzenwald, none of the Masters or Torin would be there.

  The healer didn’t even stop to introduce herself, laying eyes on Bonk immediately and hurrying over to tend to him.

  “Where did you find her?” Victoria asked her older sister quietly, watching with worry.

  “At the apothecary, actually. There weren’t a lot of options…I mean, not just anyone has the know-how to treat a magical creature. She said she’s never worked on a real dragonling before, but that she could try.”

  Hayden gulped and closed his eyes, really wishing he hadn’t heard that last bit.

  He edged closer to the stranger, who was pouring an opaque pink liquid into Bonk’s mouth and asked, “Is he going to be alright?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” she admitted, not even sparing him a glance, which was fine by him right now. “What in the world did he get in a fight with that managed to bite through his scales? Almost nothing has teeth that strong.”

  Hayden grimaced. “Another dragon. A much, much bigger one.”

  She let out a sigh of amazement. “Do you mean the one that’s been terrorizing the town for the last three months?”

  “Unless there’s more than one massive green dragon hanging around, and if that’s the case then I want to go back to school right now,” Zane grumbled from his position on the floor.

  “However did you two escape it?” she gasped.

  “I spent my prisms saving Zane from it and then it ate Bonk…then it just sort of…died.” Hayden frowned. “I have no idea why.”

  “Hmm…” the healer finished smearing a thick blue paste over Bonk’s wounds and wrapped a bandage around him before examining his opened mouth. “Maybe that’s why this little guy’s poison ducts have been emptied.”