by Gavin Brown
With a yelp, the boy fell to the ground. He flailed about and grabbed the frame of the open shaft.
Spike reacted immediately, jumping to Karim’s aid. She grabbed him under the arms and braced herself against the doorframe, helping to hold him in place as the tentacles reached from the darkness of the other elevator and took hold of his legs.
“Can you kick it off?” she asked.
“It’s too tight!” Karim answered.
Spike felt Karim slipping away, inch by inch. She gritted her teeth and pulled. At first her feet slipped, but then she found a grip on the doorframe and wrapped her leg around it. A bit of sour ooze began to eat at one of her shoes, but she ignored it.
She wasn’t going to let Tuckerville win this one. She dug in and reached a standstill.
“What is that thing?” Tommy asked as he continued to hold back the menacing gremlins with wide sweeps of the sword.
“A pit lurker!” Karim shouted.
Spike was straining to hold Karim in place. “How do we beat it?”
“You’re not going to like this, but … I need to look it up. Hold on!” Karim said.
“What? Okay, I guess.” Spike gripped Karim, holding him in place.
He was grasping the doorframe with one hand, phone in the other, and skimming the entry on pit lurkers.
The pit lurker is exactly what it sounds like. Deep in the recesses of a cave, it lies in wait for unsuspecting adventurers. Then its blue tentacles shoot out and grapple them, pulling them down to a squishy grave.
Any caves in the dark and the damp can be home to pit lurkers.
Pit lurkers are deadly foes, with a multitude of incredibly strong tentacles. Once one has a grip on its prey, very little can cause it to let go. And even if you do manage to cut one with a magical weapon, there are many more waiting to take its place.
Pit lurkers share a similar skin texture to the common snail. Especially in dry environments, pit lurkers are vulnerable to salt. In fact, they have such a strong aversion to it that a few shakes of a saltshaker is enough to give them pause.
The original entry on these monsters said that no one had ever seen the actual face of a pit lurker and lived to tell the tale. One summer on an adventure in Egypt, I took it upon myself to change that. I succeeded, but only at the cost of a lifetime of nightmares. If you think the tentacles are gross, you do not want to see what I have seen.
“Salt!” Karim yelled. “We need to put salt on it!”
“Um, it’s not like we brought a picnic basket down here,” Spike said. “Tommy, any chance you brought a saltshaker or some salt packets or something?”
“No, sorry!” Tommy said, cutting a wide arc through the air and sending a crowd of gremlins skittering backward. “Oh, wait. I do have a salt-and-vinegar Brotein bar …”
“I guess that’s our only chance. Where is it?” Spike said, but she could already see it peeking out the top of his back pocket. “Okay, I see it. Just … back up. As close to us as you can.”
Tommy backed up, wielding the sword with his two hands as the gremlins started closing in.
“Ow!” Karim yelped. “It’s starting to squeeze!”
Gritting her teeth, Spike reached up. It wasn’t really where she wanted to be sticking her hand, but this was a desperate situation. She reached in and pulled the bar from Tommy’s back pocket. With one hand still holding on, she managed to use her teeth to open the wrapper and rubbed the bar on the tentacle gripping Karim’s leg.
A high-pitched whine came from the other elevator shaft, and the tentacles jerked back into the darkness.
Spike jumped and turned to the dragon, who had been watching all this without making a move. It seemed that the gremlins knew better than to attack a dragon and were focused entirely on the humans.
“Will you help us?” Spike faced the dragon and took a deep breath. “Please?”
The dragon grunted in response.
“We are trapped here by the same evil man,” Spike said. “He wanted us to fight and kill each other. Help us escape, together.”
“Show us what a powerful dragon you are,” Karim added. “Show that you are better than—”
“Ow!” Tommy said from behind them, kicking away a gremlin that made it past him and took a bite of his leg. “They’re fast little things!”
Finally, the dragon folded its legs and splayed out its wings. It rumbled quietly. Spike could hear the annoyance in that sound. She didn’t need the translator to understand what the razorback was saying; she could read it in the beast’s eyes. Anger, pride … and perhaps a grudging respect?
The dragon rumbled again. “Climb on, then,” the translation app said.
Karim and Spike jumped on, and Spike watched as Tommy stayed behind to provide backup support. The dragon climbed into the shaft on top of the elevator car that was parked at the floor below.
“Tommy, get on!” Spike yelled.
He gave one final broad swing of the sword, sending the gremlins jumping back one more time. He turned and leaped onto the dragon, scrambling up to its neck.
Tommy clung there, while Spike was at the dragon’s tail and Karim somehow wedged between them. The gremlins had surrounded them, and he did his best to continue threatening them with the sword, but they crowded into the elevator shaft, attempting to climb on top of the dragon.
Tommy yelped as one of the gremlins jumped up and clawed at him. Their flashlights were off, so the only light available filtered down from somewhere far above. He kicked at it savagely and felt a thump as his shoe struck it in the chest and it fell back. Behind him, he could hear Spike and Karim grappling with their own gremlins.
A few times the creature’s wings scraped the ooze on the walls, and a sizzling sound filled the air. As its wings flexed in the wide elevator shaft, Tommy suddenly had the sense of this creature’s immense size. In the basement, it had been huge, even folded in on itself.
A gremlin somehow jumped past Tommy’s guard and sank its teeth into his left leg. He grabbed it and pulled, while still trying to keep the sword in action, but its teeth were locked on him.
Suddenly, the dragon’s powerful legs flexed, and it leaped upward. For a moment, everything lurched. In the darkness, Tommy couldn’t quite understand what was happening. There was the rush of air around him as the powerful wings flapped, and the dragon appeared to be using its claws to push off the walls, as if running up the shaft, picking up speed to take flight.
The last thing he saw from the basement was a glimpse of the gremlins pouncing on the remaining Brotein (“Knowledge is power—but so are muscles”) bar that was lying on the floor. What a terrible waste. Even though it was probably covered in tentacle slime, he still kind of wished Spike had managed to grab it. You never knew when you would be really hungry. Was there a five-second rule for tentacle slime?
The gremlin loosened its grip for a moment, and Tommy yanked, pulling the thing off his leg. As the dragon began to ascend, he tossed it to the ground. One of the flashlights illuminated it for a moment, hissing and gesturing rudely at him from the ground below. He glanced back to see Karim and Spike were both holding on, and seemed to have survived the gremlin onslaught.
Tommy heard the sizzling of armored claws meeting sour ooze as the razorback struggled to gain altitude. Gremlins kept jumping at them, but with three humans kicking and Tommy’s sword poking at them, the last ones fell off as the dragon ascended the first two stories.
For the next few seconds there was only the scraping of claw against concrete, the flapping of wings, and the rumblings of the dragon. Through the scales, Tommy could feel its massive muscles flexing, working hard in the confined space.
With the lurching movement and the rushing air, Tommy was forced to close his eyes. Some wild combination of wings, claws, and sheer force of dragon will propelled them upward. He knew that the bite on his leg would hurt later, but for now all he could focus on was holding on to the dragon’s neck.
Tommy clung to the creature, feeling hi
s fingers scrape against its armorlike scales. Karim’s grasp on Tommy’s leg was like a vise, almost cutting off his circulation. Tommy felt his grip slip on the rough scales, but with a wild lunge he grabbed hold again. He clenched harder and managed to stay on. He hadn’t been exercising every day with the Gripmaster 2000 to have his hands fail him now. He was Tommy. He was strength and power. And he would hold on!
At last, the wild swaying stopped. In the darkness, Tommy could hear only panting for long seconds, some from the humans and the loudest by far from a powerful dragon throat.
Spike’s light flicked on. They were perched near the top of the shaft, the dragon straddling its legs wide to hold them in place.
The dragon rumbled and poked its head against one of the elevator doors, but no one had the translation app running. Still, they understood well enough.
Balancing precariously on the dragon, this was twice as hard as it had been down below. Karim and Spike helped to brace Tommy as he slid Sidesplitter’s tip in between the elevator doors.
Tommy roared. Some jobs required clever and oddball ideas, like the ones Karim had. Some took strategy and a ruthless determination to win. That was Spike. And some took guts and raw strength. That was Tommy.
He strained against the door, the pain in his cut-up hands flaring. But that was nothing. Pain was the feeling of victory coming closer. He heaved, and the doors slid open. Once they were parted enough for the dragon to put its head through, Tommy pulled the sword, handed it off to Karim to sheathe, and let the beast force the doors open with its powerful neck. Tommy closed his eyes and hung on tight as the dragon pushed its way through the door and carried them out of the elevator.
Tommy had thought that the dragon would stop to let them off, but it kept its momentum and strode forward. They were in a large office space at the very top of the eight-story building, and moonlight was streaming in through large floor-to-ceiling windows that circled them.
“Oh no,” Karim said. “No, no, no.”
“Everyone hold on!” Spike advised.
The dragon lumbered forward, and Tommy realized almost too late what was about to happen. He closed his eyes and ducked his head close to the razorback’s neck. The dragon roared as glass shattered around them and it leaped out into the sky.
For a moment they plummeted, and Tommy had a vision of three kids and a dragon, all splattered on the street below. Then, with a great whoosh, the wings flapped, and Tommy was suddenly weightless.
This wasn’t like the lurching, blind madness of the elevator shaft. Tommy was flying. It was like nothing he had ever experienced before. The rush of the air around him, the buildings zipping by below. With every beat of the dragon’s wings, Tommy’s heart nearly stopped. But when the dragon started to glide, Tommy’s cut-up hands and Karim’s vise grip on his leg were completely forgotten.
They were out.
The dragon set the trio down in a park a couple blocks from the office building. All three of them tumbled off and lay on the ground.
Flying had been amazing, but the whole experience left Spike woozy. She tried to stand up, but felt a wave of dizziness and knelt back down on the ground and gasped.
“How does it fly like that?” Spike whispered. “It must weigh a couple tons! Those wings aren’t that big.” It just didn’t make sense that a hunk of bones and scales that heavy could possibly become airborne.
“Thaumatologists speculate that it has some way of counteracting gravity,” Karim explained, trying to remember the article that he’d read on this last year. “But no one really knows. Aeronautical engineers say that it just doesn’t make sense.”
“Do not let appearances deceive you,” the dragon said, a voice rumbling from its throat rather than the app. “I am … very aerodynamic.”
“You … you speak English! Why didn’t you tell us?” Spike demanded. Was this thing serious? Had it really been able to speak and understand them all this time? She wanted to wring its neck but realized that trying to do so would probably hurt her hands.
“You never asked me, did you?” the razorback answered, laughter rumbling in its belly. “You just assumed.”
“That’s crazy!” Tommy complained. “How should we have known to ask?”
“I suppose that I would not have told you, anyway,” the dragon said. “True dragon kin speak all languages. But it is a great honor for me to speak to you in your language. Earlier, you had not yet earned it. Now you have saved me and I have saved you. We are bonded. You are quite clever gerbils. I thank you.”
Tommy and Karim seemed to be looking at the razorback with awe and reverence, but Spike scoffed. All this honor junk was the sort of thing that got you killed. If she hadn’t had the translation app ready to go, they all would have died in that basement. All because this overgrown salamander apparently had an ego the size of Montana.
“Do you have a name?” Karim asked.
“I do,” the razorback answered. “Among my people, I am called Pipsqueak.”
Spike couldn’t help but laugh and heard the others trying to hide their amusement.
The dragon looked at them with what seemed clearly to be a scowl. “A dragon does not choose their own name,” Pipsqueak said. “And I am the smallest of my clan. But one day, I will be queen. Size matters not, when you have spirit.”
Spike grinned at that, and for a moment it seemed the dragon inclined her head in acknowledgment.
Pipsqueak turned to leave.
“Wait!” Tommy said, stepping forward. “I have one more question for you. Why do you keep calling us rodents?”
The razorback looked down at Tommy, her bulk making even his size seem insignificant. “It is the correct name, of course. You have your categories for things, and so do we. The razorbacks group animals together by taste,” Pipsqueak explained. “Rodents are the most delicious group.”
“Goodbye, Gecko with Wings,” Spike said, smiling sweetly at the dragon.
The dragon snorted and turned away. She took two lumbering steps, and as she accelerated, the awkward lumps of her body seemed to fall into place. As she reached a gallop, every motion was smooth, more like a cheetah than the awkward hippo that she had seemed in the elevator shaft. She stretched her wings, flapped three times as she ran, and launched into the air.
“Dragons are jerks,” Tommy said.
“She’s beautiful,” Karim said, staring after the razorback’s disappearing form as she flew, outlined against the moon. “Is this what falling in love feels like?”
Spike wondered if the whole moon outline thing was on purpose. The razorback certainly seemed to love drama. “You spent all last year crushing on Anna Suarez, dummy.”
“Yeah, but now I don’t think those were real feelings,” Karim said, staring wistfully into the night. “That was just dumb kid stuff.”
“How exactly would that work?” Spike asked. “You dating a dragon?”
“Uh, guys?” Tommy said, and Spike brought her focus back from the creature, which was admittedly mesmerizing. “Someone’s coming.”
Headlights shone on them as a big black SUV approached, coming on fast. Spike blinked for a moment in the glare, then brought her own light up to shine it on the vehicle. Before they could react, the SUV had skidded to a stop. The doors sprung open, and figures piled out.
One of them she recognized immediately, with his hooded sweatshirt and a shiny, metallic green tie.
As soon as Spike pointed, Tommy recognized the figure. Mike Tuckerville. He wasn’t sure how much of it was fear and how much was rage, but Tommy grinned as he felt a surge of adrenaline.
Accompanying Tuckerville was a group of people holding what looked like harpoon guns. Probably tipped with enchanted daggers—one of the few things that could penetrate dragon scales. Guns, of course, would be useless against a powerful magical beast like a razorback.
“Should we run?” Tommy asked.
“We’d never make it,” Karim said, looking at the lights closing in from behind them.
> “Stall him!” Spike whispered. Karim was already poking at his phone, and he and Spike seemed to have some plan in motion. Did Tommy have a clue what it was? No. Did it matter? Also no. He knew what he had to do. It was showtime.
Tommy stepped forward, waving cheerfully.
“Sorry about that, pal!” he said. “Looks like you just missed the razorback! I think she’s coming back around, though. Should be here in a minute.”
Tuckerville’s eyes widened for a moment, but a woman wearing dark sunglasses and holding a tablet shook her head dismissively.
“Satellite says the monster is headed due north, sir,” she said. “It’s not a threat.”
“Might I say, sir,” Tommy began, “that you look fantastic in that bright green tie? It really, ahem, ties together the whole ensemble.” He stepped forward and grabbed the AppVenture CEO’s hand, shaking it vigorously. “And might I say that it is an absolute honor to meet such a distinguished entrepreneur as yourself!”
Tuckerville was staring at him in confusion, obviously not sure what to make of such friendly behavior from someone he’d just tried to kill.
“I’ve been a huge fan of yours ever since you made your first fortune with the Cash 4 Magic Items scam—er, I mean, totally legitimate business,” Tommy continued.
Tuckerville narrowed his eyes and glared at Tommy. “What’s your game, kid?”
“Just trying to be the best Independent Adventure Contractor I can be, every day, Mr. Tuckerville, sir. I say my prayers to AppVenture every night, like a good Contractor.”
“Aren’t you mad at me?” Tuckerville asked.
“Oh, no!” Tommy said. “I trust that everything you do is for the best. Releasing the sour ooze into the basement was the perfect way to go after the razorback. In the end, sacrificing a few adventurers is worth all the lives you’ll save taking a dangerous dragon like that off the streets.”