by Paul Cude
Slumping down in the snow beside it, the events of the last hour or so started to catch up with him, noticing only now that he was shivering from the cold. The jacket that he'd taken off when falsely surrendering to the naga had been destroyed in the blast, and he couldn't see how he was going to survive for even a small period of time in this harsh environment. Beside him, the naga started to cough and gag, in the last throws of death. A dejected Flash thought he might as well curl up beside the beast and wait for death's embrace to come and claim them both.
'That's it!' he suddenly thought, a sneaky smile crossing his face for the first time in days. Quick as a... flash, he got to his feet, towering over the dying naga. Searching his near perfect memory, he knew he didn't have long to find what he needed. Ten seconds passed... fifteen... twenty... and then it came to him. It was something he'd been taught when he first joined the Crimson Guards, many, many years ago. At the time, he'd thought it a total nonsense, a mantra that he'd never get to use in a million years. Here, in the freezing cold, with little or no option but to trek tens of miles in one of the harshest environments on the planet to save himself, and possibly the dragons and nagas as well, it didn't seem quite such a waste of time.
All those years ago, he'd learnt a mantra that was positively ancient in design, known only to a select few, as well as being highly controversial. It was, after all, designed to suck all the magical energy out of one being, and then channel it into another. It could only be achieved when the being on the end of it was at death's door so to speak, because any creature with just a little willpower could interrupt its effect. Never having actually used this particular mantra before, not ever having been in a situation where he'd needed to, his Crimson Guard instructors had cited this mantra as something that could be used in the heat of a pitched battle, when a fallen comrade or enemy had been fatally wounded and you, the user, had exhausted nearly all of your magical energy. It would, if used correctly, replenish all of the exhausted magic, maybe even giving the user more than he or she would normally have in the first place, for a brief time anyway. Something else about it set it aside from nearly all other mantras. Physical contact had to be maintained throughout, which was most unusual.
Reaching out towards the naga's scorched forehead, his fingers almost blue with cold, so much so that he could barely feel the touch of the sticky, scaly skin, the naga rippled and convulsed with fright, trying desperately to pull away, but without its tail, it had no hope. Touching his numb fingers to the monster's forehead, he could sense all of its magic bubbling beneath the surface. Closing his eyes, trying very hard not to let sleep consume him, he sought out the words of the mantra he needed.
"Exsisto procul pacis quod sileo facile pro totus infinitiol.
Permissum quis eram quondam vestry iam exsisto mei."
Reciting the words, his mind simultaneously did a rough translation, which was something like this:
Be at peace and rest easily for eternity.
Let what was once yours now be mine.
Still touching the naga, Flash's eyes flew wide open in surprise as the floodgates quite literally opened. Huge amounts of magic and power, with a very different kind of 'taste' to it, flowed into him, overwhelming him in almost every sense. The exhaustion that he'd felt so heavily only moments ago was washed away instantly, his numb extremities becoming instantly recognisable to the rest of his body. It felt as though he'd been transported from this cold, bitter wilderness onto a tropical beach with the sun beating down on him. Warmth, energy and happiness consumed him. Then, something very odd happened. Memories. Tiny glimpses of a different world. Different lives, different ideas, different... everything. Everything from the naga's memory started surging into him from his childhood, swimming beneath the icy ocean, parents, children... a huge family... Flash tried to pull away, break contact and stop the mantra, but he couldn't, not able to move at all. More memories assaulted him, fresher, clearer... more recent. There was a threat, a threat to all the nagas. Their king had been captured by a group of... dragons! A meeting, no, a summit had gone disastrously wrong. Nagas had been killed trying to protect their king. Dragons had demanded things from the nagas. Missions, intelligence, all sorts of information.
"Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!" he screamed, as the memories consumed him. Instead of the joy and exhilaration that he'd felt at first, intense pain threatened to render him unconscious. He had to find out what on earth was going on, he realised in the back of his mind, the part that was still under his control.
New images flooded his consciousness. Nagas disguised as humans, all over the world. A shadowy figure in the background of it all, a dragon, a really old dragon. Transporting dragons in human form out of a mountain. A dragon councillor somehow involved. Flash couldn't quite make out the darkened image that appeared with this thought, much as he tried. Nagas disguised as humans at Casey station. Killing the dragon scientists who'd come to investigate climate change, the prisoners that he'd seen briefly. Waves of sorrow and regret flooded through him with these last images, so much so that he passed out on top of the dead naga, remaining there for over an hour.
Wafting around on the icy breeze, the rotten stench of decaying flesh startled him awake. Jumping up off the naga pretty damn quick, in a split second he took in his situation and the events leading up to it. Magic from the naga coursed through his body, invigorating him, making him as sharp as he would have been in warm surroundings. Remembering the GPS coordinates he took from his watch before he set it to blow up, his mind quickly told him that he was a little under ten miles away from Casey Station. Despite his lack of clothing, the extreme cold, bitter wind and snow laden ground, he knew getting back there while he had this amount of power available would present little or no problem. What was an issue was the fact that the naga's intrusive memories had provided an insight into some of the things going on, and from his point of view at this time, chief of those was the fact that there were three nagas living and working at Casey Station, disguised of course as humans. They would no doubt be aware of his escape by now and would almost certainly attempt to stop and recapture him. Above all he needed to get back to the dragon domain and report everything that he'd found to the king himself. How, though, was the question he asked himself, as he set off through the snow in the direction of Casey Station. And that was the thought that circled his head constantly, like a chugging train, for over an hour as he headed towards the other nagas and hopefully what he considered civilisation.
Meanwhile, far beneath Law Dome, retribution had been visited on the four prisoners for their part in Flash's escape. Wailing and screaming like a banshee which in itself was nothing new, the human shaped scientist this time had good reason, as his left leg had been brutally broken in two places with an iron bar, by the very angry jailer, the mean young human who visited occasionally with the rotten food. The scientist wasn't alone in his torment. Not asleep anymore, the ancient dragon that was more bone than body whined and howled in pain further along the icy wall, having had his left wing pierced with a specially designed stalagmite that had been sharpened with great care and precision, designed to inflict the maximum amount of pain. At the end of the wall, the half naked human hadn't fared much better, having been beaten, at first by the filthy young jailer, and then by the human shaped naga who was still recovering from the poison darts that Flash had pumped into him from point blank range, with his partner, the golden naga, having cast healing magic in his direction before leaping head first into the fast flowing freezing water of the underground stream after the escapee. When he came round from the poison, the human shaped naga had been seething, taking his anger out on the nearest being possible... the semi naked human shaped dragon. The jailer had already beaten him once, and was just in the process of thrusting the stalagmite into the old dragon's wing, when the human shaped serpent set about beating the prisoner. Relentless in its ferocity, the naga pummelled and punched the dragon until he bled all over, his splintered bones protruding from his hands and ar
ms, while his feet lay at excruciating angles. While the dragon's healing abilities would eventually kick in, albeit rather slowly in this bitterly cold prison that he was incarcerated in, the raggedy young guard had to go over and pull the naga away, for fear that he would take things too far and unintentionally kill the prisoner, something the beings in charge here certainly wouldn't want. Of the four, only the naga king remained untouched, standing manacled to the thick white wall, staring straight ahead, defiant. More than anything, the jailer wanted to attack him, teach him a lesson, for there was no doubt that he'd played an integral part in the prisoner's escape. But he'd been given very strict instructions not to, on pain of death. Instead, he wandered over to the king, just out of reach of the defiant naga, for he knew from experience that to get within striking range was just asking to be dealt a fatal blow, a lesson his predecessor had neglected to learn. Stepping in front of the naga's unblinking field of vision, the jailer smiled his sickly, perverse smile, straight at the naga king. Continuing to stare straight ahead, the king showed no emotion whatsoever.
"You'll pay for what you did... you will," spluttered the jailer, whilst poking out his tongue, hoping to provoke some sort of reaction.
Continuing to stare, unblinking, straight ahead, the naga king took no notice.
"They've gone to find some of your kind... to punish them for your lack of cooperation."
Despite wanting to beat the disgusting monster of a jailer to a pulp, the naga king continued to appear unmoved, determined not to give the jailer the satisfaction of knowing the one thing that bothered him was the health and wellbeing of his subjects. After a minute or two of just staring at each other, the jailer gave up, but not before spitting in the naga king's direction, and cursing all naga kind.
* * *
For three hours now, he'd run through the knee deep snow. There was no doubt it had been slow going, and more than a little luck had been involved in not breaking a leg or falling into a crevasse. But now he crouched on a rocky outcrop watching Casey Station from a distance, catching his breath, reluctant to go straight in because of the questions he would struggle to answer truthfully, but more importantly, it would alert all three of the human shaped nagas on the base. Regardless of the fact that he was still fully charged, in magical terms anyway, and despite the fact that he'd run over nine miles in just thermal base layers or Antarctic underwear to you and me, he still didn't think he could take all three nagas at once. If he was going to escape, then he was going to have to try and pick them off one by one. When the golden naga's dying memories had overwhelmed him and he'd realised there were nagas at Casey Station, he didn't get any sense of who they were, not even whether they were male or female. This presented a huge problem because he'd already come into contact with everyone on the base and hadn't been able to sense anything unusual in any of them. If he couldn't sense them, he needed to find some other way of identifying them, and all he could think of at the moment was to watch the base from a distance and see if anything out of the ordinary turned up. Maybe later he could try to sneak in and use the communication systems to get out a message for help. That thought made him chuckle. In his entire career, he'd never before had to request assistance. The other Crimson Guards would have a field day with him about that.
'Still,' he mused, 'I'm getting a little ahead of myself. There are still three dangerous nagas to be dealt with, before I can even think about getting back to the dragon world and be laughed at by others of my kind.'
After about an hour of watching the base with nothing out of the ordinary happening, he started to get impatient, wanting to sneak in and issue his call for help. Waiting out here was getting him nowhere and was just giving his enemies more time to organise themselves. Despite this, the little voice inside his head that he listened to more often than not, told him to remain patient and watch the base so, reluctantly, that's what he did.
An hour and a half later, his patience paid off. Three figures came outside together, one clearly issuing orders to the other two. In the hours that Flash had been watching the base, he'd seen only a handful of people outside it, and all of them had been on their own, doing the normal, day to day things that you would come to expect on a base like this. Three people together was suspicious, even without the information he possessed about there being that number of nagas on the base. Watching the three from his prone position on top of the outcrop, he noted they all wore different coloured clothing. One was dressed all in black, from his boots through to his leggings, up to and including his jacket, and it seemed appropriate that he was dishing out the orders. Of the other two, one wore a thick red jacket with silvery leggings and brown boots, while his friend carried off a light blue jacket with a fur lined hood, matching leggings and white snow boots. Currently, all three were crowded around a heavily packed skidoo. The leader, all in black, was still issuing instructions to the other two, getting quite animated about it as well, pointing in the direction that Flash had come from, before waving at the base itself. At this, the two figures in red and blue nodded, with one getting onto the front of the skidoo, while the other yanked the string to start the engine. Watching intently, Flash thought it looked as though the skidoo would be heading in his direction.
'They can't possibly know I'm here, can they?' he wondered, as the sound of the skidoo's harsh engine leapt into life, echoing across the snow in his direction.
Trying to ignore the thousand thoughts running amock inside his head, he scrambled back down the slope to the far side of the rocky outcrop. If the skidoo was headed this way, then almost certainly it would come within feet of where he was concealed. Did he try and take out whoever was on the skidoo as he came past? Did he sneak into the base and go for the leader? A lot rode on him making the right decision here and now. His little voice screamed at him to take out whoever was on the skidoo that was about to come past. Rushing around two huge boulders, climbing on top of the slightly smaller one, he waiting for the skidoo to come round the side of the outcrop. In theory at least, the machine and its rider should come within a few feet of his position. If not, then he would have to stay concealed and let it go on its way. Pulling in a wheezing breath, he hoped that the three nagas had been suckered into being over confident. After all, they should be searching for an exhausted, semi naked dragon with virtually no power, cold, hungry, utterly demoralised and, most importantly of all, a very long way from here. Only managing to get there so quickly because of the magical energy that he'd leeched from the dying naga, he was certain this was something his enemies should have absolutely no idea about.
'That,' he thought as he waited silently for the skidoo, 'should give me the advantage that I need against the three of them.'
Resounding across the ice, the noise from the skidoo's engine started to get closer. He knew what he had to do; he had to be totally and utterly ruthless and kill the driver. Of course, he'd killed in cold blood before, when the need had arisen. It wasn't something he particularly liked doing, unlike some in the Crimson Guards who seemed to get a kind of kick out of it. But it was something he knew that, on occasion, he had no option but to go through with. This was one of those times when nothing else would do, because he simply couldn't afford to leave one of the nagas alive. Too much depended on it. Taking them one at a time, with the amount of magical energy that currently topped up his body, should present little or no trouble. Of course he could, like most of the Crimson Guards, cast mantras that could kill instantly. They were amongst the most highly magical mantras in the dragon world, and were mana intensive, draining all but a little of the magical energy the caster possessed. Even in his highly charged state, he knew better than to begin with something so taxing, and figured on taking the first two down with his bare hands, thus saving the magic in case he needed it against the third.
The 'putt, putt, putt' of the skidoo's engine was nearly on top of him now. As he crouched, ready to jump and strike the naga at the controls, a flicker of movement appeared from around the rocky corner.
His muscles contracted, ready to let loose. Rushing through at quite a speed, the skidoo presented little problem for Flash who was able to use all of his dragon abilities, and could time his jump to within a thousandth of a second if need be. At exactly the right moment, he launched himself off the rock, his timing perfect for making contact with the skidoo driver. However, as he soared through the air towards the fast moving machine, his brain registered an almighty problem with his plan. He'd made a big mistake, one that potentially could prove fatal. There, sitting right behind the naga driver in the red jacket, was his colleague in the all blue outfit, with the skidoo carrying two of the three nagas, not something he'd really wanted to find out as he was flying through the air towards the moving vehicle, if at all.
Instantly his brain reverted back to his body tumbling through the biting wind. Stretching out with his bent right arm, he took the driver around the neck as he swept in from above and to the side of the skidoo. Flash and the naga crashed to the ground as the pilotless vehicle made a sharp turn, too sharp in fact, as the driver's legs had smashed into the handlebars when he'd been dragged off into the snow. Rolling over onto itself, the heavy equipment pouches attached to either side of the skidoo spilled open, littering the freshly driven snow with their contents. With no time to think, Flash acted instinctively, leaping on top of the strewn driver, who was face down in the snow. Putting both hands around his chin, getting ready to twist his neck and break it, the driver, still with his helmet on, brought his head up faster than Flash could ever have anticipated, catching the dragon full in the chest. Flash fell to one side, winded momentarily. The red jacketed naga wasted no time. Rolling over, he thrust himself through the snow and on top of Flash, scraping a big handful of snow into Flash's face as he did so. Flash blinked furiously as the naga pounded on his already sore chest with his gloved fists.
