Bentwhistle the Dragon Box

by Paul Cude

  Confused at his partner's temporary lack of concentration, Fu-ts'ang skewered the last of the six nagas that had been attempting to flank Yoyo's contingent of misfits, straight through the heart, all the time willing his comrade to come back to him. Unexpectedly he found their telepathic link cut. Stunned by the sensation of terror which had been the very last thing he'd got from Janice, the ancient artefact willed himself on, desperate to intervene. But it wasn't as simple as that. For his spirit to have physical control over the outer cage it resided in, he had to have a partner. Those were just the rules and had been that way for thousands of years. And so glancing at the young woman he now thought of as his friend, across the field of battle, he looked on helplessly as a mighty red and yellow spiked tail came crashing down towards her. The absolute dread on her face would have broken his heart, if he still had one. Clinking to the floor, the frost enshrouded weapon shivered ever so slightly as the prisoner consciousness bound inside it roared in fury and frustration at the futility of his situation.

  Mouth dry, head pounding, heart threatening to burst through his chest, much like the alien in the film with the same name, he put everything he had into running as fast as he could. Not as fast as either Flash or Richie, he was still a blurred streak to almost everyone around him. Dropping his shoulder, he weaved around a bright blue bolt of magic that went on to strike a naga another twenty metres off his position. Unable to worry about how that turned out, he kept moving, aware only of what he was trying to do.

  Frozen in place by fear, Janice cowered beneath the jaw dropping shadow of the wicked tail that was about to crush her. From out of nowhere, suddenly she was thrust to the ground. Barely able to breathe, she turned over to find the one being she'd climbed down into this fantasy world and fought dragons for. Peter! Shocked and elated both at the same time, without hesitation she leaned in and kissed him passionately on the lips. His surprise was palpable, but that didn't stop him getting caught up in the moment, losing himself entirely in his one true love. That is until the monstrous dark dragon decided to have a second crack at them, bringing his gargantuan spiked tail crashing down atop of them. Clinched in a warm embrace, the earth quite literally moved for them both, as what remained of the alea's shield saved them from a very unsavoury end.

  As the two lovers scrambled to their feet, and with what magic was left of the shield protecting Peter hissing, spluttering and sparking all around them, holding each other's hand, they backpeddalled furiously as the crazed looking dragon, having turned around to face them, stomped forward. Gripped by blind panic, and just as they thought it was over, a distorted movement off to one side had their mouths hanging open. Before their attacker had a chance to react, a cartwheeling Richie landed on his tail, weaved around the deadly spikes and sprinted straight up the top of it. The floundering dark dragon waved his arms, flapped his wings and shook his head in an attempt to rid himself of this recently arrived menace. But it did him no good. Richie's balance was perfect, and just like a rodeo rider atop a bucking bronco, there was no shaking her. With the ancient beast about to take flight, figuring that just might get rid of her, the young human shaped lacrosse player reached around behind her back, pulled free the exquisite laminium dagger and in one single, very deadly move, buried the weapon deep into the top of the dragon's head. As his giant jaw slumped forward, the beast exhaled for the last time. Withdrawing her dagger, Richie back-flipped to the ground, barely missing the fountain of green blood spouting from the fatal wound. Landing with a THUD beside her two friends, she used the bottom of her t-shirt to wipe the blood from the blade as the dragon's dead body crumpled to the ground with a CRASH.

  Temporarily stunned because of what had just happened, it didn't take long for the two lovers to recover. Janice was first to react, throwing herself at Richie, enveloping the petite lacrosse player in the mother of all hugs. All smiles and laughter, the sporting superstar returned the hug, telling the bar worker just how good it was to see her. Looking on, Peter could hardly believe what he was seeing.

  'Since when did the two of them become so chummy? What on earth have I missed?'

  Breaking off their emphatic greeting, the two women separated, allowing Peter to step forward. Grinning from ear to ear, he proffered his hand in the direction of his best friend. Without hesitation, she leapt straight at him, wrapping her arms around him in a giant bear hug. In the midst of all the magic and mayhem going on all around them, it was as surreal as moments get.

  "Thanks for the save," Peter shouted.

  "Thanks for hanging in there so long."

  "I'm sorry about Tim... he was a good... man. I mean dragon. I mean... person."

  Letting her best friend go, Richie stepped back so that both friends could get a better look at her. Taking in her face, Peter was staggered at the pain, anger and torment he could see. Since he'd last seen her, she appeared to have aged considerably.

  'Surely the death of Tim on its own hasn't done that to her?' he thought.

  Free from facing impending death, Janice immediately turned her thoughts to Fu-ts'ang. Reaching out with her consciousness, he couldn't hide the elation he felt when their minds merged into one.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered.

  "SORRY!" he replied. "I'm just glad you're okay and disappointed that it wasn't I that came to your rescue. Your friends, however, were adequate substitutes."

  They both chuckled at this, before the frost enshrouded ancient weapon reminded the young human that they had work to do. Closing her eyes, Janice's vision of the battlefield swam into view, as Fu-ts'ang sped off in search of his next target, delighted to be of use once again.

  Wrapping his arm around his love's waist, occasionally startled by the odd explosion nearby, Peter shouted in the direction of his best friend.

  "What do we do now? Can we escape?"

  Leaving all thoughts of Tim for another time, the tiniest of smiles wriggled across the lacrosse player's face.

  "Escape... no! I don't think it's possible."

  "Then what?"

  "I think it might be time to rally my troops. Don't you?"

  "Your troops?"

  "That's right! I'm the leader of this rabble... how about that?"

  Peter could barely believe what he was hearing.

  "And just how did this come about?"

  "I think we'll have to save that for another time. As you can imagine, it's quite a long story. But suffice to say, it was a unanimous vote. And no... it wasn't something I wanted. But since I am their leader, I say it's time to get the party started."

  Laughing manically, much to Peter's horror, Richie started to turn in a circle, taking in everything around her, keen to grasp the entire nature of their situation. After all, a leader should totally understand the much bigger picture.

  Over the sounds of his sobbing, a gentle voice whispered sympathetically.

  "Please excuse my actions. It was never my intention to be quite so mean."

  Wiping away tears from both eyes with one of his giant hands, Tank uncurled himself, sat up and glanced around for the voice's master. But all he could see was darkness, much like before.

  "Who are you and where am I?" the young rugby playing dragon managed to sniffle.

  "You're where you've always been... lying on the cold marble of the king's private residence, smack bang in the middle of one hell of a confrontation."

  "I don't understand."

  "I'm sorry. I thought you wanted to know where your body was."

  More than a little confused, Tank tried once again to get his head around exactly where he was.

  "So if my body is there, then where on earth is this?"

  There was a bit of a pause, with the voice clearly thinking about its answer.

  "Let's just say that your personality is my guest for the time being, shall we?"

  "Your guest... sounds more like your prisoner," replied Tank, swallowing hard, his mouth drier than a Martini in the Sahara. "You haven't answered my other question. Just who are
you, and why are you stopping me from helping my friends?"

  "I'm not stopping you," replied the voice haughtily. "It was, after all, you who made contact with me."

  Confused and fed up with being surrounded by darkness, Tank struggled to make sense of what the voice was saying.

  'I made contact with him? How on earth does that work? The last thing I can remember doing is...'

  And then it came to him. Not where he was, but whom he was addressing... the king's RING!

  "You're... you're... you're the king's ring."

  "Up to a point... you're correct. I have been passed down from one dragon monarch to another over the course of time. I do not though, belong to anyone, not even the current incumbent of that office."

  'Well... that told me,' thought Tank, taken aback at the brusqueness of the ring's reply.

  "I merely augment the dragon king's own power with that of my own, and offer advice based on the experiences of my long life, but only as long as I agree with the decisions being made. Should, for example, a monarch go insane and start murdering his own subjects, I would not and could not be made to go along with that. Although bonded with an extraordinary piece of jewellery, I am for all intents and purposes a sentient being."

  Tank was taken back at this revelation. A sentient being... wow that was something... but why wasn't the jewellery in question helping the king and the others in the fight for their lives? Slightly nervously, Tank asked the question.

  "Recently I've had cause to question the king's judgement."

  "Because of the voting at the Council meetings?"

  "Ahhh... of course... I'd forgotten he'd told you and your friends all about that. I'd had misgivings for a while, not just about the voting, but about a few other things as well. It all came to a head in a conversation we had, that is to say I and the current king. Like him, I can be quite stubborn when I want to, a trait that has in the past gotten both of us into a great deal of trouble."

  "You do know the voting in the council chamber was being rigged?"

  "I understand that might have been the case."

  "But what about now?" asked the rugby playing dragon.

  "What about now?"

  "Shouldn't you put your differences to one side and help them fight against the pervasive evil that's trying to infiltrate and ultimately take over the domain? Your vast reserve of power might be the difference between life and death for everybody."

  "Why?"

  "Surely, if you're sentient like you say you are, then shouldn't it be obvious?"

  "How so?"

  "You just used the example of not going along with a murderously insane king in killing his own subjects as an example of your own free will. But by not doing anything here, unquestionably that's the same as helping commit murder. Isn't it?"

  "Perhaps this fellow Manson and his ilk are not as bad as you think they are. Perhaps the domain needs a new way of thinking and in particular a new leader."

  "You must have seen what they've done, what they're responsible for?"

  Silence and darkness walked hand in hand.

  Tank waited, irked at the ring's attitude and the fact that he'd been taken away from helping his friends. On most levels it didn't make sense. Surely it should do what's right, whether or not it had had a tiny little spat with the incumbent bearing it. Why wasn't it helping? Puzzled at the ring's response, part of him was impatient to get back to the reality playing out all around him. But if nothing else, the young rugby playing dragon was full of common sense and with the maturity that had now started to blossom within him over the last year or so, held a deep rooted belief in himself and the decisions he made. And right now it occurred to him that if he could get the ring back on side, then just maybe the tide of the battle could be turned, and that with the king and the ring reunited in one common cause, Manson and his minions could once and for all be vanquished.

  All consuming darkness closed in around him. Not an unfamiliar situation, he'd found himself here before, on many an occasion. But not quite like this. Here and now he felt powerless... powerless to resist. A nagging pain from the lower part of his body somewhere relentlessly assaulted him, stopping him from focusing, preventing him from finding his magic and the almost limitless supply of power he could feel wrapped around his physical body. Locked inside his mind, he fought to break out and regain control. Time served no purpose here, he knew. Seconds, minutes or hours could be passing outside in the real world, and none of it would apply here. He was pretty sure it wasn't hours, but a part of him was still afraid it would all be over by the time he got back there, if such a thing were even possible. Bounding out of the way of the pure black that mirrored his every move, he'd taken to running away now, instead of his usual fighting back. In the past he'd fought off what he always supposed had been the pain tormenting his physical being. It had been hard, and he'd needed all his tricks and wits to do such a thing, but it had been possible, as he'd proved on a number of occasions. But this was somehow different, almost magnified in strength if he had to guess. And so continuing to evade by running up walls, jumping off ledges and barrel rolling beneath outstretched shadowy fingers, Flash pushed on, feeling his heart rate increase, ignoring the pounding in his ears that distracted his thinking. He knew he had to live up to his name, even though his very being only existed deep within his own mind, right at this very moment.

  'Oh crap!' he thought, deflecting yet another multiple set of attacks on his young band of dragons. That wasn't what had caused his outburst. No! He'd just witnessed his young friend, the dragon whose life he'd saved far beneath Perth, Australia on that fateful day, get his leg sliced in two by some very curious magic, and land hard in a heap, barely moving at all. Feeling more than a little depleted of mana, Yoyo knew that he now faced a very difficult and very immediate choice: keep on supplementing the defence of his young dragon contingent to the detriment of Flash, or take the risk of saving Flash at the cost of his young charges. It was the toughest decision he'd ever faced, and over the course of his life he'd had to choose which dragons had lived and which had died on the operating tables of the battlefield. Pushing any doubts aside, he made his choice based solely on the bigger picture, and what would best give them the likely outcome of winning and surviving. Stepping out from his relatively sheltered position so that he could get a better view of his unconscious subject, he cleared his mind, letting it converge on one being and one being only. FLASH! As his consciousness reached the ex-Crimson Guard, it cast its keen, specialist eye across the whole of his body. When it reached the deep gash on his leg, it almost gasped, as if such a thing were possible. A matt black, tar-like substance had infiltrated the wound and was currently eating away at the surrounding flesh, muscle and bone. That wasn't the most worrying thing. Unlikely as it may have seemed, even to Yoyo's brilliantly unorthodox mind, the substance in question was replicating, and doing so at a particularly fast rate. The healer knew that if he didn't do something, and fast, then Flash's time on this plane of existence would surely be over. Looking at the prone form of his comrade lying below him, Yoyo locked on and prepared to use his remaining magic to expunge the evil that had permeated his friend's physical form.

  A fraction of a second was all that it took for Yoyo to realise just how much of a mistake he'd made. There was no doubt that he'd chosen the right mantra, but the enormity of the task dwarfed what he was capable of doing with the amount of mana he had left. There just wasn't enough to give, and that now left him trapped. Try as he might, with all the knowledge available to him, he just couldn't wriggle free. Flash's death sentence had now just become his. But as his hope turned sour, his mind reflected on the last thing he'd seen before bringing forth his magic. Flash had been wearing the chains... laminium chains. That was it! The chains were the answer. But just how could he get his hands on the powerful metal... that was the question.

  Crouched in the shadows of a hidden little alcove, Hook was still exceedingly thankful for the return to full health that Yoyo
had provided, and was determined to do everything he could to keep his new found friend safe. Watching along the wall that provided them with some semblance of cover from part of the raging battle in that general direction, he was suddenly startled when a huge scaled hand grabbed him by the shoulder. Pulling away by spinning around abruptly, Tank's rugby playing teammate was surprised to find Yoyo standing there, eyes glazed over, sweat pouring off him, barely able to move.

  "What's wrong?" yelled Hook, over the noise of the skirmish.

  "I need Flash brought over here."

  "I can't hear you. You'll have to speak up."

  Hardly able to move his scaly lips, Yoyo put all he could into his words.

  "You have to get Flash over here so that I can touch those chains. If you don't, we're both dead."

  Yoyo's eyes closed as the sweat continued to pour, and despite Hook's best efforts, he could get no reaction out of the dragon healer. Swallowing hard, the young rugby playing human hero, who'd already proved himself a dozen times over in his brief stint underground, glanced across to where Flash's body lay some twenty or so metres away. The distance wasn't much on a rugby or hockey pitch, but right here, right now, with magic raining down hell, psychopathic prehistoric monsters running riot, and the sound of swords clashing ringing through the air, it was enough to turn most beings' legs to jelly... but not his. Using the passion, strength of purpose and courage he usually only exerted playing his sport, Hook set off at a dead run towards the unconscious looking Flash. Peppered by explosive fragments from the marble flooring all around him taking a direct magical hit half way across, it didn't deter the rugby strongman. Reaching his target, he grabbed Flash's arms and started to pull him along the floor. Blessed with huge upper body strength, this task should have been nothing more than a tame training ground test. But he hadn't figured in the weight of the chains. Not knowing what they were made of, the one thing he could attest to was that they were unbelievably heavy. He had no idea how Flash could even stand with them on... no doubt due to some sort of magic that he couldn't begin to understand. Pulling him as far as he could, he stopped for a breather, sweat dripping off every part of his body. Looking up, he realised he'd only managed to pull the young dragon about a tenth of the way. Horror and panic threatened to take over. It would take an age at this rate, all the time exposed, leaving them vulnerable to attack. What he needed was some help, but where to find it amongst everything going on was well beyond him. So without further ado, he got on with it, dragging the dead-weight body another two metres, and then another. But with each metre, the chaos and the fighting around them intensified. It was far from plain sailing.