Flight of the Dragon (The Chronicles of Dragon, Series 2, Book 5 of 10) (Tail of the Dragon)

by Craig Halloran

  Spreading his wings, Slivver hopped into the air and glided alongside Nath. “I’m going ahead. See you there.” And with that, Slivver took off like he’d been launched out of a sling.

  “No, wait!” Nath said.

  Slivver was gone. His host of other silver dragons joined him, streaking through the air like bolts of lightning in a stormy sky.

  Nath crawled up to the top of Waark’s neck and said, “Faster! Faster!”

  Waark moaned. His wings beat with new fury, neck stretched ahead.

  Nath guessed it would take an hour to get to Narnum at this rate.

  Might as well be an eon.

  His muscles tensed and flexed. His body was ready to burst from his skin. He needed to get there now. Something big was happening, and he knew what it was. Balzurth battled Eckubahn. His father was ready to break the evil titan once and for all.

  He needs me! I can feel it! Something’s wrong. I feel he can’t do it alone!

  With the wind tearing at his face, he urged Waark on. “Faster! Faster! Balzurth needs us! The entire world needs us!”

  CHAPTER 34

  Selene couldn’t believe her eyes. It wasn’t Nath chained to that slab of stone, it was Balzurth! His powerful roar strengthened her limbs and knocked the grogginess from her mind. She felt ready to fight every giant and wurmer in the land.

  Axe in hand, the giant executioner quavered. The axe fell from its fingers.

  Eckubahn shrank in his throne. The bones of its frame rattled.

  Balzurth enlarged. The chains cuffed to his wrists popped and snapped. The body of Nath Dragon transformed.

  The crowd screamed in terror.

  The king of the dragons emerged. Forty feet of brick-red and bronze scales. His neck was a pillar of iron. His tail was a great cedar. A true natural-born behemoth of armor and brawn. The sun was a lantern behind his back. His shadow cast over both Selene and Eckubahn. Brilliant illumination came from his eyes, filled with anger and judgment. Balzurth shook his grand horns and said to Eckubahn:

  “TODAY IS JUDGMENT DAY, TITAN! AND I AM THE JUDGE!”

  The giant executioner’s fingers stretched for its axe.

  Balzurth’s tail snapped like a clap of thunder, striking the giant dead.

  Filled with a new strength she’d never imagined, Selene strained at the iron chains. The dwarven metal groaned. She didn’t know if it was her newly scaled body or Balzurth’s presence, but the strength in her limbs was that of a dragon. With a roar bursting from her lips, the chains snapped. She was free. Poised to strike from the slab, she surveyed her enemies. Giants and wurmers of all sizes converged from all directions in a maddened frenzy. It was her and Balzurth versus the world. She punched her fist into her hand. “To the end!”

  The overwhelming sea of evil came by the hundreds.

  And then it rained.

  But it rained dragons.

  In a wave of teeth and claws, dragons of all colors tore into the enemies with their tantalizing scales winking in the sun. Fire shot from their mouths, covering giants in flame. Blue razor dragons sent shards of lightning through the wurmers. Jaws locked on wurmers and tore them apart.

  A sky raider dropped from the sky, crushing the giants in the stands. He stormed forward, horns down, stampeding a bewildered horde of smaller giants.

  Indeed, it was judgment day on the back-biting citizens of Narnum.

  Under a compulsion she could not explain, Selene grabbed the only weapon she could find: the giant executioner’s axe. Somehow, she lifted the unwieldy thing and swung it into the back leg of an earth giant that was locked up with a bronze dragon. The giant toppled. The dragon blasted flames into its face. With a two-handed swing of the axe, she ripped into a flock of wurmers. Scales and claws were sliced and scattered.

  All around, the ground shook and tremored. The battleground was hazy. Fire and smoke. Burning scales and sizzled flesh. Roars. Bellows. Screams. It was carnage.

  Wave after wave of dragons dived down into the arena from the sky. They unleashed their breath weapons, pelting the giants with wroth heat and pain.

  The enraged giants howled. They grabbed people and hunks of stone from the stands and hurled them at the dragons.

  With ease, the dragons swerved in midair to avoid the huge flying hunks of stone, only to attack with more fire again and again.

  So many dragons were there, and in such a multitude of colors, locked in a mortal battle. Blue razors, bulls, bronzes, green lilies, orange blazes, crimson dynamos, ivory sliders, yellow streaks, fire bites, grey scalers, and dozens of other colors attacked from all directions. It was an onslaught. They had the giants on the run.

  An orange blaze was locked on a giant’s head. The giant beat at it with fury. A second orange blaze unleashed a white foam from his mouth, coating the giant from neck to toe. The foam disintegrated the giant’s skin to the bone.

  A bronze dragon, grand in frame, swooped down from above. Its tail locked around a giant’s neck like a whip. Wings pounding the air, the bronze dragon lifted the giant into the sky like a hawk snatching a rabbit from the prairie. Up, up, up the dragon went, a speck in the sky. The giant thrashed, arms flailing and legs kicking. The bronze dragon’s neck bent, and it let out a gust of fire. The giant burned. The dragon uncurled his tail from the giant’s neck. The burning giant fell like a falling star and crashed on two of its brethren.

  Standing among the fray of chaos, Selene tossed the axe aside, pumped her arms high, and said, “Yes!”

  The tide of battle was in the dragons’ favor. Narnum was moments from being liberated.

  And then a strange hum rose among the growls and the roar of fire. A storm cloud rolled in like a swarm of locusts. They came from the west. A deep purple glow was within the cloud.

  A chill doused the fire in Selene’s bones.

  Evil’s cavalry was coming. Wurmers. Not by the hundreds but by the thousands.

  “Balzurth!” she yelled. “We need more dragons!”

  Whether the Dragon King heard her she didn’t know.

  Balzurth, towering above all, battled Eckubahn. A crushed throne of dragon bones lay beneath them. Balzurth coiled his tail around the titan’s neck. The titan king’s fists hammered at Balzurth’s body.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Selene did a double take between the sky and the battle of kings. Balzurth needed to finish Eckubahn. He needed to finish Eckubahn now.

  A second titan that Selene didn’t recognize at first was on the move. Oh, it was Isobahn, the muscular, oily, tattooed brute with the long ponytail. The titan had slunk away from the fracas, only to reappear with a spear the likes of which she’d never seen before. At the huge spear’s tip, six strips of twisted metal came to a razor-sharp point. The weapon was big enough to skewer three giants at once, more than capable of running Balzurth through, in one side and out the other. A dark aura flowed around the metal spearhead with a life of its own.

  What is that?

  But even though she had never seen the weapon before, in her heart she knew what it was. Before her time, her father, Gorn Grattack, had been the evil enemy in the first Dragon War. In the final battle, Gorn had been beaten and subdued by a man, a special man who wielded a weapon that could kill anything. A special man whose legendary name Gorn had twisted into a lie to turn the races against the dragons.

  “Barnabus!” she cried out.

  Selene knew she beheld that same weapon now. Isobahn had it poised at Balzurth’s back. The titan had a gleam in his eye as if this moment had been planned all along.

  Nalzambor, have mercy!

  “Balzurth! Watch out behind you! He wields the Spear of Barnabus!”

  CHAPTER 35

  Nath hugged a large fin of armor jutting up from the bull dragon’s back. His claws dug into the bull dragon’s rocky hide. Jaws clenched, stomach in knots, he couldn’t shake off the spiders crawling up his spine.

  I need to be there! I need to be there now!

  Still leagues away, he could
make out Narnum from the sky. There was a deadly jubilation of fiery activity below. Dragons dive bombed from unseen heights. It sent a charge through his scales into his bones. He could sense the battle’s full scale. The victorious shrieks of the dragons carried through the skies.

  Nath couldn’t imagine anything or anyone in the world surviving such an onslaught. What could possibly withstand a legion of dragons led by Balzurth?

  The dark fear in his heart enlarged the moment he spotted a sea of wurmers moving in from the west like a rain-heavy storm. He clutched his head in his hands.

  Oh no! Oh no!

  The wurmers were on course to blindside the ranks of dragons. The foul insectoids not only had strength, they had strength in numbers.

  Nath let out another dragon call, screaming a warning.

  “MaaaaaaAAARRRrrrrrrrrrrOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

  It carried. But would it carry far enough, fast enough, and into the ears of the battling mad dragon fray?

  “Faster, Waark! Faster!”

  Nath felt his heart sinking in his chest.

  I can’t be too late!

  CHAPTER 36

  With the Spear of Barnabus in hand, Isobahn closed in.

  Selene propelled herself into the towering titan’s path, waving her hands above her head, shouting, “Take me, coward.”

  Eyes fixed on Balzurth’s back, the titan’s steps did not falter.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Sansla Libor came, blasting through the chaos. Wings beating, arms outstretched, the great ape’s fists collided with the titan’s jaw with ram-like force. The blow staggered the titan. The spear tip dropped. The metal bit into the ground.

  Selene coiled her body around the spear and held it with all her dragon strength.

  Growling, Isobahn lifted her from the ground along with the spear. He tried to shake her off, arms flailing back and forth, side to side.

  All the while, Sansla Libor stood on Isobahn’s shoulder, punching the titan in the face with blows that would have dropped an ogre.

  The bone necklace on the titan’s neck rattled, but he didn’t flinch. “I will not be stopped!” Isobahn’s huge legs churned forward again.

  Selene called out in Dragonese, “Help! Help! Your king needs your help!”

  A small host of silver dragons zipped through the battle. Bolts of white-hot light shot from their mouths, striking the titan.

  Isobahn convulsed. Bellowed. His furrowed brow darkened his once-omnipotent expression. “Fleas! I am a titan! You are fleas!”

  The silver dragons latched onto the evil giant from head to toe. Claws and teeth sank into the mad titan’s skin.

  Any normal creature on Nalzambor would have fallen. But this was no ordinary giant. He was a titan, fueled by more than just flesh and bones; he had an ancient dark and evil magic as old as the world itself.

  Surging ahead like a juggernaut, the Selene-covered-spear-wielding titan said with sinister glee, “Ho-ho-ho, nothing can stop a titan like me.” With a single hand, Isobahn wrapped his fingers around Selene’s body and squeezed her like she was part of the spear itself. “Fledgling, prepare to witness front and center the death of the once mighty Balzurth!”

  With her body being crushed like it was stuck in a blacksmith’s vise, Selene let out one final cry:

  “Balzurth, watch out!”

  CHAPTER 37

  The time had come. The moment had arrived. Balzurth was locked up in combat with his mortal enemy Eckubahn. It had been more than a thousand years, and the hatred they harbored for one another had only grown.

  It showed. The two thrashed through the arena like a pair of rabid savages. Balzurth’s claws sank into the flesh of the earth giant’s body that hosted the evil spirit of the ancient titan. Balzurth’s tail coiled around the flaming neck of the fiend. The kings conversed silently, from mind to mind.

  “It’s over, Eckubahn! I showed mercy before, but I show mercy no more!” Balzurth drove the titan into the ground, smashing a wurmer and giant beneath him. “And all of your foul brood are going down with you!”

  “Never!” Eckubahn’s fist slugged Balzurth in the jaw with thunderous impact.

  The Dragon King’s talons held firm, sinking deeper into the titan’s thick hide.

  Eckubahn squirmed, twisted, and wrestled with all his might. He threw dirt in Balzurth’s eyes. Spat fire in his face. He clawed at the ground, straining. The titan couldn’t escape Balzurth’s grasp.

  The Dragon King locked on with fire in his eyes and a volcano ready to erupt from his chest.

  Striking Balzurth with anything and everything he could get his hands on, Eckubahn unleashed another deadly defense. “You cannot win, Balzurth! You are already defeated! See my wurmers! See my giants! They are turning back your pathetic surprise attack!”

  Balzurth sensed the presence of the swarm of wurmers. He’d even anticipated it. That was why he’d put his plan in motion long before he arrived. The dragons had gathered high above, far from sight and suspicion, the moment he’d arrived in Narnum. It was all on account of a very tiny dragon who had been with him all along, hiding behind his locks of hair. A lizard wisp. Small but faster than a hummingbird with wings that beat a hundred times faster than an eye could blink, the tiny creature had carried out Balzurth’s orders. The dragons had come and waited for his call. Now he just had to do his duty. Finish off Eckubahn. If not, he’d be lost. All of the dragons who had come would be lost as well.

  “Again I say it’s over, Eckubahn! Stop squirming and accept what’s coming!” Balzurth rolled on top of Eckubahn. He pinned the titan’s shoulders down to the ground. “Look me in the eye and face your doom!”

  Eyes squeezed shut, the titan pushed back, shoving Balzurth’s face up with his palms. “You can’t destroy me, Balzurth! You weaken! I strengthen! You couldn’t destroy me before. You doubt you can destroy me now! I can feel it!”

  “I DOUBT NOTHING!” Balzurth drew his horns back and head butted Eckubahn in his flaming face.

  CRACK!

  The titan’s body shimmered. His mighty limbs loosened.

  Balzurth freed his front talons from the titan’s body. Faster than a wing, his talons seized Eckubahn by the throat and squeezed.

  The titan’s head turned from orange to red to purple flames. His hands chopped at Balzurth’s powerful arms. “You will not win, Balzurth! You will not win! You have a blind spot!”

  Balzurth dug his talons deeper into the mounds of neck muscle. He searched for the titan’s evasive eyes.

  The fiend wriggled and thrashed. His huge head rolled from side to side like a spoiled child trying to avoid healthy food.

  “You will face the truth, titan! You will face it now!”

  “Never!” Choking, the titan’s eyes popped wide. Balzurth’s eyes bore right into him. “No! No! Never!”

  Balzurth, fully aware of the chaos that surrounded him, sent out a silent message to all of the dragons.

  Go! Far and fast!

  He sent another message to his son, Nath. Mind to mind, Balzurth’s final thoughts mingled with his son’s. “Nath, save Selene. Save yourself. Get out of here. That is my final wish. Live on, Son. I love you. Live on.”

  CHAPTER 38

  “Father! Father!” Nath cried out. The message his father had sent confused him.

  What’s going on?

  For a moment of the fleetest sort, he and his father had been connected, mind to mind. He had felt Balzurth’s fury and rage building. Had sensed the deep love within his father too. There had been that final command from father to son, and then the connection had just gone.

  Nath barked an order. “Dive, Waark! Dive!”

  Narnum rested in their path, only seconds away now. He’d be in time to help his father win the battle. But Selene was in danger? Where was she?

  The dragons scattered in the air in all directions.

  The wurmers gave chase.

  Nath’s keen dragon eyes zeroed in on the battleground. The are
na of the Contest of Champions. More than half of the arena’s stonework stands were nothing but dust and rubble. Thousands of bodies of giants, dragons, and wurmers lay still, but many others still battled. In the middle of it all, his grand and glorious father Balzurth had the titan held fast to the ground.

  Nath pumped his fist. “Yes, Father! Yes!” Balzurth had Eckubahn right where he wanted him: in an unbreakable death grip. His father’s plan had worked.

  I should have known!

  “End it, Father! End it!”

  Wurmers came at him like bats bursting from a cave.

  Waark plowed through them.

  The wurmers cracked against his mighty frame. They spiraled toward the ground with their wings busted.

  “Go, Waark! Go!”

  Scanning the ground with the winds ripping at his face, Nath caught a glimpse of another battle. Another titan stormed toward Balzurth with a monster-sized spear. A woman hung onto the shaft. The ugly ponytailed titan plucked the female from the shaft and slung her hard onto the ground.

  “Selene!” Nath cried out.

  The titan lifted the spear over its head.

  “Waark!” Nath ordered. “Attack! Now!”

  The bull dragon shifted direction the slightest bit, maneuvering away from Balzurth and toward his and Selene’s attacker.

  Now I know what Father meant. But I want to help him.

  Nath caught a glimpse of his father’s grand breastplate turning the color of flame. Time stopped around him. In his mind, he got it. He understood.

  Waark plowed into the spear-wielding titan, knocking it flat on the ground.

  Nath hopped off Waark’s back, rushed over to Selene, and picked her up in his arms. “Selene, Selene!”

  Blinking, she said, “Nath?” She wheezed, coughed, and shook her head.

  Sansla Libor landed by his side.

  A wurmer rushed in.

  Sansla cracked its skull with his fist.

  “We must go!” Nath said. He ran toward Waark carrying Selene, Sansla with him. “Father is going to turn this place into an inside-out volcano!”