General Fiction posted July 21, 2024 Chapters: 3 4 -5- 6... 


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Ohmie and the dragon, Ol' Silver and Red
A chapter in the book Ol' Silver and Red

Ol' Silver and Red, ch 5

by Wayne Fowler


In the last part Ohmie, after having ridden the dragon down a shaft and through a tunnel into the dragon's lair, attempted to escape, only to be nearly drowned by the dragon’s plunge into a pool.
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Chapter 5

Ohmie was bereft of breath long before beginning his rise to the surface. And the dragon had taken him deep – deeper than any pearl diver had ever plumbed – and they were professionals, well acclimated with the conditions, accustomed to the task. Ohmie was a landlubber. He couldn’t recall when he’d last been in water over his head. A flash of an ancient experience that may, or may not, have been himself skittered across his consciousness. A prehistoric soul entangled in tree limbs not too unlike the dragon's scales drowned. Ohmie, about to lose his sanity so starved for air, did not linger on that character’s fate, so near to ending his own.

    He didn’t know how he regained the surface of this water, only glad he’d risen with his back downward, his mouth out of the water. He came to his senses floating, his ears completely water-logged and his stomach seemingly filled with bilish water. He thought about the drone in his brain even though he was breathing. He thought about the bat droppings. He turned on his side and threw up. He imagined that his body somehow swallowed the water instead of breathing it.

Had there been light to see, he would have seen the greenish, purplish, vile yuck projecting and pouring from his mouth. The smell was as if he’d been kissing the dragon with an open mouth. He threw up again, spitting out the chunks of bitterness that stuck between his teeth and cheeks. He would have thrown up again, but he only dry-heaved, puking nothing but foul air and deep grunts. He dragged himself onto the bank only to pass out, wondering what had become of the diamond that had been stashed in the void where his wisdom teeth might one day live.

    The water’s boiling woke him. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, only that it was long enough for the dragon’s return. He considered the damage the dragon might have inflicted upon the castle, but not for long. He had no time for such considerations, only time for escape, to get to where the dragon wouldn’t find him. He ran for the zone where he remembered the pressure change. That must have been where the ceiling lifted, the place where the dragon flew down into his lair.

    It was. Ohmie realized almost too late that the dragon flew into the mountain, and swam out. The hissing water must have somehow been a phenomenon of the spiraling down the shaft, not swimming back up as he’d first thought. Ohmie pivoted, running back to the pool, slipping into the stinky mess after losing his footing in his own vomit. Steam and rank stench belched from the tunnel, the dragon obviously having passed through the point of ascent as it returned to its treasure hoard.

    Knowing he could never stay underwater long enough to swim out, Ohmie again found the shaft to the mountain top. The climb was torturous. Rock after rock, climbing up the vertical sides of the shafting tunnel. He felt himself weakening without even the faintest hint of light appearing above. He hoped that it meant no more than that it was a dark night sky. Or that the tunnel took a couple of hard turns at the end, not allowing entrance of the unbending rays of light.

    Ohmie was spent. His arms and legs ached. His injuries screamed in agony. He was long past hunger and thirst. Yet the surface remained cloaked in absolute and total darkness. He lifted an arm, or at least he tried to. It felt like an anvil and weighed as much as a horse. What he was trying to do was to see if perhaps his eyelids had welded shut, there may be unseen light above his closed lids. Failing to lift his arm as high as his eyes, Ohmie felt himself drifting back, fading into the abyss. The hole, he knew, had a bottom. That was where he’d started … what … how many days, or weeks ago. His exhausted brain couldn’t know. Only that he was at the end of his strength and endurance. He felt himself slipping … slipping …  Another fraction of an inch and his equilibrium would be lost. He’d fall to his death, landing in a heap, jelly for the dragon’s licking up.

+++

    Princess May felt a pang deep in her soul, catching her very breath. Trembling, she sat directly on the ground, no thinking-rock at hand. She snapped her head side-to-side as if shaking out marbles, wondering whatever possessed her to imagine a thinking rock. Trance-like, she concentrated on Ohmie. Within a moment, no idea as to the cause, or the effect, the overwhelming burden lifted.

+++

    Something stabbed the bottom of Ohmie’s bare feet. He’d lost his shoes in the pool, both of them. Climbing the jagged wall had cut and bruised his feet, but an undamaged spot was again pierced as with a poker. Ohmie snapped alert, catching a last second grip, saving himself from falling. Again, he felt the prick of an urgent stab under his foot. In his delirium he imagined someone below pressing him to keep climbing. He did. Presently he felt himself fading once more, losing incentive and motivation to continue, so utterly physically wasted as he was.

    Now the stabbing commenced under the other foot. Ohmie couldn’t turn to investigate without falling. All he could do was climb. If he wanted to find out what was happening to his feet – a spider or wasp or rat, maybe, he’d have to climb out and do something about it.

    Which is what he did.

    Once to the curvature of the cave, where the vertical shaft did indeed bend to a horizontal cave, a glimmer of light illuminated as if lit by strong candles. Ohmie saw that his bloodied feet had been pecked. The bright yellow Canary bird perched itself on his left shoulder, sweetly singing the very tune Ohmie had sung to it after saving it from the cats. The repayment task completed, the bird flew out of the cave and down the mountainside to the warmer climes that it preferred.
 

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Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com

Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia.
Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria
Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb
King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries.
Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia
King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father
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