| General Fiction posted August 6, 2024 | Chapters: |
...7 8 -9- 10... 
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To battle a dragon
A chapter in the book Ol' Silver and Red
Ol' Silver and Red, ch 9
by Wayne Fowler
In the last part Blado daringly tied a catgut string to one of the dragon's feet, planning to escape by climbing the shaft once the dragon left down through the pool and watery tunnel. Instead, the dragon torched the rope, causing Ohmie to break his arm falling down onto the dragon’s back. Blado would have made it out, but returned for his friend.
Meanwhile, May, waiting for the two at an encampment by a lake, realized that she loved Ohmie.
Meanwhile, May, waiting for the two at an encampment by a lake, realized that she loved Ohmie.
Chapter 9
Now, what to do about it, May thought, her love for Ohmie. Of course, she would marry him and have five children: at least five. But that was tomorrow. What about today? What compelled her to rock-sit? The men needed her help, of that she was most convinced, but how? She settled into deeper thought. Thought deeper than she’d ever imagined. Thought so deep she felt herself settling into the earth, her head sinking low, low, low under the ground.
That was the instant, the simultaneous instant that Blado finished digging his hole in the short, narrow tunnel from the cavernous cavern lair. Digging, not knowing exactly why. Presently he did know, and edged the hole deeper into the tunnel, far enough that once the dragon got as far as the hole, he would have to keep going all the way to the water beyond the shaft he and Ohmie had entered from.
It was also the instant that Ohmie came to, snapping himself alert with the pain in his broken arm, falling off the dragon’s neck, falling to the golden cache in the same instant Princess May fell from the rock.
Blado shrieked. He meant it to be a threatening challenge, but the result was effective nonetheless. He was glad that fighting men hadn’t heard his wimpy war cry. He would have been embarrassed by the obvious terror imbedded within. But it worked. The dragon, instead of following the noise of Ohmie’s fall to the gold, turned toward Blado shooting flame that would have curled his eyebrows had he not flattened himself into his foxhole, despite the fact that the flame quickly spurted out.
True to his plan, the silver and red dragon soared to the tunnel a little too aggressively. He’d assumed that the disappearing challenger ran back out of sight and again up the shaft, no idea he’d sunk into the ground where there’d never been a hole before. He came to a stop with his massive tail pinning Blado in the hole that could, before long, become his grave should he stay there until the air was gone.
The air in the hole did, indeed, begin to stifle. Blado’s hallucinations were the expected result of suffocation, his oxygen-deprived brain. He imagined being stabbed to death, feeling stabbing pricks all over his body.
What he felt was the blade Ohmie wielded. Despite excruciating pain in his right arm, he managed to light his little candle. With it, he found a silver ceremonial sword amongst the riches of the dragon’s wealth. Climbing the stair-stepped ridges of the waggling dragon tail, he hacked and stabbed at the appendage, attempting to either sever it from the dragon, impeding his ability to fly straight, or at least encourage him to propel further down the tunnel, freeing his friend.
He managed both. The fleeing silver and red one-eyed, half-tailed dragon screamed his way down the tunnel dragging a skewed and more-or-less useless tail behind.
Bleeding from the pin-pricks, but grateful nevertheless, Blado wrapped Ohmie’s broken arm, securing it into his tunic. Both knew that Ohmie would not be climbing out, and Blado would not be able to hoist him out. Taking the time to go for help was out of the question. Blado sensed urgency.
Princess May, dazed by her fall, having landed on her head, scrambled back onto the rock, sensing urgency.
Running full out after the dragon, Blado ushered Ohmie, who should have been growing accustomed to agony, down the tunnel trying to be careful to avoid the hole in the floor. The pile of rope was still too heavy for one person to carry by himself, so Blado tied the burnt end to Ohmie’s good wrist, taking up the other end himself.
They reached the pool just as the last of the dragon’s diving ripples waned away. Blado had no time to lose. Risking Ohmie’s very life, Ohmie in absolute and full understanding and agreement with their course of action, cooperated as best he was able. Blado tied his end of the rope to the quickly disappearing catgut cord. No sooner than he’d cinched his knot, unable to check it, Ohmie suddenly wisped from the room, slung underwater by the towing dragon, barely able to draw in a half-lung of air.
Blado watched his friend disappear underwater, hoping he didn’t get stuck and die in a watery grave, unable to swim out.
Ohmie hoped the same as he followed the trail of air bubbles through the churned-up water. Instant darkness overwhelmed him, both outside his eyes, and inside, too. He’d passed out and begun to drown. He tried very hard not to breathe the water, but finally couldn’t help himself, feeling his bursting lungs demand air so fiercely that they involuntarily took in enough water to completely fill, unable to extract the oxygen as did the fish that pecked at the bleeding gashes on his shoulders and legs.
Princess May sensed the water’s turbulence long before the silver and red dragon emerged. With a burst of effort, the dragon cleared the surface and shook like a wet dog. His tail hung limp, hampering his normal lift-off. It more resembled that of an albatross. Or an errant grasshopper devoid of flight plan or sensible trajectory.
The bladder balloon bobbed to the surface. Seeing it, Princess May dove with the grace of a dolphin. She arched and dove into the lake, pulling the catgut cord, which easily separated from the dragon’s foot, back to the beach, gently reeling in her catch. It seemed an eternity before the cord became a rope. Her arms tired long before she felt any real resistance. She regretted every single instance of complaint over Ohmie’s having urged her to exercise beyond the point of pain. Her arms ached, but kept hauling in the increasingly heavy prize.
Ohmie hung up on seaweed, the tugging on his arm pulled his shoulder completely out of its socket, but eventually yanked him free. Many minutes passed before Princess May, wanting to cry, but forcing herself to action, pulled him to the shore. With Herculean strength she hefted him far enough to turn him face down pounding and pumping until the gallon of murky, pukey, bat-slime belched from his lungs, replaced by the air forced into him by Princess May’s mouth-to-mouth blowing. Once the necessity ceased, her blowing became mutual kisses.
The silver and red dragon again crashed back into the lake, splashing the two into consciousness of their surroundings. He’d been flipping and flopping trying to gain flight, this time nearly squashing Princess May and Ohmie as he landed very near the shore. Finally, after what would be total embarrassment for a human swimmer, the dragon paddled its way to the shore, not too far from Princess May and Ohmie. Fortunately for the two, the dragon’s drooping eye pointed toward their direction. Taking advantage of his lateral blindness, the two stole out of sight behind large rocks just as the dragon began to thrash about, stumbling ashore.
Trusting that Blado, with his two good arms and trim and fit body could climb out and make it back to the castle alone, Princess May helped the injured Ohmie home where he could be tended to and helped to heal.
Blado made it back the next day with a report of having seen the dragon in erratic flight around the mountain peaks.
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
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. 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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