I feel dazed, but I keep flying. I’m hoping that whoever just smashed my head like that will go away if I just ignore them and keep zooming onward.
Then I see my attacker flying alongside me. I instantly recognize him. It’s this sophomore dragon named Twelk, who’s notorious for being a rising star on the varsity Slave-Catching team. Plus just generally being a real deranged sonuvabitch. And he’s glaring at me like the sight of me repulses him something awful.
Help.
[ 17 ]
THE DARK FIERY CORRIDOR
“Where’s your little robot chick, Weak Sauce?” Twelk snarls at me, flapping his wings and flying right up in my face. “Whatcha gonna do now that your Tin Can friend isn’t here to protect you?”
Then Twelk leans over and uses his leathery wing to whack my scaly green ass so hard that I go skidding out of control through the air.
Well like I said, Twelk is one of the youngest players on the varsity Slave-Catching team. And if you happen to be a man-creature who’s reading this, then you need to know that Slave-Catching is not only the most popular sport at WarWings, but at every institution of higher learning on Blegwethia.
WarWings has won the Inter-Academy Slave-Catching Championships for the last ten years in a row. Our closest competition is the ScalesOfDeath Academy, which is located on a suborbital space station. And each year virtually every dragon on the planet tunes in to watch as the WarWings and ScalesOfDeath Slave-Catching teams go head-to-head.
The WarWings team and the ScalesOfDeath team land on an unsuspecting planet filled with a proud and fierce race of beings. There are twelve players on each team, and each team member is armed with an array of weapons and cages. Squatting on the Designated Foreign Planet, the two opposing Slave-Catching teams line up with their backs to each other.
Then the referee drops his raised wings. And the invasion begins.
Now each team sets off flying in the opposite direction from the other team. The idea being that each team will fly all the way around the planet until they arrive at their original starting point. And all the while each team member tries to catch as many of the proud and fierce race of indigenous beings as possible on that planet and then put them in cages.
So whichever team ends up with the most indigenous slaves wins. The winning team takes their place on a gold dais and the conquered race of indigenous species kneel before their new Evil Intergalactic Dragon Overlords, with all of dragondom watching them on TV.
Of course this last part is more pageantry than sport. But it’s a huge hit with the dragons on our planet.
Even dragons who normally don’t dig watching sports will watch the Championship. Because it’s a good excuse to gather round the TV with their friends on a Sunday and get real freaking high by shooting each other with PartyBullets.
“You got a problem, Weak Sauce?” Twelk flies in real close to me and snorts flamestreams out his nostrils. “You feeling tough today?”
I quietly tell him no I do not have a problem today. And I make sure to keep my eyes staring forward as I say it, so as not to rile him up even more.
These flying dragon fools in our immediate area start snorting and hooting with laughter, on account of how I’m backing down from this jerk Twelk.
“What was that, Weak Sauce?” roars Twelk. “Speak louder, Weak Sauce!”
And then all the other treacherous cadets flying around us snort some more at hearing Twelk call me by my nickname. And the humiliation is definitely a little more keen than usual because of me being a senior and all, and this jerk Twelk is just a sophomore.
Don’t rile him up any more. Just stay calm and he’ll go away. He’s just trying to have a laugh. He’s not really going to hurt you.
Now I know Dr. Terrible would tell me that I should fry this scoundrel Twelk’s scaly green face with a mega firestream right this second. But I remind myself that I’m on my Queen Quest and I can’t let some little stupid sophomore derail my plans. Plus there’s the fact of the offending sophomore’s giant horns. Because those things look downright brutal.
So I just flap my wings and scoot far away from Twelk.
“That’s what I thought, Weak Sauce!” snarls Twelk. “You better fly away, Weak Sauce!”
And fly away I do. But stupid me, well I’m so busy clocking Twelk shouting threats at me from behind that I don’t keep an eye on what’s in front of me.
And suddenly up ahead I hear a familiar voice shout, “There he is! Get that bastard with the little horns!”
I whip my head around and peer down the corridor and:
Oh my God! It’s that bastard Rexro with some of his security goons!
I instantly close my wings and drop to the ground.
Rexro is crouched there on his powerful green haunches, blowing fire out his nostrils.
He’s flanked on either side by a couple of his Security Commando dragons. Because of the flaming torches mounted on the walls, Rexro’s shadow falls all the way down the corridor and stops right in front of my webbed feet.
But how did he find me?! Was it that Datalizard Trenx?! Did that robot rat my ass out?! It had to have been Trenx!
[ 18 ]
REXRO GOES FULL PSYCHO, PLUS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I ENCOUNTER A MYSTERIOUS WORMHOLE
Rexro points his powerstaff at me.
His tail is twitching around over his head in a murderous Threat Display.
“First I’m gonna eat your heart!” he roars. “Then you’re gonna die! And I’m going to enjoy watching you watch me eat your heart right before you die!”
Twelk and all his buddies come flying up from behind and drop to the ground and they circle around me like assassins, closing in. They’re all snorting and hooting with laughter.
“We’ll get him for you, sir!” shouts Twelk.
So as I stand here under Rexro’s horn-wilting glare, I can feel panic grip my big stupid over-large heart.
And without really thinking it through I tilt my scaly head back and shout:
“What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?”
Then, as if summoned by my cry for help, a small mirrored triangle appears in the air several feet in front of me.
Now even though I’ve never seen one before, I know in my bones that what I’m looking at is a rip in the space-time continuum.
And I know that this mirrored triangle hovering here in the air is an honest-to-goodness wormhole.
But I don’t have time to think about this because at that moment an insanely long red tongue comes zooming out of the mirrored triangle and then wraps around my neck and cinches itself tight like a noose.
My eyeballs bulge.
The sudden sensation of having this long insidious tongue wrapped tight around my neck is grotesque in the extreme.
Then the tongue yanks back and I’m whipped off my webbed feet and I go flying headfirst through the wormhole. And at the time I can’t make sense of what’s happening but I do notice when I shoot through the wormhole that I hear the same noise you hear when you come flying down out of the sky at top speed and then dive into the ocean.
Splash.
[ 19 ]
SPLASH, TURNS OUT MY SCALY GREEN ASS WAS WRONG