All this talk about my dead parents is making me feel sort of weird, and I can feel this terrific pressure in my skull.
“What about me, sir? Do I have the very essence of poetry in my blood too? Like my mom did? Is that possible, sir?”
Nog snorts blacksmoke out his nostrils, and his enormous green belly heaves as if it hurts him to say what he’s about to say. “Of course not, young Gork. Here you are with your giant heart and your Snacklicious ranking, and you have to ask me such a question. Your mother was a true fiend. She had the highest WILL TO POWER ranking in her senior class. No, I’m afraid that you are more your father’s son than anything else. As much as it pains me to tell you this. It’s the truth. For some reason, your mother wasn’t able to pass her gift for poetry along to you when she laid your egg.”
I turn my scaly green head and start looking around Nog’s lair.
“Well, are my mother and father down here in the Underworld, sir? Could I talk to them, sir?”
Nog closes his eyes and keeps them shut as if he is thinking deeply about something. I can hear the lava rumble in his belly. Then he opens his eyes and looks at me.
“I’m afraid not, Gork,” he says, snorting blacksmoke. “Your parents died on planet Earth. So their ghosts are contained within Earth’s underworld. It’s really too bad. Because they’d certainly be most welcome here—”
“Ummm, Professor,” I say, “I think I feel a little dizzy.”
Professor Nog stops and turns and looks at my scaly ass and then he sniffs the air suspiciously. “My God,” he says. “Gork, are you sweating?!”
“I can’t help it,” I say.
“I can smell you from here!” Nog pinches his scaly snout with his index and thumb claw, as if he’s trying to keep himself from gagging. “Here!” He throws me a white towel from the stack he keeps next to his couch. “Clean yourself up before I puke!”
I use the towel to wipe my green scales. And if you want to know the truth, my sweat really does stink. By any measuring stick, I’m repulsive. With the sweat pouring out of my green scales like this. I mean I can’t even stand to be in the lair with myself. That’s how gross I am.
Now at this point, I do something stupid. I reflexively reach up and touch my horns. Just to check and see if maybe they’ve grown since I last touched them. And I guess if I’m being honest I’m desperately trying to find the silver lining in all this.
But Nog sees me touch my horns like that and he jumps all over me.
“Gork, do you know the reason why your horns are so small?”
“Am I a Mutant, sir?”
“No you’re not a Mutant, Gork!” he says, snorting firestreams. “Your problem is you’re underdeveloped emotionally! You need to act like the Terrible that is your birthright! Then your horns will grow so long that this Runcita chick you’ve been chasing all morning will be begging you to let her be your Queen for EggHarvest!”
Now by this point I’m listening to Professor Nog but I’m also busy wiping my forelimb pits with the towel, and it seems like the more sweat I wipe away, the more I start sweating. And Nog’s sarcastic commentary definitely isn’t helping matters, that’s for sure. And by now I’m pretty sure I really do hate old Nog. It really is a very dirty trick for him to have pulled on my scaly ass. Sucking me down into the Underworld like this and making me lie on this hideous couch made of fiery coals, and then lecturing me like a real crazy old dead dragon.
Professor Nog watches me wipe my pits and he shakes his scaly green head and says, “I don’t know, Gork. I don’t know.” Then he says, “Perhaps there is no hope for you after all!”
And with that he claps his talons together three times and there’s a giant explosion of blacksmoke. And as I feel my particles being sucked several thousand leagues back up to WarWings, I hear Professor Nog whisper inside my head:
“Don’t forget! When you want to rule over a foreign land, you must first offer it a drop of your blood. Then wait to see if the land gives you its blessing in the form of a sacred bud. Do not forget this, young Gork! Do not forget!”
[ 22 ]
SPLASH, MY SCALY GREEN ASS IS BACK FROM THE UNDERWORLD
Splash.
I’m back from the Realm of the Dead.
I’m crouched here in the dark fiery corridor of WarWings. Just as I had been right before that mirrored triangle suddenly appeared in front of me and Professor Nog lassoed me with his cold dead tongue and yanked me down into his lair.
I glance around. One thing is for sure, Professor Nog wasn’t lying when he said he dropped a Time Freeze on everyone. All these dragon fools here in the corridor are still frozen. Including that maniac Rexro.
Frozen in time.
It is totally silent and peaceful.
Maybe too quiet? I can’t even hear my heart beating. Oh my God, am I still dead?! That would be the nastiest trick of all for Professor Nog to pull on me. To send me back up here and for me to still be dead!
I clap my talon over my chest and am instantly relieved to hear my gigantic and foolish heart beating away in there.
I snort flames of joy out my nostrils.
Thank goodness! I am alive!
So for a couple seconds I am just kind of standing here in the corridor and looking around and it’s perfectly quiet and still. And I can see that depraved Rexro frozen still and his black beak is twisted up in a sneer. He’s got one green webbed foot raised, and it’s clear he was bounding toward me when he froze.
Then I glance around at Twelk and his fiendish dragon pals, who are frozen in the middle of their chaotic gestures. Their yellow eyes are bugged-out, looking extremely psychotic.
Some of them have their tongues sticking several feet out of their beaks, frozen in the middle of some lewd gesture.
Some of them have flames jutting out their green snouts.
A couple of them have their spiked tails arched in mid–Threat Display.
The sight of all these nasties frozen in time is hideous.
At that moment, Professor Nog’s voice pops up in my scaly head and says, “Get out of there, Gork! The Time Freeze is almost up!”
Yes sir!
I leap into the air and flap my wings like a maniac and zoom down the corridor.
But then at that moment the Time Freeze must have expired.
I can just picture the last grain of sand dropping down inside Professor Nog’s timer.
Now behind me I can hear all those fiends leap back into motion. And the sonic boom of Twelk and his dragon pals snorting with wicked laughter, and the general pandemonium in the corridor, comes rushing back into my earholes.
“Where is he?! Where did he go?!” shouts Rexro.
I flap my wings and turn left down a dark corridor.
Thwack-thwack.
Inside my scaly head, Professor Nog’s voice whispers, “You must hurry! Rexro is coming for you!”
[ 23 ]
ENTER MY SECRET WEAPON, WHICH WILL HELP ME GET ON WITH THE BUSINESS OF HAVING RUNCITA LAY MY EGGS
I whiz in among the crowds of other flying cadets and I keep casting my green snout back and forth, hoping to catch a whiff of Runcita’s juicy scent.