“No more! No more!” I say. “Please don’t stick another sword in me! Please! It hurts! Oh my God it hurts so much!”
Whatever lusciousness I was feeling a few minutes ago out in the corridor is long gone. Having a chick stick a bunch of swords in your torso will do that to you. It’s a buzzkill. My virginity is intact. But somehow in the midst of getting all these swords stuck in my scaly green ass, my dang death seems to have eased on up too.
“I can feel your WILL TO POWER blocked in your heart region, Gork,” she says, snorting blacksmoke out her nostrils. “Your heart is way too big. The size of your heart is life-threatening. It’s preventing you from being connected to the BIOCON sources in your environment.”
“My heart? What’s wrong with my heart? My heart’s just fine the way it is,” I gasp.
Of course secretly I know my giant compassionate heart is to blame for pretty much all my woes. But maybe by playing dumb I can somehow trick Metheldra out of doing whatever it is she’s about to do to me with this mega sword she’s wielding in her talon.
“Hopefully I can unblock it with this sword.”
I gulp. “Now wait just a second,” I say. “Let’s talk about this. What exactly are you planning on doing with that sword?”
Metheldra flicks her powerstaff and a floating screen appears in the air and there’s a live image of my black heart on the screen, and my heart looks like a huge nasty throbbing greasy oyster. Up there on the floating screen, you can plainly see my heart is so gigantic it fills both sides of my entire chest cavity. She points at the screen with her sword.
“Gork,” she says, “I’m sorry to have to be telling you this, but this is the biggest dragon heart I have ever seen. No wonder your horns won’t grow! No wonder your BIOCON LEVS are so low. No wonder you have no WILL TO POWER. The size of your heart is undermining every other aspect of your life and your development as a dragon. Now, I would ask you if you have a problem with fainting, but one look at the image of your heart here and I already know the answer to that question. I’d be surprised if you weren’t fainting at least five times a day, maybe more.”
A strange little whimper bubbles up in the back of my throat.
Then she reaches out and carefully rubs my puny horns with her other talon.
“You poor thing,” she whispers. “You poor poor poor thing. Don’t you worry. Metheldra is going to fix you.”
“Mmmmmmm,” I moan. “That feels so good.”
I love the way it feels as she keeps gently rubbing my puny horns like this because, when she rubs them, well it makes me feel strong and super. And feeling strong and powerful isn’t a familiar sensation to me, which is partly why I find the whole experience so exhilarating.
“Mmmmmmm. Gosh that really does feel so good. Please don’t stop.”
It’s the way she clasps each horn with her talon, and then rubs her talons up and down over them. “That feels good. Please don’t stop. Mmmmmm.”
“You poor poor poor thing,” she whispers. “Metheldra is going to fix you. You poor, poor thing. Metheldra is going to fix you. You poor, poor thing.”
“Mmmmm,” I moan. “That feels so good. They’re so small. I hate how small they are. I want to have big horns.”
She keeps rubbing my horns.
“Don’t you worry,” she purrs. “I’m going to make your horns very, very big. Metheldra is going to fix you. Metheldra is going to fix you. She is going to make you into a big strong dragon with big scary horns.”
Then without warning she swings her other talon around in a flash of silver and sticks the sword blade right into my heart and pushes down with all her weight.
[ 35 ]
METHELDRA THE SWORDUPUNCTURIST
“Owwwwwww!” I sob.
I’m instantly thrashing around on the table and twisting this way and that, trying to break free. But the blade has gone straight through my heart and out my back and I’m pinned to the slab, like some sort of science specimen in a display case.
I hiss and spray sparks out of my beak.
My tail is thrashing around like an enraged beast.
“Take it out!” I bellow. “Take it out! Please take it out!”
Now I’m really starting to freak out and I suddenly get worried I might go insane because of how much pain I’m in with this sword blade jammed straight through my giant heart. I thrash around even harder and I’m struggling to get to my green webbed feet, and in the midst of my insanity I’m convinced that I can just run out of her lair with the table stuck to my back.
I’ll learn to live like that. With the sword right through my heart, and that table pinned to my back. I don’t care. As long as I manage to escape from her lair right this instant, that’s all that matters.
Then Metheldra rears back and snatches another sword with her other talon and she brings this sword down handle-first and bashes me in the snout with the butt of the sword handle. Blood instantly spurts out.
I’m dazed. I’m seeing stars. And I black out from the pain. Or from the blow to my snout. I don’t know which one it is. But I’m gone.
When I come to, I’m still lying on the table.
Metheldra is gazing down at me by candlelight with a serene look in her hooded eyes, and she is gently rubbing my horns. And it really does feel yummy, the way she’s rubbing my horns like that. I glance down and see there are still at least twenty swords stuck through my scaly body, including the giant silver sword stuck through my heart. But for some reason, I don’t care. I don’t feel pain anymore. I’m actually feeling pretty faboo.
I smile weakly up at her. “Metheldra gonna fix me. Mmmmmmm. I like you rubbing my horns. Mmmmmm. Yummy.”
“That’s good, Gork,” purrs Metheldra, as she rubs my horns. “We need to unblock your BioCon Channels. You’ve lost connection with the electromagnetic waves from the island. The name of this sword I just stuck in you is the HeartShrinker.”
“The HeartShrinker?”
“Yes. The blade was forged here at the Institute’s volcano. It’s designed to help cadets become more ruthless and deranged. There’s not a dragon heart in the universe that could withstand this blade. Your heart is shriveling as we speak.”
“Mmmmm. Me like the HeartShrinker. My horns feel big and strong.”
“By stabbing your heart with this HeartShrinker sword and letting the blade stay pierced through your heart, we should be able to shrink your heart down to a much more manageable size. So that your heart stops interfering with your natural tendencies to be ghastly and fiendish. I can tell that’s where a lot of your BIOCON LEVS are getting blocked. Your grandfather Dr. Terrible always said he wanted me to treat you if I ever got the chance.”