CHAPTER 9
Sisters' Last Battle
George leapt up at the dragon Elena as high as he could while the beast was still taking in breath. For his last running step he managed to launch himself with both feet off a large boulder, which helped him gain at least fifty meters altitude above the ground before striking the creature, elf sword first, in its lower belly.
The sword punched through stronger than steel scale and into dragon-flesh nearly as tough, to the hilt, while at the same time George shouted something he didn’t consciously understand. Blue flame blasted from the sword into the dragon, searing off several surrounding scales.
George thought to strike again, to slice deeper into the beast, but found himself hanging awkwardly with both hands holding onto the sword that was still buried in the dragon, without leverage to do anything but hang.
The dragon paused as if stung by a wasp and twisted its head down to see what had struck it. George could see its red eyes focus on him in rage as the creature’s mouth opened, exposing rows of white, dagger-shaped teeth each bigger than men. A moment later red fire erupted from the cavernous maw and shot towards George.
The teenager was dismayed to find that it took all his strength to simply pull the sword out of the creature, because dragon’s flesh was already reforming around the sword and its singed flesh was already growing new scales. Only moments before the red fire reached him George swung his legs up and pulled out the sword as he pushed away from the beast.
He landed far enough away from the dragon so that the main thrust of red fire missed him, but considerable red flame still enveloped him. To his relief, though it felt uncomfortably hot, it did not seem to damage him in any way. However, in moments, as the flame swept more directly towards him and away from the dragon, it changed in color to green. Even before it reached him, he could feel it burn his skin. Rapidly running towards the back of the dragon he again barely managed to avoid the green flame.
The red fire had been only to get him off her and far enough away to use the green fire without burning herself, George realized. The dragon was smart, probably centuries smart and a veteran of hundreds of battles similar to this one. Battles that it had all won.
George’s only fighting experience had been in watching his uncle attack the head of one of these dragons, so next he leaped as high as he could onto the creature’s tail with the intension of working his way up to the head. Atop the tail ran a row of thirty-foot spikes, as thick as tree trunks and as black as the thing’s scales. As he dodged his way through them along the tail and onto the back, he caught glimpses of the beast’s head bobbing about as the beast searched in vain for him.
He moved swiftly, but was hardly half way up the back among fifty-foot spikes when the beast declared: “I’LL KILL YOU LATER, ELF WARRIOR, AFTER I’VE FINISHED WITH SISTER.”
Grog stopped running when he reached the house and gently put down the three humans he had been carrying. “HIDE IN HOUSE,” he told them. “WARDS STRONGEST IN HOUSE.”
“Did you hear Elena?” Mary said. “She’s going after Jewel again. Jewel needs me.”
“It won’t matter,” said Rick glumly. He was looking at a cell phone type device that he had pulled from his pocket.
“Why not?” Mary insisted.
“This place will be nuked within ten minutes.”
“Can’t you stop it?” Johnny asked. “They can’t bomb a town! They’ll kill thousands of people!”
Rick shook his head. The boy had no concept of how bad it would actually be. Hundreds of thousands of people could die. Or more. “Too late. They’re following protocol set up over several decades.”
“George might not last long enough to see the blast,” Mary said.
The troll smiled grimly, big white teeth showing through dark hair. “GEORGE NEED ME, AND LIKE YOU HUMANS SAY, ME HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO.” At that he went loping back towards the battle.
The dragon Elena was taking in another deep breath when she felt another stinging blow on her back. It had to be the elf warrior again. She had thought that she and her sister had killed the pest during the earlier battle. After she was through with Jewel she would destroy the warrior, house, forest, and the town and great city beyond it. Above all, she had to be certain that the egg was captured. She feared that it had been already destroyed. If so she would have to recover the broken shell and take it to the Dark One to plea for forgiveness.
First she had to put Jewel out of service for keeps. A shame really, that Jewel had betrayed the Dark One and her own Sisters. The three of them together could have won the Dark One’s favor long ago. As it was, Jewel’s betrayal had all but destroyed her sisters’ chances to become part of the Dark One’s elite inner circle. That would change with Jewel's death.
As Elena stepped even closer to her intended victim she was disturbed to see Jewel roll onto her stomach and position her legs to stand up. It shouldn’t have been possible for Jewel to recover nearly as quickly as herself; her sister must have had help.
A crude wooden spear struck her neck hard enough to penetrate scales and sink several feet into flesh. Another superficial wound, but it startled her. If the elf warrior was on her back, where had the spear come from?
“ME GROG,” said a voice in the language of the forest troll, coming from someplace on the ground in front of her. “YOU REMEMBER ME, UGLY ONE? I TAKE YOUR GOLD MAYBE FIFTY CYCLES PAST. MARAMA GOLD, IN THE MOUNTAINS OF IDERCRANTS.”
She remembered, all right. Her entire horde of strongly warded gold had disappeared from her cave. She searched for it for three seasons in vain. Enraged, she blasted green fire in the general direction of the troll’s mocking voice.
Grog, who had never really been to the mountains of Idercrants, but had certainly heard of the gold robbery, was still running full-tilt when the edge of the fiery blast singed his thick hide. Hot tempered, the Sisters were, and the crafty troll had taken advantage of that. He laughed, despite the pain.
Elena, realizing her mistake, redirected her fire, but only a hint of green flame remained to strike Jewel; enough to kill almost anything in the Multiverse, but only enough to enrage a dragon. She had wasted most of her green flame on a mere troll!
Urged on by weak but insistent human thoughts from the one called Mary, Jewel was fully standing and drawing breath to return fire. Fearfully Elena took flight, leaping into the air with wings working to gain purchase in the thin Earth air. George clung desperately to a spike on the creature’s back, preparing to jump off, when Jewel’s green-hot blast caught Elena with wings extended and underbelly exposed. Her attempt at escape had been too late, and had only made her a perfect target. Wings disintegrated, along with much of the bulky body. What remained of Elena crashed heavily to the ground near Jewel.
“REMOVE YOURSELF, ELF WARRIOR,” Jewel commanded.
George, who had been shielded by the thickest part of Elena’s body, leapt away from the smoldering remains. As he did, he saw Elena’s head, still quite alive, twist and glare impotently at her sister. Her great jaws opened as though to return fire, but too much of the creature’s body was gone, and she was no longer capable of supplying flame. Seconds later a second wall of green flame from Jewel disintegrated the head and most of the remaining dragon parts. Only glowing cinders remained. The dragon Elena was no more!
Hardly pausing, Jewel leapt into the air and glided towards the still unconscious dragon Lee. While still airborne, she let loose with a third blast of green flame that melted away Lee’s head and neck.
The decapitated body shuddered and began thrashing about wildly as Jewel landed atop it, claws biting through black scale and into flesh, restraining the squirming mass. Than, to the horror of the human onlookers that had regrouped at the house, Jewel began eating her sister dragon, tearing great chunks of flesh from the body. After only a few great bites, Jewel stopped and lay down over the still twitching body, and the two were suddenly surrounded in a halo of green light.
George couldn’t tell what w
as going on, the light was so bright, but Mary, with her eyes closed, spoke in a clear voice that didn’t seem to be her own. “As in the beginning, so as it is now, I take you sister, unto me, as flesh of my flesh.”
“JEWEL DESTROY BAD SISTER ELENA, BUT LEE SHE KEEP FOR HERSELF. JEWEL BE STRONGER NOW,” explained Grog, who had joined the humans.
“I’ll be damned. I think she’s eating the second one because she cares for her,” Rick reasoned.
“Something like that,” Mary agreed, though her eyes remained closed.
“Three minutes to the nukes,” mentioned Johnny, looking at his watch. “Too late to run. Better to wait here and be fried right off.”
“Two and a half minutes,” corrected Rick.
George glanced skyward. He couldn’t see the approaching attack aircraft, but he could sense them on some level beyond sight. There were two of them, and he knew they would soon fire some sort of missiles, missiles that carried nuclear warheads. He relayed the images wordlessly to Mary, who wordlessly passed them on to Jewel.
Still the dragons glowed too brightly to look upon. What was happening?
“THIS BE UNCOMMON THING I THINK, EVEN BETWEEN DRAGONS,” Grog noted, calmly.
“Under a minute now,” noted Rick, looking skyward. “Nice knowing you folks.”
Both George and Mary were otherwise occupied. George sensed the launch of a missile from each airplane, followed by extreme evasive maneuvers by both of them. He relayed the information in a nearly steady stream to Mary, who relayed it to Jewel.
“Thirty seconds,” noted Rick.
The glowing abruptly ceased, revealing that Jewel stood alone. There was no sign at all of Lee. Somehow all of Lee had been absorbed into Jewel, who seemed to be much larger.
“She’s beautiful,” George noted, as he stared in awe at the black dragon.
Jewel lifted her head skyward and almost casually opened her great jaws as two massive fireballs erupted only a hundred meters above her. The fireballs grew for a moment, than rapidly dimmed, drained by dozens of streams of white-hot lightning that led from each fireball into the dragon’s open mouth.
In seconds, other than echoing thunder, it was all over.
“Jewel basically says thanks for the meal, though she prefers regular lightning from storms to bombs,” said Mary.
“I’ll be damned,” Rick muttered. “It sucked in all the energy released from two tactical nukes! Harry once told me that he didn’t think that anyone could nuke a dragon, and he was right!”
“Silly humans! Dragons need not worry about puny human weapons,” rumbled Grog.
Jewel turned her huge head to regard the humans quizzically. A red forked tongue at least ten meters long extended from her mouth, licking her lips. “She wants to know if there are more coming,” explained Mary. “She’s still hungry.”
“I don’t know,” replied Rick, who started to fuss with his cell phone. “With a dragon still here, they might decide to attack again, just to be on the safe side.”
“The two attack planes are still outbound, but each carries another bomb,” George stated. “The pilots are considering what to do. They are a bit puzzled. The whole chain of command is. I think we might have a few minutes before they come back.”
Suddenly Jewel leapt into the air and with a mighty flap of her wings, flew towards the humans. At the same time, she began to rapidly fade away.
Far overhead, the satellite confirmed that no dragons remained, and relayed that information to SAC headquarters and to the attack aircraft.
“Jewel remembered that she isn’t supposed to use her dragon form on Earth unless necessary,” explained Mary.
“Yes, I confirm it,” Rick was saying into his cell phone, as he watched a common looking crow approach from where the dragon had disappeared. “No more bogies. Situation back to normal, pretty much. Stand down to status amber.” He paused a moment to listen. “No sir, absolutely not. Do one fly over if you must, but send no ground forces. That would break treaties with you-know-who. The detonations were absorbed by a bogy, the friendly bogy that disposed of the two other enemy bogies. You’ll have my full eye witness report within the hour. Over and out.”
“Caw, caw, caw,” cried Jewel, as she approached. She landed on a holly tree branch a few feet above their heads. Except for sparkling red eyes, she looked much like an ordinary crow, rather than a super-powered alien being that had just done away with two opposing super beings and a couple of tactical nuclear blasts. Twin jet fighter-bombers flew by at low altitude, but the sound of them was muffled by the ward, and the crow appeared to take no notice of them.
“The United States Government officially thanks you for your efforts, Jewel,” Rick stated. “They do not understand what happened, of course, but they see good results.”
“They will not understand,” said the crow, in a squawky crow voice. “I would speak now with the girl and boy Chosen Ones alone.”
“As you wish, mighty one,” said Grog, and he ushered Rick and Johnny away and towards the house.
The crow regarded George. “YOU HAVE DONE WELL, YOUNG GEORGE,” said the crow, with the soundless force of dragon-thought. "I WAS ATTACKED WHILE YOU JOURNEYED HERE ON THE TRAIN, AND NEARLY DID NOT ELUDE BEING DESTROYED BY MY TWO SISTERS. YET YOU SURVIVED, AND I ASSUME YOUR DRAGON