PARTNER,” he pathed. “I AM ALIVE AND WELL. I GATHER STRENGTH NOW AND WILL COME FOR YOU WITHIN A FEW HOURS. HOLD OUT UNTIL THEN.”
He opened his eyes. In the moonlight he could see that the Masons had stepped out of the house and were waving goodbye. He waved back to them before turning to regard the tiny elf. “I don’t want you to go with me, mage.”
Pip’s face instantly went red.
“I have an equally dangerous and urgent mission for you,” George added quickly, before the elf had composed himself enough to explosively respond.
“To find Mary?” Pip asked hopefully.
“Yes. To rescue her from the Witch.”
“I was myself hoping to do this," the mage responded, "but if you don’t succeed with the Dragon it’s all for nothing, my friend.”
“If Mary dies or the Witch escapes it’s also all for nothing. Besides, the Witch has already attacked Freedom and I with elemental birds. She could do something like that again. And there is also the American Government to worry about. I need you to help with these things while I focus on rescuing Freedom.”
“I have an idea,” said Pip. “I could provide a diversion while I search for Mary that would confuse both the Witch and the Americans. That would help your cause as well as mine. What say you?”
“Perfect. I knew I could count on you, Elf Mage.” He patted the tiny mage affectionately on the head.
“We best both go then.” With that the tiny elf shot up into the air. “Good luck, Chosen One,” he shouted, as he sped away.
George himself leapt into the air with all his strength, then flew swiftly towards the distant sea. He improved his flying technique as he went, gathering more and more speed as he displaced air from in front of himself to in back of himself, as he displaced himself forward. He soon was moving at well beyond supersonic speeds, though surrounded as he was by air being displaced away from his path, none of the rushing air reached him, and his passage was silent.
Minutes later he was a hundred miles beyond the shoreline before he even realized he was over the ocean. He was happy to find that there were no ships nearby. Dropping to hover only a few feet above the warm, dark waters, he sent commands to local sea life to flee for their lives as he began to extract thermal energy from the waters. In ten minutes he stood on a massive iceberg that continued to grow geometrically. In an hour it was five miles across, and in two hours more it was fifteen miles across and extended over a thousand feet down onto the continental shelf.
At that point he ceased his efforts to gather ocean energy and shot straight upward through the atmosphere and into space. He was nearly two thousand miles above the Earth before he caught sight of his destination.
Now came the tricky part that would either kill him or make him stronger. What had the elf mage said about dragons eating suns?
****