Alex Bell - Fighting with fire

But for all Lex knew, Jesse was right. And, personally, Lex was feeling less and less sure that the dragon was real. He knew people, and he knew how easily they could get themselves wound up about nothing. One of the single most distinguishing features of a dragon was its ability to blow fire. And the fact that there were masses of fire-bunnies down here seemed too large a coincidence to ignore. But there was still the chance that the dragon was real, and Lex couldn’t possibly give up on the third round until he was absolutely certain that it was not.

As they went on, Jesse continued to whinge about the fact that they were wasting their time but he might just as well have been singing nursery rhymes for all the effect he was having on Lex.

Then they walked into another room and something happened to the canary. If either Lex or Jesse had been paying the birds any attention, they would have noticed that the light they shed was getting progressively brighter and more golden. When they stepped into the new room, a dazzling, sparkling light seemed to burst out of the bird, illuminating the entire cavern. They had finally found the gold. It glittered all around them in huge heaps of wealth. Lex had never seen so much in all his life. It was piled in great mounds up towards the ceiling, like particularly lovely stalactites. There was also a lake, so smooth and still that it seemed like a mirror. The gold piled up all around it and spilled into it. There was probably loads of the stuff beneath the surface, as well. The glow-canary Lex carried was the only one in this room. Presumably the workers had never got any further than this.

Possibly, this was because of the huge dragon sprawled on top of a great heap of gold in the middle of the room.

Apart from its massive size, it was not at all what Lex had expected. It was snoring contentedly, for one thing. And, although it may once have been a greenish colour, now it was mostly grey. Its scales seemed to have changed colour with age. Sound asleep, it was completely unaware of the humans’ presence. Lex saw now why Lady Luck had thought he could win. Lex may have been no fighter but even he was capable of stabbing something that was asleep… Or was he? Was he really that despicable that he would slaughter a geriatric dragon in its sleep, just so that he could win a Game?

‘It did kill all those people,’ he said, in a feeble effort to convince himself.

‘Did it?’ Jesse asked. ‘Seems to me it was probably those nasty little fire-bunnies all along.’

Lex walked through the gold to get closer to the dragon. He was a few metres away when the thing woke up. It slowly lifted its head and looked sleepily towards Lex with white eyes. The dragon was almost completely blind, so it must have been its sense of smell that made it move towards Lex. It got up slowly, ponderously, as if its limbs ached, and then it slithered inelegantly off the pile of gold. When it got to the floor, it crumpled on to its front legs and its long neck and head smacked on to the ground in a really pathetic way. Slowly, it picked itself back up and shuffled over towards Lex.

Lex stood completely still. He thought he should probably be terrified and running, or else reaching for his sword and screaming. But it was difficult to feel afraid of something that seemed so distinctly unthreatening. It did not look at all like a creature poised to attack. Indeed, it was so old that it seemed to be all it could do to walk. When it reached Lex, it thumped down to the floor in front of him. The dragon’s head was as big as Lex. When it opened its mouth in a yawn, Lex saw that it had hardly any teeth left in its head. And yet its breath was the most foul that Lex had ever smelled? a sort of grim mixture of stagnant water and very old fish. Rotten, dead fish, possibly.

‘Eww!’ Lex exclaimed in horror.

Even worse, a second later, the dragon licked him, dragging its huge tongue up the front of Lex’s shirt, practically soaking him in dragon saliva in the process. Then, drooling happily, it bent its lizardy head and rubbed itself affectionately against Lex’s shoulder.

‘Oh my Gods,’ Jesse whispered, moving closer to them. ‘It’s tame.’

He reached out a hand and ran it along the dragon’s head. The monster pressed into the caress happily. It seemed to revel in being touched and spoken to. At one point, it even rolled over on to its back as if wanting them to rub its belly.

‘There’s no way this beast ever killed anyone,’ Jesse said.

‘No,’ Lex replied.

Clearly the things that had terrorised the mines had been those blasted fire-bunnies, after all.

‘You raise a hand against this dragon and I’ll knock your head off,’ Jesse said calmly.

‘You don’t get to tell me what to do,’ Lex replied, without heat. ‘I will spare this dragon because it pleases me to.’

Lex knew the rules of the Game meant that he must kill the dragon, or at least try to. But Lex had always turned his nose up at rules? even if they were set by the Gods. Besides, why kill a dragon when you could own one, instead? If Lex could find some way of taking the dragon with him from the mine, he would prevent Jeremiah from winning. Then Lex would be the proud owner of what was quite possibly the last dragon left alive on the entire Globe. Just think how impressive that would be!

The only problem was that, now the points had been wiped clean for the third round, there would be no victor in the Game. Lex might draw with Jeremiah by default, or the Gods might even disqualify him. Both were equally unpleasant pills to swallow. Lex might just as well lose altogether than share the limelight with that insufferable snob. It was almost enough for him to reconsider slaying the dragon, after all. But then he looked at the grey old thing, drooling happily as Jesse scratched it behind the ears, and he knew he couldn’t? wouldn’t? kill it. It would be like chopping a dear old lady’s head off whilst she was in the process of trying to give you a home-baked pie. The Game and the Gods be damned. There were limits, and Lex didn’t kill. He might cheat and lie and steal, but he didn’t go out and kill things for fun. That was the sort of thing the posh snobs he stole from did, and one of the reasons Lex found it so easy and guilt-free to take their stuff.

No, they would get the dragon out of here somehow. All right, so it seemed like an impossible task, considering the fact that they were deep underground in a mine that was practically falling down around them and the dragon was old and feeble, not to mention enormous? and most of the tunnels were quite narrow. But there had to be some way to do it. Lex thrived on seemingly-impossible tasks. The dragon had got in here somehow, after all. Now they were just going to have to get it out.

Lex looked up at the ceiling. It was so high that it might even go all the way back up to the surface. If the old dragon could find some last burst of energy from somewhere, then perhaps it could smash through the ceiling and fly out. But, given that it could barely walk, that seemed unlikely.

Lex was still trying to work out what to do when Jeremiah came rushing into the cavern from the opposite side. He was dusty and dishevelled, as if a few bits of ceiling might have fallen down on him along the way, but he was free of scorch marks, so had obviously managed to avoid being attacked by the fire-bunnies. Tess wasn’t with him and Lex assumed that, as with the second round, he had left her behind, out of harm’s way.

The nobleman’s sword was already in his hand and, when he saw the dragon, Jeremiah instantly charged towards it. The dragon turned ponderously and then began lolloping towards the nobleman, clearly pleased and excited at the appearance of a new human who might give him a scratch behind the ears, too.