"If you don't do exactly as I say... we're all dead. Do you understand? I realise it's about the last thing you want to do. But look around. Do you really want to end up like this? We take a great risk to give you this opportunity. Use it well."
"Sorry," said Flash, meaning it more than at any other time in his life.
"When you reach the point where the river branches in two, you must take the left hand route. It is the only way out. The right hand route will take you further into the mountain and to certain death, while the left hand route breaks the surface towards the bottom of the icecap. You must hurry before the breathing mantra they've cast on you wears off. Understand?"
A thousand questions bubbled to the surface of Flash's mind. Instantly he filtered them all, leaving only the most important.
"What about the gold-coloured naga? I can't possibly handle him."
"We'll take care of him. You just manage the human shaped one, and get ready to cover your ears."
"There are so many things I want to ask."
"You have to go now. It's the only opportunity we'll have. You must bring back help. The naga prisoner you see here is their king. They can't free him, that's why they are co-operating with these... scum. You must get help and free the naga king; the fate of a lot more than just the dragon domain depends upon it. Now go, or it will be too late for all of us."
Flash felt the foot of the human shaped naga step off his back as his stolen jacket was thrown to the floor in front of him. Immediately poised to strike, knowing that every moment he delayed might cause him to fail, the chance of getting some of his stolen clothing back was just too great to pass up. Boots were tossed on top of the jacket, followed swiftly by his leggings. That was it. Channelling every bit of dragon magic he possessed, he rolled over onto his back and sprang to his feet, virtually on top of the human shaped serpent. A puzzled grin crossed the face of the naked naga, as Flash pumped the entire contents of the watch's poison darts into the surprised monster. For a split second, he thought that it hadn't worked for some reason. That was until the human form crumpled to the ground in a heap, wearing just his stupid grin.
Gold glanced across at Flash menacingly, his look alone causing Flash to have one of his epiphanies, the ones he only had when he was a hair's breadth away from death. He needn't have worried though. Before the naga had a chance to exact revenge, a wave of high pitched sound came screaming towards them. Flash scrambled to cover his ears as the wave knocked him off his feet. Feeling his ears leaking, blood he assumed, he glanced over to where Gold had been. Flash thought he was in pain from the sound wave, but as he studied the naga, he duly revised his assumption. The seemingly unstoppable creature was writhing around on the icy floor, screaming incoherently, its gills expanding and contracting at an alarming rate. A voice in Flash's head told him it was time to go. Unable to work out whether it was his own, or the other dragon's, slipping on the leggings, boots and coat, he turned and looked back at the prisoners one last time.
"Go!" commanded the other dragon in his mind.
Having now stopped producing the sonic wave that had rendered Gold useless, the naga king looked directly into Flash's eyes.
As he did so, Flash heard a very different voice inside his head. A dreamy, screeching kind of voice that said,
"You must get help, to free us all. Only then will my kind desist what they are doing. You must bring help, for the good of both our kinds."
With that, the king looked away. Flash knew his time was up. It was now or never. With one last look at the semi naked human dragon, Flash turned and flung himself head first into the icy flowing water.
The magic that had been cast on him still held was his first thought, as he tried not to pass out from the shock and pain of the water. His second thought was that it hurt more now, entering the icy torrent a second time around.
Light from the cavern subsided as the stream became fully enclosed underground, quickly leaving Flash encased by fast flowing water and tiny bubbles of air, unable to see further than two feet in front of his face. How on earth was he supposed to see when the stream separated into two? Kicking with his feet and flailing about with his arms, he tried as best he could to stay over towards the left of the channel, scraping himself along the side of the icy, underground tunnel as he did so.
A sharp right hand bend, followed by a steep drop sent him tumbling head over heels as the freezing water numbed his exhausted body. As he came out of the roll his face smacked violently into a solid, vertical piece of rock, right in the middle of the stream.
'Oh my God,' he thought. 'This is it! This is the point where the stream separates.' Scrabbling with his hands, he managed to get a handhold on part of the rock that he'd just banged his face on, realising belatedly that he'd tumbled over to the wrong side of the stream, and was now perilously close to plunging down the right hand side of the stream, almost certainly to his... DEATH!. Holding on for all he was worth, despite the fact that he could barely feel his fingers or hands, fast flowing water continued to pulverise his body as he flailed about, all the time knowing that the longer he remained here, the more likely it was that he would be carried to his doom down that side of the stream.
Digging his fingernails into the rock, he used every muscle in his entire body, willing them all to work, ignoring the pain he felt in each and every one of them. It started to work as his head became level with the top of the rock. All he had to do was pull himself up just a little higher and then he could get one arm over the other side and pull himself into the left hand stream's current. Concentrating hard on pulling himself up, he failed to notice the tiny slivers of water that had started to seep through the magic that was keeping his head dry and surrounded by air. The surprise at feeling the ice cold water running across his face nearly caused him to lose his grip. Opening his eyes, for they'd been closed as he'd willed his muscles on to greater things, he saw that the water had started to leak around nearly every part of his face.
'The mantra must be wearing off,' he thought, totally terrified. 'I'm going to drown in only a matter of moments.' It was this thought, and this alone, that gave him all the energy and motivation he required. Scrambling up the rock, he threw himself into the current on the other side, zooming headlong into the fast flowing water, concentrating on what was in front of him and the watery pocket encasing his head.
Tiny rivers had started to flow around his face now, so much so that he'd swallowed a couple of mouthfuls accidentally, and had taken to spitting some of the water back out and away from his face, which hadn't worked out as well as he'd thought. As the tunnel started to widen, the stream started to slow, the icy white sides of the tunnel becoming smoother, a bit like an underwater bobsleigh run. Hoping that the changes were indicative of reaching somewhere outside the mountain, somewhere he could exit the stream, still the water leaked in around his freezing, throbbing, bleeding head.
'Must have been where I hit the rock,' he mused, spitting out blood along with a mouthful of icy cold water. Tongue and teeth burnt from the cold, his hope that the river would be leaving the mountain and coming out above ground seemed to have been dashed. The much slower flowing water was still firmly trapped in a dark, icy tunnel, punctuated by only a few random eruptions of bubbles from the stream bed. In that moment he knew that time had nearly run out. Only a small amount of air remained around his face, air that he knew could disappear any time. Desperation forced him into action as he started to swim as fast as he could, all the time taking deep breaths of the remaining air, knowing that any one of them might be his last. Rounding a huge corner in what seemed like the widest part of the stream he'd come across so far, he pushed on, forcing his legs to move for fear of drowning.