Moments after taking another deep breath, the remaining air surrounding his head bobbed away, with the magic having totally died, leaving him terrified and exhausted. If he could have done, he would have cried. The irony of being surrounded by this much water and wanting to add more in the form of tears nearly made him laugh. As the current carried him along, he held his breath and looked back on what had been quite an adventurous life. A dozen or so thoughts and images whizzed past him, but instead of lingering on what had been, he was jolted into action, not wanting to end it all here and now, with nobody knowing how he'd died. He wasn't the sort of being that calmly laid down his life and surrendered. Alright, given the choice, he probably would have opted for an all-out fight to the death, with amazingly bad odds and just a hint of glory.
'Well,' his mind reflected, 'I haven't been given the choice but that doesn't mean I'm just going to give up and drown.' Urging his legs on, he kicked as hard as he could, his muscles burning with pain as he did so. Knowing that at best he'd have another minute or so before he was forced to expel the air inside him, he was determined to fight to the very end, albeit in a very different way from what he'd have preferred. Swimming for all he was worth, he seemed to be moving faster and faster.
'The current is increasing again,' he thought, ploughing on. Soon wave after wave of bubbles obscured his vision, as he moved through them at unerring speed, much like a torpedo locked onto its target. As his cheeks, with the remainder of his air, were battered and bruised by the rushing water and the bubbles, wanting nothing more than to expel his last breath, co-ordinating his arms and legs became vastly more difficult. Concentrating hard on not opening his mouth, as he pitched through another curtain of bubbles, a torrent of white water engulfed him, dragging him round a bend and into an almost vertical drop. Fighting not to open his jaws, while wanting to scream, he hit the bottom of the river bed hard, jarring his right knee and elbow, both at the same time.
Only a few seconds away from drowning now, he could feel his mouth about to open of its own accord, knowing he could do absolutely nothing to stop it. Unexpectedly, a haze of light appeared through the bubbles up ahead. Clamping his mouth shut with all his might he surged forward. Black spots started to cloud his vision, but he pushed himself on. Rising upwards towards the light, he had no option but to open his mouth. As his body continued to potential salvation, the freezing water raced down his throat, filling his lungs. Amazingly, he broke the surface of the stream, out into the bright Antarctic daylight. The spots before his eyes were getting worse; only tiny openings in his vision remained. With both his arms outstretched, he pulled himself for all he was worth out of the freezing cold stream, and flopped onto the snow covered bank. Rolling onto his side, his body started throwing up all the water it had swallowed, the cold continuing to nibble at his soaking wet body, paradoxically piercing him like a red hot poker. With the excess water having left his body, he passed out, only inches away from the bitter stream that had so very nearly cost him his life.
Barely five minutes later, his built in survival instinct kicked in, and in a staggering display of stubbornness, he awoke, wishing with every part of his body that he hadn't. Feeling worse than an alcoholic's hangover, and shivering on an international level, he knew that he had to get back to the dragon domain and warn the king. Nothing else existed, only that one thought. Getting to his feet, he staggered slightly, before dropping back down to his knees, his head so muzzy he couldn't concentrate. Two deep breaths later, he was back on his feet, knowing he had to get a grip, get his bearings and find a way out of this hellhole and back to the dragon world. Glancing back round at the body of water he'd just come out of, he found that the stream only broke the surface for perhaps twenty feet or so, before disappearing back underground. The bank and the surface of the stream were shielded from the normal roaring wind by a wicked looking rocky overhang that hovered menacingly over him right at this very moment. As he took all of this in, a little voice in the back of his head screamed,
"They'll come after you. As soon as they've recovered, they'll come."
Instantly, he knew what he had to do. Shivering violently, he removed his precious watch, noted the time and GPS location of where he was, and then set it down in the snow. Rubbing his hands together in an attempt to get some feeling back into them and his fingers, he set about turning the watch into an explosive device. Of course he knew how to do it, and under normal conditions it would only take a few seconds, but his frozen fingers made it hard for him to depress all the small buttons in the right order. At the rate he was going, he'd be lucky not to blow himself to smithereens.
Eventually, after lots of fiddling and a large amount of luck, he managed to set the proximity detection function. Setting the countdown to sixty seconds, so that he had enough time to get out of range, he depressed the button to start the countdown, leaving the watch on the icy bank, pressed into the snow. After the timer had counted down, any movement at all in a radius of thirty yards would set off the explosive device. Turning away from the watch, he started to jog slightly, buoyed by the knowledge that he had once again escaped certain death by the skin of his teeth.
A few paces into his jog, a thunderous splashing noise erupted from the stream, forcing him to turn round. A vision from hell appeared, dripping wet, on the water's edge... the golden-coloured naga who'd captured him previously, the one that he'd last seen flailing around on the floor of the icy prison, barely conscious, stared at him from fifteen yards away. Flash couldn't believe what he was seeing. Another forty seconds or so and the naga wouldn't have been a problem, because the explosive he'd just planted would have gone off, either killing the naga, or trapping it below the surface of the stream for good. Fighting off waves of exhaustion that were just begging him to lie down in the snow and call it a day, he couldn't believe that he'd come so far, avoided death by a gnat's... well, whatever it was, only for it to end like this. If it weren't for the deadly seriousness of it all, he'd be laughing his head off.
Cocking its head to one side, the naga's gills expanded and contracted briskly. Bright yellow fluid dribbled out of both its tiny little ears, dripping down the scales on the side of its head.
'Of course,' he thought, 'I bet it can't hear a thing after being hit by that sound wave from the king. If I can string this out a little longer, maybe I'll get out of here yet.'
Flash and his enemy, Gold, were both standing well within the blast radius of the explosive that was about to go off. The only difference between the two, was that Flash was fully aware of this, and the very deaf naga was most certainly not.
With two seconds to go, the alarm on the watch would beep constantly, priming the proximity sensor. After that, anything that moved within the radius would set off the charge, which in turn would bring down the rocky overhang above. And he was still very much within that radius.
Pure evil and malevolence gripped the naga's face. If ever the phrase 'murder in his eyes' was apt, it was here and now. Flash knew he had to play for time, keep the naga in the blast radius, and avoid being killed. Feeling like a juggler entertaining an audience, at least the adrenaline pumping through his near perfect replica of a body made him forget about how cold he was. Letting a panicked expression envelope his face, he waved his arms about in the air, pointing in different directions, all the while mouthing gibberish at the naga. More than a little suspicious, given how he'd been fooled once already, the beast watched Flash fall to his knees in the snow, looking vaguely injured and much less threatening. From Flash's point of view, it appeared to be working, with the naga not having moved from its spot next to the bank of the stream. Continuing with the gibberish, he watched as the serpent like monster turned its head in an effort to rid some of the blood from its ears, and find out exactly what Flash was trying to say. Very soon, time was going to run out. His best guess told him that there were still about twenty seconds remaining, and it looked very much like the naga's patience had just expired.