'Perhaps if I surrendered,' he thought, clearly as desperate as ever. Ever so slowly he unzipped his jacket and tossed it into the snow. Carefully, all the time watching the gold-coloured naga, he raised his hands in the air, to signal that he'd surrendered. Once again, he mouthed absolute rubbish, hoping to keep him off balance and buy himself that extra bit of time. A strange smile crept across the scaly face of the naga as Flash raised his arms and surrendered, a smile that turned to confusion when it couldn't understand what his opponent was mouthing towards him.
'Whatever it is,' thought the naga, 'it seems to be important.'
Shaking its whole body, flicking off a mound of snow from its tail in the process, the naga zigzagged towards Flash, its gills working furiously. A calm sense of acceptance washed over him as he stood motionless, arms high above his head. Abruptly, the naga stopped, staring down into the snow where the watch lay, only six feet away from him. It was then that the watch started to beep continuously, and the lights on its dial flared into existence. A look of absolute horror crossed the naga's ancient face as it realised once again it had been tricked. Flash's eyes locked onto the naga's just long enough for him to mouth the word, "Sushi," before he turned round and threw himself for all he was worth in the opposite direction to the watch and the doomed monster. All of this happened in roughly two seconds. The naga tried to flee.
BOOM!!!!! Flash's watch exploded, shattering the peaceful expanse. Thrown about forty feet in the air from his prone position, Flash landed face down in the fresh snow. Huge slabs of rock came raining down on top of the stream itself, each sounding like a little explosion. Dust, snow, rock and ice filled the air. After a thirty second period of wishing he were dead, Flash staggered to his feet, choking on debris in the air around him. Covering his mouth with one hand, he stumbled back towards the blast's epicentre. Trying to clear the dust, snow and ice in his path, to see exactly what had happened, suddenly he trod on something... squidgy, and most certainly not snow. Looking down, he immediately recognised that he'd trodden on a thick section of golden naga tail.
Instantly he became ready to fight, that is until he looked along its length. Some seven feet or so from the tip of the tail, the part that Flash had inadvertently stepped on came to an end, cut brutally in half by the explosion. As the debris cloud started to settle, Flash could just make out the rest of the golden naga's body, twenty or so feet away from its severed tail, embedded in the snowy plateau. Kicking the tail as he moved past, he made his way over to the main part of the naga's body. Even from where he was, he knew the beast was no longer any sort of threat to him. Reaching the body, the monster's eyes fluttered furiously as it attempted to draw breath. Throughout his lifetime he'd seen beings die before and was pretty sure that this one was very close to death itself.
Slumping down in the snow beside it, the events of the last hour or so started to catch up with him, noticing only now that he was shivering from the cold. The jacket that he'd taken off when falsely surrendering to the naga had been destroyed in the blast, and he couldn't see how he was going to survive for even a small period of time in this harsh environment. Beside him, the naga started to cough and gag, in the last throws of death. A dejected Flash thought he might as well curl up beside the beast and wait for death's embrace to come and claim them both.
'That's it!' he suddenly thought, a sneaky smile crossing his face for the first time in days. Quick as a... flash, he got to his feet, towering over the dying naga. Searching his near perfect memory, he knew he didn't have long to find what he needed. Ten seconds passed... fifteen... twenty... and then it came to him. It was something he'd been taught when he first joined the Crimson Guards, many, many years ago. At the time, he'd thought it a total nonsense, a mantra that he'd never get to use in a million years. Here, in the freezing cold, with little or no option but to trek tens of miles in one of the harshest environments on the planet to save himself, and possibly the dragons and nagas as well, it didn't seem quite such a waste of time.
All those years ago, he'd learnt a mantra that was positively ancient in design, known only to a select few, as well as being highly controversial. It was, after all, designed to suck all the magical energy out of one being, and then channel it into another. It could only be achieved when the being on the end of it was at death's door so to speak, because any creature with just a little willpower could interrupt its effect. Never having actually used this particular mantra before, not ever having been in a situation where he'd needed to, his Crimson Guard instructors had cited this mantra as something that could be used in the heat of a pitched battle, when a fallen comrade or enemy had been fatally wounded and you, the user, had exhausted nearly all of your magical energy. It would, if used correctly, replenish all of the exhausted magic, maybe even giving the user more than he or she would normally have in the first place, for a brief time anyway. Something else about it set it aside from nearly all other mantras. Physical contact had to be maintained throughout, which was most unusual.
Reaching out towards the naga's scorched forehead, his fingers almost blue with cold, so much so that he could barely feel the touch of the sticky, scaly skin, the naga rippled and convulsed with fright, trying desperately to pull away, but without its tail, it had no hope. Touching his numb fingers to the monster's forehead, he could sense all of its magic bubbling beneath the surface. Closing his eyes, trying very hard not to let sleep consume him, he sought out the words of the mantra he needed.
"Exsisto procul pacis quod sileo facile pro totus infinitiol.
Permissum quis eram quondam vestry iam exsisto mei."
Reciting the words, his mind simultaneously did a rough translation, which was something like this:
Be at peace and rest easily for eternity.
Let what was once yours now be mine.
Still touching the naga, Flash's eyes flew wide open in surprise as the floodgates quite literally opened. Huge amounts of magic and power, with a very different kind of 'taste' to it, flowed into him, overwhelming him in almost every sense. The exhaustion that he'd felt so heavily only moments ago was washed away instantly, his numb extremities becoming instantly recognisable to the rest of his body. It felt as though he'd been transported from this cold, bitter wilderness onto a tropical beach with the sun beating down on him. Warmth, energy and happiness consumed him. Then, something very odd happened. Memories. Tiny glimpses of a different world. Different lives, different ideas, different... everything. Everything from the naga's memory started surging into him from his childhood, swimming beneath the icy ocean, parents, children... a huge family... Flash tried to pull away, break contact and stop the mantra, but he couldn't, not able to move at all. More memories assaulted him, fresher, clearer... more recent. There was a threat, a threat to all the nagas. Their king had been captured by a group of... dragons! A meeting, no, a summit had gone disastrously wrong. Nagas had been killed trying to protect their king. Dragons had demanded things from the nagas. Missions, intelligence, all sorts of information.