"Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!" he screamed, as the memories consumed him. Instead of the joy and exhilaration that he'd felt at first, intense pain threatened to render him unconscious. He had to find out what on earth was going on, he realised in the back of his mind, the part that was still under his control.
New images flooded his consciousness. Nagas disguised as humans, all over the world. A shadowy figure in the background of it all, a dragon, a really old dragon. Transporting dragons in human form out of a mountain. A dragon councillor somehow involved. Flash couldn't quite make out the darkened image that appeared with this thought, much as he tried. Nagas disguised as humans at Casey station. Killing the dragon scientists who'd come to investigate climate change, the prisoners that he'd seen briefly. Waves of sorrow and regret flooded through him with these last images, so much so that he passed out on top of the dead naga, remaining there for over an hour.
Wafting around on the icy breeze, the rotten stench of decaying flesh startled him awake. Jumping up off the naga pretty damn quick, in a split second he took in his situation and the events leading up to it. Magic from the naga coursed through his body, invigorating him, making him as sharp as he would have been in warm surroundings. Remembering the GPS coordinates he took from his watch before he set it to blow up, his mind quickly told him that he was a little under ten miles away from Casey Station. Despite his lack of clothing, the extreme cold, bitter wind and snow laden ground, he knew getting back there while he had this amount of power available would present little or no problem. What was an issue was the fact that the naga's intrusive memories had provided an insight into some of the things going on, and from his point of view at this time, chief of those was the fact that there were three nagas living and working at Casey Station, disguised of course as humans. They would no doubt be aware of his escape by now and would almost certainly attempt to stop and recapture him. Above all he needed to get back to the dragon domain and report everything that he'd found to the king himself. How, though, was the question he asked himself, as he set off through the snow in the direction of Casey Station. And that was the thought that circled his head constantly, like a chugging train, for over an hour as he headed towards the other nagas and hopefully what he considered civilisation.
Meanwhile, far beneath Law Dome, retribution had been visited on the four prisoners for their part in Flash's escape. Wailing and screaming like a banshee which in itself was nothing new, the human shaped scientist this time had good reason, as his left leg had been brutally broken in two places with an iron bar, by the very angry jailer, the mean young human who visited occasionally with the rotten food. The scientist wasn't alone in his torment. Not asleep anymore, the ancient dragon that was more bone than body whined and howled in pain further along the icy wall, having had his left wing pierced with a specially designed stalagmite that had been sharpened with great care and precision, designed to inflict the maximum amount of pain. At the end of the wall, the half naked human hadn't fared much better, having been beaten, at first by the filthy young jailer, and then by the human shaped naga who was still recovering from the poison darts that Flash had pumped into him from point blank range, with his partner, the golden naga, having cast healing magic in his direction before leaping head first into the fast flowing freezing water of the underground stream after the escapee. When he came round from the poison, the human shaped naga had been seething, taking his anger out on the nearest being possible... the semi naked human shaped dragon. The jailer had already beaten him once, and was just in the process of thrusting the stalagmite into the old dragon's wing, when the human shaped serpent set about beating the prisoner. Relentless in its ferocity, the naga pummelled and punched the dragon until he bled all over, his splintered bones protruding from his hands and arms, while his feet lay at excruciating angles. While the dragon's healing abilities would eventually kick in, albeit rather slowly in this bitterly cold prison that he was incarcerated in, the raggedy young guard had to go over and pull the naga away, for fear that he would take things too far and unintentionally kill the prisoner, something the beings in charge here certainly wouldn't want. Of the four, only the naga king remained untouched, standing manacled to the thick white wall, staring straight ahead, defiant. More than anything, the jailer wanted to attack him, teach him a lesson, for there was no doubt that he'd played an integral part in the prisoner's escape. But he'd been given very strict instructions not to, on pain of death. Instead, he wandered over to the king, just out of reach of the defiant naga, for he knew from experience that to get within striking range was just asking to be dealt a fatal blow, a lesson his predecessor had neglected to learn. Stepping in front of the naga's unblinking field of vision, the jailer smiled his sickly, perverse smile, straight at the naga king. Continuing to stare straight ahead, the king showed no emotion whatsoever.
"You'll pay for what you did... you will," spluttered the jailer, whilst poking out his tongue, hoping to provoke some sort of reaction.
Continuing to stare, unblinking, straight ahead, the naga king took no notice.
"They've gone to find some of your kind... to punish them for your lack of cooperation."
Despite wanting to beat the disgusting monster of a jailer to a pulp, the naga king continued to appear unmoved, determined not to give the jailer the satisfaction of knowing the one thing that bothered him was the health and wellbeing of his subjects. After a minute or two of just staring at each other, the jailer gave up, but not before spitting in the naga king's direction, and cursing all naga kind.
* * *
For three hours now, he'd run through the knee deep snow. There was no doubt it had been slow going, and more than a little luck had been involved in not breaking a leg or falling into a crevasse. But now he crouched on a rocky outcrop watching Casey Station from a distance, catching his breath, reluctant to go straight in because of the questions he would struggle to answer truthfully, but more importantly, it would alert all three of the human shaped nagas on the base. Regardless of the fact that he was still fully charged, in magical terms anyway, and despite the fact that he'd run over nine miles in just thermal base layers or Antarctic underwear to you and me, he still didn't think he could take all three nagas at once. If he was going to escape, then he was going to have to try and pick them off one by one. When the golden naga's dying memories had overwhelmed him and he'd realised there were nagas at Casey Station, he didn't get any sense of who they were, not even whether they were male or female. This presented a huge problem because he'd already come into contact with everyone on the base and hadn't been able to sense anything unusual in any of them. If he couldn't sense them, he needed to find some other way of identifying them, and all he could think of at the moment was to watch the base from a distance and see if anything out of the ordinary turned up. Maybe later he could try to sneak in and use the communication systems to get out a message for help. That thought made him chuckle. In his entire career, he'd never before had to request assistance. The other Crimson Guards would have a field day with him about that.
'Still,' he mused, 'I'm getting a little ahead of myself. There are still three dangerous nagas to be dealt with, before I can even think about getting back to the dragon world and be laughed at by others of my kind.'