10
Lavapool FC (Fatally Cauterised)
Disconcerted by the darkness, especially at the speed he was travelling, his entire body hurt, particularly his head. It occurred to him that his vision was blurred but he didn't know why, given just how dark it was. Sitting on a massive leaf the size of a sofa, he cursed quietly as it hit a slight bump in the smooth rocky surface. Again he didn't know why he did it quietly; it wasn't as if there were anyone else about, here deep beneath the ground. Gripping tightly to the edges of the leaf, his back roared once again in the most agonising way possible, as he tried to convince himself that in some way he controlled the direction he was travelling in. Grip faltering as the pain overtook him, instantly he fell back into the middle of the leaf, flapping and flailing uncontrollably, his throbbing head nestled in between the thick ridges and veins that crisscrossed its entire structure.
Continuing on its pre-programmed course, now deep below Australia, the leaf was singularly unaware that its rider lay unconscious on top of it. After everything he'd been through, now was a very bad time for Flash to black out. Flying around another hairpin bend at breakneck speed, the leaf slipped halfway up the side of the tunnel wall as it wove its way towards its final destination. Flash's body rolled to one side, brushing against the turned up edge of his unconventional transport, only inches away from the shiny rock face that zipped past at speed. As the leaf came out of the bend and on to another straight, his body rolled back a bit towards the relative safety of the middle.
The leaf onto which he had dropped only minutes earlier, had already travelled over six miles, not directly down of course, that was more like three or four miles, but was now starting to near the end of its journey. Flash still wasn't awake.
A tightly wound spiral was the last part of the descent, with the leaf having just entered the start of it, and violently thrown Flash onto his stomach, his feet at the bottom of the leaf, his head, face down at the top. One of his arms flapped over the side, his hand brushing against the fast moving rocky surface, causing his fingers to become a bloodied mess. Even this wasn't enough to wake him. A hint of light shone up from the bottom of the corkscrew as the leaf neared the end of its journey.
Speeding out of the final spiral of the smooth rock tunnel very much like a ride at a water park, the leaf splashed down into an exotic looking, waist deep pool of lava, something that most dragons would love. Flash dropped from the leaf like a stone, entering the wickedly bubbling magma with a spectacular belly flop, as the leaf disintegrated into nothing but tiny wisps of smoke. In the meantime, Flash had sunk to the bottom, still no nearer to waking up, but a whole lot closer to dying.
With a vengeance, the heat from the lava attacked his human skin, probing here, attacking there, trying to overwhelm the dragon DNA inside him that fought back with all it had which, due to his naga induced injuries, was not quite what it should have been. Something ingrained within the scorching hot magma knew that it was just a matter of time before his defences were breached. It had a kind of memory, something primordial, something other worldly. It knew that it had done this before, and it knew it would only be minutes at most, but more likely in this case mere seconds before it destroyed this individual's resistance and added him to its heated core. As it happened the lava turned out to be right. Another dragon, a fit and healthy one, might have lasted minutes, but not Flash, not today. With the injuries sustained in Antarctica consuming all but a tiny part of his magical ability, he had nothing left to give, nothing left to fight with.
As the first tiny molecules of his dragon DNA yielded, giant wings plunged into the lava around him, pulling his wreck of a body out of the bubbling pool and onto the raised walkway that ran alongside it. Molten magma sparked and flared as it dripped off Flash's prone body. Using his wings, and a very basic mantra, the dragon who'd pulled Flash free, forced the lava onto the path and back into the pool. Smoking hot magma smouldered beneath Flash's nose and all around his mouth, causing his pale looking human skin to turn black and crispy. As the dragon waved away the last of the lava, he silently mouthed a mantra, putting the full force of his strong willed mind behind it. Instantly the molten magma that Flash had imbibed came rushing out of his nose, ears, mouth, slivers flowing out of his tear ducts, and well, since he was totally naked (the lava having destroyed every last fibre of his clothes on impact) it came gushing out of his... planet... you know. Not Mars, Venus, Jupiter or Saturn. The other one.
Gently, the Good Samaritan dragon lifted Flash's head up, inspecting him physically, whilst at the same time probing his mind with magic. By chance, the dragon was a healer of vast experience, on his way to a conference. Concerned and intrigued in equal measures by this unconscious conundrum of a dragon, disguised as a human who, but for him, would now be dead, he glanced along the walkway for any sign of help, but knew this was a little known route, rarely used, so it came as no surprise that it was totally deserted for as far as he could see in both directions. Of course he could call for help telepathically, but he wasn't sure who he should call, or even if the unconscious dragon would last until anyone arrived. Supporting Flash's head, the healer gently turned him on his side, to aid his sporadic breathing. As he did so, he coughed and spluttered in surprise, two tiny jets of flame spurting involuntarily out of his nostrils, as the devastating wound on Flash's back became apparent. Making sure Flash was fully supported, the healer leant closer to look at what appeared on first inspection to be an almost impossible injury.
As well as being one of the most prominent dragon healers in the southern hemisphere, the dragon who'd found Flash was one of the few who took any interest in their race's history. While it was more of a hobby for him and he had nowhere near the kind of expertise that the renowned dragon historians had, he was very dedicated and knowledgeable in a few specific areas. One of the areas he considered amongst his strongest was the relationship between his race and the others that had thrived so long alongside it. As he intently studied the infected gash that crossed Flash's back, part of him was bowled over by the wound that could only have been inflicted by a naga. If he wasn't mistaken, and he was pretty sure he wasn't, the dragon lying on the path before him had been the recipient of what the nagas call 'pulsus of dolens nex,' roughly translated as the 'blow of painful death.' It was something that had fascinated him when he'd read about it on one of his trips to the dragon repository in Rome, something he did for a month once every decade, much to his wife's (yes... his wife, and not mate) disappointment. The ancient text that he'd read so long ago, which thanks to his eidetic memory stood out in his mind, right at this very moment, described how the nagas have an inbuilt supply of deadly venom deep within their bodies, that only becomes accessible to them in a heightened state, either in a mating frenzy, the heat of battle or when they know that death is imminent either from disease or a fatal blow of some sort. When the venom becomes available, it pumps up through the naga's body into tiny receptors beneath their fingernails, through which they can disperse it into an enemy with a simple slash or punch, or even coat a weapon with it, if they act quickly enough. Known as the 'painful death' because the venom, whilst deadly, with no known antidote, can take an incredibly long time to take effect, during which it inflicts the most horrendous pain, so much so that most beings take their own lives long before the venom kills them.