"Your wound looks like it was inflicted by a... naga."
Flash's exhausted dragon shape leaning against the keep wall immediately became alert, looking suspiciously across the castle walls and moat, towards the healer.
"How would you know that?" demanded Flash.
"We really don't have time for all of this," replied the healer.
"Humour me," declared Flash.
"I study history... in my spare time."
"Really?"
"Look, everything I've told you here is the truth. I don't know who you are, but judging from the defences you've erected around yourself, you're anything but an ordinary dragon. If I had to guess, I'd say you were one of the King's Guards, or perhaps even a Councillor or something. Either way, you're in a bad shape, not just here, but back on the walkway where both our bodies reside. You need to lower your defences and let me guide you back to where you can take control of your own body and wake up in the real world. Then we can think about doing something with the wound. Nothing I've told you here is a lie. You need to act now. Time is running out."
Flash considered the stranger's words. It did all kind of ring true. Vaguely he remembered something about entering an emergency entrance of some sort, but the details eluded him at present. A pressing need to... go somewhere... to tell someone something, continually exerted itself on him. It weighed down on his mind as if he were deep below the ocean, with the pressure of all that water above him. Barely able to stand now, Flash knew that he really had no choice but to trust this stranger. As he started to lower the mental defences that years of training in the Crimson Guards had taught him, he hoped he was doing the right thing.
Standing stock still, the healer watched in amazement as the scene before him started to change. Arrow shafts protruding from the muddy ground around him shimmered briefly and then abruptly disappeared. The moat's water receded, its inhabitants vanished and the keep shrunk, slowly at first, but picking up speed as it got closer to the ground. Eventually the giant castle, vultures and everything else within, wrapped itself all into one, and transformed into a beautifully thatched cottage, wild flowers surrounding the bright white walls, with a wonderfully engraved oak door at its centre.
Suddenly the wooden door swung silently open, revealing Flash, doubled over, looking like hell. Sprinting over, the healer wrapped his consciousness around him, catching hold before he fell on the neatly mown front lawn of the cottage. Flash smiled gratefully, knowing that he'd made the right decision and cursing himself for having wasted so much valuable time. With the healer as his guide, he hung on as he was taken on what seemed like a whirlwind journey through parts of his mind he didn't even know existed. Very much like a mental maze, with the healer turning this way and that, sifting his way through Flash's memories, occasionally heading down a dead end and having to turn round, all sense of time was lost. The journey could have taken seconds or hours. Nothing made sense, which was odd considering they were inside his own head. Eventually they arrived at the centre of the mental maze. There, in the middle of another freshly mown lawn, underneath a swaying weeping willow, was a ten foot wide hole with smooth sides and absolutely no sign of how deep it was. It could have been eight feet, it could have been eight miles.
"There it is," ventured the healer. "Your way back."
Flash stepped forward, reluctantly peering over the edge.
"You're sure?" he asked, swaying gently back and forth.
"I'm sure it will return you to your body. What we'll find when we get there, I'm afraid I have no idea. Because I've been here so long, I've lost all track of time."
Flash nodded.
"Well... if it turns out badly, thanks for trying anyway."
The healer nodded in return.
"It'll be okay. I'll meet you back by the lava pool."
With that, the healer's consciousness gathered itself up and shot off back through the maze, disappearing almost immediately. Flash stood alone, gazing down into the gaping hole. Sweat flooded down his gigantic dragon head, rolled off his scaled jaw and dripped down onto the identical blades of grass beneath his feet. More than anything he didn't want to jump. He felt safe here. Still, the never ending pressure hovered all around him, a constant reminder that he was supposed to do... something, something important, something... in the other world, back where his body resided. Finding the centre of calm that had so often saved him, he closed his eyes and jumped feet first into the hole in front of him. Cloying darkness surrounded him.
Elsewhere, the healer had managed, with a great deal of difficulty, to find his way out of the maze that was Flash's mind, and was just waking up in his own body.
'No matter how many times I do that,' he thought, 'I don't think I'll ever get used to it.' Lifting his whole body up off the path beside Flash, the healer leant over the naked, raggedy human form, looking for any indication that he was about to wake up. While he waited anxiously, he tried to work out how long he'd been inside Flash's head. Concentrating furiously for a few seconds and reaching out telepathically into his surroundings, he eventually settled on minutes rather than hours. If he'd had to take a guess, he'd have said about twenty, but it was impossible to be any more accurate than that.
Flash landed with more of a splash than a bump. Just when he thought things couldn't get any weirder, he gradually started to sink into whatever it was he'd landed in. Struggling with as much strength as he could muster, he tried to escape, but the more he struggled, the more he sank into whatever it was. Moments later, a familiar feeling overtook him. It was only then that he recognised what he'd fallen into. It was his body, and he'd been gradually seeping back into it. As he sank deeper and deeper into the sticky goo that had broken his fall, he started to feel all the different aspects of it, not really caring very much for the sensation. It was a little like putting on a rubber glove to do the washing up: lots of fiddling and stretching, with it never really feeling quite right: the odd loose bit here, a bit too tight there.
Reaching out in the rubber glove that was his body, he opened his eyes, taking in a deep breath as he did so. At least, that was the idea. Instead, he found himself coughing violently, the fumes from the nearby lava pool burning his lungs. Panicked, he slapped at the burning sensation eating away at his face, but to no avail. Immediately a soothing presence was beside him, the same one he'd heard from beyond the walls of the castle in his mind only a short time ago.
"It's okay son, I'm here, just relax."
Flash fought hard to push away the pain, but it only made things worse. Then everything came flooding back in high definition. Automatically, he sat up, almost like a human jack-in-the-box, instantly wishing he hadn't. The healer wrapped his giant wings around him.
"Go steady little one. We need to get you to a med centre."
"No... no... no... no you don't understand. I have to get to London... NOW!"
"I don't think there's any chance of that at the moment. You urgently need medical attention. I'm sorry."