Pulling his hands away from his face, Peter stood almost nose to nose with the grinning old dragon leaning down, his smile clearly betraying the fact that he'd just come up with a solution to their ever impending doom.
"You... my young friend, are full of surprises," uttered the master mantra maker, lifting his head up. "If you wouldn't mind, perhaps you could just turn and face the other way for a moment, careful to stay standing still in my footprints."
Confused, he did as the old dragon asked. For his troubles, he could hear his friend suddenly become very excited.
"Ohhh... yes, this is excellent. Perfect!"
And with that, Peter could feel the old shopkeeper's hands running down his back, and along his shoulders.
"Okay. You can turn around now."
Turning round, he nearly jumped out of his skin (given that it's not really his skin in the first place... that's more than a little difficult to do, which gives you some idea of the severity of the shock he found himself in), and more importantly, out of his friend's footprints. Gee Tee was standing in front of him holding two handfuls, about six in total, of dinner plate sized spiders, which had all sneakily hitched a ride on his back, all the way from the alcove. Not able to believe what he was seeing, particularly when one or two of them started snapping at the old dragon's fingers, it was all Peter could do not to faint. It was a good job he didn't, otherwise he'd have missed Gee Tee performing the most precise throw in the world, in which one of the very bemused, very snappy spiders spun through the air, ending up in the middle of the highly toxic seeds. As the spider whipped through them, the seeds as one formed a globe like enclosure around it before pouncing without any warning at all, darting into the unsuspecting and, by now, most disturbed spider. The poor thing died instantly (even Peter didn't like this... and he harboured a real dislike for spiders) with the darts piercing its hairy flesh in almost every spot, allowing the deadly neurotoxin to perform its function.
As the spider landed on the grass with a thud, the arachnids the old shopkeeper still had hold of all looked on, instantly becoming less volatile after having seen what had happened to their friend. With the seeds all gone, Gee Tee shoved the remaining spiders into one of the hidden pouches around his waist, smiled at his young friend and very slowly headed further into the passageway on the seed path, seeking the mysterious vault.
Eventually they reached part of the tunnel where grass met rocky floor, having left both streams behind them. It was impossible for Peter to tell if they were the right way up, given all the times they'd circled the walls and floors, up to this point. Twice more, dandelion puffballs had hurled their seeds into the air at them, with Gee Tee plucking out and sacrificing spiders from his secret pouch, as before. Both times worked the same as the first, with the deadly arrow-like barbs of the seeds splintering the poor arachnids. Having reached the pure rock floor, the shopkeeper found the three remaining spiders and released them in quite a heartfelt, apologetic manner, given what he'd done to their friends, something Peter wouldn't have believed possible had he not seen it with his own eyes.
Without a word, the old shopkeeper continued on round a sharp bend in the now rocky tunnel, no more than twenty yards from where they'd exited the grass. As the passageway opened out effectively into some kind of underground courtyard, Peter let out a tiny gasp at what lay before them.
Deep within the recesses of Rome's famed dragon library, a lone, human shaped figure sat at an out of the way terminal, concentrating hard, focused on one goal and one goal only... finding out about her friend's parents. Just a single clue would have done, something so remote that it would barely have meant anything, but so far she'd found absolutely nothing. Having already scoured the library's physical shelves, delving deep into little known tomes and ancient texts, not one single record of either of Peter's parents appeared to exist. And that was odd, because they were known to have existed and Peter himself was proof of that. Whoever had wiped their information from the system had been a professional. But a professional what? So many things just didn't add up. Hacking into the library's mainframe, not at all concerned about being caught, after all, what more punishment could she possibly face, above what was already headed her way? There and then she vowed to find something, anything, that would help her friend on his quest to find the answers that so eluded him.
19
SUB-Version
Thick, swirling mist nestled lazily above the water's surface. Unseen wildlife occasionally sent out tiny ripples across the fluid's exterior, all of course hidden by the unnaturally dark clouds obscuring the moon on this eerily quiet night. The wooded area around the bank of the lesser known tributary was quiet... almost deathly so.
Waiting above a shallow bank, nestled between a quartet of large, gnarled trees, the group was camouflaged by brush on all sides. The stolen vehicles in which they'd made their way there had been dumped almost two miles away. By the time the authorities, or anyone else for that matter, ever worked out quite what had happened, they would all be long gone.
A delicate splash echoed out of the mist across the tributary, putting the entire group on guard. Weapons were drawn as two dark coloured nagas slithered down the bank before slipping effortlessly head first into the water in their natural forms, their vicious looking tails disappearing from view almost instantly.
Manson stood, one arm supported by his walking stick, the other wrapped around Troydenn (his father), to support him in what had become a rather frail human disguise. Caressing the top of the stick with the palm of his hand in the cloying darkness, briefly a wave of reassurance washed over him at having the weapon to hand. Not just because of the razor sharp blade that could be brought to the fore with just a single thought, but also due to the exquisite sea crystals that ran along its entire length, boosting the range, and more importantly, the potency of the wicked dark energy inside him. With little choice but to revert back to the form he totally despised, Troydenn sincerely hoped it would be the last time he'd have to take on this wretched guise, the thought of long awaited revenge keeping him focused on the challenge ahead. As a group they'd thought, planned and brainstormed long and hard about how to get across the Atlantic and back to the main power base of dragon society. Their takeover depended upon it. At this stage, with not all their assets entirely in place, it was deemed necessary to use the stolen submarine. (Using the monorail or any other part of the dragon domain presented too much of an unwarranted risk to their well conceived plan, much to the elderly dragon's disgust.) And the only way he was going to fit into the tight confines of the submarine was in his much smaller, alternative form.
From out of the darkness a sliver of light grey appeared, floating steadily in their direction. Instantly, weapons on the bank converged on the movement, but their concern dissipated as a dinghy, with two nagas swimming either side of it, rolled out of the mist.
"About time," grumbled Troydenn quietly, to no one in particular.
"It's all going to plan," whispered Manson in his father's ear, eager to put the old dragon at ease.
Slowly, the dinghy rocked up on the shallow bank while the nagas remained in the water. A man clad entirely in black let go of the oars and carefully made his way to the front of the tiny craft.
"If that's what you're bringing on board," he murmured, pointing at the pile of stacked equipment on the bank, "then we'll only be able to carry three of you and we'll have to make two trips!"