Breaking off their emphatic greeting, the two women separated, allowing Peter to step forward. Grinning from ear to ear, he proffered his hand in the direction of his best friend. Without hesitation, she leapt straight at him, wrapping her arms around him in a giant bear hug. In the midst of all the magic and mayhem going on all around them, it was as surreal as moments get.
"Thanks for the save," Peter shouted.
"Thanks for hanging in there so long."
"I'm sorry about Tim... he was a good... man. I mean dragon. I mean... person."
Letting her best friend go, Richie stepped back so that both friends could get a better look at her. Taking in her face, Peter was staggered at the pain, anger and torment he could see. Since he'd last seen her, she appeared to have aged considerably.
'Surely the death of Tim on its own hasn't done that to her?' he thought.
Free from facing impending death, Janice immediately turned her thoughts to Fu-ts'ang. Reaching out with her consciousness, he couldn't hide the elation he felt when their minds merged into one.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"SORRY!" he replied. "I'm just glad you're okay and disappointed that it wasn't I that came to your rescue. Your friends, however, were adequate substitutes."
They both chuckled at this, before the frost enshrouded ancient weapon reminded the young human that they had work to do. Closing her eyes, Janice's vision of the battlefield swam into view, as Fu-ts'ang sped off in search of his next target, delighted to be of use once again.
Wrapping his arm around his love's waist, occasionally startled by the odd explosion nearby, Peter shouted in the direction of his best friend.
"What do we do now? Can we escape?"
Leaving all thoughts of Tim for another time, the tiniest of smiles wriggled across the lacrosse player's face.
"Escape... no! I don't think it's possible."
"Then what?"
"I think it might be time to rally my troops. Don't you?"
"Your troops?"
"That's right! I'm the leader of this rabble... how about that?"
Peter could barely believe what he was hearing.
"And just how did this come about?"
"I think we'll have to save that for another time. As you can imagine, it's quite a long story. But suffice to say, it was a unanimous vote. And no... it wasn't something I wanted. But since I am their leader, I say it's time to get the party started."
Laughing manically, much to Peter's horror, Richie started to turn in a circle, taking in everything around her, keen to grasp the entire nature of their situation. After all, a leader should totally understand the much bigger picture.
Over the sounds of his sobbing, a gentle voice whispered sympathetically.
"Please excuse my actions. It was never my intention to be quite so mean."
Wiping away tears from both eyes with one of his giant hands, Tank uncurled himself, sat up and glanced around for the voice's master. But all he could see was darkness, much like before.
"Who are you and where am I?" the young rugby playing dragon managed to sniffle.
"You're where you've always been... lying on the cold marble of the king's private residence, smack bang in the middle of one hell of a confrontation."
"I don't understand."
"I'm sorry. I thought you wanted to know where your body was."
More than a little confused, Tank tried once again to get his head around exactly where he was.
"So if my body is there, then where on earth is this?"
There was a bit of a pause, with the voice clearly thinking about its answer.
"Let's just say that your personality is my guest for the time being, shall we?"
"Your guest... sounds more like your prisoner," replied Tank, swallowing hard, his mouth drier than a Martini in the Sahara. "You haven't answered my other question. Just who are you, and why are you stopping me from helping my friends?"
"I'm not stopping you," replied the voice haughtily. "It was, after all, you who made contact with me."
Confused and fed up with being surrounded by darkness, Tank struggled to make sense of what the voice was saying.
'I made contact with him? How on earth does that work? The last thing I can remember doing is...'
And then it came to him. Not where he was, but whom he was addressing... the king's RING!
"You're... you're... you're the king's ring."
"Up to a point... you're correct. I have been passed down from one dragon monarch to another over the course of time. I do not though, belong to anyone, not even the current incumbent of that office."
'Well... that told me,' thought Tank, taken aback at the brusqueness of the ring's reply.
"I merely augment the dragon king's own power with that of my own, and offer advice based on the experiences of my long life, but only as long as I agree with the decisions being made. Should, for example, a monarch go insane and start murdering his own subjects, I would not and could not be made to go along with that. Although bonded with an extraordinary piece of jewellery, I am for all intents and purposes a sentient being."
Tank was taken back at this revelation. A sentient being... wow that was something... but why wasn't the jewellery in question helping the king and the others in the fight for their lives? Slightly nervously, Tank asked the question.
"Recently I've had cause to question the king's judgement."
"Because of the voting at the Council meetings?"
"Ahhh... of course... I'd forgotten he'd told you and your friends all about that. I'd had misgivings for a while, not just about the voting, but about a few other things as well. It all came to a head in a conversation we had, that is to say I and the current king. Like him, I can be quite stubborn when I want to, a trait that has in the past gotten both of us into a great deal of trouble."
"You do know the voting in the council chamber was being rigged?"
"I understand that might have been the case."
"But what about now?" asked the rugby playing dragon.
"What about now?"
"Shouldn't you put your differences to one side and help them fight against the pervasive evil that's trying to infiltrate and ultimately take over the domain? Your vast reserve of power might be the difference between life and death for everybody."
"Why?"
"Surely, if you're sentient like you say you are, then shouldn't it be obvious?"
"How so?"
"You just used the example of not going along with a murderously insane king in killing his own subjects as an example of your own free will. But by not doing anything here, unquestionably that's the same as helping commit murder. Isn't it?"
"Perhaps this fellow Manson and his ilk are not as bad as you think they are. Perhaps the domain needs a new way of thinking and in particular a new leader."
"You must have seen what they've done, what they're responsible for?"
Silence and darkness walked hand in hand.
Tank waited, irked at the ring's attitude and the fact that he'd been taken away from helping his friends. On most levels it didn't make sense. Surely it should do what's right, whether or not it had had a tiny little spat with the incumbent bearing it. Why wasn't it helping? Puzzled at the ring's response, part of him was impatient to get back to the reality playing out all around him. But if nothing else, the young rugby playing dragon was full of common sense and with the maturity that had now started to blossom within him over the last year or so, held a deep rooted belief in himself and the decisions he made. And right now it occurred to him that if he could get the ring back on side, then just maybe the tide of the battle could be turned, and that with the king and the ring reunited in one common cause, Manson and his minions could once and for all be vanquished.