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The next thing George remembered was waking up with a headache. He was lying in an unfamiliar room on a sofa, and Uncle Harry, Mr. Williams, Johnny, and Mary were standing over him with worried looks that faded away quickly when they realized that he was awake. “What happened?” he asked. ”Where am I?”
“You fainted,” said Mr. Williams. “Johnny and I carried you into our house.”
“You collapsed when the first crow left with the other crow that arrived,” explained Mary. “Then Dad came, and soon after that Harry.”
“Two crows?” asked Harry. “And they left together?”
“Yes,” answered Mary. “But I think they were more than just crows. The first crow, the one George was talking to, looked funny. It seemed to get mad and then started to fade away and turn into something else. Something huge and terrible.”
“That’s plain crazy!” said her father.
“It’s starting to get dark,” noted Harry. “It must have been your imagination. Shadows can play tricks on even the keenest of observers.”
“I only saw a stupid squawking crow,” said Johnny. “What did you see, George? Why did you faint?”
“In all the excitement of moving here I missed both lunch and dinner, not to mention earlier missing breakfast,” claimed George. “I was just fooling around, pretending to talk to the crow, and I felt dizzy. Nothing mysterious. I feel OK now.”
“Well, my boy,” said Mr. Williams, “if it’s food you need, you’ve come to the right place. Marge, break out the goodies.”
“Sure thing,” said a new female voice.
“Oh!” said Mary. “This is my Mom, Marge. Mom, this is George.”
“My pleasure,” said Mrs. Williams, as she shook George’s hand. She looked like a slightly shorter, significantly older version of Mary. She glowed with powerful life like Mary, and she looked into his eyes as deeply as Mary had. “My, that is a strong handshake. Now let’s get some food into that growing teenage body of yours. Harry, you have to FEED this boy,” she scolded. “Figure on three or four times what you eat. You’re an old man; he’s a growing teenager.”
“From here on in I’ll stuff him silly,” promised Harry. “Do I smell pizza?”
Talking quickly gave way to eating three large pizzas. Though he wasn’t really starving, George managed to put away three big everything-on-them pieces. Between slices they talked about school and football mostly, but George and Harry exchanged a lot of knowing glances. Though neither wanted to appear ungrateful to the Williams family, they were both worried and anxious to leave so that they could talk in private.
Mary appeared to be on edge and to be aware that George and Harry were also. She insisted on walking them back to their house. “What’s going on?” she demanded, when they had only gone a short distance. “That crow was turning into a dragon, I’d swear it was!”
“Mary,” said George, “you should go home. You could be in danger.”
“I agree,” said Harry. “I didn’t want to speak of it in front of your folks, but I don’t think you should have come with us.”
“You shouldn’t even go back alone from here,” said George. "I should walk you home."
“We’ll wait just a couple more minutes and then we both will,” said Harry. He looked into the night sky as though searching for something, despite the darkness.
“But what’s going on?” asked Mary.
“I’m not sure,” said Harry, “but I think it could be very bad and I don’t want either of you mixed up in it.”
“Do you believe me about the crow changing?” she asked.
Harry smiled at her. “Let’s just say at this point that I don’t disbelieve. I value your observations greatly, Mary. But please go home. If you hear loud sounds like thunder and a tornado, have you and your family take shelter in your basement. It will be too late to do anything else.”
Harry and George wouldn’t talk any more about it until after they had taken Mary home and re-entered the Simple front yard jungle. Grog immediately joined them there.
“First off,” said Harry, “you fainted because you used a lot of the elf powers you had been given. Elf powers make you stronger, but sometimes there is a price to pay when you use most of them up. Now, exactly what did you see?”
George told him everything. “Was Mary right?” he then asked. “Was Jewel turning into a dragon?”
“The premise of your question is twisted in several ways, I believe,” answered Harry. “First off, I suspect the crow you approached was not Jewel.”
“What?” George exclaimed.
“It’s been a growing suspicion all day. Either it wasn’t Jewel, or Jewel has changed alliances. Very bad news either way; hard to imagine which would be more disastrous. Either situation is catastrophic, I’m afraid. You’re lucky you simply fainted and weren’t vaporized; they must simply be delaying their attack until they zero in on their real target. Maybe they hope to follow you or me to the prize they seek.
"The arrival of the other crow probably saved you; they certainly wouldn’t fear me or Grog or anything else on Earth for that matter. The other crow must have had serious business with the first one. But in any case this changes everything. This could be disastrous for Earth, Narma, and the Multiverse. Armageddon may already be at hand, I fear.”
“Grog agree,” rumbled the troll. “Me see two fly away. Two fly away who not be fighting. They not be Jewel, or Jewel not be same Jewel. Grog think both crows not be Jewel, they be the black Sisters of the Dark Horde. Grog worry much for Jewel. Grog worry much more for us.”
“Impeccable troll logic, my friend,” said Harry.
“Jewel or not, what is the egg it said it wanted?” George asked.
The question stopped Grog and Harry in their tracks. They looked at each other as though silently exchanging thoughts. “Speak no more of it now,” Harry said finally. “We’ll talk about it when we’re further in the house; the house is more heavily warded. The two Horde dragons could still be nearby and listening.”
None of them exchanged another word as they walked to the house, but George had heard enough to set his head spinning even more. Dragons, Harry had clearly said! Those two crows were really dragons? It seemed inconceivable! They had been talking about dragons earlier of course, but that had seemed to be merely an academic discussion. Even the things in the house claimed to be dragon scales had to be from creatures long extinct, right?
When they got to the house Harry led them up the stairs to the third floor, Grog climbing four steps at a time while balancing on his huge hairy toes. It was the first time George was above the second floor.
The third floor turned out to be a single huge attic room that ran the entire length of the central structure of the house, with ceilings high enough for even Grog to stand upright comfortably. It was cluttered with Narma-glowing things: books, furniture, statues, bones, and things too odd for George to name. There were weapons too, swords and spears and shields, of a size to suit elves, humans, or even trolls. Grog outfitted himself with a huge dragon-scale shield and sword, George noticed, slinging both over a massive shoulder such that his hands were still free.
“Hopefully we can speak freely here, as this is the most heavily elf-warded part of the house,” said Harry. "This treasure trove of potent elf artifacts is actually what powers the wards and so forth."
George nodded. He could see the ward, as well as feel it. It had a palatable dampening effect, like a heavy fog that sapped both sight and sound.
“The rest of the house is actually warded less on purpose, largely to provide a diversion for what is up here. I hope it continues to fool our dragon friends, but sooner or later I’m afraid they’ll soon notice that their view of this particular area is most distorted. At that point they’ll know that what they want is here and attack.”
“So the crows really are dragons?” George asked.
“Yes,” said Harry. “We can’t stay here. We must flee right away. Geor
ge, this is as serious an emergency as a human nuclear World War Three would be. Worse in some ways, actually.”
“Is the egg here?” George asked, even though before the words left his mouth he already sensed a presence in the room, a life force of immeasurable power that couldn’t be fully masked even by the ward.
“It is,” Harry affirmed. He led George through a maze of Narma paraphernalia until they reached the very center of the big room. There sat a metal chest big enough for an average sized person to squeeze into, if they were limber enough. It was closed, latched, and presumably locked. “Your mother and I brought it here. Silver plated, of course, with a thicker layer of lead underneath. It holds our greatest secret.”
Unlike many of the other objects in the room, which glowed with Narma oddness, the box appeared quite ordinary in composition to George’s eyes. But he could also dimly sense that it was a source of enormous power.
“We want to use gold for box, but on Earth gold be hard to get,” noted Grog.
“We don’t dare open it to show you, not with things as they are, but I can describe it a little,” said Harry. As he spoke he was rummaging around the room, shuffling through papers and weapons, and shoving selected items in his pockets or under his belt, including a shimmering sword. “The egg is three times as big as a basketball and looks crystalline. Basically it’s whatever color it wants to be, though it is usually white or greenish in color. It’s harder than diamond and so smooth that it’s slipperier than ice. Its mass seems less than a feather or greater than Grog, depending on his mood.”
“The egg’s got a mood and it’s a ‘he’?” George asked.
“Yes and yes. The egg is many hundreds of years old, but has been fully sentient for only a relatively short time. Its sex was obvious from the start due to the size of the egg.” Harry paused as though listening. “Right now he’s curious about you, but very much more anxious about the adult dragons.”
George could indeed sense that the powerful life force hidden in the box was curious and concerned, but not frightened. “This egg is important to them, I take it.”
“They want very much to destroy or capture it, while we must protect that from happening at all costs. This egg is our only hope to defeat the Dark One.”
When Harry said the words ‘Dark One’, George could sense a shiver of excitement from the box. Excitement, not fear.
The wind suddenly picked up outside; George could hear it whooshing around the house, rattling windows and whipping tree branches into a frenzy. Distant lightning flashed in through iron-barred dormer windows, as thunder shook the house. Grog looked about anxiously, as though he sensed something much more threatening than simply a gusty summer thunderstorm.
Harry’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened, while the trunk that held the egg suddenly seemed to come alive, shaking and rattling violently. George could sense an immense increase in its power level. The thing in the trunk was building up to do something!
“They come, and the elf wards fail,” Harry announced, shouting to be heard above the gathering storm.
“Talk later; flee now,” Grog shouted, “the Sisters be here!” With that the troll picked up the trunk under one arm and George under the other, and, crushing and kicking aside everything in his path as he went, he bulldozed through artifacts straight towards the nearest rear window. The troll punched through the steel barred window and surrounding walls as though they didn’t exist, plunging outside wildly into open air and almost total darkness!
“Ahhhh,” is all George had time to yell, as they fell twenty feet to the ground. Grog cushioned the fall well with his powerful legs, jarring George hardly at all. Then the plucky troll dashed into the forest without a pause, dodging around large trees and bushes and smashing through smaller ones, but taking care to protect George and the egg-box with his massive shoulders and arms.
George was getting his promised forest tour early, though from an awkward position cradled face-down on the vigorously shifting left forearm of a troll. Even in almost total darkness, he found that he could see his surroundings clearly. These were Earth trees and bushes, but still they glowed. It had to be a still further enhancement of his eyesight, he realized; even Earth objects were easy to see in the dark. He caught glimpses of Grog’s club, sword and shield, and realized they were all of the Earth-universe also, though they were heavily elf-warded. The box with the egg in it was hardly visible to him at all, even as an Earth object. He could also see throughout the forest thin wisps of ward power whipping about in the wind.
Running a few steps behind them was a brightly glowing, human-like apparition. It took a few moments for George to realize that it had to be Harry, wearing elf made helmet and vest armor, and carrying elf forged shield, sword and spear. How the heavily burdened old man was keeping up with the hard-running troll George couldn’t imagine.
A wind-whipped forest canopy blocked much of George’s view of the sky but for brief, revealing glimpses. High above them lightning flashed, illuminating the undersides of grey clouds, while thunder and wind shook and buffeted them. What he could discern next caused a shiver of fear and excitement to course down his spine: silhouetted against the lightning-filled clouds, an impossibly vast, dark, winged shape was dropping down towards them!
“Hold here,” George barely heard Harry shout. Grog stopped running and sat him down gently next to a sheltering tree trunk that was impossibly large, at least a dozen feet in diameter. Harry bent only inches over him. Astonishingly, he looked much younger, no more than forty years old, and much more muscular. Wielding ancient elf weapons, he looked much like a gladiator from ancient Roman times. “George, flee north towards the city, stay hidden in the crowds, and maybe you’ll have a chance. We’ll draw them off with the egg.” Harry pointed north to guide George.
“I can stay and help,” George protested.
“You haven’t the powers yet to make any difference, son," said Harry. "I doubt any of us does.”
“The dragon will find you two for sure, and the egg,” reasoned George. “Let me take the egg, if it’s weightless I can carry it.”
“No,” said Harry. “The box weighs over half a ton, you’d have to take the egg without it, and without the trunk to shield it, the egg would be found for sure. Grog and I will try to take it to Narma through the Portal, and the dragons will follow us. With luck, elves at the other end can help us evade the dragons. We’ll double back when we can, but that could take weeks. In the meantime you’re in charge here. Get in touch with Ranger Rick for help, but make no mention of the dragon egg to anyone, not even to Rick.” He gave George a quick hug. “Good luck, boy.”
“Run!” said Grog intensely, but as softly as he could, as he gently but firmly shoved George north.
George stumbled a few steps before turning to again protest, and found that both Harry, Grog, and the trunk were already gone and out of sight. Wind swirled about, strange ozone and ward laden air seeming not so much to travel in any one direction as to be thrashing about in multi-directional panic in a useless attempt to escape the area. He noted with amazement that the wind he felt didn’t at all match up with the swirling pink ward magic; air and ward were swirling about in independent and sometimes even opposite directions. From overhead, an Earth shaking, deep rumbling sound grew. For a few moments George thought it was more thunder, but as it continued and intensified it became obvious that the ear-splitting sound was the sound of a monstrous creature: it was a dragon roaring!
George looked straight up and saw it descending rapidly towards him, revealed but poorly in the flickering light of scattered lightening, wings spread far wider than those of any airplane, holding aloft an impossibly huge body that clearly included long tail and neck, four legs with clawed feet, and a hideous reptilian head with glowing red eyes!
Terrified, George run recklessly despite the buffeting winds, hands held tight over his ears, as the dragon screamed again and again. He ran only a hundred meters more before the sound was so loud
and the wind so strong he was knocked off of his feet. Lying on his back he looked up through thrashing foliage at the vast nightmarish black monster, hundreds of feet in length, suspended above the forest by huge wings that flapped ponderously. The horrible head swung in an arch at the end of a long thick neck, searching the ground with red shining eyes: eyes like those of the crow, but immense. Dark tendrils of power flowed from the dragon, effortlessly boiling away the thinning elfin protective ward.
Suddenly the red eyes fixed on something below it. With a roar the monstrous beast abruptly dropped towards the ground, not towards George, but towards someplace deeper in the forest. Towards the place where Harry and Grog had fled, George feared!
The Earth shook from the impact of the dragon slamming into it with all four feet, with a sound like a thousand claps of thunder. George would have been knocked down, had he still been standing. The monster stood up on two hind legs, putting most of it well above even the big trees and visible to George, though it faced away from him. It was insanely huge, preposterously out of scale compared to any Earth life-form. Huge spikes and plates ran from the top of its head to the tip of its clubbed tail. Huge bat-like wings reflexively twittered, and continued to drive the wind
“FIND IT, SISTER!” boomed a voice in George’s head, loud enough to cause him to cry out in pain. It wasn’t English, but he understood it perfectly. It had to be dragon thoughts, George realized, like those he had received during his earlier encounter with the crow but immeasurably louder. This was followed by a second impact to the Earth nearly as great as the first, shaking the ground, and George became aware for the first time of a second monstrous dragon that had landed on the far side of the first one. The second creature appeared to be identical to the first. The two behemoths faced each other, but their attentions were focused on something at ground level between them.
They both paused for several moments as they sucked in a monstrous quantity of air that then exploded from them as fiery red fire. The blast swept away the last remnants of the protective ward around them and turned the forest between the two dragons into a flaming hell!
Something flew up from the fire and at the far dragon, landing on its head, a tiny glowing figure that perched precariously on the creature’s snout. It had to be Harry, George realized, in amazement, as it was carrying elf weapons and glowed brighter than the fire! The creature shook its huge head in annoyance, than screamed shrilly and pawed franticly at its face with a talon-armed forefoot. George heard the dragon scream again and again in his head, but he found that somehow now he was able to turn down the volume and avoid the worst of the pain.
When the clawed paw was withdrawn, George could see that one of its eyes was smashed and streaming great torrents of black blood, and the other seemed also to be injured. Harry had escaped the pawing and was clinging to one of the two large horns atop the creature’s head. “IT’S THE ELF WARRIOR OF THE GREAT BATTLE!” screamed the dragon. “IT HAS DRAGON POWERS AS WELL AS ELF! I CAN FEEL THEM!”
“KILL IT! I CAN FEEL THE EGG IS NEAR; IT WILL NOT ESCAPE US THIS TIME!” replied the thoughts of the dragon nearest George. “BUT ALSO KEEP WATCH FOR THE TRAITOR THAT ESCAPED US EARLIER!” The nearest behemoth pounced forward, crushing burning forest under its four paws and massive body without apparent discomfort. It studied the forest burning around it intently, and soon pounced again and again, as it tore apart the burning forest with claw and tail, as though trying to crush evasive pray, as a cat might try to catch a mouse that fled and hid in grass. George could only assume that Grog was desperately dodging the plunging monster, though how even the sturdy troll could survive both the fire and the foot-stomping dragon was a mystery.
The far dragon screamed again in pain, drawing George’s attention back to it. Its entire head was enveloped in a raging white fire that seemed to flow from the tiny figure perched on its horn. In blind rage the creature belched out immense green flames that swept the forest, wave after wave of it. The flame was much more intense than the red flame had been; trees it struck exploded and were gone almost instantly. But all the dragon’s efforts were in vain, for still its entire head was covered in white elfin fire!
The green flame from the desperate far dragon swept blindly towards the near dragon, than washed over it; now it was the near dragon’s turn to scream in pain! It seemed to be in so much distress that it couldn’t even move away from the fiery blast. George was very thankful for that, since the massive body of the creature protected the forest behind it from the green flame, including himself. He was also thankful that he had mastered the ability to further reduce the volume of the telepathic dragon screams threatening to burst his head.
After suffering a few withering seconds in the green flame the near dragon responded in kind, blasting the far dragon with its own green flame, along with the tiny glowing figure atop its head. The dragon flame immediately extinguished the white flame and the small elf-glowing figure that had produced it.
“Harry!” George cried out, for surely his Uncle had been consumed!
When the fiery breath of both dragons at last ceased both dragons still stood, though badly singed, and the far one was apparently blind. As George watched, the far beast gave a great sigh and sank slowly to its knees.
“THE ELF WARRIOR THAT PLAGUED YOU IS DESTROYED, SISTER,” said the near dragon. “HEAL THYSELF WHILE I FIND THE EGG. PRAY WE HAVE NOT DESTROYED IT, FOR THE DARK ONE WANTS TO DESTROY AND TAKE IT UNTO HIMSELF.” The creature again lowered its great head low, as it pawed away at the still burning forest and soon paused when it found something of interest. “IT IS NOTHING BUT A DEAD TROLL, SISTER, AND BROKEN EGGSHELL. I SCRY NOTHING ELSE. ALL ELSE IS BURNED AWAY.”
In response the wounded far dragon only moaned in pain.
George was so stricken he could hardly breathe. The elf warrior and troll that the dragon had spoken of as being dead were Harry and Grog, and the egg that they guarded had also been destroyed!
“GREETINGS, SISTERS,” said a new dragon voice, from high above.
George was further dismayed to see yet a third black dragon dropping down from the sky towards the others. He was astonished when it landed square atop the dragon nearest to him, crushing it to the ground. The impact was enormous; the far dragon tumbled from its knees to its side from the impact and George was thrown several feet into the air, while several trees near him shook so violently that huge limbs sheared off, and several other trees collapsed entirely as their roots pulled loose from the trembling Earth.
The near dragon fared far worse; its wings and legs were crumpled in odd ways that suggested compound fractures. Yet it roared in rage and squirmed violently under the feet of the new dragon, twisting such that it could wrap its neck and tail around its attacker.
A terrible life and death struggle ensued: the writhing, rolling bodies of the two behemoths twisted around each other, biting and belching green flame at each another, renting and melting dragon flesh to a chorus of thunderous screams, while great smoldering forest trees and boulders were crushed and thrown far into the air. From the swirling black clouds above them lightning struck the struggling titans again and again, as though directed by the combatants. George couldn’t tell if the lightening was providing energy to the dragons or if it was intended to hurt them, but the huge struggling beasts seemed to ignore it.
George couldn’t decide which situation was more horrific; the first two dragons killing Harry and Grog, or three dragons fighting among themselves.
The teenager barely dodged a twenty-foot section of shattered, smoldering tree trunk that flew at and over him. Seconds later, as the spike covered club of a dragon tail tip came crashing down at him, he flung himself away and escaped the direct blow, but the impact to the ground sent him flying far into the air.
That’s the last thing he remembered that made any sense.
“I CHOOSE YOU, SMALL ONE,” said a voice in his head. “FEAR NOT!”
George had a strange dream, of himself flapping
monstrous wings and flying high over mountain tops and forests, while roaring louder than thunder in celebration of life. He was aware of having a huge, scaled, reptilian body, complete with long, trailing tail. From his glimpses of his wings and tail, George could see that he was mostly white as purest snow and glowing with power, except for vibrant tinges of green.
Then there was nothing.
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