Inch by slow inch, they finally made it to the other side. It didn’t do anything for their nerves that a large part of the track groaned, creaked and then collapsed almost as soon as they did so.
‘It’s probably rotten to the core, after all these years,’ Jesse said. ‘It’s a miracle we survived at all.’
‘But we did,’ Lex said briskly. He turned away from the cavern as he spoke, though, for it was quite horrible seeing nothing but air where the track you’d just been standing upon seconds ago had once stood. ‘Let’s finish looking for this dragon.’
‘What dragon?’ Jesse said. ‘I’d bet anything that you were right and there never was one. It was most likely them bunnies all along. A hundred years ago, there’d probably have only been ten or twenty of ’em but that’s more than enough to roast a man and pick the meat off his bones.’
‘You may be right,’ Lex replied. ‘I think you probably are. But I’m not taking any chances. I’m going to explore every square inch of this mine before I’m satisfied there’s no dragon.’
‘We’ll probably end up getting killed when a ceiling collapses on top of us,’ Jesse grumbled. ‘This place is gonna come caving in before too long.’
‘Let’s make sure we get in and out before that happens, then.’
They pressed on. Everywhere they went, they woke up more glow-canaries that lit their way. Fortunately, they had all been left behind when the workers decided to flee and so the way was illuminated for Lex and Jesse better than they had expected.
Lex had nurtured a faint hope that perhaps the fire-bunnies were all on the other side of the mine? that they were unable to cross the cavern with its great wooden roller coaster. This hope, however, turned out to be sadly, ridiculously, optimistic. The rabbits were everywhere. They could tell by the warrens and rabbit holes. Lex and Jesse fled past every rabbit hole, dreading that a rabbit head might suddenly pop up and roast their feet. In fact, this very nearly happened on one occasion. They missed the rabbit hole and didn’t even realise a rabbit was there until a blast of fire suddenly scorched the back of Lex’s legs. He yelled and jumped up in the air. When he looked back, sure enough there was a vicious fire-bunny glaring at him with a surprisingly angry expression on its face, considering the fact that it was the one that had almost barbecued Lex. The rabbit had burnt the back of his trousers but, thankfully, his legs were unharmed. Jesse threw a rock at it and it disappeared back into the tunnel.
‘What the heck is their problem?’ Lex said in exasperation.
‘Fire-bunnies hate everyone and everything,’ Jesse replied with a shrug. ‘Little monsters. Say, I sure as heck hope that there’s more than one way outta this place, ’cos I don’t fancy having to go back the way we came.’
Neither did Lex. Hordes of fire-bunnies aside, there was no guarantee that they could get back across that network of wooden railways without the whole damned thing collapsing beneath them. Besides which, without getting in a speeding, runaway cart again? an experience that even Lex was keen to avoid repeating? the whole journey would take much longer.
‘We oughta start lookin’ for a way outta here,’ Jesse said after about half an hour. ‘There’s been no sign of the others. Chances are they turned back long ago. We’ll end up getting ourselves killed and Jeremiah will win by default. You don’t want that, do you?’
‘Not particularly, no,’ Lex replied, aware of the fact that Jesse was attempting to manipulate him. ‘But I don’t want to be the twit who cut the third round short because he didn’t think the dragon existed when, in fact, it did the whole time. Jeremiah could be slaying it as we speak. We keep going.’
But for all Lex knew, Jesse was right. And, personally, Lex was feeling less and less sure that the dragon was real. He knew people, and he knew how easily they could get themselves wound up about nothing. One of the single most distinguishing features of a dragon was its ability to blow fire. And the fact that there were masses of fire- bunnies down here seemed too large a coincidence to ignore. But there was still the chance that the dragon was real, and Lex couldn’t possibly give up on the third round until he was absolutely certain that it was not.
As they went on, Jesse continued to whinge about the fact that they were wasting their time but he might just as well have been singing nursery rhymes for all the effect he was having on Lex.
Then they walked into another room and something happened to the canary. If either Lex or Jesse had been paying the birds any attention, they would have noticed that the light they shed was getting progressively brighter and more golden. When they stepped into the new room, a dazzling, sparkling light seemed to burst out of the bird, illuminating the entire cavern. They had finally found the gold. It glittered all around them in huge heaps of wealth. Lex had never seen so much in all his life. It was piled in great mounds up towards the ceiling, like particularly lovely stalactites. There was also a lake, so smooth and still that it seemed like a mirror. The gold piled up all around it and spilled into it. There was probably loads of the stuff beneath the surface, as well. The glow-canary Lex carried was the only one in this room. Presumably the workers had never got any further than this.
Possibly, this was because of the huge dragon sprawled on top of a great heap of gold in the middle of the room.
Apart from its massive size, it was not at all what Lex had expected. It was snoring contentedly, for one thing. And, although it may once have been a greenish colour, now it was mostly grey. Its scales seemed to have changed colour with age. Sound asleep, it was completely unaware of the humans’ presence. Lex saw now why Lady Luck had thought he could win. Lex may have been no fighter but even he was capable of stabbing something that was asleep… Or was he? Was he really that despicable that he would slaughter a geriatric dragon in its sleep, just so that he could win a Game?
‘It did kill all those people,’ he said, in a feeble effort to convince himself.
‘Did it?’ Jesse asked. ‘Seems to me it was probably those nasty little fire-bunnies all along.’
Lex walked through the gold to get closer to the dragon. He was a few metres away when the thing woke up. It slowly lifted its head and looked sleepily towards Lex with white eyes. The dragon was almost completely blind, so it must have been its sense of smell that made it move towards Lex. It got up slowly, ponderously, as if its limbs ached, and then it slithered inelegantly off the pile of gold. When it got to the floor, it crumpled on to its front legs and its long neck and head smacked on to the ground in a really pathetic way. Slowly, it picked itself back up and shuffled over towards Lex.
Lex stood completely still. He thought he should probably be terrified and running, or else reaching for his sword and screaming. But it was difficult to feel afraid of something that seemed so distinctly unthreatening. It did not look at all like a creature poised to attack. Indeed, it was so old that it seemed to be all it could do to walk. When it reached Lex, it thumped down to the floor in front of him. The dragon’s head was as big as Lex. When it opened its mouth in a yawn, Lex saw that it had hardly any teeth left in its head. And yet its breath was the most foul that Lex had ever smelled? a sort of grim mixture of stagnant water and very old fish. Rotten, dead fish, possibly.
‘Eww!’ Lex exclaimed in horror.
Even worse, a second later, the dragon licked him, dragging its huge tongue up the front of Lex’s shirt, practically soaking him in dragon saliva in the process. Then, drooling happily, it bent its lizardy head and rubbed itself affectionately against Lex’s shoulder.
‘Oh my Gods,’ Jesse whispered, moving closer to them. ‘It’s tame.’
He reached out a hand and ran it along the dragon’s head. The monster pressed into the caress happily. It seemed to revel in being touched and spoken to. At one point, it even rolled over on to its back as if wanting them to rub its belly.
‘There’s no way this beast ever killed anyone,’ Jesse said.
‘No,’ Lex replied.
Clearly the things that had terrorised the mines had been those blasted fire-bunnies, after all.
‘You raise a hand against this dragon and I’ll knock your head off,’ Jesse said calmly.
‘You don’t get to tell me what to do,’ Lex replied, without heat. ‘I will spare this dragon because it pleases me to.’
Lex knew the rules of the Game meant that he must kill the dragon, or at least try to. But Lex had always turned his nose up at rules? even if they were set by the Gods. Besides, why kill a dragon when you could own one, instead? If Lex could find some way of taking the dragon with him from the mine, he would prevent Jeremiah from winning. Then Lex would be the proud owner of what was quite possibly the last dragon left alive on the entire Globe. Just think how impressive that would be!
The only problem was that, now the points had been wiped clean for the third round, there would be no victor in the Game. Lex might draw with Jeremiah by default, or the Gods might even disqualify him. Both were equally unpleasant pills to swallow. Lex might just as well lose altogether than share the limelight with that insufferable
