The Dragon Of Death
‘I suppose we owe you that much,’ said the silver dragon.
‘We owe them more than that!’ The green dragon spoke for the first time.
‘After all, you opened the mountain,’ said the dragon with the sparkling blue mane, in a surprisingly soft voice.
‘We did?’ asked Billy. He didn’t think anything could surprise him at this point, but he hadn’t expected that.
‘But it isn’t enough!’ snapped the silver one.
‘They are the ones we’ve been waiting for!’ said the green dragon. ‘Haven’t we tested them sufficiently? They are brave, loyal, strong and true! And working together! If they weren’t… well, they would still be outside, doing whatever it is humans are doing in this age, and we’d still be stuck in here.’
‘We’ll still be stuck in here unless we can convince them to co-operate,’ hissed the silver dragon.
‘Then maybe you should be more co-operative!’ huffed the green one.
‘SILENCE!’ roared the red dragon. Hot, sulfuric breath rushed over them, stinging Billy’s eyes.
‘I must be dreaming,’ said Dylan, sounding a bit dazed. ‘This can’t be happening. None of this. Dragons don’t talk.’ He started to laugh, a little hysterically. ‘Dragons don’t exist.’
Charlotte reached over and pinched Dylan on the arm. Hard.
‘Ow!’ he said, rubbing his arm. ‘What did you do that for?’
‘To show you that this is happening. Now pull yourself together!’ She turned to look up at the dragons. ‘What do you mean, you’ve been waiting for us?’
‘We’ve been trapped inside this mountain for many years,’ the blue dragon said. ‘Waiting for four humans to come and open it.’ The dragon smiled. ‘Although we didn’t expect you to be so young.’
‘Little more than hatchlings,’ said the silver dragon with a sneer.
‘But with your youth come pure hearts, and that will help us all,’ the blue dragon went on.
The friends looked at each other and back at the dragons. ‘What exactly do you need us for?’ said Billy.
‘Food, probably,’ muttered Dylan, moving slightly behind Billy.
‘Please,’ sniffed the silver dragon. ‘You’d barely be a snack.’
‘Stop antagonizing the humans,’ said the green dragon. ‘That isn’t the way to get them on our side.’
‘And what side is that?’ said Ling-Fei.
‘Yeah, because if it is dragons versus humans, we are definitely on the human side,’ said Billy with as much bravado as he could muster.
‘It is a question of good versus evil,’ said the red dragon.
‘Pretty sure that fire-breathing, man-eating dragons aren’t on the good side,’ said Dylan.
‘We like to avoid eating humans,’ said the green dragon. It gave a sly glance at the huge red dragon. ‘Even him, despite what he might want you to think.’
‘So what do you mean by good versus evil?’ asked Billy.
‘Let us explain. It might be easier to show you,’ said the blue dragon, taking a deep breath and blowing frosted air on the wall behind them. Pictures began to appear in the ice, of dragons and humans and mountains. ‘There are two realms that exist in this world. The Human Realm, which you know, and the Dragon Realm, where we are from. This mountain you stand in now is one of the only passages between the two realms, and it has been sealed shut for –’ the blue dragon paused, calculating – ‘at least one hundred human years, maybe more. We used to be the guardians of all that passed through, human or dragon.’
‘Why would dragons want to come into the human world?’ asked Billy.
‘I told you,’ whispered Dylan. ‘To eat us.’
‘Because one of the greatest ways for a dragon to gain power is to form a bond with a human,’ said the red dragon. ‘Not any human, you understand. Only a human with a heart that matches its own.’ The images on the ice showed a dragon flying with a human on its back.
‘One dragon,’ said the green dragon, ‘an evil dragon known as the Dragon of Death, sought to enter the Human Realm to find a heart as evil as her own, and use her powers to rule over all dragons and humans across both realms. We had a great battle in this very mountain. Much blood was spilled.’ The images on the ice changed, showing one dragon slaying other dragons, until their bodies piled up.
‘The river of dragon blood,’ said Ling-Fei in awe. ‘It’s true.’
The silver dragon snapped its head round. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘It’s an old legend,’ said Ling-Fei. ‘I should have known that all legends have a grain of truth.’
‘How did you defeat the Dragon of Death?’ asked Billy.
‘We didn’t,’ said the red dragon flatly. ‘She is the reason we are stuck in this mountain. We managed to create a time portal to an age before humans and before dragons, but, as we sent her back, she cast a curse to seal us in this mountain until we found four hearts that matched our own.’
‘So we’ve done that?’ said Charlotte, staring at the dragons. ‘You mean our hearts match your hearts?’
‘It appears so,’ said the green dragon. ‘Otherwise you couldn’t have opened the mountain.’
‘It was only after you came to the mountain, together, that it opened enough for me to slip out and grab three of you. We needed to know that you were loyal, which is why we left one of you to decide what to do for yourself,’ said the silver dragon.
‘Does the disappearing tiger we saw have anything to do with this curse?’ said Billy.
‘A disappearing tiger?’ repeated the green dragon, drumming its claws on its jaw. ‘Intriguing. Tigers and dragons don’t usually get along, you know.’
‘A tiger chased us here and, when we thought it was going to attack us, it just… disappeared,’ explained Ling-Fei.
The dragons looked at each other.
‘Perhaps it is part of the curse,’ mused the silver dragon. ‘But you made it here, either despite or because of it.’
‘And opening the mountain is only the start of what we
