I close my eyes. “It wasn’t spells. Just a sum-up of my life. Which must be cursed somehow.”
“Servants usually speak less and sometimes even express themselves respectfully to their masters,” the dragon informs me. “Kindly be more servant-like.”
I don’t see a reason to answer, so I simply let sleep engulf me.
It’s a short night. Sunrise is still an hour away when I’m woken up by tepid raindrops, sticky with sap from the dense canopy above.
“This again,” Vyrathion seethes. “What iswrongwith this blasted planet?”
I sit up and embrace my knees. “It must be the worst planet anywhere.”
The jungle is dark around us, and the rain gets more insistent. I get some nuts out of my pockets and munch on them, wishing I had coffee and a bagel, the way I do most days.
Rain in the jungle is an unpleasant thing. The drops are big and fall with great force, kept together by the sap so they land painfully hard and turn my hair into a sticky mess.
Vyrathion seems to have no such problems - his golden hair shimmers as usual. But I sense his impatience, so I get to my feet. “You want to go on?”
A couple of Plood come out of the jungle, deposit some rocks on the ground and then hurriedly depart. There’s a pile of stuff there, so they must have been delivering their tributes all night.
Vyrathion gives the pile a hard kick, sending it all flying. “Let’s go.”
I don’t bother checking the rocks the Plood brought - I think the dragon can tell if they contain gold, and right now I’m in no mood to care that much. Even the air feels heavy, and what little light there is doesn’t really penetrate the treetops.
I plod after the dragon, tempted to mutter bitterly about my state, but I don’t want him to think I’m trying to cast a spell. So I mutter silently instead.
The terrain keeps rising, and before I know it we’re standing on a hill where the trees grow less dense. In the mist we don’t have a great view of the jungle, but I’m pretty sure I see a thin column of smoke in the distance. And I think I can hear the sound of a hammer striking steel. I often heard that in the Borok village. We appear to be close to the village Vyrathion wants to check out. There’s a constant roar somewhere near, which is either a gaggle of huge dinosaurs or the rain falling extra hard.
He looks over at the smoke with a satisfied smile. “The metal-working tribe is near. If they have any gold at all, it’ll be mine.”
As if to underline his intention, at that point there’s a mighty flash and a roar of thunder. The rain intensifies and really starts to hurt. I put my hands over my head and look around. “Can we find a place to get out of this rain?”
Vyrathion glares up at the sky. “Is this because of your spells? You think this pitiful water will stop me?”
I groan. “I have nothing to do with this! Do you really think I can control theweather?”
His eyes glint. “So many strange things happen around you that I would not be surprised.”
“Believe me,” I tell him, “if I could, this is not the weather I would pick.”
“Hmm. Be that as it may, we shall continue. Come along. I will make real use of you here.”
I don’t like the sound of that, but I like being alone even less. So I slink after him as he walks on.
We walk for approximately fifty feet before we have to stop. There’s a wide muddy river running across our path.
“That’s where the sound came from,” I state. “Don’t expect me to swim through that.”
“Oh, I expect very little from you,” the dragon says. “Only obedience. Surely there must be a way to cross this mass of water.”
The rain keeps falling hard, and now it’s making so much noise that it drowns out everything else. The river responds by getting higher and faster. Suddenly a large piece of the bank on the other side collapses and falls into the furious water with a massive splash. The waves crash over on our side, splashing our feet.
“I’ve never seen it rain like this,” I yell. “Can we go back- shit!”
The bank on this side starts to collapse, first over to our left, then to our right. Before I have time to react, the piece of earth I’m standing on comes loose and drops into the river.
I scream as the ground disappears under me and I plummet into the churning mass of mud and water. In a flash I see Vyrathion, standing calmly on the bank, arms crossed over his chest, a look of distaste on his face.
Then I hit the water, my head goes under and I have to fight to survive. I’m knocked this way and that by the immense pressure as I try to get back to the surface. But there is no real surface, just waves and splashes and pieces of dirt that come falling from the still collapsing bank.
