The Fifth Element

The wind soon drowned out the sound of my name being screamed over and over again. Out of all three of them, Henry’s voice had been the loudest.

When this was all over, I had the sneaking suspicion that I was going to be in some trouble with him, possibly with my dad, and with my mother when she found out. If any of us lived long enough to tell her about this little stunt, that was.

Could I have thought of something better than this? We had lacked time to come up with a great plan, not that this little spectacular stunt I was pulling could even be considered an okay plan. It was a pretty crappy one. I could count at least three ways it could go horribly wrong, just off the top of my head.

I glanced over my shoulder at the group of dots behind me. They were still very far away, but they were steadily growing closer. I just prayed that they would notice me, or else I didn’t know what I would do. Nessie’s blue scales blended perfectly in with the sky, making her practically invisible from far away and making me invisible as well. I had to ensure that they saw me, and just then another brilliant idea made its way into my head.

I rotated Nessie, so she was facing North and also towards the hoard of rapidly approaching dragons. “Nessie fire,” I commanded.

Nessie let out a long stream of bright yellow and red flames. As she breathed her flames, they reflected off of her scales, causing her to look like she was on fire herself. She glowed so brightly in the morning air that she could have easily been mistaken for a star.

If this didn’t get their attention, then I didn’t know what would.

It was then I realized I was still holding Vivian’s telescope in my hand. I guess I did have some luck with me today. Carefully, I steadied myself in the saddle, before pressing the metal ring up against my eye. I aimed the lens of the telescope towards the mass of tiny dots.

The image that greeted me was that of a rider looking back at me through the lenses of a different telescope. The enemy lowered his telescope at the same time I dropped mine.

Yep, they had most certainly seen me. I didn’t know if I should feel happy or terrified about this.

I turned Nessie around and fled in the opposite direction. The ground raced under me, and so did the clouds above us. Faster and faster I urged Nessie to fly. The cold air was beginning to numb my face and ears, and it made my eyes water. The wind wiped my long black hair behind me, and I could practically feel it tying itself into knots. This was worse than one of Emily’s columns of air.

It felt like I had only been flying a couple of minutes when I first heard the sound of dragon wings beating close behind me. I felt fear begin to rise and settle in my heart. How had they managed to catch up to me so fast? Nessie was not a slow dragon.

I was afraid to even look behind me to see just how close they really were. Because let’s face it, even though I was willing to sacrifice myself for the good of the team, the idea of being captured terrified me. Would they torture me, or worse?

Then, seemingly out of nowhere a massive shape appeared in front of me, blocking the route I was taking. It was another dragon, a very big dragon, maybe even the biggest dragon I had ever seen in my entire life. It had scales the color of moss and its eyes were like two glowing red embers. Along its massive body ran deep scars, which gave testimony to the hundreds of battles the dragon must have fought in its life. On its back, I spotted his rider dressed in a blood red uniform, the uniform of the government workers

Before I had time to react, the other, much larger dragon, grabbed Nessie by the shoulders with two hooked claws and began forcing her downwards towards the ground.

Nessie panicked and began trying desperately to break free. She started thrashing her body around wildly. It was a miracle that I managed to remain on top of her through all this. When that didn’t work, she opened her mouth and let out a stream of flames. The flames hit the massive dragon directly in the face, but the other dragon didn’t even flinch.

Nessie let out a cry, but this time, it was a cry of pain. I felt something break inside of me. I had had enough.

“Stop!” I shouted to the rider of the big dragon. I could see him perched on its back, but just barely. He was wearing a hood, which covered most of his face. For all I knew, the rider could be Greta herself.

“I surrender, I’ll go with you willingly, just stop hurting my dragon, please,” I begged.

“Land then,” he barked back.

“Have your dragon let go of her first.”

“I will, but if you try anything funny, I will kill it.”

“Alright,” I agreed. “No funny business.”

“Frog, release,” he commanded. The dragon released its hold on Nessie.

As soon as the dragon let go of Nessie, she shot upwards, breaking through a mass of clouds.

All she wanted to do was get far away from that scary dragon back there, and I could totally relate to that feeling right now.

“No! No! No!” I thought desperately. I took a quick backward look at the rider and the other dragon, to see if they were following me. I prayed they weren’t taking this as an attempt at escaping. Fortunately for me, it didn’t appear they were giving chase, yet.

They were probably and hopefully waiting for me to get Nessie under control, and I had the feeling I better do it quickly.

“It’s alright girl, everything is going to be okay,” I said to her in the most soothing voice I could muster. I pulled on her reigns, stopping her climb upwards.

“Good girl! Now we are just going to go back down,” I pulled downwards on the reigns, but nothing happened. Nessie remained hovering in the air.

I tried again, but with little success. Nessie let at a low hiss. “Come on Nessie,” I pleaded. “We are going to be in a lot of trouble if we don’t-”

I stopped when I noticed why she was acting so strange. Dragons. We were literally in the middle of a sea of dragons. Each individual dragon was different from the one next to it. They ranged in color from reds and yellows to blues and greens, to purples and pinks, and white and black. Their size differed too, but one thing they did have in common, all of them had riders with weapons trained on me. Still, none of them could compete with the size of the dragon below us.

“So, I heard it’s going to be a beautiful day today,” I said out loud and laughed nervously when none of them broke their hostile silence. So much for breaking the ice, I guess.

I leaned forward until I was close to Nessie’s ear. “Please go down girl,” I whispered, and gave the reins another tug. “One scary dragon is definitely better than two hundred scary dragons.” But still, she refused to budge.

I was starting to panic at this point. What if she never went down? Of course. I knew the answer to that question. We would die.

I stiffened when one of the riders broke away from the others and began moving towards Nessie and I. I saw it was a woman, as she drew closer. Her dragon was about the same size as Nessie and was a beautiful blazing orange color. She brought her dragon up beside me.

“You haven’t ridden dragons that much, have you?” I was startled by how casual her voice sounded.

“No, I haven’t,” I admitted.

She snorted, “I can tell. You better get back down there, you have about thirty more seconds before Frog comes up here.”

“I can’t,” I said, my voice cracking with despair.

“Sure you can,” the girl said. She had Champagne colored hair and porcelain skin. Again I was surprised by how casual she sounded. “You just need to pull down this lever. Your dragon will have no other choice but to go down when you use it.” She indicated to the gold thing sticking out of the saddle that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Just pull it up before you hit the ground.”

“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. I pushed it down and found myself in a very bad nose dive, the worse one I had ever been in my entire life.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I screamed.

“Remember, pull it up before you hit the ground,” she called after me from above.

Great that meant I had to keep my eyes open the entire time, didn’t it? This was going to be tricky. My brain was already begging me not to look at the ground that was rushing at me at a dizzying speed. Wait, wasn’t it a little too close now!?

Oh, crappaples!

I pulled the lever just in the nick of time, and we level out before I became part of a dragon pancake. It didn’t save us from becoming one with a tree, however, that had unfortunately materialized in front of us.

We barreled into it at full speed, and I ended up wrapped around one its long, thick branches somehow.I think that just one just won the award for the worst landing ever. I was sure I was going to be blue and purple tomorrow if I lived that long. A quick look at the ground below confirmed the Nessie was somewhat okay. She was on her feet and shaking her head back and forth.

Henry would certainly kill me if anything happened to her. I could tell by the way he acted around her that she was his baby.

I soon had bigger things to worry about then a couple of nasty bruises and Henry, when a shadow cast itself over me. I looked up to see the massive dragon named Frog and his rider, beside the tree I was in. I swallowed hard.

“What are the chances of you helping me get down?”