CHAPTER 1: MAGMA RISING
Roger Briggs and Mary Maddam had climbed up the Dragon Queen’s back and had at last entered the darkly rising slope that led to their promised freedom. Promised though only if they could make it without encountering further monsters from the Erf’s Core. Such deadly things as the dreaded three-headed Trydra or mindless armies of acid-spitting Minion Worms, all of course mentally controlled by the Fire-Worm Lords of the Core themselves. The slope’s dust and smoke were still roiling all about them and so Roger had quickly equipped them both with a couple of his ever-ready handkerchiefs; these being tightly tied around their mouths and noses, making them look like a couple of misplaced cowboys. Roger and Mary had just said their farewells to the noble but mortally wounded Dragon Queen, Sivam Sivad; or just Mavis, as she was now known to them. And tragically, this most beautiful and wondrous creature was due to explode and die sometime during the next day. For when a Dragon gave birth to her third and her final Egg, she was irrevocably destined to self-combust within a matter of days. And Queen Sivam Sivad’s time was now nigh. But the two children were now oath-sworn to protect and carry her last Egg to the surface and to see that it arrived safely at some unknown place called the Dragon’s Nest, somewhere deep in the very heart of the forbidden Forest of Lundun. But their assigned task was far from being a simple one. Mary herself was badly hurt after her dangerous fall from under the mysterious Smoking Tree and down the long, smoky slope, to the Dragon Queen’s cavern where she had been miraculously saved by Mavis. And just as Mary had been saved by Mavis, Roger now realized it was up to him to save them all, Mary, himself and the Egg, too. If that was at all possible that was. He’d duly calculated, with his usual scientific acumen, that it was still the middle of the night up above them, reckoning it had been roughly about 2 o'clock in the morning as they’d begun their cautious ascent up the stairway Mavis had blasted for them with her hot flaming breath. And Mavis had also given them some added protection, at least for a while anyway. Roger had no idea how long their auras of magickal blue flame would actually last though. The Dragon Queen had opened her jaws wide and breathed out a long, billowing cloud of her magickal blue flame, engulfing them both. This glowed all about them and the sloping stairway too as they climbed upwards into the ever-deepening darkness. “You now have the protection of the Blue Dragon Flame and a bond to my True-Dragons Magick,” she had telepathed to them. “This will protect you as you climb the slope to the Skylands and embark on your perilous journey. But remember, trust in the power of the True Dragons - and in each other. All three of you. As you do, you will each grow and learn and will be of great comfort to the other; now, Goodbye and FareWell. While I will stay connected to you as long as I can through our minds, I fear this is the last time we will see one another.” And so, Mary had put the Egg safely and snugly up her jumper and tied her coat over it, with Roger’s scarf this time. And they’d begun their journey to the surface and hopefully, eventually back home, back to the human world of Under Lundun and their mundane and humdrum lives there; for supposedly, up in the human world magick did not exist. Or at least that’s what everyone believed; or was taught to believe. The dreaded Governmental Psychonomy saw to that! “Now keep right behind me, Mary, besides our auras we’ve only got my old torch here to light our way and I don’t know how long that will last,” Roger called out to her. “Well, at least we know the only direction we’ve got to go is upwards,” Mary smiled, “and look, there’s one of your discarded hankies, Roj, we’re right where you came down.” The two weary children made their way up the murky, molten stairs, cautiously stepping forwards and upwards. The dull, red glow of the Dragon’s Cavern dimming distantly behind them. Mary was still limping slightly and Roger’s torch was a smudge of pale, yellow light, weakly probing the all-enveloping darkness ahead. “Goodbye brave Erf Children…Fare thee Well and thank you for this great burden you take on now. I will forever be in your debt.” were Mavis’s final thoughts that came softly into their minds as they made their way, step by step, up their Stairway to Heaven. After a few minutes they had laboriously progressed some way up the makeshift stairway, but Mary was now feeling decidedly and increasingly queasy and out of breath too. She really hadn’t wanted to say anything, but her long fall and then all of the subsequent underground battles had shaken her up a lot. She secretly felt that she’d probably cracked a rib or two. Whatever her actual injuries were though the truth was that the non-stop, nagging pains from her bruised ribs and swollen ankle were slowly draining her energy, if not her resolve. Roger noticed that Mary was slowly flagging behind him. He was growing more and more worried. Just how in the Dizzy Darwin was he going to get Mary and the Egg safely back up to the surface, let alone then to trek through the Bad Wood, and in the middle of the night too, with Mary in this condition? But just as Mary hadn’t wanted to admit to how weak and in pain she felt, Roger also didn’t want to confess to how inadequate he felt for this ridiculously dangerous task; and how hopeless it all seemed too. He didn’t even want to think about how they were going to get the Dragon’s Egg to the mysterious, hidden ‘Nest’ either. And the further they stepped their way onwards the more Roger’s foreboding grew. “OK if we have a quick break now?” Roger asked Mary gallantly, secretly thinking she would really need one but wouldn’t want to sound weak and burdensome. “Yes, thanks, we could both do with a bit of a rest, Roj,” Mary sighed heavily in relief. “And there’s nothing like having a nice little nap when yer deep under the ground with a Dragon’s Egg strapped to your tummy - and a wounded Mother Dragon, not far away and about to explode anytime!” She added with a wry but strained laugh. “Well, at least you’ve still got your sense of humor!” Roger laughed back. “But Mavis won’t be exploding anytime soon, Mary; she said she’ll guard the entrance to the slope and make sure we have plenty of time to get up to the surface and away before that happens.” And then they heard it, all about them, the sudden sound of terrible roaring and rumbling. It differed from the sounds all of the earlier Erf-quakes had made though, Roger thought, but just as to why exactly, he couldn’t really say. Roger saw several large boulders come tumbling and rolling out of the fog ahead of them, heading down the slope and right towards them both. Some way up ahead of them the slope’s floor had just exploded, and pools of seething, red magma were now bubbling up and flowing downwards. The initial force of the eruption had tossed chunks of rock and debris into the air, and it was these that were now raining down upon them! Roger realized that if he didn’t move fast, they’d be crushed before their journey home had hardly started. He grabbed hold of Mary’s arm and pulled her to one side, just in time, as a large boulder went crashing by, just exactly where she’d been standing. “Quick, Mary, keep rolling; right over to the side of the slope and squeeze into any crack you can find there!” Roger cried to her, as he too threw himself onto the ground and rolled to the rocky wall at his side of the slope. Luckily most of the boulders were careening down the middle of the slope like bowling balls bouncing down a bowling alley. A couple did hit the side walls and cracked into smaller pieces, missing them but showering them with pebbles and dust. And some of the larger chunks went hurtling over their heads, barely inches from their scalps, as they lay huddled, face down and squeezed tightly into fissures in the rocky walls. Mary on one side of the slope and Roger on the other. But the rock-fall was over almost as quickly as it had started. The last shower of pebbles went skittering by and just dust and darkness remained. “Whew, that was darn close!” Roger called out to her, peeling himself away from the tight crack he’d been wedged in. But there was no answer. Mary just lay by, jammed in the rock wall, silent and still. “Are y-y-you, all right?” Roger anxiously asked, scrabbling over to her and grabbing her shoulder and giving her a quick but gentle shake. But she just rolled over and lay there unmoving, on her back, with eyes tightly closed. Roger’s heart froze, his breath choked in his throat, and his stomach tightened to a hard, cold knot. He was absolutely terrified that Mary had been hit by a rock and had been killed. He just couldn’t bear the thought that he could be all alone now, here with his only friend, desperately needing his help, and him not being able to do a thing. “Not a single, stupid thing to save her!” he bitterly thought to himself, as he carefully pulled her away from the crack and tried to see if there was any sign of her having been hit. “Oh, Mary, Mary, please don’t be dead,” he implored, tears now streaming down his cheeks. He couldn’t see any immediate damage though, but Mary was unconscious, or… worse. She lay there, limp and unmoving in the smoky gloom. He took her and held her in his arms, cradled her head against his chest and softly told her that she was all right and that she’d soon be awake again, fumbling at her wrist to try and find a pulse. “You’re just having a r-r-rest, aren’t you?” he whispered gently into her ear and smoothing her long chestnut hair with his sooty hand. His torch had been knocked from him, but there, about a hundred yards up above, he could see the slope was still flooding with bubbling magma, now slowly seeping from the crater. He could also see that Mavis’s marvelous molten stairway ended just a few feet above them. The sloping passage above him was lit with orangey-red light, from the tentacles of magma, lazily oozing their deadly way down towards them. There seemed to be no escape. There was no going back and no way forward either. They were hopelessly trapped! Not being able to feel a pulse, Roger bent his head over Mary’s chest and listened to see if she was breathing, but he still couldn’t tell. He was beginning to panic. He actually knew all about taking pulses and getting a breath on a mirror, but that was all well and good up on the surface at some Boy Ranger’s exercise for a field merit badge. But this was real life and deep underground in the dark and with red burning hot magma now looming over their heads! Roger started to feel cold and numb. He felt paralyzed with fear and indecision. He knew he had to calm himself down and act rationally. Or they would both be dead…and very soon! He then noticed his hand was covered with something wet and sticky. He brought it closer to his eyes and gasped. He saw that it was covered in what looked like blood. He then quickly realized Mary was bleeding. He gently lifted her head and soon found a nasty wound on the back of her head, just where a jagged rock had struck her a glancing blow. He carefully wiped away the blood from her head and neck and then used one of his trusty hankies as a head-bandage for her wound. Then, as he sat there, unsure as to what to do next, her eyelids fluttered open and she stared up at him, groaning with a puzzled expression. “Oh, thank all the Seven Sacred Sciences!” Roger gasped. “You’re alive Mary!” “Ooh, my head hurts! Wh-wh-what happened, Roj, what’s going on?” Roger could hardly speak, he was so relieved. “You just got clipped on the head, by a r-r-rock, Mary. I really thought you were a g-g-goner there, you know; you really had me w-w-worried. You really did!” he stuttered. Roger turned away, hurriedly wiping away his tears, putting on his best brave face for her. But now he had to tell her what they were facing up ahead of them. “It d-d-doesn’t look good, Mary,” he said, trying his best to sound matter of fact about it. “We’ve got a river of b-b-boiling lava oozing down from further up the slope; it’s just above where the steps that Mavis made finish, I think. Our Stairway to Heaven’s definitely ended, and now we’ve got hot magma rising up instead! I don’t know how we’re going to get away. If we go back down, we’ll just be trapped with Mavis and be blown up when she explodes.” Mary looked up the slope and saw the deadly red rivers of fiery lava, slowly sliding down the rocky slope towards them. “They’re just like sticky tongues of fiery treacle,” she thought. Then, suddenly, they both heard the cool tones of Mavis speaking inside their heads again. “Dear Skylings, I fear that this is more of Morgrave’s evil doings! I must warn you that without you closer to me I am unable to protect you from Morgrave’s mind-warping powers. He will do all that he can to fill your minds with fears and doubts; he will try to unhinge and confuse you. Pray, do not heed him, be true to yourselves and to your own hearts! Whatever you may see or whatever he may tell you!” “You m-m-mean that this might not be real as well; he might just be making us see and hear all these things, and what’s happening right now isn’t really here? Like all this magma rising up and coming down onto us?” Roger asked Mavis, amazed and alarmed. “No, my Sky child, what you witness now is real, but what you actually believe is well within his powers too. What Morgrave far prefers, is to enter your minds and thereby into your hearts, if you let him. Therefore, you must banish all your fear. For fear becomes terror. Terror becomes Insanity… and then you are lost and you are his forever.” “Then what the Moldy old Mangoes is really going on now, Mavis? What’s just made this rockfall happen and now this lava stuff that’s attacking us?” questioned Mary, with alarm. “Mary, it’s an underground river of molten magma forced upwards from a deep Erf chamber” Mavis continued patiently “ and it is Morgrave who is commanding its course up to you and forcing it away from its usual route, in order to attack you! Morgrave has great magick to control fire as well as to warp minds!” “Great, then Giant Erf worms and Isopod balls won’t do any good against that sort of thing, now will they?” exclaimed Roger fiercely. “Then, what do we do, Mavis? How do we escape?” “I can sense the magma ascending toward you, Roger; a hot, writhing snake; but a snake of molten fire. Morgrave is even now controlling its rate of speed. Remember, he doesn’t just want you dead, what he wants, mostly ‒ is the Dragon’s Egg! However, do not fear; you will have the means, you will find the way, but you must trust and Know Your Selves!” But before they could get any specifics on what ‘the Way’ exactly was, or just how they were supposed to trust and ‘know’ themselves, their heads were filled with a thundering burst of mind-numbing noise, making them both cry out and wince with pain. It was King Morgrave, the deadly Fire-Worm Lord, now in their heads and telepathically communicating to them from his prison-cave far away, many miles beneath Mavis’s cavern. Roger could immediately tell that this ancient and vast mind was more powerful, deadly and evil than anything he could ever have imagined!
