November 15

Word Count: 2001

Ridiculous. Utterly and simply ridiculous. Stupid, dim, slow witted, idiotic, thick headed, completely and absolutely without a functioning brain. The girl had him acting like an jester. Mitty had turned Malek to mush.

Malek had not made a single rational decision since meeting Mitty. He should have turned her around and stuffed her right back in the closet where she found him. He should have dumped her off on the side of the road while she was unconscious. He should have said to hell with the globe and his commission and kept right on riding. Instead he found himself slaying dragons for her, literally.

The girl wore trouble around her neck on a chain. That cat of hers could have killed her with a single paw stroke, but she lovingly rubbed its ears. The dragon could have roasted her to death, but the cloth she stole turned out to be fireproof. The two brothers - Malek still didn't trust them… there was something shifty about them. It wasn't just the fact that the Iber one wore a sword. Malek never trusted people who were too nice. Neither one of them was a brother, probably. They were more likely thieves like him who would bind her hands and sell her to the highest bidder once out of the forest.

What troubled Malek the most was that he was still there. He was still trodding along with the group chasing after mystical glowing balls. Malek had already worked out a nearly fool proof scenario. Surely it wouldn't be difficult to slip by close to Iber's horse and remove the bag from Mitty's possession. Even if he had to make a run for it, Iber's injured horse carried two and Saratin's nag was laughable. Despite earlier threats, Mitty was too soft hearted to send her cat to bring him down. After a short sprint, Malek would be home free with his prize and free of any commitments. The ball was his after all. He had stolen it first.

Yes, the plan was fool proof, but he still couldn't bring himself to put it into action. For a while, he told himself it was the threat of dragons lurking in the dark. Too soon he recognized the lie and knew that stupid girl more in charge of him than his rotten miserable self.

Malek did not like the way Iber kept such a tight hold on Mitty. It was completely unnecessary. Surely she could see through that lopsided grin to see that the man was completely worthless. Obviously Saratin was the brains for the two of them. He was the one Malek truly needed to keep an eye on. His cheerful banter was definitely a cover for a more sinister personality.

"Malek," Mitty called. "My brother used to say that if I frowned that much that my face would freeze that way and everyone in the town would call me Glare Face." Malek rolled his eyes. He was certainly not in the mood to be taunted out of his seriousness.

"Really?" he replied dryly. He refused to look over to the pair riding beside him. He chose instead to inspect the hazy glow that had just appeared in the distance.

"My mother always said a bird would fly and perch onto my lip if it stuck out any farther," Iber stated.

"No, I think that's for pouting. Malek's definitely scowling, not pouting." Mitty and Iber laughed together.

"Perhaps I'm just concerned about the light we're approaching." The two stopped laughing. They looked forward. Mitty took out the ball and got a fix on it's glow.

"I think that's where we're supposed to be."

"Then let's get there," Malek said as he spurred his horse in the darkness. He took off towards the light, leaving the others behind. A few moments later he heard them clumping along behind him. Faster was better, as far as Malek was concerned. He could get the ball back from Mitty, and then have no logical reason to stay with her. She would be perfectly fine without him. Malek had no need of entanglements or females cluttering up his life. He did his job, collected his fee, and moved on. No one liked him, no one hated him, and no one would care if he died.

Malek's gut wrenched. For the first time in his life, that motto seemed completely and horribly wrong. Empty. Sad.

As the light grew brighter Malek's mind stumbled and grasped. He kept rethinking and repeating the same phrases he'd known all his life, hoping that his philosophy and life hypothesis hadn't just been proved wrong. Perhaps he just needed a few moments of peace and quiet for all of his puzzle pieces to get reassembled.

The trees suddenly thinned. He burst into the clearing and pulled horse up short. He'd almost ran into a huge gray boulder planted in the middle of the forest. There was a bonfire off to the side casting eerie shadows on the ring of tall trees that surrounded the enormous rock.

On second thought, maybe life philosophies were all crap anyway. When you died, you died… so who cares if anyone cares? He was going to die today after all. His rock wasn't a rock at all. It was a dragon… and there wasn't going to be any slaying of this dragon. Malek was a bite sized tender morsel, but then, so was Mitty. Well, as long as she'd led him into this mess, he'd go out with a flare. He might be able to rescue her, if not himself.

Malek pulled out his bow and an arrow from his quiver. Where does one shoot a dragon the size of a house?

"You've arrived!" the old man shouted, rubbing his hands gleefully like the host at a garden tea party. "Everyone's here!"

The man with the bow looked astonishedly in their direction. He apparently had failed to notice the old man, and Lynah's party standing off to the side, in as much awe over the dragon as he was.

Two other horses pulled up beside him. Both the horses and their riders looked like bedraggled ragamuffins. Two of them were obviously brothers by their cassocks, Lynah noticed, but they were very unlike any brothers she had known at court. They were quite rumbled and charred. They appeared to have been rolling around in a fire and some dirt. Lynah couldn't even begin to describe the girl. Her clothing was barely recognizable… the blouse she wore hung about a skirt made out of little more than a piece of material. Her hair strung down around her face in tangled clumps. What little of her face that wasn't covered with ash, was kind to call plain.

The man with the bow put down his arms, but still kept the arrow notched. He stared first at them and then at the dragon twice before he spoke.

"Who are you and what is that?" He said motioning with his head towards the dragon.

"Why don't you know a dragon when you see one? His name is Snult, and you can put the arrows away. He isn't the slightest bit interested in causing havoc today.

Lynah didn't know dragons could smile, but he did.

"Would you like to know a secret?" Snult said smugly. His voice was a deep, rich tone that echoed through the forest. "Humans are the worst tasting animal ever to exist. They have a horrible aftertaste, and their bones are like toothpicks. Now give me a nice juicy elephant," the dragon rumbled.

"It talks!" the man exclaimed.

"It also smashes silly men on horses with the flick of its tail if annoyed by said man." Snult flicked his tail for emphasis. Realizing the utter futility of his efforts, the man unnotched his arrow and placed it back in his quiver.

"Who are you, then," he asked the old man.

"Now, now, Malek, come down off that horse and be civil," he chided. "There's no reason to be churlish. Saratin, Iber, Mitty, please, join us."

"How do you know who we are?" Malek demanded.

"I'd like to know the same," Lasser stated quietly.

"Exposition, exposition… have I the strength? Perhaps, perhaps." He turned around and stared at Snult for a moment and turned back as if forgetting something. "This is the Ring of Ancients. That is Snult, the greatest of the Great Dragons, and I am the least and last of the Great Mages, and you are my friends, in more ways than you know."

"He's talking in riddles again. I say we go," Trevelyn whispered.

"Forgive me. I'm like a hard old sea sponge that’s been dry for twenty years. I don't quite soak up everything very well at first. I'm an old shell, an old withered one, but at least I've got the same one I started with. You're all new shells. I'm mixing my metaphors now."

"The Great Mages disappeared over one hundred years ago," Saratin interjected. "They expelled the Scribes of Tamarin and closed themselves in to await their death."

"So they did, but like all the magical creatures, they suffered a slow death by spirit asphyxiation. They were drained as the magic slipped away. There had been droughts before, but never like this one. They knew there was only one way to save themselves and their powers for Galadin. The eight Great Mages came together to cast a spell-"

"There were twelve. There were twelve Great Mages," Saratin interrupted.

"Yes, originally. Four expired before the rest decided to cast this spell. You see, when those four died, their powers died with them, and had the other eight waited out the drought, no doubt they would also die and their power would be lost to Galadin forever. The spell they created took their spirits and their powers and placed them within the souls of seven newborn children to await the end of the blight."

"Okay, we can do the math. You're telling us that we're all Great Mages in disguise?"

"Yes."

"Then where are these powers you keep telling us about?" Iber asked.

"Locked deep within you, to protect them. We simply need to open the door with the key."

"And where is the key?" Malek asked.

"Oh, that's where I come in," the dragon rumbled behind him. "Just think of me as the friendly neighborhood key drop." The dragon reached his claw towards his belly. He gingerly pulled on one of his scales and a key dropped into his claw. Snult held it out for inspection.

"It's a real key," said Trevelyn, amazed. "How does it work?"

"Oh, it's very simple." The old man took the key from Snult. "I simply-"

As the old man approached Malek, he backed away.

"Don't even think about using that thing on me. We still have no way of knowing who you really are."

Lynah agreed, but the idea was beginning to take hold. Was she really a Great Mage? Why hadn't she known it all along? How does one suddenly go from being human to powerful.

"What kind of powers are we expecting here?" Lynah asked. Before the old man could speak, one of the brothers chimed in.

"The Great Mages had the power to rule the world. Practically immortal, they live for thousands of years. The powers exhibited by the Great Mages are limited. They choose not to make most of their work known. Humankind has no real context to know how far reaching their powers truly are. The greatest example of the power of a Great Mage is the floating city of Wohenyu. When the river changed its course and the city faced its utter destruction, the mage came and rose the entire city a mile into the air, where it floated and prospered for one hundred years until the blight ate away at the supports and the city slowly disappeared into the raging currents of the river."

Lynah stared at the brother.

"He's a librarian," the girl shrugged.