81. (The Blind Bravery of Thieves)

An oldy but a goody. I wrote this back in 2003, 2004, and it's still one of my best stories. There are two sequels, which I am also very happy with. They can be found on my deviantart account (reido.deviantart.com). The three stories are the three oldest stories in the gallery.

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“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do—”

“Does it involve wacky hijinks in a desperate attempt to get us out of this situation?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

Phia just looked at me. “No. We’re gonna—”

“Does it involve weapons? Violence? Physical exertion?” I continued.

“Yes, no, and yes,” Phia replied, "In that order."

I frowned, rubbing my chin. “What kind of physical exertion are we talking here?”

“Um…” Phia rubbed his chin too. “Some running, some jumping, and some faster running.”

“Jumping?”

“Over the dragon.”

“Over the dragon?”

Phia rubbed his chin some more. It's what he does when he's thinking. I think that's why he can't grow a beard. “Well, really, it’s not so much jumping as it is launching ourselves into the air.”

I leaned around the corner into the treasure-chamber, where the aforementioned dragon was still sleeping noisily. “How is that any different than just jumping, Phia?”

“Wait here.” Without another word, he turned and scampered off around the corner.

Maybe I should explain what’s going on here, if I plan on keeping your attention. I’m Elly, a treasure-hunter and all-around decent girl. You’ll notice I didn’t insult Phia because of his ridiculous plan. So maybe you’re wondering why in the nineteen levels of the Underearth we’re hiding around the corner from a sleeping dragon?

Well, the thing is this: when we got here, the dragon was out. He sorta… um… "owned" my village. Stealing from him was supposed to be a subtle way of getting back at him without his noticing—I mean, he’s got more treasure than he could ever possibly keep track of. We’re—or rather, we were planning on just stealing a little bit at a time until we’d taken enough for him to notice, and then stop.

Well, that plan sorta involved the two of us being alive still.

Oh! I haven’t introduced Phia properly yet. Phia’s my… um… business partner. We’re not friends—hell, I don’t even like him that much. But he’s the best at what he does, and what he does is getting me out of tight spots. I mentioned earlier that his plan is ridiculous, right? Well, it is, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. Phia’s plans always work.

Okay, well, now I’m just interrupting the flow of my narrative, so I’ll get back to the story.

Phia came back around the corner carrying two very long pikes. “We’ll use these,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” I replied, dubious. “And when the hard, metal butts of those things hits the hard, stone floor, you expect them to not make enough noise to wake the great and powerful dragon?”

“Oh.”

Perhaps I should mention, here, that the reason Phia’s plans always work is because I’m always here to tell him what’s wrong with them. I honestly don’t know what he’d do without me. But, then, I don’t know what I’d do without him, either. Probably get eaten by the dragon.

Of course, I’d have been dead several times before this from various other adventures, so without Phia the whole try-not-to-get-eaten-by-large-beasts scenario is somewhat moot.

But I drift!

“Well, that’s where the whole ‘running faster’ aspect of the plan comes in,” Phia said. “Plus, once we’ve woken up his majesty—”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Right. Well, when we’ve woken up the pathetic dragon, we’ll have weapons to defend ourselves with. For once. See, that’s the beauty of my plan!”

I sighed. “So we run in, leap over the sleeping beast and, in turn, wake him from his peaceful slumber, run really fast, get caught, try to defend ourselves, get killed and-or eaten, recognized as citizens of the village, and are happily unaware as the beast burns our loved-ones to an ashy cloud of dust?”

“Well, when you put it that way—hey!” He exclaimed—whispering still—as I grabbed my pike and turned to sprint at the sleeping beast.

The dragon is massive, by the way. We had to jump over him—as opposed to something sensible like tip-toeing around his tail—because his neck and the aforementioned tail were both pressed against the walls of the chamber, effectively forming a big, green wall between us and our happy escape.

None of this was running through my head as I was sprinting towards him, though.

And none of anything else was really running through my head as one big, scaly, green eye-lid snapped open, the reptilian eye formerly hidden behind it staring straight at me. I skidded to a stop, pike in hand, and just stared back at it.

“Elly!” I heard Phia shout, just as he skidded to a stop next to me. “Shit!”

A thought struck me just then. I looked at the eye (which was at about shoulder-height, being just that damn big), and then I looked at my weapon. And then I looked at the eye again.

“No,” I heard Phia whisper next to me. “Don’t you even think—”

But by then, of course, it was too late. Before the word “you” had left his lips, I was already lurching forward, a battle-cry (which was less-than-impressive, I’ll admit) on my lips. At “even,” I was half-way to the eye, which was in the process of blinking in puzzlement as the small thing that was Elly, treasure-hunter came towards it. Right as Phia uttered the word “think,” I plunged the sharp end of the pike into said eye and pushed with the weight of my entire body.

I felt every aspect of that eye bend and shatter one at a time, “snap-snap-snap-snap”, and then a sickening “squish,” which of course translated in my mind as “push harder” and I did, then--I pushed harder, groaning.

All that took an instant, and with a screech of pain the dragon whipped his head around, spraying red blood and some kind of clear fluid all over my arms just before I was sent flying through the air right at the passageway we’d been trying to reach in the first place, and as I’m flying through the air all I can hear is screaming and thrashing about and I can think of two things: one, I hope I don’t break my neck when I land; two, I really hope Phia doesn't get crushed in all that writhing.

I got lucky on both counts, and as I lay there in pain, sore, covered in blood and eye-fluid (which smells awful, let me tell you), panting, groaning, wondering if I broke my arm, I couldn't hear anything but my own breathing.

Which, I suddenly realized, was a good thing. I sat up, winced, and looked around. Phia was suddenly standing over me. “Elly, the idea was to hit the ground with the pike and spring over him, not use his death-spasms to catapult yourself over here.” He was covered in smelly eye-goo and sticky blood too. Well, at least he hadn’t gotten squashed or something. He was laughing.

“I had to… um… sorta elaborate on your plan, Phia,” I mutter, standing up and, in vain, brushing myself off.

“So… what are we going to tell the townspeople now that they’re free?”

“Why,” I replied, “We’re going to tell them that we fought a terrible battle for hours and hours, and that some of this blood—we’re lucky it’s red—is ours--we're even more lucky it's not--and then we’ll be welcomed as heroes.”

“Your plans are terrible,” Phia replied, laughing harder.