And beyond that shimmering skin of pale blue light, Roger could barely see anything at all. Just the occasional blur of a rock rolling by or a spurt of pebbles hitting the bubble of flame and making it momentarily sparkle and spit. Even when all was stilled to an eerie silence, there seemed to be nothing but a bowl of featureless gloom beyond the bubble.
Then after but a few brief moments, he thought he saw something else, something out there in the haze of smoke; Something moving, something wriggling and getting steadily ever closer towards them.
In fact, several 'somethings’ were approaching; all wriggling and writhing about in the dim murky depths of the smog-filled cavern; All of them, slowly approaching wriggle by wriggle, getting ever nearer and nearer.
“Ugh! What are those horrible things? Can you see them Roj?” Mary cried out.
“By Schrodinger’s half-dead cat, yes, they’re nasty looking creatures, aren’t they now?” Roger hissed, agreeing with her.
“Look like a cross between fat slimy maggots and slithering green slugs!” Mary replied in heartfelt disgust.
“These are but The Enemy’s mindless Minions,” Mavis told them gravely, “and they come here but to do his bidding; which is to destroy us all and particularly my Egg. Unfortunately, I have not had the time to complete your educations in such things, and now we must stand and fight them instead!”
Roger saw that the cavern floor was teeming with the slithering, slimy Minion creatures, all faintly glowing with a sickly green luminescence in the cavernous gloom. And they were now totally surrounded.
The slimy Slug-worms were each about a foot long and were all the same pale green color, but also tinged and spotted with shades of vile yellow and with many red veins running the length of their bodies. They had no eyes but gaping maws for heads, and jaws edged with serrated teeth, like saws. Each worm dribbled a thick, acidic saliva.
This acidic slime oozed from them as they squirmed relentlessly across the rocky floor, their slime trails eating into the very rock itself.
“I will protect us as best I can with my blue flame shield, children, and I have tuned the flame so we can hurl whatever we can to keep these worms from us. The shield of blue flame will allow nothing to enter. You must throw what rocks you can find at them; we must, at all costs, keep them from breaching my shield with their foul acid spit!” Mavis ordered.
The children quickly scrabbled together suitable rocks and began pelting the advancing worms with them.
“You take the left side and I’ll take the right,” Roger shouted to Mary.
“O.K. I’ll do my best,” Mary answered.
She was actually a very good shot, but having cracked ribs and a bad ankle too didn’t exactly help.
“These are Fire-worm Minions,” Mavis mind-cast to them, “do not let them near or they will burn you; their slime is like your Helladian fire; Naught but Dragon Magic can quench it! I will try to pick off as many as I can with my red battle flame, but it is very difficult to both attack and defend at the same time!”
Mavis intermittently hurled her blasts of red flame, switching from red flame to blue; While Roger and Mary bombarded the Fire-worms as best they could. Roger was getting a hit every other throw, but Mary was having trouble getting her aim in. She could only really use the one arm, and each throw made her wince with pain from her hurting ribs.
“Ow! Hooray! I got one!” she cried. “But there’s too many of ‘em Roj, what are we going to do?”
Roger had knocked over and squashed several of the killer Slug-worms himself, but Mary was right, there were just too many of them. The acid spitting worms were now just madly hurling themselves at the Dragon’s dome of blue flame that had, so far, kept them both safe. But they were now relentlessly swarming up its sides too, hissing and spitting their dreadful drool; causing several areas of the blue-fire-dome to dissolve and erode.
“Whatever happens, don’t let them get through my blue-fire barrier,” Mavis ordered, “just concentrate your aim on any who are creating any holes!”
“Why are they doing this?” screamed Mary. “What’s wrong with them; They don’t seem to care whether they live or die; they just want to kill us!”
“Yes, they don’t care about their own lives, killing is all they live for!” Mavis told her grimly, as she spat another deadly fireball into the heaving mass of acid-spitting fire-worms.
The cavern floor was soon littered with writhing and blasted worm-bodies, but more and more soon replaced them. Mavis’s protective blue-fire dome was still holding, but for how long? If they kept coming like this, then they’d eventually break through. Then there would be no escape!
Oh, by Galileo’s Galloping Grasshoppers, what a horrible way to die! Roger thought to himself with horror.
But the hordes of mindless maggot-Minions were not without their limits. And whatever malevolent intelligence had been guiding and dictating their every move, now brought them to a sudden halt. For unknown to Roger and Mary, they were just the beginning of the hidden enemy’s intended onslaught.
The Slug-worm army sat rooted to the cavern floor like a thousand wriggling, green fingers; Like a writhing sea of dead-men’s hands, all reaching, groping and grasping at the grimy, putrid air; But not making any further moves forward at all.
Mavis and the children sat and waited within the bubble. Just what were these fiends up to now? They hadn’t any idea. The seconds ticked slowly and agonizingly by, and then at last, they heard it; A distant scratching and scraping noise. Then another, and another.
Roger could dimly see three large scorpion-like creatures, coming ever closer towards them, but as yet, he couldn’t see them clearly, the fog of surrounding dragon smoke badly obscuring his view. But he could see that one was coming from straight ahead and the two others, from each side. Their strange scraping noises sounded out in regular, repetitive beats, each punctuated by a loud and harsh, rattling sound.
“Shkkkrrrrrrr-brrrr! Shkkkrrrrrrr-brrrr! Shkkkrrrrrrr-brrrr!”
Then Roger saw the one in front, the leader, suddenly loom into full view and soon followed by its two fellow cohorts, one to the left and one to the right of him. The three vile creatures towered above him, being nearly as tall as the Dragon Queen Mavis herself.
There, right ahead of him, loomed a trio of huge, six-legged monsters, each three-headed and each head, three-eyed! And each, carrying a spiny tail with an evil-looking sting coiled behind it and held high over their cobra-like heads.
“Beware, children, these are the dreaded three-headed Trydra!” Mavis cried out.
“Oh, my Fernickity Ferkins! They look really nasty and very dangerous!” Mary gasped.
“The wh-wh-what, what’s a Trydra?” asked Roger, open-mouthed with horror as the three Trydra stealthily and steadily approached them in their three-pronged attack, wending their way through the army of writhing minion worms.
“The three-headed Hydra are from the Core regions; They are themselves a form of giant fire-worm, half snake and half scorpion and usually only found in the fiery depths of the Erf. They always attack in threes; It is part of their magical natures. They are creatures of three and are deadly to all forms of life; At their worst, they can even damage dragons!” Mavis hissed urgently in their heads. “If I lower my blue-flame defence I can concentrate enough red attack-flame to stop them; but if I do, then you children will no longer be protected!”