Mavis then coughed and blew a big, grey cloud of smoke towards Roger’s face, and then just before it totally enveloped him within its coiling, dense, grey fog, she blew once again, and it just vaporized, disappearing before his very eyes.
“There is always a way to find a path that is worth the taking,” she thought to them both, very pointedly, but at Master Roger Briggs, in particular.
Mary got the gist as well though and piped up in Roger’s defense. “Oh, we know, we really do Mavis. Roger’s clever at working out solutions to problems, aren’t you, Roger?”
Roger felt somewhat guilty, thankful and embarrassed, all at once. He had been having something of a crash course in the emotions this most fantastic and fateful day. He looked at Mary and he looked at Mavis and then he looked up at the wall of the cavern.
It was about twenty feet to the top and he thought he could probably climb it, but he didn’t think that Mary could, and in fact, he wasn’t that sure, on second thoughts, that he could, not while carrying a Dragon’s Egg as well anyway, even if he could leave Mary all on her own, which he really couldn’t do, he knew.
His logical brain seemed to have completely deserted him. His mind was in some turmoil and he felt he was beginning to panic again. He felt he could burst into tears at any moment, which was really not on, he knew. But just how were they going to escape from this terrible, smoke-filled cavern? There surely had to be a way somehow, but what way? And how?
As yet, the truth was, Roger just had no idea!
“All right,” he said, “just give me a minute, will you? Let’s just look at this scientifically.”
Roger paced up and down the cavern floor. He looked to see if there were any stalagmites still standing, after all the confusions of the battle and the Erfquakes.
Maybe we can find one that we can use to climb up, he thought, but rapidly saw that there were none. The cavern was strewn with the rubble of the once towering stalagmites, all now lying in broken ruin along with the debris from the many fallen stalactites. There were still swirling, grey wreaths of smoke everywhere as well, giving the whole scene an eerie, gothic-church, cemetery look.
“How about building something from the rocks?” he then suggested. “Maybe you could lift some of these rocks, Mavis, and then sort of build a bridge up to the edge of the slope?”
“I am barely able to move myself, let alone build bridges of solid rock!” Mavis gently and mournfully murmured in his head. “And I will need a little while to recuperate my powers; Meanwhile, we must use what time we have left as profitably as possible. But there will be a way out, do not fear.”
Roger was now feeling very under pressure. There must be some sort of a solution to this, he thought, banging the side of his head with one hand and biting the nails of the other.
Mavis, observing this, lowered her head next to his and calmly bathed him in a strangely cool and glowing blue flame once more. This had the immediate miraculous effect of calming and cooling his mind and thoughts.
“Remember, young Skyling,” Mavis whispered, “there is always a solution to a problem, the skill is usually only in the choosing of the solution which is truly the best!”
Roger was about to reply but then without any warning the cavern once again shuddered. More rocks came crashing down about them and yet more clouds of dust billowed up from the cavern’s floor, setting Roger and Mary to yet further bouts of coughing and spluttering.
After a few secondary, minor tremors, things soon finally settled down and became still and relatively peaceful again. Roger could still hear a distant rumbling, however, as the seismic waves from the tremors continued passing beneath them; reverberating away into the vast, rocky depths of the Under-Erf.
“If these Erfquakes carry on, then sooner or later they’re going to get us!” Roger muttered.
“Oh, Ponging Pilchards! Not another bloomin’ Erfquake!” Mary said aloud, sounding more exasperated than scared.
“No, my innocent but courageous young Humans,” came Mavis’s somber tones again; Calming them further, so they’d be ready to hear the alarming news she now had to tell them.
“You must know this, my two trusted Egg bearers. It is not the Erf that is causing quakes, but something far worse, I fear. Something that I wish you did not have to face!”
“W-w-what on Erf do you mean?” Roger asked, aghast. “What could possibly be worse than those horrific Trydra creatures?”
CHAPTER 16:
THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK CAVERN
“I will show you,” Mavis stated matter-of-factly. “You must now learn something of the true history of the Under Erf, or at least that of a thousand years ago, that is. We have no time for anymore I fear, and there are others on the surface who will be able to teach and guide you further too. First, you must learn of the catastrophe that began the long, slow decay of the True Dragon’s power and rule of the Under-Erf.”
Mavis closed her eyes and Roger immediately felt his mind gently enveloped, as with a soft, pearly light, pervading the very essence of his being.
“Oooh! What’s happening?” gasped Mary, as she too felt the same strange sensation.
“You must know of the Enemy we face. It is time I show you what I can,” Mavis sighed, “but you must both be very brave, although I’ll never knowingly show you what you cannot fully confront. Come now and witness the tragedy within my Home World Cavern, nearly a thousand years ago!”
The children all at once felt themselves dissolving into space and time and falling into its hidden depths. Their very beings seemed to mix, melding together and moving into the awareness of the Dragon Queen’s.
This time, though they were sharing the unique viewpoint and ancient mind of Mavis; Slowly, her powerful mind became the benign host for the children’s own individual minds. From there they would be able to safely share in the long history of her many dragon years. But not as separate phantoms this time, but cocooned safely within Mavis’s mind. And now they were being drawn along with her, down the long, long centuries of her tortuous time-track; Back to her own tumultuous, Dragon-World past. A thousand years earlier.
Roger mentally gasped, as he once again saw the wonderful landscape of Mavis’ home Cavern-World, but as it had been so long ago, deep beneath the surface a millennium before.
He again observed many happy Dragon families, gaily colored and busy and bustling, flying about in the pink-red sky. They swooped about their ornate, smoking Cone-homes or stomped across lava plains or through lush fields and jungles; or splashed and played together in the many steaming magma pools. It was a lovely, peaceful and well-organized world, and once again, he saw that it was full and teeming with creatures that no ‘Humdrum’ would recognize. Many of these creatures still being unknown to modern, ‘Humdrum’ science.
By Newton’s Rusty Pen Nib, I’d love to explore this place. I wonder what sort of Insects they have here? He wondered to himself.
“Look down there,” squealed Mary pointing excitedly as they swooped along over the colorful Cavern-World’s landscape below them.
“Yes, yes, I see them! By Neil Bohr’s Barmy Barnacles, they’re fantastic!” Roger yelled.
Mavis took them down even closer, to where Mary had pointed. There they could see Dinosaurs of all sorts and sizes. There were thousands of them; great browsing herds of Brontosaurs and Brachiosaurs, and also several smaller groups like the Stegosaurs and the Triceratops. And they all seemed to live together in harmony.