They slithered relentlessly on, over the corpse-littered ground, intent on finishing any wounded creature they found. Queen Anivad, unfortunately being just another hapless victim of their quest to inflict death wherever they could.
The children saw how the wounded Queen quickly and deftly took up her defenseless infant, between her pointed teeth and then lurched her bloodied bulk towards some nearby boulders. There, she took hold of baby Mavis and wedged her safely in between two large rocks. Then, turning defiantly to face her foes, she put the bulk of her mighty body between her whimpering, frightened babe and the Fire-worms, Spider-worms and Centipedes, all now converging on her.
Her majestic, blue and gold Dragon-form, reared up on high, as she unfurled her glorious, though torn and tattered wings, preparing to attack, with tooth, talon and a torrent of flame.
Her red-scaled chest pulsated and glowed ruby-red-hot; The ferocious furnace within her fiery lungs, readying itself for a final, flesh-frying blast of minion-melting flame.
But it came too late.
Baby Mavis, and the children too, saw, crawling in a silent slither from behind her Mother, a huge Fire-Worm Lord. Baby Mavis desperately tried to warn her; But her feeble mind-casts came as weak bleats of alarm, as from a lamb, lost and alone, in a field full of bleating sheep.
Her mother’s attention was elsewhere, and she paid her no heed. But as Anivad was about to release her final bolt of flame upon the frenzied Worms, the cowardly Fire-Worm Lord of the Core suddenly struck with a torrent of acid-flame.
Queen Anivad immediately recoiled and tried to twist herself around and defend herself, but it was all to no avail. The vicious, flesh-eating flames engulfed her even as she moved, the deadly acidic tongues of fire eating into her body. The Fire-Worm Lord’s flames flickered and licked all about her torso in a sulfurous, yellowing haze of searing heat.
And all the crazed Worm Minions, seeing her fall, and writhing on the ground, in agony, quickly came slithering and slurping upon her, with eager, ghoulish appetites, all wanting to be in at the Dragon Queen’s kill. They flooded over her body like a vile infestation of rancid, rabid rats, running riot over a barn, full of fuming, fouled grain.
But even as she died, Queen Anivad’s final, brave and noble act was to fall purposefully, intentionally collapsing upon the two rocks where she had hidden her last, lone Dragon-babe, Mavis, the Dragon Queen to be.
Then the shocking vision, that Roger and Mary, with unspeakable and disbelieving horror had mind-shared with Mavis, abruptly went black. Their Mind-meld and their Vision-journey to Mavis’s grisly past, was over.
And thus, was baby Mavis saved.
“That lowly, slimy, Fire-Worm Slug! That stinking, slinking creature of pusses and poison, he killed my Mother!” Mavis thought heatedly to them, and with much heart-felt venom that she momentarily could not control or contain.
“Who is this creature, this Enemy from the Core then Mavis, the one who just killed your mother… and what has he to do with you and your Egg right now?” Roger quietly asked her, realizing Mavis’s reliving of her past had been a very great ordeal for her.
“It is one and the same foul, core-creature; Morgrave is his name, who has followed me here and now,” she answered him, somberly. “And still he seeks my death as well as my Egg; But that will never be; for I have out-witted that blighted, black-souled beast of a Worm.
And I have arrived here, as close to the Skylands as I can. Although, the truth be told, it would have suited me better to have made it to a far more central area of the Great Forest of Lundun. For it is deep within that ancient Wood that my Dragon hatchling must be born to achieve his full magical potential, you see. For all that remains is my death and my re-birth… but also a new glorious life for my son… with the help of you two children, by your ensuring my last, most precious Egg, is safely hatched!”
There was a long and meaningful silence in the dimly glowing Cavern that the children’s consciousnesses had returned to. They had quietly re-entered their dormant bodies in their true present time and blinked their eyes awake in the smoky, red gloom. And there, together, hidden deep below the once enticing and mysterious Smoking Tree, their heart-wrenching and grief-stricken emotions, needed no magical telepathy, whatsoever.
“And thus, we have witnessed the beginning of the end,” Mavis murmured, after a while.
Then, the stillness and silence of the smoky cavern was again shattered by an almighty, resounding roar; Quickly followed by a continual rumbling and shaking that built in intensity all about them. Further rock-falls crashed, clattered and echoed through the Dragon’s Cavern and several hissing-hot fissures appeared, creating further cracks in the corpse-littered cavern.
“Is all this the work of your Arch Enemy, this King Morgrave, your Core Worm enemy?” asked Mary, “Is he the one causing all these Erfquakes that keep ‘appening?”
“And they seem to be getting nearer… and stronger too!” Roger added, with some alarm.
“Do not worry, my dearest Skylings, I have barricaded all possible routes to this cavern. Morgrave is using his formidable power of mind only. That vile Worm even now but rages against the trap I have him in, far below us, baited there by my own, sorely sacrificed wing. Even as we speak, he is entangled and engulfed within a mountain of enchanted rock and lies pinned beneath my hex-laden dragon wing, a magical hex from which even he will find it impossible to escape from for some while.”
“B-b-but if he’s from the Core I’d have thought these Core creatures can bore through any sort of rock, just like that, can’t they?” piped up Roger, feeling unconvinced.
“My dear young Erfling, I am no longer the unlearned and innocent babe that you saw in our journey to the past who Morgrave did not find and kill so long ago,” replied Mavis rather indignantly.
“Now children, please attend, our time must not be wasted. I hereby entrust the future of my line and the hope of all True Dragons and all Erf-kind, to your safe-keeping and to your bravery and sincerity in confronting all the horrors of the Un-Kind; all of those deadly and destructive creatures of the Erf’s Core and their poor, weak-willed puppets; and thus for you to bring my final Egg to the Dragon’s Nest, the place of his hatching.”
“We understand, Mavis, really we do, and we will!” Mary replied, staunchly.
And Roger nodded his agreement. “Where do you want us to take the Egg exactly, Mavis? Is it very far at all?” he asked, politely curious as to just where they’d have to go.
The mortally wounded Dragon Queen sighed heavily.
“My Egg must be gotten to the surface and away from the Forest of Lundun, at least for a while, at first. No one will suspect the Dragon’s Egg would be hidden amidst the Humdrums. You must briefly hide it; Then, when the time comes, you must take it to the hatching place. This will be at the Great Forest’s heart, and will soon become known to you, I promise.”
Mavis’s eyes were now drooping with weariness and Roger could tell she was doing her level best to suppress the pain she was in. He had briefly got an insight into all the terrible turmoil and terror she had suffered through the last few days. He wondered though, that if such a marvelous and powerful creature could be hurt so much, then how on Erf were they, two insignificant human Erf children, going to manage? How were they supposed to survive such a deadly and determined enemy, like this Morgrave monster was?