[ 21 ]

HERE IN THE UNDERWORLD, PROFESSOR NOG TELLS ME ABOUT MY MOTHER AND FATHER, BOTH OF WHOM DIED WHILE ON THEIR FERTILITY MISSION TO PLANET EARTH

Anyway, now the holophoto floats over to Professor Nog and transforms into blacksmoke and then flies into his powerstaff.

“Frankly,” says Professor Nog, “I consider it very generous of me to give you an A. Considering the nature of your infraction. I think you realize your punishment could be much more severe than simply failing my course!”

We both know what Nog means. Because crying is the highest possible crime a WarWings dragon can commit. And any dragon seen or recorded crying is immediately sentenced to death by firestream.

And right then I know we’re both thinking of last night’s RageFest. Because we both know, what with my grandpa Dr. Terrible having humiliated Dean Floop last night by blinding him in his eye out on the campus quad, well Dean Floop would relish the opportunity to blast me with a firestream and reduce me to a pile of ash.

“Relish” probably isn’t even a strong enough word. For the demented and dangerous Dean Floop, the act of firestreaming me would surely be luscious.

“But,” says Professor Nog as he snorts firebolts, “I’m no fan of Dean Floop and his ilk here at WarWings. For one thing, Dean Floop is threatening to cut funding for our Underworld studies. And so you needn’t worry, Gork, I’m not going to turn you in.”

“Thank you, Professor,” I whisper.

“For what, Gork?”

“For saving my life, sir.”

I look with gratitude into Nog’s ancient scaly green face and he stares back at me for a moment before blinking and turning away.

“Never mind. It’s nothing,” says Professor Nog.

I know I’ve just made Nog uncomfortable. Because thanking someone implies that they care about you. Which is universally regarded as a major character defect, to care like that.

But since we are alone, I know Professor Nog will let it slide. Whereas if there were other cadets present to witness my thank-you then Nog would be obligated to attack me on the spot. In order to save face and preserve dragon order. But the truth is, old wise Nog understands that I’m simply a victim of my compassionate heart, and so I can’t curb my grotesque impulse toward verbal expressions of gratitude.

And what’s more, secretly I know that Nog really does care. But that doesn’t mean I have to disrespect him by rubbing his beak in it like this. Well I’ve still got a damn sight more to learn, in terms of growing up and becoming an insidious dragon fiend.

“Now you haven’t heard from Dr. Terrible, have you?” says Professor Nog. “Do you know where he is? I must confess his disappearance last night has caused quite a ripple among us faculty who are sympathetic to his cause.”

“No sir. I don’t know where he is.”

“I didn’t think so,” he says. “But of course it doesn’t hurt to ask, because you never know. I especially liked the mind-swap your grandpa did between a dolphin and a bumblebee. How that dolphin spent all day flying around in the garden as if he were a bee. Hovering in front of a rose. Going from flower to flower, collecting pollen on the end of its nose!”

“Yes sir,” I say, snorting blacksmoke out my nostrils.

But I’m thinking about how things turned out in the end for that poor worm who’d been mind-swapped with the lion. That deranged worm who through no choice of its own had been endowed with that insanely high ScalesOfMenace rank.

Because yesterday, Thursday, that worm surprised everyone by committing suicide.

The worm hung itself using a piece of thread.

One of the first-year cadets discovered the worm hanging over a sink in the Library bathroom.

And just this morning there had been a big article about the worm’s suicide posted on our school datastream, The Digital Fire-Breather. It was posted right under the article about Dr. Terrible’s disappearance and the fact that he was now wanted by the Council of the Elders for treason and was considered a fugitive at large.

And according to that article about the worm taking his own life, apparently the switch from vegetarian to carnivore had been too much. And the worm even scrawled a short suicide note in blood on the bathroom mirror: CAN’T STAND ANOTHER BITE OF MEAT.

But my train of thought is interrupted by Professor Nog’s voice: “It’s been crazy up there on the island this week. These are dark days for WarWings. I do hope Dr. Terrible is doing OK. I know some of my colleagues are whispering among themselves that Dean Floop murdered Dr. Terrible. Or that he’s keeping Dr. Terrible prisoner somewhere. That would be hard to believe. But one thing is for sure, your grandfather wouldn’t have deserted his Institute if he weren’t afraid for his life.”

Now I have to hand it to Nog, the old scaly green bastard has really put me at ease with the words coming out of his beak. But I should’ve seen it coming. And the only excuse I can offer for why I didn’t is because I was so wrapped up in it being Crown Day and all. Any dragon could’ve seen the lecture coming like dark clouds gathering on the horizon.

Me, though, I get ambushed. Like a first-class fool.

“Now Gork, there is something else…,” says Professor Nog. And this is when the lecture starts. Of course I know Nog enjoys having his students lie on his couch made of flaming hot coals and lecturing them, but I didn’t know Professor Nog would lay into my scaly green ass like this. Especially on Crown Day and all.

“Now Gork, I know somewhere inside you there’s a cruel Ruler who wants to conquer his own planet! But you’re never going to be able to live up to your potential if you don’t first grow a pair of big horns! And shrink that heart of yours! And stop fainting all the time! And if you don’t grow a pair of big black horns you’re never going to get Dean Floop’s daughter to be your Queen! And none of this is going to happen if you don’t first get yourself some WILL TO POWER! Do you hear me, Gork! You need to focus on your BIOCON LEVS! Where’s your STRATEGIC DESTRUCTION COMBAT READINESS?! Where’s your MATING MAGNETISM?! How do you ever expect to conquer a planet with your current attitude?!”

I cough and roll over and look at old Professor Nog. “Conquer my own planet, sir? I don’t know, Professor. Couldn’t you get hurt doing that? Is it possible that I’m just not cut out for that line of work? Maybe I got the wrong kind of heart or something? I don’t know, sir.”

“Hurt?! You’re worried about getting hurt?! Where’s your WILL TO POWER, Gork?! You need to focus on your WILL TO POWER!” And then he whips out his powerstaff and uses it to project a 3-D holophoto in the air, right there in the middle of his lair. Old Nog says, “Just look at the long line of Terrible studs you’ve descended from!”

He presses a button on his powerstaff. “This photo is from when your great-grandfather conquered the planet Blistrixia Moof, which is in the Fubwidge Quadrant. And that red creature your great-grandfather is busy choking is a Frodaptherox. Now every Frodaptherox has five lives and each time they rise from the dead they grow another eyeball. So this fella here, well he’s clearly on his fifth life. It took your great-grandfather three hours to conquer the entire planet of Blistrixia Moof and if you go there today you’ll see big gold statues of your great-grandpa all over the planet. The Frodaptherox worship your great-grandfather as a god! Now don’t you want to be worshipped as a god, Gork?!”

All this talk is getting me riled up. Or maybe it’s the flaming coals scalding my wings, I don’t know. Anyway, I hiss and spray sparks out of my black beak.

Then Nog presses a button on his powerstaff and growls: “Now this photo was taken at the You Belong to Me Now ceremony on planet Breg 3.27, which is in the Sarconian Quadrant. In this photo, as you can see, Dr. Terrible is assuming rule over the Slitch species on planet Breg 3.27. Now the Slitches have very long forked tongues they use as propellers to fly up and down the timestream.

“So your grandfather Dr. Terrible had to travel as far as possible up the timestream and conquer the futuristic Slitches there and then return to the present-day Breg 3.27 with a holovid showing his victory. Upon seeing the holovid, the present-day Slitches surrendered to Dr. Terrible, as you can see here in this photo.”

Then Nog presses a button on his powerstaff. “Now here’s a photo of your father, Stenchwaka The Terrible—”

“Sir, what was my father like?” I say. “I never got to know him. He’s always been a big mystery to me, sir. On account of him dying during his Fertility Mission.”

“Well,” he says, “come to think of it, your dad, Stenchwaka The Terrible, was more like you, as I recall. He was, how shall we say, challenged. He had small horns. And his BIOCON LEVS were atrocious. Then during his senior year he turned into a time-travel addict. A junkie. Or so I heard, anyway. I’ve never been very clear on that part of the story. But for him to have procured your mother as his Queen, well he must have had something special that the rest of us couldn’t see. It came as a tremendous shock to everyone when she accepted your father’s crown.”

“What was she like, sir? Did you know her? Nobody ever talks about my mother. I don’t know anything about her, sir.”

“Ah, your mother,” says Nog, his ancient scaly green face brightening as if lost in pleasant memory. “She was one of the special ones, wasn’t she? She was incredibly smart. Your mother had a gift, she did. Maybe the best poet we’ve ever seen at WarWings. She could sing her poems and make things happen—”

“Make things happen, sir? What do you mean?”

“Well,” he says, snorting blacksmoke out his nostrils, “it’s very hard to explain. We professors had never seen anything like it, to tell you the truth. But your mother was an incredible dragoness, who possessed the very essence of poetry in her blood. When she was a senior, every fella was trying to get her to be their Queen. The whole thing caused quite a ruckus, I’m afraid.”

Professor Nog coughs and quickly wipes the corner of his eye with a talon.

Why are Nog’s eyes all misty? Is this ancient monster crying?!

“But sir, why did my mother go with my father?” I say, squirting blacksmoke out my nostrils. “If my father was such a loser, sir.”

“Well,” says Nog, with a mournful streak in his voice, “I heard your father promised your mother great things. Because of his facility with time travel. He claimed they could do things a new way. Set an example for generations of dragons to come. Of course it was malarkey. But I’m afraid your mother was a romantic dragonette at heart. Plus she had the gift. And sometimes when a dragon has the gift of poetry, it makes them too confident. I’m afraid she didn’t understand that there were limits, even for a dragonette as unique as your mother. It’s very sad, I’m afraid. I’ve never forgotten your mother. I’ve always wondered how things would’ve turned out for her if she’d accepted a different cadet’s crown for EggHarvest. Please don’t quote me on any of this, young Gork. I can’t claim to know all the specifics.”

All this talk about my dead parents is making me feel sort of weird, and I can feel this terrific pressure in my skull.

“What about me, sir? Do I have the very essence of poetry in my blood too? Like my mom did? Is that possible, sir?”

Nog snorts blacksmoke out his nostrils, and his enormous green belly heaves as if it hurts him to say what he’s about to say. “Of course not, young Gork. Here you are with your giant heart and your Snacklicious ranking, and you have to ask me such a question. Your mother was a true fiend. She had the highest WILL TO POWER ranking in her senior class. No, I’m afraid that you are more your father’s son than anything else. As much as it pains me to tell you this. It’s the truth. For some reason, your mother wasn’t able to pass her gift for poetry along to you when she laid your egg.”

I turn my scaly green head and start looking around Nog’s lair.

“Well, are my mother and father down here in the Underworld, sir? Could I talk to them, sir?”

Nog closes his eyes and keeps them shut as if he is thinking deeply about something. I can hear the lava rumble in his belly. Then he opens his eyes and looks at me.

“I’m afraid not, Gork,” he says, snorting blacksmoke. “Your parents died on planet Earth. So their ghosts are contained within Earth’s underworld. It’s really too bad. Because they’d certainly be most welcome here—”

“Ummm, Professor,” I say, “I think I feel a little dizzy.”

Professor Nog stops and turns and looks at my scaly ass and then he sniffs the air suspiciously. “My God,” he says. “Gork, are you sweating?!”

“I can’t help it,” I say.

“I can smell you from here!” Nog pinches his scaly snout with his index and thumb claw, as if he’s trying to keep himself from gagging. “Here!” He throws me a white towel from the stack he keeps next to his couch. “Clean yourself up before I puke!”

I use the towel to wipe my green scales. And if you want to know the truth, my sweat really does stink. By any measuring stick, I’m repulsive. With the sweat pouring out of my green scales like this. I mean I can’t even stand to be in the lair with myself. That’s how gross I am.

Now at this point, I do something stupid. I reflexively reach up and touch my horns. Just to check and see if maybe they’ve grown since I last touched them. And I guess if I’m being honest I’m desperately trying to find the silver lining in all this.

But Nog sees me touch my horns like that and he jumps all over me.

“Gork, do you know the reason why your horns are so small?”

“Am I a Mutant, sir?”

“No you’re not a Mutant, Gork!” he says, snorting firestreams. “Your problem is you’re underdeveloped emotionally! You need to act like the Terrible that is your birthright! Then your horns will grow so long that this Runcita chick you’ve been chasing all morning will be begging you to let her be your Queen for EggHarvest!”

Now by this point I’m listening to Professor Nog but I’m also busy wiping my forelimb pits with the towel, and it seems like the more sweat I wipe away, the more I start sweating. And Nog’s sarcastic commentary definitely isn’t helping matters, that’s for sure. And by now I’m pretty sure I really do hate old Nog. It really is a very dirty trick for him to have pulled on my scaly ass. Sucking me down into the Underworld like this and making me lie on this hideous couch made of fiery coals, and then lecturing me like a real crazy old dead dragon.

Professor Nog watches me wipe my pits and he shakes his scaly green head and says, “I don’t know, Gork. I don’t know.” Then he says, “Perhaps there is no hope for you after all!”

And with that he claps his talons together three times and there’s a giant explosion of blacksmoke. And as I feel my particles being sucked several thousand leagues back up to WarWings, I hear Professor Nog whisper inside my head:

“Don’t forget! When you want to rule over a foreign land, you must first offer it a drop of your blood. Then wait to see if the land gives you its blessing in the form of a sacred bud. Do not forget this, young Gork! Do not forget!”