[ 22 ]

SPLASH, MY SCALY GREEN ASS IS BACK FROM THE UNDERWORLD

Splash.

I’m back from the Realm of the Dead.

I’m crouched here in the dark fiery corridor of WarWings. Just as I had been right before that mirrored triangle suddenly appeared in front of me and Professor Nog lassoed me with his cold dead tongue and yanked me down into his lair.

I glance around. One thing is for sure, Professor Nog wasn’t lying when he said he dropped a Time Freeze on everyone. All these dragon fools here in the corridor are still frozen. Including that maniac Rexro.

Frozen in time.

It is totally silent and peaceful.

Maybe too quiet? I can’t even hear my heart beating. Oh my God, am I still dead?! That would be the nastiest trick of all for Professor Nog to pull on me. To send me back up here and for me to still be dead!

I clap my talon over my chest and am instantly relieved to hear my gigantic and foolish heart beating away in there.

I snort flames of joy out my nostrils.

Thank goodness! I am alive!

So for a couple seconds I am just kind of standing here in the corridor and looking around and it’s perfectly quiet and still. And I can see that depraved Rexro frozen still and his black beak is twisted up in a sneer. He’s got one green webbed foot raised, and it’s clear he was bounding toward me when he froze.

Then I glance around at Twelk and his fiendish dragon pals, who are frozen in the middle of their chaotic gestures. Their yellow eyes are bugged-out, looking extremely psychotic.

Some of them have their tongues sticking several feet out of their beaks, frozen in the middle of some lewd gesture.

Some of them have flames jutting out their green snouts.

A couple of them have their spiked tails arched in mid–Threat Display.

The sight of all these nasties frozen in time is hideous.

At that moment, Professor Nog’s voice pops up in my scaly head and says, “Get out of there, Gork! The Time Freeze is almost up!”

Yes sir!

I leap into the air and flap my wings like a maniac and zoom down the corridor.

But then at that moment the Time Freeze must have expired.

I can just picture the last grain of sand dropping down inside Professor Nog’s timer.

Now behind me I can hear all those fiends leap back into motion. And the sonic boom of Twelk and his dragon pals snorting with wicked laughter, and the general pandemonium in the corridor, comes rushing back into my earholes.

“Where is he?! Where did he go?!” shouts Rexro.

I flap my wings and turn left down a dark corridor.

Thwack-thwack.

Inside my scaly head, Professor Nog’s voice whispers, “You must hurry! Rexro is coming for you!”