[ 34 ]

SWORD PLAY

“Owwwwwww!” I cry.

This isn’t how I expected it to feel.

This dragoness Metheldra’s lair is full of swords.

“Please stop!” I cry.

I mean she has what look to be at least a couple hundred swords hanging on the wall. And they’re all shapes and sizes—short swords, long swords, curved swords, serrated swords, swords with black handles, swords with red handles, swords with strange runes engraved in the blades, swords with three blades, swords with oddly shaped blades devised for some horrible purpose I hope I never have to learn about. And all of these swords are mounted along the wall in a massive display device constructed of silver and black velvet.

“Oh my God that hurts!” I cry. “Please stop! Please stop! I’m begging you!”

Metheldra is the swordupuncturist Dr. Terrible has been flapping his beak about.

So here I am lying on this stone slab without any clothes on. And I already have forty or so swords stuck into my scaly body—in my wings, in my tail, in my long neck, in my talons, in my horns, in my hind legs, in my forelimbs, and even in my webbed feet. Several swords are jammed to the hilt right in my poor belly. The only light in the room is coming from a bunch of drooping candles on a nearby table.

Now Metheldra calmly pulls another long shiny sword off the wall and holds it over me, and the silver blade winks in the candlelight. And she runs an index claw slowly across my scaly chest as if she’s searching for the right point of entry.

“No more! No more!” I say. “Please don’t stick another sword in me! Please! It hurts! Oh my God it hurts so much!”

Whatever lusciousness I was feeling a few minutes ago out in the corridor is long gone. Having a chick stick a bunch of swords in your torso will do that to you. It’s a buzzkill. My virginity is intact. But somehow in the midst of getting all these swords stuck in my scaly green ass, my dang death seems to have eased on up too.

“I can feel your WILL TO POWER blocked in your heart region, Gork,” she says, snorting blacksmoke out her nostrils. “Your heart is way too big. The size of your heart is life-threatening. It’s preventing you from being connected to the BIOCON sources in your environment.”

“My heart? What’s wrong with my heart? My heart’s just fine the way it is,” I gasp.

Of course secretly I know my giant compassionate heart is to blame for pretty much all my woes. But maybe by playing dumb I can somehow trick Metheldra out of doing whatever it is she’s about to do to me with this mega sword she’s wielding in her talon.

“Hopefully I can unblock it with this sword.”

I gulp. “Now wait just a second,” I say. “Let’s talk about this. What exactly are you planning on doing with that sword?”

Metheldra flicks her powerstaff and a floating screen appears in the air and there’s a live image of my black heart on the screen, and my heart looks like a huge nasty throbbing greasy oyster. Up there on the floating screen, you can plainly see my heart is so gigantic it fills both sides of my entire chest cavity. She points at the screen with her sword.

“Gork,” she says, “I’m sorry to have to be telling you this, but this is the biggest dragon heart I have ever seen. No wonder your horns won’t grow! No wonder your BIOCON LEVS are so low. No wonder you have no WILL TO POWER. The size of your heart is undermining every other aspect of your life and your development as a dragon. Now, I would ask you if you have a problem with fainting, but one look at the image of your heart here and I already know the answer to that question. I’d be surprised if you weren’t fainting at least five times a day, maybe more.”

A strange little whimper bubbles up in the back of my throat.

Then she reaches out and carefully rubs my puny horns with her other talon.

“You poor thing,” she whispers. “You poor poor poor thing. Don’t you worry. Metheldra is going to fix you.”

“Mmmmmmm,” I moan. “That feels so good.”

I love the way it feels as she keeps gently rubbing my puny horns like this because, when she rubs them, well it makes me feel strong and super. And feeling strong and powerful isn’t a familiar sensation to me, which is partly why I find the whole experience so exhilarating.

“Mmmmmmm. Gosh that really does feel so good. Please don’t stop.”

It’s the way she clasps each horn with her talon, and then rubs her talons up and down over them. “That feels good. Please don’t stop. Mmmmmm.”

“You poor poor poor thing,” she whispers. “Metheldra is going to fix you. You poor, poor thing. Metheldra is going to fix you. You poor, poor thing.”

“Mmmmm,” I moan. “That feels so good. They’re so small. I hate how small they are. I want to have big horns.”

She keeps rubbing my horns.

“Don’t you worry,” she purrs. “I’m going to make your horns very, very big. Metheldra is going to fix you. Metheldra is going to fix you. She is going to make you into a big strong dragon with big scary horns.”

Then without warning she swings her other talon around in a flash of silver and sticks the sword blade right into my heart and pushes down with all her weight.