[ 47 ]

PREPARE TO DIE

ATHENOS II blasts up out of the lava pits and joins the slipstream of whizzing air traffic above the island.

I’m sitting in the freaking Captain’s Chair and it seems like everything is happening at light speed, and my fool brain is a wet noodle. I know Fribby is somewhere on the spaceship but I don’t have time to ponder this because outside the windshield the air traffic is dense and the sky is full of airships and spaceships whizzing by.

“Look out, sir!” shouts ATHENOS II.

I glance up through the windshield and my skull nearly explodes when I see what’s zooming straight at our spaceship.

Dean Floop.

Holy crap!

It’s Dean Floop in his ConquerCraft.

It’s Dean Floop glaring through his windshield at me.

You can see the hideous twisted look on the Dean’s beak as he snorts flames out his flared green nostrils. And his red eyes in their sockets are blooming into deranged blood flowers.

Then the Dean’s ConquerCraft blasts a volley of deadly yellow photon bolts that just crease the side of ATHENOS II.

Now over my loudspeaker, Dean Floop roars: “I warned you, Gork! I warned you! But you didn’t listen to me! You went and tried to ask my daughter to be your Queen! And so you are hereby sentenced to death! By the power vested in me as Dean! You have moved straight to the top of the WarWings Death Chart! Prepare to die! Prepare to die!”

Then the Dean’s ConquerCraft fires another round of photon bolts, and one of the bolts strikes our windshield and the windshield cracks just slightly down the middle.

“Argggh!” I shout.

And it sure looks like the Dean is so out of his mind with mega rage that this psychotic dragon is truthfully trying to ram us head-on.

“Prepare to die! Prepare to die!”

The Dean’s ConquerCraft is only about a hundred feet away from us and shows no signs of veering off.