Gork, the Teenage Dragon Read online

  Squawk! Because if you want to know the truth, it really did sound more like a squawk.

  Not long after that, I spat fire out my beak for the very first time. Now I was only four months old when I first got my fire powers and I was still just a little baby dragon and it wasn’t even on purpose.

  You see, what happened was this: I’d been flying around the forest one afternoon and I flew up and spied a hornets’ nest attached to a tree limb. This nest was as big as a boulder and it sounded like there were thousands of giant hornets buzzing around inside the nest and I was just flapping my wings and hovering there in midair, studying it. And I remember as I stared at that gigantic hornets’ nest my little belly rumbled and I thought: Me so hungry!

  So I punched the hornets’ nest out of the tree and it fell to the forest floor some fifty feet below. And then I flapped my wings and flew down to the forest floor and the hornets’ nest was setting there on the grass, and a blizzard of angry giant hornets were zooming around looking for whoever just knocked their nest out of the tree. Well as I stood there right in the middle of that blizzard of angry hornets I casually picked the nest up off the ground and opened my beak and took a huge bite out of it.

  Chomp!

  Then I chewed thoughtfully on the piece of nest while the swarm of hornets stung me all over my scaly green body. But I just ignored the hornets and focused on how delicious the nest tasted. And then I swallowed.

  “Gulp. Mmmm.”

  Now at that point the enraged hornets decided that a unified attack was their best bet, and they gathered into a dark buzzing cloud overhead and then dropped down in formation until they completely engulfed me like a sheet being lowered over a birdcage.

  So I shot my tongue out a good five feet up into the air and snatched a hornet and then retracted my tongue back into my beak, and I chewed it up and swallowed.

  “Gulp. Mmmm.”

  Then the cloud of angry hornets closed ranks and started stinging me relentlessly. Since my scales are designed to withstand sword blades and laser beams and whatnot, I couldn’t even feel the hornets’ stingers. And once one of those little bastards stung me they were stuck there, because they couldn’t yank their stingers out of my thick scales.

  So I shot my tongue out again. I did this over and over and over, snatching dozens of hornets out of the air with my tongue.

  Now I remember at one point there were hundreds of pissed-off hornets stuck all over me and I’m sure I looked like a big green pincushion flailing around in the woods that afternoon. Plus, because all those little fiends stuck in me were buzzing with rage, my body was vibrating like a tuning fork.

  So in between taking bites of the delicious hornets’ nest I’d reach up and use my claws to pluck a hornet off my scaly snout and pop it in my beak and chew it up.

  “Gulp.”

  Then I’d pluck a hornet off my belly and pop it in my beak and chew it up.

  Gulp.

  I did this over and over, eating scores of hornets in this way. And if you haven’t figured it out already, when it comes to dragons, hornets are one of our favorite snacks. And let me tell you those deranged hornets I ate that day in the forest were delicious.

  So by the time I finished that afternoon I had scarfed down the entire nest plus 671 hornets. Then I lay back on the forest floor because my little green belly was so full I could barely move, and without really thinking about it, I just opened my beak and belched.

  Boom!

  And along with the belch, a huge firestream suddenly exploded out my beak. And when the firestream exploded in front of me like that, well I thought for sure some deranged monster was attacking me and I nearly leapt out of my scales.

  Then I turned and ran away as fast as I could. And I must have sprinted a good fifty feet or so before it finally dawned on me that I wasn’t being attacked and the fire had come from my own fool beak.

  So then what did I do?

  Well I spent the whole rest of that day belching.

  I must have belched for ten hours straight.

  Because in the beginning that was the only way I could make fire shoot out of my beak. And take it from me, when you’re just a little baby dragon and you first get your fire powers, well you never really get tired of making those flames shoot out of your beak.

  Now those first couple months on planet Earth really just kind of flew by.

  Yes sir, I roamed the forest. I lived like a savage beast and had the mind of a savage beast, with no real strategy or game plan for my days and no real understanding of what or who I was. The concept of time was meaningless to me. I had no sense of the past or the future, just the eternal primal now.

  My life was claw and fang and wing, nothing more.

  But I was also growing bigger and no longer enjoyed sleeping in the tops of trees with one eye open, like a stupid bird.

  So I moved into my very first lair. Now what I did was I took up residence in this abandoned spaceship I discovered in the forest one afternoon. Though of course I didn’t know it was a spaceship, I just figured it was some sort of shiny chamber. And the main reason I chose this chamber for my lair was because it had a clear door that I could shut with my talons.

  And this door changed my life.

  Because now I could drag a freshly killed deer back to the chamber and eat it in peace with no concern of some scavenger darting in and trying to steal my meal. I could finally sleep in peace too, behind the safety of that door.

  I slept hanging upside down inside the chamber with my wings folded across my back. But I’d wake in the middle of the night and see the piercing yellow eyes of this big gray wolf watching me through the clear door. Once as a warning shot I belched a firestream at the door and the wolf leapt away. Later when I woke again that big wolf bastard was back, watching me through the clear door.

  What else can I tell you about my very first lair?

  Well the outside of my lair had the letters ATHENOS stamped on it. But since I couldn’t read or write back then, these letters held about as much meaning for me as the bark on a tree.

  And inside my lair, there were these two dragon skeletons. Of course I didn’t know that they were dragons but I could tell by the shape of their skeletons that they were the same as me, just bigger.

  They were sitting up in their seats. I’d found them that way. And each skeleton had a gold crown set atop its skull. Now propped up in front of those two skeletons was a small screen that flashed the words:

  DESTINATION: PLANET EARTH

  But again, I couldn’t read. So as far as what those flashing words on the screen were saying, I didn’t know. And as for those skeletons, I quickly forgot they were even there. Because soon the floor was littered with bones and fur and feathers from all the forest animals and whatnot I ate in my lair.

  Then the days began to blur. Days, days, and more days.

  A succession of arrivals and exits through my lair’s door. Survival was the thing. My life was claw and fang and wing, nothing more.

  That is, until The Night When Everything Changed.

  [ 3 ]

  THE FIRST TIME I MEET DR. TERRIBLE, IT HAPPENS ON PLANET EARTH

  We were deep into winter and the forest was beset with famine.

  I spent my nights staggering around, desperate with hunger. The snow was thick on the forest floor. The effort of flapping my wings made me dizzy and when I tried to fly I instantly fell to the ground.

  Then came The Night When Everything Changed.

  That night, I happened upon a big buck deer hiding in some undergrowth. I remember there was a full moon in the sky, and I had walked near some brush when all of a sudden this big buck deer exploded out of there. And I looked up in surprise to see its brown hindquarters bounding off through the snow under the moonlight. Anyway, I bolted after it and even in my weakened state, I just managed to chase it down.

  Well, I still remember how I was poised there over my fresh kill in the snow, and I was eating ravenously from it. Because for the last
couple weeks the hunger pains had been gnawing at my insides. And that’s why I didn’t do what I would have normally done in that situation, which would be to take my fresh kill back to the shiny chamber and eat it in peace. Behind the safety of that clear door.

  So I tore into my feast with my beak right there in the little snowy clearing, and I was chowing down under the moonlight like the starving beast that I was. And I figure that’s the only reason I didn’t notice the big gray wolf until it was too late.

  Because normally my horns would’ve started tingling to warn me of an imminent threat. But unfortunately my horns were starving too. My little scaly green ass had been delirious with hunger for so long and now I was eating with my whole body. Plus I was only three years old at the time and nowhere near a fully grown dragon and still technically in my infancy.

  But the instant I looked up and saw that big gray wolf standing there in the moonlit snow and growling and baring its fangs, well I knew I’d made a mistake. I should’ve known the scent of fresh blood would go out on the night wind like an alarm bell.

  Then the wolf suddenly glided in closer and studied me with his piercing yellow eyes. He snarled and crouched low on coiled haunches. You could tell the wolf was going to pounce any second. My black heart was hammering away in my chest and my fool horns were tingling like crazy.

  Thankfully, by that point the fresh meat in my belly had not only cleared my head, it also gave me a massive boost of strength. So I just looked that fool wolf in the eye and ripped a thunderous belch and a firestream flashed out my beak and blasted that thieving wolf in its furry haunches. Or it would’ve anyway, if that wolf hadn’t anticipated what I was going to do and leapt and danced away right before my flame zapped the spot on the ground where he’d just been.

  Then I heard a terrible sound coming from behind me, and this sound made the scales on the back of my long green neck stand straight up. For as long as I live, I will never forget that terrible sound. Or the fear I felt when I heard it.

  Because this sound was the deranged bloodthirsty howls of an entire wolf pack rushing in to attack me from behind. I realized only then that the first wolf had merely been acting as a decoy, something to distract me.

  I was suddenly knocked off my webbed feet from behind. And in a flash I was pinned down there in the snow under what felt like a mountain of fur, and those wolves’ hot breath was all over me. Their jaws were snapping and I could feel their fangs sinking deep into my soft belly, over and over and over. These beasts were mad with hunger. Now one of those fiendish wolves snarled and plunged its fangs into the flesh of my right wing, and this same wolf wrenched its jaws and savagely ripped my wing in half and I felt the hot cutting pain explode all over my body.

  I howled. In agony, but also in terror. Because in that instant I knew with my ripped wing I couldn’t fly out of there, and now my only hope of escape would come down to a footrace in the snow.

  So I fought like a bastard, buried under that pile of thirty or so giant wolves. I tapped into my rage. I clawed and bit and blasted fire. I managed to get in a couple of good licks, too. I tore fur and flesh with my fangs. I felt my claws slice to the bone. And I savored the sweet taste of wolf blood in my beak. Yes sir.

  But by and large I was getting the worst of it. And I knew if I didn’t do something quick then I’d be dead. I was bleeding from all those puncture wounds in my belly, and my right wing was hanging off my wingjoint in tatters. And I was still suffocating under all that fur as they tore me to shreds and it dawned on me then that these bastards wouldn’t stop until they’d gnawed every last bit of flesh off my bones.

  So after blasting countless firebolts to the point where my throat was raw and shredded, I finally managed to twist out from under and leap away from the pack and start running through the snow on my hind legs. I lit out of there in a flash.

  The pack of wolves instantly set off after me. As I ran I could feel their hot raging breath closing in and could hear the terrifying clack sound of their jaws snapping shut right on my heels. They were howling and snarling and lunging at me and yet still I kept running with no thought in my head but that of sheer terror.

  My little webbed feet were flying.

  This was all new to me. I was bleeding out of the dozens of puncture holes in my belly and could hear my tattered wing flapping behind me as I ran. I left a bright red blood trail right there in the snow under the moonlight, and my lungs were heaving so hard it felt like they were going to pop.

  And then there it was.

  The clear door.

  I don’t know how I did it, but I’d somehow managed to race all the way back to the shiny chamber with the pack of wolves hot on my heels. I could see the clear door right there in front of me, maybe twenty feet up ahead, and I was shooting toward it at full throttle. But as I raced forward I realized with a sinking heart that there was just one problem. I couldn’t afford to stop and open the door, on account of even that one split second it’d take to stop and slide open the door would mean certain death. Because the wolves would instantly be upon me and tear my scaly green ass to shreds.

  Well I was scared out of my mind and didn’t know what to do. I figured for sure I was done for. As I flashed forward I decided right then and there that I’d rather die on my own terms than those of these beasts snarling at my backside.

  So without much hope I lowered my head and kicked in the afterburners and launched forward, a green blur shooting right at the door. I reckoned it’d be better to die by ramming my head straight into the clear door. Because at least that way I wouldn’t be alive as the wolves gorged themselves on my flesh.

  But at the last second, as I prepared to meet my maker, well that clear door suddenly slid open in a flash.

  I shot across the threshold. The door flew shut. And I crashed into the far wall of the chamber. Suddenly there were thirty enraged wolves howling and repeatedly lunging at the clear door and slavering foamy drool all over it. I leapt up off the floor, still not quite believing I wasn’t dead.

  Then as I crouched there gasping on the far side of the chamber and watched the wolves attack the door, a loud noise exploded inside the chamber.

  Poof!

  I watched in shock as two gigantic green webbed feet materialized out of thin air right in front of me. And these two webbed feet had deadly-looking toe claws protruding out of them. My nostrils instantly flared. Because my snout detected a new foreign scent there in my lair.

  The wolves were still howling and slavering and lunging at the door.

  Then I heard a tremendous screeching sound which threatened to crack my fool head in half. I peered up and saw one massive claw slowly scratch a deep groove on the inside of the clear door. Instantly the wolves outside stopped and sat back on their haunches in the snow, panting and studying the groove in the door. Then I heard a snap sound, and all the wolves whirled and raced off yapping and howling back into the woods.

  I slowly tilted my scaly head up even further and that’s when I saw him. This creature that had just now materialized in my lair.

  He wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring out the door at where the wolves had been just a second ago. Snow was falling hard out there now, tumbling down sideways in big flakes under the moonlight. You could hear the wind through the door.

  He was standing upright on his powerful green hind legs and he was like nothing I’d ever seen. The hooded yellow eyes and the giant leathery wings and the thick tail with spikes running along the top of it.

  He was massive but he was so much more than that. He was regal. Downright majestic. Even with my stupid beast brain, I could tell this creature had an air of the supreme about him. Like no matter where he went, he would be the Ruler of that place. He wore a white tunic and a red cape, and in one talon he casually held what I’d later learn was his gold powerstaff.

  I stood looking up at him with my beak hanging wide open.

  Then I felt something pop on my scaly head and I heard a clattering noise at my green
webbed feet. I looked down and it took me a second to realize what I was staring at there on the chamber floor.

  My horns. They’d fallen out of my head and onto the floor. There they lay.

  At the time, I didn’t understand these were my baby horns and that it was perfectly natural for them to fall out. Necessary, even. So my adult horns could grow in. And looking back, I’ve often wondered if it was the screeching sound of his giant claw scratching the groove into the clear door that made them fall out. How else to explain my baby horns coming loose at that moment?

  “Sir,” boomed a female voice, echoing throughout the chamber. “Thank you for responding so quickly to my distress signal! As you can see, sir, he lives in constant peril. If I hadn’t opened the door just now, the wolves would’ve got him for sure.”

  “You should not have opened the door for him just now, ATHENOS!” growled the massive scaly creature. “If I see you coddle him again, I will not hesitate to unplug you. It sickens me to see a young dragon pampered. I’m warning you. It won’t mean anything to me if I have to unplug a piece of machine trash like you.”

  “You would kill me, sir? Because I saved his life? But he is your grandson, sir!”

  “You let me be the judge of who is or is not my grandson!” He peered down at me, narrowing his yellow reptilian eyes. “His condition is much worse than you described. He looks like a common filthy beast. No hint of sophistication or culture. Perhaps not even I can fix him. I wonder if you haven’t wasted my time by summoning me here. I should probably feed him to the wolves and be done with it.”

  “I did the best I could, sir. My auxiliary power was out for several months. And when I came online, I found him here, sir. But I was too weak to contact you. I had to wait for my power to regenerate. Even now, I’m only at 6%, sir.”

  “It’s despicable, really,” snorted the creature. “One of our kind, all alone here on this tiny backwater planet. And raised by a machine, no less.” He shook his head disgustedly. “Raised by a machine! The very idea. It’s revolting.”