PROLOGUE
DABUECK KUECGTT
His sore butt was at the forefront of his mind. The dragon saddle wasn’t the most comfortable thing, so Merlin half walked, half winced his way through the castle’s halls. He crouched and hid in the shadows. He could feel the stone’s pulsations getting stronger as he moved from position to position. The journey to King Midas’ realm was long, tiresome and Merlin could feel the dragon saddle’s impressions on his legs with every step.
He crept behind a guard and rendered the man unconscious with a whisper and a touch. Over the years he had developed his magic, refining it, bettering himself. Sheathing his sword he grabbed the guard and dragged him behind a golden drape. He came to a door where the pulsations were so loud in his mind he could only guess the Stone was on the other side of it.
With a slip of a spell he unlocked the door and slid into a darkened hall. He immediately moved to the first column he could see. Attempting to get his bearings and to prepare himself for any attacks. His eyes adjusted to the dim light in the room. He peered around the massive column to see into the hall. Piles of gold, golden statues of armed beasts, men and other creatures, golden weapons, and many other types of artifacts were scattered around the room –all golden. This must be the treasury room, Merlin thought.
He launched from his covered position and, in a crouched run, darted from golden pile to golden statue—moving so that the reverberating invisible thump of the stone grew louder. He saw it, in the center of the room, a black stone twice as large as a man’s head, set upon a pedestal.
He ran to the pedestal and had just reached out to put the stone into his shrinking satchel when loud laughter filled the chamber.
“Ha, ha, ha. Merlin. Merlin.” The voice was deep and harsh. “Did you think it would be so easy to walk into my castle and leave with my most prized possession?”
The stone was smooth to Merlin’s fingers. He pushed it absent-mindedly. He didn’t feel it budge. The stone was heavy and would be hard for him to put into his satchel.
The golden statues that Merlin passed as he crept through the hall started walking toward him. The voice came again, behind him this time. “It took ten men with an iron cart to move the stone here. You thought you could just walk out with it?” The voice was filled with mirth.
“Not really. I knew I would need some help, so I brought a friend.”
“Friend? I don’t see anyone. Did you leave them behind? And, here I thought you were this grand strategist…Seize him!” The voice shouted.
The golden statues rushed towards Merlin. Knowing that the stone wasn’t going anywhere, he drew his sword attacking the closest statues. His blade bit deep into the golden creatures. Sliding through their weapons, around their blades and dancing amongst their shields.
Merlin used some of his spells, when he had opportunity to form them, in between blows and parries. The spells would either restore the creatures to their original forms—humans—or they would cause the creatures to burst into flames.
When the nearby creatures were all finally disabled, Merlin withdrew a small locket from behind his tunic. He opened it and blew across the top of it. A blue sparkling dust flew out from the locket turning from billowing clouds into the shape of a woman. It solidified for an ethereal moment before the dust transformed into an amorphous shape and grew. The blue particles separated more and more, until they coalesced into a massive shape of an airy dragon. The form settled and solidified into a sleek, blue dragon—wings, spikes, claws, fire and flame—that filled fully half of the hall.
Merlin was on one side of the stone and the dragon on the other. The statues continued to come, but the fighting was diminishing.
When King Midas saw that he was loosing more of his warriors he came out of the shadows. He was a large man, with a golden suite of armor. He walked towards Merlin and the dragon.
“Merlin. You are surprising. You can’t win however. Even if you take the stone, its power cannot be contained. I will continue to have my armies and my gold. And I will live forever!” Midas’ voice got louder as he watched the dragon close its front paws around the stone. He made a move towards the dragon-a last ditch effort to stop her. Reaching out with his un-gauntleted hand he touched the dragon’s tail. Slowly, the spot where he touched turned from blue to gold and grew out from there.
The dragon reared its head back quickly, knocking the stone off the pedestal. The stone hit the ground with a terrible cracking noise. A fist-sized piece of the stone, along with a few smaller fragments, broke off from the main body. Merlin reached down and grabbed the larger shard and whatever he could immediately see of the smaller shards. He hefted them into his satchel, jumped onto the dragon’s back and yelled, “Meme. Get the stone…and we’ll fix you while we fly.”
The dragon struggled with the effects of King Midas’ touch. She looked for an exit with a protective forepaw on the stone. The gold transformation had changed most of her tail making it heavier than usual. More troops could be heard coming towards the treasure room and she was cornered.
Without thinking anymore about her situation, she spat flames at the ceiling and Merlin—following her lead fanned them and magicked the burning boards out of her way. Merlin scrambled onto her back and into a saddle that formed as he sat down.
The dragon pushed with all of her power to go through the hole in the ceiling, but the stone was too much for her one paw to hold. So she reached down with her mouth and picked up the stone in her teeth. Serpentining her neck so that her head rested on her chest she climbed out.
In that moment a simple, yet powerful, truth of the stone was discovered. The pulsations disappeared when the dragon closed her mouth around the stone. Most interesting was that, instead of there being full-grown men where Merlin and King Midas had been, there were two kids, drowning in the bulky clothes and armor they had been wearing.