"But nothing, Kimberley, we press on."

The whole group turned to leave until Aubrey noticed something, he was the one to first hear the grunted snores of the dragon, he didn't hear them now, he could hear the unmistakable sound of heavy breathing, not erratic like before, he turned to look at the dragon, as the others walked on, he remained and slowly walked back towards the beast, it was still upturned on its back. Aubrey c.o.c.ked his head to the side and noticed one of the dragon's eyes, it wasn't half shut as before it was wide open, Aubrey stood still, a sick feeling moved around him and it was now he could smell the rotten flesh wafting in from the dragon. Rooted to the spot he watched slowly as the dragon's eye stayed open...and then blinked.

Aubrey mouthed, "Good G.o.d!"

Aubrey spun around to the group. "RUUUNNNN."

The dragon righted itself instantly and took a clumsy side-step through to grogginess, it started to run swiftly, its tail whipping through the air behind it.

"MOVE IT! MOVE IT!" Aubrey yelled.

Everyone accelerated and got their feet in to gear as the dragon raced forward, the older gent ran as fast has he could, catching up with the others almost instantly, and glancing over his shoulder, he thought he could hear the dragon's snorting breath behind him and adrenaline kicked in, forcing him to run faster.

Kimberley, like in the tunnels, was in the middle of the group, Felcey yelled at her.

"CAN'T YOU DO SOMETHING? BLAST IT."

Kimberley's face tensed up. "I'M NOT TOUCHING HER, IT'S Ca.s.sANDRA AND I'M GOING TO PROVE IT."

Kimberley pulled back causing the others behind to crash into her. "WHAT THE h.e.l.l DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" Ansell yelled.

Kimberley coughed. "THAT DRAGON IS MY BEST FRIEND, I'M STAYING RIGHT HERE."

Ansell grabbed her arm. "DON'T BE SO STUPID, IT'S GOING TO KILL YOU."

She wriggled free. "LET ME GO, SIR, I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING."

He grabbed her again. "DAMMIT THIS ISN'T A GAME, YOUNG LADY, I WON'T LEAVE YOU TO DIE HERE."

Kimberley hissed back. "You'd better leave me be, sir, I don't know what she'll do to you." The other teachers implored him to leave her and to keep running, Ansell screamed back, "I'M NOT LEAVING HER."

Kimberley pushed him away and he stumbled backwards. As he fell to the ground the dragon was already upon them, it raised itself on its hind legs and gave a defiant fierce cry, Kimberley covered her ears as the dragon now hissed furiously as it dropped back down on all fours. Ansell was paralysed with fear as he lay on his back looking at the trembling form of Kimberley, she stood with her hands by her side and she finally shook with fear. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all, she thought. Blood suddenly trickled from Kimberley's nose as she shut her eyes. The dragon bent down its huge head and moved around the side of Kimberley, heavy jaws opened and closed and the dragon bellowed angrily, it gazed again at Kimberley and paused...and then let out a terrifying shriek which made Kimberley shriek too.

The others had stopped running and looked on, memorised at the dragon sizing up Kimberley.

Aubrey eagerly turned to Felcey. "Can't you do something, old boy?"

"Like what? Throw milk at it? My powers are useless, Aubrey, I can't do anything."

The dragon watched as Kimberley wiped the blood from her nose and then it cleared its mouth, and gave an impatient snort, and then it drew back its head and spat at Kimberley.

It gave a victorious roar and then began to yelp like a puppy, rearing on its hind legs again.

Kimberley wiped the remains of spit and carrion from her face and scowled at the dragon. It continued to yelp away, and then started grunting as if it was laughing. Kimberley had had enough and started to flick her right wrist in order to make an orb, her hand was already red hot before the orb could be formed and she pressed it into the crimson leg of the dragon.

The dragon roared angrily, craning its head to the side and then bought its legs down and stomped onto the ground, baring its razor sharp teeth.

Kimberley wiped some bone and gristle from her eyes and shouted, "NOO."

She punched it the dragon's legs again, right in the spot where her hand had burnt it. The dragon riled away more from surprise than pain and it bent down again to Kimberley, she could see the dried blood of its last meal encrusted along its teeth, it reared up again and came down to sniff Kimberley and nudged her knocking her down.

"STOP THAT," she shouted. She rolled along the ground and slowly got to her feet, only to be knocked down again by the dragon. "I SAID STOP IT."

The dragon looked down curiously at her and nudged her again, arms flailing, Kimberley hit the earth hard, she sprung to her feet quickly and flicked her wrist, her hand glowed as she held it to the dragon's hind leg, it roared in pain but she held it tight pressing hard against the tough crimson skin, she continued holding on to the leg as the dragon rolled its head, its talons scratched along the ground just missing Kimberley as the rocks flipped up all around her, the dragon's nostrils flared as Kimberley held her hand tight against its flesh, it bubbled and burned but still Kimberley would not let go and grimaced as she continued to hold on.

The crimson beast bellowed in pain and reared up again, when it landed back down to stomp, it was smaller, the others watching from a far stood open-mouthed at the slight transformation.

Only Kimberley failed to notice it shrinking and continued to hold on to its leg, the dragon roared again but continued to shrink in size, Kimberley rose on tiptoes not letting go of its leg and the dragon squealed, the sound was like fingernails on a blackboard and Kimberley gritted her teeth in pain, the creature rolled its eyes and waved its hands in frustration as it continued to shrink, Kimberley didn't want to break away and the dragon had shrunk even more as Kimberley held on, tirelessly shaking her head back and forth, her eyes twisted shut.

The dragon's features began to change, the elongated head vanished and its crimson body turned white, the talons retracted and turned into fingernails and clung deep into Kimberley's shoulder. Its green snake eyes rose in a dizzying movement and changed colour to brown. Blond hair grew from its now smaller head, which was humanoid in appearance.

The hind legs lost their scales but Kimberley's hand remained, glowing, and the mouth with perfect white teeth carried on howling and then the howls of pain turned in to one high-pitched scream, a girl's scream.

Kimberley opened her eyes to see a girl standing where the dragon should have been, a girl who looked very familiar, Ca.s.sandra Paintshark stood in front of her, naked and rubbing her leg where Kimberley had burned her.

"Oww!"

Ansell got to his feet and put his hand to his mouth. "Amazing!" he whispered. He took off his top and embarra.s.sedly looked to the ground as he cautiously walked up to the naked girl and handed it to her, her eyes never left his as she took the top from him, she mouthed quietly, "Thank you." Ca.s.sandra shivered as she put on the top.

Kimberley stared bright-eyed at her friend, even though it seemed like only yesterday since she had last seen her best friend thanks to the sleep stasis, it had actually been one year since their eyes last met in Big Man's holding cells, when the sleeping gas overcame them and they were separated, for the entertainment of millions. Kimberley closed her arms around her friend and held her tight, her eyes welled up, she whispered with her head resting on Ca.s.sandra's shoulder, "Hey girlfriend."

Ca.s.sandra didn't even look up but kept her head buried in her friend, her voice, trembling, shaking. "Hey girlfriend."

Felcey left the rest of the stunned group and walked over to the two girls, he paused as they continued hugging, there was a long silence as Kimberley noticed him edging slowly forward. He spoke nervously, "Room for one more?"

Kimberley breathed shallowly and glared at him, she held the stare and her eyes finally softened, she beckoned to him and kept her hand outstretched, with a smile finally emerging. "Always."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Smoke and Slaughter Elias and his group were swept further down stream and back to another part of the prison underneath the mountain; they had escaped and were out of the water but needed to rescue the other prisoners in stasis and try and find Kimberley's group. Elias tried to count heads to see if they had lost anybody, but there were too many prisoners in the first place, and some faces he knew were missing.

"WE'VE LOST SOME PEOPLE."

Nayan knew this. "We got separated at the fork in the river, we went one way and they the other."

"So anybody not here we can only a.s.sume they got taken in another direction and not drowned?"

Nayan solemnly lowered his head. "I can only hope so."

Elias regained his thoughts. "Right, well we have to find them and get to the other prisoners still in stasis."

Nayan was already on the move. "I know this prison backwards; we've been swept around the main holding area."

He pointed to a door embedded in the rocks a long way above their heads. "If the main bridge in Section A hadn't been destroyed then it would have led us up there, through that door is where the rest of our brothers in stasis are, I will free them, I must do."

"You sure you want to do this, my friend?" asked Elias with concern.

Nayan acknowledged this with a nod. "The storage bay is around this bend just over these sands, the supply ship should be docked in there, I will return with the others and we will leave this prison for good."

Faris ground his teeth in antic.i.p.ation and then enquired, "What about Aubrey, Kimberley and Felcey?...What about the others?"

Elias glanced around him. "We're going to have to hope and pray that they find us, good luck, Nayan."

"Just hold on to that ship, my brothers." And with that Nayan started up the rock face followed by prisoners Kurno and Giller for support.

Faris gave a broad smile to Elias as Nayan left. "Always on the move, eh?" he said.

"Wouldn't have it any other way," came the reply.

With that Elias and the rest headed cautiously around the sandy paths to what would hopefully lead them to the hangar; the sun that shone brightly for what had seemed an eternity was finally being covered by some wayward clouds and the lingering winds began to pick up.

In the distance was a great plain, spread out before the rock face. "WHERE IS THIS HANGAR?" yelled Elias, a.s.suming every prisoner with him knew where it was. Prisoner Nedley pointed. "It's not far, we're nearly there." He ran now, throwing away caution and as he made it around the rock face, everybody just behind him looked up to the sky to see a huge star cruiser coming into settle on to a landing platform; poking out of what was part of the prison mountain, the huge hanger doors slammed shut around the ship.

Nedley yelled in delight. "THAT'S IT! THAT'S THE SUPPLY SHIP, WE MADE IT!" He ran on faster.

Elias called to him, "NEDLEY, WAIT FOR THE OTHERS! WE MUST ALL GO TOGETHER."

But Nedley was already bounding across the plain smooth earth, eager as a hungry child in a sweet shop, running as fast as his legs would carry him. Nedley fell over, but he didn't trip over his feet...the ground had moved and carried on moving, his freed prison mates watched from a distance aghast as the earth around Nedley began to crumble in on itself, the startled man, shaken to his knees looked down into the big hole forming and saw something was moving down there, he could not run, as suddenly a giant hand burst through the sod and grabbed him, fitting perfectly around Nedley's body, lifting him up into the air. The hand was attached to a green muscled arm and then the huge body followed. Pulling itself from beneath the ground was a monstrosity of a creature, it struggled briefly as it still had Nedley in one hand, it was humanoid in appearance, large scales covered its back and continued all the way down to form a large bone-like clubbed tail. It had one eye in the centre of its forehead, a Cyclops, and its lizard-like elongated mouth produced a row of razor-sharp teeth. Freeing itself from the earth, the creature stood straight, and was extremely tall and roared; it was a sound that no-one had heard before, so deafening that the escaped prisoners covered their ears in pain, the creature squeezed its hand ever so slightly and Nedley felt excruciating pain in his back. The men were close enough to hear the sound of bones breaking before the monster flung Nedley like a child's ball into the rock face where he lay still forever.

It wasn't finished, it wanted more toys to play with and glared with its one eye at Elias and his men. It was only when they fully focused on the creature, that they saw a man strapped to the creature's left shoulder in a tight harness seemingly unaffected by the emergence from beneath the ground, it was Apollo sitting atop the creature.

The hideous creature roared again. "What the h.e.l.l is that?" whispered Elias, too scared and shocked to shout.

The old man, known as Jago, had stayed quiet for a long while, surviving the rats, the big jump and the river journey without a word, but now he stepped forward, visibly shaken. "Didn't think I'd see that again."

Elias pressed him. "WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHAT IS THAT *THING'?"

"That *Thing' is HAMMERSMITH, one of the prison guardians here on Gommerstall. A creature who was brought here for the sole purpose of destroying anyone who tries to leave this threshold; we are marked men, I'm afraid our escape is over, Elias, I can't see how we can survive this, it has been a pleasure sharing a cell with you, I'll miss our little chats."

Taking his eye off the monster for a second, Elias responded to the old man. "We never had any *little chats'."

"Then I'm happy to make this one the first."

Elias wanted to smile but couldn't, this wasn't the time or place and he was finding it hard to control his fear. "Hammersmith and Apollo, just perfect, what do we do now?" said Faris.

Elias all of a sudden arched his back and clicked his neck to the left and then the right standing tall in defiance as Hammersmith roared and began to charge at them.

"We get ready." He had time for a quick gulp.

The dog wandered through the many corridors of the tall building, n.o.body had stopped it as it exited the elevator. It knew this was the right floor as nothing much had changed since its last visit.

As it licked its paws and carried on, its stomach lurched slightly from hunger so it speeded up to reach its destination.

Reaching an office with the door ajar, the dog nudged it gently and trotted in. The secretary sat behind her desk filing her nails, her eyes were behind an oversized pair of shades and her hair unseen underneath a very tight scarf, she was dressed from head to toe in a red dress.

She watched the dog trot along the office floor, and her eyes went straight back to her nails, only stopping to rummage through her bag for a tissue to cough in; coughing fit finished, the secretary buzzed the intercom.

"Someone to see you, sir."

The dog gave a bark and again used its nose to enter a gap through to the next room. It sniffed the air and barked, wagging its tail as it walked further in. A man rose from the chair facing a window covered in rain. "h.e.l.lo boy, what are you doing here?" Big Man walked over to the dog and stroked its head. "Have you come to keep me company? There's a good boyyyy."

One year had pa.s.sed since the destruction of most of his studios, thanks to Kimberley's super powers. It was now a period of rebuilding with the studios and his investors. The monsters had been put back into the wild and had finally been outlawed, the experiments had stopped and the fighting had ceased to appear on the television. He was being sued by most of the spectators at the arena and that was at least thirty thousand people.

At the moment he was operating at a loss, his shows weren't the most popular anymore and his position on the Olympia Rich List had plummeted, he was a broken man financially.

The dog started visiting him a few months ago and was a welcome visitor to his building, all except his secretary Miss Atkins, accommodated the scruffy visitor.

The dog licked its private parts as Big Man chuckled, his hair had greyed seemingly overnight but he still wore his maybe now too expensive suits. He spoke to the dog in the third person. "Big Man's going to get back on top little fella, Big Man's going to show all those sods who put him down that they made a mistake."

He put on a baby voice. "Yes he is, Big Man's going to be the big man on campus again, isn't he? Yessss, he isssss, and he's going to get his revenge on all the super powers who cost him his game show. Yessss he isssss, because Big Man knows that Elias and Kimberley would be probably out of stasis now and trying to escape Gommerstall and get back to me...but do you know what?"

The dog barked and c.o.c.ked its head in a questioning manner. "Because when they get out and come back to Olympia, its going to be a whole new ball game."

The dog barked again and raised its paw, Big Man smiled and gently slapped it. "Hi-Five."

Apollo halted the charge of Hammersmith as they both felt the ground trembling, the giant Cyclops sidestepped the cracks beginning to show in the earth.

"Interesting," Apollo said to himself.

The prisoners were also being rocked from side to side as they found it almost impossible to remain on their feet.

"WHAT'S HAPPENING?" yelled Elias.

"I DON'T KNOW," replied Jago, who was being helped to his feet by Faris.

"IT MUST BE AN EARTHQUAKE," Faris said. "THIS DAY GETS BETTER BY THE MINUTE, GET CRUSHED BY THE EARTH OR CRUSHED BY A GIANT CYCLOPS...DECISIONS DECISIONS."

But Elias wasn't thinking about Faris's hard day, instead he was trying to stay on his feet and stay alive, and across the way he noticed the giant Cyclops Hammersmith was also unsteady on his feet.

The mountain walls began to tremble as huge cracks appeared in their sides and an avalanche of rocks fell into the valley below, the prisoners ran screaming for cover but the options were limited, Hammersmith knocked some of the falling rocks away like they were annoying flies.

Then the earth opened even more, and that's when everyone saw the claws arise from the ground.

Giant red crabs emerged from their burrows underground, their glistening thoraxes, unblemished by the unflattering dirt; they hauled their ma.s.sive bodies out into daylight with big black eyes on stalks, checking on their new surroundings. Their sh.e.l.ls seemed almost metallic in what little light the sun gave. The crabs were about the same size in height to an average man and three sizes bigger in width, and there were more of them now, the huge valley was scattered with giant crabs and they were now on the move.

"WHAT THE h.e.l.l IS THAT?" Faris demanded.

Elias could have kicked himself for being so stupid; he had studied marine life at school and it finally dawned on him what was happening.

"I KNOW WHAT IT IS." He wobbled a bit more. "THEY ARE THE RED CRABS OF GOMMERSTALL, THEY LIVE IN BURROWS TO SHELTER FROM THE SUN AND HEAD TO THE BEACH TO LAY THEIR EGGS."