We knew we were being led into a trap.
I flew low, following my fake father, a robot made to look like a dragon. Dragon Father, riding on top of me, seemed calm rather than tense. It was his adventure. He had created it in his subconscious. This ist what he had wanted. This ist what he enjoyed.
My fake father looked back and motioned at a volcano ahead of us.
He flew up, then coasted down, gliding into a dark cave entrance at the bottom of that volcano.
For a second, I hesitated. I remembered that sometimes when Dragon Father knows I am part of the adventure, he creates weapons that can cause me great harm, in order to make things harder for me.
But he was calm and Dragon Little was coming the long way around.
I followed my fake father into the cave.
The darkness quickly gave way to a vision that my centuries of life would not have allowed me to imagine.
The cave was as big as the mountain and inside it were thousands of dragons. Male and female dragons of all kinds and all colors flew in all directions.
My breath caught. I had never seen so many dragons.The most dragons I had seen were in captivity. And since dreamers could not summon dragons, my mind immediately believed what it was seeing.
“Attack my dragons!” my fake father shouted.
I immediately changed directions as the thousands of dragons opened their mouths and shot fire in our direction. Their open mouths revealed what they were and how Dragon Father was able to summon them: They were robots.
I twisted and turned in the air to avoid the fire. I opened my own mouth and threw fire at the robot dragons in front of me, burning them.
But there were too many of them. We needed help!
The opposite side of the cave suddenly exploded, as Bonnie’s Revenge burst through the side of the cave.
And now the battle truly began.
Bonnie’s Revenge’s side cannons blasted the robot dragons. I shot fire every which way, burning the robots. The robots’ fire harmed neither me nor Bonnie’s Revenge.
It was a glorious battle. It was glorious because its ending was never in doubt. When Dragon Father dreams, he controls the outcome.
And, indeed, after a few minutes, a thousand robot dragons lay destroyed on the cavern floor. Except for my fake father, whom I had left ‘alive’ enough.
I swooped in on him, hobbling with a broken leg and a broken wing, circuits protruding where he had been cut.
I caught his throat between my jaws.
Dragon Father stood up from his seat in the back of my head.
“Well, well, well,,” he said. “We have a few questions for you. You will answer them.”
Tomorrow I will tell you what happened then.
—Told by The Red Dragon