This is a contest entry for the Whiptail Dragon Halloween contest. This story's characters are...
Alcarin
Lucien
Armada
Apocolypse
Euudon
Audax
Athanatos (the "first and last Whiptail Dragon", a silvery-white, winged female WtD)
The Evil (a great evil that Alcarin has to defeat, can take on any form)
Chapter One
Alcarin sighed. He slipped his tail through the tailsleeve of satin.
"What a pathetic costume," he muttered, grabbing a latern in his mouth. "A ghost. Really, Alcarin? You're so uncreative."
"Uncreative?" a voice asked from behind him. "I'm not sure that's a word."
"Just help me get the glowing eyes in, Armada," Alcarin growled playfully at his friend. "Then we can go trick-or-treating."
"Hellooooo?" someone called from outside.
"Armadaaaaaaa..." Alcarin hissed, swiftly turning around. "You said you wouldn't invite any friends!"
"Oh, come on, Alcarin!" Armada grinned. "It's just a few! And the more the merrier, anyways."
"Fine, fine, fine," Alcarin gave in. "Tell them we'll go in a second." Armada smiled and rushed out to greet her friends.
"Oh, good!" Alcarin heard her say to them. "All four of you are here!" Alcarin shook his head - he knew Armada's "few" was his "crowd".
"But only four this time," he smiled, remembering the last time she'd said it was only a few and it turned out to be eight. He finished getting his costume on and ran out to meet these friends of Armada's.
"Alcarin," Armada smiled. "these are Lucien the knight, Apocolypse the mute crazy-dude-with-mask-guy, Euudon the fairy, and Audax the king. They're not really knights and kings and fairies, of course. That's just what they're dressed up as." Alcarin greeted all of them and they left Alcarin's cave to go trick-or-treating. They decided to go west and circle around back to Alcarin's cave for a total of 89 caves, which would take about four hours.
"We'll be home just in time for midnight!" Audax laughed. They started off on their very long ToTing route.
"Anyone else getting a little tired?" Euudon questioned after the first hour.
"Naw," Alcarin smiled. "Not even close. We've still got another... Three or so hours to go. So you'd better dragon-up if you want to go the whole way." Euudon sighed, but stayed with her group, despite her weariness.
"Hey, Alcarin," Lucien began. "I've been wondering, what's with that wierd necklace thing around your neck?"
"Oh, this?" Alcarin inquired, nosing at the glowing amulet around his neck. "It's nothing. Just a... a good-luck charm. Just for fun." He gave Lucien a forced smile and kept walking, more silent and ominous-looking than ever. He'd never told anyone who he was - a great warrior destined to defeat a great evil who had a glowing amulet, given to him by the first Whiptail Dragon ever, Athanatos, to keep him safe and give him strength and courage. He couldn't risk endangering friends or letting the enemy know who he was. It had been months since he'd first met Athanatos and learned of his destiny, and nothing adventurey had happened so far.
They kept walking, ToTing at every cave they came across. As they walked, Lucien quietly moved over to walk beside Alcarin. Alcarin glanced up at him, then back ahead.
"Alcarin," Lucien started to say. "uh, I'm sorry if I... Hurt your feelings or caused an awkward moment or something like that when I asked about your amulet. I was just curious and -"
"It's fine, Lucien," Alcarin assured him. "I'm just a little tired." He gave the dragon another smile and walked up to the next cave with his group.
"Trick or Treat!" the six chanted the traditional words, shouting into the cave. A purple dragon with red and black markings came out with a basket of treats. Her pretty butterfly costume glittered in the moonlight. As she offered the basket to the ToT'ers, her dark eyes roved over them, stopping when they reached Alcarin.
"Oh, Alcarin!" she exclaimed. "How good to see you again!" Alcarin moaned, silently mouthing a word of protest, and backed away a step.
Chapter Two
"What's wrong, Alcarin?" the dragon asked.
"Nothing at all, Violetta," he muttered, giving her a very fake smile.
"Oh, well then, it wouldn't hurt if I joined you to go trick-or-treating?" she asked happily.
"No, of course not!" Armada grinned cheerfully.
"Oh, I don't know, Armada," Alcarin said. "I don't think that would work out too well, don't you think?" He gave her a look of desparation, hiding it from Violetta.
"Yeah, Armada," Lucien agreed, having caught Alcarin's glance. "We're almost done. It wouldn't be nice to invite someone to go trick-or-treating with us and then be done two caves later."
"Oh, no, we're only halfway done, aren't we?" Armada, who hadn't seen Alcarin's look of despair, asked. "We still have two hours to go."
"Just let me go get my bag and we can go!" Violetta squeaked, running back into the cave.
"Armada!" Alcarin shrieked quietly. "Why did you do that?!"
"Well, she wanted to come, so why not?" Armada asked.
"She's a really irritating dragon that just so happens to like me a lot," Alcarin explained grimly.
"Oh," Armada said. "Sorry. I didn't know."
"Well it's not too late! Let's make a run for it!" Audax grinned mischeviously.
"No, that would be rude," Euudon argued.
"Yeah," Alcarin nodded. "As much as I hate to say it, Euudon is right." Violetta ran out of her cave, a lavendar-colored bag clenched in her jaws.
"I'm all ready!" she smiled. The group walked on, all dragons silent. Well, almost all silent. Violetta, walking next to the distraught Alcarin, babbled on and on endlessly, stopping only to place a candy or two in her bag at each cave.
Another forty minutes passed. Alcarin kept thinking to himself, 'Only one hour and twenty minutes left! Only an hour and twenty minutes!' They were passing by an old, cobwebbed cave that looked abandoned, not stopping by, when Violetta stopped.
"Why aren't we going there?" she asked, gesturing to the old cave.
"I don't think anyone lives there," Audax replied.
"Well, why don't we just go check it out?" Violetta suggested. "You never know."
"Fine," Armada agreed, only to keep Violetta from insisting in her whining, stubborn way. "We'll check it out. Quickly, though. I want to get home. I'm getting rather tired." Violetta smiled and led the way up to the cave.
"Trick or Treat!" her echo sounded through the cave. They waited for a moment in silence. "That's odd," Violetta mused after she called into the cave again. "The echo has a sort of, open-air sound to it."
"You're right, it does," Audax agreed.
"Can we pleeeeeease go see why?" Violetta whined. "It's a Halloween mystery!"
"Okay, okay, okay!" Euudon immediatly gave her consent, wanting to avoid a whiny conflict. Everyone else agreed to go in for a moment to see why the echo was wierd-sounding, but they all, except Violetta, wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible.
Chapter Three
They strode briskly through the cave, the quiet echoes of their quiet steps bouncing nearly silently off of the walls. They traveled through the cave for fiften minutes.
"Okay, Violetta, we've been in here for quite a while," Lucien finally announced. "I think it's time we turned back."
"No, please, just five more minutes?" Violetta pleaded.
"Just five - no more than that, okay?" Alcarin said sternly. Violetta nodded eagerly and bounded on quickly. The others raced after her, trying to catch up. After four minutes, they saw an end to the cave, which opened up into a flat, grassy plataeu, overlooking a long field of green hills.
"There you go, Violetta," Euudon grinned in relief. "There's your answer. Let's go back now. I promised to be back by 12:30, and if we plan to finish our entire route, we're gonna have to go super-speed." Suddenly a loud, rumbling noise filld the caves as a rock wall lowered over the exit to the hills.
"What the -" Alcarin began. But he was interupted by screams as a similar, but fainter, noise came from the other side of the cave, far away, where the speck of light that once was their other exit was quickly diminished as another rock wall covered it. Inside the now-quiet cave, it was pitch black.
"Does anyone have a light?" someone asked.
"I had one, but I left it outside," Alcarin's firm voice told the others.
"Alcarin, how on earth can you be so calm?!" a voice that sounded slightly like Armada's shrieked.
"What use would panicking do us?" Alcarin demanded in reply. All were silent.
"Hey, I've got an idea!" Audax suddenly shouted.
"Okay, but please don't shout when you're explaining the rest of it," Euudon told him. "Now what is it?"
"Alcarin, don't you have glowing markings?" Audax asked.
"Yeah, he does, but obviously they don't really glow, otherwise we'd be able to see them," Euudon argued.
"No, they do glow!" Armada exclaimed.
"Then why can't we see they're glow?" Euudon inquired in an I-told-you-so tone. Armada and the others were silent, Alcarin lost in his own thoughts while the others searched for an explanation.
"Because they're covered by his ghost costume!" Lucien cried happily, yanking Alcarin's white sheet off of him. His blue and green markings shone a dim but helpful light around the walls. What they saw in this light did not satisfy them.
A hulking mass of black flesh with red, gleaming cracks that had tiny flames leaping from them stood before them. The black, curved horns framed the nasty, cruel face. The creature's thrashing tail illuminated the shining, black claws with its dull flames.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please back away from the creepy monster," Alcarin said in a steady voice, backing up himself. "Now, let's make sure everyone is here before we're all mauled by it. Armada?"
"Here."
"Audax?"
"Uh-huh."
"Apocolypse?"
Apocolypse gave him a nudge to say "Yes" - being mute, he couldn't actually say it.
"Euudon?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Lucien?"
"Right next to you."
"Violetta?"
No answer came from the darkness.
"Violetta?" the question came again, this time from a worried Armada.
"Right here," a low, rumbling growl came from the monster's mouth.
"Oh [insert bad word here]!" Alcarin shouted, turning and running as fast as he could, the other's right ahead of him.
Chapter Four
"Guys," Alcarin muttered breathlessly as the five dragons huddled at the end of the cave, waiting for the obviously inevitable arrival of the beast. "I kind of sort of have a confession to make."
"What?!" the other four voices yelled in unison.
"I'm, uh, kind of supposed to be this great warrior who is supposed to defeat this big bad evil that will destroy all Whiptail Dragons if I don't destory it," he explained. "Athanatos - the first and last WtD - warned me that is would try to kill me first, and that it could take any form it wanted to distract me or scare me away from my destiny, but in the many months that I've been waiting for it to pop up so I could finish up my destorying it, I've grown... less careful. And I think that monster - and Violetta - are that evil. I guess I wasn't aware enough and didn't see it coming. I'm sorry, guys."
"That's alright, I guess," Lucien said after a moment of silence. "We're just as much to blame - we agreed to come in here and let her come ToTing with us in the first place after all, didn't we?"
"Yeah, but I should have been more aware, so that I could've warned you," Alcarin apologized again.
"Don't be so hard on yourself," Euudon told him. "We're just as much to blame as you, if not more."
"Still..." Alcarin muttered, nosing his amulet absent-mindedly.
"Alcarin, is that amulet really what you said it was earlier?" Lucien questioned. "Or is it something... special?"
"Athanatos gave it to me," Alcarin admitted. "She said it would protect me and give me more bravery and strength. I guess there's some trick to getting it to work. Maybe I have to be a better dragon at heart."
"That's too bad," Armada agreed. "but, you know, it just might be that it doesn't work like you think it might. Maybe it doesn't offer as much as you think it does."
"I suppose you're right," Alcarin sighed.
"Or maybe," Lucien began optimistically. "you just have to ask Athanatos to help you."
"Ask her?" Alcarin asked, his head snapping up. "But how? She isn't here."
"If she's as great and powerful as you say," Euudon picked up from where Lucien left off. "and she really is the first and last WtD -"
"Then maybe the amulet is some sort of magical artifact that allows communication between the two of you!" Audax finished excitedly!
"Well, I was thinking of something more along the lines of 'she can hear you no matter where you both are', but that works too," Lucien grinned.
"Well, it's worth a try," Alcarin agreed. He lifted the amulet closer to his face, just in case Audax's idea was correct, and whispered, "Athanatos, if you can hear me... My friends and I are in some pretty grave danger from that evil you mentioned. We, we could really use some help, and I don't know what to do. Please, if you can, help us out." A silvery sound of laughter echoed through Alcarin's mind.
"Oh, Alcarin, I'm happy to hear you've deciphered it," Athanatos' voice said to him. It appeared that he was the only one who could hear her.
"Deciphered... What, exactly?" Alcarin whispered back.
"How to get that safety, etc. from the amulet, of course," Athanatos replied.
"Well, it was actually some of my friends that figured it out," Alcarin admitted.
"Your honesty shows that you are certainly the right dragon to defeat the evil," Athanatos' voice sounded as if she were smiling. "Now, allow me to help..." A silvery, slightly transparent dragon claw reached down out of nowhere, lifting the rock wall out of the way. When the five WtDs were out, Athanatos placed it back again. Her silvery form grew smaller and they could now see her whole body.
"That should keep the evil busy for a while, a few weeks if you're lucky," she smiled. "But next time, Alcarin, I'd like you to do more, if you can. If you are entirely incapable of saving yourself, then it is perfectly fine to ask me for help. But eventually, you will have to defeat it on your own." Alcarin nodded gravely.
"I understand," he told her. "Um, is it alright that I told my friends about my destiny and all that?"
"Of course, but try not to let any more dragons know unless it is absolutely neccesary," Athanatos grinned. "You must be careful. Now go along, finish your trick-or-treating. And Happy Halloween!" Her ghost-like form flew up into the sky, fading slowly, her laughter hanging in the air with a mysteriously creepy aura.
The End
For now...
Alcarin
Lucien
Armada
Apocolypse
Euudon
Audax
Athanatos (the "first and last Whiptail Dragon", a silvery-white, winged female WtD)
The Evil (a great evil that Alcarin has to defeat, can take on any form)
Chapter One
Alcarin sighed. He slipped his tail through the tailsleeve of satin.
"What a pathetic costume," he muttered, grabbing a latern in his mouth. "A ghost. Really, Alcarin? You're so uncreative."
"Uncreative?" a voice asked from behind him. "I'm not sure that's a word."
"Just help me get the glowing eyes in, Armada," Alcarin growled playfully at his friend. "Then we can go trick-or-treating."
"Hellooooo?" someone called from outside.
"Armadaaaaaaa..." Alcarin hissed, swiftly turning around. "You said you wouldn't invite any friends!"
"Oh, come on, Alcarin!" Armada grinned. "It's just a few! And the more the merrier, anyways."
"Fine, fine, fine," Alcarin gave in. "Tell them we'll go in a second." Armada smiled and rushed out to greet her friends.
"Oh, good!" Alcarin heard her say to them. "All four of you are here!" Alcarin shook his head - he knew Armada's "few" was his "crowd".
"But only four this time," he smiled, remembering the last time she'd said it was only a few and it turned out to be eight. He finished getting his costume on and ran out to meet these friends of Armada's.
"Alcarin," Armada smiled. "these are Lucien the knight, Apocolypse the mute crazy-dude-with-mask-guy, Euudon the fairy, and Audax the king. They're not really knights and kings and fairies, of course. That's just what they're dressed up as." Alcarin greeted all of them and they left Alcarin's cave to go trick-or-treating. They decided to go west and circle around back to Alcarin's cave for a total of 89 caves, which would take about four hours.
"We'll be home just in time for midnight!" Audax laughed. They started off on their very long ToTing route.
"Anyone else getting a little tired?" Euudon questioned after the first hour.
"Naw," Alcarin smiled. "Not even close. We've still got another... Three or so hours to go. So you'd better dragon-up if you want to go the whole way." Euudon sighed, but stayed with her group, despite her weariness.
"Hey, Alcarin," Lucien began. "I've been wondering, what's with that wierd necklace thing around your neck?"
"Oh, this?" Alcarin inquired, nosing at the glowing amulet around his neck. "It's nothing. Just a... a good-luck charm. Just for fun." He gave Lucien a forced smile and kept walking, more silent and ominous-looking than ever. He'd never told anyone who he was - a great warrior destined to defeat a great evil who had a glowing amulet, given to him by the first Whiptail Dragon ever, Athanatos, to keep him safe and give him strength and courage. He couldn't risk endangering friends or letting the enemy know who he was. It had been months since he'd first met Athanatos and learned of his destiny, and nothing adventurey had happened so far.
They kept walking, ToTing at every cave they came across. As they walked, Lucien quietly moved over to walk beside Alcarin. Alcarin glanced up at him, then back ahead.
"Alcarin," Lucien started to say. "uh, I'm sorry if I... Hurt your feelings or caused an awkward moment or something like that when I asked about your amulet. I was just curious and -"
"It's fine, Lucien," Alcarin assured him. "I'm just a little tired." He gave the dragon another smile and walked up to the next cave with his group.
"Trick or Treat!" the six chanted the traditional words, shouting into the cave. A purple dragon with red and black markings came out with a basket of treats. Her pretty butterfly costume glittered in the moonlight. As she offered the basket to the ToT'ers, her dark eyes roved over them, stopping when they reached Alcarin.
"Oh, Alcarin!" she exclaimed. "How good to see you again!" Alcarin moaned, silently mouthing a word of protest, and backed away a step.
Chapter Two
"What's wrong, Alcarin?" the dragon asked.
"Nothing at all, Violetta," he muttered, giving her a very fake smile.
"Oh, well then, it wouldn't hurt if I joined you to go trick-or-treating?" she asked happily.
"No, of course not!" Armada grinned cheerfully.
"Oh, I don't know, Armada," Alcarin said. "I don't think that would work out too well, don't you think?" He gave her a look of desparation, hiding it from Violetta.
"Yeah, Armada," Lucien agreed, having caught Alcarin's glance. "We're almost done. It wouldn't be nice to invite someone to go trick-or-treating with us and then be done two caves later."
"Oh, no, we're only halfway done, aren't we?" Armada, who hadn't seen Alcarin's look of despair, asked. "We still have two hours to go."
"Just let me go get my bag and we can go!" Violetta squeaked, running back into the cave.
"Armada!" Alcarin shrieked quietly. "Why did you do that?!"
"Well, she wanted to come, so why not?" Armada asked.
"She's a really irritating dragon that just so happens to like me a lot," Alcarin explained grimly.
"Oh," Armada said. "Sorry. I didn't know."
"Well it's not too late! Let's make a run for it!" Audax grinned mischeviously.
"No, that would be rude," Euudon argued.
"Yeah," Alcarin nodded. "As much as I hate to say it, Euudon is right." Violetta ran out of her cave, a lavendar-colored bag clenched in her jaws.
"I'm all ready!" she smiled. The group walked on, all dragons silent. Well, almost all silent. Violetta, walking next to the distraught Alcarin, babbled on and on endlessly, stopping only to place a candy or two in her bag at each cave.
Another forty minutes passed. Alcarin kept thinking to himself, 'Only one hour and twenty minutes left! Only an hour and twenty minutes!' They were passing by an old, cobwebbed cave that looked abandoned, not stopping by, when Violetta stopped.
"Why aren't we going there?" she asked, gesturing to the old cave.
"I don't think anyone lives there," Audax replied.
"Well, why don't we just go check it out?" Violetta suggested. "You never know."
"Fine," Armada agreed, only to keep Violetta from insisting in her whining, stubborn way. "We'll check it out. Quickly, though. I want to get home. I'm getting rather tired." Violetta smiled and led the way up to the cave.
"Trick or Treat!" her echo sounded through the cave. They waited for a moment in silence. "That's odd," Violetta mused after she called into the cave again. "The echo has a sort of, open-air sound to it."
"You're right, it does," Audax agreed.
"Can we pleeeeeease go see why?" Violetta whined. "It's a Halloween mystery!"
"Okay, okay, okay!" Euudon immediatly gave her consent, wanting to avoid a whiny conflict. Everyone else agreed to go in for a moment to see why the echo was wierd-sounding, but they all, except Violetta, wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible.
Chapter Three
They strode briskly through the cave, the quiet echoes of their quiet steps bouncing nearly silently off of the walls. They traveled through the cave for fiften minutes.
"Okay, Violetta, we've been in here for quite a while," Lucien finally announced. "I think it's time we turned back."
"No, please, just five more minutes?" Violetta pleaded.
"Just five - no more than that, okay?" Alcarin said sternly. Violetta nodded eagerly and bounded on quickly. The others raced after her, trying to catch up. After four minutes, they saw an end to the cave, which opened up into a flat, grassy plataeu, overlooking a long field of green hills.
"There you go, Violetta," Euudon grinned in relief. "There's your answer. Let's go back now. I promised to be back by 12:30, and if we plan to finish our entire route, we're gonna have to go super-speed." Suddenly a loud, rumbling noise filld the caves as a rock wall lowered over the exit to the hills.
"What the -" Alcarin began. But he was interupted by screams as a similar, but fainter, noise came from the other side of the cave, far away, where the speck of light that once was their other exit was quickly diminished as another rock wall covered it. Inside the now-quiet cave, it was pitch black.
"Does anyone have a light?" someone asked.
"I had one, but I left it outside," Alcarin's firm voice told the others.
"Alcarin, how on earth can you be so calm?!" a voice that sounded slightly like Armada's shrieked.
"What use would panicking do us?" Alcarin demanded in reply. All were silent.
"Hey, I've got an idea!" Audax suddenly shouted.
"Okay, but please don't shout when you're explaining the rest of it," Euudon told him. "Now what is it?"
"Alcarin, don't you have glowing markings?" Audax asked.
"Yeah, he does, but obviously they don't really glow, otherwise we'd be able to see them," Euudon argued.
"No, they do glow!" Armada exclaimed.
"Then why can't we see they're glow?" Euudon inquired in an I-told-you-so tone. Armada and the others were silent, Alcarin lost in his own thoughts while the others searched for an explanation.
"Because they're covered by his ghost costume!" Lucien cried happily, yanking Alcarin's white sheet off of him. His blue and green markings shone a dim but helpful light around the walls. What they saw in this light did not satisfy them.
A hulking mass of black flesh with red, gleaming cracks that had tiny flames leaping from them stood before them. The black, curved horns framed the nasty, cruel face. The creature's thrashing tail illuminated the shining, black claws with its dull flames.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please back away from the creepy monster," Alcarin said in a steady voice, backing up himself. "Now, let's make sure everyone is here before we're all mauled by it. Armada?"
"Here."
"Audax?"
"Uh-huh."
"Apocolypse?"
Apocolypse gave him a nudge to say "Yes" - being mute, he couldn't actually say it.
"Euudon?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Lucien?"
"Right next to you."
"Violetta?"
No answer came from the darkness.
"Violetta?" the question came again, this time from a worried Armada.
"Right here," a low, rumbling growl came from the monster's mouth.
"Oh [insert bad word here]!" Alcarin shouted, turning and running as fast as he could, the other's right ahead of him.
Chapter Four
"Guys," Alcarin muttered breathlessly as the five dragons huddled at the end of the cave, waiting for the obviously inevitable arrival of the beast. "I kind of sort of have a confession to make."
"What?!" the other four voices yelled in unison.
"I'm, uh, kind of supposed to be this great warrior who is supposed to defeat this big bad evil that will destroy all Whiptail Dragons if I don't destory it," he explained. "Athanatos - the first and last WtD - warned me that is would try to kill me first, and that it could take any form it wanted to distract me or scare me away from my destiny, but in the many months that I've been waiting for it to pop up so I could finish up my destorying it, I've grown... less careful. And I think that monster - and Violetta - are that evil. I guess I wasn't aware enough and didn't see it coming. I'm sorry, guys."
"That's alright, I guess," Lucien said after a moment of silence. "We're just as much to blame - we agreed to come in here and let her come ToTing with us in the first place after all, didn't we?"
"Yeah, but I should have been more aware, so that I could've warned you," Alcarin apologized again.
"Don't be so hard on yourself," Euudon told him. "We're just as much to blame as you, if not more."
"Still..." Alcarin muttered, nosing his amulet absent-mindedly.
"Alcarin, is that amulet really what you said it was earlier?" Lucien questioned. "Or is it something... special?"
"Athanatos gave it to me," Alcarin admitted. "She said it would protect me and give me more bravery and strength. I guess there's some trick to getting it to work. Maybe I have to be a better dragon at heart."
"That's too bad," Armada agreed. "but, you know, it just might be that it doesn't work like you think it might. Maybe it doesn't offer as much as you think it does."
"I suppose you're right," Alcarin sighed.
"Or maybe," Lucien began optimistically. "you just have to ask Athanatos to help you."
"Ask her?" Alcarin asked, his head snapping up. "But how? She isn't here."
"If she's as great and powerful as you say," Euudon picked up from where Lucien left off. "and she really is the first and last WtD -"
"Then maybe the amulet is some sort of magical artifact that allows communication between the two of you!" Audax finished excitedly!
"Well, I was thinking of something more along the lines of 'she can hear you no matter where you both are', but that works too," Lucien grinned.
"Well, it's worth a try," Alcarin agreed. He lifted the amulet closer to his face, just in case Audax's idea was correct, and whispered, "Athanatos, if you can hear me... My friends and I are in some pretty grave danger from that evil you mentioned. We, we could really use some help, and I don't know what to do. Please, if you can, help us out." A silvery sound of laughter echoed through Alcarin's mind.
"Oh, Alcarin, I'm happy to hear you've deciphered it," Athanatos' voice said to him. It appeared that he was the only one who could hear her.
"Deciphered... What, exactly?" Alcarin whispered back.
"How to get that safety, etc. from the amulet, of course," Athanatos replied.
"Well, it was actually some of my friends that figured it out," Alcarin admitted.
"Your honesty shows that you are certainly the right dragon to defeat the evil," Athanatos' voice sounded as if she were smiling. "Now, allow me to help..." A silvery, slightly transparent dragon claw reached down out of nowhere, lifting the rock wall out of the way. When the five WtDs were out, Athanatos placed it back again. Her silvery form grew smaller and they could now see her whole body.
"That should keep the evil busy for a while, a few weeks if you're lucky," she smiled. "But next time, Alcarin, I'd like you to do more, if you can. If you are entirely incapable of saving yourself, then it is perfectly fine to ask me for help. But eventually, you will have to defeat it on your own." Alcarin nodded gravely.
"I understand," he told her. "Um, is it alright that I told my friends about my destiny and all that?"
"Of course, but try not to let any more dragons know unless it is absolutely neccesary," Athanatos grinned. "You must be careful. Now go along, finish your trick-or-treating. And Happy Halloween!" Her ghost-like form flew up into the sky, fading slowly, her laughter hanging in the air with a mysteriously creepy aura.
The End
For now...
