It all began with a mysterious ghostly explosion up
on Amity Heights 3 years earlier.
That summer I was working at a rundown marina at the base of the cliff
that rose 100 feet above the river.The owner was also in the scrap metal
business.There were various rusting tanks scattered about the yard,and on
the day the explosion occured I was in one of the tanks,with the hatch
sealed.
It was a old Navy buoy and I was cutting out some electronics
for my own use.There was a bang,the metal glowed green and then came
the howling winds for the next 5 minutes.
Then came the silence.
We all crept out of the buildings and workshops and looked to the
top of the cliff.There used to be a community of 35,000 people on the
top of that cliff.Now all we saw were patches of clear ground mixed with
buildings that looked like they have lain abandoned for decades.And of
the people there was no sign.It was as if they'd been swept off the face
of the Earth.
Further investigation showed that the 300 diameter hole where the explosion
had obviously originated had once been the location of a house owned by
the Fentons.They were eccentric,and the speculation was that they'd
conducted an experiment which went horribly wrong for the community
of Amity Heights.
Though there were no bodies,everyone who vanished was presumed
dead and so the legal lawsuits began.
I had a pet theory that some kind of time bomb had thrown the missing
community into the past.So after work I went through old newspaper
records to see if suddenly 35000 people from the future had suddenly
popped up.
My efforts were fruitless till one day,by accident I tripped over a
rusty piece of wreckage at the marina.I gave it a closer look and
realized from the way it was designed I was looking at a late 19th
century verson of a go kart.A steam powered go kart decades before the
things were even invented.A closer look revealed a manufacturers plate
" FentonWorks Mfg Model GameBoy Built 1904"
After that It didn't take long for me to trace the fate of the missing
Fentons,if not the entire community.They'd vanished in 1996 and FentonWorks
suddenly popped up in 1896.
I knew I was onto something big and kept my secret to myself.Further
research revealled the late 1890's was an exciting time in Amity Heights.
There were the reports of the giant steam powered amphibious metal
spider ship,numerous reports of ghostly dragons,ghostly gunfighters
named Walker,a Knight or two sighting and a circus of ghosts had
once visited the hamlet.
My strong suit was dragons and it didn't take me any research to
know that a dragon supposedly a transformed princess had crashed a
royal ball and vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.The year?
996 Ad.
So I checked the dates of the dragons appearances in the 1890's.
She'd been seen on Oct 31 1899 while being chased by the steam
powered spder thing through the river.
Today was Oct 31 1999.I did some quick thinking.I knew the
old Navy buoys used glass tubed vacuum energy collectors in place of
solar panels.And lithium Erganite power units.
So I ran to that rusty old tank I'd been inside on the day
of the explosion.Perhaps it had collected some of the weird energy
and could send me back in time a hundred years.Though many of the wires
were broken I did a quick check and discovered something of unEarthly
origin was still charging up the LE cells.And all the meters had their needles
slammed to the right in overcharged mode.
I checked my watch.Fifty minutes till the reputed sighting
of a dragon being chased into the river a century earlier.Darn,I had
less then 50 minutes to turn this pile of rusty metal into a time machine.
It was the glint of stacked glass that caught my attention.Somewhere
along the last three years someone had taken off the VEC's and stored them
along the inside walls of the tank.I looked at all those fine mesh plates,grids and
cathodes that were all facing me.If I could energize them.So I spent
the next five minutes connecting wires,joined two together
and the compartment of the tank lit up a brilliant green and I felt like I
was falling through space.
I slowly got my bearings and crawled through the hatch of the time
machine.I got the shock of my life.There was a river there,but it wasn't one
I recognized.There was no sign of Amity Heights,either the 1999 or
1899 version.However rising above the treetops of the forest surrounding
me was a cliff.And on top of the cliff sat a stone castle with towers,ramparts
etc.
I looked at my wristwatch.Not surprisingly it was flashing 0996
at me.I crept along the edge of the forest till I saw the girl sunbathing along
the river bank.She'd taken off her clothes and the sun was hot and I could see
she couldn,t have been older than six.
.I noticed a necklace with a large
green gem in it sitting in a woven reed basket filled with wild strawberries the
kid had picked.
It slowly dawned on me that perhaps this was the princess rumoured
to have crashed the royal ball as a snorting dragon.
Hmmm,so I'd get to see a dragon after all.I sat there silently and
observed her.What would trigger the change.The blazing sun?The necklace
she wasn't wearing?That stone celtic cross nearby that she was exposing her
immodesty to?Somethng else?Wasn't it a little early for a six year old to
change into a dragon.I'd always thought it was the troubled teen girls with
the issues.
Of course I had to break a nearby branch.The girl got up,cried out
" who is there?"
and when she caught my eyes blinking in the trees screamed and leapt
into the river naked,swam to the other side and ran off.
Darn Darn Darn
I left my hiding place and walked up to where her clothes lay
in the sand.I just stood there dumbfounded .
Suddenly I felt the cool feel of a necklace chain on the skin of my neck and
felt the heavy weight of a green gem resting on my flat chest.
Suddenly my legs were bound together by a invisible twine and I fell
backwards onto the sand.
CLUNK
My head hit the rock behind me and I was knocked out.
When I awakened the first thing I noticed was the green gem resting on
my shrinking chest.I squealed in terror as I felt my hair being
tugged outwards and lengthening.I could feel a thousand little hands prying
into my masculine hips,and squealed in horror as I felt a tiny little
body worm through the lips between my legs and start pushing and
changing things inside me.As a pair of amulet bracelets suddenly
pierced my earlobes I could feel busy little hands knotting my
hair in the ancient style.
A lot more of the little hands were pulling the disgusting hairs
out of my softening skin and I wiggled and squealed in delight as I realized
I was going to be able to go pee pee like few guys could.
The little people were about to tell me something important when suddenly
there was a loud shout from inside the forest and they all vanished.It
suddenly occured to me that I'd just been turned into the kings
daughters twin sister,and I was sitting with my shirt unbuttoned,wearing out of
time clothing and in a sacred grove of all places.If my new dads men were
out and about,I didn't want to be seen like this.So I quickly put the gown and
undies the other princess had left behind over my own clothing and ran
back into the forest.
It didn't take me long to come across my new mother and her train of ladies.
They knew I'd be skinydipping in the sacred grove,a fact mum had hidden from my
new dad.Dad meanwhile had gone to investigate the shouts in the forest.His men
had discovered a big rusty infernal machine,with lots of weird stuff inside it.
As we were all heading back to the castle with the navy buoy time
machine out of the trees dashed my unclothed twin sister,the original
princess.I got worried as I imagined mum and dad would wonder how they'd
suddenly acquired a extra child.I crossed my fingers and prayed silently.
Hopefully the little people had sorted out the issue of how the King
suddenly had TWO twin daughters.From the look he was giving both me
and the sobbing princess,I knew he knew one of us was a imposter.
After a few minutes he looked at the Queen and asked her why she hadn't
told him she'd given birth to twin daughters.The Queen gave him that knowing look
and said she'd been too exhausted after the experience.She'd told the royal
physician to tell the King.If the Royal Physician hadn.t mentioned the birth
of twin daughters,he was obciously guilty of treason and aught to be
locked up in the dungeons for a while.
Then she got off her horse,ran up to me and hugged me and dragged me to
meet my long lost sister.Dad ran up,gallantly put his cape over my new
sister and reannounced the royal births of Lady Masery and me Lady Isabel
to the cheering crowd.
Which is how I got to be a princess.
I could see that Masery kept looking at the necklace I was wearing.I was
only too glad to return it to her as inside the green gem I could see the image
of the Dragon of Eragon.Which implied whoever wore the necklace was the
true Dragon Princess.
So it was a major shock when I woke up very early the next morning to
feel the cooless of a metal chain on my skin.I looked over and Masery
was sound asleep so I tiptoed over and slipped the necklace back over her
neck.
So it was a even bigger shock the next morning when I heard Masery
screaming at me that I was a wishy washy double crossing changeling
whose fairy mother wore army boots.
Oh well, it was nice that she'd cleaned the air between us.I barely
noticed the cool feel of a necklace chain and a heavy gem on my chest.So
I gave it back to her,and told her it was hers,I wanted absolutely nothing to do
with it.
That didn't matter any and masery quickly realized that
Lady Isabel,sixth born daughter of the King and Queen of Eragon,
distant relative of King Arthur and Guinneviere,
was the Dragon Princess of Eragon.
Which was cool by her because it meant she could appreciate the
irony of watching meek mild mannered Lady Isabel,who couldn't even
eat the bloody meat and magpies at the table,grow claws and long sharp
teeth and a long snout to nose around in the rotting intestines of the slain
enemies of Eragon.
I'd be dong a lot more than getting angry because I couldn't attend Royal
Balls,I'd be doing delicsiously disgusting things in order to defend the realm.
Which meant Masery bounced up and down excitedly on her bed as she
showed me the picture books with the prophecies of what I'dd do,and the
grisly contents of my dragon stomach.
Which made me even sicker when at dinner the servants plunked
severed boars heads,baked and candied crows eyes,etc before me.I
took to feeling my gums and my teeth,as the books were all too
graphic in describing my probable signs of a imminent dragon transformation.
I felt like the Six Year Old Cannibal Canadian WereDragon in Eragon.
I comforted myself with the knowledge that the transformation could not
occur unless I was wearing the Necklace of Eragon.Thus after I'd learned
not to keep giving it to my twin sister I started taking it off and leaving it in
my clothes chest,where it seemed content to stay.
I also comforted myself that I'd only start sprouting wings and a tail
when I got Gods Gift to Womankind.
So when my mum invited me to join a party of local lads who were going to
recite poetry at one of my older sisters contests,I eagerly accepted.I'd only
been Lady Isabel for two months so far and didn't expect there'd be any trouble.
We were about 20 leagues into the thick dark forest when the brigands
jumped us.They didn't want me,I didn't look important.So they tied
me to a tree near the road and told me they'd send back one of the locals to
recue me.They tipped their hats to the little lady and rode off with their
prisoners.
They had barely ridden around the corner when the blood started
dripping off my upper gums.I felt around with my tongue and felt that one of my
middle teeth seemed to have taken on a nerve scratching triangular sharpness
and was twice as long as the surrounding teeth.
That was followed by a throbbing pain in my lower jaw and when I
felt around there I felt another enlarging serated dagger growing where once
had been a mere childs tooth.
When a third tooth in my upper jaw began to throb and glow I realized with
horror my teeth were changing into those of a dragon.I wasn't even wearing
the Necklace ,I was six years old and my first kills would be some good
bad guys.
I began to cry and protest my changing teeth but when I
suddenly felt my spine stretch and my elongating torso burst through the
bindings,I soon began to scream in pain.My clothing slowly split and
slid off my thickening darkening hide.My golden hair fell in clumps around
my 3 toed taloned feet.With a crack my hips and shoulders burst into a
wider form and my wings suddenly split through the skin of my back
and spread out wide.As my chest barrelled out my screams turned to roars
and I briefly closed my eyes in pain as a giant vise squeezed my
mind smaller.
Then it was done and the Dragoness of Eragon slid her slimy forked tongue
onto the forest floor dirt and smell/tasted the trail of many mammals that ran along
the man flesh road.
She decided to follow the most promising scent taste and trotted bac the
way I'd come.
That giant hand squeezing my mind much smaller did wonders for
rearranging my sense of self.It never occured to me that being a
thirty foot long 4 ton reptile was wrong.The sense of horror only swept
over me when I came out of the forest and found myself near the riverbank
with a smelly manflesh edifice that smelled like home but sure didn't lok like
something I'd feel comfortable in.
" Isabel,is that you?My,you sure are a big toothy thing aren't you.Here
let me wipe the blood off your teeth." said the small two legged female
manflesh thing that had suddenly appeared in my right eyes vision.
I violently backed back my neck and hissed at it
as I tried to decide if it was friend,foe or prey.It was certainly
small enough that a quick swipe on my tail would end its noise.
Masery took one look in my cold reptillian eyes and realized that maybe
I still had a grudge against her.Which in my present condition was not
a good thing.So she slowly backed off and stood still .We both just stared at
each another,not sure what to do.
Finally I got bored of the staring game and a image of a green pretty
in a man flesh's chest came into my mind.Thought became action.
With a blast of flapping wings I thumped off the ground and headed
for the castle.
By the time Masery got to the castle she was tired and out of breath.All the
commotion I was making in the courtyard didn't impress her.Mum was holding
back a crowd of armed soldiers and was yelling at the reptile I'd become to
return to my human shape pronto.
Masery saw me constantly looking at the window to our bedroom.
She saw me make those short hop and flights into the air.And guessed
what I wanted.So she ran in,got the green glowing pretty just as I
was making another hop in the air and dodged just in time as I roared
and threw a weak girly blast of flame at the window.
My throw was lousy but my intentions were clear,stay away from
my toys.So she did the only intelligent thing and tossed the
Necklace out the window at me.I caught it in my claws and settled back into
the courtyard.
Now if anybody could use the Necklace of Eragon then there'd be no
need for me,Lady Isabel,to hold the position of Dragon Princess.However I was
the one in the courtyard with the strength of a drafthorse and a breath straight
from a blacksmith shop.So I instinctively breathed fire on the green gem while
I pulled apart the golden cursed chain of the Necklace.
The chain began to alter ,lengthen and widen.The gem began to glow.
I coiled in my neck and put the altered Necklace around my neck.My whole
body began to glow,shrink and alter.I could feel the vise on my mind slowly
relax the painful squeezing of my thoughts.
And quickly I shrank back into the body of Lady Isabel,the Dragon Princess
of Eragon.