10 The Spectre of the Tower

There was something very satisfying about life in the cage and Dylan was very happy there. It had been several weeks since he, and his more than a hundred brothers and sisters, had hatched from their egg sac and taken to the skies to ride the wind. Dylan had been fortunate to catch a very strong updraught soon after he had let out his long web sail and so while most of his siblings were now fighting for survival in the lands below, this joy filled little spider was living the literal high life in his web strung up between two cage bars on the castle tower.

Not only did Dylan have all the local insects to himself, but sometimes a dirty and smelly person would be put inside the cage and he could take a walk across them, feasting on fleas and ticks. His latest trip however had been a great disappointment and he was beginning to wish that he had stayed home on the web because this girl was surprisingly clean and had only the smallest and most basic mites that would sit on a person's hair strands and not the juicy, blood sucking parasites that he was used to finding on the grubbier prisoners.

'If only someone who was a little dirtier would be put in the cage' Dylan thought 'someone who did not like to bathe and had very greasy hair.'

GOBBER!

The name echoed inside his tiny arachnid mind causing the little spider much confusion. He had received these strange messages before when walking across someone's back or up their arm but he had no idea what they meant; such is the confusing life of a physic spider.

The threaded bolt that held the cage door closed was both rough and rusted, but Astrid had managed to loosen it with very little trouble so she would be ready to open it up if the need arose. The guards never bothered to do the bolts up tightly because the prisoners that they were used to hanging outside the tower, usually tried to avoid falling to their deaths and never tried to open the cage doors.

"Now that's odd" she suddenly exclaimed.

"What is?" Victor enquired.

"I was just thinking about the best course of action to take when Borges returns when out of the blue, it was as if someone had asked me 'Who doesn't like to bathe?' and I thought of my friend Gobber the Belch."

Yes... that is odd" Victor agreed "you'll get no argument from me, but could we please keep our minds on the problem at hand?"

"It shouldn't be too much longer" Astrid noted as the sun slowly disappeared below the horizon.

She was beginning to believe that everything was going to fall nicely into place at last; night would fall, Hiccup would come and Borges would have to spend the next day trying to explain to the Emperor how his prisoners had escaped, but then she heard the footsteps coming up from below and several minutes later, Borges reached the top and ordered the guards to open the window shutters once more. While she was not happy to see him again, both Astrid and Victor were pleased to see how red and flustered he looked after climbing up all those steps, and the light of the sunset didn't help his complexion at all. The pretend siblings had spent a relaxing few hours in the cage but now the time had come to resume acting fearful for their captor again.

"Well then..." Borges tried to sound menacing while attempting to catch his breath "I hope that you two are ready to cooperate."

He continued to breathe deeply and almost hyperventilated while Astrid and Victor just shivered in the cramped cage.

"Get the girl" Borges ordered one of the guards who reached up for the hooked pole.

Thanks to the act they had put on earlier in the afternoon, Borges believed that Ruprecht was the one most terrified of high places and so he figured that if he removed his sister and left the boy hanging alone for a short time, he would soon crack. With a creak that destroyed all confidence in the strength of the chain, the cage was drawn in closer to the window and the second guard went to work on the bolt and was surprised to find it so loose.

"ROSE!" Victor called out as Astrid was dragged from the cage before it was let go and allowed to swing out again with the door still unlocked.

The young boy held on tightly to the bars in genuine fear as his feet slipped out of the open door and hung briefly in mid air before the cage swung back again.

"DON'T LET GO RUPRECHT" Astrid called out.

"Thanks... I won't" Victor replied to the sage advice sarcastically.

Astrid quickly looked up and around at the rafters above her head. The guard was holding her firmly but she was sure that she would be able to break his grip and leap up before he could react. Both guards would then be compelled to chase her down so she planned a route around the top of the roof beams that would bring her back into a position to swing down again and kick Borges with both feet. She couldn't guarantee that he would be in the ideal position when she did so, but she was sure that he would either fall back down the stairs or off the stairs but if he didn't move from where he was now, he'd go straight out the window; the thought of this made her smile.

"Now then boy" Borges smirked "what exactly are you not telling..."

'THUMP'

A loud noise from the roof above made everyone look up; Astrid crossed her fingers and hoped that it was Hiccup and Toothless but Victor was the only one who clearly see what it was from his vantage point in the cage.

"Err... Rose..." he voice cracked "the tiles are... well... they're wobbling."

"Damn" she whispered to herself "so much for plan A."

The sudden noise had frightened the guard so much, that his grip on Astrid had tightened, forcing her to get a little violent. The poor man yelped with pain as her heel came down sharply on his toes and before he, or anyone else could react, Astrid had broken his grip on her and leaped out of the window. She grabbed onto the cage just as it swung back and rode it out into the fading light.

"GRAB HER YOU IDIOTS" Borges yelled at the guards, but as they moved forward the cage began to swing back again.

Astrid took full advantage of the momentum and swung out her legs, catching the window stutters and kicking them back at the guards. The second fell back onto the stairs but the first sailed back off the edge and down the tower. Fortunately for him, he did not go all the way to the bottom but instead landed roughly on his back, one flight of steps below. As if to punctuate everyones shock, the sound of something heavy moving about, drifted down from the roof above and Borges decided that the time had come to beat a hasty retreat from both the ghost, and Astrid's feet. Borges almost fell over the first guard who moaned softly as he ran by, but the second guard stopped briefly to help his friend back to his feet and down the steps to safety.

The Changewing gave a low guttural growl as it moved across the conical roof towards the cage that Astrid was climbing back into. Tall trees, hill tops and towers in the general area, were all places that the near invisible dragon like to consider to be his territory and although he did not mind the people moving around down below, he did take great offence when someone dared to come up to his level. These latest ones would need to be taught a lesson, just like all the others and be sent back down to the ground in a hurry. The dragon did not consider that is was his fault if they should die a brief but painful death when they struck the ground; they should have learnt their lesson from all the others who had come crashing down before them over the last year or so.

One thing he did notice about these latest intruders, was that they were both much smaller than the people that he usually found hanging from the tower and one of them was female which although was not unheard of, was quite rare. The Changewing did not like human females very much, for although everyone would scream and yell when he appeared, well... semi-appeared, the voices of the females was of a much higher pitch than the males and it hurt his delicate ears, although the men were the most likely to start crying and the squeal of a crying man was even worse to the sensitive dragon.

It took the Changewing a short time to realise that there was something wrong here; in the nearby forest, people would either run from him or attack (with the runners living a few minutes longer than the attackers did) and as already mentioned, the people in the cages would scream and yell or shiver silently in fear, but these smaller ones were... different somehow."

"Hello there" Astrid addressed the dragon as she climbed up on top of the cage "Sorry I don't have any fish for you."

'Yes indeed' the dragon thought 'it would hide the horrid taste of human if they would garnish themselves with a nice tasty, oily fish.'

With a shudder, the Changewing stopped it slow advance across the conical roof and spread out its left wing. After studying it for a few seconds, the dragon looked down at its chest and saw that all was well; its camouflage ability was working brilliantly so how did this young girl seem to know what it was and where it was?

"I'd say that we aren't going to harm you, but I don't think that's your biggest worry."

She was right; the Changewings biggest worry at the moment was trying to work out how the humans had managed to overcome its invisibility. It would have been much happier if it had only known that Astrid could not see it, but was just guessing its location based on the sound of its footsteps and breathing. Something else suddenly occurred to the dragon; how was it that he could understand what this person was saying? He did not know the words at all, but as she spoke the meaning of them just appeared inside his head - along with a strange desire to eat a fly or two.

"We're actually waiting for some other dragons to come and get us" she revealed, not knowing why she was doing so well with this wild dragon, but Astrid was happy none the less that she and Victor were not covered with gelatinous acid... yet.

Old men were the easiest to transverse thanks mainly to the thinning or total lack of hair on their heads but this young blonde was giving Dylan a very hard time. He had been fighting his way through her straw coloured locks for what had seemed like an eight legged eternity, when he at last came across the studded leather headband that neatly crossed her forehead and encircled her crown like a bypass road. When Dylan had made his way to the top of the strap, he sat down to take a short rest because, unlike most of the people he encountered in his cage, this one did not stay still for a minute. She always seemed to be moving about or fidgeting with something and eventually, to Dylans complete surprise, she had started jumping about in a way that had made the little spider confused and dizzy, but now she had slowed down at last and was not moving much at all, giving him the break he needed. If Dylan could close his eyes, he would have even tried to get some sleep.

Something breathing behind him, caught his attention and when he looked around, he saw that his short time of rest, and possibly his life, would soon be over.

"Oh sh*t" he gasped when his polarised eyes allowed him to see the face of the dragon that no one else could, staring at him from only a few feet away.

This was one of those few times in a spider's life when he really wanted his mother; if only he and his siblings had not eaten her back when they had first hatched.

I was watching a bit of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince last night and realised that the whole series would have been much better if Harry had always acted like he did when he was under the influence of the Luck Potion. Confusing his friends, sneaking up on the Professor and doing the whole nasty fang bit with the giant spider; I almost wet myself laughing.

By the way, I came up with the idea for Dylan the Psychic Spider days ago so he is not based on Hagrid's pet BUT I did notice that his ability means that he is very similar to Douglas Adams Babel fish but with more personality... and legs.