Part VIII -- Fracto
Kenya was jotting something down on her paper wasp when the Players exited the castle. "So, how'd it go?" she inquired.
"Not good," Luke replied. "Our answer made no sense whatsoever."
She smiled apologetically. "Don't sweat over it. One way or another, the Good Magician's answers turn out to be correct. Good luck on your journey."
Luke hoped their luck would hold, but he doubted it. With such a vague answer to work with, their chances of winning the game were slim.
"The prize must be at the center of our attention, and the center of our attention must be at Lake Eerie," Jenny murmured. "So the prize must be at Lake Eerie."
"Where is Lake Eerie?" asked Vader.
Jenny frowned. "I'm sorry. I don't know."
"Metria, you must know," Luke said hopefully.
The demoness shrugged her shoulders until they rose past her forehead. "Never heard of it."
"Great," snorted Vader. "Knowing our luck, no one's heard of it."
"Maybe Chem Centaur can help," Jenny offered. "Her talent is making maps, so she might have it on one of her maps..."
Luke halted, his mind seizing the name. "Chem who?"
"Chem Centaur," Jenny repeated. "She's very nice..."
"Centaur!" Luke exclaimed. "That's how the Good Magician pronounced 'center!' He meant 'centaur' of our attention, not 'center!'"
Vader nodded. "There was a centaur among the Companion choices, if my memory serves me."
"So what's this all mean?" demanded Metria.
"That if we find Chem Centaur, she may be able to help us in our quest," Luke replied.
"But the centaur of our attention is at Lake Eerie," Vader pointed out. "If Chem truly is the centaur of our attention, we would have to find the lake in order to find her."
"And we can't find the lake until we find her!" realized Jenny.
What a mess! Luke was about ready to throw up his hands and surrender. But he knew no way out of the game other than winning it. So they all had no choice but to keep going.
"The centaur of our attention might not be Chem," Jenny added. "It could be another centaur."
"Why don't you ask the cat?" suggested Metria.
Jenny set Sammy down. "Sammy, find Chem Centaur."
The cat streaked off, and everyone had to run to keep up with him. It wasn't long before Jenny became too winded to run anymore.
"Metria, turn into a diggle again so we can all ride on your back," Luke requested.
With a loud pop she made the transformation. Everyone climbed aboard, and she slithered through the ground after the cat.
"Watch out!" shouted Jenny.
A fearsome tangle tree lashed out with its tentacle-like branches, its limbs making a groaning sound that sounded like a vicious snarl. Sammy darted under the brush and out of its reach, but it only turned its attention toward the others. Vader ignited his lightsaber, and Luke drew his blast-her, hoping the weapon wasn't particular about shooting gender-less creatures.
But Metria had other plans. She ducked beneath the surface of the earth like a water fowl, dragging the others with her.
"Metria, you'll smother us to death!" Vader shouted.
"Will not!" she shot back. "Watch!"
Dark soil and gray stone surrounded them, yet Luke had no problem breathing. They traveled through the ground as effortlessly as if it were mist. When they had traveled a sufficient distance to bypass the tangle tree, she surfaced again.
"Diggles phase through the ground, remember?" Jenny explained. "Sorry, I should have reminded you."
"Metria should have warned us," Vader replied.
"Luke already knew and you're not my Player, so there," Metria sneered. A mouth appeared on the back of her head and stuck its tongue out at Vader.
Sammy paused at the brink of a deep canyon, sat down, and looked expectantly at the others. Metria stopped and resumed her human form. The others promptly fell to the ground in a heap.
"The Gap Chasm!" Luke exclaimed, disentangling himself from Jenny and Vader. "But it took us a day to get from the Gap to the Good Magician!"
"The game must be speeding us along to the next challenge," Jenny replied. "It normally takes over a week to get from the Isthmus, where we started, to the Magician's castle, but it only took us three days. Things change a bit for the game."
"Chem must be down there," Vader mused, glancing over the edge.
A horrendous bellow rumbled from the depths.
"And the Gap Dragon, too," added Jenny. "How are we going to get down there?"
"We can always hike down," Luke suggested.
"What about the dragon?" inquired Vader.
"We'll handle him when the time comes," Luke replied. He took a step down into the canyon. "Anyone coming?"
Metria morphed into a lightning bug and settled onto the collar of Luke's shirt. She would be taking the easy way down, of course. Grudgingly Vader followed, Jenny close behind.
"Sammy, find a path," urged Jenny.
Sammy meowed and hopped onto a boulder. Vader followed the cat's cue and stepped onto the rock. But it sank into the ground, becoming flush with the canyon wall, and Vader was dumped into a channel that curved and looped its way into the Gap. He rapidly slid out of sight, uttering a loud, prolonged curse that left a black streak of char in his wake.
"A rock slide!" Jenny shouted. "These are fun!" She leaped into the channel and slid after Vader.
Luke smiled at the pun and leaped into the slide.
The slide meandered down the side of the ravine, in no particular hurry to get to the bottom. Luke knew the feeling. He wasn't exactly keen on facing the Gap Dragon himself. But perhaps, at the bottom, they'd find an answer. The game wouldn't make a challenge without providing a way to solve it, would it?
The slide finally terminated in a mass of pillow bushes on the ravine floor. Metria assumed human form and helped Luke to his feet. Vader and Jenny were already up, picking down from their clothes.
"I don't hear the dragon," Metria noted. "He must not have pack us yet."
"Must not have what?" repeated Luke.
"Gaggle, pride, school, pod, flock, group..."
"Herd? Oh, heard."
"Whatever."
A rumble shook the air. Everyone glanced around, expecting the dragon, but it wasn't to be seen. Luke shivered a bit. Had it suddenly grown colder?
"That's one ugly cloud," Metria said with her usual forthrightness.
Said cloud, which was passing over the sun at the moment, paused and rumbled again. A jag of lightning illuminated its underside.
"Oh-oh, that's Fracto," Jenny said warily. "He's the cloud king, and he's very temperamental."
Luke smirked. That sounded like someone he knew.
"He's not dangerous, is he?" asked Vader.
"He can be," cautioned Jenny. "Don't insult him and he should leave us alone."
"Pooh," grunted Metria, becoming a growly bear for an instant. "What can a puffball like Fraction do to us?"
The wind picked up, blowing Luke and Jenny's hair, Metria's skirt, and Vader's cloak askew. Flecks of rain began to pepper the air.
"Shut your mouth, Metria, before I shut it for you," Vader ordered.
Metria muttered a long list of words that blackened the ground around her and made Jenny's ears glow bright red, but at least none of the derogatory spiel was directed at Fracto.
"Forgive our friend, King Fracto," Vader apologized. "She is unable to appreciate the power of the elements. Safe journey, weather-master." He raised a welcoming hand toward the sky.
Fracto gave a thunderous growl of pleasure and continued on his way. Luke had never thought Vader to be diplomatic, but he was thankful for it. It had helped them pass this challenge unscathed.
Whomp.
"What was that?" Luke asked, suddenly nervous.
"The Gap Dragon, no doubt," Vader replied, hand on his lightsaber.
"We'd better find Chem and get out of here," Jenny stated.
"No kidding!" Luke exclaimed as the earth trembled with another mighty whomp.
They crossed the floor of the Gap and searched for an easy way to scale the cliff, but there was none. Nor was there any sign a centaur had passed this way. All the while the dragon came steadily closer.
"Here he comes!" shouted Metria.
A reptilian head rounded the corner, followed by a sinuous body with six legs, tiny stunted wings, and a lashing tail. All purple-and-green scales and sharp teeth and silver claws, it was easily the size of an AT-ST and twice as fearsome. It jetted white-hot steam from its mouth as it came, and Luke could feel the heat of its breath even some fifty meters away.
"If either of you have a plan," Metria advised, "now's a good time to implant it."
"Good time to what?" demanded Vader.
"Embed, bury, begin, commence..."
"Implement."
"Whatever."
Luke reached for his blast-her. Wait, he couldn't use it. The Gap Dragon was male.
"Metria, can you change into something to scare it off?" he asked.
"Nothing can scare that creature!" she balked.
Then he had a brainstorm. Lightning seemed to flash over his head to emphasize it. As Uncle Owen had once said, there was more than one way to rewire a vaporator.
"I'd rather contend with the Gap Dragon than that pipsqueak Fracto," he said loudly.
Fracto perked up, aware that his name had been mentioned.
"Luke," Vader rumbled threateningly, sounding almost like the cloud.
"Oh, come on!" Luke exclaimed. "That lousy puff of fog can't do much damage, can it?"
A loud crack of thunder made the Gap Dragon pause. It roared at Fracto and whomped closer.
"Sleepwalker, what the #### are you doing?" protested Metria, her curse turning the air smoky.
"Telling the truth. After all, clouds are just condensed water vapor. No real brains at all. And Fracto's probably the dumbest of them all."
This burst of thunder was deafening. Even the dragon jumped at the sound.
"C'mon, work with me here," Luke hissed at the others.
At last Metria realized what Luke was up to. "Yeah, Fractal's a real airhead. Just a little scud with some static in his belly."
"And a real windbag, too," Jenny piped up, catching on.
Vader stared at all of them, mute with amazement at their apparent stupidity. All the while Fracto's ominous thundering grew louder and louder.
"What's that noise?" wondered Luke loudly. "Do clouds get gas?"
"He's all gas," Metria replied. "It's what passes as a brain for him."
"And a personality," added Jenny with a giggle.
It was as if someone had turned on a faucet. Rain slued down from the sky as they all felt the fury of a cloud scorned. Luke was instantly soaked to the bone, and the others looked no better.
The Gap Dragon felt Fracto's anger as well. He shook water from his ears and bellowed again. But when he tried to whomp toward his prey, he lost his footing on the wet ground and landed on his belly.
At last Vader figured out what Luke was trying to accomplish. "About calling you weather-master, Fracto -- I take it back. A Tatooine dust storm could do better than this."
The rain doubled in intensity. Giant puddles materialized on the canyon floor. The Gap Dragon churned the earth beneath his feet into slippery mud trying to stand up, so he appeared to be whomping in place as he struggled to reach them.
"You call this a storm?" Vader went on with a disdainful laugh. "The clouds of Kamino would laugh hysterically if they could see this."
Hail intermixed itself with the rain, stinging them. But everyone was on a roll and in high spirits, laughing, shouting insults at the cloud, waving cheerily at the increasingly frustrated and very muddy Gap Dragon. Luke couldn't believe his plan was working so well.
"Do you hear that?" asked Metria.
"Yeah, must be Fracto's flatulence problem," Luke replied jokingly.
"Not Fatso," she replied, serious for once. "It sounds like a giant toilet being flushed."
Luke hushed up and listened. A curious roar was making itself known over the drone of rain and the dragon's struggles. It grew louder the longer he listened to it. The Force screamed a warning.
"Climb higher!" he shouted. "Flash flood!"
His warning was half an instant too late. A solid wall of water thundered around the bend and smashed into the Gap Dragon, swallowing him up and reaching hungrily for them.
Safe in the sky, Fracto enjoyed the last laugh as his storm-induced flood carried the Players and their Companions away.
***
Vader acted fast upon seeing the wave's approach. He reached for his chest controls and activated the emergency override system on his respirator. The device inflated his lungs to full capacity, then ceased operation.
Then he was swept away by the flood, his feet where his head should be, his world spinning around him as if he'd been stuffed in a laundry dryer. The water's force ground him into the dirt of the canyon floor, then tossed him roughly against something moving -- Jenny, he guessed -- then scraped him along the cliffside. All the while he struggled to regain his bearings so he could kick to the surface, but up and down changed places so frequently the task was impossible.
At last his hands found something solid that he clung to for dear life. He took a moment to discern that his head was facing up and his feet facing down, then climbed up what he assumed was the canyon wall. But when his head broke the surface he found himself clutching, not stone, but the armored side of the Gap Dragon.
This is just great, he thought. Out of the reactor, into the shaft. For the first time, he realized he had a good chance of dying in Xanth. How would that affect his Mundanian existence, he wondered. Would he simply be declared missing? Or would some snooping officer find him dead at his computer?
But he realized that chomping him was the last thing on the Gap Dragon's mind at the moment. The beast was swimming with the current, vestigial wings spread to maintain balance in the water and tail rigid to act as a rudder. He rolled one great eye to regard Vader, grunted, and resumed paddling. Apparently they were on the same side at the moment.
He felt a stabbing pain in his chest, and he reactivated his respirator. Once he'd regained his breath he scanned the waters for the others.
Metria had taken on the form of a half-human half-fish creature. She swam alongside the dragon in order to talk to Vader.
"Have you seen that son of yours?" she demanded.
"No."
"&&&&!" she hissed, diving beneath the waves with a flick of her tail.
A yellowish soggy lump bobbed on the surface of the water, and Vader extended an arm to scoop it up. It was Sammy, coughing up water and looking like a drowned nexu whelp.
"Tell the Gap Dragon where to find Luke and Jenny!" Vader ordered, throwing the cat onto the dragon's shoulder.
Sammy scrambled up the Gap Dragon's neck until he was atop his head, yowling into an ear that was so massive he could have easily fallen in. The dragon growled in reply and veered to the side, pushing Vader to a convenient ledge. He gripped the stone and pulled himself onto it, and the dragon swam on like some mythic sea serpent.
The stone ledge was about two meters wide and eight meters long, so Vader was in little danger of falling off. All the same, he scooted as close to the cliff face as he could and assumed a sitting position, awaiting the dragon's return. He didn't have long to wait. The Gap Dragon ducked his head under the water, then turned around and strained against the current to reach Vader, holding a limp form in his mouth.
It was with an unexpected dose of shock that Vader recognized it as Luke.
The Gap Dragon placed his first set of legs onto the ledge, then gently set the young Jedi down as if he were one of his own hatchlings. His ears pressed flat to his skull, he whuffed what sounded remarkably like an apology before sliding back into the water to find Jenny.
Vader hurried to Luke's side. He wasn't breathing. His lips were blue with the chill of the flood waters and lack of air. Vader fumbled at his neck to locate a pulse but couldn't find one.
Luke Skywalker, hero of the Alliance, destroyer of the Death Star, son of Darth Vader, savior of the Jedi Order, was dead.
Kenya was jotting something down on her paper wasp when the Players exited the castle. "So, how'd it go?" she inquired.
"Not good," Luke replied. "Our answer made no sense whatsoever."
She smiled apologetically. "Don't sweat over it. One way or another, the Good Magician's answers turn out to be correct. Good luck on your journey."
Luke hoped their luck would hold, but he doubted it. With such a vague answer to work with, their chances of winning the game were slim.
"The prize must be at the center of our attention, and the center of our attention must be at Lake Eerie," Jenny murmured. "So the prize must be at Lake Eerie."
"Where is Lake Eerie?" asked Vader.
Jenny frowned. "I'm sorry. I don't know."
"Metria, you must know," Luke said hopefully.
The demoness shrugged her shoulders until they rose past her forehead. "Never heard of it."
"Great," snorted Vader. "Knowing our luck, no one's heard of it."
"Maybe Chem Centaur can help," Jenny offered. "Her talent is making maps, so she might have it on one of her maps..."
Luke halted, his mind seizing the name. "Chem who?"
"Chem Centaur," Jenny repeated. "She's very nice..."
"Centaur!" Luke exclaimed. "That's how the Good Magician pronounced 'center!' He meant 'centaur' of our attention, not 'center!'"
Vader nodded. "There was a centaur among the Companion choices, if my memory serves me."
"So what's this all mean?" demanded Metria.
"That if we find Chem Centaur, she may be able to help us in our quest," Luke replied.
"But the centaur of our attention is at Lake Eerie," Vader pointed out. "If Chem truly is the centaur of our attention, we would have to find the lake in order to find her."
"And we can't find the lake until we find her!" realized Jenny.
What a mess! Luke was about ready to throw up his hands and surrender. But he knew no way out of the game other than winning it. So they all had no choice but to keep going.
"The centaur of our attention might not be Chem," Jenny added. "It could be another centaur."
"Why don't you ask the cat?" suggested Metria.
Jenny set Sammy down. "Sammy, find Chem Centaur."
The cat streaked off, and everyone had to run to keep up with him. It wasn't long before Jenny became too winded to run anymore.
"Metria, turn into a diggle again so we can all ride on your back," Luke requested.
With a loud pop she made the transformation. Everyone climbed aboard, and she slithered through the ground after the cat.
"Watch out!" shouted Jenny.
A fearsome tangle tree lashed out with its tentacle-like branches, its limbs making a groaning sound that sounded like a vicious snarl. Sammy darted under the brush and out of its reach, but it only turned its attention toward the others. Vader ignited his lightsaber, and Luke drew his blast-her, hoping the weapon wasn't particular about shooting gender-less creatures.
But Metria had other plans. She ducked beneath the surface of the earth like a water fowl, dragging the others with her.
"Metria, you'll smother us to death!" Vader shouted.
"Will not!" she shot back. "Watch!"
Dark soil and gray stone surrounded them, yet Luke had no problem breathing. They traveled through the ground as effortlessly as if it were mist. When they had traveled a sufficient distance to bypass the tangle tree, she surfaced again.
"Diggles phase through the ground, remember?" Jenny explained. "Sorry, I should have reminded you."
"Metria should have warned us," Vader replied.
"Luke already knew and you're not my Player, so there," Metria sneered. A mouth appeared on the back of her head and stuck its tongue out at Vader.
Sammy paused at the brink of a deep canyon, sat down, and looked expectantly at the others. Metria stopped and resumed her human form. The others promptly fell to the ground in a heap.
"The Gap Chasm!" Luke exclaimed, disentangling himself from Jenny and Vader. "But it took us a day to get from the Gap to the Good Magician!"
"The game must be speeding us along to the next challenge," Jenny replied. "It normally takes over a week to get from the Isthmus, where we started, to the Magician's castle, but it only took us three days. Things change a bit for the game."
"Chem must be down there," Vader mused, glancing over the edge.
A horrendous bellow rumbled from the depths.
"And the Gap Dragon, too," added Jenny. "How are we going to get down there?"
"We can always hike down," Luke suggested.
"What about the dragon?" inquired Vader.
"We'll handle him when the time comes," Luke replied. He took a step down into the canyon. "Anyone coming?"
Metria morphed into a lightning bug and settled onto the collar of Luke's shirt. She would be taking the easy way down, of course. Grudgingly Vader followed, Jenny close behind.
"Sammy, find a path," urged Jenny.
Sammy meowed and hopped onto a boulder. Vader followed the cat's cue and stepped onto the rock. But it sank into the ground, becoming flush with the canyon wall, and Vader was dumped into a channel that curved and looped its way into the Gap. He rapidly slid out of sight, uttering a loud, prolonged curse that left a black streak of char in his wake.
"A rock slide!" Jenny shouted. "These are fun!" She leaped into the channel and slid after Vader.
Luke smiled at the pun and leaped into the slide.
The slide meandered down the side of the ravine, in no particular hurry to get to the bottom. Luke knew the feeling. He wasn't exactly keen on facing the Gap Dragon himself. But perhaps, at the bottom, they'd find an answer. The game wouldn't make a challenge without providing a way to solve it, would it?
The slide finally terminated in a mass of pillow bushes on the ravine floor. Metria assumed human form and helped Luke to his feet. Vader and Jenny were already up, picking down from their clothes.
"I don't hear the dragon," Metria noted. "He must not have pack us yet."
"Must not have what?" repeated Luke.
"Gaggle, pride, school, pod, flock, group..."
"Herd? Oh, heard."
"Whatever."
A rumble shook the air. Everyone glanced around, expecting the dragon, but it wasn't to be seen. Luke shivered a bit. Had it suddenly grown colder?
"That's one ugly cloud," Metria said with her usual forthrightness.
Said cloud, which was passing over the sun at the moment, paused and rumbled again. A jag of lightning illuminated its underside.
"Oh-oh, that's Fracto," Jenny said warily. "He's the cloud king, and he's very temperamental."
Luke smirked. That sounded like someone he knew.
"He's not dangerous, is he?" asked Vader.
"He can be," cautioned Jenny. "Don't insult him and he should leave us alone."
"Pooh," grunted Metria, becoming a growly bear for an instant. "What can a puffball like Fraction do to us?"
The wind picked up, blowing Luke and Jenny's hair, Metria's skirt, and Vader's cloak askew. Flecks of rain began to pepper the air.
"Shut your mouth, Metria, before I shut it for you," Vader ordered.
Metria muttered a long list of words that blackened the ground around her and made Jenny's ears glow bright red, but at least none of the derogatory spiel was directed at Fracto.
"Forgive our friend, King Fracto," Vader apologized. "She is unable to appreciate the power of the elements. Safe journey, weather-master." He raised a welcoming hand toward the sky.
Fracto gave a thunderous growl of pleasure and continued on his way. Luke had never thought Vader to be diplomatic, but he was thankful for it. It had helped them pass this challenge unscathed.
Whomp.
"What was that?" Luke asked, suddenly nervous.
"The Gap Dragon, no doubt," Vader replied, hand on his lightsaber.
"We'd better find Chem and get out of here," Jenny stated.
"No kidding!" Luke exclaimed as the earth trembled with another mighty whomp.
They crossed the floor of the Gap and searched for an easy way to scale the cliff, but there was none. Nor was there any sign a centaur had passed this way. All the while the dragon came steadily closer.
"Here he comes!" shouted Metria.
A reptilian head rounded the corner, followed by a sinuous body with six legs, tiny stunted wings, and a lashing tail. All purple-and-green scales and sharp teeth and silver claws, it was easily the size of an AT-ST and twice as fearsome. It jetted white-hot steam from its mouth as it came, and Luke could feel the heat of its breath even some fifty meters away.
"If either of you have a plan," Metria advised, "now's a good time to implant it."
"Good time to what?" demanded Vader.
"Embed, bury, begin, commence..."
"Implement."
"Whatever."
Luke reached for his blast-her. Wait, he couldn't use it. The Gap Dragon was male.
"Metria, can you change into something to scare it off?" he asked.
"Nothing can scare that creature!" she balked.
Then he had a brainstorm. Lightning seemed to flash over his head to emphasize it. As Uncle Owen had once said, there was more than one way to rewire a vaporator.
"I'd rather contend with the Gap Dragon than that pipsqueak Fracto," he said loudly.
Fracto perked up, aware that his name had been mentioned.
"Luke," Vader rumbled threateningly, sounding almost like the cloud.
"Oh, come on!" Luke exclaimed. "That lousy puff of fog can't do much damage, can it?"
A loud crack of thunder made the Gap Dragon pause. It roared at Fracto and whomped closer.
"Sleepwalker, what the #### are you doing?" protested Metria, her curse turning the air smoky.
"Telling the truth. After all, clouds are just condensed water vapor. No real brains at all. And Fracto's probably the dumbest of them all."
This burst of thunder was deafening. Even the dragon jumped at the sound.
"C'mon, work with me here," Luke hissed at the others.
At last Metria realized what Luke was up to. "Yeah, Fractal's a real airhead. Just a little scud with some static in his belly."
"And a real windbag, too," Jenny piped up, catching on.
Vader stared at all of them, mute with amazement at their apparent stupidity. All the while Fracto's ominous thundering grew louder and louder.
"What's that noise?" wondered Luke loudly. "Do clouds get gas?"
"He's all gas," Metria replied. "It's what passes as a brain for him."
"And a personality," added Jenny with a giggle.
It was as if someone had turned on a faucet. Rain slued down from the sky as they all felt the fury of a cloud scorned. Luke was instantly soaked to the bone, and the others looked no better.
The Gap Dragon felt Fracto's anger as well. He shook water from his ears and bellowed again. But when he tried to whomp toward his prey, he lost his footing on the wet ground and landed on his belly.
At last Vader figured out what Luke was trying to accomplish. "About calling you weather-master, Fracto -- I take it back. A Tatooine dust storm could do better than this."
The rain doubled in intensity. Giant puddles materialized on the canyon floor. The Gap Dragon churned the earth beneath his feet into slippery mud trying to stand up, so he appeared to be whomping in place as he struggled to reach them.
"You call this a storm?" Vader went on with a disdainful laugh. "The clouds of Kamino would laugh hysterically if they could see this."
Hail intermixed itself with the rain, stinging them. But everyone was on a roll and in high spirits, laughing, shouting insults at the cloud, waving cheerily at the increasingly frustrated and very muddy Gap Dragon. Luke couldn't believe his plan was working so well.
"Do you hear that?" asked Metria.
"Yeah, must be Fracto's flatulence problem," Luke replied jokingly.
"Not Fatso," she replied, serious for once. "It sounds like a giant toilet being flushed."
Luke hushed up and listened. A curious roar was making itself known over the drone of rain and the dragon's struggles. It grew louder the longer he listened to it. The Force screamed a warning.
"Climb higher!" he shouted. "Flash flood!"
His warning was half an instant too late. A solid wall of water thundered around the bend and smashed into the Gap Dragon, swallowing him up and reaching hungrily for them.
Safe in the sky, Fracto enjoyed the last laugh as his storm-induced flood carried the Players and their Companions away.
***
Vader acted fast upon seeing the wave's approach. He reached for his chest controls and activated the emergency override system on his respirator. The device inflated his lungs to full capacity, then ceased operation.
Then he was swept away by the flood, his feet where his head should be, his world spinning around him as if he'd been stuffed in a laundry dryer. The water's force ground him into the dirt of the canyon floor, then tossed him roughly against something moving -- Jenny, he guessed -- then scraped him along the cliffside. All the while he struggled to regain his bearings so he could kick to the surface, but up and down changed places so frequently the task was impossible.
At last his hands found something solid that he clung to for dear life. He took a moment to discern that his head was facing up and his feet facing down, then climbed up what he assumed was the canyon wall. But when his head broke the surface he found himself clutching, not stone, but the armored side of the Gap Dragon.
This is just great, he thought. Out of the reactor, into the shaft. For the first time, he realized he had a good chance of dying in Xanth. How would that affect his Mundanian existence, he wondered. Would he simply be declared missing? Or would some snooping officer find him dead at his computer?
But he realized that chomping him was the last thing on the Gap Dragon's mind at the moment. The beast was swimming with the current, vestigial wings spread to maintain balance in the water and tail rigid to act as a rudder. He rolled one great eye to regard Vader, grunted, and resumed paddling. Apparently they were on the same side at the moment.
He felt a stabbing pain in his chest, and he reactivated his respirator. Once he'd regained his breath he scanned the waters for the others.
Metria had taken on the form of a half-human half-fish creature. She swam alongside the dragon in order to talk to Vader.
"Have you seen that son of yours?" she demanded.
"No."
"&&&&!" she hissed, diving beneath the waves with a flick of her tail.
A yellowish soggy lump bobbed on the surface of the water, and Vader extended an arm to scoop it up. It was Sammy, coughing up water and looking like a drowned nexu whelp.
"Tell the Gap Dragon where to find Luke and Jenny!" Vader ordered, throwing the cat onto the dragon's shoulder.
Sammy scrambled up the Gap Dragon's neck until he was atop his head, yowling into an ear that was so massive he could have easily fallen in. The dragon growled in reply and veered to the side, pushing Vader to a convenient ledge. He gripped the stone and pulled himself onto it, and the dragon swam on like some mythic sea serpent.
The stone ledge was about two meters wide and eight meters long, so Vader was in little danger of falling off. All the same, he scooted as close to the cliff face as he could and assumed a sitting position, awaiting the dragon's return. He didn't have long to wait. The Gap Dragon ducked his head under the water, then turned around and strained against the current to reach Vader, holding a limp form in his mouth.
It was with an unexpected dose of shock that Vader recognized it as Luke.
The Gap Dragon placed his first set of legs onto the ledge, then gently set the young Jedi down as if he were one of his own hatchlings. His ears pressed flat to his skull, he whuffed what sounded remarkably like an apology before sliding back into the water to find Jenny.
Vader hurried to Luke's side. He wasn't breathing. His lips were blue with the chill of the flood waters and lack of air. Vader fumbled at his neck to locate a pulse but couldn't find one.
Luke Skywalker, hero of the Alliance, destroyer of the Death Star, son of Darth Vader, savior of the Jedi Order, was dead.