Part 2; Making a Connection

"So, what are you two doing again?" Lance asked. Moordryd and Cain were doing something with the gear, while Lance and the dragons watched. Cain turned around, "We're trying to find a way to get our vidd-coms to link to the outside mini brat, so make yourself useful and give me that Dragon Star Gear! We'd need the wires!"

"Nu-uh!" sneered Lance as he stuck his tongue out at Cain. Moordryd yelled, "Will you two shut up! This is hard!"

"Shouldn't one of you two know this stuff?' asked Lance, "Like Parm does on my crew?"

"That's Vizz's job," Moordryd muttered, "Decepshun; can you give this a quick mag-burst to get it started?" Decepshun grunted and hit the gear with a burst of black energy. The screen of Moordryd's com came to life, but was very fuzzy. Lance looked at it and said, "Increase the Draconium polarity."

"What?" asked Cain. Lance shrugged, "I don't know, but Parm says it every time my vidd-screen's about to conk out, so maybe it'll help?"

"What the heck, the screen's so fuzzy now I can't even read the controls," Moordryd said as he squinted, the pressed a few buttons on his wrist and the screen became clear. Lance cheered, "Yay! Now let's call Artha!"

"Not a chance kid, we're calling my father!" Moordryd snapped. Lance mumbled, "Like that'll help," but did nothing else. Cain watched as the link went through, and gave a sigh of relief when it did. Lance grinned, "What's the matter? Were you scared?"

"NO!" the lieutenant yelled. Moordryd was talking to his father, "And so we're trapped in here, father. What should we do?"

"Why did you wait so late in capturing that boy's dragon, Moordryd?" Word demanded. Moordryd sighed, "Vizz was fixing the wraith gear, so we couldn't go before that, now what do we do?"

"You can still reach the bone mark Moordryd, so get it and wait for the doors to reopen!"

After the link had terminated, Lance asked, "Wouldn't it be smarter to just wait here, and not go through the really dark maze?"

"That's only if we don't want that Xenox," Cain said smugly, "Besides, we can toss you ahead to check for traps."

"Me?" yelled Lance, "But I'm just a kid! You can't throw me into traps, it's, uh, child endangerment! Yeah, that's it!"

"Cain stop arguing with the kid and follow me!" Moordryd yelled, and he and Decepshun shot down the corridor. Lance was right behind them, he wasn't taking chances with Cain, who brought up the rear.

Lance whined at Moordryd, "Can't I call Artha? He's going to be real worried!" but Moordryd just snapped, "Not a chance, and unless you want to be left behind you had better be quiet!"

Lance nodded and shut up, and soon rode half-asleep in his saddle, Fracshun was just following Decepshun, so didn't need steering. Moordryd was looking at an old map, but was finding it hard as the map was on paper, proof to its age, so it didn't glow and didn't have a heat signature. Corshun stalked past Fracshun, and knocked the little dragon as he did so. Lance jerked awake and yelled, "Hey!"

Cain laughed, and Moordryd turned to them and said, "Alright, it looks like we make three lefts, a right, pass two turns, make another left, and we're out of the maze part."

"Maze part!" squeaked Lance, "You mean there's more traps! You said that the temple was a maze!"

"Yeah, well, I meant a maze of traps!" Moordryd said as he shrugged. Cain grinned, "What's the matter? Were you scared?" he mocked. Lance muttered something about a "scale-scraping loser" and sincerely wished that he had his mag-staff with him.

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Vizz shuddered as he walked into Word Payyn's office. He stammered, "Sorry I'm late sir, Moordryd needed me to fix some wraith gear, so-"

"Enough of your squawking," Word snapped, "Did you do a scan of the scene? Or do I have to get a few wraiths in here?"

"N-no sir, I mean y-yes sir! I d-did a scan of where the wraith g-gear transmitter came off the D-dragon B-booster, thus allowing whoever took the wraith g-gear off him to do it s-s-secretly."

"Good, did you find anything?" Word asked, watching as Vizz's knees knocked together.

"W-well, there was t-this," Vizz said as he held up a black ball of metal, "From g-green gear, and it has t-traces of black Draconium on it."

"Hmm," muttered Word as he rolled it around in his hand, "How very interesting."