Okay, I'm trying to get as many chapters in as possible before Tuesday…there's a planned 14 chapters for this fic, so we're over the halfway point! Hooray! Oh, and for all those who did not like the fluff…I promise you an effective transition back to what Ptolemy's Gate started as! Do not worry, for I have read and understood the books!

In this chapter, they realize that they have (predictably) gone the wrong way and ended up in dragon territory. Come on, you could so see that coming…we'll see more of Queezle in this chapter, too. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is not mine. I wish it was, but its not…god, this makes me so depressed! Haha, not really. Jonathan Stroud is a genius, don't you agree? Oh, also some allusions to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit; I don't own that either.


Here Be Dragons

"A pessimist is one who, when he has a choice of two evils, chooses both." – Oscar Wilde

When I returned to the clearing with Queezle in the morning, I was astonished to find both humans asleep. Now, when you've seen as many humans as I have, you might not think this is that weird…but as far as I knew, Nathaniel wasn't human that way. Well, not quite. And Kitty? She seemed the early bird type.

As we moved closer, the scene became more and more disturbing. For one thing, they were sleeping on the same side of the same tree. For another, they were holding hands! While sleeping! Fully clothed, just in case you were getting excited. What the hell was up with that?

Queezle watched them interestedly. Well, at least she was entertained.

Determined to get this little show on the road, I walked over and poked Nathaniel. Hard (I made my fingernails grow especially long and pointy especially for the task). His eyes snapped open and he practically leapt out of bed. Okay, off the ground. Which isn't, technically, a bed at all (unless you were some kind of…er…mole. Which he isn't, I hope. That would be weird.)

"Bartimaeus!" he said, all surprised and everything. "What – what are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here? I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for you!"

"Never mind that." Beside him, Kitty was getting up as well, crawling over to the spring to splash water on her face. "Who is this?" he said, a bit worriedly.

"I'm Queezle," said Queezle, the sun through the trees making her translucent form positively luminous (all right, I admit it, I'm sentimental).

"I see…um, pardon me, but why are you here?"

"Just for the hell of it," I told him. "Even dead spirits have to have a bit of fun before they make their great choice."

Nathaniel's eyes snapped towards me instantly.

"What choice?" he said. Always the little scholar, even in private matters…or perhaps someone had mentioned it to him.

Surprisingly, it was Queezle who answered.

"It's a bit complicated," she said, "but as we're practically immortal, we can choose to stay on Phasma Mortuus or to just…disappear. It's a choice between peaceful mortality and forever wandering."

I watched her carefully as she said this. Not being dead myself, I wasn't sure how I would feel if I ever had to make the choice myself…what would you choose? One of the hard things about being a djinni is knowing that, someday, you may have to decide whether to wander, free but lonely, or to truly die. It's a bit hard to think about…but I'm getting off topic here.

Nathaniel, for one, was silent as he considered the sorry limits of his own humanity. Kitty broke the stillness.

"Well, where do we have to go from here?" she said, glancing at Nathaniel and giving him a small smile. Eww.

I pointed, having memorized our path completely (and predictably), and so we set off through the trees once more. Queezle tagged along, to my relief; humans can get so tiring after a while.

We had gone barely a mile when I knew something was wrong. The forest was thinning out, giving way to flatter ground and little vegetation. Even more curiously, much of it appeared to be burned or destroyed. However, it was only when we passed a tree with much of its large top half charred black that Mandrake noticed something.

"Bartimaeus," he said authoritatively (apparently he had got over his pathetic state of the day before), "are trees supposed to look like that here?"

We heard a crash somewhere nearby, followed by a feral roar. He jumped, but recovered his composure enough to berate me.

"You've got us lost, haven't you? Who knows what'll be attacking us next! God, Bartimaeus, if you didn't know my name…"

"What?" said Queezle.

Nathaniel turned pink and muttered unobtrusively under his breath. I saw Kitty put a hand over her mouth to hide her laughter.

"As funny as this," I said, "it really isn't funny! I think we've somehow landed in dragon country!"

Queezle turned pale; well, as pale as a shimmering, practically transparent dead spirit can be.

"They will not fear us," she said, quivering. "They have the most power of all the beings on the island."

"Gee, what clued you in?" said the boy angrily. "The fact that in every fantasy story ever made they're giant, fire-breathing monsters? Or perhaps the observation that the foliage around us has been desecrated?"

Kitty hit him on the shoulder. Score!

"Hey!" he said. "Don't start that again! I thought we were getting on f -"

He blushed, clamping his mouth shut, to my intense disappointment.

"Shut up for a minute, all of you," said Kitty. "I'm trying to think."

I wandered to where the forest seemed to end in front of us, giving way to flat, deserted plain. Glancing at the air above me, I confirmed our theory.

"Yep," I said solemnly, "Here be dragons."


Think, Kitty told herself, think…but nothing she had ever read or experienced could compare with facing a pack of vicious, bloodthirsty, mythical but very alive dragons! Beside her Nathaniel had his eyes closed; he looked as though he was going through every book he had ever read in his head…that would probably keep him busy for a while.

"Queezle," she said timidly to the other djinni, "you've lived here awhile…is there nothing anyone has ever done to resist the dragons?"

The ghostly girl looked at her strangely.

"Why would we?" she asked. "They don't hurt us…they are only protecting their lands. They're not like the magicians, in your world."

"Well, then," Kitty said slowly, "how do we let them know we're not attacking them, just passing through? On that thought," she continued, looking at Bartimaeus, "why don't we just find another path?"

"Two reasons," he said. "Number one, we're already lost. Who's to say we won't just end up here again after wandering in circles? A map is next to useless here. Number two…it looks like they're coming after us! Run!"

Any thoughts of carefully laid plans were crushed into dust as they took off across the desert-plain, the demons in the lead. Kitty could feel an immense heat above them, and, looking up, she saw her first dragon.

It was a bright, emerald green, its scaling shining like beacons in the hot sun – or was it the sun? Gold claws and white, gnashing teeth stood out in her eyes as well; they were sharp enough to cut her into pieces with a few, horrible swipes. It exhaled a bonfire's worth of flame into the surrounding air, its fellows (in varied shades of green, purple, red, and even black) swooping around it. Without warning, it dived, heading straight for her.

Ignoring Nathaniel's cries of warning, she stood her ground, hoping against hope that it would swoop much lower before it burned her to a crisp. Taking out two of her knives, she waited with bated breath, the wind created by the dragon's wings whipping dust clouds around her.

How does one slay a dragon? she asked herself, aware that no human before her had probably ever asked themselves that question in real life. Gazing once more at her formidable foe – A veritable leviathan, she thought – she thought she saw that one of the scales near where its heart should be was duller than the rest. A weak spot, perhaps?

Unaware that the author Tolkien had created this very thing in one of his books, she calculated and realized that if she stabbed above her head, her knives would hit that very spot (or so she hoped), perhaps the only place where they wouldn't glance off the hard scales.

She closed her eyes as the dragon loomed above her. Visualizing Lei and Antony in her mind, practising throwing their knives into the cellar ceiling, she opened her eyes again and thrust her arms upward.


Nathaniel could only watch in horror, running towards the other side of the forest, as the largest dragon dived towards Kitty. He yelled at her.

"Kitty! Run!"

The foolish girl, however, stood her ground and recklessly took out two knives – Where did they come from? he wondered – apparently to stab the sixty-foot long monster above her. What was she thinking? This was definitely not the time to die.

Nathaniel closed his eyes as she raised her arms for the kill – if it was going to be a kill. And who was to say the knives wouldn't just glance off those sharp green scales?

The dragon let out a terrible screech and he clapped his hands over tortured ears. Opening his eyes slowly in dread, he saw something that made him gasp.

The monster lay writhing on the ground, dark blood spouting from a wound in its chest. It howled and cried to its fellows. And about ten feet to its right, rising slowly from the ground with her hands and knives covered in blood. She turned slowly to face the three of them, her eyes wide in horror and her face as pale as his own.


Kitty rolled away from the dragon, the blood all over her hands, so as not to be crushed, feeling a kind of exhilaration that could only be connected with her early Resistance escapades. It was only then that she saw the dragon she had just mortally wounded.

It was screeching and crying out, and she had to fight not to cover her ears (she did not want blood in her hair, not when it was unlikely she would see a shower for many days to come). The blood poured from where she had stabbed it in the heart.

She felt a surge of empathy for the dragon – who was she that she could kill a creature so brave, so beautiful, who was merely defending its kin? Her heart seemed to rise into her tight throat and the excitement she felt was replaced, ultimately, by horror.

The blood was everywhere, the dragon's life almost gone…she swallowed hard, suddenly feeling ill. In the blood frenzy carnivores are apt to, the other dragons swooped down on their dying fellow and begin to tear it apart.

She turned to where Nathaniel and the demons were standing, gazing at her in awe, and she felt alone as she hadn't felt in a long time.

However much she might have put into the second Resistance, the fact was that she often felt she was living her life alone most of the time. It wasn't that she was uncomfortable with it…but now, the feeling had intensified.

Nathaniel rushed out and stood in front of her, his dark eyes wide. What was that emotion she saw in their depths? It was soon replaced by rigid control.

"Are you all right?" he said, his voice unnaturally high. "You – you like you're going to be sick."

Swallowing hard and feeling like she was going to cry, she answered faintly.

"I'm all right. Let's – let's just get out of here."

As she washed her hands free of the blood of a relatively innocent creature, Kitty realized that she really didn't like killing. She didn't want to be reckless anymore…and Kitty vowed to herself, silently, that if she ever went home she wanted a more peaceful life.


God, that took a while to write! I was trying to find a under-used method of dragon-slaying...hope you guys liked it, I'll take to get the next chapter up ASAP, but after that it's going to slow down a bit. Love you all!