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< Go Read Part 8

Sorry for the near month long break in this story.

Part 9

I put myself between the bear and the fish. My weak frame would do nothing to seperate a hungry beast from its meal, but I had to protect it. The lightning that had struck me had filled me with an irrational subsurvience to the fish. I heard bolts of lightning crackle in the humid, dank air of the cavern, and I felt the bear's almighty claws grazing my shoulder.

It ripped through my cloak. I felt warmth where my skin had been puncutred. I felt pain. I felt rage. I felt fire. I felt blood running down my arm, and pooling in the sleeves of the garment. This would not be the end.

The only reason I did not perish in this moment is because Damon had swung his hammer at the hamstrings of the charging bear. It fell to its face, and Damon moved raised his hammer. The bear reached for the fish with an outstretched limb. Damon's hammer came down upon the bear's paw, smashing it into a useless, broken thing.

This did not make the bear happy. But it had, for a moment, saved the fish. Only, the fish wasn't there anymore. The force of the hammer blow had displaced it, and an orb of light surrounded what was once the fish. It was blinding. It was white light, the kind that causes your vision to tunnel, and perhaps this is what death was - a vibrant light.

No. It was the fish. I could still hear Marcia's singing. Anita and Gerald were nowhere to be seen, for the light was blinding. The bear growled. Damon swore in his typical style.

An enormous crack of thunder, then the world went black.

Then it was filled with flame. The fish had become a Dragon. Perhaps Damon was right all along about it being some force of evil, but the dragon was magnificent. Large. Covered in sapphire scales, it seemed to have emeralds for eyes, and it had an aura of shimmering steam and dust about its body.

Fire and heat belched forth from the dragon's mouth. It decimated the bear. It cooked the bear, as though it was a simple, skewered meat. I gagged. It smelled disgusting, but I was disgusted further when the dragon effortlessly picked up the bear, and tore into it with its mouth.

My shoulder continued to bleed.

The world contained in that cavern was speechless. Even Marcia's incessant song had fallen into silence, and Damon looked on in terror, before breaking the silence. "I told you it was cursed!" He looked to us all, seeming to be the only one not entirely enthralled by the Dragon's mesmerising presence.

He moved to swing his hammer at the beast, and he went up in a jet of flame. If I had thought the scent of the bear's flesh roasting was vile, then this new scent which assaulted my senses was one I can never forget. There is not enough camphor in the world.

But my word, was this Dragon creature a thing of beauty. And to think, it was all contaianed within the fish. The fish that was now the dragon, that I would be forced, through some unknown mechanism of control, to protect. Gerald had seemed to have the same thoughts, and we shared a glance, not as haphazard adventurers, by as guardians of a beast that, on the surface, did not appear to require guardians.

Its eyes glowed.

It said hello in a tongue we could all understand, but the words were only heard in our minds. This was much bigger than a missing daughter. We were now to be the guardians of this thing, and protect it, as it protected us.

There was only one problem. It needed a constant supply of blood. I offered my shoulder up to the beast, and it tenderly accepted. I felt no pain. It took what it needed, and then I felt a warmth quite unlike that I'd ever felt before. The bleeding would stop, but now, I had been marked by the Dragon, and would forever carry a disfigured shoulder. How I thought this throught he intense pain, I still do not know, but I know, that some fifteen years on, we're all by this very same Dragon's side.

And Marcia is still singing. Anita's blade bring the Dragon its blood - ruffians, scoundrels, and low-lives, and Gerald pretends he is some sort of wizened Druid himself, but when really, he was just the one who found the true, blood-thirsty nature of the fish, which became the Dragon we are now enslaved by for as long as we may draw breath.

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## THE DRUID'S DILEMMA IS CONCLUDED