Chapter 3: Exlore
“So, where are we going, again?” Jake asked.
“The capital of Narabithia,” Tabitha answered. “Chrystal City. We’re going there so I can show you, in more depth, why you’re here.”
“Oh,” he said.
“See, Chrystal City holds many things. Sadly, secrets are one of them,” Tabitha said.
“Explain,” Jen said.
“Chrystal City is the capital, as I have said, so of course it will have many things. Like people, animals, tech, jewels, etc,” Tabitha explained. “But it has more secrets then all of those things combined. Some of them hold great joy; but most of them just hold sorrow.”
“That’s either a really small capital, or that’s a lot of secrets,” Rusty said.
“When we get there you’ll see why there is so much mystery to the city,” Tabitha replied. As they continued walking, a stump blocked their path.
“Nichan! Who dares to cross my path without a pass?” it said.
“My dear troll, I have a pass right here,” Tabitha said, pulling a plastic card out of thin air. She showed it to the stump.
A short, stubby man appeared from the stump. He had crazy brown hair that stood up in all directions and wild grey eyes. His skin was cracked and brown, as if it was made of bark, and his nose looked like a knot on wood.
“Ooh, a Royal Pass. Well, your pass has been revoked,” the troll said.
“Revoked? But that’s not possible. I mean, do you know who I am?” Tabitha said, raising her voice in aggravation.
“Relax, Princa. ‘Course I do. But I ain’t aloud to let anyone in here,” He replied.
“But why?” She whined.
“It’s a…” Suddenly, an explosion interrupted the troll. “War zone.” The forest started to shake. Everyone looked in the direction of the explosion. A stampede of amazing and magical creatures was coming their way.
“Quickly, into the woods!” The troll yelled. They quickly ran into the safety of the redwoods. They stayed there until the animals had all ran past. Then they hopped back onto the path.
“Careful, Princa. The woods are full of dangers,” The troll said, disappearing into the trees.
“I guess that means we can pass,” Tabitha said.
“Is there people up there?” Jen asked. They all looked a head. In the distance, there were three silhouettes; two horses, one of which was carrying the humanoid silhouette. “Is that a Catling?”She asked.
“Let’s see. Maybe they need help,” Tabitha said. She ran closer. The other four ran to catch up. As they got closer they saw that the Catling had shaggy, golden hair. He had a long golden-brown tail that had a golden puff of fur on the end of it, much like that of a lion’s. His side was caked with mud and blood.
“Exlore,” Tabitha said quietly. She ran to the Catling side. She helped him off the horse and onto the ground. He stirred slightly. Tabitha breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re alive,” she said.
When the others caught up, they stared in awe at the horses. The horses had great leathery wings that looked as if they were on fire, changing from red to orange to yellow. They had a large orange horn protruding from their foreheads. Their manes and tails were made of fire, and their bodies were a dark red.
“Wow! A real life pegacorn!” Rusty said.
The larger of the horses turned its head towards her. “Don’t insult us, young lady; we are not corn,” A male voice came from his lips. “We’re pegahorns, and don’t you forget it.”
“Sorry,” Rusty muttered. “Yeesh.”
“Blaze,” a female voice came from the other pegahorn’s mouth, “Be polite.” The horse turned her head to Rusty. “Forgive my mate, he can be a bit zealous,” she said.
Rusty knelt next to Tabitha who was stroking Exlore’s hair. “The horses talk,” she said bluntly.
“Yeah, a lot of things do,” Tabitha said. “Get used to it.” She began humming a tune, one that Rusty had never heard before.
“That’s beautiful. What song is it?” Rusty asked.
“It’s a lullaby my mother used to sing to me,” Tabitha answered. “Blaze?”
“Yes, milady?” the horse replied.
“Do you have any healing items in your pack?” She asked.
“I do,” Replied the female. She stuck her nose in one of the packs and drew out a medical kit. “Here you go,” she said.
“Thanks, Mustard,” Tabitha said, snatching the medical kit from the horse’s teeth. She began cleaning and dressing the wound.
“You should probably look for broken bones, and see if he has a concussion or head injuries,” Jake said.
“But, I don’t know how to,” Tabitha said.
“Then let me do it,” He answered. Tabitha got up and let Jake take her place by Exlore’s side.
“You know how to assess for injuries like that?” Tabitha asked.
“My older brother’s a paramedic. He taught me everything he knew,” replied Jake. “I had planned on becoming a paramedic while I was in college.”
“You wanted to be a paramedic?” Jen said, astonished. “How come I never knew this?”
“You never asked,” he retorted. He began examining Exlore. He looked through the medical kit the horses had brought. “What’s in this ointment?” he asked, holding up a plastic jar.
“Narabithian healing herbs and fruit,” Tabitha answered. “Why?”
Jake seemed to not have heard her. “What is it used for?” he asked.
“Cuts, burns, scrapes. Oh, and it’s good for when you lose your toe nails. Found that one out the hard way,” Tabitha answered.
“Eww,” Jen grimaced.
“You have no idea,” Tabitha said.
Jake smiled slightly. “It’ll do,” he told Tabitha. He looked at the wound Tabitha had been cleaning. It was a two-inch deep gash that spread from Exlore’s armpit to his hip.
Jake began rubbing the ointment in the wound. As he applied the silver-blue goop, he noticed Exlore’s muscles relaxing. A small smile grew on the unconscious Catling’s face.
Then, Jake took a needle and thread and began stitching up the gash. He took some bandages and wrapped the Catling’s side. He then felt around for any broken bones.
Jake checked Exlore’s head for a concussion. As he did so, he noticed that Exlore’s left eye was swollen and red. He cleared the mud away, and saw cut that ran from Exlore’s eyebrow to his ear. Jake cleaned and dressed the wound, giving Exlore an eye patch.
After he was done, assessing and dressing Exlore’s wounds, Jake walked over to where the others were sitting. “How is he?” Tabitha asked.
“He has two broken ribs, a broken right arm, an awful gash on his left side, and his left eye is in bad condition. But, I cleaned and dressed all the wounds so he will be feeling much better when he wakes up,” Jake reported. “But he still needs a hospital.”
“Oh, my head,” a voice mumbled in the distance. “Oh, my side.”
They all looked at where Exlore had been laying. He was struggling to get up. Tabitha ran to his side. “How do ya feel?” she asked him.
“In pain. Tabs?” he said surprised. “You’re here?”
“Yup. I found them,” she said, pointing in the direction towards Jake and the others.
“Good for you. Do you have anything for the pain?” he asked.
“Here, take some Advil,” Tabitha said, handing him some pills. He took them from her hands.
“Any water?” Exlore asked. Tabitha grabbed a canteen from Blaze’s saddle bags and threw it to him. “Thanks.” He threw the pills in his mouth and gulped the water down.
Tabitha waved Jake and the others over. They came over and plopped on the ground beside Tabitha. “What happened?” She asked Exlore as he finished off the last of his water.
“An army of Tankors raided a small village. I was informed it was just a gang of them, so I came with just a small group of my most elite warriors. When we realized that we were up against an army of several hundred warriors, we called for backup. We got everyone out of the village and held them off as long as we could.
“Backup never came. We fought and fought, but we finally had to call it quits. As our final effort, we threw our explosives at them, and then ran in different directions. I took one last look at the Tankor army, which was either in flames, running for the hills, or dead. Then everything went black,” Exlore said, with a sigh.
He tried standing up, but he collapsed on the ground, holding his side and groaning. “Whoa,” Jake said, helping Exlore into a more comfortable position. “You need to stay down buddy. You got pretty beat up.”
Jake looked down and noticed the eye wrap he had made for Exlore was on the ground. “Why is this on the ground?” he asked.
“I couldn’t see through it, and I just thought it was holding an icepack to my head,” Exlore said.
Jake wrapped the material around Exlore’s head, with many protests. “It wasn’t holding an icepack to your head,” he replied. “It was keeping infection from entering your eye; and keeping blood from exiting it.”
“Is that why my eye doesn’t want to open?”
“Yes.” Jake stood up, and pulled Tabitha to the side. “He needs to get to a hospital as soon as possible. He may be worse off than I thought,” he whispered.
Tabitha sighed. “’Kay. I’ll get the horses ready and see if I can find alternate transportation.”
“I think Black Fyre was flying over the fight. Maybe he’s still around,” Exlore said.
“Black Fyre!” Tabitha screamed.
Within seconds, a large shadow blotted out the sun. Jake looked up and saw a large black dragon flying over head. It circled a few times, then landed in the clearing not ten feet away from Jake.
He stared in awe. The ten foot long dragon was pitch black. But not all of him was black. His eyes, horns, and wings were bright gold, as was the tip of his tail. “You have a pet dragon?” Jake asked.
“Dragons aren’t pets,” Tabitha said walking up to the beast. She began stroking his scaly neck. A puff of smoke blew through his nostrils.
“Yes, Princa? You called?” The dragon said, smiling contently at Tabitha’s stroking.
“We need a ride,” Tabitha replied. “You wouldn’t mind giving us one, would you?”
“Of course not. Anything for you malady,” Black Fyre’s voice resonated across the forest floor. “How many shall I be carrying?”
“Let’s see. Exlore and I can ride on Blaze, Jake and Jen can take Mustard, and you can have the twins,” Tabitha said, using her fingers to count the group.
“As you wish,” The dragon said. He lowered himself to the ground to allow Jeff and Rusty to get on.
“How are we gonna get there?” Blaze interrupted. “I can’t fly.” Tabitha turned and stared at the horse.
“What?”She said.
“My wing is torn. I can’t fly,” he replied.
“You couldn’t have told me this sooner?” Tabitha screamed, panic building in her voice.
“Calm down, Princa,” Black Fyre said. “We will walk until the Valley. And then I will carry the horse across.”
Tabitha took a deep breath. “Thank you, Black Fyre,” she said. He nodded in response. “Let’s begin shall we. We have a long walk ahead of us, nearly three days time.”
Groans rang out from among the group, the loudest coming from Exlore. Tabitha grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet, which gave way the instant he was upright. “Oof,” Tabitha grunted nearly falling flat on her face under Exlore weight.
She flung him onto Blaze’s back and strapped him down. She hopped on the horse and sat behind him, wrapping her arms around him to keep the poor Catling from falling. “Everyone get on your rides. We have to keep moving, before it gets dark,” Tabitha said.
Jake helped Jen mount Mustard, and then mounted himself. He sat in front, and he couldn’t help but smile as he felt her arms wrap around his waist. He nudged Mustard forward, and she followed Blaze’s burning hoof prints.
Tabitha’s estimated arrival time was spot on. Three days later, they emerged from the woods, tired, hungry, and ready for a good night’s sleep. They came out onto a cliff that dropped straight down into a beautiful, green valley.
Tabitha watched proudly as everyone’s jaws dropped in awe. The valley was surrounded by three large mountains. Out of each, a frozen waterfall flowed. Farther down the mountains’ sides, the water was warmed and flowed like rivers. It flowed strait into a diamond-shaped chasm at the bottom of the valley. There large spurts of steam flowed forth.
But that was not the most amazing thing. Floating high above the chasm were three large diamonds; one pure white, one a shining gold, and the other a blood red. They circled around a large pitch black diamond, cut in half.
Tabitha knew that upon that half diamond there was a city bustling with people and animals, all going along their daily business. Home, Tabitha thought. “Dear friends,” She announced. “Welcome to Chrystal City!”
“Whoa!”, “Wow!”, and “Amazing!” came from among her friends. Her face shone with pride.
“All right,” she said, getting down to business. “We’ll eat lunch here and then fly on over.”
“Does that mean I have to be carried by the dragon?” Blaze whined.
“Blaze, we’ve been over this a thousand times. Yes, Black Fyre is going to carry you across,” Tabitha said, pulling sandwiches out of the pegahorn’s saddle bags.
“Like prey?” he whimpered.
“Like prey,” Tabitha confirmed. Tabitha set the sandwiches down and then helped Exlore down off the horse. “How do you feel?” She asked him.
“Like I was used as a punching bag, and then had a ton of bricks fall on my side,” he responded.
“That’s better than yesterday. Yesterday, you said you felt like a semi had run you over and then you got sent through a wood chipper,” Tabitha said, optimistically. She handed him a sandwich.
“Thanks.” He used her to support himself as he tried to carefully tear and eat the sandwich. Tabitha handed each of the weary travelers a sandwich, before devouring one of her own.
After everyone had devoured their lunch, they got back on their rides. “Ready?” Tabitha asked. After everyone had replied, “yes”, she had Black Fyre launch into the air. He shot fifty feet in the air, before doing a back flip and nose-diving straight for Blaze.
He picked up the horse, passengers and all, in his massive talons. The dragon lifted them gently into the air, and glided off toward the floating Chrystal City, Mustard following behind him.