No sooner had my mentor made his observation than the side of the huge box which was facing us slowly lowered itself to the ground. Revealed inside the massive container was a dragon.
The box had been big, better than thirty feet long and twenty feet high, but from the look of the dragon he must have been cramped for space inside.
He was big! I mean, really big!
Now I’ve never kidded myself about Gleep’s size. Though his ten-foot length might look big here on Klah, I had seen dragons on Deva that made him look small. The dragon currently facing us, however, dwarfed everything I had seen before.
He was an iridescent bluish-green his entire length, which was far more serpentine than I was accustomed to seeing in a dragon. He had massive bat wings that he stretched and flexed as he clawed his way out of the confining box. There was a silver glint from his eye sockets which would have made him look machinelike were it not for the fluid grace of his powerful limbs.
For a moment, I was almost overcome by the beautiful spectacle he presented, emerging onto the battlefield. Then he threw his head back and roared, and my admiration turned icy cold within me.
The great head turned until its eyes were focused directly on us. Then he began to stalk forward.
“Time for the better part of valor, kid,” Aahz whispered, tugging at my sleeve. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Wait a minute, Aahz!” I shot back. “Do you see that? What the keeper’s holding?”
A glint of gold in the sunlight had caught my eye. The dragon’s keeper had a gold pendant clasped in his fist as he urged his beast forward.