Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons [COMPLETED]

Chapter 11

Jack was not having a good day.

Sure, it was a great day in spring, but that's what made Jack all the more miserable. Normally, he would have been riding the winds or even racing them, but his stupid mission of searching for the seven-foot rabbit kept him low to the ground. The invisible boy had to carefully weave in and out of the trees at a speed that was too safe for his liking. His cloak had already caught several times on brambles, and too many times had Jack been scanning the ground for tracks and had run into a bush.

He was untangling his cloak from yet another bramble thicket when Jack heard the sound of shifting sand. He paused in his struggle and looked behind him. A bright pink flower waved wildly where Jack knew it had not been before. His cloak freed after one more tug, he wandered over to the flower. Oddly enough, the ground around it was very firm and didn't give way to any of Jack's stomps.

There's that sound again! Jack spun around to see a purple crocus spring up out of the ground. He leaped over to it and felt the ground again; it was still firm.

For the third time, Jack heard the shifting sand behind him. This time, he whirled around as fast as his wind with his staff at the ready. For only a split second, he saw two ginormous rabbit ears vanish down a hole before it filled in and a buttercup appeared in its place.

Jack rushed to the little flower. By the North winds, it does exist! He hardly had time to finish his thought before he picked up the sound of thumping paws getting distant. The little termite is running through his tunnels.

Of course, a mere rabbit was no match for the rider of winds, even through the woods. Jack took off flying; he used his eyes to watch where he was going while his ears followed the sound of thundering paws.

The rabbit was harder to catch than Jack had first expected. It led him on a high-speed chase, zig-zagging through trees, crossing over many roads, and doubling back on its own trails.

It occurred to Jack that this might go on forever. In that one second, when he let up his focus on where he was going, a tree sprang very suddenly into his path. Jack smashed into the trunk and was sent spinning through the air and into a clearing.

He lay sprawled on his back while his body was racked with pain. This was what he always did: lie still until the pain subsided. If anything, that was the only advantage of being in this strange invisible state; no matter how badly he hurt himself, he only had to wait for a minute or so, and the pain left his body.

Just like clockwork, he began to think clearly again, his eyes began to focus, and the throbbing ache diminished to a reasonable headache. Jack hoisted himself up into a sitting position and crawled over to where his staff was lying. When he wrapped his fingers around its bark, he heard the familiar sound of shifting sand behind him.

Suddenly he had an idea to catch the rabbit once and for all. Jack started to stand, but suddenly grabbed his head with his free hand and groaned. "My aching head!" He fell to one knee with his staff arm resting across his bent knee. After taking two moments to guesstimate the distance of the rabbit hole, he pointed his staff behind him and shot ice at the rabbit. His efforts were rewarded with a cry of surprise.

The victor stood up and looked down at the rabbit who had given him so much trouble. It certainly was very large. Its ears were easily two feet long with its head bigger than a human's. Both body parts were sticking up out of the rabbit hole and were trapped there due to Jack's ice spread around its neck.

The rabbit struggled. "You jackanape!" it snapped in an accented voice. "Why'd you have to do that?"

It talks? Well, that shouldn't surprise me. It's seven feet tall for crying out loud which isn't possible either. "I think it's only fair," Jack replied bitterly as he placidly strolled around the rabbit's head. "I spent the good part of the day searching for you, and how do you repay me? By running me into a tree!"