The Princess of Planet Xeronis

Wonderbee’s wrath

It was nighttime again and the two satellites of Xeronis were up and high in the sky, the other now a crescent and the other still a full moon, and these two were lanterns for the dark grove where two wolves ran in the cover provided by the shade of trees.

Ben had spent the rest of the day repairing old traps and sharpening spears as he prepared for the return of the wolves. With the dogs backing him up, he surely had a decent fighting chance.

But the anticipation meant he was probably not going to get any sleep. Even with the dogs keeping watch outside Ben still couldn't get himself comfortable enough to approach his bed. So he sat on the stairs with a silver-headed spear in his hand.

When drowsiness came, Ben found himself unable to keep himself from dozing off to sleep. His eyelids were so heavy that the unconsciousness of sleep soon found him.

Then his dream walking kicked in.

Ben couldn't exactly complain because it had proved to be a really useful ability. So, Ben turned away from his sleeping body and glided to the door to go outside.

It was a quiet night.

Ben soared to the treetops so he could try to see where the wolves would come from. As Ben moved further away from the old mansion, he thought he saw something hiding in the bushes ahead.

"Got ya!"

Ben hurried that way and came to land so he could walk on the ground. It wasn't the wolves. It was Wonderbee who had set up her own ambush in the woods.

Ben was glad.

"Is that you, dream walker?" Wonderbee asked.

"It's just me. Are you a double in my dream?"

"I certainly am. But I am speaking to you from the waking world. Your magic has reached me and I sense you around me."

Ben had thought it strange that Wonderbee was not looking at him nor was she moving her lips. She was speaking directly into his mind like telepathy.

"You could have told me you were coming," Ben said.

"My plan was to neutralize all threats without your knowledge. But there goes my subtlety out of the window. You are just like the princess."

"I am? In what way?"

"She has mind-reading magic. Keeping secrets around her is such a chore."

"Oh," Ben was thinking he ought to ask her for a demonstration next time they meet when Wonderbee said, "They are here!"

Ben's dream dissolved as he woke to a howling outside the mansion. He clutched his spear tightly as he raced to the windows. Matthias and his team took off in pursuit of one of the wolves who had revealed himself.

Ben tip-toed to the passageway and continued to crouch on the stairs to wait, spear in hand and ready.

All was set.

He looked below and he looked toward the entrance where a net lay as if it were some carpet.

It was not a carpet but an elaborate trap that Ben had learned during his hikes. Ben loved to learn new things and he could never get tired of learning. His power of recall made him a genius amongst his peers. This trap was perfect and all that remained was for a wolf to step in it.

The doors creaked open and then the first thing he spied with the help of the moonlight was the muzzle of the sniffing beast.

One wolf sniffed his way in and he had to stop before the strange carpet... but he seemed to smell the trap, and then he turned back and disappeared outside.

'He is coming in through the windows,' Ben thought as he changed his position.

He bent low as he silently rushed to the walls and then he pressed his back hard against them to listen to the sounds outside. He now could hear the claws of the beast dig into the walls as he climbed.

'One was a decoy so this one could get past the dogs?' Ben grumbled.

He was out of time.

The wolf leapt in from outside through a window shattered from yesternight, and he rolled onto the floor and did not see Ben spring alert from his cover. Ben thrust his spear the way his African ancestors would have done when killing a trapped springbok, and he gored the beast from the back and left the spear sticking out from its belly.

The wolf wailed in pain but still found the strength to whirl round and smack Ben with the back of his hand, throwing the human paces back.

Ben groaned from muscles cramping up from the crash but he forced himself to rise to see a man start to reach in an attempt to pull the spear out.

The other wolf then burst into the chamber again and Ben swung around and sped for his life. The wolf came charging after him.

Ben turned and stopped as he got to the door of the next chamber, and he held this door as he watched the wolf advance, almost rising to run like a man.

The wolf pounced and Ben violently slammed the door in his face, and then he had to quickly dive down as the wolf shattered the door to pieces with his strength just like Ben knew he would. The wolf blindly passed over him as Ben slept on the floor.

Ben wasted no time in rising and sprinting forward towards the retracting floor. Ben had found a way to retract the floor even further during the day and here lay another of his traps. He leapt over the edge in a rising spring towards a dangling rope which he managed to grab and continue to swing out of reach of the wolf that had also leapt after him.

As the wolf failed to grab Ben with his claws, gravity did not fail to pull him down. Then he was falling down some twenty feet before he came to land upon sharp and long poles that Ben had spent the whole day preparing them for this task.

The wolf did not survive the impaling.

Ben swung off the rope and stood onto the safer floor, still conscious of the other wolfman. He ran into the other chamber and saw the dreadlocked man on his knees with the spear he had pulled out in his hands.

"Brother...?" the man whispered as it dawned on him what had happened to his mate.

He suddenly looked at Ben with eyes that burned with rage... a rage that equaled madness.

Suddenly, dark fur grew astonishingly fast on the man's skin as he turned himself back into the animal. Muscle stretched as his size grew considerably large.

Ben shot out of the chamber with the wolf on his heels. He was making the descent on the flight of stairs when the wolf pounced, hurling himself so that he was going to land on the human. As he made the descent and the human was not more than a claw away below him, something intervened and interrupted this transition by pushing him towards the walls.

It was Wonderbee.

She had come and had gotten into the mansion and had heard the roaring upstairs. As the wolf pounced on Ben, the dragon came knocking him into the walls and Ben stopped to look back.

Wonderbee bit the wolf and then swung him from the second floor and threw him way down to the ground floor. She opened her wings and leapt to go land on the concrete floor.

Ben remained on the stairs.

The wolf rose and then attacked Wonderbee by leaping onto her throat. Wonderbee's scales protected her as she swung him off. She warned him by belching flames before his feet. The wolf backed away to the door and he stepped onto the net unconsciously.

Ben then saw his mistake.

He ran and leapt off the stairs in one bound, grabbed a dangling rope that lowered him down to the concrete floor while the net rose like a curtain to blanket and bag the wolf. Ben pulled and hurried to a pillar where he continued to tie the rope and therefore suspend the wolf in the air.

He had got him. At that moment Wonderbee flew up and then grabbed the net which she pulled hard until the rope broke and then she flew out through the big doors with the wolf.

Ben raced after her but she was already high up in the air.

"Wait, we have to question him," but Wonderbee was already far to hear Ben. Then she headed far from the woods towards the barren country. When she was several feet off the ground she then set the bag on fire and dropped the wolf that went and dashed against the rocks and continue to burn to ash. It was personal to the dragon that anything, beast or man, could want to harm her princess. Ben had told them that morning that the wolves were asking about the princess.

When it came to eliminating these threats then the dragon had no qualms.

Ben only saw a ball of fire falling in the distance and that is when he knew that his wolf problem was over.