The Guardian

Meet Mr. Twelve horns

The flight from The O' Bloo all the way to our destination made me with I had never ate that blueberry funnel cake pie earlier. The entire ride made me think I'd hurl the more Yellow flapped his wings, but that wasn't the main thing churning the buffet in my gut. The Dodecahydra was one of the many things I was dreading to come across from the stories I heard as a kid.

There was a well-known tale about a man named Hercule the Great. He was a man of the most untested strengths and a huge icon in the face of all myths tales and legends. His final tale, however, was when he was tasked to go up against the great Hectas. Hercule walked through everything Hectas threw at him, but it wasn't until his final obstacle that he failed, and that was against the great Dodecahydra, a super massive titan in the form of a dragon with a cluster of 12 long powerful horns brimming with energy. Hercule failed to defeat him and had to retreat back home to recover. Hectas terrorized the land for years until Hercules son was born.

His name was Maximo the Great, and he was destined to beat the dragon. With the most powerful and fabled father of all tales, and the brightest most fiery supernova mother that brightened up the galaxy, he was destined to come out on top, and that's exactly what he did. He defeated the giant dragon and dethroned Hectas, granting the land peace once more.

I definitely didn't have a supernova as a mom or a legendary hero as a dad, so there didn't seem to be a way I could even come close to harming that massive dragon. Then again, the Dodecahydra was cast into the never-ending abyss and perished, so how could they be alive again? Rosslyn seemed too focused on not throwing up to offer suggestions.

I carefully pulled out the compass that Iro gave me, trying not to drop it. The needle pointed forward, which meant we were definitely going where we needed to go. As I looked over the compass, I couldn't help but notice how much it was shaking. Maybe it was because Mamble was moving eratically, or maybe because we were flying. It looked as if it was trying to get out of the little glass compartment it was closed in.

Finally, I choked out my first words since we took off.
"Are we there yet?"

Yellow flapped his feathers impatiently before nodding. "Yeah, nearly there, champ."

The floor to the jungle started to go lower and lower, bathing us in darkness the further we flew out. The jungle was big enough to fit a hundred kingdoms in it and still have room for more, and that wasn't even including all of the sky islands, tree houses, and caves riddled throughout the jungle. There were houses, and huts as well as dens and nests every now and then, but the closer we went into the deep cold recesses of the darker part of the jungle, the less common they became.

Light fog began to become thicker, making what was ahead of us darker than it already was. Fireflies fluttered around, giving us a little light to see, and the ground started to look mucky and moist. Trees began to look more and more knotty from the amount of moisture their roots endured. Reeds, lilipads, and tall grass poked up from the swampy water beneath us as it spread farther and farther out, eventually looking like an ocean of swamp and mucky trees.

It got so dark from the tangled up branches above us as they became more conjoined, blocking out the daylight almost completely, leaving glowing insects and fungi to light our way instead. The thick grey fog made it even harder to see. If it wasn't for our compass, we'd probably be completely lost, flying in circles forever.

Finally, Yellow landed us on a wide tree stump, overlooking what seemed to be a kingdom. The branches above the massive kingdom conjoined, making a barrier from the sky that was probably too thick to break through. Under the ceiling of branches, a vast mud village surrounded a small mansion surrounded by tall wooden fences, like an outpost. Many houses were made inside withering trees or out of dried mud and concrete.