CHAPTER NINETEEN
Revenge is a Fireball Best Tossed Hot

The soon to be king crashed through the leaves like a wrecking ball and sneered. “You’re late.”
I studied his eyes, they were those of a panther, yellowish-green with perpendicular pupils, and they were not amused.
Wonderful, I thought. Nothing tops off a not so perfect evening like a crack of the dawn stroll through the Forbidden Forest beside a cantankerous feline.
“Good cock-a-doddle-do to you too, sour-puss,” Cotton said, clicking his clogs together twice. “We would have been here an hour ago if the creepazoid in the silver Speedo hadn’t held us up.”
“Hush, gnome.” His voice boomed, silencing everything in the forest right down to the last bird in the hedge. His diamond-dusted cloak …show more content…
I felt its strength drain from me as though I were a shadow of myself. Light faded. Sounds and colors bleed into the soil. I sank to my knees.
Zander traced symbols on the scepter with his claw and began to read from it, chanting softly, “Tar Dangus moifar, ist aqulare Olipar.”
Cotton paced impatiently. Mason shifted in the weeds, stepped forward, squinting at the secret code. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” said Zander, “that in times of yore an ancient king of light, called down from the heavens and forged the mighty scepter. He channeled the starlight and drove out the coiling …show more content…
“So you’ve found the—”
“Scepter of Sirethiel,” the dragon finished for him. “Yeah.”
“Aw . . . Good. Now there are no hard feelings.” The goblin spread his hands. “And we can all just be friends, right?”
“Never.” The dragon morphed into a fireball-tossing lunatic. Every time he opened his mouth and blew a column of white-hot flames or lobbed another fiery orb he’d snarl like a chain saw hacking through a forest, “This is for my brother. And this one’s from the gnome. Oh, and this inferno was sent care of the queen.”
The brown-furred dwarfs seethed, twirling in confused circles between the castle columns. Trails of shimmering smoke spiraled around the throne room resembling a slow-moving serpent adrift on pond scum.
The goblin struck like a punch in the gut, pushing the massive dragon back with his magic. He stumbled over himself, letting loose a shimmering red wall of fire, which lit up the sky and set the trees ablaze.
Isadora swooped in, batting away—a shower of red-hot flames—with rapid-fire efficiency. This time Gordok was hit in the