Unidentified Funny Objects 2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

observed this with a gloating, anticipatory grin.
    Naphtheena caught sight of his expression and cut off the fireworks at once. “Oh no you don’t,” she said, taking a deep breath and reasserting self-control. “You’d  like me to lose my temper, wouldn’t you? You’re practically drooling at the thought of me whipping myself into a frenzy of rage with no bureaucratically justifiable target in sight. If I blast you, your spells will simply deflect my flame. If I destroy anyone or anything else, I’ve violated the Accords. And if I don’t calm myself down before it’s too late—”
    “You explode,” said the wizard nastily. “ Pop! ” He wore a smug look that was absolutely begging for a complimentary butt-kicking.
    Naphtheena lowered her eyelids. “I am a dragon. Dragons do not go  ‘Pop!’ Unlike your head when compressed between two of my talons. Much as that impossible prospect delights me, I must be going. You are a highly irritating two-legged fungus and I will give you no further opportunity to goad me into a self-destructive fury.”
    “Hold!” The wizard raised one hand, meanwhile drawing his wand with the other. He looked like he was preparing to conduct the village orchestra, but Naphtheena knew that the alternating spurts of green, purple, and silver brilliance fountaining from that “baton” marked its wielder for an Eleventh Level Magister Mysticorrrrr—er, um, something or other threatening in Latin.
    It was just such wizards who had compelled Naphtheena and her peers to submit to the Basilisk Accords. She didn’t want to get into any needless confrontations with this chubby little itch, especially when the deck was not stacked in her favor. She hadn’t survived over three thousand years of stupid but tasty mortals by taking dumb chances.
    “All right, Pumpkin-pants, I’m holding. But make it snappy. I have a date with the Grand Gateway and all of the legal documents covering my departure have been properly filed with  your imbecilic Council. That means if anyone detains me without just cause, I have the right to bring them before said Council and, unless he can provide hard evidence justifying his illicit actions, I get to eat him.” She cast a connoisseur’s eye over the wizard’s generous proportions and added, “On second thought,  do please make me miss my departure. You look delicious.”
    The wizard lowered his arms slightly. “You can go as soon as you cough up M’sieu Bertrand,” he said.
    “What for? He won’t be of any use to anyone in his present state.”
    “Unholy lizard, know that my arcane studies included a full immersion course on the physiology of  your abominable race. And by ‘full immersion’ I mean that the first thing our professor did was have a dragon eat us, one by one. It was most illuminating. I mean that literally, for when it was my turn to be ingested, I saw a great light blazing before my eyes. It was the flare from the dragon’s fire pouch, and by its brilliance I saw that I was in a large, somewhat fusty sac, in damp but undigested condition. I had no sooner observed this than there came a rumbling, a great shifting, and a yo-heave-ho that propelled me out of my prison and back into the world.”
    Naphtheena glowered at the wizard. “How dare you violate a dragon’s personal space in that obnoxious manner?”
    “It was a required course.”
    “I can  not believe that one of my kin consented to cooperate with larval wizardlings like that. How humiliating!” She lashed her tail so violently that the harpy on the tavern’s thatched roof took wing, settling in an oak tree across the road.
    “Nonetheless, and by the grace of a somewhat illegal binding spell, he did. You will be pleased to hear that the professor in question was later dismissed and subsequently devoured for this breach of the Accords. In the meanwhile, he taught a surprising number of us that dragons, like cows, have more than one stomach  and give excellent milk,