"Houses of shadow
Houses of light.
Fiends and foes
Spend in delight.

Taking their tolls
Taking their lives.
Frivolous and empty
And filled with pride." --- From the Odes of a Drunken Sailor.

***

Now the story begins.

The Shading loomed angrily over the lake, its foreboding rocky face pockmarked with boils and punctures of living rock that exuded hot fleshy smells. What dared to challenge its sanctity and solace as it made its plans for domination of the world above?

It slithered about the top of the Black Tower, the dawning sun of the jungle landscape becoming molten with the lava gold of the sun's rays. It hissed angrily and retreated into the narrow cavity that was its watch place atop the Black Tower. It flowed like liquid molten rock down a long and narrow passageway, its body, free of bone, adjusting to every shape and turn of its passage until it poured into a large chamber filled with glowing rocks and a presence.

It rose in its powerful glory, its magnificent godhood and faced the frail creature that dared to challenge its sanctity.

"You dare to invade my home!"

The tall man who stood at its clawed feet looked up and took off his top hat. He polished its rim on his right arm, taking his good old time to reply, causing the Shading to grow more and more restless and angry, but something about this man tempted it to restrain its usual violence.

Finally, the man went to a nearby boulder, sat down, crossed his left leg over the right, then pulled out a cigar and lit it.

Still the Shading held back from the growing flame of hatred and anger burning in its guts and heart now.

The man took several puffs, knocked the ashes off, stomped them with a booted foot, and then looked up. "My name is Moriarity. I have a deal I'd like to make."

The Shading spit fire as it spoke.

Moriarity didn't flinch or move as the fires burst to nothing but feet from his face.

"I make no deals!"

Moriarity held his cigar up and relit it from the next burst of flames from the Shading.

He smiled, took a puff, and then nodded. "I realize that."

"Then you must also realize that you will die."

"Oh, that happens to the best of us." Moriarity agreed.

"And you are not the best."

"No, I am not the best." Moriarity said, rising slowly to his full height.  A long pause. "I am merely the greatest!"

***

It took him a few moments for his eyes to adjust. The mists were remaining very thick and kept filling his vision with moisture he had to wipe away, which made his drop into the chasm more dangerous and fraught with chance. Something he didn't fear, but something he didn't prefer when time was of the essence.

Grayson felt the end of the makeshift rope approaching and swung a bit to the right, snagging a foot against the drop's sidewall. It was a less than safe move, but one he had bet on. He had seen the veins of stone as they warped downwards and noticed how their striations moved upwards and downwards. There were no obvious disruptions in the wall, which was as he remembered it from his childhood.

He grasped the slick surface of the wall as he made his way down. Clinging to the almost perfect wall with toes and fingers with grips like iron claws. And well he did too, for it didn't let up for a long time. He still remembered the exhaustion and tension in his younger muscles as he made it to the bottom at last, trembling and shaking from one part of his body to the other. He had been tried by the walls of the Hidden Realms and found triumphant.

He started to cup his hands for his bull dragon roar, and then realized that might not be the safe thing to do. Not because he was scared of what he might face, but rather what he saw.

Grayson felt a touch of roughness on his toes and knew he was close to the bottom. He had enough rope left to swing out and let go without fear of a precipitous drop. He landed lightly on the balls of his feet and arched over, grabbing for his knife while at the same time securing his rope against the cliff with soil he wet from the canteen he had allowed to be strapped to his loin cloth. He waited a moment for it to harden enough, then pressed the soil and rope firmly together against the grainy surface of the wall and it stuck.

Satisfied, he took a better look at the world he had lowered himself into.

He had almost cried out as he dropped his hands to his loincloth for his knife. For facing him was the strangest and most frightening spectacle he had ever laid eyes upon and he had seen much for his short years of life. A very strange escarpment of stone of a black nature with colored, jewel like blasts of stone in silvered water stood before him.

He had landed on the shore of a lake. A foreboding lake, devoid of any obvious life and lit by stars that should not have been there.

Grayson nodded to himself in satisfaction as he surveyed the scene of his youthful follies. The escarpment was the same, the glowing rocks, but something else was different now. More sullen and menacing. It was as if the very ground and water about him had been transformed into something malignant and dark.

He put the knife in his hand to his side as he walked. He had no reason to harm while he was here. Yet! But being prepared was his nature and he still remembered.

The creature was something out of a dragon's nightmare. It was swift and four footed, but not a leopard or lion, nor a bear or wolf, but something worse. It had the head and face of a human, but it ran on all fours, legs and feet that ended in hands, and a body armored like that of a turtle. It had emerged from the lake like a behemoth of lore, growing larger and larger, and then erupted in a burst of frenzy and leap to the shore to attack him.

He had nowhere to retreat to with the gigantic wall of the chasm behind him. To the sides was no retreat because of huge rocks that leaned outwards grasping at him. Though they gave him an idea. He had no more time for ideas for the huge creature was almost within a leap of him. Death's face was ugly and human. Something he would never forget if he lived that long.

Grayson didn't dare to put his foot in the water. Something about it alarmed him, though he couldn't physically give a reason just yet. He nudged a small rock into it. The rock began to sizzle as if it had been placed into a vat of acid.

His eyebrows rose in alarm.

He must reach the entrance and the only path lay over the stones and the acid lake now. He eyed the distant entrance, barely visible in the perpetual night and stars of this realm. He remembered how surprised he had been to find himself in yet another world, even though his own stood to his back when he had dropped into the hidden realms. But of course, that was after he had time to actually take all that in.

Grayson smiled. Mother Dragon had called it his shief face. A tender term for a face that was fearsome and angry. Something he had a lot of in those days. His parents were ruthless in their desire to harden him, putting him to tests most humans would never have survived, but for some reason he did, and each time he survived his parents would find yet another and harder one.

Grayson gave the giant creature his shief face and waited for it to leap. It did. It wouldn't fail to disappoint him, but he would disappoint it more than once. As the creature leaped and descended in a massive arc to slash him with its hands which were armed with deadly claws, he leaped to his left with all his strength. His youthful muscles had been built and nurtured for years with toil and labor, hardening them and creating them into iron engines of strength. The potions his parents fed him from the Dragon Springs had hardened them further, developed them far beyond those of a mortal man. Some had even intimated that they had conferred immortality upon him, but he ignored that. He was too young to think of such lofty concepts.

The creature struck the wall he had been standing in front of, stunning it. He hung from one of the arches of rock to the left. One had grasped the rock like a talon of iron and the other held his trustworthy knife. One he had made himself from star rock. Flaming metal from the heavens that the dragons horded in their vast chambers of gold, silver and jewels.

He swung outwards and released himself. He landed on the neck of the creature, who alerted to the fact that he was still reachable, swung a hand up to grasp, him, but poorly as it was still stunned from the blow on its head. He wasn't. He slashed the hand, sending the creature into a paroxysm of pain and anger.

It tried to stand up.

He had smiled then and leaped to its shoulders, the hardened carapace of them giving him a sure purchase. He had swung from its right ear and around, and slashed downwards as he did so, taking out first the right eye, and then the left. Even before the creature could smash him away with its massive hands, he had dropped downwards, slashing its tender belly, exposed to him now as he struck towards the ground.

Then he realized his mistake. He was trapped between it and the wall, with no way to reach the overarching rock anymore.

Grayson smiled at the memories, but they didn't solve his current quandary. How do you cross an acid lake on slippery rocks which might themselves now be traps? It was a puzzle of enormous consequences, but he was no longer a young boy or man. He was the Jungle Lord.

He cupped his hands to his mouth and let out a bull dragon roar!

The gigantic creature began falling towards him, with no apparent avenue of escape, and that's when he saw the opening in the face of the chasm. It was small, but more than enough for him to crawl into. He dove for it at the same time as the massive weight of the creature's body smashed the space he had just stood within.

It became pitch black in that small hole and it smelled horrible. That's when he realized he wasn't alone in there and that the cave was not as small as it had seemed.

He felt his heart beating in his throat as he pivoted awkwardly in that tiny space to see two huge eyes, glowing in the dark and watching him calmly.

Grayson grinned as he heard what he had hoped for. A scrambling of creatures along the chasm walls and within minutes he was surrounded by the Monkey Men of the Hidden Realms. Korath, his long time friend of the golden hide and blue eyes, landed at his feet, uncoiled and stood erect, a smirky smile on his face.

"Once more into the chasm?"

"I honor your eyes, Korath!" He spoke the ritual words of greeting to the King of these realms.

Korath's eyes lit up brighter and he grabbed Grayson by the shoulders, and then shook him violently in joy. Grayson waited until Korath had finished, then he lifted his friend into the air and shook him mightily.

The Monkey Men watching all broke into chattering, applause and laughter.

"I mean you no harm." Grayson had spoken, even as he kept his blade at the ready.

"All men mean me harm."

Grayson shook his head. "I am not a man. I am a Dragon's Son."

"How can that be? You have the pale skin of a man, the height of one, and the muscles of one."

"I have just killed he mighty creature of the lake."

A long pause. The eyes moved closer and then a mouth opened up, revealing very sharp teeth.

The Monkey Men sat down in a circle around Grayson and Korath, who remained standing, their smiles of joy still lighting their faces.

"It's been many lapses of fog since you left."

"It has been many suns in my own realm."

"Someday I would like to journey there."

Grayson sat down.

Korath sat down. "I would like to have a friend there to see it with."

"You have that friend." His eyes moistened. "Always."

Korath's own eyes wet slightly and he struck at the moisture as if they were a sign of weakness. "This sentimentality is weakening my heart."

Grayson laughed. "Only a foolish man would ever think you had a heart, Korath!"

The Monkey Men all broke into applause.

Korath jumped up and did a savage dance to their clapping for many minutes, exalting in the freedom of his movement and the sound of the claps, and then he dropped back down in front of Grayson, who had been watching the dance, his lips lit with enjoyment.

"You are come, but why?"

Grayson told him.

As he did so, Korath's smile of delight turned to one of dark anger.

"Then if you are not a man, you do not need a man's toys."

Grayson had put his knife down and spread his hands wide. "I am that which I speak."

"As I am. And do you speak for all like you?"

Grayson knew in that instant that his life hung in the balance. He shook his head. "I speak for no one but myself, as I am not a man like the others, but a Dragon's son."

That was when Korath had struck a flint to a torch stick in his hands and lit it to reveal his face and form. Grayson was stunned. Legends of the Monkey People had filtered to the surface and were part of the driving force to get him to venture to such a dangerous place. "You are a Monkey Man!"

Korath smiled."You say that in awe."

"I am...in awe. I have wanted to meet you for all my life."

"You are too young to have had all any life."

Grayson had jumped to his feet. Mistake. "I am not..." He had cried as he leaped.

The next thing he remembered was lying out on the shore of the lake once more and a huge fire was burning, in the middle of which was the turtle creature. Korath was watching as his people stripped meat from the carcass and set them to warming over a large fire on bone sticks. He had sensed Grayson awake and had turned. He grabbed a stick of meat and smiling came to sit beside the young man. "Eat!"

Grayson had shied at first. The creature had been almost human!

Korath's eyes narrowed. Danger signals yet again.

Grayson swallowed what pride he had at that moment and in the years that followed, he would follow that path many more times, and in the process learn that evil was not always in what one did, but what one did not do as well. "You are a kind host." He told Korath, took the meat and tore hungrily into it.

***

Challenger, Conan and Harry ran for their lives, casting away anything heavy they had been carrying to lighten their load and strengthen their limbs. Behind them the cavern was collapsing as something so large it had no right to be there began pushing itself free of its entrapment.

The trio reached their boat and as one began shoving it into the water, further and further out, until they were waist high in the crashing surf, then clambered aboard. They unshipped their oars and began frantically oaring for the safety of the wide open sea.

Conan, who was at the stern and facing back, became alarmed. "The water's not stopping it!"

Harry and Challenger both dared a peek.

Behind them was a mountain of flesh, thickly hided with an ebony rock like pelt that was throned with huge horns that ran around a carapace of a head with deep eye sockets and flaming eyes that sought them with hatred as ancient as life itself.

"What in God's name is that thing? Conan demanded.

Challenger didn't answer the question. "Row, Conan, row as if your life depended on it!"

"But it does!" Conan protested as he heaved on his own oar.

"Yes, you idiot, exactly!" Challenger roared back.

On the shore the mighty beast they had awakened began striding deeper into the water, the surf barely coming to the top of its feet.

"I've got a bad feeling about this." Conan puffed between breaths.

***

Nemo blasted the creature with his electric pistol. The creature responded by tearing a piece of Atlantean structure from its side and then hurling it powerfully through the water, despite its density.

Ned and Nemo ran to the right. The structure smashed into where they had stood and plowed several yards of seascape into the air. When the dust was settling fro it, they had safely ensconced themselves behind a pillar fronting one of the ancient buildings.

The giant creature looked about, but not spotting them, instead it focused on the Nautilus. It marched towards the Nautilus, its intent obvious, as it ripped another section of building free to smash the might vessel with.

"No!" Nemo cried out, but no one could hear him. The ship communications didn't reach the suits.

Before the creature could smash the vessel it lit up more brightly and began ascending, blasts of air streaming from its sides as it did so.

"Not good." Ned commented drily.

Nemo looked at him and even through the murky sea waters and the weak light of the helmets he could see Nemo frown before he spoke. "You think?"

***

Sherlock adjusted the newspaper in his lap and sipped at a cup of tea while warming him by the fireplace. Watson paced the floor with a scone clutched in his right hand. He waved it as he spoke, his eyes flashing with anger.

"I shan't tolerate this happening. I shan't!"

Sherlock continued reading.

"It's intolerable. Hateful." Finally, Watson stopped and looked at Sherlock. "Howsoever in the world shall we survive a month without Mrs. Hudson?"

Sherlock looked up. "Really, Watson? You could do with a touch of reduction about the waist, don't you think?"

Watson threw his hands up in the air, accidentally losing his scone in the process. "I give up. Oh no!" He cried out, and frantically grasped for the scone before it could strike the floor. He caught it, then with the look of a child let loose in a candy store, sat down and began to eat.

Mrs. Hudson came up the stairs with a fresh tray of scones. "Now, dear John, I have made and left enough in the kitchen larder to last you for a good three weeks if you stretch them out."

Watson jumped up, wiping at his mouth with a hanky as he rushed to her to help her with the tray. He set it down then gave her a hug. She took it tolerantly; giving Sherlock's amused face a roll of her eyes, as if to say, "Men, such shallow creature!"

He nodded, reading her thoughts exactly. She giggled and broke free of Watson's grasp. "Now I must hurry up and finish my packing, dear."

She gave Watson a peck on the cheek and went to her room to prepare.

Sherlock watched Watson look after her, his joyful look fading once more. "I shall die if I never see her again."

"Watson! Do be a bit more positive, will you!"

Watson glared at Sherlock. "I am being positive. I will die!"

Then a banging on the front door sounded.

Mrs. Hudson stuck her head from her room. "Be a dear, John, and answer that, will you?"

***

Watson flung the front door open, almost knocking Inspector Bloodstone from his feet as he was still grasping its handle.

Constable Evans caught his father and prevented him from falling.

"Yes!" Watson demanded, angry that his last minutes with his beloved were in danger once more of an interruption.

"You and Sherlock must come at once!"

"What can be so dratted important that it can't wait until after my fiancée leaves for the air terminals?"

"The Queen is dead! Long live the Queen!"

Watson's face became as pale as a ghost. He crossed himself!