CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Professor Fauna, Elliot, Uchenna, and the Schmoke brothers all froze. Their mouths hung open. Their eyes were wider than plates of pintxos.

The seven-headed dragon roared. Its central head was the largest, and its roar was the deepest. The six smaller heads all around it writhed and screamed in their own high-pitched bellows of rage.

“Professor,” Uchenna said, “I think the storm god Sugaar is real.”

“It would appear so,” Professor Fauna replied, as if in a trance.

The herensuge beat her wings and roared back at the seven-headed Sugaar. Sugaar stood on his hind legs and blew fire all around the cavern. The humans threw themselves to the ground—the fire rolling inches above their flattened bodies in a great exploding wave.

“Yow!” the Schmoke brothers screamed in unison. They reached up and grabbed their heads. They looked at each other. The hair on the tops of their heads had been singed to a crisp by the dragon’s fire. “NO!” they cried.

The herensuge and Sugaar stood, now both on their hind legs, and sized each other up. Sugaar blew flames into the air. The herensuge did the same.

The humans gaped in awe and terror.

And then, battle was joined.

Sugaar leaped at the herensuge. The herensuge rose and met him in the air. They tussled, the seven heads of Sugaar biting the herensuge’s neck and head and wings.

“They’re going to kill each other!” Uchenna cried.

“They’re going to kill us, too!” Elliot added.

“Now’s our chance!” hissed Milton. “Edmund, come on! Let’s go!”

The Schmoke brothers began crawling on their bellies toward the dark corridor that led back to the library, their scorched heads blackened and hairless. “Let’s get the guards!” Edmund was saying to Milton. “And send them back for all the dragons!”

“Come, children,” said the professor. “We must go, too. And quickly!” He got on his knees and pulled them after him, away from the battle of the dragons.

Fire was exploding from eight mouths. Wings were beating. Elliot and Uchenna followed the professor without taking their eyes off the dragon battle. Then, Uchenna exclaimed, “Oh! One of the heads came off!”

Professor Fauna turned to look.

It was true. One of Sugaar’s heads had become detached and now seemed to be crawling, of its own accord, down the herensuge’s back.

“What the . . . ?” Elliot whispered.

The herensuge and Sugaar continued wrestling, pushing each other back and forth, toward the cage and then away from it.

Another head came off Sugaar. And another. They flapped around on their own.

“What is going on?” Elliot marveled.

Uchenna said, “The dragons don’t really seem to be hurting each other. The heads just keep coming off and flying around.”

Indeed, as the members of the Unicorn Rescue Society watched, something amazing dawned on them.

“They’re not fighting,” said Elliot. “They’re playing.”

“And that’s not Sugaar,” said Professor Fauna. “That looks like a male herensuge. And those six little heads aren’t heads. Those are baby dragons.”

“I think,” said Uchenna, “that we’re watching a family reunion.”

Elliot, Uchenna, and Professor Fauna watched as the herensuge family played and cuddled and roughhoused together.

Suddenly, Elliot said, “Where’s Jersey?”

Uchenna pointed. “There!” Jersey had crawled over to the herensuge family and started growling at one of the babies. The baby, which was much, much larger than Jersey, growled back. The two danced around each other for a second and then began tussling on the ground. They were of such different sizes that it looked like a kitten wrestling with a dinosaur.

Elliot rubbed his head in disbelief.