The beast emerges slowly from its lair as a thin snow drifts down. Yellow eyes peer from the dimness, then with a rumbling growl and puff of smoke, it glides into daylight. A waiting crowd of people gasps and some move back as more of the 70-foot-plus beast eases into view. They have never seen the dragon in its entirety before...

This is no ordinary dragon, if one may use "ordinary" to describe these fabulous, legendary creatures. This dragon emerging from its airplane hangar habitation is the brainchild of Dale Ison, a log hauler whose passion is car shows, and airbrush artist Mickey Harris, whose work ranges from fantasy to the legendary Memphis Belle bomber. They gave Road King the opportunity to introduce "Dragon Master" to the trucking world.

Crafted of imagination and untold quantities of paint liberally applied to a Kenworth T2000 and a custom-built Featherlite trailer, this may be the ultimate show truck.

It has a practical purpose, as well. Ison is renowned for winning car shows with an over-the-top Ford F150 also decorated by Harris. Ison has another hot pickup in the works and needed something bigger than the Ford dually and trailer he had to transport both. He also plans to exhibit it at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville and at other trucking industry events.

From April 2000 to this February, Harris virtually lived in the hangar at the Highland County Airport near Ison's hometown of Hillsboro, Ohio. He estimates he spent more than 2,000 hours painting the rig.

This cold January day is the first time the combination has been joined and pulled from the hangar, and the assembled townspeople gape in awe. Nearly every visible inch of the rig has been painted in exquisite detail. Some figures are only an inch high and sneak up on you as you gaze at something else.

Dragons belong to our earliest myths. In the past few decades, they have become a mainstay of fantasy books and films, sharing the stage with brawny barbarians, scowling wizards and mythic landscapes.

All that and much, much more appear here on the skin of the rig. Stare at a tree for a while, for instance, and you suddenly notice that one of its roots spreads like a hand, and trapped under that claw is a white rabbit, almost invisible against the snow.

Or look at that pile of skulls. Step closer, and you see little imps leering from within. On the fenders, you can make out wolves racing along the curves. And in that river valley, you notice that the ripples of soil define the figure of a woman, and there, a face. The more you look, the more you see -- Ison should keep a jack handy when he exhibits the rig so he can lift all the dropped jaws.

Photos simply don't do justice to the accomplishment, but they do convey a sense of the details and the painstakingly fine drawing. The work would be marvelous on your average-size canvas, but on a tractor-trailer, it is simply mesmerizing.

Except for DuPont, which donated Clear-Kote to protect the paint, Ison has done all this without sponsors. But he had plenty of supporters, especially his wife, Connie.

Ison met Harris, of Cosby, Tenn., years ago when the Ison family visited Gatlinburg, Tenn. Harris was working at a T-shirt shop and Ison asked if he could design bowling shirts for the family. They became friends, and projects grew from T-shirts to a design on a logging truck to the show pickups.

The partnership hit high gear when they conceived a fantasy theme for a Ford F150. The stunning result took auto shows by storm -- in fact, Ison says he was practically forced to retire it from active competition because it won so many awards.

The duo are working on a new project, a Chevrolet 3500 Pro Comp with a patriotic theme. Ison still takes the Ford to shows and, with the Chevy on the drawing boards, realized he needed a big rig to haul both. Harris looked at the T2000 and saw a dragon...

Ison loved the fantasy theme on the F150 but wasn't sure at first about a dragon. Harris won him over. He painted the tractor first, and it got rave reviews when they drove it to Kenworth's Chillicothe, Ohio plant. After that, the fantasy factory went into overdrive.

Ison and Harris say their dragon takes show trucks into uncharted territory. That's fitting -- when ancient mapmakers didn't know what lay in an area, they labeled it hic dracones -- Latin for "here is a dragon."