by T D Raufson
The response mollified the old king. Apparently, the news had not yet reached everyone. He needed to check the progress of his agents around the world to see whom he could expect to reconsider his plan this morning.
“Sire, please excuse me. I need to check my messages. I’ll try to be more patient today.”
“Unless you want this all to be for nothing, I would recommend you remember your place. I will not look like a fool in front of them again. I’ll be repairing the relationship with Wy Li for years.”
Nethliast bowed his head in response. The elder dragon dismissed him with a nod, and he walked toward the front desk.
“Interesting,” the voice beside him whispered.
“I’m not unaware of politics or diplomacy. I still need him, as you may observe today, unlike you.”
At the desk, he pulled out his cell phone and checked the last minute reports from each of his partial leaders. Each report contained a single name. He scanned them and then deleted all of the messages. A tickle of anger returned at the base of his neck. There was no report from the most important team. The queen had not fallen.
“I want you to stay close to Valdiest today.”
“Oh, you need me now?”
“No, but I will use you. Stay with him. I want to know where he goes and what he does.”
There was no response from the invisible witch. He assumed that meant she understood, and he walked to the meeting room.
When he entered the room, there were several males standing around talking. The room felt different. The conversations ended or became subdued as he walked to the front and sat down next to Valdiest.
After a few moments, the old man stood and addressed the room. “Brothers, please. Let’s get started. We have a lot to cover.”
Everyone moved to their seats and filled in the ranks. It was quickly obvious that they had lost the Mexican and South American contingents. That was a hit, but they would pay, in the end, along with the Asians. The rest had held and, for most of them, he knew why. As the seats filled, Valdiest looked at him as if to say, ‘See, this is what happens when you lose your temper.’ Nethliast simply nodded acquiescence.
“I think we all know what recommendation has been put before the conclave. I would like to open the floor for discussion at this time.”
The room acquired a sudden rumble that died again, and a single man stood. He was a member of the African contingent.
“I move that we vote. I don’t think there’s any reason to discuss this further.”
Valdiest speared Nethliast with another stare before he straightened the papers before him and answered the motion on the floor. “Well, I think there may be some need to continue the debate.”
Another dragon stood. “I second the motion. We should vote.”
Valdiest looked again, angry this time. Nethliast simply shrugged.
“Very well, we will vote and put this recommendation to its test. All in favor of the recommendation on the floor?” Nethliast found the situation humorous. They were about to vote on the future of human kind. They were about to decide if there was a future to their race. “All in favor, a show of hands, please.” The air filled with hands. Only a small cluster had chosen to take a chance that Nethliast was not vengeful, or wouldn’t remember. They had even made it easier by clustering together around his father, who stared at him as he sat silently watching his plan unfold. Valdiest seemed surprised at the outcome. He stumbled a moment before going on, but he covered the slip by noting the count on his pad. “Alright, and those opposed, again by show of hands.” The truly brave thrust their hands into the air and stared at him. Nethliast nodded to each of them in turn. He would not hurt their families, yet, but they would not like where he would use them.
Valdiest sat back in his chair and looked around the room. He looked at Nethliast and then back at the counts on his pad. “Very well, the resolution passes. We agree and will act according to the decision of this conclave. I would...” A standing dragon in the middle of the floor stopped Valdiest. “Yes, you would like to add something?”
The young dragon seemed very nervous in the middle of the room, but he spoke. “Yes, I would like to move…” He swallowed and tugged at the tail of his jacket, “uhm… that we appoint Nethliast our leader. It’s his resolution, and he should be allowed to lead it.”
Valdiest’s face turned red. He suddenly realized what was happening. Nethliast inhaled slowly as he enjoyed the old wyrm’s reaction to his abscission. The old man started to speak, but another voice in the crowd spoke first. “Second.”
The man who had been king looked to Nethliast and then the room. Nethliast had to be proud of the old wyrm. He took it like the very king that he was. “Very well, in favor?” An obvious majority of hands filled the air. “Opposed?” The outnumbered did still vote. Among them, with his hand thrust higher into the air than any other, was the king’s Aide-de-camp continuing to stand by his king. Nethliast was proud of them all. He was very proud of any dragon that stood with his beliefs in the face of odds like this. He shrugged and stood to take his place at the head of the table.
As he and Valdiest switched places, he measured the crowd. Most of them were looking at him with scowls not smiles. He could deal with open hatred better than he could deal with subterfuge. This was the way he liked it, straightforward. He might have to make an example or two to keep the more defiant from acting.
“Thank you all, but I must ask that Valdiest remain at my side. I am a young dragon, and I will make mistakes. I need his wise guidance to make it through this.” He looked at Valdiest who nodded as protocol required. “There are tough decisions ahead. I want to divide into geographic and functional groups to deal with each area of my plan. I will spend the next few moments outlining it for you, and then we will split up to start moving on the details.”
After several hours, when he had finished presenting his plan to the group, he was a little worried there was more indigestion than he wanted. He didn’t care anymore though. He wanted to celebrate. They had acted exactly as he had expected. He could deal with the dissenters later.
“Valdiest, will you please see to the room divisions. I will be back. I need to check on some other things.”
Valdiest nodded and swallowed whatever he was thinking. He had no choice but accept the bloodless coup. Nethliast turned away from him and walked out of the room as each of the groups he had laid out started to form around a personally selected leader.
As the door closed behind him, a lavender blur appeared next to him.
“How did you do that? That was your plan all along.”
“Magic.”
“Right—not that crowd. What do you have over them?”
He smiled. She was quick.
“You started this yesterday. No, you started this long ago; you just gave the order yesterday.”
“Why are you here?”
“What?”
“I thought I told you to stay with Valdiest?”
“You did, but he’s...”
He turned on her and stopped their progress toward the door. He was not ready for a repeat of the day before.
“Do not underestimate a dragon. I hurt him. I want to know how he takes it. I want to know if he turns on me. I don’t have him in my pocket. Plans like this are never completely successful. If you wish to help me, then help me. Do what I need for you to do.”
She stopped and looked at him like an abashed young girl. The tickle of pleasure her submission caused rushed in behind his anger. He could see that the role switch pleased her as well as they continued this little game, and he immediately grumbled at himself for caring.
“Of course… I was caught up in your excitement. I’m sorry.” She started to turn away, and he caught her arm. He slipped his room key into her hand and turned toward the lobby.
Instead of leaving out the front doors, Nethliast walked out the back and down a walkway toward the road behind the hotel. People going to and from their meetings surround
ed him. He hated them. They went about their normal day, mostly unaware that anything was different. The news had reported dragon emergence poorly because they had not understood what was really happening. In the month since, he had successfully kept the truth in the tabloids where it was safe, but he was tired of hiding. Today they would see a real dragon emerge.
At the end of the walkway, he walked into the middle of the crosswalk next to a turning circle and transformed into his full form. His sudden growth among the crowd threw people onto the hoods of cars and sent them tumbling into the turning circle. Cars swerved and crashed to avoid the people suddenly in front of them.
Throwing back his head, Nethliast roared out a challenge to any who dared come near him. All around cars and people froze in terror as they tried to make sense of the giant beast now standing where just seconds before there was nothing more than a small group of people crossing the street. They would not ignore him now.
He flapped into the air, leaving the chaos behind him. As he lifted from the ground he watched several phones snap to life as one by one the people around him attempted to capture the impossible image of a dragon taking flight before their eyes. With these shaky videos, along with the traffic and safety cameras, there would be no way to deny what had caused the pileup of humans and vehicles. Nethliast felt no concern for those he left behind. They should have thought before they raised their fists at dragons.
He flapped vigorously, pushing for altitude, filling each stroke with anger and excitement about how well things had gone. He spared a moment of thought about Rebekka and the celebration he would enjoy when he was done, but decided this was his moment. He would not foul it with positive thoughts of any human. At altitude, the refreshing flow of cold air over his wings thrilled him. He spread them out to lazily spiral down toward the city unafraid of anyone seeing him. Finally the freedom was his again. He knew he was breaking some rule, but he was now in a position to make those rules. He would no longer be bound by rules designed to protect humans.
The familiarity of this place filled his mind and reminded him of a time when he had been like a king in this land. Humans had been a small race that had been weak and completely dependent on dragons for their safety in the magical land. Soon, Nethliast would have that again. He would reclaim the land and drive the humans from it. When their presence was completely wiped from its surface, he would repopulate the hills with livestock to feed dragons and return the land to its long lost magnificence. He could hunt again in peace in the hills of his childhood. He stroked at the air once more, gained altitude, and turned south. The home of his memories was somewhere to the south. Painful barriers hid the place from him, but he would start his kingdom there and someday he would find the place he had once lived with his mate. When he found it he would have her brought there to see what they had once shared.
And he would kill her there before he took a new mate and raised his offspring to rule the land forever.
Below him, the city turned to fields. In the distance, he could see the mountains. He longed to soar over them as he had before the humans had somehow fooled them. Dipping his head, he plunged into an exhilarating dive. Because of the discretion forced on him, he had kept his own flights low and short to avoid unneeded attention. He no longer cared if the humans knew he existed. The world needed to know and fear his return. He would enjoy flying again. The air whistled past him, and he looked around at the nothingness beneath him. He opened his mouth and took the air through his nose and mouth. The odor of humans even reached these heights. It would take years to clear that smell out of the land and get it back to something like he remembered.
He closed his eyes and allowed himself a moment of doubt where he wondered if he would ever see the land back the way it had been. He inhaled the tainted air again and purged his mind of doubt. He would eliminate the blight of man on this land if he had to burn it down around them to do it. It would heal as it had in the past, and dragons would again reign.
The air pressure around him changed, alerting him that he was not alone. He opened his eyes and scanned for what had drawn his attention. Ahead of him, a pair of dots approached. They were small because they were far away, but they were closing quickly. He focused on them, and his vision drew them closer. They were airplanes from one of the human governments. He had expected this; in fact, he had been inviting it. The aircraft were small, fighters with wings loaded with missiles. Nethliast grinned. The hunt was on.
How would they react? They were intercepting him. Would they attack first? Would they try to destroy him? If they did, he only had to let them. Then no one would say he had attacked them first. Others would use their own actions to make his actions valid.
He considered this as they flew past him, answering his question. Since they chose to be cautious, he did not intend to become a martyr in his yet undeclared war. He watched both planes turn to come back around. They were slowing down to get a look. They wanted to see him. He had the advantage; they would doubt what they saw. Their radar would only show him as a contact. The ground stations would be unable to help with an identification so the pilots would be required to identify the contact and ask for permission to engage him. As they completed their turns, he stopped to hover and climbed above them.
Both planes adjusted and climbed toward him. He stopped to hover again. They climbed toward him but they could not slow down enough to hold position with him. They would have to fly past him or orbit him to complete their identification. They were lining up to pass by him again.
The lead plane turned into a slow circle to orbit him. Nethliast expected the pilot was reporting everything he saw back to the ground and was wrestling with what he was seeing. One of the planes would have him on video by now. Nethliast inhaled a deep breath and waited. He was holding his distance as both planes continued to circle. When they completed their next circle and they came out from behind him, he bolted toward where they would be. The lead pilot sensed the move, and started to turn away as Nethliast closed. He hovered as the plane turned to the right. He could hear the engine’s pitch change as the pilot was pouring fuel into it too late to escape Nethliast’s attack. He expelled the gas in his glands into the air around the plane and ignited it into a long stream that crossed the path of the plane. The heat ignited the paint on the surface of the plane’s skin and crazed the cockpit canopy. The engines ingested fire through the air intakes and immediately shut down from lack of oxygen, but the rich fuel left in the combustion chamber ignited as the flames entered through the air path in uncontrolled bursts that ripped fan blades from the impellers. The jet engines consumed themselves, expelling debris, fuel, and fire from the back of the plane as it exited the stream. The nose pitched down as the pilot struggled to control the suddenly unpowered and damaged aircraft. Smoke and debris chased the plane as it descended in an oscillating half roll that threatened to turn into an uncontrollable spin that would ultimately end badly.
With a single exhale of remaining gas, Nethliast ignited the fuel pouring from the ruptured lines in the plane, and its descent continued from the expanding explosion in large smoking chunks. The other plane had been following its wingman down as the pilots struggled to figure out what happened. As the explosion shook the second plane, the wingman broke right and accelerated out of Nethliast’s range. The scream of the twin engines turned into a banshee wail as the pilot pushed the plane to combat speed and turned in a wide circle toward him.
Not waiting to close this time, a missile fell from the wing and ignited. The sudden glow as the engine came to life was brilliant, and the missile shot away from the wing faster than Nethliast could fly and nearly faster than Nethliast could react. Not sure if it would work, Nethlist exhaled again directly in the flight path of the missile and dropped from the sky at the same moment. Assaulted by the fiery gasses, something inside the missile failed, and it exploded above Nethliast’s head. The pilot had continued his path and adjusted to Nethliast’s maneuver to line up in a strafing run. Flashes burs
t out at him from the point where the wing joined the fuselage. The air near him whistled with rounds, and bright streaks from tracers flashed past him as the pilot adjusted his flight to bring the cannon on target. Nethliast drew his entire form into a tight ball, collapsing his wings in around him to eliminate any flight. Two rounds caught his shoulder and ripped through his scales before he could drop below the plane and the line of angry hornets. The force of the impact rolled him over onto his back. He took advantage of the position to exhale a stream of acid from another gland onto the bottom of the aircraft as it passed over him. It was not as effective as the flame, which he could not prime fast enough to use against the plane, but it would act quickly against the delicate connections and components beneath the plane. It might even cause some of the ordinance to explode in time, but Nethliast was not waiting to continue the fight. He had destroyed one of his attackers. The other one was more likely to crash than land. Nethliasts was already falling away from the combat zone toward the farmland below. He extended his wings and returned to flying. Now he would see how the world reacted to the first appearance of a real dragon.
July 17 – 0530 EDT - Signal Mountain, Tennessee
Melissa leapt into the air with a growl. The cave below the estate disappeared below her quickly. The morning dew had settled, and the light of the moon cast an eerie glow over the land. Something in the night, a dream that would not end, had made it difficult for Melissa to sleep. The agitation in her mind eventually drove her to this flight to find her mother. She attacked the air, propelling herself toward her parents’ estate in the hour just before dawn.
The river below her was a shimmering ribbon where the water reflected the silver light. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the night, making it easy for her to see the terrain around her and the wildlife that filled it as easily as if the sun were high in the sky.