by Zara Zenia
“What are you doing?” Rose asked in a voice that was laced with apprehension.
“If I just stand here and take little baby steps every few minutes, then perhaps I can trick the dragon,” I explained.
Rose frowned with perplexity. “Trick it how exactly?”
“She might just think I’m roaming around the lawns,” I said. “Which isn’t a crime in itself, really. I can pretend to be inspecting the grass or picking at wildflowers. I’m allowed to be outside.”
“Don’t you think it might be safer to just race to the hedge?” Sage asked. “Get it over with perhaps?”
“No,” I shook my head. “That will cause the dragon alarm to see me running.”
“That’s also true.” Sage frowned, at an impasse in her tiny mind.
None of them seemed to agree on a solid plan and I was out of options, so I inched myself another step forward in the meantime until somebody else came up with a failsafe plan.
Since I didn’t expect the heavens to miraculously open and give me an opportunity, I had to just go with what I had for the moment.
At this rate maybe I would reach the hedge by nightfall, but what was my plan once I got there? It was too thorny to climb over to the other side, and the gates would be undoubtedly locked even if I managed to get past the row of hedges somehow. Maybe I could think of a plan while I tip toed by a thread to the other side. It wasn’t like I had a key anywhere to get past the gates.
My heart drummed nervously in my chest and I was beginning to sweat with anxiety. It was already a humid night anyway. The shirt clung to my back. The back of my neck became damp with sweat too.
I edged further. I kept my eyes up in the sky, but I didn’t tilt my head in that direction because I was afraid that the dragon would catch on if it saw me inspecting it. She was flying above the castle now.
I stopped. I froze for a brief moment in shock and then leaned over as I pretended to be picking flowers but there was none in this area to choose from. Would the dragon catch onto that or was it too brutish and stupid to understand?
It let out a hiss and a roar. An intense heat flared around me and I saw the skies glow with neon green. I began to involuntarily tremble. I didn’t even want to dare to sneak a peek behind me.
I just knew that the dragon and it’s menacing, coal black eyes would be staring me down, its nostrils huffing and spewing clouds of heavy gray smoke.
I swallowed hard and attempted to behave as casually as I could, but it was a stretch and I was a writer not an actor. I could write the scripts but performing them was a different story.
If I met the dragon’s gaze, I was sure to crack and crumble under the pressure. I heard the familiar buzzing of Aine, Sage and Rose’s dainty wings behind me. At least I had their help, with what little they could do. Anything to offer me assistance was a godsend, a blessing. I couldn’t take the little tokens for granted.
I finally gained the courage to turn around. I shrieked. The dragon wasn’t in my face exactly, but it was pretty damned close. I tumbled backward, tripping over my own feet and nearly plummeting to the ground but I was somehow able to keep my balance. My arms flailed through the air and I swung myself forward.
The dragon narrowed its eyes and grunted, letting out a puff of steam from its nostrils. I didn’t know whether I was imagining things, but I almost thought I saw a glimmer of mischief and amusement for my little spill flickering in its eyes. The edges of its snarly mouth curled into a menacing grin that made my blood run cold and my skin crawl.
It took one step forward. I glanced down at its talons. Its claws and teeth were razor sharp. I held my breath and waited for it to lash at me.
“Don’t move and she won’t hurt you.” Aine’s voice had enough warning in it to stop me dead in my tracks.
She would know. All three of them knew better than I did how to deal with the dragon and play on its weak spots.
Would they be able to distract it for long enough for me to make a break for it? The only problem with that plan was, even though they were trying to taunt it and flutter around its head, it wouldn’t keep its eyes off of me. Its steely gaze bore a menacing hole right through me. It knew exactly what I was up to and the distrust in its eyes was enough to keep me guarded and grounded for now.
We were both paranoid and uneasy about each other. We were at a standoff, a stalemate of sorts. If I made one tiny flinch, the dragon would take the opportunity to pounce on me.
The dragon continued to edge slowly forward. Its wings were mighty and fierce, outstretched like airplane wings at its side.
I knew exactly what it was doing. It was taunting me. It was sending me a mental dare through its demeanor and stance to try to make a run for it. I wasn’t going to take the bait. I knew it would turn me into ash and dust as soon as I turned around.
Its giant feet pounded the soil and vibrated the ground around me. I screamed and braced myself for its ferocious aggression. I ducked and protectively swaddled my arms over my head, even though that probably wouldn’t do me much good if the dragon decided to scorch me with its green flame.
“What do I do?” I yelled to my three fairy friends, the only resources I had at my disposal to use to my advantage. I was steeped in panic.
“Just stay there,” they advised. They tried to annoy the dragon by buzzing around its ears, but it seemed to only be making it angrier.
“I know you are just trying to help,” I stammered, still cowering but keeping an eye on the dragon out of the slits in my fingers that were still shielding my face. “But I think you are just making it furious.”
The wind began to pick up. The clouds darkened and there was no longer a peaceful looking sunset. I heard thunder roll in the distance. Something was going to happen. There was an ominous threat in the air and carrying with the strengthening breeze.
I didn’t want to battle this dragon to the death. I knew I wouldn’t win that war. It was too big, too powerful. Besides, it had the ability to breath fire, and I didn’t. I had no chance. I might as well retreat and head back inside the castle. At least Nora wasn’t there. I would have the whole place to myself.
What was I thinking when I decided to come out here and play chicken with a dragon? I was foolish to even assume that something good would come out of this. I was baffled by my own bravery which was now significantly waning.
I couldn’t doubt myself. Not when I was staring danger in the face in the form of an aggressive red animal that wanted nothing more than to burn me to a crisp.
The fairies continued to patter around it, batting at its eyes with their wings.
“Please don’t hurt yourselves.” I winced and could barely watch as Sage got extremely too close for my comfort to the beast’s face.
It roared and took a swing at it with one giant wing. I had to duck and jump out of the way in order to prevent myself from being impaled. A puff of breezy air hit my face from the action of the dragon’s movements.
I was despairing. I couldn’t go anywhere without facing the dragon’s malice. At this point I didn’t even know whether it was going to let me go toward the direction of the castle, and that was where I was supposed to be.
“Please just leave me alone,” I cried with a pleading tone in my cracking voice. “I want to go back inside the castle now.”
The dragon snorted and its eyes narrowed into dark slits of suspicion. It didn’t believe me. It thought I was going to run for the hedge. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got there anyway, so it wasn’t like I could take the risk with no solid plan to get beyond the gates without the dragon being one step behind, breathing down my neck.
I rooted my feet on the ground and went into battle stance. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have any kind of weapon to protect myself. Things had certainly escalated more than I could have imagined.
It seemed like an eternity when I had an encounter with the trolls who were now the least of my threatening worries. Now it seemed as if the dragon wasn’t
going to let me move at all in any direction. When would it grow bored and give up? More importantly, would it ever? What if it just stayed here for an eternity and I became a skeleton waiting for something to happen…
Before my mind had a chance to get too carried away, I heard something that sounded like trampling horse hooves trotting behind me. The noise was shuffled and distant, but I turned around anyway, curious because it didn’t sound like a rainstorm.
That’s when I gasped, and my hands instinctively drew up to my mouth. I fell to my knees in shock. My mind couldn’t react fast enough to keep up with my emotions. I looked to my right and saw Jinurak for the first time in person.
He was racing toward me with an army of men in armor following behind him. I felt my jaw drop. I stood up and watched as a sea of men came charging toward the dragon.
Jinurak had an electrifying expression of determination on his face. He looked like a true warrior, a handsome god of sorts. He came out of nowhere. I didn’t even know how he had broken through the gates, but here he was. I wasn’t imagining him in his handsome suit of armor that flashed and shone like gold from the heavens above as he moved fluidly with a sword in hand.
I didn’t know whether it was going to be enough to take out the dragon, but at least he had arrived. For once since I came to this mysterious place, I felt the despair in my mind begin to fade and trickle away.
Jinurak had found me at long last, but we were far from being in the clear and out of danger just yet. There was only one thing left to do, find a way to escape the dragon with a literal army of support behind me.
Chapter 15
Jinurak
I stood outside of the locked door that was shut tight with a secure code reader pad. I, of course, had no idea how to breach the security and I didn’t have the code. I was still alone in the castle. This area was dark and damp with a musty smell as if mildew was spreading across the inside of the walls behind the surface of the drywall.
There was hardly any light spilling in from the closed windows. It was a gloomy place to be, especially if you were trapped. I knew that Ariana would be locked inside a virtual reality pod and that she probably didn’t even realize she was in this decrepit castle in the first place.
In theory that might have been a good thing, but Ariana wasn’t exactly in a magical, fairytale type of scenario. She was under the torturous mental grip brought forth by Nora, and the dangerous dragon made her current situation impregnable.
I took my communicator off my belt and switched the receiver so I could talk to Yadav. I pressed the call button, hoping he would hear it and pick up. I knew that he had his own set of problems and was currently trying to find a way to escape a box trap, but I needed him and couldn’t manage a practical solution to cracking the code to this castle room.
“David?” I spoke his name evenly and carefully into the intercom.
At first, the only thing I heard in response was crackling static. “Yadav?” I asked again. My heart thumped anxiously in my chest as I stood there hopefully anticipating a reply from him.
Finally, I made contact. “I’m here,” he said.
As soon as I recognized the muffled voice of David Yadav through my receiver, I heaved a sigh of relief and leaned back against the wall for a brief moment.
“Thank goodness you answered,” I said. “I’m inside the castle.”
“You are?” David sounded impressed.
“It’s extremely dark in here,” I mentioned. “But otherwise it seems empty. I hear explosions, yelling and shooting outside but there is nothing going on in here.”
“Have you found Ariana’s virtual reality chamber yet?” Yadav asked with an optimistic ring in his voice.
“I think I’ve found the room where she’s located, but I can’t break into it,” I said. I noticed the level of frustration rising in my voice.
“It’s locked?” David asked.
“Yes, with a keypad on the side of the wall next to the door.”
“Hmm…” Yadav trailed off and I heard a brief pause on the other end of the line as he contemplated what I dreamed would be a viable solution to the problem at hand.
“Do you know how to break the codes?” I asked after a few more excruciating seconds ticked by with no word from David on the other end.
“I am working on it,” he said in a professional voice.
“Are you still locked in the box in the hole?” I asked.
“Yes, but I am trying to work that out too.” David didn’t sound distressed, so I did my best to stop worrying about it for the moment. I could only put out one fire at a time. As long as he wasn’t in immediate danger, I could bide my time in order to seek out Ariana first.
“What does the keypad look like?” David asked.
“Um…” I narrowed my eyes and inspected the little square box. “It has silver looking numbers on it, zero through nine. It is lit up with a blue glowing light around the trim.”
“Okay that sounds like it’s probably an InterLoqk box,” David said assertively as if he knew exactly what he was doing. “I am looking up the failsafe codes from my transponder receiver right now,” he said. “I’m hacking the system to see if I can find this specific device via wireless routing.”
“Good.” I nodded my head, sweating buckets and praying to the gods above that this area of the castle wouldn’t be infiltrated until I was safely inside the room and had reached Ariana.
I would face more obstacles if and when I got inside the room itself. As long as David knew what he was doing I would figure out the rest later. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. It hadn’t been a cake walk so far. I had men out there risking their lives for me and I had to make sure it wasn’t all in vain.
“Can you look on the side of the box and let me know if you see a series of black letters and numbers to the right?” David asked.
I craned my head and searched, rolling my fingertips across the padding in order to see if I could feel for any engraving. Sure enough, I spotted them.
“Yes, I see them.”
“Good.” David sounded relieved. “That is the serial code numbers for that specific box. Will you read them out to me?”
I chanted the numbers and letters out to David twice, hearing him diligently typing them into his own device for searching and navigating.
“Okay,” David said. “I’ve got it pulled up.” His voice sounded even more muffled than before. “I need you to punch these specific numbers into the code box.”
“What?” I shook my head and pressed my free hand to my other ear. “David? I can barely hear you.”
“One…”
More crackling static buzzed through my ears.
“Seven…”
“I’m sorry?” I wanted to fist my hand through the wall with frustration at this audible hinderance. “Did you say seven or eleven?”
“Seven,” David clarified.
I typed in a one first and then a seven after that. “Okay, what number comes next?”
“Three, eight and nine.”
I pushed the numbers down. “Done.”
“Now press the star key.”
My heart dropped and a sensation of panic rushed through my body. “I don’t see a star key.”
“Judging by the model I have drawn up here, it should be on the bottom right hand side.”
I looked and found it. “Sorry, for the delay,” I explained. “The symbols are significantly smaller than the numbers.”
“That’s okay.” Yadav sounded patient. “As long as you found it.”
“Okay I punched it in,” I said.
“Excellent.” David’s voice chimed with excitement. “Now Press the zero button and hold it until the door releases.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I didn’t know what kind of mental despair I would be facing if this plan didn’t work.
In my head, I counted down from three.
Three…
Two…
One…
I pr
essed the zero button and held it until I heard the miraculous sound of a hiss, then a click and a popping sound that was music to my ears. I wanted to cry with joy. It was as if the heavens had opened up and were now blaring the triumphant song of victory.
But I was far from the finish line. I still needed to find a way to break into the virtual reality chamber housing Ariana.
“The door opened,” I told David, giving the sliver of a crack in the exposed doorway a guarded glance.
“Carefully push it open, and try not to get killed by anything,” Yadav joked.
I rolled my eyes but appreciated his lighthearted humor in such a tense and serious situation.
“Thanks.” I even managed a chuckle. I was feeling a little more golden now that I was one step closer to Ariana. “I’ll be sure to do that.”
I raised my gun and widened the gap in the door. I peered inside as warily as I possibly could. That’s when I found the virtual reality chamber. It had sleek, modern lines and clean finishing details.
The lid was shiny and ivory in color and looked like a long tube. I felt an instant surge of empathy for Ariana. She had been locked in here for a significant amount of time, but not only that, the tube was extremely tight. I was experiencing waves of claustrophobia and I wasn’t even inside yet.
I updated David with everything I saw, felt, touched, smelled. “I found Ariana’s pod.”
“Good.” David seemed pleased. One step closer indeed.
But as my eyes continued to pan the room, I had the urgent feeling of panic begin to rise and ripple through me.
“Wait a minute…”
“What is it?” Yadav’s voice was filled with alarm.
I began jogging around the room. “I don’t see a second chamber.”
“You don’t?” Yadav sounded confused.
“Are you sure that one has Ariana in it?”
“The one in front of me?” I asked.
“Right.”