by James Maxey
Watching the lightning, he started a silent internal count to measure how long it would sustain itself. Should he ever again find himself in the company of biologians, he wanted to relay his observations as faithfully as possible. He studied the point where the lightning struck the rooftop. A neat, perfectly circular hole had now been carved out by the dancing arc. He tried to spot the door in the wall he’d seen earlier. The door had been about six and a half feet tall and three feet wide. He could compare the door to the size of the hole carved out by the lightning to get a better estimate of its diameter.
Only, as his eyes searched for the door, they found something far more interesting. A man! He was tall and slender, covered head to toe in tight-fitting silver armor. Indeed, the armor seemed almost like a second skin; either the man was exceedingly thin beneath the shell, or the armor was no thicker than a sheet of parchment. The protection such a flimsy film of metal could offer seemed dubious.
Even more curious than the man’s attire were his actions. He held a small white rectangle in one hand—a small book perhaps—and a stubby black stylus in the other hand. A quill stripped of its feathers? He seemed to be taking notes. Then, to Graxen’s great astonishment, the leaves and dirt around the man’s feet suddenly burst outward in a cloud and the man flew upward, covering the thirty feet or so to the rooftop with ease. He touched down, crouching, shielding his eyes with the book, placing his other hand on the roof to steady himself. The wind might not be reaching Graxen on his perch above the valley, but apparently it was the strength of a hurricane at the epicenter.
The man crept forward, slowly, slowly, drawing nearer the lighting, still holding his book toward it, like some fairytale wizard preparing to cast a spell. For that matter, the man’s silver attire reminded him of knight’s armor. Wizards and knights featured prominently in the literature read to young dragons. They were always murderous villains, intent on slaying dragons for no reason other than innate evil, and were nearly always vanquished in the final pages by some clever stratagem of the heroic young dragon whose name adorned the cover of the book.
Graxen had viewed those long ago tales as nothing but fantasy and had never believed in wizards, despite the well-known fact that King Albekizan had one in his employ. Vendevorex, Master of the Invisible, was a fellow sky-dragon, but one looked upon by most scholars at the College of Spires as a fraud. Still, if ever there were a phenomenon before his eyes that argued for the existence of magic, this was it.
Whatever the man was doing with his book, he seemed to have finished. He turned and crab walked back toward the edge of the roof. With a sudden rupture, a portion of the roof collapsed and the man dropped into the hole, losing his grip on this book, which blew away in the wind.
Graxen looked back to Nadala. “Did you see—?”
“The man, yes,” she called back. “What was he doing? What was it he dropped?”
“I’m going to find out,” said Graxen, spreading his wings.
“Graxen, no!” Nadala cried, but he plunged forward as if he hadn’t heard her. He understood the insanity of his actions. If the wizard-knight had dropped a sword, or a staff, or even a bag filled with gold, he wouldn’t have leapt. But a book! On the off chance the fall hadn’t killed the human, he had to reach the book before the man did.
His flight proved much swifter than he’d anticipated. The relatively still air higher in the valley gave way to a growing inrush of wind. From the man’s actions, he’d assumed the wind was blowing away from the lightning, but now it seemed that the lightning was aggressively sucking in all the atmosphere it could.
Graxen’s years of navigating the skies served him well. He adjusted the angle of his flight into an aggressive dive, his wings tight against his body, until he’d gained enough speed that when he spread his wings again he caught onrushing air despite the terrible backwind. Wings wide, he drifted down to land near the fallen book.
His heart sank as he retrieved the object from the bush where it had fallen. It wasn’t a book, but some sort of thin, rectangular tablet, like a tiny portable writing desk. It was crafted from some smooth white substance Graxen couldn’t quite identify. Porcelain? Glass? Enameled metal? The back was featureless save for a small black circle ringed with silver around a tiny glass window revealing an even smaller glass bead within. The front of the tablet was a sheet of glass filled glowing with its own internal light. Words, numbers, and symbols danced beneath the glass, but, though he could read the letters, the words seemed like nonsense, randomly strung together syllables like something out of The Ballad of Belpantheron. What was a neutrino? What was a tachyon? What did the dancing bars beside each word indicate?
“I’ll take that back now, if you don’t mind,” said a voice behind him.
He turned to find the wizard-knight standing near. Up close, the impression that the man wore armor turned out to be exaggerated. As near as Graxen could tell, the silver was actually painted onto the man, revealing every sculpted detail of his muscles. He looked utterly hairless, lacking even eyebrows. He also, despite his lack of pants, showed no signs of genitalia. What a strange creature. And, stranger still…
“You’re not breathing,” said Graxen. Despite the roaring wind above him, he could see that the man’s chest didn’t rise and fall, nor did his nostrils give any hint of movement. Indeed, the man was strangely devoid of any scent at all.
“And you’re not handing me back my tablet,” said the man. “Look, I’ve never met one of you before, but from everything I’ve read I’m guessing you’re a sky-dragon. They say you’re pretty intelligent.”
“Who are they?” asked Graxen.
“The e-lunatics!” said the man, sounding pleased. He gave a slight chuckle. “My, uh, team. We live on the moon.” Despite the lack of hair, he scratched the back of his head. “That must sound pretty crazy to you.”
“About what I’d expect from a lunatic.”
“See, we aren’t actual lunatics. We’re e-lunatics. It’s a play on my name and our mission and what naysayers called our team when we went up to build the colony, and oh my God, why are we discussing this? Just give me back my tablet!”
“Who are you?” asked Graxen. “Why are you doing this?”
“This?”
Graxen nodded toward the shaft of lightning.
“Right. This. I’ve… I think I might have torn a hole in time. An honest mistake. I’m Joseph Elijah. I don’t know if that name means anything to you since it’s been a long time since I’ve walked the earth, but back in the day people said I was the smartest man alive. I need that data you’re holding onto right now, or some seriously terrible stuff might happen.” Elijah held out his hand, palm up.
Graxen took a step backward. The rumors that the mountains were haunted suddenly didn’t seem as impossible as they once had. Here was a man with no breath, no scent, who claimed not to have walked the earth in a long time. Graxen wasn’t inclined to keep property that didn’t belong to him, but he also wasn’t certain that aiding this unliving thing was a wise course of action. He said, “What do you mean by terrible stuff?”
“Best case scenario, I don’t know, the rip in time starts spitting out dinosaurs? Dinosaurs if we’re lucky. Primordial viruses nothing alive will have a defense against if we’re not as lucky? Worst case scenario, the time rip turns into a space rip and the planet gets torn right down the middle, ending all life as we know it. There’s a little wiggle room in my calculations. Now hand over that tablet before I do something we’ll both regret!”
“Are you threatening me?” asked Graxen, holding up his fore-talon so that his sharp claws caught the light. He wasn’t violent by habit, but he suspected he could make short work of the man if they came to blows, especially since the man seemed to be unarmed, and, in his unclothed state, there was certainly no place he could comfortably be concealing a blade. The talk about time rips and dinosaurs struck him as the babbling of a self-confessed madman. Or mad ghost, or whatever he was. The fact that ghosts and w
izards and knights were unflinchingly evil in every story he’d ever read gave him a gut feeling that he’d be a lunatic himself to hand this seemingly magical tablet back so that the wizard-knight-ghost could finish whatever terrible spell he was casting.
Elijah pressed his left fist into his right palm. When he pulled his hands apart, the left fist had sprouted four parallel knives at least twelve inches long and wickedly sharp. “If it’s a claw contest you want to get into, I’m afraid you’ll lose.”
“How about a contest of flight?” asked Graxen, kicking off, flapping his wings, spinning into the wind. The tailwind that had nearly crashed him was now a headwind. Gaining altitude in a good strong headwind was something even a leaf could do. He sailed higher on the wind, already planning the path he would follow into the forests across the valley. He assumed the moon-ghost would chase him into the forest, while Graxen would double back to Nadala and together they would flee.
There was a loud WHOOOMPH below, and he glanced down to see the man rocketing skyward, his knife arm outstretched before him, turning his whole body into a deadly projectile. His speed made him nearly impossible to outrun, but a human body wasn’t built for maneuverability in the air. Graxen wheeled away, leaving Elijah to slice through empty sky. The silver man made a wide arc back around to attack again, still moving fast, but, as Graxen had suspected, his motions lacked finesse. His path seemed wobbly, buffeted by wind, and Graxen deliberately let him draw near, then dove. This close, the man had no time to react. Graxen corkscrewed in the air, turning his hind-talons up, using them to rake the man’s torso, to no effect. The man’s thin silver shell deflected Graxen’s claws as effectively as if he’d been wearing plate mail. At least the man was, indeed, solid. Perhaps he wasn’t a ghost, and his initial instinct that the moon-man was a wizard had validity.
Graxen took a deep breath as he spun back to level off his flight. He swerved again as the man raced up behind him, slicing the air where Graxen had just been. Graxen felt the first stirrings of panic. Of course the moon-wizard couldn’t be hurt. Obviously the man wore enchanted armor. Perhaps he should drop the tablet, and hope the man no longer gave chase. But Elijah had all but confessed that the lightning vortex was his creation, and seemed to regard the tablet as essential to controlling it. It still felt foolish to give him what he wished, but what if he had no choice? While Graxen could elude the silver man for quite some time, his hide most certainly wasn’t enchanted. Eventually the man’s blades would draw blood, he would die, and Nadala…
Nadala.
His instincts had been to keep her safely away from the moon-man. What if, as was often the case involving Nadala, his instincts were wrong?
He rose higher, toward the swirling vortex of clouds. Now that he’d had more time to study the leaves and debris swirling around him, he saw that the inrushing winds change into outflowing winds at the top and bottom of the vortex. He rode the hurricane winds dizzily around the lightning, then spun off, faster than he’d ever flown before, heading straight for the rock shelter where he’d left Nadala. There was no chance she hadn’t watched his encounter with the wizard-knight. Graxen swerved at the last second as the silver man raced at him from behind, slashing the air with his blades. He’d sensed the man’s approach by the faintest tingle in his tail as the cone of air pushed by the man’s body had tickled the tip. A half second slower and he’d have been sliced to ribbons.
As Nadala had counseled earlier, there was chasing, and there was hunting. He was done with being chased. It was time to turn this into a hunt. The bright, dancing lightning directly behind him cast his shadow forward, darkening the interior of the cave. He didn’t see Nadala within. Had she fled?
No. She’d seen him coming toward the cave, silver man in pursuit, and hidden herself. And there was only one place that made sense to hide.
With hard, rapid wing beats that made his heart feel like it would burst, he flew straight at the rocks. As he reached the boulder that lay not far from the entrance, he wheeled, darting around it, folding his wings tightly as he hurtled through the enclosed space of the shelter, then spreading his wings again as he flashed back into open air.
Behind him in heard a loud grunt and a sharp CLANG! He wheeled around to see Nadala standing over the man, who was pinned to the ground, face down. Her spear had gone right through the center of his lower spine and pinned him like an insect in a display case. The soles of his silver feet still kicked up dust for a few seconds, then died off. He slid down the shaft of the spear, lying motionless in the dirt. Graxen flapped to return to the shelter, landing before the fallen man.
“Who and what and how and why?” Nadala asked, in an animated tone.
“Elijah. Moon-wizard? Magic! He’s evil?” answered Graxen, with a confused shrug. “It happened very fast.”
“And you just trusted I’d kill him if you steered him my direction?” she asked, her voice trembling with energy.
“Yes,” he said. “I felt quite certain of it.”
She relaxed. “That is the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me. It makes me miss when we wrote love letters to one another. Telling me you had faith I could kill even a moon-wizard would have been quite flattering.”
“I’m not dead,” said Elijah, raising himself onto his elbows. “Fun as it was chasing you, why don’t you give me the tablet now?”
“What tablet?” asked Nadala.
Graxen held it up. “He used it to cast a spell to make the lightning. I think.”
“That is wrong in so many ways I don’t even know where to start,” said the silver man. He twisted his neck. He seemed to be in no pain from the spear that had pierced him. Graxen smelled no blood, nor any hint of bodily waste that one would normally expect from such an injury. “First, though, introductions. I’m Joseph Elijah. Last time I was around these parts, they called me the Moon Man.”
“I’m Nadala,” said Nadala. “This is my mate, Graxen. What manner of man are you that you can survive such injuries?”
“A man who’s already survived his own death,” said Elijah. “A thousand years ago, I perfected the world’s first permanent transplantable artificial heart. It made me a wealthy man. Wealthy enough that I bought the Maldives, which were in imminent danger of vanishing beneath a rising ocean. Luckily, the Dutch figured out how to beat a rising ocean a long time ago. Once I used my fortune to save the nation, I started my own space program and built a colony on the moon without any of the red tape I’d have had to cut through if I’d remained in America. It was a profitable venture, since only billionaires could afford to settle there. And the only thing I enjoyed more than being rich was being alive, so as various body parts failed, I replaced them, building on the tech I’d developed for my artificial heart and borrowing heavily from already existing patents on artificial limbs. Eventually…” he rapped his temple with his silver knuckles. “…even my brain got replaced. There’s a direct correlation between the Joseph Elijah born in San Francisco in 2015 and the man I am today. The funny thing is, my new body could shrug it off if you’d shot me or shocked me or gone at me with your teeth. But I honestly didn’t plan for a spear attack. Even a genius can’t plan for everything.”
Graxen eyed Nadala. “I should also have warned you he’s a lunatic.”
“That’s an e-lunatic,” said Elijah, shaking his head. “And I’m not crazy. Look, I know we lack a common vocabulary to really discuss this situation, but—”
“Your draketongue is very good,” said Nadala, reassuringly.
“I’m not speaking draketongue, you’re speaking English,” said Elijah. “Because the first dragon was an American invention and holy shit I still can’t believe we’re jabbering about trivia when the world is about to get ripped in half!”
Nadala gave Graxen a worried glance. “Are you certain he’s a lunatic?”
“He might also be a ghost. Or a wizard. Or a knight. Or all three.”
“Knights are the good guys, right?” asked Elijah, hopefully.
“Get this spear out of me and give me the damned tablet!” Elijah screamed, beating the ground with his fists like a child throwing a tantrum. “We’re seriously on the verge of complete and total destruction if you don’t let me go right now!”
Nadala furrowed her brow and grasped the spear shaft with both talons.
“Don’t,” said Graxen.
“Do you have a plan to get rid of that hell storm out in the valley?” she asked.
“No,” said Graxen.
“Yes,” said Elijah.
“That’s what I thought,” said Nadala, yanking the shaft free. “I’m already worried about giving birth so far from my sisters. The thought of raising a daughter or son in a world ripped in two is something I’d rather not have hanging over my head.”
Elijah rolled over onto his back. “Thank you.” He lifted his arm straight up. “I’ll need a minute while my system repairs itself. While we wait, let me look over the data I collected.”
Nadala nodded toward Graxen, who handed him the tablet.
Elijah’s silver lips bent into a frown as he looked at the screen. “Well, great.”
“What’s great?” asked Graxen.
“The mass readings. And they aren’t great. They’re terrible. Something huge came through the time rift while I was wasting time with you. Nine tons. I was just joking about the dinosaur earlier but apparently the universe doesn’t understand my sense of humor. Not that you’d know what the hell a dinosaur is.”
“Of course I know what a dinosaur is,” said Graxen. “The halls of the biologians are filled with fossils. We dragons are the descendants of the tyrant lizards who once ruled this world.”
Elijah chuckled. “That is one messed up creation myth but, you know, it’s no dumber than the stupid things people believed. Anyway, if we’re lucky, something big with a duck bill slipped through the rift. If we’re not as lucky, it’s something with teeth far longer than anything you’ve ever seen.”