In the hiatus, the dragons had already been busily at work, replacing the Horsey Convention Centre with their own construction. Amanda found herself standing on the floor of a giant cavern, the rock roof arching high overhead. The walls dripped with fiery liquids which lit the cavern with a flickering glow. Flying through pillars and other rock formations were thousands of dragons.
Concentrate!
Amanda focused on the Horsey Centre, willing it back. Parts of the cavern dissolved into bits of the auditorium. The effort was exhausting. As hard as she tried, she could only bring parts of the auditorium back. Then, even that was denied to her. The dragons spiralling down closer to her, opened their jaws, and spat balls of fire at her. Amanda scurried behind a big rock pillar. The heat from the exploding fireballs beat at her. She could smell hair burning. Hers.
There was no way she could bring the auditorium back. She was going to have to fight on their ground. She let go the images of the auditorium and the cavern returned wholly to the dragons’ creation.
Above her, dragons alighted on the top of the pillar. She hurled fireballs at them to no effect.
If she didn’t come up with something fast, it was going to be a very short fight.
She tried something different. She couldn’t change the whole cavern but maybe she could change bits of it. She imagined an opening in the rock wall beside her, going off into the rock.
An opening appeared. Shaky at the edges, maybe, but real enough. She dashed into the opening, closing it behind her. She ran deeper into a narrow rock corridor, imagining it in front of her as she ran, and closing it off behind her. She imagined stairs going up and spiralled them back to the cavern.
Now she imagined a thin wall of rock between her and the cavern. She killed the lighting in the little chamber. She hid behind a large rock beside the thin wall and dissolved the wall. She peered around the rock into the big cavern. It was still full of dragons flying about. She crept to the opening and carefully arched her head to look along the walls around the opening. Clinging to the rock walls around the opening were about a dozen dragons. They hadn’t yet noticed the dark opening in the rock.
Amanda abruptly made the opening wider until the dragons’ rock support disappeared. The dragons fell into the opening. Before they had a chance to react, Amanda cut them to pieces.
Flying dragons hurled fireballs at her. She imagined the rock wall back again, sealing off the little chamber from the fireballs which exploded harmlessly on the other side.
Seconds later the wall to the cavern dissolved again.
Try as she might, she wasn’t able to close it. The little chamber began to shrink, pushing her out into the cavern. The dragons were seizing control again.
And they were much stronger than her. She let go of the little cavern and jumped straight out of the opening and plummeted down the rock wall, taking the dragons by surprise. Several fireballs narrowly missed her. She imagined a rock ledge with a net in the centre. She scrambled out of the net and into a new opening. Again she had caught them by surprise and got away.
The next time she encountered the dragons, they were ready for her tactics. The dragons were in a new cavern with a waterfall dropping down between two high pillars of rock, the spray from the waterfall misting through the cavern and wetting everything, making it slippery underfoot. They let her enter the cavern and then prevented her from changing anything. She quickly found herself backed up against a rock face with nowhere to go.
The only thing that saved her was that the cavern suddenly bucked and heaved and tilted on one side. Many of the dragons smashed into the rock walls and dropped, crushed. Others fell over. So did Amanda. She was lighter on her feet than them and raced away into a new opening.
“Did that help?” Chrysalis said.
“You did that?” Amanda said.
“Yes.”
Amanda and Chrysalis now had a powerful new tactic. When the dragons prevented Amanda from making changes, Chrysalis threw the ship around, killing or injuring many of them in the process and breaking their concentration, enabling Amanda to escape into a new opening. Amanda created rock bridges over deep chasms. Caused rockslides to kill dragons. Used the dragons’ own rivers and lakes to shield her from the fireballs and then escaped down through an opening underwater.
The battle raged through the caverns. Amanda killed many dragons. It was still not enough.
Then the dragons came up with a whole new strategy.
Amanda peeped out from under a stone arch in the cavern of the many waterfalls to find only one dragon. A dragon that had to be more than 100 metres high. It towered up in the cavern, almost reaching the rocky roof. Amanda ducked down into the now dubious shelter of the stone arch.
“Are you kidding me?” she said.
Chrysalis rushed off to check with the minder. “It’s not one alien. It’s millions and millions of them all formed together into one big alien dragon.”
Amanda peeked out again. Now she could see that Chrysalis was right, although it didn’t alter anything. She couldn’t even begin to think how she could fight this monster. The dragon began to hurl enormous fireballs indiscriminately about the cavern. Amanda dropped down through the rock floor beneath her.
This time she squirrelled up through the rock until she was above the dragon. She made an opening an eyeball wide. Not only was the dragon still hurling fireballs, it was also bracing itself against the rock walls of the cavern to counter any sudden movements of the ship. She imagined spikes on her feet and her forearms.
This was definitely going to be a first.
She dropped down through the roof onto the head of the dragon, digging in with the spikes on her feet. The dragon roared, shaking its head mightily, trying to dislodge her. Now the dragon could not hit her with fireballs, and it tentatively removed a clawed arm from the rock wall to swipe at her.
Chrysalis jiggled the ship. The dragon instantly braced itself again.
Amanda drove her sword straight down through the top of the dragon’s skull, all the way to its hilt.
The dragon died without a sound. As it toppled over, Amanda unimagined the spikes on her feet and flipped herself onto the top of a tall pillar as the dragon dropped away beneath her feet.
The dragon hit the floor of the cavern with a thunderous crash and broke up. The cavern became littered with the carcasses of millions of dead dragons.
“Warrior girls rock,” Chrysalis said softly.
“Amen to that,” Amanda said.
The next time, there were three of the monster dragons. They braced themselves against each other and against the rock and covered each other’s back with a deluge of fireballs.
Amanda darted in at floor level, spiking her way swiftly up a couple of metres to the ankle of one of the dragons. She sliced through its ankle tendons and tried to disappear back into the rock but they were faster. The rock stayed solid. Worse, a massive ledge of rock split off from the face and started to fall on her. She rolled sideways out from underneath and spiked her way up the leg of the wounded dragon, slashing at its knee tendons, narrowly avoiding vicious swipes from the dragon’s free arm.
“Tilt,” Chrysalis said. Amanda swung crazily around the dragon’s leg.
It had no effect. Despite having an arm free, the dragon was still braced by the other two.
“Fly upside down,” Amanda said.
“They’ll still be braced,” Chrysalis said.
“Try it anyway,” Amanda insisted.
The cavern turned over. The dragons gripped onto the rock roof with clawed feet and extended their arms to grip the new floor of the cavern. They stayed upside down, expecting, maybe, that Chrysalis would take advantage of any attempt to move to a new position and waited for the ship to right itself. It did not.
Amanda, slashed with all her strength at the knee joint of the wounded dragon. It was bellowing with pain and one of the other dragons hurled some fireballs at her anyway.
Amanda got burned, and cried out in p
ain herself. She vanished the sword, hugging the dragon tightly with both hands, agony from her burns racking her.
The fireballs completed the job on the knee joint. The dragon’s lower leg parted company with the rest of it.
“Tilt.” Chrysalis spun the ship around again.
The dragon lost its balance and cannoned into the other two. In the confusion, Amanda killed it and badly wounded another. She disappeared into the rock again and this time their attempts to change the rock were much weaker.
She dropped out of the roof of the cavern again, head-first this time, thrusting the sword down through the top of the second wounded dragon’s head and then somersaulting away onto a rock pillar, having hardly touched the dragon with her feet at all.
Chrysalis kept flipping the ship at every opportunity and Amanda killed the third dragon.
Tens of millions of dead dragons, all heaped up on top of one another, filled the cavern.
The battle against the big dragons continued to rage for days. Or an eternity. Amanda didn’t need to eat or go to the bathroom and the minder healed her wounds as they occurred, which was often. There were many times she nearly gave up, overcome by pain and exhaustion. From somewhere, she found the strength to struggle on, hoping the nightmare would end.
When it came it was shocking and unexpected. Amanda found herself on the bus. It was floating down through the sky, coming to rest on the edge of the charred circle where the Horsey Centre had been.
Amanda stared at the others on the bus, speechless.
“Welcome back,” Chrysalis said.
“Did we win?” Amanda said, feeling as though she was trying to talk through sand.
“Yes.”
“Utopia now?”
“Can we get out now please,” Beatrice said. “That was a very interesting ride, thank you.” Her sister opened the door and went outside.
Now Amanda realised that the door wasn’t a bus door at all. It was like a…carriage door on an old-fashioned horse-drawn coach. Pretty and delicate. She looked around at the bus. It was no longer a bus. It was the gondola for an airship which stretched up above her into the sky.
“The minder says nothing is perfect,” Chrysalis said, answering Amanda’s utopia question. “But your world is now the best it can be.”
By now the rest of her family and Sarah’s family had left the gondola and were outside, gazing at the black ash stretching away.
Still dazed, Amanda joined them. Chrysalis hopped out too.
In the distance, a long stream of brightly coloured airships, solar sails sparkling in the morning sun, drifted along.
“It’s a nice day. Chrysalis said. “Families going for a picnic at the beach.”
Amanda moved the two of them away from the others. “What do they remember?”
“Some things. Not others. The minder has supplied them, and everyone on this planet, with suitable events covering the time period since the aliens came.”
“No more nuclear weapons?” Amanda said.
“No. But they do remember the singing competition.”
Amanda looked at the long line of airships. “What happens if I take this bracelet off?”
“You’ll be like them. Do you want to take the bracelet off?”
“I don’t want to be an outsider with crazy thoughts in my head that no one else will understand,” Amanda said. Now she felt sad at the thought of losing all that had made her what she was now. “I don’t want to forget I’m different from that old Amanda. I don’t want to lose that.”
“The minder can arrange suitable events that result in this new Amanda,” Chrysalis said.
“No zombies or dragons. No nightmares.”
“No nightmares,” Chrysalis agreed.
Amanda had an even sadder thought. “Will I remember you?”
“No.” Chrysalis was about to go on when she stopped for a second or two and then said excitedly, “The minder says I’m going to hatch!”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Amanda cried. She smothered Chrysalis in a massive hug. This time Chrysalis didn’t pull away and they hugged each other, jumping around in excitement.
“I’ll miss you little cocoon girl,” Amanda said, trying not to be tearful.
“I’ll miss you too, warrior girl.”
They gave each other a final hug and Chrysalis moved back to the airship.
As she was sliding the bracelet over her hand, Amanda flicked a glance across to Frankie. Yeah, like that was going to happen now.
As the bracelet slid off her hand, it disintegrated into tiny little pinpoints of light that quickly vanished.
As Chrysalis watched, Amanda looked around as though expecting to see someone and not finding them. For a moment she looked quite lost.
Frankie strolled over. “Do you still want to give me your number?”
“Sure. I can do that,” Amanda said, nearly succeeding in not giving him a silly grin.
They exchanged phone numbers. Frankie sauntered away.
Sarah came over. “Don’t let him break your heart,” she said. “He’s a real douche bag like that sometimes.”
“Use ‘em and lose ‘em,” Amanda said.
Sarah nodded comfortably. She waved her phone at Amanda. “They’re saying that it was a gas leak.”
Amanda looked at the ash pile where the Horsey Centre had been. “Must’ve been a hell of a gas leak.”
“Yeah,” Sarah said. “You’d have to think so.”
They both stood looking at the black ash.
“I guess we’ll have to enter again next year,” Amanda said.
Fiction by John Zanetti:
The Gardener Who Could See
War of the Shadows
Cantal’s Revenge
Girls with Attitude ( Sci-fi short fiction series) which includes:
Princess
Writing Home
Amalfi Echo
Would You Die For Me?
Chrysalis Young
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About the author
I am a New Zealander, now wandering around northern Australia in a caravan. I am also an Australian citizen. I brought my two boys up on my own but they are now grown and gone, leaving me free to write full-time. Mostly, I count myself fortunate to be living in the tropics, with the freedom to simply hitch up my caravan and move on whenever I get restless, which is often.
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Twitter: @johnzwriting
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