Thinking back to last night, Gregory recaptured the feeling that had enveloped them as they searched for his father. Taking just a moment, he let that feeling flow throughout his being, then sent it forward to Elizabeth.
There was a moment’s hesitation as it rammed up against Elizabeth’s rage. Then the soft, powerful feeling connected with who she truly was. Elizabeth gasped as her rage gave way to the gentle, persistent waves of the projected feelings.
“How you doing?” Gregory searched her face. “We need to get going.”
Elizabeth nodded as she looked into the eyes that held hers and gathered herself for what needed to be done. They whirled toward the clearing as a brilliant light flashed off to their right.
With a sudden rush of air, chaos descended upon the little clearing. Out of nowhere, a powerful force, like an uncontrollable hurricane, raked across the right side of the clearing. In its wake, where there had once been two feran, four body pieces now littered the right side of the clearing.
“What happened?” Gregory yelled.
Before the feran could mount a defense, a whoosh of wind brought more death. At a speed almost too fast for the eye to follow, a giant, wingless dragon swooped down, snapped its jaws twice, and disappeared up and over the trees. Again, two feran lay in pieces.
“The dragon has a savior,” Elizabeth cried jubilantly. Yelling to Gregory, she broke into a run. “Follow me!” The witch ran toward the satchel Haushofer had left on the ground. Gregory followed.
In the clearing, the three individuals still standing ran as well. The German headed to the feran near him as the guard on the other side of the shrinking prison ran to meet them. The three came together twenty feet to the right of the books.
Elizabeth, running straight at the satchel, suddenly broke off to her left.
“Grab the bag. I’ll release the dragon,” she yelled to Gregory. Responding, Gregory surged forward, reached down, picked up the books, and pivoted back toward the trees.
The German, having heard the witch’s order, propelled a bolt of black light toward the Lascion. Trailing fire, the conjured projection missed its mark, blasting the earth just beneath Gregory’s feet. The explosion rocketed Gregory and the satchel ten feet into the air. As Gregory descended, bullets whizzed past his unshielded body.
“My shield!” Gregory remembered, just before his shoulder slammed onto the hard ground.
Not far to his left, the witch, shield in place, had stopped and was looking up at the orb closing about the dragon.
“It’s now or never,” she declared as her spell began to grow.
Inside the death orb, the dragon, its eyes fixed on a point above its head, was coiling like a snake preparing to strike; ready to blast its way out of its prison.
Elizabeth unleashed her spell, blasting a purple flame at the orb just as, from out of the sky, the other dragon slammed kamikaze-style into the point where the purple glow struck the orb. A millisecond later, the dragon inside reared up violently, using every ounce of magic it had left to lift up and through the orb. The three forces collided almost as one. The first two fractured the orb making the power the coiled dragon put into its magic far greater than needed. The dragon blasted through the orb and shot skyward. Rocketing to the speed of light, it created an updraft that lifted everything within a radius of hundred feet. Rocks, trees, feran, Haushofer, witch, and the Lascion followed the freed Hermadolin Dragon into the sky.
Only the dragon that had come to the rescue wasn’t affected. Its descent was too powerful. Crashing through the debris, it bashed full force into the witch.
Witchcraft collided with magic as the force of the rising witch met the force of the descending dragon. The resulting explosion threw both the witch and dragon crashing through the forest.
***
Somehow, Gregory managed to activate his shield before he was sucked into the air. For that reason alone, he survived when he came crashing back down. An entire hillside of dirt came down with him. Astoundingly, through the chaos, he held onto the satchel.
Gregory struggled to his hands and knees as the avalanche of wood, dirt, and rock settled. Looking about, he tried to get oriented in the disrupted landscape. “Elizabeth!” he whispered, hoping she had survived the upheaval. The witch was nowhere near.
Staggering to his feet, he stumbled through the debris; the dust disrupting his sight. The prospect of finding his way, let alone anyone else, looked bleak.
***
The magic of a protective shield is designed to stop anything that comes at it with sufficient momentum. That is exactly what it did when the dragon slammed into her, and then again as the two sliced off to the left, mowing down a number of tall trees before coming to a stop.
But there is also a drawback to such a shield. The wearer is vulnerable to slow-moving, gradual penetration. Like a knife slowly pushed at one’s gut or the splintered wood of a rupture tree trunk being forced into someone by a weight from above. Elizabeth found herself pinioned on the pointy side of that jagged piece of timber, wedged between it and the belly of a five-ton dragon.
‘It’s not going to hold,’ she deduced. ‘Nor can I move,’ she added after attempting to squeeze from between the dragon and the stump.
‘What about …?’ her brain, scrambling for an answer, ran through a gambit of spells and conjures. Nothing worked. ‘The dragon’s magic must be interfering,’ she reasoned, becoming more and more desperate with every failed attempt. Already the wood, aimed an inch below her appendix, was drawing blood.
“Oh man, this doesn’t feel good,” she moaned.
Then, something Gregory said flashed through her mind. ‘Maybe he was onto something. If I can just reach its mind, maybe I can wake this dragon up,’ she hoped as she punched out her projection toward the dragon. More like a psychic scream identifying herself as a friend, her mind reach toward the mind of the dragon.
The dragon stirred and rolled slightly to its left. The motion pushed Elizabeth’s body lower. The wood held firm as it passed through skin, muscles, and intestines on its way to the other side of her shield.
Biting her tongue to keep her control, Elizabeth tried again. ‘I’m a friend. Please get up!’
With a start, the dragon lifted up.
‘Thanks,’ Elizabeth projected with relief.
The dragon looked down, saw the body below, and said with wonder, ‘You spoke to me?’
The sudden change in pressure seemed to signal Elizabeth’s body that it was time to increase its protesting. Pain shot everywhere.
Gritting her teeth, the witch asked for help. ‘Can you lift me off this stump?’
Not knowing how the dragon would respond, and unable to do anything herself, Elizabeth, inundated with unrelenting pain, waited in tearful silence. Suddenly there was pressure beneath her body. The dragon’s foot was gently pushing her body up. The wood slid back, the blood gushed out, and the witch fought to retain consciousness.
‘Got to stop the bleeding,’ she told herself.
Then realizing the dragon still held her, she tried to find the strength to ask for a safe place to rest. Before she could master the projection, the dragon’s other front foot covered her belly. Her instinct said to panic. But in her mind, she heard the words, ‘I can help.’
Pain gave way to heat—searing heat almost too intense to stand. The witch gritted her teeth. Finally, the temperature turned cool before dissipating into a sea of normal sensations leaving Elizabeth feeling whole.
The dragon’s top foot lifted as Elizabeth felt herself being lowered. The limb cradling her body hesitated briefly as if making sure the witch was positioned correctly, and then rotated her upright, placing the witch onto her feet.
‘Thank you,’ Elizabeth projected.
‘You are not with the others?’
‘No, we came to stop them,’ Elizabeth answered. The word ‘we’ reminded her of her friend.
‘Gregory!’ she thought. ‘Oh my God, he might be hurt.’
CHAPTER 20
‘What is this Gregory?’
Realizing the dragon was in her mind surprised more than startled the witch. Her experience with animals was that they communicated but never ventured into the complicated patterns of a sentient being’s thought process.
‘You heard me think that?’ she projected, just to be sure.
‘You were frightfully loud,’ the dragon confirmed. ‘Is this Gregory the one that accompanied you?’
‘Yes, he’s my friend. His name is Gregory. I am called Elizabeth.’
‘Ah, Elizabeth. That is very beautiful. I am Gossamer. The one you helped to rescue is Fetch.’
The ability to reason, sentient communication, choosing to heal a stranger; the facts pointed to one conclusion. “You’re sentient?” she wondered aloud.
‘Do you hurt?’ the dragon asked, conveying a sense of surprise and concern.
‘What? … no, I was surprised by your intelligence,’ Elizabeth confessed.
‘As am I. I had no idea something so little would have the ability to think.’
“Of course!” Elizabeth laughed aloud. Up until the German broke into this timeline, the dragons had never seen witches, Lantians or humans.
‘Elizabeth, use your mind. Squawking like that is meaningless here.’
‘Uh … right,’ Elizabeth responded rather sheepishly as she realized the dragon considered her an inferior species. The witch’s embarrassment was brief. Before Elizabeth could stammer again, she remembered Gregory. ‘Can you help me find my friend?’
‘Oh yes, your Gregory. My mate will find him for you. For now, I think it would be best if I stayed with you.’
The dragon then tuned the witch out, or at least that is what it felt like to Elizabeth. A few seconds later, she returned.
‘Fetch just pointed out to me that finding something that small is like finding a pebble in a rock slide. He would like to know what your Gregory smells like.’
‘Uh …’ Elizabeth hesitated, trying to recall his scent. The word wolf came to mind, but as it was possible there were no wolves or other humans in this time frame, Elizabeth was at a loss. Then it hit her. ‘He smells like fear!’
Reasoning that the word ‘fear’ might be meaningless to the dragon, Elizabeth did her best to interject the feeling of fear as she projected the word.
‘Ah yes … we are familiar with that emotion. Fetch employed the same scent to call for my help.’
‘Oh, my God … that smell! He was trying to get your attention.’
‘For quite some time I’m afraid. I was beyond the horizon when his call finally got to me.’
‘Why didn’t he just project?’
‘Thoughts don’t bend,’ the dragon said in a way that suggested Elizabeth should have known that. ‘I came as fast as I could.’
‘We tried to help, too,’ Elizabeth apologized, feeling as if her effort had been insignificant.
‘Oh, my dear, that was quite an effort. And it was timed perfectly. If Fetch had known how powerful someone so small could be, he would have applied much less effort.’
‘He did make quite a mess.’ Elizabeth smiled.
‘Speaking of my mate, he has found your Gregory,’ the dragon chuckled.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Fetch told me your Gregory has a lot of fear for someone so small.’
‘Please ask Fetch to project his thoughts to Gregory. Gregory will hear.’
***
Unable to see past the dust or maneuver through the rubble, Gregory was growing more concerned by the moment. How was he ever going to find the witch? And what was he going to do if he ran into Haushofer? His concerns were multiplying, but it was what he had not thought about that materialized before his eyes.
A loud thud shook the earth. Then through the haze of floating dirt, a giant head emerged.
“The dragon!” he yelled, rapidly backing up until his feet hit a small boulder. Flipping backward, he landed on his head. Stars shot out before his eyes and followed him as he rolled end over end down a short hill. Another boulder forcefully stopped his descent but not his panic. Frantically, Gregory began crawling, ripping holes in his hands and knees as he tried to escape. A slow, methodical thumping followed him justifying Gregory’s panicked scrambling. Through his overwhelming fear, words suddenly popped into his head.
‘Are you Gregory?’
“What was that?!” Gregory yelled as he fought to scramble forward with his bloody hands.
‘Little one, there’s no need for fear.’
More words were invading his mind.
‘Gregory stop! You are going to hurt yourself.’
“Tell me about it,” the Lascion instinctively responded.
‘I just did.’
Suddenly it dawned on Gregory that he was having a conversation—with a dragon?! He was not sure he could accept that idea, but just in case he wasn’t hallucinating, he asked, ‘Who are you?’
‘I am called Fetch. I was the one caught in the evil magic. Your friend helped me to escape.’
‘I …’ Gregory started before rejecting his conclusions by thinking, ‘No, this is not possible.’
‘I thought that too, until you responded.’
***
Having reunited Elizabeth and Gregory, the dragons took them some distance from the place Fetch had been held captive. Elizabeth was hurting, and Gregory was still recovering from his meeting with the dragon. The dragons gently laid them down on a giant bed of leaves, then turned to depart.
“Wait!” Gregory said. The dragons stared at him quizzically.
‘I mean, wait,’ he projected apologetically. ‘I’d like to ask you a question.’
The dragons settled themselves near the nest of leaves.
‘All other creatures use wings to fly. I’ve been told that you fly by the power of magic, but there has to be more to that explanation. The scientist in me knows there has to be a basis by which that magic works. I am able to do some magic, but I don’t fully understand how I do what I do. What you do is so much more …’
‘Magic is one way to explain what we do,’ Gossamer replied. ‘Try thinking of magic as spirit manifesting. We know where we want to go; it’s a soft thought, just as when you want to walk somewhere. You know you want to go there, and your body—bones, neurons, muscles—all do their job to get you there.
‘We do not put up barriers to … or maybe better said, limitations on, the spirit within us. I suppose you could say we are more closely connected to that spirit than most. And, as each of our cells are encased in a spiritual element, flight for us, is just a thought, like wanting to take a walk.’
‘Your cells are the same,’ Fetch added, ‘but for some reason, I haven’t seen either of you or the evil ones use this much. It’s the spirit or life force that is within each cell that … propels us as it does. We just use it more fully than you do. Honestly, flying is little more than letting the spirit have its way.’
‘Okay,’ Gregory nodded. ‘That gives me more to go on.’
‘We will let you ponder that and rest,’ Fetch said, and the dragons took to the air again.
As they watched the dragons disappear, Gregory let out a big sigh. “Wow, that thing almost scared me to death when I first saw it,” he confessed.
“That thing,” Elizabeth said, admonishing him, “is most likely smarter than you. He also saved your hide. Perhaps it’s time to give him the respect he’s due?”
“I didn’t mean anything by that. I mean, I just got a lot to think a—”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Elizabeth interrupted. “It’s just that I’ve had my fill of idiots thinking they have the right to take simply because they have the might. These two dragons are probably smarter than most people on the planet and they have kind hearts. But just because they have something that will help kill others better, they’re imprisoned and killed.”
“Hey … hey, it’s all right,” Gregory tried to sooth her, understanding that she was upset with more than
just the dragons. “There are always people that will try and help, too. There’s a lot of good in the world. We just happen to have gotten pulled into a time and place where goodness and kindness are being shut down.”
Looking to change to a subject that didn’t discourage him so much, Gregory remembered that he hadn’t told Elizabeth of the precautions he had taken.
“Hey, I forgot to tell you. I’ve set up two defense fields over and around us, just in case.”
“My hero,” Elizabeth laughed.
“Yeah, right,” he frowned. “Like we need anything other than those two watching us from the sky.”
“I doubt they’ll be up there all night.”
“You might be wrong. Fetch seemed highly motivated.”
“Yeah, I suppose if someone tried to squeeze the life out of me, I’d want a little payback.”
“You think they’ll try anything tonight?” Gregory asked; his thoughts wandering from the dragons to the snake in German uniform.
“Either tonight or tomorrow. Haushofer’s lost everything. He’s smart enough to know he won’t get a second chance with the dragons. And if he goes back without the books, his time as a Nazi darling will undoubtedly be limited. The little magic he developed on his own won’t be enough to maintain his position. Sooner or later, if he’s not producing the magic they want, the big boys won’t play with him.”
“Then it’s a good thing we have our air support.”
“I suppose you could look at it that way,” Elizabeth smiled.
“What do you mean?”
“I get the feeling they aren’t as much protecting us as they’re using us as bait.”
“You think?”
“If the roles were reversed, I would.”
“Bait, huh,” Gregory frowned. “Then you won’t mind if I snuggle up close?”
“That depends on who’s doing what. Is this you protecting me? Or is it going to be the other way around?”
“I’d like to think it’s on me. But if that wound of yours is a problem, maybe we can just cuddle up together?”
Spirit of the Dragon: A Story of Magic, a Witch, and the Third Reich Page 14