by Alexis Davie
“One loose string.” Sebastian paused for what she suspected was dramatic effect. “Whatever we find or don’t find does not exist after you leave. So far as your friends are concerned, you went on a vacation.”
She mulled it around in her head just to seem like she knew what she was talking about before nodding her head. A confidentiality clause was the least of her worries, and it made sense. She’d have expected nothing else. The rest, the whole “go free” thing seemed a bit too good to be true, but if it was actually true, she wasn’t going to be an idiot and look a gift horse in the mouth. She stuck her hand out and shook his hand.
A crucial moment passed where dragon and witch shook on a deal, a moment of significance that she normally would have been happier about, but in light of the circumstances, she was pretty proud of herself for not being in the Hummer, curled up in a ball and hoping someone would come rescue her.
The next few minutes were constituted of Teneha and Ajax loading up the speedboat with what appeared to be camping materials, food, various utensils and tools, and tons of military stuff that Ellie didn’t recognize but that looked awesome anyway. She spent most of the time investigating the portal itself. If she was supposed to be the resident expert on the magic inside, she needed to know what she was looking at.
The massive black obelisks were a good place to start. She looked over the smooth surfaces and made a loose interpretation of what the runes meant. It was undeniably a prison. She saw the term “monster” about a dozen times, “behemoth” a few, “the Great One” here and there, and some other phrases that made her doubt if it was such a good idea to wander in there. It didn’t have a chronicle of what to expect, but the group that had set up the portals to make sure people weren’t supposed to get in there was certainly trying to protect innocents from whatever lurked in there. Very, very few species were immortal. If something that big and terrifying had really lived in there, it was long dead. The only few exceptions she could think of were dragons and cursed beings, but curses generally faded after a couple of centuries. She tried to relax. She’d seen similar writings dozens of times before, mostly referring to tombs and such where the runes were meant to scare away burglars. This was probably the same sort of deal. It was like the magic version of slapping a WARNING, ELECTRIC FENCE sign on a wooden fence. Of course, the creative part of her mind reminded her, there was always the option that they were walking into a nightmare, and all the creatures were real, and going in was virtually suicide…
No. Ellie steeled her mind. This was her only real choice right now, and worrying about it needlessly wouldn’t help anyone, least of all her. Even if it ended up being filled stock full of beasties, she didn’t doubt that a few dragons could handle it. Dragons were the alpha predators in the world. They were already evolution’s golden children. Ellie ran her fingers over the glowing runes and felt an electric hum vibrate against them. This, though she couldn’t exactly tell the precise date, was hundreds of years old. This puppy had been up and running before Columbus had even come to America. Even with everything else going on, she felt her Nerd Sense tingling. This was history, right in front of her face, and she was probably one of the first people in a very, very long time to touch it and see it up close. Her focus drifted to the island on the distance. Who knew what sorts of treasures it held? If a full civilization had been living there before they had evacuated, she might get to see things straighter from the source than anything in a museum.
Or, of course, she could die.
But it was worth the risk.
4
Ellie’s confidence stayed strong all the way until the point where she found herself in the boat.
At the precise second where her foot touched the floor of the rocking boat, it became very real to her. She was literally leaving behind land, and although now she could easily hop back over to the dry part, soon she’d be traveling across open waters with who knew what in them. Sharks? Whales? Sea creatures of enormous size and scale, swimming around in the deep blackness beneath them and waiting to come surging up and eat them like a delicious snack? Eels? All that it took to make Ellie realize she apparently had a fear of deep and dark waters was to be floating on a boat that looked plenty safe from afar, but now that she was up close and personal, it seemed like a much less safe option.
She sat in the slender speedboat, legs delicately crossed and perched between a few canvas bags sitting next to the king. She could not be any more out of place, and she felt even sillier. Bulky Ajax loomed off in one corner of the boat staring at the island as it approached, his weight potentially tipping them if she and Sebastian and weren’t on the other side. Teneha, meanwhile, manned the steering. Ajax, if Ellie had to guess, was the sheer, brute, stupid strength of the operation. Teneha operated the boat with ease, but she had to have other skills, and Sebastian, well, he was the head of the group and dragons in general. And then there was her, the loose end. She studied Teneha cautiously. She doubted she wanted her dead. It wasn’t like they’d known each other for any significant period of time, but Teneha seemed like someone who wanted to impress Sebastian, and part of that would be keeping her witch backside safe. Ellie hazarded only a quick glance at Ajax. The less she knew about him, the better. If she didn’t talk to him or even realize he existed for the whole trip, she’d be more than happy.
Their boat hit a wave, causing the other three to lightly tilt their weight. Ellie, who had very little experience on open waters, tossed violently to the side and slammed into Sebastian, who was sitting beside her. In a flash, his arms had shot out to keep her from tumbling out of the boat. One hand rested on her shoulder, and the other on the small of her back. He hesitated for only a split second before spitting out a gruff, “Try not to die already,” and resituating her on her seat.
Ellie released his forearm, which she’d grabbed onto in the moment of terror when she’d almost fallen out like an idiot, and scooted more towards the center of the boat.
“Thanks,” she muttered back. Interesting. Very interesting. He’d acted mighty fast to grab her, which was to be expected, but she hadn’t expected to see a glimmer of humanity in his eyes when he’d done so. For just a second, he hadn’t been a dragon, and she hadn’t been a witch. She had just been a girl falling overboard, and he’d helped her. For that second, she’d seen another glimmer of compassion in him. Huh. She crossed her arms and directed her attention elsewhere while she thought about it. He portrayed himself as this big, tough guy, which he very well might be, but she knew the truth. Somewhere under there was a good person. Maybe this trip wouldn’t be as shitty as she’d been fearing.
Ellie tried to look out at the upcoming island like a badass, but the endless spray whacking her in the face like tiny water daggers forced her to squint. The island itself was large. That much was clear. She had always been terrible at judging size, but if she had to guess, she’d put it somewhere between the size of a truck and the size of Germany. Rocky crevices crept along the vibrant green countryside in jagged zigzags up the sheer cliffs, giving it a rather sinister look even from afar. She thought she caught a few glimpses of what looked like stone buildings, but most of the trees were taller than whatever she saw, so she didn’t get a good look. Though she was by no means an expert in the matter, it looked like a pretty standard island. No immediate warning signs came off it. So far, so good.
She turned her head to watch the diminishing portal behind them. As land got further and further away, a tiny moment of concern came over her. If that portal closed, if something glitched out on the spell, which was quite probable, given its age and dangerous nature, she’d have to get it back open. That wasn’t necessarily a big deal. She felt pretty confident in her ability to reopen it within a few days of it closing. It might take some time, but she’d be able to do it. On the other hand, if she had to do it in a hurry because something was chasing them… She shook her head even thinking about it. No. She was with dragons, and trained dragons at that. They could keep anything bad from ha
ppening, theoretically.
Ellie cleared her throat and sat forward to get Sebastian’s attention. “So, you said you knew only a little. Spill the beans. What’s the news? What happened here?”
Instead of being insulted at her tone, he went along with it and seemed mildly amused by her introduction to the topic. He leaned back and directed his focus at their target.
“There’s a lot of rumors. Nobody’s sure what’s real and what’s just a bunch of legends, but we do know for sure that there was a massive energy source here. They had some kind of rock here, a glowing rock, that gave them heightened power. They jumped from living in stone cottages to having running water and a form of electricity in no time.” He extended his hand in front of her chest, showing a small, silver ring around his right index finger with a tiny, illuminated red stone in the middle. “This stuff. Something happened. We’re fairly sure that an earthquake hit, then monsters started showing up. Things that people had never seen before started crawling out of the ocean, out of the ground, to take the stone. They called it the Red Madness, or something like that. The civilians were driven out, and only a few tiny shards of this stone made it out.” He took a deep breath. “We know that all happened, but not why. This little rock has ridiculous energy in it. You could power a car with a taste of it for years. But it seemed to also draw in the unholy.”
“Oh,” Ellie said, feeling like she should say something but not sure what. He kept going.
“Though we weren’t able to distinguish much, we found a few engravings that came with the survivors. They called it the One, or sometimes…” He paused and spit out the side of the boat. “Him.”
“Him, like God?” She felt stupid even suggesting it, but oh, well. Better to ask and look stupid than wonder.
“Him, like something. Maybe their god. Maybe a demon. Maybe they were just a bunch of confused ancients who didn’t know what they were talking about. The manuscripts mostly talked about there being veins of it, veins so beautiful that people lost their minds.”
“Hate it when that happens,” she said in an ill-timed attempt to bring humor to the conversation.
Nevertheless, the corner of his lip turned up in a smirk. “The stories tell of monsters pretty common to old lore. All of them said the same thing. The rock pulled them in, and they stayed.”
She sat back. Him? The One? Those were rather specific and unusual names for a rock. She remembered a story about something similar in East Asia, where a group of humans back in the Industrial Revolution started finding a grey-red sort of rock deep in some mines. A mysterious creature came for it, and the workers weren’t heard from again. It spooked the owners of the company enough that they closed the mine and left. But one of the workers left behind a little diary that was discovered later, and he did the same thing: started fantasizing about this glowing rock, claiming it was sentient and important. Of course, it was just a rock, but if Ellie remembered right, there was some debate about what could have caused the reactions. The magical community quickly covered it up, bought off all the press, and hid the little incident, but some people claimed the rock was cursed. Others said it was radiation, which was proved wrong. One movement that caught her attention was the people who claimed the rock had been altered by someone. It bore the magical residue of someone having tampered with it, and eventually, the researchers behind it concluded that a necromancer had been doing his work nearby, and the magical residue had crept into the countryside, infusing nature with unholy, unusual things that acted like a beacon for anything unusual and unholy nearby.
Ellie almost laughed. So, her options so far were that they were looking at a sentient rock, or maybe an undead rock, and both presented absolutely absurd images in her mind.
As they got closer to the island and the portal grew smaller and smaller in the distance, the water itself changed from a deep, murky blue to a lighter, clearer color. By the time they got a couple hundred meters away from land and she started being able to make out some of the vegetation, the water was clear enough in random patches that she could see the ground far below them. She carefully peeked her head over and watched some colorful fish swim around happily. She started to relax. Maybe this wasn’t such a scary place. If childhood cartoons had taught her anything, it was that anything with cute animals was a safe, healthy location.
Her smile vanished when she saw the bones. At first, she thought they were rocks, but after seeing a few ribs that were the size of a school bus, her face went slack.
“Holy…” She muttered under her breath. “What is that thing?”
Deep beneath them, a skeleton bigger than anything she’d ever seen before became more and more evident out of the sand. Withered, enormous bones bigger than they had any right to be kept on coming as the image of something the size of a football stadium started to form in her mind. She thought she saw a couple sharks drifting by casually between some of the skeleton, but she barely paid them any mind. It was a well-known fact that in the old days, some very large animals existed for a variety of reasons, but something like that would make a marine biologist swoon. Whatever this beast had been, it had been the undisputed champ of the sea. Even partially submerged with underwater muck near the bottom, it stood strong like the true freak of nature that it was.
Mentally, Ellie tallied a point in the “maybe there really were monsters here” category. It wasn’t enough evidence for her to kindly panic and ask them to turn the boat around, but it certainly casted some doubt as to what else might be in there with them. That wasn’t your ordinary beach debris. That was a full-fledged beast, something so bizarre that she’d never heard of something like it before. It was like the Megalodon’s big daddy. It was at times like this that Ellie was reminded that humans were so wildly unprepared for the real world. They had existed alongside the paranormal since the dawn of time, but every now and then, it just didn’t seem fair. As a witch, she understood the basic problems that humans had, like being vulnerable and being able to be injured in a way that a dragon or a werewolf might not, but her abilities gave her a leg up on your normal, everyday human. Sometimes, she felt pretty cool because of it, like sitting at the biological cool kids table at lunch. Then she’d see something that would put her right down where she belonged. She’d seen a number of dragons in full dragon form. Whatever was under them, when it had been alive, could have gulped them down like a chicken nugget. Just gulp, gone. Ellie wouldn’t even constitute a full nugget. That thing could’ve just sneezed on her, and she would have died.
Their journey continued inward. Ellie stopped thinking about the skeleton and took in the full scenic glory of the landmass. If she didn’t know that it was potentially haunted and terrifying, it would be a lovely place to go on vacation. The beautiful, clear water lapped softly against scores of white beaches, catching the occasional ray of sunshine and reflecting it brilliantly. Magnificent old trees loomed over everything, casting shade with their thick branches and waving leaves. A warm wind drifted through casually, like it had somewhere to be but wasn’t in a big hurry. All in all, the warm, sunny beach looked straight out of a shitty ad for a time share in Hawaii.
And yet, even with the pleasing exterior, a darkness seemed to ooze from the greenery. A cold chill, a whispering of a voice that warned them to turn away too quiet for them to hear, drifted from the shade under the trees. For all its beauty, something malicious waited in the cove, something not necessarily alive, but something that was not interested in visitors. Ellie gulped and drew back, wondering if this was such a good idea. She gave another quick glance to the portal, which was by then a few miles back, over the lapping water. She steeled her nerves and ordered herself to be calm. Monsters didn’t exist, she told herself. She’d read half a million curses, and nearly every one of them was just a legend without any substantial backing. Of course, there were those oddities, those freak circumstances where curses really did exist, but for her own mental sanity, she promised herself that this was not one of them. She was nervous, that was a
ll. Yeah, nervous and reading too much into the placid scene before her.
They pulled back on the speed and let the engine die down as they drifted in calmly to the shore. The tip of their boat gently touched the white sands that cradled it lovingly, or possibly grabbed it so they couldn’t escape. Either way, they were there.
Time to find out what else was on the island.
5
Mosquitoes. That was what was on the island, and that was what their party immediately ran into.
The second that the boat touched the shore, Teneha slapped one on her shoulder, and it all went downhill from there. Like little demons from hell, the little shits proceeded to emerge from all over the place and try to suck their blood. It was an absolute massacre. None of them escaped. Every time one of the bastards would stick their pointy faces into either of the dragons or Ellie, they were met with a merciless slap of justice that left them as busted tiny blood reservoirs. Once, one got on a vein on Ajax’s bicep, and just to show off, Ajax clenched his arm and blew the poor thing up. Ellie still hated his guts, but she had to admit it was fairly cool.
They dragged the boat ashore and started the slow hike up the mountain to where they could see more of the land, leaving their supplies on the boat. Sebastian led the charge, followed by Ellie, who had zero intention of leaving behind the king or getting anywhere out of his reach during the whole escapade for the sheer safety factor, followed by Teneha, with Ajax bringing up the rear and mentioning every few minutes how “fuckin’ hot” it was.
Ellie picked her way delicately around the rocks, relying on the grip of her trusty tennis shoes not to wipe out over the sometimes-moist stones. They’d been hiking for half an hour, slowly picking their way up to the peak through winding streams, sharp rock crevices, and thick vegetation. Ellie had been bitten enough by mosquitoes to break through into a whole new level of hatred for them, from killing them if they got too close to actually praying for their swift and painful extinction as a species. Her hair, short as it was, hung around her head like a sack of potatoes. Her legs were tired, seeing as the most she’d run in the past few years had been from her work to her car when it was raining. Even with her tired body, her eyes remained vibrant, and an excited smile remained plastered on her face.