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A boy of about 13 years old, Mitrik, lay on Horn's ridge, resting his cheeks on his fists, and listened, totally captivated. He loved Ilse's fairy tales.

"Once upon a time there was a princess," said Ilse.  She put her hands behind her head and leaned against Horn's side. She closed her eye, the warm sun shining on her face; her other eye was covered by her long, jet-black bangs.

"She lived in a high tower," Ilse continued, "and then one day a knight rode up to the tower. "Oh, beautiful princess!" he shouted. "I want you to be my wife! For your sake, I'm slaying a dragon…"

Horn chuckled boomingly, as if to say, "Well, well".  His side — the wall of armored scales behind the girl's back — shuddered.

Ilse lazily crossed her legs and "caught" the sun between the spread toes of her bare foot. She admired the magnificent view, narrowing one of her eyes.

"And the princess looked out of the window with a smile and said: "Oh, glorious hero, why did you think that killing a dragon would please me?" The knight was surprised: "Perhaps you want the head of a giant? Manticore skin? Or should I slay the basilisk?"

Mitrik whistled. Armed with only a sword against such a monster! The foolish knight! 

Mitrik saw a basilisk from the roof of the bakery during the Victory Parade. The winged serpent was carried in a cage. Its poisonous mouth was chained, eyes covered with lead blinders with magic seals “Radiation Hazard” - three petals in a circle...

"The princess laughed in response. "Oh no, my good knight," she said. "If you love me, then defeat a much more terrible monster that has already devoured millions of lives!"

Mitrik held his breath. My goodness! Millions of lives! Who could feast like that except perhaps the terrible machines of antiquity — the titans, leviathans and jotuns. But those creatures have long since died out, say thank evolution...

"The name of my enemy is pestilence," said the princess. "Plague, cholera, smallpox has been reaped a terrible harvest on my kingdom for centuries. Defeat them! Teach the people in the cities to wash their hands, to boil water, to take baths, and to clear the streets of slops, and then I will understand that you are worthy of being a king! But know that my enemy is not alone; two more monsters accompany him. The name of the first is Ignorance, the second is Inequality."

Horn snorted two jets of steam from his nostrils. Mitrik rolled head over heels off his back, right onto the web of the dragon's outstretched wing with the half-worn-out emblem of Crimson Lightings.

"You, dark ones, even trivialize fairy tales with your propaganda!" the dragon growled. "Don't listen to her, kid. Beautiful princesses, knights, and ‘wash your hands before eating’, ugh!"

"Well, Uncle Horn!" Mitrik rubbed his nose. "It is such an interesting story!"

"You see, Horn," Ilse said mockingly, rising to her feet. "That's what we fought for. Not for flags, not for honor - but so that the little ones learn what they need from childhood!"

When the dragon heard the word 'we,' he made a deep, unkindly rumbling, but said nothing.

"However, you are right about one thing," Ilse said, stretching.

She walked to the edge of the mountain ledge on which her workshop was located.

The city spread out below — ridges of roofs, the spire of the weather tower, the green dome of the hospital on the outskirts. In the distance, a magic train ran along the overpass. Multi-colored smoke rose from its chimney into the sky.

After admiring the beautiful view, Ilse turned around: "You are right about one thing: enough with all this yakking. The break is over. It's time to get back to work. Get your tools, Dimetrius!"

Mitrik picked up the leather baldric with the tools in its pockets: lancets, tongs, magic wands and other equipment. He adored Ilse, and allowed her to do everything, including calling himself in the same style as the Light Ones did.

While Ilse was straightening the baldric, Horn drew a heavy sigh and rolled over on his side. The wind was swept over the platform by the flapping of his gigantic wings. Mitrik grabbed his cap, while Ilse quickly pressed down on her hair with her hands. The dragon stuck out his armored belly, which was all covered with scars caused by previous attacks.

"Eisenhorn," the girl whispered, placing her hand on Horn's belly. The armor, skin, and muscle of the dragon parted in a wide slit under her fingers, miraculously without shedding a single drop of blood. The inside of the dragon opened up - a gigantic, dark cavern of muscle and ribs; his organs throbbed heavily, flickering with lights and flashes.

As soon as Ilse stepped inside the dragon, magnetic lines of force flared in his belly like a web of light and dispelled the darkness.

"Well, Dimetrius?" turning over her shoulder, Ilse smiled. "Are you ready to work wonders?"

Mitrik nodded enthusiastically. For Ilse, he would go not only into the dragon's belly, but also into his mouth!

***

When Ilse first arrived in Zvansk, everyone stared at her with disfavor - even phlegmatic trolls, who served as porters at the station. A thin, pale girl in a shabby uniform, dragging a suitcase on wheels. Her tousled hair was tied with a scarf and fell over the right half of her face. She did not smile at anyone, did not speak, and even getting into a taxi, she only said fleetingly: "To the town council!"

However, during the trip, her heart began to thaw a little. She was looking from time to time through the window of the taxi, noticing the streetlights holding spirits inside them, the wires stretched between the houses, and the cars gliding past - shiny chrome and wood, with salamander flames flickering through the radiator grilles. A faint smile played on her lips. She felt like she was back home, although Ilse had never been to Zvansk - even before the war, when it was still called Rufburg...

"Dragon pilot, then?" muttered Mikolay Vranich, the gray-whiskered mayor of Zvansk, snapping his head up from Ilse's papers.

"Flying Shadows Squadron," Ilse nodded. "Twenty-three combat missions."

"The war is over," Vranich reminded her. "And, to tell you the truth, young lady Lizaveta..."

"I prefer Ilse," the girl corrected him.

Vranich frowned.  The civil war between black and white magicians split the country into Light and Dark sides. Both states sought to break with each other in everything, including names.

Seeing his steady gaze, Ilse sighed.

"The war took everything from me, Your Worship. Homeland, family, friends, health. My name is all I have left. I'd rather keep it... for as long as I can."

"We don’t have military aviation," Vranich remarked in a tone that seemed to imply "what are you doing here?"

"But you have a hospital," Ilse said, twirling her red curls around her finger.

Vranich was confused. He moved his gaze away.

"?h! So you are..."

"Yes."

"I did not know. I apologize."

"It's fine." said Ilse, resting her elbows on the table. “You don’t need me as a pilot, but I’m also a third rank magician. Without such magical skills, they wouldn’t take us into aviation: you need to be able to fix your dragon if they shoot you down somewhere over the deserts or in the mountains ... I can be a mechanic. I can drive a taxi. With salamanders in the engine, I can handle it just fine. I am ready to work even as a dishwasher. I need a job, mayor Klaus - sorry, Mikolaj!

"Okay, okay," the mayor said hastily. He felt embarrassed for having touched on the secret of the outsider girl. The mayor hurriedly put a seal on her documents.

"We have an ownerless workshop in the suburbs. Mountains, fresh air… I think you'll like it," he added awkwardly.

"Great! And one more thing: I ask you to give me an apprentice. Some smart boy or girl... There may come a day when I can't manage alone. But don't worry, I'm not here to cause problems."

***

At first, people in the city did not trust Ilse and shunned her.

"You never know what to expect from her. Although she is a war veteran, they say, she comes from the Light Ones!"

But one day, Zbykh, a war veteran who had a failed magical prosthetic leg, hobbled over to her workshop on crutches. Sometime afterwards, he walked away from Ilse on his own two feet, marveling over his mechanical leg that had never worked so well before. Then other townspeople came cautiously to her workshop with all sorts of items needing small repairs - stopped clocks, radios, and accounting boxes with dead gremlins inside them.  Then the town judge's domesticated unicorn fell ill, having problems with its liver. The beast rushed about in its stall, and would let no one near it. Ilse fearlessly went inside and quieted the unicorn with a few words. She moved her hand to the beast's side, parted the flesh and skin without spilling a drop of blood, then soon presented to the judge a gallstone covered in bile and ichor. After this incident, the girl did not have a lack of clients.

And then a dragon crawled into the town…

***

They finished work so late in the evening that the town below them was already lit up with lanterns. Mitrik also lit the spiritual lamps, which illuminated the area. There are small spirits of light in glass bulbs wriggling in their eternal, slow dance.

"That’s all for now," said Ilse as she climbed out of the dragon’s belly and instantly resealed the wound with the help of her magic. She wiped the lymph fluid from her hands with a towel. Then she turned to Horn and said: "Try it now!"

Horn leisurely approached the edge of the platform and spread his wings. The nozzles of the implanted engines situated at his scaly sides came to life teeming with fire. Everything inside the dragon buzzed. The gigantic flying reptile pushed its legs off the rock, fell, and a moment later soared into the sky. Mitrik gasped and pressed his hands to his breast.

Eisenhorn rose higher and higher, occasionally flapping his wings. The dragon flew a few circles over the mountains and then landed back on firm ground. During the landing, his paws touched down heavily on the stone ledge.

Ilse shook her head and thought: "The left engine is failing; the fire lines must be clogged! In the air, Horn is rolling to the right wing. It is imperceptible for a beginner, but not for me as an experienced pilot. In addition, the dragon’s pitch is not very good. Next time, I will have to sit in the cockpit on the dragon's back myself."

She glanced at Mitrik but changed her mind about saying it aloud. The boy had followed the dragon’s flight with such childish excitement.

"Good job, Dimetrius," the girl said encouragingly while patting her apprentice on the shoulder. "All right, run to your mother. Be here tomorrow at the usual time."

Waiting for the sound from boy's boots to fade away, Ilse went up to the dragon and put her hand on his side, which was still hot after the flight. "This is bad. It looks like the fuselage is overheating." Ilse thought.

"Well, how do you feel?" she asked.

 Horn turned away and replied through his teeth: "Can you really call it a flight?"

***

Ilse was sleeping. She was dreaming of being a little girl again. A large man with a red beard full of rings picked her up and ran across the lawn while laughing. She spread her small hands, laughing and shouting: "Whoo! Higher, dad! Higher!"

***

The dragon crawled to the outskirts of the town on a gloomy morning. He’d gotten out of the forests, where he’d crashed, probably during the war. Where had he hidden for two whole years? He must have hibernated somewhere in the ravines curled up under fallen leaves and dry wood. Or, rather, he was hiding in a swamp, because his heavy armor was covered in green mold and dirty streaks, white armor with red zigzags on the sides.

"Scarlet Lightings," the crowd, which had gathered, whispered. "An elite fighter squadron of the Light Ones."

Facing them was their enemy.

The dragon blew steam with a husky sound from nozzles inside his nostrils. Both of his eyes were blind. The place for the pilot's cabin on his back was busted. The wounds in his sides were covered with black scabs, his wings were torn, and mud dripped from his engines. And still, he was terrible and dreadful - a masterpiece of flesh fused with metal by the powerful magic of the best technomancers. The emblem of the Air Force of the Powers of Light could still be seen on his armor: a rainbow arc crossed by an arrow pointing upwards.

People quietly discussed between themselves what to do and to whom they should report it; how to finish off the creature, and how many good spare parts and living organs could be harvested from the dragon.

The technoharuspex, who could predict the future using the insides of broken alarm clocks and washing machines, talked with excitement about how he would predict the future of the entire city a hundred years in advance after the disemboweling the monster. Meanwhile the junk dealer was bickering pettily with the predictor, as if the dragon couldn't hear them. As if he were already dead.

And then came Ilse, and the crowd parted to let her pass.

"I am Ilse tan Wölfin," she said standing in front of the dragon. "Do you hear me, serpent?"

The dragon turned his head heavily.

"Y-you're..." he wheezed, his jowls aquiver; his mouth had lost the habit of human speech. “You s-smell like one of our people…your name…but you are among them, among the enemies!”

"I swore to be faithful to the Black Council. I am a retired combat pilot. The war is over and they are your enemy no longer."

"You are a traitor!" The dragon let out an ear-splitting roar.

Many people took to their heels.

The dragon raised his head; the mechanisms inside his huge body hummed dully.

"I can destroy you right now," he growled. "Burn you like a moth!"

He opened his mouth gaping with the black nozzle of a flamethrower. It seemed that in just a second a flurry of fire would rush out and consume the cheeky girl.

"You can’t,” Ilse answered calmly. "How long have you been in the swamps? Your weapons died long ago, the fuel in your tanks has settled, and the fire mixture in your sinuses has decomposed. I bet it hurts even to move."

"What do you know about pain, you insect?"

"A lot. Believe me."

The dragon sniffed.

"You're broken too. That's why you are so brave," he snarled with wicked joy in his voice.

"That's true," the girl nodded. "But I'm a technomancer. I'm the only one who can fix you. Do you want to fly again?"

"That will never happen."

"I can try, but I need your name, your system access code…"

"Go away!" His roar almost knocked Ilse over, and then it broke into a wheeze. The dragon sank heavily to the ground, lowered his head and hid it under his wing.  "Go away and let me die..."

*

It was dark by the time Ilse cut spruce branches with a knife and built a hut from them next to the dragon. She laid down her jacket inside it.

"Good night!" she said with her head out of the shelter.

The dragon was silent.

At dawn, Ilse made a fire and caught fish in the stream. She opened the fish with her hands, without a knife, then threw out the skeleton and fried the fillet over the campfire. The dragon was still silent.

“I can feel the power vibrating off you,” he finally grumbled.

The girl just nodded silently while chewing on the fish which was impaled on a twig.

"But that's not enough to give me back my wings, you traitor. You… now you are dying, right? You are slowly falling apart inside!

"Yes, I am," Ilse shrugged. "I must admit, I’m not perfect. Join the club."

"Are you trying to be funny? Nice one."

Ilse just chuckled a bit instead of replying.

By noon, storm clouds descended, and it started to rain. Ilse curled up in her hut, and pulled her jacket over her head.

"Don’t you have anything better to do, you mortal?" roared the dragon through the sound of rain and rustling leaves. "Do you have anything left to do but to hang around here?"

"A lot. For example, to know your name."

His response was silence.

The clouds were darkening and the rain fell in torrents. The storm thundered over the trees, and bright, flashing lights illuminated the dark sky. Water began to leak through the hut’s spruce roof. Ilse put on her jacket and went out into the rain.

"Anyway, I can no longer hide in the hut. Must I sleep under a tree now or something?" she thought.

And then, out of the darkness, a sudden gust of wind hit Ilse in her face; a giant wing extended over her head, stopping the raindrops falling from above.

The girl moved closer and pressed her cheek against the dragon's scaly side. And then, through the hum of the wind in the pine trees and the sound of the heavy downpour, she heard the dragon say his name in a low but clear voice: "Eisenhorn."

***

The following morning breathless Mitrik rushed to the workshop with a happy smiling face. He was holding a bright, colorful sheet of paper tight in his hand.

"What’s that you’ve got there?" Ilse asked while getting out from under Horn’s belly.

Mitrik, in response, pressed a poster from an advertising pillar into her hands.

"An air regatta!" the boy gasped. "A dragon race in the capital. In two moons."

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Wow," said Ilse while twirling her long ash-blond hair on her finger. Three winged silhouettes on the flyer were making sharp turns in the sky.

"Between the Dark Ones and the Light Ones," Mitrik finished catching his breath. "The prize is… phew…one hundred thousand gold reals!" 

"Great! Do you want to come and watch the race?" asked Ilse. She knew that Mitrik admired the dragons and dreamed of becoming a dragon pilot.

"Well," the boy was confused. "I thought that’s what you both wanted."

"You mean, to watch the race?"

The boy gave an embarrassed grunt, but said nothing. The smile fell from his face and Ilse got it.

"Oh, come on!" she said. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. "Do you actually think for a second that we can?"

A dark shadow was cast over Ilse. The girl stopped and turned around. Horn reached out and looked at the picture, craning his neck sideways.

"An air regatta? Flying?" The dragon asked. Ilse could catch unfamiliar notes in his voice. If it weren’t Horn, she would think that they were notes of hope.

***

"Here is your medicine, Miss." A nurse in a snow-white lab coat and cap placed a bottle of magic elixir on the counter.  She glanced over her spectacles at the prescription again. "Oh, it’s a double dose."

"That’s exactly what the doctor ordered," Ilse smiled weakly.

The nurse looked at the girl with pity but remained silent. Sunlight streamed through the high windows of the hospital, sparkling on the edges of the bottles and bulbs locked in glass cabinets. Silently, the nurse placed another bottle before Ilse. Somewhere in the depth of the building, through the spacious entrance hall and flights of stairs came an echo of groaning that slowly turned into a scream of pain.

"You know what, Ilse? I just… I thought this may interest you. “Unicorn Tear” is back on sale in the hospital network."

"Seriously?" Ilse’s interest was piqued.

"Yes. They say they resumed production in the capital." The nurse replied.

Unicorn Tear was considered to be almost a panacea, a cure-all. Until recently it was believed to be a secret of the Light Ones, as a means of healing many diseases.  It wasn’t a drug or a poison for quick and merciful oblivion but truly live-saving for patients in Zvansk Hospital.

"Well, do you have it?" Ilse’s voice trembled.

"Not yet, but we may have it soon," the nurse lowered her eyes. "After all, Zvansk is quite a small town and it would take a while for it to get to us. But if there is an opportunity, you can expect the best treatment at this hospital."

Ilse nodded, trying not to show her disappointment.

"Sure. All I really need is to keeping going… Considering they are others in the hospital who are far worse off and in greater need of it than I am," Ilse thought. "At least I’m able to walk."

With two bottles in her bag, Ilse descended the steps of the old hospital stairs. She emerged onto the street through a narrow path amidst blooming bushes, where her taxi awaited. The salamander flame hissed under the hood as the car set off, carrying Ilse away from the gates adorned with the sign, "Zvansk Hospital of St. Liev for Victims of Light Magic."

***

"We could go into air cargo," Ilse thoughtfully bit her pencil, looking at her notebook. "High-speed delivery is paid very well. The country is recovering after the war, so there is enough work for everyone ... What do you think?"

Horne gave a long noisy sigh. He lay at the edge of the ledge with his neck stretched out. The girl sat leaning against his scaly shoulder. The valley below quickly descended into twilight, and the first lights in the town came on.

"You know what I will say. I want to fly again."

"But you will fly."

"No," growled the dragon. "I want to fly free, as of old! Above the clouds, where the sky ends! Not schlepping at low altitudes, hung with bales of cargo."

The girl shook her head.

"You do understand that it's dangerous. I can't fix everything, and you know that. Your engines don't work properly. The navigation system is buggy at times. Finally, the afterburning flight is certain death for you."

"Arrrgh," the dragon made a rumbling sound; he arched his neck, and his eyes flashed furiously. "I know that! But I'm tired, damn it! Hell mouth, I'm so tired!

The dragon broke off and turned away. Ilse was looking up at him in silence.

"I'm tired of being a cripple," he finished more quietly.

"So am I," Ilse said.

The girl rubbed her tongue across her teeth, grimaced, and spat blood and a white piece of bone into her palm. Her tooth. She bit her pencil too hard... Ilse took out a bottle with the potion from her pocket and emptied it in two gulps.

"So am I," she repeated, watching the light of the lamp shimmered into the empty bottle.

For a while, both were silent.

"That air race,” Horn finally muttered. "I can't stop thinking. Maybe if we find me a pilot..."

"A pilot? Does that mean I'm no good to you anymore?"

"But Ilse, you've just said it,” the dragon got really confused. "It's too much of a risk for you as well."

"Yes, I know," Ilse said calmly.

Horn frowned. Ilse reached into her pocket, took out the folded poster and smoothed it on her knee. She looked at the drawing on it, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.

"Listen, Ilse," the dragon rumbled after a pause. "What I said to you then, in the forest, when we met ..."

The girl waited in silence.

"I'd better not say that," Horn had forced himself to say it. Ilse was kindly surprised. That was very rare to hear from the battle dragon.

"Apology accepted," the pilot girl smiled. There was a fresh gap in her smile now.

"Apology accepted," the girl-pilot said with a laugh. There was a fresh gap in the place of her lost tooth.

"Forget it!" the dragon blew a puff of smoke in the girl's face. One could feel a laughter in his growl.

The next morning, Ilse's bones were aching; she felt sick and had a bitter taste in her mouth. The healing potion was toxic. However, when Mitrik came, the girl overcame herself and smiled, as bright as always: "Well, Dimetrius, it's time to work wonders."

***

Mitrik was the first to notice a dot in the clear sky over the mountains. As it neared, the boy saw wings, and threw aside his wrench.

"Ilse, look! Is that a dragon?"

The girl whipped around and looked to where the boy was pointing. Immediately, the branch pipe of the filter dropped from her hands and she exclaimed, "Oh… Mitrik, go and hide, quickly!"

"But…"

“Do as I say, now!"

The boy quickly glanced around, looking for a place to hide. After spotting a place, he jumped up without any hesitation, pulled himself up and then crawled through the nozzle inside the engine in Horn’s ”ginormous” side. He lay there without stirring, trembling from fear and uncertainty.

Worrying thoughts were going through his head like ‘What happened? Back to war again? A raid of the Lights Ones?’  He remembered the nights of terror and fear, and the fire of the burning town. "Not that again!" he said to himself.

However, his curiosity overrode his fear, causing him to peek out so that he could see everything. A chariot drawn by four golden griffins dived on the platform of a rock and a tall heavily built man dressed in white stepped out holding a staff in his hand. The man had a curly red beard with gray streaks, and his eyebrows were deeply furrowed.

"Ilse!" the guest boomed.

The girl-pilot took a deep breath.

"Hello, Dad," she said tilting her head to one side; her long platinum hair hung loosely, extending far down her back like a waterfall.

Mitrik choked back a cry of astonishment. ‘Dad?’ The boy glimpsed a silver-plated emblem on the chariot: golden wings on a cerulean blue background. The guest was certainly a high-level light magician from a noble family. He might even have been from the Supreme White Congregation. Mitric knew, of course, that Ilse came from the Light Once, but this…

"What is this? What in Light’s name is this?" the bearded man said, brandishing a sheet of paper.

"This?" Ilse craned her neck and looked. "Well, I suppose, this is the list of participants in the capital air regatta. Let me guess, you exhibit your own participant in the race?"

"Care to explain this? Why the heck is your name on the list?" the white magician growled; his voice sounding ever the more grating and unpleasant.

Mitrik bit his thumb so as not cry out again, this time with excitement. ‘Ilse nevertheless joined the dragon race! But she hasn’t told me anything.’ the boy thought.

"Well, Horn and I decided to shake things up a little," Ilse said while touching the dragon’s heavy armor. Horn gave the light magician a sidelong glance from under his half closed eyelids.

"You and Horn? I’m sorry, is this wreck your battle machine now?" The magician stroked his beard with his hand. "Ilse, at first, I gave in to all your whims. Then I was doing everything to smooth out the terrible consequences of your apostasy for the family reputation. But this! This is completely unacceptable and crosses the line."

"Just to clarify," Ilse said. "Are you worrying about me or do you bridle at the fact that I am participating under my own name on the side of the Dark Ones?"

The man sighed in displeasure. Mitrik could almost physically feel the angry energy radiating from the powerful figure of the light magician. Horn seemed to sense feel the danger too. In response, the dragon made a husky grumble.

"You are shameless! We gave you the best lifestyle you could have ever had," continued the enraged magician, his strong voice erupting with fury like a magma flow. "Our loving care. An excellent education. When you made up your mind to become a pilot we placed you in the best flight school. You graduated with honors. We had high hopes for you and then this…this…"

"Betrayal?" Ilse interrupted him; her voice was like cold steel, "Come on, dad, say it."

It was like a wall of fire hit an iceberg.

Ilse stepped forward with her fists clenched.

"Yes, when you started a war I moved to the side of the Dark Ones, because I foresaw their potential. You, the Light magicians stood for magic only for the elite, for the nobility.  The Dark Ones fought for magic for everyone. While you were clinging to old dogma, they were developing the scientific and technical knowledge and skills. And here are the results!"

Ilse reach out her hand towards the edge of the ledge, where the town lay below.

"That's what I fought for, father. Three years have not passed since the war, and the Dark side is growing and blooming. They... We have street lighting, trains, and motor vehicles. And you still live in your castles and palaces, outside whose walls are dirty and poverty-stricken villages. You pretend that the people you rule do not exist! Because you are all so exalted, pure, chosen by the Light!"

"Ilse!"

"Oh, yes, the best school!" the girl bitingly said through clenched teeth. “I heard a lot of this shit there! About glorious ancestors - dragon riders; about the fact that the Almighty Light takes the fallen heroes alive to heaven through the gates of the rainbow ... All this shit! I fought in the air over cities, against pilots like me; maybe even my classmates were among them. And no one - no one! - ascended to heaven. They all died there. I heard by radio how they screamed when they burned and fell! And you know what else, Daddy?"

Ilse took hold of her hair and pulled it off. Mitrik, though he knew her secret, involuntarily shuddered at the sight of her bald skull. Ilse's left eye shone with fury; her right eye, crossed by a scar, was bloodshot.

"That's not what the Darkness did to me," Ilse shouted. "Your wonderful, God-given Light magic did. When we flew over Zmievsk - oh, sorry, then Drakenfurt - the white magicians hit us with their "Invisible Light". They used harsh radiation against us, damn it! Shameless, you say?  Do you want to hear that I'm sorry? Yes, I'm sorry I didn't burn twice as many of you light bastards!"

Mitrik covered his ears with his hands to prevent hearing the screams.

As the chariot disappeared into the sky, the boy finally dared to climb out of the engine turbine. Ilse still stood on the edge of the ledge, looking into the distance.

"Uh…" Mitrik was beginning in a low hesitating voice.

"Well... that's it for today," the girl said in a strange voice, without turning around. "Go home."

The boy did not need telling twice; he hurried off.

Ilse silently gathered her tools. Then she went into the workshop and took a dusty bottle from the shelf.

"Ilse," said Horne in a rumbling voice.

The girl didn't turn around.

"You shouldn’t have ordered me not to talk to him. If you would only let me, I would have shown him..."

Ilse pulled the cork out of the bottle and sniffed it.

"You know you are not allowed to..."

"I do know, dammit!" Ilse blurted out. Then she turned round, closed her eyes and sighed. She had a tear rolling down her cheek.

"I know drinking's bad for me. Hell, how do I live when almost everything is forbidden for me?"

*

 Night covered the mountains. Ilse slept uneasily, lying on her firm mattress directly on the flat rock, tossing and turning, and sometimes murmuring. She was having a dream of her father. She was dreaming of being a little girl again. "Whoo! Higher, dad! Higher!"

Then the plot had subtly changed. Her fevered mind was building a new dream from her memory.

She was a dragon-pilot again. She flew high and her female dragon Tifael was roaring with laughter. Ilse laughed along with her, riding on her back in the cockpit. Beneath them moved the tiled roofs and bell towers of Drakenfurt. The fighter dragons of the Lights Ones were already rising into the air to meet them to the sound of the fight song. And there was a fierce air battle like a crazy dance; the earth was spinning and the fiery streams from the dragons’ mouths striped the sky. The burning enemies fell across the town and crashed down. The whole town was on fire… but then a human figure hooded in white appeared on the top of the highest bell tower and raised his wizard’s staff. Suddenly Tifael reared up; the dragon was trying to protect Ilse from the invisible strike of the light magic. A reactive substance in the radiometer on the dashboard boiled, turning in a scarlet foam, and Ilse’s cockpit filled with din and alarming ringing.

Ilse gave a deep sigh and made a muffled scream in her sleep. A huge shadow moved in the darkness. The dragon bent over the sleeping girl.  He picked up the edge of the blanket in his huge toothy mouth and carefully covered Ilse.

***

It was morning two days before the dragon race, when Mitrik went up along the path to the workshop with sad eyes and his head lowered.  He was sure that all was lost. It was a surprising to see Ilse on the doorstep; the witchcraft technician was cheerful and in an excellent mood. Her slim trim figure was dressed in a flight suit with patches he had never seen before.

"Well, Dimetrius, are you all packed up then?"

"Why?"

"I have two tickets for us on the train. Hurry up! We should get to the capital around nightfall. The dragon race, remember?"

***

Ilse spent a whole day before the contest into dragon’s belly, working in a hangar. She was testing and tweaking the dragon’s system over and over again and finished her work at sunset. She sat on the Aisenhorn’s huge finger and tiredly wiped the dragon’s ichor off her face with her handkerchief.

"So?" Aisenhorn asked, fearing to hear her answer.

"I tried my best, but I couldn’t completely fix your afterburner," Ilse sighed. "Well, we will just count on our luck. Anyway, if something goes wrong after we turn it on, we only have, at most, 8 seconds and than ‘kaboom’… Well, I give us fifty-fifty. I hope it works this time."

There was a long silence.

"All right, go to sleep now," the dragon said with a sigh. "Or are you going to receive the winner cup half-asleep?"

Ilse got to her feet and said with a tender smile, "Thank you, buddy."

***

"Ladies and Gentlemen, it is now time for the great competition! Tonight the best of the best dragon pilots will show you all their skills. Let destiny choose the winner! And now let me announce the participants."

Bright flags were rippling in the wind in a cloudless blue sky over the uncovered stands. The stadium was extremely busy with people on that day. The starting jump ramp hung over the stadium like a frozen wave. Multi-colored dragons’ silhouettes with folded wings stood erect on top of the ramp waiting for the "start" signal. Their pilots’ small figures of were also visible right next to the dragons.

"The female dragon named Silver Bullet and her pilot Marco Juz! Rider of the Night and his pilot Johan Straube! Avant-garde and his pilotesse Helen Reich!"  The race announcer was screaming; his magically boosted voice boomed into the sky.

Of course, all the dragons were modified by technomancers and they just called them ‘the machines’. All the machines participated in the air race under their nicknames. A dragon’s true name was kept a profound secret. It was known only by its pilot.

Mitrik stood in a crowd of people, looking up and biting his lips with excitement.

Ilse took him aside before the start of the race, and she handed him two envelopes.

She said he was to give the head of the race the first envelope. When Mitrik opened the second envelope, he was ready to sing and shout with delight.

"You know, my name still means something. I am, however, the war hero. Here is the Capital Flying School’s reference for a place here. I know you dream of flying." Ilse said sweetly to the boy, gently ruffling his hair.

"Gunpowder and her pilotlesse Elena Novak!"

"Okay, I’ve got to go. It’s time for a miracle. Wait for me. I’ll just be in and out, I swear." Ilse pecked Mitrik on the cheek and quickly walked to her dragon.

"Thunderwing and his pilot Lucian Orlov!"

 In the first few minutes, the boy was truly out of his mind with joy, but soon he started feeling really anxious. He had some doubts about all this.

"But why exactly did Ilse give me these papers now? What is in the other envelope?" These questions resounded in his head.

"And last, but certainly not least," the announcer’s voice trembled, betraying his excitement. "The stars of our race! Scarlet Lightning and his pilotesse Ilse tan Wölfin! This two war heroes are back in business, more precisely, back in air tonight."

Mitrik spotted a solitary figure in white out in the VIP area under a heraldic ensign. The boy grimaced and said to himself, "Ilse’s Dad! How can you come in here after all the stuff you said to her? Light bastard! I wonder who are you rooting for?"

"Condition 3! Everyone take your machine!"

The smooth and sleek lines of the cockpit roof closed over Ilse’s head. The pilotesse had a quick look through the dashboard and ran her fingers along the control ganglia of the dragon. "The system pressure is normal. The fuse of the flame chambers is okay. The gradient…" Ilse said almost under her breath.

"Condition 2! Key to start!"

"Come on, Horn!" Ilse inserted her ignition amulet in the slot. The dragon shuddered and the flame roared in his colossal body.

"Are you ready?" Ilse asked.

"Always ready!" the dragon growled.

"Condition 1! Five, four, three…"

The dragon’s faces were lifted to the sky. Their wings were unfolded and raised. The thrusters in their sides lighted up. The people on the stadium stood frozen as they waited. It was quiet.

"Two, one, and go!"

Eight dragons kicked off from the ramp; their engines roared to life, erupting with flickering flames, and their fast silhouettes shot upwards.

It seemed to Ilse that the sky fell toward her.

***

In the very first minutes of the race, Ilse and Horn left Rider and Gunpowder behind. Bullet and Thunderwing took the lead, narrowing the gap between them.

Three laps. They needed to fly three huge expanding laps to be first over the finishing line.

"Higher!" Ilse shouted.

Horn rushed headlong upwards, braking away from Avant-garde, who followed on his tail. Suddenly, there was a strange noise. It took Ilse a moment to realize it was Horn's triumphant laughter. Then the girl-pilot burst out laughing too, for a moment forgetting about the race. There were suddenly no tribunes, no rivals, no past years, not even insidious disease that had been slowly killing her inside.

 The endless celestial ocean stretched under the dragon’s wings.  Strong winds were blowing and howling their wild songs.

"The wind!" Ilse exclaimed. "Horn, fly higher! We should get maximum use from a good wind and catch up with the leaders."

"Yes!" the dragon replied and the earth abruptly went down.

They were flying over valleys divided into square fields, over a spiderweb of roads and the green of forests. Soon, there was the stadium up ahead again. Horn was in fourth place. Seconds later, they flew rapidly like meteors over the stands and the sea of flags and enthusiastic faces.

"The first lap is complete, ladies and gentlemen!" the race announcer declared.  "Thunderwing is the leader, followed by Silver Bullet, then came Avant-garde, and next Scarlet Lightning. Oh, did you ever see such a show of speed? That’s the thrill of this race!"

"Come on, Ilse!" Mitrik implored over the roar of the adoring crowd. The boy would pray to the Deities, but the Dark Ones did not believe in them.

"Horn!" shouted Ilse, when the silhouette of Avant-garde came into view up ahead. "An updraft flow is straight ahead," the girl- pilot said and took a look at a wind-compass. "Could we perform a barrel roll?"

"Ha! Sure!" the dragon immediately replied. Horn flew up to Avant-garde and tilted sideways, going down one of his white wings.  His maneuver was a success; Avant-garde took sides, moving away from a collision and missed his moment. Meanwhile, Horn did a full axial rotation in the air, and was upside down momentarily before flipping all the way over and catching a rising wind. After this trick, he began to rapidly increase both his airspeed and altitude, leaving Avant-garde far behind.

The next challenge in the air race was to navigate the stone labyrinth which was created by the geomancers by the use of their powerful magic in just one night. Ilse saw a forest of steep stone towering menacingly straight ahead. It was time for some swift and dangerous maneuvers. Ilse made Horn fly to and fro, dodging the stalagmites hurtling towards them and “diving” under stone bridges. The other racers flickered somewhere in front and to the side of Horn, but Ilse had no time to watch them. Suddenly, Bullet appeared from behind another stone obstacle; the dragon dove down from above, threatening to ram Horn and Ilse. Marco Juz clearly counted on Horn veering off to the right, avoiding the collision and thus losing the chance to get ahead in the race, thereby perhaps getting lost in the stone labyrinth or even crashing into a rock. Nevertheless, the pilot of the Silver Bullet made a fatal mistake, last ever in his life.

"Up!" Ilse commanded as loud as she could.

Horn threw his wings up in the air and sent himself careening upwards, barely missing a giant stalagmite with his belly. Behind him, the Bullet slammed into the rock with awful sound.

“The Silver Bullet is out, ladies and gentlemen! What a tragedy! What extraordinary passions! Our leaders complete the second lap. Leading the way is Thunderwing, followed by Scarlet Lightning and Avant-garde!" the race announcer said a single breath.

Mitrik bit his lips until they bled. On the stand for high-ranking guests, the red-haired light magician dug his fingers into his beard, intently watching the pinpricks dance across the sky.  Who knows what his lips whispered at that moment - prayers or curses?

"Ilse!"

Through the fog in her mind, as though a dream, the pilotess heard Horn's roar. The girl blinked, coming back to himself.

"Yes," she replied.

"Are you all right?"

“I'm fine, Horne. Damn it, I blacked out during sharp turn, but you did well."

Ilse's nose was bleeding. She hurriedly wiped herself with her sleeve.

"The third lap! We go second, do you hear me? We go second!" The dragon shouted.

Either way, the race was won. Both Thunderwing and Horne were Dark Ones, so a victory by either would humiliate the Light Ones. It wasn't worth risking their lives, all the more so as Ilse had been able to distinguish unwanted noise in the roar of Horn's engines, which meant that the worn out equipment inside the dragon was slowly deteriorating.  In addition Ilse was dizzy and saw double; the dashboard was blurred and indistinct, as if in a fog.

"It would be wiser to lose the first place. It's fine even we finish second," Ilse thought to herself for a second. However, she still ordered: "Full speed ahead!"

Horn roared happily.

Ilse took the helm resolutely.

The two dragons rushed at breakneck speed, so that their pilots saw the landscape below as blurry spots flashing before their eyes, leaving them with a sickening sensation of vertigo. They passed by the river and the village, which immediately disappeared from sight; a moment later, the wind from the dragons' wings tore some weather vanes and tiles off the roofs. The final lap of the dragon race was three quarters of the way through. As they approached, the stadium began to appear ahead.

 "Ladies and gentlemen, Thunderwing is still leading by four lengths ... three and a half ... three ..." the race announcer shouted over the hubbub of the crowd.

"Ilse!" Horn roared. "Command me to turn on the afterburner!"

"No, we both know you won't stand the strain," Ilse replied. "We'll blow up!"

"There's a chance we won't. Come on, girl, we can do it! Come on!" The dragon had a pleading tone in his voice for the first time. Was it a plea for victory or for death?

“Hit the afterburner!” Ilse thought she screamed with all her might, although in fact she barely moved her lips. Nevertheless, the dragon heard. The roar of the engines turned into a howling, and the G-force pressed Ilse into the pilot's seat. She was about to faint again.

"The gap is three lengths!  Two and a half!  One and a half!" the announcer was reporting.

Ilse counted too, struggling with vertigo and weakness, "Three seconds ... four ... five ..."

"We're on their tail, damn it!" Horn exclaimed.

The dragons were neck and neck, roasting to each other with the heat from their blazing engines. The finish line was only a mile away.

"Seven seconds... Nothing. I knew it!" Ilse thought, with a sense of relief. While she was processing the moment, the cockpit abruptly filled with the alarm signal sound, accompanied by red strobe lights flashing. An indicator needle on the dashboard immediately shot past upper boundary.

Luck had abandoned Ilse and Horn. The combustion chamber spiraled out of control, the flames growing larger and larger, increasing the pressure immeasurably. From within, the dragon threatened to explode.

"Horn! By the gods, no, fuck!"

"It's okay," Horn replied, his voice a mixture of pain and joy. "Hold on, Ilse, we'll get them."

With a last ditch effort, aided by the last flash of his engines, Eisenhorn, the last dragon of the Scarlet Lightning squadron, pushed ahead by half a length to cross the finish line first. An air blast ripped the garlands of colorful flags, drowned out the roar of the cheering crowd, and carried away the hats thrown in the air. 

The cockpit was shaken to the point of near distraction and the air smelled of smoke. Ilse fell into a kind of trance and realized with shocking clarity what her own end might be: death in an explosion over the stadium, the flaming skeleton of the dragon crashing directly into the mass of people, down into the joyful faces of children and women ... Dimetrius ... Father.

"Up, Horn!" Ilse screamed at the top of her lungs. Instead of going on a victory turn with a landing, where they were already awaited as the winners, Ilse pulled up the helm. Horn flew steeply up into the cloudless and sunny blue sky, moving away from the people. Laughing and crying the girl shouted, "“Higher, Horne, higher!”

"We go, girl, onward and upward!" the dragon roared triumphantly, torn apart from within by fire and pain. "Up into the sky!"

The sun poured through the cockpit windows, filling it with a blinding bright light...

***

There was dead silence in the stands of the stadium for a moment. Thousands of people turned their faces upwards. Some of them looked in the sky with excitement, someone with anxiety.

The Head of the Dragon Race was too astonished to announce the winner. His mouth was opened and he was literally speechless. The read-bearded magician stands silent in his place, looking desperately into the blue sky. He clasped a clump of hair from his beard in his fist.

Mitrik felt the tears streaming down his face; he let them fall on the paper from the second envelop in his hand.

“I am Ilse tan Wölfin, in case of circumstances of force majeure, leave the full sum of the prize money in the dragon Race to Zvansk Hospital of St. Liev for Victims of Light Magic,” the paper said.

Everyone’s eyes were on a white swirling jet trial, going high into the bright sky and crossing a strange rainbow that had arisen out of nowhere. The trial went higher and higher until it became needle-thin and disappeared completely.

THE END

How to Fix a Dragon. A short story by Goosev

Translated into English – Invir Lazarev (2023)