Aaron spent the rest of the helicopter flight looking out one of the porthole windows as the nearly pristine nature of Yellowstone passed below him. He saw several large lakes beneath them, reflecting the moon and starlight, and wondered which one he’d be jumping into blind.

Not long after they took off, the helicopters began to descend, setting down beside a miniscule lake. Miniscule, in this case, being a purely geographical term. From the air, Aaron guessed the lake was only a few hundred feet across, but as they dropped lower he realized it was probably thousands wide instead. He was never very good at estimating distances on a map, even with a scale guide. The lake was almost perfectly circular and surrounded by dense forest on all sides, trees marching right up to the banks except for a tiny sliver of land on the southwestern shore.

They disembarked from the helicopters with military precision, the security securing the narrow clearing, then Aaron was led to the very edge of the water. The surface was placid, a still reflection of the night sky.

Mallory and Tia led him to the very edge of the water, where they began performing some kind of complicated spell. Tia carved occult symbols in the soft earth, sprinkled Aaron with fluids and powders from a variety of little glass containers, and performed other minor ritual acts. Mallory incanted throughout the process, sometimes accompanying his chanting with gestures of his hands or arms.

I think it’s more than one spell, actually. Mallory started in something that sounded like Arabic and now he’s into some archaic Germanic language, maybe something Scandinavian or even a really obscure old form of English, Aaron thought after a couple minutes. Also, how cool are those tiny custom bottles or whatever? I kinda want a wall filled with decanters, vials, and ampules. Real off-topic there, Aaron.

Sometimes, Aaron thought he felt something, like he could sense the mystic energies whirling around him and brushing over his skin. It could just as easily have just been the night’s chill. Other than that, nothing happened as far as he could discern.

When they were done, Mallory stepped away to rejoin Alice and Barrett, but Tia lingered behind to erase the markings she’d carved from the dirt.

“Good luck,” she said, giving him a thumbs up before returning to the others.

“Remember, we shall await your return for twenty-four hours,” Mallory said. “Godspeed, Mr. Abrams.”

With that, there was really nothing left to do but the thing itself. Aaron stood on the shore of the isolated lake, surrounded by towering pines that were little more than a dark wall of shadow in the still night. He looked out over the water for several minutes, trying to find some inspiration or… something that would guide him on what he was supposed to do next.

I’ve come this far by embracing the weird, he told himself. I might as well go all-in.

He puffed several deep breaths in and out — that was something divers did, right? — watching his breath fog a bit in the early autumn weather.

The temptation to wade in slowly and let his body acclimate to the chilly lake was strong but this was not a midsummer’s lark; it was a test meant to measure Aaron’s capability and will. Or something like that. He needed to approach it with grit, tenacity, and other adjectives that politely circumvented describing himself as willful and stubborn.

“Fuck it,” he said.

Shutting his eyes, Aaron leapt out over the water.

He hung in the air for a long time — long enough he considered opening his eyes — then hit the water suddenly and with a loud crack, quickly sinking below the surface. Instead of the electric agony of plunging into frigid water, Aaron had only a general awareness of the water’s temperature. He knew it was cold, but it didn’t feel especially cold.

Barrett said something about temperatures not bothering me as much, Aaron thought. That’s a nice perk, but there’s still so many hurdles I’m going to have to deal with here.

For instance, Aaron’s eyes were intractably closed. His desire for a pair of goggles that could pierce the gloom of the lake’s depths hadn’t just been an issue of light. They would have, he’d hoped, allowed him to overcome a lifelong struggle — opening his eyes underwater. It was the kind of irrational fear Aaron knew he could overcome if he confronted and endured it, yet he’d never been able to force himself to go through with it.

Perhaps whatever he was supposed to do or find in the water would be apparent to him through some mystical process, but for all he knew you couldn’t ‘see’ magic… stuff the same through eyelids like you could regular lights. Maybe it wasn’t even visual, but would register to some other sense. Mallory had said it shouldn’t take more than a few hours, so it couldn’t be something that required searching the lake’s bed by touch. Wishful thinking aside, Aaron needed to open his eyes and get moving before he ran out of air.

Placing the sides of his forefingers and thumbs against his eyelids, he tried to pry his eyelids apart manually. It worked, for a second, then he jerked away reflexively and his eyes shut again. He put his hands flat against the sides of his head, palms over his temples, and tried to squeeze his brain into cooperating for once. He writhed in the water, hands against his skull, trying to compress his desire into a physical outcome.

Drifting in the cool, dark stillness of the lake, Aaron’s attention was drawn to something far more odd than his childish struggle to open his eyes under water. He’d been in the lake at least a minute. He was fairly out of shape after his last year and he’d been smoking cigarettes on and off since he was a teenager, so cardio had never been his strong suit. Yet somehow he wasn’t feeling the slightest twinge in his lungs.

Why isn’t my body flipping its shit for oxygen? he wondered.

Experienced divers could hold their breath for something like four or five minutes and the world record was probably significantly higher, but overweight smokers? A minute was probably pushing the limit.

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Can I breathe underwater? he thought. If that’s a thing dragons can do, why didn’t anyone mention it when I brought up SCUBA gear?

Aaron wasn’t about to test it out by recklessly inhaling lake water, but it was something to keep in mind. It also got Aaron thinking about all the other changes he’d been experiencing since this dragon stuff started.

He was stronger and tougher than he’d ever been, perhaps more than any normal human had ever been. Could the key to getting his eyes open be found somewhere in that fact?

If my eyes are now effectively invulnerable to knives and bullets, what’s a little sloshing water and sediment going to do to them? he asked himself. Best not to think about how they’re famous weak points heroes use to fell dragons.

He would need to know that weaker tissues were no less vulnerable than his skin if he wanted to gain the assurance needed to overcome an irrational fear. Since Aaron wasn’t about to stab himself in the eye — even if he had a knife on hand — he needed to think of other ways to test his hypothesis.

Aaron stuck the tip of his tongue between his teeth and slowly clamped down; there was pressure, but no pain. He gradually increased the pressure, driving his sharp incisors into the fleshy muscle of his tongue. Mild discomfort, but still no pain. He was pretty sure that if he’d done this before, he’d have bitten his tongue off by this point. That strongly suggested delicate tissue was no more vulnerable than any other bit of meat on his body.

It was definitely going to be easier to overcome an irrational fear with academic understanding and empirical evidence. Right? He just needed to clear his mind, focus, and accomplish a little mind over matter. Exactly the kind of thing an easily-distracted neurodivergent with poor impulse control could do in a high pressure situation. No problem.

Somewhat fortuitously, Aaron was currently floating in a kind of natural sensory deprivation chamber. That should help him to focus as long as he could reap the benefits before he had a psychotic break. If he was remembering what he’d read about sensory deprivation experiments in college, he needed to relax his body to start the process of mental release.

It was well-known that the brain influenced the body. What was less widely understood was that this mind-body connection could work in both directions. All Aaron had to do was relax all of his muscles and just… float to jumpstart the process of a major personal revelation. Yep, easy.

Unfortunately, when Aaron tried to relax all the muscles in his body, long-ingrained habit took over and he took a deep breath. Water poured in through his nostrils and down his throat, into his lungs.

I’m drowning! his brain screamed. I always knew it would end like this!

Liquid invaded his respiratory system and Aaron thrashed around in a state of raw panic.

Unbidden, he realized he was probably too deep to be causing ripples on the surface. It was a thought as macabre as it was pragmatic — no one above was likely to know he needed help. Even if they did, they might leave him to die anyway.

No…it won’t end like this. It can’t end like this, he demanded. I’m supposed to be the Primus Draconis, not a corpse floating in a pond in Yellowstone!

The balance of Aaron’s thoughts skewed even darker at the next unwanted thought — his body probably wouldn’t float for weeks. Come to that, the lake might freeze over before it did and his corpse could be in the water until the spring thaw. At least he’d be fairly well-preserved when his corpse finally made its way to the surface of the lake.

Be less goth, you turdcicle, he admonished himself. Less nail polish and poetry, more solutions.

Aaron looked around, looking for the light of the moon penetrating the surface of the lake. He shouldn’t be too deep, so if he could orient himself, he could try to break the surface and cough up the water before he was dead.

Hang on a second… how the hell am I thinking so clearly? he thought. And how would I see the moonlight with my eyes closed?

Now that it occurred to him, Aaron tried to assess anything else unusual with his situation. His lungs had filled with water but, while it was an unusual sensation, it wasn’t causing the debilitating effects he expected. In fact, he felt perfectly normal other than the strange and heavy fullness in his chest. That was a good sign that he probably wasn’t actually drowning.

Perhaps more astounding, while he’d been flailing around in — perfectly rational! — terror at his imminent gasping, gurgling death, he’d unintentionally opened his eyes and kept them open. Aaron found, to his surprise, that he could see a short distance around himself. It was not entirely unlike standing in a very dense fog or a steam room. There wasn’t really anything to see in the pristine lake, yet Aaron was certain that he was seeing, though he couldn’t explain how he knew it.

So dragons come with a lot of built-in buffs, he thought. That’s pretty dope.

Now that he was no longer holding his breath, his body had begun to work his lungs again autonomously. The sensation of water pulsing in and out of his lungs was tremendously odd. Practical concerns aside, Aaron had another fundamental problem he had no idea how to overcome — what the hell was he supposed to be doing down there?

Without warning, waves of memories flooded Aaron’s consciousness. Dozens — perhaps hundreds — of overlapping experiences, all occurring simultaneously, all as if he were experiencing them in real time. It was nearly impossible to distinguish one from the other or pick out any specific differences. In every one, however, he was doing precisely the same thing — diving into this lake. And, in every memory, he went to precisely the same place.

As if he’d done it many times before — because he essentially just had — Aaron dove deeper into the lightless depths, aiming for a specific area of the lakebed. It took him just a few minutes to find what he was looking for: an oblong piece of obsidian set into the surrounding rock.

Even if he hadn’t been able to see a hazy impression of the rock wall, Aaron would have eventually found this strange feature. All it would have taken was days or weeks feeling along the stone blindly, until eventually he would touch the smooth, glass-like mineral embedded in the more coarse stone of the lake’s wall. The flood of unexpected memories had definitely been a boon in terms of efficiency, at least, but it was a unique and unsettling experience.

Then again, he realized, I’m almost certain no one else would be able to find this stone — even if they drained the lake — but I don’t know how I know that.

Like he had in all those memories, Aaron swam up to and through the glassy stone as if it weren’t even there.