“A DRAGON?!”
I take everything I said back. This was more than I could take. However, one thing was for sure: definitely — absolutely definitely — there was no way anything else, from here on out in my life, will ever surprise me like this did.
“NO WAY!” I screamed softly. “No way, no way! There are no dragons! They don’t exist anymore!” Slashing the air violently, my hand acted as a blade.
“I know what I saw, Avarez,” said Padrict this time calmer.
“You’re telling us,” began Tedet, “that the thing that is looking for us is a dragon?”
My heart sank. The surprise didn’t let me realize we were being hunted by a dragon. Of all things in a ghost spaceship, the thing that is trying to kill us is a freaking dragon!
“Oh, Lord Almighty,” expressed Martin. “I can’t believe this is happening.” He looked like he was going to faint, as he slumped to the floor looking up, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and index finger.
For several seconds, everyone simply stood quiet, in a small room. No little machines were near us and we thought the several pieces of metal that adorned the room would drown out our voices and stop the echoing. Padrict and I tried keeping our magic flow to a minimum if not outright stopping it, in the case of Padrict. I was unsure I could stop my magic from leaking since I am terrible and zipping my magical pair of pants. The zipper wasn’t broken, I just sucked at it.
We ran for a few minutes when we realized we were being chased, and later found a small room where we could talk for a moment and strategize. The only issue was that the room made me claustrophobic. Like the suffocating sensation of being followed by the unknown was suddenly turned to paranoia, that it was listening to us through the walls.
I still did not want to believe it was a dragon. I rather believe it was something mysterious rather than a huge magical lizard. Not to say the lizard was actively hunting us after our little magical duel.
“What’s the plan?” asked Padrict. “You didn’t come here without a plan, did you?”
“Are you kidding?” I answered. “We came here thinking all we had to do was bring you back. We didn’t know there was going to be a freaking dragon or whatever!”
“Didn’t the Council tell you anything?”
“The Council doesn’t know anything! And neither do the vampires and torviela. They are all in the dark. Seems to me the only ones that know are the Faery. Galavant tried to stop me from bringing back whatever Uderach wanted, and I very much doubt that’s a dragon!”
Padrict looked at me quizzically. Between fear and calculation, he seemed more like he was trying to figure out if he could escape me and leave us to our fate. Have us feed the dragon while he took off. I was more than paranoiac, but I would like to bet that it all comes down to the fear of being swallowed whole after being burned to a crisp by a biological flame torch.
“You were sent here by Isadal for a reason. What did he want with the dragon?”
“I doubt he knew about the dragon either.”
When Padrict spoke, he looked at me like was about to say more but stayed quiet. It was all for effect. He wanted to see how we would react to the news and felt like my wide-eye expression of surprise was genuine.
“I was told to come and report what I found here. But if they had known about the dragon, they would not have sent me alone. They probably knew something was up, but I don’t think they knew there would be a full-grown dragon using the ship as its den.”
“Nobody knew?” I asked perplexed to the air before me, expecting an answer to come as a divine premonition. “We were all in the dark? No one in the universe was aware of this?!”
No one, except Padrict, seemed to react to my surprise. It seems like it took a while for Padrict to realize the real meaning behind what I just said. In all their apparent infinite wisdom and knowledge, the Faery didn’t know a dragon existed here, alive and kicking. Had they known they would’ve done something far more elaborate than sending a wizard with a death flag and very little reason to put his life on the line for them. Padrict would rather break his oath to the Faery than die a meaningless death to a dragon, even if it meant losing his powers. This only confirms further the truth.
“That just gives us more questions than answers,” said Tedet. “If nobody knew, then what did they know that this place was so important enough to employ two wizards? Both the Faery and the vampirids must know something.”
The question, coupled with the looming magical presence moving in the background, made any hypothetical answer all the more ominous.
“Well,” I began. “Whatever it was, we still have a mission to fulfill: getting the hell outta here.”
“Ed, can you tell where the dragon is?” asked Tedet.
“I can only tell its direction. What about you Padrict?”
He shook his head. “I can detect human magic and I can perceive distance. That’s why I knew where you were. But the dragon… it’s hard to tell how close it is for me.”
“Let’s stay put for a while,” I suggested. “Last time the dragon calmed down, maybe we can wait until it moves away, and we sneak around. No magic, no loud noises.”
----------------------------------------
The long silence finally broke out when Martin began asking questions related to science. Padrict was answering our questions before out of the necessity to survive, but he quickly shut himself off from any other questioning, answering only with the fewest words possible. He simplified answers, brushed off important information, refused to answer others. However, the moment magic was brought up, he seemed to open up a lot more. Padrict was an avid magicologist and genuinely enjoyed his work, for what it seemed.
Questions that Martin had already asked me, he asked again, trying to find out a deeper truth or a perspective. What things were different and how theories changed. He found himself realizing there was a lot more consensus on how magic worked than he expected. Magic wasn’t exactly a science, but millennia of working with it gave us a lot of robust data from which to support our conclusions.
Things eventually crept to Padrict's expertise. We talked about theoretical magic, and the advancements and experimentation. Usually, no raw data is involved in going from the experiment to the proof. While science requires you to be robust in proving your hypothesis, wizards tend to show their reports as a simple summary of how the magic worked, without trying to create control experiments. We learned from it through practice and repetition, not replication and statistics.
It was almost humbling to see the perspective of a scientist as he questioned how we truly knew everything we recorded was true. It was also hard to accept the limitations of the human factor when it came to something so difficult to measure. The supernatural and metaphysical were almost one and the same. Naturalistic approaches, like science, were hard to apply.
“So,” began Martin. “Clairvoyance. How does it work?”
“We’re not sure,” Padrict answered. “There’s something about possibilities, probabilities. It’s not easy to explain because studying magic isn’t like science. Theories are mostly philosophical, rather than mathematical, as you know.”
“But you did see the future.”
Padrict became quiet after talking like a parrot for a while.
“What did you see, Padrict?” I asked.
“The Council.” Padrict sighed. “They were sentencing me to death. I didn’t know what to do. It was so real. It was real. I know it was… I cannot explain. It was like seeing it before your eyes, not like a hallucination or a dream. Like a memory… it was a memory of something to be, not of something that was. It was real.”
“Why would they do that?” I asked again.
“I don’t know. Something about endangering mortals. Putting the Cabal at risk. Breaking the law. And I — I wasn’t scared, just sad. It wasn’t breaking the law that saddened me. It was something else… I did something far worse — I hurt everyone. I mean every single person.” He held his head between his hands and tucked it down. If he could, he would’ve buried it between his legs, like a scared animal running away from danger by burrowing into the soil. “Most of it was jumbled and phased out. It wasn’t exactly all visual… like a memory.”
“For what it’s worth,” I said. “I don’t believe in determinism. Free Will is evidence enough that our futures aren’t set in stone. No matter how much some scientists like to tell us.”
“Don’t look at me,” interrupted Martin. “I still think there is a level of uncertainty in our future. Quantum mechanics is proof that things can be quite random. The Many Worlds Theory comes from that. I think we get to choose our paths too.”
“An optimistic nihilist?” mocked Padrict.
“Proudly.”
“And the Lord?”
“He can take a back seat to our decisions.”
Padrict smiled wryly.
“All that aside,” I continued. “It’s incredible that you proved seeing the future — a future — is possible. I wonder if we could use it for something good.”
“Don’t.” He simply said, his face on the brink of tears while he stared. There was a tone of pleading in his voice. “Don’t do it. Don’t use it. It’s a trap. It’ll trap you, just like me. You won’t be able to escape from it. It corrupts your thoughts.”
“Black magic?”
“Something like that. But much worse. It’s natural. It’s not a magical corruption.”
“Your instincts. Your emotions.” I said in affirmation, but I thought of them as questions.
“It speaks to the animal inside you: ‘run away.’ ” He mimed claws with his hands above his head, like a predator about to pounce. “It’s fear. It’s the struggle for survival. Seeing death and trying to escape it. Wouldn’t you want to run away from a volcanic explosion when you know you’re on the path of its destruction? It’s like that.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Being on the fiftieth floor and jumping off the building on fire,” offered an analogy, Martin. “Would you rather die in the fire or on the concrete? Suffocating in your sleep doesn’t sound too bad. Die in blissful ignorance, asleep, or wake up to find you’re doomed to die.”
Padrict simply cried.
“Scientists can also be cursed with knowledge. Makes you think about all those climatologists, back on Earth, that cried themselves to sleep every night, knowing the rest of the world didn’t care for their warnings. Some watched their planet’s cancer creep up to reach stage IV, while others took it upon themselves to stop the pain… forever.”
Martin’s comment felt a little too personal. I stared at Martin and, eventually, our sights crossed. I felt no pull of the soul gaze, but I felt something else pull on me, something more natural. My instincts told me Martin was off. That part of my brain that evolved to see and interpret emotions on people’s faces was flashing lights of alert, it told me there was something wrong with Martin. But his face quickly turned to a smile, and my instincts were easily fooled, they told me everything was alright. And yet, that part of my brain that rationalized the living hell out of everything — the thing that makes us go crazy when we try to figure out if the smile from that girl or boy was them trying to flirt or just being nice — it told me to be paranoid, it told me to be careful.
I brushed it aside. That same part of the brain that makes us go crazy, makes us think there’s a monster under the bed, makes us wake up to check our locks in the middle of the night, it makes us check if we’re wearing pants as we walk out of the front door of our building — or is that just me? Besides, there was no point in thinking too much about it, our heads should be concentrating on other things.
“It is still strange,” said Martin. “If the future is a mirage of possibilities, why didn’t he see all of them? Why just one?”
“I don’t know,” said Padrict. “The whole point of clairvoyance was to see the future, not every future possible. I must have seen the most probable one. That’s why I ran away, to avoid it.”
“Nothing to do about it when our most probable future is roaming the ship looking for us,” said Tedet. “Where is it now?”
“It moved further to our left,” I answered. “We could try sneaking from behind it and run towards the ship when we get close.”
“That’s an idea,” Tedet said while nodding. “Anyone got any other plan?”
The room was quiet. No one had anything else to add.
“Fighting it would be another, but that one is stupid.” I continued in the middle of the silence. “Trying to run straight to the ship means running towards it or its path, so we might as well call it the same as the second plan. The other is to stay put and wait to see what happens, but the longer we stay the closer it might get, and by then we’ll have only two options, sneak around it — with additional difficulty — or fight — bringing us back to plan A and B. Finally, we could try running further away from it, towards the left end of the ship. But we’ll only be moving away from the exit point closest to our ship, we’ll have to sneak around it regardless. Back to plan A. And finally, the last one is to move around trying to hide and avoid it until it calms down or we get close to the exit. That’s just a roundabout way to do plan A.”
“Plan A it is,” said Tedet. “Anyone has any objections?”
Martin shook his head and so did Padrict, who was still hiding himself between his arms.
“It’s a unanimous decision, we’ll sneak around, towards the right of the ship. Our magical radars —” he pointed at us wizards with his hand, like a knife “— will tell us where the dragon is and where it’s heading. If it moves back towards us, we’ll just try sneaking around it again.”
“We’ll be heading towards its den, then,” said Padrict.
“You’ve seen it?” I asked.
He nodded. “I think it’s better if we make a detour and grab a scale —” His voice cut out, like they were stuck in his throat and he could choke on them any minute. “Maybe,” he started, and his voice wavered. “Maybe they’ll thank me, and I could go back to them without being killed.”
Padrict continued sobbing. He thought maybe there was hope for him.
“I’ll vouch for you Padrict. If they could pardon me, I’m sure they can pardon you too. They’ll have to understand what you’ve been through. A scale as evidence will convince them that all of this was for nothing.”
“I don’t like this idea,” Tedet interrupted. “I’m not putting your life at risk for him. We came to get him and that’s all we’re doing.”
“We can’t just abandon him!”
“I can, and I will for you, Ed. I could not care one single bit for his life if it means putting yours at risk.”
“I want to help him, and I will help him. You’re gonna have to live with that.”
“I saw you risk your life for your nephew, and I saw you risk your life for Misa. Every one of those times, I’ve almost lost you. I’m here so I can stop you from endangering your life here, once again.”
“Misa was the best thing that has ever happened to us. Think about what we would’ve lost if I hadn’t meddled with her.”
“AND YOU BARELY GOT OUT OF IT ALIVE!”
“WE’LL GET OUT OF THIS ONE TOO!”
“You don’t know that,” his tone cold, colder than usual.
“I chose my life and I choose my death. I will not die on this ship and I will not live knowing I’m dooming someone for my cowardice!”
“I DON’T WANT TO LOSE YOU!”
I looked at Tedet. And his face was not red or blue. It was an odd yellow. He screamed but his sadness was painted all over his face. Tedet was pleading. He was ordering me, but behind it, he was on his knees beginning me to do as he said.
“Ted,” I said calmly. “You once told me you followed me because you saw in me something different. That you thought I guided you to do good things that you’ve never done. I’m telling you right now, this is the right and good thing to do. We’re gonna do our best to save this man, but we’re not gonna put our lives at risk. If trouble comes quick, we’ll simply run away. There is no point in trying to save anyone if we’re all dead. But this is something we must do. I don’t like putting you in danger as much as you don’t want to see me in it either. But I’m still trusting your words, and I’m trusting your conviction.”
I closed it by looking him in the eyes. I approached him, our faces almost touching. I took his hand in both of mine.
“Tell me, Ted. Tell me I’m not wrong. Tell me I can trust you, all the same. Tell me we’re in this together. Tell me that our fight is just. Don’t make me second guess the work we’ve done all this time, when we gambled our lives to save others and fought in the name of good.” I clasped his hands harder. “Or were you wrong about me all this time?”
Tedet stared into me with his big, yellow eyes, twice or thrice the size of mine. His face and pimples had returned to the usual pale orange. There were no signs of what he could be thinking, but, knowing him for so long, I knew that he was thinking of a way to dissuade me while he pondered on our friendship and trust. I tried my best to speak directly to his inner rationality. I knew well that talking about the things that he’d said before would make him second guess enough to make an opening.
I decided to go for the kill. It was now or never.
“Help me, Ted. There’s no one I trust more than you for these jobs.”
“Dammit, Ed!” And walked away, striking the wall behind him. He recoiled from the pain as the solid metal wall barely budged. “Shit.”
Tedet rubbed his hand and turned to me to think about his next words. I knew, it was checkmate at this point. The moment he turned away frustrated, I knew I had won. However, it was not over. Tedet will not let this go without having the last word.
“We’re doing it your way. But the moment that thing does anything — and I mean anything — we’re turning tail; straight to the ship and back to Sovail. Is that clear, Ed?”
“Sir, yes, sir. Crystal clear.” I smiled.
“Don’t make me regret this, Edwhite.” He turned to look at Padrict. “And you better be grateful we’re going this far for you.”
“Ted…”
“Shut it, Ed. You don’t get to speak anymore. And you.” He pointed at Padrict. “We’re getting some compensation for our efforts. We’re putting our lives on the line for you. Got it?!”
Padrict noded.
“Speak, wizard. Did you get that?”
“I did. I’ll do whatever I can to repay you.”
The moment ended with those words and the tension that was pulling on our collective nerves suddenly gave in and I heard everyone, including myself, exhale asynchronously. Relief lifted the gloomy atmosphere.
It was now time for action. The dragon, or whatever, was looking for us. It was currently walking away from his den, as Padrict explained, and it would be in our best interest to sneak into it, grab a scale, and then follow behind it to finally exit through the hatch entrance and back to our ship.
Thus, we set out to the den. The dragon was none the wiser, as we walked. It turned to us and then turned back. Pacing itself back and forth, but generally seemed to be walking away. If it knew how to detect magic, it didn’t know how to look for it. Almost like smelling something but having no idea where it comes from, almost like turning in any direction would yield the same strength of smell.
After a few minutes of traversing through the skeleton of the half-eaten ghost spaceship, and tripping on some rowdy little machines, we managed to walk to the stern of the ship. It didn’t take long for Martin to realize we were in the reactor sector of the ship. The further we walked the thicker the walls got. More and more shielding appeared to separate us from the reactor core.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “The dragon’s den is the reactor core?”
“Fitting for a final boss,” I explained.
“Right, but why here?”
I only managed to shrug.
Suddenly, huge holes — at least ten meters tall — in the walls appeared and we could see the physical direction the dragon was taking to roam the ship.
“If the dragon roams the ship, how did we miss these holes?” asked Tedet.
After a few steps and through a few holes, the little machines became less and less common. Then, instead, they became slightly different. With the change in machines came another change. The silent atmosphere, only broken by footsteps, breathing, and even the occasional talk was interrupted by ominous crackling and intermittent beeping sounds.
“Radiation,” said Martin. “We must be close.”
I swallowed my fears from the sound and when I turned to see Tedet I saw his face pimples become green. We were thinking the same thing. It was dangerous, but we could probably take a bit of radiation with our suits.
However, walking close only made the sound stronger. The reactor wasn’t in sight and already radiation levels were becoming problematic. Most likely this was only gamma radiation, which is bad, but not as bad as alpha and beta. We decided to wear our helmets anyway.
Suddenly, when the radiation was becoming problematic enough to make us doubt continuing, we saw the space open up and light up. The core must have been there, and I was somewhat excited to see it at the back of my head. However, that only became secondary to the dreadful sight before us.
In the middle of the core space, there was a pile. A blue ghostly glow bloomed ever so slightly from it. Our detectors screamed a beeping of danger, but the speakers didn’t voice to us it was hazardous yet. I was expecting a few more steps, and thanks to the square law, the amount of radiation would duplicate enough to make it too much to get close.
I took a step and heard Martin plead. I took another and looked for the scales but saw nothing. I took a shaky third one and I thought I heard the Geiger counter jump and crackle faster. I began to sweat.
Oh, Lord, please. Mary, Mother, keep me safe. I prayed a faithless prayer but I still hoped for safety.
A fourth one.
The speakers turned on. “Warning. Radiation levels increasing to unhealthy exposure. Do not remove the suit for any circumstances.”
I breathed in and breathed out, calming myself down. I can still go for a bit more.
“Eddy…!” called out my boyfriend.
I looked around, trying to find the scales.
To my right, another warning voice came alive and found my best friend beside me. He simply nodded and pointed towards a black patch on the ground across me.
“You think that’s it?” asked Tedet.
Looking to my left, I thought I could barely make out the shape of a scale. I swallowed my fear and donned my courage.
I took a step towards my left along with Tedet. A second one, carefully testing out the waters. A third, the crackling appeared to change, but I thought it was all in my head. Then a fourth and a fifth.
“Warning. Mild levels of hazardous Radiation. Seek shelter.”
I closed my eyes and turned to look at a determined Tedet. We were still slightly secure from the radiation in our suits, but we couldn’t take too long.
“Quickly,” I said.
I took hurried steps. One, two, three—
“Warning. High level of Radia—Warning. Extreme levels of—Danger! Radiation levels, critical! Evacuate immediately!”
I could no longer take it; we were seven to ten steps from the scale and the beeping and crackling were becoming deafening. I decided to make a run for it.
Then the suit exploded in an alarm so loud it made my ears hurt.
“DANGER! DANGER! LETHAL LEVELS OF RADIATION IMMINENT! ABORT! ABORT!”
The digital female voice kept screaming ‘abort’ until the alarm became extremely loud before I grabbed the scale. The emergency siren used to call attention to evacuation teams activated automatically. It was meant to be as loud as possible, even at the expense of someone’s hearing — life above anything else, that was the point of the siren.
“EVACUATE! EVACUATE! EVACUATE! EVACUATE! EVACUATE!”
“MAKE IT STOP! ED!”
I ran back and the alarm kept sounding until I was finally far enough for no warning to appear. I dropped to my knees to catch my breath, panting like a dog. I felt as if I had just walked directly into hell and back out. I thought I could feel Death looming above my shoulder, breathing down my neck, and sweetly whispering in my ear to follow him.
My arm continued crackling while I held on to the scale, the amount was much less for any warning to be voiced, but the sound of the Geiger counter drove me crazy. I shut it off with a few slaps on its control. Everyone else rushed to do the same. Any sound seemed to be calling the hunter, even when it was way quieter.
Then, the spaceship rumbled, and it did not rumble just a little. It made us all lose our balance. The sound that came from every wall was painful. It was like we were being punched in the chest and slapped on our eardrums. While the alarm was deafening for being loud, this was felt like we were listening to rhythmic explosions from afar.
“Run!” Tedet screamed. “RUN!”
I knew the dragon was coming. We had woken up the beast like alarm clocks. It knew where we were now, and it was coming our way to turn us off.