The Dragon [https://i.imgur.com/rZlPRZ8.jpeg]

- Where to get it? You need ore; you need a smelting furnace, coke. It’s a special coal, in case anyone doesn’t know. - Nix regarded me.

- You could melt down my shotgun. It weighs ten pounds.

- Not enough. Some of it would just burn up, some of it would go to slag. Your weapon uses ordinary iron. It won’t penetrate dragon armor. A long time ago, humans tried to kill a dragon. A few years ago, a hunter, Elijah, ambushed Pyronax. He made an enormous bow, the bowstring strung with a rotating mechanism. Elijah had several assistants with him. Elijah fitted the arrows with iron tips. Not a single arrow penetrated the dragon’s scales. They hit like a stone wall and flew away causing no harm.

- Maybe Elijah should have worked some magic on the arrows before firing. Think of some kind of spell. You said Pyronax suppresses your magic. Couldn’t it be that his armor a magic spell protects it?

- I don’t know, — the old wizard sighed. - If only I knew in what places he had lived before.

- Well, there are some legends, rumors at last. They couldn’t just appear. As far as I know, dragons come from eggs. Pyronax hatched from an egg, too. Someone must have laid that egg.

- People said dragons fell from the sky. I can’t imagine what that would look like, though. Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh- Bummmm! -ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh!

Turns out Nix could laugh. But what he said about the sky made me wonder.

- Would heavenly iron work?

- Celestial iron? Tell me where to find it? - Nix didn’t ask me what I meant by that word. - Start a worldwide search?

- No need to search. We’ll attract him, — I shared my crazy plan with the wizard. When I was a guest of Maleus, I used to watch shooting stars at night. Some burned up in the atmosphere, some reached the ground. I remembered from school that scientists had discovered some meteorites made of iron and nickel. My plan was to watch the night sky and, when I saw a shooting star, change its trajectory. So that the star would fall somewhere in our neighborhood. Memorize the point where the star fell and go in search of celestial iron. Sounds simple enough.

I thought Nyx would laugh at my plan, but the old wizard remained serious.

- It’s a good idea. I believe the two of us can accomplish this task.

- Are you saying we're partners? I can't believe it.

- Your abilities are as good as mine. You’re growing every day. How many birds have you created today?

- A dozen and a half, — I shrugged. And Nix did the math:

- A hundred and twenty. Just two hours of your time. It would have taken me a week, maybe more.

- At first, I released one bird at a time. No pairs. A boy, then a girl. Then I thought they’d have trouble finding each other. So I started pairing them up. Then several at a time. As many as I could fit in my hands.

- That’s what I’m talking about. If we combine our efforts, we’ll get a better result.

- I don’t mind trying. A bad result is also a result.

We spent the rest of the time playing chess. Nix played with gold pawns, I - with silver pawns. I thought Nix was a great player and I would get checkmate as soon as I made the first move. I am an inept chess player, but the old wizard played worse than me by several times. He was sacrificing pawns, giving up pieces and losing.

I was getting angry:

- Why did you put the knight here? He has no cover, and I’m going to kill him now.

- Ah, — Nix rubbed his beard confusedly. - I don’t know where I should put him.

I had to spend some time training him. I didn’t remember the combinations of the great grandmasters, I was playing at an elementary level.

The time spent playing the game flew by. Kara-kora, who had been watching us, squeaked melodiously, hinting to us that it was midnight.

We left the hut and looked up at the night sky. The sky was cloudy and unfriendly. It looked as if it was about to start dripping rain. Meteorites were out of the question.

I listened to the sounds coming from all directions. Somewhere far away, invisible beasts roared, an animal ran not far from the hut. A large bird or a dragon flew above us.

Nix was the first to give up. He spun in place, looked at me a few times, and then said:

- The clouds won’t part at our will, I don’t know how to control them. Why don’t you give it a try?

I obeyed him, began to move my hands, imagining soft obedient absorbent cotton. But the clouds weren’t absorbent cotton. They twisted into balls, broke up and then came back together, preventing me from even a fleeting glimpse of the starry sky.

After a dozen tries, I said:

- We’re wasting our time. Let’s go to bed!

Despite the late hour, I tossed and turned in my bed for a long time. Restless thoughts kept me awake. I tried to visualize a picture of the future battle. The scenario of a future performance.

Suppose we could get heavenly iron, melt it down, and make a sword? I knew of Maleus’ skill. In the few days I’d been working in the forge, he’d made several bronze swords. Not forged, but cast in special molds that mimicked weapons. He mixed copper and tin in different proportions, made a mixture of clay and sand. I was very interested in the process of preparation, because in the future I was going to cast my statues myself. I was a diligent student. Maleus prepared two of the molds and poured the molten bronze himself, while he entrusted the third mold to me.

The sword from my mold came out a little crooked, and the blacksmith grinned as he looked at it.

- The first time is always like that. The more you work at it, the better you’ll get at it.

But I’ve strayed from the main line of thought. Suppose Maleus makes a sword. I can’t fence. Just swinging a sword won’t do any good. There must be tactics, swings, blocking. Proper positioning of the legs and torso. Who can tell me about this art of sword fighting?

As much as I think about it, I can’t imagine attacking a dragon. Will I take it by surprise, or will I attack it, screaming? What if it spews flames at me?

Nix never told me about dragon flames. Although, in my mind, all dragons could burn their enemies. If my assumptions are correct, I’ll need fireproof armor besides my sword. Where would I get that?

How much can a dragon weigh? A ton? Two tons? What happens if, during my attack, the dragon just flies up and falls on me, crushing me with its body? It’s complicated!

Does the old wizard know where Pyronax’s house is? Where he sleeps?Where does the rest of the family spend the night? What does his home look like?

According to many movies, dragons live in vast caves. But is this the case? A creature that has seized power in the country and enslave people just sleeps in a stone cave on the bare floor?

Let's say that the dragon and I face off in a duel and I, in some unbelievable way, win. Rumors of the family’s destruction would spread throughout the world. Wouldn’t it happen that someone stronger and more agile would take the place of the Pyronax family?

The long thoughts made me more tired than the work at the forge. I decided that if I won, if the key to return was in my hands, I would no longer be interested in another pretender to the place of the destroyed family.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

I fell asleep and a moment later, something very powerful threw me upward. Something very large and heavy fell to the ground near the wizard's hut. It wasn’t a rock or a tree. It was something alive and angry. It walked around the hut, exhaling air powerfully from its wide nostrils.

I sat unmoving, surrounded by gloomy walls, knowing that a terrible creature was walking above me. The silence tensed, as if before a storm, and I listened for every rustle, every sound that might indicate approaching danger. Fear made me clench my fists and my hands shake with tension. I could feel my fingers sliding across the rough surface of the stone bed, and my breathing became increasingly shallow. An unknown menace hovered over me like a shadow, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the creature could descend upon me at any moment.

My head was full of worst-case scenarios, and I fought the temptation to run away for a long time. Though I knew it was far more dangerous to find myself face to face with something unknown in this darkness.

Nix hadn’t told me how strong and secure his hideout was. Could Pyronax have caught my thoughts and decided to get ahead of me by attacking first? Would the ceiling of my room withstand the impact of his thick legs? How long would Pyronax keep circling in one place?

The stomping of feet suddenly changed to a noise indicating that the unknown foe had flown away. The door opened and the old wizard entered the room. He was as frightened as I was:

- Have you seen this impudent man! - he said indignantly. - He came to me uninvited and ran away without saying goodbye.

- Who was it? - I asked a counter-question. - Pyronax?

- If only, — Nyx breathed a sigh of relief.

- If it wasn’t a dragon, then who was it? - My fear intensified and mixed with surprise. - What kind of guests visit you at night?

-This is the third time he's flown to this place. And every time, the same thing happens. He flew in, stomped around the hut and flew away. Not a word, not half a word.

- Nix, maybe it’s our long-awaited ally who came here to offer us his help, and we’ve been sitting here like mice, not breathing and not moving. Maybe we should have come out and said hello first.

- You could have come out and said hello, — the old man shook his fist nervously. - I’m scared. Despite the fact that I’ve lived a long life, I’m in no hurry to die.

Our argument ended in a conciliatory drinking session. I was trying to turn the water into wine, and Nix was sipping from his bottle. The water in my cup turned red, resembling red wine in appearance, but tasting just as fresh water. Even the tried-and-true rum and coke cocktail still tasted like water.

I experimented no more and said good night to the old wizard.

The next night was less cloudy, but we didn’t see any shooting stars. The star fall ended as suddenly as it had begun. No one came to us during the night, though we prepared ourselves to hear heavy breathing.

Nix played better and our chess games with him lasted several hours. During the game, I asked questions that worried me. Only it was a futile attempt, Nix didn't know any more than I did.

If I could guess the development of the scenario, based on the movies I had seen and books I had read, the old wizard only listened to me, not knowing what he could say.

On the third night, luck smiled at us. Once under the open sky, I suggested that Nix cross our arms and imagine a magnet of undreamed-of power.

- How powerful should our device be? - inquired my old assistant.

- Its power should be equal to the power of the sun, — I said, the first comparison that came to my mind.

We stood one beside the other, our palms facing the sky and forming an irregular square. We closed our eyes and let our imaginations take over. I shouldn’t have closed my eyes, though. Because a lot of meteors were heading in our direction. The density of the atmosphere did not allow the celestial bodies to fall to the ground, meteors burned up in the air.

- Look, — Nix nudged me with his hand. I looked up. A large meteorite was flying from the sky toward us. It was impossible to determine its size, and it was moving at an incredible speed. At first the meteorite was falling on us, so we unclenched our hands and bounced in different directions. The interrupted gravity allowed the celestial body to fly along a curved trajectory and fall in the direction where the village of Maleus lay. We didn’t hear a bang or a tremor. That could mean that the meteorite was small. Or the celestial visitor fell far from us.

- You can’t fly? - I asked Nix. The old wizard nodded his head.

- How do you travel? Do you have a pack animal?

- Nix waved his hand and disappeared. Not for long at all. Then reappeared beside me.

- I found сelestial iron, our meteorite! It fell in the mountains.

- If you found the meteorite, why didn't you bring it here? - I got angry with that infirm old man.

- First of all, your meteorite is red-hot. I found it by heat trace. Well, second, I can’t move heavy things. And three, I can’t travel long distances.

- How do you move? Do you have a specific destination in mind? Is there any way you mentally plot your route? Do you visualize something?

Nix wondered. Moving wasn’t difficult for him, but explaining how it worked was difficult. Still, he tried.

- I saw the trail left by a meteorite in the sky and said to myself: Follow it! That’s how I traveled to the impact site. To get back I just said to myself: I want to go home!

- You should know... Before Nix could finish, I said the words out loud:

- I want to go home!

I was thrown to the ground, dry branches hitting my face. Because of the darkness I could not realize where I was. Was I still near the old wizard’s hut or in my own world?

Several languid minutes passed. I stood and listened, trying to get my bearings. Why is it so dark?

- Nix! - I called out to the wizard. If he's around, why isn't he talking?

Some beast growled back at me.

- I want to go home! - In a hoarse voice I cast Nix’s spell. And again unfamiliar terrain. Where the hell am I?! Why don’t I end up where I want to be?

- When making wishes, be careful, they tend to come true.

That's what our schoolteacher used to say. She probably wasn’t referring to my erratic movement. Still, where I was?

I tried to imagine myself as a nocturnal predator. They say they see better at night than they do during the day. If you've ever looked through a night vision device at night, you can imagine what I saw with my vision. The terrain was glowing green, faint bushes, some trees.

Not far from me, shuffling from foot to foot, some animal the size of a small mongrel dog stirred. Local jackal or coyote? Maybe a locally produced fox.

Night vision allowed me to chop dry branches for a fire. All that remained was to get fire. Imagining a scalding flame was easy. Putting my finger on the branches, I said:

- Ignis!

The flames spread to the branches, and the light of the fire forced me to change my vision. And at the same time to choose a thick and long stick. I mean, the shotgun, along with the ammo, was left in Nix's room.