The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection)

by Misty Provencher

  Bark fumbled from his tree. The end of the spindling sling-shotted into the air as the Cork dragon hustled sideways, cutting into the path of the rider-less dragon. With amazing speed and accuracy, Bark lunged. His heavy jaws closed around the invader's neck. The crunch and snapping of bones was horrific as the two dragons spun, head over tail in a plated dragon wheel, across the training grounds. They slammed into the thick spindlings at the far end, the ground giving one last massive jump beneath the human's feet, as a puff of smoke rose from the pile of two dragons.

  Flesh let out a cry of relief as Bark wobbled to his feet, untangling from the dead Gall.

  "It's moving!" Phil shouted, pointing out into the field. It took Maeve a moment to retrace her way back to the fallen Plutian. Phil struck out across the training grounds in a sprint.

  "No!" Flesh shouted after him, but Phil was already too close. He raised the butt of the gun overhead and the dying Plutian took his final opportunity.

  The thin line of venom could've been silly string. It shot out like a single line of a net, but as it contacted Phil's skin, he let out a blood curdling cry. Phil's entire body pulled tight as the venom soaked into him, his muscles straining against the pain as his gun fell at his feet.

  "Shoot them both!" Flesh cried.

  Dave's single gunshot jerked the last moment of life from the Plutian, but Dave didn't fire a second shot. Flesh grabbed for the gun, but Dave twisted away.

  "Help him!" Dave shouted at Flesh.

  "He can't!" Maeve shouted back. She lifted her own gun as Phil shrieked in agony again. The scope shook. Phil jerked as the venom dug through him to his bones. But the crack of the rifle that fired was not Maeve's. Phil fell in a heap on the ground as Maeve swung to see Amber lowering her gun.

  The training grounds fell silent. The sickness of death churned in every human belly.

  "They will return," Flesh said, his eyes on the sky as his words echoed. The humans from the Houses crept from the spindlings again. "Ahanas help them."

  "Help them? The aliens?" Dave snapped.

  "Of course not. Our Rhas! Those fighters had to have come through the wormhole. It wasn't sealed in time. It is the only reason they are here. Our Rhas may have failed already," Flesh's tone was grave.

  "No," Maeve said. She shook her head against the idea of more death. Flesh turned away as a tear sparkled in the corner of his eye.

  The Archivers were shocked and overwhelmed, loading women and children into the Archive. The people from the Houses came through the spindlings terrified. Flesh watched the sky and whistled commands to Bark, readying the dragon for the next onslaught. The battle had just begun and the grief already hung in the air so thick, it squeezed out the hopes of making it through this battle alive.

  Maeve's boots turned toward the cave. She would not go down without fireworks. She ran, pushing through the people who came to be saved. No one called her back. No one knew her plans. If they had, they may have tried to stop her from doing the most foolish thing on Earth.

  ***

  Maeve crept to Forge's lair, her heartbeat pounding in the back of her eyes as if it wanted to escape. Trust had gone into the cave. She wasn't sure if Trust had the strength to do what she had in mind, she wasn't sure she was ready herself, but she whistled the wet, grassy whistle to summon him to her.

  The dragon's face emerged, snout first, from the shadows. He moved slowly and she stayed to the wall, in case he burped a stream of flame at her. His nostrils only trailed thin lines of smoke and there was a misery in his eyes that translated easily for Maeve.

  "We gotta try," she whispered. Words were only for her benefit, but when his head dipped, it seemed like he understood anyway. He turned his head from her and coughed a fireball that shot up the cave wall. The flame bursting into sparks that rained down on the ground. He turned back to her slowly, head down, ashamed.

  "We've got to try," Maeve said again, but this time, she squared her shoulders when she said it. She spoke to the heathen again, this time assuming that he would understand and be encouraged. "A few misfires can't stop us. Your flame is really strong and even if you can't control it, that's got to be worth something."

  The dragon muddled toward her, standing in the opening of the cave. She walked to his side and climbed onto the spot between his body and lower trunk of his neck. No guide rein, it would be all knees. She took a deep breath and bent low over his neck.

  She'd only really ridden him once—

  The dousing might've zapped his strength—

  He wasn't full grown yet—

  She didn't know if a Samoan Dragon instinctively knew how to fight or had to be taught—

  She couldn't remember anything Diem had told her—

  She pressed her kneecaps to his plates. They were firmer than before. She squeezed and Trust responded by spreading his wings. From the mouth of the cave, he dove straight into the air. Maeve laid flat to the dragon's neck, guiding him down to the tree tops, gliding in the direction Diem had gone, hoping to God that the Gall dragons didn't return to fuck with them.

  Trust pulled through the sky as if he knew his direction. They crossed the dividing wall toward Hold House, but no dragon came to stop them. Maeve wasn't sure of the direction they should take, but with nothing else to guide her, she hoped Trust could scent Forge or that dragons had some kind of homing device that would help her find Diem. She hoped that whatever seemed to be drawing Trust wouldn't just as easily send him toward the Galls.

  The clouds grew dense as they crossed the Hold House lot. Trust swept over the House, continuing on past rows of caves on the ground and past a cliff dotted with the mouths of lairs. The clouds congealed into a suffocating fog. Trust cut through the wet foam of it, Maeve squinting to see even her dragon's head at the end of his neck. Her clothes were damp.

  She clung to the dragon, as Trust swam through the gray fog and then, the fog suddenly dropped off, as if it were a waterfall. Trust and Maeve soared from the cliff of moisture into the sapphire night. It would've been beautiful, if they hadn't sailed straight into the rear of the five Gall dragons' formation.

  Maeve swallowed a yelp. She pulled her knees down and back, widening the gap between them. The menacing dragons didn't even notice them. Their focus was stapled to what was in front of them.

  Maeve's eyes bugged as she tried to wrap her head around what she saw up ahead. A massive, gray cloud funneled down from somewhere higher than her sight could reach. At the center, the bottom of the funnel hovered miles over the thick carpet of fog, flaring out like the gripped mouth of a giant, rolled edge of a paper bag. Squinting, Maeve could make out the four Rhas and their dragons, soaring and battling another six Galls away from the funnel opening. All spotted the advancing five and sounded the cry of warning.

  The attack from the five happened before Maeve could comprehend it. The Galls in front of her surged forward, their backdraft swirling behind them, sending Trust and Maeve into a sideways spin across the sky. Maeve clung to the dragon, the ground and sky somersaulting as if they were being churned in a bingo ball cage.

  "Mother fucker," Maeve whispered as she squeezed her eyes shut and dug in her knees, more pressure on one than the other, hoping it signaled Trust to go right side up instead of upside down.

  Trust leveled out and swooped down close to the tree line as Maeve tried to get her bearings again. She looked up at the battlefield through slitted eyes.

  The Galls had broken into three groups, surrounded the Rhas in a triangle around the funnel opening. The Rhas hovered as if they were guarding it.

  "Just go up there and blaze it!" Maeve mumbled. The helplessness gutted her.

  She was stupid to have come here on a doused, baby dragon without a whiff of an idea about how she could help. The most she could be was a diversion and there were too many Galls for even that to be useful. Trust turned in a broad circle beneath the swirling ring of trouble. Maeve could hear the Rhas whistling, directing their dragons to keep in their own formation.
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  One of the Galls slipped out of place. It threaded lazily out of position, drifting behind one of the other Galls and then rising up behind the edge of the funnel. Obscured, Maeve could see the Gall, but she wasn't sure that the Rhas could. She was sure it was almost impossible for the Rhas to keep track of the eleven identical Galls with identically dressed riders.

  All, Shown's Cirrus dragon, quickly dipped into the opening of the funnel. It was like ringing an alarm.

  Hell broke loose among the dragons. The obscured Gall plunged down toward Soar, who was circling slightly below. Soar reared, flashing his belly as All burst through the side of the funnel, screeching and throwing flame, but the Cirrus came too late. The Gall clamped its jaws onto Soar's back leg, holding it tight.

  Soar whipped in a furious circle, trying to free himself. Maeve could make out Span clinging to his dragon's back.

  The other Galls swarmed in. Forge reared up and struck, sending a Gall rolling, but the animal recovered quickly and flung itself at Cirque. Impulse saw the Gall coming. He pulled Cirque back, knocking the Gall with the bowl of the Echo dragon's tail. The Gall rolled from the strike, but recovered again.

  The Cirrus doubled back and swooped in on the Gall attacking Soar. Maeve saw that it was Shown's brother, Mark, who rode the Cirrus to the Gall's side. The Hold House dragon opened its mouth just as it was parallel to the Gall. A bolt of precision flame shot the Gall straight in the eye.

  The Gall shrieked, wings flailing blindly in the air. The beast plummeted. The Plutian rider couldn't right the animal as it spiraled out of control. With one hard snap of its head, the Gall dislodged the Plutian. The rider jolted off the back of the dragon like a baseball, smacked miles away into the air, before dropping through the thick fog below.

  The spinning, partially blinded Gall crashed through the fog too. Maeve held her breath, but the Gall did not surface again. She looked up at the other Galls, locked in battle with the outnumbered Rhas.

  Maeve searched the lower fog and suddenly, she knew what she could do.

  She thrust her knees into Trust, bolting him upward, into the heart of the fight. Ready or not, she had to get word to the Rhas that pummeling the enemy wasn't cutting it. Blinding the Galls, as the Cirrus had, would be the way to win.

  "This is fuckin' crazy...absolutely fuckin' crazy," she chanted as Trust rushed upwards, the wind in her face. A Gall tore across their path. She knew her doused dragon would be no match for any of the Plutians' realized urban myths, but her head was on autopilot and the one thought of saving the Rhas directed her every move.

  She just had to make it to Diem. That was it. With Forge and Span's speed, the dragons might have a chance to overcome the Galls. It might give them the edge.

  The Cirrus dipped up into the mouth of the funnel again and disappeared. Maeve, shooting up from below, saw the Gall that raced for the mouth too. The beast dipped to enter just as Forge shot from the edge, another Gall on her tail. Diem was hunched over his dragon's neck, oblivious to the threat behind him.

  "Watch out!" Maeve shouted, but the clash of claws and the shrill whistling and roars of the flaming dragons erased the sound of her voice. The Gall closed in on Diem from behind. Maeve smashed her knees to Trust's sides, dislodging some of his plates with the pressure. Trust shot like an opened balloon, whizzing across the airborne battlefield. His plates scattered in the sharp wind behind them.

  Overtaking the trailing Gall, Trust pressed his wings down in one hard beat. They were neck-and-neck with the Gall behind Diem. The Gall's jaws opened. Its neck strained, reaching toward Forge's tail. It was now or never. One hard blast of flame would cook the attacking dragon's eye.

  Maeve slammed her knees into the igniting bag beneath Trust's skin. Trust opened his mouth in anticipation of the flame, but Maeve felt the pillow of igniting fluid slip from beneath her knee cap. It bubbled backward, behind her leg. She readjusted her hold and tried again, the bruises immediate as she crushed her legs against Trust. The dragon only grunted. The puffy diaphragm slid, like a greasy jellyfish, behind Maeve's knees again.

  Maeve shrieked. The Gall turned its head, the scope of its eyes narrowing like points on Maeve. She was nearly jerked off of her seating as Trust peeled away from the Gall and plummeted toward the ground. He wasn't hurt and Maeve was confused only until she felt the Gall's flame warming her back. Trust's dive was faster. He raced away from the heat and won.

  Maeve looked back over her shoulder as Forge barred her claws and came down screeching from the air on top of Gall that had attacked them. Forge's talons ripped at the animal, but the Gall was twisted in her grasp. Maeve could see Diem struggling with the Gall's rider as the two dragons, locked in battle, shattered all other sound.

  The Gall jerked out of Forge's grasp. In the blink of an eye, the Gall turned and struck, latching onto Forge's wing. The creature cranked backward and with one vicious shake of its head, Forge's plates rained down. Another, and there was a mighty crack as the Gall's fangs pierced Forge's wing. The Gall's jaws released and flung Forge away.

  Maeve couldn't grasp what she saw. Forge spun through the air as Diem lost hold. The two split away from each other. Diem's body twirled in a free fall as Forge spiraled into the dark clouds below.

  Maeve didn't scream. She flattened her ass to her dragon and gouged his sides, sending Trust bolting toward Diem's falling form. Trust raced Diem for the dark clouds below.

  Maeve scooped her knees, pushing Trust into the bottom of a deep, arcing dip. Trust mimicked the direction she gave, the center of his arc shoveling beneath Diem, intercepting the fall. Diem landed hard on the dragon's back. Maeve shot out her arm as Diem reached for hers.

  He worked his way forward, sliding down behind Maeve. His eyes scoured the ground for Forge.

  "Her wing was broken," Maeve shouted to him. He nodded. "We have to go back up, they need us!"

  Diem nodded again.

  Maeve guided Trust back up through the thick clouds, emerging just above the dark fog. The two peered up at the swirl of dragons above them. A Gall chased Cirque; two Galls worked to capture Soar between them. Maeve gasped, but she pressed her knees to Trust, giving the signal to rocket them back into the battle, but Diem's palm pried her leg away.

  "This dragon can't handle that." His voice was hot in her ear. Maeve twisted to look at him, but his gaze tracked the fight overhead.

  "He's going to have to," she argued. "They're losing up there!"

  "He doesn't know how to perform in a battle and he's been doused. Those Galls will kill all three of us before he can even strike."

  "But I know how to kill them!" Maeve shouted. "I saw Cirque kill one! He burnt its eye out!"

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes! All we have to do is hit them in the eyes!"

  "That's not going to be easy to do, but there's something...something else about these dragons..." Diem said. His brow dipped as he studied the beasts overhead. Then, "Ratfish!" he shouted, "That's it! They look like ratfish!"

  "Who cares what they look like? We've got to go flame them in the eyes!" Maeve said. She shrieked as Soar narrowly escaped a triangle of Galls as they closed in around him. "We can't just sit here and watch them die up there!"

  "You don’t understand! Ratfish! That's how we’re going to defeat them!" Diem shouted with a laugh. Maeve gaped at him. How the hell could he be so hysterical about ratfish when the Galls were up there closing in for the slaughter? Diem leaned into her ear, the embossed muscles of his chest pressing through his shirt. "The Plutians imported animals that were suited to the dragon trade into our environment! They mutated the genetic configuration of the animals they had available and re-engineered breeds, suiting them to their needs! That's why hampigs look like porcupines and guinea pigs and fish..."

  Maeve nodded, but every vein in her was straining to get back to the fight. "I still don't get it."

  "See how the Galls are riding in pairs?" Diem pointed. "The riders keep adjusting to guide the Galls apart. The dragons w
ant to attack each other. If the Galls are part ratfish, guess what will happen if we knock off the riders?"

  Maeve waved her finger in the air. "They kill each other!"

  "Let's go!" Diem shouted. He produced a fire seed from his pocket, flashing it to Maeve. He gently pried up one of Trust's plates and rubbed the seed against the dragon's skin. "There should be enough ignition fluid in the dragon's sweat. The Plutian's suits are fire proof, but if this works, they won't know the difference! Now get me in close!"

  Maeve didn't waste another second. She pressed her chest to Trust, gripping his plates as she focused on the precision of her guidance. Diem laid down over her back, further easing the wind pressure. They rose like a buoy, popping up just behind the furthest dragon in the most western point of the Galls' triangle.

  "Steady," Diem whispered to her. His knees pressed forward, but Trust didn't take his direction. Maeve repeated the direction with her own knees and the dragon drifted closer.

  Maeve could see the back of the Plutian's head. He wore a glossy, dark suit that matched the color of the night sky. The Plutians' forms appeared human, although Maeve couldn't be absolutely sure, since their entire bodies were completely covered. As the rider of the Gall in front of them suddenly turned to glance over his shoulder, Maeve saw that their faces were covered too. All she could see were the vague planes of the rider's features beneath the fabric.

  All Maeve focused on was how the Plutian's knees moved. The rider was giving the Gall direction to peel away from formation.

  "Now!" she shouted. Diem slit the fire seed on the edge of one of Trust's plates and hurdled it through the air at the Gall's rider. The seed sparked as it ran the distance between the two dragons, hitting the Plutian's left arm at full flame. The line of fire raced up the rider's arm. In seconds, the whole seed took and the rider was engulfed.

  The rider slapped at the flames and lost hold on the Gall. Maeve dipped Trust below the fight and surfaced behind another Gall. Diem fired a pod at the rider. The second Plutian did the same as the first, slapping at the flames on the surface of the suit until the rider lost grip on the dragon and fell. Maeve charged Trust up between the two undirected Galls. They nearly pounded heads in pursuit of the young heathen, but as they closed in on one another, Trust was forgotten.