Because he had built the wall himself.
Thick dark smoke swirled around him, stinking of sulfur and stinging his eyes and throat. The Dragon’s eyes blazed fiery red above its long, bronzed snout. Orange flames licked over its black teeth. The heat of the beast threatened to blister his skin.
But he held his ground.
Slowly, he lowered the sword.
“Dragon,” he said, “What are you? Tell me what you really are.”
The Dragon tilted its head to one side.
“What do you think I am, young King?” It said.
Koba reached out. Ran a hand over the bronze scales at the tip of the beast’s snout. The scales were almost too hot to touch. But silky smooth.
A strange, soft rumble rose from the depths of the beast.
“I think you are the manifestation of my responsibilities,” Koba said, “You are the things I have been willfully pretending are no business of mine.”
The beast slowly tilted its head back to the other side. The blazing eyes dimmed. As if the fires inside the Dragon had been banked.
For the moment.
“And why would you think that?” The Dragon asked, its sonorous voice becoming softer.
Koba smiled and lifted the sword. The strange, blue flames brightened and danced over the blade. Bright enough to cast a circle of light around himself and Ivfa.
“Because here we are,” Koba said, “Despite my best efforts to walk away. I cannot turn away any longer. To turn away is to turn away from Ivfa. And I could never do that, for she is my heart.”
He turned to her. A smile blossomed over her face. Her eyes shone.
“And Ivfa’s heart is one with Dendon,” he said, “To refuse my duties to lift Dendon from the ashes…I might as well take this sword and run her through the heart. And then myself.”
He gazed upon the bright flames licking over the blade.
“And what would that solve?” The Dragon asked.
Koba laughed. “Nothing. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? We’d probably end up right back here again. Wouldn’t we? Again and again, until I finally find my way past my fear.”
The beast drew back a little way. Taking some its heat with it. The glow of its bronze scales dimmed.
“And what is your fear?” The Dragon said.
With a sigh, Koba lowered the sword. With some difficulty, he met Ivfa's eyes. This time he didn't try look for certain emotions there. Emotions he always projected upon her. He looked at her face and accepted what was there.
“My fear…” Koba said, “My fear is of never getting anything right. And I thought the best way to fight that fear was to do nothing. I cannot fail at what I have refused to face. Right?”
The thick, black smoke swirled around the Dragon, obscuring everything but the ruddy glow of its eyes. And its sonorous voice.
“And now, young King?” The Dragon said.
Koba reached out his hand to Ivfa. Without hesitation, she took it in her own hand. Her smile lit up her face in a way he had never seen before. It took his breath away for a moment.
The heartbeat of the great beast beat the air…Thump thump…Thump thump…
In time to his own heart.
“Now my fear is I will not have enough time to do everything,” he said, “So I should not waste a moment.”
And the sword of Dendon in his hand grew brighter. Bright enough to light the world.
For it wasn’t a sword at all.
It was a beacon.
And he was the keeper of it.
He had bested the Dragon.
Seventy-Five
Chris
Chris…
Chris…
Wake up…
You need to wake up…
I didn’t want to wake up.
I wanted to stay where I was.
I was warm. I was enveloped in soft, comforting darkness.
I was safe.
Chris…
You have to wake up…
No, I didn’t. I was weary. Life kept hurting me.
Kept murdering me.
Sticking sharp objects through my heart.
I was so tired of dying.
Couldn’t I just stay dead this time?
Let someone else carry the world on their back for once.
Oh yeah? How many times have I carried your skinny ass, buster?
Liz?
Who the hell else?
Liz!
Now wake up. I’m not done with you yet, bucko.
I kicked and crawled my way back toward the surface. Toward consciousness. The tendrils of the Dendon’s dream still pulled at me.
Koba and Ivfa. At the end and the beginning of their world. It was sort of a happy ending. It would have been nice to leave off there.
But I had my own story to live.
Today wasn’t my ending. Not yet.
I broke through. Opened my eyes.
And immediately cried out in agony.
Pain screamed through my chest. Every nerve ending I had was bleating and crying. My entire body felt like a pulsing, throbbing mass of pain.
I started to sink back to unconsciousness under the assault of it all.
“No! Stay with me Chris!”
Liz.
Where?
I became aware of a warm mass against my bare skin. I blinked. Tried to focus.
“Look at me, sweetie,” Liz said, “Come back to me. You can do it, Chris.”
Through the agony tearing through me, I found her face. Her sweet, beautiful face. Those brilliant blue eyes focused on mine. She smiled and the world exploded with golden light.
I breathed in the vanilla and sandalwood scent of her.
I croaked out her name: “Liz.”
“Stay with me,” she said, “Concentrate. Make yourself heal. I can’t do it all like you can.”
What?
My mind whirled. Tried to comprehend what was happening.
We were surrounded by shiny gold. It enveloped us like a cocoon. We were wrapped together. Our bare flesh pressed against each other.
I was dead. Run through by that bastard Don Zek.
Never turn your back on a Don.
Advice I should have remembered.
But what was happening now? Why hadn’t the Dendon brought me back to life?
Something was wrong. Beyond wrong.
Through my pain, I called out for the Dendon. I listened to the silence from inside. The only sounds were the murmurs of Liz’s heart.
But not my own.
I was still dead.
Somehow Liz was reanimating me.
But how? She didn’t have that kind of power. Did she?
“How long?” I said in my gravely, scratchy voice, “How long have I been dead?”
She gave a bare shake of her head. “Too long. The Dendon isn’t helping you anymore.”
No kidding.
But why?
Stupid. This had to be another test. Another manipulation. Another move on the board.
All part of whatever long game the Dendon was playing.
Remnants of the dream came back to me…Koba, confronting the Dragon…but what happened? I couldn’t pull it back in front of me. All I know was that Koba won.
And that he didn’t fight the Dragon.
It was important. That gap in my memory held the key to this whole thing.
“Chris…you’re fading,” Liz said. Her voice was strained. Like she was fighting to stay conscious herself.
“He’s not giving me anything,” I said.
“Then take it from him,” Liz said, “It’s yours. It all belongs to you. You’re already the damned King of this fucked up planet, Chris. Just accept it already.”
Accept it.
Accept it.
Accept the responsibility.
And the memories of the dream came rushing back in full force. With razor-sharp clarity, I relived the final conversation between Koba and the Dragon.
And knew, down to my bon
es, what it meant.
I shivered. Not from cold. But from the deep, unsettling finality of what I had to do. I had a choice. I could slip back into death. Or I could choose to shoulder a mountain of responsibility so huge that it would threaten to crush me at every moment.
Or maybe I didn’t have a choice. Maybe I was like Koba. The choice would keep being presented to me until I finally accepted.
Because…in the end…someone had to do it.
Seventy-Six
Chris
Within Liz’s golden armor, our bodies pressed together, I drew a shuddering breath. The musky, vanilla and sandalwood scent of Liz’s silky skin filled my head. The warmth of her body was like a furnace against my cold, dead skin. The beat of her heart thumped against my still chest.
I was a zombie. Dead. But still alive.
The Dendon was done helping me. Done healing me after I kept stupidly getting myself killed.
The only thing keeping me in this world now was Liz’s love. A roaring flame strong enough to keep us both alive.
For a short time.
Keeping me alive was sapping her own energy. I was draining her of life. Sucking her dry like a vampire.
That had to stop.
And to make it stop, I had to do one of two things. I had to either let go and die all the way. For good this time.
Or…
I had to accept the Dendon’s offer.
The offer that I had heard, but not understood until now.
The offer that came with a burden of responsibility that I wasn’t sure had any kind of limit. I would be responsible for not a city…not a world…not the collection of sentient races in SixUnion.
I’d be responsible for an entire galaxy.
I would be the galaxy’s secret King. A King who didn’t rule, but tiptoed around putting out fires and taking away matches from ignorant children.
Which didn’t sound much like a King, come to think of it.
It sounded more like some kind of ridiculous mega-babysitter.
But…sigh…someone had to do it.
Sometimes you end up in a place. Confused as to how you got there. How did your life come to be like this?
Then you turn and look back. You see the path you took. Winding. Twisting. Full of unexpected forks in the road.
And you realize…all of that was an illusion.
There was only one path all along.
Because no matter what you did, this is where you’d end up.
At that moment you can do one of two things.
You can be angry at the universe for forcing this path, this non-choice choice, upon you.
Or you can shrug and laugh at the joke that’s been played on you. Then embrace what the universe has molded you to do. What you were always meant to be.
Here’s a hint…smile and embrace it.
Because no one likes a poor sport.
Nestled against Liz’s silky, warm skin, I turned my focus inward. I closed my eyes and sent my bruised and battered soul spiraling down into the darkness of my dead body.
I knew the pieces were all there. I could feel his presence clinging to every cell, every fiber of my being.
The Dendon hadn’t left. He was still there. Watching me with his chilly machine thoughts. Making his calculations. Waiting for the data to arrive and be collated and analyzed.
And then blossom into decision.
But this time, buddy of mine, the decision belonged to me.
I’m taking back what should have never been taken from me.
I was given these powers without my knowledge or consent. I’d been a pawn in this cosmic chess game.
But no longer.
I declare your game forfeit. You broke the unwritten, unspoken rules.
Therefore, I don’t have to follow your rules.
Ever again.
My consciousness seeped through my cells. An ocean wave washing distant shores. Places I never gave a second thought to became intimately familiar to me.
I found traces of him. An atom hanging from a nerve bundle. A cluster of silent and still makers tucked behind a cold and collapsed blood vessel. Tiny footprints in hard and waxy muscle tissue.
I tracked him down in nerves and blood vessels. Following a twisting and dark path. If I expected to find him lurking within the bony confines of my skull, I would have been wrong.
But I knew that wasn’t where he would be.
No, the head was too vulnerable. Too fragile.
I found him nestled around my cold, still heart.
I'd expected to find that vital organ pierced and torn by the Don's blade. But instead, I found the blade had passed just next to my heart. The jagged holes in my chest let in thin rays of golden light.
A glow from Liz’s armor that glinted against the black carapace around my heart.
I stopped.
The Don hadn’t killed me.
My Dendon buddy had.
He had squeezed my heart to a stop. Then let me fall like a pile of rubbish.
Anger flashed through me. A sudden, hot, red rage.
Just as quickly the anger evaporated.
I didn’t have the time or the energy to waste on anger anymore. What the Dendon had done wasn’t fair. But fair was a matter of perspective.
I thought of calling out to him. Trying to engage him in a conversation. Try to get him to answer my questions. Why?
But I found I wasn’t interested in his answers any longer.
None of the answers he was interested in giving, at least.
From now on, I would have the answers myself.
The Dendon wouldn’t be able to keep them from me.
He would serve me.
Not because I had defeated him. No, that was a fight I would never win.
He'd serve because I had bested my own Dragon. He'd serve because now, at last, I was ready to serve, also. And with me aligned to his purpose, there really wasn't any point in withholding what was rightfully mine, was there?
I touched the black carapace that glimmered in the threads of golden light. And as I did, it exploded into a flight of billions of wings. The glistening blackness turned into ruddy bronze. Clouds of tiny winged serpents spreading out from my heart. Flying to every part of my body.
And as they thundered away, they revealed my heart. That bloody muscle that served me and held me at its mercy.
I gathered a cloud of those tiny dragons. They instantly knew what I wanted. My thoughts were their actions.
Never again would there be an intermediary between me and what had become me.
My little dragons, my winged warriors rippled outward at my thoughts. Flying out to mend and rebuild what had been broken.
To renew and reanimate.
The tear in my flesh began to close. The threads of golden light began to wink out. One by one.
Just before the last one disappeared, I restarted my heart.
Thump thump…Thump thump…
Blood, once cold and clotted, suddenly brightened and flowed. The engine of my body pumped and pumped. Collapsed blood vessels sprang open. Let the rivers of life flow out to every part of me.
My consciousness flowed out with it, following the tiny bronze dragons that winged out to every last cell and nerve ending. They took their places, interlocking with their brethren. Melding together with me in every way.
I was at last…
Complete.
I drew a breath and opened my eyes.
Seventy-Seven
Chris
I woke to the lovely musk of my beautiful golden warrior. His silky skin pressed against my newly warm flesh. Her brilliant blue eyes widened as she saw I had returned.
“Chris…” she said.
I lowered my face to hers. Drew her into a deep, deep kiss.
An electric thrill flowed through us.
A part of me registered we were cocooned within the golden shell of her armor. Marveled at the power she had summoned to break through the lock the Dendon had put upon the ar
mor.
There was nothing more powerful than a pissed off Liz.
Her body responded to mine. Within our cocoon, we came together in desperate, hungry need.
I gave her back the energy she had given me. And more. I found the pieces of the Dendon that had found its way into her. Those traitorous parts that had turned her into a pawn in this stupid game.
I didn’t remove them.
Instead, I transformed them. Give them new life and new commands.
Never, ever, would they obey any master but my Liz.
She was free to do and be as she pleased. Forever.
At last, we returned to individual consciousness. Spent but renewed.
She nuzzled her cheek against mine.
“Nice to see you too, mister,” she said.
I gave her a goofy smile. Which she returned.
“You’re amazing, you know that?” I said.
“Yeah, I know. You’re not bad yourself,” she said.
Something suddenly clanged against the armor.
The outside world. Demanding to be let it.
Ah well. These moments never last.
“Time to save the stupid people again?” Liz said.
I sighed and gave her a wan smile. “We have a lot more than that to save.”
“Oh, goody,” she said, “Job security.”
I didn’t tell her the job might take us several thousand years. But then, I probably didn’t need to. Likely she knew as much as I did about our little mission now.
I was a long, long, long way from that roadside burger shack in New Mexico. And I’d be getting further away as time went by.
Assuming someone didn’t find a way to permanently kill me.
I had a feeling there would be a lot of that for a while. At least until I figured out how to keep a lower profile. Maybe I’d fake my own death at some point.
But all of that would come later.
For now, I had to save some Dons and an idiot human from some very nasty Dendon toys.
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