by Renard, Loki
“Okay,” she breathed to herself. “This is it.”
Her finger hovered over the first switch, then flipped it. There was a low hum, but nothing happened yet. That was to be expected. The portal needed at least two points of contact to open—it was both the genius and the drawback of her design.
She turned to her right and hesitated, her breath catching in her throat. There were three options as to what would happen once she threw that switch. A portal to the dragon realm could open. Her calculations indicated that was possible. She could blow her apartment to smithereens. That was much less likely. Probably. And finally, there was the possibility that nothing would happen at all. She was afraid of that outcome most of all.
“Just do it,” she lectured herself. “Do it!”
Her finger hit the switch, the current flowed…
…
…and nothing.
It was a dud. It didn’t work. She wasn’t a pioneering scientist. She wasn’t the next Marie Curie. She was just a silly woman standing in the middle of a gross old kitchen with tears in her eyes and mold growing on a half-eaten Thai takeout.
“Dammit!” She slammed her palm down on the counter, making the yet to be washed cutlery dance.
And then it happened. A small spark in the air between the electromagnetic devices. A little pinprick that lit a spark of hope in her. She scuttled back, keeping out of its way just in case it did turn out to be volatile. Her protection was an armchair she had salvaged from the side of the street. She didn’t know what material it was made of, but she knew it was old and resilient.
Over about thirty seconds to a minute, the portal blossomed before her astounded eyes. There, in her poky little kitchen, was a gateway to another world. She could see bright green grass extending from the base of the portal out into a meadow, and beyond that… she couldn’t quite make it out.
“Oh. My. God.” She murmured the words softly to herself. “This is it. I’ve done it.”
Unlike the initial portals that had ripped the sky apart, this portal was stable and small. It stood like an open doorway, inviting her through.
“I really didn’t think that would work,” she said to herself. She’d worked the math out a million ways, but the odds of the real world conforming to mathematical expectations were always much lower than, well, the odds would imply.
What now?
Should she go rushing through the portal to dance in the beckoning fields of green? It was tempting, but Kate knew the dangers of the dragon realm—well, some of them anyway—and she was definitely not a fool. Transiting through the portal could have dangers of its own.
“I need a test subject,” she murmured to herself, looking around the remainder of her kitchen. Something gleaming caught her eye.
She grabbed the spatula and tossed it through the portal, just in case it burst into flames or exploded or something. It plonked down on the grass and sat there with the warm sun of another world making it gleam.
In an instant, Kate was jealous of the spatula. It had taken the one small step before she did. Still, it was best to be cautious about these things. There were dragons on the other side of that glowing portal. None were in immediate sight though. She wondered if there were any nearby. It would be just her luck to have opened her portal to a completely uninhabited part of the dragon realm and end up not meeting any dragons at all.
Of course, there was the possibility that there were more than dragons through that doorway. A certainty, really. A world that supported dragons as an apex species had to have other creatures to support them. Some of them were likely to be aggressive.
There was literally no information regarding the flora and fauna of the dragon realm, let alone its basic geography. The view she had in the middle of her kitchen was the most in-depth look anyone had ever had into the dragon realm.
“The first human in the dragon world,” she intoned. “Well, the first one to survive the irradiated environment. Hopefully.”
She turned to the little carry case of vials all strapped in nice and neatly. They contained the formula she had been working on for years, a potentially revolutionary treatment that, when ingested, provided prophylaxis against radiation exposure for about a month. She uncorked one of the vials, put the opening to her lips, and slurped it down. It tasted vile, like battery acid mixed with mud, but she choked it down regardless. She’d taken a dose a day earlier too, figuring it would be good to give the formula a chance to saturate her tissues. This was just a top up, a good luck shot for the road. She felt a little heady charge from it, a buzz that emboldened her as she looked toward the gleaming door between worlds.
With no reason to wait anymore, Kate grabbed a few supplies and shoved them in a backpack. Her notebook was first, of course, followed swiftly by a bottle of water, more vials of her personal radiation treatment in case she needed it, and some snacks. Not much really, but she didn’t need much. Unlike most intrepid explorers, Kate was able to push the boundaries of human experience from inside her apartment.
“This is it,” she said to herself, wishing she had a better soundbite, even for herself. Something along the lines of one small step for man… or something like that. She was nervous. Her stomach was fluttering and her heart was pounding in her chest. That really was another world she was looking at. A world in which dragons lived.
“Don’t think about it,” she told herself. “Just do it.”
With a corporate slogan on her lips, Kate stepped through the portal, and into another world.
The grass was soft beneath her sneakers, and when she turned around she saw the portal behind her, a doorway to a dingy kitchen standing in the middle of some of the most beautiful wild landscape she had ever laid eyes on. It looked small and ugly, standing in direct opposition to this brilliant land that was bright and seemed to go on forever.
Standing less than an arm’s length from the portal, Kate turned back around and simply looked, letting her eyes feast on this new world. The most eye-catching element was a mountain rising in the distance. It was a singular feature, not part of a range as she’d usually expect to see on Earth, and surrounded by water that could have been an ocean or a large lake. Once again, that was strange. What kind of geological process could create a single mountain in an otherwise relatively flat plain? There were some rolling hills behind her that obscured her view of the land in the other direction, but none at all near the mountain.
“Either the laws of tectonics are different here too, or that mountain is up to something,” she muttered to herself. It was silly, of course, to think of a mountain as being suspicious, but Kate was given to occasional bouts of silliness—such as the kind that had brought her across realms.
Movement at the corner of her eye distracted her from the suspicious mountain and she lifted and turned her head to see something flying in the skies not too far from the peak. At first she thought it was a bird, but as it swung lower and the shape of it became more apparent, she realized that it was not a small bird relatively close, but a very large, not-at-all-a-bird, quite far away.
Silhouetted against the sky were arched wings, a powerful body lined with ridges and scales, a long tail against which the back legs were stretched, creating an aerodynamic figure, and front legs too. The head of the creature was large, set upon a powerful and sinuous neck.
Kate clapped her hands over her mouth and let out a little squeal of excitement. This was the culmination of years of dreaming and dedicated study. She was actually looking at a dragon in flight. They were real, and she truly had found the realm in which they reigned.
Part of her had always been a little skeptical, even when she was working with the dragon tissue. It was hard to believe that the flesh she was handling belonged to a mythical creature. Plenty of people thought the dragons had been a hoax from the beginning, that it was all some government psy-ops or cover-up or something. The video evidence had only heightened their suspicions—after all, in a world where you could make anything look real, everything could be fa
ke.
A second dragon entered her field of vision, heading toward the first. Kate watched as they flew into a circling pattern around one another, a beautiful dance of flight that left her awed as they began to dart and swirl and fly back and forth almost as if they were dog fighting like a pair of fighter planes. She watched, enthralled with the way they moved. They lost a lot of height during several of their maneuvers, bringing their powerful, mystical bodies closer to her.
They moved through the air in a similar way to dolphins moving through water, with a natural alacrity that was astonishing and beautiful to behold. She was stuck there, just staring at them, not even caring that the angle was giving her a serious crick in the neck.
Time passed without her noticing, but she suddenly saw that the dragons were growing bigger, drawing closer as they dipped through the sky. They didn’t seem to be as interested in one another anymore. They seemed to be checking out a target on the ground.
“Oh, shit.”
Kate suddenly realized that she was not just watching them. They were watching her. She had been spotted from thousands of feet in the air, like a rabbit by a hawk, and they were coming for her, wings back, tails straight, necks extended in a fast dive.
Elation turned to fear. Would they be hostile? They were more than capable of killing on sight, of that she had no doubt. What if they mistook her for food, or what if she became prey? She bolted for the portal, her feet almost failing to carry her across the short distance as fast as the dragons covered vertical miles. She threw herself back into her kitchen and killed the power just as the ground beyond her world shuddered with the impact of two heavy creatures making a hard landing, great dragon heads and slitted eyes rolling in the direction of the glowing aperture.
The portal shut down a millisecond later, leaving her panting, elated, and covered in a sheen of sweat.
“Holy…” She stared at the wall where the dragon world had once been. Now it was nothing but a grease-spattered, yellow-painted wall. It was almost a shock to see it, as if her typical reality had just asserted itself even more violently than the dragons that had come for her.
For a few minutes, she had walked in another world—and she couldn’t wait to do it again.
Her little kitchen victory dance knocked the dish soap into the sink and made grumpy Mrs. Morris downstairs bang on the ceiling with her broom, but even the thudding disapproval of the world’s touchiest neighbor couldn’t impinge on Kate’s pure triumph.
“I did it! I really did it!”
There was a whole world waiting for her at the flick of a switch, and she could go there any time she pleased. Of course, she would have to plan a longer expedition, but there was no reason why she couldn’t go back sooner for a little while, just to look… she already missed the world, which seemed brighter and so much bigger than the one she inhabited.
“That’s because your world is this apartment and the lab,” she lectured herself. “Or, it was, at least.”
It took some time for her pulse and breathing rates to return to normal. When they did, and she was able to think a little more clearly, she took a shower and checked herself carefully. She monitored herself carefully for any signs of radiation exposure. Welts, burns, rashes. Nothing seemed to be present, though it could take some hours for any symptoms to show. She was confident though. The dragon compounds provided protection on a cellular level, and at the rate of radiation exposure in the dragon realm, the effects would have been more or less immediate, she was fairly sure.
Chapter Two
Lord Vilka, guardian of the slumbering isles, was bored. He held a rock between his hands, manipulating it lightly between his fingers. Slowly it was starting to change color and form, dull stone turning to brilliant gem. He was bringing it into being using the powers all dragons had to manipulate the physical structure of the substance. When it was finally all a bright uniform blue, he tossed it over his shoulder into the growing pile of precious stones in the corner of the room. His war chamber, a room that had never once been used for anything remotely resembling war since the fortress was first built, was beginning to grow cluttered with the hobby he kept himself occupied with.
He reached for another plain stone, held it up to his eyes, and wondered idly what he might make this time. Ruby, perhaps. As his fingers set to work on the stone, he gazed out the window and sighed a deep rumbling sigh. His posting was allegedly a highly honored one, but though he had distinguished himself in the warrior trials and earned his status many decades ahead of most other dragons, he was being sidelined having been given command of the most remote post possible, a post that looked out over the remnants of the last great war and little else. There were no homes here, no civilization of any kind, just Vilka and a hundred and one hotheaded warriors.
Hunting was the preferred pastime, hunting and training for a war that in all likelihood would never come. His father had been privileged enough to see true battle, but Vilka was beginning to think his mettle would never be tested that way. The single greatest challenge he had was managing his warriors, all of whom felt as he did, whose blood ran hot with dragon fire, and whose natural instinct for battle had distinguished them as creatures best suited for the furthest reaches of the empire. Delinquents, that was what they were, and he was their king.
“M’lord!” A voice came from somewhere behind him. “I bring news!”
Vilka answered without turning around. “What is it? Are the men restless? Do we need to announce another round of sky battles, Erias?”
“It is an infinitely more pressing matter, my lord.”
Vilka turned to look at Erias with a raised brow. There was something in the man’s tone that held excitement. Erias was never excited. He thought it beneath him.
Erias was the most steady of all those under Vilka’s command, which was why he had made him his second. Unlike most of the men who had been deployed for various disciplinary incidents, Erias had volunteered for the post. He was a deep and devout believer that the slumbering world eaters would soon emerge, an obsessive with his old scrolls, scripts, and tablets. If he had not been the second ranking officer in the fort he would no doubt have come in for a great deal of teasing. As it was, he commanded a certain amount of respect even though he was relatively young compared to Vilka.
Erias was built on a smaller, sleeker scale in both his dragon and human forms. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed and usually smiled easily, especially if he got onto one of his favorite subjects. He was almost beaming now.
“What is it?”
“Yvor and Grail claim to have seen a human emerge into the northern field below the slumbering mountain while they were practicing aerial maneuvers.”
Lord Vilka let out a snort. “Had they been drinking?”
“No, sir. I verified their reports before bringing them to you, of course. Reckless guard chatter is of no interest to you. But both men are in good standing and high esteem. They investigated, saw the human at close quarters and say that it ran back to a very small portal which closed before they could capture it.”
Vilka tapped his fingers thoughtfully against the desk. “It’s not possible for humans to walk in our realm. They are prone to illness.”
“I know, sir,” Erias said. “But at one time it was not possible for there to be any gateways between the realms either, and that changed. It could be that a human has found a way through.”
“It was just one human?”
“Just one, a young female according to the guards. They say she did not seem to be armed, or interested in conflict. She fled as soon as she became aware that contact was imminent, into an area which they described as a dark little hole.”
“We cannot have young female humans creeping about our fields, can we,” Vilka said thoughtfully. “If I have learned anything about human qualities at all, it is that they are persistent. If this human was able to enter and leave, she will likely return. Perhaps with other humans. It is imperative we do not allow our borders to be breached. The
second war of the worlds could take place here if it is.”
“Yes, sir,” Erias agreed. “Human capacities cannot be assumed, they develop quickly, even in their stunted world.”
“This fortress is now on a war footing,” Vilka declared. “Put the field under constant surveillance. If another great tear is to be made in our world, it could be the last.”
“The sleeping mountain…” Erias said. “If the humans were to awaken a world eater…”
“They would realize the error of their ways too late to do anything about it,” Vilka nodded. “I think this is it, Erias. The winds of destiny are rising.”
This was what they had all been waiting for. A second breach. History was upon them and they could both feel it.
“Sound the horns, Erias, I will brief the men.”
Chapter Three
Kate couldn’t wait any longer. It had been several hours, there were no signs whatsoever of radiation sickness, and she had made up a significant batch of further formula to take with her over and above her existing supply. Her backpack was brimming with bits and pieces she’d figured could be useful on a second incursion—which she hoped would be longer than the first. The few minutes she had spent in the dragon realm had left her with a burning desire to see more, and even the sight of the dragons looming large through the portal excited her. This time she would be more careful not to be spotted. She had stood outside in the open like a fool, gawping at them. She was going to need to be more sophisticated in her approach. To that end, she had a green umbrella. She figured if she held it above her head, she would appear to blend in with the terrain at the distances the dragons seemed to fly at, instead of being a humanoid figure standing there in bright clothing.
She hit the switch of the portal and in seconds it bloomed before her, that radiant field under a blanket of otherworldly sunshine. Kate stepped through, her backpack heavy and overloaded enough to make her look a little like a beetle laboring beneath its weight, her umbrella at her side.
