by Scott Meyer
Gripper said, “Done,” and started pulling himself hand over hand toward the struggling dragon.
Kludge shouted, “That’s not what I said to—” then got yanked through the air again.
Gripper reached the dragon’s leg and climbed on, leaving his rope unmanned. This caused an imbalance in the forces pulling on the dragon, which in turn caused the dragon to spin. It rotated slowly at first, allowing Gripper the time needed to make his way to the dragon’s neck, but the other Bastards all ran in orbit of the dragon, trying to get it under control.
Heel-Kick shouted, “Oh no! We’re losing it! We’re losing it!”
Their running caused them to exert less force on the ropes, which allowed the dragon to speed up. Soon, the dragon spun quickly in place, the Bastards ran around it as fast as they could, Gripper had his arms wrapped around the dragon’s neck, trying desperately not to lose his grip, and Kludge hung from the end of the rope and swung around in a circle like he was riding a deranged carnival ride.
Heel-Kick shrieked, “Oh no! I’m going to be sick!”
Gripper slid up the dragon’s neck, onto its head. His feet swung outward, and his body lay between the dragon’s horns, over its eyes, and onto its nose. “I ain’t letting go.”
The dragon let out a burst of fire through its nostrils, which hit Gripper in the pelvic region. Gripper let go.
As he flew outward, Gripper managed to grab Kludge’s rope. He slid down the rope and into Kludge.
As in any group, some of the Bastards were faster runners than others. As they were running in a circle, this meant that after only two revolutions the men running around the dragon were bunched up in a group. It only took a few more steps before they tripped each other and fell over, but they kept their grips on the ropes.
Their ropes wrapped around the dragon’s legs, and the resistance of the men sliding across the ground stopped the dragon’s rotation and brought Gripper and Kludge to the ground in a heap. The Bastards rose woozily to their feet and started pulling on their ropes again.
Kludge left his rope to Gripper, walked over to Only Donnie, and punched him in the side of the head. Only Donnie fell to the ground. Kludge picked up Only Donnie’s rope and started pulling.
“What was that for?” Only Donnie asked. “I didn’t do it!”
“That’s right,” Kludge said. “I told you to do something, and you didn’t do it.”
Honor was so intent on watching the fight that she nearly tripped over Runt, who had stopped walking and faced away from the battle, staring into the woods, quietly growling. Honor crouched and petted Runt, trying to calm her into silence, but Runt’s growling continued, and the little dog’s attention remained locked on a specific patch of darkness beyond the tree line. Honor tried to pick Runt up, but she squirmed and dodged, making it clear that if she had her way, all four of her paws would stay on the ground, and that dark void in the woods would continue to get growled at.
Honor squinted into the woods but she couldn’t see a thing, until the dragon fighting the Bastards made another attempt to breathe fire. The twin fireballs ascended quickly, briefly bathing the woods in an orange glow, creating two sets of quickly shifting shadows behind every branch and leaf, illuminating the dragon hiding among the trees less than ten feet from where Honor stood.
Of course, the instant Honor saw the dragon, she moved. She leapt several feet back, stumbled, and fell on her rear in the middle of the road. The dragon stuck its head out of the trees. Honor silently thanked Hubert for giving her his magical idol. Runt got between Honor and the dragon, growling louder than ever.
The dragon looked down at Runt and Honor, then looked up, toward the other dragon, still struggling with Kludge and his friends, and quickly withdrew its head back into the cover of the woods. Runt’s growling grew a bit more confident.
The dragon’s scared, she thought. Not of Runt, but I won’t tell Runt that. If the dragon is scared, that means that dragons can be hurt, and if they can be hurt, they can be beaten. Beaten as in defeated, not beaten as in mistreated, though that’s probably possible, too. And if they can be mistreated, they can be treated well. If you treat a dragon well, could you tame it? Maybe even train it? If animals as fierce as bears and bulls can be trained, why not a dragon?
Of course, Honor didn’t know that the training often starts when the animal is young, not fully grown. She also didn’t know that Jeff conjured the dragons into existence less than a week before, so they were, in effect, still quite young.
Occasionally, ignorance works in one’s favor.
Honor reached into her bag and pulled out one of the scones she had packed that morning for when she and Sonny got hungry. As it happened, Sonny ended up in no condition to eat, and seeing him get that way had caused Honor to lose her appetite.
She broke off a large piece of scone and held it out in front of her. She waited, motionless, for another plume of fire, just to make sure the hiding dragon saw her and the food she offered. After a burst of flame, Honor placed the scone on the ground and stepped away.
Runt started to go for the piece of scone herself, but Honor held her back, lest the dragon get the wrong idea about what was being offered as a snack. Runt whined and squirmed, but stopped when the dragon again extended its head from the tree line. The dragon sniffed at the scone, ate it, and receded back into the dark.
Honor placed another piece of the scone in the same spot, but this time only backed about half as far away as she had before. She didn’t have to restrain Runt to keep her from making an attempt at the scone herself.
The dragon stuck its head out, more slowly this time, eyeing Honor warily. It ate the scone, then kept its head out in the open. Honor rewarded its bravery with more scone. She considered trying to pet it, but then both she and the dragon were startled by Kludge shouting, “You there! Girl!”
The dragon disappeared back into the brush. Honor turned around to face Kludge.
“What did you do?” Kludge shouted, still pulling on his rope with all of his might. It was said in an angry, accusatory tone, because it was said by Kludge, but Honor also heard a hint of awe and confusion in among the normal baseline hostility.
Honor said, “What?”
“How did you get that dragon to come out like that?” Kludge asked, between grunts of exertion.
“I work with animals.”
Kludge screwed his face up in intense effort. He seemed to be having some sort of internal struggle. Finally, he asked, “Could you help us with this?”
After a moment, he added, “Please?”
After another moment, in a wrong-headed effort to further ingratiate himself, he added, “Girl?”
Honor said, “Maybe, but first, I have two questions. What are you going to do with the dragon once you have it calmed?”
Kludge said, “I plan to use it to make the wizards sorry they were ever born.”
Honor smiled. “Second question. Do any of you Bastards know anything about baking?”
20.
At first, the man knew only one thing: his back hurt.
He flexed his shoulders, and in doing so, learned two other things: that he was lying on his belly, and that his back hurt worse when he flexed his shoulders.
He remembered a dragon threatening his town. He remembered he and his friends using their bows and fire-tipped arrows to threaten it right back. He remembered a wizard, floating in air, telling them to stop. The wizard used his magic to make their arrows fly back over their own heads and hit them in the back. After that, all he could recall was a blur of pain and panic, ending with another wizard, a lady wizard, flying in and casting some sort of spell that made the world go dark.
And now he was here.
He opened his eyes and instantly became disoriented. His brain struggled to make sense of what he saw. When it did, it struggled to convince it
self that it was mistaken.
He was lying on some sort of table with his head turned to the side, in a room filled with flames. His only company was two demons, both unmistakably female, and just as unmistakably evil. They were clad in a red, shiny material, as if instead of clothing, they wore a glossy layer of liquid blood. Both wore red masks that covered the area around their eyes. Long, pointed red horns protruded from their hair, and long whip-like tails waved and swirled in the air behind them hypnotically.
“He’s waking up,” one of the she-demons said.
The other hissed, “Yessssss. Sssplendid.”
The demons crept in closer.
“Tell us your name.”
“Richard. My name is Richard!”
One of the she-demons barked, “Correct! We are tessssssting you, Richard, to ssssee if you are an honesssst man.”
Both of the demons spoke strangely. One elongated all of her S sounds into hissing noises. The other spoke slowly, in a deep voice, and with an accent Richard had never heard before.
“I am,” Richard cried. “I try to be!”
One demon said, “Exssssellent!”
“Good, very good,” the other agreed. “So tell us honestly, Richard, do you have any allergies?”
“Allergies?” Richard didn’t know how to answer. He had never heard the word.
“Do any plants or animals make you feel sick, or make you sneeze?”
“No.”
“Okay. Good. Thank you.”
The other demon cackled and said, “You have been ssssent here for your ssssinssss, Richard. Thissss issss your reward for a life misssspent.”
The other demon moved in even closer, and used some satanic device to peer into Richard’s eyes. She asked, “Have you been sick recently?”
“Is it a sin to be sick?”
“No, but lying to me about it would be.”
“A sssssin mosssst heinoussss!” the second demon agreed.
“No, I haven’t been sick in a long time! I’m healthy as an ox! I swear it!”
The demon peering into his eyes said, “Good.”
The other said, “We are not assssking you about your ssssinssss out of ignoranccccce. We know your ssssinssss already. The lisssst issss far to long for me to . . . lisssst.”
The other demon smirked, and said, “Ssssmooth.”
“SSSShut up.”
“Tell us, Richard, do you have any other pain, besides your back?”
“No.”
The hissing demon said, “Not yet, at leassssst.”
The other said, “Only a couple more questions. Have you chewed on any willow bark recently?”
“No.”
“Do you have any loose teeth?”
The hissing demon asked, “What doessss that have to do with anything?”
“They can be a choking hazard during the procedure.”
“No,” Richard wailed. “Please don’t choke me with my own teeth!”
The demon with the accent said, “We won’t! We won’t. We’re giving you a second chance. We won’t hurt you.”
The other demon cackled. “But we might, ssssomeday. If you don’t change your wayssss, we will bring you right back here and choke you with your teeth, then sssstrangle you with your own tongue . . . ssssomehow!”
“Yes, like my friend said, somehow. But you can prevent that. Go back to your life. Be a good man. Treat others well. Take it easy for a while. No heavy lifting for at least three weeks. And avoid tobacco products. Do all that, and we shouldn’t see you here again.”
“He’ssss from a time hundredssss of yearssss before tobacco issss introducccced from the New World.”
“Oh,” the non-hissing demon said, “that should make that easier then. Any questions, Richard?”
Richard shook his head.
The demon said, “All right then,” put her hand on his head, and swiped her finger in the empty air, a streamer of light trailing from her fingertip. Richard fell into a deep sleep.
* * *
Louiza removed her hand from the patient’s head and tapped at a couple more selections in the Atlantis interface. The light in the room went from red to white, and the projected flames faded away. Their tails continued whipping and swirling behind them, as they were controlled by a separate algorithm. She pulled off her mask and said, “One down, twenty-five to go. Laid it on a bit thick, didn’t you?”
Brit the Elder removed her own mask. “We’re supposed to be demons, and this is supposed to be hell. The whole point is to make it unpleasant for them. That way we can ask them your questions, their pain will make sense to them, and we can maybe con them into being better people when they get back. The last thing we want is for any of these guys to go back to their normal lives thinking, Hell wasn’t so bad. Sure it was hot, but the people were nice. It’s like a subterranean Orlando, Florida.”
“But strangling him with his own tongue?”
“Yeah,” Brit the Elder admitted. “That got a bit dark, but I was just trying to compensate for these ridiculous demon costumes.”
Louiza glanced at Brit the Elder and said, “What’s wrong with them? I think you look good.”
“I do look good. So do you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, but that’s not the point. We’re sorceresses. We could make ourselves look like actual demons.”
“Actual demons,” Louiza said. “What do actual demons look like, Brit?”
“Okay, yes, you’re right. There are no actual demons, but if there were they wouldn’t dress like . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked down at her tight red pleather catsuit and matching patent-leather pumps, then sighed, “I’m trying hard not to make a Bananarama reference here.”
“You dated Phillip for a long time, didn’t you?”
“Depending on how you look at it, I’m still dating him.”
“That’s true,” Louiza said. “I never thought about that. You can’t just put the relationship behind you. You have to watch your younger self date him. That’s gotta be bad.”
“Not as bad as you think. Sometimes watching them reminds me why we were together in the first place. Other times watching them reminds me why we aren’t together right now. And when I’m mad at Brit the Younger I can always torture her by bringing up some of my juicier memories about their love life.”
“Ooh! Like what?”
“I’m not going to tell you. They’re juicy memories about my love life, too. I do have some sense of propriety, which brings us back to these ridiculous sexy demon costumes, which I’ll remind you, is what was written on the packages. Sexy Demon Costume. We’re two intelligent women. Why are we dressing like this?”
“Because we were in a hurry, and I didn’t see the point in wasting time reinventing the wheel when demon costumes for adult women were easy to find. Also, because it’s fun.”
21.
Martin and Phillip sat in the cave, using a chunk of golden I beam as a bench. They watched the dragons and discussed their poor decisions.
“Pressuring Jeff to make the dragons better without offering to help was wrong,” Martin said.
“Giving him the job of creating the dragons in the first place was a bad move,” Phillip said. “Sure, he had the expertise, but he was also the one who had to be rescued after Todd dropped him off of a cliff. He was bound to take training for self-defense too seriously.”
“Yeah, we should’ve just fought each other for practice. Just, you know, we all get together, pick teams, and fight, like a magical version of flag football. Say, do kids in Europe and England play flag soccer?”
“No. We just played what you call soccer. You don’t need body armor and a trauma specialist on hand to play the full version of our game. That’s why w
e love it.”
Martin said, “I think that’s also the reason Americans don’t. Anyway, that’s how we should’ve handled the self-defense training. The dragons were an unnecessary complication.”
Phillip nodded. “Agreed. And, now that I think about it, splitting up to get rid of the dragons wasn’t necessary either. We’re time travelers. We could have all just swarmed the dragons in each location, then traveled back in time to the same moment at the next place where dragons had appeared. In essence, we all would have taken out all of the dragons at the same time, everywhere. No matter how comfortable we get with the idea that we can travel through time, our brains just aren’t designed to work that way. It runs counter to our instincts.”
The two looked off into the middle distance for a moment. Then Martin said, “Also, assuming that the dragons needed food was wrong. Sure, we’d seen them eating, but they aren’t biological. There’s no reason to believe that they’ll eventually have to go outside to eat. Sure, they should need food, but they should also die when their heads are cut off. I guess they just eat when they’re bored and there’s food handy. I’ve certainly been guilty of that.”
“Yes, you’re right, of course. And creating that massive pile of hay just outside the door was folly as well. They already knew that all of the food in the world was outside. Putting another pile of food outside with it wasn’t much of an added inducement. And even if it had been, the goal looks like a big blue disk, so putting it up over the cave exit was never going to make the dragons walk through. It just looked to them like we’d sealed them in with a big blue window.”
“Yeah, I think the key is to get them moving so fast that they can’t stop before they go through the goal.”
Phillip screwed his face up in deep concentration. After several seconds of intense thought, he said, “They probably eat grass not because they need it, but because sheep eat grass and they have some sheep instincts, yes?”
Martin said, “Yes. We think.”
