by Daniel Ruth
“Are you an idiot? It’s a wonder you didn’t get murdered out here. Didn’t I tell you earlier that there are monsters out here?”
“I remember the part where we agreed they were delicious. The rest wasn’t important,” I replied dismissively to the driver.
“While we can all agree that dinosaurs are tasty, was there a real reason for your outing,” Conrad asked.
I opened my mouth to mock him when I thought of something. “Well, it’s a well-known fact that dragons love the taste of dinosaurs.”
“What? That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard and completely irrelevant as well,” the driver blustered.
“Where on earth did you hear that Professor?” Conrad asked, looking a bit confused. “And what does it have to do with you disappearing?”
“I do research Conrad,” I shook my head at him condescendingly. “It’s why you asked me to come, isn’t it?” Aside from not having anyone else durable enough to post an apology. “And you,” I said pointing to the driver. “That kind of callousness is why Frenchmen and dragons with never get along.”
I marched over to the hovercar, which was in the middle of the circle of the five dead beasts. “Well, help me put these things on the car, so we can get them back to the apartment.”
The driver wasn’t happy about having his car drenched in the blood of fresh kills. I didn’t really care, as long as we could use the car. While a part of me was teasing the human, what I said was absolutely true. At least it was true that this dragon loved barbecued dinosaurs.
When we got them back, I washed up and changed. Afterward, I took over the kitchen. Amid several complaints from the cook, which I ignored, I butchered the first raptor. Parts I cooked in the oven, some parts I used the turkey fryer and others I used for barbecue. It was the first time since I arrived in the city I really noticed how old fashioned and traditional it was. I think turkey fryers had been outlawed in the states for almost a hundred years.
“Okay, part one of my ‘Please don’t kill me’ gift is started. Did you get the rest of what I asked for?”
Conrad sighed as he breathed in the scent of cooking meat. He too had fond memories of my cook out. “Yes, it’s out front with the guard. You probably noticed it when you came in.”
“The entire thing?”
“Yes.” I followed the armored shifter outside to the cargo pod. The guard saluted, but I ignored him and reached up to pry to the top hatch open.
“That doesn’t open by hand you’re going to need a hydraulic lift... never mind.” The guard trailed off as I casually popped the top off, hoisted myself up to the rim and eagerly gazed inside. It was beautiful. I may even have shed a tear. Even in the low light, there were so many reflective surfaces, it almost seemed a house of mirrors.
Inside the pod were thousands of gems of all shapes, sizes, and colors. While this was impressive, what really took my breath away was the size. The smallest was the size of my fist and largest the size of my head. My human shaped head. It was still amazing.
I turned to Conrad and asked, “You’re sure these are natural and not manufactured? She’ll know. She’ll know and be pissed.”
“I had my terminal crosscheck the documentation of every piece.” He looked embarrassed for a moment. “I would have done it manually but it would have literally taken me six months.”
“Well, in the interest of peace I really should verify it,” I solemnly nodded to him before diving headfirst into the cargo hold.
“Really,” Conrad groaned. I imagined he was pinching the brow of his nose. I didn’t see it, of course, because I was focusing on seeing the aura of gems. Just as Conrad had said, they were natural. From what I knew, they must have been farmed from asteroids or the other planets, because nothing like these would be found on earth. At least in these quantities. I had heard Jeremy toss about words such as post-scarcity societies, but honestly, I didn’t really start to believe it until then. Of course, that was before the apocalypse.
As I moved around in the bin, it rattled and rolled. It actually required a significant amount of force to dig to the bottom and a bit of finesse not to crush the gems. It took thirty glorious minutes until I had finished shifting through the gems. It was actually pretty amazing that I only found two artificial gems. I paused to crush them contemptuously and scattered the dust. Their dead aura stood out among the lively colors of the others. It offended me and it would certainly have offended the dragon lady.
“You can toss those, or return them to the mall, or whatever,” I said as I dragged myself out of the bin. I really wanted to stay in there. Maybe take a long sleep on a mound of treasure. I had other things to do, so it would have to wait.
Poking my head above the top of the lid I nodded to Conrad. “Looks good. Let’s go!” He simply snorted and shook his head.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Afraid not. It was one of the reasons we needed you.”
I was standing in the middle of one of the ruined streets. The cargo bin and the hover car were next to me. The driver and Conrad were there as well, however, they were in the car. I was not. They were driving away. I was not.
“You flew me all the way out here, so I could drag this damn box of gems down Ravioli Street to the portal...”
“It’s Rue de Revoli...” the driver interjected.
“We’ve sent cars before, they get destroyed as soon as they turn onto, er... Chaps Elsy...” Conrad’s voice faded into an uncomfortable cough.
“It’sAvenue des Champs- Élysées!” The driver irately exclaimed out the window. “I can’t believe you Americans. Use your damn implant, it has a translator built into it.” Conrad and I both ignored him, though I think I saw his eye twitch.
“Anyway, I could wait here for you, but it’s out in the middle of nowhere. What I will actually be doing is going back to our command center...”
“The cafeteria?”
“No, that’s just living quarters for the soldiers and the few remaining civilians. One of the buildings northwest of the portal is mostly intact...”
“Casino Barriere d'Enghien-les-bains. A common gambling den. National treasures. All destroyed and a casino survives.” The driver seemed bitter.
“French people seem a bit whiny,” I muttered to Conrad under my breath.
“... mostly intact,” Conrad continued doggedly, ignoring both of us now. “So we have set up a base there. The wrist terminal you have will be tied to our system so we’ll know how you fare.” He pointed to the terminal I had temporarily retrieved from Beth.
“If you hear any crunching noises she’s either chowing down on my bones or we’re having a barbeque.”
“Noted. Are you sure they are tied down snuggly?” The officer looked back at the cargo bin. Piled on top of it, fastened down by rope, were the raptors that I had caught. We had a bear of a time getting the rope. We finally had to repurpose the flag rope outside the housing. The French flag was being used to help keep the bloody pile stable. It may have been at that point the driver started to be annoying. The other residents also glared daggers at us. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be a good idea to stay there again if we had an option. It had seemed funny at the time. And we really had needed it. World peace, you know.
“It’s not like I have my rickshaw here,” I sighed dejectedly. “I’ll be going at a walking pace.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a force field installed?”
“If she killed the cars a force field isn’t going to help.”
“All right. Good luck,” the shifter gave a last nod and squeezed his armored form into the hover car. I watched the blood-stained vehicle float sedately down the ruined street. After they were out of sight, I moved over to the bin and wrestled into the harness I had cobbled together. Moments later, I was trudging down Ravioli street with the massive cargo bin dragging and scraping behind me. It had tiny wheels but the debris constantly jammed them. This forced me to manhandle the thing down the road.
It was
slow going, so I admired the scenery. The destroyed buildings. The corpses of people, creatures large and small and the scent of smoke wafting through the air. It reminded me of home. It also made me wonder why I missed it so much. It must have been my friends because the rest of it wasn’t as fun as I remember it.
After about a half a mile, I passed the remains of the Louvre again, I made the turn Conrad mentioned and immediately saw a pile of destroyed vehicles. The army hadn’t given up immediately and the collection of parts included various cars, a tank, something that looked like a train and what I could have sworn was a plane.
I was rounding the mountain of debris when my sense of impending doom tweaked and urged me to look up. Sure enough, a rather large fireball was descending on me. Snorting, I put up a weak force bubble and paused long enough to absorb the impact of the fiery missile. Once the ground stopped shaking I continued forward.
I looked at the narrow roads ahead and the piles of rubble on either side and shook my head. The dragon lady must have some divination or sensory magic in use because I could not see the portal from here. From the pictures and videos, it was massive, but there was simply too much garbage in the way.
I had to stop every hundred feet or so, to put up a force bubble, but since I was very close to a massive node and could see the ghostly blue energy in the air, converging to the portal, I had the energy to spare. Of course so did she.
I passed by it, a small roundabout and then finally saw the eerie brilliant light of the portal through the arches of the monument ahead. I also saw a very angry dragon snarling at me on the other side.
Other than the rage in her face, she was actually very attractive. Amethyst eyes the size of watermelons, emerald scales glowing with health, arm sized teeth in a snarling maw, talons the size of a man’s legs. You know typical adult dragon. Well... cuter than my last encounter but maybe it was just me.
I stopped masking my aura, letting my energies mingle with the environment. I was the first time in well over a year I had stopped hiding it and it was marvelous. Sighing in relief, I waived to the dragon lady.
The snarl on her lips froze for a moment as I saw shock and consternation pass over it. At least the rain of fire had stopped.
Chapter 14
“What the hell are you doing here,” her growl reverberated through the air. I was over three thousand feet away, I believed she had put considerable feeling into it.
“I come bearing gifts,” I yelled back in dragonese. The younger races call it elvish but I am utterly convinced they stole it.
“What,” shouted the lady dragon. Obviously, she was confused. It probably didn’t help that my voice was presently limited by my form. I simply wasn’t loud enough.
“I said I have gifts,” I screamed back, cupping my hands around my mouth in a makeshift megaphone.
“What?”
Oh, good grief. I brought out my terminal and fiddled with the holographic interface. It was horrible on the power, or so the annoying notification stated, but I could make the interface visible and a bit larger than life. A moment of work and I had an image of a gift-wrapped box with a bow and an arrow point at me floating above my head. It also had a counter stating the battery was going to die within thirty seconds. Whoops!
“A present? For me,” the dragon’s eyes widened in appreciation. “Well, hurry over before they blow you up too.”
I took this invitation at face value and after turning off my presentation, I began to earnestly start to drag my cargo through the rubble of the narrow roads. Ten minutes later, I was at the foot of the monolith that was once the Arc de Triomphe.
“Quick, push it in before they destroy it,” she looked at the cargo box eagerly. “Ooh, are those dinosaurs? They are so yummy.”
“Your concern for my safety is overwhelming,” I replied dryly.
“Oh please, like these humans could do anything to us next to a node like this,” she snorted in disdain as one dainty claw grasped the container as it went through the portal’s surface. “I’d invite you over but there’s a weird barrier on the portal. Actually, its stops all dimensional traffic by supernaturals or magical creatures. Pretty scary stuff.”
“So if I had a way to get through, you wouldn’t mind? Would you promise guest rights to me and my friends,” I wheedled.
“Well... sure. But no offense, but if I can’t get through I don’t see how a young dragon like...” she trailed off as I darted through the glowing surface. “Well, I’ll be.”
I paused a moment on the over side. While I was previously on a flat surface, the other side appeared to be the remains of a castle over a thousand feet above the ground. Most of the castle was in ruins, however, the area the portal occupied was an arch, with two groups of spires loosely attached to it. I could guess that the circles that defined this portal had portions that extended to them. Only parts of a path downward remained as this peak overlooked a barren scorched land.
“Wow, they really did a number on this place.”
“Yes,” she began gloomily. “It used to be a beautiful little valley.” Her brows contracted and rage could be shown as flames started to flicker from her nose and nostrils. “And they opened a damn portal into my castle’s front door and threw a bomb in! I will destroy them!” Her roar echoed back from the desolate plain below.
“Right. How about barbecue? I cooked one of the raptors before I got here. It’s not hot anymore, but I am not too bad of a cook. Shall we have a bite to eat?”
“Sure,” she looked at me with a toothy grin, her rage momentarily forgotten. “I’ll put up a barrier so they don’t get us while we’re eating.” She swayed over to a flat potion near the portal and I noted she had several circles linked together in an array. Just casually looking over I noted one that would put up a nigh impenetrable force dome, a circle that would rain fire from the sky and another that would animate the dead. Well, no mysteries here. While the circles were elegantly tied together, I could tell they had been hastily inscribed on the stone surface by a certain unevenness in the etched lines and a barely detectable distortion of the circle.
While she activated her defenses, I set up a sheet on the ground and began laying out the cooked beasts. Once she was done, she hummed appreciatively. Her form shimmered, shrank and there, before me, was now a twenty-something blond girl in a blouse and thigh long mini skirt.
We sat in companionable silence, as we ate the creatures. Every once in a while she would breathe flame lightly on one to heat it up. I held up a leg and she obligingly crisped it. I was really missing some fire magic.
“So, I accept your courting,” she informally nodded in my direction.
My eyes widened as I started to cough uncontrollably. “What? What makes you think I’m trying to court you?”
“Gifts of food, sharing fire, a picnic,” she looked over at the cargo bin. “A present with your scent all over it.”
Scent? Since when do dragons smell anything? We may have slightly better senses than a human’s but compared to a vampire or shifter we were basically nose blind. “We aren’t even the same breed!”
“Meaningless. My grandfather is a god.”
I took a moment to absorb the seeming non-sequitur before I realized what she meant. From what little I knew and guessed, gods are creatures of pure mana or life energy. They actually aren’t any particular species, regardless of what they look like. Never the less, the tales of gods mating with literally anything that breathed are endless. Infamous, really. Apparently, she was implying that having a god in the gene pool allowed her to do the same.
“Um, are you a godling then?”
“Demi-god. I’d have to get some worshippers before I sparked into a godling,” she said candidly while tearing into a part I had deep fried.
“Well, what about age? I won’t be ready to find a mate for hundreds of years.”
She gave me a considering look. “You are pretty young, but courting isn’t the same as claiming a mate. When you mature you’ll want to
find a mate, but do you think one is going to pop out of the woodwork and claim you?”
“That would seem unlikely,” I admitted.
“Courting is simply getting to know each other, maybe have some fun, if we’re in the mood. If things go well, we’ll see what happens in a few hundred years.”
“Well, it seems reasonable. Fine. Let’s try this courting thing. Names Derek.”
“Maribel pleased to meet you.” She gave me a pleasant smile and continued, “Since you can get through the portal let’s hunt down all the humans on the other side and kill them in the name of Cinnamon, Cocoa, and Ceyanne.” She ended this statement with her eyes glowing and her fist clenched tightly in front of her.
“So. Who is Cinnamon, Cocoa, and Ceyanne?” I asked weakly.
“They were my little hunnies. Cinnamon was the most darling unicorn you ever saw. Cocoa was a beautiful Pegasus and Ceyanne was the cutest little griffon.”
I casually looked over the edge of the platform we sat on. Far down on the blackened rock at the foot of the spire, I saw tiny stones jutting from the ground. Sure enough, there were three tiny grave markers by what remained of the path.
“Right. Now might be the time to tell you that it’s not really a coincidence that I am here,” I started. I was really thinking that this was absolutely not the right time but...
“So you really did come to court me? I knew it! All the clues were there! How romantic! Now let’s lay waste to my... er, our enemies!”
“No, that part is dumb luck and my inherent animal magnetism,” I waved my hand in dismissal. I certainly didn’t have a better explanation for it. “Certain parties asked me to come here, as an impartial ambassador, to discuss peace.”
She looked at me as if I had killed her puppy. Or in this case her favorite griffin. Tears welled up in her eyes, and were instantly vaporized by the flames she was breathing out.
“Are these certain parties willing to kneel before me and disembowel themselves, while reciting prayers of apologies to my little snuggles,” she asked me flatly.
