The Last Dragon

by James Riley

  “NO,” the dragon said. “I SENSE IT NEAR MORE HUMANS. A LARGE AMOUNT OF YOUR KIND. BRING ME FARTHER AWAY FROM THE SUN, TO A LARGE GATHERING OF HUMANS.”

  Fort sighed. A large gathering of humans meant a big city, which only put more people in danger. But what else could he do? He hadn’t figured out a way to get the dragon back to the portal, and there was no way he was going to stop until he did. None of these innocent people deserved whatever the Old One might put them through when he didn’t find his offspring. Not when he wouldn’t even be here if Fort hadn’t gone looking for his father.

  But for now, all he could do was take the dragon where it wanted to go and hope he came up with an idea in the meantime.

  “Let’s try another city, then,” Fort said, and opened a teleportation circle to the first place he could think of that matched the dragon’s description.

  The lights from the Hollywood sign illuminated the landmark enough to see it, even through the portal, and before Fort could take a breath they soared through it, emerging into the sky above Los Angeles.

  - THIRTY-SEVEN -

  THE LIGHTS OF L.A. SPREAD out below him, extending in every direction except for the hill directly below with the Hollywood sign. Fort let the dragon fly for a moment, concentrating on where to position his teleportation circle back in the cavern.

  He had to put it directly above the portal to the Dracsi dimension. If it was anywhere else, the dragon might hit Gabriel or Rachel. But if it was that close, there was no way he’d be able to get free before they passed through.

  But maybe this is what he deserved? The Old One coming to Earth was his fault, and he’d known from the start that one of them was going to be lost to the other dimension. If this was what it took to make up for his actions while still rescuing his father, then that was what Fort had to—

  “THERE!” the Old One shouted, and they began to dive in the direction of the Pacific Ocean. “I SENSE IT, DIFFERENT THAN THE ONE ACROSS THE SEA. THIS MUST BE THE TRUE CHILD I SEEK! I AM COMING FOR YOU, LITTLE ONE!”

  What?! The last dragon might actually be here? Fort hadn’t even considered that!

  He had to get a teleportation circle open while they were still flying. That was the only way to get the dragon through it, to use its speed against it. Closing his eyes and mentally saying good-bye to his father and friends, Fort opened a circle…

  Only for the dragon to dive beneath it. “DO NOT INTERFERE,” the Old One said, squeezing Fort tighter. Once again, Fort found it almost impossible to breathe, and the world began to get even darker than it was under the starry sky.

  And then the dragon released the pressure as it did a barrel roll in the sky, avoiding something loud before them. Fort gasped for air as they passed directly under a police helicopter, then went blind as the helicopter’s lights focused right on him.

  “MORE OF YOU TRY TO STOP ME!” the dragon shouted. “YOU BEG ME TO DOOM YOUR SPECIES!”

  As the first helicopter turned to follow them, a second came up from another side. That wasn’t good. So far they just had their lights trained on the dragon, but if they started shooting, or even tried to head it off, there would be no way of stopping the creature.

  “Hey!” he shouted, waving his hands toward the helicopters. “It’s okay! I’ve got this under control!” Yes, it was a complete lie, but he still had a better shot at fixing things than they did.

  “Set the boy down safely on the ground,” said a voice over a loudspeaker from the helicopter. “We do not want to hurt you.”

  “HURT ME?” the dragon said, sneering as it turned its head toward the helicopter.

  “No!” Fort shouted, now waving at the dragon to get its attention. “Remember the last dragon? Don’t let them distract you!”

  The dragon seemed dismissive of this, but turned away from the helicopters, and Fort silently let loose the breath he’d been holding… only to scream as the dragon dropped again, rocketing toward what looked like a black, bubbling lake of awfulness right in the middle of Los Angeles.

  Tar pits. The La Brea Tar Pits. And the dragon was diving straight for them.

  “Wait, I can’t breathe in there!” Fort shouted, just seconds before they hit.

  Almost as an afterthought, the dragon absently tossed Fort into the air the moment before it plowed into the tar like a missile. Fort’s momentum sent him up and flying over the tar pits before gravity regained its hold on him, pulling him back toward the lake of blackness. He quickly opened a circle and fell through it to crash on the ground just in front of the pits, landing hard enough to send pain shooting through every part of his body.

  “Get away from the pit!” shouted someone over the helicopter loudspeaker, and Fort knew they were talking to him. The dragon had given up its hostage, which meant they could attack now.

  But if he let the police try to fight the Old One, they’d be the ones to suffer for it. So instead, Fort pushed to his feet, waving up at the bright spotlight they’d turned onto him.

  “Don’t shoot!” he shouted. “Let me handle this! I really do have it under control!”

  If only that were true.

  More helicopters hovered overhead now, and police cars came racing up to the tar pit with sirens blaring. The more that arrived, the more Fort was convinced they’d try to just grab him and forcibly remove him from the scene, dooming them all. If only the dragon would finish whatever he was doing, so Fort could figure out another way to get it back to the Dracsi dimension. What could possibly be taking so long—

  His thoughts were interrupted by the dragon flying out of the black lake to land just behind Fort, hot tar dripping from its scales. And in its hands was an egg at least three feet tall.

  Only, the egg was broken. Whatever had been inside it was gone, or hadn’t lived through the heat of the tar.

  The Old One gently lay the egg down on the ground, then turned to the police assembling before them, his eyes blazing with fury.

  “FOR THIS TRAVESTY,” he shrieked, “I SHALL WIPE YOUR KIND OFF THE FACE OF YOUR EARTH!”

  - THIRTY-EIGHT -

  NO!” FORT SHOUTED, LEAPING BETWEEN the Old One and the police. “You don’t know what happened to that dragon!”

  “YOU LED ME TO NOTHING BUT DEATH,” the Old One roared, shooting fire straight at Fort and the police behind him.

  Fort dove to the ground, and the heat almost singed his uniform as it passed just a foot or two above him. He threw a look over his shoulder to find that, thankfully, the cops had escaped unscathed by hiding behind their vehicles.

  “I didn’t know what we’d find!” Fort shouted, pushing to his feet and holding his hands up in surrender. “But these humans did nothing to that dragon. No human did! You were the one who told us that dragons were on our side. We were partners, just like you saw with the skeletons!”

  “AND FOR THAT CRIME, MY BROTHER AND SISTERS DESTROYED MY CHILDREN!” the Old One roared again, this time lunging forward, swiping directly at him. Fort quickly threw up a teleportation circle, and instead of cutting him in two, the Old One’s claws passed through empty air above the Grand Canyon.

  “Then blame them!” Fort shouted, closing his circle as the dragon pulled his hand back. “By taking it out on humanity, you’re doing the exact same thing your family did. Would your dragons want you to hurt the ones they were protecting? Especially for their sake?”

  The Old One reared back, screaming incoherently, his face still contorted with rage. “YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT IS LIKE TO LOSE YOUR CHILDREN!”

  “Kid, get out of the way!” one of the cops shouted. “You’re in the line of fire!”

  “I’ve got this!” Fort shouted, and summoned a huge teleportation circle behind him, just in case they decided to ignore him and fire anyway. Now if they did, their bullets would fly out harmlessly over the Atlantic Ocean, a spot Fort remembered from a flight to Florida once.

  He quickly turned back to the Old One, his hands still held up. “It’s true, I don’t know what it’s like t
o lose a child. But I do know what it feels like to lose my parents! I’ve never known my mother, and my father only got turned into a Dracsi because I was too slow, too weak to stop it. And yes, I’d have done anything to bring him back… but maybe I didn’t have that right. Maybe it’s not worth putting all these people in danger because I was so sad and angry!”

  The Old One sneered. “YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND THE DEPTHS OF WHO I AM, AND WHAT MY DRAGONS MEANT TO ME, HUMAN. THEY WERE THE EMBODIMENT OF ALL MAGIC, MY GREATEST CREATION. NOW I HAVE NOTHING LEFT, NOTHING !”

  “Maybe not, but…,” Fort said, then trailed off as an idea occurred to him. It wasn’t perfect, and even suggesting it might get him killed, but if it did work, it could save all the police behind him, let alone the rest of humanity. “But that didn’t have to be the last dragon.”

  “YOU CAN SEE FOR YOURSELF THAT IT IS GONE!” the Old One shouted. “THERE ARE NO MORE DRAGONS.”

  “Your children are gone,” Fort said quietly, hoping this wasn’t a huge mistake. “But that doesn’t have to be the end of their species. You brought the others out of magic, created them out of nothing, right? Why can’t you then—”

  The Old One reared back in surprise. “CREATE ONE ANEW?”

  Fort nodded and braced himself for anything, readying a teleportation spell back to his bedroom in his aunt’s apartment.

  But instead of incinerating him with fire or ripping him apart with his claws, the Old One seemed to be… thinking. “IT COULD NEVER HEAL THE LOSS,” he said finally. “BUT PERHAPS IT WOULD IN SOME WAY PUT RIGHT THAT WHICH HAS BEEN MADE WRONG.”

  “A new dragon could be created in honor of the ones that came before it,” Fort said, still waiting for the creature to change his mind.

  The dragon picked up the egg on the ground and wrapped his massive hands around it. Even next to the Old One, the egg looked gigantic, but Fort supposed any animal the size of a dragon would have to come out of a pretty big egg.

  The dragon closed his eyes, his hands glowing bright blue as the egg slowly knitted itself closed, its cracks filling over until it looked whole and unbroken. The light in the egg now grew even more intense than the dragon’s hands, and Fort covered his eyes to keep from going blind. Behind him, he could hear the police shouting and footsteps heading around the sides of his teleportation circle, only to stop as they were blinded just as he was.

  “It’s okay!” Fort shouted, hoping they’d listen. “He’s not going to hurt anyone!”

  “What is it doing?” one of the cops yelled.

  “Righting a wrong!” Fort shouted back.

  The blue light was now so strong that Fort could feel its chill even from several yards away. The cold light of Healing—no, Corporeal magic—passed through his body, and all the aches and pains he’d gotten in the last week disappeared, from training with Sergeant Tower to falling in the Dracsi cavern to even a bit of a runny nose, healed like they’d never existed to begin with.

  “I… I AM NOT AS STRONG AS I ONCE WAS,” he heard the Old One say, his voice sounding less powerful than it had. “I HAVE BEEN IMPRISONED SO LONG. I AM NOT SURE I CAN—”

  “You can do this!” Fort shouted, feeling energized from the Healing magic. “Remember what they mean to you, and don’t let anything stop you from bringing them back!”

  The Old One went silent, but the light intensified, painful even through Fort’s closed eyes. He brought his arm up over his face and turned around, hoping this magic wasn’t going to kill them all, now that he’d finally talked the dragon down. Only, as he turned, someone grabbed his shoulder and yanked him to the ground.

  “I’ve got the kid!” one of the cops shouted. “He’s out of danger!”

  “Take that thing out!” another shouted.

  “NO!” Fort screamed, but the police officer who’d grabbed him held him in place. “He won’t hurt you if you don’t attack him first!”

  “We’re doing this to keep the city safe, kid,” the cop on the ground growled at him. “I don’t know what that thing is, but if we let it go, who knows what it’ll do.”

  “Don’t shoot unless positive you have a confirmed target!” one of the cops shouted. “On my mark. Three! Two!”

  “Please, no!” Fort shouted, but as he did, the light abruptly disappeared, dropping the whole world into darkness.

  The policeman holding Fort loosened his grip in surprise, and Fort didn’t wait. He leaped to his feet and ran in the direction where he hoped the Old One was.

  “Kid, no!” the cop who’d grabbed him yelled. “Hold your fire!”

  Not waiting to see if they did, Fort threw a teleportation circle beneath the spot he’d last seen the dragon, then dove through it blindly, hoping the Old One wouldn’t pick now of all times to float above it.

  He flew through the circle and into the display room back at the new Oppenheimer School, crashing hard to the concrete floor, only to feel the whole room shake as the dragon landed next to him, not moving.

  Cradled protectively in the Old One’s arms was a bright blue egg, glowing with an inner light. And from that light, Fort could just make out the fact that something inside was moving.

  - THIRTY-NINE -

  IT WAS TAKING FAR MORE Healing bandages to wake the Old One up than Fort was comfortable using. That, and having an unconscious dragon meant he could have teleported the creature back to Dragon’s Teeth without any worry.

  But for some reason he didn’t feel right, leaving it at the mercy of the other Old Ones. If Fort sent the egg back with him, they’d surely make him turn the new dragon into another Dracsi. And if he kept the egg safe on Earth, he’d be taking the Old One’s child from it, which also felt horribly wrong.

  Still, what was he doing, healing a creature that had threatened all of humanity?

  After the seventeenth bandage, the Old One’s eyes cracked open, and he groaned, then glanced up at Fort strangely. “YOU… RESTORED MY BODY? WHY?”

  “Because that egg needs his father,” Fort said, backing away and hoping he hadn’t just made a very bad mistake. But the last thing he was going to do was take this new dragon’s dad from it, not with his own father lying on a hospital bed not far from him right now.

  The Old One’s eyes widened, and he scrambled to his feet, relaxing after he saw the glowing blue dragon egg. Fort had carried it from the Old One’s arms when he wasn’t sure if the creature would wake up or not.

  The dragon reached out a trembling hand and gently lay it on the egg, an odd expression on his face. “IT WORKED,” he said, sounding almost surprised. “IT TOOK ALMOST ALL OF MY POWER, BUT THE LITTLE ONE IS ALIVE AND WELL.” His eyes unfocused, and he put his other hand on the egg as well. “THOUGH THIS DRAGON… IT WILL BE DIFFERENT FROM MY LAST CHILDREN. MAGIC HAS CHANGED, HERE ON EARTH. IT… WANTS SOMETHING.”

  Magic wanted something? That was terrifying. “Okay, great, but we still need to get you back to your dimension,” Fort told him. “You’re going to have to find some place to hide from your family—”

  The Old One’s eyes refocused, and it sneered. “RUN? I WOULD SOONER DIE. I WILL FACE THEM AND MAKE THEM PAY FOR WHAT THEY’VE—”

  “And put your egg in danger?” Fort said incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  The dragon moved his head in closer until his teeth were just inches from Fort’s fate. “DO NOT SPEAK TO ME AS IF—”

  “Then don’t put your new child’s life in danger!” Fort shouted back, so angry that he didn’t even care if the Old One attacked. “You need to think about them, not just yourself and your need for revenge!”

  “I WOULD SOONER PERISH THAN THREATEN THIS NEW LIFE,” the Old One said, backing off a bit and standing up, still holding the egg carefully in his arms. “YOU… YOU MAY BE CORRECT, HUMAN. AND I DO NOT SAY THAT LIGHTLY. BUT WE SHOULD GO. WE MUST HURRY BACK IF WE ARE TO HAVE ANY HOPE OF HIDING FROM MY BRETHREN.”

  Really? The dragon was pulling an “I’m ready, we’re waiting on you now” on him? In spite of wanting to run
back to the medical ward and check in on his father, Fort knew he couldn’t just teleport the Old One back and hope for the best. He needed to see this through, if just so he could look his dad in the eyes when the man woke up. With a long sigh, Fort opened a circle back to the portal beneath the old Oppenheimer School. “Let me go first,” he told the Old One. “I don’t want to scare Gabriel and Rachel.”

  The dragon barely seemed to hear him, busy staring at its egg, so Fort stepped through the teleportation circle, ready to tell Rachel how right she’d been all along.

  Except Rachel wasn’t there. Neither was Gabriel. The portal still burned in the floor of the cavern, but otherwise, there was no sign of anyone.

  “Uh-oh,” Fort said, only to be knocked out of the way by the dragon pushing through the portal behind him.

  “WHAT TRANSPIRES?” the Old One said, turning his body to protect the egg. “WHY DO YOU PANIC?”

  “Because my friends were here, guarding the portal,” Fort said. “And now they’re gone. Do you… sense any humans nearby?”

  The Old One shook his head. “YOU ALONE, FOR MANY MILES AROUND.”

  Oh no. “Come on,” Fort said, and moved to the portal.

  But the Old One held back. “IF THERE IS DANGER, WE MUST SHIELD THE EGG. I CANNOT BRING IT INTO PERIL. YOU JUST SAID—”

  “I know what I said!” Fort shouted. “But my friends could be in trouble! We have to go now!”

  The dragon sighed, then slowly held out the egg, his hands shaking. “HIDE IT,” the Old One commanded. “USE YOUR SPACE MAGIC AND HIDE THE EGG SOMEWHERE SAFE UNTIL WE FIND YOUR FRIENDS. I… I OWE YOU THIS MUCH.”

  Fort just stared at the creature for a moment, then nodded and took the egg, forgetting how heavy it was. He thought for a moment, then opened a circle and deposited the egg in the safest place he could think of, right on the bed in his old room at his aunt’s house. “Okay,” he said, closing the teleportation circle. “No one will get to it there.” Unless his aunt decided to use her rowing machine. But still, it was much safer than the school, for sure.