Dragonslayer, Inc.

“You don’t have what?” screamed Machen.

“A sword,” I said, raising my arms. “A thug stole mine. I thought the HQ would have one for me. It seems to have everything else.”

I had passed the first four stages of my try-out and was on to the fifth: slaying an actual dragon. It was no bigger than the salamander I slayed on my way to Andes, and it did not have fire breath or any other extraordinary power, but with its scaly skin and tough nature, it was an imposing challenge for anyone, let alone a teenager who didn’t have a sword.

Steph said, “Get out of there.” She and a number of other Slayers had climbed into that single row of seats to watch me.

The dragon swung its tail at me. I dodged out of the way. “Someone toss me a sword,” I yelled up to the Slayers.

Ironwall threw a serrated dagger down to me. It whipped through the air. I was scared it was gonna hit me in the face, so I ran away from it, toward the dragon, which thrust its claws at me, narrowly missing. The dagger stuck in the sand. I went to grab it, but the dragon tail-slapped it to the other side of the coliseum.

“How smart is this thing?” I asked myself. “Did it know I was going to use that dagger, or did it just detect an unknown object slamming into the sand and decide to knock it to Life’s End?”

I shouldn’t have been asking those questions. I shouldn’t have been asking any questions. I should have been running after that dagger, but because I wasn’t, the dragon was able to pick me up with its teeth. Its drool collected on my body. If it had bit down, the best case scenario for me would have been a couple weeks in the hospital.

“Stop the fighting,” said Ironwall, climbing down into the fray and landing with a plunk. He lifted his warhammer. The dragon whipped its tail at him. He jumped over the tail, then grabbed onto it, ran up it, and broke it off with a single, broad, perfectly placed stroke.

Dragons with long tails use them for balance. Without its tail, this dragon wasn’t able to balance, and it fell on its side. I tried to wrestle out of its mouth, but I was unable to. I hoped it wouldn’t go unconscious. Dragons have a tendency of biting down when they’re knocked out. I didn’t not want that to happen.

Ironwall, being experienced in these matters, dashed down to its mouth and cut me out with a falchion. One thing that did not come across on TV is how fast he could move when he wanted to. Despite his appearance, the slow pace at which he spoke, and his tendency to take a gulp before answering a question, the man could book it.

Less than a minute after he cut off the dragon’s tail, I was free from its mouth. I was sopping wet but unharmed by the ordeal. “You should have told us you didn’t have a weapon,” he said. “We carry one with us at all times. It’s second nature. Some of us carry more than one.”

“How many do you have?” I asked. “Six?”

“Seven actually,” he said. A small smile creeped onto his face. “I’m glad to see you haven’t gone completely catatonic. That’s more than I could say for Machen the first time he was in a situation like this.”

I wish that was the last dragon-related ordeal I had to deal with today. Alas, before anyone could take a breath, a great purple dragon burst through the right side of the coliseum and let off a deafening roar.

For a second, I thought this was a sixth part of my test that they didn’t tell me about, but one look at Ironwall’s face proved otherwise. This was a full-on dragon attack, the kind Slayers go out to fight, except this one was happening inside Dragonslayer HQ.

This dragon could have eaten my test dragon for dinner. It was over sixty feet long measured from its three heads to its two tails, and it had the power to shoot electricity out of its mouths, its tails, and the seventy-five cannon-like spikes on its back.

Ironwall told me to lie on the ground. Slayers zoomed in from around the facility to fight the dragon. I had never seen so many in one place before. There were so many of them that they could have piled onto the dragon and taken it down by sheer force of numbers. Of course, there was no need for that, as they wielded a wider variety of weapons than I knew existed. Ironwall barked orders, and the Slayers arranged themselves in formation.

The dragon shot electricity out of fifty-six of its spikes. A handful of Slayers went flying. I curled up into a fetal position and closed my eyes, but this did not insulate me. I heard a cacophony of horrible noises, including human cries, dragon cries, bones breaking, necks snapping, electricity arcing through the air, electricity arcing through human bodies, weapons entering dragon flesh, and dragon teeth entering human flesh.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I opened my eyes and sat up. A strange serenity overtook me. For the first time since I arrived in Andes, I felt like my feet were on the ground instead of floating in the clouds.

Next to me, I noticed Ironwall’s dagger. If I had been able to, I would have given it to him, but that was not a possibility considering the chaotic turn of events, so I held onto it, softly running my fingers up and down the blade. Despite being no better than a backup weapon for Ironwall, it was of far higher quality than anything I had ever imagined owning.

The dragon, despite having twenty-four arrows, four shivs, three broadswords, and an eight-foot-long metal spear stuck in its side, rose into the air. It knew it was in mortal peril, and it wanted to escape with its life. Because of the damage it had endured, it was unable to get high off the ground at first, but it was steadily climbing.

Ironwall and his elite team, including Machen, ran through the chaos after the beast, but I could tell they weren’t going to catch it unless they suddenly gained superhuman speed. There were Slayers that were in good position, but they were either too wounded to fight or wielding weapons that were too weak to bring it down.

It was coming right toward me. I caught my breath and gripped the handle of the knife. “Not today,” I repeated over and over again until the words stopped sounding real. A couple of thoughts crossed my mind, none of which I remember. Then my instincts took over.

I plunged Ironwall’s dagger into the dragon’s throat as it passed directly above me. It coughed and hissed and began to lose altitude. Without thought or feeling, I grabbed onto a piece of skin that had been hanging off the dragon’s shoulder and flung myself up onto its back, where I slid the blood-soaked dagger around the wound I had made in its throat.

The great beast cried out and crashed to the ground. I held on tight to its ears. It shot off all the electricity it had left. Other Slayers were wounded, but I wasn’t. I merely I felt a jolt race through my veins.

Taking the dagger out, I held it aloft in victory. Ironwall and the other elite Slayers froze in their tracks, astonished. I stuck the dagger into the dragon’s head and finished the job. With one last wretched roar, it submitted to the darkness of eternal sleep.

The adrenaline drained from my body. I became myself again. It sunk in what I had done. I slunk down from the dragon’s head and took a knee on the sand. The elite Slayers came to congratulate me. These were hardened men and women of battle, but they reacted like eight-year-old boys who had just seen their first action movie. One of them said nothing but, “That was amazing.”

I got hugs and pats on the back. Machen said, “They have to let you in now.” But the biggest compliment came from Ironwall, who locked eyes with me, nodded, and told me to keep the dagger.

Nevertheless, after they left to talk with the fleets of medical professionals who had arrived on the scene, and I was left alone with the dragon carcass and the hundreds of other Slayers, many of whom were seriously injured, loneliness crept in. I felt empty inside.

“Is this what it feels like to kill a dragon?” I said quietly, so no one could hear me. I had imagined this moment from the first time I saw the Slayers on TV. But I thought it’d feel different. I thought it’d feel a lot different. I thought it would be one of the greatest moments of my life. Instead, it shook me to the core.

This wasn’t the same as killing that salamander. There, I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t run or hide. I had to kill, and so I did. Here, I had a choice. I could have left the dagger on the ground and curled back up. Sure, the dragon would have gotten away, but I wouldn’t have been hurt.

I stuck Ironwall’s dagger into that dragon’s neck because I wanted to.

But that’s not what bothered me the most. The thought that I had this relentless, callous, demonic being of rage bottled up inside me was terrifying. Though I had always been an emotional person, I had never seen that side of myself before. The closest I had come was years before the start of my journey, when I was arguing with my mother.

We had a lot of arguments, but this one was different. In spite of myself, I had a burst of bloodthirsty malice course through my body. Shocked, I shut up and ran into my room. Mom smirked, but I didn’t care. I was distraught. After worrying until my skin turned pale, I came to the decision that it was a one-off occurrence, something that would never happen again.

How wrong I was.

But even more disquieting was the fact that I had been congratulated for unleashing my inner monster. When a kid is possessed by a devil in a horror movie and subsequently goes on a rampage, the reaction of the other characters isn’t to cheer the kid on. The very thing I hated most about myself was the reason I the Dragonslayers embraced me.

If it weren’t for my killing that dragon, I would have had to fight another test dragon just for the chance to be on the Dragonslayers, and even if I had defeated it, I would have had to work my way up from the bottom of the heap.

Instead, I was ushered into the good graces of the elite Slayers. I got to skip over the entire training period and become a regular Slayer. My official induction ceremony was the day after the dragon attack. It was incredible. There were fireworks and explosions, and I got to stand beside Ironwall upon a glowing podium as he read the official Dragonslayer statement of purpose to an audience of over a hundred thousand, with millions more watching on TV.

Every other Slayer in the company was present, including Steph, who was disgruntled. When Machen tried to flirt with her, she nearly chopped his head off. She had a right to be upset. One day, she was telling this raggedy-looking kid that he couldn’t try out, and the next, that kid had passed over her and become a hero. I would have gone raving mad if I had been in her shoes.

Soon I was a national hero. They gave me the nickname ‘The Defender’. One day, when I stepped out of my apartment, I was hounded by fans and paparazzi. I enjoyed every second of it. I had always said that if I became famous, I’d open myself up the crowds and let them savor every inch of me. I never understood why celebrities hated being looking at every second of every day. I eventually did, but it took time.

The money was as much of a blessing as I could imagined. I bought everything I wanted, and I even bought a few things I didn’t want. I thought about sending some of these things to Acady and Mom, but I never got around to it. I regret that now. It would have been a nice moment. For all they knew, I was dead. The least I could have done is send them a package of gifts accompanied by a card explaining where I was and what I was doing.

Then again, I try not to be too hard on myself. After spending my entire life in poverty, I had a godless amount of money in my possession. The only natural thing to do was to spend as much as possible and spend it on the most unnecessary services and goods imaginable. My first week as a Dragonslayer, I not only hired a limo to drive me around, I hired six more limos to follow my limo everywhere it went.

Yes, my behavior was reckless and inane, but I can’t help but smile when I think back on those times.

In my defense, not all of my spending was superfluous and self-centered. When I happened upon Machen, I paid him back for the money he gave me when we first met. He looked genuinely surprised. After stumbling over his words, a rarity for him, he said, “You’ve come a long way, vagrant.”

“I think you can stop calling me that now.”

“No way.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“I’m still richer than you.”

“For now.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“How does this whole ‘being a Dragonslayer’ thing work? Who’s assigned to what missions? What do we do when we’re not going on missions? Hang? Train? Make cameos in movies and TV shows? And how much of our time is spent going on missions? A little? A lot? Tell me what I’m getting myself into. Who goes on missions with whom? Are we gonna be going on missions together? Give me some information.”

“It’s complicated. I figured it out, but you might not.”

“Thank you, Machen.”

“For what? I just insulted you. Fight back. You’re creeping me out.”

“Without you, I wouldn’t have made it here.”

“Oh. Well… you’re welcome.” He took a deep breath. “I won’t call you ‘vagrant’ anymore.”

And he didn’t.

“There’s so much I need to do,” I said. “It’s crazy how busy I am these days.”

“You’ll make it through.” He turned away. “You’re nothing if not resilient.”