Dragonslayer, Inc.

The Hunt… when you’re in the Hunt, it’s everything. When you’re not, you look for another Hunt.

This phrase was engraved in a plaque that hung above the Awards Wing of HQ. As I went to the Awards Wing a lot back in those days- whenever my thoughts haunted me and I needed confirmation that becoming a Dragonslayer was not a horrible mistake- I saw that plaque a lot, but I didn’t read it until one sunny fall morning.

It sounded familiar. I leaned against a gilded wall and put a finger to my temple. I repeated that phrase over and over again in my head. When I said it aloud, revelation hit me. Machen had said it more than once since I had known him. Was it his quote, or was he quoting someone else? I didn’t know, so I found a couple stools in an adjacent room, dragged them directly under the plaque, stacked them on top of one another, and climbed atop them.

From my new vantage point, I could see a little word written directly below the quote. That word was Ironwall. This discovery should have been satisfying, but instead it was puzzling. “Why is his name so small?” I asked myself. “He’s the leader of this organization. You’d think it’d be in big bold letters.”

Stepping down from the stools, I kicked them to the side and ambled into the Awards Wing. It was exactly as it was the last time I visited it. This was not a wing that changed frequently. Rarely, they moved a trophy or medal in or took one out, but mostly, it was the hallmark of consistency. No matter how much my life and the outside world shifted and turned and swiveled, the Awards Wing stayed the same.

I knelt down in front of an elaborate golden trophy that the federal government made to commemorate the bicentennial of Dragonslayer, Inc. My eyes grew big. My muscles relaxed. I smiled. I felt safe, like I had returned to the land of my childhood fantasies.

It had been three days since my last mission, but I was still hurting. I had taken sedatives, but I could still feel pain in my right hand. The mission wasn’t too complicated. A pack of sea serpents was attacking vacationers at a beach fifty miles north of Andes.

My sister was a great swimmer. My mother was a great swimmer. Apparently, my father was a great swimmer. I am not. Even now, I’m a worse swimmer than a lot of twelve-year-olds. Back then, I could hardly swim a lap, and worse than that, I was actively afraid of the water. I would have mentioned this to the Slayers, but I felt it would deflate their enthusiasm for me, so I didn’t.

For the record, it is typically required for Dragonslayers practice swimming- both sprints and long-distance swims- during their grueling training because of missions like this, but as I skipped over the training, I did not have to practice my swimming. The last time I had swum before this mission was when I was a fifteen-year-old taking a swim class. As a result, the mission was far more arduous than it otherwise would have been. It didn’t help that as the mission was deemed ‘low-risk’, I had only one Slayer helping me.

Once I killed the first serpent, I lost control of myself and succumbed to my inner demon. I lost my fear of the water until the end of the mission, which I guess was the universe’s way of giving me a consolation prize. When I regained control of myself, I found I was in the middle of the open ocean, exhausted and bleeding. It resembled a recurring nightmare of mine. I panicked and started sinking. The ocean was eating me alive. The other Slayer had to save me.

As a five-year-old, I fell off my bike and crashed into a wall. When I got up, some kids laughed at me. Rather than try to help me, my mom, who admittedly was going through a rough time in her life, merely quipped, “Talk about pouring salt in a wound.”

I overheard her, but I didn’t know what that phrase meant. When I got older, I looked it up, shrugged my shoulders, and moved on. After my incident with the sea serpents, I had a much different perspective: namely, that it’s such an overused phrase that it obscures the actual physical and emotional pain of getting real salt in real wounds, which is exactly what happened to me. It didn’t help that my wounds were deep, deeper than any I had received before.

If I hadn’t been a Dragonslayer, it would have taken me weeks or months to recover. Because I was and thus had access to high-quality treatment facilities, it took me days. The emotional scars were still there though, and being in the silent presence of that grand trophy helped assuage them.

When that silence was broken by Machen’s footsteps, I was ready to lash out at him, but he looked solemn and contemplative, a rare look for him in those days, so I suspected something was wrong, a suspicion that was all but confirmed when an equally solemn Ironwall trundled up behind him.

“What brings you two here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.

“There was an election,” said Ironwall.

“You came to give me political news? Couldn’t it have waited?” I laid on my back.

“You really are clueless,” said Machen.

“Because I’m not a political expert? Neither are you.”

“I’m not ignorant, punk. You are.”

“How many insults are you gonna hurl at me?”

“I’m just telling it like it is.”

“This isn’t helping,” said Ironwall. “Coran, have you ever heard of the CMF?”

“Nope. Is it a political party?”

“Yes, a newish one. They’re extremists. I despised them from the beginning, but I only got worried when they made a speech declaring the Dragonslayers to be ‘enemies of society’. My aides told me they’d moderate eventually, but they didn’t. One of their campaign promises this election cycle was to abolish Dragonslayer, Inc. if they won the presidency.”

“…And they won?”

“By about one percent, but yes.”

“So what? They can’t abolish Dragonslayer, Inc. It’s a private corporation.”

“They can’t, but they will, if you get what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

“Yesterday,” said Machen, “these psychopaths threatened to execute the old President, and I think they’re going to do it one of these days. Then they’re going to kill the Vice President. Then they’re gonna kill everyone in the Legislature. They have no boundaries. When they come for us, it’s curtains. We need to get them out of office. We need to ban their party. We need to kill their leaders. We need to start a civil war if that’s what it takes.”

“The process must be respected,” said Ironwall. “We can’t just start a war.”

“So what are we gonna do?” I asked.

“Negotiate,” Ironwall said.

“You can’t negotiate with these people,” Machen screeched.

“There’s nothing else we can do.”

“Suits me,” I said, closing my eyes.

“How can you say that?” Machen yelled, addressing both of us. “How can you live with yourselves? Listen: give the word and I’ll kill their leader within a day.”

“No, you won’t,” said Ironwall quietly. “You’ll get killed.”

Machen raced off. It was the angriest I had ever seen him. Ironwall tried to make conversation with me, but he couldn’t think of anything meaningful to say, so he asked me if I was all right. I told him I was, though that was a lie. He just kinda stood there for before walking off, a lost, desolate look on his face.

I sulked, thinking about how not all right I was. That night, I wandered the city. For the first time, I noticed people giving me dirty glances. I tried to ignore them, but it wasn’t easy.

A restaurant on the West Side hung a poster that said ‘All CMF Officials Eat For Free’. On the poster was a picture on the leader of their party, the man who was to become the new President.

Our old President was a kindly old man of seventy-five. His hair was nearly gone, and the hair he had left was as white as winter snow. He walked with a cane, and his voice was creaky, but he was an intelligent and well-liked leader. Even my mother, who hated his policies, couldn’t work up a lot of hate for him as a person. If he had run for reelection, he would almost certainly would have won, but he didn’t because of his age, and so the stage was set for the arrival of a new leader: a very different leader.

His name was Arge Draworth, though I didn’t know that at the time. He was young for a leader, younger than Ironwall, and unlike Ironwall, his face had the glow of youthful ambition. He didn’t have any scars on his face or down his back. He didn’t have any scars at all, save for one on his leg that he claimed was from a Dragonslayer who attacked him but that I suspect was self-inflicted. His eyes were green, and his hair was jet-black. At nearly seven feet tall, he could stand out in any crowd.

On the poster, he was pointing into the distance. The man loved gestures. Whenever he gave a speech, his hands flew up and dropped down and drifted back and forth and made signs and symbols. It was magnificent to behold. They looked like they were possessed by dark magic. It was as if he were determined- almost desperate- to keep his audience’s attention.

The owner of the restaurant came outside. Finding me staring at his poster, he shouted obscenities, then said something along the lines of, “Enjoy this city while you can, you disgusting moneygrubber. You’ll be gone before long.” I don’t remember exactly what he said. It doesn’t matter.

Not wanting to cause conflict, I left without saying a word. A taxi raced by, splashing muddy water on my face and clothes. “And just when I thought this city liked me,” I grumbled, frantically shaking myself clean. Groaning, I went inside a bookstore.

The receptionist- a preppy young blonde who was around my age- recognized me instantly and asked me for an autograph. Vigorously, I signed one and gave it to her. She smiled. I smiled too. It felt good to be liked. I browsed the shop, running my fingers along spine after spine, trying to find a book that interested me.

I could smell the savory scent of pricey steak rising from the restaurant kitchen, so I plugged my nose. I didn’t want to be tempted. It was nonetheless a hard scent to ignore. I wished my sense of smell would desert me.

Perhaps it was because of this smell that the book I settled on buying was titled Expert Culinary Cooking for the Beginner. It was in mint condition. A drop of water would have rolled down its cover without stopping. I gave to the receptionist, smiled at her, paid what was for me a pittance, and was on my way.

I tried to read the book as I walked down the quickly quieting streets, but it failed to captivate me, particularly as I got away from that horrendously wondrous smell. There were pictures of lovely-looking cakes and pies, which I rather enjoyed, but it was mostly overly complicated recipes that I couldn’t hope to make in a million years. There weren’t descriptions about the dishes, and this was disappointing. I didn’t need or want great, poignant writing, just something that could distract me. I don’t think that was too much to ask.

The book didn’t even have an introduction. Couldn’t it at least have had that?

Despite its failings, I couldn’t find it in myself to dispose of the tome, mostly because I would have been left with nothing. I kept it under my arms as I marched through lonely avenues, unable to fill a hole in my heart that I wasn’t aware was there.

A creeping, ominous depression swallowed the night. Life wasn’t bad, not currently, but it was teetering on the edge of a scale growing more out of balance by the hour. Things were certainly going to get worse for a large number of people, but it was uncertain how much worse they were going to get. Slogging through the city was like pacing around a set of dominos.

I found solace in a lush park north of downtown. I had no idea that, the next morning, it would be the sight of a world-changing event. Sitting between two fountains and directly underneath Deka, I thought about the future and my place in the universe.

Joggers ran by. Animals scurried to and fro. The bench I was sitting on creaked. The streetlights seemed to sparkle. A cool wind blew by. Blue-winged asphas chirped in the distance.

“There is more than the Hunt,” I said. “There has to be.”