Dragonslayer, Inc.

It was a cold, icy morning when Ironwall called us into his penthouse suite at the top of HQ.

Winter had not yet arrived, but it was coming. The skies were cloudy. I thought it was going to snow.

His suite had somehow avoided the dragon’s wrath. Upon noticing this, Machen said, “That’s just not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” said Ironwall without looking up from his desk.

“You didn’t have a secret agreement with the dragon, did you?”

Ironwall rolled his eyes and stood up. Addressing us, he said, “I assume you all know why you’re here.”

“Before we start,” I said, “can we name the dragon?”

“I really don’t think that should be our top priority,” said one of the other Slayers.

“Why not?” I countered. “We’re hunting it down, right? That could take a long time. We might as well name it.”

“You’re so sentimental,” said Machen.

“What of it?”

“We’re not naming the dragon,” stated Ironwall. “When you name a creature, you form a sentimental bond with it. You think it won’t happen, but it does.” He talked like a man with experience in this regard.

“If you’re so worried,” I said, “you can think of it as ‘the big dragon’. I’m gonna give it a name. I’m gonna name it ‘Icithan’ because it’s a leviathan with icy breath.”

“You’ll regret that.”

“No, I won’t.” I turned away. “We don’t all have to be scared.”

“You’ve got guts,” said Machen.

“Is that a compliment or an insult?” I asked.

“You decide.”

“To start over,” said Ironwall, “there’s a dragon on the loose, and we’re going to track it down. We’ll track it across fields and cities, mountains and forests. We’ll track it over area you haven’t seen before, area you may not know exists. Certainly, this’ll be the furthest you’ve ever been from home. Say goodbye to your loved ones. You won’t be seeing them for months. To be frank, you may never see them again.”

One of the Slayers sat down and turned away. Another simply said, “What?” Multiple others, including Machen, clenched their fists and tried to hold steady against emotions they didn’t want to acknowledge.

“I called you all here,” Ironwall continued, “because you’re the best Slayers we’ve got. We are facing an unprecedented challenge to the survival of our nation, our culture, and our way of life. I have been a Slayer for over half my life now, but this is as new for me as it is for you. I am truly and legitimately sorry that your time as Slayers has to coincide with this tragedy. It shouldn’t have to be this way, but it is. Likely as not, one or more of you is going to die on this journey. If any of you are not comfortable with this possibility, speak now or forever hold your peace. I will not mind. When that hundred-and-fifty-footer threatened the nation, I was not given a choice on whether to face it. I was just a kid then. I was naïve and innocent. I was also scared out of my mind. When the man who sat in this chair before me formed a party to track it down, he and the other Slayers spoke as if I had already agreed to join. They never asked me. Why would they? I was the number two Slayer in the organization, and I had never stepped away from a challenge. I felt myself being ushered along a course I wasn’t confident about taking. I wasn’t completely against joining the party, but I sure wasn’t for it. I was young, and life was confusing. Desperate, I went to the man who sat in this chair and asked him if I should join the party.”

“And it didn’t go well?” I asked.

“He laughed in my face. He said he had already put my name down. I tried to voice a few complaints, but he shut me down, claiming I was suffering nothing worse than pre-Hunt jitters. When I got angry, he did too. He said I was joining the party, and that was final. So I did. I joined. In the end, I was lucky. I survived, I slayed the dragon, and I became one of the richest and most famous people in the world. But everyone else in the party died.”

“How many were there?” Machen asked.

“Nineteen.” He stood up and let off a loud sigh. “The kinds of things I was forced to see, and the kinds of things I was forced to do; they wiped away the person I was. There is no way I am obligating you to go through what I went through and probably worse. If you want to skip this mission, simply say so in the next five seconds.”

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

No one said anything.

“So there’s no one?” Ironwall said.

“Seems so,” Steph responded. She had been standing at the door.

“Very well.” A second passed. A light went on in his head. “What are you doing here, Stephanie? You weren’t chosen. You haven’t finished your training.”

“I’m fighting.”

“Go home. Trust me when I say that not being chosen for this is a blessing.”

She slunk away, or so it seemed. Machen smirked. He knew she was right outside the door, listening in.

“We’re in this no matter what, Ironwall,” I said. “Thank you for warning us, but we’re not going to step away.”

“As I expected.”

“We know the risk. We know what we’re in for. But we also know that the people need defending, and we’re the only ones who can defend them.”

“But do you know the risk? Do you know what you’re in for? The feelings that wracked me then, the feelings that still wrack me now… you haven’t even felt them. You have no idea how painful they can be. You have no idea how completely they can destroy you.”

“Even if you’re right- and you’re not- it doesn’t matter.”

“…I guess not.” He leaned against the back wall. “We leave at sunrise tomorrow. Be ready.”

We filed out of the room one by one. I raced out of the HQ. I needed a breath of fresh air. Machen came with me. When I asked him why, he said, “Did you get a look at our team? Half of them are ready to break down. I don’t want to be around those people.”

“Where do we go?”

“Huh?”

“I’m not standing here ’til next morning.”

“Of course not. I just can’t think of any places that haven’t been destroyed.”

“I passed by the National History Museum. It’s still standing.”

“Coran, there’s no way I’m going there. Let’s get out of town.”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere. I’m tired of listening to whining and complaining.”

“Did you really just say that?”

“What’s wrong with wanting people to be strong? That’s all I want.”

In a mocking tone, I said, “I’m sorry it’s hard for them to be strong when their lives have been torn into a million little tiny pieces. I’m sorry it’s hard for them to be strong when they’ve lost everything and everyone they cared about. You’re not an alien whose spaceship just crash-landed on this planet. You know what they went through.”

“Enough.”

Without really meaning to, we sauntered through the shambles that now constituted the city streets, passing by closed restaurants and burnt cars. A couple hours later, we had gone from the middle of the city to its northern outskirts, though by that time we had stopped sauntering and started slogging.

It’s odd what you can find when you’re not looking for anything in particular. Sometimes, you bumble into a new discovery. Other times, you traipse upon a merely ordinary place that seems extraordinary by the mere fact that you came upon it without even trying. The latter was true in our case.

We found the National History Museum, specifically the back entrance. As we entered, I whispered, “I won,” in Machen’s ear. He didn’t respond, nor did I expect him to.

Despite half the museum being closed down, there were a number of interesting artifacts on display, though only two caught my eye. The first was a seven-hundred-year-old sextant used by the great Jin Halforik, the first person to circumnavigate the globe.

The second was a two-hundred-year-old map of our continent. Miyok Forest was much larger. Claci Basin was Claci Lake. Blandel Quarry didn’t exist. Neither did the Estak Desert. Rolar Desert was Rolar Plains. There were prosperous cities everywhere.

“The world was so much larger back then,” said Machen contemplatively.

“The East Coast… I wonder what it’s like.”

“Warm, I read.”

“You read? I didn’t know that.” I said condescendingly. He gave me a light punch in the shoulder.

“Warm and stormy. There are firecanes like you’ve never seen, but there is also this pale blue water and this reddish-orange sand.”

“Sounds nice.”

We had never been there. For us, the whole world might as well have stretched no further north than the shore where I fought those sea serpents, no further west than the peninsula on which Natura sat, no further south than the Estak Desert and the Claci Basin, and no further east than the western edge of the Rolark Desert.

This was not an uncommon perspective. Few had ever been beyond these boundaries, and aside from Ironwall, no living person from the Southwest- as I later came to call where I grew up- had ever been to the East Coast.

I brought up the idea of asking Ironwall about it. Machen laughed at me. Irritated, I said, “Go ahead. Keep it up. I’ll punch you in the face.”

“Try, and you’re a goner.” He leaned toward the map. “I was laughing because I did ask him. I asked him a lot. He never told me anything. Occasionally, he gave me an old travel guide on it or a novel that took place there. That was it. I asked him about other places too. Same result. There was one exception.”

“And that was?”

“Pay me, and I’ll tell you.”

“You’re despicable. I’m not paying you, rich kid.”

“Ezek. It was the Ezek Ruins.”

“What did he say?”

“He wasn’t exactly explicit, but… it’s complicated. When I asked him about other places, he simply turned away. When I asked about Ezek, he angrily told me to leave. He has history with that place, I know. I just don’t know what that history is.”

“Think we’ll find out?”

“If we end up in Ezek.”

“Will we?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. Why would I know? I have no clue where we’re going.”

“Machen admits that he doesn’t know something? Stop the presses.”

“I’m not that arrogant. I’m not you.”

“You’re more arrogant than I could ever be.”

“Wrong.”

“Right.”

“Wrong.”

“…Would you have liked to live back then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the world was better back then. I’m not sure.”

“I guess we won’t ever find out. But we can see what it’s like now… all of it.”

“A new beginning?” he asked.

“A new chapter,” I answered.