Dragonslayer, Inc.

Chapter Chapter XVII- Machen’s Consternation



The strangers approached us. Their leader, a stern, scarred giant of a man who spoke only in grunts, pointed toward Machen.

“Yes,” I said. “He’s going to die.”

I wasn’t sure if he or his followers understood me, but they could clearly see that Machen was in terrible shape, so they tended to him. While I appreciated the gesture, I was not instilled with confidence.

“What are you planning to do?” I asked. Ignoring me, they sunk a needle into his neck. His body fell limp. “What’s going on? Tell me something.” I flailed around. Blood continued pouring out of me. I felt myself getting delusional.

A thirtysomething woman with tattoos up and down her arms and legs kneeled down beside me, wielding a needle. I knew what was coming next, and I was not about to stand for it. Screaming at her to leave me alone, I pushed her to the ground and covered my neck with my hands.

This was a bad decision. She leapt on top of me and sunk the needle into my face. I tried to push her away, but she easily overpowered me. I began to lose consciousness. The last whispers of strength left my body.

My eyelids flittered shut. The world turned from white to black.

When it turned white again, morning had arrived. The sun shone brilliantly on the fresh snow. It took me a second to realize I was healed. I was sore, and there were strange blue spots on my stomach, but I felt as good as I had in weeks.

My body was surrounded by glowing blue rocks that were soft enough to be molded like dough. I sat up and pushed them away. The air was fresh, so I took a big gulp of it and noticed a subtle humidity. We weren’t that far from the ocean.

It was still snowing, but the blizzard had gone. Fluffy flakes tumbled down gracefully, as if accenting a ballerina’s performance. Gently touching the ground, they added to the massive mounds of snow that had already accrued. Astonished, I began to wonder how long I had been out. The landscape around me had transformed from a winter horrorland to a winter fantasyland.

Over my head was a sturdy wooden roof. I punched it with my revitalized arms to make sure it was sturdy. My punches did no damage but taught me there was a heap of snow on top of the roof. I relaxed and leaned against the back of the hut. If the roof were going to collapse, it would have done so already.

As I got my bearings, my mind wandered to the last things it could remember, which it slowly began piecing together. I realized those strangers had dragged me here and miraculously healed me, but they were nowhere to be found. Where were they? What had they done? What happened to Machen?

Stretching mildly, I prepared to investigate. My body and mind were eager. I was ready for a challenge. Unfortunately, I had not considered just how deep the snow was. When I tried to step outside the hut, I sank up to my hip. It was only then I discovered that I had no shoes on.

My feet went numb. I tried to climb back to the hut, but I couldn’t drag my legs out of the snow. A deep sense of dread ran down my spine, but shrouded deep in it was a sense of calmness. I had a burning suspicion that everything was going to turn out all right.

It wasn’t that cold. Tromping through the snow, I felt the morning sun warming the air. By midday, the snow would begin melting off. This was a far cry from the last week or so, when it had been unquestionably cold. Then, even at the hottest part of the day, it was barely above freezing, and the winds had been downright cruel. Now there was no wind, save for a quiet breeze that occasionally tossed about the snowflakes.

Trudging through the snow took time, but it wasn’t impossible. I slid one numb foot past the other while keeping my mind elsewhere.

My thoughts flickered from the weather to the time of day to more interesting topics, like the current state of Andes or what Curam would be like. These more interesting topics fed my mind and kept me moving. I came at them from different perspectives, sometimes arguing with myself. It got to the point where I would take one side, think for five minutes about its advantages, flip around and consider other side for five minutes, then switch back to the first side and continue the process until I had exhausted the topic.

This came to a head when I considered Acady’s fate. I started out positive, thinking about the possibility that she could be happy and safe, and that somehow she and my mother had heard about my work with the Slayers, or at least that I was alive and well. I didn’t want to consider the other side, but it nagged at the back of my mind until I gave up and thought about it. Horrendous images flashed through my head. That the most pleasant of these was Acady kneeling down on the road outside our house, crying, says a lot.

I felt like I was going insane. My mind was collapsing in on itself. I dragged myself from my thoughts and concentrated on my trudging. It hadn’t changed much since I started, except I had forgotten what it was like to feel my feet.

The falling snow had slowed to a few stray flakes. It would soon stop entirely. I took a clear breath of the chilled air. My mind had recovered slightly. Internal debates are healthy, but sending yourself into horrified hysteria is not. For a few beautiful seconds, I thought I was in the clear. I heard some rustling in the distance and got excited.

But it turned out to be just a scruffy deer.

I sighed. I knew I couldn’t keep my thoughts away forever, so I tried to focus them on my surroundings, but it didn’t work out. The landscape changed too little to keep my interest. My thoughts kept flickering to other topics. There was nothing I could do.

Thankfully, my mind never went back to Acady, and eventually, it ran out of topics and hung dormant, like a shriveled peach on a desert tree. The cold air might have had something to do with that. I had held out a long time, but it was finally starting to get to me.

I fell.

The layer of snow I was walking on gave out, and my face hit the snow. While clearing it off, I realized I couldn’t feel my hands anymore. I tried to get up, but the snow seemed determined to keep my down. I tried to roll out of the indentation my body had made upon impact, but I ended up rolling off a ledge onto an ornate wooden platform that was in the same style as the hut I’d been resting in.

Seven of those strangers were sitting on that platform. I landed on the woman who stuck that needle into my face, and I rolled into their giant of a chief, who gave a confused grunt and pushed me into Machen.

Yes, Machen. My friend-rival-ally was back to full health. His face was bright, and his eyes were sharp. I was startled. It was as if he had swallowed a thousand lightbulbs. While he had always been emotional, I had never seen him so outright euphoric, and his euphoria was so innocent. It was as though he were a ten-year-old who had been led by the hand into a new and unforeseen world. When he saw me, he gave me a hug and asked me how I’d been. I told him how shocked I was to see him alive.

This flicked a switch deep inside him. A squall of emotions descended upon his face. The euphoria did not fade or dim, but it seemed to recede back inside him, replaced with a bit of sadness that wasn’t there before. The lines on his face were accentuated. He looked ten years older.

He had lost a lot of his distinctive cocky swagger, and I was disappointed. On the surface, I should have been overjoyed. He was noticeably nicer to me from that point on, and while I wouldn’t call him soft-spoken, his tendency toward histrionics had dimmed. He had been humbled by his experiences, and he was less of a snob.

But so what?

None of these changes were permanent, and I’m glad. Machen hadn’t consciously decided to confront his limitations and change as a person- that would come later. He had just been terrified out of his mind and broken down to the point where he hardly existed anymore. Beneath his grins and smiles, he was a contour, a silhouette of a human being that had shape and form but no texture or color.

“Were my injuries that bad?” he asked me, though he already knew the answer.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

After glancing around at the strangers who had helped him, he asked them, “How close was I to dying?” His voice was desperate, as if dying for a second opinion that contradicted the sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Thirtsy minutes, aboutsa,” answered one of the tribesman. They were not native speakers of our language, but they could speak a dialect of it fairly well.

“That’s it?” responded Machen faintly.

The woman who stabbed me with the needle said, “Ye persins were lucksy we find ye. We’ve beensas grot healers fer a lung tymes. Litriolle es sem gowd stuff.”

“Indeed,” I said.

“We usa it beater then anysones els. Es a mater of practicees. Ef ya’d beensa find by anysones els, theys woodn’t ’ave beensa able ta heal ye. He wood ’ave dieed,” she said, pointing at Machen, “and ye meeta dieed too.” She pointed at me.

“I probably would have,” I admitted. One of the topics I considered while trudging through the snow was how serious our injuries had really been. The light of a new day had brought me clarity. I realized how badly we’d suffered. I had never been hurt that bad in my life, to say nothing of Machen, whose ravaged body was nightmare kerosene.

“Da blue spotes arr becuz of da Litriolle.”

“I should have figured that.”

“Where are we anyhow?” asked Machen. “Nothing looks familiar. How far did you take us?”

“Too fer if ye esk me,” answered the woman who stabbed me with the needle. “We gaves ye immedite help, thun we draggeded ye fer miles te ur rezidense en ur snowmobils.”

I said, “Let me guess: they’re powered by Litriol.”

“Uh-huh,” said a young woman with two tattoos, one on each shoulder. “Litriolle es ur liffe. Withut it, we’re noothing. Thar usedas te be more of us, bet ur numbers have decreesed since we startsed runnin’ outa it.”

“I can understand that,” I said softly. By this point, I was feeling slightly uncomfortable. There was no great reason for this. It’s not as though the tribe gave me a signal that tipped me off to a master plan they were concocting. While they were stoic people, they were not hiding any secrets, and I didn’t think otherwise. After all, they had saved my life.

No, I was feeling uncomfortable because I felt awkward.

I’m not good with strangers. There’s a reason I had next to no friends growing up while my sister had more than I could count. I’m especially bad with groups around this size, small enough that it’s physically possible to talk to everyone but large enough that doing so is a daunting task. It did not help that these people were not particularly talkative.

If there’s one talkative person in a group, everyone else follows along, saying ‘yes’ or ‘that’s true’ every once in a while to show they are paying attention. When that one person takes a breath, the others fill in with points of their own- nothing too long-winded, just whatever had come to mind. Then that one person starts talking again, and the cycle repeats itself until the conversation is finished.

It’s weird, but it works.

However, if there are no talkative people in the group, then people who aren’t used to talking a lot have to talk, and the conversation feels icy. This was the problem I faced. Good conversation is like an expertly played game of tennis, and though there are those who can manage it with anyone, most of us can only have it with people we know.

That’s why the tribe didn’t have this problem. They were like a family. They had known each other for going on forever, and though they weren’t demonstrative, they acted like it. I envied them.

Under normal circumstances, Machen would make this far less awkward for me, but as a shell of a human being, he wasn’t much help. I tried to get him involved, but he would just weakly offer a simple comment or question.

He did, however, play an important part in this conversation. When I asked about the Litriol-powered snowmobiles, he said, “What, do you want to leave already? Why? This is perfect.”

“You don’t sound enthused,” I responded, slightly irked. “Do you need more time to heal?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“It’s okay if you do. I don’t mind. Better to rest up now than regret it later.”

“There’s no problem, Coran. These wonderful people fixed me. I was broken, but they fixed me.”

“Then what’s the holdup?”

“Calm down.”

“Since when do you tell me to calm down?”

“Stop causing a fuss. We’re guests. These people made us well again. Let’s not disrupt them.”

“I don’t care about that,” I said, seething. “Why don’t you want to leave?”

“There’s no good reason to. Give me one good reason why we should?”

“Because we have a dragon to kill,” I exploded.

The chains of civility broke off me with a snap. I felt like I could breathe fire, and believe me, if I could have, I would have. I would have breathed it right in Machen’s cowardly little face.

Drool dripped down out of my mouth as I angrily clenched my teeth. I stormed out. When I slipped and fell, I tossed mounds of snow in the air like a snow blower before letting out a guttural yell. I glared back at Machen. He had not reacted in the slightest, except for holding up his right hand and whispering for me to stop. Incensed, I charged back up to the platform and knocked him onto his back. He didn’t do anything but stare up at me with starry eyes. I reached for my weapon. It wasn’t there. I reached for Machen’s rapier. He didn’t have it.

I will admit that I got out of hand.

I will admit that I overreacted.

But I will also admit that this was the moment when I decided I hated this incarnation of Machen and wanted the other one back.

“Where are the weapons?” I shouted.

The chief grunted at me. One of the others said, “De net worry. We ’ave ur weapawns. They ar safes with us. Ef ye wantse te go, we ’ill give ’em te ye. Unntil thena, we ’ill hold en te ’em. We lik ye two. We dawn’t wantse ye te kill eack otther.”

I took a deep breath. My anger didn’t leave me, but the desire to inflict bodily harm did. I sprawled out on my back and covered my eyes with my hands.

Machen still hadn’t reacted in any meaningful way. He looked like a nine-year-old who had been thrown in a college class: bored, vacant, drained, and miserable. It’s also possible that like that nine-year-old, he had no idea what was going on. He later said to me that during this time, life was like a puzzle he couldn’t solve, and that the world made as much sense to him as an ancient, arcane tomb.

After the tribe was sure I wouldn’t kill Machen, they settled down and went back to the conversation. At first, they tried talking to me, but I didn’t say anything interesting. I had no desire to. I was trying to digest what I had just done.

Soon they got tired of talking to me. I don’t blame them. I would have gotten tired of talking to me too. They began cracking jokes to one another in their native language. The energy in the room increased by five hundred percent. It wasn’t electric by Southwestern standards, but the laughter was contagious.

The only two people who couldn’t catch it were the two of us. Machen became borderline comatose, and I let the laughter wash over me. The more they laughed, the more irritated I got. It’s bad enough to not understand a joke being told in your own language, but when the joke’s in another language, it’s like a ball is being passed between two lanky teenagers, and you’re a little kid trying in vain to jump up and catch it.

For a horrifying instant, I felt my rage ignite again. I was able to contain it, but I knew I had to get off that platform. It wasn’t a want anymore. It was a need. I asked the tribe if we could use the snowmobiles.

They took a break from their jokes to say we could and send out a radio signal. I wondered who they were signaling, but I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Old but stylish snowmobiles groggily trundled up to the platform. Riding in them were six more members of the tribe.

“There’s more?” I asked, wiggling my eyebrows.

“Whateveras ded ye tank, that we onlee ’ad seven meembers?” asked the woman who stabbed me in the face with a needle. “We may net ’ave ellot of meembers anysmore, but we ’have mor then seven.”

“You didn’t have to send so many,” I said, examining the snowmobiles.

The chief grunted at me. One of the other members said, “We seend allthe snowmobils togesther so ef one meember goes down, the others ar there te hilp.”

Two of the snowmobile riders climbed out and waved us toward them. I jumped into the machine nearest me. Machen stayed put. “Come on,” I said to him, trying not to yell. “Let’s go. I don’t want to leave you behind.”

“A couple more minutes.” He had never sounded more defeated.

“Now,” I said, as much out of pity as anything else. “Please.”

“Okay.” He lifted his head up, held it in the air for five seconds, tried to lift his shoulders, and immediately flopped to the ground. “On second thought, you might have to wait on me.”

I knew that if I had to wait for him to get up on his own, I would be waiting a long, long time, so I calmly trudged over and pulled him up by the hand. He cringed but didn’t object. Once I had gotten him to his feet, I brushed him off and gave him a light shove. He smiled a little. I saw a glint in his eye, and I thought he was gonna push me back. Excitement trickled through my veins. Under my breath, I muttered, “He’s not dead after all.”

But my optimism was misplaced. He stood as still as ever, waiting for instruction. The glint I saw in his eyes had been sunlight. The clouds had parted, and the sun was shining directly on the snow.

The air was warming, a fact that gave me consolation. It may have been one small flicker of hope in an ocean of darkness, but that was enough, as it often is. If you have something to believe in and a reason- whether it be big or small- to believe in it, you can believe in the future and stand strong even as the world comes crashing down on you.

“Maybe it’ll turn out all right,” I said to myself. “Maybe the weather will be fine. Maybe it won’t be that cold. Maybe the winds will stay calm. Maybe we’ll check a really lucky break. Maybe no one else will die. Maybe we’ll catch Icithan sleeping. Maybe in the end, this will be a positive experience.”

Merrily, I ran back to that snowmobile and hopped in. I looked around for Machen. He was still on the platform. This is not to say he wasn’t moving, though honestly, it might have been less disturbing if that had been the case. Having reluctantly accepted to join me, he was shambling forward like a bored zombie. His feet never left the ground, and his arms never left his side.

I yelled at him to hurry up, but it didn’t help much. It was as if he couldn’t hear me. It was as if he were in a hypnotic trance. The sun tucked behind a passing cloud. I gave an exasperated sigh. My excitement fizzled out. Reality set in.

If Machen were ever gonna recover- and that was a big if- it was going to be a long, arduous process. His wounds were deep. His entire life, he had built up something of an internal tower dedicated to his beliefs and ideals, and now that tower had come tumbling down. This wasn’t something that could be fixed with a few magic words and the wave of a wand.

I didn’t even know what he would be like if he did recover. Would he be the same as he was, or would he have changed? And if he had changed, would it be for the better, or would it be for the worse? Would he be a stronger and healthier person, or would he be angrier and more ill-disposed? I didn’t try to guess.

The uncertainty swirled in my stomach.

After taking far too long for my liking, he came to the other snowmobile. Its driver, who was looking almost as exasperated as I was, picked him off the ground and tossed him into the back seat.

Before we left, I asked, “Can I have our weapons?”

“Sould he geet his weepon?” asked the woman who stuck me with that needle.

“No. He wouldn’t be prepared to use it.”

“Fairs enoough.” She took Ironwall’s dagger and Machen’s rapier from the chief and handed them to me.

After all this time, it felt surreal to handle weapons again. I felt that same rush of power that entered my body when I became a Slayer, minus the nervousness. When it faded away, I felt normal. I felt natural. I felt ready for action.

I asked if I could drive the snowmobile. While I was turned down, I kept on asking, and midway through the ride, the driver let me take a turn at the wheel. I promptly slammed my foot on the Litriol and sped to the front of the pack. The driver told me to slow down. High on adrenaline and power, I didn’t listen.

Power has always been a fantasy of mine. I never had it growing up. I wanted to make my family as rich and important as the celebrity families I saw on TV every now and then, but I couldn’t. I was weak, and to me, that meant I was nothing.

Whenever it got especially bad, I dreamed about being powerful, about having the world at my beck and call, and when that ceased being a dream, it felt fantastic at first. Then I came to realize what I had wanted to ignore: that just because you can do whatever you want doesn’t mean you should. It still felt great to be powerful, but the reality was not nearly as potent as the fantasy.

And so was the case here. Driving the snowmobile at top speed put me on top of a mountain of ecstasy. It also put me on a crash course for a bank of trees. Two guttural screams and a sharp turn later, the snowmobile was lying in the snow, turned on its side. No one was hurt, but it was strongly suggested that I relinquish driving duties, and I was more than happy to oblige.

The six snowmobiles glided through the terrain. I realized I didn’t know where they were taking us, but they were heading north, and north was good. North was closer to Icithan and hopefully closer to Ironwall and the others.

I clutched tight to my seat as we entered bumpy terrain. If I had been driving, the snowmobile would have gone flying twenty feet in the air. Even though I wasn’t, the ride wasn’t easy. One of the snowmobiles nearly got turned around, and another zipped off the ground and seemed to hover there for a few seconds before landing hard.

The sun came back out, and it made the snow look like a sheet of diamonds. The drivers slipped on tribal-looking ski goggles to block out the glare. They didn’t give any to me, and so my vision became an obscuring blob of neon green. I very nearly missed the colossal canyon that jumped out at us.

When I saw it, I thought no one else had, and I screamed, “Watch out.” My driver told me I had nothing to fear, but that I should hold on tight, which I did. My grip was so tight, it was like my hands had been smothered with glue.

The times when you accidentally let go bear very little overlap with the times when you’re afraid of accidentally letting go, and for that I am glad. Right after he finished talking, the first snowmobile accelerated over a ledge and flew across the canyon. For a split-second, I thought it was gonna fall in. I thought it was gonna fall in and, seconds later, hit the bottom, killing the driver. But then I realized that was absurd- no one would try that jump unless they knew they could make it. I was soon proven correct. The snowmobile landed on the other side with plenty of room to spare.

This did not comfort me. I knew what was next. My driver was clapping and hollering like a diehard sports fan.

I asked her, “Can you find another way? This can’t be the only way, right?”

“Hey,” she replied, “you’re the one who almost got us killed.” She accelerated. We were going second.

“Wait,” I shouted as we launched off the side of the canyon. It was a narrow canyon, but it was so deep, I couldn’t see the bottom.

At that point in time, I felt zero enmity toward dragons. No wonder they were so destructive, I reasoned. If I had to fly every day, I’d go on a rampage too. My bones felt like they were gonna fall out of my skin and into the odious expanses below. My heart beat so fast I was afraid it would stop working. The wind slammed against my face, and in response, tears gushed from my eyes like blood from a wound.

And I was screaming. I was screaming like I had never screamed before. I was screaming like I would only land if I screamed loud enough.

By the time we landed, I was hoarse. Every word I spoke sounded like a corrupted whisper. But in spite of myself, I raised my hands above my head in elation. A grin swept across my face. Exhilarated and relieved, I didn’t know what to make of myself.

I wasn’t quite free from fear. It hadn’t all rushed out of me at once. I was afraid my driver was gonna toss me off into canyon. I was afraid an avalanche was gonna come from out of nowhere and knock me into the canyon. I was afraid the snowmobile would suddenly explode and send me hurtling into the canyon. But these fears didn’t corrode my high. In fact, they might have bolstered it.

Every now and then, I felt nauseous. The world spun like a top. I felt like I was on a wooden ship in the middle of a hurricane. But before these spells could last more than seconds, they were blown away by blasts of optimism and desire.

“Yippee,” I cried in my hoarse voice, and I meant it.

My emotions did not settle down until the sun had set and Mina was hanging directly above us, as if suspended by an invisible string. We had reached our destination: a hill surrounded by a lake. In the distance, I could see the ruins of a city.

“Thes es Ezek,” said my driver, stepping out of a snowmobile. “Leek us, et es not ess emperessives ess et used te be, but et es steel goorgeous.”

She gave me a giant thatched bag full of food, water, and three pairs of shoes. I tried not to drop it. “Thank you,” I said, shaking her hand.

“Let fortoone faver ye,” she said slowly.

I glanced over at Machen. He had just gotten out of his snowmobile. The dark, muscular man who had driven him gave him a hug. I appreciated that. When the hug ended and the big man got back in his snowmobile, Machen glanced my way. Our eyes met, and we exchanged a frank nod.

Turning back to my driver, I said, “Thank you all. If there’s ever anything we could do… if there’s anything you need taken care of… talk to us. We’ll take care of it. We owe it to you. It’s the least we could do.”

I bowed as low as I could. She told me to shake her hand instead. I did both. We parted ways. All six snowmobiles drove off. I wondered how they were gonna get across the canyon. We were able to make the jump because the south wall of the canyon is considerably higher than the north wall. How could they jump from low to high? Could they? Did they have to? Was there a way around the canyon?

“Litriol,” I said softly, putting my thoughts to bed. “I don’t know how, but they’re gonna make it work with Litriol.” I shook my head and smiled.


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