Dragonslayer, Inc.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Machen said, pretending to be blasé even though the expression on his face proved he was anything but.

“Where were you?” The smile on her face was wide enough to bridge a canyon.

“We fell off the plateau. Coran almost died. I had to take care of him.”

“You taking care of someone? That’s far-fetched. Tell the real story.”

“That is the real story. I’m being honest.”

“Coran, care to corroborate?”

“Yeah. I would have died. Machen saved my life.”

“Wow. I’m impressed.”

“You should have believed me, Steph.”

“I did believe you. I just wanted to mess with you, get you a little angry with me. I’m no good with sappy reunions.” She sat down. “It’s good to see you again.”

Shaking his head, he asked, “How have you been? You must have a lot to say. Why weren’t you on the plateau?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You don’t have some place to be, do you?”

“No.”

“Then tell it. We’ll listen.”

“All right, but first… you two must be starving.”

“We are.”

“When was the last time you had anything to eat? When was the last time you had anything to drink?”

“I don’t remember.”

“That long, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Here.” She handed us each a handful of corn, a hunk of meat, and a leaky bottle of Litriol. “It’s not the most refined dining, but I doubt you’ll complain. Dig in.”

I was ravenous, draining the Litriol bottle in fifteen seconds and stuffing the meat and corn into my mouth in another thirty. When I finished, I felt like a new man: stronger, fiercer, happier. Machen, on the other hand, took a more reserved approach to dining. This wasn’t because he wasn’t hungry. He was very hungry, a lot hungrier than me. He ate slowly because his system was so unconditioned to food that he would have otherwise vomited. It took him a few minutes to finish his modest meal.

Returning the now-empty bottle to Steph, he said, “That was delicious. Now tell us what happened to you.”

“You’re still hungry, aren’t you?”

“Not that much hungrier than you. Or have you been stuffing yourself?”

“C’mon, Machen. You know me better than that. There’s enough food left in this bag to get us to Curam and back. I haven’t been starving myself, but I’ve been rationing. We’re all gonna have to ration, and our rations aren’t gonna be that big. Sorry. I’ve calculated it out.”

“Or,” I chimed in, “we could eat as much as we want and not worry about the return trip.”

“Now that’s an idea,” said Steph.

“A bad one,” countered Machen. “We did not slog through the jagged trail leading up to Segrabi Cavern under the cover of darkness by the ironfisted rule of Ironwall to not make it back. We did not suffer through the bitter chill of the Mulsor Highlands to not arrive safely home. We have gone from one end of this forsaken, blight-stricken continent to the other. That is an achievement, and it will be marked in the records for eternity. Let us enjoy that achievement as living, breathing citizens of this great nation, of this great world.”

“How long has he been like this?” she asked me.

“Days.”

“It must get annoying.”

“Actually, it’s kinda inspiring. When you’re on the tightrope between life and death, a little encouragement can go a long way.”

“Can I get to my story?”

“Yes,” we said, a half-second apart.

“When the blizzard came, I stayed close to camp… or at least I tried. I held on tight to our supplies, but around midnight, my grip weakened, and they flew away on the wind. Dawn came. My supplies were all gone. I went looking for them, but it was impossible in the blizzard, so I hid in a crevice and waited. The storm kept on raging. I feared I’d die before it ended, but then I remembered the bottle and buds I had on me. They gave me energy, and when the blizzard ended the morning after, I was ready to search. I thought once I found the supplies, I’d find you. I thought you and the supplies had been blown away in the same general direction. But I guess I was wrong, because I found the supplies easily, but I couldn’t find you for the life of me. I spent days searching up and down these mountains. I was starting to lose hope. I was starting to think I’d never see you again. The day after tomorrow, I would have left without you. But there you are, in the flesh, alive. It’s a wonderful world.”

“That it is,” said Machen.

“Now tell me about what you’ve been up to.”

“I thought I already did.”

“The full story. Don’t skimp on the details.”

“Maybe later.”

“That’s not fair. I told you my story.”

“Mine’s not that interesting. We should be going.”

“Already?”

“What were you thinking?”

“Let’s stay here for two days. We could get better and eat this food and drink this Litriol water. That’s what I had planned.”

“I want to leave, and I won’t be happy until I do. I’ve had too many bad experiences here.”

“Change of plans: we leave immediately. It works for me.”

And so we left behind the mysterious, foreboding mountains and their searing sense of dread, slogging closer to Curam and the end of our journey, climbing through flatlands and over sharp ridges and on and on. It got warmer, then it got colder, but it stayed clear, as though the terrain we were traversing was so desolate that not even clouds wanted to be anywhere near it. I began to wonder why a dragon would want to come here, except to get far away from Slayers. There’s nothing that would benefit a dragon, nothing that would make its life easier or more prosperous.

Then again, dragons are the only creatures that could survive in these conditions. They are the toughest animals on the planet. The arma-tank we fought in Segrabi couldn’t survive in this climate, and neither could those bizarre beasts that attacked us in Mulsor. Even in Rolar Desert, there is life, but here there is nothing.

We had passed from the main body of the continent onto a peninsula, but it doesn’t feel like a peninsula. It doesn’t feel like it’s a part of the continent, not anymore. It feels like a cancerous bulb. It feels like it needs to be chopped off. It feels like all the misfortune that has befallen the world started in its stoic, hopeless ruins and valleys. From space, it is jet-black in the summer, pure white in the winter, and spotted during the spring and fall. Snow doesn’t disguise its desolation, but rather accentuates it. Rolar Desert at its worst is nowhere near as sad. Rolar Desert, at least, is expansive and proud. This north nub, on the other hand, wants to wear a mask, wants to disguise its sorry self, wants to be seen for anything other than what it is, but its revolting wretchedness is undisguisable.

There is one exception: Curam itself. Not a kind mountain nor a friendly mountain, it is nonetheless majestic, exuding power and status. It seems happy to exist. It seems like it is glad to exist. Glassier than its surroundings, it reflects more light and appears to glow. We were looking forward to being there.

“It’s hard to believe we’ve made it this far,” I said as we stopped in its shadow.

“It hasn’t sunk in for me,” said Steph.

“Imagine the view from the top. I bet you could see Miyok.”

“I never knew it would be so… big,” said Machen, staring up to its peak, the back of his head resting on his shoulders.

The pictures hadn’t done it justice. Even seeing the mountain from far away, we were unable to comprehend its immensity. There is nothing like it. Next to it, all other mountains are hills, and all hills are plains. We could see Icithan at the top of the mountain, but it took us time to recognize it as the titanic beast that wreaked havoc on Andes and sent us on this journey in the first place. It did not look like the same creature. It did not look like a large dragon. It did not look like a dragon at all. Clutching close to the bosom of the mountain, it looked like the tiny dragon action figures I begged my mom to buy for me on my birthday. It was utterly overwhelmed by the mountain.

“We have to climb all that way,” Steph said. “I’m not ready.”

“Maybe we could bait the dragon to fight us here,” Machen said.

“How?” I responded. “It can’t even see us.” Dragons are superlative in many traits. Eyesight is not one of those traits. “And the idea of baiting a dragon does not appeal to me. I told you what happened to Ezek.”

“This is not that,” said Machen, snatching me by the shoulders. “There are no cities nearby, no towns. Except for us three, nobody is getting hurt during this fight. It’s okay for us to do everything in our power to kill this thing, and we should. If we hesitate, if we slip up, if we get too caught up in our thoughts… we’re going to lose. Relax. Stay calm. We’re in the final stretch.”

The sun set. We were at the east face of Curam, and it glowed orange, as though incased in fire. It was magical, and we couldn’t look away, but it made our climb seem tougher. Instead of challenging a real mountain, it was like we were challenging a mountain of myth, like this was the Curam from the legends, the Curam that many citizens of the Ancient Solanian Empire didn’t believe existed.

“Take yourself out of this situation,” said Steph. “Forget who you are, what Icithan has down, and what we’ve been through. Doesn’t it seem absurd what we’re doing? We’re charging up the most infamous mountain in the world by ourselves for the pleasure of facing a four-hundred-and-fifty-foot dragon with ice breath that is most likely going to kill us. It’s objectively ridiculous.”

“Trust me,” I said, “if I could take myself out of this situation, I would. I would take myself out of it, and I wouldn’t face Icithan. What we’re about to do is foolish. It doesn’t make much sense. We have two free days left, right? I’d take one of those days to relax and get myself in the mood for this journey, but it wouldn’t help.”

The glow disappeared, and Curam became nothing more than a giant mountain. As dusk set in, we began our climb. The first three hours were most auspicious. Nothing went wrong- absolutely nothing- and everything that could go right did. It was creepy. We held our breath and crossed our fingers. But even without our run of luck, our route was easy. Compared to the work we had done to get to this point, the mountaineering was a joke.

As time ticked on, we waited for the bottom to fall out, as it always did. The night got darker, and the stars got brighter, and we stayed fortunate. Five minutes before we were to set up camp, we were about to count this day as a win, but then we saw our path blocked by boulders. Machen tried to move one. They wouldn’t budge. I tried to scramble over them. That didn’t work either. It was Steph who told us that our only option was to return to the last crossroads we had seen and head right. This led us around to the north face of the mountain: the coldest, most inhospitable side. Our odyssey was not done yet however. We came across a gap, a wide gap, a gap we could not cross unless we could fly.

In the starlight, we could see the other side, and it was tantalizing. It seemed close enough to reach, but that was far from the case. By this point, it was past midnight, and I said, “Screw it. Let’s figure this out in the morning.”

We took my advice and set up camp. It was quiet, and it wasn’t that cold, but it was miserable sleeping nonetheless. An hour before dawn, I woke up, flustered and dismayed, and investigated the only feasible path forward: a measly scrawl of a path north and down. What I found was worse than the uncertainty I had beforehand. It led to the other side of that gap, but before it got there, it went deep into Life’s End.

I sat on my hands and waited for Machen and Steph to wake up. When they did, they asked me what I had been doing. I told them I had investigated the path. They asked what I had found. I didn’t have the heart to tell the truth until they explicitly demanded it of me. When they found out, they sat on their hands next to me. Together we were the most depressed group of travelers the world had ever seen.

Steph said, “We better get going,” and we set off into the morning sun and the land of death.