A House Beholden

The clamorous din of disaster assaulted Arne Adler's acute sense of hearing even through the water-like density of his dreaming. Like most residents of Wealdrake, he was commonly fast asleep at this accursedly dark and early hour, but his body, trained and prepared, propelled him from his bed to the front doorway of his home in an instant. He identified the monsters immediately by their low, guttural but distinctly avian shrieks.

Murkmunnrs? And they've already stamped out most of the fires. "Erika," he called hoarsely into the house behind him, "take the children to the cellar and stay there! I must help the others. I will come for you when it's safe."

An indefinite but affirmative shout, followed by panicked rummaging, sounded from within the house. Without awaiting further response, Arne donned his guardsman's helm, took up his sword and joined the fray.

Flightless but exceedingly swift and nearly the height of a man, the lithe, jet-black raptors seemed to move in an untargeted frenzy, sweeping through the town in a vortex of inky feathers and crooked talons. This, and their frightened, instinctual trampling of any unmanned flame compounded the tenebrous confusion of the chaotic and overcast night.

Bellowing brief, decisive commands, Arne and the other members of the guard gathered everyone into the town square and began working to ignite as many torches as they could. Ungifted as he was, even Arne could muster enough magic to light a steady flame, even in the rain, so long as there was fuel to burn.

As though in a well-rehearsed maneuver, the militia brandished their fires and their blades and proceeded to corral the monsters out of the town, protecting each other's backs as they went. Several of the things buffeted their winged arms in defiance as they backed away, gnashing their toothy, gnarled beaks and spraying the guard with putrid, green spittle. Most of the flock, however, fled quickly and without much protest apart from their repulsive, gravelly squawking.

As suddenly as the chaos had erupted, stillness fell upon Wealdrake. The riotous screeches of the murkmunnrs faded quickly into the dampening atmosphere of the surrounding forest and a heavy sigh escaped Arne's lungs as his arms fell to his sides. He allowed himself one more deep breath before making an about-face and striding back toward town square. It did not take Arne long to find the man he was looking for, distinguished as he was by his bejeweled staff and his extravagant raiment.

"Elder!"

The tall, gray man was turned slowly away from the young family he was comforting to face whoever had called for him. Dancing shadows cast by the rekindling fires painted grim scenes on his face, but he smiled brightly, reaching down to place a hand on Arne's shoulder.

"Your quick thinking and certain leadership are exemplary, as ever," the old man said, genuine and warm, showing no signs of having been shaken by the attack. "Thanks to you, dear captain, it appears that we have suffered minimal loss."

Arne furrowed his brow and nodded, noting the elder's praise but electing to get straight to the point. "What do you think, Osmund? Those vile, skittish things would not have ordinarily attacked a human settlement even if they'd had twice those numbers."

"Only in perfect darkness would they have been so bold," Osmund added, stroking his voluminous white cloud of a beard, "yet all of our watchfires had been burning brightly. And it seems even the most daring among them stole only what food they could carry off in a hurry. They must have been fleeing from something more fearsome to them than torchlight."

Clearly disgruntled, Arne removed his helm and held it at his side, his unruly red curls spilling almost past his shoulders as he did so. "In my six years of service here in your town —"

"Our town," the elder interceded, still smiling kindly, as if he had no greater worries than to remind the grizzled guard captain that he was as much a citizen of Wealdrake as anyone. Arne continued, deliberately, but could not help returning Osmund's smile as he did so.

"— I have never seen or heard of anything that'd spook a murder of murkmunnrs so thoroughly. So, I ask again: what do you think got them so riled up?"

"I do not think," Osmund stated flatly. "I know. Something you've been longing to see in the flesh ever since you arrived here, if memory serves."

Arne's eyes widened, childlike, into green saucers. As if on cue, a deafening roar sounded from beyond the clouds. Arne searched the sky exuberantly, and though his eyes could not perceive them, something in him sensed them vividly as they passed far overhead. Green dragons, congregating in Wealdrake to meet, and perhaps to mate, with one another.

Bewildered as he was, Arne had become briefly oblivious to the town around him slowly beginning to recuperate from the panic that had stricken. His bubble was burst when he became aware of a dismayed voice crying his name. His stomach turned over, eyes crimson with dread, as he sought the source of the wailing, for, even at a distance, he knew her voice intimately well.

"Erika! Are you alright —"

"We need to go after them!" She cut Arne off urgently. "They took Alfred!"

Without hesitation, Arne's face hardened, his voice thundering authoritatively, nearly reaching the entire town. "Search the woods, all uninjured guards! Alfred Adler is missing! Bring light and remain in pairs! Those monsters are still out there!"

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The clouds had parted, the sun risen well above the horizon, by the time the search parties reconvened, answering Osmund's summons. Pairs of people flooded in slow motion out of the forest and into the town, shuffling mournfully as they consolidated themselves into a quiet crowd outside of Osmund's hut. Arne stood at their front, cradling Erika and their infant daughter, Eden, in his arms. He stared at the elder, his youthful air of confidence given way to a sunken, aged-looking stupor, his eyes pleading desperately for counsel.

Osmund had seen his share of tragedies over the years, but he could not recall having seen a man so strong appear so broken. The old wizard hung his head low and let out a deep, shaky sigh. As he lifted his gaze, his eyes met Arne's, and he held them there with conviction, though he addressed the town as a whole.

"I imagine you all understand why I have called you back home, despite the fruitlessness of our efforts. The boy is nowhere to be found in the open woods — no creature friendly to me has yet seen him. With the daylight, the murkmunnrs will have retreated into their caves, and to enter those would mean near-certain death, torches or no torches. I must forbid it."

Erika shrank further into Arne's embrace, and his arm tightened around her. He was unsure whether it was her body shaking or his, whether it was the grief or the frustration. As infuriating and as heartbreaking as it was to admit, he knew that Osmund was right — anyone who went looking for Alfred in the murkmunnr dens would be torn to shreds in seconds. The elder went on.

"Often times, there can be little rationalizing with tragedy. It does not sit well with the mind, or the heart, that a man should give so much and so selflessly, only to have what is dearest to him taken by force. Arne Adler came here, to Wealdrake, to us, on a seven-day safety inspection assignment from the Royal Constabulary, and he stubbornly refused to leave. It was the fastness of his love for Erika, to be sure, but also his love for Wealdrake. For he sensed the magic of its woods, and, indeed, that of its citizens. Though I doubt you need reminding, I ask that none of you ever forget the countless noble deeds of this man, and that you stand with him, and with his family, in this time of great need. We will hold a ceremony for Alfred three days from now. I am so deeply sorry."

The sorrow and solemnity which girded Osmund's bitter, public resignation to this cruel circumstance was the final straw, and Arne could bear no more. He wept, steadily, from the moment the elder finished speaking until he fell asleep late that night, crumpling in sheer, emotional exhaustion.

Once again, it was dark when Arne awoke. He had been unable to sleep for long, tormented as he was by malefic visions of his firstborn's ghastly fate. With both his body and mind in dire need of occupation — distraction — he made his way, half-conscious, to the shed at the far end of his homestead which stood just a few steps from the fringes of the forest. The sudden snaps of severing sinew sounded sharply through the stillness of the morning at crooked intervals, as Arne split wood for what may have been minutes or hours. He had not been counting the logs, had paid no mind to the growing piles of uneven timber scattered about him.

So it was that Arne was caught completely unawares, nearly leaping out of his own skin when he heard the voice bidding him a fair morning. Even as he turned all around, attempting to return the greeting, he could see no one.

Straight ahead; look in between the trees.

Soothing as a stream flowing over polished rock, or leaves rustling in the wind, the voice spoke again, as if from inside Arne's head, though it was certainly not his own. He obeyed its instructions and froze, flabbergasted. A captivatingly beautiful green dragon materialized seemlessly out of the shadows and pines of the tree-line, its eyes, burning with the colors of cool fire, fixed upon him. He hadn't heard it approach, which was unthinkable given its size.

Fear not, human — I bear no malice toward your kind. To the contrary, I believe I have something of yours.

So thorough was Arne's state of shock that he could not piece together the meaning of what he had heard. But then, the dragon's serpentine neck stretched gracefully around to its back, and it produced a diminutive, ambiguous bundle, carefully caressed within its menacing but dextrous jaws, which it placed tenderly on the ground. As the chubby thing stumbled toward Arne, into the light of the just-dawning sun, he fell to his knees, flung open his arms and wept once more.

"I sorry worry, daddy," Alfred cooed as he nestled into his father's chest. Arne hugged the little toddler fiercely and shushed him. His words were choked with joy.

"Oh, dear boy. It was never your fault."

After several minutes of snuggling, during which the dragon waited silently, Arne stood, hooking an arm around Alfred and hoisting him up. "I —" he stuttered, having no idea how he was meant to speak to a dragon. He decided on 'brief and dignified.'

"Thank you. You have my family's eternal gratitude," he pledged and bowed his head.

A serendipitous choice of words. Tell me this, fleeting, little human — if you were so careless as to allow your own family to be broken apart by those insignificant, evil ceatures, what aid could you possibly offer to me and mine?

The dragon's words continued to ring clear as day, but its mouth had not so much as twitched once. Again, Arne struggled to find the right words for this impossible scenario. A dragon, of all things, appeared to be speaking to him, using its mind.

"Anything you might ask, to the best of my meager abilities," he put forth humbly.

Indeed.

What transpired next cannot be described in its entirety. When the dragon spoke again, it did so using its real, physical voice. The power of it was palpable as it echoed through the air, somehow delicate and earth-shattering and affecting all of Arne's senses at once. Though he did not understand the words, the gravity and meaning of the moment were conveyed to him with infallible clarity: this dragon, whose name, Arne now knew, was "Tyr," would call upon the Adler family when she deemed that they were most needed, and they would answer, to repay their debt.

𝄐

Gods, what's with that noise? It sounds like... popcorn? Firecrackers? Gunshots? And why is everything shaking? Am I under fire?!

Anthony Adler sat up way too fast, and the room spun around him like a diabolical toilet bowl flushing him down its cavernous, evil drain, surrounding him with waste comprised of beer bottles, pizza boxes and half-smoked cigarettes before finally depositing him into a wretched, dilapidated and hellish sewer where he belonged, with all the rest of the —

And I'm spiraling. Spiraling. Breathe.

Since he wasn't riddled with bullet holes yet, Anthony decided to take things a little more slowly. With one hand on his head and another on the couch, the spins began to recind a little, and the gunfire sounded a lot more like tapping on a window. That shaking sensation, he was able to logically attribute to his phone's ongoing text message alert. He risked relinquishing the anchor of his hand on the couch to read the message.

"From: Mother Dearest

Call Emily ASAP. Need to make plans for Amanda.

received - 2:30 PM"

The digital click of the screen lock button and the much more authentic thump of the phone dropping to the floor made Anthony suddenly aware that the tapping sound had stopped. He turned his head lazily toward the only window his musty motel suite had to offer. Had he left it open? The patchwork symphony of bustling city streets blasted upward three stories, working in tandem with the garrish, unclouded sun to attack Anthony's hungover sensibilities. He cringed reflexively as he poked his head out the window to look around.

At first, there appeared to be nothing to see, but suddenly a small flock of murkmunnrs were flying circles around Anthony's head, squawking and jeering provocatively as they nipped at his ears and tangled themselves up in the maroon-ish curls of his hair. He spouted curses and flailed at them with his arms, and the nasty little things retreated, their cantankerous caws calling to mind a cackling taunt as they flew away to find someone else to prank.

"Damn sky-rats! I'll have your putrid wings for dinner next time you come around!"

He thought himself a silly sight, shaking his fist and shouting at birds. An older couple walking the streets below looked up and chuckled at him. He ignored them, ducking back inside and pulling the window shut after him. Anthony slapped his hands on his cheeks, attempting to shake off the haze which still surrounded him, but the hits just kept on coming.

Is your name Adler?

There was no other person in the room who could have posed that question. Anthony reasoned that he must have misheard the news broadcast playing on the television, although he didn't remember turning it on. As he was hobbling towards the coffee table to grab the remote, he froze abruptly and slapped himself again, harder this time, because he could have sworn he saw a tiny dragon on the couch, right where he had woken up a minute ago. He rubbed his eyes until he saw dancing lights, but the thing was still there, forest green and about the size of a house cat, orange-yellow eyes staring at him. Anthony just stared back, dumbfounded.

It's polite to answer when someone asks you a question.

Between the killer hangover and the actual, extant dragon in his motel room, Anthony's brain was thoroughly reduced to hot soup. He couldn't think to say anything, but he had been raised well, so his auto-pilot setting defaulted to good manners.

"Anthony... my name is Anthony Adler."

Good. I can see you're having trouble with this, so why don't you sit down and just listen?

Still reeling, Anthony nodded sluggishly and sat down on the couch next to his impossible little visitor. He rummaged clumsily through the piles of garbage on the coffee table for a few seconds before finding an unsmoked cigarette and a lighter with fuel enough to spark it. After a deep inhale to gather his senses, he gestured for the little dragon to speak, blowing out his smoke in the opposite direction.

That's terrible for you, you know.

Anthony said nothing and took another drag.

Alright. I'll be brief, because I'm sort of in a hurry. About one-and-a-half thousand years ago, my mother rescued your ancestor, Alfred Adler, from certain death when he was two years old. His father, Arne, made a vow to my mother that his family would repay their debt to her someday. Now she's in trouble, and she told me where to find you, so that we could help her together.

"Hang on," Anthony rebutted, holding up a hand to pause the exposition as he took a moment to drag on his cigarette. "Fifteen-hundred years ago? Doesn't sound like this is my responsibility at all," he supposed. "Besides, I'm sure you could find someone with more... applicable capabilities." The little dragon was shaking its head all the while.

It has to be you. Arne Adler made a pledge to a dragon, to whom his family owed a debt of gratitude. A contract with a dragon, especially a verbal contract, is a binding agreement. If you were to break that oath, you would become afflicted with a dire and unpredictable curse.

Anthony gestured broadly at the room with both arms. "Curse," he scoffed. "Look around you — how much worse do you think my life could get?" He dropped the butt of his cigarette into one of the several mostly-empty bottles on the table and declared with apparent conviction, "You need to find someone else to help you."

It won't just be you who'll suffer, Anthony. If you were to have any children, they, as well as their children's children's children will be doomed to suffer ubiquitous misfortune and pain. Can you truly make peace with that?

There was a long pause. Anthony hung his head low and loosed an exasperated sigh. He glanced sidelong at the dragon, its fiery eyes still studying him with laser-like focus, before sitting up straight and finally conceding, "Fine. I'll bite. But only out of sheer curiosity, is that clear? I mean, I thought dragons were extinct. Everyone thought so, except for a few conspiracy nuts."

There are very few of us left, and we are exceptional at hiding. But our strength has been fading rapidly over the past few hundred years. At least, that's what mom tells me. I'm only a hundred-and-twenty-five, after all. "Barely an adolescent." But we can talk history later. My mother's den was discovered by some avaricious and nosy humans, and she was unable to defend herself. It took as much magic as she could muster to give me the knowledge to find you and to transport me to safety. They captured her. This symbol was on their clothes and their vehicles.

Before Anthony had time to question what he was hearing, the images flooded into his mind, and he watched the scene unfold. People in faceless, white hazmat suits, pouring out of some kind of portal, carrying large tranquilizer guns and what looked like nets made of pure electricity. So much of it made so little sense, but that logo — a blue, diamond-shaped crystal with a cross engraved into it. Anthony was certain he'd seen it before, but he couldn't quite place it. His ponderance was cut off unexpectedly.

Wait! Who is that, in that box?

"Box?"

It took a few seconds for the dots to connect, and then Anthony turned to look at the television screen across the room. It was the same news broadcast from earlier — a man in a lab coat saying something about 'the verge of a major alchemical breakthrough.' His pocket protector was embossed with the same symbol from the dragon's vision. The answer was in the headline, in plain, bold letters at the bottom of the screen.

"MediMana? The pharmaceutical company? Why would they go around capturing dragons," Anthony wondered aloud, already thumbing his phone screen to conduct a search. He swiped away several texts and missed calls and opened his web browser.

It does not matter why. Do you know where to find them?

"Doesn't matter to you. Anyway, as luck would have it, their public headquarters are here in Walden City," Anthony affirmed with a hint of a smile, showing the dragon the search results on his phone screen. "And they offer walk-in tours of the labs."

I don't believe in luck, and I can't read Human.

"We have more than one langua — never mind. The lab isn't far from here. We can take the train. Oh, and, I never asked before; what's your name?"

I was named for my mother. You can call me, "Tyryr."

"Tear-ear doesn't exactly roll off the human tongue. How about T?"

The names of dragons are sacred and intended to invoke ancient and powerful magics! And that was a gross mispronunciation!

"I'm sorry, T. I don't speak Dragon."

𝄐

Surprisingly, no one in the streets, at the subway station or even on the train mentioned anything to Anthony about the bulge in the belly of his hoodie. Between that, and the sunglasses which he wore even while they were underground, it would have been difficult to make their appearance more conspicuous without Tyryr sitting on Anthony's head instead. But, there they were.

Anthony was shuffling from one foot onto the other, huffing down a cigarette a block-and-a-half from the entrance to the MediMana building as he went over his plan, careful not to think out loud: remove sunglasses, walk in smiling. Approach receptionist desk, request tour, act interested for the first few stops, then ask for directions to nearest restroom. Thank tour guide and ditch discretely. Commandeer abandoned lab coat and locate an unmanned computer. Dig for critical information on dragon containment whereabouts... improvize. What could possibly go wrong?

Many, many things could go wrong.

Onlookers, had there been any, would have seen Anthony punch himself in the stomach lightly before putting out his cigarette on the sidewalk, depositing the butt into a trash receptacle on the curb and entering the MediMana building.

Somehow, the plan went smoothly for several steps. Although he hadn't been able to find a lab coat lying around, Anthony did discover an open door, beyond which was an office which appeared empty, and important. He waited around a corner for a moment until he was satisfied that no one was watching, and then waltzed into the office as if he had genuine business doing so. When he landed in the chair and spun to face the computer, his knee smacked into something round and hard. A panicked, high-pitched voice rang out from under the desk.

"Doctor Yuan, I can explai — wait, who are you? What are you doing here," a tall, thin, woman with dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair, thick glasses and green scrubs emerged, glancing nervously back and forth between Anthony and the computer hard drive under the desk. He stood up from the chair and stared, stammering, eyes wide.

"You know what? Forget I asked. I suggest you leave, quickly. And, if anyone asks, I was never here."

With that, the woman scuttled hurriedly out of the office and down the hall. Moments later, the same man from the news broadcast earlier — presumably, Doctor Yuan — stepped into the doorway of the office and looked rather disturbed when he found Anthony inside. The doctor spoke calmly, despite his apparent surprise. "I'm going to need you to come with me and answer some questions, whoever you are."

" I was... looking for the bathroom." By the time Anthony had uttered his awful excuse, Yuan had already crossed the room and clamped his hand around Anthony's forearm with, Anthony thought, a shocking amount of grip strength for a doctor. He made a mental note to reexamine his personal prejudices later, if he survived this encounter.

"Nice try," Yuan lied blatantly, dragging Anthony out into the hall. "You think you're the first activist leech we've ever had break into this building? I know one of your kind when I see one."

Anthony shook his head vigorously and began to blurt out his denial of Yuan's accusation when a glaring alarm blasted throughout the building on repeat.

"CLASS C HAZARDOUS GAS LEAK. EVACUATE IN AN ORDERLY FASHION."

Doctor Yuan's focus lapsed briefly, his grip loosened a touch, and Anthony bolted. He had no clue where he was going, but as he rounded the corner at the end of the hall, the dark-haired woman he kicked in the face earlier flagged him down, shouting directions and pointing frantically. Her vociferations were largely unintelligible, but Anthony got the gist and picked up speed, confident that he was headed for an exit.

After two more corners and three more hallways, the front door was in sight. As he ran, Anthony felt the bundle under his hoodie slip and fall to the floor. His heart skipped, but his instinct was to keep running and not look back, so that's precisely what he did. As he burst out onto the street, he heard the woman's voice calling from behind him, "Two blocks up, across the road! Red van!"

Anthony chanced a look back as he sprinted North and saw the dark-haired woman not terribly far behind, carrying a cat-sized bundle in her arms. He cursed his cowardice and thanked his luck as he reached what he assumed was his new friend's van. He tried the passenger door, finding it unlocked, and launched himself inside. After fastening his seatbelt, he leaned across the center console and opened the driver's side door. An agitated little dragon landed in his lap a split second after the dark-haired woman flew into her seat. She wasted no time checking her mirrors before pulling out into the street and speeding off.

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To be continued