Another Day, Another Dragon

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Until I was twelve, the closest I’d gotten to a dragon was reading stories about them in the public library.

Indeed, life had been pleasantly dull until four years ago when a stupid tech billionaire named Willard Ensell, trying to compete with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, had succeeded in opening a portal to another dimension rich in precious metals and raw materials. It was also rich in dragons, but nobody knew that yet.

He’d been hailed a hero. Right up until the first dragons came through and razed Silicon Valley. Now, there were dragons everywhere. Nesting in the Eiffel Tower, cruising around the Space Needle, and I’d heard the Sydney Opera House was like a bat cave, infested with a small but particularly feisty species.

I was glad those had stayed down under. The Sapphire Blues and Razorbacks that had settled here in the Pacific Northwest were bad enough. Of course, nobody knew what was happening in any of those places now. Civilization hadn’t fared well under the constant attacks, and things had gotten primitive fast. Which was why I was standing in a training yard, trying not to make a new hole in my leathers, with a sword that was far too big for me.

Commander Ryan paced around us, watching us practice the basic forms.

“The sword is an important weapon if you find yourself in close quarters with a dragon,” he instructed. “Guns won’t pierce a dragon’s hide unless you have a rocket launcher and there aren’t enough of those to go around, so don’t expect to get your hands on one unless you’re promoted and assigned to the sniper towers.”

I struggled with my blade. The damn thing was so heavy. The Commander had said the style had been called a ‘Claymore’ in the world before, meant for cleaving off heads in medieval times. Anything less couldn’t penetrate a dragon hide. I’d heard about swords that were properly balanced and wondered what one of them would feel like. Sasha, another girl in the Dragon Guard, had one, but her father was a council leader and had somehow got one from several settlements away where they had a real blacksmith, someone who had made fancy swords for Hollywood and medieval fairs before The Razing.

Martin, our settlement’s chief blacksmith, had found himself in charge of the forge because he’d once been an apprentice at a history museum that did blacksmithing demonstrations. He’d spent a summer making horseshoes, nails, and a barrel stave. He’d never made a weapon until The Razing, but he still had more skill than anyone else did. So he did his best and taught the others what he knew.

I would give anything to have a purpose and feel valued like Martin was. All I wanted was to be useful. But there wasn’t much opportunity in a society focused on survival. Especially not for a clumsy gutter rat like me.

“Try not to poke your own eye out, Lana.” Alistair Botley leered over at me, the acne scars, broad lips and permanent sneer making his expression even uglier. A bully with delusions of grandeur, Alistair had made a hobby out of making my life miserable.

“Thanks for the tip, asshole,” I said absently, trying to concentrate on the forms.

“I heard they put you here because only Commander Ryan would take you on. The others are hoping you’ll get eaten so no one has to deal with you anymore.”

“At least my parents didn’t send me here to get eaten, “ I muttered.

“What did you say?” He loomed over me menacingly.

“Botley! Focus,” Commander Ryan barked, rescuing me from my big mouth.

It was my brother who had suggested we join the Dragon Guard. Orphaned in The Razing, we’d had nowhere to go. In the Dragon Guard, you could rise up the ranks to the elite faster than anywhere else in the territory. They took everyone who was willing, housed them, fed them, and made them into warriors. Promises of honour and glory swelled the ranks with the bravest and most ambitious—as well as those with nothing to lose, like yours truly.

The Dragon Guard was full of opportunity. As long as you survived. Which was the part that all the ambitious daredevils seemed to forget about.

I hadn’t forgotten. My brother was brilliant with the sword, but he died in a raid two years ago, burnt to a crisp along with his entire team by a single gout of fire from a cranky Sapphire Blue. And now I was alone.

It was amazing I’d lived so long, but that was mostly because no one trusted me enough to send me out with the troops. There was more truth to Alistair’s cruel words than I wanted to admit. I’d been punted around all the divisions until I’d landed here in infantry, where, as a skinny, awkward and unathletic sixteen-year-old girl, I was probably the least suited. But infantry was my last shot. If Commander Ryan kicked me out, I’d be out in the streets again with no one and nothing, which in this new world was even more dangerous than being a foot soldier in the Dragon Guard. And judging by the way he was studying the latest slice in my leathers, where I’d lost my grip on my sword and nearly dropped it through my thigh, I didn’t have much time left to turn things around.

Commander Alex Ryan was only two years older than me, but heavy casualties made for very young officers. We all grew up fast when the dragons came. But despite his youth, Commander Ryan was the real deal. Honourable, intelligent, and totally badass with a sword or any other weapon, he’d quickly earned the respect of even the older, more grizzled officers.

He was also super dreamy and I was head over heels in love with him. Which was unfortunate, because that meant I was even more likely to trip over my sword and stab myself in the foot whenever he was watching. Which was often—he was no doubt wondering what the hell he was going to do with me.

“Alright team, swords down,” Commander Ryan said, shifting his attention to the group. “You’ve all been briefed about the latest intelligence reports. Dragons are attacking individual settlements and snatching up soldiers and civilians to take back to their central nesting areas."

"We don’t know if they’re hunting, feeding their young, or keeping people for some other purpose—but whatever it is, you don’t want to find out firsthand. As the Dragon Guard, we are especially vulnerable. So when we’re out there, if a dragon snatches one of our unit, what do we do?”

Everyone stared back at him, dumbly.

I rolled my eyes. Did no one listen? We’d been drilled on this first thing this morning. I was crap with weapons, but at least I listened. Of course, it probably wouldn’t be inaccurate to say I listened to every word the Commander said for entirely the wrong reasons.

When no one volunteered an answer, I put my hand up.

“Lana.” Commander Ryan turned his intense brown eyes on me and I nearly forgot what the question was.

“Uh. We try to get in close, distract it and get it to drop our comrade, Sir.”

“Correct.”

Alistair Botley snorted. “If it snatches Lana, I’m letting it have her.”

The class tittered.

Botley!” Commander Ryan barked. “On the floor, fifty push-ups now! Twenty for everyone who snickered.” He paced in front of us, watching all those who’d been honest doing their pushups with a disgusted look on his face. I studied my shoes.

When everyone had finished and was back on their feet, he fixed us all with a glare.

“We are a team. Every. Single. One of us. I don’t care if you like each other, but you WILL respect each other and stand up for each other. If you don’t have your team’s back, why should they have yours?”

Everyone was silent.

“Is that clear?”

“Yes, Sir!” we chanted.

“Okay, break for dinner and be back here at 7pm sharp for final drills. Lana, hold back. I need to speak with you.”

Uh oh.

Alistair smirked at me as he sheathed his sword. “Later, loser. Or maybe not?” He waggled his fingers at me as he left for the dining hall.

My stomach sank and my palms instantly began to sweat. Was Commander Ryan kicking me out? Or was this just a warning? I needed more time!

The Commander gestured impatiently for me to put my sword away.

Awkwardly, with my hands slick, I carefully maneuvered my sword into its scabbard on my back. He winced, watching me critically, which I thought was unfair. I’d been practicing putting my sword away gracefully and I thought I’d done reasonably well. I’d at least done it without slicing off part of my braid this time.

“Come with me,” he said curtly, and strode out of the training yard, and down a hall leading towards a wing of the complex I’d never been into.

I followed behind him, nervously twisting my fingers. We turned down two more corridors and a sea of doors. The halls grew quieter, everyone mostly in the dining hall already.

I realized if Commander Ryan was kicking me out, this might be the last time I ever saw him again. Still following behind him, I let myself drink in his broad shoulders, muscled enough to show even through his leathers, my eyes drifting down to his gorgeous butt. I mean, I’m not usually one to stare at a man’s ass, but his was magnificent.

He chose that moment to glance back at me. I hastily raised my eyes to head level, but a single raised eyebrow told me he’d noticed me staring.

Abruptly, he turned and opened the door to a small private office. Sparsely furnished, with only a small desk, a stool and a large old-fashioned steamer chest pushed into the corner, it looked largely unused. He gestured me in and shut the door behind us.

“Care to explain yourself?” he said, folding his arms.

“I wasn’t looking at your butt, Sir.”

He raised an eyebrow again.

“I was.. Er rather, I mean, there was a thread.” I lied lamely, blushing furiously. “And.. I just saw it there and couldn’t help but notice-”

“Lana, I didn’t bring you here to discuss your ogling of my butt.”

“Ogling is a strong word, Sir.”

“Is it? What word would you prefer I use?”

“I, uh... If you didn’t mean my...” Sweet Jesus, could this get any more awkward? I tried again. “What did you mean to ask me, Sir, before I...?”

“Brought up my ass?”

“Yes, Sir.” I shut my eyes, wishing I could sink into the floor.

“One of your roommates reported that you’ve been out of your bunk at lights out every night this week. Is that true?”

Ohhhhh. I swallowed uneasily. “Um. Yes, Sir.”

“Why?”

I looked down at the floor. “I was practicing, Sir. I’m sure you’ve noticed I’m a terrible soldier. Infantry is my last shot, but I can barely lift my sword, let alone wield it. I thought if I worked harder, if I could practice some more without everyone staring at me, maybe I could at least stop embarrassing myself in training.”

Commander Ryan studied me for a long moment. I caught myself twisting my fingers again under his scrutiny and clasped my hands tight behind my back to still their fidgeting.

“The sword is not your weapon,” he said finally.

That was an understatement. The only thing that got speared so far in this rotation was me. Repeatedly.

“Neither is the javelin. Or the cannons.”

The cannons had been a disaster. I could barely lift the balls and had taken three times as long as anyone else to load the cannon, then I’d somehow accidentally loaded the last ball in such a way that it overbalanced, caused the cannon to flip just as my partner lit the fuse, blowing a hole in the wall fortifications everyone had spent over a month building.

You can imagine how popular I was after that.

I nodded glumly.

“None of the rangers are going to let you anywhere near the rocket launchers,” he said, musing. He studied me some more, then nodded as if making a decision.

I braced myself for the bad news, but he turned and flicked open the latches on the enormous steamer trunk in the corner. I stood straighter, now curious. Nobody had trunks like that anymore. Where had he even get such a thing?

He opened the chest, reached into the bottom and pulled out a slim longbow and a quiver of wicked looking arrows.

“I want you to try this,” he said, handing them to me.

“A bow and arrow?”

I looked up at him in surprise, grateful for another chance. The bow was light, though when I held it, it reached from my knee to well above my head. The quiver of arrows weighed more but was still manageable, with a strap that slung across my body, positioning the weight on my back where I was stronger, but still allowing me access to my sword—if I dared draw it outside of training.

“Yes. The bow is lightweight and easy to handle, relying on the skill of the archer, rather than the strength. With these arrows, if you pull hard, it’s strong enough to pierce the underbelly scales. You’d need a lot of arrows to bring down a dragon and retrieving them is problematic, which is why the guard prefers the javelins, but a well-placed arrow can distract and give our soldiers time to retreat or regroup.”

He reached over my shoulder and lifted out one arrow, showing me a series of wicked barbs on the point. “And pulling one of these out of a wound will make any dragon think twice about how much they really want to get shot by one.”

I ran my hands over the bow, feeling the curve warm under my hands. I was itching to try it. This time, maybe I had finally found something I could be good at.

“You will need to practice hard—but what you lack in...” Commander Ryan paused, trying to find a diplomatic way to describe my complete lack of grace or athletic ability. In the end, he gave up and simply waved vaguely at my skinny body. “What you lack, you make up for in intelligence, patience and perseverance. I think you will be good with the bow.”

I stared up at him, momentarily speechless and blinking back unexpected tears. “Thank you, Commander. That’s... that’s the first nice thing an officer has ever said to me.”

A complex expression flickered across his face, gone before I could interpret it. He put a hand over his heart. “You can do this, Lana. I feel it in here.”

I gripped the bow, my heart bursting with emotion.

He reached towards me and I thought for a mad moment he might kiss me, but he only brushed my braid out of the way with gentle fingers before replacing the arrow back in the quiver. He held my gaze a moment longer, then cleared his throat and looked away.

I opened my mouth to thank him but shouts followed by a deafening roar and screech of tearing metal broke into the moment.

“Stay here,” the Commander said, bolting for the door. “You haven’t practiced with that yet!”

I hesitated. Was that a direct order? Surely not. We were obviously being attacked. I couldn’t stay here in an office while who knew what was happening outside. Another crash thundered above me, and the roof shuddered ominously with the impact of whatever was going on out there. I decided dying outside on my feet was better than being crushed by a roof caving in on me. Tucking the longbow under my arm, I dashed after Commander Ryan.

I caught up to him at the entrance to the training yard as he tried unsuccessfully to run against a tide of people escaping the other way.

“It came out of nowhere!” someone exclaimed. “Didn’t even have time to sound the alarm!”

We raced into the wreckage of the training yard, Commander Ryan grabbing a javelin from the wall racks as he ran. People screamed, running for the relative safety of the guard towers as soldiers grabbed more gear from the weapons lockers in the yard.

“Commander!” yelled an injured recruit, his voice lit with fear as he lay crumpled against the wall, a massive, lurid green Razorback stalking towards him.

The Commander pulled his sword from his back, vaulting over a broken cart like an Olympian and slicing at the dragon’s massive tail as it slammed like a wrecking ball across the training yard.

The dragon shrieked like a banshee and whirled its head towards him. He hurled the javelin at its throat, but the creature deflected it with slash of its wing, and drew back, opening its maw to spray him with a blast of fire.

“Look out!” I yelled, but soldiers in the tower were watching too and peppered the dragon with a rain of javelin spears, successfully distracting it.

Which is what I should’ve been doing. A well-placed arrow, the Commander had said.

Pulling out an arrow, I held up the bow and tried to work out how to hold it, my mind bringing up images from movies about elves I’d seen as a kid. Yes, close to the body like this. But how did I get the arrow to stay in place at the front while I drew the bowstring back? Ah, there! A little notch on the bow held it up.

The dragon whipped its tail across the yard again, flattening everyone in its path and I hurriedly drew back into a doorway where I could aim without getting pulverized. Commander Ryan and five other soldiers charged at it from different sides, swords and spears slashing.

Drawing the bowstring back hard, I aimed it at the dragon’s underbelly as it reared up to avoid their swords and spears. Letting the arrow fly, I hissed as the metal fletching sliced my wrist as it whistled past. It flew toward the target, but too low, sailing uselessly across the chaos and thunking into the bottom of a wooden door on the other side of the training yard.

But that was better than I’d done with any other weapon so far.

Encouraged, I knocked another arrow, shifting my inner elbow out of the arrow’s path this time. Then I waited for a moment in the chaos where my target was broad enough to ensure I’d hurt only the enemy and not risk my team if my arrow went wide. Judging my the last shot, I need to aim a little higher.

Flames roared across the yard and several soldiers diverted away, trying to douse a fire at the entrance to the tower staircase.

Alistair Botley raced at the dragon screaming, and hacking at the dragon’s foot. Commander Ryan shouted a warning, but Alistair looked up too late. The Razorback snatched him up in its jaws and tossed him into the fortified wall, which he hit with a sickening crunch before dropping to the ground, unmoving.

The dragon whipped around, fixing it’s attention on one of the guard towers where soldiers were rallying. It’s head was high enough, and the angle was perfect for me to aim without endangering anyone. I aimed a little higher than I had last time and let the arrow loose.

It sailed up, glancing off the dragon’s head, nearly catching its golden eye.

I pumped my fist. Until that eye turned and focused directly on me, burning with malice. It started towards me, moving fast.

Well, shit.

I fumbled with another arrow, but the dragon and it’s wide open mouth of scary teeth were too close. Bracing for the inevitable, I shut my eyes.

“No!” someone shouted, “Lana, run!”

And suddenly Commander Ryan was there. He slashed the creature across the snout with his sword. It roared in fury, smashing the sword out of his grip with a devastating lash of its spikes, then snatched him up in its front claws.

I shrieked. Not him. Anyone but him. But the dragon didn’t immediately rip him to pieces. Instead, it gave a mighty flap of its wings that flattened several damaged outbuildings and made a leap for the sky.

My heart lurched. It was taking him - like the others we’d heard about. And if not for Commander Ryan, it would have been me. And if not for my arrow, this might never have happened.

Horrified, I looked for my team, hoping for someone better than me, but they were already down or cowering under the guard towers. There was no but me.

I leaped for the creature’s tail, the only piece of it still in reach, grabbing one of the lethal spikes and swinging myself up until I got a leg over its tail and could get a better hold.

My delay had cost me though. I had intended to draw my sword and stab it, distract it and get it to drop the Commander like we’d been told, but the dragon swung its tail wildly as it pushed for the sky and there was no way I could draw that bloody sword one handed while still hanging on. I was facing the wrong way and it was hard enough just to keep my grip, even with my legs wrapped tightly around the tail, my knuckles white around those handy spikes.

In seconds, we were too high in the air and moving swiftly away from the settlement. If I somehow made the dragon drop the Commander now, he’d die from the fall instead.

I looked over my shoulder at the mighty flapping wings as we sailed up into the clouds. How long before we were too far away to ever get back home? And how long before the dragon turned its head and noticed me still latched onto its tail?

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