Order Harbinger

Prologue: Side A

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Not before the sky split.

But those were dragons, sure as anything. Maria frowned and squinted. They were quick dragons too, that was for sure. First came the world-shattering crash, as if The Great One Above had dropped a guillotine somewhere in Heaven, then the dragons appeared and began unceasingly circling the town of Lumin that sat at the bottom of the valley. Maria watched from her perch at the edge of her family’s farm that was nestled in the upper left side of the valley. She glanced at the dragons, weaving throughout the sky, then at Lumin, bustling with its magical delicacies, then to the dragons, then to Lumin. Her mom and pop were down there, probably staring agape at the shadowlike behemoths overhead, alongside everyone else in the town. Butterflies hummed in Maria’s stomach, dancing in interpretations of both anxiety and excitement.

Dragons looked odd. They were nothing like the tooth and scale dragons that she read about in her books, the ones that filled her with childlike wonder, even after eighteen winters. Their wings did not move, nor did their tails, yet they glided effortlessly through the air. They had no eyes, no mouths, no feet nor hands nor claws, yet they glided effortlessly through the air. Their bodies reflected the sun’s light in scintillant beams, sleek like blacksmiths’ swords, yet they glided effortlessly through the air. Despite all these eccentricities, the most peculiar thing was the quality of their roars. The sound was far from expressive– it did not carry emotion nor inflection. They were consistent, unbreaking grumbles that emanated from deep within the dragons, yet the subtle sound thrummed over the entire valley and far beyond, shaking the ground where Maria stood. They were simply nothing like Maria had ever known in all of her youth. No magical brews from warlock bars in Lumin, no stories of giants from the stone cities, not even the three headed lions from the traveling jester court held a flame to these.

They were dragons. Beyond doubt. What else could they be? Maria stared, her mouth unhinged. She was so plainly dumbfounded that the necessities of logic and understanding escaped her. Dragons. Dragons that had erupted from air itself to soar around Lumin. Great One, was there anything more fantastic than this moment? Would this be the pinnacle of it all? If her life peaked here, she would live content for the rest of her days. Just as the edges of a smile began to spread across her face, a knot tightened in her chest.

The dragons- both of them, at the same time- suddenly laid eggs. They were great, pitch black, shiny forms that were so perfectly and precisely cylindrical you would’ve sworn a human created them. But no– they dropped right from the bellies of the dragons. She watched them fall, creating a sound close to a jongleur’s slide whistle as they careened towards the outskirts of Lumin. The smile lit up her face in its fullest form this time. A gift! A gift from dragons themselves! Newborn dragons to–

Everything turned white.

Pure benevolence? A gift from The Great One Above? Were the dragons heaven sent? Maria’s moments of reverential awe were cut short by the shockwave. She felt it- a colossal rush of wind- a split second before she heard it. It was like the sky split once again, yet this time it was sourced by what was left of the town of Lumin. The dragon eggs hadn’t been gifts. They had caused pharaonic explosions, leaving nothing but a burning crater where the lovely, magical town of Lumin had once stood. Maria’s head was shaking involuntarily. Her mouth was moving, but no sound escaped her throat. She did the only thing she knew how to do. She ran. She ran before emotions could plant themselves in her mind, she ran before she could even begin to process the implications the crater behind her held. She ran like Hell, casting one last glance over her shoulder towards the dragons overhead.

One of the dragon’s backs had split open.

Something from within it escaped and jumped off, soaring towards… her? Maria’s eyes widened in fear. It came within shouting range in seconds, and she could hear the thing yelling nonsensical words at her. It was like a human, but it was clad in pitch black cloth, including its face, and had a singular wing attached to it by four small stringlike… things.

The words the dragon-reject shouted became no clearer as it neared, but Maria could not look away. Moments before it landed, it made a motion with its fingers, its pointer and middle finger pointed downwards before dancing forward rapidly. She knew the motion. Everyone did. Whatever the dragon escapee was, it was telling her to run.

So she did.

~

Prologue: Side B

“The dragon is in the valley,” Pilot Hennard confirmed through his radio. It was the Space Force’s exquisite code for being safely locked into their cockpits and prepared for takeoff. Ever since the limits of the Solar System had been colonized, the United Space Corporation of Earth, or, for those who wished to save their tongues from unnecessary twisting, the USCE had been hellbent on further progression.

They weren’t interested in other solar systems. Earth, Mars, and the moons of the gas giants were all they were interested in this dimension. The USCE Interplanetary Coalition had decided that multiversal travel was the next step. Naturally, with his luck, Pilot Hennard and his fellow pilot Captain Luther had been chosen for the job that could either kill them, seal them in a different reality, or kill them after being sealed in a different reality. Hennard switched off his intercom for a moment to let out a sigh. Expressions of fear weren’t taken kindly in the Space Force.

He wasn’t all too concerned with the prospects of death from speed or acceleration. Centuries ago, that would’ve meant certain death, but after countless years of traveling at the speed of light as the norm, humans had simply evolved to withstand such brutish forces with little to no physical damage. Even in an interplanetary civilization, Darwin’s theory of evolution perpetually proved itself.

No, it was the prospects of the mission that concerned Hennard. One of four things were likely to happen. Considering the projected intent was to accelerate past the speed of time to enforce a dimensional rift, their bodies could absorb the time and treat it as if it were normal time, and Hennard and Luther would rapidly age and decompose in outer space as they flew away from any conception of civilization.

Not ideal.

They could end up either in the dead zones of multidimensional space, where it was nothing but sheer blackness and the dim twinkle of stars, or on a planet or within a star. It was an odd thing– undoubtedly there was far more open space than planets or stars in the multiverse, yet because it was sheerly infinite and perpetual in nature, there were an infinite amount of planets, and an infinite amount of stars. So, by nature, infinity and infinity equalled, despite being technically disproportionate, so there was an equal chance of arrival in space, on stars, or somewhere within a planet’s gravitational pull. The whole subject gave Hennard a headache, and he made active strides to not to spend too much time on it.

The hypothetical that Hennard feared the most was reaching a planet somewhere in the multiverse that sustained life. Innocent life. The term “innocent life” had no meaning to the Interplanetary Coalition. When the USCE had first colonized Mars and discovered a sentient species there, they launched firebomb airstrikes upon the hives immediately, and poisoned the rest. Not a single survivor. No chance for opposition. As a result, Mars was colonized, and the first step of the Interplanetary Civilization was a success.

If there were living organisms wherever they disembarked, Luther and Hennard were instructed to annihilate them immediately using the bombs stored within the planes each man sat in. Luther would obey. That terrified Hennard.

There was no time for second thoughts, though, and the radio crackled to life, as Luther also confirmed, “the dragon is in the valley.” Takeoff processions were enforced, and with a pit in his stomach, Hennard erupted from the port of Jupiter’s Calisto into deep space.

They ripped themselves from the gravitational pull of Calisto, then Jupiter, then the Solar System. Lightspeed. Beyond lightspeed. Vision was pointless now, there was nothing to perceive. There was nothing to feel, to hear, to experience. It was all a profound nothingness; it was not white, moreso the absence of existence. Was he dead? He couldn’t be dead, he was thinking about whether or not he was dead, and somewhere in his nonexistent body, he could feel a slight rush. The pit was still in his stomach. He was alive.

Hennard knew that after 45 seconds, the jets would shut down. Precisely the 40th second was the moment they were projected to break the time barrier. Perhaps he felt that second arrive, he wasn’t sure- it was like a jolt, a sweep of sudden force in a tunnel of nothingness. It brought him back to reality, and his eyes cleared suddenly.

They were soaring above a valley. God, it was so green. True, natural wildlife no longer existed in the solar system– not even on earth. Grass was artificially grown. The trees and shrubs and stalks that dotted the land below them were so beautifully rich with real, lively color. Neither Luther nor Hennard spoke as they sailed gently through the air, coasting in circles over the greenery.

The valley snaked across the planet below for miles. It was like the back of a dragon, with trees and bushes for scales and mini mountain peaks for dorsal spikes. The sky was so clean and so blue, a sea of rich color that they swam through. It was untouched by mechanical smog or the products of human-made fuel tanks. Hennard realized he was crying, but he couldn’t tell if it was sheer wonder or guilt. They were intruders. They were mechanical angels soaring in skies that should’ve been occupied by creatures of holy flesh and ichor.

Deep within the valley sat a town sporting architecture reminiscent of that of the middle ages of human life on earth. They certainly weren’t identical, the town here boasting minute, magical structural details that separated it from anything within earth's timeline. Hennard and Luther were forced to study the history of human architecture so as to ensure that they could confirm whether they arrived upon a new planet or accidentally time traveled. This was not an instance of time travel. This was a new planet in a different dimension that sustained human- or, something close to it- life. Hennard, in all of his thirty-eight year old manliness, squeaked through his tears with vibrant joy at the prospect of it all.

The intercom crackled. “Hennard, do you copy?”

“Roger,” Hennard said, the smile spread on his lips permeating his tone of voice. “Luther, are you seeing this? There’s–”

“Order Harbinger prepared for discharge,” Luther cut him off.

Hennard’s face quickly was wiped clean of the smile, and bile rose in his throat. His face flushed and sweat began to pour from his brow. “Harbinge- Luther, look at the town! It’s man-made! Not some organism like what they found on Mars, Luther, those are buildings! Created by–”

“Orders stand.” Luther was terrifyingly stoic. “Things don’t change because of the specifics. Order Harbinger to be executed in five. Four.”

“I’m not dropping my bomb,” Hennard proclaimed, finality rigid in his tone. “It’s staying with me. This isn’t happening.”

“We saw it coming. My lever is wirelessly connected to your ship.” Dread filled Hennard’s chest as he heard a smile on Luther’s face appear. “When I execute the order, your bomb will drop as well.”

“LUTHER!”

“Thank me later, Hennard, as you won’t be charged for USCE violations or betrayal. Countdown resumes. Three.”

“This is nothing short of genocide!”

“Two.”

Silence.

“One.”

The bombs fell. Hennard was now openly sobbing as the perfect bliss that was the valley erupted into small mushroom clouds that engulfed the flames. He looked around, praying that somehow the villagers had escaped, but this was impossible. They were medieval. They were all already dead. He knew this, and yet, still, his eyes darted around the valley, praying for–

Someone was running. Up in the valley, near what seemed to be a single farmhouse, someone was running. Hennard had already made up his mind. If he could save even one person from multidimensional colonization, he would. The threats of sheer atmospheric pressures had no place within his mind, and he felt a scream erupt from his throat as he ejected himself from the plane, and angled himself towards the runner. He called out to her; he screamed apologies upon apologies through the air that tore his throat bloody as he careened towards her. He engaged his parachute at last, just beyond what was considered safe. Only then it occurred to him that she likely had no idea what language he spoke, no concept of the words that escaped his lips. This was a planet from a different dimension, why would they speak English?

He did the best he could. He pointed his hand downward and motioned for her to run. She bolted off once more, and he threw the parachute from his back and ran after her. Luther will try to reach the USCE any way he can, he realized. If that happens, all life here will die. The green will be gone. Tears of rage blurred his vision as he tailed closely behind the runner. For the sake of whatever God rules this dimension, I’ll kill him before it happens.