Thorne
Fire shot across the mostly blank field of pure asphalt, a blazing line of red-orange flames that acted like a living, breathing thing.
While it wasn’t truly alive, in the hands of the dragon shifter that wielded it there was little difference. The wrist-thick blazing line wrapped around the matte-black armored figure and with a mighty roar, he pulled the inhuman creature from its fight.
The dragon, fighting in its human form, hit the creature in midair as it came at it, driving it back and down, asphalt cracking outward as it drove the armored thing deep into the ground with supernatural strength. The dragon shifter hit it again. And again. The fight should have been over then and there.
Whatever it was fighting was strong though, and it struck back, sending the dragon tumbling end over end. It rose to its feet and closed again before being knocked back down, this time struggling to get up. The monster lurched and humped its way across the floor in its weird walking gait, headed toward a woman armed with an advanced weapon.
She opened up on it, hammering it with everything she had, but it came on implacably. More men, soldiers by their dress, joined in, expending round after round in a desperate attempt to stop it. Behind its advance the bodies of some of their comrades killed earlier in the attack lay still and unmoving, evidence of the creature’s ability to simply strip the life from any living thing.
One by one the soldiers ran out of ammunition except for the woman at their fore. She said something, and the other men turned and ran while she stayed behind. When her ammunition ran dry she pulled a pistol from her belt and kept on firing, all the while shouting something. Eventually the slide locked back, the gun empty. In a display of reckless courage she actually tossed the gun itself at her attacker, as if that would make a difference.
The armored creature loomed up before her, extending a pointed arm toward her. Mere moments before the creature made contact the dragon finally struggled to its feet. There was no audio, but it was obvious it was roaring a challenge of denial at the creature. Fire shot from its wrist, three or four times as wide as it had been before.
It pulled the attacker away from the female officer, and then in the blink of an eye it transformed, the large human form replaced by a massive dragon clad in carmine-red scales. It picked the creature up with its mouth, tossed it into the air, and hit it with a blast of dragonfire wider around than a human was tall.
The black creature took the brunt of the attack and was blasted clear of the view of the cameras.
“That was the first time.”
His attention was pulled from the screen he’d been watching as a woman—the same woman from the video—punched a view buttons to change the recording.
This time the cameras were overlooking some sort of loading facility for a transportation company. The buildings were old and graffiti-tagged, and piles of refuse were gathered everywhere.
As he watched, a huge scarlet-red dragon unleashed a fury of fire against another of the creatures—no, this was the same one he recalled being told. The rain of fire was so intense he found himself squinting. There was no way anything could survive the inferno being called down upon it.
And yet…there in the shadow of the flame he could see the creature, arm upraised to block much of the flames, backing toward a pile of metal poles. He watched in astonishment as it not only survived the fiery blaze, but was still strong enough to start launching poles at the dragon as if they were spears.
The concrete glowed red and flowed like liquid, but it didn’t stop the creature, the camera capturing its escape as it made the dragon duck away from the onslaught of molten-hot metal makeshift spears. The creature, the Outsider he knew it was called, slipped into a sewer, leaving bits and pieces of its melted black armor behind, the only evidence that it had even been hurt.
The video turned to static.
“That creature came through there,” the female officer said, stabbing a finger at the huge portal flickering at the far end of the chamber.
Thorne regarded it now. A hundred feet tall and easily that wide, it flickered and crackled with energy, the purplish borders containing a murky darkness that seemed like it should allow some visibility, but was in fact opaque.
“More of them will be coming,” Colonel Elin Mara said, emphasizing her earlier points. “You saw how effective our most advanced infantry weapon was against it. I have no interest in putting my soldiers in the position I was in when it first attacked. Not all of them will have a dragon around to save the day.”
Thorne shrugged. “What about those?” He pointed to the ten tube-like things along the rear wall of the cavern that housed the portal. Each one contained some sort of mechanical suit that looked designed to house a human of average size. There were weapons adorning the thing, giving it a fierce, warrior aspect to it.
“Those are untested,” Colonel Mara said. “I don’t want to rely on them. I need dragons to fight for me. That’s where you come in.”
He thought back to the videos she’d just shown him, and the sheer power of the things.
“You’re insane, right? One dragon had the power to barely stop the thing. It couldn’t even kill it. And you want me to stick around and be a part of that when the invasion comes?”
Colonel Mara glared at him. “Bring up the most recent images from the other side of the portal,” she snapped at the nearest technician, who rushed to obey.
A few seconds later the monitor in front of them began to display the grainy pictures that were all they could capture from the far side. Thorne knew that in the early days the military had tried to close the portal by sending a nuclear device through to the other side. While the portal had prevented the radiation and explosion from coming through, instead of collapsing, it had absorbed the energy and had actually grown nearly tenfold in size.
He looked at the screen. The images were gathered from robots hardened to resist the radiation and atmosphere on the far side, but they still had to send nearly a dozen robots to get one back that worked. Whatever was over there played hell with the electronics. It didn’t matter though; Thorne was easily able to see the ranks of Outsiders pulled up outside the radiation zone.
In the front were hundreds if not thousands of half-sized armored creatures, and behind them rank upon rank of their “normal” units. Squads of heavy infantry nearly twice the size of a human were dotted throughout, but that wasn’t what truly caught Thorne’s attention. Spaced at what appeared to be random intervals and towering over the massed infantry were what he’d learned were called Walkers. Giant four-legged constructs that massed as much as a full-grown dragon.
“Look at that,” Colonel Mara said heavily. “That is enough firepower to strip our planet of life entirely. Whatever these creatures are, they aren’t human. They just sit there. Waiting. Doing nothing. It’s going to be years before the radiation decays enough for them to come through. Years. And yet they just sit there, unmoving, as if the idea of waiting a few years to attack doesn’t bother them. It’s like they’re robots.” She shook her head at the oddity of that. “Thank goodness the radiation seems to affect them the same way it does us. It’s the only thing that’s going to give us a chance.”
“I fail to see what this has to do with me,” he ground out.
“Thorne. You are a dragon. You can fight these things. Have you not talked to Vanek yet? Seen his testimony?”
“Oh sure. I heard it. When he mated, it apparently gave him some sort of superpower that allowed him to become impervious to the Outsider’s life-sucking ability, and he developed the strength to kill it with relative ease. Good story, Colonel. Real good story. Unfortunately, I don’t believe it.”
She stared at him. “Are you serious? You’re a man who can shapeshift into a dragon. You can breathe fire or acid, and have the strength of tens of men. Yet you don’t believe that the bond between you and your mate can help strengthen you? Really? That’s what you don’t believe?”
“Luckily it’s my choice,” he said angrily.
“Indeed it is,” she retorted. “So I’ll give you your options. One, you can work with us. We’ll pay you handsomely in your treasure of choice, and do everything we can to help you find a mate, so that when the time comes, you can fight the Outsiders on an even footing or even with a bit of an advantage. Or two, you can refuse to fight, we put you back to sleep where we found you, and you can die encased in stone at some later date. Take your pick.”
Thorne’s eyebrows shot up as Colonel Mara stared him down, her amber eyes hard and unyielding. This was the first time he’d seen her assert herself, and suddenly he realized just what it was that Kallore saw in this feisty human. She wasn’t for him, which was good because challenging Kallore was not high on his list of “fun activities to do on a Saturday,” but her spirit was admirable.
Still, she wanted him to agree to stay and fight those horrific things. To risk his life for a world that he’d not asked to be brought back into. Thorne had fled into the long sleep of dragonkind for a reason. At the time he’d been perfectly okay with it. But now, reawakened into an age of unprecedented technology and advancement, the idea of being put back under didn’t exactly agree with him.
Then again, fighting one of the Outsiders didn’t appeal to him much either.
“I’ll need to think about it,” he stated.
“Fine. Take some time, but you’re not to leave the base. If you do, I’ll send Kallore after you. Or Vanek.”
Thorne swallowed hard at that threat. Kallore was a nightmare he was aware of from before he’d gone to sleep. But Vanek…Vanek was death incarnate. Thorne may as well give up if Vanek was ordered to come after him. It would be easier and less painful that way.
“I can do that.”
“Fine. Now get out of my sight.”
Recognizing that he’d been dismissed, Thorne walked out of the huge cavern, past the rows of battlesuits and back up the tunnel toward the surface, his steps guiding him unerringly toward the only destination that seemed appropriate.
It was time he got really drunk.