Chapter One: On Fire
There are a couple of things that just don’t happen to you every day of your life. One of those is nearly dying. I would know. I mean, it’s only happened three times in my life so far-once when I was a kid and I nearly drowned in the waves, once when I was a teenager and I had a little too much to drink (and by a little I mean I almost killed myself with alcohol poisoning,) and once when I was twenty-four and I crashed my car into a dragon.
I know. I know! It sounds crazy, right? I was sure I was crazy when it first started. That is, when I ran into it and it breathed enough fire to burn down a small forest, which it started doing because apparently that day was not my day.
I screamed a lot, not that screaming ever helps when you’re alone and driving through the wilderness on a Wednesday afternoon in your hand-me-down pickup truck that your dad gave to you on your sixteenth birthday even though he knew the transmission was shot and it was so not the kind of car you wanted a girl to drive for her first time.
Me, bitter? Never.
Anyway, not only did the forest burst into flame, so did my engine. Which... was no good because the seatbelts in the truck were temperamental at best, and required the Jaws of Life at worst. And today was one of those days where you needed the Jaws of Life, which was really unfortunate because I was a little too busy screaming my head off at the spontaneous combustion of both my engine and the forest to try and, you know, escape.
And that was just the beginning. Because then the dragon decided that I was its snack.
Okay, so I dont’ know that for sure. Dragons aren’t actually capable of communicating with people who don’t speak their language (shut up it’s true,) and it’s not like I was interested in finding out whether or not it wanted to eat me or eat the car or just get me out of danger (which would have been really sweet of it, actually.) All I know is that suddenly I was being lifted up from the ground in the truck, and I just kept screaming until I was face to face with this giant-ass dragon.
How did I know it was a dragon? IT FUCKING LOOKED LIKE ONE. Okay, so it didn’t really. It looked more like a giant dinosaur, BUT WHAT KIND OF DINOSAUR BREATHES FUCKING FIRE?
My point exactly.
So I looked this dragon right in the eye, and I was sure I was going to die. Actually, I think I said it. “OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO DIE I’M GOING TO DIE I’M GOING TO DIE.” And I really believed myself. It’s so crazy how that works, that the more negative things you tell yourself, the more likely you are to believe you. Like when I tell myself, “Okay Finn, you can do this, you can you can you can,” I don’t believe me at all. But when I say things like “OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO DIE”? I really believe me. Like, a lot. I was going to die. This was it. I was a goner. I was never going to see my boyfriend or my dad or my sister again. I was going to die.
And then someone threw a grenade at the dragon and it dropped me. Yeah. Dropped me. Not put me down nicely and gently so I wouldn’t get crushed or squished. Nope. It fucking dropped me at least fifty and a half feet to the ground. Have you ever seen a truck bounce? No? Know why? BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO. But my truck did. It bounced back up into the air and back down.
I had stopped screaming by the time it came back down the second time. Because I had kind of slipped into total shock. Things were burning around me, my truck was bouncing, and a dragon was screaming a dragon scream (which is a horrible, horrible noise I hope you never ever have to experience,) as it writhed around because someone had thrown a grenade in its face. Yeah. I was a teeny bit shocked to still be alive. Injured, yeah, but alive.
And that was when I saw them for the first time. All of them together, anyway, because I had seen some of them earlier in my life except that’s an entirely different story that will become relevent soon. Um. Whatever. Anyway.
I’ll never forget, the first one I saw was Gordon, even though Lucky was standing right next to him and Lucky is hugely tall and often draws the eye. But nope, not for me. It was Gordon first, always Gordon, a gun in his hand and that look on his face that told you you were going to be okay. I think I actually smiled, until he raised the gun at me and shot twice. Then the smile went away and I started forming the words ‘oh shit’, because, uh... oh shit, I was gonna die. There was no way around it. This old guy with very tired-looking eyes was going to kill me dead, and then I was going to be... well, dead.
And then he fired the gun over my head, at the dragon behind me. Which, at the time, I assumed was kind of a dumb idea, because what the hell is a bullet going to do to a GIANT FUCKING DRAGON? Nothing, right? I mean, those scales are probably made out of a whole load of crazy shit, like, I don’t know, gold or volcanic rock or something similar. I DON’T KNOW. I’M NOT A SCIENTIST, AND I’M NOT PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN TAKING A SCALE FROM A GIANT FUCKING THING THAT COULD EAT ME.
Well, it turns out Gordon was bright in his own way after all, even though the dragon started moving towards him-and me. Actually, it stepped over me, which was really nice of it, especially after it had dropped me and stuff. It didn’t squish me! Which, yeah, was nice. In hindsight, it could have been worse. It always could have been worse.
Now that the dragon was officially past me, it might have been a smart idea to, I don’t know, try and get OUT of the car and RUN AWAY AS FAST AS I FUCKING COULD. But I didn’t. Because again, shock. All that shock. Because it had just clicked where I had seen the old man with the tired eyes before---
When I had nearly drowned. He had grabbed me from the waves and put me on the shore, or at least I thought that’s what had happened because it was a little difficult to remember, mostly because I kept slipping in and out of consciousness and coughing up water violently. I was positive he had at least been there, though. Because I never forget a face. Ever.
And that’s when the woman (Shiloh, though I didn’t know it at the time) ran up to the truck (which, I would like to point out, was still on fire,) and smacked the windshield a couple of times, her hand darting through the flames while at the same time she tried to open the door. “You gotta get out of the car!” she yelled at me through the open window. I jerked back to reality and realized, uh, yeah, I really had to get out of the car. Except there was still that whole problem with the seatbelt.
“I can’t!” I yelled back at her. “My seatbelt!” I yanked it a couple of times to show her that nope, it wasn’t coming lose. And it wasn’t.
Oh man, was I fucked.
That is until she shouted a name I didn’t catch between the screams of the dragon and the popping the front of my car was making as it slowly was consumed by flames. And out of the wilderness (that was on fire, I might like to add,) comes another man, running up to my car with a grenade-launcher in one hand and a pistol in another. He looked like the biggest damn hero ever and I’ll admit, I stared for a second. Because dude. A fucking GRENADE-LAUNCHER?
At least now I knew where the grenade had come from.
He paused next to the truck, looking for all intents and purposes, pissed as hell. And he hadn’t even seen me yet. “Shiloh, what the fuck are you doing?” he demanded. “Gordon’s out there, with LUCKY as back-up, and we have to go-“ he immediately cut off when he saw me. “Who the fuck is that?” he asked, voice absolutely dead.
“Just some girl,” Shiloh (the woman, I would later find out,) said. “Victim. Or, you know, whatever. Her car’s kind of on fire.” She gestured vaguely at the front of the truck, which was still burning nicely. “Seatbelt’s stuck. I need your knife. I’ll be over there soon.”
The man just looked at me, his eyebrow raised, clearly evaluating me for one purpose or another. And then he shrugged. “Just leave her,” he said. My jaw dropped, though the reaction from Shiloh was decidedly less dramatic. She simply raised her eyebrows back at him and held out her hand. I didn’t understand how she could be so calm, when my truck was ON FIRE, and there was a FUCKING DRAGON over there. But then again, I wasn’t panicking too much either anymore-mostly just angry that I was being left for dead, especially after I’d managed to survive for so long. I was about to say something nasty to the guy, but he sighed at the woman, reached into his back pocket and handed her a knife.
“Be quick about it,” he said. Behind the truck, the dragon screamed again, and then there were more human cries. “Oh fuck,” he muttered, then ran towards the screams. “Hurry, Shiloh!” he shouted over his shoulder. “That was Lucky.”
“Shit.” She reached into the truck and quickly sliced the lap belt, then opened the door and started running.
“Wait!” I called after her as I stumbled out of the truck, tripping on the rocks in the road. “What am I supposed to do?” She didn’t answer me, didn’t even look back, so I just stood there for a minute, then glanced at my truck. The fire had by now spread and the windshield popped with a bang, sending shards of glass all over the front seat, and then the seat itself exploded into flames. I stared blankly my now-totally-consumed-by-fire truck, and then ran after her.
Well, it was a mess by the time I got there. There was a really tall-I mean like really, REALLY tall-man on the ground, convulsing, as the older man-the one I had known before-tried to hold him still and shoot the dragon at the same time. The woman who had saved me was also shooting at the dragon, and as for the one who wanted to leave me for dead...
Of course, I wasn’t too concerned about that at the moment. I am a medical student after all (well, was, before all these shenanigans happened,) and even though I hadn’t technically taken the Hippocratic Oath yet, they told us at medical school that we were supposed to live our lives by it anyway. So, not thinking of the dragon whatsoever, I ran over to the group, only pausing to dodge a fireball... spitball of fire? Whatever, I’m not in charge of knowing the mechanics of... well, anything beyond the human body. Or, um, humanoid body. Whatever.
I had to dive to avoid another fire...firespitball of firey spit. Or whatever. I was going to get burned to a crisp, so I had to avoid it by throwing myself at the small group, crashing face first into a bunch of gravel. “Fuck!” I hissed, and then picked myself up off the ground.
“What the hell?!” Shiloh demanded. “I told you to stay by the truck!”
“You didn’t tell me anything!” I shot back. “Now what’s going on?”
“What do you THINK is going on?!” the old man shouted at me. “There’s a fucking dragon that you aggravated, and now it’s scratched Lucky...”
“Well, I’m a doctor, maybe I can help!” I yelled back, avoiding the argument about how I hadn’t really aggravated the dragon, not on purpose anyway.
“You’re a doctor?” he raised an eyebrow at me, which I didn’t totally understand-was I really that bad of a liar?
“Okay, so I’m a med student, so I’m like half a doctor. Really, I just wanna help, and this looks pretty bad.” I gestured at the man, who was still seizing pretty violently. “I know at least basic stuff, until we can get him to a hospital.”
“That’s not going to happen,” the man said distractedly, squeezing off another shot at the dragon. “Come on, Morgan,” he muttered under his breath.
I stared, open-mouthed at him for a second. “But I’m only half a doctor, and this man is very clearly sick or... I don’t know, but he needs immediate professional medical attention. Like, now immediate, not whenever you see fit.”
“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed,” Shiloh growled at me, “but there is kind of a dragon that you provoked over there, and it doesn’t look very interested in letting us go to a hospital. And even when we get there, what are we supposed to say? ‘Oh, yeah, sorry, here’s the patient, he’s having an adverse reaction to a poisonous dragon scratch, can you fix that for us thanks.’” She wasn’t looking at me in the least, her whole focus on the dragon as she fired another shot with her stupid tiny handgun. I was getting sick of being talked down to by this point, and so made a move to swipe the gun out of her hand-not the smartest of moves on my part, but I’d had a hard day. It was forgivable.
“Okay, first of all, stop firing at that fucking thing with that tiny gun,” I snapped. “Because there is no way in hell you’re going to even hurt it with that thing. Secondly, I’m only half a doctor, but you are all a bunch of DUMBASSES. This man needs medical attention NOW, and I don’t know how you got here, but I need a vehicle because mine is kind of on fire, and if you don’t do something NOW I will drag this man to the nearest town with cell reception and call the fucking police. Do you understand?”
“Bombs away!” shouted the man who had wanted to leave me for dead earlier. He had somehow managed to climb up one of the cliffs, and had his grenade launcher aimed at the dragon’s head. The old man grabbed my shoulder and shoved me down as he fired.
I know. I know! It sounds crazy, right? I was sure I was crazy when it first started. That is, when I ran into it and it breathed enough fire to burn down a small forest, which it started doing because apparently that day was not my day.
I screamed a lot, not that screaming ever helps when you’re alone and driving through the wilderness on a Wednesday afternoon in your hand-me-down pickup truck that your dad gave to you on your sixteenth birthday even though he knew the transmission was shot and it was so not the kind of car you wanted a girl to drive for her first time.
Me, bitter? Never.
Anyway, not only did the forest burst into flame, so did my engine. Which... was no good because the seatbelts in the truck were temperamental at best, and required the Jaws of Life at worst. And today was one of those days where you needed the Jaws of Life, which was really unfortunate because I was a little too busy screaming my head off at the spontaneous combustion of both my engine and the forest to try and, you know, escape.
And that was just the beginning. Because then the dragon decided that I was its snack.
Okay, so I dont’ know that for sure. Dragons aren’t actually capable of communicating with people who don’t speak their language (shut up it’s true,) and it’s not like I was interested in finding out whether or not it wanted to eat me or eat the car or just get me out of danger (which would have been really sweet of it, actually.) All I know is that suddenly I was being lifted up from the ground in the truck, and I just kept screaming until I was face to face with this giant-ass dragon.
How did I know it was a dragon? IT FUCKING LOOKED LIKE ONE. Okay, so it didn’t really. It looked more like a giant dinosaur, BUT WHAT KIND OF DINOSAUR BREATHES FUCKING FIRE?
My point exactly.
So I looked this dragon right in the eye, and I was sure I was going to die. Actually, I think I said it. “OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO DIE I’M GOING TO DIE I’M GOING TO DIE.” And I really believed myself. It’s so crazy how that works, that the more negative things you tell yourself, the more likely you are to believe you. Like when I tell myself, “Okay Finn, you can do this, you can you can you can,” I don’t believe me at all. But when I say things like “OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO DIE”? I really believe me. Like, a lot. I was going to die. This was it. I was a goner. I was never going to see my boyfriend or my dad or my sister again. I was going to die.
And then someone threw a grenade at the dragon and it dropped me. Yeah. Dropped me. Not put me down nicely and gently so I wouldn’t get crushed or squished. Nope. It fucking dropped me at least fifty and a half feet to the ground. Have you ever seen a truck bounce? No? Know why? BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO. But my truck did. It bounced back up into the air and back down.
I had stopped screaming by the time it came back down the second time. Because I had kind of slipped into total shock. Things were burning around me, my truck was bouncing, and a dragon was screaming a dragon scream (which is a horrible, horrible noise I hope you never ever have to experience,) as it writhed around because someone had thrown a grenade in its face. Yeah. I was a teeny bit shocked to still be alive. Injured, yeah, but alive.
And that was when I saw them for the first time. All of them together, anyway, because I had seen some of them earlier in my life except that’s an entirely different story that will become relevent soon. Um. Whatever. Anyway.
I’ll never forget, the first one I saw was Gordon, even though Lucky was standing right next to him and Lucky is hugely tall and often draws the eye. But nope, not for me. It was Gordon first, always Gordon, a gun in his hand and that look on his face that told you you were going to be okay. I think I actually smiled, until he raised the gun at me and shot twice. Then the smile went away and I started forming the words ‘oh shit’, because, uh... oh shit, I was gonna die. There was no way around it. This old guy with very tired-looking eyes was going to kill me dead, and then I was going to be... well, dead.
And then he fired the gun over my head, at the dragon behind me. Which, at the time, I assumed was kind of a dumb idea, because what the hell is a bullet going to do to a GIANT FUCKING DRAGON? Nothing, right? I mean, those scales are probably made out of a whole load of crazy shit, like, I don’t know, gold or volcanic rock or something similar. I DON’T KNOW. I’M NOT A SCIENTIST, AND I’M NOT PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN TAKING A SCALE FROM A GIANT FUCKING THING THAT COULD EAT ME.
Well, it turns out Gordon was bright in his own way after all, even though the dragon started moving towards him-and me. Actually, it stepped over me, which was really nice of it, especially after it had dropped me and stuff. It didn’t squish me! Which, yeah, was nice. In hindsight, it could have been worse. It always could have been worse.
Now that the dragon was officially past me, it might have been a smart idea to, I don’t know, try and get OUT of the car and RUN AWAY AS FAST AS I FUCKING COULD. But I didn’t. Because again, shock. All that shock. Because it had just clicked where I had seen the old man with the tired eyes before---
When I had nearly drowned. He had grabbed me from the waves and put me on the shore, or at least I thought that’s what had happened because it was a little difficult to remember, mostly because I kept slipping in and out of consciousness and coughing up water violently. I was positive he had at least been there, though. Because I never forget a face. Ever.
And that’s when the woman (Shiloh, though I didn’t know it at the time) ran up to the truck (which, I would like to point out, was still on fire,) and smacked the windshield a couple of times, her hand darting through the flames while at the same time she tried to open the door. “You gotta get out of the car!” she yelled at me through the open window. I jerked back to reality and realized, uh, yeah, I really had to get out of the car. Except there was still that whole problem with the seatbelt.
“I can’t!” I yelled back at her. “My seatbelt!” I yanked it a couple of times to show her that nope, it wasn’t coming lose. And it wasn’t.
Oh man, was I fucked.
That is until she shouted a name I didn’t catch between the screams of the dragon and the popping the front of my car was making as it slowly was consumed by flames. And out of the wilderness (that was on fire, I might like to add,) comes another man, running up to my car with a grenade-launcher in one hand and a pistol in another. He looked like the biggest damn hero ever and I’ll admit, I stared for a second. Because dude. A fucking GRENADE-LAUNCHER?
At least now I knew where the grenade had come from.
He paused next to the truck, looking for all intents and purposes, pissed as hell. And he hadn’t even seen me yet. “Shiloh, what the fuck are you doing?” he demanded. “Gordon’s out there, with LUCKY as back-up, and we have to go-“ he immediately cut off when he saw me. “Who the fuck is that?” he asked, voice absolutely dead.
“Just some girl,” Shiloh (the woman, I would later find out,) said. “Victim. Or, you know, whatever. Her car’s kind of on fire.” She gestured vaguely at the front of the truck, which was still burning nicely. “Seatbelt’s stuck. I need your knife. I’ll be over there soon.”
The man just looked at me, his eyebrow raised, clearly evaluating me for one purpose or another. And then he shrugged. “Just leave her,” he said. My jaw dropped, though the reaction from Shiloh was decidedly less dramatic. She simply raised her eyebrows back at him and held out her hand. I didn’t understand how she could be so calm, when my truck was ON FIRE, and there was a FUCKING DRAGON over there. But then again, I wasn’t panicking too much either anymore-mostly just angry that I was being left for dead, especially after I’d managed to survive for so long. I was about to say something nasty to the guy, but he sighed at the woman, reached into his back pocket and handed her a knife.
“Be quick about it,” he said. Behind the truck, the dragon screamed again, and then there were more human cries. “Oh fuck,” he muttered, then ran towards the screams. “Hurry, Shiloh!” he shouted over his shoulder. “That was Lucky.”
“Shit.” She reached into the truck and quickly sliced the lap belt, then opened the door and started running.
“Wait!” I called after her as I stumbled out of the truck, tripping on the rocks in the road. “What am I supposed to do?” She didn’t answer me, didn’t even look back, so I just stood there for a minute, then glanced at my truck. The fire had by now spread and the windshield popped with a bang, sending shards of glass all over the front seat, and then the seat itself exploded into flames. I stared blankly my now-totally-consumed-by-fire truck, and then ran after her.
Well, it was a mess by the time I got there. There was a really tall-I mean like really, REALLY tall-man on the ground, convulsing, as the older man-the one I had known before-tried to hold him still and shoot the dragon at the same time. The woman who had saved me was also shooting at the dragon, and as for the one who wanted to leave me for dead...
Of course, I wasn’t too concerned about that at the moment. I am a medical student after all (well, was, before all these shenanigans happened,) and even though I hadn’t technically taken the Hippocratic Oath yet, they told us at medical school that we were supposed to live our lives by it anyway. So, not thinking of the dragon whatsoever, I ran over to the group, only pausing to dodge a fireball... spitball of fire? Whatever, I’m not in charge of knowing the mechanics of... well, anything beyond the human body. Or, um, humanoid body. Whatever.
I had to dive to avoid another fire...firespitball of firey spit. Or whatever. I was going to get burned to a crisp, so I had to avoid it by throwing myself at the small group, crashing face first into a bunch of gravel. “Fuck!” I hissed, and then picked myself up off the ground.
“What the hell?!” Shiloh demanded. “I told you to stay by the truck!”
“You didn’t tell me anything!” I shot back. “Now what’s going on?”
“What do you THINK is going on?!” the old man shouted at me. “There’s a fucking dragon that you aggravated, and now it’s scratched Lucky...”
“Well, I’m a doctor, maybe I can help!” I yelled back, avoiding the argument about how I hadn’t really aggravated the dragon, not on purpose anyway.
“You’re a doctor?” he raised an eyebrow at me, which I didn’t totally understand-was I really that bad of a liar?
“Okay, so I’m a med student, so I’m like half a doctor. Really, I just wanna help, and this looks pretty bad.” I gestured at the man, who was still seizing pretty violently. “I know at least basic stuff, until we can get him to a hospital.”
“That’s not going to happen,” the man said distractedly, squeezing off another shot at the dragon. “Come on, Morgan,” he muttered under his breath.
I stared, open-mouthed at him for a second. “But I’m only half a doctor, and this man is very clearly sick or... I don’t know, but he needs immediate professional medical attention. Like, now immediate, not whenever you see fit.”
“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed,” Shiloh growled at me, “but there is kind of a dragon that you provoked over there, and it doesn’t look very interested in letting us go to a hospital. And even when we get there, what are we supposed to say? ‘Oh, yeah, sorry, here’s the patient, he’s having an adverse reaction to a poisonous dragon scratch, can you fix that for us thanks.’” She wasn’t looking at me in the least, her whole focus on the dragon as she fired another shot with her stupid tiny handgun. I was getting sick of being talked down to by this point, and so made a move to swipe the gun out of her hand-not the smartest of moves on my part, but I’d had a hard day. It was forgivable.
“Okay, first of all, stop firing at that fucking thing with that tiny gun,” I snapped. “Because there is no way in hell you’re going to even hurt it with that thing. Secondly, I’m only half a doctor, but you are all a bunch of DUMBASSES. This man needs medical attention NOW, and I don’t know how you got here, but I need a vehicle because mine is kind of on fire, and if you don’t do something NOW I will drag this man to the nearest town with cell reception and call the fucking police. Do you understand?”
“Bombs away!” shouted the man who had wanted to leave me for dead earlier. He had somehow managed to climb up one of the cliffs, and had his grenade launcher aimed at the dragon’s head. The old man grabbed my shoulder and shoved me down as he fired.