Worlds War One

xxxi [Quest]

Quest stood nearest the newest member of the Misfits. He didn't know what possessed him. Certainly, it wasn't Autumn, as she'd failed on Saanvi's order to stop Argyro from releasing the dragon. Quest's action wasn't very soldier-like. He'd seen combat in Niger and couldn't imagine reaching out to hold the hand of a fellow soldier. Yet Quest grabbed ahold of Penina's porcelain hand as they faced a ferocious foe.

It was strange to reach out to someone, but he had never encountered a dragon before.

Instead of staring at the fearsome creature down the lane, Penina stared at Quest. She gazed down at the connection between the two, hands held. What was this thing between them?

His dads had once told Quest the story of how they'd met. They loved to embellish, the truth two twists from the telling. It had been an unexpectedly rainy day in May. They'd both been at Burberry, and there had been one umbrella left for purchase. Reginald and Harvey had each reached for it at the same time. After some fabulous small talk, they'd agreed to share the umbrella, planning to walk Reginald home first, then let Harvey take it from there. Well, they were in love by the time they'd gotten halfway along, so smitten that they hadn't even noticed the rain had stopped and the sun was shining. They'd walked along under the umbrella even under the cloudless sky, only realizing when they'd arrived at Reginald's front door. As they'd retracted the umbrella, they had both looked up at the most colorful rainbow either had ever seen. And so the legend went...

Quest had suspected several story elements were embellished, but as he grew older, he realized it wasn't the details that mattered but the truth at the center. It was a tale of true love. He'd wondered if it could take hold so quickly, that slip and slide of being smitten. Quest had been open to finding that feeling his whole life, comfortable dating either gender, no avenue left unexplored. Or so he'd thought. There was a whole 'nother world of opportunity. A Wider World bigger than being a boy or a girl or something in between. Penina was something else.

There was no May shower. No shared umbrella. No rainbow. Maybe Quest would tell his son sometime about a Lost City and certain death and a pretty, marbled Penina who faced a dragon with him, hand in hand.

Or maybe he wouldn't live long enough for fancy tales.

The dragon lifted its head into the air and roared, a jet of liquid red fire erupting from a mouth opened as wide as an overhead garage door. The sound was like a waterfall made of flame, a rush of a rocket's blastoff, an inferno avalanche. The creature examined the line of soldiers and civvies standing at the other end of the lane, then noted the scattering bystanders running down side streets here and there, and finally focused on the two Magi nearest that magnificent murderous manifestation. With a motion so fast Quest couldn't even register it, the dragon's head lashed out on a serpentine neck, and its mouth snapped Hristos in half, then fourths, swallowing the legs whole and leaving the bifurcated torso.

Argyro screamed as her brother became the dragon's first victim.

The Magi would not be the last.

"You can't control a dragon," Saanvi shouted, stepping back as the creature surveyed its options for another meal. "You only unleash it. Its only limitation is that it cannot harm the one who released it. Argyro might be the only one who lives through this."

"What did you do to that family to make it resort to releasing a dragon?" Ji cried.

"Nothing so terrible as to require Armageddon, I assure you, Seaman Choi."

"What do we do?" Fox asked. "How do we stop that thing?"

"We don't have the power to kill it," Saanvi said. "We have to trap it. Put it back where it came from."

"Fit it back into the hat?" Lieutenant Robinson looked from the dragon to the object from whence it came, discarded in the middle of the lane.

The dragon noticed Autumn. The Ghost stood paralyzed with fear in front of it. The squad shouted for her to run, but she could not move. The dragon sniffed, huffed, then sprayed the place where Autumn stood with a deluge of flame. The smoke cleared to reveal cobblestones melted into slag, and storefronts on either side of the lane scorched, but Autumn stood unscathed. She was immortal indeed. Immaterial. A Ghost.

"Can Autumn possess a dragon?" Quest asked. "Make it crawl back inside the hat?"

"Sheeee can onlyyyy control someone with a soul," Penina answered, still holding his hand. "That thing has no soul."

"Then maybe," Fox suggested, "we run!"

The dragon busied itself with gulping up fleeing civilians and torching innocent bystanders, a full buffet of Wider World eccentricities. Quest had cataloged a meal of a Magi, three aliens, four Humans, two lumps of Golem, and a Demon who went down fighting, managing to break off one of the dragon's fangs before being swallowed whole. Exhausting all available appetizers in its immediate vicinity, it surveyed the main course and saw the Misfits retreating down a narrow side street. With a great beat of wings, the dragon took to flight. It wanted Saanvi and the squad.

Quest still held Penina's hand, and she led him along the winding lanes of the Lost City. She was a navigator. She knew side passages and hidden alleys, but the dragon was above, and they couldn't avoid the beast. There was no escaping the predator that had them in its sights.

"We need to split up," Lieutenant Robinson said. "Private Ramírez, take Penina and sprint west. Seaman Choi, circle back east and rendezvous with Autumn. Airman Fox, take the obol so you can return Private Golden to the land of the living if the rest of us don't survive this. Drill and I will escort the princess and lead the dragon north, away from the most populated area of the Lost City."

"No," Ji replied. He stopped. He stood in the middle of the lane.

"That's an order, Seaman Choi."

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant, but that seems like a suicide mission," Ji said. "We're soldiers. We fight."

"You'll die," Saanvi declared.

Ji turned to Penina, still holding onto Quest. "You said I was half an Angel. Now Autumn couldn't manage to access her powers, but maybe I can. What kind of abilities does a nephilim have?"

"Speeeeed. Strength. Agilityyyy. Invulnerabilityyyy. To a certain degreeeee."

Ji unsheathed his Bowie knife with the jade blade. "This is from the First World. Can it harm a dragon?"

Penina shrugged. "Perhaps."

A shadow covered them, like a storm cloud rolling across a May sky promising rain. But there was no umbrella available to share with the beautiful Penina, nor a Burberry nearby to shop for one, so this story might not end in a fashion that would allow Quest to tell his son someday about how he'd met the person of his dreams.