In The Lair of the Draca (Book 2)

In the Lair of the Draca (Book 2) Chapter 88: Remembering [End of Part 1]

Julian had felt a stong urge to scoop one up-- as he'd thought at the time: what could it hurt?-- but Lu-Lu deftly urged him away.

"Fish no good," she'd whispered that day. "Make big poison. Can kill even big man. Must leave alone!"

Ahh, Luchek.

In spite of all of his military and Cosmos training, Julian was beginning to crack. All he could focus on was Luchek still being trapped there someplace in that evil dungeon. The spire was so close. He could even see it! How in the Hell could everything somehow still be so far away?

Zzzzt-ppping.

A third projectile found its way deep into the muscle of Julian's right calf, whirling him around with fantastic force. The pain was prompt and terrific; the only thing that kept him from crying out for his mother was the vomit that poured, even as he crumpled like a child's broken puppet.

This-hurts-This-hurts-This-huurrrrrts...

Agony thrummed in Julian's chest, keeping time with his overworked heart and respiratory system. The egg, all but forgotten, clattered onto the granite stones and rolled toward its maternal waters.

"Holy Mary and Joseph, he got me! He got me good!"

Who the hell am I talking to?

Bloated, bellowing and weeping in fresh agony, Julian tried to pivot onto his side. There was no way he could sit up. But maybe if he could reach down, just to feel how much of the arrow's shaft was protruding from his calf, he could better assess the damage--

But no. A new wave of nausea bubbled and he hurled once again. The vomit and blood from that god-damned arrow stained the rocks underneath him a sickly crimson. Julian couldn't move, breathe, or even think without white-hot shafts of pain spiraling through his neurons.

Still moaning, he grabbed awkwardly for traction but only bent his fingernails back on the unforgiving granite. Jesus, was there anything other than granite on this god-foresaken planet?

Julian felt like wilting beneath the hellish heat of the Twin Moons. He thought about pulling himself to a place of shade, but he couldn't even do that. Sandwitched here between opposing walls of the Ice-Capped Mountains, there was not a tree or even a bush to be found.

Julian's stomach roiled once more, but this time he threw up only bile. His stomach had run out of things to evict.

Slowly, Julian began to realize that he was going to die. Right here, right now, on a foreign planet where there were two red moons in the sky and all of the inhabitants had hair the color of the elephant ivory his Uncle Gregory liked to collect back on Earth. Back at home.

His body would lie here and return to the elements, but no one would memorialize him. Julian was bereft. He should have realized from the get-go that having landed here in that shitty escape pod would eventually mean the end of him. Why hadn't coming face-to-face with a god-damned dragon and witnessing Jean's slow descent into bitterness and suicide been enough to wake him up? All the people he'd ever known perished when The Celestial was destroyed. Yet he had barely been on this planet for days before meeting an E.T. and daring to fall in love with her.

What would the Army think? What about his family and friends, the soldiers he'd gone to basic training with? And what about Mom? Dad?

Or did any of that really matter anymore?

The rush of river water and the blood in his weary veins eventually melded into one dull, miserable roar. Julian knew he did not have the strength to remove the arrow from his leg. He wouldn't be able to walk anywhere even if he did. And if he could, what would be the point?

"Are you alive down there, boy?"

The muffled sound of Mr. Mountain Man gloating reached Julian's ears from very far away, or as if from underwater.

"If you are, it won't be for long. I come now to put you and the Old Woman's egg back into that river where you both belong!"

Slowly, tenderly, Julian assumed a fetal position. Perhaps dying, even at the hands of a mad-man, was better than living in this hell-hole, where the heat was unrelenting and literal dragons stalked human beings.

No reasonable person would be able to take this much longer.

But somewhere between the sound of footsteps from above and the approaching wail of a beautiful siren, there came a new turning point.

The stirring siren-song drew closer, and at a seemingly impossible speed. Before long, the wind was whistling with the advent of something massive, harnessing as much force as the turbo-jets from the air-shows Julian watched with his father as a kid.

This wasn't a turbo-jet, though. Julian knew that very well, even as his mind began to give way to the internal fog meant to anesthitize him in the throes of death.

In that moment, as the whistle died and the illusory 'siren' swooped lower into the valley, Julian finally remembered what had kept him going during all the insanity, what kept him placing one foot before the other while ignoring the part of him that wanted only to give up and die.

It hadn't been instinct, food, fear, or even Luchek.

The footsteps from the cavern stopped abruptly. There was a short yell, and then a swoosh before the valley fell silent once again.

Something of unimaginable power had stopped the Mountain Man in his tracks. That something then swirled gracefully and made another aerial pass, dipping low and continuing in a direct line toward Julian. But instead of snatching him up, or doing away with him as it had the unfortunate Mountain Man, it used graceful talons to grasp the arrow buried in Julian's thigh and ripped it clean out.

Unable to help himself, Julian brayed in fresh pain. The agony was so strong that he could not understand why his body didn't protect him by shutting down entirely.

The song of the Draca became shrill as she whirled for a final pass. It was almost in a whimsical wonder that Julian formed what he knew to be his final thoughts.

I remember who it was now, keeping me going all this time.

It was Julietta.

Scaled talons oustretched for him.

Julian squeezed his eyes shut and waited for death.