Olympus: It's Not Just a Game

Chapter 1

            Desperate, Karl remembered sign language.  He and Jacob shared a grandfather who could only talk through signs.  Slowly and deliberately, he spelled out D-R-A-G-O-N.  Then he added, rapidly and rudely, "Shut up!"

            Jacob announced a little pompously, "That's sign language."  Then he asked, "Do you know sign language?"

            "A little—just from watching the interpreters at our church."

            Interpreters?  Karl wondered.  Church?  Who was this girl?  What was she doing in his basement?

            She continued.  "But I couldn't follow that.  What did he say?"

            Jacob weighed this new opportunity.  This was too rich!  "Well, you see," he began, "He thinks he's a dragon.  That's why he's not saying any words."

            Enraged, Karl signed, "Not!"  Then he slashed his finger across his throat.

            The girl asked, "Does he want us to be quiet?"

            "Oh, no," Jacob said.  "He's afraid we want to cut his head off.  It's a very advanced case of paranoia."

            The girl sounded concerned.  "Paranoia?  That sounds serious!  What are your parents doing about this?"

            "Dad can't do much about it," Jacob said, with a fair imitation of a heart breaking.  "The doctors say it is curable, but the therapy is terribly, terribly expensive."

            Seething with fury, Karl turned his back on the ghostly voice of his maddening brother, who lectured on about diagnoses and prescriptions.  The dragon snored on—but then the dragon, unlike Karl, was completely in Olympus.

            Steeling himself, Karl slid his blade from its sheath.  Even in the green darkness beneath the trees, the sword shone.   After so many days of stalking the quarry, he would not let his brother's taunts distract him.  Maybe he could even profit from the situation—his microphone had to be picking up some of this chatter, and the beast was still sleeping soundly.  Perhaps he could risk moving a little closer.  Success, and he would be one of the heroes of Olympus.  He would collect everything this dragon had taken from other, less skillful, players.  Failure, and he would be dead—and after that, Dad would kill him when he found out what happened to the lawnmower money.

            He parted the underbrush with his blade and tiptoed toward the monster.  "Now what's he up to?  He's walking, but he isn't going anywhere," the girl noted.  "And what is that thing he's strapped into?"

            "Well, you see," said Jacob, "that harness he is wearing is for his own protection.  His convulsions get so violent that if he weren't strapped into that mechanical suit, he would have slammed right into a concrete wall."

            Karl threaded his way between the tall grass and the fern trees.  It was eerie to have two bodiless voices trailing after him.  They bobbed along behind him, passing harmlessly through tree branches.  He was close enough now that the hot breath from the dragon's mouth bent the tall grasses in front of him.  He stopped and thought.

            He couldn't be more than six feet from the dragon's mouth.  With a beast this size, there had to be a better place to be six feet away from.  He turned right and worked his way through the grasses along what should be the flank of the creature.  The female voice broke in.  "He turned around!  What's he doing now?"

            Jacob said, "Disorientation.  It's a side effect of the medication, they say."

            He had gone about half the distance he judged to be safe (if anything can be called safe when you are sneaking up on a dragon).  He was debating how much further he should go when the question was suddenly decided for him.  He stumbled over the dragon's tail.  The rumbling roar of the dragon's snore ended in a startled (and unexpectedly shrill) yelp.  Karl would have frozen in surprise if he hadn't been so busy falling down.

            It was the fall that saved him.  Had he hesitated—even half a second—that first bolt of flame would have fried him.  As it was, he tucked himself into an ungainly somersault and rolled back up on his feet.  By this time, his mind was back in gear and he flung himself through the air in the general direction of the beast's hide.  He half saw the tail, thick as a cedar trunk, lashing through the grasses where he had been standing.  One touch of that and his legs would have been pulp.  A bolt of sulfur-yellow flame sizzled through the air where he wasn't.  A tree took the blast head on, exploding into a fireball.

            His body was still hurtling through the air, but Karl's blade seemed to have a mind of its own.  The tip carved a deadly curve through the air.  The great green belly of the beast took the point, and then Karl landed, head and shoulders first, on the sword hilt.  The blade went home.  The creature shrieked, wrenching its body in a great arc of agony that hurled Karl through the air.  He smashed into the brush, still clutching his sword.  Trees were snapping left and right as the lashing tail splintered the forest.  Bursts of flame set the underbrush on fire.

            The girl shrieked.  "Something's wrong!"

            "It's the convulsions—sometimes they last for hours."

            He had wounded the monster, but how badly?  Should he run for it, hoping the creature was too weak to fly?  He forced himself to think, pushing through his fear.  If he had wounded it severely, he should stay to finish it off.  You don't get drachmas for leaving a sick beast to die by itself.  But what if it wasn't mortally injured?  Then there was even more reason to go for the deathblow.  Dragons were notorious for keeping a grudge!

            The blasts of flame were losing their force.  Was that weakness, or was it a trick?  Dragons were clever.  He tried to remember what he had heard about dragon flame.  It was hard to concentrate with the trees crashing around him and the flames roaring overhead.

            He uprooted a tuft of grass and hurled it into the fern-trees to his left.  The dragon went for it, rearing up to send a blast into the ferns that turned them into an instant bonfire.  So it had been faking!  But now the chest and belly of the beast were exposed for a moment.  This part he did remember—the old man at the weapon shop had said the heart lay just above and just between those powerful forelimbs.  He had paid good money for that tip.  He hoped it was worth it.  He lunged across the open space, eyes fixed on that one vulnerable spot.  Again, the blade did its work.  The heart, powerful enough to drive so great a beast, practically exploded as the sword pierced it.  Karl was blasted backwards into the ferns.  The tail lashed just over his head in the death-throes of the mighty serpent.

            As Karl lay on his back in the brush, Jacob's continuing chatter penetrated his consciousness.  "He's resting peacefully now.  They say that's a good sign—but it hardly ever lasts."  The girl timidly stepped out into the basement and peered down at Karl.

            Karl reached up and loosened the chinstrap on his helmet.  He pulled it from his head.  As he did so, Olympus vanished from view.  Inside the visor of the helmet, two tiny video screens still showed the green forest and the twitching dragon.  From two earpieces one could hear the faint sounds of burning trees.  He set the helmet carefully to his side.  For the first time, he realized that he was lying flat on his back in his basement, looking up at Jacob and a girl.  "You cockroach!" he roared.

            Jacob squeaked out a laugh, of sorts.  "I think I hear my homework calling." He scrambled up the basement stairs with remarkable speed.

            With Jacob gone, Karl found himself staring up into the wide blue eyes of the girl.  "Hi," he said.

            "Hello," she replied, cautiously.  She waited to see whether he would begin to hiss or merely start chewing the furniture.  After an uncomfortable pause, she asked, "What on earth is going on?"

            "Who cares about Earth?" he asked, eyes glowing.

            She bolted for the stairs.