They were more persistent than he’d originally suspected. As he flew on, they followed, all throughout the city until he wasn’t even sure that he was going the right way anymore. Their thick, whirling mechanical blades beat the air with such a racket that soon he thought his ears might burst. Sometimes they drew close enough that he caught a glimpse of their yellow, black-marked rounded shapes pulling up close to his sides, and he would desperately flap higher. We’re both determined. It’ll just come down to which one of us is more determined than the other!
He tried veering away from any skyscrapers, and the mechanical monsters seemed perfectly accepting of his choice; the more room he kept around himself, the more of them that could squeeze into the airspace behind him. Even worse, they didn’t ever get tired, but he didn’t have much energy left as it was. He began to falter. This is the end of the chase. How much farther do I have to go before I escape the city, or they give up? But they wouldn’t give up. The humans would track him down until they could capture or kill him, whichever came first—He certainly wouldn’t lie down without a fight, after all.
He swerved around another building, and for a moment the sounds of the machines faded behind him. But then his attention was drawn to a place directly ahead, where the thick, oozy smog in the atmosphere was swirling as if in a strong wind. He wondered if it might be windy enough to throw the humans off his tail. That would be a relief! Yet, as he drew closer, he saw that dark shapes loomed in the misty air. More machines. Their overbearing racket renewed as he neared, and he almost roared with frustration.
As the smog parted before him, he saw that these ones were mostly green, not yellow, and were cut slightly sleeker than their companions. To go faster, perhaps? Or maybe they could fit more humans inside. Either possibility made him shudder. He’d come so far, and now this!
But he wasn’t about to give up. As the humans spotted him and directed their machines to converge, he saw that he had one, final shot at escape. After all, the machines didn’t seem to have any means of propulsion on the ground …
When the green mechanical creations closed in front of him, and he felt the yellow ones flank his back, he folded his wings along his spine.
He plummeted.
For a moment, he felt sheer peace. The chopping thunder of the blades was left far behind as he rocketed downward, nothing but the wind to touch all around, its softness caressing him as he fell. Buildings whizzed by, pale human faces in windows, all blurry as he shot past.
Below him was a tiny beige square, longer and wider than several of the other structures, but not the biggest. Certainly not the tallest. It loomed closer and closer as he came nearer, Draq staring at it in wonder as his weightless body drifted through the air. The simplicity of the speed mesmerized him. What had once been tiny specks on the paths turned into people, and little squares suddenly transformed into whole groups of buildings, and then bloomed into individual buildings as he further approached.
He forcefully snapped out of his reverie, reminding himself that he was in danger if he didn’t do this right. Not that he hadn’t done it a dozen times before, but that had been over thick forests or soft lakes. This was concrete, waiting to meet his solid presence with its own, and any error could hurt or kill him.
Judging the distance with trained eyes, he tentatively lifted his wings a little ways from his back, and then with more determination as he felt them catch the air. His fall slowed a little, but not enough for him to fully extend his wings without risking a serious strain. He parted his wings just a little more, and then turned his body forward so that it was level with the ground. He hadn’t slowed down as much as he would have liked, but the ground was fast approaching. There was little more he could do in the dead city air.
He finally unfurled his wings. All the muscles in his shoulders were jerked backward as his wings were wrenched toward the sky by the rushing air, but then they pressed back toward the ground in a massive down-stroke that sent his body lurching. But he was back in control, now. He chanced a glance at the sky to see that the machines had been left far behind, now hardly more than little dots themselves. But he couldn’t give them the opportunity to catch up again.
The square had expanded into a dingy human building below him. There were no other humans milling around it, meaning it wasn’t at the center of attention, but he was wary of the street beyond, which was flooded with humans and machines alike. He dipped into a smoother glide, his wings aching with the recent strain of halting gravity, and circled until he could see that the roof of the building was flat. Without further thought, he pulled in his wings for a much-needed landing.
The roof-panels creaked ominously beneath his weight, but he thought they would hold. He couldn’t stay out in the open like this anyway. He padded along the roof until he reached the side of the building, one hidden from the street by the building itself, and leaped to the ground in one bound. He was almost as tall as the one-story-building happened to be, but just short enough that his horns didn’t stick up over the edge and reveal his presence to those outside.
But he was still clearly visible from the sky. His orange-flecked red scales were not an asset in this bleak gray-and-white landscape of endless buildings and pavement. He found a gray patch on the wall of the short building, reminding him of the secret room behind the patch in the abandoned building, and pushed against it with a tentative paw. No human voices bellowed an alarm from inside, and he pushed harder, hoping to get out of the narrow alley before the pursuing machines dipped low enough to spot him. The material was thin and tinny against his shoulder, but its flimsiness was a welcome respite in the face of all the other difficulties he’d had so far. With a final shove, it bent inwards. The hinges snapped with a groan, and the flap fell with a metallic clatter that sounded loud in the wide, empty space.
He pushed it aside and entered, glancing around to be sure that there really were no humans around, and pulled his tail in after him to keep it away from the machines’ line of sight. He finally dropped to the concrete floor and sighed in relief. He hadn’t been caught. And as long as he wasn’t found, that would hold true. The humans would probably assume that he’d just turned around some more skyscrapers, anyway. They’d search everywhere except for inside one of their precious buildings.
After he caught his breath, he dragged himself farther back into the dim area. He was too tired to explore, and crouched down again in the shadow of a large, metal husk, smelling of fuel and fumes. His legs were trembling with exhaustion, and he curled them beneath his body to make them relax. What was really bothering him, though, were his wings. The muscles all the way down his back were beginning to flare with pain, undoubtedly from that wrenching rush of air as he pulled his freefall into an abrupt landing. He knew he should rest them for at least a day, if not two. “Well it’s not like I’m going anywhere,” he chuckled dryly to himself in a soft voice, and then lowered his head for sleep. He couldn’t leave until he could be sure the machines were done circling outside, and then he’d still have to wait for dark night before moving freely in the city, anyway.
What’s the rush?
He didn’t wake until a harsh glare of light was shining into his face. He stirred, trying to turn away, but he was at the wrong angle. He opened his eyes to see that the sun was falling behind distant buildings, casting a relentless glow through the broken wall of the building and right onto his face. Its faint warmth felt comforting, but the light burned through his eyelids painfully.
He sighed, and dragged himself into a sitting position, tucking his legs under him. Draq realized that he didn’t feel as tired as he had earlier, but his wings still ached a little with exertion. And to make things worse, he was finally beginning to feel hungry. Not urgently, yet, but it was definitely there.
How unfortunate that nothing worth eating seemed to live in the human city. Even birds, which were such a common sight in the distant forests of his home, had been absent during the time he’d spent wandering or flying here. It was as if the humans had closed themselves off from nature so efficiently that it any trace of it was unwelcome within the city’s confines.
Except for the shivick, he reminded himself. And, with it suddenly brought back to his attention, he checked over his foreleg with a quick glance. The shivick was still there, still silent and unmoving, and still firmly attached. Draq was rather surprised to realize that it hadn’t attacked him while he slept. Hadn’t that been its plan? Well then what does it want? he wondered. It clearly doesn’t want me injured, because it just had the perfect chance.
He tried running his other paw over his leg, wondering if it might make the shivick stir, but it gave only a lazy twitch beneath his claws. It didn’t even really feel cold to touch anymore, and was almost transparent as it clung to him. Perhaps it had just grabbed onto him so that it could die? But it had probably been about to die in the human building anyway, so what was the point? Maybe it thinks it can hang onto me until I leave the city, so that it will be free again, he thought with some amusement. If that was its intention, it was in for a surprise; he wasn’t going back to the valley. He was moving on toward his own home, in the opposite direction.
In any case, he was now convinced that it didn’t want to harm him. It wasn’t even particularly bothering him. It was just . . . there. Well, there was apparently nothing he could do about it anyway, and he decided to ignore it until it left him alone.
He slunk over to the far side of the human structure and curled up in a corner away from the slanting rays of sun. In the fading light, he could now see that the building was wide, long, and mostly empty, save for several large metal inventions that the humans seemed to have stored in here. Any human scents were also mostly stale, giving him the impression that it would be safe from searching human eyes for at least as long as he was there; which wouldn’t be long at all, if he had his way.
Draq curled up again, although he found that, this time, sleep did not come as readily. He shifted uncomfortably for a while against the flat, cold floor, but finally got up again. His stomach was clenching painfully, now, keeping him awake. It wasn’t the first time he’d been hungry, but it was the first time he’d been stranded in an area where he already knew that there was nothing to eat. It worried him. What if he couldn’t manage to keep his strength up? He imagined he would waste away as easily as the shivick, if he wasn’t careful.
Unable to sleep and with night quickly falling, Draq poked his head outside.
The city lights glinted harshly in his eyes, but the rest of the world was murky dusk. Humans made shadowed, upright figures on the streets, their machines lurking nearby like silent sentinels. He cautiously pulled the rest of his body into the open, casting his gaze around at a setting that was both placid and packed with danger.
He crept through the alley keeping low to the ground, hoping his horns weren’t visible over the crest of the roof. No human alarms rang out, however. No shouts chorused in warning.
He peered around the corner to see that, in spite of the late hour, the streets were still packed with human transportation. Most of the mess seemed to be glinting machines with flashing lights, holding humans in side of them, but the narrower stretches on either side of the path were just as crowded with pedestrians.
One human walked directly past him, not bothering to glance into the shadows. At its feet trailed another machine—no, a creature, Draq realized with a start, seeing a spark of life in its black eyes. A real, live creature. It was small, furry, warm, and probably juicy … Draq caught himself and pushed the thought from his mind. He needed food, but there was no way to catch these other creatures without alerting the humans; with whom they seemed most companionable, of course.
The downside of having such close proximity to a living creature, however, was that it was more attentive to its surroundings than any machine could ever be. When the mammal picked up Draq’s scent, it turned, teeth bared, and charged at him!
For a moment, Draq was merely amused; he was several times this little animal’s size, and could easily swipe it away with a paw. Then, however, he went into battle mode at the sight of the creature’s snarling teeth and outstretched claws. Or maybe it was hunter mode. All he knew was that in the next moment, he met the attack with claws of his own, and the small animal was suddenly impaled.
The human didn’t seem to notice at first; the creature hadn’t made any sound to alert it, and Draq had dispatched it just as effectively without noise. The human walked on, oblivious. Draq dragged his catch into the shadows.
The creature was didn’t carry the same sort of unappetizing reek as humans tended to, and Draq felt no qualms about eating it—especially with his overwhelming hunger, of course. He tore the fur off with several quick swipes of his claws, and then plunged his snout into his kill to eat. The meat was warm and impossibly flavorful to his undernourished body.
He didn’t waste any of it. He chewed the bones until every last scrap of nutrition was pulled from them, and then licked the clean-swept pavement of any remaining blood. He knew he’d need all his strength, and he intended to give himself the best chance of getting out of this city that he possibly could.
When he was no longer distracted by the unexpected meal, however, he heard some sort of commotion going on around the corner.
“She was right behind me!”
“Please remain calm, Ma’am. Your dog couldn’t have gone far.”
Humans. Draq retreated from the sound of the voices, drawing back into the shadows in case they came around the corner and spotted him. He crept along until he reached the other side of the building, which he found to consist of a large open area that was nearly deserted.
He was craving the harsh glare of moonlight on his scales, and was disappointed to realize that there was none. A thick smog-like mist was swirling over the city. Or maybe it was smog; he was too far away to smell the difference between clean vapor and reeking human waste.
Avoiding flight, he skirted the wide area and prowled into another alley, adjacent to the building. Even if his wings weren’t still a little sore, he didn’t want to risk getting spotted. Maybe later in the night he would take to the sky, but for now, the streets were dark enough to conceal him from the general public.
As he crept along, he began to realize that the human population never truly settled; lights beamed from windows, people walked in and out of buildings, and their machines ruled the wider paths. Even the noise never truly quieted, although there was a certain hush during the darker hours than there was during full daytime.
Draq shivered a little, but not only because the night was chilly. There was so much he didn’t know about humans. So much that no one knew about them. They were so peculiar, so foreign—and yet, was avoidance a good thing?
He couldn’t help but remember Arlena’s face; her friendly eyes, the small quirk of her smile, her gentle hands stroking his scales. She’d been willing to accept him—to become his companion, even, during the journey. Now why couldn’t other humans learn to tolerate dragons as well? Why did they have to surround themselves with strong walls and structures of artificial stone, and shoot innocent travelers out of their skies?
He snorted, his smoky breath a fine mist in the night chill, and wondered at the senselessness of it all.
But he did have more pressing problems. There was his brother, squatting at home with all the rest of world under his cruel control. Draq had to return there, first; peace with the humans had never been on his to-do list anyway, and he didn’t believe for a second that he had any more time to waste. Axarciot certainly wasn’t awaiting his return. If Draq wanted a chance at recovering the dragon population and restoring them to their happy existence of before, then it would be better to get there soon.
He lifted his chin to the sky. This whole traveling-at-night thing would work. By foot or by air, he would make it home. He had to.
There was no second option.