Where There Be Dragons

Chapter 4

I couldn't believe my eyes. Huge leather wings were eclipsing the skies. We held our rifles up, firing warning shots into the air, but the dragons did not seem fazed. They circled for a moment and as they did, I caught sight of their armour. I held my gun ready, but I did think for a moment how strange it was that they were wearing armour? Armour was a symbol of civilisation and begged the question of how they came to own it? Did someone or something make it for them? Maybe the inhabitants of the island? Surely, they didn't make it themselves?

The dragons circled a bit longer as we tried to comprehend what we were seeing. But fate was not going to wait for the initial shock to set in, it was ready to overload our senses with sights that defied our very understanding of everything we knew.

A metal bar with rockets attached soared into the air, as the two dragons flew down to meet it and perch on it. As they safely looked down upon us from above, giant robotic bodies walked through the ocean toward us with catapults for heads. They pulled big barges behind piled high with boulders. Somehow, this was evolving into a full scale war.

As the boulders launched through the air, they each unfolded, flattening out into some sort of robotic dragon infantry man. As the soldiers fell, what looked like parachutes deployed from their backs, but the shape was more like a hot air balloon than a parachute. Some soldiers softly landed on the main deck, while others breathed flame into their balloons to rise higher. They all had symbols on their chests of a sphere. Did they have something to do with the notes on the graph paper?
On the deck, a large portion had began to gather around Keira. One of the perched dragons gave out another screech in some unknown tongue and the foot soldiers moved in on Keira.

Keira fired round after round, but bullets bounced off and the soldiers just kept on coming. Hank tried to jam a lit flare into one of infantry men's metallic skulls and I tried to decapitate several with my sword, but it was hopeless. For some reason, they wanted Keira and they were going to take her regardless of what we did.

The foot soldiers grabbed Keira, then placed her out on the deck and stepped back. As they stepped back, the circle expanded and Keira looked almost like a sacrificial offering to their masters above.

One of the mighty, perched dragons dove down and clutched Keira in its claws, before flying off the deck towards another vessel that bobbed off in the distance. The colours and design of the vessel matched up with the infantrymen and the other barges in the fleet.

As the first dragon flew away, Hank kept shooting and shooting at the at gigantic body. Most of Hank's bullets bounced off the armour, but one made a small dent in the mighty dragon's skin. It turned and looked back Hank with only a look of frustration.

It's mate, however, was less patient and more defensive, filling the deck with flame as it flew overhead to join its partner.
"Hank, we've got to get off this thing before it blows" I yelled as I pointed to a stack of barrels on the deck, covered with flammable warning signs.

We both jumped back into the cruiser and sped away from the naval ship as fast as we could.

BOOM!

"Hank! Look!"

"What is that?" I yelled as I pointed over to the strange dragon vessel.

As the surviving foot soldiers ascended with their balloons towards the hovering perch, the dragons continued to fly towards this futuristic looking vessel. It was a cross between a Viking long boat and a submarine, but where the sail should be, there hung a huge screen that was flapping in the wind. The screen was charged with this mysterious energy. It was the exact same energy that had glowed around the edges of the gateway on the night of the storm. The dragons flew right into the screen towards a castle on the other side. It was if the castle was instantaneously right there, as if this gateway was some sort of portal, a bridge between two different locations and they were using it as a form of instantaneous transport. The rocket perch soon followed after them, dragging the soldiers that held on to every inch of the perch through the screen too.

Fairly rapidly, each piece of the invasion was pulled back through the portal screen, section by section, until only the long boat remained.

The screen folded down into a mast and then the mast collapsed down like a periscope. The longboat was about to speed off and we were about to lose Keira forever!

"Quick, Hank! Your harpoon!"

Hank fired the harpoon and it hooked on to the top of the submersible. I felt like Captain Ahab, but Hank was not in the mood for adventure, he felt devastated and worried.

"I can't lose her, you hear? I can't lose her" he sobbed. "I promised her mother I'd...".

"Hey, it's OK, we're gonna find her" I reassured him.

And as the long boat sped away, it pulled us at great force and pace through a landscape we never would have dreamed of. It was like a safari of the mythical. Unicorns grazed on marshy banks, wearing what looked like police horse riot gear, while hi-tech, armoured diver propulsion vehicles assisted mer-people from one coastline to another. A perfect fusion of technology and mythology. Where on Earth were we?