Where There Be Dragons

Chapter 10

The Bermuda gateway was up ahead. I could hear dragons screeching and flapping in the distance behind me.

As I looked back over my shoulder, I saw not just the two Wyvern, but Drake as well. The winged dragons had a new perch with them, a much, much longer one, which they held up at each end with their claws. Hunched on the centre, clutching tight with its feet was King Drake, in full silver battle armour, brandishing a sword with an electric current flowing through it. This was not good.

In front of me, giant maintenance robots were adding the finishing touches to the repairs on Gate 270715. As they saw the King's fury off in the distance, they made the very sensible decision to un-tether themselves from their barges full of tools and replacement parts and vacate the area. As they walked away, the deep ocean only came up to their waists.

My boat was almost at the wall, but Drake decided to take a big leap from his perch and land onto the back of my cruiser. As the back of the boat was being pushed down further and further by his weight, I decided to steer it in the direction of one of the maintenance barges.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN OUTSMART ME, HUMAN!?" Drake roared, while a floating drone hovered next to him, desperately trying to translate his words as quickly as possibly.

"I AM DRAGON!" he thundered as he brought his sword crashing down. He was big and bulky, whereas I was small and quick. I managed to avoid the sword this time. I grabbed out the keys for the fuse box, but he saw them and kicked them out of my hand and into the sea. I think he must have shattered some bones in my hand, because I was in agony.

"WE HAD FIRE BEFORE EVEN PROMETHEUS STOLE IT FROM THE GODS!". As he spoke, I tore some rubber away from the cruiser with my other hand. As he lifted his sword again, I made the decision to abandon ship, leaping onto one of the barges.

As Drake followed me onto the barge, I drew my sword and quickly wrapped the rubber around the hilt, my hand still throbbing from the pain. I held my sword up with my other hand to counter the attack as the rubber absorbed any charge that may have been coming from his blade.

"Don't you understand? You're becoming everything that you hated."

The drone took a moment to recalibrate my words and change human speech back into dragon.

"You're taking away my freedoms and my free will. I know that you don't trust me, but you have to believe me that I'm not heading back to my world simply to bring down yours."

"I get that our species have done you wrong, but you must know that we aren't purely driven by our selfishness and our cruelty. Yes, I have selfish moments, but this isn't one of them. I have someone on the other side of that wall and I want to help them, that's it."

Drake lifted his blade for the final time with a wild look in his eyes.

"I've done nothing wrong. If you slaughter me, then you're no better than a dragon slayer."

This was it, no more stalling, no more blocking, his mighty blade was coming down and there was nothing I could do about it. I braced for impact and all I heard was a great crackle.

As I looked up, I saw that Drake had driven his sword into the stone wall, into the fuse box and the circuit had broken. The gateway was open.

"I hope your father is OK" whispered Drake with a surprisingly gentle voice.

As he turned, I crawled slowly away and then stood up to walk back to the cruiser.

"Connor!" he said.

"Yes?" I replied as I turned back towards here.

"If you ever return here, this panel will be fixed and there will be no doorway waiting for you. If you leave now, it will be for good."

"I understand." I said as I boarded the cruiser.