‘What is this?’ Tergal had drawn his own weapon, and was swinging it from one of the great flat heads to another. Thorn abruptly reached out and, in a move difficult to follow, disarmed him. ‘Are you crazy!’Tergal shouted.
Thorn inspected the weapon, then clicked across its safety catch. He tossed it back to Tergal. ‘Dragon here,’ he gestured towards the forest of pseudopods, ‘could swat that other thing back there like a bug.’ He stabbed a thumb in the direction of the droon.
Anderson slid his hand away from his own weapon. Dragon—again referred to in the singular. Lafrosten’s story had told of only one such creature, but Anderson had since heard stories of many more known as sand dragons. Surveying the nightmare forest of fleshy trees, he spotted three, four, five of the crested heads Lafrosten had described. There must be hundreds, nay thousands of the creatures here. He wondered which one of them he had supposedly come to kill.
Cupping her hands round her mouth, the woman, Arden, shouted, ‘What’s happening?’—trying to attract attention in the uproar. A single crested head turned towards her, then shot forwards, cutting a furrow through the ground with the base of its neck. Soon it was hovering over them, curving down to inspect them as if eyeing an interesting roach it had been about to step on.
‘Dragon, what are you doing?’ Arden then asked more quietly.
‘The option to spectate has been taken away from me,’ replied the reptilian head, studying them with eyes of deepest blue.
Anderson realized his own mouth was gaping, and quickly closed it. He had often repeated the gist of Lafrosten’s story, but not until this moment had he grasped that it was only a mere glimpse into some other, even larger tale. He recalled that the dragon had spoken to Lafrosten. Therefore it was a sentient creature, and therefore it had a purpose all its own: it was not just some character in a fairy tale—a tale that had taken on the dimensions of myth, even to Anderson who had actually met Lafrosten. This was real.
‘The option to spectate has been taken from you? That was evident long before now,’ said Arden.
The head turned slightly to one side. ‘Thorn,’ it observed.
Thorn nodded in acknowledgement.
‘You came from the first ship, the one that was attacked,’ Dragon stated.
Anderson noted how Thorn paused, perhaps weighing up the value of a lie. Eventually he said, ‘I did.’
‘Who was with you aboard that ship?’ Dragon asked.
‘I think you know,’ said Thorn.
Dragon hissed for a moment, then stated, ‘Ian Cormac.’ The head swung back to Arden, and Anderson discovered he had never actually heard real sarcasm voiced until now. ‘The good guys,’ said Dragon.
‘What are you planning to do?’ Arden asked.
The head turned and gazed up at the sky. ‘Make waves,’ it said.
The ground bucked again, sending them all staggering. They retreated back to the lee of their boulder and steadied themselves against it. The nearby pseudopods rose even higher, the earth churning between them. The fissures where they exited the ground joined together, melded, and, wide as a metallier house, the main trunk from which they all issued heaved itself into the air. The pseudopods splaying out from it poised overhead like a giant blue-tipped fan which then tilted forwards, a long mound rising behind it as the rest of the trunk shrugged free. Anderson realized that a hundred metres away this trunk mated with a river of scaled flesh—was just one branch of it. All around similar podia were surfacing, then drawing back towards the dusty maelstrom. Then he saw an immense dome rising up, sucking in all this tangled madness of sand dragons back towards itself. This nucleus was truly titanic and, as it drew in at the sides, began to reveal itself as a giant sphere. Anderson stood stunned when, briefly, a wind cleared away the dust. He saw the sphere whole, rising from the plain on a vast trunk of ophidian growth. Then it kept rising higher, distorting and expanding as it drew that same growth into itself: a vast scaled moon floating light as a metallier blimp. Higher and higher, receding into the sky.
Anderson felt a hand on his shoulder and looked across at the man called Thorn.
‘Dragon,’ the man said briefly.
Tergal now turned towards the knight, his expression somewhat maddened. ‘Shame you lost your lance.’
Anderson lowered his gaze and observed two creatures bounding through the dust storm. ‘Well, it’s coming now, if a little late.’ He gestured to Bonehead and Stone. ‘I wonder what brought them back here.’
‘Dragon,’ said Arden.
Anderson looked at her for explanation, but instead she asked, ‘These are yours?’
‘They are that—faithless beasts.’
‘That’s good, because with Dragon gone the force field will have gone as well.’
With that, they all turned to peer back the way they had come. The ejected VR chamber was a black dot on the horizon, seemingly floating on a stratum of mist, but of the droon there was no sign. Anderson found little comfort in that.
Vulture flapped a wing over the glassy surface to blow away the settling dust. ‘Quite an uproar,’ she noted. ‘Dragon is nothing if not dramatic’
The fossilized apek rested, perfectly frozen, in a coffin-shaped block of solid chainglass that was raised above the ground now. Etched into the block’s upper surface was a chess board. Beside this rested a spherical draconic container. Vulture had to wonder about the symbolism of it all. She looked around at the amphitheatre Dragon had cleared. The ground here was perfectly level, as if raked, in a fifty-metre circle in the middle of devastation. Amid the broken rock beyond the neat circumference lay much dragon detritus: desiccated pseudopods like a shed snake skin draped across boulders, iridescent scales the size of dinner plates, broken constructs like the by-blows of old combustion engines and lizards. Shaking her head, Vulture hopped up onto the face of the glass coffin, then turned her attention to her companion.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘lay out your pieces.’
Mr Crane gazed down at the board with painted-bead eyes, blinked once, then abruptly squatted. He delved into his pockets and took out his toys. The rubber dog was his queen, the piece of crystal his king and the blue acorns were pawns. He had one piece more than required, but then was ever a battle fought by evenly matched opponents? Vulture pecked once against the draconic sphere. The thing twitched, split, and spilt miniature albino sleers, which scuttled to take their positions on the grid and with dragon eyes glare at their opponents. Now the sphere contracted, pushing out two sand hogs with minute lance-wielding human figures mounted on them, then a small droon.
‘Y’know,’ said Vulture, ‘“surreal” is a word for the pretentious, but I can’t think of a better one right now.’
Mr Crane took off his hat and studied the layout. He reached out and nudged a blue acorn two squares forward. A sleer nymph scuttled to it, took hold of the acorn and moved it one square aside.