Dragons Awakening
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Eruption!

A ten-gallon bucket of ice water pressed into the center of her chest. Or so it seemed. Zi Yan awoke with an invisible weight pounding against her breastbone. Chills sped across every millimeter of exposed skin. She bolted upright, glad the reflection of light against the wall behind the heavy drapes indicated daytime. Not that she felt rested or ready to face the inevitable dread. The image of a dragon destroying the world replayed inside her head. Just the thing to spur the opposite of rest and relaxation.

Zi rolled off the pillow-topped king-sized mattress and padded into the adjacent bathroom. Lights flickered on at her entrance. The glare from all the platinum and white marble in the room stabbed behind her burning eyes. A green light flashing on a panel beside the triple-headed walk-in shower reminded her of the advanced automation in this borrowed villa.

“Shower on, water 46 degrees Celsius,” Zi muttered as her finger slid over the black sensor beside the flashing light.

“Three shower heads-” a female voice said in French-accented common tongue. Annoying.

“One shower head with 90 percent of available pressure,” Zi said, her index finger still covering the sensor. Interrupting the mechanized voice shouldn’t have felt so liberating.

“Optimizing pressure in one shower head,” the female voice said.

Zi slid her silk nightshirt onto the floor and stepped into the tiled shower.

Fire rained from the sky. Fields burned crimson. Black billows of smoke stretched across the horizon, shielding the sparkling Tyrrhenian Sea from view. The mountain pulsed, a flowing red river of bubbling molten rock. At its summit, a red beast opened his maw and spewed a stream of fire toward the sky. His roar in the aftermath sounded like rumbling laughter.

Zi gasped, hot water pounding into her face. The vision remained fresh, spurring a sense of urgency. Exactly like the day Uncle died. She lathered her body and hair, not giving the pounding stream of water time to do more than rinse away the soap. As much as she needed the shower to wash away her tension, it wasn’t happening today.

She toweled off, leaving the damp towel piled atop her nightshirt. She wrapped another towel around her rope of wet hair, striding toward the duffel tossed carelessly onto a chair in her rush for the bed the night before. After pulling on clean clothes, she pushed through her bedroom door and crossed the hall, opening the door without knocking.

The blankets piled on the floor and sheets snarling Akolo’s lower body in a stranglehold testified to his own restless night. He gripped a pillow to his chest. With his mouth open, he looked younger. Zi felt a twinge in her chest. It would have been nice for him to evacuate onto the naval vessel with his father and the other scientists, but the dragons required his presence.

Zi grabbed the foot nearest her, yanking it with enough force to slide him closer to the end of the bed.

“It’s happening today,” Zi said. “Get up. We need to get to Naples.”

The boy groaned and flipped onto his back, struggling against the sheets ensnaring him.

“The roads are blocked,” he said, rubbing his eyes and smacking his lips.

Their borrowed villa sat along the coast north of Latina, more than 30 kilometers within the evacuation circle. She hoped most of the blockades would be to the north of them, closer to Rome, but her driver knew his way around the minor roads or trackless areas. If it came to that.

“The red dragon is coming. We need to be closer to help.”

“Because we can do something two dragons can’t,” Akolo muttered, grabbing the coil of sheets and kicking free of the restraints.

“I don’t know why,” Zi said, turning toward the door, “but we need to be there.”

“How do you know it’s happening today?”

“I just do.” Zi shut the door behind her, unable to explain the premonition gripping her midsection. It was the day her mother died magnified by a thousand.

“We’re leaving in ten minutes,” she said.

Something thumped against the door. Let him throw all the fits he wanted, as long as they were on the road as soon as possible.

Clouds blanketed the tops of nearby peaks. Not good weather for releasing the poisonous ash and vapors certain to accompany the eruption. The Humvee growled up the steep incline. An opening in the trees made Zi’s breath catch. It offered a view of the valley where Naples nestled along the coastline, Vesuvius a dark shadow at its back.

The driver slammed on the brakes. The armored vehicle rocked side to side. Pressure in Zi’s skull made her grip the side of her head.

“Earthquake or eruption?” Akolo asked, rolling down the window beside him. He raised military grade binoculars to his face, tilting them toward the sunken crater.

The distant mountain would serve as the dragon’s entrance into the world. In actuality, it was an exit from cruel captivity in the center of the earth. What sort of person thought of such a punishment? Not a person, according to the black dragon: their deity. She shook her head, squinting out the front windshield. The red dragon deserved a worse fate. His intention to wreak havoc on her innocent world proved it.

More rumbling. This time, the ground groaned. Pressure in her head doubled. Zi leaned back, closing her eyes and massaging her temples.

Images flooded the inside of her eyelids. Vesuvius, as if she hovered a few meters from its summit. A bubble of molten rock, black as it rose and yellowish-orange when it burst, swelled out of the crater.

“No way,” Akolo shouted. It startled Zi to hear something from her actual surroundings.“It’s erupting.”

Something new occurred in the stiff seat of the military vehicle. No wonder her brain felt like it was trying to blast out of her head. Zi could see it all. This event she’d witnessed in part for weeks, now she saw it in real-time, as if she stood on the mountain.

A hand touched her knee. The driver checking on her, but even though she could hear and feel sensations from her surroundings, her mind couldn’t command her body. It was transfixed on the end of the world.

Black rocks spewed from the liquid red mouth of the volcano. Behind them a plume of ash, rotating like a cyclone, shot into the atmosphere. Embroiled with the spinning tale of toxic gases, the red beast rode the blast out of his prison.

His head, flatter and wider than either of the other dragon’s, had four horns. The surface of his body was smooth, rather than scaly, such a dark red it almost appeared black. Eyes blinked open, the red iris veiled behind some sort of silvery inner eyelid. When he opened his mouth, two rows of black teeth made a great white shark look tame. A stream of fire, dark at the heart and flaming out in red, to orange to yellow tongues, blasted the air above him.

Upward motion stopped, suspending the dragon a few hundred meters above the river of lava bubbling down every side of Mt. Vesuvius. Behind him, ash continued to spiral. A strange web of blackened bones jutted from the leathery surface of his wings. The intricate architecture supporting them, which lay concealed on Ezer on Jokul, displayed itself prominently on the unfolded wings of the red dragon. Ugly and skeletal, they barely seemed to support the dragon’s weight.

A blast of smoke descended from above the metallic beast. He opened his mouth and spouted flames in that direction. An icy blast met the fire less than a dozen meters from the flame-throwing maw. The ice and fire danced in the air, melting and shimmering, stalling each other.

“Jokul must be attacking,” Akolo said.

Emerging from the plume of ash, Ezer gouged his claws into the red dragon’s back, just behind the wings. Zi’s teeth vibrated from the screeching of talon on metal. Rather than penetrating the red body, the black claws skittered down its smooth sides.

The horned head twisted away from the ice blast and opened toward the black dragon. A blast of flame engulfed the area where the black dragon tried, unsuccessfully, to latch onto the bigger beast. Behind the turned head of the red, a blast of ice covered the shiny red skin with a layer of white. The flames snuffed out as the frigid breath crept over the horned head and covered the gaping maw.

“Ezer just got blasted,” Akolo said. Then, in a manner of someone cheering their favorite athlete, “Way to go Jokul. Freeze that mother.”

The ice faded away. What chance did it have against fire? The horned head turned back toward the white dragon and emitted another stream of flames. Jokul rolled away from the fiery blast, his diamond scales looking gray in the shadow of the erupting plume.

Hovering in the air, wings stiff at his sides, the red dragon didn’t pursue. Instead, he turned toward the eastern valley. A roar resonated through Zi’s chest. Flaming breath descended on the green vineyards and farmland. The early spring foliage wilted from the heat, smoldered and ignited. A valley of fire, exactly as she had envisioned the first time she’d witnessed this destruction.

“He’s burning everything,” Akolo said. “Where did the other two go?”

Tears spilled from behind Zi’s closed eyelids. They sped down her face. If only they could quench the destruction raining from atop the volcano.

“Something’s up with his wings,” Akolo said, deflated.

The wings bowed against an updraft. The dragon shifted slightly upward. He had yet to flap his wings. From above, a cloud of icy mist descended like a curtain over his wings and neck. A sheen of ice shimmered for a moment over the red skin. The ice stopped. A huge black mace swung from overhead, smashing the side of the hulking neck. The red beast skittered in the air, folding his wings when he began to roll and thrusting them wider to stop his descent.

Steam sizzled around him, the only reminder of the frozen attack. The ugly black teeth appeared. More fire rolled from his mouth, connecting with Ezer’s retreating back. The black dragon plunged toward the river of fire beneath him before catching himself with a downward thrust of his wings.

“They might need a new strategy,” Akolo said.

Another blast of ice drew the red gaze skyward. Crystals formed over his neck and side, only to be replaced immediately by steam when the icy blast stopped. He spewed more fire. The swirling cloud of ash swallowed it before Zi could see if it impacted the white dragon.

Smoke, flame, ice - the beasts traded shots with their killing breath. Ezer and Jokul rolled away after each attack. The vengeful Qwystanak hovered above the crater, which spilled molten rock and spewed ash-filled air.

In a desperate move, Ezer slashed at the strange wings. His talons punctured them but caught on the spiky webbing holding them in place. His weight fell against the larger dragon. The pair plummeted toward the yawning mouth of the volcano, red tongue of molten rock licking its lips in anticipation. The black dragon bucked and twisted, finally breaking free from the snare. The red dragon floated on the lava stream and chased Ezer’s retreat with another blast of flammable breath.

Jokul passed behind the floating dragon, opened his frozen maw and rained thick spears of ice onto the red dragon’s back. Steam covered them from view. When the air cleared, the red dragon spread his wings and drifted skyward on an unseen current of air. Rather than movable wings, he had something akin to a hang glider on his back.

“Where did they go?” Akolo’s voice broke on the last word.

Pain ebbed in Zi’s head, and her eyes snapped open. She wiped the wetness from her cheeks and leaned toward Akolo.

“Can you contact them?” He turned and looked at her, dropping the binoculars just below his chin. “You know with your whispering thing.”

“Whispering thing?” Akolo raised an eyebrow in her direction.

“You know what I mean,” Zi slouched against the seat, massaging her throbbing temples. “We might have to drive closer to meet them.”

The driver nodded, turning away from her to stare at the map displayed on his guidance screen.

“They are coming,” Akolo said. “There is a peak nearby. We might have to circle back to reach the access road.”

Zi heard them talking about the meeting, listening with half her brain, eyes fixed on the fire-filled valley. Naples burned, yellow flames engulfing every speck until it met the Tyrrhenian Sea. Rather than a blue jewel sparkling beneath the sunshine, the sea resembled a soup of ash.

Doomsday had arrived.