Dragonslayer, Inc.
Chapter XX- The Return

His army was riding fast, and they were riding directly toward us, and they weren’t coming to offer a friendly greeting. “Wake up,” I shouted to the other Slayers, but it didn’t work, so I had to physically wake them up, and this took time. Machen alone needed to be shook until dizzy before his eyes would pop open.

“What’s going on?” asked Ironwall. Both well-rested content and suspicious concern inhabited his voice.

Suddenly, I had a hard time forming words. “I… it…they…” I stuttered.

“No time,” he responded. The army was upon us. They encircled our camp and pointed their guns at our heads.

Their leader hopped off his horse, threw his hands in the air, and removed his helm with a single, sweeping motion. It was Arge, the new President. The air fell out of our lungs. I had to confront the reality that this man had left Andes and tracked us halfway up the continent. To my pleasure, he had not been immune to the effects of this harsh land. His pretty little face had been bruised up, and his mouth had been bent out of shape. His bottom lip was a crusty pool of blood.

“We meet again,” he said directly to Ironwall. He talked with a slight lisp, and his voice was much quieter than before. What had not changed, though, were his eyes and his carnal hatred for Slayers. Through his journey, he had remained the same cruelly ambitious leader we saw speak in Andes.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I have so many questions. Why did you come here? Don’t the people need you? Don’t they need a leader? They’re buried in rubble.”

He regarded me with a mix of passionate enmity and smirking contempt. Though I didn’t want to admit it, I had a perverse respect for him, but that was not the case in reverse. He didn’t even want to be within an arm’s length of me, and he stepped back when I advanced on him, which I found hilarious. It’s like he was afraid I carried a contagious disease.

“By the order of the common folk of Andes, I have been sent to wipe out the Dragonslayers, and I fully intend to perform my civic duty.”

“We went north to kill Icithan,” bellowed Steph. She was in a low. Her entire frame and persona projected hatred and rage. Often this rage was directed inward, but it was currently funneled straight into Arge. Her eyes were black. “That’s what we call the four-hundred-foot-long dragon that destroyed your city, and yeah, in case you forgot, your city was destroyed by a four-hundred-foot dragon, and we’re journeying to kill it. We’re serving our purpose and a lot more. Can you say the same? The answer is no. You can’t. You abandoned your people. If you weren’t already the worst leader in the history of this country, you are now.”

“Strong words from a nobody. Who are you? I have no clue.”

“My name is Stephanie. I’ll carve it into you.” She rushed at him, swords in hand, intending to dig into his flesh. He clapped and let his army do the work. They opened fire on her, as well as on me when I went to grab my weapon.

In the end, I wasn’t hit, and she only had a bullet skim over the top of her right shoulder, taking off maybe a millimeter of skin. This was intentional on their part: they only wanted to make a statement, and make a statement they had.

Steph, who had slipped and fallen to the ground, tried to get up, saying, “You don’t rule me, Arge.”

“Stay down.” He stamped his foot in the snow. “If you fight me, we’ll make your death a lot more painful.”

The life went out of her, the combination of his words and the energy needed to fight him proving too much for her broken mind to handle.

Showing surprising aggressiveness, Machen stated, “You don’t say that to my beloved fiancée.”

I waited for Steph to tell him off. She didn’t, and the implication disturbed me enough that I told him off myself. Steph was so lifeless, so devoid of energy. Of course, she wasn’t the only one. We were barely in any position to finish our journey to the mountain. We certainly weren’t in any position to fight Arge.

When he took the time to monologue, we were grateful. We had time to work with. I caught my breath, focused in on the challenge at hand, and tried to find a solution.

He said, “Do you know what happened to your precious HQ? I burned it to the ground. It’s nothing but cinders now. Do you want proof? I brought one of them with me.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a dark, ashy piece of wood, and tossed it on the ground. “That used to be a desk. If you somehow survive this confrontation, don’t show your face in Andes. There’s nothing left for you there. Under my direction, the people have purged that city of any reference to your pathetic organization, though I will admit, there wasn’t much work to do. Most of the work had all ready been done for us, by that dragon. What did you call it? Icithan? Icithan dealt my country a harsh blow. If not for my leadership, it would have been a fatal blow. You call yourself the Dragonslayers. I call that a joke. We were attacked by not just a dragon, but by the single greatest dragon of our times, and did you do anything about it? No. You floundered, and the city got destroyed. The entire nation devolved into panic. And who’s to blame for that? Me, you say? Hah. In your dreams. It was you. It was all you, and the people know it. They want your filthy stains gone from the good fabric of this country, and I am going to remove them. They are a warrior. I am their sword. And don’t say I don’t know what the people want. I do. I am a common person, my cruel, rich enemies. I just wield uncommon power. The entire army came with me to ride across the desert on horses shipped in especially for us. I lost a lot of men back there. It’s a cruel desert.”

“And that’s our fault?” I said. I had formulated my plan of attack.

“Yes, to put it bluntly. If you think about it for one second, you realize this continent would have been a better place had the Dragonslayers never existed. It wouldn’t be the dilapidated husk that it is today. It would be thriving. It would be utopian. You destroyed it. You sucked out its Litriol, and you don’t want the people to know. I talked to a lot of people when I was running my campaign. Very few had even the slightest idea what Litriol is. You’re keeping them in the dark.”

“I’m fairly certain the lack of Litriol is not the sole cause of this continent’s deterioration,” said Purple Leg. She had formulated a plan of attack too, and she was trying to communicate it to the others, especially me, via hand gestures. I got the memo and tried to communicate my plan back using the same method.

“So what? You’re being a distraction. Do you know how many people like you I’ve come across during my political career? Too many to count. I try to address the problem, and you just change the subject. You don’t want people to know the truth. You don’t want people to blame you even though it’s your fault. It’s despicable. It’s a disgrace, and the people are tired of it. Thanks to me, this nation is on the right track. Thanks to me, the lies that have held this nation captive for hundreds of years are being replaced with pillars of glorious truth. Thanks to me, the curtain has been pulled back, and the truth has been revealed. Thanks to me, everyone knows what Litriol is. It has become a sort of hot-button issue. Now it’s up to me to make sure you don’t ruin my new future.”

“Go,” I shouted, interrupting him.

Purpley and I sprang into action. She swiped at the legs of the nearest horse, causing it to rear up. Its rider was hanging on for dear life, and I jumped at him with Ironwall’s dagger, driving it into his chest. He fell off the horse, and he bled to death not soon after.

This burst of chaos spread like a virus. Horses were running into each other, and soldiers were shouting conflicting information as other soldiers shot blindly.

There were not as many soldiers in his army as first appeared. The losses it had sustained on the trip over were apparent in its behavior. Among its losses were generals and commanders, and it couldn’t fill the void, which was a problem, as no one exactly knew who was in charge of what. Arge could have led them, but he was too busy trying to stay alive to issue any effective commands.

Ironwall, Machen, the aunt-like Slayer, and a newly rejuvenated Steph took to our plan. They repeated the trick we pulled with a horse on the other side of the army, with much the same result. The six of us worked with the graceful, powerful elegance of those knifing gales that had become a scourge of our existence.

Once the army was in complete disarray, Steph went after Arge. She slammed one of her twin swords into his sides, and a volcano of blood erupted. He tried to shoot her, but she slashed the gun out of his hands and cut off a few fingers on that hand for good measure.

Seeing their leader be shred up had a uniting effect on his army. They calmed down and focused on enacting revenge on Steph.

My inner demon in control, I hopped from one horse to another, cutting down soldiers like it was nothing. I got into a groove. Even compared to my past experiences with my inner demon, though, I felt dark and hideous. I later reasoned it was because I was killing human beings, but I didn’t bare it much thought at the time because it didn’t matter much at the time.

I was not going to let them kill Steph.

Machen had the same idea, and between the two of us, we were making great progress. But it wasn’t enough. Steph had already taken several bullets.

Purpley left Ironwall and the aunt-like Slayer to become Steph’s human shield. This cut through my rage and shocked me. Ironwall gasped, but there was nothing he could do. He and the aunt-like Slayer were just enough to keep the normal assault going. If either of them left, we would be overwhelmed.

The bullets kept on flying. Some of the soldiers wanted to throw Purpley off Steph, but a commander said, “Why? We’re gonna kill ’em all anyway. Shoot ’em both.” Steph took a few more bullets during this barrage, but Purpley bore the brunt of the assault.

When Machen and I got close enough to see their bullet holes, Purpley had as many as Steph. When Machen and I reached them, Purpley had a lot more than Steph. Thanks to our efforts, the bullets had temporarily stopped flying, and the army stopped and reorganized itself, getting the still-living soldiers out on the front lines.

“Don’t wait for me,” said Purple Leg, and then she was gone. Her eyes turned glossy, and she stopped struggling. Her infamous purple leg was so ragged with wounds that I could see through it at parts.

Steph was horrified. For the first time, her face was empty. She wasn’t on a low, and she certainly wasn’t on a high, or in between a low and a high. Her eyes had been raked over with this immense banality, like her soul had been stolen by a passing specter. She was hardly human, and it didn’t help that she was losing a not-insignificant amount of blood.

Not knowing how to react, I let my mind roll to the back of my head and gave my inner demon total control. Seven more horseman died, then another seven. I couldn’t think or feel, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to be swept away. Another seven horseman fell at my feet. The new soldiers who came riding up the ranks were in as much disarray as the soldiers they replaced.

Arge’s army would have been better off on foot. The horses muddled the battlefield once riled up, and we kept taking advantage. When a sense of order was established, we didn’t stand a chance, but when anarchy reigned, so did we, and that was more often than not.

We didn’t kill that many horses: forty or so. There were hundreds of horses left without riders, and they wandered around, kicking each other and kicking mounted horses, which then bucked their riders. There were a few horses that didn’t move, and there were a few that trotted away, but the vast majority were galloping to and fro like they were on stimulants.

I got my left pinky shot off by a man who had gotten off his horse and hid behind a rock. His next shot was for my head, but before he could land it, he was kicked in the sternum by a horse.

A snowflake drifted onto my eyelashes. I blinked three times and regained control of myself. It melted, and a tiny drop of water twinkled onto my nose. I grabbed it with my five-fingered hand and ran it down to my mouth. It felt good to still have a nose. It felt good to still have a mouth.

This horse had earned my respect with its actions, but it earned my awe with its appearance. I recognized it as the horse Arge rode in on. Cremello, it strode with a brisk majesty. Smitten, I dashed toward it, ducking to avoid the gunfire that wanted me dead. This horse didn’t like my behavior or the look in my eyes, but when it tried to dash, a rapier landed twenty feet in front of it.

Before I could react, the rapier’s owner leapt through the air, landing on the horse. Bristling, it bucked him. “Nice try, Machen,” I said, scoffing.

The battlefield faded, and with it the memories of our journey and the pains it had caused, and we were once more rivals. We competed to see who could get on the horse. This was a safe proposition, as though the battlefield was moving closer to us, we were for the while free of it. Ahead to the northeast was an untouched valley. Clad in wintery dreariness, it was not aesthetically pleasing, but it was as free and boundless as the open ocean.

It called us, and we were gonna make sure that call went answered. We weren’t the same people as back before this journey, and it showed, though we imagined it didn’t. We weren’t hyper-aggressive. We didn’t quarrel. We didn’t insult. There was no room for that behavior.

There was a horse that needed mounting.

To my legitimate surprise, it was I who mounted the stallion. It was powerful. It demanded respect, so respect I gave it. I was not about to take this creature lightly. After letting off a few choice curses, Machen asked to ride with me.

I told him the truth, that it was up to the horse. He tried to climb on, and the horse again tried to throw him off, but I held steady, and gradually the beast relented. Our combined weight was stressing to the horse, but it didn’t gripe. It respected me. I had won.

Sensing my desires, it galloped into the heart of the valley, and a breeze swept through my heart. Even with two passengers, it was faster than any horse Arge’s army had left. They couldn’t catch us.

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Cracking the wide sort of smile that you only flash when you weren’t planning to smile at all, I turned my stallion around, kicked it in the sides, and said to both it and Machen, “Let’s run.”

My stallion did run. In fact, it ran faster than I anticipated. I was shook and jarred and loving every second of it. I felt as in-tune as when I gave into my inner demon, but there was no demon this time, only me, the version of myself I had always wanted to be.

“Yahoo,” I screamed as we sliced into the befuddled pack that used to be Arge’s army.

Their numbers were continuing to thin. Desertion became common. Soldiers would leave in clear view of other soldiers without causing much fanfare. Their morale had been broken. One of their few living commanders was riding around with Arge’s bloodied body. She was sure her leader was gonna live, though I was sure he wasn’t. I made certain of this, however, by lining my horse up with hers so Machen could forcibly dismount both her and Arge.

Hitting the ground, she scrambled to her feet and kept fighting. Her weapon of choice was a grand katana, but it had been cut in half, so she fought with the pieces, and she was fighting well.

This changed when she saw the body of her leader.

Arge was dying before. He was now dead. His throat had been stomped on by a horse, an unglamorous end for a glamorous leader.

A story’s been floating around that immediately before he died, he uttered a vague, rambling monologue. Speculation has raged about what he said. The day before I sat down to write this story, a bizarre hypothesis caught national attention. It stated that in his monologue, he discussed the five moments in his life he most regretted.

It was backed with a surprising amount of good reasoning and common sense, surprising because it’s entirely baseless. For the record, Arge didn’t say a word in his final seconds. He grunted and coughed up blood. That grunt carried a lot of meaning to me, but it’s not the same as talking, and it’s sure not lengthily monologuing.

Having witnessed more than my fair share of death, I would know this even if I hadn’t seen him die. It’s common sense. Monologuing as you lie dying is impossible even if you haven’t been stomped in the throat by a horse, and that anyone would believe otherwise is quite hilarious to me.

Nonetheless, I can see why others are so gullible. Thankfully, the average Southwesterner these days has not witnessed a lot of death, and Arge has attained a mythic status thanks to the brevity of his presidency, his bombast, and the divisions he created. Ten years ago, Machen told me, “There are two types of Southwesterners: those who want to build temples to Arge and those who want to erase his name from the records.”

I used to be part of the second type, and rightfully so, but the rage isn’t as intense as it used to be. I’m not young anymore. I can’t work up fiery enmity, not for Arge, not when that first type refers to fewer people every year. Depending on the time of day and the phrase of Mina, I might even feel a shred of sympathy for the guy. He was terrible, yes, but there’s something inherently tragic about a leader taking their army and trekking across the world’s largest desert to track down their archnemesis only to die in the ensuing conflict.

Back when he first died, however, I was not nearly as sympathetic, which makes it strange that my initial reaction to seeing him indisputably dead was not relief or joy but befuddled confusion. “That’s it?” I said slowly.

“I guess it is,” responded Machen. “He’s not alive.”

“He could be an expert at playing dead.”

“Not likely.”

“Death: it’s strange.”

“Indeed.” Machen had regressed to an emotionless voice, which would have troubled me had my voice not been emotionless too.

“As a Slayer, I feel safer now.”

“But should you? You’re being naïve.”

“Am I?”

“Kinda. It’s not like Slayer hatred is gonna go away.”

“I can live with that. When Machen was president,” I got a little chill by talking about him in the past tense, “I was afraid of getting shot.”

“Did your mother support him? She hated Slayers, right?”

“Probably. I’d rather not think about it.”

“You know, you’re gonna die on this trip.”

“So will you,” I responded quickly.

“That’s okay. I’m ready.”

Our emotional drain was reversed when we saw Steph take her twin swords and jam them into the commander we had dismounted. We shouted to her, and bounding up to a high, she took control of the commander’s horse and had it gallop up to ours. Along the way, she killed another two soldiers. Arge’s army was seeming less like a storm and more like a dispersing crowd.

“Is there room for three?” she asked, winking at us. If we had given the word, she would have tried to jump from one moving horse to another, and I don’t doubt she would have made it.

However, we told her to stay put. Our stallion was big, but it wasn’t big enough to carry three. Machen asked her, “Do you see Ironwall, sweetie?”

“I’m right here.” He rode up behind us, awkwardly carrying an array of bloody weapons.

His palmetto horse was belabored by another body. It took me a while to realize who it was, though it should have been obvious. At my command, our three horses flipped their courses and dashed into that sparse, open valley. I could nearly hear Arge’s army heave a collective sigh. They were spent, and their brains were scrambled. One of the last few officers shouted, “We need to reconvene. This strategy isn’t working.”

All but the most ardent Argeian loyalists consented. Few soldiers wanted to continue the fight, fewer wanted to chase us, and far fewer than that were willing to do so in violation of orders. Their glum, morose faces sank away in the distance.

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