Parental Controls

Though he certainly did not consider himself an expert, Walter Williams had read enough classic fantasy and spent enough time around his daughter to have absorbed sufficient second-hand pop culture that he had what Reeve might have considered a vague, parent-level understanding of how movies and games portrayed those who rode dragons. Now, with his personal knowledge of the subject still doubling every few minutes, Walter felt that far too many liberties had been taken with those portrayals, particularly as related to air resistance, wind chill at altitude, the level of layering appropriate in one's clothing, and the many, many challenges of sitting atop an object only slightly smaller than a mid-size commercial jet that was behaving roughly like a fighter jet.

Walter curled his fingers tightly under the front edge of his saddle and pressed his left cheek more firmly against a periwinkle scale of the beast's neck. Although he'd spent most of the brief journey with his eyes closed, Walter opened them a slit to confirm that the dragon Leaf rode, the other of the two juveniles, was still to Walter's right. It and she were still there, Leaf perched at the nape of the neck, leaning forward less aggressively than Walter and looking to the side and down to see what lay below. Walter raised his head slightly and hazarded a glance off the side of his own mount and found that their airborne quartet of dragons was now descending toward the thin cloud cover above which they'd flown since leaving Morbeet. Walter returned his cheek to the scale it had been pressing, closed his eyes, and, as he felt the moist chill of the clouds begin streaming around him, thanked for the hundredth time his luck in having procured the oilskin duster that provided some defense against the elements.

Although they spent less than a minute descending through the cloud layer, condensation was dampening Walter's hair and running down his face when they emerged from its underbelly, and he heard an indecipherable shout from Leaf. He again opened his eyes a slit and saw that Leaf was still surveying what lay below, but with much greater intensity than when they'd been atop the clouds. From his limited, sideways-facing position, Walter could see treetops in the distance, and he decided that they'd be to the ground soon enough that whatever had captured Leaf's attention could wait for his until they'd landed.

Leaf shouted something to her mount and pointed, and Walter felt his winged steed adjust course. Half a minute later, both beasts flared their wings in unison, and Walter was pressed down on the saddle and neck as the dragons braked hard while simultaneously rotating more vertically, their hind legs finding something solid upon which to land. Above them, Walter could see the adult dragons, his and Leaf's mounts' parents, circling at a height that rendered their motion eerily calm.

Do Wanda and I hover over Reeve like they hover over their children? Walter wondered. He almost immediately decided that, yes, they did, but found some consolation in thinking that he and Wanda may be not Helicopter Parents but Dragon Parents.

Despite being subjected to what he interpreted as a disdainful examination by first one eye of his mount and then those of its sibling, Walter remained where he was, fingers tucked under the front of the saddle, face pressed to scale, until Leaf called out again, her shout now intelligible without the interference of flight.

"Do you need to dismount and regain your bearings before we continue?"

"Continue?" Walter said, his voice a croak after the preceding hours of disuse. "Aren't we to Deilmarkt?"

The expression Leaf returned suggested to Walter that he best consider his surroundings before asking any further questions, so he straightened his stiff arms, pushing himself erect, and looked into the massive, crater-like pit that lay before them. Looking beyond the pit, he saw a river that even he was fairly confident was the one where they had fought the Helia lady and her army of elves. As Walter remembered the chaos of that combat—the water, the elves, the bees, and the weapons shining along the bank of the river—his mount stirred and emitted a low sound like a rusty hinge, which was quickly echoed by its sibling.

"This is unmistakably the work of either Dawn or Dusk," Leaf called. "And since we may best assume Dusk still to be held by forces unknown, I am sure it was Dawn who moved all of Deilmarkt from its cradle."

Walter thought it reasonable to ask how Dawn could do that, but his dragon shifted weight and began to lumber around the pit toward the river, pushing the thought from his mind. Looking back, he saw that Leaf's dragon was following, and a glance up suggested that the parents were shifting the focal point of their revolving path in the same direction. "Did you do this?" Walter called to Leaf.

"No. I do not control them. Even when departing Morbeet, you had to give the final command once agreed upon. You did not instruct them?"

"No." Walter held on tighter as the lumbering gait accelerated slightly.

"Not even," Leaf called, "by accident?"

Walter did not consider protesting, as the comment seemed a fair one. He thought back through the preceding moments, the discussion of Deilmarkt's move, likely to be Dawn's work, the huge pit, the river beyond, next to which they'd fought the elves—

This time, the sound emitted by Walter's mount struck him more as a low screech, which was again answered by Leaf's mount and, this time, by distance-thinned replies from the parents circling above.

"It may," Walter called to Leaf, "have something to do with elves?" He pried his gaze from the ground, which, despite the dragons' currently limiting themselves to terrestrial locomotion, was moving by at an alarming rate for one used to halfling-scale mobility, and found Leaf, his elfin companion, staring back at him. "Or…maybe not?" Walter said.

Nearly a quarter of the way around the pit, Walter's mount straightened its course and made straight for the bank of the river. It took only a few dozen strides and less time than Walter would have thought for the dragon to cross the intervening farm fields. When they reached the edge of the wild grass that descended first into the sand and pebble-covered bank and from there down to the wide river, Walter's mount stopped, and a moment later, Leaf and her mount arrived beside them at a distance of fifty or sixty yards. The spot well might have been the one where Walter and Reeve had reappeared before venturing up to Deilmarkt for the first time. How long ago now? He was a little fuzzy on the number of nights that had actually passed during their relatively brief but absolutely eventful return to the game world. Walter looked up into the overcast sky and found the parent dragons still circling just below the clouds and directly above them.

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"Why have they brought us here?" Leaf's call barely made it to Walter over the noise of the river before them.

Walter shook his head and tried to suppress the thought that always sprang to his mind whenever he considered the intentions of the dragons: probably to eat me. His mount began to stand more upright and extended its wings, causing Walter to retighten his grip upon the saddle and press his face against his favorite face-pressing scale, which left him looking down the length of the bank to Leaf and her mount, both of which were watching them.

Walter felt his dragon crane its neck forward, and what started as a low vibration under Walter's saddle rose to a deafening screech like metal against metal. Terrified, Walter focused on holding on but registered from the front of his dragon the sound of hard objects striking each other with a dull ring, while from either side of the beast came the sound of objects striking against taut cloth. A moment later, the dragon dropped back to all fours with a rumbling grunt that Walter thought might be one of satisfaction.

Unsure of what was happening, Walter decided to stick with the plan that had served him well thus far and continued clinging to the saddle. Further down the bank, Leaf's mount rose onto its hind limbs and spread its wings. It, too, then extended its head forward and emitted a thunderous screech. Walter somewhat expected this series of events, which slightly improved his confidence in the moment. The swell of confidence was short-lived, as the events of the next moments were nothing he expected. As the screech raced across the bank and wide river before them, the edge of the river came alive, sending blurred items flying out of the bank and the shallow river's edge toward the screeching dragon. To Walter's eye, the flight of the objects was not that of a projectile subject only to gravity but that of something being pulled ever faster toward its final destination, which, Walter saw with amazement, was the chest and outstretched wings of the dragon. Wherever the objects impacted the dragon, bright white light shone out for a few seconds and then faded through a spectrum of reds and slowly back to the familiar periwinkle blue. Leaf's mount relaxed its pose and fell again to all fours.

"What in good heavens," Walter said, staring at Leaf's mount and trying to comprehend what he'd just seen. After a few seconds, and with little progress on the comprehension front, his eyes shifted to movement farther down the river. It was the parent dragons, flying toward them, side-by-side and only a few yards above the river's edge. Walter had a suspicion—why, he did not know—that he should probably let go of the saddle for a moment and cover his ears, which he did. Almost as soon as he had, the parents began their own shocking, discordant roars, which lasted long enough to carry the flying pair past Walter and Leaf and another half mile upriver. As they passed, Walter again saw things he couldn't make out flying up out of the sand and pebbles of the river bank and the shallow water of the river's edge to meet the dragons, whose huge chests and wings were alight wherever the objects struck them.

"Could they…" Walter said, scratching the bushy hair above the point of one ear. Frowning with concentration, he pulled a copper coin from his inventory and looked at it as it rested in his palm. He didn't recognize the person whose profile adorned one side, and when he cupped his hand to roll the coin over, he found a bas-relief of a regal edifice that might be a castle or building of state. Shrugging his shoulders, Walter leaned forward and pressed the coin against the scale usually reserved for his cheek. He waited a few seconds, but nothing happened. "Hmmm," Walter said, disappointed in the initial setback to his theory. "But," he said, "I am Innovative. I can figure this out." After a moment of thought, he nodded. "Needs iron. Ferrous. That's it. Ferrous! I've got just the thing," he said with a broad grin.

Walter reached back and barely needed to devote any effort to produce his bee smoker from his hammerspace. Its appearance brought an even bigger grin to his face, which lasted only as long as it took his mount to swivel its huge head in his direction. Walter's eyes widened as the beast regarded him, opened its maw a fraction, and let out an almost quiet metallic purr. The bee smoker was yanked from Walter's hand and crushed itself against Walter's cheek scale, impacting with such force that it partially collapsed. Before Walter could even reach halfway to the errant apiary tool, it began glowing as though white hot, causing Walter to arrest his hand midair. Within a second, the now molten tool had begun melting and spreading across the scale while the leather of the bellows caught fire. A breath later, the metal was already beginning to cool and glow less brightly. A few more seconds and the flowing metal disappeared entirely, leaving only the scale and those around it, all of which looked unchanged.

"Ahhhm…" Walter stared at his empty hand, eyes beginning to water.

"Did you see?" Leaf called, and Walter tore his gaze from the disappeared bee smoker to find Leaf and her mount nearly to them, the dragon she rode ambling to a halt only a few yards from where Walter sat.

Walter nodded, still staring at his empty hand, uncertain how he could continue in this world without his most trusted weapon.

"Did you discern the nature of the debris they were collecting from the site of our battle with Helia and her army, now some eight years on?"

Walter managed a faltering point at the scale in front of him that had just melted and absorbed his smoker. His iron-containing, metal bee smoker.

"It is fascinating," Leaf said. "Though I admit I do not understand the full implications. Perhaps you can use your connection to these creatures to glean information over time."

"Perhaps," Walter said, his voice again a croak but now from emotion. "But first, maybe we could find an apiary—are apiary giftshops a thing?—or maybe even a blacksmith, who would make something for me."

Leaf eyed Walter for a moment. "Did you use a possession to confirm your suspicions about the element their cries attract?"

Walter nodded.

"A possession you did not wish to become part of the dragon?"

Walter nodded again.

Leaf's hand ran slowly from her forehead back over her smooth scalp, coming to rest at the back of her neck. She stared at Walter for a few seconds. "Very well. When we arrive in Deilmarkt, I will direct you to the blacksmith before I attend to more important matters."

"Where exactly," Walter said, looking over his shoulder and across the fields to the pit next to which they'd landed, "is the town? Do you know?"

Leaf nodded, and her hand slid around her neck to rest on her cloak at her chest. "Some time ago, the twins and I agreed where it was we would regroup if ever separated under threat and unable to return to Deilmarkt or Thhia." Leaf followed Walter's gaze. "The circumstance is somewhat unexpected, in that we can return here, yet Deilmarkt is not here. But I have no doubt that Dawn will have translocated Deilmarkt to our rally point."

"Which is?" Walter said, already starting to curl his fingers under the front edge of his saddle.

"An unpopulated valley in the Vyrdenh highlands," Leaf said, pointing upriver toward the east where the Deiluyne emerged from between cliffs.

"Can you be more specific?" Walter said. "They may need more."

"It lies between the Selvin Massif and the Six Sisters."

Walter repeated the names silently, his mouth shaping the sounds as he did. He nodded, sat erect, and closed his eyes. He remembered the feeling he'd come to know when he'd learned to instruct his bee colonies to Swarm or form a Deadly Throng. He combined that feeling with the one he'd used in the market, accidentally, to summon all of the bees in Deilmarkt and its surroundings.

We, he thought, need to go to an unpopulated valley in the Veerden highlands, somewhere between the Sellvin Massive and the Six—"

Walter's stomach fell into his pelvic region, and then he was thrown against his saddle and cheek scale as his dragon first dropped into a crouch and then launched itself into the air.