Keys

The body they pulled out of the alley was huge. Seven feet tall, at least, and heavy. No visible wounds, no damage to his bizarre clothing.

He had on a bright blue suit jacket and short shorts. His legs and torso were criss-crossed with straps of red leather. On his right foot was a moccasin and on his left foot was a basketball shoe.

He had tattoos on his face. They glinted in the light which was weird. Little stars around both of his eyes.

Among his personal effects was a keyring which is currently on the table in the middle of our little group.

The FBI and the CIA are guarding the door and getting us coffee. The seven of us are ringed around the table looking at the keys. Our departments are a few clearance levels above the president.

And we are intrigued.

One of the keys is glass. One of the keys is invisible but a person could feel the edges of it. One key appears to be electricity in the shape of a key. One of the keys is an old iron skeleton key. The last key is bright blue and glows in the dark.

They resisted all scans and were made of no materials we could identify except for the iron one and the glass one.

We had no theories about where the giant had come from. X-Rays had shown a delicate tracery of machinery throughout his entire body, strengthening his huge frame to allow him to move quickly.

Something that would come in handy, say, if someone was going to travel between places with differing gravity fields, I thought to myself.

He was the first. I had no idea it was to be the beginning of a new age.



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Surface to Air

I didn’t cry at all when I saw the enemy soldiers executed but I shrieked like a child when they killed the horses.

They did it after the sunset. The sky was on fire with reds and pinks and oranges. The rifles rang out and the horses that weren’t killed instantly screamed until the soldiers reloaded and fired again to silence them forever.

I can still hear them.

I suppose we could have used the horses ourselves but really, we didn’t have enough supplies to feed them. We were out to cripple and hurt the enemy and this was one way to do it.

We fed the horses to our dragons.

Aerial combat had been a way of life for us. When the humans showed up through the gate with their revolutionary ideas of ground warfare, we were caught by surprise. The shot us out of the air. They had no honour.

They almost won.

We regrouped then, and over the course of last year, we have harried and damaged the humans until we are almost even. They cannot advance and neither can we push them back. Damages have been heavy on both sides.

I look over at my mount Shadefire and am momentarily repulsed as she greedily rips a horse’s leg off.

Her tiny mate is perched on her shoulder harness, waiting for scraps.

Thinking about the run-and-hide tactics we’ve been reduced to committing makes me feel like I’ve been infected with the human concept of honourless battle.

I will be happy when this war is over and once again, we can soar without fear of attack from the ground.



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