Dragon Island (11 page)

—Excerpt from the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychological Disorders, Vol. 5
. (2006)

N
ingai Ura and I continue down the corridor of dark, rusting, space-age metal in silence. I think about all the miserable things that have happened to me since I crash-landed on
Kaiju
Island
and curse the day I boarded that stupid plane at LAX!

Then another thought strikes me like an armor-piercing bullet tearing through Teflon. The plane crashed several days ago. Mom and Dad would’ve seen on the news that the plane had gone missing. They probably would’ve even been notified by the airline of such. The search for the wreckage may already be over.

Probably so, considering they would not have found a single trace of us.

Wherever Kaiju Island is, it’s not on any maps the world at large has seen. The strange constellations I’ve seen in the night sky are proof enough of that.

But poor Mom!

For all I know, she could be sitting at my funeral right now, crying her eyes out as she looks at a picture of me. There would not be any coffin to cry over. You cannot have a coffin without a body to go inside it, after all!

I wonder if Dad will come to my funeral?

I wonder if he will shed any tears for me?

Of course he won’t.

That would make him appear weak—make him lose face. And we cannot have that, now can we?

As we continue our trek through the twisting, underground corridors, I feel Ningai Ura’s hand come to rest on me. It feels like a dead fish on my shoulder.

“I sense sadness in you, Raymond-sai,” he says. “Do not fear for Nekokat. He will be fine.”

“It’s not that.” I walk a little faster, trying to outrun his grip without being obvious about what I’m doing. Ningai simply matches my pace.

“Ah,” he says. “Then it must be family. You worry they have forgotten you already.

“I know what it feels like to have the people you love the most turn their backs on you, Raymond-sai.”

There’s such sadness and conviction in Ura’s voice that, for a moment, I empathize with him. I almost forget that he is the reason I’m stranded here on
Kaiju
Island
.

But only for a moment, and only almost.

He squeezes my shoulder, urging me to halt. I do.

“Trust me, Raymond-sai. You are better off without them.”

He waves his free hand at the wall and the corridor we are in retracts in upon itself, forming a doorway.

“In fact, to walk the road we have chosen, we must leave our family and friends behind forever.”

I look inside the doorway and see Kitsune chained to a post in the middle of an underground arena large enough to hold the Superbowl. The same dark metal of our corridor forms the arena’s floor and stadium-style seating, but its ceiling is made of stone. Blue-tinged phosphorescent lights and iron girders criss-cross overhead among countless pointed, rock stalactites. Despite the arena’s size and scope, it makes me feel closed in, as though I were buried alive.

Even an arena-sized coffin is still a coffin.

“Raymond-sai!”

“Kitsune!”

I break from Ningai Ura’s hold and bolt into the arena, running to Kitsune as fast as my legs will take me. I reach her and give her a hug. The chains binding her wrists to the post make our embrace an awkward one.

“I knew you would come for me, Raymond-sai!”

“I, uh, yeah! Sure, Kitsune! Sure I would!”

“Yes, Raymond-sai,” Ura says.

I turn to see him standing directly behind me, Kusanagi gripped in the palm of his right hand.

“You have come for her, and now you must end her.”

I stare at him, dumbfounded.

“What—? What are you—?”

“I told you, Raymond-sai, those who walk our road must sever all ties with loved ones. The god-dragon Ryuu is our only family now. His power will banish our paltry, mortal need for relationships with others.”

He holds Kusanagi out to me. “Take the god-dragon sword and slay her.”

“What?” Kitsune cries.

I look at him in disbelief.

“You want me to kill her?”

The pale man answers without hesitation.

“Yes.”

I answer just as quickly.

“Uh,uh! No way!”

“Slay her or be slain yourself, Raymond-sai. The choice is yours.”

He presses the sword toward me, urging me to take hold of it.

My gaze bounces from Kusanagi to Ura to Kitsune and back again.

Kitsune looks at me with tearful eyes, but says nothing.

I begin to cry.

“Do it!” Ura shouts. He shoves Kusanagi into my hands, forcing me to take the blade. The violent action knocks me back a step.

“Do it now!” he screams. “Slay her as we will slay the world before reshaping it into our own likeness!”

I look to Kitsune. Her face is a scowl. She says nothing, but her watery eyes bore into mine, broadcasting her thoughts into my brain.

He is unarmed, Raymond-sai. Kill him! Take Kusanagi and cut him down, now, before it is too late!

I feel nauseous. Not having anything to throw up, I being to dry heave.

“Fear me, coward!” Ura says. “Fear me and do as I command!”

He raises his hand to strike me, and my dry heaves stop. I cringe and throw up my hands to shield my face.

“No, Dad. Please, don’t!” I cry out of reflex.

When the blow fails to fall, I look up and see Ura grinning from ear-to-ear with morbid delight.

I’m absolutely certain that, any second, he will peel off his face, and it will be Dad’s underneath.

It will have been Dad, all along.

But Ura simply stands there expectantly, his veneers glistening in the lights of the arena.

I turn to Kitsune.

Kill! Him! Now!

Slowly, trembling, I remove Kusanagi from its sheath. The blades shines and the glow is somehow hungry.

Hungry for Ningai Ura.

For Kitsune.

It doesn’t matter.

Either will do. And both will be a banquet!

I release the scabbard. It falls to the arena’s metal floor with a clack. I take Kusanagi in both hands.

The sword thrums with power.

With desire.

Desire for blood.

Desire for souls.

The power and the longing it brings creeps down the sword’s hilt and enters my hands. It climbs slowly up the length of my arms. I look to Ura and then to Kitsune.

Ura has stopped grinning.

There’s unease in his face and outright terror in Kitsune’s.

And that is well, for they are looking at a killer. One about to take his first taste of death.

I raise Kusanagi and then...

And then my tears return.

This isn’t me. I don’t want to kill anyone, good or bad!

I just want to go home to Mom and Bear.

I toss Kusanagi to the floor and collapse into a squat. I wrap my arms around my torso and begin to bawl.

“A pity,” Ura says.

His voice sounds eerily similar to that of my father.

In ancient times, Kumagor (pronounced Koo-mah-gore. Literally “bear-dragon”) often served as a totem spirit-beast of the reluctant warrior, as the great daikaiju’s preferred state of existence was hibernation. But woe was to be unto any foolish enough to rouse this most ferocious of Ryuu’s children...

—Excerpt from
Dragons of the East
, by Seth Thompson (2008)

W
hy did this have to happen to me? I think as I sob. Why did my plane have to crash on a mysterious island right out of a Jules Verne novel—one complete with its own reverse-Captain Nemo-nut job?

Ningai Ura gestures to the arena wall and two rusted samurai droids detach from the metal structure, peeling themselves away like a couple of stamps exiting a booklet of their own free will.

They march over, their feet clanking against the arena’s metal floor with each herky-jerky step. Their armored, powerful limbs lift me from the floor and bring me to side of the post opposite Kitsune. They take my arms and raise them above my head.

I don’t resist.

They snap chains around my wrists so that I’m bound to the post just like Kitsune.

We are an island unto ourselves, alone without friends in this immense place of stone, metal, and horror.

Ningai Ura picks Kusanagi off the ground and sheaths it. He stuffs the sword into the sashes encircling his waist and walks around to my side of the post.

“You could have had the honor of being my herald to the outside world, Raymond-sai.” he says. “Instead, you have chosen death!

“How very Kintaro-like.”

His face wrinkles into a snarl.

“How very foolish!”

He whirls with a flourish of his kimono and heads for the arena wall. The two androids clank along after him.

“Ura!” Kitsune yells.

Without looking back, he wags a finger.

“Ah, ah, ah! Patience, Toho wilding. You will get your just reward soon enough!”

Ura stretches out his arms and the arena wall divides to allow him passage, his seemingly magical influence over this subterranean realm defying known logic and reason once again. The two androids reintegrate into the wall on either side of the divide, vanishing from sight.

The wall reseals itself and forms into a spiraling tower of twisted metal that carries Ura into the air so that he looks down on us on us from high above. From this vantage, he stretches a hand out over the arena. Kitsune and I scream as the floor beneath our feet collapses upon itself like an infinitely folding box until nothing remains. The post we are chained to now rises up from a bottomless pit much like Doragon’s Mouth.

I begin to cry.

I’m shocked that I still have any tears left to do so.

Ningai Ura draws Kusanagi and holds it aloft. Its blazing flash fills the cavern. The de facto Xenomian removes his sunglasses and I gasp. The familiar red goo surrounding his pupils is visible even in the bright light of Kusanagi. It makes him look like a mad demon.

And maybe he is.

“Rise, Hebira!” he bellows. “It is I, Ningai Ura, the rightful wielder of Kusanagi who commands it!

“Rise!”

There’s a moment of still quiet. Then a hissing like that of a thousand snakes answers from the pit, rising up from far, far below.

My bladder releases into my pants.

Oh dear Heaven, I want to go home! I want to sink down under my bedcovers and put my arms around Bear! If only Bear were here! I would feel so much better! If only—!

The post shudders and Kitsune and I being to scream and struggle against our chains. But even if we were able to free ourselves, there’s nowhere to run—no path of escape.

This is it.

We are going to die, here in the belly of the Dragon Island, so far from home.

So far from Mom.

So far from Bear.

I hear a slithering noise and look down past my dangling feet. I see something moving in the darkness.

Something is climbing up the post.

Something incredibly large.

Then I see it—Hebira—an albino cobra with an armored hood and jutting, flagpole-sized fangs. The daikaiju is as large and as long as a subway train!

The beast coils its way up the post at a speed that should be impossible for something so huge. Hebira reaches us and uncoils its upper body from the post so that it can better survey us.

Its massive forked tongue tastes the air repeatedly, catching our scent.

Its serpentine gaze locks onto us and I freeze like the prey I’m being offered up to be.

It’s as though I’m four years old all over again, staring into the eyes of the snake coiled in the yard of our old house, unable to move.

But this isn’t my old house. And Hebira is certainly no simple yard snake!

Hebira hisses and Kitsune and I scream.

Oh Bear! Please help me! Please!

“Yes!” Ura shouts from the tower-top. “Yes, Hebira!” He looks at Kusanagi, barely able to believe his long-wished-for control over the daikaiju has at last come to pass in full.

He slices the air with the sword, its arc ending with Kusanagi’s tip trained directly onto us.

“Now feed, Hebira! Feed!”

Hebira’s hood flares. Its eyes grow large in anticipation of the meal to come. The snake daikaiju draws back, readying to strike. Its mouth opens impossibly wide, exposing the pink, slobber-covered flesh inside.

Bear, I think. Bear! Bear! Bear!