The Book of Dragons

Aaron shut the door to his apartment behind him, locking it as he always did, and leaned his head against the door for a few seconds trying to collect himself. He always felt at least a little better once he got home, no matter what was going on; it truly was his sanctuary and he could get a grip on himself so much better in his own space than anywhere else.

His one bedroom apartment had the same four and a half rooms most one bedroom apartments did: living room, bedroom. bathroom, and a kitchen with attached dinette. Where it differed was how they were all connected — the kitchen was next to the living room, separated by a long wall and accessed through the dinette, but the bathroom and bedroom had a small adjoining room that doubled as a coat closet and storage space. It was especially odd because the little space, no bigger than the narrow side of the bathroom, had a door in each frame. The bedroom, bathroom, and hall each had their own door, and the passage also had a thick wood hanging rod and several large cabinets along the unused wall. Aaron liked to think of it as the stupidest dungeon ever designed.

He chuckled a little when that image bubbled up in his head and looked around the living room, trying to think of something to distract himself. He walked over to the credenza under the windows opposite the front door, dropped his tote bag on the floor, tossed down his keys, and plugged in his phone to charge.

An out of sorts feeling still hung over him. His thoughts strayed to the small suitcase on the shelf in his bedroom closet and the comfort resting inside, but he brushed those thoughts away. It had been a weird day, for sure, but he wasn that badly in need of comfort and he wanted to make do on his own.

He rolled his shoulders, surprised to find no real soreness, even where the bat had nailed him on his back and broken. A computer sat on a desk catty-corner to the front door, which also served as his entertainment system. He powered it up and put on a video from his subscription feed. It might be a good way to set his mind at ease and let his thoughts sort themselves out. He took off his overshirt to get more comfortable and tossed it on the armchair, then kicked off his shoes and sprawled out on the couch.

He dozed off within minutes.

*****

The walls were made of large, heavy stones, laid in the ashlar masonry style of old castles, and extended upwards out of sight. The passage was at least fifteen feet wide, maybe a bit more, and the floor seemed to be made from a single, solid piece of gray stone. There were no seams in the floor for as far as he could see and it seemed unlikely any stone that massive could have been quarried intact.

Aaron continued walking. He knew he was lost, which was sort of the point of a maze, but he couldn remember whether he was supposed to be finding his way into the center or out to some exit along the edges.

He stopped and checked to see if he had any chalk or coal he could use to mark the passages and found his pockets empty.

Well, shit, he thought.

The wall-follower strategy might help him find his way, assuming the maze was fairly simple in design, but he was undecided on using the rule of rights or lefts. Aaron crossed the width of the hall, placing a hand flat against the left wall, then the right. There was no logical reason for this, he just wanted to see which one felt better to his instincts. Neither wall felt particularly inspiring. As far as he could tell, they were just mortared stones. It never hurt to try, though; intuition sometimes had a funny way of communicating itself to the conscious mind.

He decided to follow the right wall and continued walking. After several minutes of twists and turns, he found himself in what appeared to be a major intersection. He could see seven other hallways leading off from the chamber and several more hallways leading off of some of those. All of the hallways were constructed similar to the one hed just exited, with heavy stone masonry and a width of ten or so feet.

It was a marginally better place for a brief pause than stopping arbitrarily in whatever path he found himself in and Aaron took a few moments to consider the situation. Since hed started using the rule of rights, it made sense to stick with it, but he briefly entertained the idea of picking another hallway at random and seeing if luck was in his favor. That was a relatively foolish idea and Aaron knew it, but he still considered it half-heartedly because wouldn it be amazing if he got it right in one?

People had been saying fortune favored the bold practically forever, but he thought fortune rarely favored anyone based solely on their outlook — it was just bias showing them what they expected or wanted to see. He felt fortune actually tended to favor the cautious — or cunning — because they tended to reduce the influence chance had in their decisions. A more accurate saying, in his opinion, was ”fortune **s the foolish ” or something like that; better to trust in chance to do only one thing consistently: be unreliable.

So that meant abandoning the rule of rights without justification was out; changing his strategy now could actually counteract any progress hed made so far. Aaron closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing. He wanted to focus on senses other than sight in hopes of discovering some new clue that way. Maybe he would feel a breeze coming from one path or another, possibly a smell or a telltale sound that might lead him to something useful like water.

After a few seconds, he thought he did hear something, faintly. He opened his eyes slightly, tilting his head so that one ear was ”aimed ” towards the sound. More seconds passed and he heard it again; a whisper of sound punctuated by a heavy beat.

Ssssssswih-thump.

He wasn sure what it was or if he wanted to find it, so he listened further. A slight frown formed on his face without his knowledge and the sound continued, steadily getting louder and more distinct.

Ssssssswih-thump.

Aaron started feeling a bit anxious. He wasn sure what the sound was, but he was growing certain that he did not like it and definitely didn love that it seemed to be getting closer.

As quietly as he could, he followed the right wall into the next closest hallway. He was a little concerned the passage, five feet wide like the others, would be too narrow to maneuver in if whatever else was in the maze chased him.

Ssssssswih-thump.

Despite the relaxed tempo, whatever was making the sound gained a lot of ground on him as Aaron crept along, trying to move stealthily. He glanced over his shoulder every few steps, like he expected something to appear behind him any moment, and he had a hard time keeping his hand close to the wall without dragging it along because his attention was divided.

After many more turns and quite a few minutes nervously creeping through the maze, Aarons luck ran out. He missed one of the small openings to a new hallway and jammed his fingers into the opposite wall. The impact itself barely made a sound, but he inhaled sharply in surprise.

He held perfectly still for a moment, willing whatever it was in the maze not to have heard. Seconds crawled by, Aaron not wanting to breathe but not daring to hold his breath. It was a long moment of poised tension, expanding onwards towards infinity. One part of his mind was counting the seconds — one one thousand, two one thousand — and knew barely any time had passed, but to the rest of his perceptions it was an agonizing expanse of timeless fear.

Eventually, Aaron felt the moment begin to fade — whatever intangible barrier separated concealment from discovery was approaching. It felt like he was in the clear. As soon as he relaxed the slightest bit at that thought, the shuffle-thump began again, repeating at a much greater tempo and quickly approaching.

Ssswih-thump.

Ssswih-thump.

He took the next right into a new hallway, his body angled slightly because of how narrow the passages were; he didn want his shoulders or arms brushing the walls and giving away his position. Speed and silence were his greatest weapons here, but stealth wasn something hed ever had a great deal of practice in, so it was a tenuous effort.

Now that the sound was more distinct, Aaron thought it was something heavy being dragged along, but he couldn think what the punctuating noise might be, until it occurred to him it sounded a bit like a severe limp. Once that thought presented itself, it was inescapable; Aaron could only picture some kind of killer or monster dragging a twisted leg along behind them.

Ssswih-thump. Ssswih-thump. Ssswih-thump.

As the scraping, shuffling sound drew closer, he abandoned stealth altogether and put his hope in speed, turning his body fully sideways to walk obliquely. He didn really have the room to do a proper grapevine step without banging his feet or knees, so he moved one foot then brought the next forward, almost like he was skipping side-straddle. It wasn as fast as running normally, but it was a pretty good pace. It had to be better than a limp, right?

Despite shuffling along almost twice as quickly as the sound of the pursuers movement, it still sounded to Aaron like whatever it was was steadily gaining ground on him. The acoustics of such tight, stone corridors might have had some impact on his ability to gauge the distance, but it couldn account for how much closer the sounds were with every passing minute.

Sswih-thump. Sswih-thump. Sswih-thump. Sswih-thump.

It was difficult enough pulling himself through the hallways, which were barely wide enough for him to sidle through without scraping his back and chest against the walls, but nervousness was beginning to blossom into panic as he failed to make headway.

SWIH-THUMP! SWIH-THUMP! SWIH-THUMP! SWIH-THUMP! SWIH-THUMP!

After several more turns, he hit a deadend and had to double back. Before he could cover even half the distance to his last turn, the shadow of whatever was chasing him through the maze fell across the mouth of the passage and the sound stopped.

The shadow was, at least, humanoid in shape. Aaron was convinced that if it even caught a glimpse of him, he was as good as dead. He reversed course again, trying to at least get around a corner, hoping the thing might just pass the deadend by. If worse came to worst, maybe he could use the sightlines of the corner to get the drop on whatever horror was after him.

He slipped trying to edge around the tight corner, losing his footing and tumbling down onto one knee.

He knew it was all over; he was as good as dead.

*****

Aaron sat up suddenly on the couch, groggy and disoriented, confused by the silence in his apartment. Even when he slept at night, he always had music, videos, movies, or something else playing so there would be some background noise; silence made him feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. He blinked around the living room a few times, sleep still weighing heavily on him, before noticing the autoplay on his videos had stopped. That was an understandable, but annoying, aspect of many video sites.

Although he wasn sweaty, he felt warm and uncomfortable. Whatever hed been dreaming about had been unpleasant, probably something about that stupid game. He had also forgotten to turn on the air conditioning when hed come home — another contributor to the hollow silence.

He got up and turned on the window-mounted unit over the credenza, checking his phone while he was there. No notifications, not surprising, but hed only dozed for about an hour, which was. Considering how out of it he felt, it seemed like much longer. An hour wasn so bad; it wouldn mess up his sleep schedule, which was easy to knock off-kilter whenever he tried sticking to normal hours.

Hed forgotten to check his mail when he came home, so he grabbed his keys and headed for the small lobby of his building, locking the door behind him — even when he went to check mail or do laundry in the basement, he locked the door behind him. He was the same way when he drove; if he got out of the car and was going to take more than a couple steps away, hed turn the car off and lock the doors. It was a habit hed had since he was a kid.

As he walked down the hallway towards the front of the building, he saw a guy through the big plate glass window, standing next to the tree by the curb and fiddling with his phone. The man outside glanced up when Aaron reached the mailboxes and there was a moment of inadvertent eye contact between them. They held each others gaze for one of those interminable moments where there is an accidental connection between two people in close proximity, effectively cut off from the option of politely not acknowledging the other persons existence.

Aaron could only think of one viable escape from the awkwardness that threatened to consume both their lives; he tilted his chin up slightly in the other guys direction and, a moment later, received an up-nod in return. They were both free: Aaron to return to his mail and the guy outside to continue messing with his phone. With social disaster averted, Aaron tossed the junk mail that took up most of his mailbox into the trash and returned to this apartment. There was never any important mail, but he knew if he didn routinely shovel the bulk mail into the garbage a day would come when some life-or-death issue couldn be resolved because the mailman wouldn deliver to an overfull mailbox.

Back in his apartment, Aaron locked the door and once more searched for something that would get his mind off his crappy day. A video game or movie would be a good start, but it needed something else to make it not just another ordinary night; he needed an extraordinary level of distraction and entertainment. If he ordered out and added some beer into the mix, that might just do the trick. He didn really drink unless he was at a bar, but he generally kept some beer in the fridge.

Pizza was his immediate choice: it went well with beer, it was very satisfying in a greasy, fatty kind of way, and you got so much of it you could stuff your face for hours, eating a piece or two at a time. Then he remembered that the softball team had been planning to go out for pizza after the game; in fact, they were probably there, right now, talking about what a freak he was.

He was used to others thinking of him as an oddball, weirdo, or whatever, and it wasn exactly untrue, but it wasn something he wanted added to the crappy baggage of the day. He took a quick deep breath and rolled his neck in a slow circle, trying to relax the tension from his jaw and shoulders. His thoughts flashed again to the suitcase in the closet, but he quickly pushed the idea away. Thats when he was struck by the most wonderful inspiration — Chinese food!

After a quick call to his usual place in the neighborhood, Aaron was left with about an hour to kill. Not enough time to really get into some games or a movie and far too much time to start drinking on an empty stomach, especially since he tended to go through beers pretty quickly if he wasn sipping them just to blend in. It was, however, enough time for a nice, long shower, which sounded awesome after a few hours of running around in the sun.

Thirty minutes or so later, he stepped out of the bathroom feeling refreshed, if still a little damp; he had used much hotter water than usual without realizing it and the bathroom and little hallway were humid and muggy. He threw on some comfortable clothes and decided he could watch some short videos and nurse a beer until the food arrived.

He checked the beer in the fridge to make sure it hadn expired. He couldn remember when hed bought the six pack of long necks and sometimes it was months or years without a drink at home. Aaron had been, at one time, under the mistaken impression that beer didn spoil, especially in the fridge, but a regrettable experience chugging what tasted like liquified cardboard, then gagging and having it spurt through his sinuses and out his nose, left him always making sure the beer he was about to drink wasn past its prime. Besides, there was a little convenience store a block away where he usually bought cigarettes whenever he had given up on giving up and a 24-hour grocery store a few blocks away, so unless it was very late at night he could usually get more booze as long as he had money in his account.

Speaking of quitting on quitting, after the stress of the day, Aaron decided this latest attempt wasn even going to last a week. He went to the cupboard above the sink and took out the emergency pack he always bought when he quit, peeling the plastic off the top, flipping a lucky, and dropping the pack in his pocket. He walked back to the living room and stopped dead as soon as his feet hit the carpet.

He had seen…something.

He blinked a couple times and tried to sort out what his brain had screamed at him just a second earlier.

He had seen something.

Out of the corner of his eye, at the very edge of his peripheral vision, he had seen something to his left, near the front door of the apartment. It didn make any rational sense, but he couldn shake the feeling. He glanced in that direction and saw nothing, but as soon as he turned back to head to his desk, he saw it again.

Except it wasn an it, it was a them; he had seen a person standing by the door inside his apartment. But he couldn have really seen anything because nothing was there. Aaron turned to look fully at the corner where the door sat and he was right: there was nothing there. Still…

He carefully set his unopened beer down near the corner of the credenza and stood completely still, looking towards the wall opposite him in the living room. He let his eyes unfocus and tried to force his brain to process his peripheral vision into his conscious awareness.

For a moment, he could almost make out the vague shape of a person standing in the corner; but only a moment. No sooner had he become aware of the silhouette than it defined itself suddenly as the hidden figure charged at him. Aaron had less than a second to process what he was seeing, which seemed to be a literal god damned ninja!

Loose, featureless black clothes and a black hood that showed only a small area around their eyes, which had then been darkened with some kind of makeup or grease. The clothes were so nondescript it was practically impossible to tell anything about the attacker other than height, general build, and eye color — and that assumed they weren wearing colored contact lenses. The clothes were modern with no distinguishing characteristics and not an archaic ninja costume, but the result was roughly the same: an indistinct, unidentifiable figure clad all in black. And wielding a knife.

His body reacted on instinct, flinching away, but he had limited space and bumped into the credenza behind him, setting the beer bottle rocking. The knife plunged into his shoulder just above the armpit. There was no pain, but that was likely adrenaline and shock.

Scrambling a few steps away, Aaron pressed his hand to the wound to stop the bleeding. Only there wasn any blood, or a wound. He and the ninja exchanged incredulous glances.

The assassin did something with their hands at their waist that Aaron couldn quite follow, deftly replacing the simple knife with a new one, significantly longer, thicker, and strangely discolored. The blade had a deep greenish tinge and, preposterously, a swirling, dull gray aura.

A chill crawled up Aarons spine; a half-forgotten yet all-too-familiar sensation he associated with fear. That was a bad sign.

Of the four common stress responses — fight, flight, freeze, and fawn (or **, if you prefer more visceral imagery) — Aarons nervous system generally only produced fight and freeze. Freeze might seem like the most dangerous in this situation, but it almost always gave way to a fight reflex and, when it did, Aaron was prone to lashing out in near-berserk fits.

Vaguely-remembered training kicked in and Aaron turned himself at an angle to his attacker, dropped his stance slightly, and brought his hands up into a fighting position.

The only way to win a fight against a knife is not to get in one, he thought. Or run. Neither are really an option here so…**. Fuck ** **.

The masked figure darted forward, a feinted slash turning into a jab. Both were so fast Aaron could barely register the movement. His body acted without his conscious direction and stepped back quickly, avoiding the knife. There was no way he should have been able to move that fast. He had always been quick, but not that quick.

”Who are you? Why are you– ”

Before he could finish speaking, the assassin was moving forward. Aaron almost tripped over his desk chair as he tried to maintain space between them, and actually did bump into the wall behind him. The knife headed straight for his face as soon as he hit the wall. He tried to throw up a forearm to deflect the blow and knew he would be too slow. But somehow, he connected with the assassins forearm, pushing the dagger off course.

The long blade pierced the drywall and the wood behind it like it was paper. The attacker backpedaled several feet and shook their knife arm gently.

The longer this goes on, the more likely I am to get shivved. I am no match for this level of skill!

On the assassins next charge, everything seemed like it was moving in slow motion. Aaron took a step forward, dropping his weight low into a wide stance almost perpendicular to the masked figure, and drove an elbow up into their solar plexus. The ninja was launched off their feet and hurtled into the couch, tumbling over it.

Aaron blinked stupidly as the ninja got back to their feet, rubbing their stomach. Less than a second later, the assassin had bent low, flipped the couch towards Aaron, and was moving right behind it. They deftly leapt over the couch in midair, dagger extended.

It happened so fast, yet Aaron miraculously had no trouble keeping track of everything. He stepped forward again and this time kicked the back of the couch like a football. It veered up into the leaping assassin and both went crashing into the wall behind.

Aaron was starting to wonder if this was some kind of screwed up dream because he was doing absurd, impossible things. He knew a bit about self-defense, sure, and he hadn always been a stranger to violence, but this? This was incredible! If it was a dream, it seemed like a good idea to lean into it.

If you had superpowers in a dream, you might as well use them. You never knew when youd get another chance.

He tried to press his advantage and get in close for some grappling, hoping to get control of the knife. The ninja was on their feet in an instant, warding him off with a couple quick slashes. Aaron backed away again and resumed his fighting posture.

The next attack was a series of slashes, going high and low, coming from different angles. Aaron maneuvered and dodged with a dexterity he simply didn have normally, avoiding the strange blade and watching for an opening.

After a handful of jabs and swipes, the masked assailant overextended; Aaron stepped into them throwing a hard elbow to the ribs. The figure went flying across the full length of the living room and crashed into the table in the dinette.

Once again, the ninja earned the title and was back on their feet almost as soon as they landed, weapon ready. Now, though, their breathing was definitely labored. Instead of approaching right away, they began to mutter something quietly in a rhythmic language Aaron didn recognize. If he had to guess, he would have said it was related to Arabic.

A light haze formed, clinging closely to their figure but not obscuring them. Aaron couldn have explained where the feeling came from, but he felt a sense of wrongness from the haze. He backed away a couple steps, considering his next move.

The haze rapidly condensed into a mist, taking on a reddish tint, then into something resembling smoke. Aaron had a very strong sense that, whatever the smoke was, it changed the situation. When the rust-colored smoke seeped into the ninjas body, he was certain. He had lost whatever strange advantage he had in this crazy nightmare and needed to change tactics, so he rushed into the small coat room joining the three rooms of the apartment.

He slammed the door to the living room and waited, just a brief second, then pulled the door to the bathroom shut with another slam, and repeated the process for the bedroom. The small room was plunged into near total darkness. Aaron, trying to move as quietly as possible, dropped down into the corner behind the door, crouched on all fours. He got as low as he could to the ground so he wouldn disturb the sweatshirts, jackets, and coats hanging along the wall behind him.

Crouched in the dark, silent, little closet, listening intently for movement, Aaron had a moment of mindfulness. He was scared, of course, but not panicked; in fact, he rarely panicked. However, some things were just off, even if this was a nightmare. His breathing was slow and even, his arms and legs not fatigued in the slightest or trembling, and, strangest of all, he wasn sweating. None of that made any sense, in a dream or real life.

There was no time to consider further; shadows moved in the light under the crack of the door to the living room, almost certainly the feet of the mysterious ninja. They had approached with a sound, of course, but the light gave them away. That feeling of wrongness from the strange smoke was there, too, tickling Aarons instincts in a way he couldn define.

Without warning, the door burst open, coming to a sudden, muffled stop against the hanging garments. The door was just inches from Aarons forehead where he was coiled down, most of his weight on his hind legs, waiting to strike.

Seconds passed in silence, each holding their position. Finally, the ninja took two steps into the closet room, cautious and silent, only part of their body passing the edge of the door. Aaron couldn see the knife, but believed it was in the hand farthest from him.

He held his breath as the ninja glanced in his direction, but they must not have seen him crouched in the dark corner. The masked figure quietly adjusted their stance to face the bathroom. They kicked the door so hard it came off its hinges and clattered into the tub. Aaron hurled himself forward, throwing his shoulder into the closet door and smashing the assassin into the far wall.

With a quick step back, Aaron repositioned himself to face his assailant. The ninja staggered back from the wall but managed to turn to face him. Aaron kept one hand high to defend, but he threw his hip into a punch with as much force as he could muster. It landed squarely on the assassins chest.

The masked figure sailed across the living room, hitting the couch again and pulling it over onto its back as they landed behind it. Aaron bull rushed the couch and leapt over it, intent on capitalizing on the advantage this time. Instead, Aaron found a gruesome sight.

The knife was buried in the assassins stomach, probably from when Aaron had charged them into the wall. Worse, their chest appeared to have been significantly compressed; it was practically concave. The ninja coughed wetly and struggled to move, one hand scrabbling for a thick, gnarled rod made of some dark material laying on the floor several feet away near the front door.

Although he was hesitant to get close, Aarons anger was overpowering his fear. He stepped forward and knelt down, his knee pinning the arm still clutching the long dagger buried in the assassins guts, and placed a hand on the shoulder on the same side. The masked figure groaned, but not nearly as loudly as Aaron expected.

”Who are you? Why are you trying to **ing kill me? ”

Aaron wasn happy that something like a note of hysteria crept into the second question, but it was the best he could manage. He wanted to hit the mysterious attacker, but that was cruel and he did not want to be a cruel person. Instead, he yanked the ninjas mask off and found himself staring at a stranger. But a familiar stranger.

”I saw you earlier, ” Aaron stammered. ”The dude on the phone. ”

The man Aaron had exchanged up-nods with not an hour earlier stared up at him, thickly smeared blood on his neck and face. Hatred was etched into his expression much more clearly than pain.

”Why? ” Aaron demanded. ”Did that old man send you? ”

The unmasked assassin took several shuddering breaths, each producing a sickly gurgle and rattling wheeze, trying to speak. Aaron leaned forward to hear what seemed to be a dying mans last words, but still half-expecting another knife to come at him.

The stranger uttered several brief phrases, each punctuated by a gasping breath. ”I struck at the serpent…before it could strike at me…but it bit and left me dead. ”

It was technically a sentence, but it didn make any sense to Aaron.

With another awful breath, the assassin continued. ”For another chance, I… give whats left of my life. Leave no trace…and make you forget. ”

The last sentence sounded different; more than that, it felt different, reverberating in Aarons head. His ears rang and he shook his head trying to clear them.

He stood up and grabbed his beer off the credenza. Why had he set it there in the first place?

He was pretty sure he hadn dropped a bottle opener, since he planned to use the one in the little drawer next to his desk, but he still checked the carpet along the back of the couch for a glint of metal. No luck.

Then he turned his attention to the front door. It was locked, of course, but it never hurt to double check. Besides, if he didn look once the thought occurred to him, the idea would keep niggling the back of his brain until he did.

Just then, there was a knock at the door, giving Aaron a start. He set his beer back down on the credenza and went to look through the peephole. Well, maybe today wasn going to be a total wash, after all — his food was a good fifteen minutes early.