# Deal's Worth Part 18 of 22 (1,660 words) "Good luck, you guys," Yogi said, and meant it. Jeff faced the empty patch of grass between the shed and the fence. "Yogi. I wish for a magical portal to appear in my backyard that goes to that battle that's on TV." Light gathered in the air beside the shed. It didn't crack or split. It built up in layers, like frost racing across a windowpane, until an oval taller than the shed door stood humming in the grass, glowing the hot, dusty orange of sandstone in afternoon sun. Through it, blurred like a city behind a shower door, Jeff could make out pillars and glare and, somewhere in the middle of it, movement much too big to be a person. He turned to say something. The grass where Yogi had been standing was already springing back up. No flash. No goodbye. Just an old man in a cardigan, and then no old man in a cardigan. Jeff's pocket felt lighter, and when he patted it, it was empty. The cyan die was gone too, off to wherever those went when their work was done, somewhere so far away that the word "far" gave up trying. "Bye, Yogi," Jeff said to the empty grass. "I liked him," Biscuit said quietly from the steps. "Yeah. Me too." Alicia bounced on the balls of her feet, staff in hand, bag strapped tight. "Ready?" Jeff looked at her. At the open glow of the portal humming by the shed that had been leaning toward their house for as long as they'd lived there. At the kid on the back steps, all long legs and borrowed shoes and hair the color of his old coat, holding the book in both hands like a trophy. "Little bro," he said, pointing. "House." "House," Biscuit agreed. "Bring me back a dragon tooth!" "No promises!" Alicia called. Jeff was grinning when he stepped through, leading with one leg, the way you ease into cold water. Alicia went right behind him. The portal hummed on in the backyard, patient and orange. Biscuit went back inside, because the house was his job now. The living room felt bigger with nobody in it. He sat down on the rug, and then, remembering he didn't have to, got up and sat on the couch like a person, and then slid back down onto the rug anyway because the rug was where he watched TV. Some things weren't about bodies. On the screen, the canyon went on. The dragon's plates stood up in a new pattern. The armored man ducked a sheet of fire, rolled, came up, and slammed his fist against his chest plate twice. Then, at the edge of the picture, near the canyon wall, a small orange glow blinked on, and two tiny figures stepped out of it. "That's them," Biscuit said to nobody. "That's them." He shuffled closer on his knees until his nose was a foot from the glass. Biscuit's hip twitched, reaching for a tail that wasn't there. (Biscuit didn't turn into an actual human being, Biscuit's dog form avatar was turned into a human form avatar.) Chapter 4: Joining the Battle The air shimmered with heat waves rising from the sandstone formations that dominated the harsh landscape. Massive pillars of weathered rock jutted skyward like the fingers of buried titans, their surfaces carved smooth by wind and sand. The ground beneath was a mixture of compacted sand and exposed bedrock, cracked and broken in places where tectonic forces had reshaped the terrain. Scattered across the canyon floor, far apart from one another, glass-like polygonal crystals rose out of the sandstone. No two formations resembled each other. One near the canyon's mouth stood taller than a man, tinted deep orange with darker orange twisting through its interior. Another, a hundred yards off, was barely knee-high, colorless and clear as ice, studded with small polygonal sub-growths. A third, alone atop a ridge in the distance, glowed faintly green from somewhere inside itself. They sat in the landscape like they had simply decided to be there. Exiting the magical portal leg first, Jeff, then Alicia, stepped onto the terrain. The sound that hit them first was deafening—the roar of combat, the crash of magic against scale and stone, the ground-shaking impacts of a massive creature in battle. Before them, perhaps two hundred yards distant, an enormous dragon dominated the battlefield. Its body was a fortress of armor plating, and its wing membranes were patterned in geometric whorls too regular to be natural. The dragon stood easily forty feet tall at the shoulder, its wingspan—when fully extended—capable of creating devastating windstorms. Already engaged with the beast was the armored figure they'd seen on the broadcast. The warrior wielded a battle axe, its haft short enough to control one-handed, its twin blades a dull black that didn't match the gleam of his enchanted armor at all. As they watched, he slammed his gauntleted fist against his chest plate twice in rapid succession, then swept the axe forward in a wide arc. Lightning erupted from the axe's blades, striking multiple points along the dragon's flank with thunderous cracks. Without pause, the armored warrior planted his feet shoulder-width apart, raised the axe overhead with both hands, then brought it down in a chopping motion—not striking anything physically, but completing the gesture. His entire body converted into crackling electricity that shot forward, reforming beside the dragon's foreleg where his axe appeared mid-swing, crashing against the armor plating. "We're doing this," Jeff said, his adrenaline rising. The irises of both his dark brown eyes turned glowing neon yellow, the pupils remaining black. Alicia nodded, her hands already moving through the beginning gestures of a spell preparation, her fingers splayed and rotating in small circles at her sides. Jeff performed his tongue simultaneous triple-fold. White feathered wings appeared attached to his back, the appendages flexing and spreading to their full span. "Coordinated strikes on the wound points!" Alicia called out, already running toward a better vantage point, her eyes scanning the dragon's body for the spots where previous attacks had damaged its armor. The dragon's attention snapped toward the newcomers, its head swiveling with terrifying speed. Along its neck and shoulders, armor plate flaps snapped open into standing positions, arranging themselves into a precise, unmistakable pattern—to perform magic. The creature reared back its head, then opened its massive jaws. Jeff's eyes widened as he saw the glow building in the back of its throat. Jeff briefly locked his double-jointed pinky finger into a specific bent configuration. A powerful gust erupted around him, catching his wings and launching him skyward just as a torrent of blue flames scorched the ground where he'd been standing. He controlled the wind's direction using his left thumb like a joystick, guiding his aerial trajectory away from the flames. The fire didn't spray or billow the way fire should. It arrived in a disciplined column, the dragon corrected the aim mid-burn, and cut off its fire-attack the instant it missed—the economy of something that had made this exact attack countless times before. The armored warrior took advantage of the dragon's focus on Jeff. He dropped to one knee, pressed the flat of the axe against the ground, then drew a quick symbol in the air with his free index finger—a jagged line representing lightning. Electrical energy poured out of the black blades and coursed through the earth, traveling up through the dragon's legs and causing its muscles to spasm momentarily. Alicia reached the nearest crystal formation, a squat cluster of rose-tinted polygons jutting from the sandstone. No time to wonder what it did. She drew a large circle on it with her finger, placed both hands flat against its surface within the circle, fingers spread wide, and pushed hard on a facet angled toward the dragon. Light poured from the crystal's opposite side—not a beam, not a blast, but a soft rose-colored radiance that unfurled through the air in slow, shimmering ribbons, curling and drifting like festival streamers. It washed over the sandstone, over the rocks, over the raging dragon, painting the entire battlefield a gentle, glowing pink. Nothing burned. Nothing broke. It was, if anything, romantic. "...Okay. Not you," Alicia told the crystal, already running. The dragon tracked her movement through the rosy shimmer with one eye, and its plate flaps shifted into a new standing arrangement along its left shoulder. The air above Alicia condensed. Water—tons of it—materialized in a single suspended mass and dropped. She threw herself forward; the deluge hammered the ground behind her hard enough to crack stone, the flash flood chasing her heels through the fading pink glow. "Watch its plates!" she shouted, rolling behind an outcropping. Jeff soared upward, his wings beating in powerful strokes. Both his hands generated spheres of black energy courtesy of his cursed ring, each one pulsing with destructive potential. With immense throwing force, he launched the dark orbs directly at the dragon's eyes. The dragon twisted with surprising agility for its size, one wing sweeping up to intercept. The dark orbs impacted against the geometric membrane, tearing twin holes through it in bursts of dissipating shadow. The dragon glanced at the damage dismissingly. "Its heart area has a barrier!" the armored warrior shouted. He pointed the axe toward the dragon's chest where a faint shimmer of transparent magical energy flickered whenever struck. "Aim for there!" Jeff adjusted his approach, diving lower. He locked his double-jointed ring finger on his left hand into a hooked position. The tattoo on the back of his neck—the halo—began glowing, the intensity increasing with the amount of magic building up. Frost originated from his hands and spread rapidly across the creature's back where fire attacks had superheated the armor, causing it to glow red-orange. He controlled the frost's spread using his left thumb like a joystick, directing it to cover the heated areas precisely. The sudden temperature change created stress fractures with audible cracking sounds.