Only a few hours later and still long before sunrise, Seymour climbed aboard the shuttle destined for Dragon Dan’s Adventure Depot. In the flickering torchlight, it looked like a humongous wooden canoe equipped with rows upon rows of bench seats and a tan, canvas awning stretching overhead, presumably to protect passengers from the elements. To his best guess, this bit of fantasyland public transportation probably measured close to fifty feet long and twenty wide. And he couldn’t get a precise count, but Seymour would have bet the thing was equipped with an easy dozen wheels on each side, which were more like big wooden discs than proper tires.

  A ridiculously muscular, tusked, elephant-like creature that appeared to be made from wet clay stood yoked to the front of the shuttle. This thing must have stood two stories tall at the shoulder. The shuttle lurched into motion as it lumbered ahead, perpetually melting and reconstituting more than simply walking, like a living sculpture that could have used some more time in the kiln. Seymour wasn’t completely sure if the creature was an actual biological entity or if it was some sort of mechanical mammoth jacked on roids and covered in thick, gray-brown goop.

  This weird-ass shuttle was how this Dragon Dan dude’s army of workers commuted back-and-forth between Ghizo’s Crossing and his magic shop each morning and night. And while Seymour felt straight up energized by the sights and sounds, after glancing around a little more it quickly struck him how bored and tired almost everyone else looked. A few of his shuttlemates conversed quietly amongst themselves, but for the most part these magic shop workers slumped against one another’s shoulders to catch some extra shut-eye. Seymour, on the other hand, took a seat right up front in order to get a better view of the passing scenery once the sun came up, like some sort of goober tourist.

  A barrel-chested man stood at the nose of the shuttle, steering it with subtle turns of a captain’s wheel that stood as tall as Seymour and looked like it belonged on a yacht built for a titan. He wore a heavy, protective coverall, and it appeared he was channeling a thick stream of turquoise-blue mana through the captain’s wheel and into the body of the creature pulling the whole thing. The coveralls even included a helmet with a full face-shield made of translucent crystal. He looked all set to handle radioactive waste, but Seymour got the sense that the outfit’s actual purpose was to protect him from the mana-stream.

  “Hey driver,” he mused under his breath, “you ever think of adding some dice games in the back of this thing? Might perk these people up a little bit.”

  The driver touched the side of his helmet and the crystal screen shielding his face dissolved as he turned to face Seymour. With the shield gone, he noticed that the man sported a bushy, black mustache with eyebrows to match, though it appeared his head was perfectly bald beneath his helmet.

  “Driver? Truly? Am I reduced by you to mere occupation? Driving is what I do, Sir, it is not who I am." His voice was deep and gravely but also mirthful, like an executioner with a sense of humor. “I am Ermin Troudt. And I will pass your suggestion along to the proper department, I assure you.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t actually think you’d be able to hear me with that helmet on. I’m Seymour.”

  “Ah yes, Seymour Little.” He nodded. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. I saw your name on the manifest. First day, eh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I do hope you find the ride acceptable.”

  “Are you kidding me? This is awesome.”

  Ermin’s mustachio lifted like the wings of a crane when he smiled. “Your enthusiasm far exceeds that of most passengers. I wonder if you will be able to maintain it for the entire voyage.”

  “About that,” Seymour wondered, “why isn’t this magic shop up here in Ghizo’s Crossing, anyway? Like, I know I’ve heard that this is a major trade hub for the empire or whatever, so wouldn’t it make more sense for the, uh, preeminent magical emporium in the realm to be here in town instead of two hours south or whatever?”

  The big man tilted his head like a quizzical little puppy. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Well, no. Obviously I don’t know what I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “What I mean is: you don't know about Dragon Dan.” Ermin cracked an even wider grin. “He cannot conduct business here in town, for he is simply far too large to enter the walls without wreaking widespread destruction.”

  “So he’s an actual dragon, then? Like, scales and all? That’s pretty sick. I sort of thought it might just be a nickname for some rich merchant weirdo.”

  “Aye, he's the genuine article – a dragon of considerable size and age. And as far as anyone knows, he is the last of his kind remaining in all the realm. His true name is Gorgudan the Golden, but you see he goes by Dragon Dan as a simple matter of smoothing the course of commerce. It strikes the ear as less monstrous; more palatable for his clientele, who are almost exclusively humanoid.”

  Seymour gazed out into the dark as the shuttle passed through the city gates. “An honest-to-God dragon.”

  “I would not go so far as to ever call him ‘honest’.” Ermin chuckled once more, and returned his attention to the highway ahead.

  Over the weeks prior, Seymour had learned that the bustling market town of Ghizo’s Crossing where Hedwick’s Home for Wayward Aliens was located had sprung up around the intersection of the Emperor’s Highway and the Red Hydra River. The highway traveled north and south, bisecting the realm down the middle and connecting all of its major cities, while the river cut across it east-to-west, allowing barges to traverse the pangaea-like landmass from coast-to-coast.

  Their convergence here meant that—outside the imperial capital city of Xellam—Ghizo’s Crossing was the empire’s primary trade hub, despite the fact that it was located on the extreme southern edge of civilized lands. The central feature of the town was the Bridge Market, which as the name implied was a market which had been established around the intersection of the highway and the river, with shops and stalls situated along both riverbanks and connected by a network of footbridges.

  The settlement itself had been named for the now long-dead Duke Ghizo, after he cleansed the surrounding countryside of the preexisting naga infestation. The legends said he had banished their entire race to dwell forever within the depths of a volcano.

  A forest of cherry blossom trees had been planted on the outskirts of town to memorialize his conquest. Seymour’s first appearance on Heschia had been out in these woods, face down in a drift of satin-soft cherry blossom petals, with no clue how he’d ended up there.

  With still over an hour until the sun would rise, the shuttle destined for Dragon Dan’s Adventure Depot was now passing through those same, picturesque woods. The scenery reminded Seymour of something out of Japan, maybe – if anything he’d ever seen on Earth could even begin to compare. This was literally just the dull morning commute for most of his fellow passengers, but to Seymour it felt like the beginning of some great adventure.

  Glowing silver crystals floated in the air on either of the highway’s shoulders, serving as streetlights which illuminated the pink and white petals of the cherry blossoms. It turned out these trees were actually enchanted so that despite perpetually shedding their petals, they would never go bare. The result was something like a neverending victory parade – the kind of thing cities back on Earth threw for their sports teams when they won the championship. The whole scene accentuated Seymour’s sense that this was the start of something big.

  And the Emperor’s Highway lived up to its majestic name; a broad, meticulously cared-for flagstone road, wide enough to accommodate multiple carriages and wagons side-by-side. The shuttle to Dragon Dan’s left a pair of perpendicular wakes where its wheels forged through the cherry blossom petals which carpeted the highway, same as they covered every inch of the surrounding forest floor. Stray petals flitted down and became caught in Seymour’s hair. He smiled, more anxious than he’d ever been in his life to arrive for his first day at a new job.

  Ermin drove the shuttle south along the highway for nearly an hour before hanging a right onto a road which was less wide but still well appointed. They crossed a brief, rolling plain before entering into a tunnel that just kept burrowing and burrowing through a mountain. A string of rune-like symbols carved into the ceiling lit their way, revealing the tunnel’s impressive size. Seymour was reminded of the four-lane Eisenhower Tunnel his family had sometimes driven through on their way to visit his Uncle Rick in Colorado. How the engineers living in this low-tech world had built this thing was a mystery to him – but only briefly:

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “I mean, they obviously just used magic. Duh.”

  When the tunnel finally ended, Seymour could only tell because his surroundings suddenly became even darker without the glowing runes overhead. Listening, he realized that they had entered into a legit rainforest or something. Primates shrieked in the distance, and palm fronds rustled on either side of the shuttle. The air became heavy from the sudden increase in humidity. As they continued to roll along, the sun at last rose somewhere above the canopy, but its rays could barely penetrate, confirming in gray tones that they were in fact forging through a region of densely-vegetated jungle.

  “A shocking departure from the biomes found outside this crater, isn’t it?” Despite the poor lighting, Ermin must have read the look on Seymour’s face. “There is, in fact, nothing like it to be found in any other corner of the realm.”

  “I’m sorry, did you just say ‘crater’?”

  “Aye. We are now within the Vol’kara Crater, ringed by the only jungle region in all of Heschia.”

  “What kind of crater are we talking about here? Like a volcano or a meteor impact or what?”

  “The former; Vol’kara is a volcano which has existed since before recorded history.” Ermin added, “but worry not – a thousand years of dormancy have passed since its most recent eruption.”

  When the shuttle finally left the jungle, the gloom of false twilight surrendered to a broad expanse of sundrenched savannah like something out of a NatGeo documentary on the Serengeti. The transition from rainforest to grasslands was so drastic that it took a few beats for Seymour’s eyes to adjust.

  “Have a gander,” Ermin said, gesturing to a silvery, metal apparatus mounted to the front of the shuttle beside him. “Sunrise brings out the best of the Vol’kara Crater.”

  He hadn’t seen them for what they were before because of the darkness, but Seymour now recognized that some sort of telescope contraptions had been installed along the front of the shuttle – reminiscent of the kind you’d find at scenic tourist attractions back on Earth. Following Ermin’s advice, he hopped up from his seat to have a look at the road ahead.

  A cobblestone path, it cut a straight line across the miles-wide crater. What at first glance appeared to be a distant mountain range was in fact the far wall of its towering caldera, the black crags jagged and domineering.

  “Real Mordor-looking shit.”

  Seymour’s mind boggled to think that this entire landscape must have once been an enormous, subterranean magma chamber, when nowadays the hollow of the ancient volcano’s crater was like a garden being grown in a bottle; the perimeter ringed with the dense jungle which the shuttle had just traversed and the middle region dominated by an almost perfectly flat plain of green and tan grasses. The memory of a map he’d once seen of the supervolcano laying dormant beneath Yellowstone flashed across his mind.

  Is that what this is? A fantasy world supervolcano?

  Continuing to trace the road ahead led his gaze directly to the door of Dragon Dan’s Adventure Depot. He gasped and muttered uncontrollably to himself upon seeing it. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.”

  Ermin chuckled again nearby.

  In the circular world of the telescope, Seymour witnessed the colossal beast lying with its eyes closed and its long, snakelike body half-coiled around its eponymous magic shop. Golden scales reflected the mid-morning sun, and from this distance Dragon Dan could have been mistaken for an impossibly large and long mound of treasure, like something the God of Too Much Money might leave behind to retrace His steps in the event He was exploring a maze.

  He estimated the dragon’s crested head to be roughly the size of the shuttle itself, and the oddly tubular torso would have stretched across the entire damn parking lot at Disneyland. The legs were short and stocky compared to the rest of the dragon’s body, sticking out to the sides the same as a crocodile, two toward the front and another pair toward the rear where the long and winding tail began. It seemed impossible that those stubby, undersized legs could actually support Gorgudan’s weight, let alone take him places, but Seymour suspected the dragon didn’t actually need to use them for walking. When he wanted to go anywhere he’d probably just float up weightlessly into the sky, same as a ribbon waving in the wind.

  An old memory bubbled up from inside Seymour’s mind; a Chinese restaurant back on Earth where his family had been regulars when he was a little kid. Way back; before the divorce, even. The placemats pressed beneath the glass tabletops in that Chinese restaurant were decorated with dragons which bore an uncanny resemblance to Dragon Dan. He hadn’t thought of the place in ages, and in fact during recent years he’d sometimes been relieved to be thinking back to his childhood with less and less frequency. Maybe that was just part of finally growing up and becoming a man—

  “Where is your head right now?” He shoved the unbidden memory all the way back down and pressed his eye to the scope again. “There’s a freaking dragon sleeping up ahead. Forget about boring-ass Earth, already.”

  To reach that sleeping dragon, the shuttle now needed only to cross the final stretch of grassy savannah, dotted with fat-bottomed, flowering baobab trees and criss-crossed by spring-fed streams. The air was warmer and drier the further he put the jungle behind him; the tall grasses whistled in the morning breeze.

  He panned the telescope apparatus back-and-forth while the shuttle traversed this alien wilderness, gaping at the local wildlife. A staggeringly large herd of shaggy-coated yak-things, colored tan and brown, stood on the banks where a stream fattened, collectively dipping their heads for a drink.

  Meanwhile, a lanky, stilt-legged bird planted itself in the middle of the knee-high water, utilizing its slender beak to fish out sleek, black, water vipers before swallowing them whole, gagging loudly the entire time. A sight as magnificent as it was vile, the sound of the bird gagging on its snake-snacks was like heavy chains being dragged over slime-drenched rocks. Seymour couldn’t help but gawk.

  “A snake fisher, guess I’d call it,” he muttered to himself.

  Ermin laughed by exhaling through his nose, the way some men do. “Close enough, I do reckon. Look closely, and you’ll notice that on either side of the road here, we have some recently-opened fissures, venting gases from the depths below.”

  Seymour drew back from the scope and squinted at the steam seeping up from said fissures. It stank of sulfur. “Uh, I’m sure that’s fine, right? I’m fine. We’re all fine. The volcano is fine.”

  “I place my trust in the instincts of Gorgudan the Golden,” Ermin explained. “Long ago, he opted to construct his shop in this crater – despite warnings from the Guild of Architectural Wizardry that the crater of a dormant, world-shaping volcano was an exceptionally odd place to build a magic shop. But he is an ancient, celestial-ranked creature. His senses are so finely attuned that we can scarcely fathom the extent of his perception. If he believes it is safe to conduct business here, then I’ve no reason to question his assessment.”

  “But dude, you just told me like an hour ago that you ‘wouldn’t go so far as to call him honest’. Those were your exact words.”

  This time, Ermin tossed his head back for a full-throated belly-laugh. “Fair enough, but I was referring more to his mischievous streak. For instance, it is rumored that over the years, Ol’ Dan here has flown to the farthest reaches of the realm in his quest to bribe generations of cartographers, and that is why whenever you get your hands on a map of this region, the volcano is labeled not as Vol’kara, but instead with his own slogan: Here There Be Bargains.”

  “You’re a regular encyclopedia of local trivia, aren’t you?”

  “I do pick up bits and pieces in the course of my travels.” He winked. “Among other things.”

  Returning to the forward-mounted telescope-thing, Seymour could now see that the shop itself was an outrageously oversized three-story cottage with a square foundation, built from massive stone blocks which had been cut so precisely that they fused together without any need for mortar. The blocks were gray with subtle blue tinges and even the smallest were as wide and tall as Seymour’s shitty little studio apartment back in Los Angeles.

  The first and third floors each had wood-framed windows placed at regular intervals, complete with shutters and sills, while the second story had none. A set of simple, oversized saloon doors invited shoppers to mosey on in and the roof was done with thick wooden shingles. It looked downright cozy despite its size, like the megalithic cottage of an enormous grandma.

  A magic shop. A straight up, big-ass magic shop owned by a big-ass Chinese dragon.

  Riding along that last stretch, Seymour’s mind wandered back over the events of the past few weeks. He’d woken up in the cherry blossom woods outside Ghizo’s Crossing without a clue how he’d gotten there. Then a representative of the Ministry of Alien Affairs had tracked him down within the first hour. Dude was an elf and Seymour had damned near fainted. It was all a blur. They brought him to Chester’s place and right away they started finding him day-labor gigs. Because he was a normie human from Earth, without any magical powers, he kept getting assigned to backbreaking jobs; exclusively manual labor. But now, he had been straight up headhunted by the realm’s preeminent magic emporium.

  Why? He had to wonder, do they want me because I can supposedly do some magic now? Because of my weird new power that I don’t even know how to use? Or is this entire train of thought kinda narcissistic?

  Against the backdrop of this conspiracy-themed inner-interrogation, Ermin brought the shuttle to a halt at the edge of a gravel yard where a number of horses were already tied outside the entrance of Dragon Dan’s Adventure Depot. The elephant-shaped golem-thing let out a hissss like the hydraulic brakes on a city bus, wrenching Seymour from his thoughts.

  “We have arrived,” Ermin dissolved his crystalline facemask to quietly announce. “Good luck today, Mr. Little.”