Flames gushed and smoke billowed out of two crystal skyscrapers, making them resemble icicle matchsticks.
Many more skyscrapers surrounded the fiery pair, all the towers rising out of a mammoth cloud that floated in a sunset sky, along with several smaller clouds highlighted with lavender and gold.
An emerald dragon circled over the skyscrapers, readying for a second attack.
In a courtyard in the middle of the skyscrapers, four boys dressed in sleepwear watched the dragon. Three of the boys wore baggy shirts and shorts while the fourth wore monogrammed pajamas. Only two of the boys knew each other, a stubby kid with buzz-cut blonde hair standing like a bodyguard beside a frightened freckled beanpole boy with short uncombed dark brown hair.
“Who the heck are you?” the stubby kid snapped at the boy in fancy pj’s.
“Who are you?” pajama boy shot back. Good looking, wiry, towheaded with plenty of wavy hair, and not much taller than the stubby boy, this kid acted anything but intimidated.
The last boy studied his unknown comrades. He was not quite as tall and skinny as beanpole, or quite as handsome and self-assured as towhead, and nowhere near as hot-blooded and gruff as stubby. His ruffled hair was black and his big eyes were gray. “Where are we? How did we get here?” Unlike stubby and towhead, whose drawls sounded American, this boy spoke with a working-class Welsh accent.
“Who cares?” beanpole boy yipped, pointing up. “What about that?”
It was the dragon.
The stubby kid snarled at the stranger wearing fancy pj’s. “Who the heck are you?”
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Swooping between the skyscrapers, the creature thrashed one tower with its claws and whipped and shattered another with its spiked tail. Shards fell, sharp as daggers.
The boys scattered, but the Welsh lad braked when he heard a tolling bell. The tolls were deep and loud but also soothing. Turning towards the tolls, he saw a girl unlike anyone he had ever seen in his life standing on a pentice, a covered path in the courtyard leading to each of the skyscrapers.
The girl, like the boys, appeared to be twelve years old. Her freckled face was pretty and her warm green eyes were shrewd. Her long hair was orange and braided like a Swede or a Dane, though Colin noticed that one braid, above her right eyebrow, had been chopped short. She wore purple and black bohemian clothes and men’s hiking shoes. In one hand she held a staff with a burning candle on top, and in the other hand she clutched an empty knife scabbard over her heart. Bizarre runes were carved into the scabbard. The girl didn’t speak or even flinch as the shards rained down. All she did was stare at him.
And then the Welsh lad woke up.
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