Knight of the Sleeping Dragon
Deep in the Great Smoky Mountains, near the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, there was a stretch of US Route 129 known to the locals as the Tail of the Dragon. It was the deadliest road in America: not only because it packed over three hundred blind corners into eleven miles, but because it belonged to a dangerous biker gang called the Knights of Appalachia.
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One day, at the last gas station and the last turn off before the Tail of the Dragon, a young lad named Phillip was leaning against his bike, refilling its tank, when he heard the distinctive rumbling of a late-80’s Indian Scout. He watched an old lady with cherry-colored hair drive up the road, blow past the signs and the barricade, and disappear around the first bend.
Tourists ignored the warnings now and then. Most turned around after a few miles. The rest never returned at all. The mountainside was littered with wrecks and corpses. This wouldn’t be the first sad old nobody on a battered motorcycle trying to resurrect a little of her youth.
But as Phillip peeled out of the gas station to follow, he knew this rider was different. She wore the leather of a true biker. She drove like a lunatic. And she had strapped to her back a greatsword: the kind used to slay a dragon.
---
Phillip soon caught up to the cherry-haired woman. He rode alongside her—dangerous on this narrow, winding road.
He yelled, “No one’s allowed up the summit! It’s dangerous!”
Cherry yelled back, “So? Slow down.”
“It’s not just the road!” he yelled. “The Knights will kill you if they catch you!”
Cherry yelled back, “I don’t see any Knights here.”
Phillip opened his mouth to argue—then gasped and slammed on the brakes. There was a right turn where it was supposed to lean left. He skidded to a stop and watched rocks tumble down the cliffside into the half-charred valley below.
When he caught his breath, Cherry was gone.
---
Night had fallen when Phillip found her. She had made camp by the ruins of an old rest stop that had been pulled apart as the ground shifted over the years. Firelight danced across the broken cinder block walls.
He considered sneaking up on her in the darkness, but Harleys aren’t known for stealth or discretion. She’d probably heard him from miles away.
He parked beside her bike and walked up. Eventually she looked at him.
“You really shouldn’t be here,” he tried again.
She laughed. “Kid, there’s nowhere I belong.”
He sat opposite her. “I’m serious,” he said. “Turn around while you can. This is no normal road. No one’s ever made it back alive.”
“I know,” Cherry said, looking back into the fire. “Before you were even born, my husband died trying to reach the summit. He would’ve made it, too. He was the best rider I’ve ever known.”
Phillip nodded. “But the Knights got to him first, didn’t they?”
She didn’t answer, instead staring at the sword she held on her lap. Firelight glinted off its scars.
Phillip considered sabotaging her motorcycle. He even imagined killing her in her sleep with his sword. But he was too cowardly—and too honorable—to do either.
---
They were woken by the growl of motorcycles echoing through the mountains. Ashes fell from a dark orange sky. Cherry took off without a word. After a few minutes of hesitation, Phillip followed her.
The air warmed as they climbed. Charcoal trees lined the road. Corner after corner stacked one atop another. They passed cairn after cairn, stone monuments crowned with the helmets of fallen riders. Still she refused to slow.
The pursuers grew louder and louder, until the mountain itself seemed to rev beneath them.
---
The summit smelled of sulphur and charcoal. Cleared of trees, it was instead peppered with boulders and scorched debris. The Dragonslayer was already there, staring down into the crater with her sword in her hands. Phillip drove his bike right up and screeched to a stop between her and the pit.
Behind him, partially buried into the rock was a twisted shard of pure steel that sounded like a dozen engines redlining.
“Out of the way, kid,” Cherry yelled over the noise. “This isn’t your fight.”
Phillip drew his sword and pointed it directly at the Dragonslayer. “You can’t kill it,” he yelled back. “I won’t let you. You’ll only bring fire and ruin onto the countryside.”
He could actually see her focus shift onto him—as if she were only just now seeing him. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? A Knight?”
Phillip nodded. “The last one.”
“There’s no one else coming? Ha!”
The Dragonslayer was an intimidating figure. Covered in scars and leather, with muscles that belied her age, while Phillip just was a scrawny punk kid. She wasn’t scared of him. In her hands she wielded a sword meant to slay a dragon.
But Phillip had a sword meant to slay a man.
Cherry howled and swung her sword. Phillip lunged to the side and knocked the heavy blade from her grip. She grabbed him, pulled him close, too close to use his sword. They grappled, faces inches apart, feet skidding through the gravel. Anger and fear and vengeance and regret in their eyes. His sword pinned between them, too fast to track. The Knight and the Dragonslayer, growling and snarling like beasts.
She reared back and head butted him.
He staggered, his vision blurred.
She grabbed his blade and sliced him across his gut.
He fell to the ground and curled up, clutching his wound.
Cherry retrieved her greatsword and skidded down the crater, buffeted by the wall of noise flowing out of the rock.
“Please, don’t!” Phillip gasped, reaching desperately.
The Dragonslayer looked back at him, then snarled and sliced clean through the dragon’s heart.
---
That summer saw the worst forest fires in recent memory. Officials blamed an earthquake for severing high voltage transmission lines. But on that summer day, according to the locals, a hundred miles of twisting asphalt peeled up from the ground and soared into the sky on wings of fire and chrome.