"Good evening, gentlemen; for the duration of the short time we'll have together, you may call me Hasai. Now before I even get started, let's get something straight: I am not your friend. I am not your enemy. Frankly, I couldn't care less if that insignificant scrap of an island of yours goes straight to Hell. And for those reasons, you can trust me. Why is that?"
The handful of faces looking at me in the tiny Sunday schoolroom frowned at me, confused; this wasn't what they'd been expecting. I smiled mockingly, feeling the sweat sticking the shirt to my back in the stifling room. "It is because I have no agenda. I have no wish to conquer you; your country holds nothing that I am interested in. Nor am I here to 'help' you; I am not so foolish as to believe that a people can conquer their demons by relying on the charity of others. You must help yourselves. I have an agreement with the one I know as Mary to show you the tools. How you actually use those tools is up to you."
"What do you see?"
I sat back on my haunches and studied the structure. Both it and the tiny scratches etched into one of my scales glowed softly. "Lines of light. Blue-white, mostly. Where two lines intersect, you're getting a plane. Looks like glass, but lit from within." I snorted with amused wonder. "A house of cards constructed of sheets of glass and lines of light."
Mary stared silently at the lines scratched into the dirt. After a few moments she took her cane and added a few lines, changed others. "And now?"
I squinted at the structure. "Several of the planes just rotated. Some of the lines, those you added plus some others, just went from blue to a bright green."
"Green?"
"Green. Um, it's as if the power dropped an octave."
With a muttered oath, Mary slashed across the lines, obliterating them. I winced at the result. "Why did you do that?"
"I made a mistake. We must start over. Why? What did you see?"
I opened my jaws, then closed them again and considered. "It was like a glass cathedral," I replied at last, "pulled crashing to the ground."
Mary stared at me, then at the scratches in the dirt.
"You can't see it, can you?" I quietly asked.
Mary sighed, then rubbed her eyes. "Mortals are as clear air to the magic. It passes around and through us as if we did not exist. I cannot see the magic. I cannot even touch it, except through the symbols."
"But--but how can you tell what you're doing, if you can't see it?"
Mary actually laughed at that, a small grim chuckle. "Only through a lifetime of trying, and seeing what comes out. Only that way."
"Guerilla Warfare, also known as Low Intensity Conflict, or LIC, is by far the most successful form of warfare, historically, and the type that is most likely to create lasting changes in a given society. Unfortunately, it can also be the longest and most hateful form of conflict, as well. . . .
". . . .In a LIC environment, the combatants are arraigned into small, self-sufficient groups called 'cells.' Each cell is totally independent of other, neighboring cells. Indeed, members of any one cell will not have the faintest idea as to the identities of members of other cells. Communications are handled solely by the cell commander, and then via a double-blind method called a 'drop.'
". . . .For every fighter in the field, you must have a dead-minimum of twenty active supporters among the population. You can get that support from one of two ways: Love, or Fear. Both work. The willing support of a population, however, is a far more resilient foundation to build upon than one based upon fear, which can very quickly unravel at the first major setback. The Sendero Luminoso movement of South America is a case in point.
"You don't understand--the order in which the lines are done to make the symbol is just as important as the lines themselves. Try it again. . . . No, again. . . .Good."
I watched as the lines I'd drawn began to fill with glowing power, siphoning up from the earth itself. How very curious. Where did it come from? Never mind; it's energy, and it seemed to follow all of the same rules that governed the more mundane forms that I understood so very well. . . .
I blinked. Could it be that simple? Could this be nothing more than some extension of the energies that I'd worked with all my life, undiscovered by all but a handful of humans? I felt a surge of elation. If so, then I could control it. Channel it. I was an engineer long before I became a dragon, and this I knew. "Mary, what would happen if I supplied a different power source?"
"What do you mean?"
"What would happen if I tapped the pattern--here, and--here, then. . . ."
I placed talon tips on certain key points, then felt my mane stir, crackling as I poured my own strength into the seemingly random scribble. Light flared, eye-hurtlingly bright, and the lines quickly shaded from blue-white to a blue of heartbreaking purity. Abruptly the color shifted, sliding up into violet, then taking on the blackish glow of ultraviolet. With a gasp I jerked my hand away, and for the tiniest fragment of time the pattern actually clung to my talons, then shattered and faded to nothingness.
Mary was watching me carefully. "What happened? What did you see?"
I stared at my talon tips, dimly surprised at seeing them still there instead of burned away by the sudden power surge I'd felt. "I don't know. Something I. . . .No. I don't know."
"Jacques, you must try to understand; yes, it would be a fine thing to stop skulking in the brush and back-alleys and meet the opposition head-on, if such engagements were decided by the rightness of one's cause. Unfortunately, they are not. If you indulge in such a toe-to-toe slugging match, you create what is called a meeting engagement. No soldier in his right mind wants to have any part of one of these, because then all of your advantages are cast to the winds, and all that counts is logistics. Who can 'git thar fustest with the mostest,' if you will.
"Do you think you can win in such a scenario, Jacques? You are a poor people, living in a poor country. Allow the enemy to draw you out into a meeting engagement and you will die, taking with you all your comrades and all your hopes. For nothing more than a moment's personal glory, which no one will live to remember."
"Mary, I may have something here that might interest you."
I inscribed a series of lines into the earth. "This is the design we were working on the other night, with a few changes, see? Now, if I continue this line--so, and this one, then. . . ."
As I completed the line, I began to pour power into the design. Swiftly the pattern's color escalated up into the ultraviolet. Once again I brought up my talons, and once again the pattern seemed to lift with them. But this time I didn't jerk away; rather, I continued to add power as I proceeded to draw, straight up into the air.
The pattern shifted slightly, turned, then began to slowly rotate before me as I continued to add to it, my talons leaving blazing purple-black lines inscribed upon the very air as they went. The pattern folded, then duplicated itself, the vertices joined in a multidimensional structure. It spun faster.
"Hasai! What are you doing?"
"Hmmm?" I looked down, to see Mary clinging to my flank, her gray dress whipping in a vicious wind that had suddenly sprung up from nowhere. Alarmed, I looked about me to see the surrounding scrub being torn out by the roots as dust devils formed about us and rapidly grew to towering proportions.
I gaped at the apparitions for a moment, then turned back to the construct, which was now spinning with eye-blurring swiftness. It was still growing, still elaborating, but on its own now. Power was sucked up into it from the earth, the air; even the stars seemed to flare more brightly.
I cursed with alarm and swiped my tail across the lines carved into the earth, breaking them. The pattern swirling in the air above them shuddered in response and tilted crazily, then somehow managed to right itself. Lines bent, then shifted and flared within the structure, and the thing continued to spin and grow. Faster.
The dust devils were taking on the proportions of tornadoes by now. Mary was shrieking something at me, her words lost in a battering wind that threatened to upset even my bulk. Half blinded by blowing dust, I gnashed my teeth, then plunged my talons directly into the pattern.
It was--insane. For a mad moment, I found myself looking down at myself even as I continued to peer up into the maelstrom of energy. Then my own viewpoint was gone, ripped away as my awareness expanded to encompass the winds about us, then about the island, then. . . .Then. . . .With a howled oath I flung my talons wide and FLAMED directly into the fabric of the whirling structure. Incandescent lines darkened, withered, then began to unravel like physical things before my onslaught. Suddenly, my creation shattered, its death throes manifesting in a monstrous thunderclap of sound and wind, the concussion bowling me off my feet.
There were several moments as the winds moaned and faded, then silence, broken only by Mary's alternate coughing and cursing. I shook my head to clear the ringing from my ears, then slowly I got to my feet and dusted myself off while Mary disentangled herself from the pile of brush she'd been flung into.
"Foolish dragon!" she grated, "what did you do? In the name of God, what did you DO?"
Dazedly, I shook my head. "Regenerative feedback loop; evidently, it's even worse an idea in magic than it is in electronics. . . .Um, I--I tried to base a pattern on more than one power source, more than one dimension, then loop back, and . . . and it just started growing."
Mary stared at me like I was speaking Swahili for a long moment, then frowned. "You tried to build something that would draw more power to itself?"
I nodded.
"What limits did you set upon it?"
"Limits?"
Her eyes went wide. "Foolish reptile! You set no limits? Then what would stop it from drawing all the power there is? Dragon, I saw you fade! I saw it begin to devour you!"
I shook the last of the dust from my mane, coughed, then stared down at my talons. "Um, Mary, I think you got it backwards."
"What?"
"I don't think the pattern was absorbing me; rather, we were absorbing each other." Mary continued to stare at me as I opened my jaws then closed them again, searching for words. Finally I continued. "For a moment there, I was the pattern. Then I. . . .Mary, I can control the weather--feel it, to a degree. But there, in the pattern, I was the weather. I was the wind about the island. Then I was . . . more. I think I was every cloud, every storm, every drop of rain in the entire Caribbean--"
She brushed my words aside with an impatient gesture. "Hasai. What did you do with the power?"
"The--what?"
"The power, Hasai! When you broke the pattern, what did you do with the power it had gathered?"
"It. . . .Um . . . I sent it away."
"'Away' where?"
I shrugged my double shoulders beneath her fiery glare, suddenly feeling like a very small child who had just done a Very Bad Thing. "Just . . . away."
The witch gaped at me, then groaned and rubbed her eyes. "Dragon, do you think that such power, once gathered, will simply go away, just like that?" She shook her head. "Never mind; it is done. Let us hope that it will not cause us any more trouble."