I spent a few hours laying on my back on the bed, taking in every detail of the textured stucco ceiling. Sure I didn't need to sleep, but at least taking some time to sit down and get my breath back would do me some good. I'm not sure exactly how much time passed. But the strangely foreboding glow that seeped in around the edges of the curtains meant it was at least morning.

I decided now was the time to check out the folder Copper had given me. All the data that the Society had gathered on me. It was an impressively thick folder. A hint of flattery teased at the back of my head. I had never thought I warranted that kind of attention.

Reading the first half didn't tell me anything new, all stuff I was already aware of.

“No recorded mental health issues or criminal convictions.” Yeah, thanks. “Does not stick with one job for long, current occupation is longest on record.” Okay, I get it. No need to rub it in. I skipped through all the rest of the stuff about me. I had a feeling it was just going to make me angry or sad.

There was a sudden, hard transition from typed-up legal documents in strict formatting to photocopies of photocopies of centuries-old parchments, shrunk slightly to fit in the centre of an A4 page with plenty of space around the middle. All serving to make it all nearly illegible.

A lot of work had gone into transcribing from Celtic or Latin into modern English, along with corrections written in the margins. But some of these pages really showed the scars of age. Sometimes whole sections or even paragraphs had been ripped apart with only small sections recovered and some kind of complaint or apology written in the blank section, always signed -P.A.

The pages were about Dragons. The text was flowery with a whole lot of 'thy' and 'thou' thrown in what felt like at random. Pay attention in school, you never know when reading all that Shakespeare for English Literature A-level will suddenly come in useful.

It started off at the deep end, Dragons were apparently the oldest of the supernatural species. And they had taken the whole 'survival of the fittest' idea to probably the basest level possible. The sheer amount of sub-species was insane, they could cross-breed with anything and everything to get an advantage. Earth, air, fire, and water were just the start. There was something listed for almost everything you could think of.

I ignored all that. I was looking for something specific.

It was heavy stuff, like all the rest it felt like something out of a bad straight-to-DVD fantasy movie. It was hard to read through all the purple prose and damage, but I was slowly putting together the broad strokes.

Dragons were tough, massively tough. Ageless with scales that could shrug off anything. Well not quite, a Dragon was weakened in the presence of whatever their opposing element was. So for me, that obviously meant direct sunlight. There were a few other references to something, something universally deadly to all Dragons that never got explained thanks to the massive amounts of damage. But every sub-species was unique, with something called Wings that gave them incredible power. Naturally, anything beyond that was damaged to the point I had no possible way of reading it.

I sat back in my chair and stared off into space for a little while. It's not every day you get told that you're functionally immortal in a way that actually means something. This was way too much to take in. But if that book was to be believed, what I had right now was time, lots of it, to get my head around the situation.

Days had begun to pass in either an agonising slow crawl or too fast for me to register. Not needing to sleep had a way of really messing with your perception of time.

Add to that the fact that I was under orders to stay in the safe-house until the mayhem had died down meant I was getting cabin fever.

At least, that's what it felt like at first. I was getting increasingly nervous and kept catching myself pacing around the room.

Then it got worse. I kept getting the urge to shout and break something, everything seemed to irritate me and a constant feeling in my chest like I was being squeezed.

At some point, I wasn't sure when, but the world turned into a chaotic blur of noises and colours. At some point, I regained control in a small room with tiled walls and a steel door.

“You ready to behave yourself?” Copper's voice came from the other side of the door. I peeled myself up off the floor and shakily regained my footing.

“What happened?” I managed to force the words out. My throat was sore and my voice came out ragged.

“You went berzerk.” I couldn't see Copper, the door didn't even have a hatch in it, just a plain flat steel surface. “Left you in there to calm down.”

“My head hurts.” I complained, blearily looking around the room for another way out. There wasn't one.

“Good. That means it worked.” The door shifted and opened a crack. Copper and Clay were immediately outside with Salt and Sand defending the hallway.

Copper under-armed something at me that I snatched out of the air. It was a clear plastic container about the size of my hand. Anyone that had seen a movie could recognise it as an IV bag, filled with blood.

“You take after Vampires, right?” Copper didn't move from the doorway. “This is your ration. Make it last.”

I gave the bag a testing look over, not letting my brain go down the path of asking what must have happened to get hold of it. The bag had a little notch in one end, a point marked for where a needle would be inserted. I looked back up at Copper, he stood still.

“I need to get out of here, I need something to do.” I told him, there was a brief flash of something that might have been sympathy in his face but it was gone before I could get a good look.

“Actually, I've got something.” Clay piped up, there was an audible sound of clothes rubbing together as all four of us turned to face him. “He's a wizard-buddy of mine and the local expert on Dragons. I can take you to see him, if you want.”

Clay's car wasn't half bad. A gracefully ageing BMW saloon from the 90's, neon red. Cheap to run, plenty of storage space. It was a very sensible car. Navy blue exterior, plain black furniture bleached faintly with age and plastic trim covered in scuffs. The car was as packed with stuff as Clay's workshop, unmarked boxes in the footwell, the boot crammed to bursting point.

The first half of the car ride was passed in heavy silence. I spent half of it toying with the IV bag, reading every word on the label. There was an ugly feeling in the pit of my stomach thanks to my brain and body fighting over what I had to do with the thing. After biting my lip a few times before finally pulling off the plastic cap off the nipple and bit my teeth into it.

The metal taste hit me like a brick and a surge of fizzing energy coursed over every limb. But at the same time, the scratching feeling in my stomach was gone, and the pressure on my chest suddenly lifted. I could breathe again.

“Don't get that all over my car.” Clay sounded more like a parent telling a child not to spill their orange juice.

“Ugh, that was nasty.” I sucked in air through my teeth and quickly replaced the cap. I had downed about a quarter of the bag before a cough interrupted me.

“I imagine you get used to it.”

“I hope not. Jesus that felt like somebody wired me up to the mains.”

We were in one of the smaller residential estates in town, mostly comprised of what we Brits call “council houses”. A house owned by the local council originally intended to be affordable housing for the working classes who couldn't afford city prices. But in my experience, they just ended up being owned by chavs who didn't want to work and could just about be afforded on benefits.

The place was ugly as all hell. A small two-storey house with a plain grey stucco facade and no real effort put into it beyond making sure it wouldn't come apart in the wind.

All I could really do was look on in shock when Clay applied the handbrake and hopped out of the car.

“Since when did Wizards stop using towers?” I asked, following Clay up the unmaintained garden path to the front door. Clay snorted then coughed in the way you do when you know you shouldn't be laughing.

“I wouldn't say that to his face.” He advised, knocking on the frosted glass of the door.

A few seconds of nothing passed and there was no sign of movement. Clay knocked again. Nothing. Clay fished around in his pockets for a while and produced his phone, fiddling with it for a second before putting it to his ear.

Somewhere inside I could hear the faint sound of a ringing landline phone. But still no movement.

Clay was starting to look worried. He gave up on the phone and pat his side, checking a pocket of his coat and once he was sure the item was there he reached out to try the door.

It was unlocked. Clay didn't seem thrilled at that fact. We stood still in the doorway for a few seconds while Clay reached back into his coat to grab the item he had checked for before.

It was a small chunk of metal, about the size of a cricket ball. It looked like a bit of ripped metal plate twisted and welded into something resembling a sphere shape.

The interior of the house was just as nasty as the outside. The smell was beyond foul. I had stuck my head in bins that smelled better than this place. It stank of cheap beer and cigarette smoke. Every flat surface had some kind of junk on it and nothing I would associate with a 'local expert' on anything other than maybe old copies of the Sun or microwave meals.

Clay suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and held up a single finger. “Listen.”

I could hear a faint fizzing noise, almost like the hiss you get in a cheap speaker, not really coming from any certain direction. A look of dawning horror started to cross Clay's face and all I could do was stare at him at wait for him to explain himself.

“Bloody hell, Paul...” He mumbled, now staring at a particular mould stain on the plaster ceiling.

“You gonna explain?” I had to ask or he would have spent all night staring at the roof.

“There's enough magical explosives to wipe out the house...And half the street...”

I half expected there to be a punchline or him to suddenly bust out laughing. But no. He was deadly serious.

“Paul! It's me!” Clay called, moving at a snail's pace forward. Wincing and visibly bracing himself for something. “If you're in trouble then call off the wards and we'll get you out of here!”

“What the hell is going on!?” I instinctively brought my voice down to a harsh whisper.

“A man has rigged his house to blow. What do you think?”

A crystal-coloured strand of something, thin as a hair, drifted across my vision. I barely even got the chance to focus my vision on it before Clay shoved his arm into my chest and shoved me back from it.

“Tripwire!” There were a few short, panicked breaths. “Walk out. Nice and slow.”

We did, moving back towards the door daring not touch anything. Not even the walls. Moving the six meters from the front door took us seconds. Moving back took minutes. As soon as we were clear of the door Clay scrambled for his phone, mashing at the touch-screen, gesturing me to follow him back to the car.

“Sir we've got a problem. Absher's gone. Door was unlocked and the whole place was covered in blasting wards.” Clay put Copper on speaker.

“He's what?!” Copper's voice clipped slightly when he jumped up from his desk and started pacing about the room.

“Gone. Up and left in a real hurry. No sign of a break-in or struggle, nothing taken, least not as we can tell.” There was the sound of a grumpy sigh and a muttered expletive. “Alright, what's the situation with the wards?”

“Three or four, I'd say. Big ones, too.”

“What do you need?”

“There's a binder marked 'wards-2' and there should be a knife with it.”

“Got it. Flint's on his way.”

That left us with some time to kill and there was something specific I wanted to ask about.

“You do bomb disposal?” I leant against the side of the car while Clay was rooting around the various bags in the boot.

“Yup, I'm an artificer. So I deal in wards, constructs, and artefacts.” I nodded, my lips pursed.

“Those sure are some words.” Clay chuckled.

“Right, sorry. The short version is that I build stuff and make things go bang.”

“So what does that make your little metal ball?”

“A grenade.” Clay pat his side pocket with confidence.

“Uh.” I instinctively shrunk back, as you do when somebody tells you they have a bomb on hand.

“Flash or smoke, mostly. Incendiaries are hard to explain away.” He reassured. I wasn't reassured.

It was about twenty minutes before Flint arrived, with a large tool-bag and a massive metal breastplate in tow. Handing them both over to Clay who wasted no time in fitting it on and headed straight back into the house, rooting through the various piles of rubbish looking for the bombs.

Me and Flint followed him in and each claimed a room to hunt through. Flint in the kitchen and me in the living room. The whole house was a disaster. Sure my old flat had the occasional empty takeaway box but this was piled knee-high. How the hell did this guy get anything done? How the hell was I supposed to find a bomb in all this mess? I dared not touch anything. Impenetrable scales or no I didn't want to stuff my hands into what smelled like a biohazard container.

Another blueish strand floated down from somewhere above me and I quickly shied back, even holding my breath. The tripwire led up and into the ceiling, vanishing into a hole that had been carved into the plaster.

“I think I've found something!” I called over to the other two, pointing out the hole when they came over.

“Bingo.” Clay tried to seem happy but just looked like he was about to be sick at any second. He dropped the toolkit and produced a knife that looked like a scalpel with a wooden handle and an extended blade.

Clay shifted his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, gritting his teeth so hard you could almost hear his jaw cracking from the pressure. He pressed the edge of the blade into the floating tripwire with a sharp intake of breath. Even Flint visibly tensed, getting ready to take cover.

The tripwire stuck to the blade, following Clay's softly shaking hand. Clay dared to crack an eye open and breathed a heavy sigh through his nose.

When he lifted, the tripwire followed, slowly more of the crystal blue hair was drawn into the knife and vanished, with Clay slowly leading it up to the hole the main bomb was hidden in.

I'm still not entirely clear on what he did next, to me it looked like he just climbed up some furniture and stuck his arm into the hole, stabbing the knife in there and carefully pulling it back to reveal a dull and scratched metal disk about the size of a beer mat.

“And there...” Clay hopped back down, crushing several plastic ready meal boxes with a wet thwack. “Is our bomb.” Clay was suddenly a lot more cheery, and redder in the face. Flint let out the breath he had been holding and moved away from the armchair he was ready to hide behind.