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The last one really was an extension on our fact number 6.
6a. Dragons prefer magickal intelligent prey, as like certain creatures, dragons can absorb the magick that the creature holds and add it to their own, increasing their own reserve of magickal power. Dragons are known to actively hunt intelligent prey because of the magick inherent in them. I had a HUGE mass of magick attached to me from Ahiah. I would be a mother-lode for a dragon. This was definitely not something that was fun to know. Don't get me wrong, I'm really, really glad I knew it, I just didn't like that I had to know it.
I spent the rest of the week bringing books to the police station, and those three wizards, bless them, never complained about the job at all. Fawn told me later that it was a break from their normal routine and they had really got into working the job. I wasn't sure what I could do to thank them properly, but Fawn smiled and told me not to worry about that until after I'd gotten the way open and avoided begin dragon hor' douerves.
Which brought up the next order of business. How the heck to open the way in the first place. Anolyn had made the barrier not so much as impregnable as absolute death to cross. You could go through it any time you wanted, you just were dead when you got through it, regardless of what you went through in. Anolyn had set the barrier to kill anything that wasn't the rock the barrier rested on. That was why the clamshell rock boat had worked, it was made of the same rock the spell was on.
The knowledge of the clamshell rock boat and it's last resting place were lost to us, so that meant starting from scratch. I really don't like re-inventing anything, especially when it has a chance to so seriously kill me if I screw it up. The next thing to do would be to look at the barrier.
I drove to the coast town of Pictou, which had been at one time the Nova Scotia terminus for the ferry that ran between it and Wood Islands on Prince Edward Island before it had been walled in by Anolyn. The barrier could be seen, a whitish curtain that went up and arced back over the island, creating an irregular dome over the whole of the island. Nothing went in alive. Nothing came out alive. It got me to wondering why would such a creature like Anolyn want such protection?
I thought about that for a moment and threw it away. My job was to re-open the Anolyn way and beyond that, I had no reason to think of anything else. If I got this done, and if I lived, then I had things to think about. That's me, just little sweet sunshine.

#

Things were progressing quietly well, which considering my “real” job as a “sting” provider and a private investigator of some ill repute. Those tended to be quiet to a point then usually all hell would bust out as, well, I'm sure it's the magick Fawn and I both carry. A late friend pointed out that both of us had all this magick, and that magick itself saw that as a kind of imbalance, so to 'balance' things, weird stuff kept happening around us.
I really hated that explanation, but it made sense. I had to other acquaintances in the business, and neither of those two women ever had to contend with all the weird stuff that went on in my jobs. You'd think that with that kind of reputation, I'd have gone broke long ago because people generally are scared off by weird and unusual. Not the case with me. I always had a backlog, of better-off-than-average clients. Blame that on the magick too I guess.
I was driving back to Halifax when the attack happened. It was so fast and powerful that I didn't recognize it for an attack until I had a moment or two to think. I was on a gentle curve when a deer flashed in front of me. I instinctively swerved the car to miss the deer. I think that's what saved my life. There was a blow to the car that lifted it off the road and threw it into some pine. I felt a cold draft hit me and a tearing sound from behind the driver's eat somewhere. I had my seat belt on and so I wasn't thrown from the wreckage, but ended up being thrown about like a rag doll in the car before it fell through the trees and hit and rolled down next to a stream.
The car stopped in mid-stream, hitting a rock and coming to a sudden rest. I sat in the car for a long time, I'm not sure just how long. Something told me that I needed to stay absolutely still, and for a wonder, I did actually listen to my instinct. Fear helped a lot. You don't know what you can do until something scares you bad enough or threatens you badly enough that you act. My act was to play dead.
Later, when my fear went away, I pulled myself out of the car and looked at it before walking to the road. The rear half of the car had been torn off by something big, and was back up the hill a ways. The front end looked like a metallic ball that something chewed up and spit out. In all that metallic carnage, I did not sustain a single scratch. A hell of a lot of bruises though, and I ached on the walk back to Pictou to call Fawn and Larry and ask them if they could pick me up at the bus station the next day.