by Brad C Baker
Crallick grinned savagely. At the very least, that meant that his crew would at least spare the maidens from their fate for the scant moments that it would take the creature to devour them. Bolstered by this thought, Crallick steadfastly raised his bow to the heavens, waiting with bated breath for the third pass.
As the approaching gale grew in volume, Crallick let fly with his first shot. This was key. If he could bloody it right off the bat, he could surely give a morale boost that could give his doomed party a fighting chance. His arrow bounced harmlessly off the dragon’s armored underbelly instead of into its armpit, where he had been aiming. Damn it all. He glared balefully at his bow, as though it were the cause of betrayal to his shot, and not his own eyes.
Alerted to the threat within the trees, the great wyrm Pyryathan slowed her passes with several mighty back-beats of its majestic wings. She snaked her head back and forth, looking for the diminutive mortals that she could now smell. Living in this part of the world, she had become used to the scent of reptilemen, humans, halflings, and other beasts of the rainforest. But coming to her mountains lately had been new and tasty smells. The canopy stymied her efforts to find her prey. She began to lower herself through the foliage to get a better look under the ocean of leaves.
A huge reddish reptilian head crashed its way delicately through the trees and into view. Upon seeing the monstrous visage, there was a general hue and cry of panic and alarm. Fortunately this clamour was accompanied by a volley of missile weapons launching up towards the incoming threat.
Crallick was again foiled by blurring vision that caused his arrow to glance off the mark. He shook his head in frustration, not quite putting together that the heat, combined with the alcohol consumption and the morning exertions, coupled with age, were producing a debilitating dehydration that was taking its toll on him.
Menshirre let fly a bolt from his crossbow that stuck into the dragon’s right foreclaw.
Drake, Faulk, and Bargress all focused their pistol fire on the beast’s belly. Armon Faulk’s pistol backfired. It destroyed itself and severely burnt his hand in the process. Bargress’s shot wasn’t as dead-on as it needed to be, so it careened off into the sky. Erik’s shot found its mark, shivering a scale and burying itself into the dragon’s skin.
Glip-Glip’s neurotoxin laden dart from his blowgun pierced the dragon’s right foreclaw with no small amount of luck. While not causing much in the way of physical damage, the slight twitching denoted the effects of the toxin.
Kittalae, however, did something altogether unexpected, and quite probably battle-turning. She saw the beast moving towards the group. She saw it forcing its way between the trees. Her yellow eyes blazed, she darkened her features in supreme concentration and bent the will of the forest trees to her own. The trees around the dragon began to writhe and lash out, their trunks twisting into manacle-like loops to anchor the dragon in place. Two twisted around its right foreleg and one around its right wing joint, impairing its ability to stay aloft. Two others, further back, bound its left hind leg and its tail.
Spread out like that, it became quite the dangerous roof on an impromptu house of horrors.
Hullaboo, Izzy and Gregor, all lacking missile weapons, hurriedly made their way up the boles of several nearby trees in an attempt to reach the ensnared dragon.
The dragon tried in vain to free itself from the trap. After yanking its trapped limbs, and clawing at the trees that held it fast, it gave up for the moment. It spied the climbers. It inhaled and gouted forth an eruption of flame from its gullet.
Gregor saw the glow in its mouth. This gave him barely enough time to hold up his shield. He felt the blast of heat wash over him, then scant moments later, he was drenched in the vomiting flames. They cascaded over him, his shield, and the tree, immolating as they went. He felt the taste of ash in his mouth, and it took him a moment to realize that it was the shield that saved his life by forfeiting itself to the fire. His eyes hurt terribly from both the intensity of the light, coupled with the dehydrating heat. He was sure he would die. Blisters rose up on the reddened flesh of his forearms and on the calves of his legs. Wood charred and splintered around him. Glowing hot embers sparked and fell from the tree. In spite of all these harrowing conditions, Gregor managed to maintain his hold aloft in the now burning tree. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he continued to climb.
Crallick rubbed his eyes. He listened to the cry of Gregor’s pain. Shaking off the dehydration-induced blur in his vision, he leveled his third arrow at the great wyrm. He loosed the arrow as the glow from the flames died away from its throat. The bladed arrowhead sped through the air. It lanced deep into the dragon’s neck. Crallick knew from experience that fighting these great predators were marathons, not sprints. Other than from a tap-room’s boisterous braggarts, he had never heard of a quick fight with a dragon. Grimly he fished another arrow from his quiver.
Kittalae was hiding amongst the roots of a massive tree. She was focused on directing the restrictive efforts of the rainforest on keeping the dragon bound in place. She sent more trees in to lash onto the mighty beast. She tried to drown out the elemental wails of anguish as fire began to consume the one tree, and embers fell to the undergrowth to take light and begin to smoulder in the damp undergrowth.
Glip-Glip felt more at home than he had felt for many a night. His sticky foot-pads helped him swiftly scale the trees to almost level with the deep ruddy beast. He glowered at it through bright yellow eyes. He leveled his blowgun to his mouth. Glip-Glip then rubbed a thorn on his skin and slipped it down the reed. He filled his lungs with air, then exploded it out through the tube, sending the small dart whizzing to the dragon’s left hind leg. It spasmed. Glip-Glip let out a “kree” of happiness. This was easily the biggest thing he had ever hunted. Ever.
Bargress and Erik swiftly reloaded their pistols.
Armon, realizing he had no working pistol and no working trigger finger, wisely hid behind a tree.
Hullaboo leapt from branch to branch, devouring the distance to the dragon swiftly.
Izzy was likewise making good progress, though it would take him a while longer than the froggle to get to his enemy.
Gregor, sobbing, forced himself to pull himself upwards. When he lifted his left hand to grab a branch, he watched in horror as the skin sloughed away, cauterized to the trunk of the tree. Fighting back tears and a sense of impending doom, he struggled onward.
Menshirre’s crossbow failed to hit his mark effectively. The bolt skittered harmlessly off the dragon’s scaly underbelly.
Pyryathan watched with contempt the little morsels. They crawled and stung at her. A sting on her throat felt upsetting. Also, she was feeling pins and needles in her foreleg and hind leg. She noticed a lizardman with a human by the base of a tree. One was cowering. Maybe it would demoralize the others if he died. She spat a bolus of flame to their tree. Conveniently it should maybe kill one of the infernal tree-spirits that were forgetting its place in the cosmic wheel. After all, wood should never challenge fire.
Whether or not it was the goddess of fate, Moredhel, or the goddess of luck, Zereah, smiling upon him, but Menshirre noticed the blaze reaching for him in barely enough time to dodge from danger. He desperately leapt forwards, rolling over himself to allow the momentum to carry him as far as it could. His quiver of bolts was upended, and his roll sent bolts scattering this way and that.
Armon Faulk felt, rather than saw, the flames. They erupted into the tree behind him. The bole of the tree charred and began to kindle. The blast of flame and heat charred the back of his neck, shoulders and back. His helm saved most of his hair. He screamed as his leather armor was boiled into his skin.
Armon’s scream of pain was not the only roar to escape the conflagration. A large striped cat took flight from under the roots of the tree. It yowled its anguish as flames licked its orange furred hide.
With the cacophony of violence erupting around him, Crallick’s panic calmed. His heart at peace, he fac
ed the winged doom, took aim, and let his fourth arrow fly. The dragon deftly swatted it away with its dominant foreclaw, only to realize that it wasn’t responding as deftly as it had hoped. Crallick’s shot buried itself into the beast’s palm.
The Pyryathan’s cry of surprise at this insult was cut off in her throat, as a tree began to tighten aggressively around her neck.
Urgently, Kittalae tried to drown out the elemental chorus in her mind, as more trees became engulfed in flames. She continued to choreograph their deadly assault on the dragon. No longer was she content to merely hold it in place, now she sought to strangle the life from its body.
Thorn from pouch. Roll on skin. Insert in reed. Fill lungs. Fire blowgun. Hanging precariously from a high vantage point in a canopy was nothing new for Glip-Glip. However, taking on a creature of such magnitude was befuddling for the tribal tree-froggle. He couldn’t fathom if his poison was even bothering it. The last thorn he fired stuck into the membrane of the beast’s right wing. Well, he would have to hope he was having some effect upon it.
Bargress and Erik continued to fire on the dragon’s belly, hoping that their focused fire would have some effect. Their two shots seemed to do little more than crack a couple of scales.
Menshirre picked himself up and quickly began scavenging for as many of his bolts as he could find. May the gods spare him this horrible day.
Making decent enough time in their climbs, Izzy and the wounded Gregor were closing in on the massive dragon. Izzy was climbing furiously, madness clouding cowardly thoughts of self-preservation. Gregor, meanwhile, was far more tentative in his ascent, fear and pain providing such a cocktail of nerves that he was practically drunk with his own wretched mortality. He climbed as though already dead.
Hullaboo landed on a branch close to the beast’s neck. He aimed his longspear and thrust! Unfortunately, the choking trees got in the way of his strike and he only dug a furrow into the side of a tree. “Garrum!” he muttered in indignation.
Armon Faulk stumbled through the forest floor, trying to get to another location to hide. Unbeknownst to him, Pyryathan’s eyes were very good. She tracked his flight and sent another ejection of flames to seek out his flesh. Fortune saved him this time by allowing him to trip face first over a root that sent him rolling down a trough-like ravine, thus sparing him the roaring flames and only costing him a broken nose for his troubles. He lay at the bottom of the ravine and wept.
Crallick’s fifth arrow. He paused to pass over it with an incantation. His firebolt spell was useless. His entangling spell was a pittance compared to whatever it was that Kittalae was performing. No, he had other tricks. He transformed the head of his arrow into a frost mine. As soon as it impacted with something it should detonate, causing ice shards and freezing temperatures to blast everything in a five-yard radius. He figured everyone was still clear of the beast. He couldn’t see the camouflaged Hullaboo, nor the deft Glip-Glip. He shot the arrow, aiming for the beast’s neck again. For only the second time in this fight, his aim was true to the mark. The arrow buried itself against the neck of the creature. The resultant blast of frost and ice caught its head, neck and forelegs in the blast. One wing also came under the ravaging blast of the spell. Ice crystals and frost coated the surprised beast for a moment.
Crallick knew the chilling effects wouldn’t last long, especially in this heat. But hopefully it would slow the beast down somewhat.
Pyryathan felt cold unlike anything it had felt before. When it washed down her gullet and chilled the fires of her breath glands, a massive belch of steam was all that would muster forth from her tormented lips. She was no longer having fun with these strange, tasty smelling creatures. There was one golden shining to that horrible blast. It had weakened the tree holding her neck, so when she had yanked her head back in response to the blast, it had torn her neck free of the bondage.
Kittalae’s hold on the dragon was weakening, she could tell. She tried to squeeze every tree that held it, to keep it in place. She was getting very tired, very quickly.
Glip-Glip saw the mighty beast rear up in agony, with steam roiling out of its mouth. He aimed under the upturned head and fired into the roof of the dragon’s mouth. His mind-numbing dart found its way into the creature’s mouth and buried itself into the soft palate of the roof of its massive maw.
Brain freeze! Brain freeze! No, not exactly. There was something numbing her mind. She couldn’t think clearly. She was beginning to panic. Something wasn’t right. Her coordination was off. Her balance. Her vision. Breathing was getting hard. Pyryathan felt something she hadn’t known for many ages. Fear.
Bargress and Erik loaded their pistols. They were breathing heavily and taking shelter behind different tree trunks that were about twenty yards apart. They had noticed what had happened to Menshirre and Armon and had no desire to repeat that mistake.
Menshirre fired one of his salvaged bolts into the now drooping right wing of the great beast. It tore through the membrane and flew out of sight.
Gregor missed a handhold. It was a numbing sensation to realize that he was doomed. Not devoured by a dragon as he had envisioned, but sent crashing to earth due to a misplaced hand that broke away a branch which had his life attached to it. Panic clutched at his throat as he felt gravity pull higher and higher on his back. As he fell away from the tree, he felt a branch tear through the seat of his pants, cruelly gore his rectum, tear along his peritoneum, and de-glove his scrotum from his testes. The burning pain lasted until another branch snapped his left arm like a twig and sent him into a spin. Two breaths later, he folded backwards with a grinding crunch at his belly when his back met the root system of the massive tree. Mercifully, he could no longer feel anything below his chest.
Izzy launched himself forward with a bellowing scream, driving both of his cutlasses into the back of the dragon’s head. He had aimed behind the horns that crowned its head with a lethal tiara. The blades bit deep, and one lodged in a suture of the beast’s skull.
Pyryathan never felt the blades bite, nor the weight of the man. She was beginning to violently thrash about, terrified of the sensations and the loss of feeling.
Hullaboo glanced his spear pointlessly off of the chest of the now thrashing monster. He could barely keep his balance, so violent was the throes of the beast.
Armon looked up from his vantage point at the bottom of the ravine. He had a good long view of the calamity about to befall them.
It began as a series of splintering cracks that shivered the tops of half a dozen trees. Then it escalated to the mad drop of the several ton creature plummeting through the forest.
Kittalae screamed in protest to the wails of the injured wood spirits in her head. She threw her hands up to her head as she became disoriented. Swift reacting Crallick, not anticipating that much of a response to the cold, but knowing never to second-guess quick changing battlefield conditions, had begun to run as he saw the seizures start to wrack the dragon. Dashing by Kittalae, he reached out and grabbed her roughly up and tossed her over his shoulder. He’d worry about apologies later if he made it. He then flung the two of them free of the creature’s growing shadow.
Glip-Glip’s sticky toe-pads made riding out the thrashing tree an easy enough task. He knew he was fortunate enough not to be on one of the trees that were trying to hold the dragon. As his perch swayed back and forth through yards of space, he watched in awe as the massive dragon fell away below him.
The rest of Crallick’s party were not so lucky. For ill-fate struck them all.
Menshirre found himself rolling to safety again. His crossbow lay crushed where he had dropped it. He felt his shoulder dislocate painfully as his pell-mell tumble took him into the path of a tree’s root system.
Bargress had almost all of the life crushed out of him as he ran over to his good friend and shipmate, Erik, and violently tossed him to safety. He had been upright when the wyrm’s mass came down upon him.
Bargress’s life-saving throw sent Erik sailing
through the air, only to have his flight arrested by a tree trunk. His armored left shoulder took the bulk of the abuse.
Izzy rode the beast all the way down, hanging on for dear life. He screamed unintelligibly for the whole ride. On impact, his chin bounced off the hilt of one of his cutlasses, causing him to bite off the tip of his tongue. He also broke the thumb of his left hand.
Hullaboo’s fall through the air was rough, but he managed to land on the back of the dragon. Unfortunately for him, the spines that crowned the vertebrae on the back of the great monster broke his right leg at the knee. He howled in pain, then mercifully went unconscious.
Armon was sure he was free of the falling dragon. As it turned out he was. The shadow that persisted to fall across his ravine, though, was a tree. The tree dislodged from the dragon’s fall, likewise joined the trend and allowed itself to also fall. The bole thundered down with almost the same intensity as the dragon. As sure as Chessintra was here to take him, Armon cried and wet himself. When the dust and earth began to settle, Armon choked and sputtered, still very much alive. There was just enough room in the now compressed earth at the sides of the ravine to allow Armon to ride out the collision. He gingerly touched the tree. “Thank you for not killing me.”
Pyryathan had lost all sense of direction. Even up and down eluded her perception. Then she couldn’t seem to make one wing work. Gravity decided to assist her higher, albeit fuzzy, brain functions at least with the problem of up and down. She was falling. Her eyes could see, but her body couldn’t feel it. It was terrifying. She watched trees loom skywards all around her. There was even one that seemed impossibly close. She heard, as though through a distant cave, tiny screams and cries. Then came the resounding impact.
The ground met her mass with a shuddering whump. The crushing collision shattered her jawbone, dislocating the mandible and driving one of the spurs of bone into the temporal lobe of her brain. Her neck broke over a rocky outcropping. This had the small mercy of a short jolt of pain, then nothing but a brutal headache. The bole of a tree that had once tried to tie her neck in place revenged its prior destruction by gallantly spitting her through a mighty lung. Thus, a simple tree managed to accomplish what many a noble knight had merely dreamed of: the lancing of a dragon to win the day. No other part of the great beast was undamaged. The concussive forces ruptured internal organs, blood vessels, and torqued bones to their breaking point. She expelled everything left in her body.
