The Final Push

“Gah-ah!” I cried out as the dragon took me in its jaws.

The wyrm’s sharp teeth punctured my right side, piercing with the ease of a knife through butter. Angered and wounded, it added insult to the injury. Shaking my body violently, it tossed me into the air before opening its maw wide in anticipation of gravity taking over.

Whoa… I thought to myself as I was flung into the air, feeling myself succumbing to the wounds. Déjà vu.

In the brief moments of wondering if this was it, if this had always been my destined death—I also thought about how cool it was to be going fisty-cuffs with a dragon. How no one from my old life would have ever expected me to go out this way. How my mom—no, Tahvin’s mom had been wrong. How, in the end, I had not been weak.

I wonder if they would have been proud? Eh, who cares? Fug them. Fug their opinions.

I exhaled a resigned sigh.

I’m proud of this short life. Proud of my team. Even if this is it—I died putting in the effort and my only hope is that the triop will be better prepared for the world to come.

Reaching the apex of my arc, I began to descend towards my impending doom.

From this vantage point, I could see above the fog bank. High enough still to catch a glimpse of Aesandoral’s shadow moving closer to the dragon and Rionriv hovering behind distant rocks, watching anxiously. Then I saw the fog cut out of the way of something nearly invisible sprinting from one boulder to another.

Sharzin’s arrow cut through the mist, piercing the throat of the dragon once more. But even as the attack hit its mark, it barely flinched. The angered beast was spiteful, determined to consume me, and it wouldn’t give up without taking at least one of us down before its flight. And so, even exposed, its jaw remained open for me to continue my plummet.

“Iz, I’m sorry!” Aesandoral cried into my mind as a point of green magical energy formed in the fog.

I felt a sudden sting in my shoulder, and the next thing I knew, I was flying in a different direction.

Aesandoral’s powerful shot had connected with such force that it launched me out of the jaws of the dragon and towards the nearby wall. Cracking my skull against the cavern’s edge, the world began to spin before I felt the tight grasp of thorny vines binding my body in place. Here, high above the sand and stone, I had found a temporary safety.

I watched as a trio of arrows flew from the fog, connecting with the wyrm’s exposed throat as it tried to understand where its meal had gone. And by the time it had spotted me on the wall and prepared its corrosive attack, another arrow of liquid silver had found its way into the creature’s remaining functional eye.

The dragon cried out, releasing pained and panicked shrieks as it reared up before falling to its back. It flailed wildly, thrashing and kicking up sand as it attempted to right itself. But it would receive no respite as more arrows now cut through the remaining fog, striking eyes and throat, burying deeper into the wounds already carved out by previous shots.

Even from my position, as the world spun and threatened to go dark, I could see the fear of death on the beast’s scaled face. Crawling to its feet, it turned and began to lumber away before diving back under the sand. As it disappeared from view, an eerie quiet consumed the cavern.

Trying to reach for my temple to send a message, I found my arms still tightly bound. I had no choice but to do it the old-fashioned way.

With a deep breath, I shouted out, “Ri! It’s coming!”

It was then that I felt the smallest drop of magic remaining within me. Choosing now to use it, I placed a hand to my thigh and channelled just enough healing to keep me conscious. Just enough to make the world cease to spin. Just enough to see the far end of the marina.

And there it was. A tunnel with a narrow sand river that led out from the cavern towards the distant desert. What was once deep enough for shimmer ships to sail on was now too shallow for the dragon to swim out.

Focusing, I could see the obsidian beast emerging from the sand and fog. It stood nearly twelve feet at its maximum and stumbled forward blindly with an awkward gait. It didn’t hesitate or look back as it raced in the direction of the exit with as much speed as it could muster. But what the blind dragon couldn’t have anticipated was the figure that had been lying in wait for the entire battle.

There was no warning. No charge-up or incantation. Only a flash of light that consumed the dragon and illuminated the marina

In an instant, the wyrm became the heart of a plasma globe. Lightning arced out from the large body, connecting with the cavern walls, stalactites, boulders, and anything that could ground it. The thunderous wave that came from the spell was enough to banish the fog of the marina, scattering it into a soft haze and revealing the entirety of the sand lake.

And then, when the storm of plasma had passed, all that remained were the faint arcs of electricity over an immobile corpse.

The dragon was dead. Its body was reduced to a smouldering heap that now blocked the exit. She had done it—they had done it…