Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Climbing almost vertically in altitude, I saw the mighty beast. Shimmering in the morning sun, the dragon emerged from the clouds. It was a bright gold and silver. It was as big as two of the Lightlance’s cabins. A much smaller figure was falling from the giant. Coal! I’m coming! I screamed in my head. Racing towards the falling figure, I aimed below him to be able to catch him. I reached out, and I missed. My hands brushed his, as he fell past. Scrambling, he caught my foot. He grabbed at my bare ankles for a couple seconds then let go again. He fell for a short bit and I heard someone scream from below.

      “Coal!” Miss Betty screamed. Obviously, she had come outside to watch us fight the beast. But there was nothing to worry about, because Coal grew his wings quickly. We could now fight the mighty beast that threatened this family. I looked for Coal, but, he had gone down to his mother. I flew down beside him to help explain.

      “How could you scare me like that?!?” Miss Betty yelled. “I thought that you were going to fall to your death!”

      “I didn’t know that you were standing there, plus, if I had held on any longer I would have almost fully transformed onto her. I just wanted enough to grow the wings. Now that dragon isn’t going to wait for us to stop talking. We have to go up there. It only dropped me once I was fully myself again. It grabbed me by my clothes so I couldn’t touch it.  It is definitely smart.” Coal said to his mother.

      “Coal, we got to go.” I reminded him.

      “Right,” he turned to his mother and gave her a hug. “I love you.” He said, and turned and took off. I followed him, aiming our path directly for the dragon.

      I drew an arrow and shouted out, “Hey beastie! Over here!” It swung its head around, I aimed and fired when I saw its eye. I arrow hit its mark, but the dragon blinked, and the arrow clinked against its scales with a chink of metal on some sort of gem like surface. The dragon roared at me in response to the arrow.

      I noticed the rage it had, and zigzagged away. It may have been big, but I was more maneuverable, which meant Coal was as well. I didn’t turn to face the beast as I would not have lived past that moment.

      “It’s me you want, not her!” Coal shouted at the beast. The dragon turned to face the pest. Coal had a strip of cloth with one end wrapped around his wrist the other was in the same hand. He had some sort of stone in his hand, possibly from a stream of river nearby, and loaded it into a pouch in the middle of the strap. He spun it around his head and I heard a low thrumming noise. Coal thrust his arm forward, releasing the end of cloth from his hand. The stone flew at the beast, hitting it between the eyes. The dragon was stunned for a minute, the shook it off to roar at Coal. I flew between the legs of the beast in the time he gave me, being careful of the tail and claws, and took an arrow and my dagger. I flew upside down, digging the points into the back edges of the scales, ripping off some of them as I gouged the belly. The dragon roared in pain, and knocked me from my space under its belly.

       I spun as I fell, unable to right myself for a couple of seconds, then got the hang of my own wings, and hovered for a moment, I looked down and saw that I had kept a hold on my weapons, the tips were dripping with the dragon’s golden blood. I could see and feel the heat waves coming off the blood, distorting the light and the images of the land below. The liquid itself was sizzling and dissolving the wood on the arrow slowly. I looked back at the flying monster and saw that two little streams of blood were trickling down from the belly. I flew around to Coal and fired the same arrow that was slowly disappearing in my hands. I aimed for the glittering creature and released. The arrow made a soft whistle as it sailed toward its target. It made its mark. Maybe because of the placement, or the fact that it was drenched in blood, but the arrow pierced the scales, drawing the acidic blood again. Apparently, the area was tender, because the dragon appeared to cry. It turned to me, the inflictor of its pain, the dragon reared its head. The mighty eye locked on me. Opening its maw wide, a plume of fire shot out. I stopped flapping, to drop ten feet and barely miss the fire. The heat was intense, nearly scorching some feathers. The dragon seemed to scream that it had missed. I took the shot and fired into the mouth of the thing.

      Coal had watched, still flinging stones when he saw an opportunity. He saw the same one that I did and released. The dragon fired at us again, Coal and I split in different directions. As if we thought together, one person would be the decoy and the other would fire on the thing. The dragon chose me to chase. I dodged and bobbed, making myself a hard target to hit.  Coal let off several stones at the dragon’s face.

      Enraged at the attack, the dragon rounded on the boy and aimed its tail to know me down, but I dropped again. A low, almost inaudible growl came from the dragon’s throat. I stopped moving except to flap my wings, frozen in place by the words I deciphered from the noise. The words also overtook my mind, I clutched my ears, trying to get him out of my head.

      “How dare you attack the mighty Lucianous?!? I am King of Dragons, servant only to the Great Wings!” I was too overwhelmed to even remember to flap, my vision faded, and the last thing that I saw was Coal diving after me, the dragon following him.