Hey everyone. I took a little break from writing over the past few weeks, but now I’m back. Matticus is too! Here is the newest installment of our Fantasy Football series! Hope it is worth the wait.
The air above him whipped around wildly as the enraged dragon thrashed about on her damaged wings. Plex dropped his bow and braced himself for what he knew was coming. Lavalandinarial let loose an eardrum shattering howl. Even with his hands covering his ears, he still felt the sting of the audible attack. Next to him, Frukeld’s hands were at his temples, meaning that the dragon was also forcing her screams into the minds of the people as well.
“Vermin!” Lavalandinarial yelled. “You will suffer for this outrage! Not only will I destroy you, I will destroy all that you hold dear.”
It seemed like the dragon was going to say more, but it was abruptly cut off as she dropped from the sky. Her injured wings could no longer support her weight. Plex felt his heart sink as he watched her fall to the ground, landing heavily on a number of buildings. From his vantage point, it looked like one of the buildings was a bakery, but the others appeared to be houses. He hoped that Frukeld and his resistance group were able to clear the people who lived there out. He didn’t want any innocent bystanders dying because of him.
Frukeld had recovered enough that he was no longer holding his head, but the dwarf was still having trouble hearing. Plex had asked him twice if they had, in fact, gotten the people out of those buildings. Both times, he was met by a questioning stare for an answer. That was when he heard a sound that sent a chill running down his spine. The dragon was laughing. He knew then that something very bad was about to happen.
“I hear you, elf,” Lavalandinarial purred. “You may have blinded me, for now, but my hearing is more acute than even the sharpest of your kind. By asking about the houses beneath me, you have told me your greatest weakness. You care about the people of this world, and that care will be your undoing.”
Plex picked up his bow and fired another arrow. The odds of it doing any real damage were slim. After all, a dragon’s wings and eyes were its two most vulnerable areas and they’d already hit those. Every other part of the beast’s anatomy were covered by thick scales. Even if he were to hit her, the arrow would likely bounce off. At most, it would slip in between the scales and she’d feel something akin to a mosquito bite to him.
The attack wasn’t meant to hurt the dragon, though. It was meant to attract her attention. He had the sickening feeling that he once again knew what was coming next. Sure enough, he was right again. While his arrow was in the air, Lavalandinarial spewed forth a gush of flames from her mouth. His arrow disappeared in the fire, not even leaving ash in its wake. Whipping her head side to side, the dragon laid waste to everything in front of her.
By the time she was done, everything in front of her was destroyed. Homes. Businesses. Warriors. Players. Everything and everything was gone. And the beast laughed again.
Plex fired another arrow, hoping to send the missile straight down the dragon’s throat.
She jerked her head to the side and exclaimed, “I told you my hearing was superior. I could hear you pulling the string back on your puny weapon, elf. I can hear the heart in your chest beating. I’m going to raze this city, reveling in your grief, and then I’m going to pluck that heart from your chest with one of my talons.”
Frukeld pulled on Plex’s arm and mimed something, pointing to the arrow Plex had already nocked, and then the dragon in the distance. It seemed like Frukeld wanted Plex to fire again but the elf couldn’t see the point. Frukeld repeated the motion with emphasis and urgency.
Shrugging, Plex pulled back the bowstring and took aim. He was going to shout at the dragon again but he saw from the corner of his eyes that Frukeld had begun to cast a spell. Plex suddenly understood the dwarf’s plan. He was going to enchant the arrow so it flew silently. Maybe enchant the bowstring as well? Plex didn’t know and it didn’t matter. He needed Lavandinarial to open her maw again.
“Hey worm,” Plex yelled.
“I heard you pull back your bowstring again elf. I also hear the men on the ground trying to launch some sort of assault on me. Did you think I’d miss them if you distracted me? Do you really think they can hurt me at all?
Go on, send them in. When they are within striking distance I’ll incinerate them as well. I’ll enjoy it too. Maybe I’ll let a few through unscathed. All this chatting has made me hungry. I could go for a snack.”
Plex was sickened by her calm disregard for life. He assumed she was working on something else devastating as well, perhaps a spell or something other attack. Perhaps she was healing herself while they wasted time. He almost loosed the arrow then, thinking it might break her concentration enough to ruin whatever she was scheming but Plex held his own calm and waited for the dwarf to finish.
“You’ve gotten careless, worm. Your pride blinded you long before my arrows took your eyes. You can hear my heart? Do you hear the truth in it? Your rule is done.”
Lavalandinarial began to laugh again. It started as a chittering noise that grated on Plex’s nerves and then became an open throated howl of derision. The elf marveled at how mad she must truly be to take such pleasure in her isolating rule of destruction and devastation. She didn’t care who had to die for her to remain in power. She would burn the whole world if she wasn’t stopped.
Frukeld’s eyes opened and stared insensely at Plex. The time had come.
Plex gauged the distance one more time, guessed how and where the dragon would move and let the string go. The arrow sailed silently across the distance, arcing towards the beast’s still open, still laughing mouth.
It flew true and stuck in the dragon’s tongue. The laughter stopped and was replaced by a screech of anger.
Lavalandinarial began thrashing around and digging at the inside of her mouth. She quickly pulled her hand away, shaking it as if in pain. Her screeching became muffled. Her eyes opened wide in terror. Plex looked on in confusion, wondering what was going on because it was too dark to see clearly. One of the beast’s thrashes moved its head into the light given off by the fires she had just started. He saw why she was reacting that way.
The dragon’s mouth was filled entirely with ice. It was as if she had tried to swallow an iceberg that was too big to go down her throat. Plex turned back to Frukeld in disbelief. “Fireballs are nice, but they don’t do much good against a dragon who breathes flames,” the old dwarf explained. “Iceballs, on the other hand, do just fine against them.”
Plex still couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was seeing. Someone smacked the back of his head, knocking him back to reality. Gilania stood behind him, pointing at Lavalandinarial. “Do something while she’s still preoccupied!”
He was about to argue that the ice ball would choke for them when his keen ears detected a strange noise. His eyes shot back up to the dragon’s mouth and he saw where the noise was coming from. It was the sound of water dripping out from between the beast’s teeth. The fire in the dragon’s throat was starting to melt the magical ice. Gilania was right. He needed to do something, and quick. But what?
“Do you have any more enchanted arrows?” Plex asked.
“No,” Frukeld replied dejectedly. “And I don’t think I have time to cast another spell on one before she gets free of the ice.”
“I need something that can hurt her. Nothing I have will do any real damage to her.”
The old dwarf shook his head. “One of our people was carrying a magical spear that we had made just for you, but I fear he died in the dragon’s breath.”
“You said it was magical, right?” Gilania interrupted. “Then there’s a chance that it survived the fire.”
“There’s a chance,” Frukeld conceded, “but if you go looking for it, she’ll hear you.”
“We’re elves,” Gilania scoffed.
“Moving silently is what we do,” Plex finished for her.
“The man who carried the weapon was on the edge of the dragon’s breath, directly ahead, the last time I saw him.”
“Got it.”
Plex turned to leave, but felt the dwarf’s strong grip on his arm and stopped. “It won’t look like a spear,” Frukeld explained. “It will act like a spear, but it won’t look like one.”
“What does it look like, then?”
The old dwarf opened his mouth with a wide smile. “What else do you think we’d make it look like?” Frukeld chuckled. “It looks like a football, of course.”
