Dragonfall

 

    Vermithor soared through the afternoon sun, letting the thermals buoy him as he plunged down from his mountain toward the wide road that led to the shore. Anger and humiliation burned in his heart. He craved vengeance. They had defeated him! They had driven him away, limping and injured. He who had destroyed entire armies and laid low mighty fleets of ships, had been humiliated by a small group of mortals. 

    "It was because I was arrogant and careless" he reminded himself. This was the well known weakness of his breed, a weakness he was well aware of and still sometimes powerless to overcome. The group advancing along the road toward his mountain had been so small in number, only eight of them, that he had assumed they would be easy meat. After all, he had laid waste to a much larger force on that very road, not half a mile from where he had met this new threat. He had approached carefully and managed to achieve complete surprise as well, it should have been an easy kill, there had been good reason for his confidence. 

    But despite being surprised by him, they hadn't run, they hadn't panicked. When he had dealt with the large force a few years ago, the mere sight of him had thrown their marching columns into complete disarray, despite their army being over a hundred strong. His first flaming breath had cut out the heart of them, and broke the will of the few who had been trying to hold their ground, and after that, there had been nothing left to do but hunt down the survivors as they tried to flee across the blasted landscape. More reason he had been overconfident when dealing with the much smaller group. 

    This time things had gone very differently. The hadn't run, though at first he had thought they were doing so, and been fooled. They had actually quickly realized his intent of his dive and scattered to minimize the effect of his fire. And they had magic, strong magic. And in addition to their magic, they had the Warrior in Black and the Elven Archer. This two had been terrible in battle. Vermithor had almost fallen.

    After he had escaped back to his lair to heal, he had considered abandoning this entire project and fleeing. Live to fight another day. But no, he had invested too much time on this, all his years of machinations had finally come to fruition, and brought him into possession of a great hoard, one that any dragon would be proud to call his own. That had been the whole reason why he had left his home islands to journey to the human lands so many years ago. As he lay on his bed of mithril and silver, and felt the power of his hoard healing him, the dragon lust had risen in his heart. This was HIS. HIS. No one would take it from him. He could defeat these heroes, he just had to be smarter. Employ better tactics, play it safer. It was too early in the game to flee. 

    In addition, he knew he had wounded them, even felled one of them. If he struck quickly, he could catch them still in the badlands, injured and exhausted. And he would be fresh and rejuvenated, the power of his hoard was already closing his wounds. He had to strike quickly though. 

    And so, less then an hour after he had been driven off, Vermithor was once again winging over the blasted scrub, searching for his prey, flying down from the Mountain along the road. 

    Their trail was easy to see, even from this altitude, at least easy for eyes such as his. He tracked them as they retreated south away from his lair, back toward the coast. "You lot weren't expecting a dragon, where you?" he thought amusedly, a bit of his confidence returning. "Flee, little prey, it won't help you." 

    He almost missed the spot where they left they road. He realized almost too late that the reason he had such an easy time tracking them up till now, why their trail was so clear was purposeful on their part, to lure him into a false sense of confidence. But he saw it, about two hundred yards after the road exited the lavaflow, back onto the scrub land, they had left the road, carefully hiding their tracks. 

    Taking care to keep high up and out of range, he circled the the landscape, eagle eyes scanning the brushlands. What was that? Dug into the ground, carefully hidden beneath bushes and in the shadow of rocks? It looked like... holes?

"I will dig us a burrow" Whisperleaf said, a lunatic smile breaking across his face.

"A.. what?" Ricmo replied confusedly.

They had just reached the edge of the lava plain, and now back in the marginally safer scrublands, they were taking a much needed break and discussing what to do if the dragon returned. Or when it returned as Merus insisted. 

"He still has all the advantages" Merus had pointed out, gesturing to the rocky, dry landscape, broken only by low bushes and shrubs. "He does not need to close. He can maintain his range and burn us down at his leisure. No one but myself and possibly Dakhir" a nod to the Warlock "have the range to engage him. He merely needs to focus his breath on us, and once we fall, the rest of you will follow. There is no cover here. We are still miles from the edge of the coastal jungle."  

    Radiant Lightbringer, still walking with a limp, had echoed her concern. "The light of Mithras flutters and fails in my breast. While his grace is always with us, I have little of his power remaining. I must rest and commune with him to regain it. I can be of little help if the dragon returns soon." The others nodded, they were all weary and spent, driving the beast off last time had taken all they had. 

    "Will he return before nightfall though? Before we make the jungle? We hurt him badly, how quickly can he possibly heal?" Ricmo wondered. 

    "Quickly" Merus had dashed the halfling's hopes. "Their race has a terrible vitality. His wounds were already closing as he fled. I guess we have an hour, maybe less, before he is fully healed."

    And that is where the Druid had hatched his insane scheme.

    "Burrows, think like gophers only bigger. Big enough for The Sturg even. They will connect underground, and I can dig many of them, many entrances. We can stay safe underground, protected from his flames, and then when he gets closer we can spring out and ambush him. If he injures one of us, they can hide inside the burrow."

    "But how can you possibly dig such a thing so quickly?" Dakhir wondered. 

    

    "Remember these?" The druid reached into his backpack and pulled out a pair of large, silver claws. The claws ended in straps and a leather socket, and looked like they were designed to slip over the paws of some large animal. "We picked them up from that dead Mage in the Convent Undercroft? They are a relatively minor magical item, designed to enhance a beasts natural claws, but one of their powers is, they allow the beast to"

    "Dig!" Ricmo interjected. "I remember! You said they wouldn't work on solid rock, but that, if you were shapeshifted into the proper form, you could burrow through dirt quickly."

    "Very quickly." Whisperleaf agreed. "I can burrow as fast as you can walk."

    "Hmm the soil here is packed dirt, the water table is likely hundreds of feet deep. This is a reasonable plan" Tello approved.  

    And so it was agreed.

    "Now THAT is something you don't see every day." Ricmo said, as he sat in the shadow of a tall rock, leaning back against his backpack, and sharing a wine flask with Dakhir.  "No you certainly don't" Dakhir replied as he accepted the flask and took a deep swig of the wine. He cracked a rare smile. "Gods bless the Sisters of Saint Ursula, they really know their craft." he acknowledged approvingly. "That is just the thing for a hot day. How do you keep it cold?" 

    "I have Merus nestle it down near that ice bow of hers" Ricmo grinned. "Works like a charm. I never knew sloths even COME that big. "That thing is as big a dire bear."

    

    From above them, where Merus was quietly perched on the top of the rock they were sheltering on keeping watch, the ranger replied "They are rare these days, almost extinct due to overhunting, but you can still find them along the southern borders of the elven lands. They are great diggers. You can find their huge burrows still, some of them encompass miles of tunnels. And of course gophers do the same at a smaller scale, to protect themselves from aerial predators,  Our Druid friend often borrows tactics from the natural world."

    As they watched, Whisperleaf-the-Sloth headed back into the tunnel he was working on and a moment later a fountain of dirt began erupting from it's mouth. "They usually don't dig anything like this fast." the ranger commented dryly. "Back to work Halfling." Ricmo sighed, put up his wineskin and headed toward the dirt fountain. 

    "The Dragon returns" Merus announced about an hour later, shading her eyes from the afternoon sun with a slim hand. She was hidden in the shadows of a rock, a tunnel mouth at her feet, and the dragon was still far off, however even at this distance she worried he might see her. She had no idea the eyesight of a dragon but she imagined it was impressive. "Get into positions."

    From across several hundred yards of flat plain, the party members ducked into tunnels hidden under bushes and in shadows. After a few moments, they were invisible. They had prepared their position carefully,  knowing details might well make the different between life and death. As Whisperleaf excavated, the rest had carefully gathered the earth he flung out of the tunnel and scattered it around, preventing the piles from revealing the disruption. This had meant back breaking work in the hot sun for most of an hour. Now they would see if it was enough.

    Merus kept her head down, her eyes barely cresting her hole as the dragon started lazily circling. "It sees something amiss" she thought. "No matter, we want a fight, just on our terms." She waited a few more moments as the dragon gradually spiraled inward, then put a pair of fingers in her mouth and let loose a shrill whistle. The trap was sprung.  

    For Vermithor, it was like a tribe of deranged gophers suddenly popped out of the ground spitting fire at him. He had been carefully maintaining altitude, which helped him now, but none the less, a wave of arrows, cannon and musket fire, and eldritch bolts rose from the ground, slamming painfully into his tough hide. Above his head, a storm cloud materialized and a bolt of lightening crashed down on him. Below he could hear his enemies cheering.

    The sound of their cheers enraged him, but not enough to make him abandoned judgement. He saw the hated Black Knight shaking a sword at him, an easy target. He opened his mouth and white hot dragonfire emerged. Not the broad cone of fire he typically used, he was much too far for that to be effective. Instead it was carefully controlled jet of fire, narrower and less destructive but much longer ranged. With satisfaction, he saw it land a direct hit on the Black Knight, the figure vanishing inside the flames.

    When The Sturg had heard his job in the plan was to attract the dragon's fire and make it breathe on him, he had simply nodded. A part of his internal monologue may have muttered "Seriously?" but he understood the rationale. The burrows worked both ways, while anyone deep inside one was probably not going to suffer from the dragon's ire, they couldn't do much to the dragon either. If they stuck their head out to attack, the dragon could see and attack them. So someone was going to get hit. It was The Sturg's accepted role to be the one that got hit. In addition, his enchanted black plate amor was reasonably fire resistant. Better him then someone else.  His internal monologue gave a mental shrug and accepted his fate

    So, when he heard Merus whistle, he clambered out of his burrow, unlimbered his shield, drew his sword and shook it at the dragon. The result was all he had imagined. Dragonfire, it turned out, enchanted armor not withstanding, was hot.

"They baited me" Vermithor thought, as he saw his fire receded leaving the Black Knight still standing. Parts of his armor glowed cherry red, but even as he watched the red glow faded. That armor should have been slag and that Knight should have been embers. "Magic protects him" Vermithor thought. 

    He put some more distance between himself and his enemies, great wings grabbing the air, gaining altitude and speed. That ambush had hurt him, but not badly. He could already feel his magical resilience at work, wounds closing, flesh and scales knitting themselves whole. "Dragonkind is not so easily brought low, you fools" he snarled. He shot out another bolt of flame and watched it strike the Shining Knight, bringing him low and snuffing out his light. He smiled in satisfaction. One down. Then he paused and took stock, studied the tactical situation, considering his options, even as arrows from the hated Elven Archer rattled off his armored belly. Burning them out of their holes was not impossible, but would be difficult and time consuming, and all the while he would be taking fire. He had to admire the cleverness of the prey's ploy.  And then, an idea occurred to him. And he smiled.  

    Merus drew and loosed, drew and loosed, fast and fluid, her body falling into an easy rhythm that she had practiced for literally a hundred years. Some of her arrows bounced off the tough hide of the creature, but others, imbued with the spirit of ice and winter, supernaturally sharp and potent, found their mark and hurt the great beast. 

    Still, her friends were hurting as well. She saw a blast of fire hit Tello dead center. The Tortle was tough, she gave him that, her keen eyes caught him working some counterspell right before the blast hit him, but other then that he stood there and took it. When the flames died down, he was still standing, firing that cannon of his and hurling bolts of frost from his staff. Singed but whole.  

    She honestly wasn't sure which side was winning or losing this game of whack-a-mole. Then the dragon changed its strategy. Banking sharply, it dropped altitude and gained speed, heading straight toward them. She could see it's lips moving. It wasn't breathing flame, it was chanting.

    "Remember, the older dragons are also masters of magic" she had heard Dakhir caution. She opened her mouth to shout a warning and the spell hit them.

    Gravity reversed itself     

    Not all of the heroes were affected the same way. Dakhir and The Sturg were still both under the influence of Dakhir's Incantation of Flight, so neither were very inconvenienced. The Sturg wobbled a bit, flipped around one hundred and eighty degrees and then stabilized himself. Dakhir, more adept at flying barely moved.  Ricmo was lucky enough to have just unloaded both his pistols and had retreated into his burrow to reload, so the only effect the spell had on him was to plaster him to the top of the tunnel.  

    For Whisperleaf, Merus, Freddy, and Tello however the effects were considerably worse. Each of them were crouching near the lip of the burrow, firing up at the dragon with spells, arrows and cannon. As the spell grabbed them, they made a desperate attempt to grab ahold of the loose dirt of the tunnel mouth and then, all four rocket up, high into the air, completely out of control, falling upward.

    Vermithor smiled and then laughed as he saw the prey come rocketing out of their holes. "Easy meat now" he said to himself, satisfied. He picked a clump of struggling figures and winged straight toward the helpless morsels.   

    Dakhir was shocked at how quickly things were unraveling. Their carefully planned ambush had been reversed with one powerful enchantment, and it had nearly fully half the party caught in it's net. Now the Dragon clearly had the advantage. He had to act, and act quickly. "Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, as mother always said" he thought to himself and drew the Black Blade of Carnamagos.  "Sturg" he announced. "To me! We attack!"

    Moving into hand to hand combat with a dragon was truly a desperate measure. While, unusual for a mage, Dakhir was a fair hand with a blade, but he was nowhere near heavily armored enough to stand toe to toe with a dragon. He was hoping that the Black Blade would even the odds but this was still a desperate gambit. 

    He had found the blade relatively recently, locked by many chains and wards, in the restricted section of the great library buried deeply beneath the Convent of St. Ursula. Locked away for a good reason. The renowned Warlock known as Carnamagos had not exactly been evil, but he had certainly been morally questionable. The well known tales about him, while impressive, had been grim. He had not come to a good end. But he had been nothing if not powerful . The magic that coursed through the black rapier he had wielded was unquestionably potent, especially so to creatures from the Otherworld but even a dragon would do well to avoid it's bite. Dakhir had learned that he could channel an amazing amount of power through the blade, though doing so drained him immensely. And given that the great wyrm was immune to even his hottest hellfire, this was his last, best option.

    "Sturg, we go in together and I will strike him, once, with everything I have left in me. Kill him or no, I will be utterly spent afterward." The Sturg didn't reply of course but he nodded.

    The two figures in black, one fully clad in armor, the other only in robes, winged toward the dragon.

    "Fools" Vermithor growled. "I am the master of the air, not you." He turned toward the two figures, spreading his great wings, unfurling his great claws, preparing to rend them to shreds.

    Dakhir held back their true speed until he was almost on the wyrm, then he dashed forward, rapier griped in both hands, held before him, robes whipping behind him, a flying spike of doom. The dragon was caught off guard by the sudden burst of speed, causing it to miss it's first attack. Dakhir could feel the wind of one of it's great claws passing inches above his head. And then he was inside its reach and with all his speed, and all his magic channeled into the black blade, he impacted, and pierced the dragon right under it's right breast. 

    There was a brilliant flash of what could only be described as black lightning, as the black blade perforated armored scales and then flesh and muscle below, allowing all of Dakhir's dark magic to course through it and into the beast. 

And then Vermithor the Great, Doom of Cerro Rico, destroyer of armies, burner of fleets, gave one last scream and died, his body dissolving into dust and ash as the Black Blade feasted on his soul.