Moving the guard's body so that it was lying totally flat, making sure the only chance of it being found was to stumble right on top of it, she grabbed the torch he'd dropped when she'd slit his throat. Using a little burst of flame from her breath, she ignited it and very carefully continued her descent.
After an hour or so, she wasn't far from the base of the pyramid. Instead of climbing straight down at this point, she wound her way around, carefully avoiding prying eyes, trying to assess the best place for her to join the flocking crowds. After biding her time, she found what she was looking for, a throng of people with absolutely no guards. Casually she made her way down the last dozen or so blocks and into the throng of people, where she quietly extinguished the torch and discarded it. Moving through the crowd at random, and keeping her head down, she headed for the nearest village where her first priority was to find some water and then a deserted spot to change into her dragon form.
Nearly another hour later, Aviva had left most of the crowd and the pyramid in the distance, ditched the guard's clothes and was approaching the outskirts of the nearest village. By now, she was overcome with dizziness through dehydration. All she wanted to do was have a drink. Stumbling through the only undergrowth for miles around, moments later she found herself in the village good and proper. Heading towards the centre, as that's where the well would be, she struggled to lift one foot in front of the other.
Finally making it to the well, she slid down next to it in a cold sweat, needing to catch a breath before attempting to lower the bucket. Holding her head in her hands, it was all she could do to remain lucid. With her throat as dry as the surrounding desert and with spots starting to appear in the periphery of her vision, she staggered up and started lowering the bucket into the well. The faint splash of water from below spurred her on, and once she could feel the weight of the liquid, she pumped the handle with all her might. Strength starting to wane as the bucket appeared out of the darkness, in a frenzy she began pouring the gorgeous cool water down her throat, not caring about the amount that was spilling down the front of her dress onto her bare feet.
Pausing for breath, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, wondering why water had never tasted this good. As she did so, she just heard the faintest 'twang, zffooofff.' Pain erupted from her left calf as she dropped to the floor, spilling the remaining water from the bucket into the sand. Rolling onto her front, she tried to get to her feet, but couldn't. A very primitive wooden arrow had pierced her calf, sending wave after wave of pain up that side of her body. Grasping the side of the well to pull herself up, the agony she felt was suddenly interrupted by something much more sinister.
A loud, booming, "HA HA HA," echoed through the night air, as Ptolemy himself strutted out from behind one of the adjacent buildings, followed by the archer that had shot her and, to her surprise, two dragon councillors, both in their human guises.
Heart racing with fear at not knowing exactly what was going on, she steeled herself to face the beings in front of her.
"Ah, brave Aviva," whispered Ptolemy, with just a hint of sarcasm. "My most loyal servant, or so it would seem. These loyal fellows though have put me right on that front, and quite a bit else."
A split second was all that was needed for it to become clear. For a moment, she'd thought that the councillors were here to aid her, but that of course really wasn't the case. She should have known. Carrying an injury, this situation would have been hard enough to get out of, but having these two here made it all but impossible.
'Still,' she thought pragmatically, 'you can be damn sure I'm gonna take one of them with me. And the biggest surprise of the lot is that they don't know about the laminium dagger which gives me more of an edge than they think.'
Screwing up their faces in unison, the two councillors gave their best false smiles.
"Aviva, you're so predictable. I bet right at this very moment you're contemplating taking one of us to the grave with you."
Not a muscle moved in her face, so determined was she not to let them know they'd been right. Instead, she allowed all the rage and power inside her to build up, waiting to let it explode out when the time was right.
"Anyway, much as this reunion has been fun, I think it's time to get down to the business at hand," began Ptolemy, nodding at the two councillors.
Taking the hint, she knew that the time had arrived. Faster than the eye could see, she grabbed the tip of the arrow poking out of her calf and yanked it free with all of her might, ignoring the mind numbing pain that accompanied it. Before anyone had a chance to react, Aviva had thrown the arrow at the archer some fifty feet away, and hit him straight through the forehead, rendering him instantly dead.
As the archer crumpled to the ground, and Ptolemy wriggled behind the two councillors, Aviva smiled to herself.
'Looks like I'm not the only one to be hit by a surprise arrow today. Karma and irony all wrapped up in one.'
"You said you could protect me. You said she'd be no danger. Do something!" barked Ptolemy at the two dragon councillors.
Both councillors took a step in Aviva's direction, whilst at the same time muttering under their breaths. Instantly they started to transform.
Pretty sure she knew what would happen, Aviva forced a little sliver of dragon power into her calf to stop the bleeding and uttered a small lightning mantra, throwing some of the extra power from the dagger at it in the process, directing it at the sand between her and the two councillors. Sand blasted everywhere as the first humungous bolt frazzled into the ground, making it impossible to see more than two metres in any one direction. Fully prepared for the outcome, Aviva vaulted over the well and sprinted around behind two of the buildings, ending up next to the river. Panting with exertion, she spoke the words that would start her own transformation, hoping that she had bought enough time to catch up with the two councillors. A second in, tremendous pain whirled around inside her, something totally out of the ordinary. Something else unusual quickly became apparent... her change was taking fractionally longer than it would normally have. Things did not bode well.
Finished, Aviva collapsed onto the river bank in her dragon form. Even in the cool night air, she really should have been fit and alert, she thought as she struggled to get her huge dragon body to respond. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a sense of danger screamed at her to get up, knowing her enemies were mere moments away. Tottering to her feet, she tried frantically to clear her mind. Looking down at her leg, she could see that it wasn't bleeding from the arrow wound. A few more seconds passed before she finally felt some sense of normality. Again, her sense of danger screamed at her, this time to take to the air. Not needing to tell herself twice, and despite the nagging sense that something was very wrong, she bent her knees and gracefully leapt into the air. Just as she did so, the building behind where she'd been standing splintered into a million pieces as one of the councillors smashed his way through.
Circling overhead, she breathed a sigh of relief, not for one second letting her guard down. In the distance she could see Ptolemy roaring orders at some of his guards that had appeared out of the undergrowth. Suddenly, Aviva remembered the dagger. She didn't have it with her. In her haste to take to the air she'd forgotten to pick it up and now it lay beneath what was left of her clothes, not ten feet from the dragon councillor that had just destroyed the building.