The dragon’s brilliant eyes crackled, and tiny jags of blue and yellow energy danced across its face. Its gaze locked on the heavy wooden bridge and the refugees lurching across it. The beast opened its jaws and arched its back, spreading its wings to slow its descent and steady its aim. Its spiked tail curled under its feet, and the dragon hovered in place, its huge wings churning the water below.
The beast drew its long neck back, and a dull boom sounded from within its chest. Its lower neck swelled like a frog’s to grotesque, almost comical proportions, then the bulge surged up the dragon’s throat to its mouth and erupted in a halo of white light.
The dragon lunged like a striking adder and coughed out a glowing sphere of white-hot energy. The sphere coalesced into a solid ball of electric fire and hurtled down toward the western end of the bridge. Dropping like a comet, the crackling missile plowed through the bridges wet wood pilings and into the heavy clay below.
Vaan’s lips parted, but only a faint wheeze emerged. Another moment passed as the farmers stood frozen, glancing nervously at each other. Then the western end of the bridge exploded.
People, water, and debris were cast hundreds of yards in every direction. Before the first victims landed, the dragon coughed out another blast and the east end of the bridge vanished in a cloud of splinters, foam, and jagged light. Those refugees who weren’t killed outright or hurled from the bridge were trapped in the middle of the river on an unstable island of cracked, groaning wood.
Instead of pressing its attack, the brute rose higher, circled back, and cut a great, looping arc across the sky. It rolled and spun as it soared, insouciant and careless, as if it had forgotten its unfinished work below.
But the beast soon veered back toward the villagers and the bridge. It swooped so close to the river’s surface its tail carved tiny wakes in the water. The dragon stretched the rest of its body out long and straight as it homed in on the final section of intact bridge. While dozens of tiny figures remained atop the crumbling structure, very few were moving—many of those still conscious fell to their knees and covered their heads.
The wind whistled against the dragon’s scales, rasping over their razor edges with a stinging, sharp sound. The beast bore down on the bridge, its eyes glowing yellow and blue and its face fixed in a feral grin.
The dragon’s head dipped and broke the surface of the river. Ignoring the sheer force of the river’s flow, the dragon slipped under water a mere hundred yards from its target. Vaan shuddered at the beasts casual display of grace and power—the winged devil had disappeared into the raging water as smoothly as a child easing into a bathtub from its mother’s arms.
For an endless moment there was no sign of the beast. Lightning continued to slice through the clouds overhead, the river continued to rush and froth, and the remnants of the shattered bridge continued to teeter and burn, but the creature’s attack had once more stopped as suddenly and capriciously as it had started. No one was lulled by the trick a second time, but Vaan knew why the beast had played it twice: it delighted in their realization that even though they knew what was about to happen, there was nothing they could do to stop it.
Finally, a horned, scaly head burst up from below the center of the bridge, scattering planks and farmers like drops of water from a shaking dog. The dragon craned its supple neck through and over the remnants of the bridge and turned its terrible eyes on the dazed survivors. Contemptuously, the great beast hissed, shrugged, and drew its muscular neck partially back under the ruined structure.
Then, with a brutal surge of power, it forced most of its body through the head-sized hole it had made. Timbers shattered and boulders flew as the last of the bridges foundations splintered, then slowly collapsed into the water. The debris quickly broke apart and was carried away by the water, and the farmers’ screams finally gurgled to a sickening halt as the last of the bridges pilings disappeared into the deluge.
The dragon slithered onto solid ground and rose up on its thick hind legs. At its full height the beast undulated again, ripples of muscle cascading along the length of its body under its glistening ceramic armor. Its magnificent scales stood on end, quivering in the moonlight as tiny arcs of galvanic energy sparked between them.
The great beast spread its wings wide and with two powerful beats rose into the air. Two more long, languid beats took the dragon back to the edge of the clouds. It huffed and snorted as it rose ever higher, and smoke trailed from its nostrils. Vaan grimly marked the evidence of the dragon’s visit to the farmland below: three score dead, two wisps of thick smoke, and the shattered remains of an entire community.
The dragon itself made no such accounting as it soared toward the largest peak on the eastern horizon, not sparing a backward glance at the evening’s entertainment.
It’s happening again, Vaan thought, careful this time to keep silent. But soon I will finally see it end.
Tania Cayce stared after the dragon as the monster flew away. She was crouched and silent, safely concealed (they assured her) by a thick sheaf of leaves and the cold morning mist.
Cayce did not feel safe. In her mind, awe fought for supremacy against terror and self-preservation, so there was very little room for comforting thoughts of safety. Her heart beat painfully in her chest, and she was unable to remember why she had come here in the first place—or why she wasn’t running for her life. She peered at the obscene wreck the dragon had made of both the bridge and the people on it. She realized she was at least better off than the poor devils down there. She was alive, for one thing, and for another it wasn’t raining up here on the mountainside.
“That is our quarry,” the female guide said. She was huge, six and a half feet tall, and dressed as a wild woman from the forest with hide clothing and bone fetishes. Her eyes were almost vibrating in her head, and a huge grin stretched her features. Her partner, a small male pixie, hovered silent and dour beside her on dragonfly wings.
“We will test this dragon’s strength, its cunning, and its essential right to be,” the woman continued. “If we are resolute, and if our cause is righteous—”
“It is,” said a softer voice from the procession ahead, “but vengeance will be served, be we righteous or not.”
From behind Cayce and from ahead of her came the murmured assent of soldiers. Directly in front of her, Master Rus turned and beckoned her closer. Cayce scooted forward and turned her head so her ear was next to her mentor’s mouth.
“I hate working with fanatics,” Rus whispered. “Especially religious and military ones. Still,” the stout man said. “That moping blue bugger’s plan is sound. And the rewards will be well worth the risk.” He took Cayce by the chin and turned her face so that their eyes met.
“Don’t look so concerned,” Rus said. He was not warm or comforting but stern, determined to banish any chance his apprentice’s expression had of reflecting badly on him. Potionmaster Donner Rus was known throughout five kingdoms as a poisoner without peer, and he valued that reputation above all else. Three of the five monarchs he worked with kept him on permanent retainer to prevent him from using his craft on them, and Master Rus was very fond of being paid for not doing his dangerous work.
This time, however, Master Rus had accepted a massive fee for his personal attention in the matter of slaying a dragon. Cayce knew her master was unlikely to admit it, but Rus had taken this job largely to salve his bruised ego. Vaan the pixie had let fly a torrent of subtle barbs about the Potionmaster’s age and fading glory—if Master Rus wanted to redeem his reputation and save face, he had to either take the job or take offense. Cayce kept this observation to herself, of course. Any apprentice who volunteered such information would not remain healthy, sane, or in Rus’s service for long.