The dragon had its shoulders in the room, the plates on its sides screeching against the stone, but it wasn't stopping, even when a piece of its shoulder came away. It smacked its head against the construct and sent it hurtling into a wall, chips of stone and dust raining from the impact. She heard Heln yell something, and she was on her feet and running over to him regardless of the danger before she even made the conscious decision to move.
The construct was up, smaller than it had been and no longer dribbling mist. It wrapped itself around the dragon again, all long, spindly claws and a head that was mostly teeth on top of a skinny neck. It stabbed and slashed wildly at the dragon. The combatants were too distracted to really take any notice of her, and she scrambled over the fallen Rising Stone.
Heln's jacket was pinned under it. Bel yanked the strap of his satchel off of his shoulder, unzipped the jacket and helped him struggle out of it, her fingers freezing and fumbling. She pulled Heln clear just as the stone was shoved closer to them when the dragon tried to dislodge the construct by thrashing its head. They both scrambled for the wall as it smashed its skull into the ceiling.
"Where's Rhyss?" Heln asked. He had finally lost his glasses. The side of his face was scraped up and his eyes were impossibly wide.
Bel glanced over the stone. Rhyss was crouched behind another one, close to them. Rhyss looked back and made some motions with her hands that were probably some elaborate plan that would get them out of the room and back to relative safety.
Unfortunately, Bel had no idea what Rhyss was trying to say with her sign language. She shrugged exaggeratedly at her.
"She's okay." Bel ducked back behind the stone just as a piece of another one went whizzing right through the air where her head had just been, hitting the wall and showering them with more dust. She flinched away from it. "I think she has a plan but I have no idea what it is. Do you have any brilliant insights?"
Heln pulled the light stick out of his pants pocket. "This."
"Yes okay a nice cheerful light instead of this green junk would be nice but—"
"No." Heln shook his head and waved it more emphatically. "When you hit it with the bubble, it faltered, right? It doesn't do well with foreign magic that isn't… filtered or whatever unless it's expecting it, like Rhyss's knife. You're low on magic and Rhyss doesn't work well without something to focus her. So. She can focus this."
"That's genius." Bel snatched the light stick from him. "I'll get it to her, you stay here."
The stone they had been hiding behind was ripped away violently enough that it shattered against the far wall. Bel found herself staring at what looked like glowing green vines, for a moment. Hundreds of them. The light construct still had a core body and long, bent legs that ended in points, but it had given up on having a head or a shape that actually looked like anything. The mist billowed around its thin limbs, eddying up its skin.
The vines all hardened into spiny points, all of them aimed for the two of them. Bel somehow found her feet and pulled Heln to his.
Her brother tugged her towards the light construct, which was honestly the last direction she wanted to go, but she figured Heln had a plan. They ducked and rolled under the claws. Bel slid a little too far but Heln ended up right next to one of the legs. Before it could react, he stabbed it with the light stick and activated the script.
Yellow oozed around the wound, lighting up the green vapor, before it absorbed the whole thing into its body. It swayed a bit, its rigid arms going limp.
The dragon bit down, hard, on the upper body with a crunch that was worse than the last one.
One of its teeth went through the main core of its body, shattering it. The construct stopped thrashing immediately, the claws clattering limply on the floor. Bel dragged Heln back to where Rhyss was standing. The dragon shook its head and pieces of it shattered off, turning the chalky, white panels green where they touched.
The dragon was halfway in the room and it dropped the construct onto the floor, green liquid spreading like a blood stain beneath it.
"Okay." Rhyss was not looking very steady. She was standing in front of the dragon like she thought she could do something. Maybe she could; it had stopped moving completely. "Okay. We just need to get through this and we can go home. Okay?"
Bel didn't know if it was that easy. But they could at least get somewhere else and find out if one of the tunnels lead somewhere else if they got out of the chamber.
The dragon opened his ruined mouth and the clicking started.
Bel did the only thing she could think of to do, which was something that was incredibly stupid. She ran at the dragon, slapped a hand on its snout, and used a cleaning script.
It screamed, the sound too loud for the small room, and tossed its head. Bel went flying and had a perfect moment of clarity, one second to regret every life choice that had led her to that point before she hit the wall and landed on the floor. Pain blossomed across her ribs, much worse than the scrape, and her vision went white. It felt like an eternity before the agony subsided enough that her vision returned. Her ears were ringing so loudly she couldn't even hear the noise she felt stalling in her throat when she tried to sit up. She managed to look over in time to see Heln get knocked over and Rhyss, who must have been screaming by the way her mouth was moving, was launching herself at the
