She turned her head forward and something else caught her eye. It gleamed as bright, if not brighter, than the dragon’s scales.
It was her sword, lodged between the back spikes.
Anwyn’s sword before me, she said, surprised the words had crossed her mind. She did not know who Anwyn was directly, but she knew it was the ghostly voice that had talked to her earlier. She wished he would talk to her again.
The dragon’s wings beat once more. As they did, Maria was knocked off balance. She scrabbled at the spikes again, only just finding her grip before another beat of its wings pushed her farther.
The sword, I have to get to the sword.
Suddenly, the dragon lurched, its wings pinning back like a bird’s when it dives for prey. Maria’s insides went upward. The force was too much, and she flipped over, falling down the dragon’s ridges. She caught hold on another spike closer to the dragon’s neck, and not too far from her sword.
The town came into view again, and the rain hit her with that same force of a thousand daggers, stinging her flesh, drilling toward the bone.
The wind whistled in her ears. It was the sound of a falling bomb; one Maria rode on the back of. She tensed her muscles as the ground grew closer and closer at an alarming rate.
There was no way the dragon could stop now…not before it crashed and took Maria with it.
Ignatius blasted a beam of energy out to a rushing Dragon Tongue. The magic took him in the gut like a sucker punch, and the man doubled over and rolled four times along the ruins of the paved street before coming to a stop a few feet from where Ignatius stood.
Frieda was at his back. The flames from her palms were hot on his skin. Sherlock and Gelbus whizzed in and out of the battle. The Gnome now had a long wooden stick. It looked to be part of a shattered horse cart. With the stick, Gelbus swept at the legs of their enemies, causing them to fall flat on their faces. When Ignatius noticed this, he would hit the enemy—whether Dragon Tongue or Orc—with a strong freezing spell. He preferred not to kill if he could help it, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t. The Orc and the Dragon Tongue might be evil, sure, but they were more stupid than bad, blindly following a cause they didn’t truly understand. Was Ignatius to be their executioner due to their lack of intelligence?
No, he would leave that job up to the Gods.
Frieda, on the other hand, had lived up to her reputation as a dark witch from the northern outskirts of the Dark Forest, killing any enemy that got in her way. Ignatius didn’t approve, but he couldn’t fault her. The Orc and Dragon Tongue would kill them without any qualms. Murder for such dark forces came naturally.
Ignatius knew that firsthand, for he had faced darkness on more than one occasion in his long life of wizardry, and he had done his fair share of killing as a royal guard in Dominion. He’d had his fill of it, but he knew this was battle, this was war, and with those things came death, whether he liked it or not.
That was fine and dandy, as long as death didn’t touch him or the ones he cared for.
It was during this thought that Hunter had fallen off of the back of the dragon. Through a haze of smoke, Ignatius looked on as the dragon crushed the cloaked man underfoot.
Oh, two moons!
Maria was hanging from the dragon’s legs, dangling and kicking for purchase. She looked close to slipping to her death. He knew if she hit the beach, it would not be long before either the Orcs or the Rogue Dragon converged on her.
As the group took down another wave of Orcs, a blast of fire rocked them from the left side. Dragon Tongue came out of the broken facade of a nearby building, their palms blasting dark magic in every direction.
Ignatius grunted and quickly danced his wand across his knuckles, mumbling a spell of protection. A shimmering wall of blue light erected up from the group. The fire hit it with a sound like breaking glass and bounced back toward the ones who’d sent it. Flames lit the Dragon Tongue’s robes, screams erupted from their throats, and they turned back the way they had come.
“Good spell, Ignatius!” Frieda shouted, zapping a flash of white lightning-fire in the direction of an Orc running toward her with its sword raised. The lightning took the Orc’s arm clean off, sending the weapon into oblivion with it. The Orc stopped, its eyes wide, as black blood spurted from its nub. Frieda had a smile on her face when the Orc dropped to the ground, writhing in pain and death. The others following it must’ve read the crazy look in the dark witch’s eyes and thought better of attacking, because they turned tail and ran.
“Maria!” Ignatius said moments before the dragon took flight. He pointed toward his dangling granddaughter.
“Oh, my word,” Frieda said breathlessly.
The streets were clear of enemies—for the moment.
Ignatius took off toward the beach, his aching joints flaring with pain and age. "Come on!"
A great burst of wind rocked both he and Frieda. They were driven backward, and they planted their heels in the sand. The dragon roared and took off into the air. Maria hung over the beach for a fraction of a second.
Ignatius wasn’t sure what a heart attack felt like, but he was pretty sure at that moment he was close to having one; then Maria reached out and gripped the tail of the dragon and disappeared into the night.
A distant roaring could be heard.
“MARIA!” he shouted as he righted himself. Frieda gripped his arm,
