Sam sprinted in the opposite direction, trying to draw the beast as far away from Alice as possible.
He zigzagged between the slender green trunks to put as much solid mass between himself and those cavernous jaws as he could.
But his cover didn’t last.
With a deafening splintering sound, the dragon casually swiped its front talons, shearing the green trees entirely in half like blades of grass.
Trunks crashed down around Sam, raining blue leaves and debris onto his head.
The beast didn’t even slow down.
At this rate, it was going to catch him in seconds.
“Hey! Over here!” Mira screamed from above.
She hurled a handful of small rocks down at its head.
The pebbles bounced harmlessly off its thick sapphire scales, but the annoyance was enough to make the dragon snap its gaze away from Sam.
Realising she had its full attention, Mira immediately flew away as fast as her wings could carry her.
The dragon’s belly flared with that ominous orange light once again, its head tracking her flight path like a turret.
It fired.
Mira darted to the side, desperately trying to jink out of the way, but the blinding beam was too fast.
The laser scorched straight through the feathers of her right wing, and with a painful cry, she lost all lift, plummeting helplessly out of the sky.
Abandoning all caution, Sam sprinted across the clearing.
He hurled himself into a desperate slide, extending his arms just in time to catch Mira right before she slammed into the hard earth.
The momentum sent them both rolling into a patch of blue bushes.
“Thanks…” Mira whimpered, clutching her scorched wing and wincing in pain.
“Don’t mention it…” Sam groaned, flat on his back.
Every bone in his body ached from the impact.
His starved muscles trembled with exhaustion.
As he lay there, his eyes unintentionally locked onto the scattered rocks Mira had thrown earlier, now sitting harmlessly in the dirt.
An idea struck him.
“I have an idea,” he whispered desperately into Mira’s ear, keeping his voice below the rustle of the foliage.
“But it’s incredibly risky.”
Mira swallowed hard, glancing toward the looming shadow of the dragon.
“Anything’s better than just sitting here and waiting to die, right?”
He quickly murmured the details of his plan to her.
As he spoke, the blood drained from her face, a deeply nervous expression twisting her features.
“Do you think you can do it?” he asked, looking straight into her eyes.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a second, then nodded.
“I’ll try my best.”
Scooping up the rocks from the dirt, Mira forced her injured wing to beat against the air, wincing through the pain as she launched herself back into the sky. Get faster updates on g.com.
Below her, the dragon stalked out of the clearing.
“Please, stop making this harder than it needs to be,” the beast rumbled coldly, its massive talons thudding heavily against the earth as it approached Sam’s location.
Sam burst from the bushes, drawing its full attention.
“Catch me if you can, lizard!” he yelled, taking off into a desperate sprint.
The dragon was quick to follow, its massive strides closing the gap instantly.
But just as it was about to snap its jaws around him, a barrage of rocks pelted its skull from a distance.
Mira was flinging them with everything she had left.
“So infuriating,” the dragon hissed, halting its chase.
It raised its head toward the sky, its sapphire belly flaring to life as it began charging another deadly beam attack.
Its jaws snapped open, a blinding sphere of laser energy condensing in the back of its throat.
But a split second before it could fire, Mira unleashed a precise volley, hurling the rocks straight down its gaping maw.
The stones lodged deep in its throat.
Instantly, the charging energy choked out with a muffled, explosive bang.
The dragon’s eyes went wide as it gasped for air.
It began to flail wildly in a blind panic, its massive tails and wings lashed frantically through the forest, shattering the green trees around it into splinters.
“It’s working!” Mira cheered from the sky, hovering just out of reach of its thrashing limbs.
In a suffocating frenzy, the dragon launched itself into the air, its massive limbs thrashing blindly through the sky as it tried to clear its throat.
Mira tried to bank away, but the beast’s movements were completely unpredictable.
A giant, sapphire-scaled claw violently collided with her mid-air.
The impact sent her rocketing downward at a terrifying speed, sending her crashing deep into the dense tree line, far out of Sam’s reach.
“Mira!” Sam screamed.
He scrambled to his feet to sprint after her, but she had been thrown so deep into the woods that she was completely out of sight.
It would take him minutes he didn’t have just to find her.
THUD.
A wet clump of rocks violently slammed into the dirt right in front of Sam’s boots, dripping with a thick, sizzling saliva.
Before he could even look up, the sky vanished.
The dragon dropped out of the air, landing heavily directly in front of him.
The impact shook the earth, its piercing green eyes glaring down at him with cold fury.
“Clever plan,” the dragon snarled, a low, smoke-filled hiss escaping its jaws.
“But unfortunately for you, it is going to take a lot more than a few pebbles to kill me.”
The terror on Sam’s face suddenly vanished, replaced by a sharp, confident smirk.
“Maybe they weren’t enough to kill you,” Sam said, his voice steady.
“But they were definitely enough to buy us the time we needed.”
The dragon’s brow furrowed in confusion.
Out of the corner of its eye, the beast caught a flash of bright red hair shining brilliantly in the sunlight.
“Got you!” Alice roared.
Her arms were locked in a vice grip around the dragon’s massive throat.
Gritting her teeth, she tensed every muscle in her body, putting the giant apex predator into a brutal chokehold.
The dragon’s head slammed violently into the dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust as it gasped for air beneath Alice’s crushing grip.
Before the beast could recover, Sam sprinted forward.
He dived for the ground, grabbing one of the spit-out rocks.
The sizzling, acidic saliva immediately blistered the skin of his palms, but he forced his fingers to lock around the stone, ignoring the burning agony.
Leaping onto the dragon’s massive head, Sam channelled every ounce of his remaining strength and slammed the jagged rock straight into the dragon’s exposed left eye.
The dragon unleashed a deafening roar, thrashing its huge skull wildly to shake them off.
But neither of them budged.
Alice squeezed its throat even tighter, while Sam threw his weight forward, burying the jagged rock even deeper into the bleeding socket.
Realising it couldn’t shake them on the ground, the dragon snapped its colossal wings and launched itself straight into the sky.
The ground instantly dropped away, rushing beneath them in a blur of sapphire blue.
The roaring wind threatened to rip them free, but Sam and Alice held on with white-knuckled desperation, refusing to let go as the beast rocketed higher into the clouds.
However, before it could reach a fatal altitude, the dragon’s ascent suddenly stopped.
An invisible, crushing force seemed to lock onto its neck and the left side of its head, violently wrenching it downward against its will.
The dragon plummeted, slamming brutally back into the dirt with an earth-shattering crash.
Safe on the ground, Sam and Alice didn’t hesitate.
Fueled by pure adrenaline and survival instinct, they unleashed a barrage of desperate, aggressive attacks, refusing to give the monster a single second to breathe.
Sam drove the stone home while Alice squeezed with every ounce of her remaining strength—until finally, the giant sapphire beast went completely limp.
The dragon lay motionless beneath them.
Even though the beast lay entirely still, they refused to take any chances.
Driven by raw paranoia, they kept up the brutal, frantic assault for several more agonising minutes, refusing to stop until their arms literally refused to move.
Finally, they quit.
Sam slipped off the dragon’s snout, and Alice tumbled from its neck.
They both collapsed flat onto the blood-stained dirt, their chests heaving violently as they fought to catch their breath.
“We did it!” Alice panted, a weary but triumphant smile breaking across her dirt-streaked face.
Sam was too physically spent to even form words.
He simply lifted a trembling hand and gave her a weak thumbs-up.
They lay in the dirt in absolute silence for a solid five minutes, the adrenaline slowly leaving their systems.
But as Sam’s mind began to clear, a sudden, terrifying realisation struck him.
“Mira!” he gasped, forcing his aching body upright.
Ignoring the protest of his muscles, he scrambled to his feet and bolted into the tree line.
Alice was right on his heels as they sprinted toward the deep woods where Mira had fallen.