Only three of those present seemed to be immediately aware of Kortez’s untimely doom: Miles himself, who hadn’t the inclination to believe in fantasy: the thought of what if he made it out alive was easily dismissed. Miles was still holding the scroll that would have saved the Adventurer’s life, and no amount of pretending would change that.

In Kortez’s last moment, he seemed to have had a single second of clarity that said oh, that’s right. I gave it to that kid. Therefore Miles concluded Kortez was the second to know of his own death.

The third was not any member of Kotez’s team, as their faces had not yet reflected the terrible fact that their leader was one Protection scroll short of a smashed face and would not be theatrically rising from the rubble. The third was the dragon.

Standing motionless for the first time, a serpentine grin seemed plastered on its face as it stared triumphantly at the heap of stone and metal. A calm hiss, like a sigh of relief and laughter rolled into one, escaped over its ribbon tongue.

Dragons are not just dumb beasts, Miles reflected, they know things. And perhaps to drive home its point that Kortez would never rise again, it opened its wide mouth over the tomb and scorched it with wild breath.

Team Kistador seemed to finally understand, and the dark realization of their leader’s fate was lightened and reflected by red-hot glowing bricks and iron.

The blonde stepped back on the rooftop horrified, barely audibly called to her allies “Retreat!” and one by one the best Team in the world fled.

Miles looked left and right down the road, but it was too late and he couldn’t call out for help. Taking a shard to the leg was now the least of his worries: the alley that currently housed him was blocked at the rear by a collapsed wall, and if he wanted to get anywhere, he would need to sneak a block up the road the way he had come without being seen. But he was seen.

No sooner had half his body come out of the passage, even though he was being slow and tip-toeing, the dragon swung its triangular head his direction as though Miles had been banging pots and shouting obscenities about its mother. He ran.

And as the trembling ground shifted beneath his sprinting feet, Miles cursed the searing meat-patty of Kortez’s corpse for not giving him a teleportation scroll instead. Sacrificing speed as he read the magic page, he unfurled the scroll and found the legible paragraph. The tingle of power coming from the parchment was strong, indicating it had a few uses left.

If in need of defense in dire situation,

Call my name:

“Protection!”

A wave of invulnerability enveloped his body, which was quite different than the lesser scrolls of Protection had used in the past. Those barely stopped a punch, but this was invincibility!

To confirm the emotional rush, the gnarled burgundy dragon’s claw came down like a comet on his back, yet Miles felt nothing except for a little nudge. Meanwhile, the great talon shattered right off its bony finger.

The exhilarating sense of the Protection spell evaporated, and Miles quickly called it again. When he looked up from the page, a feminine figure was standing in the alleyway ahead and waving to him urgently.

“This way!” she called.

What in the void? “Elle?”

For the love of the goddess, she smiled at him as though she were pleased that he had remembered her name despite the swift approaching obliteration that sauntered in his wake.

He shooed her as he approached, flailing his arms. “Go – get out of here!”

Elle cocked her head, as though confused, and seemed to consider his worried tone with her hand still halfway in the air. He snatched her wrist and pulled her at full-speed through the alley and into the park, but she was resisting him.

“Wait, Miles! I came to kill the dragon!”

“Don’t be stupid—” he stopped short of his curses and insults; the buildings creating the narrow passage darkened with the huge body eclipsing the sunbeams behind them and exploded with the weight and speed of the rampaging drake.

Miles wasn’t sure if it would work, but he took her in his arms, tight against his chest, and spoke Protection over Elle just as a volley of bedframes and clothes chests intercepted them from behind. In the tangle of legs and cedar beams, Miles fell and was carried a throw further into the park, still clutching to Elle as they rolled.

Laying where he had landed, the once spurting fountain was glugging from a broken pipe beside him. The Lightning Bearer was in a hundred pieces on the ground, staring back at Miles with chips and cracks, judging Miles’ weaknesses with dull, pale eyes.

I don’t have a Lightning scroll, you putz.

While the dragon made itself busy thrashing and scorching its newly discovered park perimeter, redecorating the place by leveling townhouses and shops, Elle squirmed.

“Miles!” she said, aghast and with an undertone of a lover’s condescension. “You tried to save me.”

“Tried? You’re alive, aren’t you?” Disgusted by her lack of appreciation, he let her go and each sat up amongst the rubble. He was still grasping his scroll, but there was no tickle of power; it was out of magic.

Gusts of heat became less frequent; satisfied with the carnage in its immediate vicinity, the dragon was beginning to double back in search of unturned anthills it had overlooked. Miles and Elle were those anthills.

Miles pulled Elle to her feet and looked once more into her pretty blue and yellow irises. He was as dead as a nail, and the most he could do was to offer his trouble-attracted acquaintance a way to escape the eyes of the beast even if both of them could not. It was positively heroic.

“Go ahead, Elle. You might be able to get away if you sneak around that felled building there. I’ll, ah –”

“But, Miles –”

“No-no,” he added, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t say goodbye. After all, we will see each other in paradise.” Miles wasn’t sure that he believed in paradise, but it sounded romantic enough for the situation.

As he took off running to meet the charging dragon, Miles instantly regretted not kissing Elle. I’d wager Kortez wouldn’t have forgotten to kiss her.

Her imploring voice, desperately – perhaps with somewhat annoyed emphasis – faded with a final call to his name.

Having long since seen him, the dragon lumbered closer with earthquake steps and the same asinine grin with which it had gloated over Kortez’s crushed body. Self-sacrifice, at least in this fashion, suddenly felt like a terrible idea. Especially since Miles had underestimated the distance and was quickly being winded by his pace, possibly compromising his image in front of Elle, if she was still watching. It was possible he hadn’t properly thought this through.

Slowing to a jog, he stared the serpent in the slit eyes finding a new peace in the prospect of death. He had done more in twenty-six years than most could accomplish in their lives. And all in hopes of becoming a man that was good enough for Nyx. His favorite memory of her surfaced from the deep of his mind: Standing on the Lellium’s railing, staring out to sea against orange skies. She had looked back at him as the ocean wind carried her autumn hair. She had smiled.

Well, if there was an afterlife, he would be seeing her presently: she could judge for herself the strength of his character.

Things considered, it was a good day to die.

Unnaturally, the sky darkened to that of twilight even though the time couldn’t have been past thirteen o’clock in the afternoon.

Drawn away from his morbidities, the fanciful plans he was making for after his death, blue and green threads of lightning caught his eye and began gathering high up, slithering and crackling in from the Cardinal directions. They centered above, and Miles lifted his head directly toward the sky to watch the light show. Sizzling luminous lines gathered into a white funnel sounding like sand being dumped into the sea. It seemed to pause, then altogether it arced down in a blinding and deafening flash that knocked Miles off his feet and into an overturned carriage.

He coughed as the thunder echoed away; the shockwave had hit him like a donkey kicking his chest. And head. He coned his hands around his ringing ears, relieved that they were still attached, then squinted through his blurry vision across the acrid smoke to the steaming pile of dragon flesh that now lay motionless. Two spasms, which seemed more like unwanted twitches than voluntary attempts to move, rippled from talon to tail. Then nothing happened at all.

Dead?

Trying out his legs, he braced against the fallen wagon and stood, wobbly. The huge dragon which had easily outmaneuvered Team Kistador and even killed its fearless leader, lay pink-bloodied and oozing from a gaping hole in its back that went all the way through its stomach. A chunk of amassed road bricks was roughly scooped and had been tossed aside, and there was still black dirt raining from the crater. Miles shook his head.

He looked around to find where the chance thunderstorm had originated from, but there was not a single cloud in the sunny sky.

But behind, at the park’s center and amidst the razed statue and fountain where the imposing visage of the mythic Quinn once overlooked the town square, now stood Elle atop the Lightning Bearer’s shattered pedestal with her foot precisely where his should have been: her hand extended toward her fallen foe, breathing heavily and smiling beneath her electric-fizzled hair.