After two days of watching wyverns, I counted four different ones and never two or more in the sky at the same time. They came out, one at a time, in the middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon to hunt. I could see prey in each wyvern's talons as they flew away toward the mountain wall that marked the kingdom border to the west.

This fits with the red wyvern behavior of hunting once in the day, eating all of the prey, and then sleeping for a long time after that. Red wyverns would eat a meal around the size of a large sheep or small goblin. They would sometimes take full-grown cattle, but would then eat their fill and let the rest of the carcass rot.

The Compendium classed wyverns as magical creatures. That suggested to me that they might be intelligent. If they were, could we negotiate with them? I wondered if they might be like the trolls, who I once considered dangerous to the intelligent races, and not intelligent or rational themselves. I kept the thought that they might be rational and intelligent to myself for now. I realized it might upset some people, especially the goblins who had lost many families and family members to these wyverns.

Prince Willam and Duke Sven had stationed the ballistae in the middle of the town green which was a large open space that hosted playing fields, picnic spaces, a lovely perimeter walk, and some great trees which were just begging me to climb them. I had great fun on our third day in Wiffleblatt because I decided it was time to stalk the assorted members of our hunting party. I was getting out of practice since I couldn't get in my daily ambush of Motley Owl while we were traveling.

I spent half the morning climbing various trees, seeing which ones were good for sleeping and which ones were good for dropping down on unsuspecting prey or Motley Owl or Cloud Eye or Roaming Wren. I picked a tree not too far from where we were staying, got comfortable, and waited. Owl would likely pass right under me on his way to eat lunch, served in the city meeting hall for the elves and the humans. The humans' cook was still making food for both of our hunting parties, and it was getting close to lunchtime.

The hobgoblins put the elvish hunting party in the town's grammar school, with the addition of some mattresses so we would have something between us and the floor. The school was one of the buildings around the perimeter of the big town green. So I expected my elves to appear sometime soon. What I didn't expect was a wyvern. I had spotted one wyvern this morning already. I was a fool for thinking they would repeat their pattern of the previous two days.

Cat Rider had already started for the meeting hall which was on the other side of the green. He was a slow walker so he began walking before the others. As he walked under my tree, he said: "you might want to consider an invisibility spell because there's a break in the foliage 20 yards back where I noticed the twitch of your tail."

So I cast invisibility on myself, which isn't exactly sporting of me but I was feeling like I really needed to land a pounce on someone, and being a good sport could wait for another day. The pussy cat wanted to play and wanted her cat toy.

I was waiting patiently when I heard the warning horn from one of the enclosed watch stations on the factory roofs. This was followed by shouts from the human ballistae crews. I dropped to the ground and saw something that dropped my heart into my stomach: a wyvern diving for Cat Rider in the open in the middle of the green. I started chanting the ice of hell spell, as Cat named it, to kill the wyvern when two ballistae fired at the same time from opposite directions.

Giant-weighted fowler's nets fouled the wyvern in flight but their combined motion changed the wyvern's trajectory such that it was now falling straight toward Cat Rider. I didn't even have time to try to cast a barrier spell or even remember the words. I saw everything that I valued and loved in this world was about to be crushed by an oversized flying monster falling out of the sky.

A running green streak appeared from nowhere, made a flying tackle of Cat Rider, and flung my boy three or four yards through the air to make a painful-looking rolling stop, as various bits and pieces of Cat Rider went flying: his hood, his walking stick, his mask, his glass eye, and his false leg. The flailing tail of the wyvern knocked the soldier in the green tabard of Nordweg almost on top of Cat Rider. Cat Rider had fallen on his left side and I could tell from how he was moving that he was hurt and needed help. The situation was complicated by the wyvern which was flailing wildly next to where the soldier and Cat Rider had landed.

To add to the confusion, the soldier started screaming, "Cat Rider, your eye, that's your eye! Merciful Matadee, did you get hit on the head? Is there blood? Say something, Cat Rider!" The soldier in the green tabard was none other than Prince Willam, who had his back to the wyvern while Cat was fallen so he was facing it.

While Willam was panicking over Cat's detached glass eye, the flailing wyvern was flailing in the direction of the two boys and getting dangerously close. None of the approaching soldiers or the duke had reached them yet to pull them away from danger. Cat Rider looked over Willam's shoulder as one of the beast's talons almost took off Willam's leg. Somehow Cat Rider found the strength to grab Willam's shoulder with his right hand and wrenched his brother down to the ground so Cat's spell casting had a clear line of sight.

"μεμ γοαδιννε εἁρ μ ἰτ ἰις φαν 'ε δjιψτε ἑλ στjοερε ὀμ δε ὁλλε φαν 'ε σνιεερν τε βεφριεζεν!" Cat Rider shouted. I could see the magic gather in front of his head and then fly like a dart and impact the wyvern's head. The wyvern collapsed and stopped all motion.

Cat's arm tried to grasp Willam to control his fall backward and missed. Willam flung himself at Cat to keep his head from hitting the ground. He laid Cat down gently with tears falling down his cheeks. Kneeling, he tentatively touched the burn scar around the empty eye socket and then examined the red roots of Cat's blond hair.

By now I had arrived. I carefully picked up the glass eye. When I did, Willam screamed and pointed at me. I didn't understand why he kept pointing and screaming. I was so confused. Then Blue Fox, by far the fastest elf on two feet arrived followed a few seconds later by Owl.

"Fuzzy," Owl addressed me in tones of exasperation, "drop the invisibility spell, now."

I dropped it immediately, embarrassed that I forgot I had cast it on myself.

"Eye," Owl held out his hand. I gave him the eye. He cleaned it off on his sleeve and then held it out, "cleansing spell, please." I cast the spell on the eye and Owl's hands. Then Owl knelt next to the wide-eyed and shaking Willam, whose tears had not stopped yet. He gently lifted Cat's head and placed the eye in the socket. Willam's look of disbelief signaled he was on the edge of losing his composure completely. Owl placed his hand on Willam's shoulder, "Highness, it's not real. It's a glass eye. Cloud Eye made it for him."

"A glass...a glass...glass eye? It's not real. Oh gods," he looked ready to fall over.