“I’ve never known dragons to nest this far south,” Leaf said as the party looked down from the barren ridgetop to the pair of periwinkle dragons circling lazily in the distance above the forest canopy that stretched to the horizon. “That redwood must be their nesting tree.”

“Are they Benavyans?” Dawn said, shading her eyes from the sky, which was so bright and pale as to seem white.

Leaf watched the dragons for dozens of hypnotic cycles. “I think no. They seem a breed I have never encountered.”

Reeve placed an elbow on the large boulder that was providing them partial concealment and cupped the side of her face in a hand. “Called it, Dad.”

“I wish I were more excited about that,” Walter said, then he flinched as the sun was extinguished and the sound of rushing air preceded a pressure-wave that pushed them all against the boulder and, as suddenly, was gone, and Walter’s pony, just beginning a terrified bleat, flew over them and down toward the trees below.

“Well,” Dusk said, checking over her shoulder nervously and then looking back to the vista, “I hope those two down below are juveniles, because the one that just carried off Walter’s pony, which will forever remain unnamed, is the largest beast I’ve ever seen in any realm of this land. May they grow no larger.”

In the distance, the dragon that had just flown over them, which was a slightly darker blue, deep water rather than sky, flared its wings, slowed, and dropped the pony, its terrified last cries rendered mercifully silent by the intervening distance, into a huge nest, toward which the two smaller dragons quickly spiraled. Having deposited its prey, the larger dragon took a few mighty flaps to regain speed and began a slow turn back toward them.

“Time to get off the ridge!” Reeve picked Walter up at the waist and flipped him, bare feet over halfling head, to deposit like an accessory on her back, his hands scrambling to find her shoulders and neck as he competed with her bow for real estate, the limb tip of the weapon poking him under the jaw as he did. She grabbed her naginata from where it leaned and began taking long, plunging steps down the extreme, scree-covered path that, zigzagging, descended the ridge face into the forest below, loose rocks sliding down the steep slope before her with each footfall.

More rocks skittering past Reeve from above let her know the others were close behind. Not daring to take her eyes off her next landing spot, she said, “Dad, where’s the dragon?”

Walter, barely able to hold on to his daughter as free fall alternated with jarring impact faster than he could believe possible, gripped Reeve’s neck more tightly and dug his heels into her sides, then carefully looked beyond her ear. “I don’t see it.”

“How…can…you…not…see…it?” Reeve said, her lungs only reliably under her control between compressive landings.

“Let me try the other side.” Walter waited for a drop to begin and quickly switched his chin from one side of Reeve’s neck to the other. “Ah. There it is.”

“How close?”

“Uh…I’m not great with quantity estimates.”

“We about to get eaten close? Or we might make it close?

Walter looked down Reeve’s shoulder toward the rapidly approaching trees, then snapped his head back up, uncomfortable with how much their descent of the trail resembled falling to one’s death, an experience at which he reluctantly now considered himself to be an expert.

“Best hurry, Reeve,” Dusk said from just behind, and a moment later the half-elf, followed immediately by Dawn and then Leaf, passed them, the trio's nimble feet finding purchase off the trail on what, Reeve did not know.

Reeve received an image of the dragon from Nyx, and it was close enough to start making out scales. The cheetah passed a moment later, its feet, like those of the elfin folk, seeming to lightly touch upon the jagged and uneven rock as it flew past.

“Almost there,” Reeve said more for her own benefit than to reassure her father.

“On your left,” Walter, a consummately polite cyclist IRL, said in her ear. For a moment, Reeve thought Walter was announcing an avalanche overtaking them from the left, so voluminous was the collection of loose rock that began sliding and bouncing past them on that side, but almost immediately the honey badger appeared amidst the rock storm, its graceless scramble the near opposite of the others who had passed, the creature a barreling cloud of fur, legs, and rock. But the results were unarguable, as the honey badger quickly left them behind and disappeared into the first scraggly trees that heralded their final approach to the forest.

“Looking more like ‘get eaten close,’” Walter said, hugging Reeve so desperately that her bow pressed painfully into her back.

“Hold tight!” Skipping the last ten yards of trail, Reeve jumped toward a massive pair of closely spaced firs below them. She fell through the dense branches, hoping they’d slow her enough to avoid a fatal impact on whatever lay beneath the trees.

Whoomph. Beneath the trees was, Reeve discovered, rock, but as she struggled to rise from under tree limbs, both broken and unbroken, that pawed at her from every angle, she thanked Fortune that the rock was flat, not pointed, and that she’d slowed enough to lose a fifth of her health but suffer no serious injuries.

“Smells like Christmas,” the fir to her left said with Walter’s voice.

“Shhh.” Gripping her naginata, Reeve stepped slowly from between the firs into the edge of the forest. She could see the rest of their party another dozen yards below them where they all crouched behind trees or boulders.

Leaf pointed back up toward the ridge, and Reeve turned to look past the firs. The huge shadow of the dragon slid over the trail they’d just vacated, and the dragon emitted a screech like metal against metal. As it did, Reeve felt the shaft of her naginata pull at her hand, as though the blade end was being tugged toward the ridge. She grasped it with both hands and looked up and down the shaft, not finding the source of the pull.

“Hey there, Fella,” Walter said inside the fir, “is that your little hidey-hole?”

“Who are you talking to?” Reeve whispered.

“This big, fluffy—whoa! Your head can really spin! You must—ahhhhh!”

Walter’s chilling scream was followed immediately by a loud metallic clanggg and then a plume of fire erupted from one side of the tree. The flames quickly spread up to the tip and around both sides, the tree becoming an enormous pyre away from which Reeve backed.

A chime sounded. Reeve opened and quickly scanned her logs.

A Level 5 Giant Barred Owl rakes at the face of Reavyr (II) with talons for 6 points of damage.

Reavyr (II) bludgeons a Level 5 Giant Barred Owl with a bee smoker for 1 point of damage.

Reavyr (II) smites a Level 5 Giant Barred Owl with a bee smoker fire for 5 points of damage.

Reeve skipped over a long list of updates that followed the spread of the fire from the bird, to the tree, to Walter, all of which experienced continuous fire damage until they were killed or destroyed.

Reavyr (II) has died. Respawn in 30 seconds.

With a sickly feeling, Reeve checked the location of her father’s spawn point.

“Ohmagod.” Eyes wide, Reeve looked down to Leaf and the twins. “We need to build a campfire now, now, now!” She bounded down toward them, but none seemed to understand the need for action. “My dad’s spawn point is still set to the pony’s saddle! Before it’s destroyed, we need to have a campfire to provide an alternative respawn option, or his location will reset to some previous point, probably back in the gnome cave.”

“Gods,” Dawn said, and quickly shrugged off her pack.

Reeve dropped to her knees and began grabbing at every stick and twig within arm’s reach.

A chime sounded.

“Ugh.” Reeve did not check her UI.

Leaf and the twins were also collecting kindling and more substantial pieces of wood.

“Doesn’t need to be fancy, just needs to burn,” Reeve called out. “Dusk, Dawn, get ready to add the fire?” She began piling the wood she’d collected into a haphazard pyramid.

Dawn arrived and dropped her collection next to the pile, then raised her cupped hands and began the spell. After a few motions, she paused and held her hands suspended, her eyes watching Dusk and Leaf approach with their contributions, which they hurriedly dropped. Reeve quickly organized the new additions, the resulting pyramid several feet tall, and then rocked backward to land on her rear as Dawn made one final gesture and pushed her palms forward, fire jetting down onto the assembled wood.

A chime sounded.

From where she now sat, Reeve leaned back on her hands and extended her feet toward the blaze that rose yards into the air.

She watched the flames, mentally ticking off seconds.

A chime sounded.

“Blech.” She lowered herself to her back and stared up at the sky.

Dusk looked down. “It is not working?”

“The pony’s saddle, or the pony—whatever is anchoring the spawn point—must still be intact, ‘cause so far he keeps respawning in the nest. He should show up here next to the party campfire once the anchor is destroyed.”

“Gods willing,” Leaf said, “it will happen soon.”

A chime sounded.

Reeve covered her face with her hands and spent the next half minute trying to find a mantra that appropriately captured both the parental and draconic aspects of the current situation.

A chime sounded before she had found one. Over the next several minutes, the chimes, which were spaced with sickening regularity, continued to derail her thoughts, and she still had not found the right mantra for the occasion by the time a faint light appeared near the fire

Walter William’s halfling slowly faded into being, and, once fully materialized, ran straight into the roaring campfire.