“So, there’s been absolutely no point to the conversation we’ve had for the past five minutes while we’re in earshot of a sleeping, and presumably very deadly, dragon?” I asked.
“I suppose not, no,” said Rummy agreeably.
Nadi bit down on the hilt of her sword in an effort not to scream in frustration. A moment later, after she had mastered her emotions, she beckoned for us to follow her. She held her sword at the ready, which suggested that she was either prepared to take on the dragon or ready to cut off the head of the next member of our group who delayed our progress any further. I decided not to delay things any further.
There’s a moment before you go into a dangerous situation—a dragon’s lair, a wizard’s tower, the annual nuptial dress sale at Cataflan’s Millinery—alongside a group of trusted companions where you almost feel giddy, like laughter is the only way to release the immense anxiety that’s built up over what you’re about to do. (Vomit and diarrhea are alternatives, of course, but messy ones, and they don’t make for a cute footnote, so we’ll just say that we all got the giggles before we went into the dragon’s lair, even if we all know what Borg was doing instead, though I’m not sure that had anything to do with nerves or anxiousness and everything to do with his ridiculously overactive bowels and terrible dietary decisions.)
Once the laughter had subsided, Nadi led us into the lair, where I paused for a moment to take in the scene. The dragon lay before us, snoring contentedly, little spurts of flame snorting out with each breath. A massive treasure hoard surrounded the beast. Gold, silver, jewels, swords, armor, shields, statues, jewelry, and, inexplicably, a huge pile of carrots were scattered across the room, heaped haphazardly here and there—including beneath the dragon, where rested a pretty significant portion of the treasure.
Rummy couldn’t help but let out a low whistle, which brought swift retribution from Nadi in the form of a hand slapped over his mouth with considerably more force than was necessary.
We froze as the dragon snorted, inadvertently immolating a small, purple vase near its left nostril and melting more gold coins than I’d seen in the past year. Fortunately for us, the dragon didn’t wake, and Nadi very reluctantly withdrew her hand, though the glare she fixed on Rummy served as a pointed reminder for him to mind his breaking-and-entering-a-dragon’s-lair P’s and Q’s.
I breathed out a long, slow (but silent) sigh of relief.
Whiska could barely control herself. Her eyes looked like carriage wheels, immense and round and driven to arrive at the destination before her. I tried to stop her, but half-hearted silent entreaties, it turns out, are pretty ineffective when it comes to stopping really avaricious Ratarians from getting closer to treasure.
Nadi moved to intervene, but she saw the wild look in Whiska’s eyes, and, instead of trying to stop her, simply mouthed, “The plan.”
I nodded and grabbed Rummy, pulling him back toward the perimeter and clearing the way for Borg to get closer to the dragon. Nadi held her sword at the ready and waited for Whiska to look at her, which took a while, given that she spent several minutes gazing lustily at the treasure. Finally, through sheer chance, she made eye contact with Nadi, who pointed toward the dragon, started to gesture for Whiska to cast her lightning bolt spell, realized that her gesture might be misinterpreted and result in a lengthy dissection of what she may or may not have meant and ultimately lead to the dragon waking up and eating all of us before we could even start to fight it, and decided instead to just nod with her chin toward the dragon and hope Whiska could figure it out.
Fortunately, Whiska figured it out. With one last, longing look at the treasure, she set her staff down on the ground so that it leaned against her, pushed the sleeves of her robe up her skinny arms (they promptly fell right back down), stretched her fingers, picked her staff back up, and began to chant very quietly, raising the staff as she neared the end of the incantation.
Just before Whiska finished, Nadi raced forward and struck the dragon across the snout with her blade. The blow didn’t do a ton of damage (though it did open up a nice gash), but it did serve to make the dragon pick its head up and blink, trying to clear the sleep from its eyes. Its head swiveled toward Whiska just as she unleashed her spell.
I’ll say this for Whiska: she may be rude, boorish, greedy, selfish, insufferable, and smell like a three-day-old piece of rotfish, and she may not have the most extensive magical training, and she is not good at creating decent clothing, and she does this annoying clicking thing with her teeth when she’s eating, and she never picks up a bar tab, and orange is her favorite color, which is just weird, but when she wants to do damage to something, she doesn’t mess around. Her lightning bolt hit the dragon square in the face, and the beast’s head shot up into the air and snapped back so hard I thought its neck might break.
In case you’re wondering, hearing a full-throated dragon’s roar in a relatively small cavern where the sound can bounce and echo and reverberate is not good for your ears (particularly if you have sensitive part-elven ears, which tend to bleed under those circumstances in my experience).
On the plus side, we had the advantage, and we pressed it. Nadi rushed back in and redoubled her efforts, striking hard on the dragon’s soft underbelly. Borg waded in and smashed his club into the dragon’s left foreleg, though I think his attack produced more sound than it did damage. Even Rummy got into the act, picking up a fist-sized rock and flinging it with expert aim toward the dragon’s snout, bouncing it off the upper part of its right nostril. I stood heroically off to the side, observing and recording the story of these brave heroes (mainly because I knew that my tiny knife couldn’t do much harm to the dragon, and, even if it could, I had no intention of getting close enough to it to even give it a shot).
Even though we had the element of surprise and drew first blood, we were still fighting a dragon, and those things are big. Also, tough, and, in this case, incredibly angry.
The dragon’s neck swiveled to the right as its head swooped back down, its gaping maw open wide to reveal row upon row of massive (albeit strangely rounded) teeth. It snapped at Borg but missed, though it did manage to bash its lower jaw into him, sending him crashing hard into the closest wall. It then turned its attention to Nadi, who danced backward and frantically tried to parry tooth with sword.
To my surprise, Whiska raced over to Borg and knelt beside him. She patted him gently on the shoulder as she leaned down and said something into his ear. He nodded, and she slipped her hand underneath his arm and helped him to his feet. It was easily the nicest, most tender thing I’d ever seen her do.
As the dragon inhaled, however, I suspected it might also be the last thing I ever saw her do, period, because I was about to become a barbecued half-elf kabob.
Borg heroically raced (well, insomuch as Borg can race…but “heroically ambled” just doesn’t quite create the level of dramatic tension we’re going for) right into the path of the flame, hoping to shield us as much as possible with his body, even though I’m pretty sure fire melts rocks, too. He stood tall, even as Rummy ducked and cowered like a rented mule (okay, so, he may not have been alone in doing so). I covered my face, but kept my fingers spread just wide enough to bear witness to Borg’s immolation, figuring that I could literally do nothing less to help him than to play the role of silent observer—and, subsequently, incredibly beautiful chronicler of his life, assuming I didn’t suffer the same fate.