The Second Attack
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Exhausted as she was, Fola wasn’t aware she had slept until the shout woke her. Someone–from the booming timbre of the voice it was the Armorer Guildmage, Tulu–was calling out the alarum. The crashing fury of the brass gong began, a counterpoint to the screams and Tulu’s terrible shouts: “Dragon! Run to your huts! The dragon returns! Warriors to your weapons!”
Illus. Andrew Robinson
She didn’t have the Prison yet–it was too soon! Scrambling out of her hut, Fola watched the terrible shadow of the dragon looming large over Kenlo’s center. The townspeople were out of the way this time, safely hidden at the first warning cry. The warriors had snatched up their weapons and were dashing into position when Fola saw the dragon’s wicked whip of a tail coil backwards like a snake preparing to attack. She screamed a warning.
Her shout was drowned out in the sudden, piercing attack-cry of the beast, so loud and painful that Fola stumbled and clasped her hands to her ears. Although only a few warriors had dropped their weapons at the sudden noise, Fola saw that even M’bari was disoriented.
Then the creature was gone again–vanished, just as before.
Illus. David O’Connor
For a moment the warriors and people of Kenlo hung suspended in time, unmoving as if trapped in amber, while the shriek faded around them. Then, reborn on the last whispers of sound, the dragon reappeared. Flashes of teeth, talons, and tail, the monster slashed at the tightly grouped warriors. M’bari fell, clasping his left leg, from which blood dropped. Even as the dragon’s tail had caught him, he had successfully slashed at the creature’s side with his sword. What a warrior was M’bari!
Fola willed mana and rage to flow through her being as she spun a shining web of power across the sky. The sunweb glistened first silver, then gold, then silver again, as it spread itself just above the warriors’ heads.
Illus. John Bolton
Screeching in rage, the catacomb dragon wheeled away from the spreading net, snatching up a large cow instead. Beating its wings, the twisting creature whirled higher and higher into the darkening sky as Fola collapsed, exhausted, to the ground.
Above the warriors, Fola’s glistening web dissolved in golden tears that disappeared before they touched the earth.