“I have a plan!” Rasia announced.
“Thank Elder,” Zephyr said when Rasia and Kai returned from scouting the dragon’s den. The mention of a plan lured Azan and Neema away from their dinner. Kai had to admit he was also curious at what she had come up with.
Zephyr and the others had finished off-loading the warship and setting up the “shields,” the loose bone plates of the dead dragons Rasia had gathered from the Graveyard. Along with the battering ram made of teeth, the warship looked even more imposing. They also had finished cranking down Rasia’s windship from the warship’s side.
Rasia dramatically clutched her hands to her chest. “Zephyr, I can’t believe you would have so little faith in me.”
“What is the plan?”
Rasia smirked and then dropped to her knees to draw scribbles in the sand. She explained the markers. A conch shell represented the warship, a clam shell the windship, rocks for each member of the kull, and a small sand crab for the dragon, but it kept scuttling off. “Okay, so. Using the den is out. Complications arose, but while we had the chance, Kai very helpfully planted the bait. So we have about . . . whenever the dragon gets back from its hunt to get everything in place. Maybe a few drums at most?”
“Wait, what?”
“I thought you said we’d have at least a day to prepare?!” Azan whined. Neema suddenly looked ill. Everyone, even Kai, thought they had more time. Again, that deadened nothingness seemed to consume him.
“Change of plans. Happening now,” Rasia chirped. She squinted at Azan and Neema. “How many arrows and spears did you manage to make from the Graveyard bones?”
“Several quivers full,” Azan said, in a reedy whisper. “Five throwing spears.”
“That’ll work,” she said.
Rasia finally, finally, explained the specifics of her plan with the same confidence and experience of a storyteller weaving intricate plotlines on the fly. Kai listened, amazed at the way it solidified before their eyes. Rasia knew all the dragon stories and twisted their tropes easily. She colored in the setting and built her world with observations from today’s scouting expedition and the memories of her childhood. She took the characters and tools given to her and created the likeliest arc to culminate in a happy ending for all. Rasia herself hadn’t known the exact plan, until she did.
“Okay,” Zephyr said, squinting at the sand squiggles, and nodded. “I got it.”
“I don’t,” Neema said, panicked.
“Just don’t freeze this time,” Rasia said as if that should have been obvious.
“Can we go over it maybe one more time?” Azan asked. “I don’t want to mess up.”
Rasia flung up her hands, becoming visibly frustrated and unable to understand why Azan or Neema didn’t immediately get it. But they weren’t used to keeping up with the speed of Rasia’s run-on sentences when she was excited, nor were they familiar with the ad hoc vocabulary she used for specific parts of the windship.
“I’ll go over the plan with Azan again,” Kai interjected. “Rasia, why don’t you finish any extra preparations we might need? Zephyr, go over the motions with Neema. Help her drill it down so she’ll feel ready and less likely to freeze when the time comes.”
“What he said,” Rasia flung her hand in Kai’s direction, then walked off in a huff. She scooped down to grab her bow and the string wax as she left.
Zephyr nodded at Kai and took Neema to the side, while Kai crouched down with Azan. Kai added words and steps to many of Rasia’s pictographs. The crab had crawled away. Really, Azan just needed the reassurance, but it helped to go over the plan until Azan could recall it from memory. It felt like no time at all had passed when Rasia came racing back, chest heaving, several drums later.
“I spotted Aurum in the clouds,” she said. “I’d say at least half a drum out. It’s happening now.”
Everyone lingered, waiting on Rasia to give something more—a little more direction, a little more instruction, a little more something. Kai nudged Rasia in the arm and whispered, “Maybe say something encouraging.”
“Seriously? We don’t have time for this.”
He nudged her again.
Rasia clapped her hands together. “Don’t die.”
Kai lowered Rasia’s clasped hands. Someone needed to say something. He glanced at Zephyr, but Zephyr only glared back at him, urging Kai to speak. Kai’s mouth suddenly dried, but time ticked down and every vibration mattered.
With a dry swallow, he forced words out of his mouth. “Many of us are here for different reasons—for glory, for family, for doing the right thing—but regardless, we’re all here together. Whether or not we succeed today, no one can ever question the mettle of our bones. Even though the dragon can’t breathe fire, as far as we know, doesn’t make it any less dangerous. We go in with everything we’ve got to give because anything less won’t be enough. Never forget—all hunters are hunted.”
“All hunters are hunted,” they repeated and broke to their stations.
Kai moved towards the windship, but Rasia snatched a hand around his neck and he curved eagerly into her lips. This was it.
Everything they had to give.
The moment Aurum returned from their hunt, they roared a fury so loud the sound rippled the ocean and the black sand vibrated.
Rasia’s heart ratcheted up in anticipation. She lived for this moment—the vibrations right before a hunt, knowing you’ve done all you could in preparation and yet knowing all your carefully laid plans could still come tumbling down around you. She got here as fast as she could. She prepared as much as she could. She rested as well as she was able. She had thrown her bones as hard and as far as possible.
Now it was time to see how her bones would land.
Rasia stood at the back of the windship, facing the cliffs and the dragon bearing towards them. As predicted, the dragon charged in their direction, chasing Kai’s scent like a well-trod path and shattering clouds in all directions.
Rasia looked at Kai over her shoulder, where he stood with his good arm on the steer. She trusted Kai to get them where they needed to go and hoped that the others were in position.
She turned back toward that incoming dragon and braced herself with one foot between the railing. She pulled a bone-shard arrow from her quiver and nocked it to her bow. She aimed for the dragon’s massive outline and waited for Aurum to breach her range.
The ship wobbled, so powerful the flap of the dragon’s wings displaced wind currents. The wobble made it hard to aim, no matter how much Kai tried to steady the ship. Her first arrow veered off.
She grabbed another arrow and anchored herself against the railing. She watched patiently for her opening as the dragon swooped down with gleaming talons. Those talons were sharp enough to rend through the entire ship, crush the mast, and impale both her and Kai all too easily. And yet, she waited.
The talons neared.
Three vibrations.
Two vibrations.
Rasia loosed her arrow. It struck true, hitting the center of the right talon, but the dragon didn’t slow. Rasia released another one, this time aiming for the fiery smoldering eye. She never got the shot off as the windship abruptly turned.
Kai dropped his weight against the outrigger and maneuvered the ship underneath the dragon’s incoming talons, causing the dragon to overshoot. Aurum crashed against the ground. The windship, although untouched, shook at the nearby impact.
Kai straightened the ship and moved them back on track toward the Dragon’s Gate. The dragon thrust off the ground and continued the chase. The shadows through the gate tunnel shifted, and out of the shadows came the warship on a collision course.
“Hurry!” Rasia yelled when Kai maneuvered around the large warship. Kai slowed, and Rasia pulled at the rope cast off from the warship’s side. Neema, Azan, and Zephyr slid down from the warship’s deck, quickly evacuating onto her smaller windship as they passed.
The warship rammed straight into the dragon flying on their heels. The large battering ram, made from dragon bone, cracked and ripped and splintered. The dragon screeched, clawed, and wrestled the massive warship.
Rasia smiled, triumphant. There are many ways to stop a warship.
Kai brought them back around to survey the damage. The ram had impaled the dragon’s ribs, but the dragon had wounded themselves further when they had ripped the warship through their right wing to get free.
Rasia had fought many of the creatures that populated the Desert. She knew their strengths and weaknesses, but to defeat a dragon, all Rasia had were kull stories: Bad steel will break against a dragon’s hide. Have a good kull that you trust at your back. Limit its ability to fly.
With the dragon now grounded, they accomplished the hardest part, but the fight was far from over.
Rasia, Neema, and Zephyr pelted the dragon with arrows as Kai circled with the windship. Some glanced off scales, but others punctured the tough hide. The head swiveled toward Kai, nostrils flaring, and growling. Blood leaked from one eye, and the right translucent wing had collapsed inward. Aurum roared, and the sound quaked through Rasia’s limbs.
“Straight ahead,” Rasia ordered, never taking her eyes off the dragon.
Kai, her beautiful brave Kai, never hesitated. He charged full speed ahead. Aurum opened their large maw, out of desperation or instinct, Rasia didn’t know. She saw deep down the dragon’s throat and could see the bone-spear broken off within. All evidence so far had proven to her that the dragon could no longer breathe fire, but when you’re staring down that fathomless abyss, you’re never truly certain.
“Behind the shields!” she ordered.
Rasia ducked behind the bone-plate shield that had been tied and looped through the railing. Zephyr erected a shield in front of both him and Kai, who had no immediate defenses as the windeka. The dragon exhaled scalding fumes and choked the air with thick brackish smoke. Rasia left the protective shield and raced into the blinding clouds of ash that burned her eyes and throat. Blindly, but knowing every board of her ship like the back of her hand, she retrieved her pair of khopesh from the open weapons hatch.
A raised talon cut a path through the smoke.
Kai crashed the ship. Intentionally. It fell on its side, slipping forward under the talon. It came to a stop right at the dragon’s shoulder.
It was close enough. The others covered her sprint with arrows. With the khopesh in both hands, Rasia raced along the date palm mast, now as horizontal as the rest of the ship. She vaulted off the end and landed atop the wing with a roll. She raced uphill, heart pounding in her ears, and her eyes burning. The closer she came, the more the smog thickened and obscured her vision. She reached the edge of the wing, then the shoulder, and blindly leapt.
Rasia planted her khopesh into the dragon’s neck, ripped down the narrow nape, and beheaded it in one fell swoop.
Her leg buckled when she landed. Her chest heaved. Her ribs ached. It burned to breathe. But Rasia felt none of it. The gibbous moon glowed a spotlight on the aftermath. Gold bled white. The wind cheered. The ocean applauded. Forever the stars would be her witness.
Rasia roared in bloody triumph.