2
As the dragon gurgled and choked on its blood, I scrambled to my feet. The other dragons were just seconds away from crashing down on me. I broke into a run, but my slow start had given them the advantage. Teeth clasped over my haunch and raked right down to my ankle. I gritted my teeth and ran harder despite the pain. Looking over my shoulder, I sweltered with a flash of worry at how close they were. Then to my surprise, they skidded to a halt, tearing up grass and tripping over each other.
It should have occurred to me why they stopped, but I only felt relief.
Relief until the ground vanished under my feet.
Suddenly, I was hurtling through the air, my heart leaping into my lungs as I sought an explanation for the weightlessness in my body. Wide-eyed, I watched the ground drop into grassy ridges below, the forest teetering on a mountainside that I hadn’t realized I was approaching. Then in the span of my next heartbeat, my body hit the slope, agony exploded through me, and I rolled down the incline, bouncing off the grass and rocks. Everything around me blurred together as I made my descent. It felt like it took minutes for me to descend the mountainside, each thump another firework of worsening pain when in reality, it must have only taken about thirty seconds for me to come to a stop in a patch of leafy brambles. I lay there on a ledge, dizzy, as I stared up at where I had fallen from. The faint moonlight illuminated the dragons looking over the ledge, searching for me. They flared their wings and took off, flying overhead. But they must not have seen me because they proceeded further down the mountainside while I lay still, stunned by the fall.
The longer I lay there, the greater the chance of them finding me. They would be able to smell my blood. I had to move.
With a sharp inhale through my teeth, I got to my stomach and tried to stand. My legs trembled, my ribs screaming in pain. I wouldn’t be able to go far, and for a moment, I thought I was absolutely screwed. I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was running, and it would be the death of me. Just a moment’s ignorance would end my life and rip away any chance I had of finding and rescuing my mother until I recognized the dark crevice beside me.
There was a hole among a tangle of roots beneath a tree firmly anchored in the mountainside. I staggered into the hole, cramming myself as tightly as I could into the darkness before turning around and staring out into the night.
The dragons soared up and down the mountainside, searching. They screeched and hissed to one another, uttering draconic noises of frustration while distantly, I thought I heard a couple of lupine barks. Maybe it was my imagination. For all the dragons knew, I could have broken my bones and died somewhere further down the mountain. But they couldn’t see me. They hovered above the brambles saturated with my scent but couldn’t land without injuring themselves in the thorns and dense undergrowth. Most likely, they would wait until sunrise, when the light of their Sun God would allow them to pick me out of the vegetation. I wasn’t going to wait that long.
With a deep breath in, I closed my eyes and focused on all the injuries I had accrued in the minutes spanning my flight. My magic wasn’t strong enough to heal me entirely. The blood smeared across my body—the dragon’s blood on my face, my own blood seeping out of my shorn haunch—was slowly poisoning me. I couldn’t even groom myself clean, or else I’d suffer even worse effects from ingesting blood. But I could at least mend the worst of my injuries so I could flee from here while it was still dark.
A gentle tingling flushed through my body. The ribs I had landed on, surely fractured by the impact, throbbed and warmed. My magic was summoned from the well of my unicorn horn, rushing through my veins and creeping into my muscles. The bones fused back together. And while I knew I still had manual healing to do, at least now I wouldn’t be suffering from sharp, stabbing pains any time I tried to walk. My ankle, which had been twisted sharply, cracked back into place. The gash on my temple bridged the flesh until it was closed and no longer bleeding.
For long minutes, I lay there and allowed my magic to repair what it could. The heavy wingbeats of the dragons slowly faded, their claws scrabbling up the mountainside. They would be back before long. I had to move quickly if I wanted to avoid being trapped here.
I swallowed my agony and extracted myself from the hole. Limbs still shaking, I shrank underneath the brambles, enduring their prickly tangle until I came out on the other side adorned in leaves and twigs. Then, with careful steps, I continued to climb down the ridge back to the even ground. I was forced to look up and around me, like a mouse ever vigilant for the talons of raptors. Every now and then, a draconic shadow passed across the stars.
Finally, I made it into the valley and dragged myself through the trees. The sound of a creek was music to my ears. Its gentle babbling ushered me forth until, at long last, I saw the starlight glinting off the surface of ambling water. With a sigh, I stopped at its bank, bent my head, and drank, soothing my dry throat. But thirst wasn’t my main concern. I had to clean the blood off of me.
The ice-cold water was a reprieve against my sore feet. I had been running for so long that I didn’t even realize how tired my feet were and how nice the numbing sensation would be.
In the water, I rinsed all the sick, sticky crimson out of my fur, bathing under the starlight. I wasn’t safe. There were always eyes on me. But for that moment, at least, I felt like I could wash away the evil and corruption of the dragons that sought to kill me. My anger was soothed.
Then on the other side of the creek, the shadows took shape again.
I could never truly be alone.