The fear came over us: a dragon. An adult dragon. We had planned to fight it for Ogleby, for the Empire. But seeing it for the first time, we were no longer sure of anything. This thing had assaulted and demolished buildings, killed dwarves who had access to alchemist’s fire crossbow bolts. And here we were, just four of us now, supposed to be chasing after this thing in the mountains. Its element.
We moved through the forest in the direction the dragon had flown. It circled overhead once, but we stayed hidden. As we reached the edge of the forest, we saw the dragon fly into an opening in the side of the mountain. The opening was small for a dragon, but large enough for us to stand (pardon, large enough for the tiefling and dragonborn to stand; some of us rarely have to duck anyway). We had found the dragon’s lair, but what would we do with it now? We had no idea how deep the cave might go. Cherry debated going in first to get the drop on this beast. I offered to send my flaming sphere in after it. Iceborn didn’t like the idea of sending the halfling in first, but she insisted it was the best plan. He demanded that she retreat at once if things got too intense, and then I could use my fire to block the exit.
Cherry went into the tunnel, which went deeper and deeper into the mountain. The plan so far was not working. The dragon’s lair was deeper that we realized and we all ended up traveling down inside. The tunnel opened into a huge cavern. We came out on a ledge several feet up and looked down into the pit below. It was dim within the cavern, but the rogue made out a hoard of shinies. The cavern was so large the white dragon had room to fly inside. Forget all the plans at this point, even inside the cavern we could not fight this thing on our level.
Cherry climbed across some rock formations and crouched on a raised area about midway between the ledge and the floor of the cave. The rest of us hid behind taller pillars at floor level. We watched as the dragon settled and Cherry fired off the first shot with her new crossbow. A pop of fire burst on the dragon as Iceborn sprinted to the dragon’s side with his great axe and swung into it. The dragon, still very upset that the group in the forest had been killed, lashed out with claws and teeth. Iceborn was quick, but that only afforded him a little protection from the dragon. Kriv moved in behind the dragon and attacked with his sword.
Knowing my ice spells would do no good, but not wanting to waste the flame sphere until I had sized up the dragon, I reached for the small tome of oozes that I was studying and conjured an ooze at the dragon’s foot. It clung to him and acid started to eat at his foot. Cherry and Iceborn got two more strikes on the dragon before it stretched its wings and took to flight. Once in the air, it let out an icy gale, slivers shredding away at Iceborn and Kriv who rightfully took a moment to heal from the attack. As the dragon attacked, the ooze burst and evaporated. His attention was now on the rogue who was shooting fire at him. I fired more acid at the dragon, and it landed fully on the target this time. Cherry fired again and Kriv climbed up higher to work the dragon with his sword. He taunted the dragon and stood ready to hold its attention.
Iceborn climbed the rock beside Kriv and took a leap at the dragon with his axe, hooking it deep in the dragon’s side and climbing up onto the hovering beast. He barely held on as the dragon reached out to take a swing at the rogue, and was quickly assaulted by Kriv. We fought with everything we had at this point. My spells, Cherry’s crossbow, Kriv’s tanking and taunting, and Iceborn’s strikes from the shoulders of the dragon. Iceborn and Kriv were taking a serious beating, but their inspiring shouts and natural resilience were keeping the fight in our favor. It went on longer than any fight we’d been in before, and rightly so. We were, as far as we knew, the first people to take on a dragon for many generations.
One last effort to speed up the battle for my injured friends, I unleashed the sphere and set fire to the dragon. It roared, having enough of the beating and did a barrelroll from a dead hover, sending Iceborn slamming into the ground. Kriv poured a bottle of alchemist’s fire onto a handaxe and threw it at the dragon. A critical hit, the handaxe burst into flames and the dragon was now burning from both sides. It wailed in rage and pain as the fiery attacks bombarded it from all sides, flying lower and lower to the ground. Iceborn found his feet and with the dragon now just beyond his reach, he took another amazing leap with his axe and sliced the dragon’s throat clear open. Cold blood sprayed out and the dragon lost control. Iceborn had not yet gotten stable footing from the leap and could not dodge the massive body that now dropped to the cavern floor. An arm slammed him to the ground and snapped one of his horns in half.
Certain the dragon was dead, we pulled Iceborn to his feet. We all walked around the huge creature bleeding out before us. Lomweg poked his head out of my pocket and gasped, “DRAGON!”
“It’s okay, this one was a bad dragon. It’s dead now. You’re safe.” As the others examined the hoard, I started scavenging talons, teeth and scales. Something told me these would be very important, if not very rare just to have. I could make necklaces from them or have them crafted into other items.
