“Oh shit! Bad horse, stop moving!” Seymour pulled on the reins.

But Sil kept whinnying in panic, bucking up and down. Seymour cursed again, his left arm let go of the reins and he looked ready to hit something. Yet to Linh’s surprise, Seymour merely waved his arm over Sil’s eyes and shouted, “Move forward!”

Another blast of flame blocked the path, but luckily Sil seemed to listen and swerved out of the way. Linh’s shoulders were slightly burnt brown from the close heat. She held on tighter to Seymour and turned back to face the dragon.

It towered over them, jaws snapping open. With one bite, it could easily swallow all three of them whole. Luckily the trees were numerous enough that the dragon couldn’t fully spread its wings. Linh had no doubt that the dragon’s wingspan could easily reach the size of three Sun Goddess temples.

The dragon roared, the last of its flame breath coming out in thick smoke. Seymour urged Sil to leap over the burnt path and follow the strange woman deeper into the woods. The dragon began moving forward, smashing its limbs through several tree trunks. Bits of bark and ash flew all over.

“Go, go, go!” Seymour shouted with more life than Linh had ever seen in him.

The Eve trees seemed oddly resistant to flames, unlike Linh herself. Not a singe was present on the bark, unlike the grass and bushes on the path.

Linh peeked back again, to see the dragon. Its deep red eyes were beginning to glow, as bright as candles set in glass cages. The glow made every scale on the dragon’s serpentine face gleam as dangerously as the first spark of gunpowder. In a few seconds, it would have enough power to blow flame again.

Sil galloped as quickly as he could, but even with Seymour’s hurried shouts, Linh knew they wouldn’t make it. She couldn’t even warn Seymour without a voice! This damned body of hers…

Wait! Linh realized that bits of her limbs were beginning to fall apart, the slightest edges of paper beginning to curl up and flutter.

She immediately ripped out the top layer of paper from her arms, ignoring the pain, and threw them into the dragon’s eyes. She watched desperately as those pages whipped up and smacked the dragon on the face. It howled, pausing just enough to swipe the pages away, and Seymour took that opportunity to drive Sil behind some trunks to the right.

Seymour quickly quieted Sil’s frantic whinnies and put up a finger to his lips. He and Linh sat as still as possible, waiting for the dragon to come. Linh concentrated on the sounds of Sil and Seymour’s breaths, harsh and vibrant against the trees.

The dragon was roaring in the distance. More flashes of light and heat. A few more distant stomps. Then the stomps grew quieter. Farther away. Silence.

Seymour and Linh both slumped over in relief. Even Sil seemed to lean against the tree trunk in a slump.

“This is why I never want to leave the house,” Seymour muttered.

Linh wanted to laugh. Not that she could anymore.

He looked down at the singed and missing pages from Linh’s arms. How thinner they looked.

“…Thank you,” he said. “This trip is entirely your fault, but… thank you.”

Linh wasn’t sure if she should be insulted or not.

Before Linh could decide though, the woman from before burst from a nearby bush, twigs and leaves raining from her head, and shouted, “Yes! I escaped with his fang! Now to—oh!” The woman tried to (unsuccessfully) hide the dragon fang behind her back. “Uh. Travellers! Here! Of all places! What… um… brings you here?”

Seymour and Linh exchanged bewildered glances before making the mutual decision not to involve themselves in the woman’s affairs and avoid all possible future dragon encounters.

“Tell us where the nearest inn is,” said Seymour, “I need another drink.”