In the sudden silence, time seemed to slow. Cara felt as though she could feel every hair begin to stand on her arms, one strand at a time. 

The boat started to spin lazily in the eddy that kept it close to shore. Cara could just barely see Dayton’s pale face and paler hair peek out to stare at her, his mouth agape.

And as Cara continued watching Dayton’s progress by the shore, it occurred to her that he wasn’t looking at her with that look of utter and complete terror. 

No, he was staring right behind her.

Slowly, carefully, Cara turned her head.

The prime wyvern had appeared between two of the great trees near the road, at the crest of the valley-ravine where they had tumbled down. 

His muzzle was dark, but the rest of him shone with the brilliance of a forgotten treasure hoard in the reddening afternoon light. 

He hadn’t moved toward them, but neither had he stepped back to his dinner of horse behind him on the road. 

Cara found her thoughts chanting, praying in a wordless petition to Cern, to the Morgana, to Riana and Lugh and all the other deities great and small that the monster just leave them be, just ignore them and go back to the mound of flesh that had been their token sacrifice to escape. 

She sensed that Dayton was doing the same behind her, and had a bit more hope than she had before. After all, he was experienced with requesting divine intervention.

And then, just as it seemed that the gods had heard their silent prayers, her bad leg decided to buckle.

Cara sank to one knee, gasping with the pain. Her hand slid down the crutch. Splinters embedded themselves in her palm. 

The wyvern drew its head back and roared a challenge, fanning its wings to halo its head with membrane and claws and spikes. 

“Cara!”

She could hear Dayton fumbling behind her, and something splashed into the water.

“Stay in the boat!” she yelled. Clutching her sling, she pushed herself into a standing position, using a tree for support as the wyvern slithered down the slope. 

“But—”

The wyvern cut off whatever Dayton had been about to say with a loud whistle-hiss as he coiled himself at the base of the hill. Saliva dripped in sloppy ropes from his fangs as he glared at Cara with first one eye, and then the other. 

The monster tilted his head back and huff-huff-huffed in the half-filled rasps that signaled the stoking of his fire breath.

Cara carefully loosened the drawstring of her bag of slingshot ammunition and fingered the rocks within. Her fingers brushed several before settling on one that she thought felt right: Heavy and smooth, with a single pockmark where another stone had chipped a flake from its side. 

She rubbed at the flaw, willing any luck she might have had to transfer into this rock-pocket. She’d only have the one shot, after all.

“Cara! What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing?”

“Shut up, Dayton,” she said.

The wyvern faced her directly.

Cara loaded the stone into her sling.

A heartbeat passed.

Two.

And then the fire breath came, hotter than its flockmate’s, golden sparks dancing around its white-hot heart. Cara threw herself away from the tree, whose branches immediately began to scorch and smoke under the fiery assault. 

As she fell, she whirled her sling. The stone slipped from the worn leather pouch at the height of its arc and flew away— 

—straight into the creature’s bloodshot eye.

Not the throat she’d meant to hit, but she’d take it.

The wyvern screamed, tilting its head back in pain. The fire stream fanned up before cutting off entirely as the wyvern shut its mouth to thrash in agony.

“Cara!”

She struggled to her knees, trying to ignore the warmth she felt seeping from her shin into her boot, onto the leaf litter.

“Cara! Are you going to sit there all day or get on this blasted boat?!”

Cara looked up. 

The boat had begun to edge its way out of the swirling eddy. Dayton leaned over the walls, bringing the boat precariously close to capsizing as he desperately snatched for any bit of overhanging greenery to keep the vessel close enough to the shore for Cara to board.

His efforts were in vain. The boat crept past the small rocky outcrop that had shielded it and was caught in the river’s main current.

“Cara!” Dayton’s shout mingled with the roar of the injured wyvern behind her.

The sound galvanized her to action. Cara began to crawl through the underbrush, then pulled herself to a standing upright— 

And then she was running through the bushes, the wyvern breathing sparks down her neck and her shin singing with pain. 

Cara heard it crashing through the trees behind her, but its new blindness must’ve hindered its progress significantly. 

Still, she found herself running even faster, heedless of direction, plowing through bushes and pulling herself forward with trees, desperately trying to reach the river before their boat had gone too far.

The forest ended abruptly. Cara grabbed at a tree that had anchored itself in the stark stone before she plunged over the edge of the cliff that overlooked a bend in the river. 

She turned her head and saw the boat—with Dayton still in it, thank gods above and below—just beginning to navigate the turn. 

Can I jump it? she wondered. No, not yet. I’ll have to wait and hope that Dayton sees me. Maybe if I— 

But whatever plan she’d begun to form died in her mind as the wyvern burst from the trees behind her with a bellow of triumph. 

The monster arrowed for her, wings churning backward to allow his talons to grab and rend her limb from limb.

But the backwash of the wings pushed Cara out further than either of them could compensate. 

The rush of air past her ears and the sickening lightening of her stomach were all the warning she got, and then she was enveloped by bone searingly cold water. 

Cara tumbled through the water, her backside hitting the river bottom with a soft crunch.

And then, her feet were braced against the pebbles, thrusting her up, kicking her to the surface despite the leaden weight of her boots.

Her face broke the surface. Cara gasped, sucking in fresh air before her boots could drag her below again. 

Suddenly, a branch hit her in the back of the head. Her mouth was forced under for a moment, and she bobbed back up to choke on the unexpected swallow of river water. 

“Sorry! Here, try again!”

The branch returned, just prodding her in the shoulder this time. Cara grabbed the makeshift lifeline. She glanced up to see Dayton was once again trying to sink their boat by leaning out too far.

“Thanks, but let go of the branch! I’ll float down with you and we’ll find a boulder for me to climb on.”

A roar echoed behind them. Turning, Cara watched the wyvern as he wrapped his tail about the cliff face tree’s trunk to lean as far as he could toward his escaping prey. 

The tongue of fire he sent their direction couldn’t even warm them, which Cara was almost sorry for. The river was cold.

The wyvern kept watch after them with its one good eye, long after the boat had disappeared into the wilderness.