Fire and Flint

Checkers took a deep breath, and started to run out of the darkness to the mage. She wanted to collide with him, force him to lose his balance, and leave him stunned on the floor. She hoped that perhaps she would knock him out, giving her leisure to grab her spear and pierce his heart.

The dragon's instincts now took over. Something is charging me from the left! I do not know what it is! Combat! Minestus felt a visceral thrill that he had not felt in a long time. His body quickly transformed itself back into its native form, that of a mighty dragon, over three times Checkers' length and ten times her weight. He felt a little jolt against his left side. He swiveled his head to his left and widened his eyes. He saw two flashes of red. The Glider had collected her spear, and was staring at him, crouched on the ground. For a fleeting few seconds, neither did anything. A tingling sense coursed through the dragon's body. The raw thrill of the hunter closing on his quarry, unaided by magic, took over. A great flame welled within him. A fan of flame shot out, sending an yellowish-orange sheet of fire spewing out across a quarter of the cavern. It felt good! But he missed. His head swept across half the room. He then felt an itch on his back, much like a man does when an insect is walking along his exposed skin. She's is there, he thought.

In the blink of an eye, the form of the mage had ballooned into the awful bulk of a dragon. Checkers foldered her wings inward, and plowed into the scaly side of the dragon with her left shoulder. She did not have time to be scared. It was time for Plan B, which still required the spear. Fortunately, it was just a step back and within reach. She grabbed, crouched, and scurried away from the book and into the darkness. She looked up, and stared into the yellowish eyes of the dragon! For what seemed like an age, neither of them moved. The dragon then appeared to lower his head to get a better look at her. As he was doing so, she jumped, higher and farther than she had thought possible. She leapt over that awful head, and was now sprawled across across its neck and upper part of its back, facing the tail. Her fists burrowed under a pair of roundish scales that were about thrice as wide as her fist, and she could feel something warm and yielding underneath. She then felt a blast of hot and foul air at her back.

While Checkers had hoped to have assistance of the strong humans like Fred, Astra, and Alric, who were afflicted by the dragon, in the final battle, she had, during her long journey to this land, given some thought as to how she would attack if she were forced into a solo battle. One Glider hunting technique was to wear a collar with sharp spikes around the ankles, and dive into the target. The shock would often kill the pig or bear. If the animal survived, then the hunter would spear the animal between the vertebrae of its backbone, effectively paralyzing it. Her original idea was that dragon would be caught by surprise and out in the open, and that she could dive bomb it. That was now out of the question, but she knew that was near the vulnerable spot, if dragons were built the same way as pigs and bears. And she was now feeling the exposed skin of the dragon underneath its scales.

Checkers now rose to her hands and knees, took her spear, and pried a scale up along the ridge of the dragon's back.

1. She then plunged her spear into the dragon with all her might.
2. She was knocked down by a sudden movement of the dragon.

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