Chapter 2
Saadra breathed, it was all she could do. Breathing was easy, but running was hard, and although every fibre of her being was screaming at her to get up and run since undoubtable no one was still watching her. They had all, or at least mostly, she was pretty sure she had heard people running the other way than they had been told, but there was no running sound just screaming, shouting and… roaring? But what was roaring? Saadra let her mind sink into its own memory, concentrating totally on the sounds being made and try to identify them. She had been a Monster Hunter for 3 and half years now and in all that time had never come across anything like this. It could still be a monster she'd read about though. Unfortunately, that wasn't exactly specific. Saadra had read a lot about monsters, she struggled to take it all in, mainly remembering how to kill them. Never remembering details about their lifecycles, habits, or methods of finding them. This why she mainly dealt with easy to find drowners and harpies. Occasionally a werewolf if she felt like spending a few days playing Witcher. But this, this could only be something, massive, the ground shook, the force knocked her to the ground, her head hit something hard and cold. It didn't break her concentration. What the hell was it…
The convoy had stopped last night to rest. They had found a circular dip in the ground that shielded them from the biting wind that despite the surrounding trees was still threatening to relieve the soldiers of any light items they didn't hold onto strongly enough. They'd even allowed to stay in the dip, not out of kindness though, more because none of the soldiers wanted to stay on guard in, to put their way, "that dragon's breath".
They'd woke to find a group of people having "a fancy-dress party", as one guard next to her said, gathered in front of them. Her guards had moved Saadra out of the ditch most likely because the group was wanting to pour a large amount of liquid into the dip. It smelt oily, but with something else mixed in, Saadra's senses weren't accurate enough to work out what. There had then been about a discussion for a few minutes, between the voice she knew as the Sargent of the soldiers and who she assumed was the leader of the, very obviously as soon as a word came out the guy's mouth, religious group. "What are you doing here?" asked the Sargent. In a deep booming voice, the leader of the group answered, "We faithful few are enacting a great and powerful ritual, look on heathen and tremble as your greatest nightmares are revealed…" and that's where Saadra stopped listening. Since everybody was clearly watching the conversation she took the opportunity to fall asleep.
She had woken up with a deep breath, with her whole mind screaming to run. Yet she still lies on the ground, unmoving and relaxed, and despite having a bag on her head, with her eyes closed.
Saadra probably would have remained there on the ground for a while, she may have even died there, who knows. That's when hands grabbed her, pulling her up, her legs were wobbly. So fast that her senses were momentarily dizzy, the bag was removed from her head. Someone shouted something at her, or at least towards her. The bounds on her hands were cut with a weirdly loud shing! After about 10 seconds of what she couldn't describe beyond noise, slowly but surely, she managed to focus her senses on the world in front of her… The words "KILL IT!" come through her ears. "Kill what?" she mumbled back, her shoulders were seized, she was spun around, "That!" came the answer.
Saadra's vision tried to focus on a large X shaped object, it was quickly getting bigger. "Duck!" yelled the soldier next to her. "That's not a duck?" Was what Saadra was about to say, but just as her tongue touched the roof of her mouth to begin the n syllable, the sprayed-out rag dolling corpse with a nice cape on the back smashed into her. She couldn't see, again. Her face was full of a back, a cape with a symbol on it reminiscent of a crab and a lizard having a fight over an eyeball (she'd know), and a weird smell of an herbal oil and singed flesh. She pushed at the body and gave way rather lighter than she'd imagine from a largish body, then she saw that the lower half of it wasn't so large anymore. To be exact it wasn't there at all.
There was a noise, like thunder, but thunder that somehow managed to just thud into her mind, just completely ignoring her ears and heading straight into her brain to inspire fear. Instinctively she turned to the noise. Her eyes saw nothing but empty field and beyond that forest with thick trees and, THUD! A claw followed quickly by a belly replaced the ground not 5 feet from her. The tremor of it ran through the ground and up her body, to the back of her neck. Her head snapped back like someone had just knocked on her spine with a Warhammer. Her eyes widened in awe as a neck arched back, a light travelled fast up inside and then spewed out in fire, fury, and death from the mouth of the dragon.
Saadra's mind and vision came back down to earth like… well like a dragon that really doesn't like what's directly below it. She realised something had just been thrust into her hands, it was an axe, her axe. With some dried blood on it from that fella Hansel she'd killed. But why was it in her hands, the face of the soldier who had untied her appeared on her right. "Fight bitch! Come on." Not his smartest move at the sound of the yell, the dragon turned, sweeping it's claw about 3 feet above the ground, Saadra saw it coming and scrambled back. The soldier wasn't so lucky, he barely managed a sound as the force of the dragon crashed him into the ground.
Saadra's brain froze in dissonance, having an internal argument on whether to run and probably die or fight and probably die. Her eyes looked up and met, for only the briefest moment the eyes of the beast now standing over her. It reared its head back, Saadra saw light coming up through its neck. The gaps in the scales creating points of light, almost like a small night's sky. At this point her brain concluded, to hell with the two ideas, lets combine them. She ran under the dragon, swinging her axe up towards it's shoulder. She hit, hard and felt as shards of her axe rain down on her head and shoulders. Then as if to say, "fuck you, here's some karma for that" the other end of the axe, pushed by the movement of the beast smashed her in the head.
Saadra fell back, blood spattered the ground and then her when she met it, it wasn't hers. She'd got through the skin. As soon as she looked at her axe Saadra understood. When she'd made it, she'd put a silver spike running through the centre of the blade and protruding out the edge of the blade. It came in handy when fighting monsters. So that can hurt it… But where could she put a blade just over a foot long on a dragon that would kill it and wouldn't, as clearly shown as the dragon acrobatically leapt round, so that it's head was facing her directly. Saadra heard but didn't listen to all the cries of run from around her, her mind was made up, she couldn't out run this so she would have to try and kill it.
She lifted herself up, balancing on the heels of her feet, ready to move, ready to fight. She held her weapon, now basically a pickaxe above her head in both hands and roared.