The dragon screamed, another roar that caused Jesse to clap their hands over their ears, almost flinch away, hunker down, squeeze their eyes shut and block it out like it was just their adopted dad shouting at them, just block it out like it was a bad dream.

But they couldn't not watch.

Aiden's wrist flicked; the whip shot out, blades flickering out and gleaming in the snatches of sunlight that caught the blades, before he whirled them in a ring of flashing red light and hit the dragon on its flank in a screeching, metallic scream that left small marks on the scales.

It turned to snap at him, but he was already dashing forward and leaping over its huge snout, an inch from violet eyes- Petra drove her sword at the scales.

A movement like that would've sunk the blade into the dragon's flesh, up to the hilt, but the scales were too thick and well-layered and as it was it just caused Petra's sword to skid over obsidian black scales.

The dragon whipped around, snapping at her like a dog that's just received a bite and trying to retaliate, but Petra had flipped out of the way and Lukas was coming in with his claws, dealing heavy, hard blows to the dragon that sent sparks flying.

But it wasn't a dragon for nothing, and when he dove out of the way to avoid a heavy hit from its tail swinging up to hit him, tipped with spikes that glimmered as it flashed up and almost hit Gill on the way, the scales didn't even look scratched.

It rumbled, smoke leaking from its nostrils- when it opened its mouth this time, Jesse could see a hint of glowing violet as Gill charged, a glowing purple fireball building up in the dragon's throat, but they didn't have time to tell Gill that it was charging its fire, they had no time at all, so what came out was-

"FIRE!"

The entire group immediately reacted like any human who'd heard the scream- Gill lunged out of the way and flattened himself to the ground, Maya promptly leapt back several feet as if the fire was two inches away from her, Lukas suddenly had a sphere of glowing energy around him- it looked like some kind of shield- and Aiden and Petra were scurrying around to a safer area still near the fight.

Just in the nick of time; the entire area seemed to darken as a white jet of flame exploded out of the creature's mouth, turning faintly violet and tinting purple at the edges as it licked stone about two hundred feet away.

The air around it seemed to boil, and Jesse could feel the heat from where they were crouching behind a rock, to the point where every single breath that they could hold evaporated, and they found themselves inhaling pure heat.

The moment the flame began to dissipate, Maya was smacking it across the face with the staff.

Of course, the dragon being bigger than the staff by about seventy times, it didn't seem to do anything other than piss it off.

"Fall back! Fall back!" Lukas was yelling to the others, flailing frantically with his claws, "this thing's scales are too hard to penetrate! We can't just go head-on at the thing!"

Jesse poked their head above the rock slightly. "This rock's been safe so far- never mind."

Despite the fact that they didn't sound at all worried about the whole matter, they were absolutely terrified out of their mind for about two seconds when the dragon's head snapped around to face them, inhaled a deep breath-

Jesse shot out from behind the rock and dove behind a somewhat larger one where Petra was already crouching. She grabbed them by the back of their shirt and pressed them to her chest in a hug, the sword held out defensively in case the dragon came leaping over the rock, flames engulfing the spot where Jesse had been crouching a moment before.

They decided not to tell her that they could feel every tremor that she was having, or the fact that her heart had sped up to the pace of a rabbit's.

(A stupidly fast speed indeed.)

"Uh, yeah, what the hell do we do about the fucking fire-and-death spitter here?!" Gill shouted over the dragon's fire, which left the stone red-hot, sizzling, and was just generally rather noisy.

"Well, instead of charging it like a bunch of idiots, why don't we try a different method? The lords wanted it alive, right?" Maya shouted back, although for once it wasn't just to antagonize Gill. "We could probably tranq it. We have enough supplies for that to work."

She raised a bottle that glowed and bubbled murky blue, the shade of a cloudy night sky, the tip of the bottle twisted in a way that looked like the liquid would spray if it so much as cracked on the floor.

Aiden peered out, then jerked back, just as the dragon's glowing, drilling eyes bored into the stone a few feet away, avoiding detection. "I can tranq it. You guys keep it distracted."

Gill nodded, raising his gun and gave a serious nod. "Distracted I can do."

"Wait, Gill- Gill-" Maya swore and pressed the bottle into Aiden's hands, already beginning to rise from where Gill had shot up off the ground and raised the gun.

The bullet he fired pinged off of the skin between the dragon's eyes and probably didn't actually do anything, but it definitely got it pissed and focused on Gill as he full-out sprinted to the left, and that was really his whole goal.

Petra gave Jesse's hair a short ruffle and rose up from the ground, lunging forward and hammering two blows onto the dragon's head before sprinting the other direction, allowing Aiden to dart along behind her and get behind a rock without the dragon spotting the shadowy movement, instead opting to scream at the red-haired demon flailing her blade at it and yelling like a maniac and spin to face her.

Jesse could only watch as Lukas swiped his claws over the muzzle of the dragon, the creature screaming and trying to bite him- Maya cooked the back of his jacket with her staff and practically threw him sideways, the blonde half-demon flipping in midair, skidding, and darting to the side, getting the dragon to snarl (in frustration?) and beat its tail on the ground in frustration.

"Thanks," he shouted back.

"Uh-huh," was her reply, before she whirled her staff above her head and sent it crashing onto the dragon's head.

They spotted the movement out of the corner of their eye- a tail, spikes tipping the end with a dagger-sharp point at the very end of the tail to boot, whipping around while Aiden was trying to sneak around the back of the dragon and tranquilize it.

They kept an eye on it for a moment, if only to make sure it wouldn't come whipping at them.

And then they saw it.

Aiden rose from the rocks, preparing to lift the potion and threw it at the dragon's head, a clear shot.

He didn't see the tail rising to whip in a vicious sidecut at him as it screamed in frustration at the other four half-demons, preparing to spin and lunge at Lukas, or Maya, or Gill, or Petra, but Jesse couldn't see any of the four and they could only see the tail beginning to fly heavily through the air in a deadly arc right at Aiden.

They only had the time to scream.

Aiden was not given that courtesy, nor the time to find out why.

The tail raked across his chest, instantly ripping his chest, his stomach open, spilling blood out of his chest like a broken water bottle, blood that soaked into his clothing rapidly, staining it a darker red than it had been before.

His eyes widened as he cried out, a choking gasp that caught in his lungs and didn't quite make its way out.

"AIDEN!" Jesse screamed, too far to do anything and too close to charge forward, for fear of being caught by the dragon.

Reuben squealed, his own attempt at crying out in fear and horror because Aiden's entire front was stained a dark muddy red and his fingers were shaking and the blood practically glowed purple in the light.

There was another scream.

Jesse didn't know who it came from.

The half-demon staggered a step backwards from the force of the blow in some dull, horrified attempt to not just topple to the ground, towards the mouth of the cave; his whip clattered to the floor from suddenly-slack fingers.

The potion bottle rolled out of his fingers, hitting the ground without even a crack.

The dragon's violet eyes darted backwards at the tiny sound, smoke rising from its nostrils.

With a screaming roar that made Lukas instinctively cringe away, the dragon spun and slammed the full weight of their tail into Aiden's chest once more, but the force sent him flying back into the darkness of the cave, disappearing from sight.

The reptilian dragon, body almost undulating like a snake's, whirled around in a wheeling motion as the dragon took off and dove after him into the cave.

"No!"

Before Lukas or Maya or Gill or Petra could stop them, Jesse had sprinted forward towards the cave, the cool maw of it swallowing them up in darkness as they followed the purple glow of the dragon's eyes and its beating wings, ignoring the cry of "Jesse!" that the four of them screamed after them.

And then they were running through the dark.

Please.

Please don't let them be too late.


A/N: Remember the good old days when I had Hybrid, and the chapters came out super fast because they were like 1000 words long?

Yeah, I'm shortening the length of chapters. I'm hoping that'll help me get back into a pattern. If it does, great, if not, the chapters'll get longer again. Sorry! Please put up with my incredible slowness xD

I am a car. Reviews are fuel. Thank you for putting more gasoline in.

Responses to reviews!

ThinMintE: Haha, yeah. / The dragon is scary though xD / They don't light that much up, but yeah, those are pretty useful. Imagine getting lost with a handful of those in your hands. / Here is the next update!

Darkbeast Dend: This happened xD

CrazyNinjagoFan1: It's a bit... short, but xD

TheAmberShadow: He would be the type of person to 'forget' something just for the drama xD / Hehe xD / Yeah... you find out why much later on xD / It basically just has a crap-ton of power; any part of it would be enough to magically cleanse the area. / No, they do actually need it alive to figure out how to use it xD / Thank you!

That's all for now. See you, so long, and g'bye!

x. X. A.L. X.x