As the green dragon gurgled an otherworldly warning from above, Second Archivist Eldaline briefly paused her frantic flight into the trees upon realising that her soldier was once again not with her.
"Flopsy! What in Oblivion do you think you are doing?"
"I thought, Madam, since we were here, I would see if it could be wounded with arrows!"
Wounded was a terrible understatement, if used to describe the expression of the dragon as it flapped down into the forest.
"Come here at once!" Eldaline ordered, making a renewed dart for an area further away from the dragon.
"The dragon bumped me with its nose, Second Archivist! I think it is trying to eat me!"
This was true. Maidens, or at least people who behave like them, with golden hair, are a dragon's favourite food.
Eldaline led the way towards the trees, and turned to face it with terrified ferocity, and a trail of painful lightning. "Get away!" she screamed, not caring if she made sense. "Figment, phantom, imagined beast of the Imperial banner! Away!"
Even along the ground, it was obvious to Eldaline that neither of them could outrun a dragon. But she was a little encouraged to see that it required some time to turn around in the trees and find its bearings. The dragon had discovered this too, and became indignant.
"Well done, Second Archivist, you have put it to flight!" cried Aralina, now running, as instructed, though she still held her bow hopefully at the ready, in case more experiments were required.
"Bollocks have I put it to flight, Flopsy, it is getting back in the air the better to destroy us." said Eldaline.
"You! Back towards the town, and keep to the trees! I will go towards the gate! It will not eat both of us!"
Far below the dragon, the air was disturbed as its enormous wings worked to keep it airborne. It was true, Eldaline had told Skavild once that the magical fields left in the world were insufficient to sustain a dragon's flight, but she had no evidence for it, and had only said it to prevent further interesting questions on a topic she found boring.
"Gods keep you, Aralina, if they like you any more than me." said Eldaline, still bristling with lightning, and quietly enough not to be heard. She put a hand to the back of her belt, to ensure that her safety bottles, her phylactery and potion of unlife, were still in place.
She did not drink the potion yet. Perhaps she would escape from the dragon. The Helm Gate was beside the smouldering watchtower, and offered better shelter, at least until the dragon decided to destroy that too.
Eldaline felt very slow as she made for the gatehouse.
The air above her grew wild and warm. Eldaline did not look around, because she knew why.
She remembered that she had told Aralina to hide in the trees, and wondered why she had not taken her own advice.
The gatehouse had looked so safe from a distance.
Still, Eldaline did not look up for the approach of doom, for she didn't wish to see it.
As she felt sudden, cold pressure around her chest, and the sky changed direction, Eldaline found she could smell the flowers that grew near her home when she was a child.
The pressure disappeared, and so did the smell of the flowers. Eldaline was certain that there were indents shaped like teeth or claws in her very expensive moonstone and quicksilver armour. She was also certain that she was not dead, but she was still in the sky. Why did I not drink the potion. She lamented. But there would not have been time to transform into a lich, anyway. Oh well. How disappointing. I wonder if the dragon is going to throw me in the air again before eating me. My old cat would do that with mice. I do miss that cat.
The dragon was very distracted. Something had bitten it upon the neck, quite hard, and the forced had been enough to push it down into the highest branches of the forest. And it had lost the marvellous thing it had been chasing.
Saril the Gryphon was no less indignant. First, he had been watching from the Jerall Mountains for his rider to join him in Bruma. Armion the Justiciar was very boring and did not know how to use the amusing bouncing sheep properly.
Then, he had witnessed a dreadful sight; Eldaline was playing with another flying animal. Then, worse still, it had appeared that the flying animal was playing with her too roughly and would damage her. This made him furious. Then finally, to his delight, Saril noticed that the animal was bigger than him. This made him mischievous.
Dreaming of cats, Eldaline's descent was slowed as she slid down a feathered red wing, past a fluffy lion's mane, and into the soft down of Saril the Gryphon.
As she struggled to wake up, she ran her hand across her ribcage to assess whether or not it was still there.
She sobbed as she felt the searing pain, adjusted her breastplate, weakly grasped Saril's mane with her left arm and carefully swung her right leg across.
"Out of the way, stupid little birds!" cried Saril, in the language of flying animals. "Can't you see that I am challenging a terrible and exalted foe?"
Below them, they could hear the green dragon crashing about in the trees, and Saril and Eldaline sailed down the forest road.
"Va tar, vey va lyeis." said Eldaline.
Saril screenched. He wanted to fight the big green dragon in the sky, not in the woods. The dragon clearly found it hard to manoeuvre in the trees, and this would make it far too easy.
Eldaline repeated her suggestion, somewhat more loudly. "Vey va tar, you intractible flying hairball, or I'll pull your tail off."
Noiselessly, the great green dragon rose through the trees to meet them.
"Cey alata! Cey alata! No! Your other cey alata!" she cried.
Saril eventually turned right
Whatever might have been happening in the trees, the dragon was looking more bedraggled than when it had arrived. At first, it was too stunned by Saril's speed to follow.
Then the dragon pursued them into light's shadow. The wind felt very fresh to them as they hurried ahead of its wings.
"Racu." said Eldaline.
But, we have only just got up here. Thought Saril. Eldaline is a commoner and did not learn the old Elvish words, as I did as a chick in Silverwood Zoo. She must mean Up.
I really did want to go down. Eldaline thought.
As the green dragon snapped its jaws into the air a few feet above their heads, Saril saw the wisdom in Eldaline's plan and dropped. I see. He thought. Perform an elaborate feint and so get a jab at the creature's scaly tail. Very clever.
"Racu! Racu! I am not playing, you flamboyant great puffin, I want it on the ground, on my terms!"
Ha! She wants to dismount? Saril scoffed to himself. Well, if she wants me to have all the glory to myself, so be it.
The dragon was not happy about having its tail bitten. It crashed down into the trees.
Eldaline spat out the pine needles that had flown into her face and prepared to jump off.
The shrubs and bushes had looked soft from the air, and now they looked pointier. But the dragon was blundering about in the branches, looking for somewhere to land its bulk.
Eldaline clung to the side of her gryphon and weighed up the advantages of staying in the air.
She thought of all the manoeuvres taught to her by Norqamerel, her riding instructor, but the Welkynars had apparently never been mobilised during the dragon plague of Elsweyr, and so none of them were relevant to her current situation.
And in any case, she could not hold on any longer.
Saril screamed his renewed challenge to his rival and climbed into the sky. But the great green dragon did not follow.
Eldaline rolled several times. Her ribs hurt several times.
My phylactery! She thought.
My dignity! My lower back!
Eldaline felt around behind her cloak. The bottles were intact. As for everything else, there was no time to be sure.
The green dragon thundered out of the forest, and the flagstones cracked underneath its claws.
"No! I said away! I will burn your wings off!" Eldaline screamed, attempting this.
It was a rare creature that could withstand the exhausting power of a mage trained for a hundred years in every school of magic, and attuned to every plane of Oblivion, but it was Eldaline who began to feel tired as she held the dragon a neck's length from her.
The green dragon lunged after as she made for the trees. It was slower than before, but it screamed back. Her ears rang and she fought with an impulse to obey, and be destroyed.
But Eldaline leapt back onto a rock on the other side of the road. Even now, it was nearly twice the height of her, and a dozen times as long. It really was very large. She knew that she was a little larger than either its mouth or its claw, for she had been in one of them and was still unsure which.
From their outpost at the edge of Whiterun, a group of guards had made their way down the road to the watchtower, and of course they were brave and strong, and openly relieved that the green dragon was taking a remarkable and particular interest in a Thalmor officer and not in them.
"Curses upon you! Shoot the dragon, not me!" she cried, as an arrow flew by her head, and the dragon chased her around the rock and deeper into the woods.
She had never concentrated her power so fiercely before, not even while holding at bay a company of Alik'r or conjuring a battalion of Dremora.
She scuttled backwards again, but every few steps she felt her ribs convulse inside her breastplate. She commanded the lightning again. The dragon slowed again.
A wounded mage could stay upright for longer than many a fatally surprised swordsman had assumed, and ever since Saril had caught her Eldaline had been calling upon a great deal of energy from beyond her sight to keep from falling. But now she was tired.
She brought the lightning upon the dragon again. A wound opened under her breastplate.
Her back met a tree and she could not retreat further. The forest fell silent.
The guards from Whiterun silently counted to twenty before they hurried noncommittally towards the location of the last noise. "By the gods." said the fastest. "There's nothing left but bones."
Aralina heard them. "Second Archivist Eldaline, where are you?" and her voice sounded unnaturally quiet, as though the words had been swallowed by the void as she called them.
And she ran into the forest after them.
- The End: Of : "The Long Flight" -
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