DEFIANCE | The Mandalorian

IX

Shit. Not again. No no no no no no—

A sob. That was the sound that filled my ears. Another one quickly forced its way out of my throat as I stared at the gaping hole in the ground, where Din was now, slowly being digested in the dark stomach of the dragon.

I vaguely registered Vanth behind me and his slight noise of distress as he looked out at the scene before us. There was no sound, no shaking of the ground, no nothing to indicate what was happening below the surface of the sand.

"No," I breathed again, struggling to stay on my feet. My knees wobbled, and the shifting sand didn't help me keep my balance.

No, it wasn't my knees that wobbled.

It was the ground.

All of a sudden, the dragon shot out of the sand, launching its entire upper half fifty feet in the air as lightning skittered across its skin. It let out a deafening screech, and my heart leapt out of my chest as Din emerged out of its opened mouth, his armor absolutely covered in green venom and goo as he sailed higher and higher with his jetpack. Once he was clear, I watched him press the button on the detonator, and a loud boom echoed as the Krayt Dragon was obliterated from the inside.

The dragon's corpse landed on the sand, and the ground trembled one last time before everything fell completely silent. Out of everything that just happened, I could only stare, mouth agape, at the gaping hole in the dragon's stomach, it's blood and guts spewed everywhere within a hundred foot radius of the explosion.

I flinched when Din landed hard on the sand, his legs giving out as his boots slammed into the ground. He fell to his knees, heaving large, labored breaths of air, like his helmet was having a hard time filtering through the acidic venom.

Oh no.

I ran at full speed, sliding across the sand on my knees until I was beside him.

Cheers broke out around us, and everyone was too busy celebrating the death of the dragon to be bothered to look at us. But Vanth stared at us in appreciation and awe.

He recoiled, almost seeming offended as I snapped, "Turn around."

"Why?" He questioned as Din's cough rattled through his chest.

"Just do it!" I yelled, desperate to get Din's helmet off his head so I could clean the filter. "And if you look at us before I say so, I will gouge your eyes out with my goddamn fingernails. So don't look."

Before I had even finished hissing my threat to the Marshal, he spun around and quickly found somewhere else to be.

As soon as I knew nobody was looking at us, I whipped back around to my riduur and ripped his helmet off. The smell of the venom alone made me want to gag. I had no idea how he hadn't vomited all over himself already.

"No!" He wheezed, his eyes so wide I could see white all the way around his beautiful dark irises. "They'll see!"

I quickly busied myself with wiping down his helmet with the part of my shirt that was exposed, and the venom began to burn holes in the fabric. "If they look, I'll kill them myself," I snapped, meaning every word. I didn't care about these people. All I needed was Din.

As soon as I finished wiping down his helmet, hoping it was clean enough to get us back to the Crest without him passing out from the fumes, I aggressively slipped it back over his face, obscuring his features once more. One the helmet fully covered him, his shoulders relaxed a bit, but a cough still sputtered from his lips.

"Is it better?" I asked urgently, afraid that his helmet was permanently compromised.

But he nodded after a moment, and his breathing didn't seem be as labored as it was before.