Inferno Legacy: Valor of the Dragon (Book One)

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

 

            The wind whipped by Cody’s face as he fell a long ways. He couldn’t tell exactly how far he was falling, but it would be a pretty safe bet to say that it would hurt when he reached the ground. But instead of gazing fearfully at the approaching earth, he looked up just in time to see a scaly black tail-tip disappear from view. Only moments later it was followed by a thick cloud of vicious birds, all of them taking absolutely no notice of the man tumbling through the trees below.

            Cody reached out for the branches that seemed to be trying to scratch at him with every chance they got, but neither succeeded. He managed to slow his fall quite a bit, but when his legs finally made contact with the ground he instantly felt himself falling flat on his face. One thing that he had forgotten about when planning his leap, was the effect that his weapons would have.

            Before him lay about five of his arrows messily thrown outward from the tremendous force the impact had. Despite the quiver being surprisingly good at keeping the arrows together when in flight, even when Inferno had gone upside-down, for some reason it couldn’t handle the fall. The axe had greatly contributed to the force of the impact, thanks to its immense size, and only helped to bring Cody to the ground after his legs had failed to support him.

            The rider grunted and growled as he slowly army crawled towards his arrows with nothing but his arms, afraid of the pain that might appear if he stood or even crawled normally. Although, having them dragged along the ground didn’t seem to cause him any pain whatsoever, making him feel at least a little optimistic.

            When the last of the arrows was safely held in place by the quiver on the rider’s back, he prepared to test out his legs. He very carefully pulled his knees up until he was in a crawling position, and let out a big breath of relief that he didn’t know he had been holding in the first place. Next, Cody put his right foot firmly on the ground so he was in a kneeling position. Last but not least, he stood up.

            Other than a minor pain that was hardly any bother at all and would obviously go away rather quickly, Cody felt a little better. Then, it struck him like a blow to the head when he remembered his task. He had to meet up with Larson and Mordon so that they could get into the caves and look for the kidnapped elf, Pippi. Also, judging by the very faint sound of thundering hooves, he only had a short time before the rest of the bandits caught up with him.

            The rider couldn’t help but chuckle slightly after he realized that the men, on horses, probably thought that they could catch up with a full-speed dragon in flight. Then again, they may not know exactly how fast a dragon could fly or how far away Inferno was. Perhaps they didn’t even know what they were up against exactly. To the best of their knowledge, the only dragon in existence is far away and definitely not black.

With any luck, they would be thinking that they were chasing some other creature, but Cody knew all too well that it probably wasn’t true, since he and Inferno had come awful close to most of them, and the archers that had been firing at them probably looked at them very carefully. Inferno probably wouldn’t be seen as anything but a dragon, even if that seemed next to impossible to the looters.

Shaking away his thoughts, Cody fought past the slight pain in his legs and sprinted along a slightly upward slope, a little ways off to the right of the direction that the bandits would likely head to catch up with Inferno and Mora. He barreled through the trees and brush until the ground slowly became a bit more barren, and he could see a great distance farther than before.

After a little more running, the slope sort of shifted a bit, telling Cody that the top was off to the right a bit more, and if he could reach the top then he might be able to see more of what was going on. He hoped that he would see the enemies without being seen himself, but he also hoped to locate his grounded companions so he could get everything over with quicker.