Knights of the Nine - Beginning of the End

Chapter 13: Rescued & Tricked

Ciri walked out of the green portal and saw that Ronin really was destroyed, all but the labyrinth. She looked around and saw no signs of a dragon and no sign of people either. She had to have got there quicker than the serpents.

Ciri walked over into the ruins of a building at sat down on a plank of wood, she kicked off some ants and larvae and began to wait.

---------------

Derek felt his eye being pryed open. He tried to throw his arms up to stop whatever was prying his eyes but he didn't have the strength to. Derek shifted his head to the right, making his right cheek wet. Not water, it was too thick. Blood, possible but again, felt to thick. Derek didn't have a clue what it was so he shifted to the left, his eyes feeling free from the pain. His left side fell onto a rough, but also smooth, set of skin. Derek knew he was still inside the dragon.

He forced himself out of sleep. He scraped at his eyes and saw that it was black blobs on it. Derek looked down at his skin, mainly all burnt like bubbles but not burnt. He pushed on a bubble and it popped, splashing goo out. Derek was half consumed by the Darkness.

Derek decided it was time to get out, but not before rigging a make-shift bomb.

"Blood, human bone, ragin roots, and dammit... a bear or horse eye." Derek said to himself, feeling bubbles split open while his mouth opened.

Derek gathered all the supplies he needed, including the root he had some in his bag, but was still out of the horse or bear eye. Derek would need to use a different eye. Derek thought, he thought about the bodies the dragon ate, down in the stomach.

"If they're in the stomach, they'd be in the stomach acid." Derek leaned onto a layer of skin.

Suddenly, Derek was launched up into the mouth of the beast and then went back down rapidly. The dragon must be going down, fast. Was it diving inward again? Derek was thrown back to the mouth, but before being thrown back down, he took hold of a tooth. One he must've forgot, or regrown. Derek saw the other teeth slowly coming up too. He pulled out his dagger and began cutting all the way down to the root of the tooth. Derek pulled it all out and blood shot up, he stabbed his dagger into where the tooth was, making the dragon shake its head.

Derek was thrown about, being thrashed. He found himself on the tongue and it was wet, slimy. It brought him down back to the throat nice and smooth. Derek was going to use the tooth instead of an eye.

Derek placed all the ingredients into a rounded bottle and. He poured the blood in last, making the bottle heavier. Derek shook it and lit a match and tossed it in the bottle, it was going to take a minute for the bottle to explode. He climbed up to the mouth and tried pushing open the bottom jaw. It wouldn't budge.

Derek could hear the bottle crack and the components explode. The beast roared and shot Derek out before any shards or anything could hit him. He was launched into a tree and into another and into another. He tried grabbing hold of a branch but was going down too fast.

Derek hit the ground harder than a sack of potatoes.

----------------

Ciri heard a roar of a dragon in the distance, a loud angry roar. She sat up and coated another oil onto her blade. She hid in some rubble and stared up at the sky. There were smaller roars, the teenage dragons. After all the roars, the wind picked up, throwing some small twigs towards Ronin.

Then the clatter of horse shoes, galloping fast. A fleet of men from Gaplu, about an hour away from Ronin, rode in and set up huge crossbows. They heard news from the beasts. The men were ready in less than three minutes, and Ciri introduced herself. The men were ready, along with Ciri.