Have you ever seen a zombified dragon? I have.
Chester pulled back the pen and let it hover between his lips for a moment, visions of blood and fire spinning behind his eyes.
It killed without thought.
He tucked the pen inside the book and let it fall.
"What are we going to do?" Jorie - the last of their party, the newcomer - asked him. He shrugged, and she bit her lip. "We owe it to them."
Them. The rest of their scientific group. Stev's charred body curled around a pile of ashes. What did they owe?
"Ches, that dragon - that dragon should have been dead, right?"
Chester didn't answer.
"Well Stev and Andrew - they're dead. Marie is dead. Please, if dragons are..." She couldn't finish, and before either of them could say anything more, a low moan filled the air.
Chester scrambled to his feet, using a pile of rubble as a brace, nausea stirring in his stomach, as a disfigured gargoyle limped toward them.
"Run!" Jorie hissed, and took off like a shot between the buildings. Chester followed as quickly as he could, heart jammed so tight in his throat he could barely breathe. His leg ached horribly with every step.
Jorie knew he was injured. She had seen him fall, she had helped him tend the injury - and she had abandned him, just like that.
Left him for dead.
Ches brushed the thought from his mind and stamped it out. This was Marjorie he was thinking about, she would never... And yet she just had.
Breath whistling, he vaulted over a pixie bridge and landed hard in the small pond on the other side. A toad screamed abuse at him. Chester scooped it up and tucked it into a pocket, keeping his balance with one hand on the bridge. Jorie would look after the animal; she always had something hanging around in her pockets or hair, from a scholarly earthworm, to the most disreputable of brownies. And that snake.
Cold fingers raised his hand from the bridge.
Horrified, Chester raised his head in time to see the cracked, broken teeth of a troll closing around his fingers - and he lurched away with a sharp gasp, almost slipping on the bank of the pond, and took off running again.
"Ches!" Jorie yelled, and he looked up barely in time to see the pole she thrust down at him. He only just managed to catch it. Was she trying to brain him?
Too quick for thoughts, an elf charged him from an alley, skin hanging off in peeling layers, teeth and claws bared to kill.
Ches charged the grotesque figure, the way knights did in jousting matches, and his stake drove through its chest as though the body was melting butter. Ches retched, and almost vomited.
"Behind you!" Jorie screamed, and he spun frantically, heart beating a wild tattoo in his chest, knowing in the bones of his leg that he couldn't outrun whatever it was.
A fairy pelted toward him, barely as high as his ankle. He didn't want to kill it - not a fairy. They were so rare, now; he only needed to step on it, and -
Chester limped away as quickly as he could, hoping for its sake that he could lose it in the maze of the broken town.
Over the Trolls' Bridge to the Faunlands he went, and through the forest to the Swamp of Princes. Over the rickety log that served as a bridge to the Hanging Gardens, and then walking stooped to avoid braining himself on the tiny floating islands, teeth gritted in pain, breath hissing between his teeth like the curse of a snake, wanting nothing more than to sit down and give up and cry. Everyone else was dead - everyone except Jorie. Why should he get to live?
