Dear Diary,

Sometimes I cannot believe how much of a dumbass I am.

So, no shit, there I was, barely closed wounds from taking a wyvern on in midair, followed by forgetting I can't fly when I killed it, and Lancaster points over my shoulder and says, "that's a Dragon."

Now, the wyverns we'd fought were about the size of a horse, but a lot of that was wing. They reminded me a little of pictures of Pteranodons I'd seen on the internet, but with a wicked barbed stinger at the end of their tail. When the fucker picked me up I mentally classified it as 'dragon', because, y'know, big, scaly, wings.

When Lancaster made his announcement in that 'I have only avoided shitting myself because my sphincter can crush coal into diamonds' voice, I heaved a sigh, said, "I'm gonna regret this," and turned around.

So, definitely four legs and two wings. The front legs weren't, like, skinny tyrannosaur arms either, but big heavily muscled things that only looked small in comparison to its back legs. Apparently Dragons don't skip leg day, because I swear to fuckin' god his thighs were as big around as his torso.

They absolutely are. Typical for an Ice Dragon. Be warned, they are highly magic resistant; moreso than their lesser kin.

Thanks, Boss. Any tips on how to beat it?

Their scales are generally an inch thick, and as hard as metal. If it's lost one, the skin underneath is leathery, but beyond being Mana resistant, half inch thick leather, it has no special resistance to physical harm. If all its scales are intact, its only weak points are its eyes, its mouth, its nostrils, and as you so brilliantly discovered, its cloaca, although as you also discovered the muscles there are on the strong side. its wings are mostly just leather, although again they're Mana resistant. Just to clarify, Ice Dragons are the most Mana resistant of all the Dragon bloodlines.

Great. How would you fight this thing?

One that size? I wouldn't. I'd wait until it went into hibernation and then kill it in its sleep.

Thanks, Boss. You're the best.

I know.

The thing's torso reminded me of a big hunting cat. Lean looking, until you got a sense of scale, which was a little hard to do with it hovering there in the air. Okay, I think the term is 'sculling', because every flap of its wings thrust it far enough up that it fell back to its starting position when it paused to take another flap. Big, big, big fuckin' wings, too. Each of them had to be at least twice as long as its body. Its head, which reminded me uncomfortably of a crocodile, was mostly jaw and teeth. The biggest difference was that its braincase was way bigger than a croc's, and its eyes were definitely 'forward facing'.

Staring right at me, now that you mention it.

Then it gave me a sense of scale by landing next to the wyvern I'd killed. Well, not 'next to' in the normal sense. More like a car can park 'next to' a kid's tricycle. Almost delicately, it put one claw into the wyvern's hindquarters, then slid sideways so the corpse lay between the Dragon and our formation. Might I remind you about the tree that the wyvern and I rammed into? Yeah, this big scaly bastard just kinda shouldered it out of the way before leaning down and, still staring at me, tore the wyvern in half, tossed the front half up, then swallowed it whole.

Without turning to look at him, I said, "hey Larry? What's the over-under on that thing chasing us if we all back away slowly?"

"Given our run to put us in the field, most of our force likely can't move faster than 'slowly', but between the casualties from fighting the wyverns and our general exhaustion, I suspect rather than 'backing away slowly', we would in fact be 'limping away at a crawl'. Which will no doubt encourage the beast to follow us and eat its fill."

For the first time since the wyvern fight started, I took a moment to glance around our formation. Without turning my head, I saw about a dozen Volunteers lying, sitting, or crouching in the middle of the formation. One red jacket stood out; Bonita lay in the middle of the group, her shoulders propped up on a Volunteer's lap, her crossbow held in her left hand, her right sleeve hanging limp from the elbow down. "Shit. Fuck. Dammit. Do you see any gaps in that thing's scales?"

"Not that I have seen."

Once the bulge of swallowed wyvern disappeared down into its belly, the Dragon reared back, spreading its wings like it felt like it needed to look bigger. "Holy shit, I think we've finally found somebody with bigger insecurities than you, Larry." Before he could reply, it roared, and brought its head towards us as it did.

Larry screamed, "shields!" I spun and crouched, since my shield still hung on my back. Ice pelted the back of my calves and my hands, where I'd wrapped them around the back of my head. The sound reminded me of nothing so much as a hailstorm; thousands of tiny hard bits of ice splattering off of our shields. Some of the casualties screamed; I was sure I heard Bonnie's voice among them. Every spot where the ice hit my hands got so cold it hurt, not to mention the pinprick pain of bits of ice penetrating my skin.

I saw Lancaster doing the same thing I was, only instead of shielding his head with his arms, he'd bowed his head down and just covered the back of his neck with his hands. I shouted, "gotta borrow this, Larry. Be right back," then leapt forward, grabbing his sword and pulling it from his sheath, then stepping behind, above, and to the side of the big scaly bastard. I fell just long enough to shift the sword into a two-handed reverse grip, stabbing the sword into the leathery wing just below the bone, my weight dragging me down about halfway before I slowed to a stop.

That got its attention, not to mention shutting down its aggressive halitosis. Fortunately, its own wing got between me and it. Unfortunately, when it lifted the wing to look behind itself, it jostled me loose and tossed me in the air. For one brief moment I got the point of view of a piece of meat thrown to a dog as it tried to snap me out of the air with a mouth big enough to swallow me whole. I stepped up and to the side, falling down towards its other wing. Pain shot through my shoulders and all my cuts reopened when I slammed into its wing, but this time I sliced all the way through.

Unfortunately, my plan for my Errol Flynn swashbuckling maneuver to ground this big fucker ended with 'slash through its wing', and forgot entirely about 'fall to the ground', because the bottom edge of its wing had to be at least fifty feet off the ground. As I fell, Lancaster shouted, "loose!" and a chorus of thrums filled the air, the crackling roar of Fire Bolts following it. Twenty-five dozen bolts fired at something the size of a air liner, and nearly a dozen Fire Bolts slammed into it at the same time. Right before I hit the snow bank, praying it was deep enough to break my fall without breaking me, I got a good look at the damage.

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Its wings had dozens of bolts sticking out of them, with more rips and tears showing where bolts had punched through or otherwise fucked up its ability to fly. Its chest had a smattering of black soot marks across it, but no sign of any of the scales breaking. I covered my head as I hit the snow, and for once luck was with me, as I plunged into the snowbank, never hitting anything that felt like 'ground'.

The snowbank shook, and without looking I Translocated above the thing again. Something hurt, but I couldn't tell if it was my Translocation muscles yelling at me or my body getting pissed because hitting a snowbank after a fifty foot fall made it survivable, not pleasant. Another wave of bolts tore at the thing, and this time I got to see them straight up bouncing off the armored scales of the big ugly bastard. One of the ricochets barely missed me, but I wasn't about to tell them to stop firing. On the other hand, they weren't really doing much to it shooting at its center of mass.

I screamed out, "eyes and mouth!" then Translocated as its maw rushed toward me again. I went for the only place I could think of that it wouldn't be able to gobble me up immediately; right on top of its head. One hand still holding Lancaster's sword in an overhand grip, I grabbed the only thing I could see that offered something to hold on to; its fucking eyelid. A moment later the Dragon and I both screamed; in my case because a bolt took me in my thigh, in its case because while its other eye snapped shut, the bolts bouncing off of it like steel tipped rain, my weight pulling back on its eyelid slowed it enough that a couple bolts sank all the way into its eyeball.

It speaks to the size of this fucking thing that its fucking eyelid was enough to yank me forward and down. It squeezed its eye shut, eyeball juice weeping around my hand, and I screamed as my hand felt like I'd stuck it in a garbage compactor. It thrashed back and forth, roaring so loud that my ears ached with the sound. All I could do was hang on and hope my injured hand didn't slip. It snapped at me, twisting itself around trying to get to me, only failing because its only real joint in its head was the jaw. The fact that this thing's eyelid was stronger than my arms, and its eyeball was significantly bigger than me just drove home the size disparity between me and it.

Of course, right about then what had just run through my head hit me, or maybe its flailing knocked some sense into me the way my sister always said she was gonna do.

MIMIC (Size)!

I grew, but long before I hit the size of the big beastie my growth stopped. Now I was maybe the size of its eyeball at best. Of course, at that point it added blinking to its thrashing around, and if I was big enough that it couldn't fling me around with its eyelid any more, I was also heavy enough that my grip slipped, and I went flying through the air. As its mouth rapidly eclipsed everything else in my field of view, I might have panicked just a little bit.

MIMIC (Defenses)!

The thing's jaws closed around me, and I heard a crackling crunch as the teeth at the tip of its muzzle snapped shut on my thighs. I could still feel my legs, which I liked, but it had rammed the crossbow bolt further into my thigh, which I most emphatically did not. It opened its mouth, yanking me upward as apparently my thigh had got caught between its teeth. As it slammed its jaws together again, I grabbed Lancaster's sword and pointed it straight at the bastard's tongue. The point of the sword did exactly what you'd expect from a sword crafted with 'money is no object' as the defining feature. The blade went almost hilt-deep into the thing's tongue, and I twisted the hilt as hard as I could, trying to make sure it lodged. My legs crackled, and hurt again, but a 'slamming your thighs into the leg machine' pain, not a 'legs go bye bye' pain.

Right about then, in what had to be some kind of Guinness World's Record for Epic Bad Timing, Saffron thought, So, is tonight any better for Isnomi and I to come see you?

DRAGON!

A moment later, it forced its jaw open again; I clung desperately to the hilt of Lancaster's sword, and my thigh came loose from its teeth, feeling like I'd lost a bunch of skin as it did. I curled my knees under me, clinging to the hilt with every iota of strength. Before it slammed its mouth shut again, a hail of bolts joined me in the Dragon's mouth. I heard a few sink into the fleshy bits further into its mouth, felt one ricochet off my thigh, and in some kind of freakish coincidence, one flew, as Deadpool put it, straight up main street.

"Fucking. Ow." I knew nobody could hear me, but that just hurt too bad to shut up about. I mean, I might have been screaming a bit here and there, but that last hit definitely deserved its own quiet exclamation. The big bastard opened its mouth; I braced for it hammering it closed again, but it didn't.

Instead it inhaled.

Air rushed past me at a volume that yanked the loose bolts in its mouth down its throat. I yanked my shield around between me and its craw. Apparently Ice Dragons aren't blonde, because it gagged and coughed, spitting crossbow bolts out its mouth, including a couple that ricocheted off my ass. I know I'd joked about buns of steel, but I never thought I had an ass that could deflect crossbow bolts. It inhaled again, tipping its head back to the point where I blessed duBois' training as I had to do a handstand on the hilt of Lancaster's sword. Then its head came back down and my world became nothing but cyclone winds filled with shards of ice.

My shield fragmenting under the blast, I heard a single thrum, followed by the Dragon's head jerking back. The hurricane stopped blasting from its throat, replaced by an ongoing sound that reminded me of nothing so much as a blender chunking up one of those iced drinks like a pina colada or a margarita. Something slammed into my shield, the point poking into my forearm where I had it through the grips. A long moment of freefall later, I lost my grip on the sword as impact slammed me into the side of the Dragon's mouth. My head spinning, I pushed myself up, shaking the remains of my shield from my arm as I did so, all except the glowing blue bolt that had punctured my jacket sleeve and dangled there looking smug.

"Nobody likes a fucking showoff, son. Good job." I reached up, braced my foot on the Dragon's tongue, and twisted Lancaster's sword out of the thing's jaw. I winced as the blue glow showed me at least one big nick taken out of the blade; at a guess right about where it had lodged in the thing's lower jaw. I stumbled towards the opening, turning off my MIMIC (Size) to squeeze through the gap between its teeth. I staggered toward the only light I could see, a blue glow coming from the same direction as some exhausted cheering.

The next thing I knew, the ground swung up to slap me upside the head. A moment later, a pair of black stiletto elevator boots slid to a stop in front of my eyes. "Are you... okay, obviously you're not okay. Are," for whatever reason her voice filled with barely suppressed giggles as she said, "you still conscious?"

"Jury's still out on that. Ow. Ouch. Fucking hell, my everything hurts."

She took a deep breath, blew it out, and said, "well. Before we do anything else, I think you're carrying a few extra bolts you don't want."

"Ow. Yeah. Ouch. Fuck."

She leaned down, pulled Vulcan's bolt out of my jacket, tearing the sleeve below the elbow off as she did. She wrapped the fabric around the bolt, slid it through my jaw, and said, "bite down on this, It might hurt."

I think I grunted something coherent, but I'm not sure, because Saffron apparently never heard the 'count to three' thing. Okay, after she yanked the first bolt out of my thigh and I left bite marks in the fabric, she said, "that's one." A moment later she pulled another out of my opposite calf, and when I finished grunting out a scream said, "two." I wanted to spit the bolt out and tell her to stop, but before I could she yanked out the one that I'd hoped to forget about. "That's three."

When I finished whimpering, I spat out the bolt and croaked out, "sixth. That hole is sixth now. Directly behind any piercings I may get in the future."

The mint flavored feeling of Heal Injury flowed through me, leaving me gasping. My vision didn't clear; instead the world spun underneath me as my vision went gray.

"I'mma pass out now." Then I did.