'Ware the waking of the ancients. While children will fight easily they forgive just as quickly; wrath long held cannot be so readily defused.

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

The dragon appeared late in the afternoon, its shadow barely disturbing the bright sun.

Jair stood ready for it.

He waited on the central front tower of the academy's outer wall, someplace not technically off limits because there was no reason for anyone to care if students went jumping off towers.

Maelstrom rested lightly in Jair's hand, its silver light flaring and fluctuating without any discernible pattern.

Ran stood beside him, his own weapon held at the ready.

The dragon came nearer.

"Why are we doing this?" Ran glowered at him through the crystal faceplate of a sealed full helmet, much like sand-divers used for breathing underground.

"Because it's the only way to be sure."

"Be sure of what? You've been acting weird all week, and now you say--"

"Sssh. Dragon slaying time." Jair projected confidence he didn't feel. Despite four days of imprinting, his spell paths weren't even close to strong enough to be used. He had his sword and nothing else. A few meager traps, a few insufficient plans, nothing concrete. But he wasn’t going to let that stop him.

"I'm going to try this one until it works," Jair vowed. "I'm not going to leave you behind this time. I don't care how long it takes. I want you by my side."

"I'm right here, you don't have to go talking like I'm about to disappear--"

The dragon roared, drowning out the rest of Ran's complaints. Jair roared in answering defiance, thrusting Maelstrom into the sky with a shout of challenge.

The dragon ignored him, eyes fixing on Ran.

"Uh… why is it looking at me like it wants to eat me?"

Jair took three steps back across the narrow towertop, gauging his distance and the dragon's speed, then ran and jumped.

The dragon blew out a cloud of poison fire, choking smoke that exploded on contact with its spark. The blast hurled Jair away, out of the dragon's path, leaving him flailing as he fell without anything beneath him. The academy was built on the top of a cliff, so he had a long way to fall.

He had time to watch Ran swallowed in one quick chomp, then he focused inward and activated Temporal Reversion before he could hit the ground.

Jair tumbled through darkness and golden light.

He reached out immediately, dragging himself out of the timeline as quickly as possible.

"--view at the top can't be worth all this fuss," Ran huffed as they climbed the hundreds of stairs. "And why the armor?"

"Builds muscle," Jair replied absently. They emerged onto the tower roof. A quick glance at the sun showed they had about a half hour until the dragon arrived.

"Why did you have to pick this week to become a fitness guy." Ran complained. “And how are you so much less tired?”

"Breathing technique. I can show you."

Ran gave him an increasingly familiar look of uncertainty. "Breathing technique."

"Yes, believe it or not, there are wrong ways to breathe," Jair repeated, though his heart wasn't in it this time, and Ran picked up on it.

"Come on, Jair. If something's bothering you, tell me."

"The dragon's all that's bothering me."

"Dragon, right."

"I promise, after today, I'll answer any question you have. By Dovak, I'll dance naked in the dining hall if that's what you want."

Ran's concern only deepened.

“That’s enough rest. Back down to the tunnel.”

"You had better explain this all."

"You have my word. First thing in the morning. Ask me anything you want then."

"I will. And you're going to answer."

“Yup. Now down to the tunnel.”

They descended the too-many stairs again, then crossed to the hastily-excavated tunnel they'd covertly dug over the past three days beneath the outer wall past the library towers.

From what he recalled of his old attempts at hiding or running, this was the closest he’d come to finding a guaranteed 'force the dragon to land' spot.

It would try to roast them from a distance, but being far enough underground plus the existing ward constructs on the wall should do away with that avenue of attack.

Next, if the pattern held, it should try to topple one of the towers on top of them or tear the wall apart.

Those wouldn't work. The dragon could destroy the architecture, yes, but it wouldn’t be able to hurt them by doing so. That didn't even require Jair's intervention. The academy grounds itself were so heavily layered in student-protection constructs that even if you removed the walls of a building in an instant, the falling ceiling would break up and miss everyone inside.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Indirect attacks foiled, the dragon should land and stick its head out at their tunnel entrance, belching its poison breath into their fragile sanctuary.

At that point, Jair would have between three and twelve seconds to close the distance before the dragon ignited the explosive gas.

Both himself and Ran wore full armor as well as the helmets, flanged to make eating them as painful to the dragon as possible as one final 'if we die we'll do our best to take you with us’. Not that it would matter, since Jair's death or imminent death would mean he reverted the timeline, but it was satisfying to imagine.

The beast's roar shook the ground as it circled the academy, slowly closing in on their location by whatever sense it used to faultlessly track Ran to wherever he hid.

"That... that's an actual dragon roar." Ran's wide eyes stared at Jair. "You really are a seer. I'm sorry I doubted you."

"Sssh." Jair crouched between Ran and the tunnel entrance, Maelstrom pulsing with silver light.

He caught the barest glimpse of a wing as the dragon swooped by, still overhead at the moment. Another roar. A burst of hot wind from its flame breath, but the academy protections worked as usual to reduce it to safe levels.

The dragon could overwhelm those protections eventually, but physical attacks tended to be the quickest way to get to Ran and eat him.

Crashing, loud and close. Ran jumped and cursed, startled by the sound.

Jair shook his head, motioning that everything was under control. It had attacked the wall, very near overhead. Exactly as expected.

"What do you mean--" Ran tried to ask, but Jair shushed him again, leaning forward in a ready crouch. The moment was getting close...

Hkreee! The dragon screeched overhead, then something more crashed down. Probably more wall. Perhaps part of a tower.

"Another minute and it'll get tired of breaking things," Jair whispered. "It'll come down then."

"And you're going to just run up and stab it?"

"That's the plan."

"You can't take something like that down on your own!"

"Shh, I need to listen."

Ran subsided reluctantly. Jair held his breathing to a steady rhythm, though his heart thundered wildly out of control.

The dragon landed a moment later, dark yellow-green iridescence blocking the entrance entirely.

Jair took off at a dead sprint, racing up the tunnel just as the dragon leaned down to puff its poison at them. He pushed off hard, jumping so Maelstrom slammed into the dragon's sensitive nose, silver blade striking deep.

The dragon reared up and swatted him away with a pained roar. Jair lost his grip on the sword as he went flying, crashed into a broken chunk of stone from the wall, then took a faceful of dragonfire as the furious beast retaliated.

As long as it was roasting him, it hadn't gotten to Ran yet. Progress.

Jair recalled Maelstrom and pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the painfully-hot armor that he could feel even through the cloth underneath.

The dragon raised its wings to take off.

Jair hurled his sword at its left shoulder.

His aim was solid, but the target was too mobile. The blade glanced off the dragon's chest as it reared up.

"Get back here you--!"

Jair ran at the dragon, blade recalled to his hand in a flash of silver.

The dragon ignored the pest trying to slow it down. It took off, then blasted Jair with another gout of fire.

Another one of those would melt his armor right off. The heat was already well beyond uncomfortable.

Jair cursed vehemently and dove back into the tunnel, colliding with Ran who was on his way out.

"I told you to stay inside!" Jair shoved Ran backwards as they untangled themselves. A glance up at the sky showed the dragon already diving. No time. "Aelir and Dovak, why don't you listen!"

Jair raised Maelstrom above his head, braced in final defiance, as the dragon's jaw clamped down on the duo, taking half the tunnel with them.

Being eaten by a venomous dragon of this level wasn't instant death, but it wasn't something you could survive either. Even if you killed the dragon on the way out, the concentrated venom of its blood and saliva would burn through armor in under a minute, and once it got into your skin it would only be a question of how slowly it killed you. Jair experienced that end too many times to hold out false hope.

In this case, one of its teeth had punctured Ran's armor already, so he was dead either way. Jair had maybe thirty seconds if he wanted to do some vengeful stabbing as they were swallowed, but there was no point to that.

Jair closed his eyes and centered inward. The golden star of Temporal Reversion answered his touch, hurling him backwards down his timeline.

He reached out as quickly as he could, reversion slowing, but he missed the moment where the two of them were ascending the tower. The first class of the day crumbled before he could extract himself and he fell with a lurch.

The previous evening slipped by before he could reorient, not yet used to this particular temporal landscape and its peculiarities.

Finally he yanked himself out of freefall into the middle of the day before.

"--fair, I've been doing this for my entire life, how can you..." Ran trailed off as Jair staggered dizzily. "Are you okay?"

"Not now,” Jair snapped. “Give me a minute." He fought back the instinctive surge of adrenaline that accompanied any reversion, the readiness to jump into whatever he was doing full force. There shouldn’t be any danger here.

What had they been doing?

He stared down at a half-finished drawing, a wiggly smudge across its center where he’d lost control in the instant of reorienting to the moment.

Oh, yes. Art.

Jair flipped the page over and started scrawling out a diagram instead, quickly sketching the dragon and where he'd hit it and how it had reacted. Size. Shape. Specifics of its anatomy that he couldn't have learned from a book. The vision clear in his memory, the battle he'd just fought.

Ran's eyes grew progressively wider and wider as Jair continued drawing, writing out quick notes beside it, then drawing more as he tried to plot out a better way to bring it down.

Throwing his sword wasn't going to work from this angle. He couldn't attack it from underneath, he'd need to get a higher angle. So perhaps put Ran down under the wall, and himself up on one of the towers? Jump down on it from above, stab it. That might work.

Frostvine rope and nets. He had those, what could he do with them? He could string them between towers, but the dragon was both too large and too clever to fall into them easily. He would need to lure it into a fury if he wanted either to catch it. The only way to do that would be...

He couldn't think of anything. The thoughts racing through his mind stuttered to a halt as the moment of frenzy passed, leaving him feeling drained. He slumped down in his seat, staring at the diagram.

Ran stared at him with clear awe. "Jair. Did you just have a vision?"

He would have laughed if he'd been any less strained. Instead he shrugged and gestured at the page.

Ran needed no further explanation. "This is the dragon you need to slay?"

"Yeah. It's big. Wants to eat us both. Very hard to talk to. Very hard to work with. Even harder to kill."

"Have you talked to the headmaster?"

"Not yet. Was planning to try taking it out on my own before bringing Larenok into it. We have a few more things we can try first."

"That sounds needlessly risky. What if we don't need to be involved at all, what if he can deal with the problem without us?"

"Sure. Let's bring the headmaster in early." Jair shrugged. "No problem. I'm glad for as much help as we can bring in. You'll come with me?" He didn't know what prompted the request, perhaps the deep desire not to fight alone any longer.

Ran rolled up the drawing with a grim expression of determination. "Yes. I'm coming too."

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