Susan laughed, a derisive bark that thundered over the assembled vampires. Many of them jumped backwards in surprise, unlike Jaroslav. He just kept staring at her, smiling.
“You think this,” She gave the ugly stone band around her neck a tug with a claw, “Is enough to kill me?”
“Why yes I do,” Jaroslav’s smile didn’t budge, “You see, we vampires know you dragon’s dirty little secret. Those incredible bodies of yours are not as perfect as you claim. Every little failure in their design requires mana to smooth it over. And those add up. Your body might be a little too heavy to support itself, or your muscles too strong for your bones…”
An emaciated hand pointed to each body part in turn, “Maybe the fire within your chest burns a little too hot. As you are now, without mana, it is only a matter of time before one of those little problems finally becomes too much for you to survive. I am fascinated to learn which will be the case for you.”
Susan took in the manic smile covering his face.
“You really are confident, aren’t you,” She said.
“Of course, He said. “Did you really think that there were no other dragons in this world because of mere coincidence? No it was because we vampires wished it to be so. And when you are gone the upper world will return to the way it should be, with us as its apex predators!”
His voice raised until it was booming. It echoed back over the crows and Susan saw many nods and grins form the other vampires.
“There is no escaping here, " He continued, “No magic can occur here unless we will it, and there is no one within a hundred leagues to carry news of your plight to the guardians of Earth.
Susan wasn't paying attention to his rant, instead she was examining the crowd. Many of them looked and smelled young. The vampiric curse on them was not even powerful enough yet that they had to avoid the sun.
A wolfish smile crossed her face as she realized something. Jaroslav wasn't speaking to her. He was preaching to the crowd. This was a lesson on vampiric dominance for the youngsters.
That meant she had an easy way out. Intimidation. Thankfully she was good at that.
The stone beneath Susan’s claws began bubbling, catching Jaroslav’s eye. His smile dimmed as he spotted the claw she had slid underneath the stone band, now glowing white hot.
“An impressive trick,” He said quickly, “But the collar is tied to the very stone around us. To destroy the collar, you would need the strength to tear apart the entire cave. And you are no Earth Dragon to split stone like water.”
As he spoke the spell activated again, pulling away the heat and pushing it into the cave around her. Susan felt the room’s temperature increase infinitesimally, but that was it.
“Well,” Susan said, “You’re right about one thing.”
Her scales ignited. The entire room was lit in stark colors as the center of the cave around Susan was turned into a hellish furnace.
A wave of burning heat blasted away from her, but stopped at the edge of the room when it splashed against an invisible barrier.
Some of the vampires jumped away, but a screamed command from Jaroslav pulled them back. As one they reached out and began pouring spell after spell back into the cave.
Quickly, the temperature of the room began to dip back down as legions worth of cooling spells were cast. The warming stone cracked beneath the tide of frost that rushed over it.
“I’m not an earth dragon,” Susan continued, not having moved from where she stood in front of Yaroslav.
It took a long moment for the mask of calm to reassert itself as he confirmed that the vampires were successfully overpowering her heat output. That was what Susan had been waiting for.
“I don’t have a vital flaw.”
With a hum that shook the air, her heart fully activated.
The Mages Congress had called her insane when she finally explained to them what it was. Their science barely allowed them to comprehend the extent to her creation, but what they knew terrified them such that they had begged her never to spread the knowledge of how she had done it.
Within her chest was the two meter wide black sphere that she called her ‘heart’, a superheated sphere of condensed hydrogen held in place by an array of electromagnets.
In other words, a miniature thermonuclear reactor.
Now, the electromagnets began to power up, compressing the core even more and increasing the power coming from it by magnitudes.
The heat in the room very quickly went from warm to apocalyptic. The frost forming upon the stone boiled away in an instant, and moments later the stone itself began to melt in an expanding ring. Above her stalactites began dripping molten stone, and her claws started to sink into the softening floor of the cave.
Susan watched as the vampires tried to fight back, but this wasn’t a contest of magic. It was a contest of pure physics, and she had every advantage.
It took a while for Jaroslav to grasp what was going on. His expression went from absolute calm, to worried, then panicked as he whipped his head back and forth to the other vampires.
His expression began to truly widen in fear as he realized that every one of the other vampires truly were putting their full effort into contesting Susan for control of the room.
And losing.
His eyes turned to Susan, and she grinned. Rearing back, she spoke in a booming voice that rolled over the packed vampires.
“DO YOU GET IT NOW?” She roared, “THERE IS NO CAGE PROTECTING YOU. THERE IS NO ARMY YOU COULD CALL UPON TO STOP ME. THE ONLY THING KEEPING YOU SAFE RIGHT NOW IS THE LIFE OF ANNABETH SEKH.”
Jaroslav stared open mouthed, and Susan could see in his eyes the entire illusion of superiority he had crumble to pieces.
“You are the Archdragon of Ruin,” He said lamely.
Susan gave a nod.
“Yes,” She said. “I am the Nuclear Dragon.”
Jaroslav’s eyes seemed to spin, and Susan’s mouth split into a grin.
Her time on Themus had often been frustrated by the lack of scientific advancement. She had never made a secret of what kind of dragon she was, but the number of people there who understood what it meant was practically nonexistent.
And while she hadn’t wanted to freak the Guardians out by telling them she was a walking nuclear reactor, the vampires were fair game. And now she could finally, properly intimidate someone without needing a flowchart to do it.
It was such a rush to finally have someone understand just what she was.
The ancient vampire finally came back to himself. With a shake of his head he refocused on her and spoke again.
“You will have your friend.”
Susan’s smile widened. Finally, the crushing weight of worry seemed to lift and she breathed out in relief.
With a few shouted orders at the other vampires, Jaroslav was soon brought a small hand mirror. Under the red glow of Susan’s body, he cast a communication spell.
The smiling face of Robert quickly appeared, then the smile gradually vanished as he took in the older vampire's face.
“Elde-” He began, only to be cut off instantly.
“Do you know where Annabeth Sekh is?” Jaroslav snapped.
“Yes, of course,” He replied guilessly.
“Well?”
“Well what?” Robert asked with a frown.
“WHERE IS THE GIRL?” Jaroslav roared.
“She…” Suddenly Robert seemed unable to look at the other vampire.
“SPEAK, ACEZAR!” Jaroslav roared with the tone of a mother calling her child’s full name, his face twisting into a reddened snarl.
“I turned her over to the mouskin!” Robert shrieked.
In Susan’s heart, the smug confidence she had created was snuffed out. Cold replaced it, and her next breath came in short and fast.
For the vampire, the news took a moment to sink in. The mirror tumbled from his unmoving hand to shatter on the ground, and all expression fell away from his wrinkled face.
His eyes raised to meet Susan’s.
“I ask for mercy for my kin’s foolishness-”
“Run,” Susan said.
“What?”
“That is all the mercy I can give right now,” Susan said, not even looking at him.
Instead she focused on the roof. The mottled stone above her was probably limestone, a light rock. A small part of her mind analyzed the situation. Tunneling out through hundreds of feet, or even meters of rock was dangerous, and could leave her hurt or trapped.
The rest of her didn’t care. Within her chest, her heart began to heat up.
Her neck stretched out, pointing upwards. In her chest, her heart opened.
As the last of the panicking vampires vanished into the recesses of the cave, Susan breathed out fire and light. The collar around her neck shattered into molten fragments.
----------------------------------------
John Smith breathed in. Then he breathed out and tried to center himself. Today had been a complete shitshow, and it wasn’t nearly over yet.
With the threat of magic being revealed to the world hanging in the balance, the BSMP had mobilized its entire workforce to combat the problem. John himself had been woken up at an ungodly hour to deal with an order to get whatever information he could from Rawiyah Sekh.
He had entered the mousekin’s sanctum in the Garage Sale to find her in a panic. When she had calmed enough to get a word out, the news had been chilling.
The appearance of the dragons had overturned every single one of her predictions. Most problematic among them was her nephew, who had gone from a nonissue to an immediate threat of massive proportions.
Joseph Sekh had allied with the vampires in order to get his hands on his niece. The ploy had succeeded, and now he was on his way to sacrifice the girl to an Eldritch Beast and ascend to become the first full Eldritch Avatar in Earth’s history.
Now it was late in the morning. Every one of John’s lines of inquiry had been shot down by the seer, and now he sat collapsed on one of the low couches to the side of the room. In front of him, Rawiyah paced around the edge of her table, eyes wide as her tail whipped back and forth behind her.
He was tired, and she was furious, but his superior had ordered him to be here. Any nuggets of wisdom she could throw at them would be more than worth the effort. So he weathered the scorn and fury she threw at him as he tried to find a way out of the shithole the BSMP had dug for itself.
His phone buzzed, and he glanced down at it to see another update request.
“Is there anything new?” He asked, then looked away from the furious return glare from Rawiyah.
“No,” She snapped.
“Could you at least check?”
“No.”
“My superiors-”
“Caused this, you fool!” Rawiyah shouted, “You could have granted my niece protection years ago. Instead I had to manipulate a dragon into helping her!”
“Oh yes,” John said sitting up, “The dragon you failed to warn the BSMP about.”
Rawiyah scoffed at that.
“I did warn the BSMP about her.”
“You call the incapacitation of an entire attack team a warning?” John asked.
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“Yes,” She scoffed, “The only kind of warning you fools ever listen to.”
John frowned, “We listen to warnings.”
“No, you do not,” Rawiyah shot him another scathing glare, “It is why your organization will fall.”
John rolled his eyes, it wasn’t the first time he was hearing about this tonight.
“Can you check the damn ball now?” He asked.
“What else do you need to know?” Rawiyah screeched, “The vampires have already caught the dragon, and my niece is almost to the abomination.”
Then she sighed and looked down.
“The die is cast, and it fell against us,” She finished quietly
“There is a team on its way…”
Rawiyah’s glare made him trail off.
“The world will shiver in fear beneath the might of a fully powered eldritch avatar,” She said, “That is all my visions hold.”
John let the conversation end there. This was the third time they had this argument, and he didn’t feel like suffering through more of it. His attention returned to his phone, and his thumbs traced the familiar message back to his superior, ‘No news’.
A thump echoed from outside the room, a huge, heavy noise that reverberated through the concrete around them.
John frowned, glancing over to Rawiyah. The mousekin looked surprised.
Her reaction had him on his feet with his gun out in an instant, though fear dragged at his limbs. Anything the seer couldn’t see coming was way above his weight class.
“Check the damn ball!” He snapped, and Rawiyah nodded.
She scampered to the center of the table. Grasping the tiny ball with both hands, she stared down into it with narrowed eyes.
Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to let out a huff. More followed, and soon she was cackling wildly. A shouted request from John returned only more laughter as she fell on her side on the table, still heaving.
Screams and shouts echoed in from the Garage Sale outside, the source of the sounds quickly drawing near.
John stared down the door with wide eyes, hands shaking despite his training. The laughter of the mouse, the screams outside, he didn’t know what to do beyond staring at the door and pointing his gun at it.
Finally, Rawiyah stopped laughing and stood back up. Turning around, she faced the door with a calm smirk over her lips.
Then four glowing blades tore through the steel of the door above the handle. With a hiss of melting metal, they carved a semicircle around the handle, then vanished, taking the door handle with them.
Then an impact blasted the door open, bouncing it off of the wall beside it.
The figure that appeared through the doorway was straight out of someone’s nightmares. A long snarling animal head on top of a long sinuous body held up by stubby legs ending in claws glowing with heat that John could feel on the other side of the room.
He belatedly recognized it as Susan Hill from the security camera footage of her confrontation with Robert.
“You were an archdragon,” Rawiyah squeaked happily.
The word set off alarm bells in John’s head, though he wasn't familiar with it. He knew of Archmages, mages who had completely mastered a specific type of magic. Most of them sat comfortably on the list of people the BSMP couldn’t afford to mess with.
He had no idea what ‘archdragon’ could mean. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.
Unfortunately, he had the sense that he was going to find out soon anyways.
Uncaring of either of their considerations, Susan stepped into the room. Each movement from her was sharp and angry, and the glowing claws seemed to pulse in a furious tempo.
“I have had to deal with a lot of shit just to get here,” She hissed in a low voice, “So tell me quickly, where is Anne?”
----------------------------------------
The world that passed by Anne seemed to be made up entirely of yellow and brown. Barren plains stretched around her, interspersed with the occasional craggy hill that whizzed past her.
An oppressive heat filled the air around her. Together with a dust that seemed to strip every bit of moisture from the environment, it worked to make the landscape feel truly hellish.
Anne just felt cold. The jeep she sat in jolted as it passed over another rock. A round of curses from the other occupants of the car reached her ears, but she ignored them.
A few hours ago life had been going pretty well. She had spent a fun night with her friends, and while she was dreading attending school the next day it had been worth it.
Then a dozen vampires had kidnapped her out of Susan’s grandparents home, dropped her off in a room with a smarmy looking vampire, and left.
All of ten minutes after that, Joseph had shown up and pressured the idiot into handing her over.
She had tried to fight, tried to run. The mousekin had trussed her up at first, then threatened her, then yelled at her.
It hadn’t dissuaded her, and she kept trying. Right up until they finally let slip why exactly it had been the vampires to kidnap her.
They wanted to get at Susan. The mousekin didn’t know or care why. What mattered was that Anne was the only person who Susan was attached to, but not strong enough to protect herself.
So in getting help from Susan, Anne had made herself the dragon’s only real weakness.
Her ploy to survive hadn’t just failed. It had backfired, and now Susan was in danger as well.
So now Anne just felt numb. Even now, packed into the back of a dusty jeep with a half dozen other mouskin, she simply couldn't muster the rage or fury to keep fighting. It didn’t seem worth it anymore.
A shouted command from the front of the jeep caught her attention as Joseph gave another direction to the driver. She mostly ignored it, until the jeep began to slow.
It rolled to a stop at the edge of a small empty plain. The craggy hills continued around it, but the entire area was flat ground except for the area in the center.
Instead of another hill, the land dipped down into a yawning pit. The chasm was entirely dark despite the bright day, and the air around it seemed to warp. Not shimmer like the heat, but warp and twist in ways that seemed to trick the eyes.
The only thing in the area around them was an oddly formed boulder. A ledge was carved into the side facing the chasm, and two protrusions jutted up from it that seemed shaped like… armrests.
Anne’s heart sank into her stomach as she stared at it, but the rock refused to change shape under her gaze. It was like she was staring at a guillotine, a tool designed for nothing but death.
There was clatter as the small group clambered out of the jeep. A moment later Anne found her fears realized as she was hauled out of the back of the jeep by two burly mousekin, then sat on the ledge with her arms tied to the two protruding stone arms.
Joseph appeared in front of her, staring at her for a moment. He didn’t say anything, but did give a small smirk before turning around.
Arrayed before the both of them were the rest of the mousekin, seven in total. Joseph’s head swiveled back and forth as he looked over them.
Then he reached down with his right arm and rolled back the sleeve on the other. With slow, reverent movements, he took out a small knife, and scored a cut across the back of his arm.
“The bargain is fulfilled,” He intoned, “The final servant given. Bestow to her your knowledge, and to me your power.”
Everyone watched as a line of blood welled up, then flowed down until it began to drip down to the ground. As the first few drops struck, a small tremor made the dust around them shake.
A horrible groan came from the chasm, and the air around the group was sucked toward it as if by a breath
Some of the mousekin’s heads began to turn to look back, but a snapped command from Joseph had them looking away once again.
“The beast stirs,” Joseph said, startling her, “In only a few minutes, the ritual will be complete, and we mouskin will return to the Brick not as servants, but as masters…”
He kept talking, but Anne barely heard him. Instead she was distracted by the emotion welling within her. Rage.
She had felt it before, a fury at Joseph. At his idiotic scrabble for power, and everything she had lost to it. The feeling had been snuffed out by the realization of what had happened to Susan. But now, listening to him prattle on about his empty headed plans to rule the world, even as her death loomed over her head? No amount of fear or dread could calm her down.
“Would you shut up!” She grated out, interrupting him mid word.
“Quiet,” He snapped, turning to face her again.
“Or what?” She asked with a manic smile, “You’ll do something terrible to me? Guess what, you beat yourself to the punch on that!”
“Someone shut her up,” Joseph said, not even looking back toward the other mousekin.
One of them stepped forward with a rag, but he had barely begun to move his hands around her head when Anne snapped her teeth towards his fingers. He leapt back with a yelp, and the rag fell to the ground.
Anne choked out a laugh as he stumbled away.
“Did you really think you could gag a mouskin?” She said in between chuckles, “Sharp teeth is one of the only abilities we get!”
Her body stilled, and she looked up to meet Joseph’s cold eyes once again.
“Grandma’s right, you really are a failure of a mouskin,” She said, and watched him turn red. “Do you really think you're going to be the master of anything?
“I know why you decided to ally with the vampires. You saw the news about dragons in Yosemite and realized that no matter how many people you kill, you still can’t fight people with actual power. No matter how high a mound of corpses you build, you won't ever stand high enough to reach the top!”
The other Mouskin were staring at her now, several glowering while others seemed worried. Anne didn’t care.
“I’d ask where you got the brains or the spine to even get that far,” She spat, “But I already know the answer to that too. You stole them from someone better than you-”
Joseph’s backhand caught her across the face and sent her head snapping to the side. She tasted copper, but couldn’t hold back a smile. She met his eyes, knowing she’d hit home with that insult.
He looked back towards the group.
“Bring it,” He snapped.
The mousekin at one end of the line, a tiny man dressed in dark grey clothes, moved back towards the jeep.
He returned with a long wooden box held in both arms. Standing in front of Joseph, he held the box out in front of himself.
Joseph spared him a nod, then flipped the box open. He reached out to pick up whatever was inside, then paused and looked back at Anne with another smirk.
“You know,” he said, “I wouldn't have gotten this without you.”
Anne met his smirk with a glare and didn’t answer.
“It was only by having the dragon followed that I even found out about it,” He continued, “After her scuffle with the Thunderbirds, one of my agents came back to me with news of a Tier 4 magical weapon hidden away by the Olbrechts.”
Anne’s breath caught in her throat.
“And so while the vampires were capturing you, Steward here managed to sneak in and get it out for me,” By the end of his speech his smile was distinctly pretadory, with a glint in his eye as he watched Anne.
Anything she might have said died in her throat, and she had to fight to keep her jaw from clenching. She couldn't give him this. No matter what he said, she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her break.
Joseph watched her for a moment, but seemed to give up on waiting for her to break down and instead turned his attention back to the box. His hand reached in with deliberate slowness, and the inside of the box lit up a deep green.
He lifted out what Anne assumed to be a sword. It was completely transparent, to the point that it looked like Joseph wasn't even holding anything. The only thing that let her see it was the green glow that emanated from it.
The group stared on in awed silence, and Joseph’s grin widened into an expression of pure glee as he looked down at the blade, the fantastical object slowly growing to fit perfectly in his hand.
Then Anne saw wisps of smoke rising. The smile on Joseph's face vanished as every part of his body touched by the green light began to smoke, the flesh dissolving as if it were being touched by acid.
He threw the sword away from himself with a yell, and Anne saw the clear blade imbed itself to the hilt in the soil a few meters away. Joseph stumbled away, still roaring with pain.
The group of mousekin leapt around like a herd of deer, some of them jumping away, others moving forward to try and help.
A raised hand held them off, and they watched with wide eyes as the skin of his body began to glow violet. Starting from his chest, the light flowed under his skin like a living tattoo. When it reached the bleeding injuries, it intensified and Anne had to look away. When she looked back Joseph was whole again, as if everything that happened before was a dream.
The only thing that didn’t change was Joseph’s expression. When the light had finished healing him, he stalked forward like a storm toward the sword.
“Alright then,” He growled, grabbing the sword around the hilt and tearing it from the ground.
The green light began again immediately, but this time Joseph gritted his teeth against the pain. The violet light appeared again, flowing through his arm and toward the sword.
It reached his hand and intensified as if being blocked for a moment, then in a rush it flowed from Joseph and into the blade.
He opened his mouth with a wide grin, ready to gloat. He never got to finish.
Instead the sword in his hand flashed, and the clear material that made it up began to warp. For a moment the sword seemed to twist in on itself, then it snapped back to its normal shape. Only now Joseph’s vice grip was holding the blade instead of the guard.
Under the horrified gazes of the mousekin the blade fell to the ground again, surrounded by a rain of severed fingers.
Even as the violet light flashed again to restore Joseph’s body, Anne was laughing hysterically.
His expression turned thunderous but it was interrupted when a breeze blew past them, followed by a deep moan that made Anne’s ears ache. Joseph turned back to the chasm slowly as her laughter choked off.
“It's awake,” He said, and the spiteful warmth in her chest was snuffed out.
In front of her and Joseph, and behind the backs of the other mouskin, something came out of the chasm.
Anne tried to look away at first, but a strange magnetism seemed to draw her gaze back to it. At first there was a haze around it, like her eyes weren’t focused on it properly. But then it became clear and the pain started.
The very action of looking at it seemed like pins were being pushed into her eyes, while a headache burned through her mind like a wildfire. The creature itself was like nothing she had ever seen. The entire thing was a strange violet color that seemed to twist inward on itself in a mind searing pattern.
Anne couldn’t tell if the thing walked or crawled, whether it had eyes or noses or even a face. The twisting patterns made it look like it was all eyes, all noses, all limbs. She couldn't even tell what shape it was underneath the kaleidoscope of violet madness.
Her mind and body screamed with pain, but one thing kept Anne from succumbing. Rage. She hated this thing. She hated it more than Joseph. She hated it with a fury that made the pain in her mind seem insignificant by comparison.
The creature wiggled in her eyes as it moved closer, but Anne didn’t let herself succumb. She screamed, trying to hold herself together even as her vision turned red and something dribbled from her eyes and ears.
Then something caught her eye, drawing it away from the nightmare in front of her. A glowing dot floating somewhere in the sky above the abomination.
It grew brighter like a star, before a brilliant white beam of energy shot down to strike the eldritch creature. The beam was incredibly thin, barely a wire's thickness from Anne’s perspective, but the world around it seemed to tremble as the white glow suffused it.
It was like the fury of the sun had been unleashed in front of her, the beam piercing the eldritch creature to dig into the ground below.
Anne could barely feel it. Not the rush of sound and air that made the other Mouskin jump, or the wave of heat that followed and made them run for cover. It was only when the violet colors blackened under the incredible heat of the beam that she came back to herself.
After a few seconds the beam of energy cut off, leaving behind a towering black blob where the eldritch abomination had been. As Anne watched the scorched remains seemed to deflate, before collapsing inwards in a rush.
They vanished with a squelch, sliding down into the newly bored hole in the empty plain.
Anne sat silently for a moment, then wheezed out a laugh. Within seconds she was sniffling, then crying as the enormity of the situation washed over her.
At some point she heard the tires of the jeep tear off behind her, signaling that the other mousekin were gone. She didn’t care. They couldn't threaten her anymore.
Instead she looked up through teary eyes toward whatever it was that saved her. The dot in the sky was still there, and looked like it was glowing brighter than before. Then Anne realized that it was getting closer.
A second later it grew large enough to be recognized. It was Susan, the gray scaled giant as easy to spot as ever.
Anne’s heart soared, only for her joy to sour when a groan caught her attention.
Joseph was still there, stretched out on the ground. His body seemed duller now, his face white as if the blood had been pulled from it.
Despite whatever backlash he had suffered when the Eldritch Beast died, he still managed to pull himself up. The roar of Susan’s approach caught his attention, and his head twisted around to look at her.
The growl that came from his throat sounded like something from a wild animal. His maddened eyes locked onto the magic sword again, and he forced himself into a stumbling crawl over to it.
His hand hovered over it as Susan began to draw nearer, and Anne realized his plan with a start.
She turned her eyes back to Susan ready to scream out a warning, but it wasn’t necessary. The dragon had spotted Joseph already, and was turning away. As they watched, she cut a wide wide circle around the barren plain to approach them from the side.
“COME ON,” Joseph screamed, crouched down with his hand by the sword.
Susan’s wings caught the air, slowing her approach. She glared at Joseph, arms held forward and ready to lash out.
Joseph’s eyes locked onto something and he frowned for a moment, then broke into a grin.
“Perfect,” He whispered through withered lips as he watched Susan approach.
Anne tried to follow his eyes, then gasped as she spotted what he’d seen, a series of vents around the base of Susan’s neck drawing in air.
She tried to scream out a warning, but it was too late. Susan rushed in, claws outstretched and ready to cut as Joseph grabbed the sword and leapt toward her.
As the green light began burning away at him, he began to shrink. He vanished into his clothes, only for a tiny brown mouse carrying a glowing green blade the size of a toothpick to appear shooting out from them.
Even as the clothes were shredded behind him, he flew upwards and vanished into one of the vents.
Susan’s head twisted around, eyes wide with shock.
“YOU IDIOT!” She roared, then her eyes rolled up in her head and she hit the ground in a thunderous tumble.