Day Eight-Sixty-Eight: Run for it

The trip to the base of the tower was not as quiet as The Baron might have hoped. Indeed, it wasn’t quiet at all.

The Baron’s plan, such as it was, consisted of waiting until the battle against the Non really heated up. Then he and his little band of misfits - including the smaller-but-still-pretty-damned-big Titan Blue - would sneak in and begin heaving away at the tower’s base until it collapsed. A tall order, perhaps, but The Baron had the strongest people in the world on his side. He figured this wildly-impractical scheme might just have some merit.

The stealth mission lasted all of three minutes. Then some rear sentry in the distance noticed The Baron’s group through a spyglass and alerted his fellows, and things went to hell.

The situation exploded, almost literally, when three of the dragons wheeling about in the sky over the battlefield split from their airborne flock and hurtled down towards the party. They opened their mouths in tandem, shooting long streams of flame at the ground. With only seconds to consider their actions, The Baron figured that all of them were, most assuredly, dead.

Such was not the case. Her titanic strength as ridiculous as ever, Eve knelt, plunged her hands into the dirt at their feet, and wrenched a mostly-buried boulder out of the ground. The rock began to crumble as Eve moved, but she swept it upward so quickly that its pieces were still more or less a cohesive whole as they flew into the air, towards the fire. It was not enough to stop the flames, of course -

- but the hole left by the boulder was sufficient as an impromptu hiding place, and the sliding dirt of unstable ground forced everyone into said hole with delightful rapidity. The Baron found himself beneath everyone, which, being the weakest person in the party, he did not particularly like. Especially when Traveller’s smelly, grungy foot smothered his face and left a print on his cracked glasses.

“Mmph,” The Baron commented, nevertheless grateful for being underground. The air felt way too hot for his liking, despite the miss.

“My hair is singed,” Traveller said back, rather jovial. “Eve is strong. I’m pretty sure she’s my kid, but I can’t prove it. Did I have sex with Libby and not realize? I bet I’m a papa!”

The Baron didn’t comment. His insides did, however, seize up and wither a little.

The dragons swooped around for another pass above, but it was far too late for them. Eve had already extricated herself from the hole, and she leaped at the great reptiles with another hunk of rock - this sharpened - in one hand. Grabbing onto the left dragon’s belly she ripped away at its protective scales and plunged the rock into its flesh. 

The dragon screamed and plummetted. Understandably. The other dragons might have reacted to this, only Titan Blue, full size again, was busy hurling enormous clumps of dirt at them. Traveller joined in at her side once he extricated himself from the hole.

“You look like onea the bad dudes,” Traveller commented, not cruelly. “Shouldn’t you be, like, a big douche, or something?”

“Big, yes. Douche…” Titan Blue thought about it as she whipped another lump of dirt at the right dragon. Its roar was smothered by hundreds of pounds of earthen clay. “Well, I’m still working that out.”

Antonio pulled The Baron from the hole, set him on his feet, looked him over quickly, and turned to watch as Cedric thundered towards the dirt furrow created by the downed dragon. It was writhing weakly at the wound Eve had inflicted, and The Baron suspected Cedric would happily finish the job. Eve was already airborne again, clinging to a second dragon and wrestling to get at its wings.

“Zere are timez,” Antonio murmured, shielding his eyes to watch the fight above, apparently content not to join in, “zat I veel a little levt behind by zeze volkz. You underztand ziz?”

The Baron watched Eve rip a wing away. He watched Titan Blue pick up, and hurl, Traveller, and he watched Traveller land on the third dragon, whisper something in one of its ears, and kick it on the back of its head. He watched Cedric roar as he ripped into the downed dragon, his undead might more than enough to tear its head from its neck.

The Baron could control all of them, if he wanted. If. And it would be rather easy to do.

“Not really,” he replied, though he knew his voice was shaky. “We all have our talents. Come on, we have ridiculous work to do.”