Up in Smoke

The scream was the first indicator that all was not well in dreamland.

Blaise growled beside me. We shared a look. And then I started running while she took to the skies with a beat of powerful wings.

The wide trail dead-ended at a ditch. I slid to a stop at the top. Below, a father and his daughter cowered against the sandy incline while a creature out of nightmares slithered toward them.

A Shadow basilisk. An eighty-foot snake as black as pitch, with eyes of fiery red. It held the pair paralyzed within that burning stare. Within seconds it would strike, and it wouldn't even need to constrict the puny humans; they would just go straight down its throat.

I had to act fast.

"Hey!" I raised my hand and summoned my secret weapon: magic. A fire blazed to life in my palm. I lobbed the softball-sized flame at the basilisk's head.

Direct hit. The giant snake reared back with a hiss. Its bright eyes locked on me, and I knew that the people below had been forgotten.

"Run!" I shouted at them anyway, and then I turned on my heel and did the same.

I ducked into the forest that bordered the trail and ran as fast as I could, dodging trees, jumping roots, ducking branches. My breath was loud and steady in my ears, but not loud enough to disguise the sound of the basilisk as it came after me. The forest slowed it down, but not enough. I needed to get back into the open so Blaise could get to me. A forest fight was no place for a fire wyvern.

Luckily, I knew this forest. I darted left onto a deer path and gained a bit of speed. Then I shot right and-

The sounds of pursuit had silenced.

I stopped running, the mulch beneath my boots sending my feet sliding. I grabbed a sapling to keep them under me. I peered into the forest behind me, but it was empty. And far, far too quiet.

Uh-oh.

I looked left and right, up and down. Nothing. I backed up slowly, eyes and ears peeled. Shadow basilisks were stealthy, I knew, but surely it couldn't have vanished entirely. Maybe-

The ground gave way under my foot. I dropped, grasping at roots, but they didn't halt my fall. No, the mud pit did that as I landed with an undignified squelch.

"Son of a." I shook out my hands, not that it did much good, and glared up at the short incline I had failed to notice while looking for the basilisk. Teeth gritted, I carefully pulled my arse out of the muck and got to my feet.

So much for my new jeans. Tracy was going to kill me.

I walked toward the incline - or tried to. My feet stuck fast, and the harder I pulled, the more it felt like my boot was about to come off. I was not losing my boots. No way, no how. I applied steady pressure, wiggling and shaking, gentle pulling...

My foot popped out of the mud with a shudder-inducing sucking sound, and I almost fell on my ass again. Thank God Trevor wasn't there with his camera to catch my windmilling arms. I placed the freed foot on a tiny grassy hillock and started the process again with the second foot.

The basilisk came out of nowhere.

If you've ever seen a basilisk, you'll know how shocking that really is. The two-ton serpent lunged forward with dizzying speed, and it was only the quick wits of my wyvern that saved me from a one-way trip down the snake's throat.

Blaise dropped out of the sky like a comet and crashed talons-first into the basilisk. They crashed into the swamp with a roar. Blaise's jaws snapped for the basilisk's eyes. The serpent's tail lashed, taking down a full-grown spruce tree. I frantically worked my foot free.

With a shriek, Blaise was thrown from the basilisk. She landed in the mud, her fiery hide causing it to harden and cake beneath her hide. One foot ended up stuck in that suddenly dry mud, and the precious second it took her to yank it free was all the basilisk needed to coil up and lung, fangs bared.

"No!" My second fireball missed the beast's head, but the light was enough to make it falter. Blaise slapped her leathery wings down hard, taking her up just high enough that the serpent missed her. Blaise slammed down on its back, talons grabbing, then puncturing, the thick skin of the snake.

It reared with a scream. The massive body coiled in on itself, trying to dislodge the hot talons of my fire wyvern. In response, Blaise roared and lit herself on fire.

The basilisk's thrashing intensified. I finally got my foot free, and not a moment too soon. The serpent suddenly rolled, forcing Blaise into the mud less than a dozen paces from me. I jumped clear as Blaise's fire raged higher - then blinked out, smothered by the mud even as the heat of her hide hardened it.

The snake gave one last massive heave with its whole body and sent Blaise crashing into the fallen spruce tree. Smoke immediately started rising from the needles. Blaise was oblivious as she rolled to her feet and faced the basilisk.

The giant serpent coiled tight with a growling hiss; red eyes locked on Blaise, it summoned its magic and tried to smother her fire with its dark power.

I struggled to my feet. I knew this fight had to end, and quickly. I didn't know how long Blaise could fight the basilisk's magic. The forest was in danger of burning down around us. I couldn't let that happen.

It was risky, but I summoned my magic. Eyes closed, I pulled the fire within me up and up. I opened my eyes. And I-

"Sierra!"

My head jerked up so fast I nearly tipped backwards on my stool. Tracy caught my arm and kept me upright again.

"Jeez, girl," my best friend said. "That's the third time this week you've gone off to La La Land during Mr. Pickles' lecture. Why on earth have you been so distracted?"

I exhaled roughly, the tension in my muscles easing as my brain caught up to the fact that I was in science class, not out in the woods fighting a basilisk with a wyvern. "Where is Mr. Pickles?" I asked.

"He went to get the Bunsen burners." Tracy leaned over the lab table toward me. "Now spill it, girl. You were daydreaming about a certain guy, weren't you?"

"What guy would that be?" I genuinely had no idea.

Tracy rolled her big brown eyes. "Duh. The guest speaker we had Monday. The sexy Guardian Sean."

Ah. I looked down at my binder. "Well... yes and no," I admitted. "He's the cause, but he wasn't actually... involved."

"What do you mean?"

Thankfully, Mr. Pickles returned before I had to answer. I didn't know how to tell my best friend that I had been dreaming of a life as a WyvernRider. She wouldn't understand. I wasn't even sure I did.

The rest of class was question free as we focused on our experiment: lighting paper soaked in different liquid solutions on fire and noting our findings.

I was the one wielding the tongs while Tracy got to wield the pen. I picked up the fifth small scrap of paper and dipped it in another beaker of colorless liquid.

"Ethanol," Tracy informed me. "Be careful, this one is super-"

I had barely placed the paper within reach of the flame when it went up in a flash. It was so sudden that I jumped, and somehow, a spark jumped with me and landed on my open notebook. With no effort at all, the book caught fire.

"Shit!" Tracy leapt off her stool, snatched one of the beakers, and dumped it on my flaming notebook.

"Everything alright back there, girls?" Mr. Pickles asked from the front of the classroom.

"Yes, Mr. Pickles!" Tracy called, already pulling handfuls of paper towel off the roll. She bumped my shoulder, jolting me from my stupor. I quickly shut off the Bunsen burner and moved all the other beakers out of the way while Tracy mopped up the water.

She handed me my soaking wet notebook. "Never a dull moment, eh?" She grinned.

I gave a wan smile in return. "Yeah."

Maybe it was a good thing my daydream ended when it did. Fire really wasn't my element.