Tiggy lifted himself slowly.
I pushed myself up off Ryan.
Ryan stood, knees popping, brushing off the seat of his trousers.
I gave it one more moment.
Still nothing.
“Okay,” I said, sure we were fine. “Maybe it’s not even there. This was probably all for nothing. We should—”
The snake dragon monster thing roared, and then that was the loudest thing in the world.
“—run as fast as we possibly can,” I squeaked.
And then the ground started to shake beneath our feet, the trees shuddering, the flowers swaying back and forth. The birds took to their wings, flying up and circling overhead.
Tiggy didn’t even hesitate. He scooped up Ryan and me in his arms and took great bounding steps toward the front of the dome. My hands were on his shoulders as I stared behind us, tree limbs slapping against my back and neck as Tiggy grunted. Ryan was shouting something, but I was focused on the hole as it got farther and farther away. There was another roar that echoed through the dome, and Tiggy stumbled as the ground cracked beneath his feet. We pitched forward dangerously, and for a panicked second, I thought we’d go crashing down, but Tiggy caught himself at the last second, spinning out of the way to dodge a falling tree, clutching us tightly.
“Holy shit!” Ryan cried, and I couldn’t even be bothered to tell him to think of the children, because holy shit was right. “We have to get out of here!”
“Trying,” Tiggy growled. “Next time, you carry me!”
“Well try harder! You can’t just—”
Everything fell away after that, like a veil had dropped over the world. The colors were softer, the sounds muted. Tiggy and Ryan continued to bicker, but it wasn’t important. It was background noise. I could hear the breaths I took, the shift of the magic in the air. It was green and gold and red, and it was everywhere. It was in the trees, the flowers, the brush, everything. There was a concentration of it in this dome, and the hook in my brain gave a sickening pull, a wave of nausea rolling through me. We were going the wrong way. We were going the wrong way. We were going the wrong—
Wizard, it whispered, clear as day. Wizard.
I am coming.
“Oh no,” I whispered.
The dragon burst from the hole in the floor of the dome in a crumbling, forgotten castle. It was thinner than I thought it’d be, but far longer. Its underbelly was white, the scales on its back and sides a fiery red that glittered in the beams of the sun, causing fractals of light to shoot off around the dome. It had no legs, and its wings were paper-thin, flapping almost like an insect’s, quick and light. Its head was hooded like a snake’s, with sharp white spikes jutting out down the sides toward its neck. The same spikes ran up its head toward its blunt snout. It was completely out of the hole when its head jerked toward us, black eyes blinking. Its mouth opened as it hissed, forked tongue flicking out between rows of teeth that ended with two gigantic fangs that unfurled from the top.
In other words, it was a fucking nightmare, and I wanted to be anywhere but where I was.
“Sweet molasses,” I managed to say.
“And furthermore, you weigh like eight times more than I do. I couldn’t
even carry you if I—holy gods that is a giant snake!”
If we lived through this, I was going to give Ryan so much shit for the way he’d shrieked that.
Jekhipe curled in the air, bringing up its body underneath it, wings flapping furiously. The hood on its head flared out, the spikes rattling against each other as it shook. It opened its mouth again and roared, a sound that felt like it was vibrating into my bones.
“We’re so fucking screwed,” I whispered.
Jekhipe jerked forward, lightning quick, body hurtling toward us.
“We’re so fucking screwed!” I screamed.
“Talk to it!” Ryan shouted at me.
“You talk to it!”
“I’m not a godsdamned wizard!”