The world seemed to hold its breath.

  The chaotic fight on the ground—the frantic dodging of acid, the clash of steel, the shouting—faded into a distant, muffled hum. Every eye, mortal and reptilian, was fixed on the sky.

  Above us, the monologuing Ashdrake hung in the air, suspended by a sudden and violent case of indigestion. Its throat pulsed with a faint but rapidly intensifying multi-colored light that shone through the scales of its neck like a lantern in a paper bag. It made a choked, confused gurgling sound, its triumphant dive degrading into an uncontrolled, wobbling descent.

  It looked less like a fearsome apex predator and more like a man who had just swallowed a lit firecracker and was beginning to deeply, profoundly regret every life choice that had led him to this moment.

  The glow brightened. It shifted violently from red to blue to a dazzling, impossible green, illuminating the beast from the inside out. We could see the silhouette of its ribs. We could see the shadow of something flapping frantically inside its gullet.

  Elmsworth’s spell had sputtered into nothingness, his hands falling uselessly to his sides. His face, which had been a mask of frantic concentration, crumbled into an expression of pure, heart-wrenching anguish.

  “NUGGET!” he screamed, his voice a ragged, broken sound that was more terrible than any drake’s shriek. “HE ATE MY CHICKEN! YOU AERIAL-BOUND PHILISTINE! YOU UNEDUCATED BRUTE! HE WAS A SCHOLAR! A GENTLEMAN!”

  As Elmsworth began to deliver a frantic, tearful eulogy, the glowing drake lost all motor control. It careened through the sky, a silent, glittering comet of impending doom. It crashed directly into the last remaining healthy drake, which had been circling for another attack run.

  The impact was a sickening crunch of bone and tearing leather, tangling the two beasts in a knot of confused limbs and wings.

  For a split second, the two forms hung in the air, a ball of scales and claws.

  Then came a muffled, internal FOOM.

  The first drake exploded from the inside out.

  It was a silent, utterly spectacular detonation—a blossoming flower of gore, guts, and shimmering, multi-colored light that lit up the bruised sky. It wasn't just fire; it was a magical release of pent-up bio-arcane energy. It rained sparkles. It rained scales. It rained liver.

  It was the most beautiful and most disgusting firework I had ever seen.

  The second drake, crippled by the collision and now coated in the glittering remains of its companion, let out a single, pathetic shriek. It tumbled end over end, plummeting from the sky like a stone. It hit the ashen plains in the distance with a faint, final thud that vibrated through the soles of our boots.

  In the sudden, ringing silence, Elmsworth’s eulogy continued, now a heartbroken sob echoing off the iron road.

  “…HE HAD JUST MASTERED THE SEMIOTICS OF THEORETICAL ALCHEMY! GONE! ALL GONE, LIKE A CANDLE SNUFFED OUT IN THE CRUEL, INDIFFERENT GALE OF FATE! HE NEVER EVEN GOT TO PUBLISH HIS FINDINGS ON THE FLAMMABILITY OF GNOME HAIR!”

  For a long moment, the four of us and the one remaining wounded drake on the ground just stood there, frozen. We stared at the empty spot in the sky where a predator had just spontaneously ceased to exist in a cloud of confetti and blood.

  Faelar broke the silence. He threw his head back and let out a roar of pure, triumphant, disbelieving laughter.

  “HA! HA HA! THE CHICKEN EXPLODED! I KNEW HE WAS A HERO! I KNEW IT!”

  The wounded drake on the road, seeing its pack-mates vanish in a puff of poultry-powered magic, let out a desperate, furious hiss. It was cornered, injured, and fighting for its life. The shock wore off, replaced by the instinct to kill.

  It lunged at Faelar, its jaws snapping with renewed desperation.

  “He’s not dead yet!” I roared, snapping back to the immediate threat. “To me! Finish it!”

  Re-energized by the absurd victory, we converged on the last drake. The fight was no longer a desperate scramble for survival; it was a grim, bloody task of execution.

  The wounded creature was still incredibly dangerous. Its thrashing tail and snapping jaws forced us to work in a tight, coordinated rhythm.

  “Watch its tail!” I yelled as the heavy, scaled appendage swept across the iron road like a scythe, forcing me to leap backwards to avoid having my legs shattered.

  “I see it, lad!” Faelar roared back. He brought his axe down on the beast’s back, the blow landing with a dull thud on its thick hide. “It’s got less fight in it than that chicken did!”

  Liam reached for an arrow to capitalize on the distraction. His hand grasped empty air. He cursed, checking his quiver. Empty.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Out of ammo!” he hissed, his face twisting in frustration. “That’s it. I’m charging Greydon double for this mission.”

  He drew his daggers, the steel rasping against leather. He moved in, a blur of motion, darting in and out of the drake’s reach. His blades flashed as he struck at the creature’s wounded leg, trying to hamstring it.

  “It would go faster if it would just stand still!” Liam grunted, dodging a clumsy swipe of its claws that would have disemboweled him.

  “There is no sport in this,” Soul-Drinker complained from his belt, the voice dripping with aristocratic disdain in Liam’s mind. “A wounded animal? It’s pathetic. It’s beneath us. Finish it quickly so we can find a proper challenge worthy of my edge. I am bored, elf. Bored! Stab it in the eye! Or at least twist the blade when you hit!”

  “I’m working on it!” Liam hissed back at the dagger, stabbing the drake in the flank.

  Willow, who had partially recovered from her storm-summoning, saw the drake trying to turn on Liam. She thrust her hands out.

  “Hold, ground and vine!” she cried.

  The iron of the road was useless to her—it was dead, cold metal. But the cracks in the ancient slag were filled with ash and grit, and life is stubborn. Thin, tough, thorny weeds and vines snaked out from the fissures. They weren't the massive roots of the quarry, but they were enough.

  They wrapped around the drake’s hind legs, hindering its movement.

  The beast shrieked in fury, trying to pull free, snapping the smaller vines, but more grew to replace them.

  “Its leg! It’s tangled!” I shouted. “Faelar, draw its head left! Liam, the other leg, now!”

  Faelar bellowed and swung his axe not at the beast, but at the iron road just in front of its face. The deafening CLANG and shower of sparks drew its attention instantly.

  “Over here, you ugly handbag!”

  As the drake snapped at the dwarf, Liam darted in. His daggers blurred. He sliced through the tendons of its uninjured hind leg with surgical precision.

  The creature roared in pain and its back half collapsed, leaving it struggling, unable to stand properly.

  It thrashed, its head whipping around to bite Liam.

  “No you don't!” I shouted.

  I lunged forward. I put all my weight behind my spear, aiming for the soft scales under the jaw. I drove the steel head deep into the creature’s exposed throat.

  It shuddered. A final, wet gurgle escaped its maw. It slumped to the iron road and went still.

  Silence, heavy and final, fell on the road of black iron.

  It was a scene of utter devastation. The road was a ruin of acid pits, deep gouges from Faelar’s axe, and wide, dark pools of drake blood that hissed faintly against the metal.

  I stood panting, my arms shaking with exhaustion, leaning heavily on my spear. My shield arm felt like lead.

  Faelar was bent over, hands on his knees, his breath coming in great, shuddering gasps.

  “That…” he wheezed, “was… messy.”

  Liam was already wiping his daggers clean on the drake’s hide, his face a mask of weary professionalism. He looked at his empty quiver with genuine sadness.

  Willow stood with her eyes closed, her face pale, whispering an apology to the dead beast for using the vines to hurt it.

  But Elmsworth was still sobbing.

  “Oh, Nugget, my friend, my confidant,” he wept, stumbling towards the glittering pile of viscera that had rained down from the exploded drake.

  He fell to his knees in the gore. “A martyr to the cause of… of… well, I’m not entirely sure what the cause was, but you were a martyr to it nonetheless! Science weeps for you! The academy will know your name! I will name a star after you! Or perhaps a very explosive rune!”

  In the middle of his speech, a small, gore-covered, shimmering figure crawled out from under a particularly large piece of intestine.

  It was covered in blood, slime, and shimmering with a faint, multi-colored light. It looked like a nightmare.

  But it clucked.

  The chicken shook its head, sending a spray of drake blood flying. It let out a small, disoriented sound, and its color slowly returned to a normal, speckled brown.

  Elmsworth’s sobs cut off mid-wail. His eyes went wide behind his spectacles.

  “Nugget?” he whispered, his voice trembling.

  The chicken looked at him. She tilted her head. She clucked again, a sound that clearly communicated, “Why are you screaming? And where is the corn?”

  Then, she began calmly preening a piece of drake intestine from her wing.

  Elmsworth’s sobs turned into cries of joyous, tearful relief. He scrambled over and scooped the gore-covered chicken into his arms, hugging it tight. He didn't seem to mind the viscera that now coated his robes.

  “Oh, my brave, brilliant, indigestible friend! You have returned from the belly of the beast! You are victorious! You are un-metabolized!”

  We stood there, watching the tender reunion between a wizard and his poultry. The full, brain-breaking absurdity of what had just happened finally washed over us.

  “So…” Faelar said slowly, his voice full of a deep and profound awe. “The chicken is a hero! An exploding, un-eatable hero! I’ll never question the bird again. I might even salute it.”

  “Technically,” Liam corrected, walking over to the carcass to see if any arrowheads were salvageable, “the drake exploded. The chicken appears to be the detonator. And, alarmingly, reusable. Which raises several questions about poultry physics.”

  “He is not a detonator!” Elmsworth sniffed, cradling the bird protectively. “He is a Bio-Arcane Catalyst with a trans-dimensional, corporeal reconstitution mechanism! It is obvious! When faced with imminent digestive annihilation, he simply shifts his physical form into a parallel energy state, triggering a catastrophic release of the ambient magical energy within the hostile organism, and then re-manifests at the point of detonation! It’s perfectly logical physics!”

  “So…” Faelar scratched his beard. “Magic explosion chicken.”

  “Yes!” Elmsworth cried. “If you must use such reductive terminology!”

  I looked at the carnage around us. I looked at the wizard lovingly cleaning viscera off his dimension-hopping chicken. I looked at the long, dark, and now terrifyingly quiet road ahead.

  My body ached. My armor was pitted with acid burns. We were out of food, out of arrows, and standing in the open.

  “Alright,” I said, my voice weary beyond its years as I sheathed my sword. “Let’s get off this road. Before the smell brings every scavenger in ten miles. And before something else decides to eat the chicken. I don't think the universe can handle another explosion like that today.”

  Willow stumbled, almost falling. I caught her arm.

  “I’ve got you,” I said.

  She nodded weakly. “I’m okay. Just… tired. The road is so hard to talk to.”

  “Liam, help Faelar,” I ordered. “We need to find shelter. Real shelter.”

  Liam moved to Faelar’s side. The dwarf looked like he was about to tip over.

  “Come on, you noisy rock,” Liam grunted, putting Faelar’s arm over his shoulder. “Let’s find a hole to hide in.”

  “I could have taken ‘em,” Faelar mumbled, leaning heavily on the elf. “Just needed… a bit more… leverage.”

  We limped away from the scene of our victory, leaving the smoking craters and the broken bodies of the drakes to the wind and the ash.