The she-demon narrowed her eyes and turned slightly, shifting her body, to regard Ere more closely.
“Clever, clever human,” she practically purred. “You are making me reconsider killing you.”
“Why not Arthur, poor fellow?” Ere asked. “Isn’t he Merlin’s spawn as well?”
At that, Guinevere threw her head back and laughed.
Which was when Wolfe glimpsed the object in the middle of her chest, surrounded by a ring of smaller scales, as if it had been welded there.
A large, oval, citrine gem. The size of a dragon’s eye.
“Is that what you think?” Guinevere trilled, thoroughly amused.
“Arthur is the full-blooded son of Uther and Igraine. He is nothing special, just a human warlord with a goodly sized sword. And heir to Uther’s throne. One must not forget that. I had to go to some lengths to cast the right spell on him for myself.”
Wolfe flicked his head subtly at Sorin. The warrior looked where he looked and saw the same, his eyes narrowing in comprehension.
That was Guinevere’s weakness, Wolfe was certain of it.
If they could somehow carve it from her chest…
The flesh beneath was unprotected. And because the eye was embedded there forcefully, not a natural part of her outer armor of scales, it would be the one place she was most vulnerable to attack.
Thus decided, they took concerted action, Sorin taking two bounds to the left, as if he was attacking her flank, distracting Guinevere’s eye, while Wolfe leapt for the chest.
For a gigantic reptile, she moved fast. Immediately rounding on them with a roar, her tail whipping and smashing its spiky club down into the water, making Sorin jump out of the way, while her monstrous jaws snapped at Wolfe, forcing him to dive to the side.
Just when the dragon opened its great maw to crunch him in two, it jerked its head suddenly back with a shriek.
Rui had stabbed her long sword into the back of its neck where it couldn’t reach.
While it thrashed and howled, trying to buck Rui off, Wolfe got up and charged again at its chest.
Sorin was already climbing onto its side, headed toward the same destination.
Guinevere snapped and shook, trying to throw off her attackers.
Rui hung on to her sword, embedded hilt-deep in the dragon’s neck. Sorin leapt off the side to grasp one of her long tendrils, using it to swing onto its neck, and dug into the thinner scale covering her throat with his dagger.
Wolfe did the same, grabbing a flailing tentacle to swing himself toward her chest.
Mid-air, he let go of his line to grasp his sword with both hands, discarding his dagger in the water below. He positioned the sword tip down to drive into the dragon’s chest.
But the blade broke upon impact, and Wolfe fell into the pool between her foreclaws.
Guinevere laughed ominously and bucked with renewed strength, succeeding this time in throwing both Rui and Sorin off as well.
“Fools! That dagger and sword won’t work on me!” she howled.
“I am the one who gifted them to you, dragon-slayer. I am the one who imbued them with magic. To killmymonsters and give the stupid humans a sense of control, as if they had hope of winning against our Kind. And to killthisdragon. Merlin. But never me. It is my magic, after all. You cannot kill me with it.”
Fuck!
Wolfe tossed the useless, broken sword away, but refused to back down. He picked up the discarded dagger and ran toward the white dragon’s chest again, trying to catch another whisker.
But she was ready for him. She batted him effortlessly away with a mild swing of her foreclaw, tossing him clear across the cavern to the opposite wall.
He hit the stone with a resounding crack, his shoulder dislocating in the process, his head ringing from the bash against the wall.