Young Writers Society

Ready, ready, get bloody on with it.

The trees were still crashing around in the distance, and Rayden was. Well, Rayden was probably very close to a panic attack.

He'd also been very bloody useless in the past couple of minutes. Not that he minded the uselessness. Most of the people around him had already offered up risky ideas that put themselves in danger, but no, that kind of thing was not Rayden's scene. He liked being alive, thank you very much.

He concentrated on squeezing in as close to the group as he could, but as far away from impact area - that is, Lex - as possible.

As Dae got ready to charge, Rayden braced himself. He could see the others holding their breaths as well.

He wondered if he could close his eyes, or would that make him look too chicken? He berated himself mentally, Get a grip on yourself, Ray. He could do this, he could do this, he would do this and that too with all the bravado of a book-hero....

And as Dae charged, Rayden squeezed his eyes shut, and prayed to gods he didn't even believe in.

As Dae's smaller eastern dragon body shimmered and grew into his much larger hydra one, he found himself automatically curling up into a ball. He didn't have time to puzzle over that, as all the momentum he had gained during his flight as the eastern dragon carried over into his hydra form.

He began to worry about Lex. Having a five foot ball of hydra flying at you mustn't be a wonderful sight to behold. Though it would pale in comparison to being hit by said ball of hydra; he could tell from the feeling of the impact that in this zero gravity environment, that the group might just fly farther than he had anticipated.

He took a deep breath as he saw Dae's form shift.

I know you can't hear me, Télos, but I hope your magic can protect me, Lex thought. This idea was marginally better than Kiran's idea - the only benefit was that they had a higher chance of all surviving. But survival wasn't the only thing he had to worry about. There was a very high chance that he could get hurt, and he didn't have any healing potions on him. If he got injured badly, he could...

No, he wasn't going to think about it.

He let out the breath he had been holding and prepared to get hit.

Oop. They were going ahead with this plan. And it sounded like Dae was flying right for them (not that Aegeas was going to open his eyes to look).

Aegeas gripped Lex's hand as hard as he could, gritting his teeth and bracing for impact.

It was like getting hit by a small boulder. Dae winced at the feeling of the impact, but he had no doubt Lex was getting the worse end of this deal. He'd have to find something to make it up to him later.

He managed to aim himself enough that it hit Lex in the chest, rather than someplace else that would break easily. Fortunately, his hydra didn't have any sharp, pokey bits, so that wouldn't be a problem. Nonetheless, he hit Lex with enough force to propel the entire group at a fairly decent speed...he would have to find Lex something later on to ask for forgiveness.

Getting hit by a dragon hurt.

Lex had expected pain, but he hadn't expected the suddenness of it. He had seen Dae coming - he had known that there was only a matter of seconds before impact. But then Dae had made contact, and his attention alternated between how much his chest (even when protected by the armor) hurt and how they were easily clearing the rest of the forest.

Before he knew it, he was feeling another kind of pain: the pain of hitting the ground. It wasn't as sudden or from as high of a height as the trees had been falling. Gravity had started to return to normal the farther they got from the center of the forest. But there was still an awkward few inches that they fell from, and he was sure the fall made everyone feel a little sore.

The group fell to the ground in one big heap, Lex halfway underneath it and halfway out.

He let out a groan and rested his head back on the ground after trying to get a better look at the pile of people on top of his legs.

In retrospect, the pain didn't hurt too much - it hurt just the same as when he had first been sparring with Aleks like this.

Kiran fell differently from the others. Being made of sky, and having finally joined it for the first time in years, it was unwilling to let her go immediately. She fell sort of slowly, as though someone had put her in slow motion, then all at once as the sky gave her up.

"Let's do that again," she said, even as she groaned and rubbed her sore, well, everything.

Despite the pain shooting up his spine, despite the tumble of bodies he was buried in, despite everything- Rayden began to laugh. Hysterically.

Great, he thought. I've finally gone barmy.

He rolled over on the grass and lay there, looking up at the unfamiliar skyline. He couldn't tell what time it was, which was a first. He closed his eyes and wished that when he opened them again, he would be back in his pastel-gray city, busy and humming; that instead of the menacingly soft shrubbery beneath him, he'd feel gravel cutting into his shoulder blades. He wanted to smell the stink of the alleyways he'd gotten used to a long time ago, he wnated, wanted, wanted....

Hunger. It gnawed at him. When was the last time he'd eaten? This morning? No, he'd skipped it in favor of some pick pocketing. Last evening, then. How long had he been here? How much longer?

He could feel the sharp clenching of his stomach, a feeling he hadn't had since he learned to make money. He smiled - a scary, empty thing, and stood up on his feet, ignoring the way his head pulsed. He'd gotten through worse. He would get through this too.

"Onward to Civilization, then?"

As Dara wormed herself out of the body heap, her heart still caught in her throat, she believed that was quite possibly the dumbest idea she’d ever agreed to. There were several steps in that physics experiment in which they could have died horrifically. Her black hair strangled her face and pulled under the weight of others; if any of her companions were from Earth as some of them claimed to be, they might have jumped at her probable likeness to the girl from The Ring. She just about had the internal deadness for it right now – too dead to reply to either Kiran or Rayden.

After manoeuvring in a strange amount of gravity and being propelled violently across said gravity, Dara felt the right to justify her wobbly rise to her feet. She stood still for a few high-adrenaline moments, hands on knees, remembering how to breathe. For once she was glad her brother wasn’t with her to experience all this.

The thought pulled Dara’s head sharply towards Lex, checking and subtlety hoping to see that he’d come out in one piece. The more Dara observed Lex, the more he reminded her of her brother. They were both selfless and thoughtful, to the point of making others around them stupidly worry if they were okay.

“Oi, Lex,” Dara started, but her words didn’t know where else to go. A pause later she settled on saying, “Are you alright?”

"I think I am," he said. He tried to sit up, but then thought better of it and decided to lay back down. He would wait for everyone to get up first; it would make it easier to free his legs and catch his breath. "I'm just a little sore-"

He faltered, having moved enough to get a good look at Dara's current appearance. She looked like someone out of a horror movie with her wobbly posture and hair sticking to her face. He might have jumped - he could imagine Aleks calling him a wimp like he always used to - at the sight, but he was too buried underneath everyone to muster the strength.

Helenah squirmed out of the bundle of people and sighed. "Gosh, that was..." she coughed. "Interesting."

Ruby.

She checked her pocket and was relieved to see her animal best friend shuddering. Helenah took the bird out. Ruby's beak was slightly chipped. That might make it hard for the poor bird to eat. Helenah stroked Ruby's head, giving her comfort. "My wing." Ruby said softly, her voice like bells chiming in a soft breeze. "Broken." she said, her head drooping.

"Um, does anyone know how to heal a broken wing?" Helenah asked the group.

Nope, Aegeas didn't know how to heal anyone. Even if he did, he was more preoccupied with lying face-down, breathing into the grass, and feeling very relieved that he didn't have to fly anymore. Even if his landing had been a bit rough, which probably explained why he felt so sore.

"I don't," Lex said from his spot on the ground. "I'm sorry. Maybe we can find a healing-"

He caught himself mid-sentence, suddenly remembering that not everywhere had the same resources that Minecraftia did - something that was especially clear after the whole floating forest incident.

"I've fixed broken noses before," Rayden offered. "Also, one of my friend's little finger broke once. I helped set it."

You learned to do these things early in your life. Rayden remembered the painful thrum along his nose, covered in blood. He'd been 14, and trying to outrun some guards. He ran into a pole. Hard. Later, he stood in a public toilet. Feeling along the cartilage, he'd looked into the mirror, closed his eyes, and twisted, letting instinct take over.

Sharp pain shot up his face and he lost feeling for a second or two before the world righted itself. His nose was okay. After that, he became the official bone setter of his loot-gang.

Rayden tentatively approached the bird, a little afraid. He'd never been responsible for something so fragile before. Ruby, Helenah had called her. Hesitantly, he asked Helenah, "May I look?"

Dae finally managed to catch up, managing a relatively graceful landing as he shifted from a small dragon to a below average size human. He, of course, was the least injured by the unorthodox plan; he had aimed himself relatively well as some feeling took over him at the last second, meaning that his back had been the thing to hit Lex. His scales had taken most of the impact, and he had only a bit of soreness to deal with.

Looking over the group, and seeing all the varying states of pain, he couldn't help but feel guilty. However he pushed that feeling aside for now, looking around to see if there was any way he could help. He didn't really have any forms capable of healing, nor did he know how one would go about dealing with anything from soreness to broken bones, but he nonetheless wanted to feel helpful in a way that didn't include ramming into anyone else.