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A noise caused the Dragon to lift her head and sniff the air around her.
The clearing had seemed safe and inviting at first when she had landed in it under the height of the sun for a nap. Yet now in the fading light, the trees loomed large above her. The wind whistled ominously through their boughs with an eerie whisper.
Pushing herself up into a low crouch, the Dragon started to unfurl her emerald wings when all of a sudden a creature leaped at her from a nearby tree.
As it sailed towards her, a strange sticky substance streamed from behind it. It landed on her with eight pointed legs, each poking her roughly as it started scurrying over her. It dragged the sticky strand over her right wing and shoulder and down her left side.
Shaking herself out of her shock, the Dragon proceeded to stand further, opening her jaws to show a hint of fire. She worried about loosing a torrent though, it would do no good to burn the forest down if she wished to nap here again.
Before she could break the first strand though, several more of the chittering eight legged creatures with far too many eyes jumped from other trees or scurried out of bushes along the edges of the clearing, and rushed to entrap her with more strands.
Roaring, she tried to roll and spread her wings, only to find herself stuck in the sticky web. As one of the creatures scuttled past her head, she roared again and reached forward to bite it, but it merely stepped out of her reach and clicked its mandibles at her.
Unable to bear the indignity any longer, she opened her maw and let loose a torrent of flame, scorching several of the cowardly creatures and setting a swath of the surrounding clearing on fire.
Lamenting the loss of her new found napping spot the Dragon arched her back and roared again as she strained against the layer of webbing that continued to hold her down.
The remaining creatures chittered loudly amongst themselves and set about trying to secure the remaining webbing and keep her held down.
She did not know their end goal, but she refused to stay here and let herself become lunch to such lowly beings.
Suddenly a shadow zipped overhead and magic rained down from above.
The barrage caused the scuttling scurrying things to turn their tailless backs and scatter into the woods as quickly as they'd come.
And then the shadow descended.
It was a pesky human on one of those flying branches, and with a flick of the twig in his hand, she was freed from the webbing and the surrounding fires were put out.
As she stood up fully, the Dragon turned her head to glare at the human.
Green eyes stared back at her from under a mess of dark brown hair.
A shiver overcame her as she couldn’t quite get rid of the feeling of the creatures skittering over her scales.
She felt weak.
She hated it.
She refocused her glare onto the human, who had the audacity to grin at her. She had not needed its help to defeat the creepy crawling creatures, she was a dragon. She was perfectly capable of defeating such lowly beasts. Even if the human’s intervention was timely, she couldn’t simply let it stand.
She puffed her chest up and let out a roar, directly into the human’s face.
Surprisingly, he didn’t even flinch.
The audacity of the human truly was galling, yet nonetheless she decided she would not eat this human. He had helped her after all.
So with a huff and a puff of smoke she pulled back, letting the human live as she stretched her verdant wings high and brought them down in a powerful stroke as she launched herself into the air and left the clearing and its horrific horde of vile vermin behind.