My sudden freefall swiftly put a significant amount of distance between me and the dragon. Now, however, I had a new problem. With a fall from such a height, I would crash into the ground at a speed of 142 kilometers per hour. A car traveling down the highway at a dangerous speed moved that fast.

  When my body had fallen half of the distance to the ground, I frantically reactivated the [Fly] spell. I stopped accelerating downward, but my velocity remained unchanged. My body twisted as I interposed my staff between myself and the ground. Typically, I cast [Gust] through my wand. At that moment, however, I needed as much power in that spell as possible.

  “Ventus!” I shouted, and a powerful gust of wind began slowing my fall.

  Despite my best efforts, I continued to fall toward the ground at a fast rate. The buildings of Etron rose up to meet me, and I could see the miniscule forms of Haydith and David resolve into focus from the undifferentiated tapestry of the city below. At the last second, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to stop my momentum completely before I reached the ground, so I lifted my arms up to protect my head.

  I struck the ground at the speed of a fast jogger. With my weak constitution, it was probably enough to deal a few points of damage. More important than the damage, however, was the fact that I was able to maintain focus on the [Fly] spell.

  “Haydith!” I shouted as I blinked the blurriness out of my eyes. “Get ready!”

  My hand reached upward, and I shot a bright cone of flame in the dragon’s direction. There was no chance for such an attack to actually damage the dragon, but it would certainly be enough to catch its attention.

  The great black dragon screeched like a banshee as it descended in a wide semicircle. It could have followed me in my dive, of course, but it didn’t want me dead enough to threaten its own health.

  I used a weakened [Gust] spell to rotate my body vertically and push my feet against the ground. Less than three meters to my right, five large barrels sat. All told, there must have been more than a ton of TNT in those barrels. I had already done the calculations. I knew it would be enough to take out a dragon, so it would certainly be enough to kill me at that range. All it took was a little spark.

  Like a bird of prey diving on a rabbit, the dragon flew toward me. It descended beneath the buildings with four sets of talons posed to strike. I stood there, unmoving, as the dragon got close enough for me to see its eyes in detail: two yellow slitted pupils suspended in pure black irises.

  Then, the beast stopped. The immense momentum of the ten-ton dragon flying at the speed of a car - which seemed unstoppable a moment before - was suddenly halted.

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  I didn’t have enough time to breathe a sigh of relief and thank Nyx for my safety, though I wanted to. I looked to my left and saw Haydith standing a meter away. At the time, I hadn’t noticed, but she was in just as much danger as I was.

  Without hesitation, she pushed off the ground and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I could feel her weight against mine, and her fearful breaths brushed against the skin on the back of my neck. The twin urges - Eros and Thanatos, life and death - pulsed in my mind. Death loomed over me like a sword suspended on a thread of spider silk, yet I was exhilarated.

  Air escaped through clenched teeth as I summoned a spark of Hellfire within my bubble of stable space and time. The flame crackled and burned like any other. Without outside interference, it would burn eternally.

  A conjured gust of wind blew me and Haydith a few feet away from the dragon. As we fell back, I saw as the mote of Hellfire froze in place. I turned my head to see if David had been caught in the [Time Stop]. As I looked, I saw a blur of movement as he took off into the air.

  Good, he didn’t need to be saved. Mentally, I sent the command for the frozen Hellfire mote to expand at an explosive rate and eject as much fire as possible. Strangely, I could feel as some of my mana was expended in the effort, yet the Hellfire spark remained unchanged.

  The spark must have received my message. Actually, when I thought about it, it made some sense. I could still see when under the effects of [Time Stop], so time still had to be moving outside of my bubble. If my message to the spark traveled at the speed of light, it would still receive the message instantaneously, even if time was moving at 0.001% its normal speed.

  I pointed my wand at the ground, and we shot up into the sky. It would have been impossible for me to carry Haydith under normal circumstances. In zero gravity, it was easy. I didn’t focus on getting to a minimum safe distance. I just accelerated upward as fast as I could, putting as much distance between us and the dragon as possible.

  There was an echoing boom from somewhere behind me, and I rotated my wand to slow my acceleration. Looking down, I realized I was so high up in the air that I could see the entirety of Etron spread out beneath me. The whole city was contained within a massive circular wall. From that altitude, the city looked like a puddle of gray within a sea of green.

  “Did we get it?” Haydith asked.

  I looked around, fearing that I would see an enraged dragon charging toward us, but all I saw was David’s slowly-approaching form.

  “I don’t know,” I said, sighing. Five explosive barrels would be enough to deal with a dragon theoretically, but the science of explosions was fickle. If the barrels had been oriented in the wrong way or if the compound within was suboptimal, it could cause the explosive to be much less effective.

  “Hey!” David shouted out to us. “Let’s come down! I can’t hold this spell for very long!”

  We descended back to the ground, slowly approaching the smoldering city block where I had set the ambush. The scene was eerily similar to that of the aftermath of a modern drone strike. Well, ultimately, it was the same method of destruction.

  David and I touched down on the outskirts of the devastated section of the city. As I looked, the smoke cleared enough for me to see through. There, buried underneath a section of collapsed building, was the torn cadaver of the adult black dragon. Its wing had been torn off, and one half of its skull had been flayed down to the bone.

  “Holy shit,” David swore. “It actually worked.”