One. It is minute thirty of my hunt. I’ve tracked and wounded an Anjanath, a sort of pink tyrannosaurus rex with smoke and flame wisping from its maw, to the very highest point in the Ancient Forest, a nest built on top of a clearing made of naturally-woven branches, leaves, and ivy.

I’d first found it stomping down a trail in the lowest depths of the woods, frightening away other, smaller creatures with its heavy strides. I’d wounded it there, dodging fire, tooth, and claw, and striking back with my switch axe, a sort of cleaver that stores up energy and can transform into an elementally charged great sword.

It did not falter from my blows, but I worked it down, bit by bit, and I eventually watched it limp erratically up the heavy boughs that make up the forest’s network of pathways, and to what I presumed was its home: A matted bed of flora, brittle bones from past meals, a few eggs.

I approached its resting body calmly, raised my blade, and heard the roar from above as a dragon arrived. It came with a speed that wasn’t meant for my eyes, only for achieving its goal: the expulsion of Anjanath from its home.

And that expulsion was quick. In one motion, as the creature I was hunting rose from its slumber, the dragon sunk its claws into its side and lifted it up into the air. I expected a fight, maybe because Anjanath had given me one. Instead, there was only a struggle. It writhed and screamed in the dragon’s grip, and I found myself wishing it would slip away. Instead, it was flicked off the edge, like a napkin or a toothpick, back to the base of the forest.

I’d carve it for parts a few minutes later.