Chase looked coldly at the droid. The droid looked back in the cold way only a being of steel and silicon could.
"Don't you even care about any of those people?" Chase yelled in angry sadness, pointing at the bubbling crater where the ship had slipped into the magma moments earlier.
"I am not programmed to care, Chase," the Assassin Droid stated flatly, "but if I was, I'm fairly sure they wouldn't have wanted you to escape the wreckage only to die out here. It seems... illogical."
Chase sighed. The droid was right. There would be time for mourning later. He shook his
head. "Lucky?"
"Deceased. Dove into the crater chasing his pack of cigarettes when he dropped them. Said something about 'life without nicotine is not life at all' before making a desperate grab at them, in which he lost his balance."
"Damn rabbit," Chase sighed.
Dan'Tiree let out a sad smile, "you always told him those things would kill him." Chase snorted a brief bit of laughter.
"And he hated it when I was right."
"Please, humans," the droid spoke in an agitated tone, "we must leave this place. We are
quite in the open here."
"Alright. Let's go."
The trio slowly headed down the mountain, picking their path carefully from the limited options left by the terrain. After several hours of descent, the three found a path that led the rest of the way down into a pass, and opted to use it in hopes that it led to civilization, or at
least shelter.
During the hours that passed on their journey, Chase, Dan'Tiree and Gramps noted pterydactyls occasionally flying by, beating their leathery wings loudly, and loud roars that made even the unfeeling droid watch his back. The air around them was sweltering, as both the volcano and the climate were totally unforgiving to anyone travelling through.
Another fluttering sound overhead was heard. The three assumed it was merely another pterodactyl, until the source of the fluttering landed in front of them with a hideous shrieking roar. A dragon, but it didn't look entirely like a dragon. The dragon looked as if it had been partially incinerated but had survived, and still burned in certain places. The beast looked down upon its prey briefly before letting out a gout of flame that narrowly missed Dan'Tiree as all three dove out of its way.
Chase Jericho raised his blaster pistol, leveled it at the head of the beast, and was about to
fire when a hideous screech from the dragon caused him to wince and his aim to deviate. The shot barely glanced off of a singed scale on the back of the beast, causing it to yell in pain and bellow a challenge at the smuggler. Chase prepared to fire again, but realized that dodging
the dragon diving at him through the air was more important, and barely escaped the impact zone as the dragon landed on the ground, stomping angrily.
Unaware of the locations of their companions, the three began to warily move around the dragon, trying to find some way to make their escape. Chase aimed his weapon, but knew that the beast was smart enough to know what the blaster pistol was, and he would have to
wait until the flaming monster had averted its attention to get a legitmate shot off. None of them noticed the others until they had closed to within several feet of each other. At that moment, during the instant that they realized they had made the mistake of bunching up, all
three of them were sure they saw the mostrosity smile as it leapt into the air.
Dan'Tiree and Chase lept desperately in opposite directions. The droid was not so lucky. Looking up as the dragon began to drive down to the ground, Gramps said nothing, knowing it would do no good, and accepted his fate as the dragon stomped him into the ground, metal
cracking and shattering under the immense weight of the flaming beast.
Chase got up and looked around, then noticed, to his horror, that Dan'Tiree was injured.
In the dive, she didn't have time to look at where she was diving to, and had struck her head on a large rock, knocking herself unconscious. As the dragon snorted smoke and looked fiendishly at Dan'Tiree's prone form, Chase went into a frenzy, firing wildly at the dragon. The
one shot that hit the beast fully caused it to rear back in pain and anger. Glaring at Chase, the dragon noticed, that for a brief instant, the smuggler's eyes darted in fear and concern to his fallen fiancé. The dragon grinned sadistically, and before Chase could even scream in fear from what he knew the dragon had learned, the massive beast turned it's head and incinerated Dan'Tiree where she lay, leaving nothing more than a pile of burned ash as Chase yowled in sorrow, firing blast after blast at the monster.
The dragon, angered and now noticably damaged by the blaster fire, turned its attention to the nuisance with the gun. Bellowing a roaring challenge at Chase, who had frozen with terror watching the beast now, the flaming dragon stomped forward. Chase watched in horror as he fired again, causing the monster to wince in pain, but shrug off a wound that would kill many beasts of even this size. The dragon breathed in deeply, preparing to remove
Chase from the mortal coil with a single, flaming breath, but stopped suddenly and whirled around as both he and his quarry heard a noise from behind the dragon.
"Gnarl smash!!!"
The dragon turned around to meet his new foe, but wasn't prepared for the attack, and was knocked violently onto its back. Chase watched in horror and awe as a huge stone being, manlike in stance and shape, but huge and made of what appeared to be solid granite rammed
its shoulder into the dragon. The dragon hopped to its feet and launched a counter attack, slamming its clawed hand into the chest of the stone giant, knocking it back. The golem staggered for a moment, then retaliated with another punch, but the now ready dragon dodged the clumsy blow deftly. The dragon began to take to the air when suddenly a force from the side caused it to fall to the ground again.
The dragon turned to face Chase, who had since regained his senses and was firing again. The dragon moved about quickly, ruining the smuggler's aim, but causing him to once again forget about the golem, who landed his next punch into the side of the flaming beast.
Bellowing in pain, the dragon fell back rapidly, and before either the golem or Chase could
follow or fight further, took to the air and flew away. Chase fired several shots at the retreating beast in a futile manner, but all for naught as the dragon escaped to lick its wounds.
Chase realized, however, that he had been rescued from one peril by another, as the huge granite man now lumbered toward him intently.