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<pre>The Rakash hits the ground with a grunt and hisses as she lands awkwardly, slipping on the wet stones on the waterfall’s edge. She scrambles to her feet, silently berating herself for once again being caught distracted by the awesome spectacle in the clear morning skies above. The wyvern pumps the air in victory and howls gleefully, blocking out the pre-dawn blush of first light as it climbs back into the sky for another pass. 

Abyssally dark eyes squint through the eyeholes of the golden warrior mask she wears, the bright specks of stars eddying gently across her void-dark gaze in patterns and constellations that are starkly missing from the sky above. She traces the stylized butterfly tattoo on her palm with her thumb in a measured motion, silently invoking the spell within as she stares down the scaled creature hurtling towards her. With a snarl and a raised hand, she finalizes the spell pattern and pushes golden energy into it in warping, unnatural skeins. 

She only has a moment to look dismayed as her hand is destroyed in a wash of blue-black flame half a heartbeat before the shrieking wyvern bowls her over again with a gout of fire, raking her back with ichor-stained claws as she scrabbles behind the dubious cover of a low boulder, cursing creatively.  

“Enelne’s exquisite ecdysis, that hurts.” The little cleric peers up at the aerial figures grimly marching across the sky as she cradles her ruined hand and applies a handful of herbal concoctions to the charred limb.  She shakes the stump towards the implacable forms. “For Thee, O’ Gods, for Thee! Always for Thee!” 

Howling a defiant paean that rings off the mountain’s peak as the healing itch grows under her skin, she surges to her feet and summons white-hot coils of lava with the stomp of a booted foot, sending serpentine strands of Ushnish’s blessed molten fury straight into the teeth of the diving wyvern. 

It is the beast’s turn to look dismayed for the briefest of moments before lash after lash of searing lava cuts through its scaled hide like a hot knife through butter. Smoking pieces of wyvern continue to rain from the sky as the grim-faced Rakash leaves the carcass twitching on the mountainside behind her, eyes once more on the overly-crowded yet strangely empty skies.