The dragon's body writhed among the clouds, its golden scales refracting a blinding light under the gray-white sky.
The vines entwined around its right wing snapped one by one, the broken vines falling from the sky like dead snakes, gouging deep trenches into the ground.
But more vines surged from the space behind Vera, layer upon layer, trapping it like a spider's web.
Audric halted all movements, hovering mid-air, as golden light exploded from within him like a sun plummeting to the ground.
The vines coiled around him began to wither in the light, not scorched but deprived of life force by some higher power.
The leaves curled, the vines shriveled, turning from green to withered yellow, from withered yellow to gray-white, and finally disintegrating into powder, scattered by the wind.
