Friday Fanfic

Buffy the Dragon Slayer

(An obvious continuation of last week's story)

Chapter Eighteen-Beta

Buffy grabbed Querida's arm in time to keep her from stabbing her with the crossbow bolt -- but not in time to enable her to save Lady Isabel.

Which is just as well since Lady Isabel had already summoned her flames against her two female attackers and there was no way Buffy could interfere without getting burned herself.

Nevertheless, Querida kept trying to stab her with the crossbow bolt, only to stop when Buffy finally broke her arm.

Then Querida tried to use her other hand to stab Buffy with a crossbow bolt.

"Please stop this," Buffy said. "I don't want to kill you, Querida."

"But I want to kill you," said Querida.

Buffy sighed and broke Querida's other arm, only to note that Querida was now crawling in her direction and attempting to bite her feet.

At the same time, Buffy heard the sounds of someone running up behind her. She turned in time to see Warden Meers running at her with a drawn dagger -- and out of instinct, she hit him. Hard.

As Warden collapsed, Querida again tried to bite Buffy on the foot. But this time Buffy just sighed and stomped on Querida's head until she finally ceased to move.

When she turned to check on Lady Isabel, Buffy noticed that the two women Warden had sicced on her were now aflame and no longer in a position to harm anyone. Unfortunately, much of the inn was on fire too. Buffy reached for a loose towel and started trying to smother the fire.

But before she could get too far, two people -- an one-armed man and a dark-haired woman -- entered the inn and aimed yet another crossbow in her direction.

"Give it up, Slayer!" cried the woman. "As of now, you are being permanently terminated."

"Funny that you'd say that," said Lady Isabel. "I was about to say the same thing."

And before the two newcomers could say anything more, Lady Isabel unleashed yet another wave of flame in their direction.

xxx

"You killed them!" cried Buffy.

"Of course I did," said Lady Isabel. "I had no choice. Now if you excuse me, I need to go kill that dragon."

"Wait," said Buffy. "You're going to kill the dragon?"

"Yes, of course," said Lady Isabel. "You don't honestly think I went through all that for nothing, did you? Besides, someone needs to stop this fire and since I tend to be better at starting fires than stopping fires --"

"No, wait," said Buffy. "I thought I was supposed to kill the dragon."

"Well, maybe next time you could," said Lady Isabel. "But tonight's it's my turn. If you want, you can consider yourself to be -- oh, what's the word I'm looking for -- oh, yes, retired!"

And with that, Lady Isabel ran off into the darkness, leaving behind a very puzzled dragon slayer...

To be continued...