"Final Flight" by Colton Hamshire

Note to reader: this is one of my earliest writings in my collections of scenes. I wrote this back in early 2007 and it shows. At least to me it does.

"Keep them out! Keep them out!" shouted Leon. The sound of battle echoed throughout the stairwell behind Leon accompanied with vehement curses from both the humans and hobgoblins. The human soldiers guarded the doorway aggressively, creating an impermeable wall, but for each humanoid they killed, another quickly appeared in its fallen comrade’s stead.

Leon turned his gaze out of the damaged turret’s window, the wind flailing his blonde hair about. He watched as the four wyverns flew across the gray sky, darting downward into the affray dealing death with bursts of toxic yellow gas from their mouths while their riders rained down arrows from their backs. Leon aimed the ballista at a wyvern as it flew past the tower with its black leathery wings outstretched while bellowing a loud, guttural screech, creating a squall that carried the creature’s fetid stench.

"We can’t hold ‘em much longer," shouted one of the fighters from behind as he delved his sword into one of the hobgoblins. "Shoot the aerials, Leon! Shoot them!"

"I’m trying," cried Leon.

Leon glanced over his shoulder in time to see a hobgoblin fell a human under the weight of his bastard sword. Angered, Leon focused his attention once again on the wyverns that flew overhead.

Leon watched, his fingers eager to release the projectile, but he knew an early fire would prove futile. He waited for his chance, despite the horrid cries of the dying that resounded below. Then the moment came. One of the wyvern’s riders took note of Leon and flew toward the soldier, taking a poor shot at Leon with his bow. The arrow flew wide of its target.

The wyvern, now too close to the tower, pulled upward, flying vertically along the tower’s wall. Leon waited for his window. When the wyvern’s chest became adjacent with the ballista, Leon fired the weapon. The sound of the bolt slamming into the creature’s chest echoed around Leon, and, with a spray of blood, both the wyvern and its rider hobgoblin rider spiraled downward into a small unit of the enemy, emitting a cloud of gray dust from the rubble-covered ground.