Page 57 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)
The Justice of Dragons
There is only one thing left to tell.
A clan of red-winged dragons found water at a well: there had been no well there before. The water smelled acrid, but they drank it with eagerness. An intelligent observer might have been surprised at their eagerness, but there were no intelligent observers available that day.
And then, as the man watched in hiding, the dragons died. Some might have said their deaths were overly theatrical, but those would be people who dared to criticize a dragon, and they are rare.
The man waited until he was sure. Then he darted close, filling a sack with gold. It would be enough to start a new life in the Outerlands. It would be enough to live in munificence; in luxury. He was not beaten yet.
He did not see the batrachomyomachian mouse run from dragon to dragon, biting the soft skin under the neck and causing blood to swell. Batrachomyomachian mice do so love to assist.
He did not see that the largest dragon had opened his eye. He did not see that the strongest dragon had licked her lips.
Claude Argen did not know that Anya had sold everything she owned and together with Christopher had sent an antidote to the poison to every dragon in the Glimouria Archipelago, just in case. Why would he suspect? His mind was not of the kind that could imagine the shape and depth of hers.
Claude left celebrating, and the dragons let him go. The dragons let him reach the peak of the hill.
And then they came over the horizon, all of them black in the body and red in the underwing, like an avenging storm. The flap of their wings had the sound of rage in it.
Dragons have no doubts or scruples about death. Their lives are too different from human lives.
There was one man, but there were sixteen dragons: enough dragons to cover the sky with their wings, to block out the sun.
Anya watched it from many miles away, from the top of the tallest tower of Glimt. She never forgot what she saw.
The sky, suddenly, was fire. The whole horizon was yellow, red, pure burning blue.
And then the dragons peeled up into the sky. Only the shape of the hill was left, scorched black, topped with molten gold. The trees, and the man, and his poison and his plans, were gone.
As Anya watched, the dragons moved as if in answer to a call. They wheeled, circled the hill once, and flew—not away over the island, but straight up into the sky, until they were beyond the reach of human sight.