Resuming fire, they tore into its face and neck.  When it raised its head and spread its wings as if to take to the air, a shot from Sam’s rifle penetrated its throat just below the jaw.  It bellowed again, weakly this time.  Allistor cast Restraint on it again just before its feet left the ground, and it froze with the wound in its throat exposed.   Every man present focused his fire on that weak spot without a word needed.  The shotgun slugs and rifle rounds ripped into the damaged flesh, opening the wound further.  Each of them got off two shots before the spell wore off.

With a gurgling sound, the monstrous lizard’s head fell.  Its wings collapsed as its legs buckled, the weight of the creature’s body crushing small trees and bushes as it hit the ground.  A few of the survivors leveled up, and Allistor got a bit closer to level ten.

They moved forward, the xp gains making them confident the creature was dead.  Allistor marveled at it, standing next to the head that, even laying on its side on the ground, was nearly as tall as he was.   The drake’s menacing jaws were open, and Allistor peered inside, looking past fangs as long as his arm at the burned spot near the back.

Ramon put a hand on his shoulder and spoke from behind him.  “I think that last shot you took before it breathed fire is what did that.  You punched a hole in its flesh and that liquid fire flowed right up into it.  Probably would have fried its brain if it hadn’t stopped.”

Allistor nodded, imagining how screwed they all would have been if it had been able to continue.  The earth in front of the thing wasn’t just burned, it was melted.

He touched the drake’s head and looted it.  The rewards were decent – a hundred klax, a stack of drake hide pieces, two drake teeth that he thought might make excellent weapons, and the drake’s heart.  This one wasn’t purple, but he suspected it might still have some value as a crafting item or cooking ingredient.

They sent a runner back for one of the ATVs, and the rest of them began to harvest what they could from the drake’s corpse.  When the ATV arrived, several other survivors joined them.  Allistor lifted what was left of Candy and set her gently on a sheet someone had brought along.  As they wrapped her body, he retrieved Rick’s corpse and loaded it onto the ATV.  When both bodies were secure, and the harvest was complete, the entire group washed themselves off in the creek and headed back to the Warren.   Each of them gathered wood as they walked, and when they reached the clearing outside the walls, they constructed a pyre.