"Well she's not wrong," replied Twitch conversationally, almost as if the statement had actually been addressing him. "My braincase is the size of a small pear, what do I know?" Idle chatter while he folded the scant remains of the energy bugs in a greased paper bag. Some still flickered, even wriggled, but most were burned out. Twitch didn't mind; he was used to salvaging what he could. There was one bolt still intact in the beast's flesh, adorned with a scrap of fur, and the atmosphere first began to change as he hacked it out with a shard of glass.

Twitch scented the approaching creature before the false rain began, crawled behind the zombie's side and cowered there, already assembling his crossbow. The heavy flecks of spores in the air confirmed his fear. This fall was organic. Something alive was approaching. The stained bolt snapped into place on the string and a snarl invaded Twitch's face as darkness fell.

Flattening himself, the rat pushed himself underneath the zombie's bulk in haste as the center of the storm landed. The dragon was unlike those in Valoran- It had forelimbs in addition to its wings and legs, and a strange eyeless face. And many other things, no doubt. Then the pulses of spores and gas flowed out, and Twitch's thoughts were interrupted as his fur flattened under the fierce rush and darkened as the particles caught in it, even under the zombie's bulk. His eyes were safe under his goggles but his nose was filled with the miasma (viroids, fur, reptile breath, spores, other smells), overwhelmed by the suddenness. The gas stung and he sneezed heavily, but only once, his internal ecology already adapting to the newcomers.

Twitch fought in the one and only way he knew. Excising himself from under the zombie in an instant, he ran hunched through the open, taking advantage of the thick gas. His ears were wide, and between the sound of the dragon's voice and the shifting of its wing-claws still discernible through the mayhem, he let his eyes focus where he thought the thing's under-arm would be, ignoring the flashes of fire and steel. A flexible place, if it used those wings to fly. Little room for armour there. Twitch released the trigger.