A quiet swishing from behind the group announced Dragon's swift return. He came plowing back up along the marshy channel with a large, dead cave deer seized in his jaws--slightly rancid, a little bit rotting. He came up alongside the others, eyes bright with his IDEA, and then dropped the carcass down on a large, wet stone.

Where he promptly began to tear into it, seizing pieces of flesh and twisting and rolling until the thing was disemboweled. He didn't bother explaining, not until he was done; he just sat there and ripped the deer apart.

Finally, satisfied, he looked up at Eve.

"Wreathe the tree in this?" he suggested. "Rot and death, decay. We will defeat it."

He lifted his own head, ready to demonstrate, and with a toss of his jaws, flung a rope of dripping gore over a tree branch. It hung there, limp and visceral, looking out of place and rather gruesome lying up in the tree branches.

It wasn't high, but Eve could fix that. And anyway, it was the effect that mattered. One did not come up to a tree and expect to find entrails dangling from it, and something about them there, the way they were out of place and gory, fit perfectly.

At least, in Dragon's mind.

The alligator rared back a bit to peer up, proud of his handiwork.