Free Legend of the Timekeepers by Sharon Ledwith

cleared her throat. “Um, I wouldn’t worry too much about us, seeing as your—”
    “It’s…it’s broken!” She-Aba cut her off.
    “Your foot is broken?” Tau asked in a concerned tone.
    She-Aba sniffed. “No, my heel! Now my shoe is ruined!”
    Lilith rolled her eyes. She got up, brushed herself off, looked at the young man hovering over her friend, and said, “She’s all yours.”
    Etan ripped out a painful roar. Lilith whirled around. The wyvern had managed to dig one of its sharp talons into his leg. His grip was starting to weaken. The wyvern’s tail swung around enough for Lilith to see a small tattoo above the barbed tail. Her eyes widened. Uncle Kukulkan had once told her that to ensure their safety wyvern breeders implanted a small poisonous sac inside the tails of young wyverns, and marked the area with a tattoo. If a wyvern suddenly became unruly, then the breeder smashed a rod against the tattoo to release the poison into the wyvern’s body, killing it instantly. Panicking, Lilith looked around for a makeshift weapon. The only possible weapon was being used as a post. She didn’t hesitate and grabbed the staff the stranger was leaning on.
    “Tau, pick up the vine and follow me!” Lilith yelled.
    “Huh? Why?” Tau asked.
    “You’re a farmer’s son. Surely you know how to rope a goat,” Lilith answered.
    “Goats, yes. That—” Tau pointed, while gathering the vine “—not so much.”
    “All you need to do is rope its tail. I’ll do the rest with this staff.”
    Tau groaned as he made a loop with the vine. “Atchas make no sense.”
    Lilith frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “You’re afraid of cobras, but not afraid of those things?”
    The wyvern shrieked as it thrashed its head and long neck.
    “Come on, Tau, the hybrid is losing his grip!”
    Lilith sprinted and circled the wyvern on one side, while Tau ran toward the opposite side and waved the noose over his head. With his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth, Tau threw the vine and caught the tip of its barbed tail. Threading the vine around his torso, Tau yanked on the tail. The wyvern screeched, swung its head in Tau’s direction, and snapped its jaws, just missing his foot.
    “Hurry, Lilith, before this oversized lizard reaches me!”
    Lilith targeted the dark tattoo shaped like two connected circles above the barb, raised the staff and swung it with enough force to hit the tattoo dead-on. The wyvern jumped at the blow. Hissing and wailing, the wyvern started to convulse and drool as the poison from the implanted sac swiftly shot through its body. Etan released his hold, flicked his tail, and motioned for Lilith and Tau to move away. The wyvern, now free, thrashed and railed for three more breaths before it fell deadly still.
    “Quick thinking, Lilith,” Tau said as he joined her. “How did you know what to do?”
    “Simple. We needed to fight fire with fire, like Istulo did with my father,” she replied. “I knew that under the tattoo above the wyvern’s barbed tail was a poisonous sac placed there by its breeder, so I thought if we could get close enough to break the sac then—”
    “—it would poison itself,” Tau cut in, finishing for Lilith. “Good call, Atcha-girl.”
    “Thank you,” the human-lion hybrid said, bowing. His voice sounded beastly, deep.
    Lilith squeezed the staff. “We should be the ones thanking you. If it wasn’t for you, my friends and I would be wyvern fodder by now.”
    “Unless it got to She-Aba first,” Tau added with a grin. “She would have left a bad taste in its mouth, and it would have left us alone.”
    Lilith burst out laughing.
    “Did I miss a joke?” She-Aba asked, hobbling on one foot while the young man had his arm wrapped around her waist.
    “Oh, there’s always something to laugh about when you’re around, fire-head.”
    She-Aba huffed. “If you don’t show some proper manners, I won’t introduce you to my new friend.”
    “Poor friend,” Tau