(15+4+3) Chance drops quickly to the ground, sketching her rune into the snow. The world takes on a muffled quality, the sounds of the party dropping down into the snow hardly audible. Likewise, Fia seems to almost blend into the rocks behind her as she remains still.
The scraping sound grows louder before stopping altogether, as a white, reptilian head pokes its way over the lip of the cave mouth. The head itself is around half a metre long, and the jaw extends along the entire length. Twin red eyes, each no larger than a marble, are positioned on either side of the head. Its nostrils flare as it sways back and forth, attached to a long, sinuous neck. Claws appear over the lip, resembling little more than daggers made of old bone, and a fine dust of snow falls over the party, dislodged.
Then suddenly the creature is airborne. It is perhaps three times the length of a horse, though a third of that belongs to both the neck and tail. The body seems ungainly by comparison, the stomach almost swollen, though still covered in its scales. The rear limbs also appear stunted, though the front pair appear longer and stronger. Its wings are batlike, though the same snowy white as the rest of its body, and each is as long as its length when extended.
It circles above the group, its flight slow and laboured, but seemingly finding nothing it flies east in silence.
The party is heading west, so it went in the opposite direction.
The average drake is probably about a third of the size of this one.