Excerpt: Shimari

The dragon roared and exhaled a pillar of fire, and then slashed at the wooden craft of the nearest attacker. The vessel’s hull burst into flame and soldiers fell off the deck from the strike. Cannon balls whistled through the air and into the darkness. Those aboard the vessels shouted muffled commands as they shot arrows and other weaponry at their quarry. Yelps of pain trailed from the attacks. Four airships tracked the behemoth.
The terrifying beast flew towards another ship. Upon reaching it, the dragon embedded its claws into the woodwork and swung at those aboard. It caught an unfortunate hunter in its jaws and tossed it off to the ground. Breathing another cone of fire, it slowly charred the contraption turning the wood into red coals. It continued to exhale the flames upon the machine until the craft began to drop to the ground below from the crippling attacks. The dragon released its claws from the hull and flew off away from the remaining ships.
The soldiers on board the other crafts loaded metal tipped timbers into ballistae and aimed towards the beast. Gracefully the creature dodged the projectiles and dove towards the ground. The ships followed and lowered their altitude to where they flew barely a hundred feet higher than the treetops below. The dragon fell to the ground, vanishing underneath the leafy branches.
Shouts echoed into the night but silence eventually fell on the hunters and only the ambient whirring of the propellers and putts from the engine disturbed the night. They scanned the dark forest below; an occasional bird would fly from its perch and land in another tree, the rest off the woods remaining motionless.
Suddenly trees shifted and creaked. In quick retaliation, bows, ballistae and cannons fired upon the moving area. A tree fell down, choruses of different birds shrieked angrily at the destruction of their home. It seemed that the movement was nothing but then the dragon bolted out from the tree cover, cracked branches and tilting some of the timbers. It flew quickly, rising above the ships and the dove again attempting to confuse its pursuers. More cannon shots barraged the sky and smashed all across the ground, leaving destruction in their wake. The dragon dropped quickly onto the edge of the forest just near farm fields with a crash. It recuperated hastily and rose again into the air, flying towards another patch of trees in the distance.