"Okay! So you'll help me get buckled in, and then we'll leave, and then I'll drop the bombs on the skeletons, and then we'll turn around and come back?"

"That's right. It won't take more than an hour, and it's still early in the afternoon, so I should think you can still make it to Falconreach before nightfall. I'd offer you a lift to make up the lost time, but Glumbert and I need to stick around in Oaklore after this to make sure all the slimes and undead are dealt with." 

"That makes sense! Honestly, I'm really excited to fly with a real dragon! I'll do my best!"

"That's all we can ask."

Sir Baumbard helps Elan climb up Glumbert's leg and strap himself into the saddle. (Glumbert also helps, by shifting positions as needed.)

"Alright, here are the lightbombs. Twenty probably won't be enough to take out the whole army, so remember, aim for large clusters and do your best to get as many as you can with each bomb. Ready?"

Elan does his best to figure out a position for the bag that will let him grab the bombs easily without spilling them on the ground.

"I think so!"

He's a little nervous that he'll mess things up, but it sounds like things won't be too bad if he isn't perfect. He'll just have to believe in himself!

"You can do it, Elan! I'll be cheering for you from down here...on the nice solid ground..." 

"Thanks!"

Even though moglins bounce, it would be bad if Twilly fell off. Especially if he fell into the battle!

Glumbert cranes his great head around to check that Elan's ready, then takes off. 

It's a little like riding a horse. If the horse was massive, you had no way of steering or stopping, and you were going much faster and also very high up.

The wind roars in Elan's ears and tugs at his hair and clothes; it's very quickly obvious why he had to be strapped in. As they fly south, ancient oak trees form a rolling sea of green beneath them, spreading out in all directions. It's a bright, sunny afternoon, but dark clouds loom in the distance. 

Wow! This is very different from both Wind Walk and riding on the Mechane. He's glad that his hair is short; it would probably be in his face if it was longer. He holds on tight to the bag of bombs.

"Wow, cool!" he starts to say, but the wind is loud enough that he can't really hear himself.

He eyes the clouds in the distance. Those seem like they could be doomy… or just regular rainclouds. Maybe he should have brought a raincoat.

Long before they get close to the clouds, Glumbert slows and begins to fly in a more meandering path that covers a wider area of the forest. Soon after that, Elan starts to spot movement through the gaps between the trees: at first it's just individual skeletons and the occasional lone blob of slime, but before long they're coming in twos and threes. 

Oh good, they probably won't get rained on.

Elan scans for a group of four to drop the first bomb on; if he doesn't see one he'll try and get a nearby group of three.

Just ahead, a clearing opens up below him. Moving through it is a whole group of monsters, way more than four.

(They're a mix of skeletons, slimes, and...slimes that have eaten skeletons?) 

"Whoa, slimetons!"

He'll deploy the bombs against those guys! Well, first he'll see how big of an explosion the first bomb makes.

He drops a lightbomb, and...

BOOM!

The initial explosion is followed by a chorus of smaller ones as each monster hit by the blast radius explodes in turn, creating a chain reaction. The clearing is pretty much emptied out! (Weirdly, the trees and grass seem unaffected, and no fires start.) 

"Whoa, cool!"

He thinks he basically knows what to do, now, as long as they keep flying over clearings or the monsters keep proceeding through this one.

Glumbert, who definitely knows what to do, will keep circling between this clearing and a handful of others so Elan can clear out the monsters as they pass through. The monsters don't seem to be smart enough to start avoiding the clearings. 

Well, that's good! Elan can do his best to drop the bombs at the densest gatherings of monsters until they are interrupted or he runs out.

The numbers he's getting with each bomb do go down over time, but that seems to be because there are fewer monsters there to bomb. By the time he runs out, the horde of undead is significantly thinned out! 

Glumbert must have been keeping count of the lightbombs, because he starts flying back to the keep after Elan has dropped the last one. 

Which is good, because Elan hasn't been keeping track and wasn't sure how he would let Glumbert know once the bag was empty!

"Thanks!" he says anyway.

He tucks the empty bag under his legs so he can put his hands up for the return trip. Wheeeee!

Wheeee!

They land back in the same place, just outside the gates. A group of mounted knights is just heading out, presumably to mop up the stragglers. 

"Great job, Elan! Glumbert says you're a natural." 

Elan bounces. He's doing a good job!

"Thanks! Oh, here's the bag that the bombs were in."

"Thank you." He takes the bag and sets about helping Elan extract himself from the saddle without getting tangled in the straps. "What did you think of your first time riding a dragon?" 

"It was fun! But also loud and cold and windy. I didn't really notice the cold until it was done, though. Do you ever get rained on?"

"I'm sorry, I should have thought about that. DragonLord armour is designed to shed water, and it has a thermal layer underneath for the cold," Baumbard explains. "But even so, we generally fly around rainstorms and so on. I'm glad you didn't get rained on, and that you had a good time. Thank you again for your help—I don't know what I would have done without you."