Yuri and the twins walked continuously, moving by the cardinal point given by him, hoping they had not been spotted by a falcon so far.
But all of their hopes vanished immediately when they heard a loud growl followed by a warm gush of wind blowing from behind them.
"Damn it!" Yuri swore as he instinctively lifted the children and sprinted off at full speed without looking back.
The twins at first didn't know for sure what had just happened but were frightened when they heard heavy footsteps accelerate from behind them.
Not able to help not looking, the twins looked above Yuri's shoulder as they were carried along.
"Yuri!" Genta called, with a terrified voice...
"It's..." Enji said, also terrified,
"Don't say it!" Yuri instructed, not wanting to also get terrified,
"A dragon!" the twins chorused.
"Damn it, I told you not to say it!" Yuri yelled as he knew that the knowledge of what was coming after them would cloud his reasoning with fear and doubt.
Now that he had a clue as to what they were up against, there was no need for him to avoid seeing it for himself, so for a second, he looked back to see an angry red dragon running after them with full speed.
It was about 20 feet tall and very fierce-looking. Its eyes glowed red, the general color of its scaly skin was scarlet, and the color of its wings faded to violet.
This beautiful animal was a ruthless killer, and Yuri was not going to fall for it.
The chase had lasted for almost a minute without their demise, and it felt absurd to Yuri.
If this was a dragon, why had it not incinerated them with its fiery breath by now?
It could have been possible that it was a juvenile dragon they were dealing with, even though it was hard to believe given the enormous size of the fabled beast.
This was his first encounter with a dragon, so he wasn't particularly familiar with their sizes in relation to their ages and experiences.
So he pondered this for a few seconds as he ran until Genta called out his name again and said,
"Yuri, look!" she said, pointing behind him.
Yuri in his mind thought, "What now?" as he looked back to see the dragon arch its neck, drawing its head backwards.
"Damn! "I hope it's not about to do what I think it's about to do," he said, knowing the dragon was about to pour out flames from its mouth at them.
"Brace yourselves, everyone!" he instructed as to the eventual roar of the dragon, which sent waves of heat at them and blew them away by over fifty feet into the air.
Within seconds, the trio was in the air, holding on to each other.
Yuri opened his eyes upon noticing he wasn't dead and confirming his thoughts were correct—this was a juvenile dragon, one that had not yet mastered the art of breathing fire.
But that breath that sent them flying wasn't a gush of wind, as it was extremely hot—so hot that he felt burns on his face right after impact. It felt like the closest one could get to the actual fire.
Right before gravity caught up with them, the dragon leapt high into the air and opened its wide mouth to engulf them.
Yuri's eyes widened as he saw its large mouth open wide less than ten feet away from them, wide enough to completely engulf all three of them in one go without a struggle.
Without thinking, Yuri pushed the twins aside, away from him, and out of the range of the dragon's closing mouth.
In a split second, the jaws of the dragon snapped closed, causing the twins to scream out his name with tears in their eyes.
"YURI!" they cried out right before falling to the ground cushioned by the thick grasses.
The dragon raised its head in a way that hinted that Yuri had just been swallowed.
This terrorized the children, keeping them frozen in fear as the dragon set its sights on them.
Then, in a split second, the twins observed the sharp sound of a sword cutting through flesh and bone, followed by the sight of the dragon suddenly falling to the ground into a pool of its blood.
Enji and Genta (the twins) looked at each other in surprise at what had just happened before them.
Then smiles came to their faces when they saw Yuri crawling off the site of the dragon's neck injury, using his sword to expand the torn flesh to ease his escape from the dragon's body.
As he came out, they both rushed to embrace him with tears in their eyes, sobbing heavily and holding him close.
"You girls know that I'm covered in blood and slime, right?" he joked as he hugged them back.
His body was covered in blood and slime, and his body stank heavily, but the children didn't seem to care.
"Come on, let's keep going," he said right before they resumed their walk, despite their exhaustion, as they knew that staying here any longer would assure them of another encounter with a fabled beast, even if it were for a short rest.
By daybreak they managed to get off the fabled territories of the forest and back to the "safe" path they were on before, hoping the overpowered air manipulator wasn't waiting for them somewhere.
Barely a minute after they got back to the safe path, Yuri fell to the ground, unconscious.
The children knelt to help him up, but on doing so, they also realized how exhausted they were, and without thinking, they dragged Yuri's sleeping body with them to the bark of a tree, where they peacefully fell asleep, as it had been a very long night before now.
It seemed like every enforcer had forgotten about their highly esteemed Master Drey, whose body was yet to be found,
... and his explicit admirer, Tobirama, who also went missing after the attack of the Arutimetsu.