Shifting Seas

Shifting Seas is the (original) first book in Pern, and the WoF adaptation of Turning Tides, the (original) first novel of L1quid's These Alien Dragons trilogy. It is in the point-of-view of Tide. The book is succeeded by Shifting Storms.
==Synopsis==
The depths are calling...
Living her whole life in the Deep Palace, Tide is bound to become the next leader of the ocean dragons.
Never breaching her native waters, she barely knows anything about the surface of her home - an Earth-like planet orbiting Rukbat, an isolated golden G-type star in the Milky Way galaxy.
But isolation has a price. When Tide is suddenly kidnapped by dragons angry with their leaders, shocking secrets will come to light - and change the course of universal history forever.
----
Peace doesn't last forever...
One hundred years has passed since the Prophecies, and dragons and humans live in peace across "Pern", the planet that humans colonized so long ago.
Others are open-minded to new ideas, draconic hybrids are no longer stigmatized, and there are only minor skirmishes.
But now something threatens that peaceful stability, and three dragons have the burden of finding a solution - or see their planet destroyed for good.
==A Guide to Pern==
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|-|=
Click on each tab to view the Guide to Pern.
|-|BeetleWings=
Description: a combination of SilkWings, HiveWings, and RainWings
Species Adaptations: can shoot a form of flaming silk known as "flamesilk", can shoot venom from teeth, can detect threats within surroundings with antennae, have stingers in wrists, can shoot acid from tail stinger, poisonous teeth
Homeworld: continent Pyrrhia, planet Pern (formerly); continent Pantala, planet Pern (before extinction)
|-|Dragons=
Dragons are the native lifeforms of Pern. They were created when the human settlers genetically modified the original native lifeforms to be larger, stronger, and sentient for military purposes. However, this backfired, when the dragons thought for themselves and overthrew their creators in an event known as "the Scorching".
They are divided into eleven species - BeetleWings, HiveWings, IceWings, LeafWings, MudWings, NightWing, RainWings, SandWings, SeaWings, SilkWings, and SkyWings.
|-|HiveWings=
Description: scales in shades of yellow, orange, and red; four dragonfly-like wings; patches of black scales here and there on bodies
Species Adaptations: although many do not have any, some have differing "abilities" based on genes and environment, including shooting venom from teeth, stingers in wrists, shooting acid from tail stinger, and poisonous teeth
Leader: Monarch Needle
Homeworld: continent Pantala, planet Pern
|-|Humans=
Description: skin in all shades of white, brown, and black; bipedal (walk on two legs); two arms, hands, and feet; sexual dimorphism (males are taller than females); wear different forms of clothing, with material from surrounding environments
Species Adaptations: can create tools from surrounding environments
Homeworld: planet Earth (origin), all across the universe (after spaceflight technology development)
|-|IceWings=
Description: scales in shades of white, grey, and blue; forked blue tongues; serrated claws to grip the ice and other surfaces
Species Adaptations: can breathe smoke-like ice from their mouths ("frostbreath" or "freezing death-breath"); can resist all forms of cold and shades of light; very sharp eyesight
Leader: Monarch Graupel
Homeworld: continent Pyrrhia, planet Pern
|-|LeafWings=
Description: scales in shades of green and brown (accenting colors can be any known color); two leaf-shaped wings
Species Adaptations: can gain energy from sunlight, knowledge of plants, some individuals have "leafspeak" (a form of chlorokinesis)
Leader: none, are guided by the SilkWing Assembly (alongside the SilkWings)
Homeworld: continent Pantala, planet Pern
|-|MudWings=
Description: scales in shades of brown, with orange and gold scales seen occasionally; thick, armored scales; nostrils on top of snout like crocodiles and alligators; muscular and beefy stature
Species Adaptations: can hold breath for one hour (sixty minutes), can breathe fire if body is warm enough, can camouflage into the earth and the waters of swamps/marshes, exceptional strength, resistance to heat and fire if hatched from a blood-red egg
Leader: Monarch Marsh
Homeworld: continent Pyrrhia, planet Pern
|-|NightWings=
Description: scales in shades of black or darker shades of other colors; silver scales scattered on undersides of wings, resembling a sky full of stars
Species Adaptations: can breathe fire, can blend into shadows and dark areas, can foresee the future or read minds if hatched under any of the three moons
Leader: Vulcan
Homeworld: continent Pyrrhia, planet Pern
|-|Proto-Dragons=
Description: a combination of all known dragons of planet Pern; were the size of birds-of-prey before being experimented on
Species Adaptations: varied, although the majority could breathe fire
Homeworld: continent Pyrrhia, planet Pern (before extinction)
|-|RainWings=
Description: scales in all known shades and tints of colors in the universe; ruff behind ears; fangs in mouth; prehensile tails
Species Adaptations: can camouflage by changing the coloration of their scales with the chromatophores in their skin, can shoot an acid that degrades all organic matter from fangs
Leader: Monarch Dignity
Homeworld: continent Pyrrhia, planet Pern
|-|SandWings=
Description: scales in shades of yellow and light brown; scorpion-barbed tail; forked black tongues; rippling dune-appearing spine
Species Adaptations: can breathe fire, can camouflage into desert sand, heat-radiating scales, can go a long time without food and/or water, highly tuned sense of smell and hearing
Leader: Monarch Scorch
Homeworld: continent Pyrrhia, planet Pern
|-|SeaWings=
Description: scales in shades of blue, green, and purple; gills on neck; webs between claws; bioluminescent stripes all over body
Species Adaptations: can breathe underwater in all bodies of water, well-tuned nocturnal vision, can use tails to create large waves or to kill enemies
Leader: Monarch Wave
Homeworld: continent Pyrrhia, planet Pern
|-|SilkWings=
Description: scales in all colors of the universe; four butterfly-like wings with appear at age 6 during a process known as "Metamorphosis"; antennae on head
Species Adaptations: can shoot silk from wrists after "Metamorphosis", can detect threats within surroundings with antennae, some individuals can shoot a form of flaming silk known as "flamesilk"
Leader: none, are guided by the SilkWing Assembly
Homeworld: continent Pantala, planet Pern
|-|SkyWings=
Description: scales in shades of orange and red; enormous wings
Species Adaptations: can breathe fire, can fly faster than an average dragon, high endurance and stamina, can resist all forms of cold
Leader: Monarch Ruby
Homeworld: continent Pyrrhia, planet Pern
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==Prologue==
When are stories considered legends?
What do legends become over time?
Do they continue being legends?
Or do they fade into the darkness, never to be spoken of again?
The planet known as Pern was a last resort for those humans trying to escape the governments who ruled Earth and other planets in the Milky Way galaxy of the universe.
When the colonists landed on their New World, they found that the native life on the planet was something only their authors could only write of - dragons. These dragons resembled a combination of many environments Pern hosted - swamps, marshes, deserts, mountains, oceans, jungles, arctic, and forests. The colonists decided to "play God" on these small, bird-of-prey-sized dragons through genetic modification and inadvertently triggered what became known to the dragons later as "the Scorching".
The human colonists who stayed on the first continent of Pern, Pyrrhia, barely survived; while another group of colonists left for the second continent of Pern: Pantala.
There, a human known as Cottonmouth, who was believed to have been named after the cottonmouth snakes of Earth, genetically-engineered a plant known to the dragons as the "breath of evil" in order to train dragons. However, his dragon, a female named Lizard, killed Cottonmouth upon hatching - creating the "othermind".
The othermind ruled Pantala for years before the LeafWings and BeetleWings, exiled from Pyrrhia for unknown purposes, nearly exterminated the plant during the Founding of Pantala; this would be later known as "The Legend of the Hive" to the dragons.
For over three thousand years, Pyrrhia and Pantala never knew of each other existence until Clearsight, a NightWing dragon fleeing from Pyrrhia, arrived on the continent. From that moment on, Pantala changed. Clearsight's book of visions brought forth religion and her genes brought into existence the HiveWings.
Throughout the years on Pyrrhia, there were cycles of technological highs and lows, similar to the economic booms and recessions in a business cycle. And the continent was in a technological low when the War of the SandWing Succession broke out.
The war was stretched out for eighteen years (twenty, if you count the night that Oasis, a former SandWing monarch, was murdered by humans) before The Dragonet Prophecy, a faux prophecy created the NightWings to save their species from extinction, ended the war. One year later, an event known the "Darkstalker Crisis" emerged in the form of The Jade Mountain Prophecy - the first true prophecy spoken by a NightWing seer in centuries. The crisis was contained in a matter of weeks by the use of "animus magic" (draconic magic).
Immediately after that, The Lost Continent Prophecy emerged and brought back the two continents who had been lost to time together again. This prophecy ended a dictatorship ruled by a paranoid monarch and brought into existence a new era where Pyrrhia and Pantala can communicate, and where humans and dragons could finally live in peace.
Years passed since the Prophecies, and the stories which told about the Prophecies were simply placed into textbooks and historical documents - and they were never spoken about again.
==Part One: The Deepest Blue==
===Chapter 1===
The eggshell floated to the top of the cavern as we all gathered around the hatchling’s nest. Mother picked up the corpse of her child – my sibling – in her claws as our brains reeled in horror.
The assassin had struck again, and we weren’t even close to discovering their identity. For all anyone knew, it could be one of us, one of Mother’s children.
But that would be impossible. I was with Mother every day, preparing for the day that I would lead the SeaWings when she wasn’t around. Swell spent most his time reading books, especially those about alternate worlds where the characters had fantastic adventures. Flood was busy working around the capital, and the same applied to her hatchmate brother, Riptide. Surf… well Surf was learning how the politics of the sea worked.
The dead hatchling had blue scales like Mother’s, and judging by its less-formed smooth features, it was a female hatchling.
There were now four eggs left in our family’s hatchery, none of us knew if the hatchlings were male or female. Mother suspects that three of the eggs are female, while Flood is convinced that there’s more males than females.
I never really cared about if my siblings were male or female – I only cared about them surviving to hatching and finding who the family killer was.
Warm jets of water surrounded us, as Mother grieved her dead hatchling for a moment before turning around to face the openings of the cavern.
The openings were covered by a stone door, allowing the eggs to be unseen by outsiders, and they led back into tunnel that snaked back to the main cavern of the Deep Palace, the SeaWings’ underwater capital.
Tide, Flood, Mother tells me and my older sister with her face stripes, without even looking at us. Take Turtle and Requiem to the prison and asks the guards there to tell me or any of you when they wake.
Yes, Mother, I respond with my snout stripes.
I look at Flood. Which one do you want to take?
She studies the two guards. Requiem’s turquoise scales make her look like was one of the poor SeaWings lived, despite the fact that she was the strongest of the two and grew up in the capital her entire life. Turtle was skinny and had a thin frame; her green-yellow scales made her look like a kelp forest that had turned itself into a dragon. Despite her appearance and her lack of fighting power, she had the brains to know who intruders were and who weren’t.
I’ll take Requiem, Flood says, and you’ll take Turtle. Is that okay?
I nod, and Flood swims over to Requiem and picks her up in her front claws before swimming out of the cave and into the tunnel.
I swim over towards Turtle and wrap my forearms around her, making sure that her comatose body won’t slip out of my grip as I swim to the prison.
After I make sure Turtle’s in my grip, I swim out of the hatchery and into the tunnel that leads towards the main cavern of the capital.
The tunnel’s slope goes up as I swim through it until I emerge into a giant coral reef that’s carved to forms a system. It was full of bioluminescent coral, making it look that the stars had managed to trap themselves underwater. Luminescent jellyfish pulsed throughout the cavern’s waters, providing further light down here.
This is the main hall, the center of everything.
Ahead of me, in the center of the giant cavern, is a decaying statue of Coral, one of my ancestors.
It is said that the coral and jellyfish that inhabit the trench because they found the opening to it while wandering the ocean. With no way back to the surface, they settled and adjusted to the lack of light down there.
In the corner of my eye, I spot Flood swimming towards the upper part of one of the cliffsides on either side of the trench. I swim up to her, still holding Turtle in my forearms.
As I head towards my sister, I pass various stone buildings that were carved by dragon claws. These buildings house other dragons that live in the capital, but don’t directly serve me or my family. An example of this would be the soldiers that defend us from domestic and external threats.
On the top of cliffside, is an opening that leads through a small tunnel system, where prisoners are held. These are exclusively SeaWings, as none of the other dragons of Pyrrhia or Pantala can breathe underwater.
I follow Flood into the tunnel, and there are dragons pinned to the walls by thick metallic chains wound around their neck, wings, wrists, and back legs that prevent them from escaping. In the past, some of the prisoners have tried to escape, although these were some of the desperate, dumb, and foolish ones I’ve seen over the Turn.
Chained dragons bite and snarl at me and my sister in contempt and anger as we swim past them. These dragons weren’t in here for petty crimes such as stealing. They were in here because they caused a ruckus amongst the reef cities, encouraging their residences to disobey Mother and the Depths. Or because they looted in hopes that their stolen goods would be “free from corruption”.
Either way, crime does not go unpunished here in the ocean. And neither does failing or disobeying your leaders.
Flood finds two areas which haven’t had a prisoner in them for a while, and flashes her stripes to guide me.
The chains are like thick, floppy eels on the wall, but they won’t be once Requiem and Turtle have been chained.
The process of chaining a dragon to the wall is this – first, wrap the chain that goes around their neck and bolt it too the wall. Second, once the dragon is in place, do the same thing with the wings. The wrists and back legs should be done last.
Usually, the process takes time, as the prisoners will try to bite their captors as a means of escape. But here, it’s easy to do with knocked-out dragons.
As I step back from chained Turtle to the wall, I notice that she looks more like dead prey in a trap than an imprisoned dragon.
This is our reality. We are being killed by someone or something for unknown reasons. Some dragons in the capital think that the killer is someone close to our family, but they’re in the minority. Many of us suspect it’s the Undercurrents, the most dangerous coalition of dragons in modern draconic history.
Nobody knows how they really formed, but many believe that they’re killing us off to enact their master plan – usurp power from Mother and the Depths so they can rule the ocean their own way.
----“Have you analyzed the evidence yet, like I told you too?”
“Yes, sir”, he said not even looking at Ridge. “I have found that the DNA we have obtained matches the one found on Avalanche’s scarf.”
“So?”
“That means we can go arrest her.”
‘That’s the only evidence this dragon has to convince Kestrel for murdering Avalanche? Are they serious?’
I continued onto the next chapter, “Chapter 31”, and read.
I’d been reading the novel The Depths of the Ocean for nearly a season now, and I was now getting halfway through it.
You could say that long days got in the way of my initial goal finishing it within one-third of a season.
Reading was strongly encouraged in my family, as it was necessary for being successful in life. I was a decent reader myself, but there no other voracious reader than Swell, my younger brother who hatched several Turns ago.
He was currently reading Skies of Fire, a series that I grew up with and loved reading. Many dragons did in fact, grow up with this series and wanted to be like Rise, the series’ author.
But recently, Power of Fire, the most recent and final book in the series, showed the world what she really believed. And just like that, dragons began searching for other non-political books to read and distanced themselves from the once-beloved series.
Right now, I was on the precipice of the main action of the plot – a murder trial for the alleged killer.
She flew towards Ebb’s store, the warm air flowing through and past her brown wings.
Eventually, the store came into sight, that wooden structure on the water, and Kestrel gave the SeaWing a toothy smile.
He didn’t smile back, and stared at her with hard, blue eyes.
‘Oh?’
Something was wrong. Kestrel could feel in her soul.
Her ears detected the sound of rustling foliage – the sound of movement in the surroundings.
She stopped flying and beat her wings so she could look around while hovering in the air.
‘It’s the authorities; it must be.’
She scanned the trees and the bushes with her eyes, and saw no one, even though her ears said that there was someone in the vicinity.
‘They’re going to arrest-.’
There was a flashing of stripes in the entryway of my room, and I looked up from my book.
It was Riptide, Flood’s hatchmate brother and the oldest of my siblings.
Get ready for the last meal, he said. Mother’s not cancelling it, even though her hatchling was murdered today.
He then swam away, presumable in the direction that led to the side opening of the giant reef that led to my family’s rooms.
I put the book down on my nest, a bundle of soft seaweed only found in the warmer waters of the planet, and marked where I was with a thin piece of stone I had.
I stretched myself before swimming over to a stone box near my room’s opening. I opened it and inspected its contents.
There were several options – ropes of pearls, ropes of corals, and a combination of the two. I chose the pearl-and-coral rope since it would look nice.
I wound them around my chest and wings, even though I always wore a pearl necklace every sunrise. After the last meal, the coral-and-pearl ropes would go back in the box, and the pearl necklace would be placed near my nest.
With that in mind, I headed out for the dining hall.
----The dining hall was deep within the reef, away from the main hall and the royal hatchery. It was a giant hollow of it that was either natural or carved by dragon claws. The structure of it roared “carved by dragon claws”, but I didn’t know.
The only way a dragon could access it, was if they swam through the palace’s main entrance to a tunnel on one of its sides. From there, you followed the tunnel’s path until you emerged into a large dining hall that could hold around forty to fifty dragons in it.
I swam to the dining hall after I deemed that the pearl-and-coral ropes I wore was enough décor, and saw that Flood and Riptide were already there. The father-son duo of the Depths, Whirlpool and Rush, were also there.
I took my place next to Flood, sitting in a stone chair, as the four were using their stripes to converse.
Are you sure that it’s Vulcan that’s been attacking our outposts in the Ice Kingdom? Riptide gawked.
Whirlpool nodded. That’s what one of the messengers told me earlier. He turned a small rectangular piece of metal that looked like it was piece of something larger over in his claws. He also says that this came off a piece of armor not seen anywhere in the history of Pyrrhia.
Why are you talking about Vulcan? I asked him, thinking that whatever he said was important.
He looked up at me with surprise. Oh, Tide! I didn’t know you had come! 
Whirlpool gave a look at Flood, who gave him a look that said, “Explain it to her” before looking back at me.
We’ve heard reports about how the NightWings are sabotaging the outposts we’ve established in the Ice Kingdom, he said. We don’t know exactly why they’re occurring, but some think it’s Vulcan either declaring war on the planet or giving us a warning of what he’ll do if we refuse to surrender.
Vulcan was the leader of the NightWings, much like Mother was the leader of the SeaWings. I assumed he was descended from a ruling family like us, but I could be wrong. I’ve never met him up close, only hearing whispers and rumors about him.
Leaders on “Pern” ranged from being strict and manipulating, to just plain senile. Mother was somewhere in between but leaned more to the “strict and manipulating” side. The leader of LeafWings and SilkWings, however, was senile and old like dirt.
If Vulcan’s declaring war on the planet, I said, wouldn’t the other dragons try to fight him sooner rather than later?
Whirlpool gave me a look at me. I know what you’re thinking, but war with him would be suicide. Us and the world would be destroyed in an instant if we tried.
But aren’t there any other ways of fighting him.
Yes, Rush chimed in. Using words.
I raised an eye ridge at him. Words?
He nodded as Flow swam behind him.
Using words to fight Vulcan would be asinine, she said as she slid into her seat next to him. It’s like trying to tame a fire by using more fire.
And the only way to put out a fire is with water, Whirlpool clarified as another Depth swam into the hall and took their place next to him.
Are you talking about Vulcan? the dragon next to Whirlpool asked.
He let out an audible sigh. Yes.
SeaWings can speak underwater, like how other dragons take in air and let it out as sound. Instead, we take in water and let it out as sound.
However, we do not speak underwater as it wouldn’t be practical in the long flight that is life.
Instead, we use the stripes on our bodies to communicate. The idea came from Aquatic, a dragon only known in our legends. It is said that she devised a way for SeaWings to speak underwater while not even producing sound in an era of great strife. While we don’t know the true origin of why we speak her language, we call it “Aquatic” in honor of her.
Ah, the dragon continues. I hope this is because of-
You know what it is Splash.
Splash’s face is permeated by gawkiness on her face as Whirlpool raises an eye ridge and gives her a look of displeasure. There is an awkward silence in the hall and its waters.
Nobody speaks with their mouths nor their stripes. Its deafening like thunder in a storm.
Whirlpool turns the piece of metal in his claws before giving it to Splash. This was retrieved several days ago from the Ice Kingdom.
Splash takes the piece and studies it. What is it?
A fragment of the new armor that the NightWings have recently developed. If it’s true, then this will allow them to wipe off the face of the planet, as if we’d never existed in the first place.
What do you mean?
It will allow them to survive in the most extreme places, like the poles or ocean trenches.
I shivered. Whirlpool was right. With that armor, the NightWings would exterminate us easily.
As Whirlpool and Splash had their conversation, other dragons filed into the hall, such as the rest of the Depths, my aunts, uncles, and younger brother.
The brother here was not Swell, as he was still attached to Mother via a harness, and this one was slightly older than him.
And those two weren’t here yet. Did something happen to them? Or were they late?
As if on cue to relief my fears, Mother and Swell entered the hall. They took their place at the head of the table, the farthest seat away from the tunnel that led to the area.
Swell was only a few years old, and he would soon be released from the harness.
Because of the assassin killing us off, Mother had each of her children attached to her for around four Turns before unharnessing them and giving them duties to perform in the capital.
But that didn’t assure that they would still live. They could be killed while working, for that matter.
Mother slumped into her ornate stone seat, with Swell floating in the water above her. Her shoulders were hunched, and her head hung down, nearly touching the table.
Mother? Riptide gently said and put a talon on her shoulder.
She looked up. The grief and pain were still in her.
Just send the servants in, she flashed with her stripes.
----My room was the only place I usually went to after the last meal, regardless of what happened that day.
And today was no different, except that someone part of my family was killed before they could even hatch.
The only way to deal with it was to get in the flow of your routine, even if that involved reading before sleeping.
She scanned the trees and the bushes with her eyes, and saw no one, even though her ears said that there was someone in the vicinity.
‘Ah, yes, there I am. The potential arrest of Kestrel’.
Where are you? she thought, as something jumped out of the trees towards her.
Kestrel darted away like a fish avoiding predators and dove into the swamp, following the waters that ran through it as an escape route.
Soon, she heard wingbeats behind her, telling her that there were several dragons following her.
Hunting to survive was one thing, but being hunting – quite another.
===Chapter 2 ===
Something nudged me awake the next sunrise.
I opened my eyes and saw that Swell was touching my snout with his small blue talons.
I groaned.
I loved him, but sometimes he was… a little annoying.
Time to for breakfast! he crowed as I yawned and stretched myself. As I took the pearl necklace off the floor and put it around my neck, I could see that he was holding Seas of Fire, the second book of Skies of Fire, in his claws.
Seas of Fire? I said, and he nodded. Where are you in it?
I’m getting close to where Alda finds out whose been killing her family.
Skies of Fire was a series where sky-creatures were the main protagonists of the books. It was somewhat odd to read a story in their perspective of the world, but it was also really fun to read.
It took place on Varani, a world dominated by scavengers and where dragons were a rarity. In the first series, the continent was ripped apart by a vicious, never-ending war; the only war for it to end was for a prophecy to be fulfilled. In the second series, peace had come to the world, but an ancient threat was coming back, and a new prophecy must be fulfilled to stop said threat. In the third (and final) series, the second continent of the world was shown, and a cryptic prophecy foretold was destruction would come if the authoritarian-like leader of said continent was not defeated.
Many dragons liked the first series, because it was not afraid to talk about real-world situations, like war, to dragonets, its target audience. The second series was “meh”, meaning that it lacked the spirt of what made the first series legendary. The third series was doomed from the start, when its plots started becoming more like a lecture an Instructor would give to their students, instead of an epic, soaring flight.
Where are in your book? he asked, and I knew he was talking about The Depths of the Ocean.
Kestrel has been arrested for a crime she did not commit.
His face went from placid happiness to horrified in an instant. What?
I snorted. Yep. She’s the main suspect in Avalanche’s murder.
But if she were the killer, why would she murder him?
I dunno. Maybe fury over him being in a relationship with her while also being in a relationship with another dragon?
I paused for effect.
Maybe, Avalanche’s mate killed him.
Swell’s jaw dropped open in horror.
I started to laugh. Your face…
What about my face?
Your face…. it’s priceless.
What about it? he asked as I stopped laughing.
Your face went from horrified to even more horrified at the mention that someone’s mate would kill them over their dirty little secret.
It… it did?
I nodded and gave him a toothy smile before Mother came into view. Even though she was outside my room, I could see that she looked less grief-stricken than last night.
Swell, dear, she said, we must go to the dining hall for the first meal. She eyed me. Were you talking to your sister?
I spoke for him. Yes, he was. We were talking about the book we’re reading.
Mother sighed. It was a sigh of annoyance than defeat.
Both of you, come assist me to the dining hall.
----The three of us went to their respective seats in the dining hall, the same ones from last night.
The food was already on the table – plates of full of raw meat from deboned and descaled fish, bowls of seaweed-and-snail salad, bowls of in-shell mussels and clams, and more.
Swell, Mother told her son, please give that me.
But I’m so close to-
Now.
Swell snorted as he gave Mother Seas of Fire, who put it on the table between her and Surge, one of the male members of the Depths.
You may have that when we’re done eating.
Swell’s face was of displeasure, but he knew why it had to be taken from him.
The servants entered the hall and gave each of us stone plates and bowls before leaving us to eat in peace.
Nobody ate without Mother’s permission. To do so would be a sin against proper etiquette.
You may eat, Mother flashed with her wing stripes, and we all dug into the food.
I took a heap of the seaweed-and-snail salad from a nearby bowl with my claws and put in my stone bowl, and just ate that. I didn’t feel hungry today.
Although you could talk with others during the first meal, nobody spoke. The tension in the water was so thick, claws couldn’t slash all the way through it.
It was after a while when a dragon swam into the entrance of the hall. Your Majesty? Am I interrupting something?
Mother looked up at the dragon, who looked to be a messenger based on the seagrass-woven pouch they wore around their neck.
Not at all. Please, come in. What is the message?
The messenger swam towards the table, uneasiness in their eyes. Ruby of the SkyWings wants you to come to her palace in several sunrises.
For what?
A meeting discussing the future of the planet.
What about it?
The messenger swallowed. It concerns Vulcan and a threat from beyond.
Everyone stopped eating and swiveled their heads to the dragon. Is it more scavengers coming to Pern? Flow asked.
The SeaWing shuffled on their talons awkwardly. The SkyWing messenger that approached me wouldn’t tell me. He also doesn’t know as well.
So it is the scavengers.
The messenger shook their head. Honestly, I really don’t know. But I don’t think it’s the scavengers. If it were them, we would’ve found evidence of it throughout Pern’s oceans.
Mother looked back at the messenger. You said we have to arrive in a few sunrises, correct? The messenger shook their head, and Mother looked at the dragon between Surge and Splash. Whitecap, she said, choose four dragons to assist be during this meeting. You will tell your choices and I will determine if they are acceptable.
Whitecap was one of my uncles, and Mother’s hatchmate brother. He didn’t have dragonets since he didn’t want any – yet.
Yes, Wave, he bowed.
Mother looked back at the messenger. Do you have anything else to say?
The messenger nodded. The prison guards have told me to tell you that two imprisoned hatchery guards have awakened from their coma.
Requiem and Turtle.
They nodded. That’s all I have.
Mother nodded. Dismissed.
The messengers turned around and left.
Flood, Tide, Mother said. You put Requiem and Turtle in the prison last night, right?
We both looked at each other before nodding at Mother.
Very well. After first meal is over, you will come with me to interrogate them on why they failed to protect my eggs.
----As Mother promised, Flood and I swam with her out of the dining hall and out of the palace to the prison to interrogate Requiem and Turtle. Swell had to come with us, since he was still harnessed to her.
We led her to were Requiem and Turtle were chained, and their eyes opened when they saw Mother.
Your Majesty, Turtle flashed harriedly, I- we-
You failed to protect my eggs, my heirs.
It wasn’t our fault!
Oh, yes. It was. You and Requiem failed to identify the assassin and prevent them from entering the hatchery.
Turtle’s eyes were full of fear as Mother approached her. What do you remember from that moment, yesterday? Mother asked her.
Turtle swallowed and Requiem looked up at her.
Your Majesty, Requiem said, I remember that I was prowling the cave and the entrances when both of us were conked by an unknown assailant.
Turtle said nothing, as if she were like her namesake, hiding in a shell to protect herself.
But being silent won’t save you from the wrath of a furious leader.
What do you know about this “assailant”? Mother inquired.
We really don’t know, Requiem answered. All we know was that we were doing our duties, and then WHAM! We were out.
So you saw nothing.
Requiem nodded.
No description, no nothing?
The two didn’t say anything as Mother swam up to Requiem. That’s alright, since you’ve already failed me.
With one fluid movement, Mother twisted Requiem’s neck and the dragon was dead in an instant.
Swell curled himself into a blue scaly ball, knowing what was going to happen next. He was still holding his book in his claws.
Mother then swam up to Turtle and did the same thing to her also.
Death was the price for failure around here.
As she swam backward from the two chained corpses, Swell uncurled himself and precarious looked at them.
Guards! Mother called.
No response.
She called again. Guards!
Nothing.
Frustrated, she roared in the surrounded water. “GUARDS!”
From deep within the tunnel, two dragons came up and swam towards Mother. Yes, Your Majesty? one the dragons asked.
Mother eyed the corpses before looking back at the guards.
Please dispose of these corpses for me.
The second guard looked at what was on the wall. Yes, Your Majesty, they said as Mother flashes her tail stripes at me and Flood to leave the tunnel.
As we head for the tunnel, I stop and look back at Mother as she finishes her conversation with the guards.
Since Ruby was calling for the leaders of the dragon world to meet in her palace, this might be a golden opportunity to test a long-standing theory of mine in this cold case – that the assassin only kills in the royal hatchery.
Soon, Mother’s done with the conversation and swims towards us. She stops when she sees me.
Tide, she says, please follow your sister to the tunnel’s entrance.
Mother, I say, I need to ask you something.
She arches an eye ridge at me. Oh?
Since Ruby wants everyone gathered at her palace, I want to test the long-running theory I’ve had – that the assassin only kills in the royal hatchery and nowhere else.
She growls at me. Are you insane? That’ll kill that hatchling! Any dragon there will easily trample over it, and I’ll have another dead heir.
There is a flashing of stripes behind me, and I know its Flood.
Mother looks at her, and there is thoughtfulness on her snout.
After a bit, Mother flashes her stripes at me.
Alright. I’ll you test your little theory during the leader’s meeting. But if anything happens to it, it’s on you.
=== Chapter 3===
Sitting in the middle of the Deep Palace’s main hall while Mother chooses an egg for me to take seemed like an eternity.
The royal hatchery was the only safe hatchery down here, unlike the common hatcheries other dragons used. For one, its openings were covered, allowing no one to see the eggs. Secondly, it was heavily guarded.
Common hatcheries had none of those things. You could steal an egg from there and no one would even notice or bat an eye. Whereas if you stole from the royal hatchery, a hunt was on for you and the stolen egg.
But everything was determined by Mother, the Depths, and how many Scales you had. At the end of each Turn, Mother was busy, determining who would work where in the sea. She also worked on this the rest of the year, if nothing major was bothering her.
But since keeping her heirs was of upmost importance to her now, she was swamped in work at the end of it; leaving either Eagre, Whitecap, Surge, or Riptide to lead the capital temporarily.
Once Mother determines who should be who, she gave this information to messengers, who reported to the various dragon cities in Pern’s oceans. These cities were made out of coral reefs, and they could be anywhere in the world – anywhere.
Down here, your occupation was determined by who your family was. If your parent was a jeweler, you became a jeweler. If your parent was a commander, you became a commander, and so on and so on. But your behavior and number of Scales was a key factor in if you inherited the family’s occupation. If you had low Scales and bad behavior, you were demoted from the family occupation and given menial tasks like cleaning the caves.
Dragons had once thought that my family’s killer was one of these dragons, but it was quickly thrown into the currents as they weren’t even allowed to approach the royal hatchery.
Dragons swam above and around me, performing their duties. Some were cleaning the coral, preventing anything like straggled algae that had found its way down here from growing on it.
At long last, Mother emerges from the tunnel leading to the royal hatchery, carrying a green egg in her talons. She swims towards me.
Mother pins me down with her eyes. Come, she says, I need to get you fitted for a harness if we are to “test” this theory of yours.
I follow her out of the reef and to the back of the palace, which is hollowed out like most of it, and is where the craftsdragons work. They make materials for the palace such as weapons, seaweed for nests, and other supplies we leaders might need.
Mother swims to a nearby dragon working on a weapon, maybe a long metallic spear, at a stone table. Based on their feature, I could tell that dragon was male.
The dragon looks up at her as she looms over him, and fear permeates his eyes. Mother’s presence spoke louder than words sometimes.
Yes, Your Majesty? the dragon says, fear quivering throughout his green scales.
Please bring me a harness.
The dragon tilts his head at her.
Now, Mother demands, and he darts off to another section of the cave.
Everyone else in here occasionally looks at Mother as the green dragon finds me a harness, hoping they aren’t her next victim.
Harnesses came in three parts – the harness that the parent had around their chest; the rope that tied the parent and child’s harnesses together; and the harness that connected the child to the rope and (ultimately) their parent.
The green dragon then returns with the part of the harness made specifically for the parent, although it’s a slightly larger than my chest. This one is made from seaweed with various underwater plants woven into it – not the clear, white one that I was chained to for four Turns. Is this for you?
No, Mother replies, it’s for my daughter.
With that in mind, the dragon weaves and loops the harness around me until its stabilized.
Mother peers at the green-purple-and-blue harness. Do you have a smaller size?
Yes, Monarch, the green dragon says and unwinds the harness from me before taking it back to where it came from.
Soon, he comes back with another harness, and loops it around me again. It’s snug against my scales, and it would keep any dragonets close to me. However, it probably wouldn’t stabilize at egg effectively until it hatched.
Get an even smaller one, Mother hisses at the dragon after studying it, and he quickly skirts to the back and comes back with another small harness.
He takes the one off of me before putting the smaller one around me. This one feels… constricting, as if a scavenger had decided to put whatever it made on me.
I’ve never seen a scavenger up close before, but I do have an idea of what they look like and where they might or do live on Pern.
Mother studies the harness. Perfect. Now, can you please loosen it so I can slide this into it? She shows him the green egg.
Uh, sure, he says before loosening the harness.
It’s a temporary breather as Mother slides the egg into the harness near my chest before the green dragon ties it back up again.
Soon, it looks like I’m a mother to the green egg, although I’m actually it’s older sister.
Alright, I think to myself, you’re putting yourself through this for your family – your sister. Now what?
----When everyone gathered for last meal that night, Whitecap, my uncle and Mother’s hatchmate brother, had announced who he had chosen to represent the SeaWings while at Ruby’s interspecies meeting.
He had chosen me, Mother, Whirlpool, Seaquake, and Current.
Seaquake was one of the most powerful generals in recent Pernese history. But that power paled in comparison to the power and ferocity of her daughter, Tsunami, another powerful general. I had a hunch that if Whitecap had chosen Tsunami to go, it would be political and physical suicide for the SeaWings.
Current was a messenger who worked around the capital. However, he wasn’t the one that told Mother about Mistral’s meeting.
Mother asked her brother about his choices, and he simply stated that Whirlpool will represent the Depths, while also being Mother’s bodyguard; that Seaquake will represent our military; and that I’ve been primed to become the next leader, even though Flood and Riptide have been subjected to this same training in the past. He also mentioned that Current will represent the commoners, as well as being the messenger in case “something big happens”.
“Something big”? Mother arched an eye ridge at Whitecap. Like what?
Like war breaking out across the world, or if there is a second wave of scavengers descending onto Pern. Something like that.
As I ate what was served, I could see Surge leer at the two siblings, agitation visible on his face. I wanted to claw that entitlement off of his face and tell him that he didn’t have any talent representing his species.
Some point in the conversation, Mother and Whitecap stopped speaking as I was eating an octopus tentacle. Swell was munching on a small octopus, floating above Mother in the water.
Mother’s face seemed pensive, as she was considering her brother’s choices.
Then, she flashed several stripes on her snout to declare her decision.
I approve.
----Several sunrises later, me, Mother, Seaquake, Whirlpool, and Current had packed for the long flight and the stay at the SkyWing palace.
Swell was dragged into this, as he was still harnessed to Mother.
I had packed some food, some seaweed for a nest (just in case), a knife (as means of defense), and the book I was reading. You always had to be prepared for trips like these.
Mother had told us tonight that we should go to sleep early, as we were going to leave early the next sunrise.
Good thing she told me, as I wasn’t going to read The Depths of the Ocean that night.
----Something lightly tapping my snout woke me from a dream where the egg slipped from the harness and floated down to the sea floor where sky-creatures hunted it.
I opened my eyes, and it was Swell. Tide, he flashed, keeping his stripes dim. It’s time to go.
I got up, stretched myself, and yawned before putting my pearl necklace on. I looked down and saw that the harness and its egg were still attached to me.
I looked back up and saw that Current and Whirlpool were already awake and near the coral ledge that led to these small caves.
Swell looked behind him before looking back at me. Come, he flashed with his snout stripes before swimming out of my room.
I followed him, and saw Mother, Whirlpool, and Current conversing each other. Between the three of them, they all had our bags slung across their backs so they we wouldn’t carry anything extra.
You’re sure we should fly there? Current asked. But we don’t know anything about what’s in those skies.
Trust me, Whirlpool told him. It would be much better off if we were killed by crazed birds than unsuspecting currents.
Whirlpool’s right, Mother responded. If we’re going to make it to Ruby’s palace alive, we need to break standard procedure and leave the sea. We need to fly.
Fly? The only time SeaWings left the sea to fly was when they were learning how to fly and how to speak the physical language of dragons.
If this was how we were going to Mistral’s palace, this would be the first time I would be out of the ocean since hatching. Mother’s children weren’t exempt from protocol around here, even if they were harnessed to her at all time.
Alright, Current said, let’s do it. The only dragon we have to wait for is-
He stopped when Seaquake swam up the cliff.
Her blue-grey scales were dull from many years, and she had less scars that her daughter.
Your Majesty, Seaquake bowed. She had a bag slung around her neck. Are we ready to leave for the Sky Kingdom?
Swell and I paddled towards Mother, ready to leave. Mother took a look at us and her surrounding before answering the commander.
Yes, we’re ready to leave.
===Chapter 4===
When I leapt out of the water into the night sky (for the first time since hatching), I flapped my wings hard so I could stabilize myself in the air and become one with it. It was like how SeaWings used the sea to their advantage when swimming in its waters.
I could see that one of the three moons were out – Imperial, the first moon. It was in darkening phase, as it was orbiting the side of the planet closest to the sun.
Pern had three moons orbiting it – Imperial, Oracle, and Perception. Imperial was the largest of them, while Perception was the smallest of them.
Small silver dots freckled the black sky. These were the stars I’ve heard about, and how the wing scales on an NightWing resembled them in this sky (according to the dragon guide).
It was quite ethereal, seeing the sky like this.
Ahead of me, a harnessed Swell had gotten used to flying behind Mother. Current was next to me, and Whirlpool and Seaquake were on either of Mother’s sides.
“Quite amazing, isn’t it?” Current mused about the stars and the moon. His voice was light, like the currents that flowed through the sea. “The moon and the stars. It gives you a feeling of… otherworldliness.”
“Remember why Uncle chose you”, I reprimanded him. I noticed that my voice sounded like the deepest blue, rumbly and bass.
He snorted. “Of course, I know. He chose me if something were to happen to any one of us, specifically your mother.”
I remember that Whitecap had told Mother about choosing Current to report back in case something like war breaking out or another wave of scavengers descending on Pern. But I had a feeling that it was much worse than that, based on the message that dragon gave us a few sunrises ago.
“A meeting discussing the future of the planet”, as they had said.
----Dawn had come soon, when we passed through the ruins of the old Summer Palace, which were destroyed long ago.
The first rays of sunlight gave the night sky a dark blue color. Slowly, but surely, more sunlight penetrated the black night and colors such as purple, orange, and red seeped through.
As the sun crawled its way up towards the horizons, pink was added to the sky and orange, purple, and red were intensified.
“Mother, look!” Swell chirped. His voice was high-pitched like a calling bird. “Dawn!”
Mother didn’t pay attention to him. I bet was worried about getting us safely to Ruby’s palace.
Dawn soon turned into sunrise, and the sky was set ablaze by the sun’s light.
And so were our scales.
I looked down and saw that the green egg that was harnessed to me was pale green in the orange light.
“Hey, Current”, I said, turning my head, hoping to show him the egg, but I couldn’t finish my thought.
His blue scales were a pale blue-orange in the sunlight. He looked quite beautiful here, even though he was ordinary in the deep.
“What?” he said.
“Uh”, I stammered. “The egg. It was glowing in the sunlight.”
He looked at the egg, and noticed it’s green-orange coloration in the sunrise.
“Amazing”, he muttered to himself, “absolutely amazing what light can do.”
----Sunrise gave way to the day when the sun was halfway to its highest point in the sky. The sky was a bright blue, like Current’s scales, and puffy clouds had already formed, sparsely decorating it.
Nobody had eaten since we’d left, and my stomach was beginning to hurt.
Current let out a soft guttural, yet pain croon from his throat. He was clearly starving like me.
“Can you ask Wave for us to stop and eat?”
I looked at Mother, who was still flying nonchalantly as if nothing affected her.
I looked back at Current. “I hope so.”
I pumped my wings so I could position myself above Mother, while not disturbing her.
She noticed me in the corner of her eye when I flew up to her. “Yes?”
“Can we stop?” I asked her. “We haven’t eaten anything since we left.”
“I second that”, Seaquake agreed with me. “Look, I know you want us to get to Ruby’s quickly, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take care of your dragons.”
Dragons could survive a long time without food, even longer than a scavenger. But sometimes, our consume-digestion cycle was the same as theirs, and we needed to eat food to give us energy and to keep us alive.
Mother sighed. “You’re right. I should’ve fed you before we left. It’s my fault, I’m sorry. We’ll land on an island, and we’ll eat there.”
The island was ahead of us, although we couldn’t see it yet. Stretches of water surrounded us for miles where we were.
But soon, a large shape loomed ahead of us. As we got closer, we saw trees concentrated in a single area on an area that are around ten dragons long and ten dragons wide.
An island.
We all dived at its shores, and relief flooding my wings.
Finally!
I drooped my wings and my body collapsed on the sand, which wasn’t wet.
Like the loosening of the harness around me when I was fitted for it, this was a temporary breather.
“Tide”, Mother said, and I turned my head towards her. Her voice was like mine, except more elegant. “You said you wanted to eat, right?”
I nodded.
“Then eat. We won’t stay here long, and you can crash in our guest quarters when we reach Ruby’s palace.”
I sighed. “Alright.”
I got up and shook the sand off my underbelly before heading into the surf.
Wave crashed around my talons, and seabirds wheeled in the sky, calling to each other.
What was I supposed to do?
I remember being taught how to hunt in the sea, but I couldn’t recall how to.
Crap.
I wacked myself with one of my wings, before a giant silver fish flung itself out of the water and whacked my snout before landing wet brown sand.
Swell let out a hard, wheezing laugh that sounded like chattering birds.
Mother chided him, and he regressed to snickering, as he were mocking my lack of hunting skills. Or he saw it as free entertainment.
I picked it up with my teeth before another wave came in and swept it away.
This would be fine until we arrived at our destination.
As I ate, I could hear something in the distance, something like insects buzzing. But it didn’t “feel” like it was an insect flying around.
Usually, insects stayed in their respective habitats like forests and jungles. But that wasn’t the case here.
As the buzzing got closer, I could see it came from a small, smooth black metal rectangle that resembled the stone chest in my room where I kept my jewelry.
It was hovering in the air, and it was getting closer and closer towards us.
What is that?
I stopped eating and watched it move. It headed towards me, and I could see that it was somehow floating by itself.
Was it programed into it, or was someone controlling it?
It studied me before it moved on to Seaquake, who destroyed it by biting at it.
She turned her head to Mother, who took the rectangle out of her mouth and studied it.
“This is definitely scavenger technology”, she said. “No dragon would know how to make this.”
“Except the NightWings”, Whirlpool quipped with contempt in his voice.
----After eating, the five of us heading towards the Sky Kingdom, heading straight towards it.
Once we left the island, I could see nothing but water as far as my eyes could see.
When the sun had reached its highest point in the sky, I could see a large shape looming out of the water with trees in either direction.
We had officially entered the Sky Kingdom, the territory of the SkyWings.
And it was going to be a long flight for sure.
Many of these mountains were large enough to house multitudess, and dragons in colors of fire swarmed all over them.
How would we know which mountain was Ruby’s palace?
Thankfully, Mother allowed Current to ask a native where her palace was. We all hovered in the air as Current asked a orange dragon with large wings where we were supposed to go.
He came back to us shortly after he got his answer.
“We keep flying in the direction we’re going in until we find the mountain with an arena.”
“’An arena’?” Mother asked. “But how…?”
“The dragon told me that it was used for gladiator battles and as a hospital in the past. It’s now a historical site.”
----When the sun was halfway towards the other horizon, we had found the mountain with the arena that was Ruby’s palace.
In the distance, SkyWings swarmed all over. In one area of the palace, a small group of dragons set a cloth-wrapped on fire before dumping it into a large trench-like pit.
That was either the cleverest or the dumbest way to dispose of a corpse I’ve ever seen.
There were dragons near the arena, and they flew towards us when they determined we were close enough to the palace.
That’s the advance guard, I realized.
Most palaces, to my knowledge, had advance guards, which prevent any unauthorized dragons from entering it.
The fire-colored dragons surrounded us as we hovered in the air, their wingbeats sounding like storms.
“Who are you?” one the dragons demanded. This one was a male, based on his features.
Seaquake was going to speak on the behalf of Mother, but she shot her a look that said “don’t”.
Mother then looked back at the guard and said, “My name is Wave, the monarch of the SeaWings. Your monarch, Ruby, had invited me to attend her meeting discussing the future of the world?”
“Do you have any proof?” another dragon asked her.
Some of the dragon’s claws were twitching, as if they were waiting the entire day to make an arrest. Some of them closed on us, and I bared my teeth against an orange dragon that had gotten to close to me.
“It’s fine, Gust”, a red dragon to my left said. “I can take them to Ruby.”
Gust gave a look at the dragon. “You’re really sure that their the SeaWing representatives?”
The red dragon nodded. “They have the wing markings to prove it”, and pointed to Mother, mine, and Swell’s wings.
Gust studied them for a moment, getting a good look at them, before backing away. “Alright Vent”, he said. “They’re all yours.”
The other guards had backed away except for Vent, whose made his way in front of us.
“Follow me”, he said before diving into the area. We followed suit.
The arena was large, enough for multiple dragons to fight each other. It was shaped like a bowl, and sand was scattered throughout it. As I landed, I could feel that it was hot, hotter than the temperate the Kingdom of the Sea had in summer.
He flicked his tail at us, and we all followed.
Dragons could be seen scuttling around, bringing stuff to this dragon or that dragon. There were others taking the white cloths I had seen earlier to the entrance that we had come through from.
What were they, and why did everyone wrap the corpses of dead SkyWings in them before dropping them into the pit?
I had to ask. “Hey, Vent?” I inquired. “We saw dragons drop corpses who were wrapped in those cloths to the ground or set them on fire. Do you know what those cloths are and why the dead are only wrapped in them?”
“Those are burial cloths”, Vent explained as the group kept walking and following into tunnels that branched into other tunnels and cavern systems. “They act as a way for the souls of the dead to be released from their mortal bodies and either fly into the sky before we burn their corpses. The cloth can be kept by the family, if they wish, or it can be reused for future burials, in which case it must be cleaned before using.”
“How do you get into ‘the Sky’?” Swell asked, with curiosity in his voice. “Swell…” Mother growled at him.
“That’s something you’ll have to ask Welkin about”, the SkyWing replied. “For now, I’m just going to say that if you obey Caelum’s law, you’ll be alright.”
“Caelum?” Seaquake said. “He sounds he’s a leader that’s above Ruby.”
“No, no”, Vent quickly explained. “Caelum is our god, the one who created everything and everyone. He also dictates our lives.”
“So you believe in a higher power?” Mother snorted. “Mmm-hmm”, Vent replied.
I could hear Whirlpool let out an audible sigh that sounded like “hoo boy”, as if he didn’t want to deal with this.
Lizard, Uncle chose you to represent your species. Don’t like it? Deal with it.
Eventually, Vent led us through more tunnels that went deep into the mountain and led us to a cave that had no doors and had four dragons guarding it – one on each side. They bristled when they saw us and him.
“My name is Vent of the SkyWings”, he said. “I am the one Ruby assigned me to look after the SeaWing representatives as they stay here.”
One of the guards, a red dragon with orange eyes clad in metallic armor all over, peered at us, studying us.
After a moment, the dragon flicked their tail at the other dragons moved, allowing us to enter.
In the cave were other dragons that were not SkyWings, but instead from all around Pern. Gold in the shape of clouds were inlaid in the walls and the throne, which was just cloud shapes carved into a tall column of rock.
And on that throne (I assume), was Ruby, the monarch of the SkyWings and the oldest leader in the history of Pern. She had scales that were a full washed-out red, and wore rubies that wrapped around her body and a golden crown with cloud motifs on her head, signifying her as the species’ monarch.
Flanking on either side of her throne were two dragons – one was a slightly-washed out red with orange eyes, and the other was pale orange with blue eyes and was covered with scars like Tsunami.
“The SeaWing representatives”, Vent announced as we all passed him into the throne room.
All the dragons there swiveled their heads to look at us as Vent padded over to one of the walls where other dragons were and sat alongside them.
I recognized none of them, as I had never met them, except for one of the MudWings there…
“Reed!” Swell squeaked and scampered up to her.
Reed was the author of the once-beloved Skies of Fire series. She had brown scales, like mud, and wore wire-rimmed glasses in front of her eyes that hooked around her ears. She also had a pattered of dapped brown on her wings, making it looks like the swamp was with her.
She looked down at my brother with admiration. “Hello, young dragon”, she said, as Swell came to the end of his harness. He pulled on his, dragging Mother with it.
“Swell”, Mother snipped at him, “come back here.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because she will kidnap you if you wander from me.”
Immediately, Swell ran back to Mother.
“Woah there”, Reed said. “I pose no danger to this dragonet.”
“Physically”, another female MudWing next to Reed snipped at her. She wore a silver crown with images of reeds and live oaks with moss draping from its branches in it. I assume that was the MudWing queen. “You’re a danger to him mentally with your ideas of a male becoming female through mutilation.”
“I never promoted that in my books.”
“Yes, you did, with that character.”
The Skies of Fire character mentioned here was Cam, a human who appeared in Power of Fire, the final book of the series.
This character was one of the other reasons why nobody wanted to support Reed anymore. In Power of Fire, Cam was presented as a character who was neither male nor female, but yet “non-binary”.
Yet many dragons, like me, theorized that Cam was actually a social outcast and claimed the title of “non-binary” so that they may be accepted by others for doing absolutely nothing, which went against most dragons’ values.
But nobody knew for sure who the character really was. Only the author knew.
“But Cam was-”, Reed started, but she was cut off by Ruby.
“Dragons!” she boomed, despite her elderly, frail frame. “This is not the time to discuss your politics with each other. We must discuss the threat at hand if we are going to survive.”
“What threat?” one of the SandWings spat at her. “What exactly are we threated by?”
“A threat that no one had taken notice of until now?”
“Vulcan?” an IceWing griped.
“Yes and no”, Ruby replied. “Vulcan is an imminent threat here, but not from above.”
“Is it the scavengers?” a RainWing asked.
“No, it is something like them but is not them.”
“Like what?”
Ruby flicked her tail at the scarred dragon to her right, who I could make out was male underneath all those scars. He pulled a small, smooth black rectangle from a rawhide bag around his neck. It was the exact same one that we had saw earlier, except it was larger.
He handed it to Ruby, bowing as he did so.
“This”, the monarch said, “is not made by the scavengers. It does not resemble anything we know of them.”
“It could also be made by Vulcan, right?” a male MudWing next to Reed perked, his brown eyes narrowing at the box.
“Possibly”, Ruby said, “but it is not made by him. If he were to make this, his dragons would’ve had to make substantial advancement in the technology we already possess.”
A dead silence filled the room.
“So you’re saying that extraterrestrials made that?” the same male MudWing said. His eyes narrowed and honed on the black box.
Ruby stared at him. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you implied it.”
“Implied what?” a dragon behind me rumbled.
I turned around and saw a giant black dragon towering over me. Accompanying him was a smaller dragon, around my age or older with a scavenger on its back.
Instinctively, I shrank back in fear instinctively to protect myself and my unhatched sibling.
“Vulcan”, Ruby says smoothly, “it’s about time you showed up.”
===Chapter 5===
So this was Vulcan, the leader of the NightWings.
He was large, even larger than Mother, and his black scales were like pure darkness. The silver scales on the undersides of his wings glinted coldly like ice. He stared down at all of us, studying us each with cold, unblinking, fire-colored eyes.
“I hope you haven’t’ started without me”, he rumbled slowly. “That would be… impractical.”
“We haven’t started without you”, Ruby replied. “Please, find somewhere to sit.”
Vulcan slowly walking over towards one side of the cave, and I turned around to face Mistral’s throne to watch his assistant follow suit. Both dragons placed themselves between the IceWings and the RainWings, which were close to the throne. His assistant with the scavenger followed suit.
These were the most dangerous dragons in the world, according to external sources, and we were letting them right into our own territories.
“Uh”, one of the RainWings gawked at Vulcan’s assistant. “You have a scavenger on your back.”
“Oh!” the dragon said. “This is Firehead, and he won’t hurt you, unless you provoke him.”
Firehead. What an odd name to give your sky-creature.
Owning scavengers as pets was rare amongst us dragons. It was more common that these guys tamed dragons who approached their settlements, not the opposite way around.
“Alright”, the SkyWing monarch sighed. “Let us formally begin.” She handed the black box that was in her talons to the dragon nearest to her throne, which was an IceWing.
“I have gathered you all here because of what is passing around. These ‘boxes’ have been seen taking samples of the Sky Kingdom’s environment by my dragons. I have also heard reports from others that these same boxes have been taking samples of all of Pern’s environments. We know that the scavengers came here eons ago, and took such samples of their surroundings before expanding their settlements, but not with technology with this.”
The box was now in the talons of a RainWing whose scales were black-and-white with some orange here and there.
Ruby continued.
“If we know where these come from or who made it, we can formulate a plan to defend ourselves and the planet.”
The black-and-white RainWing had passed the box on to a dark green LeafWing.
Wait, what was a LeafWing doing with the RainWings? Did they force her to help her, or did she agree to help them out of her own willpower?
The dark green dragon studied it, before giving it to a green RainWing with leaf-shaped wings.
Was that a… hybrid? And what was it doing here? Did they know that being a hybrid was seen as betrayal to their different parent species?
The RainWing with the leaf-shaped wings passed the box to a SandWing with pale yellow scales. The yellow dragon snorted at the green dragon with disdain before studying the box.
Ruby said nothing for a while as the box was passed to each dragon before it ended up in my talons.
I studied it, and I noticed that it was larger than the one seen earlier. A several small holes were on one of its sides, and there was one on its bottom. Were these its propellants, like a dragon’s wings? Or was it something else?
I felt someone jab my underbelly, and I turned. It was Whirlpool, gesturing that I give the box to him.
I gave it to him after a bit of thought and watched him as he studied the box. He then gave it to Mother, who sat next to him, after a bit. She studied it before letting Swell look at it, before giving it to Seaquake.
I turned back and looked at Vulcan. He seemed to be watching Mother like a predator watching its prey, waiting for the right time to strike. In fact, he seemed to be watching everyone like this.
Was he observing how everyone would respond to his new technology? Or determining our future demise?
It took a while before the black box was given to the last dragon in the circle, a male MudWing with light pale wing membranes. He turned it around in his brown claws before extended his forearm to give it back to the queen.
One of the dragons that sat on either side of Ruby’s throne stepped down from their post. It was the red dragon with orange eyes, and they snatched the box out of the MudWings’ talons before returning to their post. As they approached the brown dragon, I could see that they were like the scarred dragon on the other side of the throne – a male dragon, thanks to the soft orange-gold light emitting from the brazier’s flames illuminating his physical features.
He handed the box to Ruby, who took it from his talons. “Your Majesty”, he said in a high bass voice.
“Thank you, Cliff.”
Ruby then gave the box to the dragon on the other side of her throne. “Cloud”, she said to the scarred orange dragon, “can you put this away?”
Cloud took the box from Ruby’s talons. “Yes, monarch.”
As he put the box in the rawhide bag around his neck, Ruby boomed. “So, that was an introduction on why we are here. The last meal is upon us, and I would like my servants to take you to your quarters.” She extended a wing towards the dragons near one of the walls and swept her wing towards the other dragons. I noticed that one of them was Vent.
They all went to the representatives, and looked at Ruby, waiting to receive their orders.
“Servants”, Ruby said, “please take our guests to their quarters to get them situated here.”
The servants bowed, and Vent flicked his tail at Mother, getting her attention. “This way, Monarch”, he said before heading into a tunnel beyond Cliffs’s post beside Mistral’s throne.
The red dragon stared at us with curiosity in his eyes as we passed him and followed Vent throughout the mountain.
The red dragon led us through tunnels that seemed to down in the mountain, deep into its bowels. But it soon turned out that we were heading towards the palace’s supposed guest quarters, as it didn’t quite “feel” like we were deep below the mountain.
As Vent led us into a tunnel with stone doors on one side, I could see the other draconic representatives enter their respective quarters.
We passed the RainWing and SandWing representatives, who headed inside their quarters, when Vent stopped outside one of the stone doors.
“The guest quarters for visiting SeaWings”, he said, and opened its door for us.
The quarters were a cave where ten dragons could easily fit in it. On the far side of it, there was a dragon-sized hole in the wall, where sunlight filtered in. On the right side of it, was a small dent in the cave, where two dragons snuggled up to each other could fit.
The five of us entered, and I noticed that there was a basket made of grass in one corner. I walked over and peered inside it.
“Those are blankets”, Vent explained behind me, “for you to create your nests.”
I pulled one that was blue with white clouds scattered through it with my teeth out of the basket and set it on the smooth, stony floor.
“I’ll be back to assist you for last meal”, Vent said. “But right now, I’ll let you get comfortable and prepare for it.”
The stone door scraped shut behind us, and it was just me, Mother, Swell, Seaquake, Whirlpool, and Current in the cave.
Mother scanned the cave, almost as if she were determining where we would stay.
“Hmmm”, she mused before walking over to the basket and taking a blue blanket with images of flying dragons on it out with her teeth. She walked over to the one side of the cavern, Swell padding behind her as not be dragged, and put on the floor.
“Swell and I will take this…area”, Mother announced, gesturing to the dent in the cave wall.
“If that’s the case”, Whirlpool added, “I’ll stay outside it if anything happens or if you need anything.”
I picked up the blue blanket I had taken out, and picked it up with me teeth and placed it on the ground near the hole in the back wall.
This would simulate my room back in the capital, but with a SkyWing flare, so to speak.
Whirlpool had gone over to the basket and had chosen a grey blanket with a black pattern on it, making it look like it was made out of storm clouds. He had picked it up with his teeth and brought it over the outside the dent and placed on the smooth floor.
Likewise, Current had done the same, marking his spot near the stone door. The blanket he chose was white and had a black pattern on it that made it seemed like he had chosen to sleep on clouds.
Seaquake had settled herself in the middle of the cavern with no blanket.
“Hey”, Current called to me. I looked up, and he slung my bag across the floor to me.
I opened the bag, and saw that everything in it was intact, well except for the food. Some of it broke along the way, but that was fine.
‘You should get another blanket for the egg’, Seaquake flashed at me with her snout stripes.
I arched an eye ridge at her. ‘What?’ I flashed back at her.
‘That’s based on my experience with Tsunami’s egg’, she flashed back, accompanied by a snort.
‘Alright’, I flashed to her before getting up and padding back to the basket. I took another blanket out, which strangely looked a bit like the one SkyWings used for their funeral rites.
I went back to my nest and set it down on top and beside the other one, when I realized that it was not the SkyWing funeral cloth.
It had a white color with a gold border, and had a grey silhouette design on it, resembling a dragon flying over the mountains. Fluffy white clouds were the image’s background.
It seemed like there was a common theme in SkyWing blankets – images evoking their home’s essence.
Hm. If we revitalized the Summer Palace, maybe the craftsdragons could make something like this for the other species if they did visit us.
I rummaged through the bag, and pulled out The Depths of the Ocean and pulled out some ropes of pearls I had brought with me. I didn’t want to bring the pearl-and-coral ropes – it would be too formal for a meeting like this.
Current had already taken his bag off his back, and Whirlpool had given Mother’s and Swell’s bags to them. Seaquake had slung the bag she brought her off her back as well.
Soon, everyone was preparing for our first last meal in the Mountain Claws.
As I placed The Depths of the Ocean into the blankets that made my nest, I could see Current putting a silver ring onto his right horn. It wasn’t much, but at least he went prepared.
Whirlpool was putting gold rings on himself – on his claws, on his ears, and throughout his webbing.
‘Current’, he flashed to the blue dragon, obviously struggling with the rings for his back, ‘can you help?’
Current gave a grotesque look at the rings Whirlpool had, but he sighed sucked it up like a real dragon. ‘Fine.’
He padded over to Whirlpool and helped put the rings into his spine webbing on his back.
Meanwhile, Mother was wrapping herself coral-and-pearl ropes she brought around herself, making seem more like a living statue that a dragon. She was also putting a necklace made of many seashells around Swell.
As Current was finishing Whirlpool’s rings, I noticed that Seaquake wasn’t wearing anything.
“General”, I said to her, “why aren’t you wearing anything to last meal?”
“Generals”, she hissed while glaring at me, “do not need to be dressed for events like this.”
“You have to”, Current said, “otherwise you’ll be like a scavenger with no coverings on it.”
“Pfft”, Seaquake snorted.
“I think what Current is telling you, general”, Mother said, “is that you need to have something on you for the last meal. Otherwise, you’ll look like you have no respect for our guests.”
Seaquake looking up and her eyes moved from side to side, as if she were thinking.
After a bit, she groaned. “Fine. Give me a piece I can wear without looking flamboyant.”
Current walked over to his bag and fished out a small silver ring from it. He tossed it to Seaquake, who caught in her claws.
“Wear that on your ear”, he told her. “You’ll still look like the badass general you are.”
Seaquake cracked a small yet brief smile before her face when back to its resting look. She put the ring in on her ear, and then everyone was ready.
Vent hadn’t come by to get us for last meal, which was odd, since the sun was now getting closer and closer to sunset.
Had we really been in the palace that long?
I got up from the nest and got on my haunches so I could look out from the hole. The sky was beginning to fade from a bright blue to dark blue, and the sun was taking on an orange glow.
I could hear the wind whipping through the mountains, birds calling to each, and wingbeats from dragons whose day was ending.
It was very different than the Deep Palace, but in a good way.
It was vibrant like the sea – full of life.
But my reverie in admiring the coming sunset was interrupted by the sound of the stone door opening. I turned around, and it was cracked open.
“Esteemed guests”, I could hear Vent say on the other side, “are you ready for last meal?”
“We are”, Mother told him.
“Very well. Please, follow me. We are about to start.”
===Chapter 6===
The SkyWing palace’s dining hall was larger than the one in the Deep Palace.
It was situated outside the palace, on a half-circle-shaped field that was situated between two cliffs part of the palace’s overall infrastructure. It was blocked off from the rest of the world with rocks and boulders and cliffs dropping from it or not in either direction, creating makeshift windows where bars of light could come through.
Statues of dragons carved from black rock, marble, or gold were scattered around, as if they were watching our every move. Braziers of fires were everywhere, giving the place an orange glow. SkyWing guards were on the walls, clad in armor, watching for any danger.
In the middle of the field was a wooden table, which already had food on it, and at its head was golden throne with cloud motifs carved into it.
And on that golden throne was Ruby. Like her namesake, she was dripping in rubies. Rubies were all over her body – her neck, her wings, her talons, and her tail. She glanced up from the table, supposedly from dozing off, and her eyes widened with jubilee.
“SeaWings!” she chirped. “I’m so glad you could make it! Please, take your seats.” She gestured at the wooden chairs at the northeastern end of the table, right next to her.
The four of us slid into the chairs, as Swell sat between Mother’s claws in her chair.
The three Pantalan dragon species were on the southern and southwestern ends of the table, and the SandWings were right next to them on the table’s western side.
Nobody else had arrived… yet.
The only sounds in the cave were the hushed breathing of dragons, birds calling to each other side, and the gentle burning of the flames.
Nobody dared to speak now, out of respect for Ruby and her wishes.
The sun sank lower and lower as time went on.
Where were the others?
Some of the dragons were eying the food that was already on the table – platters of roasted and deboned birds, bowls with salads made of mountain flora, and platters of mountain goats treated like the birds. Wooden jugs of water were everywhere on the table, and stone plates and metal cups were in front of each placement.
My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten anything since we briefly stopped at the Sky Kingdom’s shore as a temporary rest.
Footsteps near the hall’s entrance, and I turned my head.
The RainWings were here, and Ruby gestured to the seats between the Pantalan dragons and a grouping of chairs on the table’s eastern side.
They took their seats as the other representatives filed themselves in and Ruby seated them.
The IceWings and the NightWings were situated between the SkyWing queen and the SandWings. The MudWings were situated between us SeaWings and the RainWings.
The servants that had brought them were staying at one side of the cavern, in case the dragons needed to be ushered to their quarters unexpectedly.
“Okay, now that everyone is here”, Ruby said, “we must pray before we eat. Bow your heads with me.”
What? I couldn’t understand why, but I did it. Everyone followed suit, having the same confused look on my face. The guards and the servants also bowed their heads as well, except this was in respect more than confusion.
“Dear Caelum”, the queen prayed, “I ask that You bless this food that we are about to eat. I also ask that You bless the time we have here, that it would glorify You and be part of Your master plan. Amen.”
“Amen”, the guards and the servants said in harmonious synchronicity. Everyone else said this, befuddlement in their voices.
“You may eat”, Ruby said, and everyone began digging into the platters and bowls, while also passing it around.
“Caelum?” Vulcan rumbled at Ruby.
“Our god”, she replied.
“Oh. So you believe in those stories.”
“Excuse me?”
“Those that say there is a master over the universe. There’s no proof that anyone had ordained everything in existence. If there was proof, we would’ve found it by now.” He popped a mountain goat from his plate into his mouth.
“What kind of proof are you talking about?” Ruby inquired, arching an eye ridge at the huge dragon as the NightWing with the scavenger gave a bowl of salad to her.
“Like some sort of sign witnessed by millions. One that roared ‘Hey, everyone! I created everyone and everything! Oh, and by the way, you must strictly follow these specific commandments if you want a secure place in the afterlife’.”
“Caelum does not work like that!” Ruby hissed at him.
“Then how does your god work, SkyWing? Tell me, how does He work?”
Ruby couldn’t say anything, as if she hadn’t been asked this question in her entire life.
“I thought so”, Vulcan muttered to himself before taking a swig from his metal cup.
“Mother, may I speak freely?” Swell asked Mother.
Mother looked at Vulcan and Mistral before looking back at Swell. “No”, she answered him, “you cannot enter this conversation.” She pointed at the NightWing leader. “That is the most dangerous dragon in the world, more than the antagonists in Skies of Fire, and you must never directly confront him unless you want war.”
“Sound advice”, the NightWing with the scavenger said. In the dying light, I could see the dragon’s features, and they said that this was a female, like me. “The most powerful dragons are the ones that shouldn’t be trifled with, young dragon.” She set a piece of bird wing meat on fire before giving it to Firehead, her scavnger, to eat.
“Hold up”, I said to the NightWing, and I felt Mother stare at me with the full force of the SeaWing’s army. “Did you just set that bird on fire for the scavenger to eat?”
“Yes”, the NightWing said. “Scavengers will rarely eat anything raw like us dragons. They cook it first over flames before eating it.”
“How come?”
“I dunno. Some of our other dragons with sky-creatures have done this, using raw fish, and those died in sunrises after ingesting it. It’s a very odd phenomenon.”
“While we’re on the subject of odd phenomenon”, the MudWing with the brown scales and eyes jumped in, “would you care to explain how the VolcanoWings managed to create something that defied nature?”
“Argil!” the MudWing with the pale wing membranes hissed at him.
Firehead’s NightWing glared at him, her orange eyes turning into slits. “How do the MudWings know about-?”
“When something huge on the planetary stage happens, everyone takes notice.”
I took mountain goat from my plate and munched on it.
“We also know that you’ve been attacking the posts where the IceWing and the SeaWings do business”, Argil snarled. “Do you deny it?”
An awkward silence hung in the air, as the last rays of the sun vanished beneath the horizon, and the stars and the moons were coming out for the night.
“That wasn’t us”, Vulcan nonchalantly rumbled before putting a roasted bird into his mouth. I took a sip of water from my cup.
“We have witnesses about this”, Seaquake jumped it. The tone of her voice had the essence of “I know what I’m doing” all over it.
“We have a metal plate that fell off of one of the soldiers’ armor when you ambushed the Ice Kingdom several sunrises ago.”
“We had nothing to do with that”, he deflected.
“The IceWings can confirm that what the SeaWing is saying is true”, a white IceWing said. “The survivors of these attacks have told me about their plight, and I want to know why you are targeting us in this way. Is it a show of power, a show of force? Or is it a warning to others what the NightWings can do if the world goes to war against you?”
Everybody stopped what they were doing and turned their heads to Vulcan, hoping for an answer.
Argil and IceWing glared at both dragons, their eyes full of anger. I practically feel the fury radiating off their scales and emitting throughout the entire cave.
Vulcan glared at his assistant, who spoke for him. “Those attacks were supposed to be a test of the armor. We never wanted anyone to get hurt in the process.”
“Then you should’ve done them in your rotten, foul volcanos, you lizards”, Seaquake griped at her.
Vulcan backed himself up and got out of his chair. “Come on, Ashes”, he grunted to the black dragon, who was Firehead’s owner. “Let’s leave the fools to own devices for right now.”
The two dragons stormed towards the cavern entrance, and their servant, an orange dragon ran up to them.
“Ready to go back to their quarters?”
“Yes”, Vulcan rumbled. “Take us there. We won’t be leaving them for the rest of the night.”
The three dragons left, and everyone resumed eating their food, albeit cautiously.
I didn’t feel hungry after that. If that was the greatest threat to the world, someone who disrespected a species’ culture and deflected what they had clearly done, then the dragons needed a plan to defeat them.
A very specific one.
“Mother”, I said, “may I please be excused?”
Mother looked at the table and the surrounding area. “Yes, dear”, she replied.
I backed my chair up and got out, walking towards one of the makeshift windows.
As I approached it, I could see the mountains, rivers, and cliffs bathed in moon- and starlight.
This was temporary haven from everything.
Imperial and Perception were still out. One was still progressively getting darker, while the other was getting brighter.
I could hear the dragons at the table were now conversing normally, getting to know each other despite these high political tensions.
I could hear the wind blowing through the rocks and the sky.
Current was right, this was definitely an otherworldly feeling.
Wait, what if otherworldliness was something we could do to defeat the NightWings?
We could hijack their technology and send them out into the stars to die slowly in the vacuum of space.
But to do that, we would have to find someway to steal those ships (if they had any) without getting caught.
Maybe there was another way…
A buzzing sound interrupted my train of thought.
I recognized that buzzing from earlier.
It was from one of those black boxes that Seaquake had bitten at the beach.
And it was coming closer and closer towards me.
Right before it came up my snout, a shadow suddenly snatched it out of the air and gobbled it up.
What the-?
But shadows don’t do that.
Only dragons do that.
The black box was dropped at my feet, and a a pair orange eyes piercing the darkness stared back at me.
Another NightWing.
But… how?
How could Vulcan and Ashes bring along a third dragon and not have this one be seen by others?
Was this dragon a messenger, like Current, or something else?
Whoever they were, the only thing that mattered was that the NightWings were going down as one of the most dangerous dragons in the history of the universe.
===Chapter 7===
Waking up in the middle of the night was not my thing. Neither was not being able to fall asleep after said awakening.
I had woken from a dream where Vulcan had breathed fire at me before eating me up.
Which was supposed to represent my fear of him taking over the planet?
I shook myself and stretched before looking down to see if the egg was intact.
It was.
Good.
Mother was still asleep in her alcove, Swell curled up to her. Likewise were Whirlpool, Current, and Seaquake.
She had advised me last night before everyone went to sleep not to take the harness off during the night, as it would be asinine for my mental and physical wellbeing overall.
I looked out the hole and saw that it was still nighttime, Imperial, Perception, and the stars were still out.
That could give me some time to fly around the mountain before discussions occurred today.
But it had to happened before dawn or before anyone woke. And I couldn’t take my pearls with me; I had to stay unnoticed.
With that in mind, I jumped through the hole into the night sky, my nostrils taking in the wild scent of the forest.
I angled my wings to catch the gentle winds around the mountain, as it I were positioning myself to catch a current to travel faster in the ocean.
The winds were still blowing against it as I flew around.
It was peaceful, and there was no smell of dragons in the vicinity.
Too peaceful, in fact.
As I let the wind carry me its gentle currents around the mountain, I could hear wingbeats behind me.
Mother? Or another dragon?
I turned around, and I noticed that Ashes and Firehead were following me.
The black dragon soared down to me, and I gave her a look.
Her scavenger was sitting on the back of her neck, hoping she couldn’t suddenly jerk away from something and send him plummeting to his death.
She noticed me. “What?”
I didn’t say anything. My face spoke more than words could articulate.
“Oh”, she said, “you think that I’m here with Vulcan to destroy the planet.”
I nodded.
“To be fair, there have always been power grabs throughout history.”
“But none as aggressive as yours.”
She didn’t respond.
Gotcha.
The two of us flew around the mountain, its peaks, and the arena for a bit before the sky during a dark blue color.
Dawn was coming soon, and birds will start calling to each other.
To quote Kestrel from The Depths of the Ocean: “I learned that birds sung at dawn, because the cool air carried their songs over long distances.”
The sky faded from dark blue to grey, and the birds started singing.
Their calls were like Swell’s voice when he first saw dawn last sunrise.
“Squrk!” Firehead chirped when he heard the birds, as if he hadn’t heard them in his entire life.
Meet too, little scavenger, me too.
As the grey sky turned bright with the colors of gold and light blue, I could wingbeats around the palace, and low voices of dragons.
The palace was waking up, and Mother could be looking for me any minute.
At the sound of waking dragons, Ashes darted over to a side of the mountain and entered its tunnel, probably leading to where the NightWings were housed.
I was tempted to follow her, but I realized that it would be quicker for me to find the hole I left from so Mother and the others didn’t suspect anything.
The hole was slightly down from the tunnel Ashes entered, and I flew down and slipped through it as orange-gold light rose from the horizon. The sky was now in colors of orange, pink, and purple.
I grabbed my pearls from the blankets I slept on and put them around my neck and horns before the first dragon woke.
It was Swell, he was the first one to open their eyes.
“Augh, at least I’m out of there”, he muttered to himself before sitting up and yawning.
What did was he dreaming about? Something like a hellish world?
He shook himself and stretched before padding to me, a slight bounce in his stride.
“Good morning, Tide!” he chirped.
I cracked him a smile as Seaquake stretched her blue-grey wings and sat up, yawning. She still had the metal hoop from last night still in her ear.
“Good morning, general”, I said.
She turned and bowed her head. “Good morning, princess.”
Soon, everybody woke up. Mother was the last to wake.
After stretching ourselves, we decorated ourselves like the night before, with some variation.
After Mother had finished wrapping the coral-and-pearl ropes around her body, she fished out some gold and silver rings from her bag. She put them on her ears and talons.
Light from the sunrise was leaking into the cave through the hole, washing everything in an orange-yellow light. I could hear a large fluttering of wingbeats around the mountain, despite it being early in the day.
There was a knock at the door, and it creaked open.
“Good morning, esteemed guests”, Vent said from the other side. “How are you doing?”
“We’re fine”, Mother said. “You?”
He let out a happy snort. “Never been better.”
“You’re kidding”, Reed said as she and the rest of the MudWings passed the SeaWings’ cave. “We’re going to a religious gathering before first meal?”
Whirlpool glared at the stone door, as if he wanted to throw shade at Vent.
After the MudWings passed, the stone door opened fully, and Vent stood in its entryway.
He extended a red wing towards the tunnel.
“Queen Wave, everyone. Please follow me. Like that MudWing said, we are going to worship Caelum before having first meal.”
----The tunnels Vent led us through went deep into the mountain, deep into its bowels.
As we went deeper, the braziers on the walls disappeared and were replaced by something that resembled stars that were trapped underground. Vent said that these were glowworms.
They had an ethereal blue glow to them, mimicking the stars at night.
As we got closer, I could see that there were carvings on the walls, many of them intricate.
Swell asked Vent what they were, beating me to ask him, and he said that those carvings were ripped out of the Sanctus Liber, their “holy book”.
What I learned about “holy books” were that they were not factual. They were solely written to make sense of the world in a time with no intelligence and to console a dragon’s fear about the unknown. I hadn’t read any, they were forbidden by Mother and the Depths.
Some the wall carvings took the shape of a grandiose dragon, lighting, and clouds behind it. Vent explained that those carvings represented Caelum, their god.
Further down the tunnel, I could hear dragons talking to each other. “Ah, we’ve arrived!” Vent announced to us.
The cave here was small, which could several dragons in it. There were two other tunnels in its sides, one that lead to the worship area and one that lead back into the palace.
SkyWings were gathered in it, talking to each other, or ogling other’s offspring.
As we passed a family, a dragonet with red scales ran up to Swell and started talking to him.
“Hello!” she chirped at him. “My name is Wind! What’s yours?”
“Swell.”
“Hi Swell! Do you want to play during the service?”
“Wind!” a dragon boomed across the cave. “Come back here!”
The dragonet stopped following us. “Yes, Father”, she replied before scampering back to him.
Vent led the five of us through the tunnel on the right, which led into another small cave, capable of holding a small amount of dragons in it, before turning right again, this time into a giant cave.
The cave seemed like the size of the reef in the capital, with long, thick stalactites hanging from the ceiling and short, stumpy stalagmites on the walls. A raised pulpit that was carved into the floor was on its far side, and behind that were several instruments I could not identify.
There were long continuous chairs carved into the floor in an arrangement, where SkyWings were filing themselves in. This cave did not have glowworms in it; inside braziers of fire lined the walls and a metallic chandelier, bolted to the top of it, hung from the ceiling.
Vent gestured to the line of the long chairs on the left. “You’ll be sitting next to the MudWings this service. I’ll be in the back if you need anything.”
He let us walk towards the MudWings, which were in the topmost long chair in the cave, farthest away from the pulpit.
We slid in from the side that didn’t have that many dragons in it, and I found myself sitting next to Argil.
“Oh, hi”, he said when he noticed me sliding over to him. “Is this where your…?”
I nodded. “This is where I have to sit during the service.”
“Huh.” He extended a claw towards me. “My name’s Argil”, he said in a friendly voice. “You?”
“Tide”, I replied as I took his claw and shook it.
“Ah, like the shifting ocean tides on our planet?”
I nodded as he ogled at me. It took me a moment to realize that he noticed my sister’s egg on the harness around my chest.
“Is that…?”
I was going to explain to him that it was my little siblings than my egg, thinking that he thought I was already a mother, when music from behind the pulpit started playing.
The music had a tempo to it that was joyful, like what the dawn represented in the books I read.
At the sound of the music, SkyWings outside this cave began filing themselves in, nearly packing the entire place full of dragons.
After a moment, one of the musicians spoke while playing their respective instrument.
“Good morning, everyone. Let us stand and sing about our god’s greatness.”
Everyone stood up, including us SeaWings and the MudWings.
Then, we sang.
Our god is great, the father of creation.
We see His works each day. 
The lightning strikes, the thunder booms their praises.
The stars can’t help but declare His worth.'
If this was a song glorifying Caelum’s supposed creation, I didn’t want to know what a song about His deeds were.
After singing that, a SkyWing got up onto the pulpit and told everyone to sit down. We obeyed.
“Good morning, everyone. My name is Welkin, a spiritual elder here. I would just like to give some announcements before the singing continues.”
I mentally blocked it out. It wasn’t necessary for our trip, but at least I knew what Vent meant when he said, “That’s something you’ll have to ask Welkin about”.
“To round things out”, Welkin said, “I would like to acknowledge that there might be… unusual dragons during a few services. Will these dragons please stand up?”
The RainWings stood up, and I saw that they were in the long chairs closest to the pulpit. Everyone clapped when they saw them.
Mother stood up, and I followed suit. So did the MmudWings. Standing up, I could see that the LeafWings and the SandWings were on the other side of the cave and that the NightWings and IceWings were in its back. The rest of the representatives were scattered through the place.
The applause soon died down, as Welkin explained our purpose being here. “These dragons have been selected to represent their species during these trying times, as Ruby has invited them over to discuss how to secure the future of the world.”
After that statement, we representatives were not told to sit back down, but instead the entire congregation was told to open to the Santus Liber and to head to a passage. Looks like the announcements were over.
Argil pulled a copy of the Sanctus Liber from the back of the long chair in front of him, flipped to the passage, and showed it to both of us so that we could read it.
The passage was about Cloud, a SkyWing who had decided to face the LeafWings by faith alone.
Wait, there was another Cloud in the SkyWings? I thought it just the one, one of Ruby’s top dragons.
The passage further described how Cloud managed to kill Hornbeam, the LeafWing champion, by simply slinging rocks from the ocean into the dragon’s temple.
Hoo boy! These dragons do believe that faith alone could get you anywhere!
Faith alone did not save you in this life. This was tested by previous generations in the SeaWings, and the result was that faith made you disconnected from reality. If you wanted to survive in this life, abandon all faith and focus on the world in your talons.
The same applied to hope.
After finishing the passage, Whelkin prayed to Caelum before stepped down from pulpit and the musicians took over.
When the musicians began playing again, a new song was sung.
Your Word is like the sky, sustaining us with breath.
This is true even in death.
Your Word is like the sea, sustaining us with all we need.
Let us sing to You, our god. Let us sing.
We shall sing of Your deeds throughout the generations.
Yes, we will.
Your Word is like the sun, lighting our ways.
You keep us straight, even in these last days.
Let us sing to Your, our god. Let us sing.
We shall sing of Your deeds throughout the generations.
Yes, we will.'
We sung several more verses like this until one of the musicians prayed and we were instructed to sit down.
Upon sitting down, a dragon with pale orange scales and light blue eyes perched themselves behind the pulpit, a copy of the Santus Libre open on its surface.
In the light, I could make out that this dragon was male.
“Good morning SkyWings”, he said, “as you know my name is Wren, the pastor of the palace’s worship area. Today, we will be continuing our series on how the Old Promises connect to the New Promises. So please turn your Sanctus Libre’s to Zephyr chapter 19.”
The sound of book pages turning emitted through the cave. Argil was also flipping through the book, hoping to find it.
“I can’t find it”, he whispered to me and held it out with his front talons. “Do you want to read it?”
I took the book from his front talons and began flipping through the first pages, which took to the Sanctus Libre’s first “book”, the Book of Spirits.
This apparently detailed the origin of the world and the history of the SkyWings.
Interesting.
I began with the first chapter, Spirits 1, which was called “The Creation of the World”.
I began reading.
In the beginning, Caelum created the heavens and the earth. Now, the earth was without form nor shape, yet it hung as a sphere in the darkness. Caelum’s spirit was hovering over the dark waters when light came into being.
“Let there be light”, He said, and behold there was light!
Caelum saw that the light was good and separated the light from the darkness by calling the light “Day” and the darkness “Night”. This was the first day.
Then Caelum ordered the creation of the sky by saying “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water and separate them from the waters above the firmament and below the firmament”. And behold, there was a firmament separating the waters! This was the second day.
Then Caelum ordered the creation of the earth by saying, “Let the waters of the firmament be gathered unto one place and let dry land appear.” And behold, the waters were gathered unto one place around the land! He called the dry land “Earth” and the gathered waters “Seas” and “Oceans”.
Then Caelum ordered the creation of the plants by saying “Let the earth yield vegetation, the plants yielding fruits and seeds and every green herb according to their kind.” And behold, the earth bore plants according to their kind! This was the third day.
Then Caelum ordered the creation of the sun, the moons, the stars, and the planets by saying “Let there be lights beyond the firmament in the darkness. These shall be signs for seasons, sunrises, and Turns.” And Caelum created five great lights for the earth – one to rule the day, and four to rule the night. He also created the stars of the universe, and the planets which revolve around them. This was the fourth day.
Then Caelum ordered the creation of sea creatures, by saying “Let the waters abundantly produce life, the moving creature that has breath.”
All of that in four to five days?!
I then realized that I hadn’t finished the chapter.
I looked up from the chapter and saw that Gale was still preaching his message on how the first half of the Sanctus Libre was connected to the second half.
I could also see that Peak was watching the pastor preach with rapt attention.
But his eyes told a different story. He was looking around, his claws fidgeting.
Was he nervous about something, or was Gale’s message affecting him?
I closed the book and put a talon on his shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?” I whispered to him,
His grey eyes gave me a worried look.
“Something’s wrong”, he whispered back to me. “I feel that there’s something that’s not supposed to be here.”
“Like what?”
His eyes suddenly widened. “It’s behind us”, he whispered, supposedly out of breath.
And then something bit the back of the MudWing with the silver crown on her head sitting neck to him.
===Chapter 8===
“Your Majesty!” Argil shrieked as blood spurted out from the dragon’s neck. He tried to pry whatever was on the back of neck off her with his claws.
I turned and saw that teeth had lodged themselves into the dragon’s neck, and those teeth belonged to the same dragon that had snatched the box out the sky last night.
This was a NightWing assassin, and they had their jaws firmly planted on the back of the MudWing queen’s neck.
As I jumped over the back of the long chair, the black dragon let go and bolted out the cave. I followed them, hoping that this dragon would provide some answers about Vulcan.
As I followed the assassin through the tunnels that wound throughout the mountain, I realized that these tunnels weren’t like the ones Vent showed us through – those that went back into the palace.
These tunnels headed somewhere else. Perhaps to the outside world or the funeral peak?
Turning a corner into a tunnel the assassin went through, I nearly crashed in a SkyWing carrying a basket. I stopped myself in front them, stubbing my claws on the stone.
“Ow” I hissed at myself.
The SkyWing looked at me, stunned yet befuddled. “Are you okay?”
I looked around, not even answering them. Where did you go?
“Are you lost?”
No answer from me.
“Did something happen?”
I didn’t answer them again. I sniffed the air, hoping to get a whiff of that NightWing’s scent.
The intersection mainly smelled of SkyWings, but there was a hint of NightWing… There!
I bolted past the SkyWing into the tunnel, which had a gradual upward slope. As I raced up the tunnel, I could hear wind howling outside.
I was close to the mountains, and the NightWing would be arrested there.
When I reached the top of the tunnel, I could see the NightWing was at the mouth of it, near the sea. But they were surrounded by… SeaWings? What were these dragons doing here?
“Where are they?” a green dragon demanded the assassin.
The assassin just shook their head. “Like I said, I don’t know who ‘they’ are. You’re asking the wrong dragon.”
“Do you know where you last saw them?”
“In the gathering area, deep in the mountain.”
“How do we get there?”
The assassin gave them a look. “Why are you asking me this?”
‘Should we…?’, the green dragon flashed to a green-brown dragon. They nodded, and the green dragon explained all to the NightWing as the green-brown dragon turned around, supposedly looking for someone else, and spotted me.
“The dragons we are searching for are here, and they’ve wronged us for generations. They’ve ripped our families apart, starved us, killed those who speak the truth.”
‘There!’ the dragon flashed with their tail stripes to the others and charged at me.
Crap!
I spun around to flee back into the mountain, but a hood that smelled of underwater plants was shoved over my head, and stumbled to the ground, nearly tumbling back down the tunnel. It was dark like the deepest blue, but greener.
As I landed on the floor, I heard a crack come from my chest, and panic shot through me. Had the egg broken? Did I just kill my little sibling?
I clawed the back of the hood, but I felt talons on it, meaning that someone was trying to hold it down onto me. But why?
Teeth sank into my tail, and talons pinned my down to the floor. I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything. What did they want with me?
I saw flashes of light from outside the hood in patterns, meaning that the SeaWings were speaking to each other in Aquatic.
When the last flash was over, I felt myself being dragged by these guys to the mouth of the tunnel. They should’ve targeted the assassin, not me!
“Hey!” I heard a voice bark from tunnel. It was Argil, but he had come too late.
One of the dragons hissed at him. “This does not concern the MudWings.”
“It does now”, he growled and breathed a stream of fire from his mouth at the dragons. I could the heat coming off from it, reminding me of the Royal Hatchery.
As I was forced backward to the edge of the cave, I briefly saw flashes from outside the hood before something slammed into my head, and darkness took over.
----The water is a deep blue, and silver light streams into it.
She sinks to the bottom of the ocean, no will her body to surface.
The light is moving farther out of her grasp.
She knows she must surface on order to survive, so she musters her strength and claws her way up through the water. 
The silver light gets intense as she breaches the undercurrents of the deepest blue…
----As I open my eyes, I saw pulsing colors of pink and blue around me.
Am I dead?
It looked like I wasn’t, as I sat up and groaned.
‘What happened?’
I looked around at my surroundings, and I saw I giant palatial reef in front me, surrounded by cliffs on all sides, the only light coming from bioluminescent coral and pulsating jellyfish. The coral of the reef was rotting, long sheets of moss were draped over its pinnacles and sides. Stone vents popped up out of the stony floor, spewing heat into the surrounding area.
Dragons were all over the cliffs, but these dragons weren’t ones I knew. They were in colors I didn’t know, a mishmash of different waters.
I was back underwater. But where was I? Maybe the dragons in front of me might help.
As I took a step, a blue dragon’s head popped into my view, and they looked pissed.
Get back in there, scum, they growled at me.
Not wanting any trouble, I obeyed and realized that I was in an alcove like Mother was in Ruby’s palace, and it was guarded at all angles by SeaWings.
Where was I? If I’m being held prisoner by these dragons, what do they want from me?
The blue dragon was still staring at me, fury in their eyes, and their gaze wouldn’t let go.
The alcove was small, able to house three dragons who were curled up to each other comfortably. But why hold one dragon here instead of multiple ones?
Something felt “off” about my chest, and I looked down. The harness and my little sibling’s egg were gone.
No.
I curled myself into a ball, clutching my horns with my claws and letting myself fall to the ocean floor.
‘I failed you, Mother. I failed to protect the future. Our family.’
The heat from the vents burbled around me, wrapped me in the gentle anger of the deep.
How was I supposed to deal with this? Losing my sister and being so far from home?
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a dragon swim towards me. They had pale blue scales that were nearly white like water filled with light, and their membranes were pale pink like the insides of seashells. Perhaps they could tell me why I’m here.
One of the dragons guarding the mouth the alcove let the newcomer pass. As they approached me, I uncoiled myself from being a ball, straightened myself, and bared my teeth at them.
The pale dragon stopped. So, you’re the new dragon Coral dragged here, they mused. Fascinated how she chose you instead of any of the others.
Who’s Coral? I demanded. And why am I here?
You will learn soon who my sister is, but for now, get comfortable here. You’re dealing with the Undercurrents now.
==Part Two: The Undercurrents==
===Chapter 9===
The Undercurrents. Three moons.
I’m in the territory of the most dangerous dragons on Pern.
And they’re real, not something concocted to make us vigilant about our way of life.
The pale blue dragon floating in front me cocked their head at me. Can you not look like you want to kill anyone when Coral gets here? It’ll look like I haven’t contained her prisoner.
I closed my mouth as a dark blue dragon swam towards down towards the alcove. The guards let her through and she paddled next to the pale blue one, staring claws into my eyes.
‘So this is Coral’, I thought, ‘the one who ordained my capture. And this dragon’s sister.’
Coral studied me closely, as if I were a carving more than a living being.
This is the wrong dragon, she said to the pale blue dragon beside her, but we can make it work. Dragon, state your name, species, and title.
Both? I flashed back. She nodded.
My name is Tide of the SeaWings, heir to its throne.
Anemone, she flashed to the pale blue dragon next to her, a withering look on her snout, I’m disappointed in you. For this reason, I want you to tend to this sniveling dragon until I say it’s time to interrogate them.
Yes, Coral, Anemone bowed her head at the other dragon and swam away to the palatial reef behind her.
Interrogate me? I growled at Coral. For what?
Coral’s eyes narrowed into thin slits like Mother when she was pissed at me, her children, or anyone who disobeyed her.
You’ll soon know, she said before turning around and swimming back into the reef. And I was alone with guards surrounding my prison.
----Time passed as I was held here in the alcove.
I didn’t know how many sunrises it was since I was kidnapped or many sunrises I’d been in here.
Everything blurred together. Up was down, right was left, war made peace.
I went in circles around the alcove to keep from muscles from deteriorating, and ate whatever prey Anemone gave me. Most of it was creatures that lived in the open sea, like I ate in the Deep Palace, but it wasn’t prepared on stone platters; it was just given to me as is. The other stuff I ate was trench creatures that had unexpectedly wandered into my alcove.
It wasn’t enough, but at least it kept me alive.
From the alcove, I could observe the Undercurrents and understood why Mother instilled hatred of them in her children – they had no regard for the law, nor understood why it was implemented.
Dragons were not paired with each other as Mother understood them, they chose how they were paired. They also looked after their own, whereas we looked after everyone.
The dragons here also taunted me as they swam over the reef and the surrounding cliffs, flashing slurs and insults at me, and threw their leftover rancid food at me. The guards did nothing about this, in fact, they encouraged it.
If you were a weenie, you would cry at those insults. If were a real dragon, you would suck it up and make your inner mental shell stronger.
Even though I sucked it up externally, it was torturous internally – they were insulting the integrity of generations of leadership to my face. I could almost hear my ancestors crying through the insults.
Regarding those leftovers, if any of their leftovers entered the alcove, I didn’t eat it. It was already disgusting enough.
I pawed the leftovers to the guards, and they ate them. Either they weren’t allowed to leave their post and were starving or wanted something extra to eat. I didn’t know, since they swapped positions every few times I went to sleep in the alcove.
It was sometime after I woke from a dream where I was in Kestrel’s swamp and a scavenger with a shiny stick strapped to its body had opened its clawless paw and put it on my snout when a dragon, accompanied by other dragons, swam towards the alcove. The dream felt so real, like I was in her world. But Kestrel never met scavengers in the book. So that part was probably me being wistful for freedom from these crooks.
The lead dragon flashed their stripes at the surrounding dragons to move away. As the guard allowed the dragons to pass, one of them clutched one of my forearms hard. The pain was great, like multiple jellyfish stinging me at once.
Time to see Coral, their leader said and they dragged me into the direction of the palatial reef.
===Chapter 10===
We went through the center of the reef, which resembled the main hall back in the capital, except a bit more… organized, as if dragons had carved this reef out over years.
We went through down a tunnel that went straight through the reef and had a decline at its end, we went down and down and down into the reef. The water became warmer, no hotter, as our descent led us to the stone door, where a dragon with a skinny, wiry frame was guarding it.
Coral wanted to see her prisoner, the lead dragon said, and the skinny dragon opened the door, allowing us in.
We were now inside a cave which seemed to be molded by talons over time. The stalagmites and stalagmites were all carved back, made blunt, and the stone floor had been worn smooth by dragon claws.
There were vents in the floor, and there were eggs around these vents like in the capital hatcheries, except that their nests were made of seaweed, not the stone they were contained in. Tubeworms were clustered around the vents as crabs crawled over the eggs, picking off whatever grew on them.
Coral and Anemone were beside a bowl-shaped vent spewing heat into the cave, one of them holding pieces of a dark green egg in their claws.
Coral noticed the guards, and snagged my wing with one of her claws as the dragon that dragged me let go of my forearm. It still felt like multiple jellyfish were stinging me. Either her claws were that sharp or she that she had high force in her grip.
Leave us, she flashed at the guards with her snout stripes. They obeyed and closed the stone door behind them before Coral let go my wing.
I growled, baring my teeth at her. This is an outrage, I started. First you-
I don’t want to listen to your ramblings, lizard, Coral cut me off. I know that you’ll complain that this was not how you expected to me treated. Let me tell you something. This is how you treat us every sunrise. You fatten yourselves with the best food while we starve and fall ill to diseases that could easily be fought off with proper medication. You love to say that you know how to keep order, while murder runs rampant in our reef cities. You-
She was cut off by Anemone, who put a talon on her shoulder. Coral glared at her as she spoke. What my sister is trying to say is that you don’t do what you say, and that we’re struggling to survive out here.
Is that the real reason you brought me here? I snarked. So I could listen to your ramblings?
No, Coral sniffed. That’s not why I brought you here. Although you did also give me something I’ve always wanted.
And that would be…?
You already know.
She showed me a piece of green eggshell in her claws, and suddenly wacked her tail into my snout, careening me sideways and blood pouring out of my mouth into the surrounding waters.
I clutched my mouth in pain, one of my ears was ringing. Her name is Wrack, she said as she threw the pieces of eggshell into the water, letting them float to the top of the cavern, and I’ve given her to a family to be part of. A proper family.
What do you mean?
You know what I mean.
I arched an eye ridge at her. Uh, no. I don’t know what you mean.
Coral had an expression on her snout that said, “I’m done with you”, and blew bubbles in the water.
I’ve given Wrack to a family that will protect and love her no matter what and will discipline her rightly. I don’t know how you were raised, but I can only speculate that you didn’t have the parental support you needed because Wave was too busy controlling us. I’m amazed that you haven’t gone homicidal because of that.
Homicidal? I snapped at Coral. Homicidal?!
What Coral’s trying to say, Anemone clarified, is that you display all the hallmarks of a competent dragon despite your upbringing.
Uncle was me and my siblings’ paternal figure since Father was never around.
And do you know anything about your father?
No, I’ve never heard anything about him.
Did he leave Wave for another dragon or…?
Oceans, no! If Father was unfaithful to Mother, then she would’ve dealt it years ago. Why are you asking me about this?
To compare the family you had versus the one Wrack will have, Coral snipped. In our reef cities, fatherless dragons are responsible for murders that plague us. Which accounts for most of the general population. But I don’t want to talk about that anymore. I want to talk about why you’re really here.
I arched an eye ridge at her. And that would be?
A way to enter the capital.
I tried to growl at her, but the pain in my jaw from Coral’s tail was still there. The ringing in my ear was still there, but it was dying down gradually.
You won’t get anything out of me.
Really? Coral swam towards me. Will this get you to speak? She kicked my underbelly with her back claws and I keeled over in pain before she grabbed my wrists in her talons, exerting much force on them.
I couldn’t close my jaw, I couldn’t move my forearms, there’s pain in my underbelly. I couldn’t do anything.
‘They want me to feel helpless.’
Coral’s pressure on my claws was relenting, and soon they turned a deep purple-blue and I couldn’t feel them moving. The pain in my underbelly was still there, but it was fading. The ringing in my ear was now gone, although I think someone should look at my jaw after this.
Alright alright! I relented. I’ll talk.
Coral let go, a pleased expression on her face. Good. Pain has a way of making others talk. Now, tell me how to evade the advance guard, or how to get rid of them.
Uh, okay, I started. The first thing you need to do is hide from the guards. Skillfully. Dragons who wander through the reef above the trench or who directly approached it are more likely to get killed.
I began moving my talons as I spoke to get them moving again, and they soon did. The numbness in my talons were replaced with the feeling of rushing blood and they were back to their normal dark blue.
Is that it? Coral inquired. I nodded, the pain in my jaw still there.
Good, now tell me how to enter the capital.
I was baffled. Excuse me?
You heard me.
If I was going to get out of here alive, I had to tell them everything, despite everything roaring in my brain to stop.
I told her.
Once you’ve evaded the trench guards, go directly into the trench, but be careful. There are dragons on the cliff walls, but they can be either evaded or killed before you arrive at the reef.
Coral arched an eye ridge. And then…?
And then you’re in the capital.
Just like that?
I nodded. Now are you going to release me?
Coral looked up at the cavern ceiling thoughtfully before looking down and swimming towards me. She put one talon on top of my head and the other on my chin. The position of a quick, painless, yet physical execution. Her claws began to bury themselves into my scales.
Even though you’ve given me what I’ve wanted, you won’t be leaving anytime soon. In fact, this’ll-
She was cut off by a dragon bolting into a cavern and knocking both of us off-balance.
The world went upside-down, and I saw flashes of light below me.
I oriented myself upright with my body, still floating in the cavern’s warm water, the pain in my body dying down, and caught a bit of Coral and the dragon’s conversation.
Are you sure? she said to the dragon.
The dragon nodded.
Coral’s eyes widened, her scales shaking with fear.
Anemone, she told her sister, look after the prisoner while I deal with this outside.
She swam out of the cavern with the dragon beside her, and Anemone paddled towards me.
I flinched, unsure if she was going to execute me.
She held up her talons. I’m not going to execute you, as I don’t have the guts to do it. Coral, on the other talon… She faltered. She’s been defending me since dragonethood, and now the dragons of the Undercurrents as of late. So, she has more willpower to kill, but it’s more preemptively than defensi-
She was cut off as I felt something in the water shoot through the hatchery entrance and begin burning through my tail.
===Chapter 11===
I held in my screams as I flailed through the hatchery’s water, trying to calm the burn down.
The world went round and round in all directions and I could make out an armored figure fighting Anemone through the chaos.
I reoriented myself and quickly checked my tail, which had a red gash throbbing with pain on one side of it, before looking back up.
A black dragon with silver scales on their wing undersides clad in plated metallic armor was wielding some sort of metallic stick that was curved at one end and was forcing it into Anemone’s gills. It was almost like stabbing someone’s chest, aiming the knife at their lungs.
The skinny dragon that was guarding the hatchery was dead, their body was starting to rise to the top due to gas swelling in their body, backside up. Burn scars like the one on my tail were all over their body, including one deep in their chest.
Anemone was staggering back as she pushed the curved stick the black dragon had back as it was being forced into her gills, burning them.
I charged at the black dragon, plowing into them, and knocking them off-balance. The dragon flailed in the water, trying to reorient themselves, and I grabbed their head, taking advantage of their lack of competent deep-sea swimming.
As I yanked the helmet off the dragon’s head, they tried to push my forearms off to keep it on, throwing the stick into the surrounding water.
Anemone! I called. Help me!
I kicked the black dragon in their stomach, and they keeled over in pain, allowing me to wedge my claws into the helmet and pull it off them.
Anemone swam up to me and snagged the helmet, noticing what I was doing.
Together we pulled the helmet off the dragon, and she smacked the dragon’s head with her tail. I heard a snap, and the black dragon was now limp in the water.
I looked at back her. I thought you said you didn’t have the guts to kill.
Anemone snorted. I said I don’t have the guts to execute dragons. Now hold still.
She put one of her talons on top of my head and the other on my jaw. This is going to hurt, she said before moving my jaw back into place in one swift, hard motion.
The pain from earlier came back, but at least now I could tell that my jaw wasn’t broken. I snatched some mouthfuls of water to make sure it was working properly before realizing that this was my chance to escape.
I turned around and sped out of the hatchery, leaving the blazing heat behind.
I saw flashes behind me, which was probably Anemone following me with also yelling at me.
As soon as I exited the tunnel and into the main hall, a green dragon staggered backward as a black dragon stabbed them with a curved metallic stick. No blood came from the green dragon, oddly, but I had to get out of here.
I darted around the dragons and to the opening of the reef, my eyes were assaulted with dragons fighting dragons. Blue on black, green on black. Dragons were scrambling to get out of the reef and into the darkness of the trench.
I darted out into the battlefield, a black dragon plowed into me, and I was sent careening before I felt claws dig into my scales and the feeling of fire burned into the back of my neck.
Instinctively, I clawed behind me, and I felt my claws snag on metal plates and the fire went into my gills. The more I pulled on the plates, the more the fire dug into my neck.
So this was how I was going to die – in the waters of enemy territory by foreign dragons, stained with blood.
Before the fire completely dug into my gills and I choked on fire, the burning suddenly stopped, and I was pushed down into the trench by claws.
The pain in my gills was great as I regained my balance on one of the trench’s cliffs before swimming out into the darkness of the trench.
There were other dragons here, but some of them weren’t so lucky when they fled. Blood from the wounds of the living and dead seeped into the surrounding dark water, trailing behind them, or leaving their corpses.
I swam from the cliff into the dark waters of the trench, away from the Undercurrents and a battlefield.
----When I emerged from the trench, the light streaming into the water was a dying gold, meaning that it was evening on the surface.
Above the water, I could see silhouettes of dragons attacking other dragons. Some of those silhouettes morphed into corpses as their bodies fell into the ocean from wounds. I recognized that the corpses falling into the water were from different species, from different areas of the world – SkyWings, SandWings, MudWings, and IceWings from Pyrrhia.
I didn’t have time to investigate who these dragons were. I had to find out what was going on and I had to find my way back to the capital.
I surfaced the water when the sky seemed clear and found the shape of the trees of the Poison Jungle in the distance. The roaring of dragons and the smell of smoke could be heard in the distance and the silhouettes of other dragons were heading my way.
I plunged my head underwater to avoid detection and formulated my plan. If I continued north a bit, I would reach the Gullet River and use that as a starting point to get back to the Deep Palace.
I couldn’t simply turn around and go back. There were probably more armored dragons swarming the trench, and they would easily detect and kill me in a heartbeat.
I also couldn’t surface, because I would end up like those dragons that fell into the water – very dead.
Like the protagonist of Crescents of Fire, the sixth book of Skies of Fire, I had to stay hidden to stay safe.
----I continued swimming until the water turned dark blue with silver, when I found a giant reef loom in front of me that looked like a mountain jutting in the ocean.
It looked abandoned based on its state, and there were char marks all over it. Claw marks pocketed it in areas where dragons had tried to claw the coral to stay alive.
It was bigger than the reef in the caverns below and had a jagged spherical shape.
I swam down to the hollow that seemed closest to me and was at my eye line. It was worn smooth my dragon claws over the Turns, despite its jagged exterior.
A grey-green eel that had made its home in one of the cracks in the reef nipped at one of my claws, warning me to stay away from it.
I curled up on the smooth coral floor and let exhaustion and uncertainty take over me.
----She swims through the trench, which are pocketed with scorch and claw marks all over.
The reef in the center of the cave is destroyed, pieces of it lie on the cavern floor. Corpses litter the water, floating to the surface of the sea due to gas building up in them. The shells of eggs have been destroyed in the hatcheries and their inhabitants are also gone.
There is no life here, save for her only, and only her.
She continues swimming around until she sees some sort of groove within the trench’s cliff walls. She tugs at it with her claws, and it gives way.
A door that leads somewhere else.
She opens the door completely and swims into a new trench, lit with bioluminescent coral.
Dragons swarm the reef down here and its cliffs. She is not sure this is real, so she turns around and the door is gone.
She turns around again to face the reef and a dragon swims down her. 
Excuse me, they say, do you need help?
Yes, she replies, do you know who the current SeaWing monarch is?
The dragon gives a look at her and arches an eye ridge.
Have you been living under a rock? The monarch is Wave.
Mother’s alive, she mutters to herself before asking the dragon where she is and thanking them.
She speeds into the middle of the reef and down the tunnel leading to a stone door in front of a cave.
The dragon guarding the door puts a curved metallic stick in her snout, ready to shoot fire at her.
I’m Tide, she says, Wave’s daughter.
The guard studies her before opening the door and letting her in.
Vents line the cavern floor, eggs tucked into seaweed nests surrounding them.
In there was a dark blue dragon who was holding a dark green egg in her claws which was soon to hatch.
Around her chest was a harness and rope made from a clear, white-colored substance that connected her to a small blue dragonet.
Behind her were two dragons – one with dark blue scales and pale blue eyes; the other with pale blue scales, pink webbing, and pale blue eyes. They looked nearly identical, as if they were related to each other.
The small dragonet notices her and scampers up to her.
Tide! the dragonet chirps, elation in his eyes. You’re alive!
She lets out a guttural chuckle. She has missed her little brother.
It’s good to see you, Swell.
While you were gone, I finished all the books of Skies of Fire.
Oh, did you?
Yes, and guess what? I’m starting some new books!
Which ones?
Swell drops his head, disappointment on his snout. Ones related to Instruction.
You shouldn’t mope about them, Wave said. Your brothers and sisters have gone through them, and look where they are-
She was cut off by the dark blue dragon behind her quickly snapping her neck with her talons.
Coral.
The dragon then trampled over Wave’s corpse and the egg towards her and her little brother.
The egg was now crushed, the eggshells floated to the top of the cavern as the little green hatchling stayed still in her mother’s claws.
She wraps herself around Swell, baring her teeth to ward Coral off.
But the dragon didn’t heed the warning. She opened her jaw like a snake and lunged at her, devouring her whole into darkness.
===Chapter 12===
My eyes opened as Coral devoured me into darkness. I lay still as my brain processed what happened.
I had dreamt of my family… and Coral.
It had felt all so real – the capital, the reef, Swell. Everything.
Yet I was so far from that.
I sat up slowly before I yawned and stretched myself, seeing that the water was a calm pristine blue, a stark contrast from the blood and death last sunrise.
My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten since…
How long had it been since the time I ate?
I tried to count how many times Anemone had fed me, but I had lost count since the umpteenth time.
I turned around to see if the eel was still in the crack. Sure enough, it was still there, waiting for its next meal.
Joke’s on it because it was my next meal.
The eel eyed me with its small unblinking eyes and gaped its mouth at me, as if it were hissing.
I snapped my mouth at it, but it darted into the crack, and I bit my tongue. A bit of blood dripped from into my mouth, and I gently bit my tongue to stop the bleeding.
The eel wasn’t like the crabs and snails that had wandered into my alcove in Undercurrent territory.
Speaking of crabs, I could try to find one here before I left for the Gullet River and the Poison Jungle Jungle.
I swam out of the reef and searched the other hollows for what I could find. The only things I could find were a map of planet Pern on a long sheet of waterproof paper and a bag woven out of multiple types of seagrasses. The map was detailed in showing the poles, continents Pyrrhia and Pantala, and the planet’s ocean currents in their entirety.
A map of the planet was required in most SeaWing settlements, including the capital. But because I couldn’t reference the capital’s map, this would do for now.
As I rolled up the map and put it in the bag, I realized that I would be an easy target out there with the pearls on my horns and neck.
I took them off, placed them in the bag, and swam around the reef one more time to find a crab. I found none, meaning that I would have to go hungry today.
I then swam away from the reef and surfaced, seeing how far I was to the jungle. I was maybe twenty to thirty dragons away, not far from it, and I could see that the sun was near its highest point in the sky.
With that in mind, I went underwater and swam towards it, to the mouth of the Gullet River.
As I got closer to it, I could feel myself gag and saw sand slowly pouring out of the banks from jutting rocks. But it wasn’t sand, it was silt.
The Gullet River was the most poisonous river in the world due to unknown reasons.
I surfaced before I got into the river and heaved myself onto brown wet sand that lined the sea and the riverbanks.
As I heaved to get the feeling of venom from river's water out of me, I caught my reflection in the it's murky water.
A dark blue dragon I was, with grey eyes like stones. A burn mark was on the right side of my neck, at the end of my gills. My form was less powerful than Flood’s, but still dynamic enough to navigate the ocean.
I resembled a lost heir, far from home, far from her dragons.
I shook myself to get the droplets of water and wet sand that had clung onto my underbelly off me before venturing into the forest.
The trees were tall, with thick brown trunks and bright green leaves. Vines curled around branches, flowers on them blooming. Birds sat on the ground hopping from one place to another. Some of them flapped into the trees as I approached them. Sundews and small Venus dragon-traps gathered themselves around the trees.
About thirty talonsteps into the jungle, I saw a large lump near the riverside. As I got closer to it, I realized that it wasn’t a rock or a pile of sky-creature corpses. It was a dragon’s corpse, and it was covered in dragonbite vipers.
===Chapter 13===
The corpse was bellyside-up on the ground and its scales were orange like the sky during sunset. It also had long wings like a seagull that were flaccid on the ground.
Snakes slithered all over the dead SkyWing, eating whatever flesh was still on its bones and hiding in its exposed organs, which they also ate. There was a dent in one side of the corpse’s head, suggesting that someone bludgeoned this dragon to death with some sort of weapon. Whatever blood that had pooled around the head was already dried on the ground.
There was a forensic term that described this dragon’s demise: “blunt force trauma”.
A snake that slithered out of one of the corpse’s kidneys noticed me and began making its way out to me as if I were its next meal.
I skirted around the corpse to avoid being bitten by any of these creatures and continued making my way through the jungle.
There were more bloodstains on the surrounding trees, as well as claw marks and scorched earth.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Something red was dropping onto my snout like rain.
I stopped walking and wiped my snout with my talons and noticed that it was blood that fell onto me.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I moved two steps back to avoid more blood dripping onto me, wiped my snout again with my claws, and looked up at the trees.
The corpses of SkyWings were dangling from the trees, their bodies twisted into horrifying forms.
One of them had their mouth open, as if they were roaring for help or calling their god to help them.
Another one had their eyes scorched out as birds pecked at their orange scales, eating away its body.
A red dragon who was skewered on a branch had their wings shredded, nearly ripped off their body.
The blood that was dripping onto my snout came from a dragon that had more wounds than scales and was spread across several tree branches, making it look like a dragon Mother executed because they failed her and left it out to hang on a coral outcropping as a warning sign.
This happened recently.
Who were these dragons, and what warranted their deaths?
----When night came, dragons died.
The sight caught me off guard, so I had to jump into nearby foliage away from the riverbank to avoid detection. I also had to be careful I didn’t suddenly lauch myself into a Venus dragontrap – which I didn’t, thank the moons.
The NightWings had found a small settlement where dragons from around the world had gathered here in the jungle.
Dragons fled from the camp into the dark trees as the black dragons set their tents on fire and killed anyone they could find. It didn’t matter to them who you were; if you were not them, you were a traitor.
Some of the NightWings were dragging dragons they caught into the air. I looked up, following their flight path with my eyes and saw them chaining their captives onto the lower half of a large, hollow, square-shaped metal contraption where other captured dragons dangled from. It was manned by NightWings who had some sort of harness on their chests; thick chains connected the harness to the structure as they hovered in the air.
The captured dragons dangling from the metallic skeleton were bound by leather around their wings, bodies, legs, and snout, preventing them from flying, speaking, or attacking. These straps of leather had thick chains looped around them, connecting them to the makeshift prison.
I could spot that this contraption contained various dragons such as MudWings, SkyWings, and RainWing whose wounds were covered in cakey, dried blood.
There were also SeaWings in it. They looked parched, their scales nearly a lifeless grey. One of them, who was a dull blue-grey, had their eyes gouged out, leaving gaping red holes behind.
I couldn’t tell if any of them were royal or not. The only sign that you were an heir or relative was if you had a pattern on the fringes of your wings that resembled a lacy coral reef.
I kept still within the foliage, watching the dragons’ every move until I felt a thump near my talons.
I took my eyes off the metallic skeleton and looked down.
A soft brown bag had been tossed into my hiding place.
I picked it up from the bottom and felt a smooth, oval-shaped object in it.
A dragon egg.
If I peered inside and saw that the egg was black, then it was a NightWing egg, and I would leave it to nature to die. I didn’t want another hellbent, powerhungry dragon to be brought into the world. In fact, the world would be a better place without the NightWings.
If it was a different color, like yellow or green or brown, I would keep it.
I clutched the bag close to my chest as I heard the NightWings’ contraption clank and groan as it flew away from the smoking encampment, far into the night.
When the NightWings were out of earshot, I walked out of the foliage and into the ruins, the bag still in my claws.
I would have to stay here temporarily before moving on. I couldn’t fly, as it was suicide and would lead to my capture or death; I couldn’t swim in the river because of the snakes. I would have to walk for now.
----Before moving on, I had peered into the bag and saw that it contained an egg the color of desert sand in it. I took it out and placed it into the bag around my neck, where it would join the planetary map and my pearls as one of my possessions, before continuing my trek into the jungle.
I had noticed last night that the moons in the sky weren’t the same the night before I was captured. The only moon out was Perception instead of Imperial and Perception.
Only three, and it looked like a brightest night wasn’t far from now.
But alas, this was a farce. According to celestial records, the most recent one occurred approximately seven years ago. Normal brightest nights occurred once every one-hundred years.
I didn’t dream that night and woke slightly after dawn. Taking advantage of what little darkness there was, I decided to take a risk and flew into the jungle’s canopy, hoping that it would speed up my journey.
When sunrise formally came, I dove back into the understory and continued to fly, since I couldn’t see or hear anything that sounded like the NightWings for many wingbeats. It would also give me camouflage in case I did come across anything dangerous.
Green light filtered down from the leaves onto my scales and the forest floor. I was careful as I flew to follow the river and to not crash into any trees, fat or thin, large or small.
As sunset dawned, I heard roaring dragons in the distance.
Thinking it was NightWings coming my way, I bolted into a large, tall, brown-barked tree with vines drooping on it. A brown bird that was on a branch flew away into the trees of the forest as soon as I landed. I breathed softly, hoping that no one would hear me.
I was near the end of the river, where there was an encampment straight ahead, which was composed of multiple small huts set up in a clearing with many dragons in. Neither I nor the encampment’s residents could afford to be spotted right now.
Keeping my eyes on the trees beyond, I saw them rustle before an exhausted green dragon with leaf-shaped wings collapsed into the encampment.
One of their wings was nearly shredded and one side of their neck was bleeding profusely. It was a miracle that this dragon had survived for this long.
One of the encampment’s dragons, a skinny gold dragon approached the worn-out dragon.
They sniffed the green dragon, as if they were infected with a contagious disease, before turning around.
“Get this dragon to Alder”, they ordered a nearby white dragon. “Quickly.”
The white dragon stepped forward and helped the green dragon pass some leaf-woven huts and into the trees, albeit not in a way that would be considered “helpful”.
Who were these dragons? A small resistance? A band of refugees?
A brown dragon approached the gold SandWing and spoke to them.
“Bright, a word?”
The dragon nodded and gestured with one of their wings to the shores of the riverbank. Both walked on it, keeping their way from any potential snakes that might slither out of the water, until they thought they were out of earshot of the others. Little did they know, they were right near the tree I was hiding in, and I could hear them as something began crawling onto my tail. Something small with many legs.
“You should’ve taken us to the north pole when you had the chance”, the brown dragon snarled at Bright. “Then perhaps we wouldn’t be seeing this all the time and taking them in. Who knows who’s going to betray us?”
“Argil, calm down. No need to get all jumpy.”
That name sent shudders down my spine.
Argil.
The last time I saw him was when he was chasing the SeaWings that kidnapped me and let that NightWing assassin go.
“Then why are we still here?” Peak snarled. “Why are we still in this hellhole?”
“I told you. We must wait for them to find us.”
“And whose ‘them’?”
“You and the others will know soon.”
“No, stop playing the pronoun game. Just tell me facts. I know that Queen Marsh and her council let the Diamond Spray Delta burn to the ground when a chemical spill caught fire there because we were unimportant. We didn’t advance their agenda.”
Bright’s black eyes fell to the ground and their wings drooped also.
“Alright”, they said, not even meeting Argil’s eyes.
“The dragons that are coming to find us are part of a growing resistance – one where scavengers and dragons work together to fight off the NightWings. They’re supposed to come get us instead of us finding them because of…”
Bright trailed off, as if they couldn’t finish their thought cohesively.
“Because of what?” Argil demanded.
“Because they don’t want anybody leading potential infiltrators to their base and outing them to the world.”
“And when were they supposed to come?”
“Three sunrises ago.”
The thing crawling on my tail was making my tail itch, badly.
Without thinking, I whacked my tail into one of the tree’s thick limbs nearby. The pain in my burn scar was reopened as the limb’s leaves rattled, despite it not oozing blood.
Argil and Bright snapped their heads up.
“There’s something here”, Argil whispered, “something big and in the trees.”
I pressed myself against the tree, making sure not to crack the SandWing egg inside my bag.
“Let me look”, Bright whispered back and took off into the greenery.
I could hear Bright flying around the trees at the riverbank.
I stayed still, slowed my breath, and closed my eyes, praying to Caelum that they wouldn’t find me.
Bright’s wingbeats were in my direction, then they weren’t, and then they were, and then they weren’t.
And then they stopped.
Had they landed on the ground, giving up their search?
But if they had, why hadn’t I heard a thump on the ground right now?
Or were they searching in another area?
One heartbeat.
Another.
Nothing.
Maybe they were searching in another area.
But the feeling of a body swooping down and suddenly slamming right into me proved it all wrong.
I opened my eyes as I was knocked off the tree and fell to the ground, frantically flapping my wings to right myself up. It was useless, until something grabbed me and carried me over the riverbank into the trees. The dragon hovered over the dark soil, their grip hard like Coral’s, and I was able to crane my head and saw that the dragon that had caught me was Argil.
It looked like it was the same Argil I knew back in the SkyWing palace, the same sharp brown eyes that knew everything.
But he looked more… volatile than the last time I saw him.
His eyes narrowed at me as I stared back at him.
“Bright”, he called, “is this one of the dragons you mentioned earlier?”
Overhead, I could hear Bright descend, and a moment later, they were hovering beside Peak.
Now that I could see the SandWing up close, I could tell that this dragon was a female, rather than male, based on facial features.
Bright sniffed me. “No”, she replied, “this is not one of the dragons I mentioned earlier.”
“Then what is this dragon doing here?” he demanded.
“I don’t know”, she replied, “but we are going to find out.”
=== Chapter 14===
Argil flew back to the smattering of leaf-made huts at the edge of the river, carrying me in his talons, with Bright leading him.
“Stay here”, she told him as they approached a hunt that was larger than the rest. She flew down and entered the hut as he still hovered in the air, holding me in his talons.
After a moment, Bright emerged from the hut with a brown-and-green LeafWing following her. She gestured with one of her wings for Argil to land, and he did.
He shoved me out of his talons towards the brown-and-green dragon, who caught me with their talons.
“Tend to them”, Bright snorted at, “and make sure they don’t escape”.
The brown-and-green dragon, who was male based on their features, led me into the leaf-made hut, where the green dragon from earlier was sprawled out on a patch of leaves collected from the surrounding trees on one side of it. Based on their features, I could tell that this was a male. His wound was covered with a mess of vines and leaves and one of his wings was shredded beyond repair.
He led me to a spot next to the battered LeafWing where I lay down and extended his forearms.
“May I take your bag? It’ll only be a bit.”
Reluctantly, I gave him the bag, which he took with him to the other side of the hut and set it on the ground gently before gathering something in his claws.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Alder”, he replied without even looking at me, “a Healer of the LeafSilk Kingdom before…” He trailed off.
“Before the NightWings?” I finished, and he nodded solemnly.
He turned around and padded over to me, with what looked like to be small berries of different colors still on their vines and crushed green leaves of varying sizes and textures in his claws. He placed them on the ground in front of me.
“These are berries herbs with painkillers in them”, he explained. “Give them to Oak.”
He gestured to the dragon next to me, and I gave him a look.
“Issa fine”, Oak slurred. “I’ll take ’em.”
Alder snorted and nudged the bundle with his claws to him. Oak ate them as fast as he could, possibly trying to get the taste of leaves out of his mouth.
Behind me, the shadows had lengthened as the sun began disappearing beyond the horizon. Orange light streaked into the hut and on us dragons.
“It’ll be a bit before they take effect”, Alder explained to Oak, referring to the concoction he just gave him. “Once they’ve kicked in, I’ll begin working on that wound of yours.”
“Issa fine”, Oak slurred again, and his brown eyes were beginning to droop, as if heavy stones were starting to weigh them down.
I was also tired from my long journey (and also getting up before dawn), but I didn’t want to sleep. Not after getting a glimpse of what was happening across Pern.
I could fall asleep right now and never wake up if the NightWings descended on this camp during the night.
I shuddered.
Did the NightWings also target the capitals of the world like they did with mishmashed camps like this one?
Did they suffer the same fate as the Undercurrents’ base while I was gone?
“You thinking about something?” Alder asked. He apparently noticed me shaking as he watched Oak fall into a deep, drugged sleep. The moons were coming out, beginning to wash the forest in an ethereal silver light.
“Just a memory”, I muttered, but that was far from the truth.
I didn’t know what had happened or how long it had been since I was taken, but the appearance of Perception and the NightWings raiding everything and everyone told me that it was some time since then.
Precisely how long, I didn’t know.
As Oak fell asleep, Alder went through my bag, his back turned from his patients.
The first thing he fished out from it was the map I had found.
He unrolled it in his talons and studied it before putting it on the ground.
The next thing he pulled out was the pearls I wore on my neck and horns in the SkyWing palace. He gave them a curious look before setting them on top of the map.
The last thing he pulled out was the SandWing egg I had found last night.
He peered at it. “Where did you find this?”
“Why do you want to know?” I asked.
“Just tell me.”
I sighed. “A dragon threw a bag at me last night as I hid from NightWings during a raid. Inside was this egg, which thankfully wasn’t-”
He cut me off. “This was thrown at you?”
“Yes. Is there anything significant about that egg?”
Alder turned around, holding the pale yellow egg in his front claws. His green eyes were wide with hope and pain.
“You don’t know what this means, SeaWing. It means that there is a chance we can survive this hellish nightmare.”
I arched an eye ridge at him.
He continued. “Since the NightWings declared war on Pern, they’ve smashed every single non-NightWing egg they come across. The RainWings have been rendered extinct because of this.”
Horror shot through me. “The RainWings are extinct?”
Impossible! The last time I saw them…
The last time I saw them was in Ruby’s palace.
Alder solemnly nodded. “The last time anyone has heard from them, was when Vulcan’s forces were advancing their way into the Rainforest, supposedly to murder Dignity and her descendants.”
“Vulcan’s forces were advancing their way … to murder Eagle and her descendants”. If Dignity and her descendants were truly murdered by the NightWings’ forces, then it could happen to anyone, including my own family.
“SeaWing, are you okay?”
Rage boiled inside of me like churning water.
I was not okay.
“Do you have any information on Wave and the SeaWings?” I growled at him, baring teeth.
He looked befuddled and terrified. “What?”
“You heard me. Has there been anything circulating about Wave and the SeaWings in this camp?”
“I… I…”, he stammered.
“I’ll take it from here, Alder”, a voice from outside suddenly piped.
I turned my head and saw that Argil had landed outside the hut.
He extended a wing to the trees beyond. “SeaWing, come with me.”
He walked away from the hut, and I followed him. He walked towards the banks of the Gullet River, steering clear of the water.
We walked for a bit as silver-white light from the three moons bathed the trees and the foliage like light streaming into the ocean.
Once we were far from the camp, at a grove of trees with thick trunks, he turned around and grabbed my shoulders with his forearms.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he hissed.
I gave him a look. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, why are you in the Poison Jungle in the first place? Only desperate dragons come here.”
“I’m not desperate”, I retorted. “I’m trying to get home after being held hostage for… moons know how long.”
He raised an eye ridge at me. “Where were you held hostage?”
“In… in…” I couldn’t get the words out initially. But I still told him. “In an old reef deep within a trench by other SeaWings.”
Argil’s grip loosened, and his brown eyes widened. “You were held…?”
I nodded.
“Three moons”, he breathed. “They’re either turning on each other or you’re the only one that survived Ruby’s palace.”
I gave him a look. “What do you mean the SeaWings are turned on each other? Are they rebelling against Mother?”
“Moons, no! It means they’re rebelling against Riptide.”
I let out a rumbly chuckle. “Riptide’s not the monarch. Mother is.”
Argil didn’t laugh with me, and I stopped after realizing his tone was serious.
“You don’t know what happened after they kidnapped you, Tide?”
A sickening feeling suddenly lurched in my stomach.
“You don’t mean…”
He solemnly nodded. “Long live Queen Wave. All hail King Riptide.”
----Argil had placed me into the small grove of trees as he went out and caught some prey for me.
It didn’t take long for him to come back with a fat, dead brown bird in his claws.
“I brought this for you”, he said as he handed it to me.
I took it from him and sniffed it.
“It’s not poisonous”, he assured me, “unlike most things around here.”
I looked at him, giving a look that said, “you sure?”
He returned the expression with a face that said, “trust me, I know”.
With that in mind, I sniffed the dead bird again before eating it ravenously. I hadn’t eaten anything this morning, since I failed to find myself a crab to eat several sunrises ago.
I didn’t even pluck the feathers from my meal as I ate it. Eating was the only thing on my mind.
That and the fact that Mother was dead, and my brother had ascended to take her place as leader.
After I ate, I asked Argil what happened after I was kidnapped.
“Lots”, he sighed. “Marsh did survive the attempt on her life, thankfully, but we left after Reed was assassinated.”
“Was she intentionally targeted?” I inquired, and he shook his head.
“No, I think it was accidental.”
I frowned. How could an assassin accidentally assassinate the wrong target?
He explained further.
“Several sunrises after Marsh was admitted into Ruby’s infirmary, another assassination had taken place. The target was Wave, your mother. Unlike Marsh, she succumbed to the bite at the…”
He gestured to the back of his neck.
Mother had succumbed to the same injury as Marsh.
A death blow.
“Soon after that, one of the SeaWings left the palace for the ocean. I don’t know their name, but they had blue scales and had no wave patterns on their wings.”
“You saw Current, one of our messengers, head into the ocean”, I told him. “I think he did exactly what Uncle wanted him to do in case anything like that happened. I’m also betting that you saw others like him as well.”
He nodded. “Two others. One with dark green scales and a horrendous amount of gold rings on his body, and a dull blue-grey one covered in scars.”
“Whirlpool and General Seaquake.” I arched an eye ridge at him. “You never bothered to learn their names?”
“Everyone was so preoccupied with the assassinations, that no one wanted to learn their names. They were all worried about being the next target.”
“Do you know if those dragons and a small blue dragonet left the palace after…” I trailed off, thinking about if Swell and the others survived.
Argil nodded.
“Those three left after Current came back and told them something. I couldn’t tell from a distance, but I think it was that Riptide was chosen to be the new monarch.”
“Do you know why Riptide was chosen?”
“No, but I assume it’s because of the unspoken rule that when a monarch passes unexpectedly, their eldest heir automatically becomes leader.”
I mentally kicked myself.
Of course! That rule!
“Speaking of monarchs passing unexpectedly”, Argil said, “what you heard from Alder is true. Queen Dignity of the RainWings has been killed alongside the rest of her kin and the RainWings species by NightWings. I know that the LeafWings and SilkWings are on the verge of succumbing to the same fate. The others… I don’t know.”
“But Alder said that I had given him hope with that SandWing egg.”
Argil’s grey eyes went wide. “You found what?”
“I found a SandWing egg, here in the jungle. It was in a lonesome bag, untouched by NightWings.”
He grabbed my front talons in his, gripping them hard.
“Nothing has come out of the Kingdom of Sand since the NightWings invaded Pyrrhia three months ago. It’s impossible that any SandWing or SkyWing would come this far.”
“Wait”, I said, “you said that occurred three months ago.”
He nodded.
“But that would mean that the NightWings invaded Pyrrhia at the beginning of the year.”
He shook his head. “No, they didn’t invade the continent at the beginning of the year. They invaded it while you were gone.”
A chill went down the back of my spine.
“Tide, you’ve been gone for four months. The world has changed since those SeaWings nabbed you, and it’s about time you adapted to it.”
“And that time to adapt is now”, a slick voice behind me said softly.
Claws lightly touched the back of neck and Peak let go of me as I jumped.
Two orange eyes were staring back at us from the tree and a silver ring on a small, claw-shaped piece of obsidian flashed in the moonlight.
It was Ashes, the NightWing with the scavenger I had met at Ruby’s palace.
She didn’t blink as me and Peak both gutturally growled at her simultaneously.
“Come with me”, she whispered. “I can take you to the swamps where the Undercurrents are hiding.”
I raised an eye ridge at her. “How can we trust you?”
“Hm”, she replied, “let’s just say I have friends, dear friends who told me about them.”
“And you know where they are?” I couldn’t wait to get my claws on them, after what they did to me, my baby sister, and my family.
She didn’t say anything, only nodding her head as if a shadow had agreed to a contract I had given it.
“But we have to go now”, she hissed. “The NightWings are coming here to find any LeafWings that slipped through their claws today.”
“…to find any LeafWings that slipped through their claws today.”
Oak.
Alder.
The egg.
I darted away, running down the riverbank like Kestrel avoiding those hunting her towards the camp and skidded into Alder’s hut.
The brown-and-green dragon was nearly done patching up Oak’s neck wound, and a white IceWing was assisting. Blood was spattered over the ground from the operation, and it looked like the wound was being sewed up with plant fibers and the spine of a creature I had never seen before.
“Hey!” he snapped at me. “Watch it! I’m doing surgery here!”
I darted over to the side opposite of where the dragons were, and harridly shoved my pearls, the map of Pern, and the SeaWing egg into the seagrass-bag before putting it over my neck.
“Woah woah woah”, Alder snipped. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Says who?” I snipped back as I started heading out of the hut.
“Bright.”
“Bright can burn in hell.”
“She ordered that I keep you from escaping, and here you are escaping.”
“I’m not escaping”, I retorted, “I’m fleeing danger.”
Alder gave a look at his assistant, before giving them the needle and the thread to them. “Finish for me while I deal with this”, he ordered in a low voice.
I continued out the hut as Alder slinked after me and clamped his jaws onto one of my back legs.
I kept in my roar, as he dragged me backward into the hut.
Instinctively, I whacked my tail into my snout, and I heard a crack behind me.
The pain in my leg suddenly stopped, as Alder had let go of it and he was now the one in pain.
Using it as an opportunity, I ran out of the hut and leapt into the air.
I flared my wings out and oriented myself back to the shores of the Gullet River, where Argil and Ashes were presumably waiting for me.
The MudWing was still there. But the NightWing and her scavenger…
Tilting my wings, I descended and landed on the ground.
He turned around the moment I landed and ogled my bag.
“Did you get everything?”
I nodded.
“Then why is one of your legs bleeding?” Ashes hissed from the trees.
I nearly jumped. Moons, I forgot she was there!”
“You’re bleeding?” Argil asked. “Where?”
I showed him my back leg, which now had blood trickling down it like raindrops trailing down my body.
He studied it before heading over to a nearby tree and stripping the leaves off one of its branches.
Deftly, he wound the leaves together before walking back over to me and wrapping it around my ankle.
“It won’t do much”, he explained, “but it should stop the bleeding and prevent anyone from following a potential blood trail.”
“Clever dragon”, Ashes oozed from the tree. “It’s a shame that Vul- anyone didn’t have you as their personal guide.”
“Well, in this world”, Argil said after tightening the leaf-band around my ankle, “you’ve gotta be your own guide, since no one’s going to guide your throughout life.”
He sat up and looked at me before his brown eyes suddenly shot up at the trees.
“Moons, you were right, Ashes. The NightWings are coming to exterminate the remaining LeafWings.”
“Then you need to follow me if you don’t want to be a prisoner or a fresh corpse.”
Slowly, Ashes emerged from the darkness of the tree into the moonlit jungle, Firehead clutching onto one of her horns for stability.
She opened her wings and took off into the sky before hovering over the river.
“Come on, lizards”, she said without even looking at us. “Let’s get out of here.”
== Part Three: The Restless Sea ==
===Chapter 15===
Ashes led us west of the Gullet River, taking us across northern Pantala, before we reached the western coast and left the shores of the continent to reach the Undercurrents.
As she led us, she told us some facts about why some areas on Pern were named that why.
She claimed that the Poison Jungle was named after a LeafWing named Poison that had discovered it soon after the Legend of the Hive; although I couldn’t tell if she was lying about it or not. Her tone was straightforward and factual.
She also claimed that she knew who our family’s assassin was.
“Can you tell me who it is?” I exclaimed. After all these years, this cold case was finally going to be solved.
“No”, she only replied. “But the only thing I can tell you is that the killer was under your snout the entire time.”
“The killer was under your snout the entire time.”
Who could that refer to?
Mother?
No, she couldn’t be. If she wanted to kill her children, she would do it already and I wouldn’t exist.
Flood?
It could be a possibility, since she was the one usually given the task of checking the eggs during each guard transition.
That could explain how she managed to drug Turtle and Requiem and get away with it. She could’ve used something from the Healers, and they wouldn’t know what was taken from them unless they checked their supplies.
But what would be her motive? Motive was everything when trying to solve a mystery.
Spite? Ensuring that she would be the one to ascend to the throne instead of me or any of the others?
I knew Flood throughout my dragonethood and even now as an adult, and yet there was a possibility that I didn’t truly know the dragon that was my sister.
So she’s a possible killer. Who else would be?
I thought about the different members of my family and Depths and thought out it for a long while as we continued our way down the coasts, the waves crashing on the shores.
Whirlpool couldn’t be the killer. If the autopsy of the hatchlings found indentations of rings in the shells and the tiny corpses, he would be arrested and executed by now.
Rush? If Whirlpool was the killer, he could be his accomplice.
Splash? I chucked that thought into the wind. She’s not able to kill.
Flow? Maybe, since she did have a way with words and actions.
Droplet? Probably not, since she’s like Splash, unable to kill.
But there was one I could rule alongside Flood as a possible killer.
Surge.
He had always acted like he deserved everything, and I remembered that Mother always seemed afraid of him whenever he spoke to her.
There was that time I read starting to read Skies of Fire Turns ago, and I was reading book two after a long session of Instruction outside the palatial reef that made up Deep Palace when I saw flashes of light come out of the corner of my eye.
Bookmarking where I was with a flat stone, I closed the book, turned my head to one side of the reef, and watched.
Surge was telling Mother something in an angry tone, but I couldn’t remember what it was. But what I do clearly remember was the look on her face – sheer terror.
Her wings, the same shade of deep blue as her scales, were quivering, and her grey eyes were wide. The pearls around her horns, neck, and wings shuddered with the movement of her body.
She had the harness around her chest connected to Surf, who was still several Turns old at that time, who floated in the water like a dark blue jewel.
Now that I think about it, I’m kind of like the spitting image of Mother, except I have burn scars, probably the species’ endling, and lost from home.
And Surf looked like a mini version of Surge.
But that couldn’t be possible. My father was never around for the entirety of my dragonethood.
Coral’s statement from when she interrogated me was now picking at my head. “…but I can only speculate that you didn’t have the parental support you needed because Wave was too busy controlling us. I’m amazed that you haven’t gone homicidal because of that.”
I wanted to claw my head until it bled.
Why were her words coming back to haunt me?
----Ten days after we left the Gullet River and three days after we left Pantala, we were officially in SeaWing territory and I was home.
Joy tingled in my claws as we landed on an island whose cliffs, rocks, and boulders resembled a dragon skeleton.
If one were to follow the direction of the island’s “snout”, it led you to the ruins of the old Summer Palace, which were destroyed two hundred years ago by the SkyWings and MudWings in the SandWing succession war.
I winced as I landed on the island’s shore from the gnawing infection in my ankle from Alder’s bite nearly a week ago. We had used everything to cure it, but we could stave it off for now, and a real Healer had to take care of this.
“Well, you’re home”, Ashes snorted as she let Firehead off her head and let him wander the beach. The sun was near its highest point in the sky when we landed.
“Not really”, I reminded her. “The SeaWings rarely use the Summer Palaces nowadays, unlike previous generations.”
Argil sniffed my seaweed-wrapped ankle, which now replaced the leaf bandages I had on Pantala, and nearly gagged.
“That bad?” I asked. He nodded. “We need to take you to a Healer, now.”
I knew he was right, but where would we…
The Deep Palace! That’s where I could find one!
“I’ll find a Healer in the Deep Palace”, I said.
“If it’s still there”, Ashes snorted as I gave Peak my bag and staggered myself to the waves crashing on the island’s shore.
I took a deep breath as I focused my gaze upon the ruins of Fathom and Albatross’ creation and began wading myself into the water.
Waves crashed into my body I pressed on until my vision was replaced by the depths of the ocean. The water here wasn’t sharp, like how Tsunami, my ancestor, described her first experience in the Kingdom’s waters. It felt like coming home.
I kept my infected leg near my body as I swam down and down and down in the water towards the rocks that marked the old Summer Palace’s entrance.
A green sea turtle was eating a bed of seagrass on a nearby reef, as small yellow fish darted around in shoals. A crab scuttled across the reef in a spiraling shell that resembled a smaller version of a nautilus.
The sea life was the same down here as I continued on until I saw the rocks, the rocks that denoted the old Summer Palace’s entrance. These were a pair of rocks that were sharp and narrow, like a NightWing’s horns, and were evenly matched.
As I approached the tunnel that was shrouded in an untamed golden seagrass curtain, I felt water above me.
I looked up and placed one of my talons, and felt water rush through them.
Gotcha. The current that led to the Deep Palace.
I bolted into the current and I let it sweep me through the ocean, albeit I was swimming inside it.
I swam for a while I saw the trench, the trench where the Deep Palace was, loom in front of me.
As swift as Kestrel running through the swamps, I left the current and dove into the trench.
The blue light from above was soon replaced with biolumnescnet light from coral that resemble stars.
I continued on, and then it came into view.
The Deep Palace, where the SeaWings conducted business within the ocean.
Everything was still the same, but it was strangely silent. Where were the servants? Where was the Council?
I slowed the speed at which I swam and went into the reef with an open mind, not sure what I would find.
The first thing that caught my eye was the broken reef. Pieces of coral had been hacked off in different areas of the reef.
As I continued swimming towards the palace entrance, I could see that the statue of Queen Coral, which loomed benevolently and graciously in the middle of the entrance, was broken. Its stony head had been knocked off, and was now lying on the coral floor; and bits of her talons had crumbled away. The sapphires and emeralds that has also decorated the entrance were also gone, as someone had pried them out with their claws.
Floating on the roof of the entrance was the corpse of a SeaWing that was still being devoured by marine scavengers. Half of its body was gone, with only its blue back legs and tail remaining.
Argil’s words were echoing in my head with the same ferocity as Coral’s. “Tide, you’ve been gone for four months. The world has changed since those SeaWings nabbed you, and it’s about time you adapted to it.”
I ventured further into the palace, and swam down the tunnel that led to the Royal Hatchery.
The water became warmer and warmer as I descended, and eventually came to the stone door that marked its entrance.
It was open and the corpses of the guards floated to the top of the tunnel and the hatchery’s cave.
I warily swam into the hatchery and saw that there was nothing in there, save for the bare patch of stone where Orca’s statue once stood.
When the royal murders first started, dragons thought that there was an animus in the tribe, out to kill every last royal to finish what Orca started.
But that was soon thrown into the currents when an autopsy on the hatchling’s corpses showed that dragon claws were smashing them, not stone.
The cave that was once a harbinger of life and death was now an empty shell of itself.
Realizing that there was nothing, I swam out of the cave, went through the tunnel, and emerged into the front entrance.
I blew a stream of water from my snout. I had to stay focused on my mission – find a Healer.
I swam around the reef, searching everywhere for a single dragon that lived here.
I found none and I decided to head back to the island where Argil and Ashes were.
It was near sunset when I emerged from waves onto the shore of the island.
Argil was laying down on the sand, and perked his head when he saw me.
“Anything?”
I shook my head.
“The Deep Palace is an empty shell of itself”, I said, my voice wavering with grief and despair. “There’s no one there, not even a Healer.”
“Then that settles it”, Ashes coldly said from a rock jutting out of the water next to me that resembled a giant claw. Firehead was on her, grabbing onto one of her horns. “We leave now, knowing that all traces of the SeaWings have been destroyed.”
“Ashes, you heartless beast!” Argil snapped at her. “Give the dragon a chance to fully grieve!”
Ashes looked at me, then at Argil, and then back at me. “Fine”, she snipped, “I’ll let you sloppy lizards get in touch with your feelings.” She said the word “feelings” as if it were a slimy, disgusting feeling in her mouth.
She beat her wings and jumped, allowing her to hover in the air, and pointed at the ruins of the old Summer Palace.
“We stay there tonight, and then we head for the shores of the Sky Kingdom.”
She flew on without beckoning us, and me and Argil followed her.
The old Summer Palace was made of four pale blue pillars of stone, with levels of different sizes situated between them. The smallest was the furthest from the lake the pavilion sat in, the largest closest to it.
Dragon bones were scattered amongst the cliffs, with were full of caves and several long waterfalls that emptied into the lake. At the top of the cliffs which surrounded the pavilion were a spare number of lush, green trees and the shriveled husks of leaves that once hid it from sight.
The three of us landed on the bottommost level of the palace, the one closest to the lake, and it was empty, save for the bones of those dragons who didn’t survive the siege of the Summer Palace.
I sprawled myself on the blue stone, which had stayed unchanged for two hundred years and felt nothing like the Deep Palace, and let everything wash over me.
----Several days after we left the Kingdom of the Sea and headed south for the swamps through the shores of the Sky Kingdom, the egg inside my pouch began rocking.
It was when the sun was at its highest point in the sky when it happened, and we were in the vicinity of the marshes.
I had felt a jolt of movement near me, and I thought it was my heart aching over the theory that my sister and others close to me could’ve been the family killer.
But then it happened again, and again, and again.
I looked down and saw that my bag was moving.
The egg.
As I looked back up to call for Ashes and Argil, I noticed I had dipped a bit towards the sand.
Although I blamed the basic rule of wing-eye coordination, which stated that what you were looking at was where you flew, for this, I took advantage of it.
I continued dipping down towards the beach until my talons felt the warm sand and I folded in my wings, oblivious to the pain and the foul smell in my ankle.
“Ashes! Argil!” I called to them, who were gradually soaring away from me.
Argil stopped and hovered in the air, looking around with his eyes until he saw me on the beach.
He flew down to the sands and landed in front of me. Ashes followed suit, looking displeased.
“Come on lizard”, she snorted, “we still have a long flight ahead of us.”
The egg rocked again in my pouch, and I took it off my neck, placing it on the sand.
Carefully, I rolled it out and held it in my claws.
It rocked again, accompanied by a CRACK!
Argil studied it. “What are you going to name it?”
My mind went blank.
I hadn’t thought of this.
Dragon eggs hatched within one year after being laid. Plenty of time to think of a name for the resulting hatchling.
I didn’t have a year to think of a name.
I had several moments as the first cracks appeared on the pale yellow shell.
Ashes studied the egg. “Name it Silicon”, she griped. “It’s the same thing that makes up magma and sand. There, problem solved.”
“We are not naming the hatchling ‘Silicon’”, I retorted. “It’s not fitting for-” I stopped myself.
“Not fitting for what?” Ashes raised an eye ridge.
“Rrrrgh”, Firehead agreed with her. After all this time, he was still holding onto one of her straight grey horns for stability.
“I’m sure she means that it’s not fitting for a SandWing hatchling like this one”, Peak chuckled nervously, although I could tell he subconsciously knew the exact reason we couldn’t name this hatchling “Silicon”.
The egg cracked again, a small piece fell away, leaving a small hole in the shell.
“Just go with my suggestion so we can get over this sooner rather than later”, Ashes said as more eggshell fell off, creating more holes in the egg.
“Yrp!” Firehead agreed.
Me and Argil didn’t say anything. None of us liked her suggestion.
I looked up at the sky, and the sun blazed in my eyes.
I looked back at the MudWing. “What about Sun?” I suggested.
He shrugged his shoulders as the eggshell fell away and a pale yellow hatchling was left in its place.
The hatchling was small with large, dark eyes and had a similarly colored pale yellow rippling dune-like spine on its neck. Its claws were like long crescents and its horns were the same, except if the crescent was thicker. On the end of its snout, above its nose, was a small, black thorn-like spike. Another of these spikes was below each of its ears. A small, black scorpion-like barb was at the end of its tail.
Argil crouched down to the hatchling’s level and it waddled over to him across the sands before putting its front claws on his snout.
He let out a soft, deep, pleased, guttural purr at this.
“What do you think about Sunny?” he asked without even looking at me or Ashes, keeping his eyes on the hatchling.
Sunny, I mused. Sunny, Sunny, Sunny.
Perfect.
I nodded at him.
“’Sunny’?” Ashes sniffed indignantly. “What kind of a name is that?”
“One that you don’t get to change”, I sniffed back as I gently lifted the hatchling with my claws from his snout and placed it into my bag.
Because of its sandy coloration and general rules of nature, this hatchling was female.
As soon as I placed her in my bag, Sunny curled up into a small scaly ball, her small front talons on my pearls and her small body on top of the map.
I looked up at both Argil and Ashes.
“Are we going now?” she sighed.
I noticed there was a hint of annoyance in her voice as I nodded my head.
“Yes, we are.”
----Four days passed after Sunny’s hatching as we flew through the western shores of the Sky Kingdom before we arrived at the swamps and marshes.
The words were used interchangeably by Kestrel in the prologue of The Depths of the Ocean, but I knew the proper definitions of the words. A “swamp” was a forest that was flooded and near the edges of the ocean. A “marsh” was the transition area between the swamp and the ocean, dominated by reeds, cattails, other grasses, and gulls.
Ecstasy tingled in my talons for two reasons. One, I was in the place that inspired that book I read before ending up here. Two, this was where the Undercurrents were hiding, and I couldn’t wait to spill their blood into the ground, whatever they were standing on.
Ashes had caught food for me and Argil the entire flight, as if we were helpless newborn hatchlings. Now that a hatchling was with us, she caught more food and set it on fire for “easier consumption”, as stated in her own words.
It was near sunset as we landed on the shores of the ocean, in the fringes of the marsh.
My webbed, blue talons sunk into the warm white sand as Argil landed beside me.
I was tired, we both were.
He looked at me and gestured to my bag.
“Can I…?” he asked, and I simply gave it to him. I trusted this dragon, even though I knew him for about one-third of one-third-of-a-season. Sunny poked her head out as the bag landed in his brown talons.
“Trrrrgh?” she purred. “Wrrrh?”
She looked like she wanted to say “Tide? What’s happening?”
It would take her some time before she uttered her first true words, which would be squawking messes of actual words. Hatchlings first spoke within one season after hatching, at which point, they were officially known as “dragonets”, or young dragons.
Until then, baby dragons emitted purring and shrieking sounds to communicate.
Argil placed the bag around his neck as I lay down, letting myself sink into the sand and closed my eyes, and let exhaustion take over me.
----She walks through the tunnels of the caves which are covered in glowworms, resembling a place in the stars. They don’t move or shudder as she pads over them.
Accompanying her is a burly, brown dragon with brown eyes and a pale underbelly. He is wearing long ropes of corals and pearls around his thick neck.
She on the other talon, is only wearing pearls around her neck, like usually does each sunrise.
The two dragons walk down the tunnel of glowworms into a small cave filled with an equal number of glowworms. Here, dragons from all over the planet are chatting with each other and dragonets play with each other, trying not to be reprimanded by their parents.
On the left side of the cave is a small tunnel leading to another small cave, filled with even more glowworms.
She notices that the previous service has ended and its congregants are walking out of the cave where it’s held.
She did not expect to see the corpses of dragon marred, dismembered, and burnt walking out of the cave. Blood pours from the corpses’ wounds onto the stone below, trailing in streams towards her.
She turns around, and runs from the blood to the tunnel, only to find that it is now sealed.
She turns around again, and everyone save for a pile of corpses is in the cave.
She tentatively makes her way towards the pile of corpses, which are dragons she knows, and notices that one of them is her mother – a deep blue dragon with pearls around her neck and horns. Gashes cover her body, and blood seeps out from them.
She gentle paws her mother’s snout when it suddenly snaps open its eyes and notices her.
“You failed to protect us”, the blue corpse snarls at her. It then drags itself out of the pile and makes its way towards her as she backs away from it.
“You failed to protect your own. But that’s all right, because you’ve already failed me.”
The corpse unhinges its jaw like a snake, ready to devour her, when a voice from beyond calls to her.
“Tide!”
----“Tide! Tide! Wake up!”
Claws shook me violently from that putrid dream I was having.
“Tide!”
I open my eyes groggily and it took me a bit to realize that it was now night out. Light from the moons washed the marsh in a silver glow and the dragon that woke me was Argil.
He didn’t have the bag containing Sunny around his neck, and I looked behind him. Dark trees were behind him and Ashes was nowhere to be found.
That creature! She took her!
I sat up when the pain from my wound suddenly set in again.
“Agh!” I muttered. Argil put his talons on my shoulder, and I gripped them to balance myself. “Easy, Tide”, he whispered in a low tone. His voice was soft like a gentle ocean breeze, but I couldn’t be calmed if a hatchling was just stolen. Especially one whose egg I found alone.
“Ashes and Sunny are in the trees”, Argil said, flicking his tail at the dark, twisting trees beyond.
“Come on”, he urged and helped me up.
“Is it…?” I inquired as I sat up.
He nodded. “They’re close. My ears can hear them.”
Behind us, the waves crashed on the shore in a rhythmic pattern. Wind gently blew through the trees, and insects chirped in the grasses.
As Argil got me up and was about to put my weight on his, that’s when something big grabbed my shoulders and began dragging me towards the ocean.
===Chapter 16 ===
Argil gripped my forearms as I was dragged backward into the crashing waves, letting himself be dragged with me.
He was either stupid or desperate if he was doing this.
He tried to dig into the sand with his back claws, but it was no use.
Only I could get myself out of this mess.
As the waves inched closer and closer towards my back legs, I smashed my tail up and heard a crack behind me.
“Gah!” my assailant roared.
So it wasn’t one of those black boxes from four months ago. It was a dragon.
The grip on my shoulders didn’t let go, so I smashed my tail repeatedly into the dragon behind me until they let go.
Argil grabbed me close to him and wrapped his thick talons around my neck, gripping it in almost in a protective way.
I turned my head around as he glared at my assailant, and I saw that they were an SeaWing with deep, dark blue scales that were nearly black. Strangely, there was a grouping of scavengers on the now-lifeless dragon, which were dismounting onto the shore and running towards us. They were clad in some sort of metallic armor that covered their small bodies and they wielded some sort of metallic stick in their clawless paws.
Argil started backwards into trees, still holding me in his talons, but we weren’t fast enough.
The scavengers stopped close in front of us and raised their sticks at us, which had a small hole at one end, We both suddenly felt painful pricks in our scales, more painful than being stabbed by dragon claws.
Many of them hit my back all at once, and the pain was as if large metallic thorns were being embedded into me. One of them even got into my eye, and a metallic, burning feeling suddenly shot through my head.
I roared in pain as the sky-creatures kept shooting at us, and Argil let go of me and I fell onto the sand bellyfirst. “ASHES! WHERE IN THE NAME OF PERN ARE YOU?!”
No response from the dark trees as I felt blood stream down my back. I looked up at Argil, and his underbelly was now a red color and he looked like he wasn’t going to survive this.
I felt my mouth go dry as I heard sky-creatures whoop in victory for our demise.
This was the second time I was near death. Only this time, this was going to be permanent and wouldn’t be coming back.
I turned my head to look out of my remaining eye, and saw Argil stagger down onto the sand, backside first. He was breathing shakily, as if the scavnger’s weapons had managed to puncture his lungs.
Dragon bones were hard, harder than a scavenger’s. But their lungs… not so much. Sure, they were larger than most creatures on the planet, but they too could easily be punctured by sharp objects or clumsiness.
He looked up at the moons and the stars above, not even looking at me.
“I hope they’re right”, he muttered to himself as his eyes lolled shut. “I hope I meet Caelum.”
He’s wrong, I thought to myself. He won’t meet Caelum because he never believed in the deity, and he also never obeyed the tenants of the SkyWing religion in the first place.
He’s trying to comfort his dying self.
The scavengers were now encircling us, ready for the kill. They raised their metallic sticks before a roar from beyond called out, “Jambeau? Jambeau!”
I could feel myself slipping away into darkness as I turned my head to see the caller, an SeaWing, land on the sand in front of us.
The dragon was pale blue, nearly white like clouds, had pale pink membranes like the insides of shells, and dark eyes.
I remembered this dragon from the trenches.
Anemone had come to save us, but it was already too late.
“Dammit!”, she muttered under her breath as she studied the scene with her eyes.
‘Anemone’, I flashed at her with my tail stripes as my eyes drooped before my vision became darkness.
“Your Smaller Majesty, is that you?” was the last thing I heard before slipping into the still darkness of death.
----The first thing I heard as I left the darkness was the beating of wings and the whooshing of air. My eyes weren’t open, but I could hear everything around me, and I felt warm talons carry me through the air.
Wind whipped through my flaccid, lifeless wings and body.
I could hear birds calling to each other, but these weren’t seagulls.
My mouth was dry like wet paper that had been left too long in the sun to dry.
Suddenly, the dragon carrying me dipped down and down and down to the ground. Leaves and branches smashed into my tail.
But instead of going to the ground, the dragon flew through the trees.
Wind, branches, and leaves whipped past me for a while before I could hear dragons ahead.
There were many voices from all over the planet, conglomerated into one area. Many of them were barking orders or yelling at others for their mistakes. Others were being clad in some type of armor as I heard the clanging of metal being applied. I could also hear the squeaking of scavengers running below us dragons.
Soon the dragon carrying me landed on the ground, and talonsteps rushed towards them.
“Get this dragon to Healer Cactus”, they said to the dragons, and the newcomers handled me with their talons, carrying my body towards an area far from the chatter as the voices faded into nothing when scales warmer than the vents in the underwater capital suddenly seized my shoulders.
“Who is this?” the warm-taloned dragon said.
“We don’t know”, one of my carriers replied. “All we know is that this dragon was found with Jambeau’s corpse and a nearly dead MudWing on a northeastern beach.”
“Who found the body?”
“Anemone and Reed. Oh, and there was a NightWing with a scavenger on its head and a SandWing hatchling in a bag around their neck hiding in the trees. We’ve detained them for questioning.”
The warm-taloned dragon hoisted my body from my carriers, thanked them, and dragged me across the ground.
They then put me on the ground, and I heard other dragons in the vicinity. They must be working for this one.
One of ran towards me and the dragon that brought me here. “This the other one?”
Nothing. Then, the newcomer wrapped their talons around me and dragged me across the ground, my tail trailing behind, for a bit before lifting me up and dumping me onto a flat surface (a table?) backside-up.
I heard voices come from all angles and approach where I was.
“What have we got?” a nasal voice demanded.
“This was of the dragons found last night near Jambeau’s corpse. It’s an SeaWing, female I presume.”
I felt my jaw gently open with dirt-caked claws. “Based on dental wear, I’d say that she’s about seven years.”
“What about this?” another dragon said, who prodded one of my wings open.
Silence hung over everything before the dragon with the nasal voice spoke again. “That’s the markings of an SeaWing royal. Probably one of the dragons that managed to escape the underwater capital’s siege.”
“Don’t speculate about the patient’s origins!” a dragon with a brittle voice hissed. “Only focus on what at your talons, lizard!”
“Alright”, one of the dragons on my right said. “Where do we start?”
“First get water. Eel, keep an eye on the patient and monitor her”, the dragon that brought me here ordered before I heard them and the others run away.
The nasaly dragon snorted in response. I heard them pad over me and placed their cold, webbed talons onto my neck.
“You’re dead, aren’t you?” they whispered aggressively into one of my ears. “So why are they treating you?”
They kept their talons on my neck, monitoring me before cold water suddenly splashed onto my back.
Eel jumped back, and their talons left my neck. I didn’t move.
“What the hell Crystal?” they roared at the dragon who splashed water onto me. “You’re treating a corpse at this point!”
Crystal didn’t pay attention to them, and I heard metallic clattering come up behind me.
They were going to open my back and take whatever the scavengers killed me with out of my body.
I heard the other dragons from earlier pad up to me and I heard the flicking of something before talons flipped me over onto my back.
“Ready?” Crystal told the dragons.
There was nothing before a whirr came from something that the dragon version of a sky-creature’s tools.
“Clear”, one of the dragons said, placed two cold metallic discs on my chest.
My body jerked in response, and I felt Eel’s talons touch my neck. I could my heart begin to slowly beat.
“Nothing”, they said before the discs were charged again.
“Clear”, the same dragon said, and my body jerked in response.
This was done several times, alongside blowing air into my mouth, until my heart began to beat, and my lungs began to breathe.
I was alive again.
I felt myself being flipped over onto my stomach before more water was dumped over me, and they began carving into me.
----She lives alone in a small shack in the swamps where no one, not even the scavengers, can find her.
Artwork of the swamps is plastered throughout the screened-in front porch she sleeps in, and they are realistic, been perfected over the years.
Shells, feathers, scales, bones, and dumped items are also scattered among the porch, like lost jewels that have a vagabond owner.
She is drawing her family, which left her years ago, on a piece of paper while birds outside hunt fish in the peaty waters. The last part of it is her little sister, who is green like leaves during summer. Her eyes are grey like stones and her stripes are blue-green. A lacy pattern resembling a coral reef is on the fringes of her wings.
She moves her deft blue talons across the paper with her colored pencils, coloring in the hatchling before completing the final drawing with the finishing touches.
She gets up from where she’s sitting and places it inside a small, flat brown folder located in a wooden shelf where her personal drawings are kept. 
As she puts the folder away, there is a knock at the door.
She turns around. A handsome red dragon stands at the door. She knows this figure. His name is Avalanche, a SkyWing from the mountains.
She walks towards the door and opens it, letting him in.
Avalanche walks around, studying everything she has before picking up a large white shell from one of the shelves on the right side of the porch before he turns around and tries to bash her with it.
She swings her thick blue tail at his snout, but he dodges backward and tries to attack again.
She clamps down on his forearm with her jaws, and he drops the shell in pain. It lands on the ground with a thud.
Blood seeps from the bite. “Let go, creature”, he hisses at her, but she doesn’t let go.
She pushes him backward with her claws, letting go of his forearm.
He darts out of the shack with a terrified look on his snout, and she roars after him as he takes off into the sky.
----The smell of grass and petrichor enters my nose when I gain consciousness.
“She’s waking up”, a voice beside me softly says.
My vision is still dark, but slowly, I open… one of my eyes?
Sunlight filters in through a green, leafy roof that has been woven together with branches.
I move slowly on the woven branch floor below me, and something feels off.
I try to stand, but a dragon the color of white clouds rushes over to me and puts their cold, serrated talons on shoulders and eases me back down.
“Easy, SeaWing”, they said. “You’ve just come out of the most intensive surgeries I’ve ever done.”
“That’s after you resurrected her corpse, whitescales”, an SeaWing snarked at the white dragon.
I could see that the SeaWing was near a half-square opening in what appeared to me to be a hut woven from plant-based materials. Vines with various-colored flowers the size of a dragon’s foot snaked around and through the structure.
In front of their talons was a small scavenger who held a long, sleek metallic stick in its front paws. It was studying its weapon, as if it were its child.
I put one of my talons to my open eye and then to the closed one. But the other one felt… missing.
The IceWing took notice and gave a sympathetic look at me.
“We couldn’t save your right eye, although it’s your left based on your perspective. There was something lodged it, probably from one of the scavenger’s weapons based on the looks of it, and we decided that repairing it would be a delicate operation when there was more on the line. So we removed it.” They also gestured to my hind legs. “Your right hind leg was removed, also your left from your perspective. It smelled putrid and we decided to remove it so the infection wouldn’t spread. I’ll say, you’ve been through some hell SeaWing.”
My right hind leg? Gone?
I turned to my left and saw through my good eye that my left hind leg was, indeed, gone.
In its place was a stump.
Me, Argil, and Ashes had done what we could to stave off the infection, and this was the result for letting it fester along our journey.
I turned back to face the IceWing.
My mouth was parched, but not like before when the Healers were starting to operate on me.
“Water”, I managed to choke out in a hoarse voice. “I need water.”
The IceWing flicked her narrow tail to the green-yellow SeaWing at the hut’s opening, not even looking at them. “Eel, get some water for our patient.”
Eel grumbled before getting up, startling the sky-creature, and walked out of the hut onto branch-woven bridges that seemed to connect other huts in the vicinity of the forest.
The scavenger walked over to me and sat next to my talons. Now that it was close to me, I lowered my head and studied it.
It was small, about the size of a newborn hatchling, and had a thatch of dark fur on its head and around its flat mouth. Its torso and forearms were covered in some sort of grey hide and its legs were covered in a different type of black hide. Covering its clawless feet was something hard and black. Its skin was also white, like the IceWing’s scales, but not that white.
The IceWing noticed and gestured at it with one of their claws. “That’s a male scavenger”, they explained. “They always have some sort of fur on their bodies. The same applies to female scavenger, but they have less fur than them.”
The scavenger patted my snout with one of its clawless paws, its grey eyes looking at me with sympathy.
“What’s your name?” I croaked at the IceWing.
“My name?” they replied. “My name is Crystal of the IceWings. My assistant who left to get you water is Eel of the SeaWings. If you want to get technical, I’m female and he’s male, and we’re the dragon taking care of you since Healer Cactus is swamped with new patients every day.”
Crystal. That name was familiar. It was the name of the dragon that had splashed water over my back before the other dragons operated on me.
As the scavenger continued stroking its paw along my snout, it reminded me of a dream I had where a sky-creature with a metallic stick for a weapon put its paw on my snout. But where did it occur and when did I have it?
I mentally shrugged. Who knows? Like sunrises, dreams come and go.
“Crrr hrrr?” the scavenger said. “Crrr?”
It took me a moment to realize that it was speaking to me. But I didn’t understand what it wanted.
Despite that, it climbed onto my snout and scrambled to the top of my head. I felt it sit on top of my skull and grab one of my horns to support itself.
I lifted my head. What an odd feeling to have one of these creatures on your head.
Soon, Eel came back with water in what appeared to be a metal basin the size of a three-year-old dragonet and placed it in front of me.
I studied it. “It’s one of the scavenger’s contraptions to hold liquids”, he explained in a slippery, nasaly tone. “It’s extra and they allowed us to have it. Or so we think.”
I took a few laps from it to taste it. It had a metallic taste, not like the water in Ruby’s palace nor in the ocean, but it wasn’t clawing you in the face that you couldn’t drink it.
This water felt safe to drink. Slowly but surely, I lapped up the water with my tongue and my throat was starting to feel hydrated once more.
I lapped and lapped and lapped until my throat was fully wet and felt “normal”.
Much better.
I sighed deeply.
That was refreshing. Now, some questions for these two.
I raised my head, looking directly into Eel’s cold dark green eyes.
“Did I die?” I asked.
“By my standards, yes”, the SeaWing replied. “By her standards, no.” He gestured a webbed claw at Crystal, who was still to my right.
I raised an eye ridge at him. “What do you mean?”
Crystal hissed at both of us before our conversation could advance, He glared at her before turning his gaze back to me.
“I see that Silver has taken a liking to you.”
“Silver?” I asked.
He nodded. “Tree’s scavenger before she died not that long ago. I was entrusted as its new owner if something ever happened to her.”
That’s the vaguest command I’ve ever heard.
I didn’t let myself dwell on that. I had other things to ask.
“Did any of you see a MudWing come with me? He has brown scales, thick talons, and sharp brown eyes.”
Crystal shook her head and Eel said nothing.
“What about a NightWing with an obsidian earring and has yellow hatchling in a pouch around her neck?” I continued, hoping to jog their memories. “Did you see them?”
“The NightWing you mentioned is the one the Undercurrents arrested and interrogated”, Eel said. “She’s been cleared. The hatchling, on the other talon, has been given to a family until we find her parents – her biological parents.”
So Ashes and Sunny were alive.
But Argil…
I dipped my head towards the basin and closed my eyes.
Please be alive, I prayed. Please be alive.
===Chapter 17===
The dragons that were recovering or adjusting to their new broken bodies stayed at the RainWing capital. It was the closest dragon city to the Mud Kingdom, where the new Undercurrents were situated, and was the only capital that wasn’t a husk of its former self. It was also where I woke after being operated on and found out that I now had one eye instead of two.
Silver stayed with me during my day sessions, as I learned how to live with my scarred self. At night, he stayed with Eel before the cycle repeated the next day. Whoever this “Tree” dragon was, had trained the scavenger well.
I did not see Argil throughout my recovery. At first, I thought that he was on a different flight to recovery. But as the days went on, bleeding and blurring into each other, I came to believe that he was dead.
Ashes had led us here, but, like most things in life, the price of it was death.
Death.
It came for everyone, no matter who you were.
Sometimes it came at the right moment, like an Elder who had a life well-lived; other times it ripped life away before it could start, like my siblings who were crushed in their eggs. No doubt their assassin was still out there, killing my brother’s eggs (if he had any).
On the days where I didn’t have any training, I decided to head to the capital’s old library, which still functioned despite its battered state. There I reread the first five books of Skies of Fire before finishing The Depths of the Ocean.
Ocean’s ending was like a massive wave that had suddenly crashed over me. I thought that Avalanche’s mate was the killer, but I was wrong – Kestrel was.
I was also wrong about those black boxes that began zipping around the sky unexpectedly a while back. They weren’t like the ones I had seen at the SkyWing-SeaWing border – these were bent on destroying the planet.
Because of this, droves of dragons had abandoned their respective territories for higher ground. Or what was left of the world.
The dragons that came here, to the swamps and the rainforest, were placed into what was left of the upper MudWing cities before they were allowed refugee status. If a dragon was not allowed refugee status, they were either arrested and brought to the MudWing palace, the capital of the Mud Kingdom, or were killed on the spot.
Good to know that dragons did have a sense of sanity at the end of the world.
The refugees who were injured were brought here to the RainWing capital to recover. Some of them were NightWings who had defected from Vulcan’s army, although many dragons were suspicious of them when they arrived.
I decided to meet my enemy up close, and introduced myself to them. The dragons introduced themselves as Fumarole and Obsidian.
Only two of them.
Two members of our adversary had defected to the other side.
There were only two reasons for this: they had either awoken from their Vulcan-induced stupor and knew what was really going on, or they were quickening the world’s demise by coming here.
Nobody trusted them, and their huts were guarded heavily as they recovered.
Whenever I spoke to either Obsidian or Fumarole in their huts, the guards outside verified who I was by asking questions before letting me in and the guards inside watched our every move as we spoke.
One misstep, and it would be all over.
Thankfully, nothing really happened during those meetings, although I heard whispers amongst the other dragons that taking in the NightWings would be the gravest mistake the Undercurrents made in their umpteenth year history.
I could not secretly agree with them more. Taking them in was either suicide or genius, and I didn’t know which quality trumped the other.
----On the last day of my recovery, a visitor came to visit me.
It was Ashes, of all the dragons.
Like the last time I saw her, Firehead was still clutching one of her horns to stay on her head. She was completely unscathed, likely because she hid in the shadows while me and Peak were attacked by that SeaWing’s scavengers.
What was different this time, was that she was wearing a harness around her chest, and attached to that harness, with a cord, was Sunny, who also had a harness around her chest.
I wanted to claw her for leaving me and Peak to the scavengers and for taking Sunny with her without my permission.
And I did.
I lunged at her when she landed into the section of the capital me, Eel, Crystal, and Silver were in, pinning her down with my front claws.
Firehead fell off her head onto the branch-woven bridge, clearly confused.
“You creature!” I snarled at her, baring my teeth. “First you take Sunny and leave me and Peak to die in the marsh! And then you saunter in with the hatchling like you own the place!”
She gave me a look.
“I didn’t steal her. Peak gave her to me.”
I dug my claws into the place where her wings met her shoulders so that she was starting to bleed. She was lying, she clearly was.
Before I could do anything, cold, serrated, webbed talons gripped my shoulders and yanked me backwards off Ashes.
I tried to fight back and wriggle my way out, when a thick tail swept through my legs, knocking me to the ground.
“ORK!” I heard a voice to my right.
I looked, and saw that Eel was the one who knocked me down, and that Silver was on his head, pointing his metallic stick at Ashes.
No doubt that the cold serrated talons also gripping my shoulders belonged to Crystal.
Sunny gave a confused look at me. “Trrrgh?” she inquired. “Trrrgh?”
I could only guess what she was saying.
She wanted me, the dragon that found and protected her out there, not Ashes.
Both dragons helped me up and dragged me away from them towards another place in the capital.
It was close by the bridge and resembled the hut I had stayed in for a month, except it was tidier and more patched up. Dark oblong green leaves arranged in a spherical pattern made up the roof, letting light in through small cracks between them. The building itself was small, and was made with wood from the forest’s trees woven together. The floor was made with branches woven tightly together.
As soon as we were inside and sure we were out of sight, Eel whirled around to face me, anger on his snout. Silver wasn’t looking at me with the same expression. The expression on his flat face was sympathy. It was almost… dragonlike in a way.
‘Vile Seastar’, he flashed in Marine. ‘I thought you were one of the only good ones. It seems I was wrong, you’re just like the others, clawing those that stand in your way.’
‘That’s not what that was about’, I flashed back. ‘That dragon you pulled me off was the one that brought me and Peak here. But she had also abandoned us and took Sunny with her the night when that SeaWing’s scavengers attacked us.’
‘Which SeaWing?’ Eel raised an eye ridge at me.
‘It was a male with scales like mine, except darker and nearly black.’
‘Jambeau?’
‘Thanks for reminding me of his name. I nearly forgot.’
‘Jambeau was a dragon that loyally served his reef until six months ago. How dare you desecrate his memory by forgetting it!’
“If I can intervene”, Crystal said suddenly, disrupting our conversation, but Eel quickly slapped her with one of his wings as a way to shut her up. I heard Silver squeak in horror.
‘That’s no way to treat a dragon!’ I roared.
‘Correct’, he sniffed. ‘But this is how you and the Depths treated all of us commoners who live above you – with no dignity.’
His words reminded me of Coral’s when she interrogated me in the old reef.
‘Hold up. You brought me here to bash me for being your ruler?’
The SeaWing glared at me with dark, hostile green eyes, and said nothing.
His silence was my answer. He did bring me here to bash me for who I was.
On his head, Silver was frantically tapping his head, as if he wanted something. The metallic stick was on his back, probably because he wasn’t using it.
Eel ignored him, and slowly walked out of the hut.
“Meet me at sunset”, were his only words as he strode out onto the bridges connecting the capital together.
“Meet me at sunset”. But where? Where does he want me to meet him?
I turned my head to ask Crystal, but she was holding her snout in her serrated talons, blue blood seeping through them.
“It’s alright”, she said in a hoarse voice that reminded me of Eel’s. “I’ll see a Healer to get this fixed up. Can you stay here in the meantime?”
I nodded, and she nodded back before leaving the hut.
Now that I was alone, I looked around the hut, trying to distract myself for the time being.
The hut was the size of a large egg, and was able to pack in four dragons with their wings spread out. I presumed that this this was the capital’s hatchery, but I didn’t see anything or any materials on the floor that would denote it one. Nests were different across dragon species.
“Meet Eel at sunset”, I muttered to myself as I circled the hut. “Meet Eel at sunset, meet Eel at sunset. But where?”
And why are so vague sometimes?
As I circled the hut for the umpteenth time, a figure was now standing in front of the hut’s oblong entrance.
I stopped, and froze.
It was Coral, Eel and Crystal following her.
The prey had come straight into its predator’s claws.
The pent-up rage that had been simmering within me for so long that it boiled rapidly at the sight of Coral.
I lunged towards her, pinning her to the bridge with my claws, digging right into her shoulders like I did with Ashes when I saw her earlier.
“You lizard”, I hissed into her unchanging, yet subtly terrified face. “You creature. Everyone was right about you and the Undercurrents. You’re the ones killing us off because you hate us. You hate, no, despise law and order. After all we do for you as citizens of deep, this is how you repay us? By murdering us even as eggs?”
“You dare use my words against me, Seastar?” Coral hissed venomously.
“I could go on if you want”, I threatened.
“AKH!” a sharp voice rose behind Coral.
I looked up and there was a scavenger brandishing a metallic stick like Silver’s, but this one seemed less hardened than him.
It pointed its stick at me, as if it wanted me to get off of Coral.
I looked back down at Coral, who looked annoyed.
“Get off”, she spat.
“Or what?” I growled.
“Or Commander will shoot you and you’ll be of no value to me.”
Not wanting my other eye to be shot at, I slowly got off of Coral while warily eying her. Red blood dripped from where my claws sank into her shoulders down onto the woven bridge.
The dark blue dragon got up and extended a wing towards the scavenger, whom she called “Commander”. It climbed onto her wing, and she folded it in, allowing it to get on her without climbing.
“I’m not here to indulge your violent fantasies that I’m somehow sending my dragons to assassinate the royal family. I’m here to send you into battle.”
I took a step back. Battle?
“But Coral”, Crystal explained, “she…”
Coral cut her off. “I know, but we have no choice. Our forces are getting pummeled by the NightWings searching for every last dragon of Pern, and I’m running out of options for soldiers.”
I wrinkled my snout at her. “What are you saying?”
She gave a look at me. “I’m sending everyone into war. That means the wounded, the disabled, refugees, Healers, everyone. We’re barely holding on, and many of my dragons have either been killed or captured. Freedom is never free, SeaWing. You always have to fight for it.”
===Chapter 18===
The beach, which was part of the border between the Kingdom of the Sea and the Mud Kingdom, was littered with corpses of dragons and scavengers alike.
Silver light from the moons shone upon them, casting an eerie glow on their lifeless forms.
Among the dead were MudWings, SeaWings, LeafWings, IceWings, and NightWings. A horrid, rancid smell permeated the petrichor in the night air.
For once, I had to admit that Coral was right about something.
Waves lapped on the shores, blood from still-bleeding wounds were pulled out to sea in long, thin red trails.
Coral hovered above the carnage, sweeping her head from side to side to study it. On her back, her scavenger gripped her webbed spine tightly, even though it was secured to her with a contraption that wound around her neck.
The contraption resembled the harness I wore nearly six months ago to protect Wrack’s egg, except that it was some sort of brown color and that when unrolled, multiple scavengers could be stabilized on it.
After Coral forced Eel to give up Silver as she rassled the remains of Pern together, I had one fitted for myself where the scavenger would stay on me throughout the ordeal.
But the question was why?
Why was I fitted for one of these things and not Eel?
He had more experience with Silver than me. Plus, I was an heir, not a soldier.
I turned my head to see who was behind and beside me.
Eel was in the crowd, beating his green-yellow wings to hover. The scavenger-stabilized contraption wasn’t on him, yet a scavenger was clutching a part of his webbed spine to stay alive.
Crystal was hovering beside me, and there was no scavenger on her back.
On the other side of me was a MudWing, and it wasn’t any of the three I knew. It was a random dragon.
Behind me was a LeafWing. Yet again, another random dragon.
And behind that dragon was another dragon and another and another. A continuous wave of dragons after the other behind others.
I turned my head back forward to see Coral, who was now hovering over the water and flashing her tail stripes rapidly in such a random pattern it was hard to decipher what she was saying.
A moment of nothing, and then there was a rapid flashing of light from under Coral’s position that seemed to outshine the light of the moons.
‘Come’, Coral flashed with her tail stripes, and then a dragon emerged from the waves.
It was Anemone, and an armored scavenger was on her back. It looked like the same one that was with her when she found me and Peak on the beach that bloody night.
The pale blue dragon heaved her pink wings so that she lifted herself out of the water and hovered in front of Coral at a reasonable distance.
“Did they retreat?” the dark blue dragon asked.
Anemone shook her head. “They never really went away after the slaughter. I think they’re hiding somewhere, preferably in the trees.”
She then looked behind her sister and her dark eyes went huge. “You didn’t actually- Please tell me-”
“We have no choice”, Coral growled. “This is all that’s left of Pern, and we’re hanging on threads now.”
“But they’re-”
“I know that most of them are not fighters, but if they want to retain their freedom, they must fight for it, like – like our Undercurrents.”
Coral choked on the last words as if a sentimental memory were continually haunting her before snapping back to her normal voice – which was deep like mine.
Anemone gave one last look at us, a sympathetic yet horrified expression permeated her snout, before looking back at Coral.
‘All right’, she flashed with her snout stripes. ‘Send them out’.
----I was assigned to a backup team, alongside Loam, Blaze, Branch, and Bolt, four other dragons who were in the crowd.
Loam was the brown dragon that hovered next to me as Coral and Anemone decided their next move. Branch was behind me.
Two out of the four had scavengers of their own – Blaze had a female scavenger, while Bolt had a male scavenger – and they also had the same scavenger-stabilizing contraption on their backs.
We were stationed in the dark swamp, on one of its large trees with long, sprawling, moss-draped branches, close to where the NightWings could be hiding, according to Anemone.
Other backup teams were stationed like so. Their purpose was to drag those in dire out of the battlefield and towards the Rainforest Kingdom as urgent as possible.
Basically, the “backup teams” were actually rescue teams and never provided any real backup to the impromptu army.
As all of us watched the dark trees and the remnants of the world work on their last stand, I could only assume all our origins.
Blaze was a SandWing that managed to escape the Kingdom of Sand when the NightWings invaded it five months ago. They were probably one of the lucky ones, like Sunny.
The same applied to Bolt, although I presumed that his “faith” in Caelum is what spared them from death in the Sky Kingdom.
Loam was either one of those that managed to escape the Diamond Spray Delta when a chemical spill burned it to the ground or a dragon that managed to flee MudWing society before the NightWings took over.
Branch was probably like Alder, a Healer that fled from the LeafSilk Kingdom before seeking asylum here in the swamp.
Everyone worked in the air, as it would take years to remove the corpses from the beach and we didn’t have that many days to do that.
The rotten scent of decaying corpses permeated everyone’s snouts, and some of the flying dragons were audibly gagging at the stench. Others, like me, were taking in shallow breaths as compensation.
The scavengers were also gagging at the decay, but in a dragon-like way.
I turned my head around and saw that Silver had his long, metallic stick in one clawless talon, and that he had taken the upper part of the grey hide on his body, and covered his nose with it (while he still had it on).
The hides he wore were in a different shade of grey and black than when I first met him. The coverings on his feet stayed the same. I assumed that he changed hides every so often. But why? Why would sky-creatures change their hides every so often?
Were they like the snakes in the Gullet River, who shed their skin every season to grow? Or the small crabs that scuttled along the ocean floor, gaining a new shell to call “home” when the old one didn’t fit anymore?
Or did they all wear the same hides every day, albeit they were just fading with the years?
He patted my neck with one of his clawless talons, assuring me that he was okay.
“Seastar”, Loam breathed softly. I turned my head and saw that she was on a branch behind me. She gestured with one of her wings to come towards her.
I gingerly moved across the branches and I could see that her amber eyes were in slits – just like Argil’s when Marsh was nearly assassinated.
“Do you sense something?” I asked her. She nodded. “Dragons, I suspect. In in the swamp.”
She whipped her head around to everything that moved, everything that breathed in the darkness.
Where are you, lizards? I thought.
Snap.
Me and Loam both whipped our heads in the same direction in the darkness, away from the moonlit beach.
One heartbeat.
Another heartbeat.
Snap.
We both gave looks at each other.
“Go down there”, Hillock said, “I’ll join you after I tell the others.”
I gave her a look.
“You do know that-”
“I know. Go find them.”
She turned around without another word and slithered across the branches to tell her suspicions to the others.
A dragon called in the distant on the beach, and a swarm of wingbeats hurried suit as I climbed down the tree. The damp earth of the swamp hit by talons as I landed.
I turned my head around to see if Silver was okay, and he did look pleased at how I landed.
Snap.
I whipped my head back around to the dark trees.
Snap.
It was getting closer.
Snap.
And closer.
Snap.
Closer.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
Then there was nothing.
Where are you?
I began making my way into the dark trees when…
Snap.
Silver’s stick let out a soft whirr as looked down. An old, thin branch on the ground was now split in half from my talons.
There were several times when rainfall occurred during my recovery in the Rainforest Kingdom, and the stronger ones ripped loose branches from the forest’s trees, sending them pummeling to the ground.
I sniffed the branch. My scent was on it, but there was another scent on it, overpowering the others. One that was familiar…
Ashes.
She was here.
But what would be doing all the way out here?
“Trrrgh?”
I shot my head up.
A voice had come from the shadowy forest. And it was a familiar one.
“Trrgh?”
“Sunny?” I whispered. “Sunny?”
No response.
Was my head playing tricks on me?
Snap.
“Trrgh?”
There it was again.
Snapping branches and soft purring.
There you are.
Snap.
Snap snap snap.
“Trrgh!”
A small hatchling suddenly leaped out of the dark swamp and into my front talons.
It was Sunny.
I lowered my head to look at her, and she put her front talons on my snout; her dark eyes were filled with elation.
She was still wearing that harness the last time I saw her. The only question was, who was she harnessed to?
I looked past the small hatchling and saw that the cord that connected her harness to the adult harness snaked into underbrush of the swamp.
“Stay”, I ordered her as I lifted my head and followed the cord’s path.
Like most hatchlings, she didn’t heed and followed me.
Nearing a brush of reeds, there was a snap behind me.
I turned around to see that the rest of my backup team was behind me.
“Anything?” Loam said.
“Besides the dumb hatchling?” Blaze snorted, to which he got kicked in the side by Bolt.
I gestured to a random branch with one my claws, hoping that it was the same one.
“There’s a scent of a NightWing on that branch”, I explained.
Blaze lowered his head and sniffed it dubiously. “That’s a NightWing’s scent?”
“Does it smell like burnt rock?”
“No, it smells like you.”
“Let me see”, Bolt said and lowered his neck. His scavenger was looked around the swamp as if he knew death had come for him.
“Oh, right”, the grey dragon mused. “There is the smell of burnt rock here. But it’s so faint because of the other smells. I think you were sniffing the wrong branch, sand-brain.”
Blaze flicked his dark tongue at Bolt indignantly.
Now that that was settled, I turned around and saw that Loam and Sunny were done, as if the swamp had eaten then behind our backs.
“Loam? Sunny?” I called.
No response.
“Loam?”
There was no response until talons wrapped around my shoulders and yanked me backwards into the swamp.
I heard Silver fired his metallic stick multiple times, and whoever grabbed me roared in pain.
Using the opportunity, I whirled around and saw a NightWing clutching a side of their face, blood streaming down from their eye from whatever Silver shot at them.
I lunged at the black dragon, taking their head in my talons and twisting it, ending their life in an instant. I let the corpse drop to the ground, and saw that it was not Ashes. It was just a random dragon.
Footsteps padded behind me, and I turned around and flared my wings to face my next attacker.
Bolt, Blaze, and Branch suddenly stopped in front of me, with the LeafWing holding his green talons up to show he was harmless.
“You okay?” Bolt asked.
I nodded, and gestured to the black corpse.
“A NightWing tried to nab me. Luckily Silver shot at them first so I could attack.”
“So Seastars like you can fight”, Blaze mused to himself while studying the body.
At this point, I wanted to claw anyone who called me a “Seastar”. I hated that poisonous word, even if it was part of an average dragon’s lexicon.
“Looks like you killed him swiftly”, Blaze observed. “As if you wanted to execute him.”
He placed a heavy emphasis on the word “execute”, as if it were an undignified way to go out, which it was.
“Well, what was she supposed to do?”, Bolt growled at the SandWing. “Politely ask the dragon to not kill her?”
Blaze whipped his head towards Bolt, and his sky-creature let out a shocked squeak. He flicked his forked tongue at him.
“Stop barging in like a dragoness.”
The SkyWing’s amber eyes went wide.
Branch seemed to be oblivious to what was going on, as his ears perked up.
“Did anyone hear that?” he said.
“Hear what?” Blaze spat.
“It’s talonsteps, and it’s–”
And then something long and black like shadows snatched him into the dark trees.
===Chapter 19===
Branch fought and roared as his assailant attempted to subdue him.
Blaze snapped his head back, the back of his mouth alight, and shot a long stream of fire at the grappling duo, despite the shrieking of his scavengers supposedly telling him otherwise.
The dark dragon flung themselves over themselves and Branch, and they were not affected by it at all as they wore armor all over their body.
This was a NightWing.
Three moons, Loam was right.
I bolted into the air, plowing through Branch and the NightWing before hitting the ground with a metallic thud.
The NightWing still had their talons wrapped around Branch as they jabbed their back talons into my underbelly. I keeled over in pain, the same way I keeled when Coral tortured me in her old base.
Except that happened in water, and water couldn’t save me now.
A few pews emitted from Silver’s metallic stick and the NightWing roared, staggering backwards and clutching their head, letting go of Branch. Blood poured from one of their eyes profusely.
The LeafWing took advantage of this, and thrusted his claws into the black dragon’s underbelly, between the leather straps tying the armor together, pinning them to the ground.
The NightWing roared in pain, frantically looking around and pawing the air as if gripping it would drag themselves to away from Branch.
Blood poured from the wound like the fast-flowing currents of the sea, even as Branch twisted his claws deep into the dragon’s underbelly.
I walked towards the NightWing to look at them in the eye before twisting their next, like the last dragon that came across me, and recognized that the dragon was Obsidian.
Something inside me boiled like when I saw Ashes with Sunny in the Rainforest Kingdom a while ago.
“Obsidian”, I growled, “what are doing here?”
The NightWing let out a bitter, jagged laugh before he suddenly gasped for air as Branch twisted his green talons again in his underbelly.
“She asked you a question, lizard”, Branch seethed. “Answer it.”
Obsidian took in big gulps of air in an attempt to hold on.
“Why would I answer a foolish question, One-Eye?”, he snarked in a rusty voice.
“I’d ask the same thing, Seastar”, spoke a voice in the dark trees.
I shot my head up. A soft whirr came from Silver’s stick.
That voice. It felt familiar.
“Whatever this is”, I said. “this… attack… is.” I couldn’t get the words out. “It’s going to cause the extinction of everything.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it that”, the slithering voice replied, as its owner emerged from the shadows. A silver earring flashed in the moonlight.
“I would call it ‘elegant rage’.”
Ashes.
I started forward, but she lifted a talon and multiple night- and shadow-colored dragons slithered down the dark trees.
I stopped.
Hunting to survive was one thing, but being hunting – quite another.
She had brought reinforcements.
Whipping my head around, I saw other similarly colored dragons snake down the trees and surrounded me, Silver, and Branch.
We were outnumbered.
Two dragons and a scavenger couldn’t take out one, two, three…
I stopped mentally counting when a shriek far beyond the dark marsh pierced the moonlit night.
“That”, Ashes said in a smooth voice, “is the sound of Pern falling.”
She slithered off the tree like a snake going through the Gullet River. Firehead, her sky-creature, was no longer on her head; instead, he was on her back, strapped in a similar contraption used to keep the Undercurrents’ scavengers on their dragon’s back so they didn’t accidentally die. A similar-looking metallic stick like Silver’s was held in his clawless front paws, and it was pointed straight at me.
I took several steps back before bumping into something.
I turned around, and saw that Branch no longer had his claws in Obsidian’s abdomen, as the NightWing was now already dead.
“I should say that the Undercurrents were the easiest group to infiltrate”, Ashes purred. “I mean, you just interrogated me and then let me go. No detention, no suspicions, nothing. I guess you all were desperate and pathetic, like Vulcan suspected.”
“But, the marsh…” Branch gestured to the surroundings with one of his wings.
Ashes flicked her tail at the dead NightWing. “They were my informants, gathering information about you right under your snouts and then sending it to me in the other dragon cities while I looked after that surviving cretin you found.”
“Sun-” I started, but a shadow poked me in the ribs with something to shut me up.
I looked underneath one of my wings, and found that a dart was jabbed into my sides.
“Gah!” Branch hissed, and I turned around.
A similar looking dart had been shot into his neck.
“Tsk, tsk”, Ashes said. “I thought you were all free, brave, powerful, and accepting, like you think you are. But at the end of the day, you’re weak, cowardly, and intolerant like the animals you are. And when dragons have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong – every single time. But don’t worry, we will take care of you and you will be just fine.”
“OR!” something squawked behind me and turned my head around to see that Silver had been shot in the neck with a small dart.
I looked up at Ashes, and I tried to speak, but nothing came out.
She flicked her tail, and her dragons moved forward.
The NightWings moved like lightning before we could even do anything.
In an instant, thick leather straps were wrapped around our snouts, wings, bodies and legs, and a leather-and-metal harness was strapped to our bodies.
I took a step forward and I fell down, bellyside-first. Silver tumbled off my back and onto the peaty ground.
Ashes stared down at us with malicious, euphoric orange eyes as wingbeats approached our location.
I looked up, and saw that dragons were chained to a large, hollow, square-shaped metal contraption manned by NightWings.
I recognized it from my short time in the jungle. It was their prisoner transport.
Dragons of all types were chained. I even spotted Crystal as one of them.
Ashes shot a spurt of fire into the star-and-moons-laden sky, and dragons dove towards us.
They gripped us in their claws up and up and up, until the swamp seemed to be several dragons away from a regional map instead of a forest.
I felt claws weave thick chains through my harness and through the contraption until the dragons carrying me let their claws go.
I was dangling above the marsh, held in place by an enemy’s talonwork.
Soon, Ashes and her dragons flew up to the contraption.
Beside me, a dragon holding small metal cage in their claws threaded a thick chain through its interwoven top to the contraption.
In the cage were Silver and other sky-creatures.
Ashes’ words were gnawing at my brain.
“When dragons have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong – every single time. But don’t worry, we will take care of you and you will be just fine.”
Why did that sound familiar, and yet so damning at the same time?
After the small cage was tried, Ashes flew up to me and hovered in front of me.
I couldn’t speak, but I could flash something in Marine to her.
“You little-”, I started, but she held my snout up her one her front talons.
“I know exactly the realization you’ve come to Seastar”, she said with a condescending lilt in her voice. “It was politics that built you, and it was politics that destroyed you.”
She let go, flying off towards the sea as the dragons manning the metal transport followed her lead.
As our transport flew over the beach separating the marsh from the ocean, I saw multiple corpses litter the swamp.
White, green, brown, grey, all lumped together like some mishmashed SkyWing tapestry.
The last of the dragons were loaded onto the transports before following the others suit.
One of the black dragons from one of the transports behind us flew up to a black dragon guarding our transport.
“Sir”, they said in a light voice reminding me of Current. “Where are we heading?”
The dragon they spoke to turned their head, and seemed to stare at them with fire in their eyes, and if the other should’ve already known.
“The volcanic island”, they said gruffly, “like the rest of the planet.”
The swamp had already left our sights at this point and was now replaced with the piedmont.
A piedmont that would certainly lead to death if any of us went out of NightWing’s line.
I looked at Crystal, and she noticed me.
A look of defeat permeated her white snout, and I figured that mine had a look of “what just happened?” permeated mine.
I looked around, and saw that everyone on board had the same looks at me and Crystal.
Like lightning in a storm, everything deftly went up in flames.
Like lightning in a storm, we were now slaves to the NightWings.
Like lightning in a storm, Pern had fallen.
==Epilogue==
He’s finally done it.
He’s fulfilled his lifelong dream of conquering Pern, albeit was no small feat.
Vulcan looks down from the jagged rock jutting out from the volcano behind him. It is the same color as his scales and allows him to see the smoking mountains south of his fortress that suddenly stop at the sea.
He had the stars to thank for this, for if the strange boxes hadn’t descended, everyone would be setting his tail on fire with every move he made.
But because everyone had been distracted and was worrisome for their own scales, it was over in six months.
He was now awaiting one his most trusted dragons to tell of how the stragglers were dealt with. She was also the same dragon he sent out to spy on the “new” Undercurrents after their base was destroyed.
For that, he had to thank Surge, the true leader of the SeaWings.
Well, he didn’t say he was the leader of the SeaWings initially, but after being tortured through some unique ways only Vulcan had in his mental arsenal, he finally squealed about a lot of things – including the fact that he was the biological father of Wave’s children and was also the mysterious royal assassin of the deep. (Which explained some things considering his time in the SkyWing palace, but not everything.)
Pain and fear were the things that turned tough dragons into puddles of slop.
That could also be said about average dragons, if one applied the same observation equally among others.
Before releasing the SeaWings into the waters surrounding the NightWing island, Vulcan had instructed his dragons to place a metallic collar around their necks that would track where they were around the island. Like the tracker that most of his dragon had inserted into one of their ankles, it would send a signal of where the dragon was in real-time. If a dragon passed a certain marker in the ocean, the collar would send a signal that would alert Vulcan and the dragons in his stronghold of the trespassing while also shocking the dragon, forcing them backwards back into the island’s waters.
The collar was the result of Vulcan and his dragons dissecting the scavenger’s technology and the technology from the stars, and putting it together with the NightWing’s technology to make a contraption that would keep the SeaWings together. It was purely experimental, but at least it was better than sending armored dragons down into the ocean to watch and guard them.
The collar did not apply to the other dragons of Pern. Instead, the tracker was placed inserted one of their ankles, and it worked similarly to the collar.
Even the dragons that personally worked for Vulcan had the tracker in them.
Behind him, footsteps padded. Vulcan turned, and saw that Scoria, the head of internal affairs, had approached him.
“Permission to speak, Great Vulcan?” she asked.
He nodded, and she spoke.
“My dragons have reported to me that some of the new citizens don’t want to be ruled by you. I must ask, how will you handle it?”
Vulcan scratched his throat with his black talons, appearing to her to be deep in thought.
He knew this would arise when he first started this a year ago.
But he had an idea on how to do it.
He stopped and put his talons back on the volcanic rock below him.
“Don’t worry about it”, he mused in his distinctive, low, rumbly voice. “I’ll deal with it soon. For now, have your dragons guard the new citizens with brute force.”
“Understood”, she replied, bowing before she left, walking back into the stronghold.
As he watched her, he was reminded that his scientists determined that the volcano that the stronghold was carved into wouldn’t erupt for several years. He’d get to that soon, after putting it off for so long. His first priority was making sure that the dragons of Pern knew where their place was in his territory.
The stronghold was the residence of the NightWing’s old leaders before he took it over, and rightly fully so.
The old leaders thought they were descended from some sort of god and only leaders descended from this god could lead the VolcanoWings. 
Many dragons, including Vulcan’s family, believed in this theological monarchy and the god.
Vulcan never believed in both, since there was no proof that any god existed, including the StormWing deity “Caelum”, and there was proof that all dragons were descended from a type of proto-dragon.
He didn’t become leader to dismantle the idea of “God”. He became leader to lead those who couldn’t be led.
And sometimes you had to silence your opponents to lead, which including throwing them in prison or straight-up killing them.
He turned to look back out at his volcanic kingdom, and saw that a flying shape was heading towards him.
He tensed up, not sure who it was.
The flying shape got closer and closer until he saw that the shape belonged to no other than Ashes.
Relief fizzled through his body as she landed in front of him.
Ashes was smaller than Vulcan, albeit not that short.
She bowed.
“Great Vulcan.”
She held her bow two heartbeats before looking up at him.
“Permission to speak?”
He nodded, not even noticing her scavnger fiddling with the contraption used to strap him to the back of her neck.
“The remnants of Pern have finally been distributed over the northern shores of the Sky Kingdom, your island, and the surrounding waters.”
“And how long did that take?”
“A week, Your Greatness.”
“A week since when?”
“A week since the raid on the Undercurrents’ marsh base.”
As he studied, he noticed that there were two dragons missing.
“Where are Obsidian and Fumarole?”
“Dead, Your Greatness. Obsidian was killed by a LeafWing, while Fumarole was one of the first go down when she launched the attack.”
“And yet you’re unscathed.”
“I used the reinforcements you gave to back me up.”
Vulcan gave an incredulous look at her. “What did you use them for?”
She sneered at him. “I used them to subdue the last heir of the SeaWings.”
He raised at eye ridge at her. “Did they resist?”
“She”, Ashes corrected him. “Did she resist? Nope, not after hearing the Undercurrents roar into the night and not after she, her scavenger, and her LeafWing were tranquilized with the darts I had.”
She opened the black leather sheath around her chest held her obsidian knife and let him peer inside.
Inside the sheath was a shoddily-woven-in secret pouch containing several darts used by the Containment Unit to subdue dissidents.
Usually, Vulcan would punish an act like this, but Ashes was too clever and knew the enemy well.
He let it slide, for now.
Ashes closed the sheath as Firehead squawked and squawked to be let out of the contraption.
“Your scavenger”, Vulcan noticed and pointed to the joint the connected a dragon’s wing to their front leg.
Ashes followed his gaze, eventually landing on Firehead.
“I’ll do it later; we have to inform the Council first.”
Vulcan thought that sounded like a good idea to start his reign over Pern.
“Come”, he told her, “let’s see how we can improve the state of the world.”
==Changes from Original Novel==
===Chapter Changes===
*In chapter 10 of the original novel, Tide explains in detail to Coral how to get into the OceanWing capital. In the adaptation, Tide's explanation for getting into the Deep Palace to Coral is blunt yet detailed, due to the differences the series have with their respective underwater capitals for ocean dragons.
*In chapter 12 of the original novel, Tide stays out of the River of Beaks, located in the Rachis Jungle, the northern jungle of continent/planet Eukarya, because it hosts a multitude of poisonous aquatic snakes. In the adaptation, Tide stays out of the Poison Jungle's Gullet River because the water is poisonous and there are sharp rocks jutting out of it.
*In the original novel, Tide finds a dragon corpse covered in the River of Beaks' native snakes. In the adaptation, she finds a dragon corpse covered in dragonbite vipers who found it.
*In chapter 16 of the original novel's outline, there was a scene where Alpine's City, a MountainWing settlement, catches fire from chemicals. This was inspired by the train derailment in East Palestine, OH, USA which occurred February 2023. (The scene was originally supposed to be the catalyst for Peak's arc (if he became a protagonist in the original series), but L1quid kept it in the final book to talk about current (2020s) events.) In the final novel and its adaptation, the incident is only mentioned as L1quid had determined that having their characters directly run into a chemical fire would be a bad idea psychologically and physically.
*In chapter 13 of the original novel's outline, there was a scene where Tide saw TreeWings being killed by VolcanoWings in the distance and staying in the ruins of an abandoned camp destroyed by the VolcanoWings; Tide also reunited with Peak in chapter 14 of the original novel's outline. In the final novel and its subsequent WoF adaptation, both scenes were merged into one scene for "runtime", to get to act three quicker, and to make the storyline more cohesive.
*In chapter 13 of the original novel's outline, an unnamed MountainWing stumbles into the Rivers of Beaks to escape the VolcanoWings and meets her end by poisonous snakes in the river. In the outline of the adaptation, the MountainWing is replaced by a MudWing and her death is being impaled by jutting rocks instead being killed by poisonous snakes to keep in line with WoF's lore.
*In chapter 13 of the original novel's outline, it took Tide a few days to fly through the northern Great Forest to the Piedmont bordering the Ridges. In chapter 13 of the adaptation's outline, it took her a week to get to the Northwestern Mountains due to Pantala's terrain.
*In chapter 13 of the original novel's outline, Tide came across a group of MountainWings fleeing the Ridges, the eastern mountains of continent/planet Eukarya. In the adaptation's original outline, she comes across an intertribal group of dragons, as the WoF version of MountainWings are MudWings, and she is nowhere close to the Mud Kingdom at that point in
*In chapter 14 of the original novel's outline, Cliff, a male MountainWing, takes Tide to Alpine's Gorge, a canyon system located in the Ridges. In chapter 14 of the adaptation's original outline, Clay (the WoF stand-in for Cliff) takes Tide to Beetle Lake, as she is still nowhere close to the Mud Kingdom at that point in the adaptation (and the location where she was taken needed to be close).
*In chapter 17 of the original novel's outline, Tide, Cliff, and Peak fly through the Great Forest, the swamps and marshes, and the Ocean of Storms on continent/planet Eukarya to reach the second continent, as directly flying there through the Ridges and across the ocean would be too risky and would result in a direct confrontation with the VolcanoWings (which they are unprepared for). In chapter 17 of the adaptation's original outline, they decide to fly through the Kingdom of the Sea and the Mud Kingdom before heading into the Sky Kingdom for the same reasons. In the final version of the adaptation, Ashes, Tide, and Argil (TAD's Peak) fly through SeaWing and MudWing territory to find war survivors.
**This change prompted several scenes that were in the semifinal outline of the original novel, but not in the final outline, to be seen in the adaptation. (The scenes mentioned here were scrapped from the final outline due to "runtime" (how long a book should be and how long it should be read) and because it would steer the plot of the book "off course".)
***One of these scenes was Tide returning to the OceanWing capital and returning to her family, but she is arrested due to Riptide's belief that Tide is dead and that the dragon is actually her imposter (her sister Flood is the only one that believes her). This scene was modified for the WoF adaptation for Tide to return to the Deep Palace, only to see it destroyed and abandoned.
*In chapter 16 of the original novel's outline, Tide asked MountainWings to carry their dragonets for them as they take whatever they can salvage with them and some dragons allow her to do this so they can carry their own uncontaminated stuff. In the adaptation's outline, Tide asks to help the dragons, as MudWings do not have formal families in WoF's world, and is allowed to take some of their supplies for them.
*In the original novel's outline, chapter 16 ended part two and chapter 17 ended part three. In the final novel (and it's adaptation), chapter 14 ended part two and chapter 15 started part three as L1quid combined scenes from different chapters in the outline in the novel for longer chapters and shorter parts.
*In chapter 17 of the original novel's outline, Cliff, Peak, and Argil decide to go to the Isle of Rods, the swamp-riddled northwestern island of continent Bacteria, planet Eukarya, to search for survivors. In the adaptation's outline, they head to the northern Sky Kingdom, as it's closer to the NightWing island.
*Originally, chapter 17 (in the original novel and its adaptation) had the first appearance of Sunny, who would be the Bumblebee-like character in the overall storyline. However, because L1quid did not want the story pacing to be "slow", they did the introduction earlier in the novel.
===General Changes===
*The prologue is a history of "Pern", similar to the prologues in Dragonriders of Pern, instead of humanity's future (which is written in the same style).
**The Dragonriders-like prologue is recycled from L1quid's old/incomplete fanfictions.
***In These Alien Dragons, the prologue and epilogue is combination of the prologue and epilogue of The Babylon Bee's Post-Modern Pilgrim's Progress (how it's narrated) and the Dragonriders of Pern prologue (how it's expositional). (As L1quid edited the outline for book 1, this was ultimately removed and the history of humanity making spaceflight will be saved for a future novella or stand-alone in their series.)
*The dragon guide is similar to one in These Alien Dragons - it states the dragon species and its respective appearance, adaptations, leaders, and territory.
**Originally, L1quid (purposely) removed the dragon monarchs from their version of the WoF guides (and "FeatherWings" guides) since they though it was filler material. Later, they decided to keep it, as the guide would purposely be misleading in the final version of the novel (WoF adaptation and These Alien Dragons).
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*Several characters had their species and/or names changed to be in accordance with their appearances in the original novel and in accordance with the world of Wings of Fire. 
**Bud, a male TreeWing dragonet, is a female SilkWing dragonet named "Monarch"; Blossom, a female TreeWing dragonet, is a male SilkWing dragonet named "Moth"; Sand's name was changed to "Heat" because it would be dumb to have a character named "Sand of the SandWings".
*The Great Forest (FeatherWings) is replaced by the LeafSilk Kingdom (Wings of Fire).
*The Pantalan Hives make a cameo in the novel's first chapter as Maple hunts in the forest, as cities like the Hives are not canon in FeatherWings.
**The Hives also appear as the shelter for dragons fleeing the hurricane in chapter 5 (part one) of the novel. L1quid wanted to do something similar to their novel (to keep the Hives as a cameo), but had to follow WoF canon when writing this adaptation.
*The prologue is a history of "Pern", similar to the prologues in Dragonriders of Pern, instead of humanity's future (which is written in the same style). 
**The Dragonriders-like prologue is recycled from L1quid's old/incomplete fanfictions.
*The dragon guide is similar to one in FeatherWings - it states the dragon species and its respective appearance, adaptations, and territory. It does not state who the draconic monarchs are, like the Wings of Fire dragon guides. 
**L1quid purposely removed the dragon monarchs from their version of the WoF guides since they think it's filler material.
==Trivia==
*L1quid changed the protagonist of book 1 from a TreeWing to an OceanWing (These Alien Dragons), as it would be realistic for a sea dragon to find strangers in the ocean before the elements got to them (if they were found early enough); it would get the series' trio together easily; and because Wings of Fire: The Lost Heir (2013) was the first Wings of Fire (series) novel L1quid read.
**L1quid changed the protagonists for the entire trilogy after thinking about how the books would play out. They initially had three different dragons from the three different continents of planet Eukarya (These Alien Dragons), but got rid of one and replaced it with a new character. (These main protagonists were originally minor characters in "FeatherWings", and only appeared in book 2's epilogue.)
***On the Wings of Fire fanon wiki, the pages for the old protagonists can still be seen, as L1quid has worked hard on their respective pages and doesn't want to delete them. (These same characters in These Alien Dragons have been demoted from "main protagonist" to "background character".)
*Shifting Seas is also a murder mystery, on top of being a science-fiction/fantasy novel. Even though Wings of Fire: The Lost Heir (2013) is one of the inspirations for the novel, L1quid is putting it in there because they're a fan of crime shows (i.e. NCIS: New Orleans (TV, 2014-2021)) and because they attempted to write a science-fiction/mystery novel in 2017 called The Earth in the Sludge, which was never completed.
**This murder mystery still stands in the Wings of Fire adaptation of the novel.
*The part names for Turning Tides and its WoF adaptation are derived from aspects of Wings of Fire, music that L1quid listens to in real-life, and concepts part of the Alien Dragons universe. Part one ("The Deepest Blue's") name is derived from the line in the Dragonet Prophecy: "Find the SeaWing egg of deepest blue, wings of night will come to you" and is also a poetic name for the ocean. Part two ("The Undercurrents'") name is derived from the Undercurrents, the OceanWing (SeaWing in WoF adaptation) resistance and the definition of an "undercurrent" (according to Dictionary.com). Part three ("The Restless Sea's") name is derived from the lyric in the Young Oceans song "This Wild Earth": "Every soul upon the restless sea, hold on" and is also supposed to symbolize the coming trouble that Tide and her allies must face with the VolcanoWings (NightWings in the WoF adaptation) threatening the planet.
*In the original series, the dragons are ruled by different governments. In the WoF adaptation, they are ruled by monarchies, however anyone related to the royal family can become queen, regardless of gender, throwing out the canon rule that only females related to the queen can succeed her.
==Notes==
On 02/26/2023, L1quid finalized the titles of their series - Shifting Seas (book 1), Shifting Storms (book 2), Shifting Stars (book 3). L1quid changed the titles to their final version so that each title an elemental meaning behind it, but also it would tie into the novel's perspective and overall plot. (This is both for the WoF adaption and the original series.)
L1quid is keeping the page for book 2 up, which was the old page for book 1, and will not rename it. They will simply make a new page for book 1 (which is this page) and will start there for their series.
Like its predecessor page, there will be a Mature Warning slapped onto the page (due to the amount of gore present in it, which is supposed to be like the original five books of Wings of Fire).
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On 02/21/2023, even though L1quid like the name "Shifting Seas" for their original novel, the WoF adaptation's title won't be changed as it is fanfiction. The original novel's title has been changed from "Shifting Seas" to "Turning Tides" in order to distinguish the books from one another (and because L1quid found inspiration in the titling of books 6-10 of Wings of Fire).
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On 03/02/2023, L1quid finished the outline for "Turning Tides" (TAD bk.1) 03/01/2023, and is now working on the outline for "Raging Fires" (TAD bk.2). They have also determined that they won't write the books until the outlines have been finished.
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On 04/16/2023, L1quid added the overviews of chapters from their TAD outlines to their respective WoF adaptation so that they're pages on the fanon wiki aren't always empty. (The overviews of chapters from books 2 and 3 will change, since their outlines have not been finalized yet. The only exception to this in book 1, whose outline has been finalized.)
Spoilers for These Alien Dragons will be present on these pages!
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On 09/06/2023, L1quid finished Turning Tides, the first book of These Alien Dragons, and its subsequent Wings of Fire adaptation.
All that's needed for the original novel is an editor and an dragon artist for the final touches before it can finally be published physically.
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On 10/10/2023, L1quid is in the process of cleaning and editing Turning Tides (TAD bk.1) before giving it to a professional editor for a final review. The Wings of Fire adaptation is getting the same treatment, and this page will be edited over time to reflect this. (The current version of the adaptation on the wiki is the pre-edited, final version of the original novel.)
----On 11/30/2023, the author is redoing the entire series' plot, as the plot during that time could not work plot-wise and realistically. Furthermore, the first two books will be changed, as the third book will be affected by this development.
The adaptations of the first two books will not be changed and kept on the wiki. The new adaptations will be on a different page.
==Gallery==
File:Turning Tides (graphic, These Alien Dragons).jpg|Original novel graphic by L1quid using Inkarnate.
File:Wings of fire book 2 by joy ang.jpg|Unedited, full cover of Wings of Fire: The Lost Heir (2013) by Joy Ang. The Lost Heir influenced some aspects of Shifting Seas.
File:Maple (treewing (wof poster), featherwings (series)).png|Maple poster (book coloration; LeafWing coloring page from The Official WoF Coloring Book by Brianna C. Walsh)
==External Links ==
*Named Pern characters, unnamed Pern characters - Wings of Fire fanon wiki
*These Alien Dragons: Turning Tides - L1quid's Wattpad page
*These Alien Dragons: Turning Tides - FeatherWings wiki
Category:Content (L1quidMarbl3)
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)
Category:Fanfictions (Completed)