In The Lair of the Draca (Book 2)

In the Lair of the Draca (Book 2)-- Chapter 83: A New Era Blooms

Julian's bolberry canoe paddle was no match for the water dragon's fetid maw. Splintered wood met cracked, blackening draga teeth with a jolt that was electric. In less than a heart-beat's length of time, the Hidden Well refugees' canoes found themselves upside down, dashed to pieces beneath the frigid waters of the Great Rush Lake.

I can't breathe. I can't breathe!

Julian, his brain overrun by panick, clawed wretchedly for the surface and was instantly battered against jutting crags of granite.

His eyes popped open, but could see absolutely nothing in the water's inky blackness. He couldn't even orient himself; as the frothing draga churned its surroundings with a tail as thick as a snow-tree's root, Julian could discern neither which direction was up nor which led further down into the stark gloom.

Julian was tossed, flipped, and rotated like weak reed doll. It was akin to being trapped in one of those centuries-old clothes washing  machines, which he'd seen once in a museum as a child...but the strenuous power of the water was almost incomprehensible.

Somewhere in the lake, he could hear muffled screams. The water beast boomed her wrath with a force so strong that it burst Julian's ear-drums... but that was the least of his problems.

Air. Air!

Mightily, he struggled. At one point his head breached the surface, and his famished lungs were able to suck in a brief whoosh of salty air before a foam-capped wave overtook him. Underneath, Julian was surrounded by bits of ragged wood and sloshing debris: a sandal here, an abandoned oar there, and the soft, broken bodies of what he realized were tiny children.

Dear God-- the kids. The kids are gone!

Julian pivoted and was able to once again strain toward the surface. He needed air. He needed life. And the children, he realized with a raw pang, were probably all dead.

Vanished. Sucked into the belly of a ferocious aquatic predator, along with their canoes, supplies, mountain guides, and all of the Hidden Well refugees, most of whom didn't know how to swim. The relentless beating of the frosty waves would have daunted even an accomplished Olympic swimmer.

With the incensed water-dragon streaking back and forth through the narrow bends of the lake and ravaging everything she came across, Julian fancied that they'd all have been safer in an aquarium full of Megalodon sharks. And God, but she was ugly: all four fins were barnacle-encrusted and scarred, which whispered of secret battles encountered with over-enthusiastic mates or young bulls seeking to assert themselves by claiming her territory. The beast's eyes, easily twice as large as standard eating plates, bulged in their madness. And her teeth were in a terrifying, five-inch league of their own.

Julian's lungs screamed. He broke the surface. He gulped in one breath, and then another. He was half-way through a third when an object of formidable force slammed into his back and sent him flying. Out of the lake he was hurled, with limbs pinwheeling this way and that, until finally being plastered face-first into the icy wall of the east mountain face. The impact knocked Julian out of consciousness immediately. His embattled body slid down and crumpled on the frigid bank, twenty feet from the water's edge.

And still, the monster raged, in a frantic and furious search for the ova which she had been nursing with so much care. It was her only ova, and she would likely never have another.

Bits of canoe bobbed on the lake surface, like the twisted bodies of sea-fowl from another world, but the area was now bereft of any other form of life.

No other stragglers reached for the shore. Only the lead canoe had been able to escape the fray, but unless the water-dragon was able to find her precious cargo, she would follow that canoe as far as she could go, or at least until the waters became to shallow to support her.