A Dragon's Tale #Watty's2015

Taro's Sacrifice

“What are you doing?”, Nina asked.

Not answering, I opened a metal box. Inside were a couple of diving suits.

“Taro said there was a ship involved”, I said pulling it out, “so I came prepared. There's one in here for you too.”

I slid my suit on and put my vest over it, strapping the re-breather to my chest and the grappling hook to my back. I helped Nina into her suit as Greyson turned back to us.

“We'll make it in two minutes, get ready to jump!”

“Are you good?”, I asked looking into Nina's eyes as she tightened her vest.

“Yeah I'm good”, she answered.

I nodded to her and then punched the door release. As it came down, wind filled the cabin and attempted to suck us out. The mist from the engines and the rain blasted in and threatened to soak us before we even dove in.

“Come back alive you two”, Greyson said, “two deaths are enough for today.”

I held up two fingers as Nina and I dove off the edge. There was a faint window of seeing a dark, starless night sky before the cold, salty ocean water engulfed us both. Under the surface was so inky black it was impossible to see an inch past my goggles. I broke a few glow sticks and then radioed Nina to do the same. A few seconds later a yellow glow popped up in front of me. I gave her an OK hand signal and she did the same.

Swimming wasn't that difficult for dragons because we used our wings under the water. Where it differed from flying was how you stroked them. Since water was many times more dense than air, if you tried to use them like in flight, you'd just end up jerking yourself back and fourth and never get anywhere. So to avoid it, you would extend your wings forward, like you were going to grab someone and then thrust back. I took the lead as we started forward. I could feel the push from the ships propellers, so Nina and I got in the middle of the stream and followed it until we could hear the chop, chop, chop, of them in the water. Once we had the sound we veered to the right and swam until we had the side of the ship. I gave the motion to surface and we detached our tanks and started up. When we surfaced, Nina gasped for air.

“You okay?”, I asked.

“Yeah”, she said planting, “I always had problems holding my breath is all.”

I reached onto my back for the grapple gun, “our first objective is to disable the communications, objective two is to free Prisoner 0, three is to release all prisoners and 4....is to recover Taro's body.”

Nina didn't answer. We shot our lines up to the deck of the ship. They caught on the side railing and Nina and I started our assent. I could hear some very faint chatter coming from the other end of the ship. Here was hoping they didn't see us come up and raise an alarm. My gun's electric motor slowed down as I reached the top. I gripped the side of the boat and pulled my head over, I could see a few dragons who weren't armed laughing and having a good time at the other end of the ship. They were wearing party hats and had glow sticks stuck in a cake, so I guessed they were celebrating a birthday. I felt a twinge of anger at them, but quickly brought myself in check. Couldn't lose my head, this could end up like my nightmare if I did.

“All clear Nina”, I said hauling myself up and over.

Nina followed closely behind me. I heard her growl and mutter something under her breath at the dragons on the other end of the ship. Nina and I quickly trotted over to a door. Nina opened it and I slipped inside, coming face to face with a little silver cub who appeared no older than Tyson. Nina walked in behind me and stopped quickly. He just sat there and stared at us through curios eyes.