These Alien Dragons

Chapter 1 (T.T.)

2222 A.D.

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 OceanWings 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 two openings of the cavern.

The openings were covered with a golden seagrass, allowing the eggs to be unseen by outsiders, and they led back into tunnels that snaked back to the main cavern of the OceanWings' 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 OceanWings 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 cavern 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 cavern, where everything occurs and where everyone lives.

Ahead of me, in the center of the giant cavern, is an amorphous blob of a coral reef, where me, Mother, and the rest of our family lives (since we are the leaders of the OceanWings), as well as the dragons that directly serve us.