The beach was littered with corpses of dragons and sky-creatures alike.
Silver light from the moons shone upon them, casting an eerie glow on their lifeless forms.
Among the dead were MountainWings, OceanWings, TreeWings, ArcticWing, and VolcanoWings. 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 sky-creature 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 two seasons ago to protect Wrack's egg, except that it was some sort of brown color and that when unrolled, multiple sky-creatures could be stabilized on it.
After Coral forced Eel to give up Silver as she rassled all the Communities together, I had one fitted for myself where the sky-creature 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 sky-creature-stabilized contraption wasn't on him, yet a sky-creature was clutching a part of his webbed spine to stay alive.
Crystal was hovering beside me, and there was no sky-creature on her back.
On the other side of me was a MountainWing, and it wasn't any of the three I knew. It was a random dragon.
Behind me was a TreeWing. 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 sky-creature 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 Eukarya, 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.
YOU ARE READING
These Alien Dragons
Science Fiction(Note: This is the old version. It is preferable if you read the current/new version.) For all their life, J. Pappas has been a reader and a writer. They have written about many things - cats, owls, humans, and dragons; they've read stories about di...
