Wings of Fire: Dragons, Steel, and Pom-Poms

II - Sea Monsters?

This creature did have fins, clearly. Two small pectoral fins to the bottom front of the creature, similar to the fins that one would see on a whale or shark, but much smaller and closer to the front of the thing. It also had a sort of giant dorsal fin on the top, but it was weirdly wide, and centered far away from the other fins. Cuttlefish could also see something on top of the creature, just in front of the giant dorsal fin, but he had no idea what it was.

The whole creature had a silhouette that was much leaner and decidedly more... predatory... than the other creatures they saw earlier.

And it was coming right towards them.

The three dragonets floated in place, petrified with terror, and a bit of morbid curiosity, on Oyster's part. None of them dared to move a muscle or flash a blink. Their bodies and minds weren't used to this kind of fear, the fear induced by a predator watching you.

Dragons never were on the receiving end of that interaction, after all.

The creature continued to move towards them... slowly.

Actually, really slowly. Almost lazily slowly, now that Cuttlefish thought about it. He sort of figured that if a great sea monster were hunting, it would probably move with a bit more urgency.

And so he, and so probably by extent Clam and Oyster, held fast while the creature slowly swam closer.

They watched with wide eyes as the thing passed by them, not once deviating from its course or seemingly paying them any mind at all.

This was the closest any of the dragonets had been to one of the creatures, and now that it wasn't silhouetted against the surface, they could get the best look they had of one of them so far.

And well, they did not really get any less confusing up close.

It was hard to tell exactly what color the creature was, given that they were underwater and it was dark. But the thing appeared to probably be light-gray in coloration, pretty similar to a shark.

Similar to the other creatures, the front of it tapered off to a kind of wedge shape, but it had two... rectangular divots... on the side, and presumably two more on the other side, which served an unknown purpose. It also had a single jagged horn angled backwards that sprouted from the upper tip of the front end, which itself was angled forwards.

Come to think of it, just behind the tapered wedge that made up the front of the creature, it had a series of weird, perfectly rectangular holes that Cuttlefish could not imagine the purpose of or where they went. They ran almost the whole length of the creature near the top of it. Which itself was strangely flat.

Speaking of the top of the creature, the dorsal fin and strange thing in front of it were even more bewildering up close.

Cuttlefish still had absolutely no idea what the thing in front of the bloated dorsal fin was supposed to be, or what it was supposed to do. It was long, its length ran along the same direction as the creature's length, the end facing the front being shaped like a tube and having a hole at the end of it, while the other end that faced the dorsal was kinda more square and blocky in shape.

The dorsal fin was even stranger, it was almost as wide as the creature itself was, and had a bunch of smaller things all jutting out from it. Cuttlefish could see small, thin tubes that stretched out the top of the thing pointing towards the surface. On the side of the fin, he could see strange patterns made from a different coloration than the rest of the creature that looked suspiciously like symbols...

He could also see strange things on the back of the fin that looked somewhat similar in shape to the thing in front of the fin, but smaller. He could also see another one set behind the entire dorsal fin, this one pointing towards the back of the creature.