by Logan Jacobs
Then, up above, I heard the sound of a snapping branch.
“Son of an acorn hoarder!” Lezan cried out.
I looked up and saw the leaf give out on the Coonag woman. Her striped tail flicked back and forth as she plummeted, and her arms and legs flailed wildly.
Then Nadir’s arm shot down, grabbed her friend, and halted her fall, but unfortunately, the stop was only temporary. Lezan’s weight, mixed with the slippery surface of the oversized leaves, caused Nadir to lose her footing, and she reached out hopelessly as she slid off the green platform as well. At the last moment, the dark-haired leader threw up her arm, grabbed a hold of the leaf’s narrow end tightly, and held on for dear life.
Nadir and Lezan both chittered at each other angrily, and they were surely cursing the situation in their native tongue. They were safe for now, but they weren’t doing anybody any good dangling helplessly hundreds of feet off the ground.
Meanwhile, I continued my ascent while the other members of my team tried to get to Arrick first. Malkey attempted to hop across the branches, but he quickly came to a roadblock when he arrived at the twenty-foot gap. Without Tirian’s assistance, there was no way he was making that jump on his own.
At the same time, Sela and Mira were on the move, and both of the dragonkin warriors ran side-by-side with their spears out and at the ready. Instead of attempting to run across the rickety boards or jump from leaf to leaf, though, they used their weapons as pole vaults to completely circumvent the bridges.
Jemma, on the other hand, stood beside Tirian with her bow drawn.
Maybe I can give the dwelling more support by pinning it against the leaf, the long-legged deer woman suggested. If you can give me a clear shot, I can at least try.
What in the world can I do? Tirian asked sadly. I can’t fly right now.
No, Jemma noted through their dragonbond. But you can evaporate the water and give me a clear shot. Just make sure your breath isn’t at full power, or you’ll run the risk of setting the leaves on fire.
Yes, ma’am! the dragon agreed.
The next thing I knew, I saw a flash of orange out of the corner of my eye, followed by the succinct twang of an arrow being released from its string, and I glanced up and saw the two projectiles hissing through the air. The flames were first, and they sent up large billows of steam as the fire itself grew dimmer with each passing second. It finally disappeared a few seconds before it hit Arrick’s dwelling, and then Jemma’s arrow stabbed straight through the upper corner of the building and stuck it into the leaf above.
Damn, she was becoming a great archer.
Even still, I didn’t know how long her quick patches were going to hold. So, I continued upward, and now I was only a few dozen feet down from being level with the village.
“Hold on, Arrick!” Mira bellowed as she dashed toward my son.
When I looked back up at the structure, my eyes went wide, and I swallowed my own tongue. Even with Jemma’s arrow holding it against the leaf, the base of the hanging structure was halfway off its foundation. Mira and Sela weren’t going to get there in time, and neither was I.
If Arrick was going to make it out of this alive, I had to change my course of action.
We couldn’t get to him before the structure fell, but maybe, just maybe, he could get to us… It was a long shot, but I had to try.
So, instead of moving up, I began to go sideways. I hoisted myself onto the slick branch of the tree, sidestepped across it carefully, and then hopped over to the next one, and I barely caught my arms around the thin tree branch before I pulled myself up and repeated the process. Eventually, I found myself standing on the tree that was parallel to the opening in Arrick’s dwelling, a few feet down from where it was hanging and several dozen feet away.
“Malkey!” I ordered the water dragon. “I need you to spray Arrick with the hardest blast of water you possibly can.”
What? Arrick, Jemma, Malkey, and Mira all seemed to say at the same time.
That’ll knock him out of the dwelling! Mira protested.
“I know,” I retorted. “Just do it, and do it now! That’s an order.”
Dad… Arrick’s voice echoed in my head.
My son was full of fear, and for a split second I wondered if this was the right call. I didn’t have time to think it over, though. This was a matter of life and death, and any indecision could be catastrophic.
“Do it now, Malkey!” I ordered the copper water dragon.
Malkey reared back his head and sucked in a bunch of air. Then he threw his face forward and unleashed a blast of water straight toward Arrick’s position. The jetstream rocketed across the landscape with the force of a firehose, and the torrential rain seemed to bounce off it like they were little more than spittle from an underpowered water gun.
Then the blast of water shot into the hanging dwelling and knocked Arrick out the other side.
Right in the nick of time, too.
Just as the boy’s body flew out the other side of the building, the base of the giant leaf snapped off its branch and sent the whole structure plummeting to the ground.
Arrick’s eyes were wide and terrified as he soared across the rainy landscape, and it was now all up to me. So, I sheathed my dagger, flipped my sword around, and took a running jump toward my son.
Our bodies slammed together in the sky and, luckily, my heavier mass was enough to change the boy’s trajectory. I wrapped my left arm around Arrick tightly as we plummeted at a downward angle, and then I used my free hand to ready my sword. Once I got close enough, I stabbed the blade into a tree trunk and held on for dear life. The blade tore through the wet wood like it was cardboard as our weight carried us down, but we eventually slowed to a crawl and then stopped ourselves against a thick branch.
My heart was still beating a million miles per second as I hugged my son tightly and refused to let go.
“Thank Gods you’re okay, Arrick,” I panted as I held his head close to my chest.
“I’m--I’m sorry, Dad.” The boy’s gray eyes were full of tears. “I didn’t mean to put myself into danger like that. I should have been able to get out of it myself.”
“Don’t say that,” I told the preteen as I grabbed his face and locked my gaze with his. “It’s not your fault. I’m just happy you’re okay.”
I was a wreck. This was the first time my son had ever left the island, and we’d already encountered not one, but two massively deadly situations. I feared what other dangers awaited us on this island… Other dangers I may have put Arrick directly in the path of.
I glanced up and saw Lezan and Nadir had pulled themselves back up onto the waxy leaves, but they still struggled to move across them.
“I’ve got Arrick!” I called up through the downpour. “Is everybody else alright?”
“We’re fine,” Nadir shouted back. “Just a little slip-up, but we’re still in one piece.”
“Good,” I nodded up to my friends. “Now, we need to get down from this place right away, before more leaves decide to give out.”
What am I supposed to do? Malkey sounded fearful as he paced back and forth before the giant gap. Tirian can’t fly in this weather!
“Sure, he can,” I explained. “Tirian, you just said the rain weighs you down, right? So, you can’t fly forward?”
That’s right, the silver dragon confirmed. Every time I try to go forward, the rain pushes me down so I can’t get to where I need to go.
“Unless you want to go down,” I suggested to the adolescent dragon.
Then it was like the lightbulb went on in his head.
Ohhhhhh, Tirian chuckled. I’ll be right over, Malkey!
I watched as the silver fire-breathing dragon hopped from branch to branch until he was only one away from Malkey. Then he jumped up into the air, flapped his wings, and grabbed the copper dragon around the front shoulders. Tirian strained as he lifted Malkey just a few feet off the tree and then grunted as they both began to flutter downwards. Tirian car
ried the hefty water dragon a few feet at a time and stopped every few branches to catch his breath, but after a couple minutes of descending, Malkey’s thick legs finally plopped into the mushy ground below.
Thank you, friend! the copper water dragon exclaimed. That beats climbing any day.
You… You’re welcome, Tirian huffed as he tried to catch his breath. I think I’m going to sleep for a straight week when this is all over.
The rest of us slowly and carefully made our way down the sides of the trees until we finally arrived at the forest floor. The ground was drenched from the rain, so thick mud squashed around our boots as we tried to clear out of the way from any potential falling structures.
Arrick’s dwelling laid at the very center of the clearing in a crumpled heap. It was now caked thick with mud, but it hadn’t broken into a million pieces like concrete or brick would have. Whatever these things were made out of, they were sturdy as fuck.
Suddenly, more branches snapped above us, and then we watched as three more of the structures came slamming down into the muddy ground.
“So much for structural integrity.” I whistled as another one fell from the trees. “How did these people live like that?”
“It’s not hard when you’re used to it,” Nadir sighed. “Once the orcs appeared on our island, we had to switch dwellings every few weeks. Eventually, you just kind of get used to not having a permanent place to live, and the constant moving becomes part of your routine…”
“It also helps when you have wings,” a soft, unknown voice interjected through the winds of the storm.
My crew and I whipped around to see a small band of women standing behind us. There were five in total, each one with a slender, frail figure that looked like it would snap like a twig if the breeze hit them wrong. Their lovely, tan skin somehow still glowed through the darkness of the storm, and they all stood in a battle-ready position.
However, the most jarring thing about these women were their wings.
Each one of them had a pair of butterfly wings with a three-foot wingspan. The appendages came in a variety of colors that caught the light like stained glass.
The women also each held a fan blade like the one we’d seen on the beach in both of their hands.
“Who are these fuckers of mothers?” Mira demanded as she twirled her spear and prepared to fight.
“We’d like to ask you the same question,” one of the butterfly women spoke up.
The woman’s head was covered in neon orange locks that had been trimmed into a pixie cut that hugged her skull just above her ears. She had sharp cheekbones, and a small patch of freckles was dotted across her nose and slender face. Her ears were pointed and horizontal, similar to what you’d expect from an elf in a high fantasy series, and on her body she wore a very thin drape of silk that, honestly, didn’t seem to serve any purpose. The white fabric was tied around her frame like a loose-fitting tunic, and it was practically translucent in the wet rain. The fabric curved around her small, pert breasts and hugged the slight curves of her thin waist, and my eyes reverently traced the sight.
Her wings were something else. They were a vibrant bright pink, outlined with a black trim and dogged with splotches of equally dark pigment all across their width, and they flicked nervously as she sashayed forward.
As sexy as she was, though, she obviously meant business, because the butterfly woman raised her fan blade to my face and furrowed her brow.
“Hey, heeeeeyyyy…” I held my hands up. “There’s no need for that. We’re friends, not foes.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” the woman grumbled. “How do we know we can trust you?”
“We are not with the orcs, if that’s what you’re asking,” Sela spoke up, which only got another one of the women to step forward and hold out her weapon at the dragonkin.
“What in Cacoo’s name is an orc?” the first butterfly woman demanded with a raised eyebrow.
My crew and I all exchanged looks. They didn’t know what an orc was? Then what, exactly, happened around here?
“Are you telling us the orcs haven’t been here yet?” Jemma questioned.
“For the last time,” the woman with the pixie cut muttered, “I don’t know what an ‘orc’ is.”
“Invaders,” Lezan explained. “Hideous beings with green skin who come from a strange land. They’ve come to all of our islands, killed off all of our men, and then tried to capture our women.”
“We had our backs against the wall and were living in fear,” Mira added before she gestured toward me, “until Ben showed up, that is.”
The orange-haired woman’s tense expression softened, but she didn’t lower her weapon.
“The only invaders I see here are you people,” she noted.
“We’re not here to harm you,” I repeated. “Our ship was blown off course by a storm, and we’ve taken refuge here on your island until we can repair it.”
“Likely story.” The butterfly woman scowled once more and pointed at Tirian. “I know what you’re here for. You want more like him, don’t you?”
They didn’t steal me! Tirian protested, though we all knew these new people couldn’t hear him.
“Hold on…” I said as I weighed my next words carefully. “Tirian is Jemma’s dragon. We rescued his egg from a band of those orcs we were talking about, and he bonded with her.”
“A dragonbond?” the woman scoffed. “Impossible. Morpho men are the only ones who can bond with a dragon.”
“That’s not true.” I shook my head. “I have my own bond with a dragon back on my island, as does Mira over there. And do you see the big copper guy back there? He’s bonded with my son.”
“Liar,” the butterfly woman hissed through gritted teeth. “You come here to tell us stories about these terrible invaders just so you can get our guards down. But we know what you’re here for. You’re waiting for the time of great fertility, aren’t you?”
“I don’t even know what that is,” I replied. “We’ve never been to this island before, and we knew next to nothing about it until we dropped anchor here.”
“Then why were you in the men’s village?” another butterfly woman demanded as she stepped forward.
This woman was as petite as the others, with long purple hair that ran down past her silver wings and stopped at her ankles. There was no rhyme or reason to its flow whatsoever, her violet locks simply frizzed out in every direction like a wild woman. Her sunken eye sockets fell back to reveal two large, beige irises underneath the two slim eyebrows upon her brow, and her nose was triangular and rested above thick, red lips.
“We didn’t know it was your men’s village,” Jemma protested. “We thought it was abandoned, and we needed a place to stay for the night.”
“So, you expect us to believe you just so happened to show up on our island at the exact same time as the great fertility, and you just so happened to find yourselves in the homes of the men who were supposed to arrive at any moment?” the purple-haired beauty questioned with narrowed eyes.
“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds really bad,” I chuckled nervously. “Look, you are right about one thing… We were looking for the dragons, but that’s only because the orcs are looking for them, too. And trust me when I say that, if they get to them first, the whole world is going to be fucked.”
“Trust you?” the woman with orange hair, who I now assumed was their leader, mused. “Why in the five heavens should I trust you?”
“Here.” I slowly reached down and unfastened my weapons belt.
I undid the buckle, slid it off my waist, and tossed it to the side. Then I held my hands up high as if to surrender.
My friends all seemed to do the same. They tossed their weapons into the ground and gave themselves up to these strange, gorgeous butterfly women.
Well, everyone but the Coonag women.
“What are you doing?” Nadir demanded as her bright gray eyes snapped to me. “Why are you giving up your weapons?”
“We’re trying to show them we mean them no harm,” I hissed under my breath.
“Well, I can’t say that for a fact,” the dark-haired Coonag protested. “I don’t know what they’re going to do to us, so why would I leave myself vulnerable?”
“Put the weapons down.” The orange-haired butterfly woman nodded. “And then we can talk.”
“Come on, guys…” I asked the Coonag women one more time.
Lezan and Nadir looked at each other with concern on their faces, but they then laid down their axes in the mud.
“There,” the Morpho woman noted. “Now, we can talk. Why are you here?”
“We told you,” I repeated, “our ship got blown off course, and we found the village. We thought it was empty, so we camped out there for the night.”
“Okay…” the butterfly woman continued as she studied me carefully, “let’s say I believe you. A storm blew you off course, but where were you headed before that?”
“We were headed to the volcanic island, just to the southeast of this place,” I admitted.
The pink-winged butterfly woman quirked her head. “The island of ash? What business did you have there?”
“We were looking for dragons,” I confessed. “But we wanted to save them, not to hurt them or enslave them.”
“Aha!” the purple-haired butterfly woman exclaimed as she pointed at me. “So, you are looking for dragons. I don’t know why you think you’re going to find them on an island like that, though. There hasn’t been a living thing on the ashy island since the volcano erupted fifty sun cycles ago.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore,” I replied. “We followed a few orc ships there a few weeks ago and discovered there were dragons nested inside of the dormant volcano.”
The orange-haired woman stepped back as her eyes narrowed, and then she glanced around at her peers, who all shared her look of shock and disbelief.
“Ahwara, you don’t think…” a skinny, blue-winged woman gasped as she looked at her leader in horror.
The woman, Ahwara, simply frowned and lowered her eyes.
“That would explain why they are late this cycle,” Ahwara sighed. “They’re usually right on time.”