by Logan Jacobs
“You’re right.” I nodded. “I guess we’d better find whatever is the link between them, before we end up just like the orc ship.”
It looked like we might have discovered a new enemy to worry about.
Chapter Four
“You are sure this scale is not just from a water dragon?” Jemma asked as her chartreuse eyes flew from my face, to Mira’s, to Jonas’, and finally, landed on George.
No. The massive dragon shook his head apologetically at her. I do not see how a water dragon would get all the way out here. We need a piece of land to call home, and a people to bond with. There is no such thing within miles.
“He says it’s pretty much impossible,” I relayed to Jemma. “Water dragons need land nearby. Plus, there aren’t any more water dragons. George and Nixie were the only babies we ever found. There’s no way there would be a single, random water dragon all the way out here.”
“So, then it is not a dragon scale,” Jemma said as her brow furrowed. “It must be from some other sort of creature.”
That, I do not know, sweet girl, George sighed. I cannot pull up this creature in my water dragon memory without knowing more about it. That is, if it is a creature my people ever encountered.
Jemma looked from me to George as we carried on the silent conversation, and she was clearly impatient to know what we’d said.
“He says he does not know,” Mira volunteered. “It is possible he knows of this creature, but he needs more information. Then again, it is possible our orc enemies have discovered some new type of beast.”
“Speaking of our friends over there,” I interjected, “I want to get a closer look at that ship and see if there’s anything on there to help us figure this out. Or even just more weapons.”
“Yes, more weapons are always nice.” Mira grinned. “Jemma, Jonas, will you two man the ship while Draco Rex and I explore?”
“Of course.” Jemma nodded.
With that decided, Mira and I walked down the steps to the lower deck at the same time Sela emerged from below the deck.
“Everyone is settled in,” the gray-blue haired warrior announced. “Or as settled in as they will be, after that sight.”
Sela nodded in the direction of the burnt ship, but she let her eyes linger on its hull for a moment, like she wanted some orc to suddenly appear and tell us all about what had happened.
“Thank you,” I told her. “George found some sort of scale in the water near the vessel.”
“A fifth water dragon?” she asked, and her green eyes went wide.
“Not at all,” Mira sighed. “The scale was too different to be from a water dragon.”
“It even felt different,” I responded thoughtfully. “Like whatever creature it came from was built for something different than the water dragons are.”
“Interesting.” Sela frowned as she considered the information.
Internally, I started to wonder something as I looked at the charred remains of the ship. I said nothing to the women I was with, but I couldn’t help but think about dragons. Actual, live, fire breathing ones, the kind that appeared in all sorts of awesome fantasy stories back on Earth. I’d never heard of them in this world, but it seemed to be the only logical explanation. They could have scales similar to George’s, and they’d be able to take out an orc ship by fire as easily as I could snap my fingers.
Surely, though, if giant, fire breathing monsters flew this world, someone would have seen one at this point.
Possibly not, dear one, George said. It is possible for such beasts to exist, though I do not know the last time a water dragon came across one, if they ever did.
For once, I didn’t mind George invading my thoughts. I said nothing aloud, but I turned and nodded at the water dragon to let him know I agreed with him.
So, now our list of possibilities included: no idea, and a fire breathing dragon.
Perfect. Now, I really needed to know what had burned down the ship. If it was a dragon, maybe it would be intelligent like George and could help us to defeat the orcs.
“We’re going to check out the burned ship,” I told Sela. “Do you want to come?”
“Does a haeye walk on land and sea?” She grinned.
“Unfortunately, yes, they do,” I sighed as I remembered my very first encounter with the creepy land and sea animal that had way too many legs for my liking. Four legs I could get behind and understand, but the minute something had more than four legs was the minute I decided to despise it for all eternity.
“Let us go, then,” Mira said as her gold eyes glimmered with excitement.
We each grabbed our swords, just in case, and then we lowered one of the rowboats and headed over to the ship.
As we passed the fire that still blazed on the water, we slowed down to get a good look at it. We maintained a safe distance, since none of us really felt like it was time to become a group of charred skeletons, but even from a few feet away, I could still feel the heat that rolled off the dancing flames.
Suddenly, though, the flames went out. They went from alive and terrifying one second to completely dead the next, like someone had flipped a switch.
“What in the names of the gods?” Sela breathed.
I just stared at the spot where the flames had disappeared in utter confusion. As far as I could tell, nothing had changed on the surface of the ocean. No massive fish had swum through and somehow put the flames out, nor were they doused by a wave. They were simply there one second, and then gone the next.
“That’s crazy.” I shook my head.
Confused and without an answer, we sailed onward and up next to the burned-out ship.
The ladder had been on the part of the bow that was basically ash, so we rowed over to the stern and used some of the broken wood as handholds. Sela stayed in the rowboat to keep it in place with the gentle waves, while Mira and I climbed aboard the ship.
Slowly, I swung myself over the rail and onto the charred deck. I gingerly stepped forward and checked the wood to make sure it wouldn’t just collapse beneath me, but it seemed fairly solid. The back half of the ship appeared to have been relatively left alone by the fire and was only scorched and charred in some places, but the front part, the bow, was absolutely decimated. All that remained of whatever orcs had been aboard were four blackened skeletons.
I wandered forward to investigate the remains and was instantly hit with the stench of burned, nasty flesh. I gagged and yanked the neck of my shirt up over my nose in an attempt to stop the smell. It didn’t do very much, though, thanks to my heightened dragon senses. Normally, they were an absolute blessing, but in a situation like this, I suddenly longed for my dull, weak human senses. The stench of burned bodies probably wouldn’t be quite as bad then.
“There is no situation where they do not smell worse than rotted boar meat, is there?” Mira complained as she, too, pulled her shirt over her nose to try and ward off some of the stench.
“Not a one,” I sighed. “Do you see anything that might tell you what did this?”
“No.” Mira shook her head. “There is not much I know that you do not, my king. Whatever creature did this will be new to us both.”
“It might not be so new to me,” I grumbled as I looked over the charred bits of wood and cloth that had once been the mast and sails.
“What do you mean?” Mira asked.
“Where I come from, we had a lot of stories,” I explained, “but they weren’t like what you have here. There wasn’t any truth to them, and they were all made up for entertainment. At least, we thought they were made up.”
“You made up stories for entertainment?” she gasped. “Did that not scare you?”
“Sometimes,” I chuckled. “But that was kind of the appeal.”
“You come from a strange world.” The warrior shook her head.
“You’re not wrong about that,” I laughed. “Back to my point, though. We had one story that was pretty prevalent across a lot of cultures. It was about dragons. But
we didn’t have water dragons, or anything like that. The dragons in our stories were massive, flying creatures that could breathe fire so hot it would kill a person the minute they touched it.”
For a moment, Mira was silent as she considered what I said, and the warrior looked out over the burnt ship with bright, inquisitive eyes.
“Suppose you are right about this dragon,” she began. “How do we bond with it? Are they intelligent?”
“Yeah, they don’t do the whole ‘bonding’ thing,” I replied. “They’re sort of just… forces of mass destruction? Also, they like treasure, but that doesn’t help us in any way. If the thing that did this is a dragon like the legends where I come from, they don’t really care who they hurt as long as they get what they want.”
“Hmm,” Mira murmured. “Well, then, I suppose we should hope this was not done by a fire breathing dragon. Or if it was, we must hope the creature was nothing like the ones where you come from.”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
I walked a little bit farther onto the deck, toward a spot much more charred than the rest of it, just above the stairs that led below decks. I knelt down and reached out a finger to touch the charred spot, but the moment I did, the entire section crumbled away and dissolved into soot.
“Woah!” I gasped as I stumbled back so I didn’t fall through the newly created hole. It was so strange, like whatever sort of fire that burned the ship had gone through the wood and left it still in its shape, almost like one of those trees that gets struck by lightning and burns on the inside, but not the outside.
I peered down below the deck, into the hole, and tried to see if there was anything down there.
“Do you think there will be weapons we can use still?” Mira asked in a hopeful voice.
“Let’s go check it out,” I replied, since I also wanted to get my hands on some well-crafted orc weapons.
We made sure to step around any of the charred and burnt parts of the ship, to avoid it crumbling away again, and descended down the stairs. As we got further and further down, we could tell exactly where the fire stopped. It was almost as if it had been a controlled blaze, like when a farmer burns part of his field. There seemed to be a sort of clear boundary about six steps down. All of a sudden, the wood went from dark and charred in a lot of places to the clean, dark colored wood that most likely came from the orc island.
“So strange,” I murmured as I looked at the weird pattern. I’d started to think that whatever creature had done this must have had some level of intelligence. It had known what it wanted to burn, and it stopped when it didn’t want to burn the ship anymore.
Mira and I checked below the decks and found the weapons storage room. It was unmarred by the blaze that burned above, and we pulled out a couple of sharp metal swords for us to take back to our ship.
Then I turned and looked at the wall opposite the swords, and I could not believe what I saw.
“A crossbow!” I hollered in excitement.
I dashed up to the weapon like a kid in a candy store and yanked it off the wall. The bow was nicely made, done with wood and tightly wound string, and it almost looked like something that could be made in a factory.
I pulled it up to my shoulder and sighted up the bow on the far wall. I didn’t fire the bolt that was already loaded, but I couldn’t wait until I had the chance to. A crossbow wasn’t quite as good as a gun, but I’d take it over one of the bows I’d managed to make any day.
“What is that?” Mira asked as she tilted her head curiously.
“It’s like a bow,” I replied. “but you crank back the string using your foot like this so you get way more power behind the shot and the trajectory is flatter with a longer range. Take a look.”
I didn’t fire the weapon, but I showed her where the trigger was and how to easily reload the bow, and then I put my foot in the front-loading loop and showed her how to yank back the string.
“So, you do not have to use your own arm strength to launch the weapon.” Mira grinned.
“Not really,” I replied. “This thing will shoot a bolt farther than you could ever dream. It won’t shoot as fast, but if I could figure out how to make one of these for all of you, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“One day you will,” the warrior replied, with all of the assurance in the world. “Or, we will steal them from the orcs ourselves.”
To emphasize her point, she wiggled her dark green eyebrows in a way that was likely meant to be mysterious, but came across more as extremely devious.
And I loved it, and I loved her.
“You bet your ass we will,” I chuckled.
I’d just pulled her close to me for a kiss when suddenly we heard the sound of wood creaking from somewhere else in the ship.
Immediately, both of us froze and slowly turned our heads toward the entrance of the store room. Mira readied her sword, while I gently laid the crossbow back on its hook and drew my own weapon from its sheath. I didn’t want to test out a new weapon in such a small, cramped space and risk the possibility that it backfired somehow and hurt Mira or me.
We waited in tense silence to see if the wooden creak had been the movement of the ship itself, or if we weren’t alone below the decks.
When two entire minutes went by without another sound, I poked Mira in the small of her back to indicate the warrior should move forward.
Slowly, we crept out of the weapons room, careful not to make a sound.
I debated in my head what I should do if we did find a live orc still on this ship. On the one hand, I really wanted the chance to get some answers about what the hell had happened on this vessel, but, on the other hand, the orcs weren’t likely to give in without a fight, and there was no way I could take them alive.
The moment we were through the doorway of the weapons room and into the more open space, we froze again together, silently. At this point, we knew each other and our styles well enough to be able to move without communication.
Sure enough, the moment we froze, another creak sounded. Then, suddenly, two orcs charged out of the shadows with their swords held high above their heads.
Both of them were clearly battle worn. Their clothes were charred at the edges, and one of them looked like he had his hair singed off.
Quickly, Mira and I leapt apart, but the orcs followed. One went after Mira, and the other charged straight at me.
I deftly blocked his first, wild blow as he tried to slice straight through my head. In all of my encounters with the orcs, I’d never exactly known them to be good fighters, but the wild anger with which my orc opponent swung his sword seemed even more reckless than all of the ones who had come before him.
As I blocked his second blow and ducked under his sword arm, the orc ran headlong into the wall behind me.
I spun around, sword at the ready in front of me, but I decided to try and get some answers before I had to kill the fucker.
“What happened here?” I demanded. “What burnt your ship up?”
The orc turned and seethed with rage, but he didn’t make any attempts to answer either of my questions.
“Die!” he screamed instead as he made another run straight at me.
The clang of metal on stone rang out as his sword collided with my sea glass one. The vibration of the impact danced up my arm and through my bones, but I held steady. Then I undercut with my sword and sliced the orc’s meaty dominant arm clean open, and blood poured out from him as he screamed in anguished pain.
I was behind him now, and I pressed the tip of my sword into his back in a silent order to freeze. I didn’t sink it into his flesh just yet, but the pressure was enough to slice his skin if he moved a muscle.
The orc froze with his back to me, and I could hear his heavy mouth breathing as he tried to figure out his next move.
“Answer my question,” I growled. “What did this to your ship? Was it a beast?”
“Why should I tell you?” the orc spat. “You will just kill me anyways. Unless, of course, I ki
ll you first.”
With that, he bolted down and slammed to the floor, only to spin around and try to slice at my feet, like some strange windmill. I hadn’t expected him to strike there, so I only had time to leap into the air to avoid getting my feet chopped off.
Angrily, I swung my sword down with as much force as I had in my entire body, and I chopped the orc’s sword arm clean off.
An anguished, pained screech ripped from his throat as blood poured out from his shoulder cavity, but I gave him no time to concentrate on the immense amount of pain he was in. I stepped closer, made sure to avoid the widening pool of blood, and stuck my sword under his chin, ready to shove it right through his neck.
“I’m going to ask you again,” I snarled. “Tell me what did this.”
“I don’t know,” the orc choked out. “It came from the sky. The sound… I will never forget the sound. And then, suddenly, there was fire. So much fire. My crew all died. The scaled beast took the package meant for the king, and then just like that, it was gone.”
“What was in the package for your king?” I spat.
But it was too late. The blood that spilled from his arm was too much of a loss for the orc, and he took a last, heaving, shuddery breath before he died right in front of me.
Before he could answer my last fucking question.
I’d gotten half of what I needed, though, and my theory was proven absolutely right.
We had a real live, flying, fire breathing dragon on our hands, and the little kid in me wanted to scream and jump about how cool that was.
But the adult man in me, the one who knew the dangers a dragon posed, wanted nothing more than to send the beast far, far away from anyone I loved.
“You killed him,” Mira panted as she skated up behind me. “Did he give you any information? The one I fought off was as tight lipped as a fycan in heat.”
I didn’t even have time to comment on the strange new simile Mira had come up with, because I was far too preoccupied with the larger problem at hand.
“Yeah, he gave me plenty of information.” I nodded. “We better get back to the ship and have a meeting.”