Deepwater's Daughter

Chapter 15

"My name is Xsatca," the silvery naga said as she glided above the treetops with Ysara in her arms, "I am a shaman, like you."

"I'm not really a shaman," Ysara answered, squeezing her eyes shut after having dared a peek. Her tail wriggled uselessly in the empty air below them while she tightly grasped the flying naga's arms.

"Please don't struggle," Xsatca said, "it makes it rather difficult to fly straight."

"I'm sorry," Ysara groaned, "I'm just not used to being up this high."

"And yet I found you in the air to begin with," Xsatca chuckled.

"I didn't mean to be on the ship," Ysara said, "That just kind of happened."

"Yes, your friend told me about your situation," Xsatca said.

"Rasha's here?" Ysara gasped, daring another peek, but trying to twist her neck around to look at the face of the woman carrying her.

Xsatca's scaly lips curled in a smile. "Yes," she answered, "your friend and I have had a long chat about how you both came to be in the captivity of the horned ones."

"It wasn't exactly captivity," Ysara protested, "They were kind to us."

Xsatca made an unconvinced noise.

Ysara dared another glance and then gasped in surprise.

Rising from the jungle ahead of them, a tower of vine-wreathed stone stood like a dark pillar against the night sky. It crowned the pinnacle of a great hill, below which, the lamps of a thousand tree-house dwellings spread like a web of lights, radiating out from the central spire.

"My home," Xsatca sighed as she slowly descended toward the tree-city below.

"Is Rasha there?" Ysara asked.

"Somewhere," Xsatca said, "but there are others I would have you meet first."

"More naga?" Ysara asked.

"We do not call ourselves that," Xsatca laughed, "We are simply the Children."

"Whose children?" Ysara asked.

"The sky," Xsatca replied.

"Oh," Ysara said, "How many of you are there?"

Xsatca fell silent as she lowered her tail and fluttered her wings, alighting on a wooden platform, high in the canopy of the jungle trees.

Ysara gasped in pleasure to find solid wood beneath her tail again, and she breathed deeply as Xsatca released her hold around her chest, allowing her to stand on her own.

The silver-scaled naga's eyes filled with pain as Ysara turned to face her. Xsatca reached out to touch Ysara's cheek and gave her a sad smile.

"There are fewer now than there were before, little one," Xsatca said, "and I fear for those that remain."

"You're afraid of the satyrs," Ysara said.

Xsatca's lips parted to answer, but the approach of another winged naga drew her attention.

"What have the monsters done to her?" a towering male naga growled as he landed on the platform beside them.

Ysara drew back in alarm at the sight of the huge snake man with scarred rust-colored scales and ruffled wings that shone a fiery orange in the light of a nearby tree lamp. His eyes blazed with emerald fire as he looked down at her, and his mighty fists shook with rage.

"Done to me?" Ysara meeped.

"They took her wings!" he hissed through clenched teeth.

"Oh!" Ysara said, touching her shoulder, "I never had any to begin with."