Where have the dragons gone, and why is the land dying?
Blue Shark sets out from her distant island home for the continent of Pyrrhia, brimming with excitement and determined to prove herself to her family.
But something is very wrong.
Dragons ar...
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The sea churned under the black sky off the coast of the Ice Kingdom.
Clouds loomed overhead, swirling darkly in the starless, moonless sky. The wind shrieked like claws on ice along the stone hard ridges of the frozen shore.
A pack of wolves slept snugly under a blanket of snow in the pine forest inland, and a herd of caribou bowed their heads and stood patiently. Their calves huddled in the center of the warmly packed bodies. They would wait out out the storm, as they always did.
It was a dangerous night, and none but an IceWing would dare be out in it.
A small spire of rock rose from the depths a league from the shore, battered by the huge waves. It seemed frail, a mere needle of stone—no doubt the remainder of a once majestic sea-stack—but it held fast against the raging sea.
To it clung a small shape, a fragile blot of scales in the midst of the vast, rolling darkness.
Fanged darkness, screaming with the gale and roaring with the ocean. The blot clung, heedless of the monstrous infinity of the prowling night, with it's teeth of ice and breath of freezing wind.
The blot was a SeaWing, unmoving and hardly conscious.
Her talons dug desperately into the rock, her bloody sides heaving in shallow, choked breaths. Frost rimmed her mouth, her breath freezing as soon as it left her flaring nostrils.
All night she had been flying in the gale, blown far off course, but the tossing spray of the sea had frozen her wings and she had crashed into the turbulent, icy water. Her endeavor to swim to shore was in vain—accustomed to gentler, warmer waters, she had been tossed about like a piece of driftwood. Her nose had brushed the rock, she was pulled back, then hurled against it with terrifying force. Her shoulder hurt horribly, she she had tasted blood in her mouth until saltwater filled it and poured down her throat.
The dragon could do nothing but cling fast. She did not know that only a league away lay the icy shore. Icy, but solid.
I'm not sure... longer... hold on.
Her thoughts were blurry and it hurt to focus on her words as they slurred through her mind.
So cold.
She gritted her teeth, her muscles contracting painfully in the ice. Rime coated her scales, and she closed her eyes. It was only a matter of time before her grip loosened and she fell, frozen and unable to swim.
She endeavored to cling tighter as her claws slid down the ice-covered stone, but her bleeding talons had cramped and she could not flex or tighten them.
Hold... must hold on...
Images flashed through her numbing mind, a smiling female SeaWing, the warm, tropical sea, a vague memory of a conversation. She struggled to hold on to it, to remember what was said. Her mind cleared and a surge of sadness filled her as she recalled standing over her aged mother and promising to make her proud.
Are you proud of me now, mother?
A tear squeezed from between her eyelids and froze on the scales of her cheek.
I've held on for so long... I'm stronger than Seahorse thought I was...
But not strong enough.
A wave of exhaustion washed over her like the dark currents crushing her and pulling her down.
A wind-whipped wave curled inland. Ice floes rode on it's crest, like barnacles on the back of a whale. The wall of water curled slowly, gracefully, and crashed down on the spire. Freezing saltwater and chunks of ice obscured both stone and dragon from view.
With a thunderous crash, the wave sank back into the bosom of the ocean from whence it came.
The pinnacle of stone was bare. The dragon was gone.
