Cypher 0X

Chapter 1 - Bivouac

Cypher's skin tingled the moment before the bronze dragon on her six spewed blue lightning. Her stomach lurched as her own dragons wings snapped closed, killing their lift and dropping them below the blast. The proximity of the discharged ions was still probably enough to frazzle her hair for a week.

The pack of pirates continued their pursuit and one came alongside her, twirling a grapple line. Tempest banked toward the smaller dragon, shoulder checking it deftly and mangling its wing. She then dove, trying to put distance between them and the pirates. Looking back, Cypher could see all but two of the pirates had decided this encounter wasn't worth their lives. She smirked to herself, but as she pulled her dragon up and spread her wings to glide, Tempest let out a pained squawk.

Cypher didn't immediately understand what was wrong; Tempest just started spinning out of control, causing Cypher's red hair braid to whip around violently and smack her in the face. Throwing her hair from her eyes, she looked to the left, seeing a giant ice spike piercing Tempest's wing. Realising the inevitability of crashing in their future and cursing the skill of the pirate's ice sniper, Cypher fought not to panic. She stared at the black ground of the Underworld as they plummeted, the pair of them falling faster and faster. She closed her eyes, not wanting to look at the earth as it rushed up to crush her.

Tempest thrashed her tail to stop the spin and managed to lock out the damaged wing, regaining the barest modicum of control and braking their descent at the last second, saving them from colliding full speed into the ground. There was a startlingly loud crunch as Tempest's head smashed into a large glumbark tree.

The crash sent Cypher flying out of her flight saddle and onto Tempest's bulky metal neck. Inertia bounced her up and over Tempest's head, almost colliding with the tree herself. She hit the ground hard and instinctively tucked into a ball, rolling away the rest of her momentum, picking up more than a few cuts, bruises, and pebbles along the way. Hauling herself up to her feet, a little woozy from the crash, she looked at the sky, seeing two large, dragon-shaped specks. Her green eyes widened and she ran under the tree for cover, not wanting the dragons' riders to see her, but knowing it wouldn't be hard for them to spot the crash site if they'd followed closely enough.

Cypher held her head in pain, since she'd managed to bang it pretty hard on Tempest's neck during the forced dismount. As she peeked over the trunk to inspect the damage done to Tempest, the dragon let out a loud mechanical grunt. Cypher sighed and leaned against the tree, staring down at Tempest's crushed silver snout. "Oh Tempest," she muttered, "We got ourselves stuck in some sort of pickle jar, now didn't we?" Tempest answered with a soft metallic grunt.

Cypher stepped out from under the tree and did a slow turn inspection of the sky. Fortunately it looked like the pirates had passed by without spotting them. She turned to inspect Tempest's damaged wing, the ice spike already starting to melt. She clumsily climbed onto Tempest's back, trying to get in a good angle to rip the spike out before the water started messing with her systems. Cypher wrapped gloved hands around the base of the spike, and heaved against the ice--trying unsuccessfully to remove the large, slowly melting spike. She growled at the unmoving dagger of ice, angry at how weak she was.

Taking a different approach, she climbed over to the bags in the saddle, looking for something to help her extricate the ice. She knelt next to the bags while removing her gloves and gingerly opened the one closest to her. She tossed random things out of the bag, bobbles, machine parts, and small bagged foods flew. She found what she was looking for in the third saddle bag and rushed back onto Tempest. Cypher hammered a metal tent stake into the ice chunk and laid underneath it. She carefully placed her feet against the spike and pushed upwards, managing to dislodge the ice. Cypher quickly dragged the melting ice pillar away from Tempest and set it down to melt.