TAW Tales: How to Train Your Shifters (#1)

~ Chapter 35 ~

We didn't have to wait long.

We sat our dragons on one of the craggly cliffs looking down at the village so that they didn't wear their wings out, with Astrid giving me a seriously bad death-stare the whole time.

And of course Night decided to be... amusing.

"Hey do you guys smell smoke?" I asked suddenly, sniffing the air.

Winter shrugged. "This whole island smells like smoke. And the dragons' breath smells like smoke. Or maybe it's fish, I dunno."

Astrid frowned. "No, I knwo what she means. I smell it too. And I think it's coming from - Willow, your tail's on fire!"

I squeaked with alarm and literally tried to look around at my backside. Then I realised I didn't have a tail at that moment and she meant Wavebreaker. Then I also realised there was smoke rising from his tail. And THEN I realised Night was standing behind me, with Greytooth releasing small curls of smoke from his nostrils.

"Dang it Night!" I cried angrily.

"Sh!" Astrid snapped. "Do you want to alert the whole Outcast island? Because if so, I'm all for dragging you down there myself."

I got the message. I shut up.

"Where's Zero?" Winter asked Night, being much more quieter than I had been.

"He's already down there," she replied in a low voice. "They're loading the ships and there's like hundreds of them; they even have their own dragons."

"More like they've captured their ow dragons," Astrid said coldly. "They don't know anything about actually training them."

"Yeah, I know right? I saw this one guy hit his dragon with a stick on it's-"

"Night."

"Oh, yeah!" Night grinned at me. "Sorry, I got distracted."

"No duh," Winter said, rolling her eyes.

"Shut it. Anyway, Zero's waiting down there for you," Night reported. "We found a load of like, barrels or something that they're rolling onto the ships. We don't know what they actually are, but they look heavy and Zero said he could hear liquid sloshing about inside."

"Oil?" I asked Astrid.

"Probably," she replied bitterly. "Knowing them, they'll set it alight with the fire from their dragons. We have to stop them!"

"Yeah, except for the fact that neither Zero or I could get very close," Night said, sighing. "They have like, these massive guards blocking the ships."

Astrid stretched her arms out, fingers clasped together. I heard some of her knuckles crack and shuddered.

"Easy," she said confidently. "I've taken on more than a couple of guards. We just sneak in the back and we'll be fine."

"Er, okay then." I turned to Night. "Where did you say Zero was again?"

"Follow me," Night said. With that, her Small Shadow dragon spread his wings and took off into the air. Even though he was supposed to be deaf, I though he reacted pretty well to what Night wanted of him.

Our own dragons flared their wings and glided down off the cliff, keeping to the shadows and just skimming across the land, trying to stay as hidden as possible.

Night led us through a small obsticle course of rocks and boulders; around this one, over that one, below that overhang and between that weird one with a hole through it. I, of course, clasped my hands to Wavebreaker's neck, feeling like the bottom had fallen out of my stomach whenever I dared to look down.