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ADAMAR

I lean over the edge of the boat, mask pressing wetly against my nose and mouth. I can feel the cool droplets of water sliding down my neck and chest. We just passed through a cloud of smoke and ash from a burning house. Folas is still coughing in the back of the boat. Silv doesn’t want us any closer to the ground, because of all the people on the streets. But we can’t go higher up either because of the dragons. They’re everywhere. There must be hundreds of them. From Briareth and Faladel’s stories, I’d thought most of them were dead. But perhaps those were just the young ones. Perhaps these ones were hiding somewhere else. Or perhaps they had more floating islands somewhere, and the Dragons’ Nest Isle was just a meeting place and nesting ground.

I only half notice when the streets below become more crowded and chaotic. Zytherlings on the ground are being shoved from side to side by taller, bulkier Kashan and Tadhiel. When the Kashan and Tadhiel take to the skies, they often crash in their panic, falling in tangles of wounded limbs.

“What are you doing?! You’ll bound to crash you idiot! Or burnt to death!” Silv shouts, and my eyes follow hers, leaving the skyline and finding Mattias as he climbs onto the railing

“What’s a storyteller without an audience?” He calls back. “I’m helping get my people out of this hellhole of a city! You figure out how to make these dragons leave, I’ll make sure people survive!” And then the white winged Kashan dives into the smoke. Fin hesitates, still manning the sails as Elen runs around beneath him carrying water. I’m not quite sure what she’s doing, or if she’s even noticed Mattias is gone.

“Should I go after him?” He calls down to Silv. I can barely hear him over the noise from the wingbeats as three dragons dive towards us. Silv curses and swerves sharply, barely avoiding them. But the draft recoiling from their wings sends us spinning downwards, straight towards the crowded streets below us. I clutch at my section of boat-edge, desperate to simultaneously stay on the boat and not throw up.

“It’s useless!” Silv hollers, struggling to right the boat out of our death spiral. “He’s long gone, and I need you on those sails! Nobody else here has the strength to deal with them!”

With a desperate lurch, the back of the boat swings out, nearly into the building next to us before we hurdle towards the other side of the street. “Yes!” Silv screams exuberantly, arching us back towards the center and taking us back up to the rooftops, out of the flight zone of the fleeing mobs of people.

“Wait!” Valkallyn shouts, “Take us back down!”

“What, why?” Fin calls back.

“Listen to her!” I shout, seeing what she is seeing. “Those dragons weren’t diving randomly, they’re chasing someone!”

The dragons in question, an ugly green, a shiny black, and an absolutely gigantic copper and bronze, have turned off the main thoroughfare to follow someone down an alleyway, and are keeping straight to the path, not veering and getting distracted like the others. They are hunting. The one with the copper upper scales was actually going so fast he had to backpedal to follow above the alley, the beat of his wings and slash of his tail against the ground bowling over the smaller creatures fleeing his wrath and actually knocking the roof off of one of the houses.

Silv glares at the dragons, and spins the ship's wheel. Fin tightens the sails and we zip closer, zig zagging on our parallel route and staying just far enough away to avoid another spinning incident.

“How will we know if it’s the thief who stole the scales?” She shouts above the wind.

“Easy!” I shout back. “Get us close enough to check if the person has wings or not, and if they look to be carrying something!” Suddenly a pillar of fire lances out of the sky in front of us, spearing into a house just two roofs down and instantly covering it in flames.

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“Up UP UPPP!” Silv shrieks hauling on the wheel. Flames lick around the bottom of the boat, and I jerk away from the sides as Fin hauls on the sails. We were only in there for a few seconds, but the very air feels scorched. Elen hurries over and douses the few flames still clinging to the railing with her bucket.

“So that’s what you were doing.” I say, and then cough, a hoarse, desperate sound. She immediately whips out a small cup, plunges it in her bucket and gives it to me.

“We’re traveling through fire, and you didn’t think Silv had someone constantly wetting everything?” She says bluntly. “How stupid are you? No, don’t answer that. Come help me instead. This boat might be small, but there’s only so much I can do alone.”

“But I’m on lookout!” I protest, she grabs my arm.

“We have two other people in that position. And Silv has her own set of eyes. Three pairs or four pairs of eyes doesn’t really make a difference, but two pairs of hands is always better than one.”

I can’t really argue with that, and she’s already dragging me off my perch on the railing. So I start dousing things. Ropes, floor, even the sails. Elen leads me to the small space below decks that has three bunks and all the food and water. I mostly stay down there, prepping buckets for her and making sure no flames slip through the hull and attack from below. When I emerge above decks again, it hasn’t been that long, but we’re zipping through the abandoned streets of what feels like a completely different section of the city. Most of the fires are behind us now and there are no signs of the crowds. Elen rushes over right next to Silv, slipping slightly on the wet deck, while shouting at her to “Turn left! Now! NOW!”

“Where are we?” I call out to Fin, spreading my legs in a desperate attempt to keep my balance as we swing hard to the right.

“I don’t know, Elen’s taking us on a route that will meet up with the–”

“I SEE THEM!” Folas screams, pointing ahead from his position on the bow. “The guy and the dragons!”

“READY YOUR WEAPONS!!” Silv bellows in an insanely loud voice. Fin loosens his grip on the ropes controlling the sails to grab his revolver. The sails slacken slightly, and I can feel us slowing. “Heave on those sails, Fin! We’re not slowing down!” Silv shouts, and Fin obligingly tightens them again.

I ready the limited magic I have, not quite sure what I’m going to do with it, but knowing I’ll use it if I have to.

In front of us, the young man scrambles away from the dragons, desperately swerving, pausing, and then doubling back and forth, checking both sides for an alternate route before continuing his headlong dash. The alley ends in a large square in less than fifty feet, and we’re coming straight at him towards its exit. He definitely looks to be carrying something. He has no wings, although with the speed the dragons have demonstrated in the sky, they wouldn’t be useful anyway. All that has kept him alive so far is the narrowness of the alley and his nimble feet. And one of those is about to end. Behind him, the alley is torn to shreds by dragon claws and fire. When he sees us coming straight towards him, his wild blue eyes cloud with fear. Desperate, he looks towards us, and then back at the dragons, before looking down at the object in his arms. Then, he speeds up even more, something I didn’t even know was possible.

He screams at us, bearded face twisting with hate, his words unintelligible, but the rage and pain behind them clear as he throws his object high into the center of the square and dives to the side.

Silv jerks us out of the way, throwing us off course, and out of the way of the oncoming dragons. They overshoot, the black one accidentally loosing control and crashing headlong into a row of houses. Silv snarls, twisting her boat into a tight curve, cutting off our momentum and whipping us around to face the three creatures. The black one shakes its head, dislodging the remains of the house from its neck.

Beyond it though, I see a small form get up from his crumpled position and start limping off from the scene. Silv has seen it as well. “Adamar, you go after him! Make sure he didn’t throw us a decoy! Take,” She hesitates. “Take Valkallyn and Folas with you! I need Fin and Elen to run this ship properly, and as you guys said, fists and swords aren’t that good against dragons.”

“Will you be needing this?” Elen offers her a rope.

Silv’s eyes light up. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“You sure you don’t need–” I begin, pretty convinced that the strange man’s anger wasn’t fake when he threw away the object he’d been clutching to his chest.

“Unless you can fly, you don’t want to be here for what happens next.” She cuts me off, quickly and effectively tying herself to the steering wheel.

Eyes widening, I grab Folas and Valkallyn, and we quickly descend the ships ladder to the ground. I jump the last few rungs as I hear Silv call. “Tighten those sails, Fin! we’re going to run spheres around these beasties!” And suddenly, they’re zipping away into the darkening sky, leaving us stranded on the ground.