Alika heaved herself up from the water and back onto the ship, using her forepaws to pull Tarka up after her. The sea rocked the Windrider, and the dragons almost slipped back into the water as the boat swayed.

“What’s going on?” Alika asked Yarik, her ears twitching as more green flashes lit up the clouds. “I thought the weather was supposed to be calm!”

“Ah, but the sea is a fickle and unpredictable mistress,” Yarik chuckled. The fluff on his chin was soaked, dripping water down at his feet. Even so, his back had straightened out, and there was a glint of wild energy in his eyes that Alika hadn’t seen before. “This is good news. The winds are in our favor, so if we set sail now, it will much shorten our journey through the doldrums.”

“I think I’m fine without my journey being cut short!” Snow yapped, the wind fluttering her triangular ears. “Immortal does not mean unkillable.”

Tarka shook his body from side to side, splattering Snow and Alika with cold water. With the rain pouring down, it didn’t do much to dry him off,

“Wait, you want to sail through the storm?” Alika exclaimed, shocked. A bolt of green lightning lit up the sky as she spoke, casting a viridian glow across her cream scruff.

“Of course,” Yarik nodded. He slapped the side of the boat’s left hull, water streaking across his palm. “The Windrider is a sturdy boat, and she’s been through worse. A little bit of rain won’t knock her over.”

A thunderclap shook Alika’s paws. She shuddered. If this was just a little bit of rain to Yarik, she didn’t want to know what a lot looked like.

“Fine, send us all to our deaths,” Snow muttered, placing one of her tails over her head to block the rain. “I’m going to dry off my fur. Illusions don’t exactly work against forces of nature.”

The fox leaped under the thatched roof of the cabin, shaking off water. As soon as she did so, a gust of wind blew the rain sideways, soaking her white fur once again. She glared at Yarik, soppy and miserable as if he’d summoned the storm here just to vex her.

“Hurry, hurry, before the winds get too rough!” Yarik shouted. “Tarka, hoist the mainsail! Alika, prepare yourself!”

“Aye-aye, captain!” Tarka grinned. Tail wagging, he ran across the slippery deck and grabbed the rope with his jaws.

With a squeaky grunt, Tarka began to pull back, and the sail unfurled from its wrappings. A sudden burst of wind caught it, pulling it back down. He yelped as his paws skid across the deck, and he was lifted into the air. His hindlegs and tail dangled and wriggled as he tried to grasp the deck.

Yarik grabbed the rope, pulling it back to the ground with a strength befitting a far younger man. The wind settled for a moment, and the two of them managed to get the first sail together. The Windrider turned to the east, skimming the water as the wind caught the sail.

“Yarik, this is nonsense,” Alika hissed. She stamped her paws down on the wet deck. “We need to wait it out.”

Yarik coiled up a wet rope and turned his head to the swirling storm clouds. Water ran down his face. “Chances like this come rarely. If we don’t take this, it could be a season before we’re out of the doldrums. It’s summer in the north right now. Do you want to find your pack in winter?”

“I’m fine being patient if it means we live,” Alika replied. She slapped her tail against the deck and let out a hot sigh of smoke. “Even if we have to wait another year before heading north.”

Yarik’s voice sunk to a hush, the waves lapping over it. “Perhaps the rest of you have that sort of time, but I don’t.”

The wind rumbled in Alika’s ears. The rain stung as it splattered into her eyes. Dark clouds danced in the sky, pulling the boat with their motion.

“What do you mean?” Alika whispered.

“Well, I’m a dying man,” Yarik replied, as casually as if discussing the weather. “I can’t say how long, but the Curtain has made it clear that I’ll be soon descending into the Midnight Sea.”

Alika was silent. The implication went unsaid. If they didn’t catch this storm, if they turned their sails and fled, Yarik wouldn’t make it to the other side. He wouldn’t get to see his granddaughter.

“Don’t pity me, if that’s what you’re doing,” Yarik laughed. “I’ve known for quite some time, and I’ve lived a long life. A good one, far better than I deserved. I’ll be glad to finally meet my love again beneath the waves.”

Alika clenched her talons, looking up into the storm. The clouds were moving more quickly now, circling across the sky. Green flashes lit them up. Their silhouettes formed worlds of their own, far into the heavens.

Alika stepped toward the front of the boat and grabbed a rope with her jaws. She began pulling, slowly raising the Windrider’s forward sail.

“Well, don’t just stand there!” she grunted out from the side of her snout. “We have a storm to catch, don’t we?”

Yarik laughed maniacally as lightning lit his hair green, grasping ahold of the sobbing rope with both hands and pulling. Human and dragon fought the storm in tandem, and the sail inched upward.

And it was in good time, too. Once the second sail had been tied off, the winds took hold of it, dragging the boat and its residents along. Water sprayed into Alika’s snout from the sea and the sky, and she fell flat on her underbelly as the Windrider shook. As the storm clouds surrounded them, she was terrified that the wind would rip the sails and masts clean off the boat and into the sky, but the ship held.

Alika stepped up to one of the two bows of the ship and watched the dark seas ahead of her. She’d never seen a storm like this before. Water poured over her, but she was already soaked. There wasn’t much avoiding it.

The gales screamed past her as the Windrider rode the wind. It slipped across the water’s rocky surface as if it were sliding across the ice, except for when it crested over a wave and almost tossed Alika into the air. They were moving, and fast.

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Was this what flying was like? Alika’s wings fidgeted, and she stretched them out slightly. Without warning, the wind grasped its talons around them, and she felt it pulling her into the air, lifting her off her paws. With a yelp of surprise, she pulled them in as tight as she could, afraid that they’d get ripped off her body like poorly attached sails.

“Alika, take this!” Yarik shouted, his quiet human voice barely audible in the storm.

Alika turned to have a rope land at her claws. She picked it up, unsure what to do.

Yarik had moved under the cabin thatching to Snow, holding out another similar rope to her.

“What’s this?” Snow asked, drenched. “I’m not helping you get us all killed if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Just in case you fall overboard,” Yarik smiled. “Don’t worry, just a precaution.”

Snow slapped her snout with one of her soggy tails, but let Yarik tie the rope around her waist.

Alika did the same, standing on her hindlegs and using her forepaws to tie the slippery rope across her stomach. Tarka shuffled up to her, with his own rope already tied. Alika gave it a tug, just to make sure it wouldn’t come loose.

“Alika, I’m scared,” Tarka whimpered, his ears folding back.

“Yeah, I am too,” Alika sighed. Another thunderclap roared over them. “But it’s going to be alright. Yarik knows what he’s doing.”

“No, it’s not that.” Tarka shook his head. “The storm is cool, and I trust Yarik. It’s something else, but I’m not sure what. I don’t think Yarik can feel it.” He turned his snout up as the waves lifted and dropped the boat. “I think there’s something up there.”

Alika followed his gaze to the center of the storm. The dark clouds spiraled around. Green bolts moved from cloud to cloud in a circle, and each clap of thunder made Alika’s fur stand on end. Tarka was right. The lightning was moving too pattern-like, too perfectly. It was almost as if something was directing it.

“The winds are shifting!” Yarik yelled. “Get on the lines, now!”

Alika and Tarka grabbed the ropes and pulled as a beam of wood swung above them, almost taking off Yarik’s head. The Windrider tilted over — one of its two great canoes lifted into the air.

Yarik leaped onto the raised side, splashing down into a puddle. It slammed back down into the sea, and cold water crashed over Alika’s head.

The boat had turned northeast, and the clouds overhead moved faster. Alika’s heart raced. The storm was pulling them toward its center. The winds weren’t a circle, they were an inescapable spiral inward.

“I’ve made a huge mistake,” Yarik wheezed, wiping away blood from his mouth.

“Which?” Snow squealed, flailing her tails around as she clung onto one of the desk legs, which had been thankfully bolted down into the deck. “Which mistake?”

“This is no natural storm,” Yarik said. He pointed a twitching finger ahead of the boat. Green lightning continuously pulsed, forming a huge ring in the clouds above them. The sound of thunder was continuous and agonizing. The waters swirled and rose as if the sky was reaching down to claw them up. “Hold on!”

The Windrider twisted and turned as it sailed into the storm. Alika grabbed Tarka’s rope, pulling him toward the aft mast and clutching on for all her life, digging her talons deep into the wet wood.

The ocean moved in ways it should not have, writhing as if in agony while the sky pulled at it. The clouds screamed as the storm ripped them asunder. Alika slowly turned her snout upward, water still in her view: a great wave taller than any dragon towered over the boat, and the wind was pulling them straight into it

“Dreamer have mercy,” Alika whispered, wrapping a wing around her brother just as the Windrider plunged into the sea.

The ocean swallowed them up as they entered the great wave, twisting the boat to its side. There was nothing Alika could do but be one with the sea, and her hopes of protecting Tarka were as dashed as she suspected they would soon be. The current washed Alika away from the mast and off the boat’s deck.

For a moment, she could see the Windrider suspended within the water, any and all unstowed belongings drifting past her. The torrent blasted away a net full of uneaten fish. Nautical charts were swept along her wings.

And then, the rope tightened around her waist, burning as it dug beneath her fur. It almost knocked the breath out of her as it dragged her along with the boat. She paddled and flailed, spotting Tarka’s cream fur and swimming toward him.

The boat was sinking, and they would sink with it! Yarik had tied them to their deaths!

But the merchant still had a few tricks up his sails. Blue light streamed out from the Windrider’s hulls, glowing symbols appearing in the wood. While the waves passed over them, the ship fought back against the force of the sea. As if invisible talons were picking it up, it began to right itself underwater, the ropes pulling Alika and Tarka back to the deck. And then, it rose.

Water rushed down as the Windrider valiantly pierced the ocean surface, its twin bows rising into the air. Alika gasped as gravity took hold of her once more, her claws slamming to the deck, her legs quivering. Everything was soaked: the boat, her fur, all the belongings that hadn’t been swept away.

And yet, no more rain pelted down on her coat. The sky was clear and streaked with the colors of dawn, the moons visible behind the sliver of Tasien’s rings. The storm couldn’t have passed so quickly, could it have?

It hadn’t. Stormclouds pulsing with lightning swirled around them in a circle. A towering wall of water blocked all directions of exit.

They were in the eye of the storm.

“Is everyone okay?” Yarik called out.

Alika looked over her wing to see Yarik miraculously upright. He was soaked, but walking around the deck as if nothing had happened. He untied the rope around his waist, and Alika followed his lead.

“I don’t think that even deserves a response,” Snow groaned, dragging herself out from the cabin and biting at her rope.

Alika gave Tarka a quick glance. He was wet and shaken, like the rest of them, but nothing about him looked injured.

Yarik cackled, patting the Windrider’s hull. The blue symbols around it faded away, leaving behind gnarled burn scars, remnants of the magic.

“I’m glad that enchantment was worth the cost!” Yarik laughed. “I was almost expecting I wouldn’t see it in action. Now, let’s make sure not to sink her again, shall we? It only works once.”

Alika cast a nervous glance at their surroundings. They might have been safe within the eye of the storm, but the walls of water had them trapped there. The Windrider wouldn’t survive going through one of those waves again.

Her gaze caught on Tarka and Snow’s normally white fur — the glow of the lightning made it look a pale green. The lightning itself had formed a continuous chain, now looking more like a glowing ring in the sky.

Alika stared up at it, so bright it made her eyes hurt. Was it just seawater around her third eyelid, or had the lightning formed glowing symbols like the ones now scorched into the Windrider?

“What is that?” Tarka asked.

“Magic,” Snow whispered, her tails raised straight into the air. There was a curious, almost greedy look in her eyes. “Powerful magic.”

A horrible screeching thunderclap tore through the sky, forcing Alika to the deck. Her talons shuddered as she watched the sky itself quiver like it were a sail fluttering in the wind. The Twins shivered in the heavens, and then, the ring ripped the sky into tatters.

Pieces of sky peeled away, revealing a smoke-filled firmament behind the bleeding viridian fabric of reality. Every muscle in Alika’s body tensed involuntarily as if she’d been hit by lightning. The sky pulled back, and the eye of the storm was replaced with a circular hole, leading to somewhere that was certainly not Tasien.

Alika stared into the smoke beyond her world, not sure if she was experiencing wonder or terror.

And then, someone plummeted from it.