Turquoise scales flashed, and a long, serpentine body fell past Alika. It splashed like a stone off the side of the Windrider. The four bewildered residents of the boat stared as it coiled under the water’s surface, sinking down into the depths.

“Was that… a dragon?” Snow asked.

“I believe so,” Yarik replied, though he sounded just as confused as the fox.

“But it didn’t have wings or fur,” Snow said.

Alika watched the sinking maybe-dragon, still frozen to the deck. What was going on?

Tarka was the first of the crew to move, and move he did: leaping straight off the side of the boat.

“Tarka!” Alika squealed, though, at this point, she wasn’t sure why she even bothered.

“Come on!” Tarka said as soon as he resurfaced. He paddled out toward the dragon, marked by a green glow underwater. “We need to save him!”

“He could be dangerous,” Alika replied, exasperated.

“He’s sinking!”

Alika looked down at the snake-like dragon, unmoving beneath the waves, then up at the crackling portal eye. With a sigh, she leaped in after her brother. It wasn’t like she could convince Tarka not to rescue an unknown dragon, so she might as well help him.

She paddled after Tarka, her third eyelid closing to keep out the water. The strange dragon was, surely enough, slowly sinking. His body was odd: long, tubelike, and wingless, absolutely nothing like hers and Tarka’s stocky figures. His fangs were almost adorably small, and the only fur on his body was a long white mane. Antlers poked out from the back of his head. The rest of him was covered in shining half-moon scales, polished to a vivid blue-green color, as well as bleeding crimson scratches and wounds. Even underwater he reeked of the metallic scent of blood.

The curious green glow pretty obviously came from the strange contraption around his left foreleg. A thick, silvery bracelet had been clamped around it, dominated by a huge dial that was wider than the dragon’s leg. It seemed more like an odd human creation, with moving parts of multicolored metals visible within the dial’s face, turning at different speeds as if they were dancing with each other. The glow came from beneath them, and Alika felt a shiver run through her body as she grabbed his foreleg, her heart speeding up with it.

Tarka grabbed the dragon’s other foreleg, and the two began to pull. Their tails lashed from side to side as they dragged him through the water. The mysterious dragon was thoroughly unconscious, if not dead, and offered no resistance but that of the water on his sleek body.

Alika grasped the Windrider’s rune-scorched side, and with a heave, the siblings lifted the front half of the dragon out of the water. Yarik held the dragon’s scaled snout as Alika and Tarka climbed aboard, the torso and hindlegs draped over the edge of the boat and wriggling in the water like a sail.

Alika grabbed the dragon’s forelegs, dragging him across the wet deck and slowly raising his hindquarters out of the water. He made no motion to awaken, his eyes closed, his extended body slack. Blood leaked from his wounds, dripping down his scales and mixing with the puddles of the soaked wooden deck. The green light stored within his rotating bracelet crackled with the lightning above, the portal still consuming the sky.

Yarik tried to roll the dragon over onto his back but only managed to twist the upper half of his body. Yarik shoved his weight onto the dragon’s ribcage, and the dragon’s jaws opened a tad, spitting water out past his weird, tiny fangs. The human kept pushing until no more water came out, wiping blood on his sides.

Alika stared. She couldn’t help but be reminded of the horrible sight of her mother’s torn-up body, lying still across the glacier.

“Well, he’s alive,” Yarik frowned. “Those scratches look worse than they are. He’s not gonna wake up dancing, mind you, but dragons are resilient.”

“He doesn’t look like any dragon I’ve seen before.” Snow sniffed at the unconscious dragon’s tail, the tuft of fur at the tip of it still in the water. “Nor does he smell like one. Why is he so long?”

“He’s a Kurothian dragon,” Yarik replied.

“A what?” Alika asked, cocking her head.

“He’s from one of the other realms,” Yarik explained.

“Ah, that would make sense,” Snow said.

“The what?” Alika was getting more confused by the second.

“The other realms. You can see them up in the sky sometimes. They look like stars, but don’t move like them,” Yarik continued. He gestured his hand out above him, frowning at the mass of smoke escaping from the hole in the sky. “Though they’re not usually so close.”

“Is that what a Greater Gate looks like?” Snow asked, twitching her tails. “I’ve never seen one before.”

“Certainly not.” Yarik shook his head. “They tend to be large, circular stone structures. They don’t appear out of nowhere — I’ve only ever been through the Linan one for trade, through Congla’s Canal.”

“How was Lina?” Snow asked curiously. “I’ve never met anyone who’s been to another realm before.”

“Warm, so very warm,” Yarik sighed, a hint of a smile on his wrinkled lips. His gaze drifted off as if lost in a waking dream. “I wouldn’t mind my bones no longer being so cold.”

The end of Alika’s tail twitched. Seriously? Yarik had been to another world? How come no one had mentioned this before? She opened her mouth, about to snap at them, but Tarka opened his jaws first.

“He’s moving!” Tarka interrupted. His tail thumped the deck. “Look, he’s moving!”

The four instantly turned their attention to the not-so-unconscious dragon, the tip of his snout wriggling, dragging two wet whiskers along with it. One of his blood-encrusted eyes flickered open. His iris was a dull green, almost a sickly gray. With his voice raspy and choked, he spat out more water, mumbling incomprehensibly.

“Take your time,” Tarka replied, his tail trembling in excitement. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere!”

Suddenly, the dragon’s talons shot forward, sharp claws digging into Alika’s foreleg as he pulled himself upright. Alika’s fur stood on end as a jolt made its way through her body. She yelped, trying to pull back, her talons out, and ready to scratch the dragon’s eyes out.

“Akav Khikitos!” he frantically screamed. “Akav Khikitos!”

The strength immediately left the dragon’s talons, and he let go, his head falling back to the deck with a thud. His eyes closed.

Tarka prodded him with a talon. He didn’t move, though Alika could see his chest rising and falling.

“So, what does that mean?” Alika asked, brushing off the fur where he’d grabbed her. She looked to Snow, expectantly.

“Akav Khikitos.” Snow shut her eyes and twitched one of her tails in a spiral. “Close the Gate.”

All eyes turned up to the crackling lightning that was ripping apart the sky.

“So, that’s what he’s talking about, right?” Snow asked. “The giant smoke-filled portal he fell through? We’re all clear on that?”

“That is most likely,” Yarik murmured.

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Alika asked, looking to Yarik for answers. He was the one who actually knew anything about this sort of thing, after all.

Yarik shrugged.

“Nothing?” Snow sighed.

“The Greater Gates I know of are supposedly indestructible,” Yarik replied. “All attempts to destroy them — and there have been many — have failed. I don’t have the first idea of how to close this. My many years of experience were in buying and selling magic, not using it.”

Alika’s ears twitched. She looked to the unconscious dragon, then back to the billowing portal of smoke, then back to the dragon. There was only one clear thing connecting them.

With a snarl, Alika plunged her talons into the glowing green bracelet’s face, trying to rip out anything she could. As soon as her claws made contact, her body stiffened up, and agonizing pain shot through her. She squealed, immediately letting go and slipping on the wet deck, flat on her underbelly.

There was a slight scent of burnt fur as she got back to her paws, and the blue ends on her forelegs had been blackened. The bracelet was unharmed, and the portal was still intact.

“How is this thing even supposed to close it?” Alika snapped, staring up into the smoke-filled sky. She squinted at the clouds. Was it just the shock to her vision, or was there something moving up there — a dark figure hiding within dark smoke?

“Do you all see that?” Snow asked, confirming to Alika that it wasn’t just her.

If Tarka and Yarik hadn’t seen it yet, they did now. The shape burst through the smoke, and a long, serpentine dragon flew through the portal.

Unlike the fallen one, this Kurothian was quite conscious. He swam through the sky like a slithering snake. His body was covered in crimson scales, and a pitch-black mane ran down his spine. He was large, too: at least twice Alika’s size. He wasn’t quite as large as Serka, but he was very clearly a fully grown adult of his species.

“TSHAV!” the newcomer roared, his voice grating. The red dragon flung himself through the sky directly at the Windrider. His dripping talons were just as red as his scales, and Alika had a sudden suspicion as to where the wounded dragon’s scratches had come from.

“He said ‘Kill!’” Snow explained, twisting a tail.

“TSHAV!” the dragon screamed again, growing closer, an all-consuming rage in his eyes. “TSHAV! TSHAV!”

“He said ‘Kill!’ again,” Snow continued. “And again. And ag—”

“Thank you, Snow,” Yarik sighed. “We know what ‘kill’ in Kurothian is now.”

“TSHAV! TSHAV! TSHAV!” the dragon roared, seemingly unable to make any more sort of conversation.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Hey, just doing my part,” Snow yapped. “Maybe it’s his name and he’s just trying to greet us? Hi Tshav! I’m Snow! It’s nice to meet you!”

“TSHAV!” ‘Tshav’ replied, his body furiously rippling like rope in the storm.

“Tarka, stay behind me!” Alika ordered. She stepped in front of her younger brother, who was attending to the unconscious Kurothian.

Alika stretched out her wings and got on her hindlegs, making herself look bigger. She let out a roar of warning at Tshav, showing off her huge saber fangs. Adult or not, Tshav’s body was thin and string-like, and his own fangs were no larger than Alika’s claws. If it was a fight he wanted, a fight she’d give him.

Yarik ducked under the thatching and into the cabin, returning with one of those ugly three-pronged spears. Though the wound was long since healed, just the sight of it made Alika recoil in pain. She was glad she was going to be on the other side of the spear this time around.

“TSHAV!” Tshav screamed again, and his sticky red talons slammed into Alika’s forepaws.

Alika roared back in fury, wrapping her thick, furred forepaws around his, clawing into him. If he felt pain, he showed none of it. Tshav’s body twisted and writhed in the air as he pushed down on Alika from above.

Alika grunted, using her tail to keep her upright as she held him up. Her hindpaws pressed back into the deck, and she thought she heard a crack of wood beneath her. The Windrider rocked unhappily underneath. Her limbs were thick and strong from the moons of walking, but Tshav was still far larger than she was. How come he could levitate? Where did the force even come from? It seemed totally unfair.

Tshav’s long neck shot out, and his head darted around her own and past her wings. Out of the corner of her eyes, Alika saw him strike at the unconscious Kurothian’s tail, almost taking a bite out of it.

With a roar of effort, Alika shoved Tshav to the side and slammed her jaws down into his neck. One of her saber fangs tore through his scales, ripping through his flesh with ease.

“TSHAV!” he cried out, pulling his head back. Force suddenly slammed on the back of Alika’s hindlegs as Tshav’s tail whipped behind them, tripping her. Alika fell on her back with a thud, her head landing on the surprisingly squishy stomach of the unconscious green Kurothian.

“TSHAV!” Tshav screamed again, drooling from tiny fangs as he stared Alika down. His pupils had been dilated into huge, round circles, shuddering around his eyes. His breath was fast, far faster than any dragon’s should have been. He rose his head up and coiled up his floating body, his foreclaws twitching anxiously. “TSHAV!”

Tshav forcefully uncoiled at Alika and the turquoise Kurothian but found himself on the sharpened points of a spear instead. Almost miraculously, Yarik was standing his ground against the fully grown dragon towering above him. The triple spearheads impaled themselves deep beneath Tshav’s neck scales with a crack and a squelch.

Tshav barely noticed — apparently, nothing would distract him from the young dragon under Alika. Yarik grunted as Tshav pushed more of his weight down on the boat. Alika held her breath as she waited for the spear to crack. If a dragon his size landed on her, she’d get bruised, but a squishy human would be smooshed into a bloody pancake.

But Yarik’s sleeves hadn’t been emptied yet, and his left hand twisted the bottom half of the spear. Blue runes appeared on the wooden shaft, and Alika heard a loud crack as she smelled ozone.

A bolt of lightning shot through the end of the spear, directly into Tshav’s body. The snake-like dragon’s muscles all tensed up, coiling and thrashing in the air. Alika yelped as a huge tail sailed over her snout, just narrowly avoiding being concussed.

Tshav’s crimson scales smoked. A tree-like web of black lines had spread out across his chest and underbelly. A shudder ran from his snout to his tail, slowly making its way along each of his numerous vertebrae. His eyes rolled around their sockets, before finding their way to the unconscious Kurothian once more.

“TSHAV!” he screamed, and Alika knew then that nothing short of death would stop him from ripping apart the dragon beneath her.

Tshav struck out once more, and Yarik twisted the spear again. Lightning cracked, scales smoked, and as she dodged one of Tshav’s spasms, Alika found herself looking up at the sky.

More elongated, shadowy figures had appeared in the smoke, and Alika could hear an all-too-familiar chant in the distance.

“I think there are more of them!” Alika cried, as the sound of a dozen ‘TSHAV!’s reverberated in the background. “Close the Gate! We need to close the Gate!”

A small shock to her furred cheek and the crackle of electricity alerted her to something happening behind her head. Tarka, hiding beneath one of Alika’s wings, was poking his snout at the unconscious Kurothian’s bracelet. Alika watched as her brother dragged his tongue along the shining metal and up to the dial. With each stroke of it, the metal melted like ice into water.

“Tarka, no!” Alika warned him as a green bolt grazed his snout. Her claws tensed, expecting that Tarka would soon be spasming with Tshav.

The green light within the dial flickered as Tarka dragged his tongue across it, and so did the chain of lightning around the portal’s edge.

“Tarka, yes!” Snow exclaimed.

Molten metal glittered as Tarka lapped it up, bronze and silver gears flowing into gold. Electricity crackled within the dial as the moving parts ground to a halt, screeching like talons raking across hard ice.

Alika watched wondrously. Dragons could do that?

Tarka pulled his jaws away from the bracelet, molten metal dripping from his fur as if he’d been digging into fresh prey. Viridian rings circled his irises, and her little brother stared almost menacingly. With a final groan, the bracelet’s motion halted, and the light within it faded.

The portal shuddered, flapping around in the sky. The circular ring of lightning around it split into two rings, then four, then an unimaginable multitude of overlapping ovals. The portal ripped itself to shreds, forming a seafoam of tiny holes in the sky that blinked out of existence.

And with that, it was over. Only the smoke that had poured from the portals remained, quickly dissipating in the storm winds. The clouds were freed from the claws of enchantment, loosened from their clean spiral motions, and scattered across the heavens. So too was the sea, and the great wall of waves that had held the Windrider in the eye of the storm collapsed.

“Prepare for impact!” Yarik shouted.

The waves fell back into the sea, throwing the boat up into the air. Alika kept herself low to the deck as it pushed against her back, shutting her eyes. A moment later, the boat fell like a stone, dropping Alika with it.

Water washed across the deck as they landed. Alika clutched out with her talons frantically and managed to latch onto one of the unconscious dragon’s hindlegs. And it was a good thing she did — the wave might have otherwise pulled him away and slipped him off the Windrider’s edge.

The Windrider rocked from side to side in a way it certainly wasn’t supposed to. When it finally stilled, they were still afloat, though the deck was soaked. Alika opened her eyes. She was still on the deck, and so was the unconscious Kurothian. Tarka stood beside them, looking quite blank and stunned. Snow dropped down from the inside of the cabin’s thrashed roofing, managing to land on her paws.

Neither Yarik nor the crimson dragon he’d been fighting were anywhere to be seen.

“Yarik?” Snow yelled, her tails whipping in anxious curls. She paced the deck, scanning the ocean’s surface. “Yarik!”

Tarka stepped over to the other side of the deck. Every so often, his tail seemed to twitch, one of his ears shuddering.

“How did you know that would work?” Alika asked. She angled her ears around, hoping to hear a splash as the human made it back to the surface. He couldn’t have drowned, could he? It was Yarik — he had to have something prepared for just this situation.

Tarka shrugged his wings. “I didn’t. I just thought it smelled good.”

Alika sniffed the remainder of the bracelet. It had been warped to such an extent that it held onto the unconscious dragon’s foreleg by a thread. It barely resembled its original state, fused into itself like a half-melted snow dragon. A few more licks and it would be more of a solid puddle than a piece of jewelry. Tarka was right though: it did smell good.

Alika whipped her snout around at the splash of parting water. For a moment, she had hope that Yarik had surfaced, but the sound was too loud, the waves far too big. Crimson scales rose from the ocean, Tshav looming over Tarka. His eyes were wild and furious, his chest blackened and scorched. Blood dripped from three deep wounds within it. Alika was now less sure she wanted to know what had happened to Yarik, but there was no time to ponder on his fate.

“TSHAV!” Tshav roared, and flung himself down at the unconscious Kurothian, paying no heed to Tarka standing between him and his quarry.

“Tarka, jump!” Alika shouted though the words left her mouth far too late.

Yet, Tarka did no such thing. Instead, the cub raised his head up at the huge crimson dragon, opened his jaws, and let out a column of flame that would have put even Serka to shame.

Heat rolled over Alika’s fur even from this distance, and for a moment, Tarka’s fire drowned out even the rising sun. Tshav was engulfed within it, and Alika counted them lucky that Tshav hadn’t approached from the other side of the Windrider, where Tarka’s fire might have engulfed a mast as well. Licks of fire as blue as the sea poured from Tarka’s neck, melting into the sunrise as they changed into yellows, oranges, and crimsons as red as the dragon caught within it.

As quickly as the fire came, it was gone. Tarka wheezed black clouds from his jaws, clutching his chest and rolling around the not-quite-as-wet deck as he choked from breathing it back in.

And Tshav remained floating in the air.

The crimson scales on his underside were now as black and cracked as his scorched away mane had been, but Tshav was unmistakably, definitely, alive. Nothing, absolutely nothing they had done seemed to slow him down.

“TSHAV!” he roared, but his empty stare was now focused on the cabin’s roof.

“How about you pick on someone your own size!” The turquoise Kurothian stood on the roof with a wicked grin on his snout and spoke in a voice that was definitely not his own.

“Snow,” Alika whispered, and the illusory turquoise dragon gave her a wink, before rising into the air and growing.

Even knowing that it was just Snow’s magic, Alika couldn’t help but feel a pang of wonder as Snow’s illusion took on the form of a giant turquoise Kurothian, five times larger than Tshav. Had she wanted to, she could have picked up the Windrider itself and thrown it through the sky, or flung Tshav through the heavens all the way back to Kuroth — that is, had it not just been an illusion.

Still, it all depended on Tshav buying it. Alika unassumingly spread her wings, trying to hide the actual turquoise Kurothian from the crimson dragon’s gaze. A dragon so big was incredulous. Would he fall for the illusion?

Fortunately, Tshav didn’t seem like he was on the sharper side of his species.

“TSHAV!” he screamed, flinging himself at the illusion as if his life depended on it.

The giant dragon moved at supernatural speeds, a blur as it incomprehensibly evaded its crimson attacker. Tshav, noticing that his claws and fangs landed only in the air, whipped around, attacking again. The giant looped around him playfully.

“TSHAV! TSHAV!” Tshav kept flinging himself at the giant. Did he never tire?

“That’s right! Tshav!” the giant dragon laughed. It suddenly turned, plunging into the water and skimming its surface. Faster than any dragon could fly, it shot toward the horizon like an arrow. Tshav flew after it, sounding his signature call. In only moments, the two were out of sight.

“Snow!” Alika yelled. It was just an illusion! She couldn’t actually fight him!

“Missed me?” Snow yipped, poking her head out from beneath the cabin’s desk. “Tshav seems as dumb as rocks, but even he’ll figure it out soon enough. We need to get out of here as soon as possible.”

Alika let out a sigh of relief, before recalling that they still had one crewmate missing. She sprinted to the side of the ship.

“Yarik!” she called out, Snow and a recovered Tarka joining her. Alika wasn’t sure what had happened to him after he’d been washed overboard with Tshav, but she didn’t like any of the options she could think of. “Yarik!”

“Down here!”

Alika peered over the bow of the ship’s deck, between the two canoes that it rested on. Caught in the dark space in the middle of the two, Yarik floated on the water. His clothes had puffed themselves up, making the poor man seem trapped inside them.

“A little help?” Yarik asked.

Tarka looked over with Alika, snickering at Yarik’s state. Together, the two dragons managed to get him unstuck and back aboard the Windrider. With his spear still in hand, he lumbered across the deck, his clothes slowly deflating.

“You weren’t trying to steal my ship, were you?” he asked Snow, raising an eyebrow.

“This ole piece of driftwood?” Snow countered, sticking out her tongue. “You’d have to pay me to take her off your hands. Good to see you’re okay. We thought Tshav might’ve gotten you.”

“Ah, I’m far too slippery a fish for that dragon to catch,” Yarik tsked. He cast his gaze down at the turquoise Kurothian. “Once he’s awake, our new friend will have a lot of explaining to do.”

Suddenly, Yarik was slammed to the ground by a Tarka tackle. He landed gently, squeezing out the last of the air from his clothes.

“Yarik, Yarik! Did you see?” Tarka asked, giving a friendly lick up the back of Yarik’s neck. “I made my first flame!”

Yarik cast a nervous glance at the sails before rolling himself over and giving Tarka a pat on the head. “Ah, so I heard! See, unfortunately, I did not. I was wriggly enough to get free of Tshav, but the Windrider here wouldn’t let me go. Perhaps you can show me another one?”

Tarka’s eyes lit up, and Alika snuck a wing in front of her snout, not wanting the ship to be lit up as well.

“Another time,” Alika warned him. “After I teach you the fire safety rules that Mom taught me.”

“That’s no fun,” Tarka rumbled.

“Not to break up the party, but we still have a big red problem!” Snow exclaimed. One of her tails flicked, and her ears swiveled. “My illusions can’t go forever. Tshav caught up to it and it broke. We need to go — now!”