Cecilia floated in the waters. Her consciousness slowly returned and she gasped for air. There was none to be found. Her whole body itched though it was more focused on her neck and lungs. Her Atavism mutation was hard at work to ensure her survival as gills sprouted from the sides of her neck. Her lungs started to pump the water out as she breathed it in.
Her regeneration had already closed the leg stump. Though it would take a couple of months to regrow her whole shin and foot.
It took a few minutes for her oxygen levels to rise back to normal. The amount of activity at the surface ensured the oceans were rich in oxygen, though visibility was zero. Once she could think straight, Cecilia pushed as much water out of her lungs as she could, then held her breath. Carbon dioxide started to build inside her lungs while the gills provided a steady oxygen supply. It took a while but she started to become buoyant. As she approached the surface, the waters become increasingly agitated.
She rose above the surface and wiped the muddy water off of her eyes, then coughed and expectorated the mud off of her lungs along with a lot of phlegm. At least this time she reached the surface before her body started to mutate to develop electrolocation. With how much electricity was running in these oceans, she didn't want to deal with that. Not again.
Scanning her surroundings, Cecilia bit her lip in dread as she found the Dragon corpse floating. At least she believed it was a corpse because it wasn't moving.
It moved.
She gasped and swallowed some sea water. The Dragon stirred and rolled, the damaged wing flopping uselessly. It floated on its belly and rose its head fifty feet above the water. A quick scan later and its slitted eyes were staring straight at her.
She should've stayed underwater long enough to develop electrolocation. She might've gotten webbed feet like that time, too. Like now, with her mostly human body, a crippled leg, and a furry tail to generate drag, she didn't believe she could outswim a Dragon.
'This is how I die', she thought to herself. 'Though I'll give as good as I'll take'.
She swam toward the Dragon.
*
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*
Seth stopped at the top of a rock near the western shore. He stared at the distance, part of his mind wondering how big this planet was. The horizon was more than ten miles away, he was sure of that. Without any landmarks to triangulate the distance to the horizon, measuring the world's circumference was a lost cause. But it was bigger than Earth.
But his main focus was on finding Cecilia. Now that they were this close together, he couldn't lose her again. He failed once and that was one time more than what his ego would afford himself.
No. This time, he would attain immortality. Even the great Judges of the Cosmos deemed his cause worthy. Why would they bring him back to life otherwise?
He glanced at the clay sphere with flared top. Cecilia had wrapped and tossed Joseph inside without waking the kid up. He could understand why. With how loud this world's background noise was, how violent were the winds and the incessant rain, and the peals of thunder that rumbled every five seconds in average, with a one-second error margin, natives would've developed the ability to sleep over any disturbances.
It was interesting to know that people could enter the damned clay boxes. His was big enough for him to slip inside. Though he couldn't enter it. At least not the extradimensional space. The user needed to put other people inside theirs. Which meant...
No. Not yet.
Seth unscrewed the lid. Peeking inside, he saw only darkness. "Joseph? Do you hear me?" He got no answer. He shouted a bit more but there was no reaction. Did the storage devices stop time too? No, that would require orders of magnitude more magic.
He saw a lightning bolt illuminate both sides of a rock and glanced behind him. The mirror was floating their way. The Judges' agent and viewport. The surface rippled and a spray can flew out of the mirror. No, not a spray can. An air horn. Why was the mirror dispensing items left and right like that? After giving it some thought, he decided it was the whim of the Judges. For entertainment or more sinister designs, he couldn't tell.
Examining the air horn, he found a dial at the neck next to the valve that controlled the rate of release. Seth frowned; it had no measurement. He dialed it to the minimum. Pressing on the valve, a faint wheeze came out. He slowly turned it up and tested. The sound grew higher and higher, in both intensity and pitch. By the time it was as loud as its counterparts on Earth, the pitch was so high that no human voice could reach it. The dial was nowhere near the higher end. Soon it would be ultrasonic like a dog whistle, but with the intensity of an airplane turbine.
Should he? No. Without the proper protection equipment, he could very well blow up his eardrums or cause a landslide. Or worse, awaken something as awful as the Dragon.
Seth sat down on the rock and watched the night ocean churn, lit up by the flashes of lightning that peppered the sky. Cecilia would soon come back; he was sure of it.
The mirror whooshed past him, flying up and westward, vanishing into the dark night.
*
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*
The Dragon tracked her swimming form. If Cecilia bothered to guess, she would say it was smirking at her. Its sinuous neck bobbed up and down and sideways, as a snake aiming to strike.
"Foolish girl." It spoke with a cavernous voice. "Already my wing heals."
A wave crashed over her, pushing Cecilia ten feet underwater. She emerged moments later. The Dragon raised one of its front paws out of the water and swatted the ocean, sending another wave that pushed Cecilia away.
"We're both crippled; I doubt you can even reach me in these troubled waters." It taunted.
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The Dragon was right. Keeping her head out of the water was already a daunting task with only one leg. It was toying with its prey. Or... stalling for time. Cecilia thought. If was the latter, it would take flight and go back to the island once its wing healed enough. And then... Her father and Joseph were exposed and vulnerable. She doubted either could survive an attack from the Dragon.
She swam toward the creature with her full strength. She summoned her [Phantom Claws] to give her hands more surface to push water with. The dragon chuckled and pushed her away once again. This repeated itself a few times. She made no progress toward the creature. It was infuriating. She felt like a bug in the bathtub of a naughty child. It had full control over the water. Unless...
She dove underwater. Cecilia had only a faint sense of direction as she attempted to go underneath the turbulent waves plaguing the surface while keeping herself heading toward the Dragon. She had no idea if she was in the right direction, much less if she was advancing. The depths were like a sensory deprivation tank. No sight, no noise, only the warm water and the currents.
An hour or so later, at least as far as she could tell time mentally, she was completely lost. Cecilia had no idea how far or how close she was to the Dragon, only a vague sense of depth because of the water pressure. Without an alternative, she let her lungs fill with carbon dioxide and slowly floated back to the surface.
She emerged to the side of the Dragon but no closer than where she started. The monster quickly sensed her presence and turned its neck around to stare at her.
"Back so soon? I admire your ability to hold your breath."
So, it hadn't yet noticed her gills. She swam toward it. This time, it flicked its tail and smashed the water between them, sending a massive wave to shove Cecilia away.
"I know you already realized. Determination and focus are power in this chaotic world. That's how you became able to cut my flesh. Why don't you try it? Focus your will. Become of one mind. Show me the power to achieve your goals." The Dragon spoke like a motivational speaker. It was mocking her.
She tried. Cecilia thought about protecting her father and Joseph from this murderer of a lizard. She willed for that fire to run in her veins, to give her power. Yet doubt and despair kept the power at bay. She was wounded, tired, and was smart enough to know the difference in power between the Dragon and her.
She couldn't give up, though. Cecilia swam toward the Dragon once more. This time, the creature shifted its attention upward. A wave of raw power washed over them, temporarily smoothing the ocean. Cecilia didn't pay the strange event any mind. She used the opportunity to paddle as fast as she could to reach the dragon.
A flash of light illuminated the greyish-brown waters. Cecilia was thirty feet away from the Dragon's flank. The monster was still staring at the sky for some reason. It was her opportunity. She closed the distance and started to climb the wet scales.
Then she heard a scream. A feminine and shrill scream. Unable to hold her curiosity, Cecilia looked up. She saw the mirror plummeting down, with tiny hands grabbing its edges. She checked the Dragon and saw it was paddling its way to get underneath the falling pair.
The Judges had sent another inmate down. Damn. But it wasn't anybody Cecilia knew. She only knew her father and herself. Even if it was someone she met in one of the many worlds she visited in the last century... no.
Killing the Dragon took priority. She redoubled her efforts to climb the monster. Once atop its back, she had to stand on one leg and two arms, forming an inverted V with her body. She coiled her leg and leapt forward, catching on with her arms and pushing forward as she flexed her leg back only to kick again. It was an awkward leapfrog movement but the fastest she could move forward with one working leg.
Cecilia saw the wounded wing and the good one. She went for the damaged one, to finish what she started.
The Dragon attempted to snatch the falling Defendant and mirror out of the sky. Silver light shone from the mirror, causing the monster to howl and flinch away in agony.
Cecilia reached the wounded wing and started to hack away at the scabbed wound she caused earlier. She filed a mental note. The mirror had stunned a Dragon. No wonder her instincts told her to be wary of the reflector. Perhaps she should start calling it Mirror, with a capital 'M'.
*
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*
Five thousand years of torpor didn't vanish in a flash. Or in the few hours the Dragon was awake. Not only it failed to properly defend itself against the bestial girl, it also had forgotten what the mirror was and what it represented. A Divine Artifact at the service of the Cosmic Judges. The jailors of all inmates tossed into this world of death, itself included. It didn’t matter who the Judges sent with the mirror. It was someone particularly important. A VIP.
Anyway. The girl-bug was back, biting at its back. It was time to go back home and finish house-cleaning. Ignoring the pain at the base of its wing, the Dragon started to chant a spell. Mana washed over it as the spell circle formed in front of its snout. Once completed, it flew backward and around its head and down its neck, expanding and morphing to enchant its body.
Healing magic washed over itself, focusing on the small wounds the girl caused and its wing. A flash of gold light later, the Dragon relished the feeling of working both wings in tandem. It flapped them once, twice, and up in the air it went.
It ascended a thousand feet in a handful of minutes. Circling around once, it found the island only when a stray tsunami triggered its shield. Then it finished the current rotation and set course back to it.
*
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Cecilia hung for her dear life on a back spine. When the golden light sprung from the wound she was digging at, she had almost lost her footing. When the Dragon started to beat its wings, the air tossed her like a leaf toward the back. Now she was at the bottom of the small of the monster's back, a bit over the hips.
The Dragon picked up speed. The winds dried her clothes, taking her body heat away with the moisture. Cecilia shivered. Glancing ahead, she saw the blue dome vanish. The island was nearby.
Then the monster dove toward the island. Cecilia lost her grip and fell off the side like a bug that was too close to the edge of a speeding truck's windshield.
air resistance held her back while the Dragon moved forward, descending even faster than herself in free fall. The monster became smaller and smaller, vanishing in the dark fog that was forming. Assessing her bearings, she was about a mile away from the shore. Cecilia twisted and turned and hugged her knees.
She dropped into the churning ocean like a cannonball.
*
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Seth saw the Dragon right after the shield went out. It was descending straight at him. Why? Did Cecilia bother the creature enough it thought to vent its anger on him? Did the dragon notice their relationship? He had no idea. But if the glow around its closed snout was any hint, the monster was about to rudely dispel the chill of the night. Not that it was cold, he classified this island's weather as tropical because of the humidity and average temperature... he was digressing.
He had little time to prepare and no shelter. Perhaps if he could hide inside his allegedly indestructible storage device... or turn it upside down and duck inside. Fuck. He wouldn't bet his life on an untested property.
Seth turned the dial on his air horn all the way. While the maximum setting on this was also untested, the widget wasn't. He knew it worked and how it operated. He could only hope it proved effective.
He shielded an ear with his left hand, keeping the widget as far away from his head as humanly possible. Then he pointed it at the Dragon and pushed the button. The can shook in his hand. He heard nothing but felt the warmth of his own blood in his hand as the world went silent.
Seth didn't dare open his eyes. He felt the wild winds around him and only hoped he would survive it long enough to fix his ruptured eardrums.
*
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Flying in a Class F5 weather wasn't fun. Actually, it was the opposite of fun. The Dragon felt every scale in its body rattle and rumble under the ultrasonic attack coming from the shore. All the rocks and gravel on the beach, and the seawater were sucked in by the winds and tossed straight at him at half the speed of sound. Boulders pummeled him. Losing concentration, the Dragon vomited its Dragon breath propellant in an awkward manner, sideways. Its wings caught the cyclonic-force winds and ripped.
The Dragon tumbled in the winds, lost its lift, and crashed down into what was left of the shore like a meaty meteorite. Then the source of the wind vanished as abruptly as it appeared.
It tumbled over, flipping ass over teakettle as it went inland.
"Oh, shit!" It faintly heard a male voice say something as it rolled over a soft...
CRUNCH.