Mani had no idea what the emperor thought he was going to do with him, other than possibly negotiate a ransom to call off Agadart’s attack against his forces. It was clear that the emperor’s navy and all of his flights had become aware that they were up against a queen and her entire reign, and the few that had not actually turned tail and run were focusing on coalescing a protective ring around the emperor’s ship rather than trying to continue an invasion that was now obviously doomed to failure.
Sopping wet and freezing cold and completely exposed on the captain’s deck, Mani could only watch as the battle raged around him. There was nothing he could do to escape other than just jump overboard, but that was certain death.
The emperor, sprawled on the main deck below him, too injured to directly lead his troops, was obviously communicating with a man that Mani had to assume was the emperor’s brother, the elder Duke Paruask. There was reported no one the emperor trusted more. Mani was actually surprised that the emperor was still trying to fight. He thought that it highlighted the emperor’s instability, only worsened by his injuries and blood loss and frustration.
Nobody had ever seen a queen fully engaged in battle in centuries, but the legends were legends for reason, and that reason was because it was said that a queen at the head of her reign, fighting for her territory, could bring the powers of nature to her bidding and destroy her enemies with a single cry.
Mani wasn’t sure he believed the legends that much, but even from a distance he felt the electric buzzing of the air around them in preparation for the now-inevitable battle. He could tell that the emperor still was in command of his navy and his flights, but it was also clear that there was a hesitancy to those forces, an unwillingness to risk everything against a queen, even a new queen, even a queen that no one had ever heard of before. She had manifested in the fires of rage and as the Wattish forces came closer and closer across the massive swells of the sea, cannons firing and flights starting to attack each other viciously, Mani knew, even if the emperor did not, that the battle was lost.
He had thought he would be going down with the platform, but despite the reprieve the emperor had given him by grabbing him, Mani still felt very certain that he was going to meet a watery grave if Agadart and Ro did not get to him soon. He braced himself against the mizzenmast, clutching at whatever ropes he could grab, as the ship was sailing fast if beleaguered by the natural waves of the all-powerful ocean and the launching of cannons and the wing-to-claw combat of the dragons, some of whom created momentous waves of their own as they crashed to their deaths. His perception of the battle, which was actually a collection of many smaller battles taking place all around him, was that the Iskaryyvan navy was headed eastbound, indicating they were in a retreat, however disorganized. They were traveling so fast that the water was spraying high enough to splash over the railing, the spray salty and stinging like shards of glass against his exposed skin. If he could bring himself to take a moment, he thought he could concentrate on his connection to Ro and to Agadart to let them know where he was – for all they knew he had been on the platform when it sank. But his own panic and fear kept him from being able to send any kind of emotional signal to them other than the repeated refrain that he kept shouting out loud in the hopes that they would pick up on the meaning, even if they could not hear the words. “I am alive! I am alive!”
The emperor screeched even more loudly than he had when he first landed on the ship with Mani in his claws. It seemed to be a signal, and Mani noticed everyone looking in a specific direction, not quite stopping whatever they were doing as they reloaded cannons or worked the sails, and he followed their gaze.
Headed towards them like the sharp tip of an arrowhead was a small flight of less than twenty dragons, cutting through the battle straight toward the ship he was on. Above them was a single dragon, the largest Mani had ever seen, it’s wingspan almost reaching tip to tip from one side of the flight formation to the other. The head of the arrow, though, was obviously a queen. His queen, he knew instinctively. She was slightly larger than the dragons around her but radiating monstrous power, her eyes glowing so brightly that even from a distance Mani could see the burning orange embers like two small suns breaking through the smoke of war. And behind Agadart, just off to her side and slightly ahead of the others in the formation, was the familiar, beloved shape and colors of Ro.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
They had come for him.
Mani decided to stay as low as possible while the ship bobbed in the water, but then he heard some of the sailors screaming in horror. He looked out instinctively over the railing and saw a dragon crawling out of the water up the side of a nearby ship. As the ship tipped dangerously to one side due to the extra weight, the dragon grabbed the mainmast, even as several sailors tried attacking it with swords. Instead of letting go, it lurched out of the water to put all its weight into yanking the mainmast all the way over. With hardly any resistance at all, the whole ship flipped upside down. The dragon disappeared into the waters and the screaming of the men on board was cut short as they were swallowed by the dark ocean waves.
There was a momentous pause in the battle as those who had observed the attack stared on in utter shock and horror. Dragons didn’t swim, and it made no sense for a dragon to simply appear out of the water and attack a ship. But then the cries of horror changed and Mani looked up into the sky to see that the queen’s flight had taken advantage of the distraction to fly hard, low, and fast. The ships nearest to the emperor’s immediately tried tacking to close in on her. The problem was that they could not fire at her or her flight without risking hitting their own ships across the way. She was too close.
The emperor reared up on his hind legs, tail thrashing across the deck, sending one of his own sailors over the side into the water, and screamed. It was a gut-wrenching sound, powerful yet desperate. Mani looked back over to the flight and saw Agadart and Ro peel away from the others. Slicing through the air with their wings tucked close, they came in for the ship that Mani was on. He started yelling at them, waving his hands about as far as he could, hoping that they would notice him on the deck.
And then suddenly, something shifted in Mani’s mind, akin to watching the clouds break after a violent storm and letting the rays of sunlight fall through: brilliant, blinding, and full of hope. He staggered, trying to get to his feet as the emotions of Agadart and Ro flooded into him, swamping all of his senses and rendering him speechless. Ro had reopened the connection between them as fully as possible, and Mani could sense between them that he was teaching Agadart how to reach out to Mani. When dragons communicated in such a primal way, their language consisted of color and sensation, but it was no less powerful or meaningful than spoken words. Mani felt wrapped up in the adoration he was feeling from them, the relief and the hope and the love that they shared altogether, and he started crying. He knew no one could tell, in the middle of the battle with water spraying over the edge into his face and making his skin feel numb, but as Agadart and Ro came up to the ship all he knew was that they had come for him, that they loved him.
The emperor screeched again, bringing Mani’s attention quickly back down to the reality of his situation, which was that he was stuck on a ship that was seconds away from being directly attacked by a queen, her king, and every flight under her command.
At the last moment Agadart pulled up and spread her wings wide, tipping so that her back was to the ship, one wing dipping low and skimming sharply through the water to spray it directly into the emperor’s face. Guns were going off, and in the distance so were other cannons. He heard the creaking and cracking of ships that were being torn apart by the queen’s many flights, and as he looked out over the waters he saw that the main Wattish forces had arrived on the heels of their queen, masses of dragons and ships charging through the air and over the waters directly toward them.
Out ahead of the ship he was on, Mani saw the bulk of the Iskaryyvan navy in full retreat.
The emperor was screaming again, his gaze following Agadart as she circled around the ship. Her intent was clear to anyone watching: she was angling directly at the emperor. Faced with a direct attack, he leapt off of the blood-soaked deck to meet her claw for claw and tooth for tooth. In the middle of his desperate gamble though, he had lost sight of Ro, who had swerved up and dive-bombed just as the emperor snapped at Agadart’s jaw. She swatted him away, straight into Ro’s clutches, who tore mercilessly at the emperor’s wings.
Other dragons in her flight started harassing the ship’s sailors, while the rest of the emperor’s navy and his flights circled around, leaderless, picking fights with anyone they could get close to. It was utter chaos with ships firing at each other and dragons fighting indiscriminately. Ro and Agadart were tag-teaming the emperor, whose guards were joining the fray in an effort to extract him before he was killed.
A desperate scream caused Mani to look away from his mates to see a knot of four, possibly five, fighting dragons, covered in blood and tearing at each other, as they slammed into the fore of the ship. It shuddered under the onslaught as the dragons spilled across the forecastle, breaking everything as they went and spilling over the side, taking half the deck with them.
The ship tipped dangerously on its side, pausing for an eternal moment, suspended between where it had been and what was coming. Mani braced himself as the ship shuddered again, cracking under the strain, the breaking wood groaning loudly. The sailors screamed and the dragons fell into the water as the ship finally fell over completely, dragging Mani down with it.