Page 28 of Catastrophe

“I’m sorry, Charlie. Our wing appears to be stuck under a fallen tree. If I move it, we will tear the wing and won’t be able to fly until we heal.”

“Stuck?” I squeaked. “Shitting hell! So the options are stuck under a tree or stuck on an island with a ripped wing? What are we going to do?”

“Do not fear. I sense others. Perhaps they can assist us,” Dralie said positively. I wondered if the souls that got stuck together as drakorian were opposites, because being positive wasn’t my norm.

“What? Who?” I hadn’t noticed anything, but then again, I was just the panicking human voice in a dragon’s head. What the fuck could I notice? “People are more likely to take pictures with us and put it on their Instagram than to help us. Dragons aren’t native here, and humans are generally bad, so let’s think of a new plan before they find us.”

“These others feel … powerful. They will know our kind.”

“Power doesn’t mean good, Dralie. Please try to get out of here before we are noticed.”

“It is too late for that. Trust me, Charlie. I know what is best for us.”

“You do?” I asked sardonically, but Dralie didn’t seem to notice. We both stayed quiet, listening as the sounds of people reached our ears.

“Something fell,” an eager voice said. It sounded familiar. But again, with my past, familiar wasn’t good either. “It was large with wings! What kind of creature could that have been, Laurence?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bird that big,” another voice replied dubiously.

“I do not think it is a bird. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a dragon crashing into this island,” a bored voice announced. Also familiar.

But my racing mind didn’t mull over the owner of the voice since. Instead, I attempted to spur the dragon to do something, anything.

“Oh, fuck. We’ve been rumbled. On three, Dralie, use your big dragon body and hide under as much dirt as you can.”

Footsteps hurried closer. “I think there’s really something here.”

“Hide?” Dralie scoffed. “I am drakorian. We do not hide. We face our fears.”

Was it wrong that I wanted to strangle the bastard? “Just listen to me and hide before—”

But it was too late. A cacophony of gasps echoed around our little mud cave. We were spotted.

We are fucked.

I braced myself for what came next, but when they came into view, all the tension and fear evaporated. Sigurd, the protector of the realms, charged toward us. While I was glad to see someone I recognized, I also didn’t know how he was there.

Did I crash-land on the island? The hunters took witches and Zaide, and yet Sigurd escaped?

“Dralie, this is Sigurd. We know—”

But Sigurd interrupted me and shouted, “You will die here and now, Fafnir. Your tyranny will end.”

“Fafnir? Where?” I tried to turn around but only got the darkness of Dralie’s mind.

“Who is this Fafnir he speaks of?” Dralie asked, insulted he was being misidentified.

“My evil grandad dragon.”

“Dragons are not evil.”

But I didn’t reply to him, because a large stone smacked into our face. We paused our conversation and directed our attention to Sigurd.

“You know this being?” Dralie asked.

“Unfortunately.”

“And the others?”

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