Page 132 of Ash

The ocean was full of Dragons. Some had dragged themselves to the closest stretch of beach, but many more were thrashing in the water, trying to fight off huge and vicious predators.

Dani’s guts twisted into a knot, and Tyrez’s body shuddered beneath her.

“I haves tos gets down theres,” he snarled.

Any attempt to do so would leave him open to those missiles and whatever poison they contained.

“Hover just above the cliff,” she ordered.

Tyrez did as she asked, but his attention was on his Legion brothers struggling far below.

Dani blocked that from her mind. She focused on the nearest stretch of beach, and spread her arms, fingers curling.

When the gravel lifted and came at them, Tyrez flinched, his wings carrying them fifty feet higher in a single beat.

“Hold!” yelled Dani, her mind wrapped up in lifting the gravel. It passed in a tumbling cloud beneath them, and she swept it around in an arc before flinging it at the cliff face.

Some bounced harmlessly off the rock, but she noted when it did not—when the small stones found openings, and sailed on through. She mentally gathered the ones that fell and sent them after their more successful brethren.

High, thin screams and howls came from the cliff. A few forms leaped from the openings, transitioning to their furred state as they plummeted toward the waves below.

Dani kept the gravel coming, pouring it into every opening until the screams stopped and no more could be crammed within.

“Wells dones,” rumbled Tyrez. He folded his wings, and dove.

Several Dragons had clustered together amid the waves in an attempt to fight off the predators. It was a losing battle. Dragons might be masters of the air, but in water, they were sitting ducks.

The same wings that mastered the wind helped them to float, so long as they lay on the surface. But the waves swamped those efforts, and once the wings submerged, they unbalanced any attempt to swim, and served only to drag them down.

The wings were also prime targets for the ocean’s toothier residents. Many of those thrashing below had already lost limbs, as well as wings, in their efforts to stave off the predators.

Eyes streaming in the wind, Dani took it all in. She thrust her hands before her, and made the ocean her slave.

She pushed the waves, crashing them into one another to form a miniature tsunami, and then sent it radiating out from the cluster of struggling Dragons. It surged into the predators and sent them reeling back. Then she pulled from beneath, and pulsed a current of water through the Dragons, pushing them toward the shore.

Tyrez’s entire body stiffened in surprise, but he adjusted his flight path so that they stayed over the group, enabling Dani to continue her work. When one Dragon floundered and started to sink, he dipped down to place powerful forelimbs beneath its shoulders, dragging it back to the surface with heavy beats of his wings.

They got the group to the shallows and turned back. One at a time, they retrieved those still above the waves. Dani didn’t dare think about those who hadn’t made it. The ones they saved were broken and bleeding, as well as contorted in pain from whatever destroyed them from within.

All too soon, Tyrez wheeled over an ocean empty of living Dragons. A wave of exhaustion passed through Dani, and she clutched his spikes. As Tyrez carried her back to the beach, she surveyed the writhing forms lying upon the gravel. One had shifted back to human, and lay ominously still.

Tyrez landed, and she slid off. She watched him approach a large blue Dragon. Something about the shape of the head—it resembled Tyrez.

One wing lay in pieces across the gravel. And the forearm on that side was gone, bitten clear off by a predator. The stump pulsed his lifeblood onto the beach.

Dani stripped off her sweatpants and ran to the Dragon. As she wound them around the stump and tied it off, strong arms moved her gently aside. Tyrez, now in human form, wound a sliver of stone through the cloth, and began to twist to tighten it.

“Leaves it,” the blue Dragon rumbled. “I dos nots wish to lives like thiss.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Taran,” Tyrez hissed.

“I wills nevers flys again. A Dragons must fly.”

“You will lead our people into the future, brother. You do not need wings for that.” He gave the tourniquet a final twist, and then moved to the wing.

The entire body heaved and contorted, and Taran gasped. “Ssomething—its feels like ssomething is eatings me from within.”

“It has yet to be confirmed, but I think those missiles contained parasites.”

---