Stephen Sullivan - The Dragon Isles

Bok grabbed her and lost his hold on Marlian.

Marlian screamed as she disappeared into the brine. Razorfish swarmed in her wake and stained the ocean red with blood.

Trip clasped his fingers tight around the rope atop the masthead. He watched in fascination as the dragon dived past the ship on the starboard side. Several deckhands threw themselves off the ship in a frenzy of terror. What Trip felt was more of a thrill. He’d never seen a dragon before and was determined not to miss a moment of the experience, even if it killed him.

Lightning flashed through the sky, narrowly missing the mast. As quickly as he could, Trip scrambled down the rigging toward the deck.

Another dragon-spawned wave struck Kingfisher’s side. The boat pitched wildly, and Trip found himself hanging in the air, holding onto a rain-soaked rope by only his fingertips.

“Whee!” he squealed as his hands slipped free. The feeling of soaring unfettered through the air was one the kender knew he would treasure for the rest of his life-even if that life was about to end. Trip smiled at his friends on the madly bobbing ship below as the waves rushed up to meet him. “Will I hit the deck, or the water?” he wondered. “Will it hurt much?”

Karista grabbed Bok’s shoulder and clung to him as he pulled her away from the rail.

“Lower the boat!” Karista cried, staggering toward the skiff, stowed amidships. “If we lower the boat, we could get away!”

“Away to where?” Bok replied, gazing frantically around the surging seas, trying to find the islands.

Dragon-fear held the crew firmly in its terrifying grip. Most of the hired hands dashed madly about the deck, or dived for cover through the hatch and into the hold. Following Karista’s suggestion, several sailors began to unlash the ship’s boat and push it toward the rail.

“Belay that, you fools!” Mik shouted from the bridge, but the crew wasn’t listening. The captain cursed as the heaving seas threatened to yank the tiller from his hand. Kingfisher bobbed and swerved wildly, nearly heaving onto its side.

Ula staggered from the rail to help Mik. As she skidded across the teetering bridge, the sea elf looked up and saw a kender flying through the air toward her. She held out her arms, and Trip fell hard into them. The two of them thudded to the rain-soaked deck. “So kender fly now?” Ula asked.

“I wish!” Trip replied. The two of them struggled to their feet once more and lurched to the tiller.

“Hold onto this,” Mik said, slapping the diamond artifact into Trip’s small hand. “I don’t want to lose it in this wash.”

Trip nodded, and tucked the object into one of the many pouches on his lizard-skin vest.

“The dragon’s submerged! I can’t see it!” Bok cried. The big bodyguard looked around frantically.

“Maybe it’s gone,” said Pamak, trying to launch the boat.

“It could be anywhere!” replied a woman helping him. The two kept pushing die skiff toward the rail. A crowd of sailors had formed around them, but no one seemed to have a clear plan for accomplishing their task; the crowd hindered as much as helped the efforts to launch the smaller boat.

Meinor and Bok pushed up to the milling crowd. “Let us through!” the aristocrat bellowed. “I must get on that boat!”

“Turn the ship into the wind, or we’ll be swamped!” Mik said to Ula as the two of them struggled with the tiller.

The sea elf nodded. Trip came to help them, wrapping his small arms around the steering board. A huge wave cascaded over the side of Kingfisher . The crew on deck were scattered like ninepins, and the ship’s boat crashed through the rail and over the side. Bok went with it, but Karista got pinned against the gunwale, her foot caught in one of the scuppers meant to drain the deck.

A second wave crashed over the bridge. The impact jarred Trip’s fingers loose from the tiller. The kender tumbled down the stairs, skidding helplessly toward the rail.

Karista reached out and Trip grabbed her hand.

“Thanks!” Trip gasped. They clung to each other and staggered away from the side, but Kingfisher lurched and threw them hard against the main mast. They grabbed a tangle of lines at the mast’s base and barely avoided being sucked overboard in the backwash.

Thunder crashed and lighting splintered the ship’s bowsprit. Karista and Trip staggered to their feet once more.

They all gazed out into the raging sea. Four lengths off the starboard side, the ship’s boat floundered in the crashing waves. Bok and several other sailors had managed to pull themselves aboard the tiny vessel. They clung to the sides as the gale spun them about like a toy in an angry child’s bathtub.

The skiff suddenly surged upward on a huge column of black water. The crew screamed as the water fell away and a lightning flash revealed the dragon beneath. Tempest held the tiny boat between her immense rows of teeth for a moment. Then her jaws snapped shut, and the boat flew into splinters.

The people manning the skiff disappeared into her gigantic maw-all but Bok, who had been flung out as the boat disintegrated. The bodyguard clung desperately to one of the huge Turbidus leeches hanging from the dragon’s upper jaw. He screamed wildly as he tried to scrabble up the dragon’s face to the imagined safety of her brow.

Tempest flicked her head, like a monstrous dog flipping a hone into the air. Bok lost his grip and flew up into the storm. Tempest caught him in her titanic fangs and crushed him into a bloody pulp. Sharks, razorfish, and Turbidus leeches swarmed forward to gobble up the crimson leavings.

Karista’s eyes went wide with horror as the dragon surged toward Kingfisher . She screamed-a piercing, high-pitched wail from the center of her soul.

“Move!” Trip shouted, hauling on Karista’s hand. “We have to move!” He tried to drag her toward the bridge, and finally her legs began to move. They scrambled frantically over the wet, slimy deck toward the aft stairway. On the bridge, Mik and Ula struggled with the tiller, trying in vain to bring the ship around.

The dragon’s snout snapped the top off the main mast as Tempest crashed down on the bow of the ship. Kingfisher heaved forward, and Mik lost his grip on the tiller. He tumbled down the stairs onto the water-drenched quarterdeck, smashing into Trip. The kender lost his grip on Karista. She tried to grab them again, but they skidded out of her reach and crashed into the base of the shattered mast.

The captain and the kender barely had time to look up before an avalanche of rigging and tangled sails buried them.

The dragon whipped her head toward the bridge. Karista, soaked and shivering, clung to the stairs just below where Ula held fast to the tiller.

The sea elf shouted a defiant curse. She let go of the steering pole and seized a boathook from a rack near the rail. With all her strength, she threw the iron-tipped spear at the dragon.

The weapon’s forward lance pierced the dragon’s cheek, and the trailing hook caught in her lower eyelid. Tempest roared in pain and surprise. She reared back her head and belched scalding steam over the deck of the Kingfisher .

Karista ducked as the boiling cloud thundered over her head. Ula screamed as the blistering steam hit her. She turned and dived over the side, disappearing into the swirling deep.

Tempest reared up, raising nearly all of her massive form out of the surging seas. Then she crashed back into the ocean, head first, smashing into Kingfisher as she came.

Kingfisher’s spine broke in half as the dragon surged into the depths. In an instant the hold filled with water, smothering the cries of the crew still struggling below deck.