Here Be Dragons: Book 1 of the Emergence Series

Pryce received the radio message early in the morning, as expected. He was relieved to hear that it hadn’t changed, since the rescue ship probably wouldn’t be delayed so close to launch.

Once he confirmed the viability of his plan, he got to work on synthesizing the rest of the mold broth. Pryce chipped away at this task until he heard Fathom’s footsteps outside on the beach.

“Do you still say ‘good morning’ if we have not just woken up?” Fathom asked, his brassy voice easily audible through the steel door.

“Yes, and good morning to you too,” Pryce said once he opened the hatch. “Did anything interesting happen?”

“No,” Fathom replied, shaking his head. “How long until you finish with this batch of antibiotics?”

Pryce shrugged. “Four or five more hours, why?”

“The others want to know when you’ll start moving the ship. I also came to tell you that we’re going hunting, and that we’ll be back soon. Don’t forget to lock the hatch.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” Pryce sighed. The portholes allowed some amount of fresh air to flow into the hold, but the room was still stuffy and unpleasant without the open hatch. Only an imbecile would risk leaving the door open for creature comforts, but he would still miss the cool morning air.

Pryce closed the hatch after they both said their short farewells, though Fathom only left after he heard the heavy clunk of the lock sliding shut. A few moments later Pryce heard the wingbeats of several dragons fading into the distance.

With no distractions left to bother him, Pryce quickly re-immersed himself within his task, though the inadequate lighting strained his eyes a little. Just as he was to consider taking a break, he heard wingbeats. Returning wingbeats.

He frowned at that. Was that only one set of wings? Did someone forget something? No, that didn’t make much sense, dragons only occasionally used rocks to hunt, and those could be found anywhere.

Pryce quickly closed each porthole window, anticipating the worst. He braced his back against the hatch to peer outside, and through the small window he was able to see a great shadow pass over the beach.

He tore his gaze away from the window, and after a moment of indecision hid under the nearest table. A second later he realized he would be visible if the dragon looked inside the right portholes, so he laid face-down and covered his upper body with his lab coat. There was no time to get anything else to cover his feet and legs, so he would just have to hope that his pants and shoes would make his lower body unrecognizable as part of a living being.

Then he stayed as still as he could, and listened for the sound of a dragon’s landing.

But it never came. Instead, a great splash sounded from the river, the transient waves crashing against the hull of the ship. Pryce pressed his lips into a thin line. He was almost certain this dragon was an invader now, though he wasn’t sure why they dove into the river first. The only sensible explanation was that the unknown dragon wanted to get rid of their scent.

That was not a reassuring hypothesis.

As bad as the situation seemed, he wasn’t in any mortal danger; not even a dragon could hurt him with the thick hull standing between them. Abruptly, he realized that wasn’t the real threat, and that Fathom could hear a heartbeat if he cupped his wings around his head. Was three centimeters of steel enough to keep this dragon from hearing him?

He couldn’t take any steps without alerting the dragon to his presence, not when they were standing right next to the Horizon. Pryce forced himself to take deep, quiet breaths, and regretted not having hid further in the ship’s depths.

All he could do at the moment was to force himself to lay as still as possible while his imagination ran wild. Sand didn’t make much noise even when subjected to a dragon’s footsteps, so he was a little startled when a tapping noise echoed throughout the ship. As he laid on the floor, he remembered that dragons were supposed to announce their arrival into another’s territory. Not only that, but this dragon had also appeared mere minutes after the others departed; that was no coincidence.

This one was a trespasser.

The dragon continued to give the hull experimental taps and scratches. They also tapped and scratched at the windows a few times, though there didn’t seem to be an effort to break them. The sounds stopped when the dragon scraped the hull, inadvertently making the same dreadful screeching noise Celeste had stumbled upon the day before.

Then, silence.

Pryce was almost beginning to wonder if the invader had wandered off when a creaking noise sounded from somewhere higher up along the hull, several floors above him. In the end he couldn’t resist, and lifted the lab coat to see a glimpse of green scales outside the porthole.

He immediately re-buried himself.

He couldn’t tell which part of their body he’d just seen, but this dragon – who he decided to call Trespasser – had to have been standing up on his hind legs to lean against the hull. That was the only explanation that made sense, and a few moments later the hull creaked, and Pryce felt a dull thud through the floor as the dragon presumably landed back on all fours.

A breath later he heard a whump and a hiss as grains of sand pattered against the hull of the ship – the tell-tale sound of a dragon leaping into the air. Relief flooded Pryce for precisely three seconds until a heavy thud resounded from the deck of the ship.

Pryce bit back a curse, and settled for quietly exhaling through his nose. He had no idea what he could possibly do in this situation, save for the obvious solution of waiting for Fathom to return. The three of them had left five, maybe ten minutes ago, and probably wouldn’t be back for another ten.

In other words, he was in for a long wait.

Pryce considered various options as he sat in the cargo hold, but all of them were discarded for the simple reason that any kind of confrontation was a terrible idea. His backpack sat right next to the door, so he had access to his rifle, but that wouldn’t be helpful until Fathom and the others returned.

Trespasser wandered around the deck of the ship for what felt like an eternity, until they started banging on the door. Oddly enough, the impacts weren’t very violent – almost as if he weren’t trying to break down the door. But that didn’t make much sense, what other explanation was there? It wasn’t like there was anything near the door, and the only thing on the door was…the handle.

The shiny brass handle.

A decisive thud echoed from the deck, and the rapid clomping of hurried steps preceded a great splash that Pryce felt through the floor of the cargo hold. The painful silence made it difficult to tell what happened next, but half a minute later he heard the distinct sound of a dragon taking off followed by gradually fading wingbeats, and he rushed to a porthole window to see a green figure winging off in a southwestern direction.

Pryce was about to open the door when he paused. This wasn’t an elaborate trick, was it? What if there were two dragons working together, and one of them had swam through the river to wait in ambush? Fathom had told him that dragons didn’t work together much, but there was nothing to be gained by going outside now, even if he was itching to look for whatever traces Trespasser left behind.

So he picked up the chronometer and waited. He waited for one minute, then two. It was only until three minutes had passed that he allowed himself to relax. It could still be a trap, but he felt comfortable enough to crack open a window, just enough so that he could hear any approaching wingbeats. Pryce didn’t bother resuming his work; he knew the others would be back soon.

Sure enough, the three of them appeared from the east scarcely five minutes later, their jaws bloodstained as usual. Fathom was in the lead, and he seemed to notice something was wrong. He called out something to the others, and they landed some distance away so as to not disturb the traces left upon the beach.

“Pryce?!” Fathom called out as he ran – galloped? – over to the Horizon, with Celeste trailing right behind him and Devotion walking at a fast pace.

“I’m fine,” Pryce called out as he unlocked the hatch. “A green dragon arrived a few minutes after you three left, they flew away south-west, I’m not sure if they’re male or female, and they jumped into the water before and after they left-” he said in a rush, checking the chronometer, “-eight minutes ago!”

Fathom hissed as he stepped around what were presumably Trespasser’s footprints – Pryce wasn’t sure how he could tell. «Ahnoumh, you stay here with Pryce, Ghorrah, you fly north,» he barked.

«Do not tell me what to do, brat,» Devotion hissed. «And that is a stupid plan; Ahnoumh can fly faster than me, it is better if she goes. I will stay here and keep him safe.»

Fathom growled in irritation, but finding no rebuke to give he launched himself into the air.

«How are we going to catch them if they left eight minutes ago?» Celeste asked, trailing after her father.

«No one is going to catch them if we all stay here,» Fathom retorted, and gave further instructions as they winged away.

It took a lot more energy for a dragon to ascend from flat ground than if they jumped off a cliff, but the two of them gained a respectable amount of altitude within a short period of time. Despite their efforts, Pryce privately doubted they could catch a dragon who had a head start, and he was fairly certain Fathom knew it too.

Pryce looked at Devotion, who was presently sniffing at one of the footprints. “Can you smell anything?” He asked.

Devotion gave a thumbs down, not in answer to his question, but because she didn’t understand the words he used. «Smell. Very little,» she said, tapping her nostrils and making a pinching gesture.

“Yeah, I figured,” Pryce sighed, not in the mood to find it interesting how familiar her gesture for ‘small’ was. “I guess we should do some investigating.”

Fathom and Celeste returned half an hour later, landing a bit roughly as they panted from exhaustion. Just as Pryce had anticipated, they found no trace of the green dragon.

“While you were gone, we found something,” Pryce said, and gestured to the broken doorknob.

«He cannot be very old.» Devotion snorted disdainfully. «That fool went so far to hide his scent, and then he decided to chew something off.»

«He?» Celeste asked, before she leaned forward to sniff at the chewed stump of a door handle. «Oh, yes, definitely male.»

“I don’t suppose any of you recognize this scent?” He asked as Fathom gave it a sniff.

“No, I don’t know who this is,” Fathom grumbled, dissatisfied.

«I smell greenfruit, but we already know his color,» Celeste noted.

“What did she say she smelled?” Pryce asked.

“...greenfruit,” Fathom said. “That is the name of the fruit that makes a dragon green.”

“Unless it’s rare, that doesn’t help us locate him.”

“No, it’s very common,” Fathom said, half-hissing, half-sighing. “That coward must have been waiting for us to leave if he appeared so soon after we left.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” Pryce said. “And we don’t know when he started watching us. He could have started following us since yesterday, or maybe he just hid in your territory when we arrived.”

“Yes,” Fathom growled, low and menacing. “He did not answer my roar, which means he likes to sneak around. A dragon like that can’t be trusted.”

Pryce waited for Fathom to echo their conversation to Celeste and Devotion. They in turn voiced their own, largely similar sentiments.

“One of us should have stayed here while the others went hunting,” Fathom grumbled as he glared at the trespasser’s footprints.

“That wouldn’t have done anything, he still would have seen the ship,” Pryce pointed out. “I’m not completely sure, but I don’t think he knows I exist.” Fathom blinked at this news, and Pryce went on to explain how the green dragon had inspected the hull and deck of the ship without much attempt to get inside. “He left behind some scratches, and I didn’t have enough words to ask Devotion if these meant anything,” he said, pointing at some scratch marks along the side of a smokestack.

Fathom shook his head. “These have no meaning, they’re just normal scratches.”

“So we have nothing to go off of,” Pryce muttered. “Could you recognize this dragon by scent if you met him in the future?”

“Yes, easily,” Fathom answered.

“You said…ship can move…yes?” Celeste asked, slow and uncertain as she spoke in the unfamiliar language.

“Yes, why?”

“If…green dragon…” Tossing her head, she turned to her father, «It does not matter who this green dragon talks to if Pryce moves the ship, right?»

Fathom paused, then translated this for Pryce.

“That’s…a good point,” Pryce said, nodding as he considered the idea. “He does have the door handle, but there’s nothing we can do about that. Good thing we were going to move it anyway.”

“This is good, right? You don’t seem happy.”

“We should leave as soon as possible just in case the green dragon brings anyone back, but that means I’ll need to put away all my lab equipment so nothing breaks while I move the ship. I’m not done making penicillin yet, so I’ll have to take it all out again when we get back.” Pryce threw his hands up in exasperation.

“How much longer will you need if we stay and let you finish?”

“I don’t know, four hours?”

“Then yes, we should move.”

“Great,” Pryce sighed. “Well, I’ll get started. You three can climb aboard, and bring along all the stuff you want.”

“...yes,” Fathom said to Pryce’s back, his spines flattened.

Celeste tilted her head. «Is something wrong?»

«I should move all my things if I will not be here to defend my territory, but…it feels like running away,» Fathom grumbled, only to hiss as Devotion whacked him over the head with a wingtip.

«You are still too young to be concerned with such things,» Devotion snorted, ignoring Fathom’s glare with perfect grace. «Running does not make you weak. Fighting does not make you strong. Those who are strong know when to run and when to fight.»

«I know that-» Fathom started, but she cut him off, continuing unimpeded.

«A dragon who takes your territory will either be stronger or weaker than you. If they are weaker, you can just take it back. If they are stronger, then you would have lost anyway. There is nothing here that you cannot replace, especially when humans can apparently make so many things.»

«Of course I know that,» Fathom hissed, «but that does not mean I will enjoy doing it.»

Devotion snorted austerely. «If you knew that, you should not have complained.»

“What are you three talking about?” Pryce asked as he carried something outside.

“Nothing important,” Fathom huffed. “What is that?”

“It’s called a cooler. Cold things will stay cold for a long time if you put them in here,” Pryce explained. “You open it like this,” he said, demonstrating how the simple mechanism operated. “Can you fly up the mountain and put some ice in here? Snow is good too, but put as much as you can inside of the cooler.”

“Why?”

“I need someplace cold to store the penicillin, remember? I’m not leaving what we have here in the river.”

“Right,” Fathom nodded. “I’ll fill this with ice, and then I will move my things into the ship. Do you have more bags?”

Pryce blinked in surprise, but realized it only made sense to pack things up if they were going to leave his territory vulnerable. “Of course, I’ll get a few right now.”