"Maybe I can go on ahead, do a bit of scouting. I…" he stopped, and froze in the air, his eyes widening as something down on the ground below caught his eye.
And made his heart quicken.
...
"Huh? What's wrong, Lily?" Wendy caught his sudden silence and asked in concern.
"Um…" Lily hedged, going lower to try and get a better look at what he'd seen. "Maybe… maybe you should come and look at this."
"Well, that doesn't sound good," Charla muttered as the others hurried forwards after Lily, until they found themselves cresting a large rocky precipice and looking down into a dip in the ground below.
Wendy gasped and placed a hand over her mouth at what she saw.
Bones.
Animal bones.
Or, to be more precise, a single animal carcass lying broken on the ground. It's long legs and pointed skull indicated it had probably once been a deer of some kind. Indeed, there were a few snapped antlers lying nearby confirming this guess. But it wasn't the bones alone that was so shocking, nor was it the hideous smell that was drifting up Wendy's sensitive nostrils. It was the fact that every bone was blackened and charred like they were made of charcoal, burnt scabs of meat still clinging to them here and there. And the ribs were rent asunder as if something large had ripped its way into the poor thing to devour its insides.
"Oh my…" Charla's breath caught in her throat. "That… doesn't bode well…"
"What happened to it?" Happy trembled, clearly picturing something similar happening to him now. "What could have done that to it?"
"The entire thing is just… immolated…" Lily agreed, biting his lip and eyeing his surroundings warily, his hand going to the hilt of his sword. "But whatever the case, that thing was hunted and killed by some kind of giant predator. That much is clear."
Mavis looked dire. "We don't know anything about this world," she murmured softly. "But were I in our own world… I think I know what I would have guessed the attacker of this creature to be… and I think we should probably get out of here, quickly."
Wendy nodded in agreement and stepped backwards… but misplaced her foot and fell backwards with a sudden scream that echoed around the hills. She hit her shoulder hard on the ground and winced in pain, clenching her teeth to help bare it slightly.
"Wendy! Are you okay?" Charla asked worriedly.
"I'm… I'm fine," Wendy nodded as she sat up and rolled her shoulder slightly. "Nothing serious, nothing broken. I'm…"
She stopped, her eyes widening as she suddenly spotted something that none of them had noticed before. A short distance off to their right, nestled in something like a large basin carved out of the earth were several large black rocks. About ten of them all pressed up against each other and each one about the size of a basketball. The ground around them was singed and carbonised, just like that skeleton of the nearby deer.
But Wendy had a feeling in her guts… that those were not rocks at all.
"Um… are those what I think they are…?" she asked nervously.
"They look like… eggs…" Charla swallowed.
"We should leave," Mavis said immediately. "We should get out of here now before we…"
But she was suddenly drowned out by a sudden, massive roar that ripped through the air and seemed to wash over them like a tidal wave, battering their eardrums and practically rattling their insides. Wendy clapped her hands over her ears, but looked up suddenly with wide eyes as a large shadow fell across her.
A gigantic shape swept through the sky high above the cliffs, huge skeletal wings stretching wide on either side of it and four thick legs with viciously hooked claws on the end of its toes tucked in against its long, lizard-like body. Its long neck ends in a horned reptilian head with jaws that were almost akin to that of a crocodile crossed with an theropod dinosaur. It's tail was even longer and ended with a large, arrow shaped spike. Its underside was a deep, dark purple but the rest of it was pure black.
"ACNOLOGIA!" Happy screamed immediately. "HE'S BACK!"
"No!" Charla cried. "That's not Acnologia. Its a dragon, but it looks different and its not as big!"
"Let's get out of here!" Lily suggested. "If that thing's even half as strong as Acnologia we won't stand a chance against it!"
But Wendy pushed herself to her feet and waved her arms up towards the dragon, which was circling round in a great, sweeping arc and diving swiftly back towards them. "It's alright!" she shouted up to it. "We're friends! Please don't attack us!"
"Wendy, what are you…?" Charla gasped, but immediately threw herself upwards and activated her Aera, seizing Wendy by the back of her dress and hauling her out the way just as the dragon blasted a furious torrent of flames from between its jaws at the group, scorching a line of ash across the rocks as it swept towards them. The three Exceed scattered and Mavis levitated up and out the way, ducking her head as the dragon shot past her overhead and wheeled around for another pass.
"Wendy, are you okay?" Mavis called across to her.
"I… I'm fine…" Wendy gasped, a little shaken but turning back towards the dragon and screaming, "What did you do that for? We don't want to hurt you!"
"It must be a mother dragon protecting her eggs," Charla suggested.
"We don't want to hurt your eggs either," Wendy spread her arms wide. "Just stop!"
But the dragon ignored her and powered its great wings back towards her, the inside of its mouth glowing red hot as it tilted its body to shoot towards the young girl with jaws agape. Wendy and Charla both froze at the sight of the incoming jaws, frozen in momentary fear before suddenly Pantherlily crashed into them from the side in his battle form, scooping them into his arms and twisting out the way as the dragons jaws closed inches from his tail.
The dragon bellowed in anger and twisted its head around, pulsing a jet of fire at the giant Exceed but Lily folded his wings and dropped like a stone, dodging the blast. The dragon turned its head down to follow his progress and Lily flared his wings out again, levelling off inches from hitting the surface of the sea and shooting across it back towards the land, steam exploding up behind him when the dragons' flames connected with the water.
"Charla! Wendy! Lily!" Happy cried, flying towards them with a stick in his paws as if that would somehow help to defend them against the dragon, which was turning tightly in the air to come for them again. "Careful! It looks like this is a fire dragon, like Natsu!"
"STOP IT!" Wendy shouted. "PLEASE JUST STOP IT!"
"We have to go now!" Lily seized Happy in one hand and backed across the sky, the dragon closing in on them and blotting out the sun with its great wings, belching another jet of flame from between its teeth at them.
"Wendy!" Charla cried.
"Got it!" Wendy sucked in a great lungful of air and screamed, "TENRYUU NO HOUKOU!"
A crashing tornado of wind exploded out from Wendy's lips and met with the dragon's fire head on. The two attacks merged with one another and exploded outwards in a terrific fireball, Wendy's winds whipping the fire to greater heights than before but also pushing it back the way it had come towards the dragon. But the dragon's colossal frame whooshed out of the inferno with a furious snarl, mouth agape and teeth slicing down towards the group.
"Crap!" Lily cried and, with a heave of his arms, he flung Wendy, Charla and Happy to one side threw the air and took hold of his sword, swinging it with all his considerable might at the oncoming dragon. The blade glowed and grew in length until it was almost five times as tall as Pantherlily himself and just as wide, crashing into the side of the dragon's head and neck with a loud slicing crack.
This actually had an affect and the dragon screeched in surprise, thrown off course by the massive weapon and lurching back towards the cliffs. Lily threw himself out of the way just in time to avoid being smashed by one of its furiously flapping wings, but even as he tumbled in the jet stream the dragon created he noticed that his sword had sliced a shallow cut in the side of its neck through the thick scales. That was something of a relief. He'd hit Acnologia in the leg at least once during his attack to no effect whatsoever, which meant that at least this one was nowhere near as strong.
A slightly dizzy Charla had managed to catch both herself and Wendy, as Lily had guessed they would but still shook her head and griped, "A little warning next time."
Lily didn't answer, watching as the dragon flapped above the cliffs and landed with a heavy thumping noise on top of the rocks, turning its head round to hiss up at them angrily and rearing up onto its hind legs to spread its wings wide like an immense bat.
"Why won't you talk to us?!" Wendy shouted to it. "We don't want to fight you!"
"I don't believe it can talk to you, Wendy," Mavis rose up to hover next to her.
"Huh? What do you mean?" Wendy blinked. "All dragons can talk."
"In our universe perhaps. But we're in another world entirely. Look at this one. I can see no sentience in its eyes, no real intelligence in its demeanour. This isn't the same kind of dragon you know. I think this one is just an animal."
"That… can't be…" Wendy gasped in shock - the mere thought of an unintelligent dragon was nothing short of horrifying. But the dragon itself merely roared and lifted up into the air again, its tail lashing the air behind it as it twisted its head violently, breathing plumes of flame all over the place so a veritable wall of fire was pulsed up towards them.
"Let's get out of here!" Happy shouted as he and Charla dragged Wendy upwards and out of the way, Lily and Mavis close behind. "We've got no reason to stay here with a dragon like this!"
"Come on!" Lily agreed, shrinking his sword and diving back towards the land, the others in hot pursuit. "Stay low to the ground! It'll be harder for it to get to us down here!"
...
if you want to support me or just to read ahead of the public release, you can join my p@treon :
p atreon/Moonhorse