A sudden red glow casts through the trees, muting the verdant greens to dark yellows and orange. I flick my eyes upward through a shaft expecting to see the comet, but no, it’s the moon beginning to ascend. My breath hitches.
The sun is already falling.It has to be.
I had lost track of time within the jungle’s shade, and I dip my eyes down to my supplies. I expected that if I wanted to truly search for a dragon—to give it a good effort—that I’d have to spend a night or two in the jungle.
But I thought I had more time to find a place to fortify for the night. It’ll take a good hour to do such a thing.
My gaze trails back to the moon and scans the red glow around me.One hour, maybe two, before the sunlight is gone, depending on how dark the jungle shadows grow at dusk…
Apoppingsound brings my eyes back to the river. There are more bubbles now. They are bigger too, so large they’re making the flowers jump and move.
Something slides against the underside of my raft, and I drop back down, grabbing my spear. Checking the water on each side, nothing appears. I lower still, bracing my body for another hit.
One of my oars begins to slide into the water. Holding my breath, I grab it and wait, keeping it and myself as still as possible. Nothing but the sound of bubbles attacks me.Pop, pop, pop-pop-pop.
I set my spear down quietly and slowly lift the oar from the water.
Pop-pop-pop-pop—
Something long, enormously thick, and covered in algae emerges from the water, right where my oar had been. Glittering green and black scales catch the light where the algae falls away. There’s no end, no beginning of the appendage before it falls back into the dark waters below.
Titanoboa?Frozen, I stare at the spot where the serpentine thing vanished.It can’t be a crocodile—they don’t have scales.
POP!
Startling back, the scaley appendage appears again, higher and longer this time.
My heart beats wildly, pounding against my ribcage. The saliva in my mouth dries up, and my back grows so stiff I’m afraid it’ll never move again.
The tail—it’s a tail, it has to be—leads to a body so huge that the entirety of the river is displaced as it rises up. Dozens of giant black spikes break the water’s surface first, like sharkfins. My raft catches in the roiling water and surges toward the shoreline, forcing my eyes away from the beast.
My raft strikes the side of a tree trunk, knocking me off balance, and I turn to catch myself and anchor against the trunk, gasping, holding onto several thick vines. Twisting back to the monster, there’s nothing.
It’s back below the water.
I can barely hear the popping over the drum of my heart.
What have I gotten myself into?
I wait, tense all over, for it to resurface—but it doesn’t. Only the bubbles remain.
After a while, my courage returns and I survey my surroundings. The red glow is heavier now, I realize, the shadows thicker and deeper.
The mating call’s ear-splitting screech assails the air, gut-punching me.
The bubbles return.
Go! Now.My hands drop from the vines.You’re not safe!
Quickly, I take up my oars and slide them into the water. Pushing off from the tree as the shriek echoes through the trees, I work on spinning my raft around. Keeping my raft from where the tail first appeared, I row with all my might.
The tail bursts back above the water, forcing my raft back to the tree I just escaped. The vessel floods with water. An oar slips from my grip and it’s lost to the river.
Then the monstrous body reappears—the razor-sharp black spikes reappear.
The boat rocks. I hear a crack.
The beast keeps rising, revealing a body so big, so deeply green and black, that I can’t tell shadow from limb. I hold in a scream. Long black strips of skin, like snake-like cords moving around, sprout from behind four thick horns way ahead that emerge.
