Sea snakes, villainous wretches!
This is how they repay me? For leaving them alone, allowing them to settle within my coral reefs and valleys? For protecting them from vicious, hungry deep-sea monsters that would love to dine on their flesh?
Worst of all, the echoing yowls of my future mate and my competitor are gone.I’ve waited centuries for this.Loss hits me harder than it should. Loss and anger—rage ignites.
How dare they?I dig my talons into the stony floor of my domain and pull my wings inward, upward, shelling my back.They think they can keep me trapped?
My body fills with lava-like heat, erupting with my quaking emotions.
Nothing will keep me from what is mine.NOTHING!
I ram my back upward.
The ceiling cracks and stones and dust falls around me, polluting my cherished home. I ram my back again, and more gives way. Terrible, hollow sounds fill my ears, eclipsing even the thunder of my furied heart.
I do not stop, and even when the rocks and sand bury me within, I keep hitting the cave ceiling with all the might of my body. Pain tears through me. The weakest parts of my wings scrape and rip as my body becomes compressed. But each time I thrust up, cracks form—it is working. The trench terra shifts, and slowly, far too slowly for my liking, the pressure on me gives way.
Hours turn to days, and my body is nearly empty of all its oxygen stores. My limbs are numb with exhaustion. I need to surface soon. Desperate, giving a final shove, the ground below me loosens. The remaining rock and sand fall upon me, around me, under me where a deep crater forms. Renewed with the seabed’s movement, I slam my tail up and break through. My wings and body quickly follow.
Sunlight—red light—fills my view.
I am free!I open my long mouth and roar. My body revels and shakes with ferocious delight.
The ground sinks beneath me, caving in. I swim upward into the open water. The once mountainous seascape crumbles and vanishes around me. Waterwhooshespast my hide and under my scales, falling into the terra below. Coral reefs collapse, and colorful schools of fish scatter every which way.
Sharks swim away; octopus scurry from the budding cracks.My creatures flee because the merfolk sought to contain me.
Part of me is sad for the loss of my home, my treasures and jewels, for the space I hoped would one day become a nest to share with my mate, but the other part is dead set on one thing: finding the femdragon in need and making her mine.
My shaft emerges from my body, rigid and ready—and large, my potent seed brewing forth, ready to fertilize.
Feeling it drag beneath where my tail meets my body, my eyes focus through the light I am not used to—not anymore—and scan the blue waters of my home for mermaid traitors.They have fled,I notice, seeing none around me.Good.
Taking no time to hunt for them, I swim toward the direction my femdragon’s sounds came from, picking up speed as the dappled sunlight and glow of the cursed comet disappears in the waters. Everything moves out of my way.
Days,I realize,I have lost days escaping from my caves.
And then I hear it again, my femdragon. Heat grows in my belly all over again.
The water is gray and dark when I emerge. Clouds fill the sky overhead. I inhale air. Rain falls upon me when I glimpse the shore and the edges of my territory.
Kaos’s territory.Now I know who my adversary is. A jungle dragon bred from a water and earth dragon long ago.Like I was.We are similar in age, he and I. We respect our borders and have never had a need to fight.
All these thoughts fall from my head as his and my femdragon’s pheromones fill my nostrils.
Not even a storm could remove them from the air.
Hot, mossy, potent, and rich. Subtle in the winds but I smell them, hating Kaos’s scent as much as loving the femdragon’s. My large body contracts with need, my talons descend, my wings strain and seize. I dip my head beneath the water to cleanse the chaos in my mind, only to reemerge to scream at the world, my eyes on Kaos’s jungle.
FIGHT ME!All the power of my soul erupts in the air, louder than thunder and higher than the crashing waves.Meet me and fight for mating rights!Smoke plumes from my mouth, saying as much in challenge.
My eyes go to the jungle’s edge as rage builds, where a lone figure is standing on the shore. A human. Throwing all my intensity her way, she retreats back into the shadows of the trees.
“FACE ME, KAOS!” I bellow in dragon. “Come to the edge!”
I do not want my future mate near us when we battle. Blood will spray.
But minutes pass, and Kaos does not show. He does not answer, and my mind grows curious in its chaos. Seeking him out with my senses, I find I no longer feel him.
