The ominous shadow dove towards the two fluttering fairies. Great, Melody thought, it never rains but it pours. Now they were going to have to deal with the Night Fury and the two tyrannosaurs. It wasn't bad enough when Jenny and Cristina got knocked out. No, a flying monster had to butt in too!
"Brace yourself, Melody! No one ever faced a Night Fury and lived to tell the tale," Natsuki warned her. Then how does anyone know what a Night Fury is? Melody wondered. She still prepared to fight the strange, shadowy creature that had propelled itself at them. If the dragon frightened Natsuki so much, Melody had every reason to stay focused. At least this once.
The obscure, black dragon flew at an incredible speed, so it was hard to tell what it really looked like. Melody saw that it had enormous bat-shaped wings, a long tail with bat-like fins, four legs, and a broad head. It was roughly the height of a horse (not counting its wings) and 27 feet long, and had a wingspan of a whopping 48 feet.
Natsuki and Melody kept spheres of energy at the ready between their hands, but right when they expected the dragon to attack, it curved and circled around them. That's when they noticed a girl riding on the Night Fury's back!
"Save your friends!" was all the girl shouted before she steered her dragon towards the T-rexes. For a moment the two fairies were dumbfounded, but afterwards they quickly fluttered down. Jenny and Cristina still lay unconsciously on the jungle floor when their friends landed next to them. Natsuki supported Cristina under her shoulder, while Melody did the same for Jenny. They then dragged their friends away from the large dinosaurs that were still trashing close by.
"Who was that girl?" Melody asked. She still found it hard to believe she had actually seen the stranger on the back of the flying black reptile. In fact, she still found it hard to believe said reptile hadn't blasted them like the second T-rex.
"I don't know, but she must be one heck of a bad-ass to ride a Night Fury," Natsuki grunted as she leaned Cristina against a palm tree. Since she was born in Japan (where dragons are sacred), she instantly admired the dragon rider, who had saved them from the carnivores. It also wasn't every day she saw a girl her age mounted on a rare and presumably dangerous dragon.
Meanwhile, the female dragon rider and her Night Fury swooped in on the tyrannosaurs. The first T-rex, which had chased Natsuki from the jungle, gathered its bearings before the other one and stood up on its strong hind legs. Only to be blasted with a purple plasma bolt from the Night Fury's mouth. The dinosaur was sent flying back and roared in pain.
The second tyrannosaur, which had helped the first one after the fairies' attack, had experienced enough pain for one day and decided to leave. It stood up, eyed the other carnivore (even though it was now blind in one eye), carefully peered at the Night Fury, and ran for the hills. Although it helped the first T-rex against the tiny humans, it wasn't going to battle the much more powerful and infamous Night Fury.
The original tyrannosaur couldn't get any angrier, though. It had had it with the puny magical girls and the flying intruder that had blasted it. Insane with anger, it roared at the Night Fury, which zipped past it at the speed of lightning. And with that, it signed its death certificate.
Idiot, the dragon rider thought as she saw the defiant pose of the dinosaur. "Alright Shade, let's give it hell!" she told her Night Fury. Shade replied with a growled nod. It plunged towards the T-rex and fired another purple plasma blast from its mouth before its rider jumped off with deceptive ease. As she fell through the air, she transformed.
The Winx girls spectated the free fall in awe and then surprise when their savior turned into a fairy. Now that she was moving much slower, they could finally see what she looked like. She had long curls that reached midway her back, skin the color of café au lait, and a strong, muscular build. Her chocolate-colored hair was tied in two circular pigtails on top of her head.
After her transformation, she had serrated cyan wings with gray tips. She wore a sparkly cropped halter top, a glittery miniskirt with matching shorts underneath, ankle boots, glove-like, detached sleeves, and a silver pointed tiara. All of her fairy clothes were dark navy blue, almost to the point where they seemed black, like a twinkling night's sky. A diamond-shaped, dark purple brooch clung to the center of her navy blue cropped halter top.
"She's the one! She's the fairy we have to take to Alfea!" Jenny cheered. She had just come to when the dragon rider had jumped off her Night Fury. Seeing the girl transform into a fairy gave her hope that their mission might succeed after all. Now that they had (accidentally) found the new fairy on Pyros they were that much closer to going back home. Aside from the fact that they were still trapped on the Island of the Dragons.
The tyrannosaurus rex roared at the new fairy, recognizing her as one of the 'insects' that had buzzed around its head. Yet the young dragon rider was unimpressed:
"You call that a roar? T-rex Roar!"
The girl spread her limbs, threw her head back, and opened her mouth. A roar scarily similar to that of the dinosaur erupted from her vocal cords, but her roar was amplified by magic and sounded five times louder that a real T-rex'. It thundered through the rainforest and hurt the eardrums of the Winx, who quickly covered their ears. The raving mad carnivore wasn't so lucky, though, and felt the roar's full force.
Unable to place its stubby paws over its ginormous head, the tyrannosaur fell to the jungle floor and rubbed its head over the ground in a pointless effort to drone out the sound. When the dragon rider's magic roar stopped, the T-rex looked up at the fluttering fairy and hissed. It hated her kind with a passion.
The girl felt a jab of pain in her heart at the sight of the mad dinosaur. She didn't want it to end this way, but the carnivore hadn't learned its lesson, even after dealing with four…no, five fairies and a Night Fury. She decided to put the animal out of its misery, a decision she'd probably hate herself for later.
"Hideous Zippleback!" she cupped her hands together and blew over her palms as if she were blowing away a kiss. Instead, thick green gas wafted from her hands and surrounded the T-rex. The dinosaur hissed and coughed in the smothering green mist, but an asthma attack was the least of its concerns.
"I'm sorry," the girl whispered as she snapped her fingers, which sparked a small electric shock. Although it was a small electric spark, it was enough to ignite the highly flammable green gas. Fire surged where the green cloud had drifted and engulfed the insane dinosaur in flames. It didn't take long for the T-rex to be consumed entirely.
When the fight was over, the female dragon rider landed near the other fairies, but stumbled a bit awkwardly in her high-heeled ankle boots. This made Jenny realize that the new fairy wasn't yet used to flying with her own wings, but had already practiced attacks. The fact that she had taken out the T-rex so swiftly proved that.
As soon as she had landed, her Night Fury touched down next to her. The Winx flinched back startled, but the new fairy was undisturbed. She even patted the large black dragon and started scratching it as if she was dealing with a harmless puppy and not a terrifying reptile. Shade seemed to enjoy it a lot and even rolled over, so its rider could scratch and tickle its belly. The other fairies looked on in a mix of bewilderment, awe, and relief.
"It's like a giant cat," Cristina breathed.
"But with scales and wings…and freaky magic powers," Jenny added. Now that the Night Fury was so close, which none of them could believe, they saw that Shade had a row of stubby spines running along the length of its body. It also resembled an axolotl (a weird albino-looking salamander) and its green eyes looked like those of a cat.
"Thank you for saving us," Natsuki addressed the dragon rider cautiously, the first to actually talk to the new fairy. Surprised, the girl looked up and the Winx gasped. She had no eyebrows! At least, not in the way regular humans did. Instead of eyebrows, the dragon fairy frowned two rows of scales, a few shades darker than her coffee-and-cream skin.
"Yeah, well, I wish I didn't have to destroy that dragon," she grumbled before tickling the black dragon again.
"Dragon?" Natsuki snorted. "That was a tyrannosaur." Back in Japan she had worshipped enough fire-breathing flying reptiles to know the difference.
The girl smiled as if this were all part of an inside joke. "Yes, a tyrannosaurus rex, which your people would classify as a dinosaur. Well, now you're on Pyros and we classify it as a dragon."
The Winx looked baffled, a reaction the dragon rider had expected. For their sake, she added:
"Dragons are not just fire-breathing flying reptiles," she noticed how the Japanese fairy blushed, "but also the prehistoric animals you call dinosaurs. Don't worry, we're not crazy on Pyros. My dad was a paleontologist from Magix, so I know how your kind thinks about 'dinosaurs'. He came here thinking the same thing, but discovered modern science was wrong because dragons and 'dinosaurs' coexist on Pyros."
"That would explain the sea reptile that attacked our boat," Natsuki considered. It also explained the T-rex. It would make sense for both animals to exist on Pyros, the Island of the Dragons, if dinosaurs were in fact dragons.
"What sea reptile?" the navy blue-clothed fairy asked. She had been wondering how the four girls had reached her home world. She was surprised to hear they came on a boat, but not so much that they were attacked, considering they had also attracted two tyrannosaurs. These girls sure are magnets for disaster, she thought.
"It looked like a cross between a crocodile, an eel, and a fish, and was about 40 feet long," Cristina described.
"And it had an appetite for boats," Melody chuckled, but Jenny shot her a glare. She thought that joke was in poor state because their captain was eaten by the tyrannosaur the dragon rider had just vanquished.
"Oh, that must have been a hainosaurus," the dragon fairy nodded and then added, "By the way, I'm Subari and this is Shade."
The Night Fury perked up at the sound of its name and looked eagerly at the four fairies with a lolling tongue, the dragon version of a smile. Not scared of the black reptile anymore, the Winx smiled in return. Again Natsuki introduced herself first:
"Hello Subari, I'm Natsuki and I admire you so much for riding…Shade, was it?"
She looked directly at the Night Fury, which was sniffing her knee-high pink boots out of curiosity. Subari nodded and instinctively stroked her dragon friend. Melody came up next.
"I'm Melody, a Princess and half mermaid," she giggled. Subari raised one of her scaled eyebrows at that, but smiled back at the enthusiastic fairy-mermaid hybrid.
"I'm Cristina. Nice to meet you," Cristina extended her hand, which the dragon fairy hesitated to accept. Her dad had explained his people's weird habit to shake hands when they met a stranger. Yet on Pyros that meant some dragon could rip your arm right out of its socket. Subari took the risk and shook the hand of the artistic fairy.
"I'm Jenny," said the Princess of Solaria, who also offered her hand, "and we're here to take you to Alfea!"
Subari instantly pulled back her arm. They were going to do what?
"Wow, wow, wow," she stepped back from the four fairies, "if I knew you guys were slave traders, I wouldn't have saved you."
"What?" Jenny blurted. What is she talking about? Slave traders, why would…oh! "Oh no, no, no! We're not going to kidnap you. Our headmistress sent us here because your powers had revealed themselves."
"Yeah, we want to take you to Alfea, College for Fairies," Cristina added with a smile. The two other fairies nodded with the same warm, friendly expression on their faces.
"Oh? Well, let me get back to you on that," Subari muttered. She only just met the four girls and wasn't going to blindly trust them, even though they were the first fairies she'd ever seen. She had been shocked when she discovered her magic powers and completely flabbergasted when she first turned into a fairy, so she was happy to find someone just like her.
"What's there to get back to? Don't you want to learn how to develop your powers? You've obviously been training yourself," Jenny argued. She hadn't expected the new fairy to say 'no'. Well, she hadn't really denied their invitation, but she sure hadn't accepted it either. This put a stop to their mission.
The dragon fairy blushed at the remark and looked away. "Training doesn't mean I want to leave my home. Anyway, it'll be dark soon, so you might want to change back or your glittery outfits will stick out like a sore thumb." Not that they didn't already.
The five fairies returned to normal in a flash. Subari snorted at the sight of the Winx' basic camouflage outfits, which were skimpy and impractical to say the least.
"This is Pyros, not bootcamp. If you think dragons won't notice your beige and green spots, you're going to have a bad time. They have great sense of smell and plenty of them have great eyesight and even night vision too," Subari then pointed to the leather hides wrapped around her body, "This'll help you more, but you're going to have to rub yourself with dirt and feces if you want good camouflage."
"Did she just tell us to roll around in poop?" Cristina whispered to Jenny. Her BFF scrunched up her nose and nodded. After smearing on dung like it was sunscreen, Subari led the Winx through the jungle. Just as she'd said, evening fell pretty quickly. Nocturnal dinosaurs, and heaps of dragons, came out of hiding and the fairies were relieved they had rubbed their clothes with dirt and feces. Eventually, Subari stopped in front of a small-looking cave.
"We'll spend the night here. Mind you, this isn't my home, just an outpost. If it weren't for you slowmos, Shade and I would've been home in a jiffy."
The Winx looked at the cave and their heart sunk to their stomach. It was pitch-black inside and their imaginations speculated to what was in there, which varied from venomous spiders to trolls and from fairy-eating dragons to a magical portal to the world of Alice in Wonderland. Subari didn't pay attention to the terrified girls and strolled into the dark cave, so the Winx had no other choice than to follow. And down the rabbit hole they went.
