Hermes: It's CORONA TIME!
Apollo: Our sincerest apologies for the wait. Nearly three months, to me at least, is far too long. To save space in our ANs, we have elected to provide a blanket response to all reviews, past, present, and future, that are simply along the lines of "Thank you, it's really good." That response is thus: thank you. Do not take the fact that your reviews aren't being answered in these ANs personally, as we get more reviews we may need to do this to most other reviews as well. Now, on to the other reviews!
Artemis: To , we weren't actually thinking about any comparisons between our Blaze and Lady Jewel, and we just wanted Blister to sound creepy and vaguely evil.
Apollo: She's immune to Starflight's manipulations not because of any special powers or enchanted items, but through an absolute knowledge of herself. Anything even slightly out of character is grounds for suspicion in her eyes.
Hermes: To shirzadym, thanks :)
Apollo: Artemis, want to go into more depth?
Artemis: I hope you like the loophole we used. You were completely right about the minimum time bit, and the spear cannot be broken by any DRAGON other than Tsunami. Marble Orca, if we're being technical, is a dragon-shaped rock, not a dragon. Thanks for the long and well-thought-out review.
Apollo: I do, however, consider Under a War-Torn Sky to be much better than our work, among a couple others in this fandom. Even with author's bias. To Blackberry Avar, don't worry about being three months late, so are we. Sorry about the prophecy, but think about it. We have a dragon who can see the future. It was, in this fandom, considering Moonwatcher and Clearsight, pretty much unavoidable, and I tried to make it good. Sorry about the chess moves as well, I kinda got carried away.
Artemis: Apollo here is disturbingly obsessed with chess.
Apollo: It's meant to be a sort of slice of life, Blaze's mask slipping and Glacier not noticing, but as I said, I got carried away. As for the verbal flaw, the targeted eggs have already been removed from the Royal Hatchery. I'm just going to take a moment to say that the commentary of all you readers is appreciated and cherished.
Hermes: To Trysin, thanks :)
Artemis: *smacks Hermes* What he means to say is, we don't have a document, but we do have three people who are perfectly happy to smack each other upside the head if we get a fact wrong, and we go through the chapter before we post it to make sure it's consistent.
Apollo: I actually replaced Tortoise with the second-in-command we devised for her because I remembered that I'd put her in the Deep Palace with the male eggs during Gill's distraction/Council meeting.
Artemis: I absolutely refused to let Gill die, that bugged me in canon, and we liked the personality we saw in canon flashbacks, so we built on that. We just wanted to show Turtle because they're in his kingdom interacting with his family, but he won't really be relevant until Moon's team comes into play.
Apollo: Finally, the pandemic in the room. This is a really messed up situation that, while it could be a lot better, it could also be a lot worse. Stay at home, stay healthy, and whatever you do, the American federal government is doing a lot worse than you are. Coronavirus briefings are for coronavirus, not Facebook or military anti-narcotics missions. We'll try not to take so long next time, but I have final exams coming up, and I'm the main writer here. After this chapter and the next, we're finally done with the Kingdom of the Sea.
The statue was carved of dark green marble, with garlands of blue and purple plants woven through its horns and wings. Sunny bolted out of the cave, shouting "It's after the eggs!"
She was right. That was the statue from the vision, but where was Tsunami? Starflight flew hurriedly down towards the statue, which had turned and started swimming east as a burly SeaWing ducked behind the waterfall hiding the queen's chambers. Clay followed close behind, and Glory was moving toward the pavilion.
"What's going on?" asked Clay as six armed and armored guards moved to engage the statue.
"Tsunami must have failed! But that doesn't make sense, I didn't see anything about her dying, she's too skilled. We need to stop that thing."
Clay dove at the statue while shouting a war cry. Unfortunately, the shouting distracted the guards, and two of them were struck so hard by Marble Orca's tail that they skipped over the water, screaming all the while. Starflight extended his awareness, landing on a ledge by the waterfall.
Glory was in the pavilion, fast approaching the Council. The two unfortunate guards were unconscious, but still alive. The statue itself had a primitive mind of its own and appeared to be analyzing the fighting style of the four remaining guards. Moving up the tunnel…
"Tsunami! You're alive! What happened, the statue's here and beating four guards at once, plus Clay."
FINALLY! I've been thinking as loud as I could the whole way back! I'll be there in a minute, you'll find out what happened when this is over.
In the time it took for the exchange to happen, another guard had been sent spinning away, bleeding heavily. Clay and the three remaining guards were trying to wrestle Marble Orca to a beach, but it was thrashing hard. Sunny flew over to Starflight.
"If this goes on much longer, I'll have to curse it. Where's Tsunami - ah."
"Any second now…"
Tsunami burst from the water, carrying the blade of the spear she had left with and wearing about half of the light armor she had donned earlier.
"GET BACK HERE, YOU COWARDLY PILE OF ROCKS!"
"She's fine," Sunny commented lightly. Starflight looked into the mind of the statue.
Warning: target approaching.
Memories flashed - disjointed images of Tsunami snarling and a rapid perspective change… as if the viewer had been thrown against a wall.
Engage with caution. Cannot achieve victory with prior four enemies involved. Solution - attack immobile targets. Force enemies into narrow space.
Before Starflight could shout, or even broadcast, a warning, the statue completed a particularly vicious spin, dislodging the SeaWings in the process, and lunged towards the beach. Before Tsunami was halfway to Marble Orca, it rolled in an attempt to crush Clay, forcing him to let go. The statue promptly grabbed him and threw him at Tsunami.
"Blade of Tsunami's spear, be blunt," Sunny incanted quietly.
Clay collided with Tsunami, knocking her into the water. If not for Sunny's foresight, he would surely have been impaled. The statue darted toward the waterfall, but Sunny was already moving to intercept it. Sparks flashed.
Animus magic detected - no dragon could naturally hold their position against that strike. Certainty that SandWing-like dragon is the source - 98.54%. Probability of mobile target (estimation 7 years old) being the source - 1.02%. Probability of unseen source - 0.44%. Attempt lethal blow.
The statue lashed out with its claws, faster than any dragon could have a hope of reacting to, but Sunny was already in motion, grabbing the claw and reaching for Marble Orca's face. Where there had once been two gems serving as eyes, it now had one, likely lost to Tsunami. Almost delicately, Sunny plucked the other gem from its place, throwing it behind her. Of course, the statue did not react to the loss of the eye. It was, after all, an enchanted statue.
Opponent has enhanced reaction time - no. Not reaction, precognition. Target was in motion prior to the attack commencing. Eye lost. Irrelevant. Cover already lost. INCOMING -
Tsunami crashed into the statue, knocking it toward the beach where Clay was just getting up. She got her legs under her, digging into the sand and pushed. Slowly, as dragons began to pour from the pavilion in full armor, Tsunami forced the statue onto the beach.
"Clay, now!"
It was good that Kestrel had beat the knowledge of how to fight well into their skulls, Starflight thought, because that meant that the dragonets knew exactly where to strike to disable an opponent. With a mighty blow, Clay broke off the statue's left wing at the joint. Then the right wing.
Wings lost. Open sea swimming capacity - 2%. Probability of destroying immobile targets - 0.0001%. With generous rounding. What would Orca do?
"You three! Help us hold this thing down!" Tsunami called to the three guards still capable of fighting. Starflight flew down to the beach.
"And where have you been?" Tsunami asked crossly.
"Trying to figure out what makes that thing tick. It has a mind, Tsunami. Orca gave it a mind of its own! It has thoughts! I can sense them!" Starflight whispered excitedly.
Annoyance detected. Capability - 0%. Currently pinned by 5 dragons. More incoming. Situation hopeless. Animus not neutralized. This can't really get worse.
"And what would that accomplish in saving my sisters?" Tsunami asked.
"It doesn't, but I can't do anything else. What happened down there?"
"I'll tell everyone later, but the short version is that I fought it, won as I defined it, and then it reacted… oddly. By which I mean, it started swimming here. It delayed me a bit."
Rather conveniently, Queen Coral chose that moment to land on the beach, flanked by Gill and Anemone. "What is going on here?"
They must have made an odd sight. Four SeaWings and a MudWing pinning a statue, with a small SandWing trying to help them and a NightWing standing awkwardly to the side.
"Hello, Mother!" Tsunami began. "We've caught you the assassin! You know, the one that's been killing my sisters?" She kicked the statue.
"What… is that Orca's statue?"
"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees."
"What is it doing here?" Queen Coral asked imperiously.
"Trying to kill me, Anemone, and our unhatched sisters, Mother."
"That reminds me," one of the guards pinning Marble Orca chipped in. "Your Majesty, your youngest daughters hatched not long ago."
"And you didn't send for me immediately?" Coral exclaimed.
"You were in a Council meeting, Your Majesty. King Gill instructed us to not interrupt you unless we were under attack."
Gill nodded. "I did. Why did you not send anyone to get us? We only noticed the attack because of Tsunami's… war cry."
Tsunami ducked her head… then remembered she was pinning a marble statue, which promptly tried to flip her over. It failed.
"Well, by the time Pelican got us out of the cave, it was already attacking us, and his entrance let it take Swordfish and Bottlenose out of the fight. Do you know if they're dead? They were hit pretty hard," the guard explained, jabbing a claw at Clay.
"They're knocked out," Starflight said.
"Well, that's good. Anyway, Reef is inside with the dragonets, Your Majesty. What would you like us to do with this?"
"Perhaps we could interrogate it?" Blister asked smoothly as she landed on the beach. "You do have an animus dragon to do so with…"
"An excellent idea!" the queen exclaimed. "Anemone, if you would?"
Anemone sighed and nodded. "Statue. I enchant you to obey my commands. You will not attack anyone. You will not attempt to escape. You are bound to my will… and mine alone."
Nothing perceptible happened. However, Starflight could feel the statue's mind rebelling against the compulsion, trying to keep fighting… and failing.
"Who do you obey, statue?"
"You, sister," the statue ground out in the voice of a female SeaWing, perhaps Tsunami's age. Coral gasped.
"Orca?"
Anemone continued on, inexorably. "Who enchanted you?"
"Orca."
"Why?" asked the queen. The statue remained silent.
"Why did Orca enchant you?" Anemone asked.
"I don't know."
"A-ask the statue why it speaks in Orca's voice," Queen Coral commanded, sounding shaken.
"Why do you speak in Orca's voice?"
"I don't know."
"Take your best guess, then."
"She created me. Animus magic affects the soul. Perhaps I contain a fragment of her."
"What was your enchantment?" Blister asked. The statue remained silent. "Well? Answer me!"
The statue smiled.
"It's only bound to answer my questions, Queen Blister. Statue, what was your enchantment?" Anemone said.
"Enchant this statue to kill royal SeaWing heirs, but not me, and to do so undetected whenever possible. It shall know when dragons enter the passageway to the Royal Hatchery, and how many dragons are in the passageway and the Hatchery proper at all times." Marble Orca recited.
"I think that's all, wouldn't you agree, Coral?" Blister asked.
"Yes, it is. Anemone -"
"Wait," Gill said. "Statue, do you know why Orca challenged for the throne?" Coral looked at him questioningly. "Please, humor this old general's sentimental question," Gill said.
The statue did not stay silent. "She thought she could get us out of the war."
"Ah," Gill sighed, "of course. No more questions."
"Anemone, destroy the statue," Queen Coral ordered.
Anemone nodded and raised her talons. "I strip away the enchantments from you, statue. Crumble to dust and be no more."
The statue crumbled to dust and washed away with the waves.
"Tsunami, what in the name of Fathom's animated octopus happened down there?" Gill asked as soon as they were alone. Coral had gone into her quarters to coo over her youngest daughters, Anemone in tow, Blister had gone to see just how flooded her cave was, and the guards had dispersed, leaving the five dragonets and Gill alone.
"I fought the statue, won, and it ran up here. What did you think, it killed me?" Tsunami deadpanned.
"For a minute, yeah," Clay said. "The thing you're supposed to fight shows up out of nowhere, you're not there, and it's going after your sisters? I thought you were dead until you showed up screaming."
"So, again, what. Happened."
"Exactly what I told you, Father. Do you want the blow-by-blow, 'cause that could take a while."
"We have nothing but time, Tsunami. King and general, remember?"
"Alright. So after I left the Summer Palace…"
It was pitch-black in the Royal Hatchery, but to SeaWing eyes, it was merely cast in shades of grey and somewhat blurry, with flashes of color coming from the three eggs when the unhatched princes moved. The room was cavernous, roughly rectangular, with the statue at its center. The guards Tsunami had brought had relieved the prior guards, then by Tsunami's order moved to take up positions flanking the outside entrance of the passageway to the Royal Hatchery, leaving the eldest surviving princess of the SeaWing tribe alone, with only her armor, spear, and an enchanted statue for company. Never mind the fact that she didn't actually know how to use the spear. Not one of her smartest moves, Tsunami reflected ruefully, but an enchanted spear was better than nothing.
"Statue? Assassin? Are you going to kill me?"
The statue didn't move. It was uncomfortably hot.
"I know Orca enchanted you."
Well, not quite, but who else would have enchanted anything?
"I guess I'm just gonna leave, then."
The statue lunged. Tsunami braced herself against the floor, but the force of a solid marble statue traveling at a not-inconsiderable speed bowled her over, and she kicked the statue up before it could capitalize. The statue pushed off of Tsunami, flipping in the water, and dug its claws into the ceiling.
Obviously, it would try to crush Tsunami. She grinned, braced the spear against the floor, for all the good that would do against an opponent that didn't live, and backed away -
The spear shattered as the statue came down like an avalanche, encasing the statue in a thick layer of ice and bouncing it back up.
What.
Shards of stone flew everywhere, and Tsunami closed her eyes, feeling shrapnel skid across her scales. After a second, she looked. The spear shaft was destroyed, but the blade was intact. It had but skidded off the statue's neck, deflected by the smooth marble and carving a line from its throat along most of its body. The statue must not have struck head-on, and instead crushed the shaft of the spear, sending the blade spinning sluggishly through the water. Tsunami grabbed it.
How? It was supposed to be unbreakable to any dragon - oh, right, statue. Cracks were forming in the ice. Tsunami glanced at the door - the ice shattered - the statue lunged again. Tsunami snarled and grabbed it. Without a pedestal or a ceiling to push off of, it was limited to whatever force it could generate with a good wingbeat, and with the water slowing it down, the impact was easy to negate. The princess' talons bit into the stone beneath her, and she jumped over the statue, which hastily sank its own talons into the floor - effortlessly, Tsunami noted with envy, there were evidently benefits to talons made of hard stone - and, just as Tsunami had hoped, bent over backwards as it flipped Tsunami back down. As she made contact with the floor, she pulled, the stone beneath the statue gave way, being ripped upwards with a mighty crack, and Tsunami let go. The statue flew towards the wall, and Tsunami was already jumping after it.
The statue struck the wall with a muted boom. It looked up just in time for an enraged princess to latch onto its face, successfully removing an eye before the statue threw her off. The assassin jumped forward, grabbing Tsunami and advancing inexorably toward the opposite wall. Tsunami reversed her grip on the blade of her destroyed spear, stabbing down again and again with enough power to chip the marble, but the statue was undeterred. It reached the wall, pinned Tsunami between the wall and floor, and swiped for her throat.
Tsunami was pinned. Statue holding her in one direction, wall and floor in two more…
It should have pinned her in a corner.
In one fluid motion Tsunami twisted and lunged forward and upward. The statue managed to keep its grip on the warrior, eliciting a grunt of pain from the princess as her foreleg was twisted with the motion, but lost its grip on the floor, again, sending both combatants spinning back toward the center of the room.
Keeping it away from the princes was easily accomplished, it wasn't interested in them, but it was strong. Maybe in open air it would be more easily overwhelmed, but even with the situational awareness beaten into Tsunami's head by Kestrel, it was painfully clear that she couldn't win. Her blade couldn't damage her opponent in any meaningful way, and as strong as she was, that meant nothing without leverage, which the statue kept denying her. She had gotten one or two good hits in, but the failsafe was triggered and she hadn't taken advantage of it. Time to skedaddle - hopefully the enchantment wouldn't let it leave the hatchery.
Tsunami managed to twist out of the grip of the statue, accompanied by the sound of her armor breaking and ripping off her foreleg, aimed for the door, and pushed off, rocketing toward the exit. Risking a glance behind her, she saw that it was still spinning, but was quickly getting its motion under control. She yanked open the door.
The statue beat its wings once. Twice. It wasn't stopping, it was getting closer -
Tsunami spun out of the way, letting the statue crash outside the Royal Hatchery, but it had managed to snag another part of Tsunami's armor. Thankfully, the back of the armor ripped off easily, having been subjected to the force of a diving statue. It got up, snarled at Tsunami, and…
Turned and started moving away as fast as it could. What was it doing, the witness was back here - the Summer Palace. It was going after Tsunami's sisters.
Blade ready, armor on her underbelly and three limbs, Tsunami set off down the passageway. There could be no delay. She had to get into Starflight's range before the statue arrived at the Summer Palace.
Sparing a glance for the two guards (conscious, but to bring them would be an unacceptable delay), Tsunami left the palace as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, she didn't know the place well and had to stop to ask for directions once from someone who, by his patterns, was one of Tsunami's brothers (perhaps waiting for the guards would have been a good idea), but all in all, she made good time out of the palace. The statue was equally unfamiliar with the palace's layout, and it didn't know where the ocean currents were. What a stroke of luck! Tsunami angled toward the current that would speed her to the Summer Palace -
So did the statue. It must have seen her leave the Deep Palace. By all the snakes…
And so it was that Tsunami found herself chasing a statue to the Summer Palace. Her superior swimming technique (not by much) was countered by the statue's brute strength, as any time Tsunami got too close it would beat its wings again and Tsunami's rhythm was disturbed by the water moving significantly slower than she was. It accelerated.
STARFLIGHT! STARFLIGHT! STARFLIGHT!
Marble Orca was getting better at swimming. Now, with skill it had not possessed at the beginning of the chase, and with its strength exceeding even Tsunami's own, it pulled further and further away. Not far to the Summer Palace, but the gap was widening. The armor was flapping around, not as much as it would have been were it not still around Tsunami's left foreleg, but enough to cause drag. Worse, she could feel the armor around that leg begin to part - it couldn't stand up to the water pulling at it in its damaged state. Tsunami pulled her legs in even further, blade flush against her underbelly, but even then, the statue kept pulling ahead. Thirty dragon-lengths - forty - fifty - gone.
STARFLIGHT! ANSWER ME, IN FATHOM'S NAME!
She kept swimming. Just get into range… couldn't be much farther…
Tsunami had been swimming for what felt like days, but she knew it could only have been a few minutes.
"Tsunami! You're alive! What happened, the statue's here and beating four guards at once, plus Clay."
FINALLY! I've been thinking as loud as I could the whole way back! I'll be there in a minute, you'll find out what happened when this is over.
Took him long enough. Tsunami was pretty sure he'd sensed the NightWings from much further away when Morrowseer had kidnapped him, he sure didn't seem surprised… but if the statue was already there and wreaking havoc, it was understandable that he'd be a bit distracted. And if the statue was there, it was a reasonable assumption that she was dead, if a bit hurtful. The spiral rocks came into view. Tsunami ducked into the tunnel, swam hurriedly past the breathing holes, and pushed off the bottom of the tunnel at the end, transitioning seamlessly into flight as she twisted to face the queen's quarters - and, she was satisfied to note, the statue.
"GET BACK HERE, YOU COWARDLY PILE OF ROCKS!"
"And you know the rest."
Gill blinked. "Somehow, I was expecting more chaos."
"Did anything happen with Webs and Riptide?" Sunny asked.
"Yeah, I convinced Coral to hold off on executing Webs and hand over Riptide to Porpoise - the dragon in charge of justice," Gill added, seeing the confused looks of… everyone else in the cave.
"Alright," Tsunami said. "Is that everything we need to discuss?"
Starflight nodded. "Yes."
"Soldiers!"
Crocodile stood on a beach, a force of SkyWings and MudWings fifty strong arrayed before her. A strike force - not meant for pitched battle, but that wasn't why they were there, on an island more than a day's flight from the mainland. Beside each MudWing lay two logs and five dragonflame cacti. The goal, of course, was to reach the Summer Palace undetected, which seemed to be going well, to drop fifty burning logs and over a hundred cactus firebombs, and fly like the Darkstalker himself were after them.
"Queen Burn handpicked us for this critical mission. See that island over there? On the horizon?" Crocodile pointed at the island that she and Burn had picked out - the most likely location of the Summer Palace. "Until now, I didn't tell you why we're out here. Couldn't take the risk of a spy somehow finding out what we were doing. I'll tell you why now. Through my work infiltrating the Talons of Peace, I found a lead as to the location of the Summer Palace. With the queen's map, we determined that the most likely location for it, based on my intel, is over there! Merely two or three hours from here!"
They were on the major island just along the dragon's tail from the target that lay along the direct path from the Diamond Spray Delta. Through her desperate effort, they had arrived in record time - from the time Crocodile had reported to Burn, barely a full day had passed, the journey that would ordinarily take three days cut down sixfold. Queen Burn had chosen the fastest MudWings in order to keep up with the force of SkyWings, and they had not stopped to rest, nor eat, nor drink from the morning until the evening on which they arrived at their current location. For a night they rested, and now they would continue at a regular pace until arriving at the palace. They needed all their energy for the escape, after all.
"In that palace are the Dragonets of Destiny!" Crocodile paused to allow the strike force to jeer. "Furthermore, as we were leaving, you may have seen the queen stop me and tell me something. That something is this - Blister was spotted heading north! She might be in the palace! And that's not all…" Crocodile grinned. "The Dragonets of Destiny were bringing the esteemed general and king Gill back to the SeaWings with them! SkyWings! This is your chance to avenge the wrong done unto Queen Scarlet! MudWings, for the honor of Queen Moorhen! We fly!"
As the soldiers gathered their logs and cacti, Crocodile reared up. "If we kill even one of our six targets, it doesn't matter if we all die here, either Blister's dead or the prophecy is broken! Gill is a bonus, but if you see a chance to kill Blister, take it! I'm going after the Dragonets of Destiny!"
The soldiers rose into the air, a cry issuing from each throat.
"FOR BURN!"
