Hello again! This week, Harpy is not amused by the concept of airships and Gigas makes a friend.

95. Gravity

For a day that had started with a narrow escape from one of the awful metal machines, Harpy thought it was turning out surprisingly well. It was... pleasant, to be around Twiggy without fighting. She was a lot like the other Beacon dragons. Softer, somehow, than anyone else she'd ever met.

"The transports really aren't so bad," Twiggy said, as they trotted along between Ao Guang and Freya. "They don't smell very nice, but there's more space than you'd think."

Harpy bared her teeth. "Flying is better."

"But the Council have guns," Freya reminded her.

"Flying is better."

Guang, apparently bored by the debate, pounced on Twiggy and tackled her to the ground. Harpy edged away—he was nice, and he played with Gigas, but she didn't like his smell. Too much like the place Pyrrha had called the ocean, where it seemed like the whole world had turned to water. Harbinger had been like that, too. All dampness. She supposed she'd get used to it eventually, since he wasn't actually wet to the touch.

She had to get used to it, she reminded herself. For Pyrrha.

Freya was easier. She slept almost as much as Brand did, and would probably sleep even more if it wasn't for how much energy her rider had. Once Harpy had even seen Gigas curled up under one of her wings.

Her tail twitched nervously. They were going to see him, now, and she'd decided to finally try and talk to him. Talking had worked with Twiggy, after all.

He was asleep in his stall when they got there. The little door the riders had put in had gotten too small for him, and they couldn't make it bigger without letting the Lieutenant through, too. Pyrrha had to unlock the door and let him out. He came slowly, his tail dragging behind him, and wouldn't look at them.

Ao Guang gave him a nudge and a playful lick. Twiggy tried to tempt him out by batting him gently with one paw. Freya yawned and said, "You can come back and sleep whenever you want. We'll open the door for you."

But it was only when the Lieutenant patted him on the back and said, "Go on," that he finally ambled outside. He squinted in the sunshine and curled up in a ball. It took the combined efforts of Twiggy and Guang to coax him back to his feet and out onto the grounds.

Harpy lost the tail game for the first time since she'd first learned it—she was too distracted trying to think of what to say to Gigas. Talking was... hard.

He seemed to get a little life back when Guang started play-wrestling with him, and a little more when Twiggy let him ride on her back while she raced around the field. But eventually he retreated from the action, his chest heaving.

Harpy approached him. He looked up at her, his violet eyes wide, his neck extending towards her until he remembered that he was supposed to be angry and looked away. She sat next to him and tentatively wound her tail around him.

"Sorry," she said.

He pawed at her tail. "Why don't you like the Lieutenant?"

Her ears went back, and she shuffled her front paws in discomfort. "Have you seen the big tent?"

Twiggy, who was playing with Freya a few feet away, turned towards them. "Um," she said tentatively, like she was afraid of starting an argument. "Isn't he a little too young for that?"

Gigas let out an indignant twang. "I fought all of you!" he burst out. "I'm not a little hatchling anymore!"

Harpy snorted. She wasn't even half a year old, and he barely came up to the top of her forelegs.

"I'm not!"

"Harpy?" Twiggy's tail started to twitch nervously.

"I was smaller. Better to know."

"Know what?" Gigas whined.

"They make hatchlings there," Harpy explained. "Some live. You, Flux, Harbinger. Me. Many more die."

His ears flattened. "What's that got to do with the Lieutenant?"

"He helps. Kills many to have us. We're... tools. Used. Bad." Harpy looked away, off into the distance where the shadow of Atlas had fallen across the tundra. She could just see a hint of trees on the horizon.

"I'm not a tool." Gigas put his paws up on her side. "And Ursan doesn't do that!"

She sighed. "I can't... tell. Have to see."

"You can't hurt him." Gigas snorted mulishly and bit her to get her attention again. He already had it—it was just hard to look at him while she was talking about this.

"...I won't," she promised. "Not here. Only if he hurts more eggs."

"Not ever!"

"No." Harpy's tail started to twitch. "Won't let them hurt."

"But..." Gigas whined and butted his head against her legs. "I don't want to have to hate you."

She put a paw down on his back. "You don't."

"But—but I have to if you hurt him."

Harpy didn't know what to say to that.

Twiggy poked her head between them, her ears twitching hesitantly. "How about... you promise to help keep the Lieutenant from hurting any eggs. And Harpy can promise not to hurt him, even if she has to stop him?"

Harpy considered that. "He's smaller now," she decided. "Easier not to hurt."

"Oh." Gigas perked up. "Okay! If there really is a bad tent, we'll just tell them to get rid of it and then we won't have to fight."

Twiggy winced. Harpy just sighed and tugged him a little closer, tucked in safe against her flank.

"And you have to promise the same thing about Sienna."

Even Guang and Freya looked around at that. Twiggy froze with one paw in the air, her eyes wide.

"Harpy?" Gigas prodded her with his nose.

"...No." She moved away from him. "No. Won't hurt Sienna."

"Okay! Then we can get Flux and Harbinger and... um... I guess Harbinger would want us to be nice to Corsac, even if he's kind of mean. And Fennac is way too nice to hurt eggs! And Hazel isn't Brand's rider but he likes him, so we can't hurt him either."

Harpy's ears drooped.

"Try," she promised, and nuzzled little Gigas between the ears.

May lay on her back on the cot someone had dragged into her cell, listening dully to the sound of dragons playing outside. The stall smelled like dragons, too. There was no escaping it.

She turned on her side and buried her head in her arms. Would she be out there with Flurry right now, if she'd gotten into Beacon instead? But he'd been a Shade egg. He would have gone to someone else, and probably ended up in the pits.

Was there anything she could have done to save them? Or was she just useless?

She stuck a fingernail into her mouth, even though it was already bitten to the quick. The din outside peaked as the crowd of dragons entered the barn. There was a creak and a frenzy of barking as the stall next door opened, and its occupant bolted inside to greet his rider. May knew next to nothing about him, except that his voice made her think he must be the size of a grizzly bear, but she envied him.

Pain flared up in her finger. She swore and shook it, scattering a couple drops of blood on the floor. There was a confused twang from the other stall. Then a scrabbling sound against the wall.

"Gigas," the man sighed. "Leave it. It's just the human girl."

A thump. Then silence... a quiet rattling. May got to her feet and stared at the wall. Could he get in? There was a grate there, for dragons to communicate with one another, but the lever to open it was at the top of the wall, out of reach for a dragonet who couldn't fly.

"Gigas?" A scraping sound and another thud. "What the hell are you...?"

Click.

May jumped as the grate slammed open. Then a thick, blocky snout poked inside, and Gigas barked a greeting.

"Hi," she said, still slightly stunned. She glanced at the lever again. Maybe it was lower in the other stalls?

He twanged and, by the sound of it, wagged his tail. May knelt down to pet him, and he licked her bleeding finger. "Thanks," she choked out. Gigas yelped in alarm as the first tears started to fall. He squirmed, like he was trying to push his head further inside.

"No!" May and the big man blurted at the same time. He stopped. Whined.

"You'll get stuck," his rider grunted.

"I'm fine," she lied, but she bent a little closer to let him lick her face.

It would be a severe understatement to say that Roman didn't want to go back. He'd made his position very clear by sputtering and signing more and more aggressively—his version of shouting. Neo rolled her eyes and repeated herself for the third time.

"I told you, we're wanted by the Council. And they just lost the fight in Atlas. We already helped Ironwood's people once, I don't think it'll be that hard to wheedle a pardon out of him after this is all over."

"And if they lose—"

Neo smacked his hands, cutting him off mid-sentence. "If they lose, how long do you think it'll take for one of them to mention us by name? And once the Council cracks down, they'll have plenty of time to look for us. Not taking a side really isn't an option."

Roman groaned. "Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?" he said—out loud, this time. When he was annoyed enough he sometimes started fumbling signs. Probably because his instinct when he was irritated was to wave his arms around in frustration, like he was doing now.

"More or less dangerous than having the Council's full attention on all the stragglers who got away? They need to squash this hard if they want to stay in power afterward."

"...I hate when you're right."

She put on a sympathetic pout. "Life must be so hard for you."

That had been back when the incident at Atlas Dragonry was all over the news, a few days ago. It had taken that long to make their way back since, ironically, it was way slower traveling with a dragon than without, unless you were way out in the wilds. It didn't help that Roman had never tried to sneak around with one before. He still managed to find a shop owner up in Mantle who owed him a favor, and let them stow away in a shipment of flour for an absurd amount of lien. Once they were in the shadow of the floating city, they just needed to get aboard a shuttle without anyone noticing.

...Well, without anyone who wasn't on the shuttle noticing. The rest was probably a lost cause. So they waited until the middle of the night, and Neo slipped Whisper in through the back. She emerged in a very quiet passenger car.

Quiet, but not quite empty.

"It's the rogues!" someone whispered to his neighbor. A man near the back edged towards the door, only to freeze when Neo wagged a finger at him. And an old woman sighed as though the conductor had just said there would be a small traffic delay.

"Get on with it," she grumbled, waving a cane at them. "The pilot's up front. I'll fly you if he won't." She was wearing what looked like a top-of-the-line pair of prosthetic eyes and a grin that even Neo wanted nothing to do with.

Fortunately Roman could fly a shuttle, and respond to the air chatter well enough that no one thought to raise the alarm. They landed a few blocks away from the dragonry and absconded into the night. From there it was mostly just a matter of moving quickly. There was never a time when all of Atlas was asleep, and they hadn't even gone a full block before they could hear police sirens and the leathery snap of dragon wings in the distance. The Council had upped security on the dragonry to a truly absurd degree... but they apparently still hadn't tried another raid.

Interesting.

Whisper carried them the last block, up and over the walls of the school. She fluttered her wings, yawned, and started plodding towards the school itself. It didn't take very long before they were spotted—Ragnar himself poked his head up from behind one of the buildings and let out a bellow.

"Hello there!" Roman called out, waving his hat over his head. "Is Jimmy home?"

The wind and water hybrid was dead. Watts still wasn't sure why—maybe some defect he hadn't noticed initially, or just an infection from its burned paws. It probably wouldn't have been able to carry him anyway, but it had still been his best chance among the hybrids.

He'd assumed he'd be able to simply fly out on one of the pit dragons, and hadn't worried. And yet somehow the creatures had managed to throw a wrench in the works without being able to so much as twitch their blasted tails. They were growing increasingly erratic and unreliable—but not due to any fault in their programming. No, the problem was entirely physical.

"Damn you," he hissed under his breath, as Dusk retched up its meal for the third time in a row. Half the pit dragons had what looked an awful lot like a draconic version of the flu, complete with horrifying quantities of phlegm. They were losing weight at an alarming rate, and a few had developed odd twitches that were, as far as he could tell, completely involuntary.

Perhaps, given time, he could fine-tune the devices so that they could regulate digestion and the sorts of movements that were normally unconscious. Watts did not have time.

"Again?"

He tried not to jump too obviously. Tyrian had crept up behind him—the man had an alarming habit of doing just that, and to make it even worse his hybrid's eyes glowed in the dark. He stroked Dusk's neck and cooed softly.

Watts cleared his throat stiffly. "If you'll excuse me. I have another attempt at feeding to make."

"Hm." Tyrian's eyes flashed. "You do love your machines. Almost as much as I love my goddess." Ozone chirped and bumped its head against his shins.

Oh, hell. The last thing Watts wanted was a conversation with Tyrian.

"Yes, yes." He tried to chivy the man away from Dusk.

A toothy grin flashed in the growing dark. "You like to dissect the things you love."

Watts chose not to respond to that. This was apparently the incorrect move—Tyrian leaned in to whisper in his ear, "I prefer to dissect the things I hate."

And with that, and an unsettling giggle, he was off into the dark. Watts almost relaxed, until a distant yellow glint warned him that Tyrian might well still be watching. He swore again, under his breath, and glared at the shivering pit dragon.

He could probably still ride it... but he wanted something fast and reliable. It would be one thing to lose a few dragons to Cinder's inevitable chase, but Watts himself wasn't so expendable.

Letting out a frustrated huff, Watts massaged his temples. The enormous wind dragon had been one of his best options for flight, but he was starting to think he'd have better luck with one of the younger ones. Riptide was having a similar problem with keeping food down, but Tallow and Pearl were both still in decent health. It seemed that the younger the dragon was when it was introduced to the devices, the better it held up. He hadn't had any such problems in his hybrids.

He found Tallow on the other side of the camp, crouched on top of a small heap of rocks, its eyes closed. It was still thinner than he'd like, but he could hardly afford to be picky. Watts glanced over his shoulder and, when neither he nor the pit dragon detected anything amiss, withdrew a little vial from one of his sleeves. It cast a cherry red glow onto the forest floor.

"Desperate times," he muttered, and injected the fire dragon.

After all, if this didn't work, there was always Pearl.