Disclaimer:
I don't own anything to do with the Harry Potter universe, J. K Rowling has that honor. I also don't own anything to do with Temeraire, that wonderful Naomi Novik does. I'm just borrowing the verses for a bit.
Chapter 3: Trouble comes calling.
Part Three.
Harry shot out of the water like a breaching whale with a couple of powerful flaps of his own wings - his longer body making the transition from water to air a bit harder to do than Temeraire's more graceful one - and quickly started chasing after his fearful little brother. Harry could feel the fear and anger, even a little bit of humiliation mixing in, just rolling off his brother like a bad smell; it was fairly distracting as it only added onto the already quite busy emotions churning in elder dragon at the moment. Due to this he almost missed another good attempt at grounding him by the Anglewing, and it was only his fast thinking once the beast suddenly came into view that let him dodge the attack at all. Harry flared his wings to almost stop entirely in mid air, allowing the other now confused dragon to pass him, and instead latched on with his teeth to the tail of the Anglewing as the limb flew past his head.
The sudden taste of blood was startling at first but oh so satisfying once his brain recognized the successful counter attack; the scream the other let out at the action magnified the feeling ten fold. He let go and the poor Anglewing tucked it's tail a bit in a weak bid to protect it from further harm and banked hard to the left as if to get behind Harry again.
'Oh no you don't!' the black dragon thought with a mental snarl and whipped around, top half first, his hind end following seconds later so that he appeared to be an agitated cobra rearing and ready for a fight. It was hard to keep his wings flapping and still control his hands and feet for battle, his brain kept trying to use the wing paws as secondary hands, forgetting that he wasn't on the ground or in the water and needed them moving differently to keep him aloft.
Harry brought both his fore paws up to meet the slightly bigger fore paws of the Anglewing in a wrestling match, his hind legs were already kicking out to do damage with the longer claws on his feet. But before their bodies could actually meet the Anglewing struck with their teeth so fast that Harry almost missed the movement; the sharp sting on his neck proved that the other had landed a rather good blow. Another jarring blow was dealt with the impact of fore paws to fore paws when Harry felt his left wrist give horribly with a sick pop, and pain lanced up to his shoulders and neck; now not only did he have some metal stuck in his wrist, it was now possibly broken as well. And he had a smarting bite mark on his neck and another new one on his chest just now; the damn thing was as fast as a snitch!
Their tails lashed the air viciously, helping to spin the two around while they flapped their wings like mad to stay in the air. Feet from both combatants kicked out hard at the other and teeth flashed quickly in an attempt to grab at any part that was possible to reach. Many times these attacks missed their intended mark now that the dragons were more invested in steering, each trying to pull the other around to a better attack position with their locked fore paws. The Anglewing bluffed a move to the right and Harry dodged that, only to wind up in the path of the teeth again, this time the other managed to latch onto the base of Harry's neck where it met his shoulder on the left side and bit down hard, pulling a loud yell of pain from the dark dragon.
'I'm apparently pretty rubbish at this dragon combat business. Definitely going to recruit Temeraire for some mock battles once we get out of here and heal up.'
The Anglewing's Captain was trying to aim his pistol around his dragon's neck at Harry's face, probably hoping to hit an eye, but the man was being thrown about too much to take the shot and risk possibly missing and hitting someone else or wasting a round. He eventually gave up and shouted up at the Parnassian as it circled by.
"Get some crew on him, quickly now!"
Harry snapped his head back and saw the Parnassian Captain nod and turn to give orders to the group the Parnassian had pulled out of the water. The poor sods were still dripping wet and were not having very good luck in moving about on the slick dragon hide.
Another sharp pain on his chest served to remind Harry that he was still in the middle of a fight and that it was quite stupid of him to take his eyes off of the foe he literally had in hand.
With a massive grunt of pain, Harry groaned as he flapped hard and used his longer wings to turn the Anglewing around, blocking the drop from the Parnassian's back with the other dragon so the crew had to either abort or get a nasty landing at an unexpected angle. They chose to abort.
"Go get the other!" came the shout from the Captain on the Anglewing and Harry wondered if this one was the senior Captain of the group with all the orders he was throwing about.
"Let go you little shit!" Harry barked in heavily accented English, turning his teeth to the left wing joint where it connected to near the shoulder area of Anglewing, swiping his tail barbs at the other dragon's belly and leaving three long, painful looking bloody streaks from chest to vent. To it's credit, although it did let go of his chest and cry out in pain, jerking terribly from the bite it took as well, it didn't release his paws or try to pull away. A sharp scream of pain from Temeraire yanked Harry's eyes from his foe once more to see what was happening to his little brother.
At the sight of the Parnassian trying to hold a bloody and wriggling Temeraire in all four of it's massive paws and cart him and his Captain off to wherever the English were parked right now, Harry felt something deep in his chest rumble. Turning his head back to the Anglewing with an angry snarl, he let the rumbling feeling surge up into his throat but it caught painfully and stalled near the base of his neck for a second or two before it finally popped, releasing the pressure and leaking out of his now clinched teeth in a long and deadly hiss of hot air. The hiss in turn gave way to another rumbling wave from deep within - his belly this time - which rushed quickly up and then out in a form of just over a cup's worth of hot but not boiling water.
But that wasn't what shocked both Harry and the Anglewing he was fighting. No, it was when Harry almost instinctively rubbed the two prongs on the roof of his mouth with his barbed tongue and ignited the water into a sizzling bolt of near purple lightning!
With a loud crack like a magnified gunshot it seared hot and terrifying, slithering from his gaping maw like a lazy serpent and then forking into many long fingers of bright angry death as it sped toward the enemy. The impact was just as harsh as the sound of ignition had been and the bolt quickly crawled all over the closest part of the Anglewing which just so happened to be it's very unprotected face. Through the blinding initial flash Harry couldn't actually see the damage done by the attack, but he could certainly hear and smell it; flesh sizzled and popped like meat on a fire, a few wet pops sounded as well, and Harry had a horrible feeling those might have been the other dragon's eyes and mouth.
The poor Anglewing howled and thrashed in agony for a short moment, seizing strongly in place as if stuck on an electric fence before a group of soft pops and louder sizzling caused it to suddenly go limp, death frozen paws still locked on Harry's as it plummeted down into the water below like a discarded stone. Harry twisted his fore paws free from the still clinched paws of his enemy with great difficulty, further injuring his left wrist, and hovered in place. The smell of cooked flesh hung heavy in the air now and Harry felt his stomach turn over at the thought of what had just occurred. Looking down at the point of impact, Harry saw the Anglewing wasn't moving not even a twitch, it's head was under the water and the Captain on it's back was laying down so their hands could rub it's neck and shoulders as if trying to give comfort. Though whether that comfort was for the dragon or the Captain Harry didn't know and really didn't care to. He couldn't see the damage he had done to the other's face but was sure the eyes and mouth at least had been fried by that close encounter with a super charged thunderbolt.
'It can't have survived that blast and if it did...well it won't be alive much longer with it's head under like that' Harry thought, still hovering for a moment more over the scene to make sure there was no chance of it coming back to attack him.
The Reaper, the one who lost his Captain to Captain Laurence's pistol shot, was still sitting in the water, now gaping up at Harry in terror. As soon as it noticed Harry's eyes fall on it, the dragon started to herd it's crew behind the wings, which were raised straight up in the air now, like shields to protect the little humans on it's back from whatever the hell that was. The other Reaper was no where to be seen and most of the people were no longer in the water. Swallowing hard, the black dragon wheeled about to follow the Parnassian, quickly darting his eyes around for the other Reaper as he pushed his body to go faster.
A loud dragon battle cry from above had Harry rolling over swiftly to expose his underside to the attacker so that he might try and use his hind paws to catch the diving Reaper in the chest. This was mostly in the hopes of not letting those claws anywhere near his own chest or neck which was already so heavily abused, but partly it was to keep anyone who might try and jump dragon from making a safe landing on Harry's unprotected back. Hissing menacingly at his new opponent, Harry rumbled again, making sure it was from deep within that he pulled from instead of midway like the first failed attempt; that catch in his chest and throat had hurt!
The other dragon didn't go through with the collision though and instead pulled back to make sure it stayed well out of Harry's claw range, forcing the black dragon to roll the right way up or else loose his position in the air. Already he had dropped a few yards because the other dragon hadn't made contact so Harry had been left on his back awkwardly pumping his wings the wrong way in anticipation of having to counter the other's downward wing thrusts like he had with the Anglewing.
'Made me look a right fool there for a moment' he mused, rotating his head around to keep the Reaper in sight for his lightning strike.
Harry was really hoping to pull quite a bit of water up for another fairly good sized lightning bolt, but not very much came to the dragon's great dismay; obviously he uses whatever he consumes as fuel and as he hadn't had a drink of water in hours, there wasn't much in his belly right now to draw from. It was enough to send a little crackling finger out toward the Reaper. The other dragon's eyes grew wide with fright and it quickly dodged away with a fear filled cry, only getting some minor burns on the right wing from where the lightning had splashed almost harmlessly instead of taking it point blank in the chest as Harry had intended.
Harry could hear the Reaper's Captain howling at his dragon to head back, where they were suppose to be heading Harry didn't know, but it was obvious from the way the man's voice trembled that it wasn't meant as an order to return to the combat.
Satisfied that the Reaper would keep it's distance now if not leave altogether, Harry dipped low over the ocean surface and scooped up a few mouth fulls of water as he flew, swallowing quickly to give himself some ammo for the face off he was about to have with that big brute who still held his brother prisoner.
It didn't take long before he spotted them up ahead and took even less time for him to catch up to them due to Temeraire's constant fight for freedom slowing the Parnassian down tremendously.
The near pure black dragon was struggling violently against his mighty attacker, half slipping free multiple times and getting ripped up for his trouble before being caught fast in the strong paws of the much bigger dragon. Temeraire kept juggling Captain Laurence between his hands to keep the crew on the belly and chest rigging of the big beast from getting a clear shot, and he even took to swiping at his own rigging with his feet and free hand in a sad attempt of removing the crews now embedded there. But he was growing very tired and obviously didn't want to put his Captain in danger so the hand not holding Captain Laurence wasn't doing much good. Quite a few of the men on Temeraire's own weak chest rigging were trying to hang onto the bits still attached while avoiding his attacks, and looking to be successfully wrestling Captain Laurence from the almost sobbing black dragon.
'That will not do' Harry pushed his wings faster and darted up under Temeraire, his brother's eyes snapping to him as the bigger black and gray dragon started to pull ahead. He reached out toward where the men were climbing back onto the chest rigging of the Parnassian - pulling a panicking Captain Laurence with them - and cried out in French once Harry was more in front of him and could see where he was pointing "Laurence! They have my Captain!"
Harry flapped his tiring wings a little more to get his shoulders right even with both Temeraire and the Parnassian's chests, which gave his head a perfect shot of the whole of the Parnassian's neck base.
"Captain Laurence! Drop!" Harry shouted to him in French, trusting the man knew enough of the language by now with all of them having been tutoring him in the basics since he hatched Temeraire. The man kicked out at the knee of one of his jailers, and used the back of his hand to smack another behind him in the face. It wasn't much, but they did loose their grip for a second, which was just long enough for Laurence to jump. The crazy man started to sky dive but was saved from death by splatter by one of Harry's feet snatching him by the arm, surely pulling it out of socket from the yell of pain the man gave out.
"Oh do be careful!" Temeraire screamed. Harry ignored him and re-positioned Captain Laurence to be held by both feet and then lifted his head again to focus on the neck and chest of the Parnassian. Again he heaved, the rumbling moving up to his mouth, and Harry made sure it was a small amount so as not to waste it or possibly overcharge it and hit Temeraire as well. The bolt crackled out, just as large as the first one and hit the started Parnassian in the chest. It reflexively let go of Temeraire to try and claw off the lightning moving over it's wet body, the burns were minor on such a large dragon, but it didn't immediately shake it off.
"OH! That hurt!" he bellowed pulling away from Harry and a tired but delighted Temeraire so that he could see the situation better, now watching Harry's mouth with a weary sort of air about him. But there was also fascination; they had probably never heard of a dragon who could spit lightning. Indeed, Harry wasn't sure if any dragons here COULD spit lightning or if this was just his thing.
'It doesn't matter either way. The gift is just plain wicked and I'm definitely going to abuse it later when I'm healthier. After all, as a great man once said; What's the point of being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?'
Harry whirled around and sped off in the direction of the last known location of the French fleet, calling back in French to his flagging brother while still keeping a cautious eye on the Parnassian who was following behind them eagerly.
"Temeraire, come quickly! The ships will protect us! They have a place to rest on them!"
Temeraire made a noise that might have been acknowledgment or could have been a noise of confusion with how out of it he looked. But at least the other was following Harry like a duckling trails after it's mother, even if he was doing it very poorly. Captain Laurence was shouting now, sometimes at Temeraire, sometimes at Harry, and sometimes at the Parnassian; what exactly the man was saying Harry didn't know, but he was in perfect form; his anger could almost be felt as a physical thing through Harry's feet.
"Julien, I am ever so glad that you have learned your trick, and I would like to see you do it again sometime. But can we rest now please? My wings hurt" Temeraire said weakly through harsh breaths. Harry glanced back and noticed his brother's wing beats were starting to stutter horribly. The right wing was looking savaged from either claw or tooth marks near the wrist, while the left looked to be mostly untouched but it too was flapping oddly. Temeraire's wings were loosing synchronization and very soon he was going to wind up in the water again, only this time he would be very easy prey for the Parnassian.
Speaking of the beast, Harry pulled his eyes back to the large shape still following them, though the other dragon was keeping well away from Harry's range of attack. Not that the other knew what Harry's range was, it looked like he was assuming Harry had the same range as a fire breather. Harry didn't even know what his range was so he seriously doubted the Parnassian actually did unless they were familiar with Harry's breed and it was a well known thing for them to spit lightning or something like it.
"Keep flying this way, do not deviate. I will chase him off" He commanded, Temeraire was too tired and hurt to object, though he did take Captain Laurence back from Harry as the elder handed the still shouting man over.
"Laurence, Laurence did you see? Julien can make thunderbolts!" Harry heard Temeraire exclaim in as much excitement as he could muster in his exhaustion.
The Captain's reply was lost to the wind as once Harry was sure that both Temeraire and his Captain were on there way to safety, he flew hard toward the Parnassian, his own weakly flapping wings screamed in protest of the treatment. The Parnassian's eyes bulged and his crew started shouting at each other as soon as Harry had started in their direction. The other dragon began to turn away as if to go around and continue on course after Temeraire, that is until Harry pulled up sharply to sail clean over the much bigger dragon. 'There's no way I'm going to do much damage to him at my size, but I can hurt his crew at least'
He heaved and coughed, his tired form only just managing to bring anything up, sending a bolt of sizzling lightning soaring down to the unprotected back of the Parnassian. The brute rolled at the last minute but his wet left wing caught the crackling attack, and the light crawled again over him and all over the unfortunate people on that side of him. The men howled in pain, many dancing in place, unable to move away because they were evidently belted onto the harness. Some went limp, others just collapsed but still moved about weakly.
Time seemed to speed up unrealistically to Harry's mind as he watched the Captain near the Parnassian's neck raise his arms to face level, and Harry heard the rifle report at the same time he felt his left eyebrow ignite in fiery pain as it split open and gushed blood down that side of his face. 'Damn it! Too slow!' he berated himself while spinning away from another couple of rifle shots from the other crew members who were able to shoot.
The Parnassian at least had finally decided it didn't want anything more to do with that 'nasty lightning spitting monster and rushed off back to the previous battle zone where Temeraire had been resting not long ago, maybe to check on it's wing mates. Harry circled for a long while in the area to make sure the large dragon did indeed actually leave and not just head out for a little ways and then come about again when he figured Harry wasn't looking. Harry didn't know how long he glided in that loose circle, watching the Parnassian go from a large colorful shape to a tiny black dot, before he turned away from the sight. It was long enough that his wings were damn near useless and were only just allowing him to sail quickly on a current of air back to where the French ships should be waiting. He was startled, however, to see them coming up on him faster than he thought they should have.
'They must have turned around shortly after I left. May also be why the Parnassian decided to run, didn't want any of those guns on him' Harry mused as he flew by the large dragon transport ship. He could see Temeraire resting on the deck with a lot of very active people fussing around and on him, Captain Laurence standing at his front with his hands on Temeraire's head. The man was possibly speaking to the dragon to keep him calm while the men worked on his many wounds. It didn't seem like the Captain was being held prisoner in any way. No obvious guns on him and none of the people around Temeraire were treating him poorly, though for how long that would go on Harry didn't know.
Dipping down lower to come up on the pad, he nearly failed to snap his wings out fast enough to slow down. As it was, the painful effort had manged to slow his fall enough that the impending landing on the dragon transport pad wouldn't do much more damage to his person than what had already been inflicted.
With a loud thump and a lot of splashing water when the pad rocked from the rough landing, Harry scrambled ungracefully onto the pad with a lot of stumbling and flailing, and then flopped down on his mostly uninjured right side once he was sure he wouldn't just slide off the wooden platform and into the unforgiving sea. The exhausted dragon just laid there for a long moment in total stillness before slowly stretching his damaged left foreleg out and started weakly licking the mangled wrist, his head not even lifting from the pad to do so. That was soon too painful to continue so Harry stopped his grooming and gently lifted his head to look the rest of himself over, shutting his heavy eyes for a few seconds when a wave of pain rolled through him at even that little bit of movement. By now his left eye was too swollen to open again and the right was crying out for sleep but he could at least force it open so he could look at the rest of the damage he had sustained.
It was bad. He would most certainly be grounded to the pad for the foreseeable future. His wings were fine, aside from a few scratches he had no big tears he could see at the moment, but his legs, back, chest, neck and tail were covered in bite and scratch marks. Some like the chest, neck and right thigh were deep gashes, others were just surface marring that would heal fairly well in a few days, but they all bled so much that it seemed like they were far worse then they were. The deep wounds throbbed fiercely with every second that past while the less severe ones stung and burned. Every wound caused Harry's flesh to jump and twitch no matter how severe or not they were.
Sighing heavily and setting his head down with a loud groan, Harry shut his still working eye again and shifted his weight a little better to ease off the tail wound. Keeping his head down and his eyes shut, Harry raised his voice to the transport ahead of him as best he could.
"Temeraire, are you going to live, little brother?"
There was a fair bit a scratching about on the deck and a few shouts came from the men who were still trying to work on the other dragon. Harry opened his eye in time to see his brother's bloodied head pop up to rest on the railing closest to the back. "I will live, Julien. Laurence says my wounds are not so bad as they look. I might be flying again in a week."
Harry hummed and closed his eye again, moving to get in a better position for sleep when a deep and angry voice sounded from the end of the pad opposite to him.
"Something you will not be doing for quite some time, no matter how well healed you are. Julien, you have much to answer for, my dear"
Harry let out a sharp breath of air and started laughing at the irony of the situation; it wasn't the English Captain and his French-ish dragon that were in trouble, it was Harry himself.
'Well you can't say you didn't have it coming' he thought ruefully as he slowly open his still working eye to take in the sight of quite enraged Gregory and two very irritated men in officer's uniforms who had just vacated a little boat now tied to the pad. 'Definitely in trouble' Harry grinned as much as he was able to in his low energy state and called out to the approaching men.
"Hello, my friend, did you miss me terribly?"
End part Three.
AN:
So Harry has discovered LIGHTNING BOLT...XD And successfully used it on an enemy.
No it's not a spell but magic is playing a part in how it happens, like how does he make electricity in his mouth? Magic! Water helps him spit it or else all he could do is have a really nasty electric bite which could kill if you don't get him to let go and he pumps it in you for awhile. As it is passive magic, it doesn't have a limit in how many times he can do it, only in how exhausted he becomes in having to heave the water up to spit it. Biting with it he could do forever, spitting is limited to how strong he is physically. Right now he isn't in the best of shape so he won't be capable of going all Zeus on everyone just because.
Storms are caused by a spell even if he doesn't realize he is using it, so that is something he can't do all the time without severe consequences.
That's the last of chapter three so now it'll be slower going from here.
