The Saga of Ross

On the thermals over a calm ocean, near her adopted island home, Kylura hummed in contentment. The sun shone brightly, the thermals undulated and turned just right for easy maneuvering above the wispy white clouds, and the cries of shear-waters, albatross, gannets and pelicans hunting in the azure depths below sounded to her sensitive ears like an orchestra playing upon her part of the world. She folded her left wing closed, giving a 'Grah!' of amusement and giggled like a school girl as she righted herself after pulling out of her dive. 'Truly, she thought languidly, this is what I was MADE to do!' She looked below herself, her sharp hunter's eyes seeing the dramas below in the ocean play out in the subtle and yet dramatic dances of Nature. The birds where diving at a prey ball; the small fish were panicking and schooling near the surface to avoid underwater predators. Kylura recognized the forms of large gray shapes underneath the hapless school of fishes; Most likely some dolphins, but might be some sort of seal or maybe even sharks! Kylura felt her claws twitch at the thought of seals; she had found them to be most delicious, especially the fatty blubber they had upon them. She felt her tongue begin to slaver. 'Just like me to think of the next meal. My father was right, I am basically a stomach with hands!' She laughed at her sire's old joke.

She suddenly noticed a large ship on the ocean. 'By the build, appears to be Diamond Dogs. Might be griffin.' The ship flew a large red flag near its crow's nest, and after further study she noticed it had a familiar symbol upon it; a mug of ale with a yellow orchid growing out of its frothing contents. 'The Mugflower's merchant flag? I haven't seen Nivec Mugflower in ages! What has it been, sixteen years?' That was when she noticed a flurry of movement below her. Her instinctual wariness noted that the animal life below had fled, none of the prey nor the predators remained in their respective places. A lonely brown pelican was winging away back to Aylura's island in a hurry. That was when she noticed the shape.

It appeared at first to be a large whale, Aylura noted with growing dismay and panic, but it was moving much too fast and unfortunately, the larger cetaceans about her island were not a dark shade of red, dark as blood. And straight at the vessel of her friends, the Mugflower ship and its myriad crew. Aylura felt her wariness being overtaken by a new emotion.

Protective rage.

She dove, her spined tail streaming behind her, rows of ivory-colored teeth being brought into display from within her large jaws, as her chest-flame; the draconian breath-weapon organ, pumped in preparation like a third lung or second heart. Below, she noted as her massive form began racing closer and closer to the underwater monster, that it had large and luminous eyes and two fins upon what she had first mistaken for a main body but was actually the head. 'Cephalopodic in nature...'; her subconscious mind, ever-feeling the need to be scientifically accurate, commented. Her eyes scanned it as she began to widen her wings and slowly changing her center of gravity back into a less steep dive, her wing joints snapped into attention as she began to beat her wings powerfully, her claws tensing and eyes narrowing as her body prepared for combat. A roar unleashed from her golden-scaled mouth, her nape scales lifted in exhilaration at the promise of blood and death.

She heard cries of terror from the ship. Fools! 'Maybe your navigators and crow's nest attendees need to get new jobs; a fucking KRAKEN is out and after you and then all of a sudden OH NO A BIG GOLDEN DRAGON QUICK SOUND THE ALARM! Probably some fool got into his ale too deep...' and with such vitriol and heavy aggressiveness to mind, Aylura attacked the sea beast, foam and blood spraying as she sunk her sword-sharp claws into the kraken's red hide. Her claws sought purchase in the slimy, boneless and rubbery skin. She felt the large and violent animal tense in surprise; here it was expecting a nice and easy prospect in sinking a ship, pulling crew members into its great beaked maw and feeling the destructive joy of breaking apart the ship like a toddler smashing a house of blocks. Now, here was an new challenging force, one far older and more cunning than it, who resided upon the breath of the clouds and the weightlessness of the free skies, as opposed to his more skulking and shadowy peregrinations through the inky blackness of the deep. And before the battle had really begun, it was over. Aylura snapped her jaws just as she released her dragonfire; the kraken knew intense pain followed by nothing. One of its large red feeding tentacles, covered in pony-sized suckers and filled with jagged and disturbingly razor-toothed edges, caressed her back like a slimy tail, which made her shiver in revulsion before falling limply back into the water to twitch about spasmodically. Aylura began to breath more fire upon it, breath after breath until her more animal nature allowed her to relax.

'Now to see to the crew.' She folded her wings, falling into the ocean with a tremendous PLOP!, which made her smile. It reminded her of the sound of a whale breaching. Still some cries of panicked fright (in addition to fevered and whispered prayers, which made Aylura further have to hold hers jaws to avoid laughing out loud and further terrorizing the poor crew-mates) came from the deck of Mistfire as the dragoness could now see was the name of the ship. It had a black-stained hull which look quite nice, and coincidentally enough a dragon's head bobbing majestically at the prow for decoration. Aylura felt twin jets of flame escape her nose as she snorted in wry amusement at how other creatures of the world treated her race; one minute with mythic symbolism and the next with fear and distrust. But then again, certain dragons did little but reinforce the tired old 'I'm-going-to-steal-your-belongings and snatch-your-virgins' nonsense that the shorter-lived kind subscribed to her race.

She decided to start the proceedings with a heartfelt and apologetic sounding shout, "A thousand pardons, but I saw the big nasty kraken heading towards your Mistfire here and thought I'd catch it before it caught you!" She smiled brightly, noticing as the griffins and Diamond Dog crew members began to blanch. She heard many hissing, rapid breaths. "Oh don't worry," she stated while paddling closer to the gunwale, her large amber eyes taking in the sailors one at a time, "I don't tend to eat friends." She inwardly sighed as the crew mates began praising her, one large black and tan Diamond Dog even going so far as to say, "Praise be to the First Ones!" and falling to his knees in relief. "We erm, well uhm... thank you of course, Miss, uh?" a younger male griffin stumbled out the first thanks while his leonine back legs shook furiously in adrenalin-doused excitement. Aylura answered the unspoken question, "I'm Aylura. This boat belongs to the Mugflower family of Griffincan's port city of Talonbeach, yes?" Many of the sea dogs and griffins nodded. "I take it that none of his family are upon this vessel, then?"

Emphatic head nods said no before a griffin lad wearing a red bandanna on his head said, "You mean old Nivec Mugflower, right? He's the Harbormaster now, Mistress Aylura. He owns this and many other boats." The griffin clacked his beak slowly and ruffled his head feathers before asking, "If you don't mind me asking, how do you know him?" Several of the crew began to wander slowly back to their jobs, as though every day large dragons swam to starboard side of their ship. Aylura answered as she looked forward at her island, seeing if any of the island's other inhabitants were out and about. "I know him from the War Of Pikespeak Reach, back about... what was it, fifty years ago?" A Diamond Dog with a badly scarred muzzle nodded, lifted his head and squared his shoulders proudly before smiling a maw full of pristine white teeth. "Well paint spots on me and call me a gnoll! Ya mean to tell us ya be the Roaring Tempest, lass?" His accent placed him as a Northerner among Diamond Dogs, the vowels seemed to be slowly chewed before being rushed out. Aylura thought it sounded like... what were those fellows called again, from her Before? Oh right, Nords. From that... video game? Yes that is right... I think.

She nodded at the grizzled old veteran, who smiled even wider as he tapped his chin with his thumb. "You and yer band of dragons in your flight definitely scared the yellow piss out of the big black drake those rebels hired. He ran away like a scalded cat, howling for a matin' in a back alley, and then you set fire and frost from yer mouths to them aerial infantry the Hellcat sent forward. 'Twas glorious to behold, lass." He smiled and spread his immense arms to his sides, then thrust them akimbo while grinning even more. ""Course, I was just a volunteer draft soldier, mostly defending me mates and mine own arse from the Glorious Ones or whatever weird name those griffins was calling themselves." The Diamond Dog smiled and turned to his crew-mates of the same species, "No offense to any present company, of course!" Many of the griffins grunted and waved it off, before a female with green eyes added fiercely, "None TAKEN. 'The Glorious Ones!' PAH!" She spat on the heaving deck, then hovered above it on her white eagle wings while lashing her lion tail about it anger. "What was so glorious about Baron Kestrelwise? Bastard didn't acknowledge the Perched Council, and said that the griffins needed to dissolve the Balance Pact, saying Diamond Dogs are 'mud-slinging mongrels unfit to be allies with sons and daughters of the original Great Sky-Cat!' (The Diamond Dogs of the crew snarled at this, and Aylura suppressed her own similar reaction) Then, and this was more proof of his insanity, he proclaims himself to be the 'King of Griffins' to the Equestrian princesses and begins amassing his Barony for war. Then he recruits gnolls, outlaws, and even some minotaur mercenaries and finally some dragons to fight for him, hoping to prove his letter to the pony goddesses true. He gets most of funding from some addle-brained old colleagues of his from his politicking days in Saddle Arabia and then he attacks the Winged Mountains..."

Aylura suppressed a yawn as the various crew members rehashed and rehearsed the war, some adding that such and such was because Kestrelwise was insane, some admitting the rogue griffin leader to being a genius yet full of folly as to ally with such ill-regarded beasts as gnolls while having low judgments upon the race of Diamond Dogs. Her opinion was asked for often, and she dutifully answered questions about the conflict as she and her band, the Tempest Dragonflight, recalled it. The elder former Diamond Dog soldier, whose name was Marteck, especially liked to tell the others about the time he served. He told them how the griffin hoplites would take to the air, roaring and shrieking in blood lust as they took off their enemies' heads with their spears and swords, how the Diamond Dog light infantry would pounce from the ground to wrestle a savage rebel to the ground while swinging an axe at the griffins' neck, the din and blood and violence. Aylura felt the flames in her chest rise, as her mind relived the old memories.

She finally thanked them for their opinions as paddled further from the ship, bidding farewell and good luck to the merchantile vessel and its load of wine tuns, barrels of salt and pepper, and grain and merry Balance Pact ship-mates. Nice enough sort, she thought as she flapped her wings, fanning the water upon the sea with the force of the air being displaced. With a departing bugle of happiness, she flew back to her island, her brain basking in the light of her good deed for the day.