I am Dragon (Dragon Fires Rising Book 2) by Marc Secchia (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

wings and struck out with his talons and fire, gouging bloody trenches and dark, charred channels in the giant Sea Serpent’s flesh. Fighting underwater was a strange, almost languid interplay of strike and counter-strike, where every movement slowed down so much that his brain ran ahead while his body lagged behind. He surged through the water to punch Azania away from a sweeping bite. Coils! He arched his back as a muscular, serpentine length slipped beneath his belly, but his forced dodge only found a denser, more confusing thicket of serpentine coils. His fire hissed out.

Trapped! The beast had wound itself around his body! The serpent squeezed him with monstrous strength. Dragon burned and burned it again around the eye; now he was free, gulping a massive lungful of air before the mighty grip tightened again around his middle, and the Sea Serpent dived. Here came Azania! The lithe, tiny girl hung grimly onto the edge of the Sea Dragon’s jaw as the water rushed by, the pressure increasing with the depth. He groaned as those powerful muscles clenched again, causing his ribcage to creak. Never had he felt a grip like this!

Twisting a Dragon bow quarrel about in her hands, Azania plunged it deep into the serpent’s burning yellow eye.

Convulsions tore them through the water.

Mighty as the body was, it thrashed about atop a deeper ridge with Dragon helplessly trapped in its coils. Up again? Down? Where was the surface? He dared not strike out with his fire for fear that he might burn Azania – there she was! She rolled over and over, helplessly sucked about by the tow. The girl was still trying to draw her Dragon talon dagger to do more damage, when he saw her head strike a lump of coral.

A tiny ribbon of crimson trailed from the spot as she went limp.

Reaching out with his forepaw, Dragon somehow managed to snag the tip of her boot as the azure Sea Serpent thrashed into a powerful rotation that wrapped his wings about his body. Then, they were tumbling into deeper water. Sinking slowly as they scraped down the side of the reef, he had a moment to cry in a desperate bugle:

≈Azania! Help us!≈

What could he do? She needed air, but could not possibly swim.

The only option came to him in a flash. He would not be able to use his fire anymore, but he might just save her life – this girl who had taken on a Sea Serpent a hundred times her size.

He stuffed her into his mouth and sealed his lips.

Carefully, forcing air up out of his lungs with the help of those terrifyingly powerful coils, he pushed the seawater out, hoping to create a bubble in which the girl might rest. Meantime, he raked the Sea Serpent repeatedly with his talons. It wouldn’t let go? He would cut right through this thing! He quarried great hunks of flesh out of the trench he had begun, digging deeper and deeper through the dense muscular layers.

Come on, Azania. Come on!

Something shifted in his mind. ≈Come on!≈

Squeeze himself loose! Could he make it – the Sea Serpent shifted and the grip tightened enormously, almost forcing the last of his air to burst from his lungs. The girl shifted weakly upon his tongue, coughing and spluttering.

≈Alive!≈

Who was that? What was that gorgeous music?

Suddenly, Dragon thrilled to a majestic, sonorous challenge that seemed to arrive from every direction at once. Dimly, from the murky blue, he spied the white form of a Dragoness sweeping toward them. Fire hosed from her mouth, latching unerringly onto the Sea Serpent’s head. The creature screamed and thrashed beneath the unrelenting assault, its massive coils finally releasing the pressure. A coil slammed into his bared throat, forcing a reflexive swallow. Whirling away in a gush of water, he backed-kicked as the azure fangs drove toward him once more; by some combination of a complete fluke and incredible skill, his heel smacked the quarrel stuck in its eye, driving it six feet deeper – perhaps, right into the brain. A terrible scream faded into nothingness.

The body sank.

Dragon? Dragon, where – I’m stuck – heeeeeelp!

Hold on, Azania!

Boots, hands, knees and elbows scraped the inside of his gullet, far too low down!

Azania! Stay there!

Nooo …

Terror drove him upward to the surface more quickly than he had ever swum. No! What a fool, this Blitz the Fritz, this accident-prone moron. He had just contrived to swallow his best friend in the world!

Bursting into the air in a wild spray of water, he opened his mouth and deliberately punched himself in the gut. Air burst out of him, shifting the Princess upward. Come on, come on Azania – climb!

Can’t … stuck …

The tickling deep in his throat was too much. Dragon vomited up the contents of his food stomach. A painful pressure built in his throat before Azania shot out in a spray of steaming digestive juices, yelling all the way to an awkward landing in the water, which instantly stopped her skin burning, he assumed. And shut her up.

He fished a very, very bedraggled Princess out of the waves by the scruff of her neck and popped her up onto the scrap of reef.

“I am so, so sorry.”

Azania coughed and hacked a bit more, saying between fits, “No … thank you … saving me. I only remember … sinking, then coming to in your … aaah! Grief, I feel awful.”

He rubbed her back gently. “Alright?”

“Aye. Remind me next time not to take on a Sea Serpent, alright?”

“You killed it.”

“I – uh, what? Dragon, that’s ridiculous. No-one will ever believe that you almost swallowed me down there to save my life, but … how?”

“You stuck a quarrel in its eye. I kicked it in deeper, and that’s what killed the beast.”