Ashes led us south of the River of Beaks before following the western shores of the continent to reach the Undercurrents.

As she led us, she told us some facts about why some areas on Eukarya were named that why.

She claimed that the Rachis Jungle was named after a FeatherWing named Rachis that had discovered it; although I couldn't tell if she was lying about it or not. Her tone was straightforward and factual.

She also claimed that she knew who our family's assassin was.

"Can you tell me who it is?" I exclaimed. After all these Turns, this cold case was finally going to be solved.

"No", she only replied. "But the only thing I can tell you is that the killer was under your snout the entire time."

"The killer was under your snout the entire time."

Who could that refer to?

Mother?

No, she couldn't be. If she wanted to kill her children, she would do it already and I wouldn't exist.

Flood?

It could be a possibility, since she was the one usually given the task of checking the eggs during each guard transition.

That could explain how she managed to drug Turtle and Requiem and get away with it. She could've used something from the Healers, and they wouldn't know what was taken from them unless they checked their supplies.

But what would be her motive? Motive was everything when trying to solve a mystery.

Spite? Ensuring that she would be the one to ascend to the throne instead of me or any of the others?

I knew Flood throughout my dragonethood and even now as an adult, and yet there was a possibility that I didn't truly know the dragon that was my sister.

So she's a possible killer. Who else would be?

I thought about the different members of my family and Depths and thought out it for a long while as we continued our way down the coasts, the waves crashing on the shores.

Whirlpool couldn't be the killer. If the autopsy of the hatchlings found indentations of rings in the shells and the tiny corpses, he would be arrested and executed by now.

Rush? If Whirlpool was the killer, he could be his accomplice.

Splash? I chucked that thought into the wind. She's not able to kill.

Flow? Maybe, since she did have a way with words and actions.

Droplet? Probably not, since she's like Splash, unable to kill.

But there was one I could rule alongside Flood as a possible killer.

Surge.

He had always acted like he deserved everything, and I remembered that Mother always seemed afraid of him whenever he spoke to her.

There was that time I read starting to read Skies of Fire Turns ago, and I was reading book two after a long session of Instruction outside the giant, amorphous, blobby reef that acted as our "palace" when I saw flashes of light come out of the corner of my eye.

Bookmarking where I was with a flat stone, I closed the book, turned my head to one side of the reef, and watched.

Surge was telling Mother something in an angry tone, but I couldn't remember what it was. But what I do clearly remember was the look on her face – sheer terror.

Her wings, the same shade of deep blue as her scales, were quivering, and her grey eyes were wide. The pearls around her horns, neck, and wings shuddered with the movement of her body.

She had the harness around her chest connected to Surf, who was still several Turns old at that time, who floated in the water like a dark blue jewel.

Now that I think about it, I'm kind of like the spitting image of Mother, except I have burn scars, probably the species' endling, and lost from home.

And Surf looked like a mini version of Surge.

But that couldn't be possible. My father was never around for the entirety of my dragonethood.

Coral's statement from when she interrogated me was now picking at my head. "...but I can only speculate that you didn't have the parental support you needed because Wave was too busy controlling us. I'm amazed that you haven't gone homicidal because of that."

I wanted to claw my head until it bled.

Why were her words coming back to haunt me?

________

Several sunrises after we left the River of Beaks and headed south for the swamps, the egg inside my pouch began rocking.

It was when the sun was at its highest point in the sky when it happened, and we were in the vicinity of the Great Forest.

I had felt a jolt of movement near me, and I thought it was my heart aching over the theory that my sister and others close to me could've been the family killer.

But then it happened again, and again, and again.

I looked down and saw that my bag was moving.

The egg.

As I looked back up to call for Ashes and Peak, I noticed I had dipped a bit towards the sand.

Although I blamed the basic rule of wing-eye coordination, which stated that what you were looking at was where you flew, for this, I took advantage of it.

I continued dipping down towards the beach until my talons felt the warm sand and I folded in my wings, oblivious to the gnawing infection in my ankle from Alder's bite several sunrises ago.

"Ashes! Peak!" I called to them, who were gradually soaring away from me.

Peak stopped and hovered in the air, looking around with his eyes until he saw me on the beach.

He flew down to the sands and landed in front of me. Ashes followed suit, looking displeased.

"Come on lizard", she snorted, "we still have a long flight ahead of us."

The egg rocked again in my pouch, and I took it off my neck, placing it on the sand.

Carefully, I rolled it out and held it in my claws.

It rocked again, accompanied by a CRACK!

Peak studied it. "What are you going to name it?"

My mind went blank.

I hadn't thought of this.

Dragon eggs hatched within two seasons after being laid. Plenty of time to think of a name for the resulting hatchling.

I didn't have two seasons to think of a name.

I had several moments as the first cracks appeared on the pale yellow shell.

Ashes studied the egg. "Name it Silicon", she griped. "It's the same thing that makes up magma and sand. There, problem solved."

"We are not naming the hatchling 'Silicon'", I retorted. "It's not fitting for-" I stopped myself.

"Not fitting for what?" Ashes raised an eye ridge.

"Rrrrgh", Firehead agreed with her. After all this time, he was still holding onto one of her straight grey horns for stability.

"I'm sure she means that it's not fitting for a DesertWing hatchling like this one", Peak chuckled nervously, although I could tell he subconsciously knew the exact reason we couldn't name this hatchling "Silicon".

The egg cracked again, a small piece fell away, leaving a small hole in the shell.

"Just go with my suggestion so we can get over this sooner rather than later", Ashes said as more eggshell fell off, creating more holes in the egg.

"Yrp!" Firehead agreed.

Me and Peak didn't say anything. None of us liked her suggestion.

I looked up at the sky, and the sun blazed in my eyes.

I looked back at Peak. "What about Sun?" I suggested.

He shrugged his shoulders as the eggshell fell away and a pale yellow hatchling was left in its place.

The hatchling was small with large, dark eyes and had a similarly colored pale yellow mane on its neck. Its claws were like long crescents and its horns were the same, except if the crescent was thicker. On the end of its snout, above its nose, was a small, black thorn-like spike. Another of these spikes was below each of its ears.

Peak crouched down to the hatchling's level and it waddled over to him across the sands before putting its front claws on his snout.

He let out a soft, pleased, guttural purr at this.

"What do you think about Sunny?" he asked without even looking at me or Ashes, keeping his eyes on the hatchling.

Sunny, I mused. Sunny, Sunny, Sunny.

Perfect.

I nodded at him.

"'Sunny'?" Ashes sniffed indignantly. "What kind of a name is that?"

"One that you don't get to change", I sniffed back as I gently lifted the hatchling with my claws from his snout and placed it into my bag.

Because of its sandy coloration and general rules of nature, this hatchling was female.

As soon as I placed her in my bag, Sunny curled up into a small scaly ball, her small front talons on my pearls and her small body on top of the map.

I looked up at both Peak and Ashes.

"Are we going now?" she sighed.

I noticed there was a hint of annoyance in her voice as I nodded my head.

"Yes, we are."

__________

Four sunrises passed after Sunny's hatching as we flew through the southern area of the jungle and the northern part of the forest before we arrived at the swamps and marshes.

The words were used interchangeably by Kestrel in the prologue of The Depths of the Ocean, but I knew the proper definitions of the words. A "swamp" was a forest that was flooded and near the edges of the ocean. A "marsh" was the transition area between the swamp and the ocean, dominated by reeds, cattails, other grasses, and gulls.

Ecstasy tingled in my talons for two reasons. One, I was in the place that inspired that book I read before ending up here. Two, this was where the Undercurrents were hiding, and I couldn't wait to spill their blood into the ground, whatever they were standing on.

Ashes had caught food for me and Peak the entire flight, as if we were helpless newborn hatchlings. Now that a hatchling was with us, she caught more food and set it on fire for "easier consumption", as stated in her own words.

It was near sunset as we landed on the shores of the ocean, in the fringes of the marsh.

My webbed, blue talons sunk into the warm white sand as Peak landed beside me.

I was tired, we both were.

He looked at me and gestured to my bag.

"Can I...?" he asked, and I simply gave it to him. I trusted this dragon, even though I knew him for about one-third of one-third-of-a-season. Sunny poked her head out as the bag landed in his brown talons.

"Trrrrgh?" she purred. "Wrrrh?"

She looked like she wanted to say "Tide? What's happening?"

It would take her some time before she uttered her first true words, which would be squawking messes of actual words. Hatchlings first spoke within one season after hatching, at which point, they were officially known as "dragonets", or young dragons.

Until then, baby dragons emitted purring and shrieking sounds to communicate.

Peak placed the bag around his neck as I lay down, letting myself sink into the sand and closed my eyes, and let exhaustion take over me.

__________

She walks through the tunnels of the caves which are covered in glowworms, resembling a place in the stars. They don't move or shudder as she pads over them.

Accompanying her is a brown dragon with two long, thin whiskers dangling from his snout ending in two teardrop-shaped lobes. The lobes and the undersides of his wings have brown-and-grey markings on them. He is also wearing long ropes of corals and pearls around his neck.

She on the other talon, is only wearing pearls around her neck, like usually does each sunrise.

The two dragons walk down the tunnel of glowworms into a small cave filled with an equal number of glowworms. Here, dragons from all over the planet are chatting with each other and dragonets play with each other, trying not to be reprimanded by their parents.

On the left side of the cave is a small tunnel leading to another small cave, filled with even more glowworms.

She notices that the previous service has ended and its congregants are walking out of the cave where it's held.

She did not expect to see the corpses of dragon marred, dismembered, and burnt walking out of the cave. Blood pours from the corpses' wounds onto the stone below, trailing in streams towards her.

She turns around, and runs from the blood to the tunnel, only to find that it is now sealed.

She turns around again, and everyone save for a pile of corpses is in the cave.

She tentatively makes her way towards the pile of corpses, which are dragons she knows, and notices that one of them is her mother – a deep blue dragon with pearls around her neck and horns. Gashes cover her body, and blood seeps out from them.

She gentle paws her mother's snout when it suddenly snaps opens its eyes and notices her.

"You failed to protect us", the blue corpse snarls at her. It then drags itself out of the pile and makes its way towards her as she backs away from it.

"You failed to protect your own. But that's all right, because you've already failed me."

The corpse unhinges its jaw like a snake, ready to devour her, when a voice from beyond calls to her.

"Tide!"

__________

"Tide! Tide! Wake up!"

Claws shook me violently from that putrid dream I was having.

"Tide!"

I open my eyes groggily and it took me a bit to realize that it was now night out. Light from the moons washed the marsh in a silver glow and the dragon that woke me was Peak.

He didn't have the bag containing Sunny around his neck, and I looked behind him. Dark trees were behind him and Ashes was nowhere to be found.

That creature! She took her!

I sat up when the pain from my wound suddenly set in again.

"Agh!" I muttered. Peak put his talons on my shoulder. "Easy, Tide", he whispered in a low tone. His voice was soft like a gentle breeze, but I couldn't be calmed if a hatchling was just stolen. Especially one whose egg I found alone.

"Ashes and Sunny are in the trees", Peak said, gesturing to the dark, twisting trees beyond with one of his wings.

"Come on", he urged and helped me up.

"Is it...?" I inquired as I sat up.

He nodded. "They're close. My antennae can feel it."

Behind us, the waves crashed on the shore in a rhythmic pattern. Wind gently blew through the trees, and insects chirped.

And that's when somethingbegan dragging me towards the ocean.

Originally published: 05/14/2023 (typed up final manuscript of chapter 15, book 1 to page); edited: (WIP)