Branch fought and roared as his assailant attempted to subdue him.

Blaze snapped his head back, the back of his mouth alight, and shot a long stream of fire at the grappling duo, despite the shrieking of his sky-creature supposedly telling him otherwise.

The dark dragon flung their wings over themselves and Branch, and they were not affected by it at all.

This was a VolcanoWing.

Four moons, Hillock was right.

I bolted into the air, plowing through Branch and the VolcanoWing before hitting the ground with a thud.

The VolcanoWing still had their talons wrapped around Branch as they jabbed their back talons into my underbelly. I keeled over in pain, the same way I keeled when Coral tortured me in her old base.

Except that happened in water, and water couldn't save me now.

A few pews emitted from Silver's metallic stick and the VolcanoWing roared, staggering backwards and clutching their head, letting go of Branch.

The TreeWing took advantage of this, and thrusted his claws into the black dragon's underbelly, pinning them to the ground.

The VolcanoWing roared in pain, frantically looking around and pawing the air as if gripping it would drag themselves to away from Branch.

Blood poured from the wound like the fast-flowing currents of the sea, even as Branch twisted his claws deep into the dragon's underbelly.

I walked towards the VolcanoWing to look at them in the eye before twisting their next, like the last dragon that came across me, and recognized that the dragon was Obsidian.

Something inside me boiled like when I saw Ashes with Sunny in the Community of Coasts a while ago.

"Obsidian", I growled, "what are doing here?"

The VolcanoWing let out a bitter, jagged laugh before he suddenly gasped for air as Branch twisted his green talons again in his underbelly.

"She asked you a question, lizard", Branch seethed. "Answer it."

Obsidian took in big gulps of air in an attempt to hold on.

"Why would I answer a foolish question, One-Eye?", he snarked in a rusty voice.

"I'd ask the same thing, Seastar", spoke a voice in the dark trees.

I shot my head up. A soft whirr came from Silver's stick.

That voice. It felt familiar.

"Whatever this is", I said. "this... attack... is." I couldn't get the words out. "It's going to cause the extinction of everything."

"Oh, I wouldn't call it that", the slithering voice replied, as its owner emerged from the shadows. A silver earring flashed in the moonlight.

"I would call it 'elegant rage'."

Ashes.

I started forward, but she lifted a talon and multiple night- and shadow-colored dragons slithered down the dark trees.

I stopped.

Hunting to survive was one thing, but being hunting – quite another.

She had brought reinforcements.

Whipping my head around, I saw other similarly colored dragons snake down the trees and surrounded me, Silver, and Branch.

We were outnumbered.

Two dragons and a sky-creature couldn't take out one, two, three...

I stopped mentally counting when a shriek far beyond the dark marsh pierced the moonlit night.

"That", Ashes said in a smooth voice, "is the sound of Eukarya falling."

She slithered off the tree like a snake going through the River of Beaks. Firehead, her sky-creature, was no longer on her head; instead, he was on her back, strapped in a similar contraption used to keep the Undercurrents' sky-creatures on their dragon's back so they didn't accidentally die. A similar-looking metallic stick like Silver's was held in his clawless front paws, and it was pointed straight at me.

I took several steps back before bumping into something.

I turned around, and saw that Branch no longer had his claws in Obsidian's abdomen, as the VolcanoWing was now already dead.

"I should say that the Undercurrents were the easiest group to infiltrate", Ashes purred. "I mean, you just interrogated me and then let me go. No detention, no suspicions, nothing. I guess you all were desperate and pathetic, like Vulcan suspected."

"But, the marsh..." Branch gestured to the surroundings with one of his wings.

Ashes flicked her tail at the dead VolcanoWing. "They were my informants, gathering information about you right under your snouts and then sending it to me in the other Communities while I looked after that surviving cretin you found."

"Sun-" I started, but a shadow poked me in the ribs with something to shut me up.

I looked underneath one of my wings, and found that a dart was jabbed into my sides.

"Gah!" Branch hissed, and I turned around.

A similar looking dart had been shot into his neck.

"Tsk, tsk", Ashes said. "I thought you were all free, brave, powerful, and accepting, like you think you are. But at the end of the day, you're weak, cowardly, and intolerant like the animals you are. And when dragons have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong – every single time. But don't worry, we will take care of you and you will be just fine."

"OR!" something squawked behind me and turned my head around to see that Silver had been shot in the neck with a small dart.

I looked up at Ashes, and I tried to speak, but nothing came out.

She flicked her tail, and her dragons moved forward.

The VolcanoWings moved like lightning before we could even do anything.

In an instant, thick leather straps were wrapped around our snouts, wings, bodies and legs, and a leather-and-metal harness was strapped to our bodies.

I took a step forward and I fell down, bellyside-first. Silver tumbled off my back and onto the peaty ground.

Ashes stared down at us with malicious, euphoric orange eyes as wingbeats approached our location.

I looked up, and saw that dragons were chained to a large, hollow, square-shaped metal contraption manned by VolcanoWings.

I recognized it from my short time in the jungle. It was their prisoner transport.

Dragons of all types were chained. I even spotted Crystal as one of them.

Ashes shot a spurt of fire into the star-and-moons-laden sky, and dragons dove towards us.

They gripped us in their claws up and up and up, until the swamp seemed to be several dragons away from a regional map instead of a forest.

I felt claws weave thick chains through my harness and through the contraption until the dragons carrying me let their claws go.

I was dangling above the marsh, held in place by an enemy's talonwork.

Soon, Ashes and her dragons flew up to the contraption.

Beside me, a dragon holding small metal cage in their claws threaded a thick chain through its interwoven top to the contraption.

In the cage were Silver and other sky-creatures.

Ashes' words were gnawing at my brain.

"When dragons have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong – every single time. But don't worry, we will take care of you and you will be just fine."

Why did that sound familiar, and yet so damning at the same time?

After the small cage was tried, Ashes flew up to me and hovered in front of me.

I couldn't speak, but I could flash something in Marine to her.

"You little-", I started, but she held my snout up her one her front talons.

"I know exactly the realization you've come to Seastar", she said with a condescending lilt in her voice. "It was politics that built you, and it was politics that destroyed you."

She let go, flying off towards the sea as the dragons manning the metal transport followed her lead.

As our transport flew over the beach separating the marsh from the ocean, I saw multiple corpses litter the sands.

White, green, brown, grey, all lumped together like some mishmashed StormWing tapestry.

The last of the dragons were loaded onto the transports before following the others suit.

One of the black dragons from one of the transports behind us flew up to a black dragon guarding our transport.

"Sir", they said in a light voice reminding me of Current. "Where are we heading?"

The dragon they spoke to turned their head, and seemed to stare at them with fire in their eyes, and if the other should've already known.

"Bacteria", they said gruffly, "like the rest of the planet."

The beach had already left our sights at this point and was now replaced with endless ocean.

An ocean that would certainly lead to death if any of us went out of VolcanoWing's line.

I looked at Crystal, and she noticed me.

A look of defeat permeated her white snout, and I figured that mine had a look of "what just happened?" permeated mine.

I looked around, and saw that everyone on board had the same looks at me and Crystal.

Like lightning in a storm, everything deftly went up in flames.

Like lightning in a storm, we were now slaves to the VolcanoWings.

Like lightning in a storm, Eukarya had fallen.

Originally published: 09/06/2023 (typed up final manuscript of chapter 19, book 1 to page); edited: (WIP)