A Perilous Dive
The ice on Lake Plummet was thick that winter. Thick enough it did not immediately break when Carrion settled her muscular bulk upon it. The red dragon pulled her wings tight against her back to keep the winds from dragging her around and stood motionless on all fours for several seconds. Head tilted to the side, she listened to the creak and crackle of the early morning ice sparkling beneath the encroaching sun. She shifted one leg, heard no appreciable shift in the ice to warn of impending doom, and breathed a sigh of relief.
The feeling of being watched dragged Carrion’s gaze from the milky-white ice beneath her to the three elder dragons waiting on the lake’s beach some dozen yards away, three jewels of gold, green, and a scarlet red to match Carrion’s own. Mother Gazer, the leader of the Northern Conclave. Carrion tried to smile their way, raised an arm to wave at them, overbalanced and nearly fell. Swallowing, Carrion’s stomach dropped as she watched the green dragon lean over to whisper something to Gazer. The red elder dragon in turn hid her face behind a wing, but judging by her shaking shoulders, she seemed to be laughing.
Alright. The judging had already started. Great.
Looking away, Carrion ventured a yard farther out onto the ice and thought again about why she was out there in the first place. Tradition. 827 years before, a meteor had crashed down into the vast north of Heraldale, into the heart of Schwarz Angebot and among the densest of the dragon dens. A lake had formed in the crater, one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, and beneath the waters of Lake Plummet could be found the most precious of riches to the hearts of dragonkind, though few knew of it. The unicorns of Avalon assumed dragons loved gemstones the most, diamonds and sapphires, rubies and emeralds, garnets and peridots. Gryphons of Schwarz Angebot and Vogelstadt far to the south assumed dragons most loved gold. Only the Wolf-Lords, under the wise and insightful leadership of Queen Nero and Morgana le Fay, had ever known the truth.
Pearls. It was pearls dragons loved and cherished above all other riches, so rare and distant they were from the mountains most of Carrion’s kindred called home.
And it was for a pearl that Carrion now stood upon the winter ice of Lake Plummet, staring down through it into the deep, shadowy depths below. It was a tradition in Carrion’s conclave dating back to the community’s founding for every dragon, once they came of age, to dive down into the depths of Lake Plummet and return with a pearl. The size and color did not matter, only the retrieving of it, to show the rest of the community that the dragon in question was strong and brave and would not be a hindrance to drag the others down in times of hardship.
And whatever happened to those few dragons who could not return with a pearl, who could not find one or who perished in the icy depths . . .
Carrion shook such thoughts away, well aware they could only hinder her in the moment. Instead she spared a final glance at the ice before her and then rose up on her rear legs, thankful for her thick scales and inner fire for rendering the cold winds buffeting her hardly noticeable. She called upon that inner fire then, the blazing fire magic which made her who and what she was down to her most secret essence. She breathed in once, filling her lungs. Breathed in again, the air warming inside her. Breathed in a third time, the air beginning to shimmer around her as the building heat inside radiated from her.
Then she threw her head down, jaws half-open, and breathed OUT. The fire, narrowed, focused by her muzzle, half-melted the ice before her, half-punched through it with magical concussive force. Once the initial hole was made, she opened her jaws to their widest and breathed her fire, carving the ice hole larger, larger, large enough to fit the whole of her bulk through.
The fire died out. Carrion stood beside the hole for several seconds to catch her breath, fighting off the urge to look to her small audience on the shore. Then she took another deep breath and dived.
The cold of the lake waters struck at once, far harder and harsher than the wind’s cold up on the surface, almost a physical barrier to be fought. Carrion pushed on, wings and arms and legs held tight to her sides as she swam undulating from the tip of her snout, down her long neck, her body, down her tail as her elders had taught her in early childhood, swimming through the dark lake waters like her distant sea serpent kin.
And God above, the lake was dark, Carrion found, the light which made it through the thick ice dim and cold, growing fainter the farther down she swam, the hole she had left a rapidly dwindling pinprick of clear, unfettered light against her back, the ghost of warmth and the world above.
Down and down Carrion swam, down into bewildering darkness. All around her, half-seen things appeared and faded from sight like ghosts caught in the still waters. Carrion, too, felt almost still beneath the lake, bereft of any sense of movement, any guidance or signpost she was making any forward—downward—progress beyond the faint resistance of the water against her front. It frightened her. Carrion’s heart beat in her chest as the horrid idea suddenly struck her of getting lost down in deeps of the lake, of losing all sense of up or down and swimming, swimming, swimming blind until her lungs, mighty dragon lungs, able to outlast anything else that breathed, nevertheless found their limits. Then the oldest instincts would take hold and she would open her mouth for breath, and the waters would rush in, deadly and freezing waters, and she would drown, drown down and lost in the—
Something seemed to move in the darkness to Carrion’s right, snapping her from her devolving thoughts. She half-turned to look, saw the tail end of something long and plump and dragging tentacles disappear into the shadows. It had been a third her size, or half her size, or even larger than her. She was not sure. She had only caught a glimpse of it swimming away. As the seconds passed it could be returning her way, coming from above her, or below her, or behind her.
Desperate, Carrion looked upward, or at least what was her best guess for upward. After a moment, she could sight of the thin beam of clearer light penetrating through the hole she had left. It came down at her at a strange slant, startling the dragon with how twisted she had gotten even from so slight a distraction. Forcing the panic back down and the thoughts of the half-seen creature away, she reoriented herself in accordance with the surface light and resumed her dive down toward the bottom of the lake.
Carrion’s lungs had begun to feel the first inklings of strain when at last the deeper, more solid darkness of the lake bed rose to meet her out of the water’s murky darkness. She fanned her wings out to slow herself and settled onto the rough and aimless stone, felt more than saw the bubbling beds of smoother mussel shells. She tucked her wings back in and leaned close until the tip of her snout nearly brushed over the hardened, deceptively brittle shells. Seconds passed and her eyes adjusted once more, and then she could see them. Barely. The mussels of Plummet Lake were large, nearly as big as dragon eggs of the sort Carrion had been born from. Their shells were a peerless black from most directions, but from the right angle it could be seen they possesses the finest, thinnest pearlescent sheen, a glimmer of rainbow within the black. Precious in their own right, at least among the Wolf-Lords to the southeast.
Not wanting to waste any more time, Carrion began to slowly, carefully drag her claws across the mussel beds, shifted a foot to the side and did it again. Every ounce of her focus was on feeling for the slightest give among the shells, feeling for the one ready for her, heavy with its pearl grown fat.
“This isn’t so hard, really. More time-consuming than anything else. Whatever keeps my mother and her people so fretful?”
No sooner had the thought passed through Carrion’s mind than the claws of her right hand caught upon a mussel less embedded in the hard lake floor than the rest. She resisted the urge to grin, instead dug her claws in and yanked her prize up and free. She almost staggered from the effort, her eyes growing wide as she got herself a better look at her find. The mussel was massive, nearly as big as her head. Had she seen it at first rather than felt it, she might have mistaken it for a small log or other piece of debris which might find its way to the bottom of a lake in due time.
“Holy Snarl! I hit the mother lode!”
Mentally laughing to herself at how Mother Gazer and the rest would react when she surfaced hauling it, Carrion tucked the monster mussel against her chest and turned to swim back up. So pleased with herself, she did not notice the creature hovering in the waters behind her until she nearly rammed into it snout-first. She jerked back, wings flaring again to slow herself, but the damage had been done. The creature lunged for her, a grey, translucent thing of cold, rubbery skin and long, long tentacles. They latched onto her kicking legs, barbed suction cups digging into the gaps between her scales to fill the flesh with a burning, melting pain.
Carrion almost screamed from the pain. A few bubbles slipped from her snout. She raked the claws of her free hand forward, tearing through the bulbous mass at the creature’s center. Gouts of grey blood billowed out like smoke. The tentacles loosed their grip. Carrion tore herself free and swam.
Upward.
Upward.
Bubbles bled from her snout now, chest burning from the exertion. Her legs dragged limp behind her, adding further to the panic building in her drumming, rushing blood. In the corners of her vision she saw more of the ghostly creatures oozing from the watery darkness, drawing in from every direction but upward, from the light which seemed now impossibly far away.
When next she felt the biting tentacles gripping at her legs, Carrion did scream. A quick, hastily-muffled scream, her terror—and her breath—fleeing her in a burst of bubbles hurrying to the lake surface. She twisted down to swipe at the tentacles gripping her legs and felt more grabbing at her wings, her arms, wrapping tight around her middle to squeeze the last of her breath from her to the sounds of bones CRACKING. Carrion thrashed as the creatures clung to her from all directions, eyes wide with pain and the horrified realization she, a dragon, was being slowly, thoroughly, EATEN ALIVE. She tried to scream again, already drowning, and felt one of the creatures settle over her head, delivering a sharp, building agony as tentacles burrowed down her throat and other orifices.
Struggles slowed, then ceased. The grey of the creatures began to fill with the crimson of dragon blood.
Up on the surface, above the ice, on the shore, the three elder dragons waited until wind and falling snow had sealed the hole left by their young kin back up. Then they took wing and began the long flight back to their caves. The wind shrieked across the thick ice of Lake Plummet, and nobody remained to hear it.