Nysid’s normally iron stomach was pushed to its limits as he and Ephinea were tossed and tumbled through the air like dust on the wind and just as helpless to control their direction. He had never experienced the like before, not even the few times since their bonding he and Ephinea had been caught unawares by sudden sandstorms over the desert. Shadowed sky blended nauseatingly with the surging sea so neither man nor dragon could tell up from down until the wind cast them towards the water and Ephinea barely managed to catch herself before they hit. Just as Nysid sucked in a breath and forced himself upright in hopes of getting his bearings, however, a wave, huge and dark, surged up from the surface of the sea behind them like a wall.

“Move!” the prince roared and Ephinea threw herself forward, wings fairly grasping at the air as she tried to put distance between them and the wave. Faced with a formidable headwind, however, it was a losing battle that forced her to cut sideways in a last ditch attempt to escape the sea’s clutches, but to no avail.

Water crashed down over them, striking with such force the dazed prince thought they had somehow hit ground after all before the current dragged them down into the deep and dark. Nysid felt some of his riding straps break under the strain of the forces trying to drag him away from Ephinea, but a few held until their movement slowed long enough for the prince to right himself and reach forward to grasp at the support strap still fixed around his dragon’s neck on the off chance the rest gave out after all. He felt Ephinea twist and surge under him, though he caught only the dimmest flash of scales when she moved as lightning cracked somewhere in the distance overhead, silhouetting his partner briefly against the impenetrable, endless dark of the sea below.

A shudder of terror at all that vast, crushing emptiness racked Nysid as his lungs began to ache for air and the hard press of the water around him made his ears ache terribly. The light from above faded quickly but the flash was all Ephinea had needed to orient herself─ the dragon clamped her wings to her side and clawed her way desperately towards the surface, body undulating in a serpentine fashion to propel them all the faster. Nysid marked their progress by the lessening of the pressure on his chest and ears, though it was a close thing; his vision was beginning to tunnel and his heart to pound by the time they finally broke free of the water’s clutches into the air.

Nysid gasped in deep, greedy lungfuls, though the rain was now coming down so hard the surface was only barely discernible from the air. It stung, sharp and cold, against the skin of his face, first sign that he had lost his helmet in the crash, though he didn’t have long to mourn its passing as he realized Ephinea was beginning to founder. Tangled in the remains of their riding gear, she was struggling to remain on the surface, unable to free herself and tread water at the same time.

“Hang on, I’ll cut you free,” the prince bellowed over the storm as his partner cast an uncharacteristically frantic eye back towards him. Ever cool and collected even in the face of battle, Ephinea was thoroughly out of her element in the sea and justifiably terrified after her first taste of its overwhelming power. Without hesitation, Nysid stripped out of his leather armor and cast it away into the sea lest it drag him down, though he decided to risk keeping his sword where it hung from his belt. His bow and quiver were long gone, but Nysid still had his belt knife, which he dragged from its sheath and used to cut himself free of the last of his safety straps then did the same for those within reach still attached to his dragon. They fell away easily enough, but their weight dragged at those fouling Ephinea’s wings and legs, making a bad situation worse.

Seeing his strength was beginning to flag from fighting the current, the dragon reached out and delicately grasped him by one gauntleted forearm and dragged him back in towards her bulk so he could climb onto her back once more. It was no easy task, slick as Ephinea’s scales were in the water, but Nysid eventually managed and sagged limply against her as he fought for breath.

Ephinea tried springing aloft from the water’s surface when a few waves carried her particularly high, but the feat proved beyond her— so rather than exhaust herself and drown the both of them, she stopped trying and swam instead. Neither of them had any idea which way they had come from, so Ephinea didn’t ask, simply moved in the direction the waves carried her in hopes that they would find their way to shore.

Frozen and miserable as the rain continued to pound down on them, Nysid hunkered down against his dragon’s back and focused on staying there as waves continued to swamp them in spite of Ephinea’s best efforts. Slimly built as she was and weighed down by her now useless wings, it took effort for the dragon to keep herself afloat. Nysid couldn’t begin to guess how long they went on like that, but already tired from the battle along the coast, his partner was began to strain worryingly, though she made no complaints.

The raging storm ceased so abruptly that the sudden lack of noise almost convinced Nysid he’d gone deaf for a moment. At first he experienced only relief that the steady, uncomfortable drum of cold rain had finally ceased, but that quickly turned to consternation when he sat up and registered just how unnatural the suddenly calm weather truly was.

The storm hadn’t so much stopped as they’d entered some heretofore invisible bubble of calm; behind them, when the prince looked, he could still see the storm raging, waves surging and rain lashing the sea’s heaving surface, but the waters calmed almost instantaneously past an invisible line they had obviously crossed. There was powerful magic at work here and it set Nysid’s teeth on edge; not knowing it’s purpose only intensified the feeling.

“Land,” Ephinea said, her relief almost palpable as she immediately started for shore.

Wary though he was of such an unexpected and unnatural windfall, Nysid couldn’t object given they had no other options. The spit of land that jutted invitingly towards them, as if reaching out to the lost pair, was the foothills of a small, but steeply peaked mountain. They were close enough that the prince couldn’t guess if it was attached to a larger body of land, but he had to guess that it was; he’d studied the map of Marilderand’s coast extensively and while he and Ephinea had no doubt been blown some distance by the storm, there was no way they’d gone so far as to reach the islands to the west.

As they neared the shore, Nysid peered down into the water and felt his curiosity turn to horror as he beheld a vast bed of tangled bones half-buried in the sand below the surface.

“Ephi─” he began, voice tight with trepidation.

“I know,” she said, glancing back at him over her shoulder as she continued to swim, “I see them. We have no other choice, my prince.”

Knowing she was right, Nysid grit his teeth and nodded, spine rigid and eyes sharp as he studied the shoreline. There were bones there as well, though Ephinea was aiming for a stretch of sand less occupied by the mortal remains of sea creatures great and small than the barrier of bones they had already crossed. His only comfort thus far was the lack of either human or dragon bones, as far as he’d been able to tell— though who knew what secrets lay buried in the bright white sand.

Nysid felt the moment his partner’s feet found the ground once more, though he remained mounted until she reached the beach and came to a stop above the tide line where the sand was dry. With a tremendous sigh, Ephinea dropped to her belly and finally relaxed her wings, seeming relieved to finally be still after so long on the move. When she did, Nysid slid from her back and grimaced as his knees buckled the moment his boots hit the ground, sending him into a heap at his partner’s side. It was all the prince could do to roll onto his back and close his eyes against the sunshine bearing down on him. For all they had done since waking that morning, it was, somehow, barely past noon.

Though not so intense as it would have been in his homeland, the warmth of the sand eased the chill both man and dragon had absorbed in the sea, and might have lured them into a deep slumber if not for the eeriness of the place in which they had found themselves.

Eventually, Nysid forced himself to his feet with a grunt of effort and looked up and down the beach, then back at the stretch of forest behind them, over which the mountain loomed. It wasn’t so large as those found in the Ashenge range, but with little else to catch the eye it dominated the horizon.

“Where are we?” Ephinea asked and lifted her head to look as well, though did not yet join her partner in standing.

Nysid frowned to himself and brushed some errant strands of his long, dark hair back from his face. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve memorized the maps, I can’t think of anywhere in Marilderland’s borders that has a single, free standing mountain like this.”

Ephinea considered his answer, then suggested, “Perhaps it only appears so from this angle. If we climb to its peak and get a better lay of the land, you might recognize where we are after all.”

“Perhaps. No point in climbing, though, we’ll fly once you feel up to it,” Nysid said as he brushed some sand from his beard then loosed his hair from the braid he’d tied it back in that morning and did his best to put it in order before braiding it once more.

“Fly?”

Finished with his hair, Nysid let his hands drop and looked at his partner who, in turn, was regarding him with a look of confusion. “You don’t honestly want to make the trip on foot when you’ve a pair of perfectly good wings, do you?” he asked, torn between disbelief and bemusement. “Are you injured?” he added, frowning  as he considered the possibility. They had been tossed about like a child’s toy by the storm— it wouldn’t be surprising if the dragon had strained something.