Monster Girl Islands 5

by Logan Jacobs

  “Over here!” I yelled out.

  “No, over here!” Mira called.

  “Fight me, monster!” Nadir screeched like a battle cry.

  We all exchanged yells and hollers with the beast in an attempt to confuse it.

  And it worked.

  The seething beast spun around each time one of us yelled and turned in the direction of the newest sound, but I could tell it had quickly started to become aggravated.

  We kept yelling and hollering to confuse the hell out of it, and the beast spun in quick, wonky circles with all of the stimulation we gave it. Then, when it was just about to collapse from complete and utter dizziness, I sprinted forward with my sword gripped tightly in my hand and leapt right onto that massive, ugly snout it had on its face. I drove my sword so far down into its milky white eyes that I felt the blade hit bone, and blood spurted out the other end like a faucet.

  The beast tried to spin around one more time, weakly, but it was no use. I’d outsmarted that stupid armor it had and completely split open its brains.

  “Nice job, Ben!” Jemma exclaimed.

  The beast collapsed underneath me with a final, heaving breath, and then it didn’t move another muscle.

  “Take that,” I cried out as I withdrew my sword from its head.

  “I have never seen someone take down a wildabear before,” Nadir said with a grin. It was the first, genuine smile I’d seen from the woman, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Well, now you have,” I laughed. “Man, that thing was tough.”

  “There is a reason we do not travel above ground,” she reiterated. “That is only one of the many beasts that can harm you.”

  “Yeah, I think I’d rather take my chances with the moles in the tunnels,” I chuckled.

  I definitely did not want to find out what other kinds of creatures traversed these awful woods and wanted to gnash us to bits within their giant, vampire like fangs. Or rip us apart with enormous claws.

  Or burn us down with a stream of fire.

  None of those options sounded ideal, but yet, I wanted to go and find that fire breathing dragon and see if it would be willing to help us.

  Hopefully, with George by my side and what I assumed was a mutual hatred for the orcs, we could get the dragon to ally itself with us. I just really hoped it was intelligent like George was and wasn’t one of those destructive beasts that was always portrayed in the movies.

  “We should keep moving,” Nadir informed us. “I do not know what other beasts may be on this side of the ravine. There could be any number of terrifying creatures.”

  “Like what?” Jemma asked as she wrung her hands nervously.

  “Let’s just leave it at terrifying,” I told the auburn-haired beauty. “We wouldn’t want to hear about all the ways we could die today, you know?”

  I said it not so much for my sake, but for Jemma’s. The wonderful woman put on a brave face to the rest of the world, but I knew deep down inside she got scared way more easily than the rest of us. And even though she would never show it, I didn’t want Jemma to have to walk around and try to stay calm for our benefit throughout the rest of the day.

  “Right, of course, you are right, Ben.” The deer woman nodded furiously.

  But I watched her give Nadir more than one sidelong glance as we continued on our journey. Jemma definitely wanted to know just what else we could encounter. She kept a tight grip on the spear by her side, and I noticed her shift her quiver of arrows every once in a while, to bring it closer to her dominant hand, just for comfort.

  After another hour or so, the tall grass began to thin out, and we began to walk on flatter, drier dirt, like a desert.

  “This island has such an interesting mix of terrains,” Mira commented curiously. “How does that happen?”

  “I do not know.” Nadir shrugged. “I suppose there is a reason my ancestors did not settle on this side of the ravine.”

  “Yeah, this stuff would be pretty hard to grow food in,” I commented as I looked down at the dry, cracked dirt that reminded me a bit of the Arizona desert. A person would have to do a lot of watering to get it back into shape.

  Thankfully, we didn’t run into any more blind monster bears with impossible, horror movie level super hearing on our way to the dragon. I had no idea just how Nadir knew exactly where it had gone, but I could tell the women had kept a close eye on the beast after it stole their treasure.

  It took us another hour to decide it was time to make camp for the night and continue on our journey in the morning. The sun had nearly set, and the moon was high in the sky above us.

  We pitched one of the tents we’d taken from our camp and built up a fire, then rotated the watch all night. When it was my two hours to sit next to the flames, stoke them to make sure they stayed high, and keep watch, I couldn’t relax for a single second.

  George lifted his massive head about twenty minutes into my shift and looked at me with a raised brow.

  You are thinking of all the creatures that could be out there, he said knowingly.

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Mostly, I’m trying to figure out how the hell we could manage to do with them what the orcs did with the wargs. You know, get them on our side and turn them into some sort of monster that could help us defeat the orcs. Do you think it’s possible?”

  I think we must find this fire breathing beast first, George replied. Before we decide what is and is not possible.

  “Good point.” I nodded. “Go back to sleep. We might need you in the morning.”

  George fell asleep quickly, while I stayed up with my hand on the hilt of my sword and my eyes completely and totally alert the entire time.

  When the sun finally peeked over the horizon, I wasted no time in rousing everyone. Nadir, of course, was already awake and ready to go, while the other three women took a moment to rub the sleep out of their eyes and shake themselves back to the land of consciousness.

  I grabbed some dried boar meat from my bag to act as breakfast and handed out some to everyone. George snapped his larger ration up in less than a second, whereas Nadir looked at hers like it was a foreign object from another planet.

  “Cooked meat?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Well, it’s dried meat,” I replied. “But yeah, it was cooked at one point.”

  “I suppose I shall try it,” she sighed. “I make no promises that I will enjoy it.”

  She took the piece of meat from me and inspected it with the utmost suspicion, as if she thought it would jump out at her and eat her up itself, before she could even get a proper bite in.

  Which, of course, it didn’t.

  After the raccoon woman determined it was safe, she ripped off a large piece with her sharp front teeth and chewed it slowly and thoughtfully, with her head tilted toward the sky like she didn’t want to be distracted by any of our faces.

  “Well, what do you think?” Mira asked when Nadir had finished chewing.

  The black-haired raccoon woman turned her head back down toward us, flicked her tail, and then shrugged, as if the new food was nothing more than a bug on the ground.

  “It is interesting,” she replied. “I am unused to the texture. And I think meat should be digested right from the animal, the way the gods made it. But it is not terrible. I will survive on it for the duration of our journey.”

  I started to really like the seriousness with which Nadir spoke about everything. These were traits I knew she shared with the other women in her tribe, and it was refreshing and strange all at the same time.

  But I liked strange. I was on an island with two dragonkin women and another woman with long, long, long legs and a set of small horns that grew out of her head. Different and strange were my new normal.

  After only fifteen more minutes of our walk, Nadir suddenly froze up in front of me. Her tail went straight out behind her like a hunting dog’s, and her nose twitched in the air.

  “We are close,” she whispered. “The stream of fire went up
just over there.”

  She pointed ahead of us, where a mountain ridge rose up and concealed whatever was on the other side of it from our sight. It was the perfect hiding place for a dragon.

  “Come on,” I said. “Everyone be as quiet as you possibly can. Let’s not alert this thing to our presence if we can avoid it.”

  Quickly and quietly, we dashed across the field to the ridge like a band of thieves about to break into the Louvre in the middle of the night.

  When we crested the ridge, all of us got down flat on our stomachs. George stayed at the very bottom, since he was massive and a pretty bright blue that stood out against the dull color of the dirt, but the rest of us pressed down against the ground and army crawled our way up over the ridge.

  “I’ll look first,” I whispered. I was met with nods from the women, even Nadir, so I slowly pulled myself up over the rocks to where I could peek over the ridge.

  And what I saw nearly stopped my heart in my chest like an electric shock.

  We’d traversed the entire island, because on the other side of the ridge was a bright, sandy beach with the same glimmering, perfect white sand we’d come across on the other beach.

  But that wasn’t at all what had stopped my heart.

  Right in the middle of the beach was an enormous, birdlike nest. Except this nest would have been built for a bird the size of Godzilla. It was made of all sorts of random things, like torn up trees and mounds of sea kelp that had clearly been pulled straight out of the ocean.

  The nest was also a perfect circle, despite its haphazard appearance, and for a moment, I was so captivated by this massive feat of engineering I didn’t even see what was in the center of it.

  But that was the most amazing part of all. Even though I’d had a hunch this entire time and was pretty sure I knew what kind of beast had destroyed the orc ship, that was nothing like what it felt to see it in person, though.

  A real, live golden dragon was in the center of the nest. It was massive, well over a hundred feet, with a long snout and terrifying talons, just like in every movie I’d ever seen.

  The beast was also currently asleep, curled up around a bright, shiny, silver egg.

  I’d bet anything that was the treasure. The women hadn’t just found a pretty object. They’d found a freaking dragon’s egg. And now they wanted it back from its mom.

  That could potentially be a gigantic problem.

  Chapter Nine

  “What is that?” Jemma breathed. Her normally creamy face had paled to nearly white with complete and utter shock as she stared at the dragon with unblinking chartreuse eyes, and I imagined my expression was probably very similar to hers.

  No one answered her question, though. We were all in way too much shock to even be able to form a sound, let alone a string of them and put some sort of answer together for Jemma.

  The truth was, I didn’t even really have an answer. I knew what a dragon was, since I’d been so damn obsessed with magic and fairy tales, and all that kind of shit kids loved. But my wildest daydreams about fire breathing beasts that soared through the skies and rained terror down upon unsuspecting townsfolk had absolutely nothing on what it was like to see a dragon, alive and in the flesh right in front of me.

  I’d wrongly assumed it wouldn’t faze me one bit to have my suspicions confirmed in real life. Hell, I’d already washed up onshore of a tropical paradise in another world, where I was faced with women who had scales and brightly colored skin. Then a baby water dragon bonded with me and coughed up a stone, which I’d then eaten without another thought.

  I’d also talked to ancient water dragons. And gods. And fought off orcs and wargs. And giant sea squids. And vampire bears. So, a real live, fire breathing dragon should have had absolutely no effect on me.

  That assumption was completely and utterly wrong, though.

  I mean… dragons were totally awesome.

  I couldn’t even force my lungs to draw in a breath as I stared at the massive sleeping beast. We were probably about a thousand feet away from it, and about a hundred feet above it, but even from that distance, I could see the beast was absolutely massive in size. It was probably the length of a football field, and just as wide. There was no telling how big its wingspan was from so far away, though, since the wings were curled up against its sides as it nestled against the egg protectively.

  I assumed this meant it was a female dragon, which only made me want to be even more cautious. One thing that didn’t change no matter which world I was in was a mother’s basic instinct to protect her child at all costs. A fire breathing dragon would be absolutely no different, and the orc ship was only proof of that.

  I also understood now exactly what had happened. Somehow, the orcs must have ended up with her egg. I was sure they wanted to hatch a baby dragon themselves and keep the beast the same way they’d kept the wargs. Thankfully, their plan hadn’t turned out exactly the way they wanted it to. I didn’t even want to imagine the terror they could have wreaked upon my world if they had a massive, winged, fire breathing beast on their side.

  We’d all be toast.

  “How exactly did you come upon this egg, Nadir?” Mira murmured to the black-haired woman.

  “It washed up on our shores.” She shrugged. “Any treasure that washes up here is ours, if we so wish. And this beast has stolen it.”

  I do not believe she would think about it that way, dear one, George chuckled in my mind.

  “No, she probably wouldn’t,” Mira responded.

  “What are you speaking of?” Nadir hissed, and I could tell she’d figured out she wasn’t a part of our semi-telepathic conversation.

  “We’re just saying the dragon probably wouldn’t see it as stealing your treasure,” I replied. “That treasure is an egg. There’s a baby dragon inside of it, which will hatch at some point. The egg is hers. She’s the mom. She was just trying to protect her child.”

  “Which means that, unfortunately, this beast does not have a vendetta against the orcs the way we had hoped,” Sela muttered.

  “Pretty much.” I nodded.

  I would like to have a closer look, George said. I want to see if this creature is like me. It is possible she can speak over the dragon bond, just as we do.

  “Wouldn’t she have to be bonded to someone?” I asked.

  Who is to say she isn’t? George replied.

  “Good point,” I mused. “Alright, let’s take a closer look. Ladies, you stay here and… well, I was going to say keep lookout, but I doubt any other creature is foolish enough to try and get close to this thing.”

  “The fools are the best kinds,” Mira laughed. “We will stay here.”

  “I want to go get the treasure,” Nadir protested. “I shall come with you, and we will take our treasure back from this horrible creature.”

  The woman stood up, since the decision had already been made in her mind, and started to scramble over the top of the ridge and head toward the dragon, without a care in the world for silence or caution. She was stubborn and determined, and while I found those traits absolutely endearing, now was not the time to make our decisions based on emotions.

  “Wait,” I hissed, and I grabbed her arm and yanked her back down before she could crest the ridge.

  “Come with me if you must, Ben,” Nadir responded as she tried to shake off my grip and go forward anyways.

  “You cannot be so fool-headed.” Sela rolled her big eyes and grabbed Nadir’s other hand, and the combined force of Sela and I brought the woman back down behind the crest of the ridge, though she made an awful lot of noise in doing so.

  The dirt crackled and crumbled under her feet, and all of us froze, Nadir included, as the sound bounced around the otherwise silent land.

  The tell-tale snuffle of a waking dragon caused all of our hearts to stop in our chests, and I was certain Jemma was about to have a heart attack as a massive groan rumbled over the land.

  Slowly and carefully, I turned my head, but I tried to make it
look like I hadn’t moved at all, since I had no idea what kind of sight capabilities this beast had. When I finally was able to look out over the beach and see the dragon, I watched as it shifted its head. The two massive eyes were still completely closed, and the rest of its body didn’t move a muscle as it shifted and wrapped its neck even further around the egg. We were all completely silent as the beast went still again, and the only sign of movement was the slow, even rise and fall of its chest, which indicated it was still fast asleep.

  Thank the gods.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to Nadir, whose gray eyes were now wide as she stared at the dragon, and for the first time, I actually saw a slight hint of fear in them. She pressed her pink lips together and drew in a single breath, then nodded at me.

  “You are right, Ben,” the raccoon girl breathed. “I will stay here. You and George go.”

  Nadir gestured toward the dragon’s nest, and then sank back to sit down on the hard soil of the ridge with her hands in her lap like a scolded child.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I reassured her. “Just be careful.”

  I turned to George, who nodded at me. We were ready to go.

  “Be careful,” Mira said with a worried frown.

  “When am I not?” I winked and smiled at her, but it did nothing to ease the warrior’s nerves.

  For a split second, I wondered if we should just leave the dragon with her egg in peace, but then, in the next second, I realized how foolish that would be. If nothing else, the beast was dangerous. The burnt-out orc ship had proven that. In a few seconds, the dragon could cause more damage than a thousand bombs could, and I needed to figure out if the beast was friend, foe, or a wild animal we couldn’t control.

  If it was the last choice, I had no idea what we could do then. Part of me hated the idea of a dragon that flew in the sky and could destroy us at any second, but the other part of me knew it would be wrong to kill a creature that hadn’t directly attacked us, especially one that was very obviously rare and beautiful.