Thanks to @armoury for the beta!

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I stared at the flames for several moments, Beithir’s wings flapping beneath me as we hovered above the clouds and the waves. The ship, not a large thing, sat damn near center in the channel and was covered in flames from front to back. As I watched, I could see a figure dive off the side of the ship and into the water, followed by another smaller figure falling off the side closer to the bow.

I snapped the reins and turned Beithir into a screaming dive. Her wings tucked against her sides as she went sailing towards the water. As I broke through the layer of clouds the extent of the damage became more clear, as did the light from the flames. A large gouge was broken from the side of the ship, the wood blasted inwards and revealing heavily aflame innards. The ship was little bigger than a barge, incapable of carrying much of anything at all beyond people and small bits of cargo, and what little I could see of the second on top of the deck was heavily aflame, with what was inside more than likely completely lost.

But that didn’t particularly matter, no. What did was the two people swimming in the water. I could hear shouting down below as Beithir curved its dive to glide over the water, her wings flapping to slow her down as I started to tug the reins back. The shouting was from one voice, a man’s, and it took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t shouting for help. I looked towards the swimmers as Beithir slowed to a stop, just a few yards away. There were three figures, a man, a boy, and a woman. The man was missing his shirt and a decent chunk of his hair as well, he was waving at me frantically, shouting mad things that I couldn’t quite make heads or tails of. Not far from him was a boy maybe five or six and looking at me in sheer terror. Beyond the both of them was a woman, she was floating in the water on her back, the flickering light from the fire revealing that her eyes were closed and that she was laying motionless beyond the bobbing of the freezing waves.

“HAVEN’T YOU DONE ENOUGH!?” The man screamed, and I jerked my head back to see that the man was swimming away from me towards the boy.

I nudged Beithir in the sides, snapping the reins so that she slowly flew forward so that I was beside the man and the boy. Then, gripping the reins and keeping one foot tight in the stirrup I reached down to grab the man by the arm, only for him to bat my hand away with a wild, panicked look in his eyes. “Away from me devil! Wasn’t burning my ship enough!?”

I stared at him, my mind processing what he said. Then I slapped the reins and guided Beithir into belly flopping into the water. She made a noise of protest, flames jutting out of her mouth and making the man beside me jerk back, but she floated regardless. “Ah didn’t set yer damn ship on fire, now get on the damn wyvern ya daft bastard!”

The man looked at me, then looked towards the boy bobbing in the water and the woman not moving at all. The man turned to start paddling for the boy, but I had already leapt off the wyvern as he started the motion. The armor came off of my chest using the quick straps built into the sides of it, I ripped the helmet off as I hit the water, and the gauntlets… well, they possibly actually let me swim faster with how much water I could push back with them. My legs started to kick, and I reached the boy far faster than the man with the benefit of being able to leap off of the wyvern. Grabbing him the boy weakly tried to pull away from me, but he was already too young to do much of anything to begin with, much less when he was waterlogged. Grasping him underneath the arms I tossed him back towards the man I assumed was his father, the man’s eyes widening as he reached out his hands to grab the boy in midair, once the man had the boy I gestured towards the Wyvern, then turned back to start swimming towards the woman.

Splashes hit the water all around me as bits of the ship broke off and rained down aflame into the dark waters of the channel. The normally cool water was rapidly heating up from all the wild flame above, and I only barely reached the woman before she drifted dangerously close to some burning driftwood in the water. The woman was about the same age as the man, and angry red marks covered the entire left side of her head, a good chunk of her hair was gone, and a large amount of her dress had been burned to naught more than cinders as well. I tucked one arm underneath her body, pulling her towards me, then shifted her around so that she was perched onto my shoulder as I started to swim back towards the wyvern. Her head lolled lifelessly against my own as I moved, and I could do little but swim and pray that she was alright as I made the swim back. The only thing I could hear was the sound of the ship cracking and breaking behind me, the only thing I could see was the wyvern a short distance away, the man was pushing the boy up onto Beithir’s back, apparently having gotten rid of any fear of me and the wyvern in favor of not drowning in the English channel.

Once the boy was on he turned back, his eyes widening as he saw the woman in my arms. “Get up on the wyvern and put yer boy in yer lap!” I shouted. “I’ll take the lass!”

The man opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off before he could. “That wasn’t a damned request, move yer sorry ass!”

I was never sure if it was panic, or him respecting my orders as he hauled his behind up and onto the wyvern. But I was grateful he immediately did so regardless, swimming up I grabbed the front of Beithir’s wing, then the reins, and with a grunt from Beithir I used all of my strength to pull myself and the woman up and onto the saddle. It was only barely big enough to sit myself and the man behind me, much less when he had a child in his lap and I was trying to balance a woman on my own. The end result was a rather uncomfortable position, but it was ignored easily enough given the fact that I had far more important things to worry about. “Hold onto my sides as tight as ya can, ah’m gonna get us to Dover!” I shouted.

I felt the man’s hands clamp around my sides, and it is only then that I appreciated the fact that I apparently saved a bear by the sheer size of the things. Snapping the reins I nudged Beithir in the sides. “Up!”

Beithir slapped her wings against the water, roaring as she attempted to take off. She jerked, barely achieving any lift with how little she could move her wings. The water was too close, already a lithe creature, Beithir was too low in the water to effectively flap her wings. With another roar she fell back into the surf, growling even as the flames grew from the ship. Right, too low to the water, but doesn't have feathers to weigh her down. Right Arthur… I just needed some lift. I pulled back on the reins as hard as I could, forcing Beithir to pull her neck and shoulders out of the water as best she could. Then I twisted the reins, pressing my feet against her lower stomach in the process. On cue Beithir unleashed a torrent of flame into the water, the liquid instantly boiling from the sheer heat of her breath. “Hang on!” I screamed as the force of the flame shoved Beithir up and out of the water, then I slapped the reins once more. “Fly Beithir!”

With one, triumphant slam of its wings Beithir jerked up and out of the water, then with several more she started to gain altitude. “Aye good girl, just like that.” I said, moving my hand to rub along the side of the wyvern’s neck before I adjusted her climb. “Now straight into Dover as fast as ye can!”

I nudged her sides to make it happen, and I enjoyed the feeling of the wind blowing away the water as we sailed towards the city once more.

---

Beithir let out an ear-piercing roar as she landed back at the school, and it was something

I was grateful for, as by the time I was helping the man and the boy behind me off of the wyvern the front doors of the school burst open and a host of servants came running out. They got about halfway before they turned back to get blankets and clothes, and I was placing the woman gingerly onto the ground as Morrigan came running out. Far from the usual ‘noble’ getup she tended to wear or the wyvern-riding outfit I had grown rather familiar with, the woman was looking rather ragged being in just her night clothes. Her hair was a wild mess of curls behind her instead of the carefully maintained straight style. It was also something I only took notice of for a moment before I yanked her down to my level. “She’s badly burned,” I said. “Wyvern attack from what the man said, do ya have a doctor on staff?”

“Of course we do!” Morrigan replied, apparently not liking being yanked down to the ground. “But he’s off for the season back in Dover.”

I scooped the woman back up into my arms, ignoring the staff trying to wrap a blanket around me. “Where in Dover?”

“Town square, large sign above the door that says Dr. Dylan’s medical office.” Morrigan said. “Largest square in town!”

I nodded, sprinting back to the wyvern and leaping up onto her with the woman in my arms. Beithir looked back at me with something almost approaching alarm with how fast I mounted her, but I was snapping the reins almost as soon as I got my foot into the stirrups. As the wings slammed beneath me I could see Morrigan shouting something, but the sound of wind was too great for me to make it out before I was off flying towards the town.

I hugged the woman to my chest with one arm, the other on the reins as the night air whipped by me and Beithir. In the distance I could see faint traces of flame on the water, the ship had already broken up and collapsed into the dark waters beyond just a few traces of flaming debris. With a kick against the side Beithir tore through the air even faster, and the grounds below me blurred. Ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds later I yanked back on the reins, then tugged them to the side, bringing Beithir into a wide descending circle into the largest square in Dover. It took only thirty seconds for Beithir to go from the school to the center of Dover, a journey that would take a good half hour by carriage.

She didn’t land gently, I didn’t have to time to make her do so. With the crash of shattering stone Beithir landed, and I slid down her side with the woman in my arms. “Stay girl!”

People were staring at me in the dull illumination of the cities streetlights, shock clear on their faces. They were also not moving, which was a great benefit to myself. I looked towards one, a rather dapper-looking man in a heavy coat. “Where’s Dr. Dylan?”

The man opened his mouth like a fish, apparently not quite sure what to say. I turned to the woman at his side, a younger thing. “You, do you know?”

The woman was thankfully more quick to think than the man, as she pointed across the square towards a two-story stone building that sat in between two larger offices. I stared at it, making out the large wooden plaque above the door that read ‘Doctor Dylan’s Clinic’. I was running towards it before I fully processed that, my heavy metal boots clanked against the street as I ran across the square. Men and women stepped out of my way as I sprinted, and I was fairly sure I was going to regret this tomorrow with the way the sabatons were cutting into my knees at present.

Stopping just before the door I rapped my heavy gloves against it, the bang damn near enough to wake the dead… and hopefully, any doctor inside that may be sleeping. The building was two stories, so I was rather hoping against hope that the good doctor chose to sleep in his clinic instead of having a separate house a distance away. My fears, thankfully, were assuaged a few long moments later when the door opened to reveal a middle-aged man. He was wearing little more than a grey robe and a pair of slippers. His face was wizened, cracked, and full of lines of stress and strain that clashed rather heavily with youthful blue eyes.

He was also staring at me with a great deal of annoyance, something that quickly washed away when he saw the burnt woman in my arms. “Are you the doctor?” I asked.

“Aye, I’m him.” The man replied.

I offered the woman forward, not sure what else to do. “She was injured in a fire, a ship offshore was set aflame. She went overboard into the water and hasn’t moved since.”

Dylan took her out of my hands and stepped back into the clinic with a grunt. “Come with me, and take off those gloves.”

I did so, tossing them through the doorway onto the floor as the doctor walked into a side room. Following him, I found the man laying her out onto a long wooden bed in the center of the room. All around it along the walls were shelves filled to the brim with books and tonics. The sound of tearing clothes brought my attention back, and I found the doctor had removed the woman’s blouse and was going over the burns. “The second shelf on the right, bring me the bottle of carron oil and bandages. Quick boy!”

I snapped to it, running across the room and bringing it back to him. Snatching it out of my hands the man quickly got to work smearing the substance over her burns and then wrapping bandages around it with my assistance. It is only as we finished applying the bandages on her face that he spoke again. “You say you saw her in the water?”

I nodded. “Her, and a man and boy, neither were as injured as her. He said… or was implying that a wyvern rider came by and set fire to his vessel.”

The doctor paused at that, glancing up at me before frowning. “More flame testing then.”

“Flame testing?” I repeated.

The doctor scowled then started to wrap the bandages down the woman’s side. She was still unconscious, as I would imagine was a mercy; with the number of burns on her body if she were awake she would be screaming in agony. “Miscreants testing the heat of their wyvern’s flame. Forest, boats, buildings, they are usually gone before anyone can catch them.”

That’s… I opened my mouth to reply, but before I could there was a loud knock at the door. I looked towards it, then at the doctor. Dylan jerked his shoulder towards the door, and I walked over to it. With any luck it would be Morrigan, and I could ask to see if she found out anything more.

Instead, it opened to reveal two men in blue uniform, tall hats on their heads, and truncheons in their grip. Behind them, I could see Beithir pressed down against the ground. Nets covering her from head to tail. I looked back, only to get a truncheon in my stomach before I could say anything. With a groan, I stumbled back onto the ground, and I found myself looking up into the face of a rather ugly constable. The next thing I felt was a second blow against my temple, then not much else after that.