No thanks to a certain kindly brute, Tresille was stuck in the back on the tethered glider with Sara. Henry was lounging in a primitive glider with a spinning propeller attached, he also carried the tent and supplies. Keylin was the lucky one, she flew with Stone as he swooped in and around the clouds while she squealed with delight. Henry would not allow such acrobatics in the gliders, maintaining very straight and boring flight. Tresille watched Stone and Keylin, the two were actually playing. A few times Stone tossed her into the air. It reminded Tresille of playing with her Dad, he would throw her up to the balcony when it was time for bed. The flight itself wasn’t so bad, a bit more turbulent and the harness fit well. Stone did not let her and Sara separate for the flight, she still had some kind of fibrous velvet rope that Stone used for his belt around their waist. The rope itself seemed very practical, and he had plenty of it left. The most interesting aspect of the rope was that it didn’t need to be knotted. Stone simply laid the two ends on top of each-other, and they stuck together. Not for a lack of trying, but only Stone seemed capable of pulling it apart. Out of sheer defiance toward Stone, Sara and Tresille had a silent agreement to not speak to each other until the end.

Henry tied down the glider and ultralight for the night. They had made beautiful progress, traveling much further than hoped. He could not get over how wonderful flight is. The first half day of flight put him out of range for database access and couldn’t read any more files about flight. Of course, all he wanted to do now was be up in the sky dancing on the wind. He was wildly jealous of Stone, who was still up in the sky doing just that. Tresille’s pet cat emerged from the bushes. Henry almost pulled out his weapon, but the cat did not appear to be hunting.

For some strange reason the cat was friendly to everyone else in the group. Anytime Henry put his back to the cat, he was pounced. Had he not been in the near indestructible golem, the cat would have eaten him days ago.Tresille’s cat ‘Glinda’ was trying its hardest to gnaw through Henry’s leg. Had Henry not been so captivated by his map, he would have made a bigger deal, but currently his attention needed tobe on the map, and its one inconsistency. All three girls were sitting down, watching Henry probably captivated by his lack of response to the infernal cat. Stone was doing reconnaissance flights up and down the coast to get a better idea of what was happening.

“So, we are lost?” insinuated Tresille. She didn’t actually say anything while she and Sara approached, but the slight angle at the neck, lifted eyebrow, hand placement on her hip; the attempt at a powerwalk, said it for her. Henry allowed himself a few moments of distraction to focus on Tresille. Her first words would be in a friendly tone but insinuate incompetence. Probably an offer to help.

“You know, I took a number of cartography classes back in school, maybe I could help with the map?” said Tresille. Henry didn’t reply and chose to continue staring at the map. Unfortunately no matter how much he willed it, the map would not change. Tresille would not take kindly to being ignored and expected people to listen to her. She was the type to let her credentials talk for her, so her next comment would be nonverbal outrage, like a ‘tsk’, or an exasperated breath. She would do that condescending assumption most middle managers make when they give subordinates the “benefit of the doubt’ and presume they were not heard.

‘Sorry Tresille, I am ignoring you.’ thought Henry.

*Cough Cough*

‘Close enough.’ thought Henry. Now she would pull out the guns. Henry watched the color of her cheeks tum from a pale white to a beet red. Henry was not too interested in being screamed at, but now he was two for two, and really wanted to see this game through. It didn’t help that this was the first in a long time Henry saw Sara smile so delightfully. Tresille was going to start another one of her long-winded tirades. Her emotional ploy would be to make him feel bad, and associate that feeling of bad with his decision to not accept her help. Tresille opened her mouth but didn’t say anything. She let her jaw relax and both she and Sara simply stared out into the open ocean. Henry trusted Sara, he had ensured she saw the nittiest and grittiest of his job. For her to be surprised at this point, meant an event truly noteworthy. Henry couldn’t resist and put down the map.

Dragon was the only word to describe the water creature. It was extremely long and serpentine but had short salamander like claws. Its true size was difficult to estimate as half of it was continuously underwater, whirling and looping. Its face was also serpentine with some fins near the ear and a catfish like moustache. It was difficult to tell from so far away, but the face seemed expressive, like it was smiling. The animal appeared to be playing in the water, doing spins and hops out of the water, sometimes splashing.

“Rough estimate based on distance, but I would say that animal’s two sharp canine teeth, the two that extend below its chin, are about the same height as Henry here” said Keylin.

To prove the point, the dragon's head splashed into the water, and pulled out a massive white and black fish, flung it high into the air, and gulped it whole. The dragon was not much wider than the massive fish, showing a prominent bulge as it travelled down the dragon’s throat.

“I believe we could have fed an entire district for a day on that one fish” said Sara. Henry nodded in agreement. There was a silver lining to the revelation of this creature, it forced their hand in how to cross the ocean. Sailing was not an option. Just to be sure, they would fly extra high as they crossed.

“This thing, what is it?” asked Stone. Henry shared a few glances at the girls, nobody seemed sure who Stone was talking to. He had a tendency to speak without indicating who he was speaking to. Sara spoke up.

“We call it a dragon, but none of us have seen one before” said Sara.

“I thought dragons were bigger” said Stone.

“Your people know of dragons?” said Sara.

“We have many stories of them, from our Elders and before. Back in the time when we flew.” Stone replied. “Some Dragons were good and few with us, others were bad and ate us. Grandma Spring told a story once of a massive dragon that began eating all the fliers. She said it was a dragon so big it would shade the whole mountain. He was so big some of us would get lodged between his teeth as he flew. Grandma Spring said that Dragons were like people, they have good days and bad”

“Well it’s a good thing this one doesn’t have wings!” said Tresille.

The Dragon burst out of the water, wings emerged from somewhere in the middle. They had been wrapped around the body so tightly it was nearly impossible to distinguish them when folded. Tresille had seen paintings of similar looking dragons in the history databases back home. She had always assumed them to be myths. Especially since any mention of Dragons was always tagged with “Fantasy” and “Myth”.

“I will speak with the Dragon” said Stone. He jumped off the rounded cliff before anyone could say otherwise.

“Well, while he is out discussing with the Dragon, care to explain how we got to the coast two days early?” said Keylin.

“I suspect” said Henry “It has something to do with how sheer and curved this cliff into the ocean is.”

“Let me see the map” Keylin already had the map in her hands, but she still felt the need to ask permission. Henry was not willing to share the map thus far, so Keylin had to insist. Keylin understood the problem immediately, pointing to a spot in the map.

“This is roughly where you think we are, correct?” asked Keylin. Where she was pointing was roughly in the center of the smaller fourth continent. A huge contest was held to give the eleven terrestrial continents names. Keylin hoped she would return home in time to see if she won. The winners would get to land on the continent a few hours before the great return, and announce the new name. It was a very big deal and Keylin had submitted multiple times for all eleven continents. If she wins, continent number four would be named “Bumblebrop”.

“So, there are two possibilities for this problem” said Keylin. “One is that my math is wrong and we have been going faster than estimated” Keylin could barely say that with a straight face. Of course her math was correct. “Or your map is wrong”.

Henry scoffed. “The map isn’t wrong”

“How old is it?” asked Keylin.

“Ok, it may be old, but it isn’t wrong” said Henry “The last cartography missions were four generations ago, coastlines won’t change that quickly”

“You need to redraw your maps, continent four has always looked like this”. Keylin drew a line, nearly cutting the continent in half. “In fact, I’m fairly certain this isn’t technically a cliff, it’s the edge of a crater. Teacher says it was like this since the everwar”

Well sure, that was obvious, from how the edge of the cliff rose up to how it looked like it was part of a massive circle, that it is a crater. The real issue is that whatever happened here was after the cartography mission. Whatever explosion caused this should have been detected, and given Keylin’s statement, the Lunarians were involved. Two whole hordes were now gone forever; Thickroot and Deepwell. Henry’s grandmother was born in Thickroot. There was very little communication between cities. The distance between them was intentional to keep fighting to a minimum, or at the very least isolated. Gollum transfer is relatively short range so the only way to actually communicate with other cities was surface travel. That meant independent golems with the person fully inside. With all the topside radioactivity, such travel is extremely rare.

The moss the Lunarians sent many hundred years ago was a great start. His people had been working on cleaning the dirt from the bottom up, and the Lunarians were cleaning the earth from the surface down. Unbeknownst to the Lunarians, they had been working in harmony to clean the earth for centuries. If their little King hadn’t caused such a ruckus when he came down, Henry likely would have welcomed Tresille and Keylin as friends. Henry couldn’t help but wonder if Pythagoras’ visit was somehow connected to this crater. Without access to the databases, it would be impossible to check the timelines and see if that crazy king had arrived before or after the cartography expedition. A gasp from Sara knocked Henry out of his thoughts.

Sara had trouble caring about the massive crater aside from the loss of the two cities. Whatever happened, happened a long time ago and it was quick from the look of it. Either way her attention was on Stone. He got smaller and smaller as he flew toward the flying dragon. She knew so little about him, she didn’t know if he was prepared to confront such a beast, or was ignorantly walking head-first into a fire. Soon the Dragon noticed Stone, and began flying in a wide circle. Stone flew close to the head, matching the flightpath.

“Do you think the Dragon can speak?” asked Keylin. Sara only shrugged her shoulders. At this point anything was possible. Its elongated face was certainly expressive enough to allow some form of verbal speech, but who knows if it was anything intelligible. Sara watched as the two circled faster and faster, when Stone turned into the dragon and hit the animal in the eye. Sara let out a gasp as the dragon curled into a tight ball, effectively cannonballing into the ocean. Stone was somewhere in that ball.

“We have to help him!” said Sara, Tresille, Keylin and Henry.

‘JINX!’ sent Keylin. Tresille was first to calm down.

“What can we do?” said Tresille aloud. Henry was already loading up into his ultralight, Keylin was hooking up the glider to tow behind. Both stopped and thought for a moment.

“Did you bring some sort of weapon?” Keylin asked.

“Of course I did!” said Henry, pulling out an ancient rifle. Tresille was stunned. The rifle was a chemically exothermic propellant weapon, barely more advanced than rock tied to a stick. On Luna, guns were symbolic of cavemen and other primitives. The thought of a mildly controlled explosion occurring so close to one’s face was frightening. Henry expected her to be impressed. Her look of disdain on the rifle effectively took the excitement out of his eyes.

“IS that a GUN?” asked Keylin excitedly. The spark came back.

“This is a .22 lever action Henry Rifle” said Henry proudly.

“YOU WERE NAMED AFTER A GUN?” asked Keylin in wonder. “Is it a family heirloom? Also do you have a larger caliber than .22? I read that it wasn’t very effective for tall buildings”

“You would be surprised how effective a .22 can be in the right hands.” said Henry. “That being said, you may be right, this will likely do nothing against an animal that massive” Henry got out of his ultralight. “Tresille is also right, anything we do right now will only endanger our own lives” Henry then put the rifle back in the aircraft. Keylin eyed it hungrily.

“How do you know so much about rifles?” Sent Tresille

“They are fascinating! Did you know that they rely entirely on controlled exothermic reactions? They used explosions inches from their face, safely! How cool is that? I read that the first rifles were used to drive nails into the roofs of their barns so they didn’t have to climb up there.” Keylin replied.

“Why are you so interested in construction equipment?” Tresille asked.

“There’s just something cool about them” Sent Keylin.

“Can you teach me how to shoot it?” asked Keylin to Henry.

“When the time is right, sure” said Henry. Keylin squealed in delight. Tresille could not believe how happy everyone was while Stone was still in danger. She was about to tell the two to calm down when Sara gently elbowed her and pointed to the water. The water was churning violently.

The dragon burst out of the water, half its body still coiled up in the ocean below. It arched its neck, and spat out Stone, hurling him well above the clouds. As quickly as the dragon emerged from the water, it was back under and dived deep into the darker waters.

Sara let out a sigh. “I bet my dessert Stone doesn’t have a scratch on him”

“For my dessert, I’ll bet that dragon is his new best friend” said Tresille

“I bet he brings back souvenirs” said Keylin. Everyone turned to look at her. “You know, the little gifts you get for your friends when you go somewhere interesting”

Henry contemplated for a moment “I bet he never tells us what happened”

“Deal” said Keylin “Now everyone give me desserts because I won”

Stone gave his best landing yet, majestically imitating a feline avoiding the water at all costs. His wings causing a small localized hurricane. In his arms were five blue scales each as tall and wide as Keylin with her outstretched arms.

“We must leave now” said Stone. He moved at alarming speed, ripping the rope that tied Sara and Tresille away and using the rope to tie the scales around his chest. Each one was large enough to cover his wide chest, they were concave like a spoon and fit into each other. Stone then picked up Keylin who screamed “Wheeeeeeeeeeee !” as he threw her over the edge of the cliff and dove after her. It happened so quickly nobody else moved until they watched Stone and Keylin rise above the horizon. Tresille and Sara forgot their punishment was over and moved in unison to finish packing and prep for flight. Two minutes later they were over the cliff and gaining altitude.