Chương 184: 21. Flames of Wrath 4

The Breakwater scraped between those two sea-dragon gunships close enough that I honestly thought the next lurch would dump us all into the sea. Something slammed into our starboard side—maybe a glancing cannonball, maybe some jutting spar—making the entire deck shudder. Ropes snapped, splinters flew, and the salty wind now reeked of powder and charred fabric.

"Down!" Blake suddenly tackled me. An instant later, an iron grapnel line screamed overhead, burying itself in the bulwark by the mainmast. The planks split with an ugly crack. Nico's face went dead white, but his mouth still worked.

"I take it back!" he howled, hacking at the grapnel line.

"This isn't cuckolding the Emperor—you people burned down his bedchamber!"

"Shut up and pull!" Lov blew a sea-dragon off its rail with a casual shot, then snarled over her shoulder, "Keep yapping and I'll hang you up as a flag!" Marro didn't spare us a glance. He was welded to the helm, the wheel creaking under strain, eyes blazing with something between calculation and madness.

"Hold that sheet—fill the sail! Blake, ease that port line half a foot! Nico, if that grapnel fouls the rudder, I'll feed you to the Sea God myself!" The Breakwater knifed left like someone had kicked her spine. Behind us, the gunship I'd disrupted was yawing out of control, fire crawling across her foredeck. The other, swerving to avoid collision, lost its perfect intercept angle. In that sliver of time—just that one—an escape route opened.

"Now! Ride it!" Marro rasped. The Breakwater shot forward like a blackfish driven to madness, skimming the wave-tops. Behind us, the Yanxia Empire dragonship fired another broadside. This time not everything missed. One heavy ball slammed into the sea just aft, throwing up a wall of water that crashed over the stern and flattened Nico and me. Another grazed our tail, tearing away the aft railing and a section of outboard frame.

"Starboard quarter breach!" Blake bellowed.

"Leave it!" Marro didn't even look back.

"Let her take water! Keep our speed! As long as she isn't sinking, she runs!" That was when I finally understood how a man like him could claw his way to untouchable status in Blackbeard Bay. Because when it counted, there was no such thing as "hesitation" in his head. What to sacrifice, what to save, who lives, which plank gets patched later—he'd done the math before the cannonballs even landed. And me? I was still clutching the pistol, fingertips tingling from recoil and adrenaline.

"Let me see that thing." Lov reached me first, seizing my wrist. Her eyes locked on the still-warm ancient pistol. The cold lead in her gaze had melted into something bright, almost unhinged.

"It fires consecutively?" Her voice was rough.

"No fresh powder, no ramrod, you just pull again and it spits another shot?!"

"…In theory, yeah."

"In theory?!"

"This is my first time actually shooting people from a ship!"

"Damn those ancients…" she muttered, but there was no disgust—only the naked shock and greed of a musketeer staring at a miracle.

"This thing is an insult to everything we do—""Lov!" Marro's shout cracked like a whip.

"If you want to cuddle it later, patch that breach first. Now!" Lov bit back whatever she was going to say and dove for the stern, but not before skewering me with one last glare.

"Don't you dare drop that in the sea!" …Her obsession with weapons was honestly getting scary. Ignicia appeared from the other side, someone else's blood still on her arm. Her gaze flicked to the pistol, then to the sea-dragon gunship flailing with half its foredeck ablaze. No surprise on her face—only a deep, clear gravity.

"You felt it?" she asked.

"Felt what?"

"Its weight. Not just in your hand." Her voice dropped low. I froze. The sea wind slid over the gunmetal, carrying the scorched tang of powder and hot metal. When I'd fired those shots, I'd been too busy trying not to die to think. Only now, with the Breakwater finally pulling distance, did I really feel it— This wasn't a normal weapon. It was an answer from another age. And that answer was too fast, too clean. So clean it made this era's way of fighting feel clumsy and slow.

I stared at the pistol, my palm going oddly cold.

"…I don't like this feeling."

"Neither do I," Ignicia replied, just as calm. She stepped closer, voice dropping to a whisper.

"Then let's make a promise." I looked up at her.

"Unless there's no other choice. Unless what you're facing comes from that civilization that destroyed itself—otherwise…" Her golden eyes burned with restrained fire as she stared at the pistol.

"Don't let that thing become your answer to everything." I stayed silent for a long moment. Then nodded.

"…All right." She reached out and pressed my hand once, over the pistol. Brief. So brief it almost felt imagined.

"Just remember." With that, she turned to help Blake shore up a mast strut shaken loose by the bombardment. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. I looked down at the pistol, exhaled slowly, then checked the safety and wrapped it back in oilcloth. The motion felt like sealing something away. From this moment on, it wasn't just loot. And it sure as hell wasn't just a secret. It was a card. A heavy, dangerous card I could never afford to play lightly.

The next half hour, the Breakwater ran on borrowed time and Marro's stubbornness. The Yanxia dragonship was too heavy to match our turns; the real threat was still the sea-dragon gunships. But with one wrecked by my shots and another tangled in collision avoidance, Marro drove us into a stretch of continuous side waves. For big ships, those waves were trouble. For the narrow, fast Breakwater, they were a desperate racetrack.

"Hold steady!" Blake shouted around the rope in his teeth.

"I am steady!" Nico was practically hanging off the outer netting.

"I'm holding on for my life!"

"That's not the same thing!"

"Close enough when the alternative is fish bait—" Another boom cut his words in half, but this volley fell farther back. Lov glanced over her shoulder, finally letting real relief ease her features.

"We're pulling away…"

"Not yet," Marro cut in flatly.

"Eyes on the wake. As long as they're in sight, you're not alive." Harsh. But nobody argued. Only when the sun had crawled west and the water ahead began changing color did tension ease the tiniest fraction. Not because our pursuers were gone. Because Blake had been staring ahead from the shrouds before finally breathing:"We're close."

"Close to what?" He jerked his chin forward. At first I saw nothing—just water a shade darker, currents twisting differently. Further on, black rocks poked above the waves like an almost-invisible gate. Ignicia walked to the bow. One look:"The outer border of the Dragon Kingdom's waters." Her words worked like a dispelling charm. Blake slumped against the mast and actually laughed. Nico sat down hard and blew out a lungful of air.

"Shit… I really thought we were fish food today." Lov didn't speak, but her musket finally dipped a hair. Even Marro's shoulders eased a fraction. This was the Dragon Kingdom. Whatever dirty business the Yanxia Empire and sea-dragons had going, once you crossed into another nation's waters, by rights, they were supposed to stop. By rights. I looked at Ignicia. She stood at the prow, spine straight, cloak snapping in the wind. For one absurd heartbeat, I almost believed it. Like we'd really made it.

Like we could leave the chaos, the cannon fire, Blackbeard Bay, the Ravens, and the Empire behind us. … Reality slapped me before that thought got comfortable. By dawn the next day, when the Breakwater had crossed the line marked by reefs, currents, and ancient buoys, everyone assumed the worst we'd get would be hard stares from a distance. The Yanxia dragonship didn't hesitate for half a breath.

Boom— The first cannonball crashed through morning mist, landing just off our port quarter in a column of spray that rocked the entire hull. Everyone froze. Blake needed a full beat before managing: "They're insane?!"

"Not just one!" Lov yelled. Second and third volleys roared out. The two sea-dragon gunships that had reformed also ignored the border completely, skimming in with guns and grapnels both. This wasn't a chase gone wrong. This wasn't a navigation error. This was deliberate—open fire across a sovereign border. Ignicia stood at the bow, her face turning so cold it was almost someone else's. Then she spoke.

"…This is a declaration of war." She didn't scream. She didn't roar. She just laid those four words down, flat and level. Somehow that made my spine chill more than the cannon fire. The next second, she tore off her cloak. Deep red lining snapped in the wind like fresh blood. She looked back at Marro, and those golden eyes that had shared our ship as fellow traveler, injured fugitive, even passenger—were gone. In their place was a resolve that belonged to something far higher up the ladder.

"From this moment, this is my war," she said.

"Stay out of it."

"Wait—" I stepped forward. She just glanced at me. That glance was short. But it felt like she'd packed everything unsaid into it and locked it away. Then she vaulted the rail and threw herself into the sea.

"Ignicia!" By the time I reached the prow, only ripples remained. Those ripples hadn't even faded when the sea… heaved. Not a swell. Not a splash. An eruption. Crimson. Not fish. Not ship. Not human. A dragon burst from the depths. Water cascaded off scarlet scales and vast wings as morning light struck her—turning that red-gold armor into something that hurt to look at directly. When she beat her wings, the sea beneath compressed visibly, air itself screaming as membrane tore it apart.

On the Breakwater's deck, silence swallowed everything. Not that nobody spoke—nobody remembered how. Even Nico hung slack-jawed, rope forgotten in his hands. For the first time, something like real disorientation flickered in Marro's eyes. As for me— It wasn't my first time seeing her inhuman side. But seeing a fully realized, battle-ready fire dragon hurl herself into the sky still felt like something had reached into my chest and squeezed. That wasn't a fight. That was a natural disaster choosing a direction.

Ignicia wasted no time. She folded once in midair and dove straight for the Yanxia dragonship. They clearly hadn't expected to meet a real dragon in a sea battle. The ordered gun crews and signalmen disintegrated the moment she stooped. She opened her jaws. Flame didn't spit out. It poured. A torrent of red-gold fire—heat I didn't want to imagine—slammed along the dragonship's midships. Planks, rope, canvas, powder chests—everything turned the same furious color simultaneously. The dragonship became a torch.

Not "caught fire." Became a torch. The people who built that monster had never planned for this—guns to bombard cities, not defend against dragons cooking their deck from above. The cannons never got a chance to adjust. The superstructure burned. The rigging burned. Men ran screaming, some leaping overboard, some not getting even that far. Ignicia didn't waste a second breath on it. She swept past the burning hulk and banked toward the sea-dragon gunships.

Those were smaller, faster—and right now that speed just meant they could panic more efficiently. Sea-dragons knew what she was. They understood what a mature fire dragon over water meant. Their formation shattered instantly. Too late. Ignicia skimmed the surface, wingtips clipping waves. Her second blast carved across the sea like a red scythe, chewing from bow to midships of the nearest gunship. Sea-dragons screamed and jumped for water, but flames clung to wood and oil like they were alive.

The third gunship tried to flee. She didn't waste flame. She dropped from the sky and smashed it with wings and tail, rolling the hull sideways. Only then did she finish it with fire. This wasn't war anymore. This was what happened when one side stopped being a military force and became a cleanup problem. Where moments ago an imperial strike force had us pinned, now the sea was a field of burning wreckage and roiling smoke, dotted with desperate swimmers.

On the Breakwater, only wind, distant fire, and the occasional boom of secondary explosions remained. Everyone had forgotten how to speak. When Ignicia flew back, she didn't land immediately. She circled low once. The downdraft nearly flattened us. As those golden dragon eyes looked down, I suddenly understood something else— Why a dragon could be a country.

Because when something like that fixed its gaze on you, it was hard not to wonder if your species had been standing on the wrong rung of the food chain from the beginning.

"Your wounds?" I yelled up. She folded her wings slightly, voice carrying down clearly.

"More or less healed." Then her head tilted toward the northeast horizon.

"Marro. Dragon cavalry incoming. Straighten the ship and slow down. Leave the rest to me." Marro snapped out of his trance, instinct kicking in.

"Bring her to! Bows forward!" he bellowed.

"Take in half sail! Move!" That was when everyone except me finally broke. Not from wounds. Not exhaustion. Dragon-aura. A pressure older and simpler than any command—like an invisible hand pressing every spine and knee, forcing bone and flesh to admit the obvious hierarchy. Nico folded first, slamming onto the deck, face fish-belly white. Blake tried to resist but went to one knee after two heartbeats.

Lov's musket clattered down as she dropped—not humiliation on her face, but involuntary shudder she'd never forgive herself for. Marro held out longest. He was Marro, after all. But even he ended up on one knee, bracing himself to keep from going flat. That face always calculating everyone's price now showed dawning awareness of what he'd been doing business with. Only I stayed standing. Not because I was stronger. Not because I wasn't scared. When her gaze swept over us, my back went cold, chest heavy as lead.

But I didn't kneel. Maybe because I'd seen her at her most pathetic—hurt, cursing me in a shack while refusing to collapse. Barefoot in ancient ruins, grimacing at gasoline's taste. Not "the dragon," but Ignicia. So even now, cloaked in fire with war nesting in her wingspan, I could still look up and stay on my feet. Our eyes met across the distance. Neither spoke. But I knew—she'd noticed I was still standing. Right then, shadows broke from distant clouds. Not ships. Two riders on dragonback.

They came fast from the Dragon Kingdom's interior, wings slicing mist, contrails streaming behind. Armored, lance-bearing, banners snapping with authority that didn't need announcement. Not reinforcements. Weapons a kingdom had thrown. Dragon cavalry. Two riders. Closing on a sea still smoking with evidence of what Ignicia had done. We were back in the Dragon Kingdom.