Excerpt
“It’s here.” I took off the wool cloak so I would have better freedom of movement, but left my little brown cloak on, and drew Fiore’s sword from its sheath on my back and prepared for the inevitable.
Arianna and Etienne stood up from their bench.
“Where?” my elfin friend asked.
I pointed with the sword to starboard, and saw that the shadow had gotten closer – and had picked up speed. I moved to the side of the boat and took up a defensive stance. Arianna stood on my right, with her bow and arrow held ready. Etienne stood on the other side of me, ready to spellcast. But unless the seamonster was a Demon, I didn’t think any of his magic spells would be of any help. Unless he happened to know some black magic and hadn’t told us that, either.
We stood with our nerves and muscles tensed, and watched the large, obscure shadow come closer and closer. It reached us and we readied ourselves to attack as soon as it surfaced.
But instead of surfacing, it continued on, diving deeper underneath our boat. Surprised, we followed it to the other side in three steps. We reached the port side of the boat just in time to see the huge, sea green, lizard-like head and neck of a sea dragon surface right next to us. A horrendous roar bellowed out of its enormous, fanged mouth.
There was only enough time for me to let out a startled scream at the dragon’s sudden appearance, and for Arianna to launch her arrow, before the turbulence created by the monster’s rough surfacing caused our little rickety boat to capsize. We cried out in terror as we went flying and tumbling into the ocean. I glimpsed Arianna’s arrow lodge into one of the sea dragon’s blazing yellow eyes before I hit the water, and I heard the dragon cry out in anger and pain. But I didn’t have time to savor that little victory, because I sank fast beneath the surface of the water. My fear of drowning had been realized at last…