Sutherland - Wings of Fire #11: The Lost Continent

About two thousand years ago

If you are flying directly into a hurricane, it is probably useful to be a dragon who can see the future.

Then again, if you are a dragon who can see the future, you are most likely far too smart to fly directly into a hurricane.

And yet, according to Clearsights visions, that was exactly what she needed to do.

She shook out her black wings, which were already tired from how far shed flown all morning and the day before. Her talons clung to the slippery wet rock below her. Her scales felt itchy with salt from the ocean spray. Above her, the sun peeked wearily through cracks in the dull gray clouds.

She closed her eyes, tracing the future paths ahead of her.

In one direction south and a little east there was a small island with a warm sandy beach. Two coconut palms nodded toward each other and there were lazy tiger sharks to eat. The hurricane would pass it by completely. If she went there, Clearsight could rest, eat, and sleep in safety. Then she could continue on in two days, after the storm was over.

But in the other direction a long flight west and slightly north the lost continent was waiting for her.

She knew it was real now. When shed left Pyrrhia to find it, shed half expected to fly all the way around the world and end up back on Pyrrhias other coast. No one was sure another continent even existed and if it did, everyone knew it was too far away to fly to. Any dragon would tire, fall into the sea, and drown before reaching it.

But Clearsight wasnt any dragon. She had something no one else did: the ability to carefully trace the paths of multiple possible futures. Standing on the edge of Pyrrhia, she could see which direction would take her to an island where she could rest. And then the next day: to another island. Shifting her course slightly each day, guided by her visions, she had found a trail of small islands to take her safely across the ocean.

A gust of wind roared over her, splattering a handful of raindrops onto her head.

The hurricane was almost upon her. If she didnt leave right now, dragons on the lost continent would die. Dragons who might one day be her friends, if she saved them. Dragons who had no idea what was bearing down on them, because there was no one there to warn them.

Yet.

Clearsight took a deep breath, vaulted into the sky, and pointed herself west.

Her mind immediately started flashing through all the ways she could die in the next two days. This was why she hated flying in storms. They were too unpredictable; the smallest twitch of the wind in the wrong direction could send her plummeting to the rocks below, or drive a stray palm branch into her heart.

Dont think about that. Think about the dragons who need you.

The other vision was fading; the one where she flew southeast and hid. In that one, shed arrived on the lost continent in the hurricanes aftermath. The images of the devastation and dead bodies would be hard to shake off, even if she prevented them in reality.

Will they believe me? Will they listen to me?

In some of her visions, they did; in some, they didnt.

All she could do was fly her hardest and hope.

The hurricane fought her at every wingbeat, as if it knew she was trying to snatch victims from its claws. Rain battered her ferociously. She felt like shed be driven into the endless sea at any moment. Or maybe shed drown up here, in the waterlogged sky.

But this was only the outer edge of the storm; there was far worse still to come. Clearsight was trying to reach land before the really terrible fury behind her did. She couldnt stop, couldnt slow down for a moment.

At one point she glanced back and saw a spout of water sucked into the air. In the middle of it, an orca flailed desperately, before the storm flung it away.

A while later, after the sun had apparently been swallowed for good, Clearsight saw an entire hut fly by her, then splinter apart. She had to duck quickly to a lower air current to avoid the debris. Where had it come from? Who had lived in it? She would never know, her visions told her.