The Onyx Dragon by Marc Secchia

thing–that creature, Pip realised–which held them captive. Between digits as thick as the largest of Dragonships, she saw a crack of sky. Paws. Great Islands! Paws covered the mountaintop …
    Leandrial! Pip yelled in her mind.
    Abruptly, the low earthquake of movement outside the volcano stilled. The Dragons froze. Silence roared in her ears, while her heart beat a desperate tattoo upon her ribs. Why would the Land Dragon ambush them? Had the Marshal of Herimor corrupted and turned even the mightiest of the Dragonkind? Were that true, they were surely doomed.
    WHERE IS THE ONE CALLED PIP?
    The caldera walls juddered and cracked at Leandrial’s awesome thundering. Stunned, Pip saw Kassik plunge into the lake, while Tazzaral crumpled nearby and even Emblazon shuddered as though one of those paws had delivered a prodigious buffet to the side of his head. Ten thousand birds burst from the dense foliage in a deafening clatter of wings, but they had nowhere to go and perhaps the unnatural darkness confused them, for they returned almost as quickly to their evening perches.
    Peace, Leandrial. I am here.
    LIAR! Do you take me for a fool? Pip is a Lesser Dragon!
    Though she tasted blood in her mouth, Pip replied steadily, Pip is here. I am the one who speaks the ancient magic, and I am unafraid of you.
    “Grief, I’m afraid,” Nak squeaked.
    A white light brightened behind the digits. Pip realised that Leandrial gazed upon them with that single, magical eye in the centre of her forehead; the wash of alien magic stunned her and Silver, who made a sound between a gasp and a whimper beside her. She tried to raise her chin, to gird up her courage, but Pip knew the gesture for an exercise in futility. She made a ‘keep calm’ gesture in case anyone was looking to her for a lead, aware of Emmaraz lending a shoulder as the Brown Shapeshifter staggered out of the lake, while Emblazon’s belly-fires raged in readiness for battle.
    Abruptly, the digits drew apart and Leandrial thrust her muzzle down into the caldera, right above Pip. At the vast inrush of air into the Land Dragon’s nostrils, the Pygmy girl felt her feet leave the sand.
    Leand–
    Draconic laughter boomed overhead, raising waves on the lake and snuffing out Nak’s cooking fire in an instant, puffing Pip down into an ungainly sprawl on the sand.
    “You are Pip. Why’ve you changed? What is this taint I scent within you, little one?”
    Leandrial. She had not fallen to the Marshal. She was more awesome than ever, large enough to seize volcanoes in her paws and cunning enough to ambush experienced Dragons. Jyoss winged cautiously around the Land Dragon’s head before deciding upon a landing on the volcano’s rim.
    The tendrils trailing from Leandrial’s jowls scraped across Pip’s legs as her body refused to obey her command to roll out of the way. The milky white eye, wide enough for a Dragon fledgling to fly right into, scrutinised their company as though seeking to sample the very marrow of their bones, the living pith that Islanders spoke of. Her hide was a smooth, grey-green wall of flesh, the width of her muzzle filling the crater with little room to spare. Dank yet evocative, the scent of a bottom-dweller filled their nostrils. Primeval secrets. Ageless swamp. Waters rich with tangy minerals and organic compounds, and that ever-so-draconic overtone of cinnamon intermingled with other spices and savours Pip could not identify.
    No Dragon of their company twitched so much as a wingtip. Their natural awe and reverence of physical size rendered them speechless.
    Well. Now they all felt like insects in a terrarium, while its owner peered in from above. Blotting out the sky. Absurdly, Pip hoped Leandrial would not feel the urge to sneeze. That would be messy. She mentally kicked herself into action. Her friends depended on her. Pip pushed herself out of Silver’s paw, dusting off her Dragon Rider trousers with a businesslike air. She would speak up, for she