Azendandor woke fully energized. Lissa still lay asleep in her nest so he flew up to land atop her large warm shape.

’Lissa?’ he prodded gently.

Her mind echoed back anger and wordless reproof. Zen flinched at the vehemence of it. Sometimes she would wake, sometimes she would answer, and sometimes… well.

She pretended her deep loathing of him didn’t matter, and he managed to forget it most of the time, but when she lay sleeping and open… Sometimes he felt her urging him to fly away and never come back. Perhaps then she could be happy.

But the same force that wanted him to flee also drew him back to her inexorably. Even before she’d sealed him as hers, he knew she was the center of his universe and always would be.

Zen huffed out a tiny spark of flame, then immediately pounced on it to smother it with his body before it could catch into a full blaze. He still remembered the time his spark had ignited the sun-hiding hanging cloths Lissa kept over the window.

How did sun-hiding cloths work? He still hadn’t figured it out. He flew over to the window and nosed at the replacements, noting the coarser texture of them, how they rippled more stiffly. The window lay open a crack, enough to admit a faint night breeze, which performed very disappointingly and failed to more than rustle the hanging cloths.

Zen lay watching them for a long moment, looped body coiled with tension, prepared to pounce… but they never even tried to flee. He finally attacked regardless, zipping across the gap with quick wingbeats, then snapped it up in his mouth. It didn’t even wriggle, lying limp and dead, so he spat it out in disgust.

With one more glance back to check on Lissa, who was still napping, he nosed the window open far enough to admit him, then flew out into the night.

Though most of the Lissa-like people were asleep, Zen wasn’t the only dragon out for an evening adventure. He found Maki easily. The big browning’s pale scales showed up clearly in the moonlight, and he pranced eagerly when he saw Zen coming.

“Zen! Come come come closer.”

“Maki!” Zen screamed, coiling his body around Maki’s neck. “Where shall we be going today? Out into the hills? Have you found another cave? Or will we be chasing wildlings?”

“None of those.” Maki’s eyes shifted from side to side, then he tilted his head closer to Zen’s and growled softly, “we’re going to hunt a leviathan.”

Zen felt the tingle of excitement all the way down his body, tightening his grip on Maki’s neck as he shivered in eager anticipation. “Where is it?”

“In the Lake.” Maki tilted his head proudly, straightening his stance. “Oli showed me on a map yesterday.”

“Ooooooh.”

Maki grinned, tongue flicking. He was used to Zen’s envy and said nothing about it. “Ready?”

“Yes yes yes yes yes! Go! Go go go!”

Maki needed no further urging. He broke into a gallop at once, running faster than Zen could fly, charging straight at the wall enclosing them. Zen, still coiled tightly, stretched up and flapped his wings mightily, urging Maki to leap into the air and soar.

Maki waited until the last possible moment, until Zen felt sure he’d jump too late and they’d bump right into the wall, then gathered himself and jumped, wings snapping open as he pushed against the air trying to hold them down.

For a moment, the air seemed as though it would win. It pressed hard, but Maki was big and strong and fearless. He flapped harder, Zen fluttering his own tiny wings as fast as he possibly could, straining to ease the burden and help Maki loft over the wall.

Then they were over, claws scraping against the stone in a quick shriek, and Maki came down in a smooth glide, tucked his wings away to land… and promptly toppled forward, tail over head as he rolled with uneven momentum.

Zen screeched in surprise, but then Maki was back on his feet, rushing onward as though it were all part of the plan, and Zen relaxed. He let his body coil loosely, head upraised to catch the full force of the wind. He let his wings float behind him, imagining that he was flying, flying like the fastest aelanir in history. One day he’d be able to fly so fast the wind burned his throat and tugged at his wings as though to rip them away. One day, he’d be the fastest one ever.

Maki ran for so long that Zen started to feel sleepy again, but he didn’t dare sleep yet in case he missed their arrival to the Lake.

“There it is!” Maki roared, leaping into the air and flaring his wings to slow their descent. For a brief moment they hung in the air and Zen saw it, a silvery line across the land straight ahead of them, a line that rippled and shifted like a mirror with too much magic on it.

“Is it magic?” Zen asked eagerly.

“It’s water.”

“Water?” Zen scoffed. “I’ve seen water lots of times, but it’s a coward.” While it was true that it rippled, it was so skittish. If you spilled it on the ground it would run away and disappear. There was no way it would all stay settled in one spot like that.

“It’s very old and fearless water,” Maki confided. “You can jump right in it and it won’t go anywhere.”

Zen’s wings fluttered happily, and he wanted to slip into the air and coil around, but Maki was still running at full speed and if he jumped off he’d be left behind. He restrained his happiness, stretching his long neck up as far as was safe, staring with big eyes at the fearless water standing unflinching across their path.

He still couldn’t quite believe it. It stretched like a black cloth across the land, covering it completely. But as he watched, he saw that Maki was right. It rippled like water, not like cloth, and moonlight glinted off it in fluctuating waves.

“Hold your breath!” Maki bellowed, then took one last giant leap. Zen gasped, then snapped his mouth shut and gripped his body tighter around Maki as they flew down toward the ancient water waiting confidently for them.

Zen waited for it to flinch away, but instead it slapped him hard in the face, hard enough that he almost lost his grip. Zen hissed angrily, but that only let the water fill his mouth. He swallowed it defiantly. No water was going to get the best of him, however old or confident. Stupid water.

The darkness around them seemed heavier than he was used to, his eyes couldn’t quite adjust to it. He blinked into other sight instead, and the water lit up with thousands of tiny floating things. He snapped his tongue out at one curiously, but it was too small to taste.

Then they broke the surface as Maki laughed and sent water flying everywhere.

“Where’s the Leviathan?” Zen asked. “What is it?”

“It’s a wingless dragon that flies through water,” Maki said mysteriously. “I’ve never seen one, but Oli said they live in the Lake.”

Maki gulped in air and Zen took a longer, slower breath this time, now that he understood. Then they were back under, in the dark heaviness.

Water was thicker than air, sticky and clinging instead of dancing away when you flapped at it. Zen had been in baths before, but he’d not guessed how much more weighty the water could become when it made up its mind to settle in one place forever and grow big enough to swallow dragons whole.

For a time they flew silently through the heavy darkness. Zen switched regularly between vision sight and other sight, but neither showed their surroundings clearly. The tiny glowing things made his other sight almost useless, and the darkness made vision sight just as hard to use.

Maki was good at this water-flying, pushing them up to the surface for air regularly, then cruising below for minutes.

They stayed near the edge at first, neither comfortable enough to insist on going further, but after four times not finding anything Zen decided the time had come.

“We need to go further. If there’s a Leviathan here, it won’t be waiting in the open. It’ll be hiding at the bottom.”

Maki nodded. “I was just about to suggest that myself. You ready?”

Zen gulped in air and nodded, then they dove. This time, Maki pushed them straight out toward the center, following the slope of the ground down, down, down.

Zen switched to other sight, then tightened on Maki’s neck. He couldn’t speak without letting water in, but he tapped Maki’s head and gestured.

Together they stared at the faintly-glowing form of the Leviathan. It was long, but round and chubby, more like a Quetzlen than like Zen. It had six wings spread across its body, and another on its tail, which it used to fly through the water with native ease.

It opened its mouth as it flew toward them, and Maki reached out his nose tentatively. The Leviathan came right up, nibbled at his snout, then flew lazily off in a different direction as though completely disinterested in the intruders.

Maki and Zen stared after it until it disappeared from sight behind the countless floating specks, then returned to the surface.

“IT TOUCHED ME!” Maki shouted, flapping his wings to send water flying in all directions. “Did you see that? The Leviathan actually touched me. And it didn’t eat me or anything!”

“It would be hard for it to eat you,” Zen pointed out. “You’d need to be sliced into pieces. Me? It could have swallowed me whole. Except my tail.” He puffed up and nodded proudly. “So I am bigger than it, a little.”

“Did you see its scales? They’re so tiny and thin. I wonder if that’s to make it lighter so it can fly easily in water.”

“I want to see it again!”

Maki agreed, and they dove back down to hunt the Leviathan again. It never grew more interested in them however many times they found it, though it did nibble at Zen’s head once, which felt very strange but not unpleasant.

By the time they arrived back at the Academy, the sun had started to brighten the sky and Zen worried they may be too late. But Maki jumped the wall and Zen uncoiled himself to streak off to Lissa’s nest, while Maki settled to his place outside Oli’s building.

Zen yawned as he slipped in and jumped on the window to push it back to mostly-closed, bouncing up and down until it resembled its former state. It had been a long night, and he could use a nap.

Moments after he closed his eyes, Lissa poked him with her mind. “Zen, you awake?”

'Mhmm,' Zen replied, dishonestly.

“You’re starting to reek, I think you need another bath.”

Zen wanted to protest that he’d been in water all night, but held back at the last moment. Their hunts had to stay secret or the People In Charge would make the walls higher to keep them in. So he didn’t protest as he was taken to the tamed water and scrubbed until he shone.