Chapter Text
“Is this…thing going to be big enough to hold all of us?”
It’s not that Katie—Pidge, to most of her friends—exactly distrusts Keith. She doesn’t know him personally all that well, but Matt is vouching for him, and he did just save them in the middle of this disastrous rescue attempt for Shiro.
Except none of them had really expected that rescue to come with, well, a dragon. Much less a Monstrous Nightmare.
It’s smaller than the average Nightmare, but that still means it towers over all of them, and even the smallest of the Nightmares can still eviscerate a sheep in about ten seconds or less. They’re the wildest, most primal, most instinctive and bloodthirsty dragons around, and they never back down from a fight until they’re dead or you are.
And Keith’s riding it, like it’s no big deal.
“No,” Keith answers shortly. He looks distinctly displeased as he sits on the creature’s neck on a makeshift saddle, fingers wrapped around its massive twisted horns. The Nightmare growls, and twists its head sharply, smacking Keith in the side of his face with one of the horns, and Keith yelps. After a moment, he amends, “Yes.”
Pidge swears the dragon looks smugly satisfied with itself. She’s not sure if that’s a good thing. She still hasn’t figure out if it’s happy because it’s proving it can do something difficult, or if it’s because it’s getting a very large dinner.
“Guys, I hate to interrupt or whatever, but we’ve got trouble coming!” Lance shouts. He’s got his back to the rest of them, facing back towards the buildings and enclosed paths they’ve finally escaped, bow drawn and arrow nocked. He’s not wrong—a dozen of these Galra clansmen are already running towards them, weaponry raised and yelling angrily.
“Okay, dragon says it can handle it, so let’s go, let’s go!” Matt all but yelps. He clambers up on the Nightmare’s back, clinging to one of the wavy spines. The dragon shifts and growls low in its throat at the movement, but Keith leans forward and mutters something to it, and it stills enough for Pidge to scramble up after her brother. They each grab a spine, and Matt adds, “Hand him up to us, quick!”
Hunk obliges, shifting the unconscious Shiro off his shoulder and pushing him up towards the siblings. Pidge reaches out and manages to catch Shiro under one arm, and Matt grabs the other one. They drag him between them and secure him more carefully by locking their arms with his. Shiro flops like a rag doll against Matt, all but dead to the world, but at least he’s not actually dead. They’d been in time enough for that at least, even if the rest of this mission had been a total disaster.
Pidge is starting to wonder if the village elders had maybe had a point. They hadn’t been willing to immediately strike at this new, strange clan spreading across the archipelago until they had more information. Matt had brought word of the attackers when he’d washed up on shore after being lost at sea for months, but they’d wanted to get a better scope of the whole mess before committing to an attack. But Matt had insisted they had to go back, Shiro was still there, and their father, and they couldn’t wait, it would be too late then.
So he’d recruited Pidge, and her friends from the village, Lance and Hunk. A stealth mission would be easy. They could sneak in, break her father and Shiro free, and sneak out. But they hadn’t counted on not finding her father on the island Matt directed them to, or on their boat being discovered, or on Shiro being unconscious and missing half his right arm when they found him. If Keith hadn’t shown up when he did, on a gods-damned dragon, they’d probably all be dead.
Not that there’s not still a chance to all be dead. “Hurry,” Keith snaps, as his Nightmare snarls at the enemies. Hunk clambers up on the Nightmare’s back next, sitting the farthest back. Lance fires off a pair of arrows, knocking a few throwing weapons out of enemy viking hands, and then whips around to lock wrists with Hunk, who pulls him up on the dragon near him.
As soon as Lance is clear, Keith hisses, “Fire stream,” and the Nightmare roars and spits a thirty foot jet of flame at the approaching enemies. They yell in surprise and pain as they dart out of the way, some with clothes or weapons on fire. Keith tugs on the Nightmare’s horns, and it lumbers into action even as he calls over his shoulder, “Hang on!”
The Nightmare leaps, and its powerful wings flap, but it only makes it a few feet in the air before collapsing back to the ground with an earth-shattering thud. It growls, and scuttles forward several feet at an awkward run before leaping in the air again, to the same effect.
“They’re catching up,” Hunk yelps frantically, clinging to one of the Nightmare’s spines as he looks back over his shoulder. “That fire didn’t slow them long!”
“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Lance yells.
“You wanna jump off and lighten the load, be my guest!” Keith shoots back tersely. “You try carrying six people!”
Which was sort of what Pidge was getting at earlier, really, but she has enough grace to not yell ‘I told you so’ while being chased by armed combatants.
“You just need a little help, don’t you girl?” Keith says. Pidge barely hears him over the yells of the vikings behind them; the words are clearly intended for his dragon, and she’s just lucky enough to overhear. “Just a little momentum, a little uplift…there!”
He twists the Nightmare’s horns, and she turns and rockets forward on awkward mis-matched limbs, towards—oh, no.
“Guys?” Matt asks, looking increasingly alarmed. “Are we running straight towards a cliff?”
“Yup,” Keith answers. It’s almost conversational. Pidge swears he’s grinning.
“Are you crazy?” Lance snaps. “Your dragon can’t fly and you want to run us off a cliff?”
The Nightmare roars in protest, and Keith scowls as he looks over his shoulder. “That dragon’s saving your ass, so shut up, trust us, and hang on.”
The last, Pidge realizes, is said approximately five seconds before the dragon reaches the edge of the cliff and launches with one powerful leap off its edge. She screams, because that’s the only intelligent reaction, really, but she also has enough presence of mind to tighten her grip around the spine in her left hand and Shiro’s arm in her right, and she can feel Matt doing the same on the other side. The last thing they need is to lose the unconscious guy in a freefall after leaping off a cliff hundreds of feet in the air on the back of an overburdened dragon.
If they live through this, this is going to be one hell of a story to tell her tribe one day.
She’s not the only one screaming. Everyone else is, except Shiro (obviously) and Keith (less obvious). Keith seems focused, and leans forward towards his dragon’s head, horns tight in a white-knuckled grip. The Monstrous Nightmare’s wings are folded close to her body, and she’s dropping like a stone, nose pointed straight at the jagged rocks and ocean waves below.
Pidge is considered to be fairly intelligent amongst the vikings on their island back home, and she’s pretty sure diving straight at the ground is the exact opposite of flying.
But Keith seems to know what he’s doing and it’s not like they have any other choice but to trust him now, as asked. And lo and behold, at exactly the right moment, he pulls back on the horns and yells, “Now!” And the Monstrous Nightmare, in a shocking display of maneuverability Pidge hadn’t thought possible for such a massive beast, wrenches its whole body back suddenly and spreads its wings wide. The kickback from the sudden resistance is incredible, and Pidge grunts in pain as she nearly cracks her head against he creature’s scales, and she can feel everyone else crashing into each other.
But it works. The dragon converts all that momentum and energy into lift, and glides on her massive wingspan, soaring just over the water. The speed seems to send her slingshotting back into the air, now that she’s actually in flight, and she blasts upward and away. Pidge glances back, and her last view of the Galra outpost is tiny flickering torches and the faintest of angry yells. Then they’re in the clouds, and visuals of that awful place are gone.
“I cannot believe that worked,” Lance says incredulously.
“I told you to trust us,” Keith says, sounding both smug and a little irritated. The Monstrous Nightmare roars in agreement, and he leans forward to pat her on the head. “Don’t listen to him. You were amazing, Red. You did a great job.”
And Pidge, well, she definitely doesn’t distrust Keith. That’s twice now he’s saved their lives, with a dragon no less. And the dragon-riding thing is a little crazy, but…
But she exchanges glances with her brother over Shiro’s head, and he’s just as wide-eyed and excited looking at the realization that they’re riding on the back of a gods-damned dragon, and Pidge thinks that maybe this is a kind of crazy she could get behind.
Keith’s home is a tiny little otherwise-uninhabited island. It’s not on any of the charts, and there aren’t any other humans on it, or other dragons. The only signs of habitation are from Keith himself. He’s got a small hut, a tiny storage shed for keeping food and supplies, and an even tinier garden. It’s right near a cave that clearly plays home to his dragon, and he’s got plenty of supplies for caring for her, but that’s about the extent of it.
It seems lonely, at least to Hunk. But he’s grown up in a village all his life, and he values that sense of community. Keith obviously never did, or he wouldn’t have left the day the oracles spoke of a longboat lost at sea.
Keith makes them pile off of Red to let the dragon rest, not that any of them are complaining. Hunk’s glad to get off the beast, himself. When she soars it isn’t so bad, but flying is not fun with all that constant flapping and the nauseated feelings he gets watching the horizon bob up and down uncomfortably. He’s already thrown up twice over the side of the dragon just on the way here. He’ll keep his feet on the ground, thank you very much.
He pokes through Keith’s storage shed while Keith and Matt are getting Shiro situated in the hut and giving him medical attention. Shiro hadn’t woken at all during the flight out, and he’d had some awful injuries when they found him. Most of his right forearm is just gone, up to almost his elbow. There’s an awful gash across his face that looks like it’s still healing, and dozens of bruises and bumps, and his fringe of hair has turned white somehow. It makes Hunk worried, but Matt’s trained with the village healers; it’s one of the reasons he went on the voyage. If anyone can fix Shiro up he can. And in the meantime, Hunk can help with the other half.
Lance joins in Hunk’s search, and helps him pull apart all the neat stuff in the shed—food, tools, weapons, shields, armor. It’s small, but Keith’s still got a lot of things in here. Keith himself comes out halfway through and looks irritated with the pair of them for digging through his stuff, but quiets when he realizes what Hunk is up to, and grudgingly permits it. Then he climbs on his dragon and disappears into the horizon.
But it’s his house, so he’ll be back. Probably.
Hunk finds what he needs with Lance’s help, and he’s almost put the finishing touches on his little project when Matt exits the hut. “Just gotta wait for him to wake up now,” he says with a sigh, as he sits down on a stump near his sister.
(Hunk still thinks it’s crazy how similar those two look, even when Pidge’s hair is currently tied back in a classic viking braid, and Matt’s had been sheared short from his captivity. It’s no surprise people think they’re twins so often, even when they’re a couple years apart).
“What do you think?” Hunk asks, holding up his project for inspection. It’s nothing fancy, just a hook Shiro can use in place of his right hand for now. If Hunk had access to a proper forge he could make a better one, and maybe Pidge can help him come up with some good designs; she’s always good at making up mechanical plans and brainstorming new concepts. But for now it will at least let Shiro cap the stump of his arm, protect it from taking a beating, and still give him something he can at least kind of maneuver objects with.
“Not bad, considering,” Matt says, which is just about how Hunk feels. He nods to himself, and finishes putting the final pieces together.
It’s not long after that when Keith returns, riding Red. That he came back isn’t surprising; what is surprising is that he came back with dinner. Hunk can feel his mouth watering at the sight of the fat boar clutched in the Monstrous Nightmare’s talons, but even so he doesn’t miss the fact that Keith found game big enough for everyone. He might act like a lone wolf, but he’s still thinking of the others. Hunk has never really known him well before this, but he decides the guy is okay now.
Hunk assists with prepping dinner, and Red helpfully provides a cooking fire. She still seems a little uneasy with so many humans present, and sticks near Keith or keeps an eye on them constantly, but she doesn’t seem quite as aggressive as she had been when she first showed up with Keith on her back. Frankly, Hunk is stunned to see a Monstrous Nightmare being even neutral about interacting with people. He’d always learned they were wild, rabid beasts, the worst of the dragons that attacked the village. Red is prickly, but she doesn’t seem savage.
Hunk wonders about that, and wonders if the things they’ve learned about dragons are as accurate as he first thought.
Shiro wakes just as dinner finishes, and stumbles weakly out of the hut looking confused and exhausted. He’s a mess of bandages, especially his right arm, and he looks dead on his feet, but he’s awake. That’s such a relief after finding him unconscious in a cell at the Galra outpost. Hunk won’t ever forget that image; it had scared him to death, to think they’d been too late.
“What…what’s going on?” Shiro asks, looking around at them all in confusion. “Where…where are we? This isn’t the outpost, or the village, or…” His eyes widen in alarm as he spots Red, and even as exhausted as he is he falls into a combat crouch, one remaining arm raised and at the ready. “Dragon! Run!”
Red bristles at the noise, pupils shrinking to slits, and her massive head raises in the air as she snarls warningly. Shiro looks fully ready to engage in order to give them time to run, and Hunk is impressed at how much control he seems to have and how willing he is to fight for them despite clearly being so confused. But this is a situation that can’t end well, and Hunk watches the aggressive dragon very nervously.
Keith puts an end to it, fortunately. He leaps between man and dragon, and holds out his hands to both. “Wait! Wait,” he yells, and Red snarls again but lowers her head a little, eyes narrowed but not as aggressive. Shiro’s stance raises a little, and in the moment of confusion Keith says, “Red’s with me, Shiro. She’s my partner. She won’t hurt anybody here as long as we’re all on the same side.”
Woe betide anybody who betrays Keith, apparently. Hunk shudders at the thought of what that dragon might do to them, but probably it won’t be pleasant. At least he’s on Keith’s good side, and has no interest in or need to turn on him, especially after he saved their butts twice.
“Keith?” Shiro frowns in confusion. “Why do you have a dragon?”
This is the question everyone has been tossing around since their arrival on the island, but Keith has been absent for most of it rustling up some grub, so he hasn’t been able to answer yet. Everyone turns to stare at him, and Keith glances around at them all, and sighs. “Sit down, Shiro, you look exhausted. Everyone start eating the stew Hunk made, and I’ll explain.”
And even if it’s a bit tired and begrudging sounding, Keith’s true to his word. He explains while eating his own meal and tossing bits of roasted boar into Red’s mouth. “After the oracles said they’d seen visions of your ship sinking, I left the island,” he says, glancing at Shiro and Matt. “I was trying to find you. I didn’t want to believe…well. You know. So I stole a boat and set out to search. Only there was a storm, and I got shipwrecked. On this island, actually.” He gestures absently around him. “I was trying to get off of it on my own, build another boat or something so I could escape. But I also had to eat, and there’s a lot of wild boar on this island, so I also did a lot of hunting. That’s where I met Red.”
The Nightmare makes a rumbling noise in her throat that Hunk swears is ‘contentment,’ and nudges Keith’s side with her nose. He absently slides an arm over her long snout and rubs a hand along her scales, and her eyes fall half closed in bliss. Hunk is struck by how natural it all looks, how easily Keith interacts with this massive fiery beast that’s supposed to bring nothing but death and destruction. At how passive she is with him, at how loyal and protective she clearly is. The others are clearly impressed too, watching in awe, although Hunk swears he catches a hint of jealousy in Lance’s face.
“She was hunting too,” Keith continues, still stroking the dragon’s scales as he speaks. “We were after the same food, which meant we were enemies. And we were both hungry, and we were both scared of what the other one would do to us, so we were enemies with nothing to lose. We fought. A lot.” He shrugs. “At first it was just kill or be killed, but neither of us could ever quite beat the other one. Some days she’d steal my kills, some days I’d get to the boar first, some days we’d beat each up so badly neither of us got to eat. And eventually we just kinda…grew to respect each other, I guess. She never gave up and kept fighting to hold her own and I respected that. And I guess she thought the same about me.” He scratches behind her horns affectionately, and offers a rare, tiny smile. “We started to get along more. Work together to hunt. Share the kills. She got injured once and I wrapped up her foot and brought her food. I got sick and she defended me until I was better. After that it just kinda naturally progressed and she let me fly with her.”
His smile melts away, and he looks more serious as he stares across the open cooking pit at Shiro. “She’s been helping me look for you. I’ve been exploring all the islands around here, just…looking. We finally figured out really recently that you were moved to that Galra clan outpost, but we couldn’t figure out how to get in. It was so heavily armed, there were too many people. Even more than a Nightmare could handle. But then these guys attacked and tried to free you, and I saw my chance.” He gestures at the others. “So. Thanks for that, I guess.”
“Okay, that’s cool and all, but one important question,” Lance says, and yeah, Hunk is definitely not mistaking that little edge of jealousy in Lance. Lance has always considered Keith a rival back at their village, through all the combat and fishing and hunting and sailing practice, even if Keith never really returned the sentiment. It must be killing him to know his rival has now bonded with an incredibly powerful and admittedly very awesome dragon when he has no way to do the same. It’s the biggest in-your-face that Keith never intended to make, and Lance isn’t going to take it silently, Hunk is sure. Lance scowls as he gestures at the Monstrous Nightmare and says, “The most dangerous and deadly of all dragons, and you had to go with ‘Red’? That’s it? That’s the best you could come up with?”
“She’s red,” Keith says, looking a little confused, as if this ought to explain everything and he’s not sure why it doesn’t.
“It’s too obvious,” Lance says. “It’s not awesome enough. It could’ve been, I don’t know, Blazewing or Emberfang or Fireflash or anything else but you went with ‘Red.’”
“She doesn’t seem to mind it,” Keith says, now scratching the dragon under the chin. The content rumbling grows louder and she manages to shove her head into his lap, twisting her serpentine head to allow it while still sitting behind him. Hunk winces at the way Lance’s lips seem to press together. Keith probably isn’t doing it on purpose, but seeing him interact with the dragon like this has got to look like deliberate showing off to Lance. “Besides, I don’t think she’d answer to anything else at this point. Huh, Red?”
The dragon lets out a wuff of agreement. Lance scowls and crosses his arms, muttering under his breath, “Guy gets a huge fire breathing monster for a pet and he can’t even figure out how to give it a cool name, some guys just don’t deserve the cool things the gods give them…”
Keith, thankfully, doesn’t seem to hear him over the Nightmare’s rumbling.
Shiro puts an end to it, fortunately. He’s looking much better after the food and a chance to just sit, even if he does still look pretty awful after the beating he’s taken. “Regardless of how it happened, thank you all for rescuing me,” he says, glancing around at them all. Matt grins, and Pidge’s grin next to him is almost identical. Hunk nods, Lance offers a mock salute, and Keith looks solemn.
“But I don’t think we’re done yet,” Shiro adds, looking serious, and the smiles slowly start to melt off everyone’s faces. “We might have escaped the Galra tribe, but they’re still a threat. I don’t think they intend to stop spreading until all the seas and everything in them belongs to them. Our island is in danger.”
“Then we go back and warn’em,” Lance says, as if this is obvious. “We’ll need to leave this guy behind, though, they won’t take kindly to dragons back home.” He jerks a thumb at Keith. Red’s content look disappears and her purring turns into a low growl. The sound is reflected in Keith’s scowl as he glares back at Lance.
“Nobody is leaving anybody behind,” Shiro says firmly. “Not if they don’t want to be.”
“Well we don’t have a boat,” Pidge says practically. “Keith said he couldn’t get off the island without Red.”
“We could build one,” Matt says. “Keith probably had too much to worry about before, what with surviving and protecting himself from a dragon. But it sounds like him and Red basically control this island now, and all its resources are ours. We could probably get a boat built in what, a week or two?” He glances between Pidge and Hunk.
“Not a pretty one,” Hunk affirms, “but it’d get us back home.”
“Home wasn’t what I had in mind,” Shiro says, very softly. Hunk blinks at the quietness of it. Shiro’s staring into the flames of the campfire, almost as though hypnotized, and he clutches his bowl of stew in one hand like a lifeline. They have to lean forward to hear him. “There’s something else. Something…something important. I’m not sure what it is, or who it is, but the Galra are searching for it everywhere. One of their oracles saw it in a vision. I overheard her speaking. They’re…they’re crazy for it. Some sort of weapon, or guardian, or something. Something that has the ability to give them inhuman power, or something that can break their armada completely.”
He blinks, and it’s almost like he slips out of a trance as he turns to look around at them all. “I don’t know what it is. But I think we need to get to it before they do. I’m not sure if we can use this…whatever it is…but at the very least I know we don’t want them to get their hands on it. If they do, our island, and lots other lands around us, are going to get overwhelmed.”
There’s an awful silence that fills the air, broken only by the gentle snap-pop of the campfire. Even the dragon is silent.
After a very long moment, Lance asks slowly, “And that means…what? Where is this thing? Would we…would we not be going home at all?” He swallows.
“Maybe.” Shiro stares up at the sky for a moment. When he looks back down around at them all again, his face is more composed, more controlled. “Look. I can’t ask any of you to do this if you’re not interested. If you want to go home, I won’t stop you. If you do go home, I’ll ask that you warn everyone to be ready. But this…this is something I have to do. I think it’s the only way to protect our home, and others as well. I have to see this through. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”
“I’m with you,” Keith says immediately. “Wherever you want to go. Red, too. She’ll help us get there.” The dragon lets out a low growl of agreement.
“I did not organize a rescue mission and come all this way just to split up again now,” Matt says, throwing his hands in the air. “I’m in, too. Whatever we’re in for.”
“Besides, we still need to find our father,” Pidge adds. “He wasn’t at that camp with you. But maybe whatever we’re looking for can help us find him. Or we can use it to beat back the Galra tribe, and rescue the prisoners. So I’m in, too.”
They turn to look at Hunk, and Lance, sitting next to him. Lance fidgets under the stares, and looks hesitant for a moment, biting his lip. But after a moment he says, “These guys really aren’t going to stop, are they?”
“I’ve never known them to,” Shiro says. “Even for vikings, they’re bloodthirsty. They’ve slaughtered their way through every island they’ve come across. Killed any resisting warriors, and take the remainder for slave labor. I don’t think our island will be spared if they find it.”
Lance’s mouth sets in a hard line. After a moment he nods, looking grimly determined. “I don’t want to leave my family behind, but…I don’t want them to go through that, either. Most of my siblings are too young to have any combat experience yet. I can’t…I can’t let them get taken like that. So…I’m in.” He taps his quiver. “But I’m gonna need more arrows first.”
“I’ve got some bundles of arrows you can take,” Keith says. “Not a fan of bows.”
Lance scowls at him, like this is a personal insult. Keith doesn’t notice—he, and everyone else, are already looking at Hunk.
And Hunk is…well, he’s not so sure about this whole thing. He was willing to help Pidge, because Pidge was a friend and she was worried about her father, and her brother was important to her too and Matt had been so frantic. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But Hunk had only signed up for a rescue, not a full-scale voyage. He’d never even had a chance to tell his mother and father where he’d disappeared to. He was supposed to only be gone for a single night.
And to try and beat some extra bloodthirsty viking clan to some kind of secret weapon, just to fight them off? Hunk has never really been partial to combat, personally. He knows how, and he’s well trained in bows and axes, has been put through his paces by his father until he can hold his own. His clan is especially skilled with shields, too, using them as a weapon and defense both, and he’s confident in his skills there. But Hunk has never really looked forward to battle with vikings or with dragons. He’s always enjoyed the forge much more—creating things that other people can use. He’s not sure there’ll be much use for creating in a wild chase like this.
But as much as he doesn’t like the sound of it…Lance is also right. Hunk might not want this fight, but he doesn’t want his family to suffer for it, either. He doesn’t want his homeland to be overrun by this bloodthirsty Galra clan and see his village burned to the ground or his family dragged away in chains. They probably only have so much time to find this whatever it is before the Galra do, and they’ll probably need every bit of help they can get. Hunk doesn’t like it, but if he can protect his family and his home even a little bit…
He sighs. “Okay. I’m in, too.”
Shiro smiles. “Great. Then we’re officially a team on this. Whatever happens, we’re not going to let these Galra clansmen get away with what they’ve been doing.”
“That’s great and all,” Hunk says, “But—and I hate to be the voice of reason here, but nobody else has brought it up—where do we even start looking for this…whatever it is?”
“That’s…actually a good question,” Matt says, as all of them turn to look at Shiro. “Any starting points?”
“The visions I overheard,” Shiro says. He closes his eyes and tips his head back, like he’s trying to remember. “The oracles…they said something about…traveling to the land of stars. And…how did they put it…’cutting spines that reach the skies guard the path to the altar of storms.’ “ He opens his eyes and glances around at them all. “That’s it. That’s all I was able to overhear, but they said it a lot. It must be important, but I got the feeling they didn’t know what it meant, or how to get there.”
“I’ll say,” Lance snorts. “The land of stars? Are we supposed to go up there?” He gestures at the mid-afternoon sky. “‘Cause I’m pretty sure even with a dragon we’re not going to reach the stars.”
“It might not mean the stars themselves,” Keith says, looking thoughtful. “What if it’s the shape of the land?”
When they give him curious looks, he grabs a stick, and sketches in the dirt next to the fire pit. “When I was searching for Shiro with Red, there was an island that kind of looked like this from above. It had sheer cliff faces, so I never bothered to explore it, since there was no way anybody could shipwreck on it. But maybe there’s something there?” He finishes the rough sketch in the dirt, and the shape does look a bit like a starburst.
“It’s possible,” Shiro agrees. “How far is it? Do you think Red can carry all of us there?”
“It’s maybe a day’s flight by ourselves,” Keith says, scratching the Monstrous Nightmare at the base of her horns. “Maybe two with everyone else, as long as she can rest on some islands in between. She’s never carried that many people before last night.”
“It’s as good a place to start as any,” Pidge says. “We don’t have any place better to start, unless we go back and try to spy on the Galra more.”
“Agreed,” Shiro says. “Here’s the plan: we spend today getting supplies together and preparing to leave. Get whatever weaponry you have ready, pack food supplies, but remember we need to travel relatively light for Red’s sake. We leave at first light tomorrow, under the assumption that we’re not returning here any time soon.”
Red huffs in answer, and the others nod in acknowledgement. Shiro’s not a chief, or even in the same family as one, but he’s always been well respected in the village, and it just feels right to let him take charge. If Hunk is going to be a part of this, he definitely wants the best leading him, and they can’t go wrong with Shiro.
“I’ll start putting together food packs,” Hunk says. The others split off to attend to their own tasks, and Hunk settles into his. He’s still not really enthusiastic about the whole thing, but if it keeps his family safe…
He’ll do whatever he has to. Even chase an oracle’s cryptic words across the ocean.