Heart of Water

Chapter 10: Water Training

The next day after making sure that Riptide was feeling up to it, Summer and Riptide took Aggro out to learn more about her water dragon abilities.

"We'll be back in a few hours!" Riptide called over her shoulder to the others as she prepared to fly away. "Don't do anything too stupid or crazy while we're gone!"

"Oh don't worry!" Winger told her with a wide smile. "I'll keep them out of trouble Riptide, no need to worry."

Riptide burst out laughing and gave him a toothless grin. "And that's when I worry the most," the Fastfin said in a joking tone, making Winger laugh and shake his head in amusement.

"Come on Riptide!" Summer called out to her. "Let's get going before Aggro bites our heads off for being so slow!"

The sky blue Fastfin laughed and quickly took to the sky, following her mate as they quickly caught up to Aggro.

They flew in silence for a few moments before Aggro spoke up in an attempt to break it.

"So, Riptide, where should we go to train?" Aggro asked her as they continued flying across the forested landscape.

"How about Berry Island?" Riptide asked her, getting a collective nod of agreement from her two companions. "Alrighty then! Follow me!" Riptide said, leading the way to a small island next to Hazzard Island.

As the three dragons flew to the outskirts of the forest, Riptide was chattering excitedly about how much fun the three of them were going to have.

"Wow! This is so great! Just think about it, this means that we can now all play together underwater!" Riptide said, sounding very excited while Aggro and Summer just laughed at her excitement.

Summer smiled softly and waved her tail from side to side. "I think you're a lot more excited about this whole thing than Aggro is," Summer said with a small laugh and an amused smile forming on her face.

Riptide blushed and ducked her head in embarrassment. "Oh, sorry about that, I'm just really excited!" Riptide said sheepishly with a quick glance back at Aggro and Summer.

"Don't worry about it Riptide, it's fine," Aggro told her with a small laugh. "You're just really really excited, that's all! And speaking of that, what's the first thing I need to learn Riptide?"

Riptide smiled brightly and turned to face Summer with a knowing look passing between them. "Well, you'll see soon enough!" Summer told her with a fond smile and an excited twitch of her tail. "Now come on! Let's get this show on the road!"

The first thing they did was get Aggro used to activating the water fury abilities instead of her fire fury ones. Luckily this was achieved by remembering the feeling of when she used them on the eels. The next was to figure out the abilities. Luckily Riptide had a solution for that. She switched to Leyla and pulled out some stone slabs from her bag from Valantis that described water furies, glad that they were among the slabs Burple had stored in his stomach when they first went to Valantis.

"Okay, so it looks like that in addition to the underwater abilities of all water dragons water furies also have two major abilities," Leyla read. "In addition to the normal water blasts they can shape the water either the water around them or the water from their blasts. The older they are the more water they could search control."

"That sounds like it'd be pretty useful," Summer mused to herself while Aggro just smirked.

Unfortunately, she was just young enough that she could only search control her blasts and a few inches of the water around her, which she was not happy about, though she did have fun making rings from her water blasts for her, Summer, and Riptide to fly through.

"So what's next Riptide?" Aggro asked as Riptide turned back into Leyla and read the last ability.

"Woah!" Leyla said in shock while the other two just blinked in confusion. "It looks like Water Furies could cloak themselves to look like the water around them, which when combined with their water search control makes it look like the element of water itself was furious at their targets."

"So, what you're saying is that I can cloak myself underwater?" Aggro asked her, her eyes popping wide open in shock. "Now that sounds pretty useful. Too bad I can't search control enough water to combine them like that, but this alone will be fun."

Again it took a few tries, but in the end Aggro had managed to learn how to cloak, though it only worked in water. If she tried to do it in the sky she just looked like a floating dragon-shaped blob of water. Though they did find out that Aggro really enjoyed cloaking herself and sneaking up on them and chasing them around in a game of improvised air-tag, using their water blasts and dodging them.

After a few hours of playing around with Aggro's new water abilities, the three dragons had a fish feast before deciding that it was time to start heading back.

"Uh, hey, Riptide? Didn't you tell Winger that we'd be back in a few hours?" Summer asked her mate with a small frown forming on her face.

"Yes I did, why do you ask?" Riptide asked in return, staring at her mate with a puzzled look on her face. "Is there something wrong, Sum?"

Summer said nothing, only pointing to the sky with one of her wings.

"Oh my Alpha! We've been here for almost the entire day!" Riptide cried in horror. "The others are probably wondering why we're not back yet!" She started to panic, flicking her tail anxiously from left to right while pacing in circles around the beach.

Summer crooned softly and nuzzled her mate's cheek, trying to calm the distressed water dragon down. "Shh, it's okay Riptide, everything's going to be fine." Summer whispered comfortingly into her mate's ear.

After a few more moments of silence, Riptide finally calmed down and her breathing returned to normal. "Thanks Sum, I really needed that," Riptide muttered softly while giving her mate a loving nuzzle.

Summer smiled softly and returned the nuzzle. "No problem at all!" She replied back with a soft croon while giving the top of Riptide's head a light kiss.

"Should we start heading back to the Roost now?" Aggro asked as she saw the position of the sun. "It's getting dark and the others are most likely wondering where we are."

Summer and Riptide nodded in agreement and quickly took to the sky, following after the young fire fury as they headed back home.