The Iron Dragon’s Shadow

Fiction

The current snagged at D-Fin, tugging him away from the familiar shadows of the superstructure. He strained against it, a flash of silver scales momentarily catching the dappled sunlight filtering down from the surface. Below him, the broken hull of the freighter stretched like a metal scar across the sandy seabed. It had been his home ever since he was a tiny fry, following his parents through the maze of flooded corridors and shattered cabins.

The freighter, they called it the Iron Dragon among the glimmering fish schools that darted in and out of its gaping wounds. A relic of a faraway war, it was a world unto itself. Eels slithered through rusted ventilation shafts, while crustaceans scuttled between the moss-covered crates forever undelivered. D-Fin, a spotted grouper, knew every nook and cranny.

He darted into a particularly shadowy corridor, the water here cool and still. A shiver brushed his scales – a memory, a story his parents had told him countless times. The Iron Dragon, once a proud carrier of men and machines, had been ripped apart by a steel serpent from the surface. The explosion, they said, had deafened the very water itself.

D-Fin emerged from the corridor into a vast chamber, the cargo hold. Sunlight slanted through a gaping hole in the freighter’s belly, illuminating a motley crew of scavengers. A giant clam, its shell crusted with barnacles, lay nestled amidst a pile of mangled metal. A long, sinuous cutlassfish weaved through a school of shimmering herring, its body flashing with a predatory glint.

Suddenly, the water trembled. A dark shape, immense and powerful, moved past the opening. D-Fin froze. It was the Great Scar, the enormous grey shark that patrolled the deeper waters beyond the wreck. Fear prickled his fins – the Great Scar was a legend among the fish of the Iron Dragon, a ruthless hunter with a taste for grouper.

He darted back towards the familiar shadows, the memory of his parents sharpening his instincts. They were gone, taken by the Great Scar during a hunting patrol years ago. D-Fin was alone now, the last grouper in the Iron Dragon.

As he reached the safety of the superstructure, a glint of silver caught his eye. A strange, unfamiliar object lay half-buried in the sand. It was unlike anything he had seen before – smooth and curved, made of a material unknown to him. Curiosity piqued, D-Fin nudged it with his snout.
A puff of pressurized air shot out, sending him reeling back. The object twitched, then unfolded, revealing a slender metal form with a single, glowing eye. It was unlike any creature D-Fin had ever encountered.

The glowing eye pulsed once, then twice, as if studying him. A tremor of unease ran through D-Fin. This was something new, something alien to the world of the Iron Dragon. But before he could react, the strange object let out a high-pitched whine and propelled itself away, leaving a trail of bubbles in its wake.
D-Fin watched it go, a sense of wonder battling with apprehension. The familiar world of the Iron Dragon, he realized, was no longer the only world there was. There were things out there, beyond the wreck, that he had never known existed. And as he watched the sunlight fade through the water, casting long shadows across the freighter’s broken hull, D-Fin knew that his world, once safe and predictable, was about to change.