Wings of Fire: Dragons, Steel, and Pom-Poms

IX - Foreigners and Cuttlefish-Dragon

>Aboard U-178, unknown waters_

Korvettenkapitän Klaus Witt had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

Actually, he technically knew what he was doing. He had followed a bunch of actual dragons to some seemingly random point in the ocean. At their behest. After only meeting them, exchanging a series of nonsensical flashes via bioluminescent scales and signal lamp, and then listening to three of the roughly Great White Shark-sized creatures almost... talk with each other?

The real question, Klaus supposed, was why. Why had he agreed to follow after a trio of water dragons? Why did he and his crew take such interest in them? Why were they waiting here for the water dragons to return after they had disappeared back under the waves, departing with what seemed like a hand gesture to wait where they were?

Perhaps they were lost, and had no idea where they were. The compasses were still acting up, and they had been getting nothing but background static for the past few days, so they didn't have a read on their location. They had no idea what to do, as they had lost contact with both the convoy and obviously with Lorient.

Perhaps... Probably, even, it was just because they were bored. It wasn't as though there was much to do aboard a U-boat, after all. Other than run crash-dive drills, watch for targets or threats and smell each other's stench.

He took a draw of interesting submarine coffee from his cheap mug. He supposed he probably should have seen this coming. The water dragons, anyway.

Seaman Hans Fischer had frantically reported seeing a similar creature just after they came through the storm, after they heard that banging noise. Nobody believed him. The Watch Officer had gone up to see what the fuss was about, and came back insisting that he needed to get more sleep.

The rest of the enlisted crew had some fun ribbing him about it, though.

It was just a few nothing-days later that Hans once again called out that he'd seen a water dragon, and this time Witt decided to go up and check it out himself.

It had turned out that Hans was indeed right about the water dragon.

Others from the crew all clambered up onto the sail with them to get a look. The blue-green dragon seemed to take an interest in them and their signal lamp, and flashed the bioluminescent lights it apparently had in a manner weirdly similar to how ships communicate with light signals.

Witt had gotten a little nervous when two more water dragons appeared. They were fairly large, similar in size to a Great White Shark, he thought. He didn't know if they could jump out of the water at them, but none of the dragons seemed at all hostile. They just seemed... Curious.

The dragons seemed to... converse with each other through a series of growls and guttural sounds, before one of them made a gesture with one of its talons that seemed to denote that it wanted them to follow it. Witt had, for whatever reason (boredom and curiosity, probably), agreed and ordered the boat's helmsman to follow after them. He had no idea whether or not these water dragons were intelligent, but it was certainly possible; Dragons in mythology were kind of inconsistent between either being just beasts, cunning and intelligent, somewhere in between, or something else entirely. By how the water dragons were interacting with each other, and how the first one looked at them and somehow knew to blink its scales in a way at least reminiscent of Morse Code... Witt and many others aboard were leaning towards the water dragons they found being sapient.

Another, perhaps more pressing question to ask, would be whether the water dragons were benevolent or not.

Harkening back to the dragons-in-mythos example, Witt found himself liking the probable answer to that question much less.