The Siren ship, Maredia–named after the island on which it had been built- remained on the left of where Kayla was meant to be. At the helm between Maredia and the other Siren ship, the paladin was riding. Nobody wished to be around her, especially not after one of their ships sank in their attempts to claim the island.
The most fortunate in that matter were the sky watchers. Being winged faunans carrying periscopes to keep an eye on the islands, they were the furthest away from the general, something they wouldn't trade for anything else.
"Do you see anything, Jessa?" Asked a sparrow-winged woman to one of her companions.
"Nothing yet." Letting down the periscope, Jessa shrugged her shoulders. "The reptilians are taking their sweet time, I haven't seen a single fire yet."
"Are you mental? Of course, they're not gonna set fires in the bright morning!" Clicking her tongue, a red-headed cardinal girl looked at the other two. "And keep your peepers peeled, you two. The last ship's watchers were the first ones to get killed by the dragonkins!"
Rolling their eyes at her command, the two gave each other a knowing look. One half a sparrow and the other half a lark, their tame color melted into the background, while the one complaining, a red cardinal stuck out in the sky like a bright red spot on an empty canvas.
"Oh, flock off, girlie~ We can handle ourselves," said the sparrow-winged woman.
Staring at the cardinal, she invited confrontation. However, realizing that she would be pulled into their tussle and punished along with them if caught, Jessa stretched her hands in their directions.
"Geia, Ruu, before you fight, let me remind you, the general's on board the middle ship." Her reminder quickly pulled the two out of their thoughts about confrontation. Noticing their bodies easing up, Jessa lifted her periscope and motioned the two to focus on their front once more. "Goblins, orcs, our citizens captured and tortured, remember? Yeah, so let's do our job so that we can save them soon."
"Save them?" Although Geia lifted her periscope, the redhead couldn't help but complain once more. "They're either eaten or raped beyond saving, the orcs and goblins both use our women to reproduce, the best we can hope for is to help them escape that torture with a swift blade to the neck!"
Hearing her talking so crudely about their people, the other two glanced at her sideways with a defeated grimace. Neither of them expected her to change; her pessimism was, in fact, so infectious that they themselves felt their minds changing.
"Whatever," Ruu whispered..
"You have a way with words, Geia." Looking through the periscope at last. "I pity your future husband and children, really."
Ignoring them both, Geia focused on the islands–her eyes sharp as a hawk. Looking around, she noticed sudden movement for the first time since this morning. And the next thing the group knew, a dark dragonkin–mostly human looking but with heavy scales on his limbs emerged from within the flora of the island.
"DUCK!" Turning to her companions, she grabbed the one closest and folded their wings at once. Jessa was shocked by her sudden action, but as she watched Ruu getting hit with a burning arrow, her doubts melted away, and she realized why Geia did what she did.
"RUU!" Her screams were drowned along with her in the water. Falling feet first into the ocean, the trauma to their heads was minimal, and yet both of them were disoriented for a while.
As for Ruu, she fell into the water just like them. Having seen her getting injured, however, the crew focused on recovering her first since she probably couldn't swim with an arrow to her chest. In the end, all three of them had to be recovered by the crew as their drenched wings made their bodies ten times heavier.
Usually, the girls were never supposed to be off the ship's deck, but with the island being so far, they had to be at least a few feet forward to get a clear picture around the curvature of the ocean.
But that short distance today almost cost Ruu her life. Saved barely before she would drown like the other two, she lived, and so did they. But from that point onward, caution took hold of the ship. Having never been in the ship that sank, they thought that the threat was a distant one when it was very much real.
No sky watcher flapped their wings without a rope around their waist and an Aegis spell to shield them from the fire breaths. Even then, when shot, the shield barely mattered as the dragonkin were naturally adept at countering shields. But the same fire that the enemy breathed started to become their enemy. Deep in the night, their crops would burn, and so would the trees. The water grew salty, and their equipment to desalinate went missing.
In a matter of weeks, the island of the dragonkin was weakened by hunger. It happened quickly, far too quickly, in fact. Nobody on the Sirens had expected the plan to work so perfectly, but even now, there remained a few problems. Kayla had told them to keep their station and not move the ship a single inch. She didn't want to lose another man or a woman; thus, starving her enemies was the route she was taking.
The crew, of course, couldn't see the sense in such a tactic. The dragonkins were weakened, and the monsters were probably living off of cannibalizing each other, so what better time to strike than that very moment? What they failed to realize, however, even when weakened, was that the dragonkin and the monsters would take at least a tenth of the ship's crew with them. And that was something the general wasn't yet ready to do when it could simply be avoided by waiting.
'Another week and they should be on the verge of starvation.' Thought Kayla, and knowing full well that she was right, the paladin waited for another week and only then decided to take the fight to the enemy. But with the dragonkin and the minotaur-headed goblin at the enemy's helm, the fight, although one-sided, was about to be interesting, to say the least.