Here Be Dragons: Book 1 of the Emergence Series

Pryce woke up at dawn and was quickly reminded of the shoulder wound he sustained yesterday. It was thankfully fairly shallow, and after cleaning and stitching up the wound he was sure it would heal completely in a month or two. At least his shoulder was still usable, he just couldn’t do anything too strenuous for some time. The fact that he’d have to put in new ones if that happened was ample motivation to not push himself.

His stretches were far more limited now thanks to his injury, so he was forced to do his chores with stiff muscles this time. At least it wasn’t too difficult to tend to a few animals with his dominant arm, if it had been his right shoulder that was wounded then things would’ve been much more complicated.

Once Pryce was done with breakfast he entered the captain’s quarters with a tool bag, then carefully undid the screws securing the full-length mirror to the wall. It wasn’t too heavy, and Pryce could have carried it with confidence if not for his injury.

Giving up on the largest mirror for now, he decided to go after the second largest one; the communal mirror in the living quarters was half a body length in size. This one he could carry under one arm with some difficulty, and he walked slowly to make sure he didn’t hit any walls or railings on the way to the exit hatch.

He made it to his destination without incident and laid the mirror out of harm’s way for now. Next, he returned to the deck of the ship with more specialized tools in hand, it was time to perform some dissections.

Pryce’s main concern was actually disposing of the bodies, they were very heavy and he had no way of pushing them overboard, so he was going to kill two birds with one stone and gain some scientific insight to these creatures while cleaning up the deck.

He already took basic measurements yesterday, but he noted various things as he took pictures of each specimen, using half a roll of tape for each raptor. Once he was done with physical characteristics, he noted the location of the bullet holes.

Bullet #1 missed Raptor #1.

Bullet #2 struck Raptor #1 in the torso.

Bullet #3 struck Raptor #3 in the torso.

Bullet #4 struck Raptor #2 in the torso at point-black range.

Bullet #5 missed Raptor #4.

Bullet #6 struck Raptor #4 in the thigh.

All three of the bullets in the torso had struck bone, causing them to shatter and rip through many other vital organs and arteries. The fourth raptor’s bullet wound only tore through muscles in the thigh, so it wasn’t surprising that it wasn’t immediately fatal. Based on the amount of dried blood that poured out of the wound Pryce had probably nicked an artery, but he couldn’t tell from an external examination.

Well, that was what the dissection was for.

Many hours later, Pryce had finished dissecting one of the raptors, placing the undamaged organs in formaldehyde solutions to be preserved.

One of the more unusual things that stood out to Pryce was the heart had a double aortic arch – a feature which made the heart significantly more efficient. It was an adaptation found in crocodiles. Other than that, the layout of the internal organs was not dissimilar to other creatures Pryce had seen; he could identify the major organs like the heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys, which was not surprising. All life needed to overcome similar challenges, and they all (probably) came from a common ancestor. It was a pity there was no way to determine how long ago that ancestor lived since they were probably aquatic, so if any fossils existed, they would be borderline impossible to locate and date.

On the subject of bones, those were one of the more overtly interesting features of the raptor. Not only were the bones hollow and porous on the inside, but the bones had a slight iridescent glimmer under certain angles of sunlight. The color reminded Pryce of the interior of clam shells…

The ship had 50 liters of hydrochloric acid at a concentration of 12.39 mol/L, he diluted the acid to a tenth of stock concentration, then dropped a fingerbone he’d boiled the meat off of.

The bone fizzled away as expected, and Pryce let it sit as he worked dissecting the next specimen. He’d like to have one of each organ preserved, and this one’s heart and lungs were damaged by the bullet.

Not having anyone to help him take notes and pictures while his hands were doing the dirty work sure slowed down the process a lot, but it couldn’t be helped.

When he was done with the dissections, he took the bone out of the acidic solution with a pair of plastic tongs – the acid had eaten away at the bones in much the same way it did for clam shells, leaving behind shiny structure.

A higher concentration of acid might’ve left him with greater purity, but Pryce wanted to preserve his stock. He stirred the bone in some saltwater to wash off the acid, then put it under a microscope, using the sunlight as a backlight.

It certainly glimmered like nacre – that was the name for the shiny material found on the inside of clam shells, and it was very light for its size, probably a hollow structure with many pockets of air inside of it. Pryce wasn’t sure how he could verify this, so he consulted some of the many books brought along in the ship.

He found an entry for calcium carbonate, or chalk, which was the main component of nacre, along with a test for it. If it was made of calcium carbonate, it would fizz and produce carbon dioxide when introduced to a strong acid.

He didn’t want to waste too much acid testing this, so he simply placed the bone into a graduated cylinder, then used an eyedropper to drip a few drops of stock concentration hydrochloric acid onto the bone, causing it to fizzle in a satisfying manner.

When the reaction stopped producing gas, Pryce lit a candle and ‘poured’ what he hoped was invisible CO2 gas from the graduated cylinder onto the wick, causing it to sputter and die from the lack of oxygen.

“Yes!” Pryce pumped his fist in excitement at the success of the experiment.

If he really needed to confirm if it was CO2 he could bubble it through a dilute solution of calcium hydroxide, which would produce a solid precipitate of calcium carbonate again, but that seemed a bit wasteful. A test like that could be done by someone else, and whether or not a raptor’s bones incorporated nacre wasn’t something worth wasting too much of his limited resources on.

The tests he had done left him quite certain this was nacre, and in a species so far removed from clams! It must reinforce their bone structure – that would explain why the raptors bones were so porous! Pryce had great difficulty in moving them, but they were still oddly light for being such large creatures. The nacre in the bones reinforced the skeleton, allowing the predator to be lighter and faster.

Pryce grinned at the discovery, it was beautiful how random chance and selective pressures could result in something so wonderfully efficient. He was fairly certain this usage of calcium carbonate had evolved independently from clams given how drastically different the two species were, though he had no way to confirm that.

Many people thought birds used hollow skeletons to reduce weight; this was only half of the story. The hollow skeletons allowed the birds to store oxygen in their skeletons – in essence, the lungs of a bird extend to their bones. He remembered the odd air sacs located near the bones and realized that raptors used it in the same way. It would definitely increase their endurance if they could store oxygen like that, or perhaps it allowed them to hold their breath longer to better ambush prey.

Though that did beg the question of how their body processed carbon dioxide. Contrary to popular belief, getting rid of CO2 was arguably more important than taking in O2. The suffocation reflex is dependent on the concentration of CO2 in the body, this is why someone wouldn’t feel like they were suffocating even if they were completely deprived of oxygen, so long as they were breathing plenty of some inert gas like nitrogen.

How they handled CO2 would be far more difficult to determine, so he noted the problem in his research logs before cleaning up.

Having dissected the raptors, it was easy to toss the dismembered parts into the ocean. Pryce might have considered preserving some meat for food, but the flesh had an odd smell about it. They had been dead for a full day or so, and the warm tropical climate certainly didn’t help in preserving the flesh.

In the end, Pryce disposed of all of the raptors and brought up buckets of seawater to scrub off the dried blood from the deck. He wondered what he should do to the raptor on the beach, looking on the beach he could see that…the body was gone.

Pryce rubbed his eyes, the day’s labors catching up on him as he contemplated this additional piece of information. The tracks leading to and from the location of the body were definitely raptor, so they either wanted the meat or had death rituals. Though the former was entirely possible, he was leaning towards the latter being more plausible based on the intelligence they exhibited.

Having finished cleaning up yesterday’s mess, Pryce returned to the galley and made himself a nice hearty meal. As he ate, he recalled the classes he taught and the lectures he gave at universities. The experience wasn’t going to be very helpful in the days to come, but it was the only time he had ever drafted a lesson syllabus before.

Why reminisce about his time as a professor? Because it was time to teach a dragon how to speak English.

The dragon was an adult – at least Pryce hoped the 13-meter-long creature was an adult. This was good because it had the intelligence of an adult, but bad because fully developed brains had more difficulty learning new things, at least for humans. How long would it take for the dragon to learn enough English to communicate properly? Pryce had no idea. The average human child spoke simple sentences from age 3-4 and spoke complex ones at ages 4-5, though Pryce recalled a child who spoke his first words at 6 months and full sentences at the age of two.

“…Uncle Alex…!”

Pryce shook his head, closing his eyes as he dismissed the painful memory.

Teaching a language was a lot harder than Pryce thought it would be. He knew it wasn’t a great idea to teach someone a language the same way a native speaker learnt it, and the best way to learn was to use it…but that was about it. He knew English very well, being his mother tongue, but he wasn’t a linguist. He knew about the 8 parts of speech of course: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection.

The easiest to teach would be nouns, he’d already done that by pointing at things and saying their name.

Pronouns could be tossed out for the sake of clarity, he’d just talk without them. He’d sound like a caveman, but he would be understood, and that was the important part.

Verbs could be demonstrated with pantomime, though they would be trickier than nouns. Same with adverbs.

He decided to ignore prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections for now. What he needed was effective communication, he didn’t need the dragon to be publishing scientific articles anytime soon.

Things seemed relatively easy on paper, but Pryce could already tell conceptual things would be a pain to get across, and that wasn’t even getting to the nightmare that was conjugation.

He groaned, rubbing his temples before deciding to worry about it tomorrow.

[JOURNAL ENTRY]

Raptor dissection today was messy, but insightful. I wonder, how many creatures on this island use nacre in their skeletal structure? Perhaps this trait can be used to identify which ones share a common ancestor…

I’m still capable of using my left arm despite the shoulder wound, it doesn’t bother me too much unless I try to lift something moderately heavy.

The dragon didn’t show up today, I wonder why? Perhaps they sleep for long times to preserve energy? Or was it occupied with something else? If the roles were reversed, I’d certainly be eager to meet a strange little creature capable of speech.

I hope they turn up tomorrow, if not then I’ll find something to occupy myself with.