The white dragon had been fighting for a full cycle of the sun.
When the corrupted orcas first surrounded him in that lightless ocean, he had met them with tooth and claw. Learning from his mistakes, he refused to fight them on their terms.
The deep was their domain. Black water and crushing pressure and the endless, choking dark wasn't worth the fight. So he changed the battlefield. He dragged them to the sky.
The first orca he seized by the dorsal fin, his claws punching through corrupted blubber and anchoring deep into the vertebrae beneath. With a single, titanic surge of his wings, he breached the surface, and an explosion of white water and black ichor and the silver flash of scales catching what remained of the fading light.
The orca thrashed in his grip, its corrupted body weeping purple filth, its hollow eye sockets streaming trails of corruption that steamed and hissed in the open air.
