Hey seven,

Haha, darn whacky engineers. Always ignoring their assignments in favour of designing far too expensive flagships in the shape of sea leviathans.

But anyway, I loved the sheer amount of description and tension you managed to add here in such few words.

> Fins flashed and serpents snarled, and Tinker escaped their ravenous jaws only by the hairs on the tip of his tail. As he flapped back to the dirigible, braying accusations at his master,

The description of the contraption as well as the sea dragons themselves was really good. And I liked the bit of humour with the donkey there at the end.

I just have a few bits and bobs for you,

> A fin here, a wing there, an arch of precisely this degree, a lever, a hinge, a length of rope, and a whole lot of paint and silver and gold.

I think adding a period rather than a comma after "degree" could make the story read a bit better. It's a fairly long sentence. Also, at this point, we don't know what Dedalus has planned. I assumed he was just sketching the shape and look of these animals, not trying to model a ship after them. So adding a period here could do well to highlight the "lever" and "hinge" and such. Things that don't really make sense until you get to the end of the story. But that's just a small thought.

> The king, bemused by the spectacle of an exhausted-yet-overenthusiastic engineer, stroked his beard in contemplation.

One small issue here, this line makes it seem like the king doesn't know who Dedalus is specifically. He knows Dedalus is an engineer, but that's about it. It fit at first, as I initially assumed Dedalus was some random rogue engineer who had just burst into the king's throne room with his passion project. But in the end, we learn that the king actually specifically instructed him earlier. I hope this makes sense.

"...an exhausted-yet-overenthusiastic Dedalus..." could work better, maybe.

> Dedalus remembered the foreign port he'd floated out to see.

This line didn't make much sense to me. Did he float by the port? Or was that the port he went to? Just a bit confused with the wording.

I hope this helps.

Good Words!