Tales of the Lost

A collection of Wings of Fire short stories by DuskRose42.
== Lament ==
Lament raised her wings and flew off into the rainforest, droplets pattering her shifting scales. She breathed in a deep breath of air, which smelled of plant growth, decay, and fresh rain.
The smell of home.
Home was a place of mixed feelings. A place of complexity.
One the one hand, there was sunshine, dewdrops, and plants of a million varieties. Delicious fruits and colourful friends.
And then there was Iro, Lament’s sister.
They had been friends before they did the venom test, and discovered that they were closely related, and they had only grew closer from there.
But something had changed about Iro. Subtle things.
She didn’t laugh the same anymore. She used to crinkle her nose and laugh in a way that spread joy to everyone in the room.
Now when she laughed there was something empty about it, something cold. It always sent a chill down Lament’s spine, but she tried to hide it.
There was nothing obvious about the change, and Lament almost thought that she was going crazy that only she had noticed it.
But it was there, she was sure of it. The way she talked, and walked, and breathed, everything was different, just the slightest bit. Slightly meaner, and crueler. She sensed it somehow.
There was another thing. Iro never showed up for suntime anymore. Whether this was the cause of the change, or a symptom, Lament didn’t know, but she saw how Iro worsened day by day and her scales grew dull and grayish.
Eventually she didn’t show up in the village at all anymore.
She only came there camouflaged, and Lament had spotted her once or twice when she caught the sight of her purplish eyes twinkling as a tree’s bark appeared to shift strangely.
It had been a few weeks since Iro had even agreed to talk to her.
Lament sighed, slowing down the pace of her flying and settling on a branch. She closed her eyes, letting the raindrops attack her scales in a rhythmic pattern, calming her nerves.
The noise of a branch breaking pricked her ears. She opened her eyes and shot her head around.
All the saw was rainforest as she turned around.
Until something shifted, and pounced.
The last thing Lament saw was two bloodshot purple eyes.
== Hopeless ==
Odonata had been hopeless all her life.
She lay, leaning against a cave wall, blood dripping from her talons. She looked up at the ceiling, reminiscing on the life that had brought her to this point. Her blue antennae twitched as if testing the air, studying the tiny movements sent through it by insects and floating pieces of dust.
Every tiny thing holding an effect on the rest of the world, all the microcosms of the planet coexisting and influencing one another.
Lots of things had affected Odonata. Living in the Hives, ruled by a Queen that wasn’t hers for her entire life. That affected her.
Her hatred for the HiveWings ran deep, but she was made to work for them. Kill for them. Infiltrate the Chrysalis from the inside and bring them down.
Until she couldn’t stand it anymore. Until it burned her up inside.
Until she rebelled, and the entire Hive that she once called home turned on her, one monolith of white eyes. A wave of dragons, all under the control of Queen Wasp.
She fled, hidden in a cave out in the Savanna.
But it’s too late, Odonata said, chuckling a dry laugh, I’m already bleeding out. I guess I deserved this. I am to blame, after all. Hopeless until the end.
== The Butcher ==
Sometimes I think if I stay still enough, everything will be alright, and nothing will hurt anymore.
I want to be a statue, beyond life, beyond interaction, beyond my own shortcomings.
Or a star, a star that only follows its design. No illusion of choice. I am born, I grow, I create, I destroy, and then I die.
If only life were that simple. If only I could follow some grand design that was pre-written for me.
But instead I've seen things I can never unsee.
Down in the shops that night, wandering alone when I should have been at home, I heard a scream. The only store with lights still on was the butcher's. 
I was just a dragonet then.
I opened the door. I entered the front room. It was empty except for a variety of sausages and deli meats displayed on shelves.
Wrangling my talons nervously, I followed the noise to the backroom.
There was a table there, and meat hooks, blood everywhere, but no dragons could be found. By the streaks of blood on the floor it looked like something had been dragged away, back into the freezer room.
I opened the door cautiously.
Dark figures hanging from the ceiling, skinned animals. I saw a dragon hanging a fresh, limp figure onto one of the meat hooks. 
I reached towards the wall, tentatively flipping on the light switch.
Big mistake.
The lone light bulb in the middle of the room swung on its wire, illuminating the shadows of skinned dragons as if they were dancing on the back wall.
I'll never forget the face of the butcher as he looked at me. His head swiveled around to face me. Slow, sickeningly slow.
The yellow eyes wide when they saw me. I ran before I saw anything else, ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I ran until I felt as though my lungs were on fire, and I coughed so hard I felt that I was going to break my ribs.
I know he pursued me. The butcher.
He haunts my dreams and my days. He will never leave me.
I've become withdrawn, paranoid. Hurt and abandoned everyone in my life.
The only thing left to do is find him. Murder him. Erase him from this planet.
Born, grow, create, destroy, die. This is the grand design.
== Alternate ==
Fatespeaker’s world was falling apart. 
Raised under the mountain with the other Dragonets of Destiny, Ochre, Squid, Flame, and Viper, Fatespeaker only knew a life of simplicity. Their guardians yelling at them, forcing them to fight one another, to ‘become better dragons’, learning about the history of the tribes, and waiting for their great destiny to begin. It was a daily routine of isolation and hope for the future.
Everything changed when they finally started fulfilling the prophecy.
None of the other dragonets liked Fatespeaker. She tried her best to treat them like siblings and care about them, but all the others did was make fun of her and Squid. “Fatespeaker with her fake prophecies, and that sniveling little coward,” they would say, “They’ll never amount to anything, not like the rest of us.”
Fatespeaker couldn’t hate them, but she almost feared them.
She always believed that she had the powers of prophecy, she could feel visions coming on and sometimes they almost came true, but nothing she could imagine would predict the way that the war went.
The dragonets followed the advice of Morrowseer and backed Blister in the war, they tried their best to inspire the hope of the tribes like the Talons of Peace wanted them to, but Squid was too ‘pathetic’. He was quickly replaced with a new dragon, named Tsunami. She was part of an alternate group of dragonets. Fatespeaker liked Tsunami, she had a lot of personality and was extremely fierce.
But Fatespeaker had no idea what they did with Squid. Where was he? Why couldn’t they ever see him?
She feared that she would be the next to be replaced, because everyone knew her visions were defective. She just believed that fate was fluid, and not all visions could be perfectly exact, but there was another, better, dragonet waiting to replace her. His name was Starflight, and he was smart, and handsome, and born on brightest night with all the powers of prophecy and mind reading.
He had beautiful silver teardrop scales next to his eyes, just like Fatespeaker’s, but for some reason his meant intelligence and power, and hers meant nothing.
Fatespeaker knew Flame and the others would never miss her, if she went missing like Squid, and the great and powerful Starflight replaced her.
She knew that the other dragonets would never try to protect her from Morrowseer and the guardians. Kestrel kept looking at Fatespeaker like she was going to kill her. Kestrel had always thought she was weak anyways. The only one who was ever kind to her was Webs, but he never defended her from Kestrel or Dune.
She knew her time was running out.
== The Root of Evil ==
50 years
50 long years
Lost in a state of dreaming and consciousness
Never knowing
If I’m really still alive
I look up at the trees
Seeing only a vastness
And I hear something whispering
Always whispering
I can’t tell
If it’s my mind, my own thoughts, racing 
Or if it’s something else
Something lingering
Something that has been here for a long time
Am I really alone?
Except for the seed
I see the seed, I carved it
Smooth and round, shaped like an egg
It will grow and grow and it will become everything
Or will I become everything?
I can’t tell the difference anymore
The snakes, the snakes are my friends
Or am I the snakes
Or are they me?
Or are we all one
With the mind of the forest
I vaguely remember a time before the whispers
Before my days were filled with wood carvings
And experimentations
The experiments which eventually led to the whispers
Now all I am is whispers
In my head
In my ears
In my heart
Who was I before?
Hawthorn?
That’s right, I tried to control Queen Wasp
And it backfired
But it could have worked! 
It should have worked…
If I just knew how the vines worked…
If I just understood…
And now I am one with it, closer to everything
And there are visitors in the eye of the jungle
They want a cure
I have a cure
Heart of salvation, I will save the LeafWings, I will redeem myself
Part of me hears that, part of me believes that
But the other half knows
It hears the whispers, it listens
It knows that the plant is not the heart of salvation
But the root of evil
All will become one
The snakes, the vines, and Hawthorn
Are merely figments
An illusion of individuality
All Othermind
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon)
Category:Content (DuskRose42)
Category:Genre (Short Story)
Category:Genre (Tragedy)
Category:Genre (Horror)