Dark Seas

Two dragons walked through the desert. An endless expanse of sand, reaching far beyond either of their eyes could see. Here, they were alone. Nothing and no one could bother them.
“I’ve heard it said that a misplaced grain of sand can cause the rise and falls of queens,” the brown one said. “That the smallest change could lead to a drastically different future.”
The orange one pushed her paw through the sand, letting the grains fall through her talons as she lifted them in the air. She snorted. “Do you believe it?”
The brown one shook his head. “It’s a simplification. The truth of the matter is that it depends on the system you consider. Falling sand will always hit the ground.”
The orange one stared down at the sand in her paw, a halo of blue flames suddenly rising up from her scales. The sand suddenly glowed a bright orange, before she turned her paw over, cooling glass falling into the desert floor. “Huh.”
“Other systems are completely unpredictable,” the brown one continued. “A flipped scale? How can you predict that?”
“If I was doing the flipping, I’d predict that the scale would melt,” the orange one snorted. “That seems true to me.”
“Not every scale,” the brown one smiled. “There will someday exist dragons whose scales even you can’t melt.”
“Doubt it,” the orange one tsked. “Hey Cal, how much longer do we have to walk through this desert? Can’t we just fly?”
“Patience, Ignite,” the brown one said to her. “And please, call me Calamity. Let me finish my tale.”
“That’s a funny name,” Ignite commented.
“As I was saying, there are many systems still that might look to be unpredictable at a first glance,” Calamity continued, “but there might be parts you can predict. Even if you don’t know the speed and direction the wind will blow, you might still have a good idea of when.”
As if to prove his point, a gust hit against the side of Ignite’s snout, pushing her head to the side. She turned her head towards it, to see where it had come from. Far in the distance, a light as bright as the sun’s fire burned on the horizon, rising up as it lit the sky.
“Is that what you wanted me to see?” Ignite asked, mildly impressed at the distant explosion. “Are you going to teach me how to do that?”
Calamity laughed. “No. Unfortunately, I’ve predicted that your powers will never allow you to do something like that.”
Ignite huffed, mildly annoyed. She stared up at the cloud as it continued its ascent into the sky, the light fading. She raised a wing as the wind blew sand against her, protecting her eyes as it turned into glittering glass.
“With enough time and effort, someone could conceivably predict even the random motions of scattered grains of sand,” Calamity continued. “But it seems far easier to just have the wind blow them where you want them to, don’t you think? That way, you know which way they’re all going. Alongside the wind you set in motion.”
==Prologue==
“Coconut, please don’t follow my commands.”
Orca took a glance around the stone walls of her room to make sure no one was watching. While she might have been alone in her room at the Summer Palace, she didn’t want to take any chances of being caught using her magic. The two doors leading out of her room were both closed, fortunately.
A small coconut rested by her front claws, beneath a large bed which looked far too big for even four dragons, much less one little dragonet. On top of the bed was a satchel with a few waterproof scrolls hanging out: all of the belongings that Orca had bothered to bring with her from her normal undersea bedroom in the Deep Palace. If she really had to get something from the Deep Palace, she could just ask her mother to take her back (Coral would comply to almost any of Orca’s demands), and they would be back before sunfall.
On two of the other walls of the room were doors. One of these led to a so-called “natural” balcony overlooking the palace’s pavilion and connecting to the rest of the palace, while the second led directly to Gill and Coral’s room. While the one leading to the outside was locked, the latter was not, and Coral could barge in at any time, which would be unfortunately inconvenient if Orca was using her magic at the moment.
Although Orca didn’t know what would happen if her mother, Queen Coral, found out about her animus powers, it couldn’t be good. The SeaWings had just sent out their first batch of troops for war, and Orca might be forced to go along with the second as some sort of magical weapon. Or worse, Coral might have her killed. 
Orca felt the cold, damp stone beneath her claws, part of the magnificent palace created by the ancient animus Albatross. Yet, all SeaWings of the royal family knew all too well what he had done with his powers. Two-thousand years might have been a long time, but dragons had long memories. If Coral thought that Orca would do similar, they’d have her throat cut out before the end of the night. It was somewhat ironic. If Orca’s destiny was to eventually kill Coral herself and take her place on the SeaWing throne, killing Coral a little early couldn’t hurt, right? Not that she planned to do it anytime soon, she wasn’t crazy.
Orca listened for any clawsteps in the neighboring room, and detecting none, she turned back to the coconut on the ground.
“Coconut, please lift up into the air.”
A phantasmal force slowly wrapped itself around the coconut, steadily moving the coconut upwards until it reached a height of around Orca’s wings. She sighed. The coconut still followed her commands, even though she had told it not to earlier. She had to think of another plan.
Suddenly, Orca heard clawsteps in the room nextdoor, and the wooden doorknob started to turn. The young princess glanced at the coconut, still levitating in midair. If Coral saw it, there would be no chance at hiding her secret.
“Coconut, be invisible to Coral,” Orca whispered. A wave of exhaustion passed over Orca, and she suddenly felt slightly light-headed. She steadied herself with her tail. Most of the enchantments Orca had done so far involved moving small objects back and forth, but this was more complicated than her usual. She crossed her claws and hoped it would work.
The door opened, and Coral stepped into the room. The queen’s scales were a deep ultramarine, like an unnaturally vivid burst of water. Pearl necklaces of all colors and sizes adorned her neck, and a sharpened narwhal horn was strapped to her tail, gentle candlelight glistening off its indents. Coral’s own horns had silver rings around them, complimenting her scales beautifully.
“It’s almost time for the ceremony, sweetie!” Coral said, barging through the door. “Let’s get these pearls on!”
The spell seemed to work. Coral didn’t look once at the unnervingly levitating coconut in the middle of the room. Orca breathed a sigh of relief.
Holding a few strands of pearl necklaces in her claws, Coral walked towards Orca. Orca’s eyes suddenly opened in alarm; Coral was going to walk right into the floating coconut.
Orca rushed towards Coral, narrowly avoiding the levitating coconut on the way. She wrapped her wings lovingly around her mother, and feigned a delighted expression on her snout.
“Thank you so much, mother!” Orca said, slightly pushing into Coral in order to move her away from the coconut. “I was soooooo excited for the ceremony, and had almost forgotten about these!”
“Oh, er, great!” replied Coral, slightly confused as to why her daughter was ramming into her. She draped a pearl necklace around Orca, then another, and another. Orca stood between Coral and the floating coconut.
“Thank you, mother!” Orca said, attempting to get Coral out of the room as fast as she could. She nudged her mother towards the door. “I’ll be right out, I just have to fix up a few things first.”
“Mhm,” Coral replied. “Oh yeah! I almost forgot, Gill and I are going to have more dragonets! Maybe another sister for you, or even two!”
“I’m very glad you’re having more potential queens, but I really need to finish up so we can get to the ceremony,” Orca replied. Oops, Orca thought, that came out a little weird. She pondered for a moment what more siblings meant for the throne, but Orca decided she was too busy making sure Coral didn’t run into an invisible coconut to worry about future heiresses right now. “It’s almost time, right?”
Coral nodded, ignoring Orca’s faux pas. “Well, I’ll let you be, but just make it quick!” She trotted out of the room, while Orca shut the door as soon as Coral’s tail flicked past the doorway. Orca breathed a sigh of relief.
“Coconut, float back to the ground,” she muttered, “and no longer be invisible to Coral.” The coconut obeyed, and it gently returned to its mundane state.
New siblings? Orca thought. Ugh, maybe instead of having new children, Coral could pay more attention to the ones she already has. Orca was thinking of her two older brothers, Rift and Anglerfish (Angler for short). At least since Orca was born, Coral had completely ignored their existence. It didn’t help that they were identical twins, and their milky-green scales made them look almost exactly alike. Coral seemed to always confuse one for the other.
Yet, if Coral did have another daughter, maybe she would be less engulfing of Orca. Coral was constantly around Orca, always trying get into her business, and it annoyed the young princess to no end. She might be able to get a little freedom in her life for once if Orca had someone else to parent.
Orca glanced back at the coconut. Although it seemed a little unreliable just to tell the coconut not to move, maybe she could prevent her powers from being caught in another way. When Coral came in, she couldn’t see the coconut levitating, there’s no reason why Orca couldn’t do the same at the Talons of Power ceremony. All she had to do was make it so that other dragons couldn’t sense the coconut being affected by her powers, and she would be fine. The plan was foolproof!
“Orca!” Coral’s voice called from the attached room. “We need to go!”
“Sorry mother!” Orca quickly replied. She straightened out her pearl beads and opened the door, ready to face her challenge.
The ruins of the Island Palace were not very far from the Summer Palace, only a short swim. As Orca neared closer to the ruins, right behind Coral and Gill, more and more dragons converged, swarming around the royal family. Over to her right, she saw the royal twins, Rift and Angler, join the rest of their family.
Hey, Orca flashed in Aquatic to Rift. She could easily tell which one was him, even if Coral couldn’t. His body was just a little bit stockier than Angler’s, and he was much more talkative than his quiet twin.
Hey! Rift flashed back. Did Coral tell you that we’re getting more siblings?
Orca visibly rolled her eyes, and lit up two glowing bands on her tail which, when combined, created a similar meaning. Ugh. How much larger a family do we need? I thought three dragonets was enough, and combined with Aunt Tempest, Uncle Shark, and his dragonet, that’s even more . . . like twenty-four.
Rift silently laughed, and three of his stripes flashed up to communicate his chuckles. Eight, he replied. You used the wrong wing-band modifier.
Orca blushed in embarrassment. She still hadn’t gotten her numbers in Aquatic fully down yet, strangely enough. She had gotten a few mixed up when learning them, and had never completely broken the habit.
The ruins soon came up ahead, above the water surface. Orca smiled to Rift, and climbed out of the water, onto the golden sand. A fresh breath of salty air entered her lungs. She wasn’t the only dragonet to do so. Maybe a hundred other dragonets around her age were doing the same, getting ready for their ceremonies. Orca wondered if any of them were also animuses. If they were, hopefully they had a plan in mind too, or else the entire kingdom would know about their powers.
“C’mon, Orca!” Coral called cheerfully. “Look at you, you’re getting so big!”
Orca rolled her eyes again. She really was starting to get tired of her mother. A few new dragonets for her to wrangle with might not be such a bad idea.
Orca shook off the leftover droplets of water and stepped onto the golden beach, her claws making imprints in the wet sand. A number of SeaWings were already waiting there, with a pile of coconuts ready to be passed out. Two year old dragonets fidgeted in a straight line along the beach, impatiently waiting for the ceremony to begin. Whirlpool, Orca’s tutor and the leader of the ceremony, sat among a few older dragons, ready for it to begin.
Orca took her place among the line. Next to her were two dragonets she had never seen before: a small purple one who smelt slightly of rotting fish, and another with a golden chain wrapped around her neck, maybe a minor noble of some sort. Both of them avoided looking directly at Orca, not wanting to disrespect the princess with their stares. The one with the chain scrunched her wings in tightly, attempting not to accidentally nudge Orca with them. Orca didn’t mind if one of them accidentally bumped her, although she wished the purple one would’ve cleaned himself a little more.
Behind Orca stood a large jungle, with ancient ruins occasionally breaking the peaks. The Island Palace. Where one of Orca’s ancestors, Albatross, had lost his soul and killed the royal family in his insanity. Orca shivered. Hopefully the enchantment she was about to perform wouldn’t harm her soul. She didn’t feel violent against any of her family members yet, right?
“Hello, dragonets,” Whirlpools slimy voice called out, like a bunch of live eels slithering over one another. “We’re going to start the ceremony now. Let’s pass out the coconuts.”
Slowly but surely, a few of the older dragons passed out coconuts into each of the dragonets grabbing claws. Now was the time for Orca to try her enchantment. She brought her snout close to the coconut, to make it seem like she was muttering a good-luck charm or something.
“Coconut, I enchant you so that no dragon in Pyrrhia other than myself can see, hear, or feel any effects caused by magic used upon you.” Would that do it? If all else failed, Orca could try and enchant something to remove everyone’s memories of the ceremony, but she didn’t think she was powerful enough to do something like that. Additionally, just the idea of an animus being able to do something like that unnerved her. If changing dragons’ minds like that was possible, how could she know anything was real? She squeamishly thought about the enchantment she had just made. Maybe it was a little too late for that.
Suddenly, a wave of lightheadedness passed over her, as if she had gotten up too quickly from bed. She attempted to move her tail to keep herself balanced. Yet this time, a cold shiver followed it, unnaturally chilling her scales. But Orca kept herself steady.
Glancing around, the other two dragonets were still attempting to avoid looking at her. If they had somehow seen something, hopefully they wouldn’t think anything of it.
Whirlpool walked slowly along the line of dragonets; wherever he passed, looks of disappointment appeared as the dragonets were unable to move their coconuts. After what seemed like an eternity, he got to Orca.
“Hello, dear,” Whirlpool said to Orca, his forked tongue flickering in and out of his teeth. “You know, it would be absolutely wonderful if we had an animus princess. The war would be over hardly before it started, and the SeaWings could reap all the benefits. Your mother would be so proud.”
Orca gulped. Did he somehow suspect her magic? Well, if he did, this would hopefully put his suspicions to rest.
“Coconut, float in the air, and then return to my claws,” Orca said. Suddenly, the coconut rose into the air from her claws, and resting for just a moment, came back as softly as it had risen. Orca was momentarily startled by it, but Whirlpool just kept staring at her claws with a glazed over expression of boredom on his face. Orca’s enchantment had worked; Whirlpool didn’t notice a thing.
“Disappointing,” Whirlpool slimily hissed, a sour expression forming on his snout. “Maybe Coral’s next daughter will have the gift.”He moved on to the dragonet with the golden chain, and Orca breathed a sigh of relief. Her secret was safe.
=Part 1=
==Chapter 1==
It had been three years since Orca’s Talons of Power ceremony. She had managed to hide her secret well: as far as she knew, no one had discovered her powers. True to their word, Coral and Gill had created two more siblings for Orca: a violet-scaled princess named River, and a cerulean prince named Torrent.
After River was born, Coral had become totally occupied with the newborn princess, and Orca had been left to her own devices since. She continued having private lessons with Whirlpool, but she was a fast learner, and schoolwork couldn’t hold her attention for long. In her free time, if she could remain unseen in her room in the Deep Palace (luckily, her old rooms which had been attached to her mother’s had been given to River) she might attempt to practice using her animus powers, but Orca tried not to practice with them too often, in fear of losing her soul like the legends had warned. Instead, she had taken up sculpting as a hobby. 
Orca enjoyed creating models of her family and the other dragons who lived in the palace, and had a few busts of some of her family members. While she did have a few enchantments on her sculpting tools to make things a little easier and smoother, she preferred not to make her sculptures entirely from enchantments; it took away all the fun.
Another hobby of hers was reading scrolls. This was what she was doing now, nosing around the underwater library for fascinating things to read. The scrolls in the Deep Palace library were all coated with a smooth resin, preventing them from dissolving in the water, although apparently all of the scrolls had to be copied every hundred years or so.
Orca pulled out a scroll from the shelf and read its title. Role of the SeaWings in the War of Queen Fen. If she remembered Whirlpool’s history lessons correctly, Queen Fen was an animus who had used her powers to create a amulet that created a giant bubble of air, allowing the MudWings to attack the Deep Palace for the first time in history. Orca hadn’t seen this scroll before, and it involved animus dragons, so she placed it in her pile with a series of other scrolls. A couple were on sculpting, and there was one Whirlpool had assigned to her showing how monarchies were the ideal system of government, but the rest were stories and recounted legends that Orca would read in her free time.
She tucked her pile of scrolls in her claws and was just about to exit the library when suddenly, another SeaWing ran into her, knocking the scrolls out of her claws and onto the ground.
Her older brother, Rift, looked down in embarrassment. Oh clams, he flashed in Aquatic, I’m super sorry about that. Ugh, I’ve been so squid-armed today.
You’re always squid-armed, Orca japed. Rift started attempting to re-capture the scrolls, which were gently floating away from the two in all directions.
Rift glanced at the title on one of the scrolls. Reading about Queen Fen? he asked. Whirlpool assign you more boring history scrolls? He sure has for me. I’m reading a history on the years right after mother became queen, and he keeps bragging about how much he did to strengthen her reign, and how ‘the SeaWing Kingdom would have plunged into anarchy had I not been alive then.’ The funny part is that the scroll mentions his name zilch times.
Oh, Orca responded, no, I’m actually reading this for fun. It just looked a little interesting to me, and I thought I would check it out.
Rift snorted. One of the Sea Kingdom’s biggest military failures if you ask me. Speaking of that, you mind me asking you about something?
Orca gulped as she picked up another scroll. Could he have found out? But how? Maybe she could enchant something on him to make him forget . . . no, that seemed wrong, controlling dragons like that. Ask away, she flashed, not knowing how else to answer.
Well, Rift replied, I was thinking about how closed-off the Deep Palace is. We have guests occasionally, but it’s just so boring. Orca breathed a sigh of relief. Yeah, I suppose.
So, I’ve decided that I want to leave the Sea Kingdom and join the army.
Orca eyes went wide open. The army??? What if you get hurt? Or even worse, killed?
Don’t worry, Rift replied, I’ll be fine. I’m a prince, I’m not going to be placed on the front lines. Plus, we have the entire SeaWing army, the MudWings, and a third of the SandWings. The SkyWings and the IceWings are too busy fighting among each other, they don’t have a chance. The war will be over in a year or two, max, so I won’t be gone that long.
Orca fidgeted nervously. If she had learnt anything from Whirlpool’s history scrolls, it was that wars killed dragons. Have you asked Angler about it yet?
Angler might have been twin Rift’s brother, but he was smart, and wasn’t scared to tell dragons if he thought they were wrong, his own brother included. He would know better how to handle this.
Not yet, Rift replied. Do you think I should?
Orca nodded. He’ll have some good advice for you.
She took the last of the scrolls she had dropped from Rift’s claws, and glanced at him as he started to leave. Stay safe, she flashed in Aquatic.
Rift grinned backwards, flashed You too, and left, swimming down the cold undersea corridor.
Orca glanced up at the roof of the dark cavernous hall leading from the library. The Deep Palace had always seemed too large for her. The large distances between the rooms created a divide within her family; she could go without seeing one of her siblings for a whole day. It had seemed so much more inviting and full when she was following mother everywhere, but now it was just lonely and empty. She wondered how many times she had talked with her father in the past week; she could probably count them on her claws. They generally ate supper together in the banquet room, but the Deep Palace was so large that Orca didn’t know if she had encountered Gill outside of meals. Yet, if Rift followed through with his idea and left the Sea Kingdom, the Deep Palace would feel larger still.
Orca sighed and carried her scrolls back to her room. After her old room had been passed down to River, Orca got the choice of almost any unused rooms in the palace. She had chosen a room nestled deep within the palace. She thought it could have been placed directly beneath her parents’ rooms, a number of levels below, but she wasn’t sure. It was almost a maze to reach it, and it was easy to get lost if you didn’t know the way. From the library, Orca had to swim up two floors, go across a bridge leading to a fringe wing of the palace, head down another four floors or so, swim through a tunnel back to the main palace, and travel up a strangely slanted corridor to get to where her room was.
As she finally approached her room, after her long swim, she saw another SeaWing there, knocking on her locked door. It was her newest brother, Torrent. She wondered how he had gotten down here, as far as she knew, no one had told him how to get to her room.
Hey, Orca flashed in Aquatic, the bright bursts of light getting Torrent’s attention. What are you doing down here?
I need help understanding a history scroll I’m reading for Whirlpool. Gill was busy so I asked Angler, but Angler was busy so he told me to come down here to ask you. Are you busy too?
Orca sighed. She had been hoping to read some of her scrolls, but she didn’t want to just pass Torrent along after he had come all the way down here. Maybe Whirlpool had assigned one of the more interesting scrolls.
No, I can help, Orca replied. While pinning her scrolls against her body with a wing, she unlocked the door and led Torrent into her room. Orca’s room was a comfortable size. Not too small to be at all cramped, but not as overwhelmingly spacious as the rest of the palace. Orca breathed a sigh of relaxation as she entered it, glad to be out of the creepy corridors.
A few scroll-shelves lined the room, with maybe twenty or so scrolls in total on them. Orca added the ones she had picked out from the library to the collection. She would return some of them to the library as soon as she had finished reading them.
On the side opposite the scroll-shelves stood Orca’s sculptures. A few chisels and a hammer sat beneath these. They all had various enchantments on them (for example, they could float in the water by Orca’s claws without sinking), but Orca had placed a clause in her enchantments that she had to flash a couple specific words (seals and salmon) for them to work, so that no one would activate them accidentally and discover her secret. Her stone sculptures stood next to them, in the likeness of various dragons. She had an emerald-eyed bust of her father, and a head bust of her mother next to it, her eyes represented as beautiful black pearls. She was currently working on a full body statue of Coral’s mother and Orca’s grandmother, the late Queen Atoll.
Torrent pulled out his scroll and set it down before Orca and himself. He rolled it open, revealing what appeared to be a scroll on the reign of a SeaWing queen from around eighty years ago, Orca’s great-grandmother, Queen Tidepool. It discussed how she had used various reforms in order to gather wealth for the Sea Kingdom and make them the richest kingdom of Pyrrhia at the time.
Okay. First, Whirlpool wants me to describe why Tidepool was called the ‘Queen of Trade’ and how she got into that role, Torrent flashed to Orca.
Alright, Orca replied, the scroll glosses over this a little, but the way Tidepool first started to get into trade was by buying a bunch of land along the Diamond Spray River from the MudWings and the SkyWings. The MudWings of the Diamond Spray Delta have always been a bit more rebellious against the MudWing queens, because the palace is in the south of the kingdom. Tidepool paid a few of the MudWing nobles in the area to stir up trouble in the area, and because the MudWings were already in a war with the SandWings at the time and didn’t have the resources to deal with it, their queen let Tidepool buy the land from her as long as Tidepool would keep the nearby MudWings from rebelling. After buying a little more land from the SkyWings, Tidepool used the Diamond Spray River in order to tax anyone passing through.
Okay, thanks, Torrent replied while furiously scratching down notes. Next question . . .
This continued on for a while. Although this wasn’t one of her favorite periods of it, Orca enjoyed history, and loved to talk about the subject to others. She was actually starting to have fun with it.
After the last question, Torrent flashed with a sigh of relief, All done. Thank you for the help!
No problem, Orca replied. If you want to read more about the time period, I know a great scroll in the library on Tidepool. It’s much more interesting than the one Whirlpool had you read, I promise.
Ugh, no thanks, Torrent groaned. I hate reading scrolls, they’re all so boring.
Orca raised her eye scales in skepticism. Really? All scrolls? she flashed.
Torrent nodded in reply, a little confused.
Well, I’ve got a surprise for you, Orca answered, grinning. She swam over to one of her scrollshelves and pulled out a scroll. She passed it to Torrent, and he rolled it open.
Legends of the Lost Continent, Torrent flashed, reading the title of the scroll.
You should try it, Orca recommended. It’s one of my favorites. It’s a series of stories about a magical land across the sea with all sorts of fantastical creatures.
Torrent glanced a skeptical look at his older sister. Alright, he replied. I’ll give it a try when I finish my homework for Whirlpool.
Orca smiled. Don’t worry, it’ll be worth your while. Just return it to me when you’re done.
Torrent nodded and rolled up the scroll. He tucked it under his wing, and swam over towards the door to Orca’s room. 
Thank you for the help and the scroll, he flashed in gratitude. Orca waved goodbye as he left the room.
After he closed the door, Orca breathed a sigh of relief. She had enjoyed spending time with Torrent, but she was ready to sit down and read some of the scrolls she had gotten from the library. She had just opened up the scroll on Queen Fen when she heard a knock on her door. She silently groaned before getting up to open the door.
Torrent was back again, looking slightly embarrassed. I just realized that I don’t know how to get back to the main part of the palace, he flashed stiffly.
Orca nodded, feeling inadequate for not thinking that Torrent might not have been able to find his way back. Yeah, sorry. Here, I’ll show you the way.
After shutting her door behind her, Orca swam through the passageway back to the central part of the Deep Palace, Torrent tagging along right behind her.
==Chapter 2==
Orca dug her claws into the sand nervously, but kept a plastered smile on her snout. The end of her tail twitched in apprehension. Three years ago to this day, Orca had taken part in her Talons of Power Ceremony. This time, it was her younger siblings, River and Torrent, who were participating in it.Orca knew that animus magic ran within families, but she was almost certain that her younger brother and sister, along with any other members of her family, were not animuses. After learning about the royal IceWing animus line, Orca had enchanted a small amethyst inlaid in a golden bracelet that her mother had given her for Orca’s hatchday to heat up when animuses or enchantments were around, and so far it had only detected her own handiwork and other ancient enchanted items. For example, when she had brought the bracelet to the Summer Palace created by Albatross, the gem had gotten so hot it burnt her scales.So, Orca logically didn’t have any reason to be worried about more animuses at the ceremony. Yet, it still unnerved her, and she couldn’t wait for the ceremony to end.Torrent stood by the shadow of his twin sister, Princess River. Orca wore only a minimal amount of jewelry (for a SeaWing Princess, at least, Orca wore her golden bracelet and a small silver chain from her neck carrying a golden pendant in the shape of a dolphin on it, embedded with ruby eyes). River, on the other claw, was covered from snout to tail with precious metals, gemstones, and of course, pearls, the paradigm of wealth symbols in the Sea Kingdom. River had clearly taken inspiration from her mother’s looks. Strands of multi-colored pearls were slung around her neck, and two gold bands were wrapped around each of River’s horns, contrasting with her shimmering violet scales. Similar bands of gold wrapped around her neck and tail.Torrent, on the other claw, was dressed much more modestly; he had only a silver chain placed around his neck. But both of the two siblings looked excited for their ceremony; like almost all of the dragonets in line, each of them waited impatiently for their turn.Whirlpool eventually reached the royal siblings. He asked River to direct her coconut, but unsurprisingly, there was no effect. From Orca’s distance, Whirlpool looked even more crestfallen than River.Whirlpool quickly twisted his snout into his usual smug grin, and moved onto Torrent. The same result came; the coconut didn’t move. Orca felt relief, but also a pinch of dismay. She had almost been hoping that there was someone else she could share her powers with.The rest of the ceremony continued with no surprise. There were no animus dragons among this year’s batch of two-year old dragonets.“What a shame River isn’t an animus,” Queen Coral said, walking over to her eldest daughter, “it would sure help us win this war, and it would have been a great skill for a successor to have. Imagine all the good she could’ve done for the Kingdom!”“Yeah,” Orca replied, lost in her own thoughts. Was hiding her powers really the right thing to do? If Orca revealed her powers, she could help the Sea Kingdom in so many ways. In time, she might be able to create an enchantment giving the SeaWings an infinite supply of fish, or stones which could cure dragons of any illness, or a spear which renders the dragon holding it unbeatable in battle.The animus princess opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by her mother.“Of course, having an animus in charge of the kingdom might not be such a good idea after all,” Coral interrupted, speaking what appeared to be her own train of thought out loud. “Queen Fen got so bloodthirsty at the end that her last remaining brother had to murder her in her sleep, and we all know what Albatross did. I suppose it’s better than not that River isn’t one. I wouldn’t want to place a horrific burden like that on her.”Orca nodded quietly. That was why she couldn’t use her powers to help others out. If she used them too much, she would lose her soul, and end up killing the rest of her family. It wasn’t fair. She glanced down at her claws and felt a shiver crawl up her spine. Her tail twitched slightly. That wasn’t something she wanted to think about.“Well, it’s no matter now,” Coral smiled. “I have business to attend to with a member of my council; ask Gill to take you and River back to the Deep Palace.”The SeaWing queen stretched her wings, and royally trotted into the surf, before diving underwater. Orca sighed and walked up the beach towards where River and Torrent were standing.“This way, Torrent,” River ordered pretentiously. She looked a bit unhappy that she hadn’t turned out to be an animus, but she was trying to hide it. “Move the rocks and shells out of my path so that I don’t stub a claw on one. A princess should never have to stub her claws.”“Yes, River,” Torrent reluctantly complied. He moved a few of the shells and rocks out of the way of his twin sister lethargically.“That’s Princess River,” River demanded. Orca wondered where she got that tone from, their mother had at least one humble scale on her body.“Yes, Princess River,” Torrent grumbled, continuing to move shells and rocks to keep River’s precious talons unscathed.Orca rolled her eyes and sighed. “River, stop ordering around your brother,” Orca requested.“You’re not my queen,” River hissed back, her forked tongue flickering in and out of her jaws. “I don’t have to do anything you say!”“I’m your older sister,” Orca replied calmly, “and Coral put me in charge of you two until we find father. So yes, you do.”“Oh yeah?” River replied. “Well, I’m an animus princess, so I outrank you, and if you try to order me around I’ll turn you into a squid.”What might have been an immature but harmless comment to any other dragonet did not sit well with Orca. “Shut up! What do you think this ceremony was for?” she snapped at River, a growl behind her words. “You’re not an animus, you’re just a bratty, spoiled dragonet.”River gave a “hmph” in content, a smirk on her snout, satisfied that she had succeeded in angering her older sister. “My powers just haven’t developed yet,” she claimed. “Give it another year, and I’ll have won the war for us. Now, Torrent, hurry picking up those shells or I’ll turn you into a squid!”Orca bristled in anger, her ear twitching. While River glanced away to see if her brother was doing an adequate job of his menial labor, Orca quickly murmured under her breath, “I enchant the sand in front of River to turn into a rock and stub River’s claw.”River suddenly yelped in pain. “Ow, ow, ow!” she yelled. She rolled onto her back, and flailed her talons around, as if it would relieve the pain somehow. Torrent snickered, but quickly put a claw over his snout to hide it. After River finished her spectacle, she climbed back onto her four paws, wincing in pain slightly. She quickly noticed the rock that had caused her injury, and picked it up, examining it. “WHAT IS THIS?” she yelled at Torrent in a rage.Torrent shrunk back in fear. “I’m sorry,” he quietly whispered.“No you’re not,” Orca replied for Torrent, walking between the two dragonets. “You don’t have to listen to her orders.” She turned to face River, baring her sharp, pointed teeth. “Watch where you’re walking, next time. And don’t ever try to order Torrent around again.” She growled menacingly at her younger sister.Orca was a few years older than River, and a fair amount larger, so the younger dragonet was clearly intimidated by her. Tears started to form in River’s eyes, and she gulped. The young princess vigorously nodded in submission to her older sister.Orca, satisfied, turned back to Torrent. “C’mon, let’s go find Father,” she calmly suggested.After Orca and Torrent started walking away, River took a few deep breaths, relaxing herself. She glanced at the rock she had stubbed her claw on. Something about it just seemed off. It was a beautiful rock, almost unnaturally round. She squinted at it for a few more seconds before she ran off towards her siblings, keeping the rock safely held in her talons as they pushed past the ground.Chapter 3Orca heard the rapping of claws at her door as she was reading one of her scrolls on animus histories. She quickly rolled up the scroll and tucked it into her scrollshelf. She didn’t want anyone getting suspicious.
Orca opened up the door and saw her younger brother, Torrent, standing outside it. He was carrying a scroll in his claws, and looked somewhat exhausted.
Here, he flashed, holding out the scroll. Orca immediately saw that it was the one she had given him earlier, Legends of the Lost Continent. Thank you for letting me borrow it, Torrent flashed gratefully in Aquatic. I really liked it, do you have any more? The dragonet peeked his head beneath Orca’s wing into the room, peering around as if he could see more scrolls from there.
I don’t think I have any on the Lost Continent in my room, but I know there are more in the library, Orca replied back. C’mon, I’ll show you!
She nudged her little brother out of the room, and locked it behind her. This way!
Orca started to swim the long passage that led to her room, Torrent right behind her.
So, Orca asked Torrent, excited to have a friend she could share converse with about their common interests, who was your favorite character in the scroll?
Talon the gryphon! Torrent replied with ease, not having to think about the answer. He’s so awesome! I loved the story about how he fought with the Hybrid Knight to defeat King Skullmaker, I just wish it could’ve been longer. Are there gryphons in Pyrrhia?
Orca had to hold back a chuckle. No, of course not! These are just legends, they’re probably not real, and if they are, it happened a long time ago, even before the Scorching.
Oh, Torrent replied, with a disappointed expression on his snout. After a short but awkward silence, he spoke up again. Who’s your favorite?
Hmm . . . I’d have to say the Hybrid Knight. I love how she goes around the Continent, foiling King Skullmaker’s plans and defeating his evil lackeys at every turn. I know there are more scrolls about her and Talon in the library, I read them all a few years ago.
Really? asked Torrent, excited again.
Orca nodded in reply. Here it is, she flashed, pointing a claw at the library entrance. Torrent carefully peeked into the room, and breathed a sigh of relief at whatever he saw or didn’t see in there.
What is it? asked Orca, in a bit of concern for her brother.
Oh, Torrent replied, I was just checking to make sure River wasn’t there. I hate talking to her, she’s such a clam-faced jerk.
You don’t have to be scared of her, you know. She can’t turn you into a squid. Orca’s eyes quickly darted to the amethyst inlaid in her golden bracelet. If River was actually an animus, Orca would’ve detected it by now.
Yeah, but she might be queen one day, and could have me exiled, or even executed, Torrent worried.
Over my cold dead body, that brat will be queen. Thinking about how the royal challenge system worked, that wasn’t too much of an exaggeration. If Orca failed in her eventual but almost certain challenge against Queen Coral, she would be killed by her own mother’s claws.
Torrent smiled in gratitude. Thanks, he replied, old enough to know that Orca could be meaning that literally. He swam into the library and looked around at the thousands of scrolls in awe. There’s so many! How can we find the ones with Talon?
One of our Palace-Keepers puts all the scrolls in order. Over here, she directed Torrent, pointing him to a section on Lost Continent legends. There should be a few on this shelf, but there might be a few others scattered about. Here, I think this one’s might be what you’re looking for!
Orca pulled out a scroll and gave it to Torrent. The young prince opened the scroll to see its title, and nodded. Yeah, it’s exactly what I was looking for! Thank you so much! 
Torrent wrapped a forearm and a wing around Orca as a hug. Orca returned the gesture, smiling. She hadn’t really had many friends before.
There weren’t many other dragonets around the Deep Palace, just her own siblings and Moray, Orca’s cousin. While Moray was only a year younger than Orca, her only redeeming quality was that she despised River even more than Orca did. Unfortunately for her, Queen Coral was as fascinated with her niece almost as much as with her daughter River, and kept Moray around River as much as possible, thinking that they would make great friends (they didn’t). While Orca had a good relationship with her older brothers, especially Rift, the twins had always tended to play with each other more than Orca. River, of course, Orca couldn’t stand to talk too, much less be friends with.
Alright, Torrent flashed, breaking off from the hug, I should go now. I have homework to do and want to get started reading.
Good idea, Orca replied. Tell me how you like the scroll once you’re done!
Torrent nodded, and swam out of the library with the scroll, heading back to his room presumably. Orca decided she would do the same, and started swimming back to her own room. Even though the privacy was useful, there were disadvantages to having a room so estranged from the rest of the palace, the foremost being how long it took to get there and back. If she accidentally forgot a scroll in the library, it could take her almost twenty minutes to get it and come back swimming at a casual pace.
When she finally entered her room, she looked over her collection of statues. She had just recently finished her statue of Queen Atoll, Queen Coral’s mother, and wasn’t sure what she wanted to make next. She thought for a moment before an idea came to her.
Orca pulled out a large piece of parchment from her scrollshelf that she had been using to sketch out ideas. Although most of the scrolls that they read in the Deep Palace were coated with the waterproof resin, in order to write underwater, the SeaWings had the ingenious idea of creating black tinted paper, and placing a white film on top of it which would come off when scratched, revealing the black underneath and allowing one to write on it. Orca’s parchment had a number of drawings and sketches on it of her previous sculpting projects, some which had been placed into reality, and others which had been long abandoned. Choosing an area without any scratches in it yet, Orca started to sketch out her design, glancing over the drawings at the scroll Torrent had returned to her every so often for reference.
Angler looked at his brother Rift, an expression of surprise across his face. The milky-green SeaWing frowned. You want to do what?
I’m going to join the war! Rift said. A joyous smile was across his face. Isn’t that great?
The two were in a hallway of the Deep Palace. A large archway stood over the two  dragons, making the palace seem even emptier than it already was. Many repairs of the ancient palace showed through the mismatched stone above. Unlike many of the other buildings of Pyrrhia, the Deep Palace had never been fully rebuilt, due to its location, but it still had to be periodically repaired or expanded upon.
How is that great? Angler replied worriedly.
What do you mean, how is it great? Rift asked. I get to go out and make a difference in the world, just like Auntie Tempest! I’ll meet a bunch of new friends, maybe even some SandWings and MudWings, and we’ll travel all the way across Pyrrhia to fight for Queen Coral and the Sea Kingdom!
Angler scoffed a little. You mean you’ll be flying across Pyrrhia for longer than you’ve ever flown before, through rain, heat, and snow, just to get a winged frozen off by an IceWing and to be left for dead by your ‘friends.’ Haven’t you ever read soldier’s diaries?
Of course I have! Rift flashed, hissing. I’ve read a ton, far more than you, I know that it’s not going to be all easy, or fun! For one thing, I’m a prince, this is what I’m supposed to do, instead of swimming back and forth around the Deep Palace for the rest of my life.
You could get hurt; joining the war is an awful idea! Angler flashed back angrily.
It is not! Rift replied exasperatedly. I can keep myself safe, and so what if I get some scratches here and there? It’s not your choice anyways, I’ve already made my decision!
Angler let a silent growl escape from his lips. War is never safe. You might not be on the front lines, but you’ll certainly be in danger.
I will not! Rift replied. I can fight, I’ve been training with some of the older dragons for years!
You’re a prince, you fight for fun, Angler snapped. You don’t get to be so selfish that you get to abandon me and the rest of the family for some clam-brained romanticized notions of war and martyrdom.
I’m the one being selfish? Rift hit his large SeaWing tail against the tile beneath him. You’re the one trying to keep me he— 
What’s going on? interrupted a dragon. A large SeaWing, the color of thick green algae, swam into the room, frowning. Two golden bands decoratively wrapped around his front ankles. King Gill towered over his two sons, his forked tongue flicking between his teeth. What is the meaning of this?
Rift wants to join the war and become a martyr, Angler quickly flashed.
I do not! Rift flashed back. I have no intention of dying! He turned to his father. I want to join the war. I’ve been trained how to command. I could help end the war faster, I could— 
No, Gill issued. Angler smiled smugly next to him.
I would be an asset to the SeaWings! Rift protested. I’m seven now; I’m an adult! I’m a prince, eventually I’ll be a commander like Uncle Shark! This is the perfect time to start training for that!
You’re still too young, Gill replied, and this war has been brutal so far. Maybe in a few years.
I don’t need to wait a few years! I’m old enough now!
Gill sighed. This is for your own good. You’re far too reckless, and are bound to get first. Angler nodded as Gill was flashing in Aquatic, agreeing with his father.
Stop treating me like I’m still a dragonet! Rift angrily flashed. He turned his back, and swam off in a storm from his father and brother.
The waves of Rift’s departure slowly passed over Angler and Gill. Angler glanced up at his father. Should we go after him? he asked.
No, Gill shook his head. He’ll calm down before long. He’s not going to go anywhere.
Angler nodded. There was a short pause. Is it true that Rift is eventually going to become a commander? he asked. 
Gill nodded solemnly. Yes, if he chooses to. He’s a prince, and will be the next queen’s brother. A high-ranking job in the army is a traditional job for princes and princesses of royal families.
Angler frowned. He knew his brother, and Rift couldn’t make a good commander. He was far too headstrong, and didn’t think enough before acting. He would be bound to get himself injured, or worse. Maybe there was a way for Angler to convince Rift of the same.
==Chapter 4==
It had been two weeks since Orca had taken Torrent to the library. Orca knew that it was a bit risky to show Torrent the statue completed so soon, but she hoped that he wouldn’t get suspicious at how quickly she had finished it. She caught up with her brother by his room.
Torrent’s room was much closer to the rest of the palace than her own. His room wasn’t in the same cluster as Coral, Gill, and River’s rooms, but was in a small corridor escaping from  their hallway. When Orca got to the doorway, she knocked her claws on the stone slab of his door. When no one responded, she attempted to turn the doorknob to open it. Pushing the water behind the door away, it creaked open with little resistance. Unlike Orca’s own room, Torrent’s didn’t appear to have a lock.
Orca peered in, but didn’t see Torrent in there. Suddenly, she felt a claw tap on her back. She ruffled her wings in surprise and turned around.
Hello, Torrent flashed in Aquatic, unsure why his sister was looking into his room.
So sorry! Orca replied, embarrassed that she had been caught peeking into Torrent’s room without permission. I was looking for you, and thought you might be here.
Torrent nodded understandingly. What for? he asked, curious.
Oh! I have a surprise back in my room for you!
Torrent frowned. What sort of surprise?
Don’t worry, it’s good. I made you a gift! Orca reassured her younger brother.
Torrent thought for a moment. Alright, let me set down my scrolls first. The SeaWing prince brushed past his older sister into his room, and placed down a few scrolls from school he was carrying. He turned around, and followed Orca out, closing his door carefully behind him.
As the two started the swim down the long path to Orca’s lair, Orca glanced over at Torrent. He was unusually grim and silent.
What’s wrong? Orca asked. You seem quiet.
Torrent shrugged his wingblades. It’s nothing.
Oh, Orca replied, unsure how she should respond. Torrent didn’t seem comfortable with telling her whatever it was. She could understand that, there were plenty of things she couldn’t tell her family, specifically her powers.
The two continued swimming down the passage in silence, the gloomy ceiling of the castle looming above them, like a sea of clouds on a cold and rainy day. The gentle drone of rushing water swept past their ears as they swam onwards.
Orca thought for a moment. Maybe she should try again to get Torrent to open up about whatever was bothering him.
Are you sure it’s nothing? she asked.
Torrent didn’t reply for a moment, and looked away from Orca uncomfortably. It’s River, he finally flashed back, she’s angry that Mother is too busy with the council to give her attention.
And she’s taking it out on you? Orca guessed.
Torrent nodded slowly in affirmation.
Well, tell her that she shouldn’t be such a clam-brained brat, Orca snapped. And that she can go choke on a sea urchin for all you care.
Torrent smiled slightly and rolled his eyes.
No, seriously! Orca continued. It’s completely true, I’ll bet that if we replaced her with a clam one day, Whirlpool would hardly notice! Now, that dragon’s too busy picking the sand between Coral’s claws to notice if an octopus crawled up his nose, but still!
Torrent chuckled. Orca was completely right about Whirlpool, he’d do anything for Coral; it was almost pitiful. You know River would just go and tell mother if I said that.
Then I’ll just go and tell mother that she said something even nastier first. I’m older, so of course she’ll believe me.
Torrent thought for a moment, smiling. You know that would be lying. You shouldn’t lie.
Well, it’s not like she hasn’t said anything nastier to you before, right?
Torrent tapped a claw in thought and shrugged.
See? Orca flashed. It would totally be fair, and maybe she’d finally start learning some manners.
Of course, there are other things I could do to River, Orca thought to herself. Maybe a small enchantment to make her scales itch wildly whenever she was rude to anyone would do the trick . . . no. Orca knew that it would be wrong to use her animus powers to hurt someone else. But it would be so easy . . .
I guess I could try, Torrent replied. He gently smiled at his older sister as the two approached Orca’s door.
Alright, close your eyes, Orca flashed to Torrent, shaking away her previous train of thought. No peeking!
She opened the door, and guided Torrent through the doorway into her room. Grabbing her brother’s claws, she peeled them away from his eyes. Tada! she flashed.
In front of Torrent stood a light-grey marble statue of a gryphon. The top of the gryphon’s ruffled head reached about the bottom of Torrent’s wingblades, maybe a quarter the height of a full-grown dragon. The statue’s head had intricate feathers up against its neck and head, with two long triangular ears poking out the back, and a sharp beak on the front. It had four legs, just like a dragon, and carefully carved talons at the end of each. It’s feathery wings were folded up against it’s body, and it was looking up at Torrent almost expectantly, as if it were asking him some question no one knew the answer to.
Torrent looked back at the gryphon in a happy shock. Wow, he flashed. This is amazing!
Orca grinned back in humility. You really think so?
Yeah! Torrent replied. He’s so awesome! Thank you so much! He swam up to his older sister and wrapped a wing around her in gratitude.
Orca smiled. You’re welcome. I hope you like him.
I love him! Torrent flashed back. How did you make him so quickly?
Orca’s smile suddenly dropped. She was unsure how to respond. The only reason she had been able to make the statue so quickly was because of her animus magic, and she couldn’t tell Torrent about that.
But, she didn’t want to lie to him, not to her friend, not again. Orca recalled what Torrent had said when she had suggested lying to their mother about River: You know that would be lying. You shouldn’t lie. Torrent had told her the truth about River being mean, hadn’t he? She shouldn’t return the favor by lying right to his snout.
Orca knew she could lie, she had done it a thousand times before, to her mother, to her father, even to Rift. It had almost become second nature. She could easily just claim I worked  day and night or blame it on “artist’s luck” or something like that; Torrent would believe her, and even if he didn’t, he wouldn’t guess the truth. But Orca didn’t want to lie, she was done lying. And Torrent was her brother, her friend, she could trust him, right? If not, she could always just wipe it from his memories somehow, could her animus magic do that? It probably could, if worst came to worst. She was settled. She would tell Torrent.
Umm . . . magic, Orca replied.
Oh, I see, Torrent joked. Don’t want to give away your secret, do you? He rolled his eyes at what he thought was Orca’s insincerity. Don’t worry, I won’t share.
It wasn’t too late to turn back. Torrent was almost giving her an opportunity at a second chance. But Orca was done hiding her secret. Why did he have to make it so hard for her?
No, I’m serious. I enchanted some of my chisels to make things go quicker.
Gulping down her fear, Orca held her breath in apprehension, and hoped for the best.
Wait, you’re serious? Torrent asked in shock. He blinked a few times, as if he were attempting to make sure this wasn’t a dream. As in, magical enchantments? Animus enchantments?
Orca slowly nodded, her head barely moving up and down.
Torrent let out a small chuckle. This is a joke, right? You’re going to say something like, ‘haha, fooled you’ as soon as I believe you, aren’t you?
Orca shook her head. She realized that Torrent would need actual proof in front of his own two eyes to believe her. She looked over to a scroll on her scrollshelf. Under her breath, she muttered, “Enchant that scroll to bring itself over in front of Torrent.” The scroll followed her directions to expert precision, quickly pushing the water in front of it aside to float in front of Torrent’s snout.
Whoa! Torrent flashed, startled. He quickly jumped away from the scroll. For a few moments, he just stood there, looking back and forth between Orca and the scroll.
After an uncomfortable silence, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. So it’s true.
Orca nodded grimly. This wasn’t going as well as she had hoped.
Does anyone else know? Rift? Mother? Father?
No, Orca flashed.
Torrent started pacing back and forth around Orca’s room. After a moment which felt like an eternity, he stopped. That’s . . . cool.
Torrent still looked a bit surprised, but that was to be expected. Are you scared of me? Orca asked in concern.
Her younger brother thought for a moment before answering. I guess, you do have practically unlimited power, right? But you’re still my sister, and I know you wouldn’t use your powers to hurt anyone.
Was that really true? Orca had hurt River during the Talons of Power Ceremony with her powers. Would she do that again? What if next time, she even killed a dragon?
On the outside, Orca smiled and nodded. Yeah, she flashed. She had done it again. Lied. Wasn’t that the whole point of telling Torrent about her powers? So she didn’t have to lie to him anymore?
Torrent looked at her, then at the statue. He appeared to be deep in thought.
What is it? Orca questioned.
Well, I was wondering, would it be alright if you enchanted something for me? Torrent looked slightly uncomfortable asking her the question.
Orca cocked her head to the side, wondering what her little brother wanted. I guess? I mean, sure, what is it? Even if Torrent wanted her to enchant something, that was to be expected. Orca was just glad that he had accepted her powers.
Well . . . can you enchant the gryphon statue to come to life?
Orca blinked in surprise. It didn’t seem like too harmful an enchantment; there were worse things Torrent could’ve asked for. I don’t know, Orca honestly replied. I haven’t enchanted something to life before; I don’t even know if that’s possible. But I’ll try.
Really? Torrent flashed, practically bursting in excitement. A huge grin was spread across his snout.
Orca nodded. She looked at the statue and took in a deep breath. “Statue, I enchant you to turn into a real gryphon,” she whispered into the seawater.
For a moment, it looked like nothing was happening. Suddenly, the marble started to gloss over, and change colors, leaving behind what was no longer a dull statue. The solid, brittle feathers were now delicate and rich with color, being pushed too and fro by the motion of the water they were entrenched in. A golden beak protruded from the gryphon’s snout, and motion had entered the gryphon’s long claws.
Torrent suddenly glanced over at Orca, and saw her staggering around. Are you alright? he asked.
Y-yeah, I’m fine, Orca flashed, clearly not fine. I just need to lie down for a moment, that’s all. She felt dizzy and tired, as if someone had hit her head with a large stone. Her vision was blurry. Unable to hold herself up on four legs anymore, the SeaWing princess flopped to the ground, the water gently carrying her body to the stone, landing it with a soft thud.
Suddenly, the gryphon, now alive, started to clutch at his throat. Water was pouring into his lungs, and the gill-less creature was drowning. The gryphon struggled out, his wings flapping and his claws scratching at his feathery neck. In his first few moments of life, the gryphon was going to die.
It took only moments for Torrent to notice the poor bird’s plight, and not having any other options, the SeaWing furiously shook his sister, flashing all his stripes on and off in terror and yelling as loud as he could through the water in a hope to wake Orca up.
Fortunately for the poor gryphon, Orca was still conscious enough to notice Torrent’s alarm, and in her daze, was able to see the gryphon. Mustering all her willpower to keep herself awake, she muttered, “I enchant the gryphon to breath water,” before feeling another pang of pain. The previous two enchantments having taken far too much of a toll on her body, Orca sank into unconsciousness.
For the gryphon, her enchantment was just in time. He took his first breath of oxygen, and gasped in shock. He continued hyperventilating like this for a minute or two, trembling in fear. He had been plunged into this world only to almost leave as quickly as he had arrived.
He had no idea where he was, or who he was. Wherever he was, it felt unnatural and frightening. He needed to get out. The gryphon looked around the room, and saw a closed door, leading to what might be the outside, he scrambled towards it, attempting to paddle through the water.
When the gryphon finally reached the door, he clawed against it, long scratch marks raking through the wood. He continued this for a while in his terror, before he tired, and his claws settled.
Meanwhile, Torrent looked on in shame. This was his fault. The poor creature he had asked Orca to create was now confused and frightened, while Orca herself lay unconscious on the ground, having overexerted her powers. Torrent shook her a few times with her claws, but received no response. He looked down at her gills and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw them gently opening and closing. Still, he was worried. He didn’t know if or when Orca would wake up.
It took around half an hour for Orca to finally wake. During that time, Torrent stayed in the room with the gryphon and Orca. He attempted to swim over to the gryphon a few times, but all he got in return was an unfriendly hiss.
When Orca finally stirred, Torrent immediately rushed over to her.
Orca, are you alright? he flashed in concern. Orca just groaned in response. It took a few minutes for her to recover and get back up.
Remind me not to enchant things to life ever again, Orca groaned, clutching her head with a paw. How long was I out?
Torrent shrugged. A while, he said in shame. This wouldn’t had happened if he hadn’t asked Orca to enchant the statue for him.
Orca nodded. I’m alright, she flashed, reassuring Torrent, just a little dazed. She looked over to the gryphon, huddled in the corner by the door. What about him? she asked Torrent.
He freaked out and has been like that since.
Orca nodded and walked over to the gryphon. He hissed angrily and snapped his beak at Orca. She ruffled her wings and moved back, startled. Thinking for a moment, she turned to Torrent. Can he speak? she asked.
Torrent shook his head. He’s been quiet the whole time.
Orca nodded. She was feeling less dizzy right now, and thought she might be up to this. Taking in a deep breath through her gills, she said, “I enchant the gryphon to have the intelligence to speak language, to be able to do so, above and underwater, and to be able to understand Aquatic.”
The familiar dizziness washed over her, but less so than before. For a moment, a cold shiver went through Orca’s scales, but then was washed away. She stood her ground, and after a few moments, the dizziness subsided. She was glad. Hopefully that would stop happening the more she used her powers.
Afterwards the enchantment, the gryphon stood still, unsure what was going on. Torrent stepped back, unsure as to exactly what Orca had said.
“What have you done to me?” the gryphon raspily shouted in bewilderment.
Calm down, Orca flashed. It’s going to be alright. “Alright? What is alright about this? Where am I?”
Orca paused for a moment before turning to Torrent.
Torrent gulped. You’re in the Deep Palace, underwater. You’re a gryphon, and we’re all SeaWings. Dragons. He wasn’t sure what else to say.
The gryphon looked around nervously, shaking. “Who are you?”
I’m Prince Torrent, Torrent replied, but you can call me Torrent. This is my sister, Princess Orca.
The gryphon was still shaking, but seemed slightly calmer now. “Who am I?”
Torrent thought for a moment. Calling the gryphon Talon just seemed wrong, but he didn’t know of any other good gryphon names. Griffin? Torrent replied. Griffin didn’t seem to have a problem with this, or if he did, Torrent didn’t notice.
Griffin glanced from side to side, finally a bit more calm. His breathing had slowed to a normal pace.
“Why am I here?” Griffin asked.
I brought you to life, Orca uncomfortably replied.
“But why?”
Orca turned to Torrent for an explanation. Torrent wasn’t exactly sure of the answer himself. I wanted another friend? he replied, not sure if that was the correct answer.
“How do I be a friend?”
Torrent wasn’t sure of that answer either. He glanced at Orca for an answer, but she shrugged her wingblades in uncertainty. We can talk about things, if you’d like that. Stories and mean sisters and other stuff.
“I don’t know if I’d like that.”
Oh, Torrent flashed, slightly hurt, then what do you like? We can do that.
“I don’t know what I like.”
Torrent wasn’t exactly sure what Griffin liked either. Well, what makes you happy?
“I don’t know. Do I like being happy?”
Yeah, everyone likes being happy.
Griffin seemed even more confused at this, but appeared to accept it. An attempt at a smile appeared from his beak. “Alright, I’ll be happy then.”
That’s good, Torrent replied, now extremely confused himself at this sudden change. How did one just choose to become happy? He looked at Orca, unsure what to do. Now what? he asked Griffin. Are you hungry?
“No,” Griffin replied. “But I’m tired.”
Torrent nodded. Where should he sleep? he asked Orca.
Your room is fine, Orca flashed back. She was exhausted. It would probably be a good idea to sleep and regain the energy she had used via animus magic. Tell mother I went to bed early, she flashed to Torrent, yawning.
Torrent nodded, and glanced back at Griffin, who was curiously examining his claws. Let’s go, there shouldn’t be anyone in the hallways right now, they’re all planning a meeting or something.
Griffin nodded, and still smiling, swam after Torrent.
==Chapter 5==
Claws rapped against Rift’s door. Not wanting to talk to whoever it was outside, be it Gill or Angler, Rift didn’t answer. The claws rapped against it again. After a third rap, the door slowly opened, revealing Gill as the knocker. The humongous king lumbered in.
Rift glared at his father. What do you want? he flashed in Aquatic.
Gill sighed. I thought a little bit about what you said earlier, and I decided to let you join the war. A conflicted grimace was plastered onto his face.
An expression of surprise washed over Rift’s snout. He hadn’t expected his father to change his mind. Why? he asked, confused.
You are right in that being a prince, your place is leading the army, if you so choose that path.
Rift smiled, pushing back a smug grin. He hadn’t his father to show reason, but he was grateful that he had. Gill was right. Rift was a SeaWing prince, and leading the SeaWing forces into war to protect his kingdom was not only his birthright, but his duty. If Angler wanted to help his kingdom in other ways, then good for him, but he had no right to try and stop Rift from performing his purpose. When do I start? Rift asked apprehensively.
Your mother is meeting with Queen Moorhen and Queen Blister in a week for war planning. You can join us in the meetings and we can discuss your role with the queens there, if you still want to.
Gill appeared to think that this was some passing whim of Rift’s. Rift felt slighted, he had been wanting to join the army for years now, but he knew his father wouldn’t even consider it until he was of age. And I will, he flashed back.
Gill frowned, with a look that said, “We’ll see,” then abruptly turned and left the room. Rift shut the door after his father left. It might do him good to find out a little more about Queen Moorhen and Blister, if he was going to join them.
Torrent worriedly glanced at Orca. Although he and Orca had thought she’d completely recovered from her overuse of animus magic, now Torrent wasn’t so sure. For the past few days, Orca had been lethargically resting in her room, too tired to leave, or basically do anything other than rest and read. The two weren’t sure if it was the animus magic, or just a common sickness, but either way Orca was completely exhausted. Torrent had been getting her scrolls from the library on request, but most of the time she just wanted to sleep. Fortunately, this allowed him to spend more time getting to know Griffin.
Griffin appeared to have recovered from his creation and then near death, and instead of being anxious and frightened, he had changed to being joyful and curious. He was constantly asking Torrent about the world they lived in, and although he desperately wanted to leave Torrent’s room, Torrent wouldn’t let him, telling Griffin that the other dragons might try and hurt him and Orca if they found out about him.
Torrent liked Griffin, but found him a bit confusing. It surprised him how much of what Torrent knew he took for granted. Some of the things Torrent told Griffin were considered basic, such as having to explain that all the tribes were all dragons, and could breed with each other, but they looked very different. Other of Griffin’s questions were stranger, such as when he asked Torrent if he just disappeared whenever Griffin blinked. 
Yet, the hardest question Torrent had been forced to answer was when Griffin asked him where the other gryphons were.
Oh, gryphons don’t exist, Torrent replied naïvely.
“I thought I was a gryphon?” Griffin asked. “Don’t I exist?”
Well, Torrent said, you’re not really a real gryphon. You’re just a statue that Orca enchanted.
Griffin found this alarming, unsurprisingly, making Torrent wish Orca had explained it to Griffin instead of him. I mean, Torrent corrected himself, you’re a real gryphon sort of, since Orca made you one, but you’re not a normal gryphon.
Torrent and Griffin had more conversations like this at first, but they slowly started to decrease in frequency. They started talking more about Orca, or the scrolls on the Lost Continent Torrent had been reading. It was nice, having a friend Torrent could talk to. With Orca, Torrent felt like he was somehow below her, and not just in age. It occasionally seemed like he was talking to a superior. With Griffin, things were different.
At this moment, Griffin was alone in Torrent’s room, and Torrent was bringing Orca another batch of scrolls. He glanced at her in concern. Are you alright? he asked.
Orca nodded. Yeah, I think I’m getting better, she said with a faint smile. You don’t need to worry about me, I’ll be fine.
Torrent sighed. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t asked Orca his stupid selfish wish about bringing Griffin to life, none of this ever would have happened. Is there anything else I can get you?
Orca shook her head. I’m good, thank you.
Torrent looked around the room uncomfortably. His eyes landed on a scroll on Orca’s desk. He went over to it, and scanned it. It appeared to be a guide on animuses and animus magic. He wondered how old the scroll was. It didn’t look too old, but it might have been a copy of an older scroll. 
Don’t read that! Orca suddenly flashed, seeing Torrent. Torrent frowned, and backed away from the scroll, just more curious than before. It’s . . . not very good, Orca explained, her lie clearly showing through her lethargy. Torrent nodded, pretending to believe her.
Torrent swam over to Orca, and looked down on her again. Are you sure there’s nothing I can get you? Do you need food?
Orca smiled thankfully. I’m not very hungry, but thank you. She attempted to stifle a yawn, before succumbing to it, closing her eyes to rest. Within a few moments, Orca was fast asleep, her gills slowly closing and opening.
Torrent glanced back at the scroll and frowned. He wondered what Orca had wanted to hide in it. His curiosity getting the better of him, Torrent took the chance Orca’s sleep had caused and swam over to the scroll. He read a small portion of it:
“The usage of animus magic is known to have multiple effects on the user, which we will later explain in more detail. The first is a kind of exhaustion, especially common among young or inexperienced animus dragons. The second, and more well-known effect, is a slow and creeping paranoia which grows each time the animus uses their powers. This accompanies a greater reliance on the animus’s powers, and a greater willingness to use them for violent and immoral means that the animus might not otherwise use their powers for. The effect is more commonly known as ‘losing one’s soul,’ the phrase stemming from ancient theories and legends of animuses ‘bargaining’ their souls to a higher power in order to enchant objects. Whether or not the phrase should be taken literally, there have been numerous accounts of animus dragons experiencing this effect, the most well known case being the Royal SeaWing Massacre caused by Albatross.”
Torrent gulped in fear, and glanced back at Orca. He knew about the Royal SeaWing Massacre, all royal SeaWings did. He had just thought that Albatross had gone power-crazed, not that he had lost his soul, or whatever. What if the same thing was happening to Orca? He had made her overuse her powers, what if she was going to kill his family now? No, that couldn’t happen, Orca seemed completely normal. Maybe the scroll was wrong?
Torrent rolled up the scroll. He would read more about the subject back in his room, this was important. He opened Orca’s door, and shut it gently behind him, so not to wake her.
After the long swim back to his room, he opened it. Griffin was inside, sitting happily on Torrent’s bed. He waved happily to the young SeaWing, grinning. Torrent smiled back politely, then swam to his bed and rolled open the scroll, being careful not to rip the paper with his claws. He set some small reading stones on each corner to keep the scroll from rolling up or floating.
“What’s that?” Griffin asked.
A scroll, Torrent replied, not knowing if Griffin knew what scrolls were or not. It’s for writing down and preserving information or stories.
“Huh,” Griffin mused. “What’s on the scroll?”
I’m not sure yet, Torrent flashed, but I think it’s about animus dragons. Orca didn’t want me to read it.
Griffin thought for a moment. “Why did you read it then?” Torrent thought for a moment. I thought it might teach us how to make Orca well again.
“That makes sense!” Griffin squawked. Torrent was still unsure how Griffin was able to talk underwater, but he guessed it was just the power of animus magic.
Torrent dragged a claw along the scroll, to focus in on what he thought was the relevant section. He frowned. The scroll says that animus dragons lose their souls and go insane the more they use magic.
“What if that’s why Orca didn’t want you to read the scroll? She didn’t want you to know she had lost her soul and gone all crazy.”
No, she wouldn’t do that! Torrent replied. At least, that was what he hoped. Yet, a snaking strand of suspicion had burrowed its way to his heart. What if Orca had already gone insane?
Griffin shrugged and ruffled the feathers on his neck. He didn’t seem convinced.
Torrent bared his fangs at the scroll. It doesn’t say how to cure it! he flashed in frustration.
“Is there a way to cure it?” Griffin asked skeptically.
Of course there is! There had to be, or else Orca would go insane! Orca wasn’t the first animus, there had to be others who had found a way to prevent the insanity.
I’m going to the library, Torrent notified Griffin. I’m going to find some more scrolls with more information.
“Oh,” Griffin replied, disappointed that Torrent was leaving him so soon. “Well, good luck.”
Torrent nodded, and left the room in a flash, swimming towards the library. He needed to fix this. What if it was already too late, and Orca had already lost her soul? No, that couldn’t have happened. She hadn’t used that much magic, had she?
Torrent got to the library, and looked around the area. He wasn’t sure where to start. The section on magic and the paranormal looked like a good place. He swam up to the shelves, and pulled off a few of the scrolls in a hurry. Eventually, he found one that looked relevant, it was a compilation of a few legends, some of them with animus dragons in them. He looked through the scroll, reading through the relevant legends. No luck. All of the legends either had the animus lose their soul at the end, not use animus magic, or the story ignored the whole soul thing altogether. Torrent didn’t care that the ancient IceWings only used their magic once, Orca had already used it multiple times.
The pattern continued in the other scrolls Torrent read, and Torrent couldn’t find anything helpful. There were a few cases in which the animus had created some sort of charm to prevent them from losing their soul, but all of them ended up insane anyways. Torrent didn’t know if these were just stories or actual events, but either way, it wasn’t helpful. After reading through what he felt like was all the scrolls in the library, Torrent remembered the time. It had been hours, and Orca was probably awake by now. He needed to go check up on her, and get her food if she was hungry.
Torrent left the library in defeat, heading towards Orca’s room. What if Griffin was right, and Orca had tried to prevent Torrent from reading the scroll because she had already lost her soul? The scroll! Torrent had left it in his room with Griffin. He thought about turning back to go get it, but he was already at Orca’s door. She’d probably still be in her bed anyways, and wouldn’t have noticed. Torrent slowly opened the door to Orca’s room.
Orca was standing, wide awake, in the middle of the room. She saw Torrent, and glanced back at the empty desk where the scroll was. She clearly had noticed. Orca sighed and ground her pointed teeth together. She rubbed her wing up against her gills in discomfort.
Did you take the scroll? she asked Torrent.
Torrent nodded and gulped a lump down his throat. He glanced behind him nervously before turning back to Orca.
Orca groaned. Look, don’t worry, my soul is fine. I’m fine. I haven’t used anywhere near enough magic to get to the point where I would hurt you, or anyone else. 
Torrent relaxed a little bit. She looked and sounded fine. Her soul was still intact. Why didn’t you want me to know? he asked.
I just wanted to explain it to you myself. I didn’t want you to be scared of me or anything. 
Torrent nodded. It still felt like Orca wasn’t telling him something, but that made sense. So, do you know how to stop it?
No, Orca replied matter-of-factly. There isn’t a way, I just have to not use a ton of animus magic, and it will be fine.
Torrent wondered how much animus magic Orca had already used before she told him. There was her sculpting tools, of course, but he didn’t know of any other enchantments she had made. Are you sure there’s no way? Maybe you could enchant something to protect your soul? Torrent really doubted that would work, and he could tell from the look on Orca’s face that she felt the same. If couldn’t just be that easy, could it?
Orca shrugged, flashed, Well, it’s worth a try, I suppose, and pulled off the golden amethyst-inlaid bracelet that she wore. Torrent couldn’t really make out what she next said through the water, but from the faint purple glow that suddenly appeared on the golden bracelet, he guessed it was something along the lines of enchanting the bracelet to keep the wearer’s soul intact. Orca put the bracelet back on.
Torrent smiled, feigning content. Well, hopefully that does the trick.
Orca smiled in return. I’m going to go to the kitchens to find some food to eat now. I don’t think I’ve eaten in awhile, I’ve felt so bad. Do you want to join me?
Sure! Torrent flashed back. Even with all this soul business, the SeaWing prince was still grateful that his sister was feeling better.
Pretending as if the situation was over, the two dragonets left Orca’s room to head to the kitchens, swimming side by side.
==Chapter 6==
While Torrent was in the library, his other sister, River, was having problems of her own.
C’mon Moray, give me the stupid scroll! River flashed desperately. 
Moray stuck her tongue out at her younger cousin in reply and twitched her pale green tail. Nah-ah, you’re going to have to suffer through Whirlpool’s homework just like I did. 
River fumed. She had to turn in a math assignment to Whirlpool the next day, and she had no idea how to complete her homework. Moray bragged that Whirlpool had tutored her in the same subject last year, and that she had a fully completed copy of the assignment, but she refused to give it to River.
When I’m queen, I’m going to make you take classes with Whirlpool for the rest of your life! River threatened.
Moray scoffed, puckering her snout in faux pity. You’re never going to be queen. Orca is going to challenge Coral before you. You’ll just have to live as a weak, powerless sister of a queen for the rest of your life, however short it might be. I, on the other claw, am going to be a Council Member to Queen Orca.
River growled and bared her teeth in anger. She wouldn’t take this from Moray anymore. River roared through the water and leapt at her cousin, claws outstretched. She landed, scratching at Moray’s gills.
Moray suddenly turned around, and a hunk of tail came flying at River’s skull. It hit, knocking her across the small room. River lay on the ground, clutching at where Moray hit and squinting an eye. Moray snorted. How can a runt like you expect to defeat Coral when you can’t even touch me?
Moray swam away until the last glint of green-grey scale disappeared. River got up off the stone floor and looked at her royal violet claws. She couldn’t ever fight her mother or Orca for the throne, she’d be torn to bits within seconds. Moray was right, River was the runt of the family.
River wouldn’t cry. A queen didn’t cry. A queen was strong, and would stand up to her enemies. And right now, that was her schoolwork. Concocting a plan to take the throne from Orca’s grasping claws could wait.
The SeaWing princess thought about what to do. If she couldn’t complete her homework, and Moray wouldn’t help, she had to ask someone else. Whirlpool taught Torrent together with her, maybe he could help. As much as she hated asking a brother who fraternized with her enemy (Orca, of course, Moray was just Coral’s niece and didn’t deserve the title of enemy), River didn’t really see any other options at the moment.
River swam down to Torrent’s room. She hadn’t seen him much recently, her brother was taking care of Orca. Maybe Orca would get sick and die, so River would be able to challenge Mother unopposed and in her own time. But that was too much to hope for.
River knocked on Torrent’s door. She thought she might have heard a rustle of water inside, but she wasn’t sure. She waited a few moments, but there was still no response. Torrent didn’t appear to be in his room at the moment. River thought for a moment. Torrent was a better student than her, he had probably already completed his homework for tomorrow. If so, River could look at it and copy it. She grinned; she was such a great problem solver.
She slowly opened his door. Fortunately for her, it had no lock. Torrent, are you there? she flashed. There was no answer. She stepped inside the room and looked around. Sure enough, there were a few scrolls scattered around the room. There was one still open on his bed. River swam over to it, hoping that it would be Torrent’s homework. 
Suddenly, River thought she heard another rustle of water by the bed, like there was something in his room. She looked around quickly to make sure Torrent hadn’t returned. He hadn’t. It was probably just a stray fish or something that had gotten into the palace. She looked over at the scroll. It appeared to be about animus dragons and their souls.
River felt a pang of frustration. She had hoped so badly to be an animus at the ceremony. If only she was, she could enchant her something that would let her defeat Coral or Orca and become queen. She clenched her teeth in anger.
Not seeing Torrent’s homework on the scroll, River moved on to his desk. There was a scroll rolled closed on it that looked promising. River opened it and smiled. It was the math homework that she needed. She took out her own homework scroll and opened it. Quickly as she could, she copied over the answers. Once done, she rolled the scroll close and put it exactly as she had been. She then turned to leave the room.
River noticed something strange on the floor, a feather. She wondered how a feather got down here, there weren’t any birds that lived in the ocean. Did Torrent bring it back from the Summer Palace? Frowning, she picked it up and looked closer at it. Something about it just felt off, and touching it sent a cold shiver through River. It just seemed too perfectly made, no kinks or bends. It gave River a strange sense of déjà vu, like she had seen something like it before. She remembered the rock that she had found on the beach during her Talons of Power Ceremony. It was similar to that. 
She shrugged and kept the feather between her talons. It was just a neat feather, that was it. Maybe the water preserved it well. Even though she felt a pang of doubt at her theory, River left Torrent’s room to head back to her own. She didn’t want to get caught by anyone.
----
Torrent opened the door to his room, Orca following close behind him. With a scramble of feathers, Griffin swam under Torrent’s bed, leaving behind only a trail of feathers.Griffin? Torrent asked. What’s wrong?
Griffin peeked his head out, looking relieved. “Sorry, I was worried it was the purple dragon again.”
The purple dragon? Orca asked. Does he mean River?
Torrent thought about it for a moment. As far as he knew, River was the only purple SeaWing living in the palace. Did she have midnight-blue stripes and starbursts beneath her wings?
Griffin paused, then nodded, confirming Orca’s guess.
Why was she in here? Orca asked.
“She came in, read a scroll on your desk, then left.” Griffin showed Torrent to the particular scroll.
Torrent sighed. It was his math homework. River must’ve been trying to copy off it. Did she see you? he asked Griffin.
Griffin shook his head. Orca was relieved; questions would be asked if Griffin was found, and Orca’s powers would probably be discovered. 
“She didn’t see me, I hid, but she found one of my feathers.” Griffin replied. This was worrying. What if River found Griffin and put the pieces together? No, she couldn’t do that, Orca reassured herself. That’s far too unlikely.
We should move Griffin down to my room, Orca flashed. It was stupid of me to suggest putting him up here; my room has a lock, and Torrent and I are really the only ones that go by it.
Torrent nodded. Orca was right. As much as he wanted to keep Griffin in his room, moving him would be much more safe.
Griffin himself looked a bit worried.
Don’t worry, Torrent flashed, Orca is nice, and I can still visit all the time.
“That’s not my worry,” Griffin replied. “How long will it be before River finds out about me?”
Hopefully never, Orca replied, as long as we keep you hidden.
Griffin nodded, a little dismayed. He didn’t appear to like the idea of being cooped up in Orca’s room forever.
Alright, Orca flashed, this is probably a good time to move Griffin, since most of the family is eating dinner now. I’ll go scout out the area, and Torrent, take Griffin and follow.
Moving Griffin down to Orca’s room went all as planned, fortunately, and no one saw him. The three breathed a collective sigh of relief as they closed Orca’s door behind them.
What should we do with Griffin during the meetings? Torrent asked.
Meetings? Orca replied, confused. What meetings?
Torrent had forgotten that Orca was sick, and no one would’ve told her about them. Queen Coral is meeting with Queen Moorhen and Queen Blister to discuss the war in a week. It’ll be for two weeks at the Summer Palace, and she expects us to come along with her.
Orca frowned. Did Torrent expect to bring Griffin to the meetings with them? That seemed like a bad idea. Yet, if they didn’t, Griffin would be alone in the Deep Palace for two weeks. She glanced over at Griffin; he had a hopeful look on his face as he looked up at her. Orca sighed.
We can bring Griffin with us, I suppose. I’ll go to the Summer Palace a few days early with him, and find an unused room to put him in.
Griffin grinned, thankful that he wouldn’t have to spend two weeks alone in Orca’s room.
Great! Torrent flashed.
Orca suddenly had a great idea. I can enchant Griffin to be invisible to those who we haven’t told about him, she suggested, that way he’ll have no chance of being seen.
Torrent opened his mouth slightly, frowning in shock. Orca was confused. What was the problem with her plan? It seemed perfect.
No! Torrent flashed, almost angrily. No more enchantments! You know what the scroll said: you’ll lose your soul and go insane! If we can hide Griffin without using your magic, then we should do it.
Orca clenched her teeth slightly. She didn’t think she had lost that much of her soul; she hadn’t noticed anything wrong. It wasn’t like she had made that many enchantments, had she? But since Torrent felt strongly about it, so as long as Griffin was kept out of danger of being seen, she wouldn’t enchant Griffin. Even though it would be so easy, and fully solve all their problems.
Fine, Orca replied, letting out a little bit more frustration in her voice than she intended. No magic.
Torrent breathed in relief. He didn’t think Orca had lost too much of her soul, but every enchantment she made was another step down the slope to insanity, and he didn’t know how many steps she had to go before she would fall off the edge and end up like Albatross.
Torrent’s snout suddenly lit up. Maybe we could ask Moorhen and Blister about scrolls on animus magic! They’re bound to have some, especially Moorhen. The MudWings have a few libraries, don’t they?
Orca thought for a moment. She thought that they did. The MudWings hadn’t had any animus dragons since Queen Fen, they murdered them all if they hatched, but they might have information. What if one of their scrolls held the secret to saving Orca’s soul? Was that too much to hope for?
That sounds good, but what if the queens get suspicious? Orca asked.
In that case, I can just tell them it’s for a school project or something like that.
Orca nodded. If there was a chance that it could save her soul and let her continue using animus magic, she would try it. Alright, that sounds good.
Great! Torrent replied. So the plan is that you take Griffin to the Summer Palace in a few days?
Orca glanced over at Griffin, who had remained quiet this whole time, and had an uncomfortable smile plastered over his beak. Yeah,she replied. You alright with that? she asked Griffin.
Griffin nodded in reply. “Sure, it beats staying alone for two weeks.”
Fantastic! Orca flashed. So it’s settled.
----
Rift heard a knock on his door. Maybe it was Gill, ready to take him out to the Summer Palace early? Nothing could ruin his mood now, it was only two days before the meetings which would change his life and set him on his adventure.
Rift opened up his door to see Angler, frowning. What? Rift asked.
I have someone to show you, Angler replied, pushing past Rift. Along with him came an ancient SeaWing that looked like she had seen better days. She had a wing and a leg missing, and clearly struggled to swim. Looking closer, Rift saw that she had a glass eye. She shivered, as if the water chilled her to her bones.
This is Trout, Angler introduced, she normally lives on an island abovewater, where it’s warmer, but I convinced her to come down here for a visit.
Rift doubted it took much convincing. A prince’s request wasn’t usually refused. Why? he asked.
She was a soldier in a war with the MudWings many years ago, Angler explained, all of her wounds were obtained in battle.
Rift snarled. He saw what Angler was trying to do. Look, I don’t care how many injured dragons you bring down here, I’m not staying in this dump for the rest of my life.
If the Deep Palace is your idea of a dump, Angler retorted, I doubt you’re going to find much luck anywhere else on Pyrrhia.
You know what I mean! Now take this poor veteran back to the surface, and leave me alone.
At least hear her out, Angler pleaded. She came all the way down here just to talk to you.
To tell me words that I’m sure you put in her mouth, Rift flashed angrily, what were you going to have done to her if she insist I change my mind, I wonder? Now get out.
Angler frowned grimly. I hope you realize that you’re making the wrong decision, brother. Is there nothing I can do to change your mind?
Out! Rift flashed.
Angler solemnly nodded, defeated. Fine. Have it your way. Thank you for coming down here, Trout, even if it was all for nothing.
Mmmmmm, Trout flashed slowly, swimming out the door.
Angler glanced back at Rift one last time before leaving. I’ll always love you, you know, he flashed back.
Rift sighed. He didn’t want to stay angry at his twin. He really didn’t. I’ll miss you.
==Chapter 7==
Orca nervously looked for dragons outside the Deep Palace, and checking that the waters were clear, she motioned Griffin forward, making sure not to use Aquatic and attract attention.
It was nighttime, and while darkness was no problem for a SeaWing’s eyes, they couldn’t register color as well. From a distance, Griffin might look like a small dragonet, at least that was what Orca hoped.
Fortunately, there were no dragons out on this night. The two swam as quickly as they could towards the Summer Palace. There were a few points along the trip that Orca thought she had seen another SeaWing, but they turned out to instead be a whale or dolphin.
Eventually, Orca and Griffin reached the palace. Orca had left her enchanted amethyst bracelet in her room; if she hadn’t, it would be burning off her scales. The two swam beneath the tunnels that led to the center of the island for what felt like an eternity, but they finally surfaced at a pool in a tunnel off of the lake in the center of the palace. Orca looked around. There would be a few servants preparing the palace for the queens along with permanent inhabitants, but none were in the tunnel at that moment. Orca motioned Griffin to surface.
Griffin surfaced, and his eyes went wide in shock. He took a deep breath in through his nose, this time taking in actual air instead of water. “Wow,” he whispered, “this is amazing.”
The Summer Palace was just as Orca had seen it last: beautiful and jarring. It was somewhere in between the perplexing randomness of nature and the simple geometry of dragon-made architecture, combining the two into a statue of stone.
Griffin looked out the exit of the tunnel, to the lake in the center of the Summer Palace. Moonlight faintly shone through the green canopy overhead onto the twelve stacked pavilions in the center. He had only seen the Deep Palace, and not much of it. While the Deep Palace was beautiful, it was nothing compared to the architecture sculpted by Albatross’s magic. Orca wondered how hard it would be for her to create something like this with her own magic. Yet, this was also Albatross’s final feat—it was only after the creation of the Summer Palace that he killed the royal family. It was imbued with his soul, as tarnished as it became.
Orca silently nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered, “we need to go. Follow me.”
Orca led Griffin down the tunnel, away from the lake. There was bound to be at least one dragon sleeping there, if not more. Suddenly, she saw something in the movement in the distance. There was a SeaWing coming down the tunnel.
Orca quickly pushed Griffin into a small cave off the side of the tunnel, hoping that there was no one in there, and patiently waited for the dragon to pass. He slowly walked down the tunnel, wading in the shallow water, bowing to Orca as he passed. If he noticed something wrong, he ignored it. Orca sighed in relief when he was out of sight.
Orca pulled Griffin back out, and they continued down the tunnel, before long, Orca found a cave which she thought would be suitable. There was a lock on the door, and Orca would be able to get a key from a guard in the morning. She opened the door, and she and Griffin entered. Griffin would have a home for the next two weeks in the Summer Palace. Now, she needed a plan to get him out again.
Orca watched from one of the pavilions as the three queens swam out of the tunnel into the lake, their scales bathed in emerald sunlight.
Blister wasn’t properly a queen, of course, but she was treated like one in the Sea Kingdom. It was considered rudeness, even criminal, to call her Princess Blister instead of Queen Blister, as she preferred. She might have been more intelligent, but Blister was just as narcissistic as her sister Blaze, she just showed it less. At the moment, Blister was swimming just ahead of Queen Coral, extending her finned neck with pride. Her pale gold scales turned a light green under the canopy light, making her diamond pattern less contrasting with the rest of her.
Behind Blister and Queen Coral swam Queen Moorhen. She was the largest of the three, as large as Orca’s father, King Gill. She had a number of gemstones embedded into her scales, yet they did not appear excessively glamorous. Moorhen was one of the oldest queens in Pyrrhia, and her size proved it. Maybe Torrent was right, and she would know more about animus dragons than the SeaWings.
Not far behind Moorhen swam four more MudWings and two SeaWings: Moorhen’s siblings, Gill, and Shark. They appeared to be engaged in casual conversation with each other. After them proceeded the rest of the SeaWing Royal Family: Rift, Angler, Torrent, River, and Moray. Orca jumped off the pavilion she was on and glided down into the lake.
Orca bowed as she approached the queens, paying the respect that was expected of a dragonet her age. “Your Majesties,” she said.
Queen Blister stood there quietly smiling, swishing her barbed tail back and forth, but Queen Moorhen approached Orca. “Princess Orca,” she replied, in her calm, kind voice. “It’s been quite a while. You have grown fast.”
“Thank you,” Orca replied, acknowledging the MudWing queen’s compliment.
Queen Coral smiled to the other queens. “Most of my council is already waiting on the usual pavilion. Orca, I expect you to attend the meeting. You are to be queen one day, you know,” Coral clucked.
Blister frowned at this and flicked out her forked tongue, as if she didn’t like the idea of Orca being queen so much. Well, it wasn’t as if you’ve got any say in the matter, Orca thought.
The three queens and Orca flew up to the pavilion second from top, where the queens usually met. Coral motioned back to the dragons exiting the tunnel, and Gill, Rift, and Shark flew after them.
The pavilion already had a number of SeaWings on it, Queen Coral’s council members. Whirlpool was there, along with Gill’s sister and Orca’s aunt, Commander Tempest. The various dragons took their places, with Blister, Coral, and Moorhen in the center.
“Queen Moorhen, Queen Blister, welcome back to the Summer Palace,” Whirlpool greeted, in his usual slimy voice. Queen Moorhen thanked him, while Blister just smiled and waved her barb back and forth.
“Let’s get down to business,” Moorhen started. “We are all reaffirming our alliance in the war?”
Blister immediately nodded, of course. She was the one who had the most to gain from an alliance, the SandWing throne.
Coral waited a moment longer, thinking. Blister turned to her and let out a slight hiss, frowning. “What is it, Coral?” she asked.
“It’s just that this war has gone on longer than expected,” Coral replied. “I’m not going to be pulling out my troops, but it just feels like we’re no closer to winning than at the start.”
Blister smiled silkily. “Do not worry, we’re closer than ever to winning. With two kingdoms behind me and my legion of SandWings, we far outnumber the other kingdoms in troops. I want this war to be over as soon as you do. Yet, we may be able to finish sooner if we only had more troops. Commander Tempest and Commander Shark’s legions have been very useful, but another would benefit the war effort very much.”
Rift suddenly raised his voice, interrupting whatever Queen Coral was about to say. “Your Majesty, I could command a legion.”
Blister seemed somewhat surprised for a moment, but then a pleased expression passed over her face. Orca didn’t like this at all.
Queen Coral looked at her son and frowned. “Angler? Have you talked to your father about this? The war is no place for a dragonet.”
“Rift,” he hissed. “My name is Rift, and I’m not a dragonet anymore. And yes, I have talked to father about it. He said it was my choice.”
Gill sighed. He had hoped Rift would’ve given this up by now.
Coral didn’t seem convinced. Blister saw Coral’s expression, and decided to comment. “I think it’s a good idea. As I mentioned, we’re in need of another legion, and having a SeaWing prince at the forefront would really boost troop morale, and give Rift military experience.”
Coral thought for a moment, weighing options. “It would be dangerous, though. What if he gets injured?”
“He won’t,” Blister replied. “I’ll make sure to keep his legion with my own, and I can keep an eye on him.”
Coral nodded her head. She seemed convinced. Orca rolled her eyes. Her mother was so easily persuaded. What was she even getting out of this war anyways?
“Alright,” Coral replied, “Rift, as of now, you are now a commander. Over the next few weeks, we’ll give you training and pulling together your troops. You’ll be under the command of Queen Blister, and need to listen to her.”
Rift grinned. He had finally gotten what he wanted. “Thank you, Mother,” he replied. “Your Majesty, Queen Blister, I promise I will serve you well.”
Blister smiled slyly and nodded, flicking her forked tongue in and out of her teeth.
The rest of the meeting was the queens and the council discussing various other war plans and the details of the alliance; it didn’t seem very interesting to Orca, so after the first few minutes she tuned it out. After the end of the meeting, and the queens went their separate ways, she went up to Rift as they were swimming to the area of the Summer Palace reserved for the Royal Family’s rooms.
“Rift,” Orca said, trying to get his attention.
Rift turned around, and saw Orca, “Oh, Orca! Isn’t it great? I get to be a commander!” He was clearly in a joyful mood.
Orca nodded politely. “Congratulations,” she replied, “just . . . stay safe, alright?”
“Heh, don’t worry. I’ll be fine, I can take care of anything that comes for me.” He raised a claw and swiped at an invisible enemy, as if he was showing Orca that his words were true.
Orca smiled, even though she knew that Rift hadn’t had any real fighting experience. “Here,” she said, “I got you a gift.” Orca unlatched the small dolphin necklace from her neck, and put it against her mouth, whispering something into it. She had received it from her mother years before, just one of the many pieces of jewelry Coral had given her daugher, but it was Orca’s personal favorite, and the only one she wore consistently. 
“Wow,” Rift said, taking it into his claws and putting around his own neck. “It’s really beautiful! Thank you so much!”
Orca smiled. “Just make sure not to lose it, so don’t take it off. You promise?”
“Oh, sure!” Rift replied. “Don’t worry, I’ll see you soon!”
Orca nodded, and the two headed their separate ways. She knew that Torrent wouldn’t like that she had enchanted something else, but war was dangerous, and something small just to protect her brother couldn’t do that much harm on her soul, could it?
==Chapter 8==
Two MudWing guards waited outside Queen Moorhen’s room. They looked similar, as if they might be brother and sister. Both were the same dark shade of brown, and had similar shaped faces. The female MudWing was a little larger than her brother. Siblings working and living together seemed to be common with MudWings, at least that was what Torrent remembered from his lessons with Whirlpool. Torrent wondered if his bond with Orca would last that long or stay that strong when they grew up. He thought about Coral and Shark’s relationship; the two never really seemed happy around each other. Shark was always stiff and tense near his sister, and Coral tended to completely ignore Shark.
As Torrent walked by, they looked cautiously at him. “Hi,” the dragonet said calmly, “is Queen Moorhen in there? I’d like to talk to her.” He raised a wing and presented the royal starburst patterns beneath them. The MudWings didn’t appear to recognize it, though Torrent didn’t expect them too.
“Er . . . who are you?” the brother asked.
“Prince Torrent,” Torrent replied. “I wanted to ask your queen something. No weapons, don’t worry.”
The MudWings looked at each other, then moved aside to allow Torrent in. A SeaWing dragonet wasn’t much of a threat to the queen, even a large one like Torrent. And if he really was a prince, refusing him could cause unneeded diplomatic tensions between the kingdoms.
Torrent walked into the room, and the two MudWings moved behind him. “Queen Moorhen,” one announced, “this dragonet says he’s a prince and wants to talk to you.”
The room inside had five dragons. Four of them were circled around one in the center, who Torrent guessed was Queen Moorhen by the jewels in her scales. The other four must be her siblings.
Queen Moorhen raised her head to see what the disturbance was, and her siblings followed. She looked over at her guards, and then to Torrent. The SeaWing prince lifted up a wing to show his royal patterns, and Queen Moorhen nodded in understanding.
“Yes?” she asked Torrent expectantly. “Did Queen Coral send you?”
Torrent shook his head, shaking slightly in apprehension. “Your Majesty, I wanted to ask you for a favor. It’s nothing large.”
Queen Moorhen chuckled at the idea of a dragonet asking her for something. “Well then, what is it? We’re not sending more troops into the war, if that’s what you want.”
“No, Your Majesty,” Torrent replied, bowing, “I was wondering if the Mud Kingdom had any libraries with scrolls on animus dragons.”
Queen Moorhen frowned slightly. “Animus dragons?” she asked. “What for?” One of the queen’s siblings whispered something to another.
“It’s for a project I’m doing for my history class on the supernatural,” Torrent smoothly lied. He had planned this excuse beforehand. “The Deep Palace Library is lacking in modern information; most of our stuff is on Albatross.” He waved a claw around the carefully crafted cave walls around them.
Moorhen thought for a moment, tugging a talon on a small silver bracelet she wore. “I suppose I could ask our librarians,” she replied after a moment of thinking.
Torrent bowed again. “Many thanks, Your Majesty. If there are any scrolls in the Deep Palace you’re interested in, I can bring them to you the next time we meet.”
“Oh, no worries,” Queen Moorhen replied. “Prince Torrent, correct?” Torrent nodded. “The son of my ally is also my ally,” Moorhen continued. “If something does come up, I’ll let you know.”
Torrent bowed one last time, and exited the room. He didn’t know how long it would be before Queen Moorhen returned to the Summer Palace, and a solution in the MudWing scrolls was a longshot. Still, he could hope.
----
River regally waded into the large lake in the center of the palace, as regally as one could wade. She looked around in earnest, but couldn’t find her mother anywhere. Queen Coral was probably in a private meeting somewhere. River growled just thinking about it. How come Orca was allowed to attend meetings and she wasn’t? Mother didn’t know that Orca was going to become queen for certain, did she? River should’ve been allowed to meet with the queens too.She waded past two guards, and picked up a snippet of their conversation. “ . . . the princess asked me for it.” This sounded interesting, were they talking about her? She hadn’t remembered asking any guards for anything. River stopped swimming, and hung around to eavesdrop on the guards.
“Really?” the second guard asked. “Did she say why?”
“Nah,” the first replied. “Just told me to give her the key and left.”
“Did you look to see what’s there?”
“ ‘Course not, I don’t wanna get my snout into any royal business, else it could get chopped off. You know how Coral can be.”
River suddenly swam between the two guards, making herself known to them. “What room?” she demanded.
The guards splashed back in surprise. “Er, eleventh cave down the small tunnel,” the first replied, pointing a claw in the correct direction.
River nodded. Fortunately, she knew exactly where the spare keys were, up in her mother’s room, just like the ones in the Deep Palace. She quickly flew to it, and looked in. Neither of the guards bothered her, they knew who she was, and knew that they could have their heads off if they tried to stop her. They had no reason to, anyways, River’s own room was connected. Neither of River’s parents were in their room, they were probably at a meeting, leaving the room empty. River stepped into the room and dug through a small drawer with the keys to most of the rooms in the palace. Finding the one she wanted, she left her parents’ room, and flew down to the room the guard had given her directions to.
River inserted the key in the lock, and unlocked it. For a second, she thought that Orca must still be in the room, and backed away, River didn’t want to be caught snooping on her sister’s activities. Then, she remembered that if her parents were at a meeting, so would Orca. Was it Torrent in there? No matter, River would get to the bottom of this.
She pushed open the door, and looked around. The room didn’t seem like anything special, it had no furniture except for a desk and a bed. Suddenly, the SeaWing princess noticed a feather on the ground, exactly like the one in Torrent’s room. River frowned as she rolled it between her claws. What could it mean?
Suddenly, River saw movement beneath the bed. There was something alive under it. Whatever the feathers were coming from.
The princess’s breath sped up. What if it was dangerous? No, it was too late for her to turn back now. River ducked her head down, and growled at whatever was under there. “Come out!” she snarled.
In a flash, the creature under the bed pushed scrambled past River, its feathers brushing past her violet scales. River turned around, and couldn’t believe what she saw for a moment. A gryphon. But they were only in stories, weren’t they?
The gryphon rushed towards the door, pushing it open. River wanted to claw her own eyes out. Why hadn’t she closed it? Was she just that incompetent? It ran out into the corridor.
“Stop!” River angrily yelled after it, not knowing if it could understand her, or if it cared. She ran out into the corridor, and tried to quickly wade through the water. SeaWings might’ve been fast swimming beneath the surface, but they were just as slow as any other dragon while wading, maybe even worse due to the webbing between their claws. She could still see the gryphon heading down the corridor.
Suddenly, the gryphon spread its feathery wings and took off in flight. At first, it staggered and shook a bit, and River thought it would fall back into the water, but it started to get the hang of it, and flew down the dimly-lit tunnel much faster than River could follow by wading.
River roared in anger; she shook the water of her own wings, and tried to get into the air herself. The tunnel was too small for a full-sized SeaWing to fly in, but River was a dragonet, so she might be able to try. She opened her wings and lifted-off, focused on catching the gryphon ahead of her. She cringed in pain as the sharp stone walls scraped against her wing membranes, tearing gashes into them. She yelled out in pain.
River suddenly hit something, and fell back down to the shallow water, splashing through it before hitting the rigid floors below. When she got back up to see what happened, another SeaWing was in front of her, a larger and older dragon looking quite ashamed after being caught in the princess’s in-chosen flight path, while only wanting to exit his room.
“Your Majesty, my deepest apologies,” he bowed, shaking in fear. Even if it wasn’t at all his fault, if Princess River was at all seriously injured, Queen Coral would take his head off. “Are you alright? Do you need anything?”
“I’m fine,” River growled. She pushed aside the older SeaWing with a paw as he scrambled out of her way. When she next looked down the tunnel, the gryphon was gone. She roared in frustration. The cave network around the Summer Palace was so big, there was no way she could find it now.
She seethed at the pain in her wings, the saltwater having splashed into her cuts. She looked over to see the bloodied membranes on her right wing. It wasn’t as bad as it felt, fortunately, and would heal before too long.
“Did you see it?” she demanded of the SeaWing, turning to him.
The SeaWing looked down the hall to where the gryphon had gone, then turned back to River. “The eagle-thing?” he asked, somewhat surprised. “I think so.”
“It wasn’t an eagle, you dimwit. Eagles don’t have front legs or dragon-like bodies,” the princess hissed. “It was a gryphon.”
The SeaWing nodded, unsure how he had gotten dragged into this.
“C’mon,” she ordered, “we’re going to see my mother.”
The SeaWing nodded meekly, and followed River down the tunnel back into the lake at the center of the Summer Palace. River looked up to the pavilion on which River guessed Coral would be having her meeting, then back at her wing.
“Carry me up,” she ordered the SeaWing.
The SeaWing bent down, allowing River to drag herself on him, and took off, gasping heavily for air. Eventually, he reached the top with River.
River’s guess was correct: the three queens, Orca, Gill, Shark, Tempest, a few other high-ranking SeaWings, and some MudWings and SandWings she didn’t know were all feverently discussing plans for the war. Queen Coral looked up as she saw her daughter approaching with the other SeaWing behind him, and the rest of the the dragons fell silent and turned their eyes on the violet-scaled princess. River felt a slight shiver as the beady-eyed Blister glared at her.
“River, are you alright?” Coral asked in shock. “Your wing, what happened? Did someone hurt you?”
“It’s nothing. Just tried to fly in the tunnels.”
Coral shook her head in disdain. “River sweetie, you really need to take care of yourself more. You’re getting older, and you should know by now that you can’t fly in such close quarters.”
River seethed, but kept herself from getting defensive. “Mother, we need to talk,” River hissed back.
Coral sighed. “Can it wait? I’m in the middle of a meeting.”
“No, it cannot.” River snapped, giving Orca a short glare.
Queen Coral rolled her eyes and looked at the other two queens. “Dragonets,” she tsked, loud enough for River to hear. Not that either of the other queens would have any idea what taking care of dragonets was like. “I’ll make this quick.”
River dragged herself back onto the poor SeaWing who had gotten stuck in this mess. The three flew up to a ledge on the cave walls of the Palace, leading to the royal chambers. “What is it,” Coral hissed to her daughter angrily, “and why is it so important you must take me away from my meetings?”
At least to River, it was important because it could create a scandal around Orca that might eventually get River to the throne instead of her older sister, but Coral wouldn’t care about that. The queen had seemed to have already decided that Orca would be her successor, not River. “Orca is hiding a gryphon in the Summer Palace,” River bluntly replied.
Coral exasperatedly clenched her sharp shark-like teeth. “Gryphons don’t exist, River.”
“Apparently they do, and Orca is hiding one,” she dragged the elder SeaWing behind her up. “He saw it too.”
The elder SeaWing wasn’t sure exactly what to say. He didn’t want to anger the princess, but angering the queen would be far worse. “I mean, I might have, but it was really fast and kind of a blur.”
Queen Coral looked at River and sighed. “River, it was probably just a large bird or something. Orca isn’t hiding an imaginary creature in her room.”
River let loose a low growl. “It was!” she whined. “And I’ll prove it!”
She lept off the ledge, and started to fly away, before remembering her injured wing. River yelled in pain, and half glided-half dove into the lake below, causing a bunch of SeaWings to scramble out of her way. Fortunately, the lake was deep enough that she arose from the water uninjured.
Behind her, she saw her mother apologizing to the elder SeaWing for all the trouble, not batting an eye towards River. River knew what she had seen, and she would prove it to her mother. Then she’d get Coral to banish Orca, and River would be the next Queen of the SeaWings.
----
Rift looked out the entrance to the Summer Palace. His uncle Shark stood next to him impatiently, glaring unblinkingly at Rift. Rift fidgeted a little. He was also eager to be off—the two were going to start military training on an island in the west of the Sea Kingdom, where apparently a number of troops were already placed.
Rift looked back, and breathed a sigh of relief. Angler was swimming in the lake beneath towards him. His pale-green twin rose out of the water, an expression of grief on his face.
“Hey,” Rift awkwardly beckoned, playing with the dolphin necklace that Orca had given him, “I’m glad you came.”
“You can still turn back, you know,” Angler commented forwardly. “Sure, Mother might be a little annoyed, but I know Gill wants you to wait a few more years, and h—”
“Angler,” Rift sighed, shaking his head, “I want to go, and I’m not turning tail to embarrass the Sea Kingdom in front of our allies.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to go now. You can wait a couple more years, until we’re older, and you’ve had a bit more time to think.”
“Look, did you come here to argue with me, or did you want to say goodbye?” Rift asked, keeping his voice calm.
Angler took a deep breath of air in, and closed his eyes for a moment. He walked towards Rift, his claws splashing in the shallow water, and wrapped his wings around his twin. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Me too. Don’t worry, I’ll be back for a visit within six months, and the war will be over in a year if I have anything to say about it. I’ll make sure to tell you everything, okay?”
Angler nodded. “Stay safe,” he whispered, letting go of Rift.
“You too!” Rift called back. Shark was motioning to him that it was time to leave. “See you soon!”
Rift turned around, and followed his uncle, diving into the undersea tunnel, not looking back. This was the SeaWing prince’s grand destiny, and he would face it head-on.
==Chapter 9==
Torrent opened the room to where Orca had told him Griffin was, using her key. “Griffin?” he asked. “Are you in there?” He received no reply. “Griffin?” he called again.
Still no response. Torrent was worried. Where had Griffin gone? Could he have flown off somewhere? No, there’s no way he couldn’t have been caught, there was only one way in and out of the palace, and that was the underwater tunnels. Griffin might have been able to sneak out at night, when they were empty, but Torrent had just seen Griffin this very morning. He had to still be in the palace.
Torrent exited the room, and looked left and right, scanning the semi-natural tunnel. Griffin couldn’t have taken the tunnel left: that led to the busy pavilions and the lake, and he would’ve been seen right away, so he must’ve gone right. Torrent waded through the water, looking around for nearby dragons and Griffin. “Griffin,” he called out quietly. “It’s me, Torrent.”
After a few minutes of wading, the SeaWing thought he heard something. “Griffin?” he asked.
“I’m here,” a small nervous voice called from ahead. Torrent swam forward, and looked inside a small cave offshooting from the main tunnel. Griffin was inside, hiding. Torrent went inside and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where have you been?” Torrent asked. “Why are you here?”
The small feathered gryphon looked around nervously. “The purple dragon who came into your room before found me in the room and chased me out.”
“What?” asked Torrent in surprise. “She saw you?” This couldn’t be good, who knew what Queen Coral would do to Griffin if he was caught by River, and what would happen to Orca. “We need to get you back to the Deep Palace,” Torrent reasoned. “It’ll be easier to hide you in Orca’s room. Let me get Orca, then we can get you back tonight. Stay here and hide.”
Torrent was about to rush down the hall to find his older sister, when he thought of something. He turned back to Griffin. “When Orca comes here, don’t tell her that River actually saw you, just tell her that River almost caught you again and you ran over here for safety. If she thinks that you’re in too much danger, she might use her magic again, and we can’t have that happen.”
Griffin nodded compliantly, so Torrent waded back down the tunnel as fast as he could. Orca was either at a meeting or in her room, and the pavilions were closer, so he went there first. He flew to the meeting pavilion, and he was just in luck. The meeting had just ended, so Orca was free for now.
Not bothering to give the three conversing queens nearby a glance, Torrent flew up to Orca. “I need you to come with me, now. We have a problem.”
Orca nodded, realizing that this was something that they couldn’t talk about in public. The two headed back to the tunnel, and waded down it. Torrent checked a few times to make sure they weren’t being followed, then the two headed into the cave Griffin was temporarily hiding in. Griffin looked relieved seeing Torrent and Orca again.
“River came into Griffin’s room again,” Torrent explained. “We need to take him back to the Deep Palace, tonight.”
Orca nodded. “I might be able to enchant someth—”
“No!” Torrent interrupted, almost shouting. “No more magic.”
Orca grimly conceded. “Fine. I’ll tell Gill that you left something back in the Deep Palace that you need to get, and that I’m willing to take you. We’ll just leave Griffin in there for the remainder of the meetings.”
Griffin looked a bit disappointed. The queens were only going to be at the palace for a few more days, but that still felt like a long time for Griffin.
“Don’t worry,” Torrent reassured Griffin, “I’ll make sure you have plenty of scrolls to read, alright?” Griffin nodded. “Great,” Orca replied, exiting the room. “I’ll meet you in this room a few hours past sundown, when the exits should be clear.”
Fortunately for the two SeaWing dragonets, the the exit tunnels were empty, and Griffin was safely returned to the Deep Palace. Orca and Torrent finished up their meeting at the Summer Palace without any commotion, and thereafter returned to their more permanent home far beneath the depths of the dark ocean.
Time passed. For the next few months, Griffin was able to stay safely hidden. Because of Torrent’s worry that River might attempt to break into Orca’s room while they were gone, he decided that Griffin would be better off sleeping in a room nearby to Orca’s: just as secluded, but not as obvious a place to hide him. River continued her investigation, but so far, it was no use. Other than a few scrolls describing fantastical gryphons, the SeaWing princess could not find any more traces of what she had seen.
While Torrent continued searching through the SeaWing Library, he had no luck with finding relevant information on animus souls. As he attempted to remain hopeful that Queen Moorhen’s scrolls would bring new knowledge to light, the next meeting of the queens was still months away, and his impatience continued to grow.
Torrent threw his scroll to the ground in exasperation, though it only gently floated down through the water, fluttering before landing on the floor. Nothing! There’s nothing!
Orca sighed, and glanced over to Griffin. The small feathered creature just shrugged, he had no more useful information than them.
Torrent, be patient, Orca flashed, we’ve only got a few more months until Queen Moorhen comes back with more scrolls; maybe one of those will have something.
Torrent grumbled. Maybe, but who knows. For all we know, they could just be stupid legends and stories like the rest.
Possibly, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve got my bracelet, remember? Orca held up the golden bracelet enchanted to keep her soul intact. She smiled a little half-heartedly.
Torrent sighed. Sure you have it, but how do we know it works? Maybe it’s not your soul after all, and it’s something different, and here you are, slowly losing your mind while we just wait.
Orca twitched her tail back and forth, frowning. I am not losing my mind. Look, if you really want to settle this once and for all, how about we ask another animus?
What? Torrent asked, confused. Another animus? Are there more? Do you know one?
Orca shrugged. No, but I can find one. She brought out a blank piece of the waterproof parchment paper, and rolled it open. “I enchant this paper so that a map of Pyrrhia appears on it, showing the location of every animus in Pyrrhia.”
Torrent snarled. No more enchantments!
Orca glared back. It’s my soul, if I want to, I can make all the enchantments I want.
Not if you’re at danger of massacring the rest of us.
Orca flicked her tongue out angrily, and aggressively took a step towards Torrent. And what are you going to do about it. Try and stop me from using my magic?
Torrent and Orca’s eyes locked angrily for a moment.
“Stop fighting!” Griffin interrupted, the small creature swimming between the two larger dragonets. “You’re supposed to be friends.”
There was a short silence before Orca broke it. She clenched her claws in shame at her sudden self-awareness. No, no, Torrent is right. I need to make sure that if I ever lose my soul, Torrent can stop me from using my magic. She swam over to her desk, and opened a drawer. She pulled out a small letter-opener. Muttering something under her breath, the letter-opener morphed, changing into a long dagger with a sharply curved blade.
Torrent looked at her, a little worried. Orca swam back to Torrent, and he took a small step back.
“I enchant this dagger to not allow animus enchantments to affect it, anyone or anything it is touching or it is in the possession of, unless Torrent wills it otherwise,” Orca enchanted, Torrent and Griffin barely hearing her through the water. She flashed out what she had enchanted to make sure they knew.
There, Orca flashed in contentment, giving the dagger to Torrent. Now as long as you have this, you can’t be hurt by my magic.
Torrent grimly nodded, and placed the weapon down on Orca’s desk. Griffin took a cautious step away from it. It won’t come to me ever having to use it, Torrent said. Orca nodded, hoping the same.
She brought the mapd she had enchante between them. Ink had magically appeared on the parchment, creating a map of Pyrrhia. A small number of colored blotches had also appeared, a dark-green one where the Deep Palace was placed. Torrent figured that would be Orca’s. The nearest blotch to them was southeast of the Bay of a Thousand Scales, a pitch-black one in the far east of the Mud Kingdom.
Orca pointed a claw to it. That’s where we’ll go.
The next night, the three left the palace. Nighttime outside the Deep Palace was dark, but not much light reached down to these watery depths during the day anyways, so it wasn’t too much different than normal. The SeaWings might not have been able to see the time of day so far down, but they generally kept to a diurnal schedule. As usual, the waters outside the Deep Palace were almost empty by the time Torrent, Orca, and Griffin left the Deep Palace.
Swimming would be the fastest way to the Eastern Mud Kingdom, and when they reached the shore, the three could fly the rest of the way. By the time they burst into the air from the surf to take flight, the sun was already rising. Griffin took a deep breath in of the air, and relaxed. Breathing underwater was always strange for him, occasionally he’d wake up and think he was drowning. As unnatural a creature as he was, Griffin loved the natural feeling of the fresh air going in and out of his lungs.
The rising sun glinted off the salty waves as the three rose higher, and started to fly over the land beneath. They were at little danger of being seen by MudWings, the area was practically uninhabited.
“Griffin, this is the first time you’ve ever flown, isn’t it?” Orca asked.
Griffin thought for a moment, “I mean, there was one tiny little time in the Summer Palace, but that wasn’t really flying, not like this. So yeah, this is the first time.”
“Do you like it?”
Griffin was too focused on the beautiful, clear, not watery air to notice the flying, but he nodded anyways. He did enjoy the flying, even if he wasn’t exactly sure how he was able to learn it so quickly. Maybe Orca’s enchantment had helped.
By the time they reached their destination, the sun had risen further in the sky. Orca held the map out in their claws, and saw that the two blotches were almost on top of each other. “That’s it,” she said, pointing a talon at a large hill below.
The hill had a large cave carved in the side, almost ten times as high as Orca and Torrent. It almost looked like it was naturally placed there, but something about it gave Orca a strange feeling. The cave led deeper into the hill, tunneling through. The three landed.
“Well, this is . . . unnerving,” Griffin commented. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“I’ve got my magic as a last resort,” Orca explained. “Hopefully the animus will be friendly.”
Torrent doubted that. Friendly dragons didn’t live in caves with no one else around for miles. It would be fortunate if the dragon didn’t attack them on first sight. Still, this could be helpfully. He hoped for the best.
Orca gave Torrent and Griffin a quick look of confirmation, then stepped into the behemoth passage.
==Chapter 10==
The cave was dark, cold, and damp. A drop of water fell from the ceiling onto Torrent’s snout, then splashed off his scales as soon as it arrived. Griffin looked around nervously.
“Hello?” Orca called. “Is anyone there?” Her voice emptily echoed off the walls. “Is anyone there? Is anyone there? Is anyone there?” She received no answers.
“C’mon,” Orca said, “I know there’s an animus in here. Probably in further.”
The three continued in further. The cave went far into the hill, further than what Torrent thought was possible. Is this magic? he wondered. He glanced around the walls of the cave, and touched one, dragging a talon down its surface. It felt smooth and ethereal, like the walls of the Summer Palace, or Griffin’s feather. The cave was not just any cave, but the epitome of all caves. There was no cave more cave-like than this cave, this cave was perfect.
“Hello?” Orca called again.
There was a strange silence, until suddenly a voice called back, almost making Griffin jump out of his feathers. “Princess Herring?” it asked. “Is that you? You haven’t visited for a while.” The voice was rough and jarring, as if it hadn’t been used in a long, long time. It seemed to reverberate from everywhere in the cavern.
Orca looked around, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice. Who was Princess Herring? Orca hadn’t heard of her before. An old SeaWing princess, perhaps? “No, my name is Princess Orca,” she replied. Suddenly, Orca felt a giant shake in the ground, as if an earthquake had just happened by. She looked up to the ceiling. Rocks were gently crumbling down.
Suddenly, the walls appeared to move. Stone crumbled and broke off them, falling onto the dark floor in thin slabs, then further collapsing into dust. Dark black dragon scales were revealed behind them, larger than any scales Orca had seen before. Veins of shimmering gold appeared between the scales. The walls continued crumbling and rotating, until the largest dragon Orca had ever seen crawled out of the walls, almost wrapping herself around the three.
The gargantuan NightWing’s head reached down, stone continuing to fall off it as her neck moved. Just her head was larger than the three of them combined. As the NightWing moved her nostrils in front of Orca, and sniffed her, the puny SeaWing princess could not help but back up in fear, tucking her tail between her legs. She’d heard that the older a dragon was, the larger they got. How old was this dragon? Or was this magic?
“You’re not Herring,” the NightWing replied, opening her mouth and breathing hot sulfuric air over the SeaWing princess. The NightWing’s breathing was slow and raspy, as if she had immense trouble just doing the simple task of taking in air to her lungs. Her slow heartbeat shook the ground.
“Er . . . no.” Orca replied. She noticed a humongous necklace resting around the NightWing’s neck. A strange aura floated off it, making Orca’s scales shiver. This dragon was clearly an animus, and a very powerful one at that.
“Orca, you say?” the NightWing said. She slowly turned her head, smelling Griffin and Torrent in turn. “It is so very good to have visitors. I haven’t had any in a very long time. Why have you come? Did Herring send you?”
“No,” Orca replied, still unsure who Herring was, “I don’t know a princess named Herring.”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” the NightWing replied. “I am . . .” The NightWing thought for a moment, as if she was attempting to remember who she was. “. . . Sunscorcher. Yes.”
Orca nodded. “Er . . . Sunscorcher, we came to you to ask you a question. About animus magic.”
Sunscorcher lifted her head up slowly, with an expression of surprise on her face. She opened one eyelid, revealing a milky-white orb over her pupil, surrounded by a golden iris. “Animus magic,” she said, almost like a whisper. “That’s what Herring asked me about when she first visited me. Are you sure you are not Herring?”
“I’m not,” Orca patiently replied.
“You shouldn’t mess with animus magic,” Sunscorcher scolded. “It’s very dangerous, you know. Herring got into trouble with animus magic. I hope she’s alright.”
“You are an animus, right?” Orca asked. “I am too. I wanted to ask if there was a way to not lose my soul.”
“An animus?” The NightWing thought for a moment. The rocks shuddered beneath the dragons’ claws. “Yes, I am.” Suddenly, Sunscorcher laughed. The horrible, raspy laugh reverberated about the cave walls. Torrent and Griffin covered their ears.
“Losing your soul?” Sunscorcher asked. “Animus dragons don’t lose their souls when they use their magic.” She flicked out forked tongue. “Their souls become more complete. More perfect. More beautiful. Can you hear them?”
“What?” Orca asked. She was becoming more and more certain that this dragon wouldn’t be any help.
Sunscorcher opened her other eye. It was just as milky-white as the first one, but the blind NightWing appeared to be staring right into Orca’s soul. “The voices. They whisper to me when I use magic. They’re beautiful, are they not?”
Orca shuddered. Griffin tugged at her tail, and silently motioned towards the exit of the cave. Orca shook her head. Maybe the animus would still say something useful. “They . . . are?” Orca replied.
Sunscorcher nodded, as if agreeing with Orca. “Yes, they are. Always there. Always there. No matter how hard I try to make them go away.” The giant animus suddenly looked angry. Griffin glanced back again to make sure there was still an exit. Sunscorcher played with the necklace around her neck. “I tried to make them go away,” she whispered. Tears started to form on her milky-white eyes. “But it only made things worse. You’ve tried too, haven’t you? I can smell it.” Orca rubbed one of her claws on the golden bracelet she had made to protect her soul.
Sunscorcher suddenly raised one of her talons, and jammed it deep into her ears, not even flinching. Crimson blood started pouring down her claws from her ear, onto the ground beneath. It started to form a red puddle on the ground, slowly flowing towards Orca.
“No, there’s no way to stop them,” Sunscorcher continued. “That’s just not how it works. There is only one way to silence the voices forever.” As she pulled her talon out of her brain, she shook it, sending what looked like chunks of flesh or brain onto the wall. Quickly, the blood stopped dripping, and the hole she had made in her head magically started to mend itself.
Griffin tugged on Orca’s tail again. She looked back to the entrance. Sunscorcher was slowly moving her huge tail in front of the entrance, attempting to fully encircle the three with her body. Orca nodded, and motioned Torrent. The three started to slowly move back towards the entrance of the cavern.
Tears fell down Sunscorcher’s snout, splashing on the ground, and merging with the puddle of blood. “I miss Herring. She was such a nice SeaWing. But I had to silence them, didn’t I? She would have hurt other dragons, and I couldn’t let that happen. The voices had gotten too loud, and she couldn’t hear me anymore. Can you still hear me?” The last question seemed to be directed towards Orca.
“Yes, I can hear you fine,” Orca replied, nervously moving towards the entrance. Just a few more moments, and they would be able to escape Sunscorcher.
“No, you can’t.” Sunscorcher replied. “They’ve gotten too loud.” Suddenly, Sunscorcher moved her tail inwards towards her head, attempting to complete the circle and trap the three inside.
“FLY!” Orca yelled. Griffin and Torrent opened their wings, and flew over Sunscorcher’s incoming tail. Orca did the same, and just narrowly avoided it. The NightWing roared in anger, and the tunnel shook in retaliation as for the first time in centuries, or maybe millennia, she attempted to get up. Sunscorcher marched towards the exit of the tunnel, her jaws open wide, as the three flew towards the exit. Orca looked back, and saw what Sunscorcher was doing. She heard a deep influx of breath from the giant NightWing: Sunscorcher was going to breath fire.
Orca glanced back to the tunnel. She saw light ahead, but it was too far. They weren’t going to make it. Large rocks started to fall from the tunnel ceiling. “Tunnel!” Orca commanded. “Collapse on Sunscorcher and kill her!” The top of the tunnel shook for a moment, as Orca flew as fast as she could away. A familiar wave of exhaustion washed over her, but the princess’s adrenaline far overpowered that, and Orca’s wings kept beating.
A cracking noise sounded throughout the air, and huge boulders suddenly paraded down on Sunscorcher’s head, crushing it against the bottom of the floor, along with the necklace she had been wearing. Orca glanced back for a second. The giant NightWing’s skull had been fully crushed. Scarlet blood flooded out of her head onto the rocks, but it was quickly hidden beneath more falling boulders. The rest of the tunnel was collapsing.
Orca, Torrent, and Griffin made it out of the tunnel just in time. Just after Orca’s tail had gotten free of the cave entrance, it collapsed into a rocky rubble below. Sunscorcher’s body was forever lost, far beneath the leveled hill.
The three breathed a collective sigh of relief, and landed a small ways from the rubble. Orca lay down, her head spinning. The rush of adrenaline had subsided, and the magic she used had finally taken its toll. She brought out the map, and opened the parchment. She glanced to the ink blotch that represented herself. This time, there was only one in the area. The blotch representing Sunscorcher had disappeared. The ancient animus was dead.
==Chapter 11==
After recuperating from their escape from the cave, Orca, Torrent, and Griffin headed back to the Deep Palace. The way back was silent. None of them wanted to discuss what had occurred, so they kept their thoughts to themselves.
Torrent thought back to the raving NightWing. She sounded completely bonkers, but what if she was right? What if there was no way to help Orca, and it was already too late? He remembered what Sunscorcher had said: She would have hurt other dragons, and I couldn’t let that happen. Did that mean Orca was going to hurt dragons, too? Torrent looked to his sister, who was also deep in thought. No, she wouldn’t hurt anyone on purpose, would she?
The image of Sunscorcher’s crushed skull was still fresh in Orca’s mind. That was entirely her doing. Orca didn’t have to kill Sunscorcher, did she? She could’ve done something else, like enchanting Sunscorcher to become tiny or something. Orca could enchant something like that, couldn’t she? Or maybe enchant rocks to fall in front of Sunscorcher, not on top of her. It was entirely her choosing to kill Sunscorcher. She had said it herself when she made the enchantment: she wanted them to kill Sunscorcher. Orca looked back at Torrent. Does he know that I caused the cave to collapse? Maybe he just thinks it was the NightWing’s fault. I’ll keep it that way for now. 
It was just past sunset by the time the three returned to the Deep Palace. Orca looked at the palace from afar. There were still dragons swimming around, going about their usual business. It would be difficult to sneak Griffin back in. Orca looked down to the seafloor. Patches of kelp grew along it, scrambling up to the surface for light. While they weren’t large enough to hide a dragonet the size of Torrent or Orca, they were plenty large enough for the small Griffin.
Griffin, stay behind me, Orca flashed. She went ahead, scouting out the path most devoid of SeaWings. Suddenly, she saw three dragons coming towards them. She gulped when she saw who they were.
Coral and Gill swam out towards Orca and Torrent, while Griffin burrowed himself into the kelp, making him invisible to the larger dragons. River followed closely behind her mother, with a smirk across her face.
Orca, Torrent, where have you been? Queen Coral asked, frowning. You’ve been missing for the whole day. She tapped her claws on the ground below, waiting for an answer.
We went to the Summer Palace, Orca quickly lied. Torrent had forgotten something there, so we went back to find it.
Coral looked satisfied with this answer, but River was not. Oh yeah? she asked. Then why did you come back from that way, River pointed a claw to the east, when the Summer Palace is in the other direction? Gill put a claw up, motioning his daughter to be quiet; it wasn’t her place to question her siblings.
We flew back from the Summer Palace instead of swimming, Orca quickly flashed, so we accidentally went a bit further than we intended, and had to swim back. That’s why we took so long.
Coral nodded. Fine, but don’t do it again. Orca, I know you’re getting older and that you’ve made the journey by yourself before, but please, please tell your father or I before going to the Summer Palace without an adult. You’re our princess, and it would be awful for the entire kingdom of you got somehow injured. 
River glared at her mother and bared her teeth slightly, she obviously didn’t like Coral ignoring that she was too a princess. Yes, yes, River. This goes for you too, Coral continued, noticing the look River was giving her.
Orca nodded. I’m sorry, she replied, I’ll make sure to tell you the next time I leave the palace.
The same goes for you too, Torrent, Gill reprimanded. Torrent nodded in agreement.
Coral and Gill seemed satisfied, so they headed back to the palace, River trailing behind them. She gave Orca a quick glare as she swam away.
Orca and Torrent breathed a sigh of relief, and when the three were completely gone, they turned around to check that Griffin was still there. Fortunately, the kelp had hidden him well, and he wasn’t caught.
As the sun set far above the Deep Palace, Orca, Torrent, and Griffin slowly swam back into their home.
----
River was angry. It has been three days since Orca and Torrent had been caught on their unauthorized trip to the “Summer Palace.” Couldn't Mother see that they were lying? Or did she just not care? If Coral wouldn't care, then River would. Orca was clearly up to something, and River would get to the bottom of it. Over the last few days, she had been studying Orca and Torrent’s schedules. While they were somewhat erratic, River had found a time when they wouldn't be in Orca’s room, and River planned to go down there and investigate. 
Orca's room was normally locked, but River knew where the spare keys for all the rooms in the Deep Palace were, and had taken Orca's out of the stash. She swam down to her sister’s room, traversing the long and winding passage. She had accounted for the time needed to get through it in her plans, and she had a good hour before Torrent or Orca were free again. Torrent was with Whirlpool, while Orca was with Coral.
River breathed in nervously through her gills, a nervous sweat radiating off her violet scales. She inserted the old key into Orca’s lock, and paused a moment before turning it. If her theories were correct, the gryphon would be inside Orca’s room. This time, River would make sure to close the door behind her.
Yet, River hesitated. Was this really the right thing to do? Orca was her sister, wasn’t she? And what if Torrent got caught up in whatever happened? Would he get hurt? No, Orca might have been River’s biological sister, but she was no friend: Orca was River’s rival, her enemy, a competitor for the throne, and Orca’s icey attitude towards her younger sibling had done nothing to show anything different. If Torrent got harmed, that was his own fault for joining in with her. River turned the key, and opened up the door to Orca’s room.
The young princess slammed the door behind her, making sure whatever was inside couldn’t escape. She looked around the room for any signs of movement, and prepared her claws in case she needed to fight. A long moment passed before River realized that there was nothing there, except for a few loose feathers, similar to the ones she had found before, scattered around the floor.
Her eyes glazed around the room again, searching every nook and cranny. Still nothing. She had been wrong: the gryphon she had seen earlier was not in Orca’s room. River cursed in Aquatic. Had this all been for nothing? Was Orca innocent of any implicating crime?
No, she couldn’t be. Even if she hadn’t gotten her goal, River wouldn’t let this opportunity and planning go to waste. She would take this time to investigate. The first place River looked at was Orca’s collection of statues. Orca’s hobby had always seemed suspicious to her. Just the way that the jewel-eyed busts of her parents stared back at River creeped her out, like she was being watched by her mother’s judging eyes.
River picked up Orca’s sculpting tools in her claws, and frowned. They gave off a strange aura, sending a small shiver up River’s scales, but other than that, there was nothing unusual or incriminating about them. She set them back down. River then looked over to Orca’s desk and the scroll-shelves above. Orca always spent so much time reading scrolls, maybe that would give River a clue. River opened one of the ones on the desk. It contained sketches of the statue Orca had made of Queen Atoll. That statue was no longer in Orca’s room, River now unfortunately had to see it whenever she swam from her room too Whirlpool’s classroom, just as another reminder of how much greater Orca was than her. River rolled open another scroll, and her eyes opened wide in surprise. This was promising. The scroll contained plans for another statue: a gryphon. The sketches looked exactly the same as the creature River had seen in the Summer Palace. River glanced back to the statues, just to make sure that there wasn’t a gryphon statue there. There wasn’t.
For a second, River thought about taking the scroll to Coral right there and then. But, no, Coral wouldn’t believe her, and even if she did, Orca would just find a way to convince Coral otherwise. River couldn’t believe how gullible Coral was, to believe anything that Orca ever told her. How did Orca get away with it?
Fueled by her discovery, River looked up to Orca’s scrollshelf. She pulled out a few of them, making sure to keep track of their order so that Orca wouldn’t notice anything gone. It only took a glance at a few of the titles for River to realize what was going on. Every single scroll was about animus dragons. She pulled out a few more scrolls, and the pattern continued.
It didn’t take River long to put two and two together: Orca was an animus, and she had enchanted her gryphon statue to come to life. It all made sense. The strange perfection of the feathers, as if they were made by a dragon’s mind and claws instead of by nature. The stone River had stubbed her claw on so long ago. She still had it in her room, next to the feathers. Torrent was sure to be in on it too. An accomplice to Orca’s crimes.
River suddenly froze with a frightening realization. What if Orca’s room was trapped? If she was an animus, she could have all sorts of ways to prevent intruders. River had heard about what animuses could do. River could’ve gotten an awful curse on her, for all she knew. No, that seemed unlikely. River didn’t feel any different, did she? Yet, Orca might still have an alarm on her room. What if she knew that someone had gotten in? River needed to get out, fast.
After quickly placing the scrolls back in order, so that Orca would hopefully not know River was ever in there, River left the room, relocking it after she exited. She still wasn’t sure about her theory, but if Orca was an animus, this was big. And very, very dangerous.
----
Mother, why do we have Talons of Power ceremonies? River asked. It had been a few hours since she had left Orca’s room, and as far as River knew, she hadn’t triggered any alarms.Oh, I don’t know, Coral replied, paying more attention to the scroll she was reading than her daughter. I suppose it’s kind of a coming of age thing. Two is a very big year for a lot of dragonets.
River sighed. Did Queen Coral really think River didn’t know about the true purpose of the ceremony? River already knew what the ceremonies were used for, but she figured this would be the easiest way for her to learn if there was anything suspicious during Orca’s ceremony. If there was, it could confirm her theory about Orca being an animus.
What about the coconuts? I thought it had to do with finding animus dragons.
Coral sighed and rolled her eyes slightly. Well, yes, it does, but it’s been ages and ages since we’ve found any. Such a shame, really.
River slowly nodded. Don’t we have animus blood in our family? Albatross and Fathom were both animuses, she pressed Coral.
We might, Coral replied, but it’s been so long that I really don’t know anymore.
River tried to appear deep in thought for her mother. When I had my Talons of Power ceremony, did anything weird happen? Like, did the coconut move, but just a little?
Coral chuckled, surely thinking about her dragonet’s silly antics. No, I’m sorry, but I don’t think so. Whirlpool would’ve told me if anything had happened.
River nodded. Now she could finally get to the question she had wanted to ask. What about at Rift and Angler’s ceremonies? Or Orca’s ceremony.
Coral thought about if for a moment. No, I don’t think so. They all went completely according to plan.
River frowned. This didn’t bode well for her theory. Yet, it had all made perfect sense! Where else could the gryphon have come from, and why else would Orca have all those scrolls on animus dragons in her room? Alright, thank you, Mother.
Coral nodded, then looked back to her scroll. It was some report on the SeaWing treasury or battle plans, not of much interest to River. River started to head back to her room. Maybe Orca’s powers just hadn’t developed by two? That would explain it. Or maybe she had somehow hidden them.
Either way, what Coral had said still didn’t disprove River’s theory. She wondered what to do next. Queen Moorhen and Blister were coming to the Summer Palace again in a few weeks, maybe River could search for the gryphon again then. She would finally be able to get to the bottom of this, once and for all.
==Chapter 12==
Torrent rapped his claws against Queen Moorhen’s door in the Summer Palace. It had been a few weeks since the encounter with Sunscorcher, and the queens were ready to meet again. It was the first day of the meetings, and Moorhen had just arrived. Torrent knew that it was slightly rude of him to bother the MudWing queen on her first day in the palace, but he didn’t care. Orca’s soul was more important.
The guards let him in without any questions. They were the same ones as last time, and they recognized him. The MudWing queen was pacing around the room inside, with one of her brothers attempting to comfort her. Torrent wasn’t sure what had happened, but it wasn’t any of his business.
Queen Moorhen looked over at the SeaWing prince, and smiled, her stressed frown fading from her face. “Torrent, is it?”
Torrent nodded. “Yes, your majesty.”
Moorhen chuckled jolily. “Good, good. My brother here thinks I’m becoming forgetful in my age, but he’s doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” She glanced over to the brother that she was talking too, who evidently didn’t find this amusing. He frowned at Torrent and gave him an icy glare.
Torrent awkwardly turned away from the MudWing prince, unsure of the context here. He wondered how old Moorhen was, but didn’t bother to ask, not wanting to appear rude. She was one of the oldest queens in Pyrrhia, the oldest if one didn’t count the NightWings or RainWings, and no one really knew how old their queens were. Had she known Coral’s grandmother? Or even her great-grandmother?
“Ah, yes,” Moorhen continued. “You wanted some scrolls on animus dragons, correct? I found a number in our library that might be of interest to you. Unfortunately, we couldn’t bring them into the Summer Palace, or else they would have gotten soaked in the tunnels. They’re currently being kept on another island. Our royal librarian, Mallard, can bring you there; she’s sleeping two caves down the tunnel. Is that alright?”
Torrent was surprised. It sounded like Moorhen had put together a lot of effort for him. He hadn’t expected her to do that.
“Oh, one more thing,” Moorhen said. “In exchange for sharing some of our scrolls, Mallard wanted to see some of yours. She said that she wanted some particularly on SeaWing chemistry. Does that work for you?”
Torrent nodded. He could ask Orca if she could get some of those from the Deep Palace. Hopefully, Coral or Gill wouldn’t mind if she went back quickly, maybe they wouldn’t even notice her missing. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said in gratitude.
“It’s no problem,” Queen Moorhen replied, waving a claw aside.
Torrent left the room. Maybe, just maybe, this would work, and the scrolls would contain a way to save Orca. He could only hope.
----
Torrent slowly knocked on the door to Mallard’s cave. Orca was behind him, carrying the scrolls Mallard had wanted. “Come in,” a voice sounded from inside.A small, burnt-orange MudWing was inside the room. She wasn’t a dragonet, but was just smaller than Torrent. She looked up at the visitors. “What is it?” she demanded.
“Mallard, right?” Torrent asked. Mallard didn’t respond, but just continued to look at him expectantly. “Queen Moorhen told us you could take us to the scrolls you had gotten.”
Mallard nodded, then caught sight of the scrolls Orca was carrying. She quickly got up, and walked over to the SeaWing princess, then grabbed one of them. She looked it over, dragging her claws along the waterproof film. “Wow,” Mallard said, admiring the waxy film as she turned the scroll from side to side, allowing it to reflect in the torchlight. “So that’s how you keep them intact down in the Deep Palace? Ingenious.”
She opened up the scroll, and the bottom of it hit the floor with a clatter. The MudWing quickly looked down the scroll. “Good, good,” she muttered. She looked back at the two patient SeaWings. “You wanted your animus scrolls, right? Let me take you to them.”
Mallard led the two SeaWings to the exit of the Summer Palace, where two SeaWing guards waited. One of them offered a blindfold to Mallard, and she took it with a glare and a hiss. “Is this really necessary?” she asked Orca.
“It is,” Orca nodded with a bit of a sigh. “You can take it off after we’re clear of the palace.”
Mallard snorted and wrapped the cloth around her eyes, nestling it up against the back of her snout. “Do you SeaWings really need two secret palaces?”
Orca didn’t answer, and pushed Mallard into the water. Currently, renovations were underway to make the swim more accessible to dragons who couldn’t breath underwater, particularly for Princess Blister. When SandWings wanted to go into the palace, they needed to bring a large sack of air with them in order to swim the entire length without drowning. To fix this issue, holes were being made in the tunnel roof so that a bubble of air could be placed there, allowing dragons to surface, but the air would have to be continuously replaced, which might prove troublesome. Fortunately for Mallard and the rest of the MudWings, they could easily hold their breaths long enough to make it through the tunnel without surfacing.
The flight to the island was long, and Mallard’s company only made it feel longer. For a librarian, Mallard was talkative. She clambered on and on about the libraries in the Mud Kingdom, and how good they were compared to the SeaWing libraries. Orca tried to get her to switch subjects to animus dragons once, hoping Mallard could tell her something useful, but the librarian quickly turned back to bragging about her scroll collection.
A few MudWings were waiting at the island expectantly when the three arrived. As soon as Mallard, Orca, and Torrent touched down, they were given a large pile of scrolls. “You better read these quickly,” Mallard commented, “this might be your only chance to see them.”
Orca nodded. She had known that she would be unable to take them back to the Summer Palace, and had brought a long, blank scratchable scroll so that she and Torrent could take notes. While they started reading through their own scrolls, Mallard and the other MudWings read through the ones Orca had brought, copying them down as fast as possible.
By the time the two were done with the scrolls, the sun had almost set beneath the horizon. They had found nothing. Some interesting legends they hadn’t heard before, and a fair amount of completely useless information on the animus Queen Fen, but nothing telling them how to stop an animus from losing their soul. Hopeless. Orca glared at the scroll that she and Torrent had been taking notes on. She wanted to tear it up in anger.
Torrent looked at Orca as if his eyes were trying to tell her that he was sorry. “Maybe there are more scrolls in the Sand Kingdom?” he asked, trying to inspire some hope.
Orca hissed at her brother. “There aren’t,” she hissed. “This was a stupid plan, and just a waste of time. Sunscorcher was right, there’s no way to stop it.” Orca threw the scroll of notes onto the sand, then dove into the ocean. Within a few minutes, she was gone.
Torrent watched his sister leave, and packed the scroll of notes into the scrollcase Orca had brought with her, the one where the map they had used to find Sunscorcher was kept. Orca was right, this had all been a waste of time. He should have known that it was too much to hope for. He had been useless.
“Your sister left?” Mallard asked Torrent. He turned around in surprise. He hadn’t realized she was still there. Had she heard anything they’d just said?
Mallard glanced at the setting sun. “It’s about time,” she continued. “I’m done with my scrolls. Hope you’re finished with yours, ‘cause we’re heading back to your palace now.”
Torrent nodded, and with the MudWing librarian flying behind him, took flight, just as the sun had dipped below the horizon, and dusk had finally begun.
----
Blister walked into the Summer Palace, two SeaWings and two SandWings behind her. She was a day early, just as she had planned. A few SeaWings wading in the large lake in the palace center stared at the SandWing in shock. The whole palace grew quiet.“Bring me Coral,” Blister hissed at an unsuspecting SeaWing. The SeaWing, unsure what to do, froze in place as Blister glared.
Fortunately for the SeaWing, she was soon let off the hook. Queen Coral flew down from one of the great pavilions, landing in front of Blister. Gill followed closely behind her.
“Queen Blister, what is it?” Coral asked.
“I came here as fast as I could,” Blister said, her head held low. Coral looked with concern. “It’s RIft,” Blister continued. “One of Scarlet’s generals attacked him, and slit his throat in the fight.”
“What?” a voice yelled. “Rift is dead? Rift?” Angler flew down to the dragons standing there, shaking in anger. 
Blister nodded gravely. “My condolences.”
“How?” Angler hissed, staring at Blister as if he wanted to rip her throat out.
“It was a sneak attack in the middle of the night,” Blister replied, grimacing. “They set our camp on fire. The SkyWing general came straight for me, but Rift bravely flew in the way, and faced the general one on one. Your brother fought bravely, but the SkyWing won. I made sure that his death was well avenged, but the attack order came from a higher-up, Queen Scarlet herself, certainly. Those SkyWings are far too cowardly to face us on a fair battlefield.” At this point, Blister’s grimace had transformed to an almost angry growl, just on the verge of showing emotion.
Gill was still in shock. Rift had been killed? His son, Rift, was gone?
“We’re leaving the war,” Gill said suddenly. “You can fight this awful travesty with the MudWings, alone.”
Blister frowned. “Leaving?” she asked. The SandWing princess turned to Coral for an answer.
Coral thought for a moment, then turned to her mate. “We really shouldn’t be too hasty,” she said. “You know as well as I do that leaving the war at this point could have serious consequences for all of Pyrrhia, not just our own kingdom.”
“What?” Gill roared, slapping his tail on the ground in anger. The SeaWings in the pool started to form a small crowd around the royalty. “Do you just not care that Rift died? How many others will lose their children in the war if we continue? Who do you think will be next? Tempest? Shark? Orca? Me?”
“If we continue,” Blister interrupted, talking directly to Coral, “Rift’s death won’t be in vain. We will make the SkyWings pay dearly for his life; I’ll order a hundred of our prisoners executed for him, and we’ll drop their heads on Scarlet’s ghoulish arena, with your son’s name written upon their skulls in blood. Every one of us they kill, we’ll kill ten more of theirs.” Blister slowly swished her barbed tail back and forth.
“Quiet!” Queen Coral hissed at the SandWing princess, moving her jaws so close to Blister’s that Coral could bite off Blister’s snout if she so wish. The SandWing princess scuttled back in alarm, and just barely managed to avoid instinctively twisting her tail into an attacking position.
“I don’t care for your petty revenge on the SkyWings, Blister,” Queen Coral continued, leaving off the royal title Blister preferred. “Don’t think I’m so stupid that I can’t tell what you’re trying to do.” Blister looked at the SeaWing queen, feigning confusion.
Queen Coral turned to her mate. “And I do care that Rift died, but I’m the queen to my tribe before a mother and mate. It’s too late for us to leave the war now: all we can hope is that it will end quickly, and in our favor. If you want another son, we can make one, or two, or fifty more for all I care.”
Gill stood, trembling in a furious anger. For a moment, it looked like he was going to lash out at Coral, but he did not. “Angler, we’re leaving,” he hissed. He turned around, and along with his eldest son, dove into the lake. The other SeaWings kept far away as the two swam past.
A whisper of a smirk appeared on Blister’s snout, just before Queen Coral’s claws swept it away, leaving behind a trail of blood. The two SandWing guards quickly readied their barbed tails, and ran towards their queen, attempting to wade through the water. In return, around ten SeaWings, maybe more, surrounded them, jumping out of the artificial pool and blocking their paths. More SeaWings moved between Blister and Queen Coral, ready to lay down their lives in order to protect their queen from any incoming attacks by Blister’s barb.
Blister glared at the SeaWing queen in anger, but motioned her guards down. They lowered their barbs, and Blister made sure to keep hers tucked away and non-threatening. She placed her talons against her bleeding face, wiping away the blood. Her honor might have been offended, but Blister knew that any attempts to restore it through physical threats would end very, very poorly for her and her alliance. Hearing the commotion, Queen Moorhen poked a head out of her cave, but quickly tucked it back inside after seeing the scene.
“Do not think that just because my troops are fighting with yours, to help you get your throne, that I will forgive you for what happened to my son, and that you will not pay for allowing it to happen. I am not the easily manipulated fool that you would like to think I am. Leave the Summer Palace, and return to whatever barren, sandy wasteland you came from. We will discuss war-plans at a later date.”
Blister nodded with a straight face, keeping her pride as locked away as her barb. Grief was a powerful force, and could tear down even the strongest of queens. Queen Coral might have won this battle, but Blister would still yet win this war, and the next.
==Chapter 13==
River swam down the long passage to Orca’s room. It had been two months since the news of Rift’s death had arrived, and River had decided to investigate her older sister’s room again. Maybe this time, the gryphon would be there, or there would be another clue to what was really going on with Orca and Torrent behind the scenes. She had a little more than an hour before Torrent and Orca were free again, which would hopefully be plenty time to solve this mystery.
River stuck the spare key into Orca’s door again, almost breaking the key, and unlocked it. She swept the door open, but again, it was empty. River sighed in frustration, but with a hint of relief. While she wanted to find out what the gryphon really was and if Orca was actually an animus, as River suspected, River was also frightened. If Orca was an animus, she had powers, and that could be very dangerous for her.
Again, River noticed some of the feathers on the floor, new ones. Where had they come from, if the gryphon wasn’t in the room? River thought about it for a moment. They had to be keeping the gryphon somewhere. A palace servant surely would have mentioned it if they had seen the gryphon, so it was out of sight. Yet, the gryphon had to be able to get into Orca’s room fairly easily, or else there would be no feathers. That meant the gryphon was being kept in one of the rooms near Orca’s, probably a locked one: it could quickly get back and forth between the two rooms without being seen, since very few SeaWings ever came down here, Orca and Torrent being the sole exceptions.
River swam back outside Orca’s room, locking it behind her. There were three rooms nearby, the gryphon had to be in one of them. Swimming as quietly as she could, River put her head up against one, hoping she could hear it. Nothing. She moved on to the next. Nothing—wait, no. There was a sound in the room, like something moving around. It was faint, but River could hear it. There was something alive, or at least somewhat alive, in the room, and River was almost certain what it was.
She glanced at the door lock. There was bound to be a spare key in Coral’s room, and fortunately, her mother was with Orca at the moment, conducting more “queen preparation,” of course. River quietly swam away from the gryphon’s room, and as soon as she was out of hearing range, swam as fast as she could to her mother’s bedroom. River wasn’t sure how much time she had left, and she didn’t know when she would have another chance.
When she entered Coral’s bedroom, she quickly pulled out the box of spare keys beneath her bed. She tore her claws through them, looking for the right one for the room. She found it, and returned the box to its previous place.
River thought for a moment about her plan. She would capture the gryphon, and bring it to Coral in order to prove it was real. But how would she capture it? River remembered that there was a small fishing net in a storage room nearby, maybe she could use that.
River swam to the storage room, and rummaged around its contents, looking for the net. It took a few minutes of moving around useless junk before she got it, and even longer to untangle it, but she got it done. Grabbing the net, she swam back down the passage to Orca’s room, attempting to keep it as untangled and as flat as possible.
The net and key in her talons, River stood in front of the door. The sound was still there, and this time, River was sure she would succeed. She slowly unlocked the door, and opened it, pushing aside the water behind it.
She looked inside, and sure enough, her guess was right. The small gryphon was inside the room, and looked up in surprise at the mischievously grinning River. River rushed inside, and slammed the door behind her to prevent the gryphon from easily escaping.
As River slowly swam forward, the gryphon backed away into the wall. River raised her net, and jumped at the gryphon, but she was too slow, and its tail slipped out from under the net. She growled in irritation, then swam after the gryphon, heading to the door. She wouldn’t let it escape, not again.
As the gryphon attempted to open the door, River pounced on it, covering it with the fishing net. It tried to struggle loose, but the gryphon’s feathered wings got caught in the net, tangling it further. After a short struggle, the gryphon was trapped beneath the net, glaring up at her.
River smirked triumphantly. She had done it. She had captured the gryphon. River would bring it to Queen Coral and show everyone Orca’s lies, putting River in line for the queen. Queen River. She liked the sound of that. What would mother think of her then?
“Let me go,” a voice hissed. River jumped in shock. Where did the voice come from? There was no one here, and they were underwater. She glanced at the gryphon, frowning.
“Yes, I can talk,” the gryphon said, almost reading River’s mind. “Okay, you got me. Now let me go, alright?”
Had Orca enchanted it to speak? Weird. Did it understand Aquatic? Now, why would I do that? River flashed. I went to all this effort to capture you.
“Because you’re a nice SeaWing?” the gryphon asked, slightly confused. “What do you want with me, anyways?”
River grinned, beaming. I’m going to use you to become queen. Orca enchanted you, right?
The gryphon nodded through the net. “She did. Your name is River, right? You’re Torrent’s sister?”
I am.
“Why do you need me to become queen?” the gryphon asked. “Can’t you just challenge Queen Coral?”
Not before Orca does, River hissed, and if she’s an animus, then I have no chance of winning against her, or Coral beating her.
“Orca doesn’t even want to be queen, though.”
Maybe, but she doesn’t want me to be queen more. She’s said so, many many times. And now I’m going to beat her.
River thought for a moment. She didn’t think she had much time left before Torrent and Orca came back. She needed to leave now. We’re going, she flashed, dragging the net with the gryphon with it through the water. The gryphon struggled a bit, but gave up, realizing that it was to no avail.
When she got outside, she started to swim down the path to the main part of the palace. She turned around the first corner, then quickly ducked back around, hiding behind the wall. Torrent and Orca were swimming down the hallway. Had she spent too much time? River didn’t think they had seen her, but she didn’t know where else to go. There wasn’t another tunnel back to the main part of the palace as far as she knew, so she couldn’t slip past Orca and Torrent. She had only one choice, she had to hide with the captured gryphon in one of the other rooms, and hope that Orca or Torrent didn’t notice he was missing.
She started to turn around, changing the direction she was dragging the gryphon. “Change of pl—” the gryphon started to ask, before River clamped his beak shut with her claws. 
Yes, she flashed, heading back to the room. She pushed the entangled gryphon into the room, went in after him, then quietly shut the door. Now, she had to wait, and hope that she wasn’t discovered.
==Chapter 14==
Twenty minutes before River went into hiding, Torrent had just finished his “Aquatic Grammar tutoring” with Whirlpool, probably the worst of the classes he had to take with the old freshwater breather. After soon as he was done, he swam to the room where Orca was, currently receiving lessons from Coral on queenship. The two were just finishing up, and Torrent impatiently waited on the outside of the room, watching.
After Coral and Orca finished, they walked over towards Torrent. I see you two have made up? Queen Coral asked her children.
Torrent nodded. It hadn’t taken long for Orca to apologize for her rudeness to him, and He was surprised Coral hadn’t found that out yet, though she didn’t seem to check on how they were doing all that often. The brother and sister still weren’t exactly sure what to do now about Orca’s magic, but at least they were still friends.
That’s good. Siblings shouldn’t stay angry for long. These are hard times, and we’ve been through alot, so I’m glad you still have each other.
Torrent was concerned for a moment: at first, he thought Coral somehow knew about Orca’s problems with animus magic, but he quickly realized that his mother was talking about Rift’s death. Torrent and Orca had both known Rift well, but grief was taking by far the largest toll on Gill and Angler. Angler was Rift’s twin, and they had been a pair since birth. The eldest prince had been sulking alone in his room for the past two months. Gill was faring a bit better. He still appeared to be constantly gloomy, but at least he was out of his room.
Oh, yes, that’s right, Coral flashed, suddenly remembering something. I almost forgot, you two are going to have another sister soon! Her egg is in the royal hatchery if you would like to say hello.
Orca almost visibly groaned. She clearly didn’t want another sibling, River was already enough. Torrent himself didn’t care. Maybe the new dragonet would be nicer than their current sister. That wasn’t too much to hope for, was it?
Orca and Torrent said their goodbyes to their mother, and headed down towards Orca’s room quietly. Orca suddenly thought she heard something, or someone. Maybe Griffin, deciding to wander about the empty corridor? Did you hear something? she asked Torrent.
Torrent shook his head. Orca frowned. Can you go get Griffin? she asked Torrent.
Torrent nodded, and swam across the passageway to the room where Griffin was being kept. He took out the key, and unlocked the door. His talons clenched up when he saw who was inside.
Torrent, what’s wrong? Orca asked after a moment.
River, Torrent flashed.
River lay on the ground in the room, holding down a fishing net containing a trapped Griffin. Griffin struggled to get free, but to no avail. River had a claw threateningly resting around Griffin’s feathered throat, brushing under his coat of feathers.
Orca and Torrent entered the room. Orca hissed, and opened her jaws as if to say something.
Don’t try to use your magic, River flashed. I’ll slit his throat.
The two SeaWing princesses stood, their eyes locked together in a stare. Torrent turned to Griffin, had River hurt him? Fortunately, he looked unharmed. Torrent wasn’t exactly certain what would happen if Griffin’s throat was cut open. Would he bleed? Would he drown? If he died, Orca wouldn’t be able to bring him back: there was one rule of animus magic, and that was that one couldn’t bring back the dead.
What do you want? Orca flashed, glaring at her sister with a scowl.
River thought for a moment, as if deciding what exactly to say. Your magic, she finally responded. I want you to enchant me to get your animus powers, then leave the Sea Kingdom forever.
Orca snorted and seethed. Torrent wasn’t sure if she was able to do that. He hadn’t heard any tales of animus powers being given before, but as far as he knew there was no rule against it. Yet, it still seemed wrong; there must be some rule of magic preventing that.
If Orca did try and give her powers to River, what would happen to her soul? Would it be saved, or would it be harmed even further? It sounded like a large enchantment, what if trying to do it killed her?
Orca, don’t do it, Torrent flashed quickly.
River looked impatiently, and slowly dragged her claw across Griffin’s throat, drawing a red line of blood across it. He could clearly bleed. Griffin fidgeted from side to side in pain, looking up at Orca pleadingly.
River, that’s not possible, Orca calmly replied to her younger sister. That’s not how animus magic works. Can we settle this someway else? I can enchant you something that will protect you in combat, or maybe something that will make dragons like you more.
River hissed at Orca. And then what? You’ll just let me keep it? No, as soon as I take my talons off your little pet, you’ll zap me into oblivion or worse.
We don’t have to settle this with violence, River, Orca replied exasperatedly. We can work something out. For some reason, Orca didn’t seem too worried about Griffin’s death. Torrent wondered if she was just trying to remain calm in front of River.
Oh, so now you want to work something out? River flashed. Now that I have power? It’s too late for that. You could’ve worked something out earlier: you’ve had four years to work something out. But no, you’ve ignored me, rejected me. You’ve always had your future planned. An animus queen of the SeaWings, destined to unite Pyrrhia under our tribe, right? You think I don’t know what queens do with their sisters after they take the throne? What Oasis did, what Scarlet did? No, I’m going to become queen, and you should be grateful to me that I’m letting you live in exile. You wouldn’t have done the same for me.
Suddenly, as River was distracting herself talking to Orca, Torrent tackled his sister from the side, pushing River away from the entangled Griffin. The two tumbled through the water, claws and wings flashing.
After creating a little space between them, Torrent used the classic SeaWing fight tactic of hitting her head with his thick tail, but River was too fast. She grabbed his tail, digging her claws into it, and used it to slam him into the ground. Torrent quickly got up and clawed at his sister’s neck, but River rammed into Torrent’s own neck and bit into it hard, making Torrent yelp out in pain. She grabbed his neck with her talons, and stabbed the thick claw on her wing into his back. She might have been smaller than her brother, but her constant fights with Moray had given her far more experience.
River placed a claw in front of Torrent’s neck, directly on one of his arteries. She pushed his neck against her own, pinning it in place. A single motion and she could end Torrent’s life. He went still, knowing he had lost the fight.
Now, River flashed to Orca, let’s see if you care about your brother more than your p—
The string of pearls draped on River’s neck suddenly morphed into sharp metal blades, and contracted around her neck, instantly severing her head from the rest of her body. Her claws clenched, poking between Torrent’s scales, but they didn’t puncture through the spaces between them. River’s violet-scaled head slowly floated down to the stone floor, blood streaming from the severed base, staining the water red.
Orca stood from the side, glaring as her dead sister’s severed head hit the ground, laying to rest on the ground. Her mouth was stretched in a determined grimace, and her eyes glared in anger at her dead sister’s dull eyes. Torrent, are you alright? she asked.
Torrent stood in shock as his twin sister’s body fell to the paved floor, the water around her neck stump turning a bright red.
Orca walked over to the entangled Griffin, who had fortunately been turned away from the gruesome scene. With a few muttered words under her breath, the fishing net rose up and disentangled itself from Griffin. He placed a talon against his bleeding neck, feeling his wound and wincing in pain as the saltwater flooded into it. He turned around, and seeing River’s remains, almost retched into the water.
“What did—” Griffin started to ask.
Let’s clean this up, Orca flashed, interrupting whatever Griffin was about to say. She grabbed River’s head by the horns almost triumphantly, and was about to exit the room with it, before thinking better of it. Wait, no, I have another idea, Orca flashed.
She swam over to River’s body, and opened a small pouch River had been carrying, letting the contents fall out and get caught in the flow of the red water. Among them were a couple of Griffin’s feathers, the spare keys to Orca and Griffin’s rooms, a small scroll, a locket containing a dragonet’s drawing of River and Coral, a waxed parchment paper containing a claw-written note from Rift and a small pebble that Orca recognized as the one she had enchanted so long ago.
Orca claws quickly enclosed around the pebble, and she pulled it up in front of her snout, inspecting it. “I enchant this pebble so that as long as it is underwater, no dragon except for myself, Torrent, and Griffin are able to remember River.”
What, no! Torrent protested. He tried to grab the pebble out of Orca’s claws, but she pulled it away from him. You can’t do that!
I can, Orca flashed back, and it’s for the better. This way even if someone does find her body, no one will care. She was just some random SeaWing no one remembered now.
Torrent stared at Orca, frightened. This wasn’t the Orca he knew, it couldn’t have been.
Anyways, Orca continued, this way no one will have to grieve for her, Angler and father in particular.
She was murdered, she didn’t just die! Why? Torrent asked.
Why what? Orca snapped. Why did I kill her? She was going to kill you, so I did what I had to protect us. The little brat deserved it anyways, remember how mean she always was to you? It’s not like I had a choice!
Torrent nodded with a gulp, not wanting to further anger his sister. She wouldn’t hurt him, would she? The legend of Albatross suddenly came to mind. The first animus dragon Torrent had heard of. He had killed his family, even those whom he had loved.
Orca examined the enchanted pebble for a moment, thinking. Seeing Torrent’s expression, she flashed, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to hurt anyone, ever again. Come on.
Orca left Griffin’s room, and headed to her own, Torrent and Griffin cautiously following behind her. They gave each other a glance. This wasn’t good. Torrent looked over at the dagger Orca had created, still on her desk. Orca noticed his glance.
What, you think I’ve lost my soul? Orca flashed with a growl. You want to kill me? Then go ahead! I won’t stop you.
No, I didn’t mean that! Torrent quickly replied. I don’t want to kill you, I’m just . . .
Worried? Orca asked with a sigh. She took a deep breath, and covered her snout with a claws. Well, maybe you should be.
Orca glanced around the room, and her eyes landed on the jewel-eyed headbusts of her parents. She went over to them, and pried off one of the eyes from each statue: the emerald from her father, and the black pearl from her mother. She muttered something, dagger on the desk flew over into her claws, and three small indentations appeared in its hilt, about the size of the gemstones she had pried from her parents’ jeweled eyes.
Orca took off the small golden band, still around her wrist, and used her claws to pry off the amethyst embedded in it. She placed it on one of the holes in the dagger’s hilt, and it locked into place.
She held out the two gemstones she had taken from her parents’ busts. “I enchant this emerald so that when it is touched, it permanently removes all enchantments on items the blade of the dagger is touching, not including the dagger itself, and I enchant this pearl so that if the dagger it’s attached to is touching an animus, the dragon it cuts into is turned to stone.” She placed the two gemstones into the dagger, locking them into place.
Orca placed the completed weapon in Torrent’s claws, and looked at him expectantly. Well? she flashed.
Torrent glanced at Orca in confusion. What is it for? he asked.
So you can kill me, she replied. She took the dagger, and turned it around in Torrent’s claws so that the tip was resting against her chest. Torrent’s claws shook, and he threw the dagger aside.
I’m not going to kill you! he flashed. You’re going to be fine, okay? You haven’t lost your soul.
Orca snarled. “Dagger, return to Torrent.” The dagger slowly floated up through the water, back into Torrent’s claws. It’s too late for me, she hissed. If you don’t kill me now, I’m just going to harm more dragons. Maybe Coral next, or Gill, or Angler. Do you want me to do that?
No, Torrent refused. I won’t kill you, and I know you don't have it in you to kill them.
You’re weak, Orca flashed angrily. You have to do it. Sunscorcher was right about animus dragons. I can hear the voices she was talking about now. They want me to kill you, and everyone else who might get in my way. But I won’t listen to them, not yet. You need to kill me, then every animus dragon in Pyrrhia. You’ve seen the legends, you know what we can do. Kill me.
Torrent shook his head, and swam out of the room. Orca let him go. She glared at Griffin, who was still sitting there, too fearful to move. Leave, she flashed solemnly. Before I hurt you too.
Griffin scrambled from the room, swimming away as fast as he could. Orca was left to herself in her room. The dagger she had enchanted for Torrent slowly clattered across the floor, attempting to return itself to Torrent. After it moved itself out of Orca’s room and into the passageway, she closed her door, the SeaWing princess locking it behind her.
==Chapter 15==
Orca paced back and forth across her room, her teeth clenched together. Why had she killed River? Sure, Orca was protecting Torrent’s life, but there were other ways she could have done it. Enchant this necklace to teleport its wearer to the Summer Palace,Orca thought. Or enchant it to make River fall unconscious as long as she wears it. There were plenty of other options! But no, I just had to choose the one which killed her. First she had used her magic to kill Sunscorcher, then her own sister. There was only one option: Orca had used too much of her magic, and had lost her soul.
She wondered what to do. Obviously, there was only one choice, if she truly wanted to protect her family, death. But Orca didn’t want to die. She shuddered at the thought, and she caught a glimpse of the bracelet she had enchanted to protect her soul, still in her claws. What good that did her. She flung it away, being gently stopped by the water and sinking to the floor.
Maybe she didn’t need to die after all. Sure, she had to be more careful when making her enchantments, but she didn’t particularly feel evil. And think of all the good that an animus dragon could do for the SeaWings if she was queen! The war could be over in an instant, and no more SeaWing lives could be lost. With the right spell, every war, ever, could be over!
She thought back to River. With River out of the way, it’s not like there was anyone else to challenge her mother. Sure, there was the egg in the nursery, but it wouldn’t be ready to claim the throne for another seven years. And if things kept up as they were, that would be seven more years of war. Seven more years of dragons dying, of families losing brothers and sisters. An image of Rift passed beneath Orca’s eyes. If she became queen now, all of that would be over.
Orca felt almost giddy about it. She hadn’t expected, or even considered challenging her mother for the throne for many more years, she was just barely seven right now, and any fight against Coral would be doom for her. But Orca had magic. With the right spell, it would be easier than eating a fish.
Orca looked back at the golden bracelet she had thrown away. She picked it up; it would now serve another use. She could make her scales harder than diamond, or slipperier than an eel, but that seemed too roundabout. Why not just make the enchantment direct?
“I enchant this bracelet so that Coral can’t harm me,” she whispered, ensuring her victory. She felt a chill through her scales and smiled. She was sure to win her fight and become queen. What could go wrong? Orca opened her bedroom door, and left it. She looked back to the door as she locked it. Tomorrow night, she would be sleeping in her mother’s quarters. She smiled excitedly, and turned to leave the labyrinth beneath the Deep Palace.
After a long swim, Orca reached to Coral’s bedroom and knocked on the door. Her mother opened it for her, looking at her daughter as if nothing had changed. But it had, Coral just didn’t know it yet. Orca was finally ready to claim her birthright. What is it, Orca?Coral asked in confusion. It wasn’t often her daughter came up to talk.
I’m challenging you for the throne, Orca flashed back. Coral stared in shock, still taking in what Orca had said. I’ll see you outside the Deep Palace at the break of dawn.
Orca shut the door in Coral’s snout, and gleefully swam down to her room. Things were going perfectly. She would be queen by sundown tomorrow, and Pyrrhia would be in an eternal peace within the week. Nothing could go wrong, unless . . .
Animus magic is passed down through families, Orca remembered in a sudden shock. Torrent, Angler, and Moray don’t have it, and neither did River nor Rift. But what if her new sister did.
Her heart racing, she rushed towards the royal hatchery. An animus princess, her sister. Someone who could challenge her and become queen herself. Orca shuddered. She was able to control her magic, and keep her soul intact. What if her sister wasn’t the same way? What if she was like Albatross?
She reached the royal hatchery, just outside of the Deep Palace. There was one guard on duty that Orca needed to get past. She picked up a small strand of kelp and quickly enchanted it to make the holder unnoticeable to others. She felt a small shiver as she did it, but ignored it. 
Orca entered the dark hatchery, and looked for the egg. It was sitting alone, all unprotected and vulnerable. Small green spirals were on its surface, barely visible against the darker green of the eggshell. She picked it up and nestled it in her claws, examining it with fervor from all angles.
She gritted her teeth. “Egg, flash light if you’re going to be an animus,” she whispered into the water.
Orca paused for a moment, and a smidgen of relief washed over her when suddenly a burst of light lit up from the egg. The light spread across the hatchery, and lighting up the empty stone halls. Orca trembled. She should have known. Since, animus magic was passed through families: any one of her mother’s possible children, or her own future children, could have it.
Kill it, a small voice whispered in the back of Orca’s head. She knew that was what she should do, just to be safe. The dragonet was her sister, and could challenge her for the throne. Once the dragonet was old enough, it would kill Orca without a second thought with or without her magic. Why shouldn’t Orca do the same to it?
Orca raised her claws, ready to slam the egg into the stone walls. Yet, Orca hesitated. This just seemed wrong. The dragonet was innocent, it hadn’t killed anyone yet with its magic. It was also Orca’s sibling. Like Torrent, Rift, Angler, and even River. 
Orca set the egg down and put her claws to her face. She couldn’t do it, but she knew she had to. Not just for her sake, but for all of Pyrrhia’s. The dragonet would be an animus, and one of those in the Sea Kingdom was surely enough. It had to die. She thought out the enchantment in her head, and spoke it aloud.
“I enchant the stone floor to turn into an inconspicuous statue of myself, which attacks royal heirs to the throne when no dragon is looking.”
Bubbles appeared from the rock below, and the stone morphed, unnaturally twisting and twirling into a perfect replica of Orca herself, carrying a spear. The statue was a dark green marble, with blue sapphire eyes glaring straight at Orca herself, as if her own magic was judging her. Orca’s name was engraved in flowing letters at the base, far more perfect than any dragon could write.
Orca left the room for a moment, and waited outside for a few minutes, looking at the guard, who remained unaware of her. He was a young SeaWing: determined to fulfill his duty of protecting the royal family. When she became queen, she would make sure he was pardoned for her own actions.
Orca turned back to the dark room, and re-entered it. Eggshell was strewn all about the room, and Orca turned away, not wanting to look. The statue was just as she had left it. Guilt flooded her mind. Three dragons I’ve killed now, and two of them my own sisters,she thought to herself in shame. Well, wasn’t that just how things were in Pyrrhia? Sister against sister, mother against daughter? As an animus, a descendant of Albatross, and a princess in line for the throne, the death of her family wasn’t a choice. It was engraved in stone, it was her destiny.
==Chapter 16==
Torrent woke up to a sharp rap on his door. Was it Orca? He shuddered, suddenly remembering the events of last night. River was dead, at Orca’s claws. He yawned slightly. It was early in the morning, much earlier than he preferred.
Torrent opened up the door, Angler stood there, looking worse than ever. No hint of a smile crossed his milky-green scales, and he looked as if he had hardly slept. His wings were hunched over his back, and his eyes strained to look at Torrent. Torrent wondered if Gill had heard about River’s death, then realized that he wouldn’t have: Orca’s enchantment would have kept him from even remembering her. Looking at Angler’s expression, maybe Orca was right and it was for the better.
I’m glad you’re out of your room, Angler, Torrent flashed.
Angler shook his head, as if denying Torrent’s statement. Did nobody tell you? he asked. Orca has challenged mother for the throne.
What? Torrent flashed in alarm. Orca? Challenging mother? What was she thinking, she’ll get herself killed! Unless. . . We have to stop her! he shouted.
Angler shrugged, and sighed as he was pitying Torrent’s hope, looking down on him in scorn. It’s far too late. Coral accepted the challenge, and they’re fighting at dawn on Orca’s request. You might be able to make it to the arena if you hurry, but I wouldn’t. One of them will have to die, and we’ll have yet another dead family member. Just the dragon way. Angler looked pleadingly at Torrent, as if he wanted his younger brother to say something to make it alright, but Torrent didn’t know what to say to comfort him.
I just thought you should know, since you were the closest to her, Angler continued. I’m sorry. Angler left Torrent’s room, presumably swimming back to his own.
Torrent took a deep breath in through his gills. He knew how the battle would end, and it wouldn’t turn out good for Coral. Orca had her animus powers, there was no way she could lose. Torrent looked around the room, and a flash of metal caught his eye. The dagger Orca had given him had apparently moved itself to his room, even though he had left it. Maybe that was Orca’s game—if Torrent didn’t kill her like she had asked, she would become Queen of the SeaWings.
Yet, Torrent knew he couldn’t kill her. Orca was his sister, his best friend. He wouldn’t kill her, no matter what. Even if she became some animus monster and decided to take over the Sea Kingdom. Then what could he do? Torrent would flee the Sea Kingdom. The MudWings were still allies with the SeaWings, he could stay there, and find a way to save Orca. Moorhen seemed to like Torrent, maybe she would let him stay with her, and it sounded like Mallard had even more scrolls than the ones she had given them to read, maybe one of them would tell him how to save Orca, or at least find a solution better than killing her. He glanced at the dagger. He wouldn’t have to use it on her, not now, not ever. He kicked it away.
Torrent grabbed the scrollcase containing the notes on animus legends he had compiled with Orca, then a small satchel which in he stuffed a few salted fish into, along with a couple pieces of jewelry his mother had given him as presents. He didn’t have many other belongings to take. As he left the room, the dagger started to rattle, slowly moving towards him. After he took a quick last look at his room, Torrent shut the door on it. Hopefully that would stop the pestering dagger, at least for a while.
Torrent swam down to the exit of the palace. It was even emptier than normal: only one guard remained, the rest of the guards and servants had swam to the arena in which the royal challenge was taking place. Torrent looked over to it. Was it really alright to leave the Sea Kingdom in the talons of Orca? But what other choice did he have, killing her? Hopefully she would be a good queen, at least until Torrent could find some way to stop her, or maybe even save her.
He glanced back at the palace in which he was raised. The Deep Palace stood, dark and ominous, various rooms scattered around the original palace nestled in the center, as if someone had dropped them from the surface of the ocean, letting them settle in the sand. Torrent wondered when he would see it again. Sure, he had left the palace plenty of times, but he’d only been out of the Sea Kingdom once, when he, Orca, and Griffin went to find Sunscorcher. Maybe one day, if he could help Orca, he’d return. He turned away, and swam towards the ocean surface far above.
Torrent burst out of the water, taking flight. He took in a breath of the salty ocean air. Seagulls called from afar, as if beckoning him to join the outside world beyond the ocean. The SeaWing prince glanced at the sun, just now rising above the horizon. Far below, Orca was just now engaging in a bloody combat with Coral. Torrent looked down to the shimmering surface of the waves, but saw nothing beneath. Using the sun as his guide, Torrent headed south, towards the Mud Kingdom, when he suddenly heard a familiar voice behind him.
“Torrent!” Griffin called. “Wait up!”
Griffin quickly caught up to Torrent. “Where are you going?” he asked excitedly, glancing constantly at the clouds above, just like a jittery dragonet.
“The Mud Kingdom,” Torrent replied solemnly, “to Queen Moorhen’s Palace. How did you get out of the Deep Palace? Did anyone see you?”
Griffin shrugged his feathered forearms. “Maybe? It’s not like it really matters anymore, does it? If Orca became queen, I wouldn’t have to live in hiding anymore, wouldn’t that be great?”
“No, it would be awful,” Torrent growled. “She’s used too much magic. I don’t know what she’s going to do to the Sea Kingdom.”
Griffin looked slightly hurt. “What if she’s a good queen?”
Torrent thought for a moment. That was his hope, but it wouldn’t be true. “She won’t be. The Orca we knew died with River.”
Griffin remained silent for a moment, his beak contorted into a twist of a frown. “Alright then. How are you going to sneak me into Queen Moorhen’s Palace?”
“We’re not,” Torrent replied in exasperation. “I am. You’re not going with me.”
“What?” Griffin squawked. “What do you mean, not going with you? I mean, I could just stay outside the palace until you find a way to get me in, but that would get kind of lonely. . .”
“I mean you’re not coming with me at all!” Torrent yelled, his claws twitching in anger. “I don’t want you anymore!” Griffin ruffled his feathers, clenching his talons. “You don’t want me anymore? What do you think I am, some pet you can order around? Well, you know what, maybe I don’t want you anymore!” 
Griffin spat into the sea below, then turned tail, gliding off to the west. Griffin glanced back a few times to see if Torrent would fly after him, but Torrent kept on his course, not looking back. He didn’t need Griffin, he didn’t need anyone.
After a few minutes, Griffin was completely out of view. Torrent glanced back to the ocean far behind him, in the direction of the Deep Palace. Somewhere below, Orca would have just killed Queen Coral, and someone would be crowning her as the new Queen of the SeaWings.
----
Orca slowly swam in a circle, her mother at the other side. Orca tried to lock her eyes on Coral in determination, but Coral looked away in shame. Look at me, mother, Orca flashed, but got no response. This would be easy for Orca.
Coral, on the other claw, looked quite distressed. It was far too early for Orca to challenge her, and she knew that her daughter didn’t stand a chance in combat. Whereas Coral had been well-prepared for her challenge and years older, Orca was just barely seven, and her combat training had been lacking at best. Coral nervously rubbed at her pearl necklace. She just didn’t understand why Orca had bothered to challenge her, why now?
Orca lunged at her mother, claws outstretched, Coral deftly dodged, the decorative narwhal horn on her tail slipping through her daughter’s claws. Even though she was much older than her daughter, the two were about the same size. Orca had gotten that from Gill.
After a short moment of hesitation, Coral came in for a strike, diving beneath her daughter and clawing at her green belly, but Coral’s claws slipped off Orca’s scales to no effect. Orca in return dove down and plunged her claws into Coral’s backside, the queen’s blood spraying into the ocean. The guards scanned the seas for hungry sharks.
You don’t have to do this, Coral flashed. I can call off the match.
Coral nimbly swam up, pushing Orca off, then slammed her huge SeaWing tail into Orca’s side. Although she was almost certain she had made contact, Orca came out from beneath it and grabbed Coral’s tail, dragging her down. Coral attempted to claw at Orca, but to no avail, as Orca pulled Coral to a pillar of the Deep Palace and slammed her into it. A large sound reverberated through the water, and when Coral finally got up, a crack had formed in the pillar. Orca was winning.
Yes, I do, Orca replied, her expression emotionless.
Coral rushed towards her daughter, claws outstretched. Orca attempted to dodge, but Coral was too fast, and the SeaWing queen’s claws grabbed onto Orca’s neck. Yet, they slid right off her scales, and Orca slammed her tail into Coral’s neck, throwing her through the water. 
Coral cringed in pain; she was almost certain Orca had broken something. She tried to swim up through the water back into the fight, but a sharp pain rattled through her spine. Orca took advantage of that, and swam straight towards her mother, claws wide open and ready to kill. 
Coral curled up, and braced for the impact, curling her tail up defensively. She closed her eyes in resignation. This would be the end of her reign. The Sea Kingdom would be fine, Orca had been well prepared for the throne. So would Gill. He would be hurting, but he would get through it. Maybe he would find a new mate. Coral hoped that for him, he deserved to be happy.
She thought about what she had done during her reign. Not much, truly. The Sea Kingdom was much the same as it was before, except now she had brought them into a world war. Orca would finish the war her mother had started, and Coral would be forgotten within a century or two. Not that it mattered much now; whether or not Coral got a place in the history scrolls, she would be dead.
Suddenly, Coral felt a large jolt on her tail, painfully jamming it back into her spine. The queen yelped in pain, but Coral wasn’t dead. The SeaWing queen opened her eyes to see her only daughter impaled on the narwhal horn that was decorating Coral’s tail. Orca’s blood started to spread, staining the surrounding water red. A few of the guards around the fight looked around cautiously, ready to fight off any sharks who wanted a free meal. Coral stared in surprise. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen.
Evidently, Orca hadn’t suspected this either. She glanced at the small golden band on her wrist, then at the narwhal horn sticking through her. Suddenly, Orca laughed. The enchantment had protected her from Coral, yet it was Orca who had accidentally impaled herself. She had trusted her magic to let her win, but in the end, it had betrayed her. I did this all wrong, she flashed to herself, silently laughing in the water.
Orca tried to free herself from the narwhal horn, but to no avail. Why? Coral asked. Why couldn’t you have waited longer? You could’ve been a strong queen, you know, the best the SeaWings could’ve ever hoped for. No other heir of mine could ever be like you. Small tears started to form in the corner of Coral’s eyes, quickly being washed away by the salty currents.
Orca smirked, remembering that Coral wouldn’t ever have more heirs. It would be awhile before she could see her mother in whatever hell they were sent to. She shook her head. You’re going to rule forever, aren’t you, Mother? You should thank me, no one can stop you now.
Coral wrapped her forepaws and wings around her daughter, wanting a final embrace. Orca tried to push her away, but she was unable to, her vision was fading. She thought about making a final enchantment, something to save her. She glanced at the narwhal horn, and opened her mouth, but instead of words, blood flooded her mouth. She retched at the sickening taste, just causing more blood to spurt up.
She was getting dizzy. This was what she had wanted, anyways. Torrent wouldn’t have to kill her, she had accidentally done it herself.
She wondered where Torrent was right now. Was he watching? It was too late to care. Death was approaching quickly, and she welcomed him with open wings. Maybe she could apologize to River. Orca was sorry for killing her sister, she hadn’t really deserved it. The unhatched dragonet in the egg the statue had broken, too. Along with the rest of the dragonets the statue would kill in the future. Wow, Orca really hadn’t been a good sister, had she? Well, it could’ve been worse. There was Albatross, he had ki—
Orca tried to breathe water into her gills, then air into her lungs, but there was too much blood. Her body started convulsing, desperately trying to get more air and repair itself, but even with all her animus magic, Orca had no chance.
Her body slid off the narwhal horn, down to the ocean floor below. Coral stared, watching her final daughter fall to the frigid depths of the ocean, just like Coral’s own mother had done, so many years ago, and how Coral’s body would one day fall in front of one of her own yet unborn daughters. But today was not that day. Coral had lived to be queen, and Orca had not.
=Part 2=
==Chapter 17==
A freezing wind blew against the shutters of a house, wrapped in ice and snow. The dark night was lit up by colorful lights, dancing across the starry background. In the most northern reaches of the Ice Kingdom, a young IceWing huddled beneath a floorboard, trying hard to keep her breath as quiet and shallow as possible. Walls of frozen dirt pushed up against her wings.
Keep calm, Crystal, she thought, they can’t hear you. They won’t hear you. She kept her breath shallow.
She heard the sound of clawsteps above her, and saw a razor sharp claw between the floorboards. Two adult IceWings. Palace guards. A third followed into the room after her.
“When is the last time you saw your sister?” a gruff voice asked, one of the guards. His spiny tail gently tapped on the floorboard above Crystal. If he noticed that the floor beneath was hollow, Crystal would be executed by the end of the day. No amount of rapport with Queen Glacier could make up for her crimes.
“Months. That ungrateful walrus decided she was too good for me after our father took her in.” That was a voice Crystal recognized well, her sister, Clarity. She was five years older than her, in the Fourth Circle, though Crystal well knew Clarity could rise much further in the rankings if she truly wanted. “What do you want with her?” Clarity quizzed the guards. “I thought she was living in the palace now, why would she come all the way out here?”
The guard didn’t answer Clarity’s question, but continued looking poking around the room. “Do you know what she stole?” he asked.
“No idea,” Clarity replied with a laugh. “What did she do, run off with Queen Glacier’s crown or something? Decided she wanted to be queen for a change?” Clarity snorted. The guards didn’t appear to find this so funny. One of them tapped his claw on the floorboard in impatience. Crystal held back a gulp. If he realized it was hollow underneath . . . 
Crystal gently rubbed her claws down the small silver chain around her neck until they reached the perfectly spherical stone hanging from it. The stone was pretty, but didn’t seem like anything special at first glance. It was a dark, dark purple, almost black. It was faintly translucent, and Crystal could see small particles of glowing violet swirling around inside, even in the almost absolute darkness. It certainly wasn’t the queen’s crown, but to Queen Glacier, it might be even more important.
The guards continued poking around for a few more minutes, until Crystal finally heard them walking towards the exit. “Make sure to give that brat my regards when you find her!” Clarity called after the two guards as they shut the door. Crystal breathed a sigh of relief; she was safe for now.
Clarity walked back into the room, and tapped a claw on the floorboards, trying to find the hollow space her sister was hiding in. When she heard an empty echo, she pulled the loose floorboards off, revealing Crystal, curled up in the small space. Clarity glared at her sister as Crystal slowly crawled out of the hole. “Okay, start talking,” Clarity demanded. “What did you steal?”
Crystal held up the small spherical stone around her neck. “It’s a weapon,” she said, attempting to explain. “Queen Glacier wants to use it to destroy the MudWings.”
Clarity looked at her younger sister skeptically, and bend down to touch the stone. Crystal nervously allowed her to touch it. “A weapon that can destroy the MudWings?” She laughed. “Does it work?”
Crystal shook her head. “Not yet, but Father thought it was almost complete. That’s why I stole it. They won’t be able to make another one, either, at least not before the war is finished.”
Crystal sounded serious, and Clarity knew she was telling the truth. She might not have always gotten along with her younger sister, but she knew Crystal trusted Clarity with her life. That’s why she had come here for refuge. “If it can really do all that, then you need to leave the Ice Kingdom, soon. Tonight if possible. They’ll be back here, and I can’t guarantee they won’t find you next time.”
Crystal nodded in agreement. She had known the consequences of taking the Darkstone when she had taken it. She rubbed between her claws. She had tried destroying it, but it hadn’t worked. Crystal just had to take it with her, and the safest place was as far away from the Ice Kingdom as possible. The Sea Kingdom, if possible.
Clarity pulled out a scroll from a case, and unrolled it to reveal a map of Pyrrhia. She pointed her claw at a location just south of Queen Glacier’s palace. As Crystal had suspected, Clarity had an escape plan prepared already, albeit it was intended for Clarity’s use, not Crystal’s. She and her mate were members of some anti-war group, if Crystal recalled correctly. She hadn’t done a very good job of keeping up with her sister since she’d been apprenticed to Boreal.
“This is where we are now. Go due southeast. Not north, they’ll expect you to follow the northern coast or the edge of the mountain range. Avoid towns on the way. Once you get to the eastern coast, follow it to the south, but only fly at night. The guards won’t be able to see you as well then. You’ll cross the Great Ice Cliff, but continue only flying at night until you get here.” Clarity pointed a claw just south of the mouth of the Five-Tailed River. “I have a SkyWing friend there, her name is Avalanche. She lives in a house with blue shingles, and has bright red scales. Just tell her I sent you, she’ll make sure you get through the Sky Kingdom safely.”
Crystal nodded, rolled up the map, and put it into her satchel. Clarity gave her some salted seal meat, and Crystal added that with the map. “Thank you,” she said to her sister, giving Clarity a quick hug with her wings.
“It’s nothing,” Clarity replied, pushing her sister away. “Just hurry, and be safe. May the Great Ice Dragon fly beside you.” She pulled a scroll on her shelf partially out, and twisted it twice to the left, once to the right, then pushed it in again. Clarity grabbed the scrollshelf, and moved it to the side, exposing a small, narrow passageway with steep steps leading down into the frozen earth, barely large enough for Crystal to fit through. “This will get you just outside of the house, but you’ll need to get flying as soon as you leave the tunnel. The guards will be watching the house for a while; I’ll try and distract them after you get out.”
Crystal nodded, and crept down into the passageway. The IceWing dragonet coughed slightly as the dust entered her airways, but continued on. She looked back, hoping to see her sister one last time, but Clarity was already moving the shelf again.
The passageway went completely dark, so Crystal’s very limited IceWing nightvision was no use in helping her see anything. She had enough room to turn around, so she could only hope that the tunnel was unimpeded. Taking in a deep breath to calm herself, Crystal slowly walked through the tunnel, the frozen dirt closing in on her all around. She coughed, wincing as the sound echoed through.
It only took a couple minutes for Crystal to reach the exit, though it felt like much longer. There was a thin wall at the end. Crystal placed her claw around the edges of the wall: it was only loosely fitted in place. She pushed against it, and it slowly moved, pushing aside the snow that had piled up behind and on top of it. Crystal dug her claws into the cold ground of the tunnel, and shoved her body against the wall. It went another foot, and a mound of snow fell on her snout. Above, she saw the sky, green lights like waves flooding across it. She pushed against the wall one more time, and it finally moved enough for her to escape the tunnel.
Crystal clawed her way through the exit tunnel, pulling the rest of her body up. Her underbelly got caught on the top of the wall, before she pulled herself over and fell, snout-first, into the snow below. She shook herself off, and looked back. Clarity’s voice could be heard in the distance, around the front of the house. Distracting the guards.
Crystal said a silent thank you, and spread open her wings. She gently pushed down with them, supplying the lift in order for her to take off. After getting to a sufficient height, she glanced back at the house. Clarity must have drawn the guards inside the house to let Crystal make her get-away. Much further in the distance, a dim light could be seen, the conglomeration of moon-globes in the palace. Crystal looked the other way, towards the south east. Nothing. Nervously rubbing the Darkstone between her talons, Crystal flapped her wings hard, flying as fast as a SkyWing.
==Chapter 18==
Torrent finally arrived at the only place outside of the Sea Kingdom he thought he could take refuge in: Queen Moorhen’s Palace. The sun was drooping low in the sky, and Torrent’s wings were heavy from the long flight behind him. His sore wings and scales were caked with dried mud and grime from the mudhuts where he’d slept in the nights between his flying, and dirt had gotten between his scales. Not at all befitting of a SeaWing prince.
There had been a number of wary and angry glares from MudWings below as Torrent passed over the MudWing marshes and swamps below, but due to the alliance of the two kingdoms, Torrent had passed through the MudWing territory unhindered. The oppressive humid heat of the Mud Kingdom had made flying much more exhausting, but Torrent was able to make it far enough into the mainland to find the palace.
Occasionally, Torrent had glanced back to see if Griffin was following him, but the gryphon seemed to have left him. Torrent felt guilty; he shouldn’t have told Griffin to just go away like that, but it was too late now, wasn’t it. He wondered where Griffin had gone off to after he’d left. Had Griffin stayed in the Deep Palace? Was he even in the Sea Kingdom anymore?
As he approached Queen Moorhen’s palace didn’t look much like a palace to Torrent, but then again, he hadn’t seen very many palaces. The Summer Palace was hardly a traditional palace — it could only be seen from the inside — and the Deep Palace was underwater. Queen Moorhen’s palace had high walls on the outside, enclosing a number of square spires and the main portion of palace on the inside.
Torrent wondered why the palace needed walls. The Deep Palace didn’t have walls, but then again, it didn’t need defenses. Yet, the walls didn’t seem like useful protection from flying invaders. Torrent looked down at the houses and the city between the walls and the palace. Maybe the walls helped block the city from attacks, instead of the palace?
Torrent landed at the bottom of the walls, where a large gate stood. A number of guards eyed him suspiciously. He smiled in return.
“You!” one MudWing called. “SeaWing! What’s your reason for entry?” A few of the others crowded around Torrent, and snickered.
“I’m here to see Queen Moorhen,” Torrent responded truthfully, tensing up as they approached, “I’ve come to ask her to stay in the palace for a short while.”
The MudWings looked at each other, as if trying to figure out of Torrent was being serious or not. When they decided he was, they burst out in laughter. “Queen Moorhen doesn’t have time for SeaWing dragonets,” one of the MudWings replied snarkily. “Go back to the watery depths you came from.”
Torrent uncomfortably raised a wing, revealing the starbursts below. He lit them up,  indicating that he was SeaWing royalty, and hoped the MudWings would recognize the symbols.
One of the guards raised his wings and reared up onto his hind legs. “What, you wanna fight?” he asked, thinking Torrent was offering a challenge. “You think that just because we’re allies now, we’ve forgiven you for the last war?” He staggered towards Torrent, before one of the other guards latched her claws around his tail, pulling him back, causing him to lose his balance.
“Shut up,” the second guard hissed. She bowed to Torrent. “Our sincerest apologies, your majesty.” Realizing what was going on, the other guards immediately bowed their heads to the ground. The MudWing who had asked to fight gulped warily.
“Just take me to the queen,” Torrent growled. This had been far from a good trip, and he would be glad to see it over. He thought back to the Sea Kingdom, where Orca would be now, queen. He wondered if she had even thought of him, or of River.
A couple of the MudWing guards brought Torrent through the walls, and into the city. Unlike the absolute quiet of the Deep Palace, the town outside Queen Moorhen’s palace was bustling with the sounds of MudWings. It was so loud it almost gave Torrent a headache. He much preferred the silence of Aquatic to the striking voices of the land dragons.
Torrent quickly moved down the main road of the city, getting strange looks from the MudWings as he passed. He wasn’t the only SeaWing in the city, but being paraded by the other MudWings attracted unwanted attention. He kept his eyes down and his wings tucked, trying to ignore the stares and the growing silence. Finally, they reached the entrance to the palace. One of the MudWings rushed inside to fetch Queen Moorhen, while Torrent and the others entered a large room, preventing the crowds from staring at him any longer.
A number of long tapestries hang around the walls of the room, each depicting a MudWing queen, their names woven, in addition to the queens’ sibs, standing side by side with her. At the far left end, the tapestries were almost completely faded, and Torrent could barely make out the outlines of the ancient MudWing queens. At the other end stood Queen Moorhen’s tapestry, with her siblings’ beneath her. Torrent got a strange sense of déjà vu from the hall, as if he had seen something like it before in the Sea Kingdom.
Torrent scanned the room, and found the tapestry which most interested him: Queen Fen. Until now, she was the last animus queen of Pyrrhia. Her siblings rested beneath her. Torrent wondered which one of her brothers was the tragic Prince Calamity, the one who had killed both Fen and himself to end her reign. None of the brothers particularly stood out, but Fen had a determined grimace plastered across her face. She was young, very young, barely older than Orca was. Torrent wondered when she had challenged her own mother; was it seven, when she was technically first allowed to? Or had she gotten away with it even earlier?
Queen Moorhen suddenly entered the room, breaking Torrent’s focus on the tapestry. One of the MudWing guards was with her, along with one of her brothers; Torrent didn’t know his name. She looked surprised when she saw him. “Torrent?” she asked. “What a surprise, I wasn’t expecting you here.”
Torrent nodded. “I’m sorry for not sending any notice in advance.” Queen Moorhen smiled kindly. “No matter. Any relative of Coral is welcome here, anytime.”
Torrent tried to hide his discomfort. Coral was probably dead by now, and considering what happened with Albatross, he might be the only member of the royal family still alive. He wondered if he was still welcome. Fortunately, news traveled slowly out of the Deep Palace, and Torrent didn’t know how long it would be before Moorhen heard of the royal challenge. Unfortunately, that meant he would be unable to hear the news for quite some time, too. What would Orca do after she won? Would she look for him? If Orca wanted to, could she even use her magic to force him to return?
“Now,” Queen Moorhen asked, “what brings you my palace today?”
“I would like to board here for a time,” Torrent replied, “and if possible, have use of your libraries.”
Queen Moorhen’s brother whispered something to her, but she held up her claws and motioned him silent. “I am able to offer you food and a place to cover your scales,” she replied, “although it may not be as comfortable to what you are used to. You will have to ask Mallard about the libraries, she can be very picky about who she allows to see her scrolls. I believe you have already made her acquaintance, have you not?”
Torrent bowed his head. “Yes. Thank you, your majesty” he calmly replied.
Moorhen’s brother frowned, and glared at Torrent. He stood up, revealing a jagged scar beneath his neck. He stretched out his scales, as if trying to intimidate Torrent. “Just how long do you plan to stay with us, prince?” he growled. “And why?”
Torrent kept his calm, though he retreated back a small stop. “Two fortnights at maximum,” he replied. “I just wanted to continue my studies with Mallard.” It wasn’t completely false, and four weeks should be enough for news to arrive from the Sea Kingdom, and would give Torrent time to read more scrolls and plan what to do next, although he doubted he had even that long before Orca came looking for him.
Moorhen gave her brother a glare. “I apologize for my brother’s rudeness,” she told Torrent. “Granite occasionally steps out of his place.” The MudWing brother, who Torrent guessed was Prince Granite, looked away in shame and anger.
The MudWing queen gave the guards leave, and motioned Torrent to follow her up the staircase. “I will bring you to your quarters.”
As Torrent followed her, he walked directly passed Prince Granite. The MudWing was large, as large as Moorhen and Gill. Torrent ducked his head, and attempted not to meet eyes with the prince. Granite stepped in front of Torrent as he was walking, hissing, “If you dare try to harm my si—”
“Enough!” Moorhen roared back at her brother, the elderly queen showing a hint of emotion. “Torrent is our guest, and Queen Coral’s son. Treat him as you would treat any other royalty, or even better, if you can.”
Granite stayed silent, and let Torrent pass, his eyes still on the small SeaWing. Torrent and Moorhen continued up the palace stairs, until the MudWing prince was out of sight.
Moorhen sighed as the two walked to Torrent’s quarters. “Again, I’m sorry about Granite. He’s not usually like this, it’s just that with the war and all, we’re all so on edge.”
Torrent nodded silently, and followed Moorhen up to his quarters. The palace was a lot smaller than the Deep Palace, and whereas the Deep Palace had been continuously added onto over the years, Moorhen’s palace seemed fully planned from the start. There were no winding corridors like the one that led to Orca’s room, so he doubted it would be easy to get lost. All of the passages looked like they led back to the entry room, in one way or another.
Within a few turns, Moorhen and Torrent reached a door on the wall. She took out a key from a small pouch and unlocked it. “This is one of our guest room,” she said, smiling at Torrent.
Torrent looked inside. It was much larger than his room back at the Deep Palace, and far more decorated. There were around eight beds inside, each with a beautiful quilt on them, decorated with scenes from what appeared to be past MudWing military victories, many of them SeaWings. He averted his eyes from a square with a SeaWing similar-looking to his mother being pulled apart from the limbs by seven MudWing sibs.
“Is it to your liking?” Moorhen asked, oblivious to Torrent’s disgust.
Torrent nodded respectfully with a slight grimace. “What’s with all the beds?”
“Ah,” Moorhen replied, rolling her eyes slightly at Torrent’s naïvety, “most MudWing rooms are this way, it’s so that an entire clutch of sibs can stay in the same room. Don’t worry, you won’t be staying with anyone.” Torrent placed his scroll-case at the foot of one of the beds and turned back to Moorhen. “When can I see Mallard?”
Moorhen glanced out the window. That was different, there were no windows in the Summer Palace nor the Deep Palace. They seemed a bit insecure from attack. It was now dark outside, and the sun had set since Torrent had arrived at the palace, though Torrent could see just fine after his nightvision adjusted from the dim candlelight inside the room. 
“In the morning,” Moorhen replied, “Mallard may be asleep. I will fetch you for breakfast at dawn, and after that I can take you to her.”
“Thank you,” Torrent replied, bowing his head to Moorhen and lowering his forearms. Queen Moorhen smiled, and gave him a friendly clawwave before leaving the guest room. Torrent looked out the window again.
He wasn’t sure what direction it was pointing, but he pretended it was towards the Deep Palace. Far away, beneath miles of water, Orca would be crowned as queen, sitting on Coral’s throne.
==Chapter 19==
Torrent woke up to a sharp rap on the door outside. The SeaWing placed his claws over his ears, trying to drown out the noise. He heard another rap. “Torrent, are you awake?” Queen Moorhen called.
“Yes, your majesty,” Torrent groaned as he rolled out of the bed. He swished his tail back and forth, stretching out his wings. Torrent crawled over to the door and opened it. The giant MudWing queen stood before him, patiently waiting.
“C’mon,” she said, leaving Torrent no time to wake up further. He followed her across the palace to where he supposed the dining room was. The walk was short, but still exhausting for the not yet awake dragonet.
When they reached the dining room, Queen Moorhen led Torrent in. The room consisted of a long table with a series of place on it, with a beautiful chandelier above it, crystals shimmering in the candlelight. Around ten MudWings stood by the table, eating, two of them situated around the head, Granite and another one of Moorhen’s brothers. Moorhen motioned Torrent to follow her, and while she ate at the head of the table, he stood nearby.
Across from him stood Prince Granite, who gave Torrent a glare as he tore into a roasted pig. Torrent looked away uncomfortably and turned to his own meal. The dragons continued in silence until one of the other princes spoke up.
“Prince Torrent, is it?” the second prince asked. He had scales just a slightly lighter shade of brown than Queen Moorhen’s, and two large hoops hanging from each horn. He tapped a long, shining talon on his plate. “You’ve come quite a way, haven’t you? The Deep Palace is quite a ways away, isn’t it.”
Torrent nodded silently.
“Good, good,” the MudWing prince continued, “how is life in the Sea Kingdom? It sounds tranquil.”
Torrent again nodded. He glanced back at his dish uncomfortably. 
“Speak up!” the prince demanded. “It seems nice living in a palace under the sea. No SkyWing armies to ever bother you, huh?”
“Be polite to your guest, Mole,” Moorhen muttered, her mouth full of pig.
Prince Mole snorted indignantly. “You must eat a lot of fish, Torrent, don’t you?” he pressed. “Enjoying the pork?”
Torrent nodded vigorously. In truth, he was enjoying it. “Fish is nice, but it gets boring,” he replied quietly.
Mole smiled. “Not all SeaWings would agree. When I was last on the field, with your uncle, I gave him salted pork once. Spat it right out, he did, and cursed me. He complained that it was stuck in his teeth for the next week.” Mole chuckled slightly.
Torrent politely smiled in response to Mole’s anecdote, and the MudWings returned to eating. The rest of the meal went smooth, although Granite continued to give Torrent nasty glares. After it was done, a few MudWing servants took the dishes and leftovers away, while Moorhen motioned for Torrent to follow her. The SeaWing prince did so, and they left the dining room.
Moorhen smiled as the two walked through the palace. “Was the meal to your liking?” she asked.
“Very much so,” he replied, following closely behind her while attempting to avoid the stares of the MudWings they passed. Many of the dragons didn’t seem to have been around many SeaWings before, and looked curiously at the guest.
“Good, good,” Moorhen said. “I was worried that you were just saying that to please Mole, he can be quite . . . forward. I will give your compliments to our chef.”
The two continued through the palace a fair ways until they reached a small staircase, leading down in a circle to what Torrent suspected was Mallard’s quarters. The bottom of the staircase opened up to a pair of doors, which Moorhen subsequently unlocked and opened with a creak. A spider crawled up Torrent’s claws, but he quickly shook it off. This place had apparently not been cleaned in quite some time. He wondered why, one would think that the MudWing queen would keep her palace in shining shape.
The two doors opened to a long room stretching down the palace, with a dusty scrollshelf running along either side, packed to the brim with scrolls. A number of lecterns were strung around the room, with scrolls hanging haphazardly from them. Large inserts into the walls broke up the scrollshelves, with small, circular holes carved into the stone floor and ceiling. It looked like steel bars had once fit between them — this ‘library’ had once been a prison. At the far back of the room was a rug with scrolls thrown around the edges. A small burnt-orange MudWing sat on top, whom Torrent recognized as Mallard.
“Mallard!” Moorhen called. “You have a guest!”
Mallard appeared not to notice at first, but after a number of seconds passed, she looked up from her scrolls. “What is it?” she growled, frustrated at the interruption.
Torrent waved a claw and smiled awkwardly, hoping she would remember him. She did. “Torrent?” Mallard asked. “Is that you?” Torrent nodded.
“It’s been a while!” Mallard exclaimed. Glad she wasn’t angry to see him, Torrent started to open his mouth to respond, but Mallard cut him off.
“Thank you again for those scrolls you gave us,” she said, “they’ll be a massive contribution to the war effort! Now, what’s brought you here?”
The war effort? Torrent wondered what she had meant by that, but he didn’t ask any questions. The MudWings were on the SeaWings’ side, anything that was good for one kingdom would be good for the other. “Well, I was staying here for a while, and I wanted to ask you about borrowing some more scrolls.”
Mallard thought for a moment. “Did you bring any in return?” she asked. Torrent gritted his teeth, and winced a little. He hadn’t brought any, his trip to the Mud Kingdom was somewhat unplanned. He thought for a moment, wondering of there was anything he could give instead.
Fortunately, he was in luck. Seeing the expression on Torrent’s face, Mallard quickly said, “No worries; the other scrolls were plenty help. Feel free to look at any in the library.” She gestured around the room.
Moorhen smiled, satisfied that Torrent was in good paws. “I’m going to take my leave now,” the MudWing queen said, lumbering off. “I’ll see you two later!”
Mallard’s eyes carefully followed her queen, and only after Queen Moorhen had firmly shut the door to the makeshift library behind her, Mallard spoke up again. “Your sister isn’t with you this time,” she noticed. “Where is she? I thought she was interested in animus magic too.”
Torrent hesitated, unsure what to say. Chances were, Orca was now sitting on the SeaWing throne. “She stayed back in the Sea Kingdom,” Torrent cautiously replied.
Mallard looked skeptically at Torrent, and tapped the tip of her tail on the rug, as if wondering what exactly to say. “Your sister, Orca. She’s an animus, right? Or is it you?”
Torrent froze up. Mallard knew Orca was an animus? How had she known?
As if to answer Torrent’s concerns, Mallard explained, “It’s kind of obvious. It’s not every day we have two royal SeaWings looking for scrolls on animus magic and dropping the name ‘Sunscorcher.’ So, which one of you is the animus?”
Torrent just stood there, shaking. He didn’t know what to say. Had Mallard told Queen Moorhen about this yet? If Mallard knew Orca was an animus, and decided to expose her. . . it wouldn’t matter. If Orca had used her magic during her royal challenge, there was a good chance half the Sea Kingdom would know already.
Mallard sighed, starting to get irritated at Torrent’s silence. “Look, your secret is safe with me. I’m not going to tell anyone: I’m just a friend who wants to help.”
Friend? Torrent thought. He hadn’t really thought of Mallard as a friend, just a random MudWing he’d met. “It’s Orca,” he blurted out, “I left after she killed our sister and challenged Mother for the throne.”
Mallard frowned. “Sister?” she asked. “I thought Orca was the only hei — ”
“She used her magic to make everyone else forget about River,” Torrent replied with a wince. Talking about this with Mallard was a little cathartic; it was nice having someone other than Orca and Griffin to reveal their secrets to.
Mallard was silent for a moment, thinking about what Torrent had said. Torrent wondered how much she knew about animus magic, had she even known that was possible?
“I’m sorry,” Mallard replied sincerely. “It must be hard, losing so much of your family in such a short time-span.” She said her condolences slowly, crafting the words carefully so not to offend Torrent.
Torrent shuddered. The scariest part to him was that he couldn’t care. Rift was dead, River was dead, and now his mother was probably dead, but all he could do was just worry about himself. Was he just as bad as Orca?
“If you would like, I can tell you the news from the Sea Kingdom as soon as it arrives,” Mallard offered.
Torrent nodded. He wanted to know what Orca had done as soon as possible. His life, or someone else’s, could depend on it.
“So, what exactly are you looking for in these scrolls?” Mallard asked, walking over to the shelves and pulling a few down. 
“Anything on animuses losing their souls,” Torrent replied, “particularly on how to stop that from happening.” He thought for a moment and frowned. “Or reverse it, if it’s possible.” By this point, Torrent expected that Orca was too far gone, and he was sure that this search would end up futile. He wondered what Orca would do to him if he returned to the Sea Kingdom: he was certain she knew by now that he had fled.
Mallard bobbed her head in understanding. She scanned the shelf she was looking at, and pulled a few more scrolls out, then handed the collection to Torrent. “I doubt these will be to useful,” she grimly warned, “but there might be something interesting here. There has never been that much research on animus magic in the Mud Kingdom, since it’s so rare, and test subjects are hard to come by. Apparently there’s been a lot of IceWing research into it, but going to the Ice Kingdom to read their most recent scrolls isn’t exactly an option, so you’ll have to make do with what I’ve got.”
Torrent knew what Mallard had meant by that: he had read about the Great Ice Cliff and how it was designed to kill any non-IceWings who approached. He doubted the IceWings would want a SeaWing prince into their kingdom anyways; the SeaWings were currently at war with the IceWings.
Torrent took the scrolls from Mallard. “Thank you,” he gratefully said.
“It’s no difficulty,” Mallard assured Torrent. “If you need more, just ask anytime.” She thought for a moment, and an idea popped into her head. “Depending on how long you’re going to be here, I’ve been semi-secretly communicating by letter with an IceWing scholar named Boreal through the SandWings for the post couple of years. It would be a while, but I could ask him to send some scrolls over.”
Torrent shook his head. “Sorry,” he declined, “I don’t know how long I’m planning to stay.”
“Alright,” Mallard acknowledged, “but come to me if you change your mind. It wouldn’t be a big deal.”
Torrent tucked the scrolls Mallard had given him beneath a wing, and waved his claws goodbye. After leaving the musty library, he headed back back to his room, only getting lost once along the way, As soon as he entered, the SeaWing set the scrolls down. He glanced over their titles to see which one he should read first. “IceWing Perspectives on the Dangers of Animus Magic and their Potential Effects.” That looked somewhat hopeful. Torrent rolled opened the scroll, and started his reading.
==Chapter 20==
A few days had passed since Torrent received his scrolls from Mallard. He had been slowly working through them, and had gone back down to the library a few times to collect new ones, but so far Torrent had no luck in finding what he was searching for: anything that would help save Orca’s soul. Yet, the SeaWing had come across a few interesting scrolls: for example, a description by Prince Ripple, son of Prince Fathom, of how Darkstalker used his magic to create a talisman containing his animus powers. Based on how the end of the Darkstalker legends worked out, Torrent somewhat doubted it had worked well.
Another different scroll gave an example of another animus, an ancient RainWing queen who had done the opposite of Darkstalker: she had created a phylactery to contain her soul and protect it from any adverse effects. Unfortunately, separating her soul from her body ended up killing her, so that was clearly not a viable option. Surprisingly, this was a scroll written by a RainWing; Torrent hadn’t ever seen a RainWing scroll before, strangely enough. He hadn’t even known they had writing.
The IceWing scroll probably would have ended up being the most useful, if Orca had never used her power to begin with. It described how the second queen of the IceWings, Queen Frost, had brought animus magic into the royal family through a marriage to an animus, and knowing the fowl effects of magic, she had set up the system in which animus dragons would only use their magic once throughout their entire life. Although there were numerous cases in IceWing history of their animus dragons using their magic twice, or even three times, they rarely caused much trouble, and Frost’s system gave the IceWings prosperity for the next three thousand years. Torrent tried to remember how many times Orca had used her magic; it was much more than once, for certain.
As Torrent rolled up the scrolls and placed them into a neat pile, the SeaWing noticed a flash of metal out of the corner of his eye. There was something on his counter that hadn’t been there before. He went over to check it out, and groaned. The dagger Orca had enchanted for him to kill her was there. Torrent had forgotten that Orca had enchanted it to return to him if he was separated, and it looked like it had finally arrived from the Sea Kingdom. He picked it up, and twirled it in his claws.
He remembered all the glares Prince Granite had been giving him in the dining rooms and hallways. Although he didn’t particularly want the dagger, it wasn’t like Torrent could just get rid of it, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a little extra protection on him, just in case Granite decided to do more than just words and glares. He decided it would be a good idea to go get a sheath for the dagger. There should be some extra ones down in the palace’s armory, and he doubted Queen Moorhen would mind if he borrowed one. Torrent grabbed up the dagger, and left the room. It would be good to get out of his room anyways, he had been cooped up in there for many of the past few days reading musty scrolls. Remembering where the armory was, Torrent traversed the palace halls down to its location.
There were no guards around the armory, and Torrent entered freely. He scanned around the room. There were all sorts of weapons here: a fair amount of spears, swords, and sets of armor along the walls, along with some more exotic things. There were some three-pronged tridents in a corner, and another one of the corners had wooden barrels stacked in it. Carefully taking off the lid of the barrel, Torrent curiously looked inside them. He saw a coarse black powder, and thought about dragging a claw in it, before choosing better. It might be some kind of poison.
Putting the lid back in place, the SeaWing prince turned away to look at the sheathes. Placing his dagger into a few of them, he found a plain leather one which fit it. Torrent then looked for a strap to place it on. He grabbed one which went beneath his wing and wrapped around a foreleg, it was slightly large, but it seemed comfortable enough. He placed the dagger on and grinned; he liked the idea of being able to protect himself from any dragon which came his way. The prince placed a claw on his jeweled dagger and drew it in and out of the sheath, letting it glint in the candlelight.
Satisfied, Torrent quietly left the armory and headed back to his room, but it only took a few steps before he ran into a MudWing. Queen Moorhen stood in front of him, frowning slightly as she saw where Torrent had come from. “Your majesty,” Torrent said, shaking.
Moorhen looked back to Torrent and noticed the strap and dagger. “Are you planning on leaving the palace so soon?” she asked, wondering what Torrent was doing.
“No, your majesty,” Torrent replied, his heart crawling up his neck. “The dagger was a gift from my sister, and I wanted to find a matching sheath.” Moorhen glanced down to the dagger. The gemstones inlaid in it made it look more ceremonial and royal than just a plain weapon. “May I see?” she asked.
Torrent quickly nodded. He placed his claws on the hilt, and slowly started to pull it out. He noticed in surprise that the amethyst was warm. What did that do again? He thought Orca had once told him it detected enchanted items. As he brought the dagger towards Moorhen, it got warmer, meaning she must have an animus-touched item on her. He noticed the small silver bracelet around her foreleg, it looked like the culprit.
Moorhen noticed Torrent looking at her bracelet, and furrowed the scales above her eyes. “What is it?”
“Your bracelet,” Torrent responded, wanting to draw the conversation away from the dagger. If Moorhen touched the amethyst, she would instantly know it was magical, and Orca’s secret would be out. “Is it enchanted?”
Moorhen twitched her ears. She didn’t seem to like Torrent realizing that. She was silent for a moment, and Torrent tensely wondered what she was going to do. Finally, she smiled, and relaxed slightly. “You have good perception; those scrolls you’ve been reading must be quite helpful. It is, it’s been passed down by the queens since Queen Fen made it.”
Torrent breathed a sigh a relief and tucked his dagger back into its sheath. “What does it do?” he asked.
“It’s enchanted to vibrate when a dragon with bad intentions is nearby. It was designed to warn Queen Fen of potential spies and enemies.” She chuckled slightly. “Not that it did its creator much good. You know what happened to her, don’t you?”
Torrent nodded. Killed by her own brother after she had lost so much of her soul. “Does it vibrate around me?” Torrent asked, already suspecting the answer.
“Three moons, no,” Moorhen sweetly answered. “I wouldn’t have brought Mallard all the way out to the Summer Palace if it had. Nor your mother: for all her faults, Queen Coral seems like a well-intentioned dragon.” Moorhen frowned. “Now on the other claw, it’s hard to keep my claws from shaking when I’m around Princess Blister.”
Torrent was confused. “Wait, why did you join her, then, if she has such poor intentions?”
Moorhen sighed. “By the time we joined the war, the IceWings, SeaWings, and SkyWings had already taken their sides. Knowing that the RainWings and NightWings wouldn’t join the war, we were the only tribe left, and all three princesses were vying for us, knowing that having two kingdoms on their side would be a huge advantage. At first, we attempted to remain peaceful, but Burn and Scarlet threatened to attack us if we refused to join them. Granite convinced me that if we had to choose between the two, Blister would be a much better alternative than Blaze for a variety of reasons, so I ignored the bracelet’s warnings.
“With two kingdoms behind her claim, Blister should have been able to quickly end the war. Unfortunately, because a number of our generals were captured or assassinated within the first few months of the campaign, and an temporary truce between Burn and Blaze, the war doesn’t look like it will be ending anytime soon.”
Moorhen looked at Torrent and smiled. “Well, I’m sure that’s enough of my politics and complaining for you. You’re busy with Mallard’s scrolls, aren’t you? I’ll let you get back to that.”
And with a swish of her tail, Moorhen had left Torrent back to his reading. The SeaWing prince climbed back up the stairs to the guest room, and settled down to work.
==Chapter 21==
Another few days had passed, but to the SeaWing prince, it felt like weeks. Each day, he had gone down to Mallard’s chamber and asked for news from the Sea Kingdom, but he had received none, and Torrent’s anxiety only increased.
Torrent had continued reading and gathering information from the scrolls, but was unable to find a cure for soul loss. Just enchanting one’s soul to return didn’t seem to do the trick, and if were that easy, no animus would ever go towards the dark. Maybe the problem was something other than losing one’s soul? Torrent asked himself. In that case, an enchantment curing one’s soul wouldn’t work, since that wasn’t the problem to begin with. He supposed an enchantment forcing an animus to only do good could work, but there might be workarounds for that. What if two dragons disagreed on what was good? Anyways, it seemed a bit wrong to him to control a dragon like that, though he supposed it might be tolerable if the only alternative was to let an evil animus have free reign over their powers.
Deciding that it would be worthwhile to write down notes about the animus legends he had read, along with what he thought some curing possibilities could be, Torrent opened the scroll case he had brought from the Sea Kingdom and spilt its contents on the ground. He rolled open the scroll of notes that he and Orca had been taking, and started scratching new script into it. He grimaced slightly as he saw Orca’s messy scrawl above his own clawwriting.
Something caught Torrent’s attention out of the corner of his eye. Along with the scroll of notes, there were a few other pieces of parchment in the scroll case, including the map that Orca had enchanted in order to find Sunscorcher. Torrent rolled it open to reveal the enchanted parchment. There was a small number of ink blotches strewn around the map, each representing an animus dragon. The first thing Torrent noticed was a brick-red blotch not far from Moorhen’s palace, in the huge swamps to the north. That meant there was an animus dragon not too far from him.
Torrent’s eyes then turned back to the Sea Kingdom. He looked around the unmarked area where the Deep Palace was, scanning for a blotch indicating Orca. Nothing. There was no blotch. Maybe she was in the Summer Palace? No, the nearest animus to the Summer Palace was a small orange dot in the eastern Sky Kingdom. Maybe that was Orca?
Torrent’s claws started shaking a bit, and he started to think through the possibilities. First, Orca could be one of the dots outside the Sea Kingdom, but that seemed unlikely. He supposed she could have gone to participate in a battle, but it seemed too soon after her ascent to the throne for that. Anyways, Torrent remembered Orca’s dot as being a dark green, the same color as her scales. Second, Orca could have given up her animus powers somehow. Torrent didn’t know if it was possible, but it was his favorite option by far. It would explain why Orca wasn’t on the map, and if she gave up her powers, it meant she was just an ordinary dragon without powers. Queen, maybe, and possibly a malicious soulless one, but not an animus.
The final option was what made Torrent’s claws shake in worry. What if Orca had lost her challenge with Mother? She couldn’t have, that wasn’t possible. Orca was an animus, and was willing to use her power the last time Torrent had seen her. She wouldn’t just let Coral kill her, would she? At least if she’s dead, she can’t hurt anyone with her powers, a small voice whispered into Torrent’s head.
Torrent immediately felt guilty for even thinking the thought. No, even if it meant that Orca would harm others, Torrent would never want her dead, would he? She was still his sister, his best friend, no matter how many dragons she hurt. He shoved the thought to the back of his mind, along with his ridiculous theory that Orca was dead. He would go down to Mallard again to ask for news. Something surely would have arrived by now.
Torrent crawled the halls of Queen Moorhen’s palace to Mallard’s room. The SeaWing prince pushed the doors open to see Mallard at the far end of the room, reading some scrolls as usual. He returned the scrolls he had read, placing them down in front of her, causing her to look up. “Done already?” Mallard asked. Torrent nodded in return, it wasn’t as if he had much else to do while he was in the MudWings’ palace.
Mallard took the scrolls from him and carefully placed them on the shelves. “What’s wrong?” she asked Torrent.
“Oh, nothing,” Torrent replied, trying to push his theories of Orca to the back of his mind again. It was no use speculating.
Mallard frowned, and continued to press the question. “Your tail is dragging and your ears are drooping. There’s clearly something wrong, what is it?”
Torrent sighed. “It’s Orca again. I’m worried about how she’s doing, and what happened in her challenge.” He didn’t particularly want to tell Mallard about the map and what it showed him.
Mallard thought for a moment. “She’s an animus,” she replied. “She’s got practically unlimited powers, doesn’t she? I doubt something as mundane as a royal challenge could harm her.”
Torrent nodded, but even so, the map still worried him. There were no animuses in the Sea Kingdom. He supposed that Orca could have done something to the map which hid herself, or found another enchantment that did the same thing. That was it. She knew Torrent had the map, and didn’t want him tracking her!
“Thank you,” Torrent said, breathing a sigh of relief.
“You’re welcome,” Mallard replied with a smile, pulling out a few more scrolls from the shelves. “Anyways, we should be getting a messenger any day now, so you won’t have to worry for much longer. I’ll make sure you’ll be the first to know.”
Torrent thought about the map again. There was an animus in the Mud Kingdom on it, wasn’t there? He hadn’t read about any MudWing animuses since Queen Fen. “Mallard,” Torrent asked, “what do MudWings do with their animuses?”
A slight grimace appeared on Mallard’s face. “Well,” she answered, “we do similar to the SkyWings. If we know they’re an animus, we kill them as soon as they hatch — ”
“Oh,” Torrent interrupted, thinking Mallard was done.
“ — along with all their siblings,” Mallard finished uncomfortably.
Torrent scrunched up his snout in disgust. Their siblings too? He could see their reason for killing the animus dragonet itself, but it’s siblings were completely innocent.
“It’s to keep the siblings from passing on animus magic to their children,” Mallard explained, seeing Torrent’s facial expression. “MudWings don’t do mates like you SeaWings, so otherwise we wouldn’t know where the animus magic is coming from, and we might get more slip-ups. We’ve done it since Queen Fen was killed, and we don’t have any animus dragons, so it’s worked.”
No, it hasn’t, Torrent thought, remembering the blotch on the map. He couldn’t be certain, but since it was deep within the Mud Kingdom, the animus was almost certainly a MudWing. “Alright, thank you,” he said.
“It’s nothing,” Mallard grinned, handing the scrolls she had gather over to Torrent. “Any luck on finding a cure for Orca?” she asked.
Torrent pondered for a moment. “Maybe,” he answered, “I don’t know if it would work, but she could enchant herself to not be an animus, though it wouldn’t solve the problem with her soul.”
Mallard paused, tapping her tail on the ground. “Well, good luck. If you need anything else, just ask.”
The young SeaWing smiled and thanked Mallard for her help, then traversed the palace corridors back up to his room. He set the scrolls down, and opened up the map again. The spot in the MudWing swamps was still there, and there were still no animuses in the Sea Kingdom. He furrowed the scale-ridges above his eyes in a frown, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. Maybe tomorrow, news would finally come.
==Chapter 22==
Torrent awoke to a sharp rap on the door. “Just a minute,” he grumbled. It felt far too early for Moorhen to come in. He just wanted to sleep more.
The SeaWing prince peeled open his eyes and took a peek out the window. He frowned. It really was far too early for Moorhen to come in. It was long before dawn. Why would Moorhen want him now?
Torrent shook himself out of bed and opened the door. He was surprised to see the snout meeting him outside the doorway. “Mallard?” he asked. “What are yo—”
Mallard put a claw to his mouth, silencing him. She took a quick glance around the hallway before entering Torrent’s room, then shutting the door behind him with her tail. “We need to get out of here, now,” she hissed.
Torrent frowned. “What is it?” he asked quietly. “Did something happen to Moorhen?”
Mallard shook her head. “Queen Coral sent out an order for you to be brought back to the Sea Kingdom as soon as possible, and King Gill offered a reward for anyone bringing you back. At the peak of dawn, our messenger will tell Moorhen, and you’ll be taken to the Summer Palace, whether you like it or not.”
“Wait, hold up,” Torrent said, his heart beginning to race. “Did you say Queen Coral?” he asked.
Mallard winced, and looked at Torrent, her eyes offering an apology. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Orca lost her challenge against Coral. I’ll spare you the gruesome details.”
“What?” Torrent exclaimed, almost yelling, before remembering that he didn’t want to wake the entire Mud Kingdom. “No! Tell me!”
Mallard sighed. “She accidentally impaled herself on a narwhal horn attached to Coral’s tail during the challenge.”
No, Torrent thought, no, that can’t be right. Orca can’t be dead. This has to be some sort of trick with her animus magic. Maybe she switched bodies with Coral somehow, and is now ruling the Sea Kingdom in her name? Still, his gut and the map told him that Orca couldn’t still be alive. He felt stiff, and his breath became shallow.
“We have to go,” Mallard hissed. “I can get you out of the palace without us being seen, but we have to be out of the city before dawn.” She pulled on one of Torrent’s wings, urging him on.
Torrent looked at Mallard, and suddenly worried about her. She was risking her neck to get him out of the palace. “Why are you helping me?” he asked. “Queen Moorhen could have you imprisoned for something like this, or worse! You could just take the bounty and buy some more scrolls or something.”
Mallard thought for a moment, as if she wasn’t quite sure herself why she was helping Torrent. “You’re my friend,” she answered. “And friends help each other out, right?” He saw a hint of melancholy within Mallard’s eyes, and wondered where that had come from. “C’mon,” Mallard ordered, smiling again, “let’s get you out of here before I change my mind. You know how tempting a good scroll can be.”
Mallard opened the door to Torrent’s room, and took a peek around the corners. “All clear,” she whispered.
Torrent nodded, and quickly grabbed his stuff. He didn’t have much to take, just his scrollcase, his satchel, which still had a bit of salted fish, and his dagger. He put them on his strap, and moved after Mallard.
The walk down to Mallard’s quarters was long and slow. The MudWing librarian was cautious, and made sure to check around every corner before the two continued on. The most worrying part of the trip was when they went through the center of the palace: the hall of tapestries that Torrent had seen when he first entered the palace.
The hall was large and open, and Torrent was almost certain a MudWing guard would burst into there any second. He could see the tapestries placed around the hall in all their brilliance, although due to his nightvision being used, they were all in black and white. Yet, by using his nightvision, it finally struck him where he had seen something similar before: the Mausoleum of the Queens in the Deep Palace. He had visited the place a few times, but its eerie stillness always discomforted him. Supposedly it held the bodies of every SeaWing queen since the Scorching, along with many of the princesses, kings and other royal family members, although many of those were placed in the undersea catacombs even further beneath the ocean floor. Orca would be placed there, and Torrent may even end up there eventually. He remembered Orca telling him how many of the queens were buried with enchanted items, and Torrent’s claws went to the amethyst on his dagger. It was cold.Torrent tried to put Orca out of his mind again, focusing on the task at hand. He needed to get out of the MudWing city if he didn’t want to be taken back to the Sea Kingdom, which he didn’t. Orca was dead. There was nothing left there for him anymore.
Mallard and Torrent passed through the room of tapestries without any incident. After a few more turns, they reached Mallard’s room, positioned below the rest of the palace. She opened the doors and brought Torrent in. At least to him, it looked like a dead end. How did Mallard expect him to get out from here? Unless . . . it was some sort of trap?
“Now,” Mallard explained to the unnerved Torrent, “this room was an unused dungeon before I turned it into the great library it is today.” Torrent gulped a little, even though he had figured the possibility. “But, one of the prisoners in here, long ago, decided to make this little beauty.”
Mallard grabbed one of the scrollshelves and pulled it away from the wall with ease. A small room was positioned behind the shelf, with a few scrolls scattered around that Mallard had apparently wanted hidden. A dark tunnel at the end of the room led beyond it. “Apparently he got free, and was never found again.” Mallard smiled. “So I can only assume that it leads out of the city.”
Torrent gulped, his heart pulsing. Either it lead out of the city, or the MudWing’s bones could still be down there. “Are you telling me you’ve never been in it?”
Mallard foolishly grinned. “I’ve been down it a little ways, but never the entire thing. No nightvision for MudWings, unfortunately, so you’ll have to lead. You might be a big dragonet, but you should still fit.”
Torrent took a deep breath and tucked his wings in. He stepped into the cramped tunnel. He hated the feeling of the earth closing in on him; SeaWings were supposed to live in the large, open sea, not in some underground tunnel made by an escaped convict. “Is this safe?” he asked.
“Probably,” Mallard replied, not making Torrent any less anxious. “Well, hurry up, we haven’t got all night, you know.”
Torrent tried to steady his heartbeat. If a MudWing prisoner could do this, then so could a SeaWing prince. “We?” he asked.
Mallard snorted. “Of course! You think I’m just going to let you have all the fun? I’m not wasting this chance, how often do you think I get dragons with nightvision down here?”
Fun, Torrent thought. This is just fun. That’s all this is, fun.
----
Fortunately for the two, Mallard was correct: the tunnel wasn’t collapsed somehow, and led all the way out of the city. As the dawn light finally hit his eyes. Torrent breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing better than not being in an awful tunnel like that. Except for Orca being alive, a small voice told Torrent in the back of his mind. Don’t think about her, don’t think about her, Torrent told himself, pushing the thoughts away.
Torrent stepped into the muddy water of the swamp, his claws uncomfortably sinking down into the mud below with a squelch. He glanced behind him. Sure enough, the walled city which surrounded Queen Moorhen’s palace was there. He thought he could see the guest room where he had stayed at. Torrent quickly ducked beneath the swamp’s trees, hoping to prevent any MudWings overhead from freeing him. Mallard followed a little behind him, the MudWing comfortably splashing through the swamp. A wave of dirty water hit the SeaWing in the side. Torrent tried to brush it off, but the mud sticking to his claws only made things worse.
“Well,” Mallard said, looking back at the city, “I guess this is where we part.”
Torrent looked at her, concerned. He wasn’t really sure he wanted her to go already; he could use someone to travel with, to wherever he was going next. He was also a bit worried about what Moorhen would do if she discovered the librarian had helped him escape. “Are you sure you don’t want to join me?” Torrent asked. “It could be dangerous back at the palace; Queen Moorhen won’t like that you snuck me out of the palace.”
Mallard smiled. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got other things to do. Scrolls to tend to and all. And don’t worry about me, if Queen Moorhen asked where I was, I can make something up on the fly. I’ll be fine.”
Torrent wasn’t sure that Mallard’s confidence was fully warranted, but he didn’t press her further. “Alright,” he said, “thank you for everything.”
The librarian grinned. “It’s nothing. Just come and visit me if you ever come by the palace again, promise?”
Torrent nodded. He was a bit sad that he had to part with Mallard here; he hadn’t really gotten to know her as much as he would’ve liked, but hopefully he would see her again. He waved his claws goodbye, and started to walk off. Mallard went in the other direction, back towards the palace.
Before Mallard took off to fly back to the palace, she looked back at Torrent. “Oh!” she warned Torrent. “Try and avoid the swamps to the north, there’ve been a bunch of missing dragons around there lately! Stay safe!”
“You too!” Torrent called back before Mallard took off. He pulled out his map of animus dragons. Sure enough, there was a small blotch to the north of the palace. He clutched his dagger. Apparently it made it so that animus magic couldn’t harm him. If there was an animus north of the palace causing these disappearances, it might be worthwhile for Torrent to check the area out. It wasn’t as if he had anywhere else to go.
==Chapter 23==
The smells and sounds of a bustling marketplace wafted through the air, engulfing Crystal. She kept her head down, trying to make herself look as small as possible. This was no place for an IceWing; it was nothing like the placid serenity of the frozen tundra, with only the vaguest scents of a polar bear cub that had passed a week ago. A SandWing bumped into Crystal, pushing the dragonet out of his way with a hiss. Crystal shuddered as his deadly barb trailed past her, only inches from her nose.
“Have a barb wound you need healed? Brightsting Cactus at low prices!” a SkyWing vendor called out, seemingly directing his shouting towards her. Crystal placed a claw on the side of her snout, just to make certain she hadn’t been scratched accidentally. She didn’t have any spare change, and a scratch would be fatal if left untreated.
Crystal took a peek at the area around her. The town was primarily filled with SandWings, but a number of SkyWings were scattered around. She’d seen and talked to SandWings before, when she’d gone to the southern border with Boreal for the mining operation, but she’d only seen SkyWings in the aftermath of battles. They were allied with Burn, and the IceWings were in an alliance with Blaze. A few of the large-winged dragons gave her quick glares or frowned, but fortunately, most of them just seemed to ignore her.
Crystal quickly made her way through the town, carefully avoiding being caught by the deadly tail barbs. A blue-shingled roof, she wondered. Where could that be? So far, Crystal had no luck in finding the house, and she didn’t know how much longer she had until night fell. She didn’t particularly want to find out what kind of dragons were around after dark.
“You lost?” a voice suddenly asked from behind Crystal. She jumped up in surprise to see a young SandWing with golden-brown scales behind her. He had a small stick resting in his claws, with a thoroughly charred lizard impaled on it. A few of its legs appeared to have been torn off, presumably by the SandWing.
“I’m fine,” Crystal warily replied. She glanced around quickly, and clutched her small satchel. Was this dragonet trying to rob her?
The SandWing looked at her curiously, examining the satchel she had moved a claw to. “I don’t mean harm,” he replied, snorting in laughter. “Just don’t see many IceWings here. Too hot maybe. Where you going?”
“Nowhere,” Crystal muttered. She didn’t want to take any chances here, even if this dragonet seemed harmless enough. She was exposed enough as is, and didn’t know if news from Glacier’s Palace had reached here yet. She doubted it, but Glacier would have a large bounty on her head by now.
The dragonet fluttered his wings, keeping them folded in so not to brush up against the rest of the bustling crowd. “Suit yourself,” he said, tearing off another leg of his lizard-ka-bob, “but you IceWings can’t see in the dark, can you? Dontcha all use magical snowballs or something?”
Crystal was confused for a second, then realized what he was talking about. “Moon globes,” she corrected. “I don’t have any, if that’s what you want.”
The SandWing made a slight grimace on his face. “Aww, I’ve always wanted to see one. What about that thing around your neck? Is that magical too?”
Crystal suddenly covered the Darkstone on her neck with a claw. She had forgotten to take it off before she had entered the town. “No!” she quickly exclaimed, even knowing it wasn’t completely true.
“Who’d ya’ steal it from?” the SandWing asked, poking his nose a little closer.
“No one,” Crystal hissed, “it’s mine.”
The dragonet snorted again. “You wouldn’t be trying to hide it from me if it was yours. You’d be wearing it out and proud, walking around like no one could touch you. Don’t worry, I’ve stolen stuff too. Gila and his snake-scaled thugs have far more than they’d ever need.” He waved around the lizard on a stick, practically charcoal. “Don’t wear that around after dark though.”
Crystal nodded a little nervously. She really needed to find Avalanche, and quickly.
“So,” the dragonet continued, “you need help finding your way?”
Crystal sighed, conceding. “Fine. What do you get out of helping me?”
The SandWing thought for a moment. “You tell me about the Ice Kingdom. It sounds nice, with palaces everywhere and enough food for everyone.”
Crystal rolled her eyes. The Ice Kingdom had its own troubles, and it certainly wasn’t as idyllic as the SandWing thought it was. “Alright, I don’t really a choice, I suppose. I’m looking for a house with a blue-shingled roof. Ever seen it?”
The SandWing nodded. “Yeah, there’s a SkyWing who lives there. She likes yelling at dragonets as we walk past. You want to see her? Most dragons try to stay away.”
Crystal grimaced. Avalanche didn’t sound like a dragon Crystal particularly wanted to meet, but it wasn’t as if she had other options. Clarity said Avalanche was a friend, and her sister’s word was good enough for her.
Crystal nodded. “Yes,” she replied, “take me there.”
----
The sun was starting to dip just below the horizon by the time Crystal and her new SandWing friend had reached Avalanche’s house. It had turned out that Crystal had been in the wrong town altogether, but it was an easy mistake to make, since the two towns were close enough these days most of the dragons didn’t distinguish between the two. Crystal had been searching in the western town, and she’d needed to cross the Great Five-Tail River to the SkyWing side, where the blue-shingled house would presumably be.
On first glance, Avalanche’s house very much stood out. It didn’t really seem like someplace for a rebel group to have a hidden base. The colorful roof not included, the architecture was clearly different from any of the houses around. While the SkyWing-built houses tended to use a grey stone and sharp triangular roofs, and the SandWings used open arches and flat roofs, Avalanche lived in what was practically a giant barn, with a blunt roof. It stood out in the city (cities?) like a toucan who’d accidentally wandered into Queen Glacier’s palace, which had never happened, and of course never would, since toucans couldn’t survive that far north.
Crystal walked forward towards the door. She turned around, realizing the SandWing hadn’t walked up to the doorsteps with her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Can’t go with you. SkyWing said she’d knock my teeth out if I came here again.”
“Oh,” Crystal responded, frowning. She was somewhat hoping she wouldn’t have to face Avalanche herself. “Alright, see you soon.”The SandWing shook his head a little grimly. “Sorry, gotta go now. My little sis is waiting. But nice meeting ya! Good luck with your angry SkyWing!” He waved a claw, still holding the stick, now charred lizard-less, and promptly walked off.
“Goodbye!” Crystal called after him. She sighed. She had almost wanted him to go with her. He had seemed pretty nice, but she guessed he had other things to attend to, this sister for example. It wasn’t like she could just expect him to fly off with her into the Sky Kingdom. Yet, this way was safer anyways. Going alone, she wouldn’t have to risk being betrayed, or someone else wanting the Darkstone for themselves.
Crystal knocked on the door to the blue-shingled house. She just realized that she hadn’t ever asked the SandWing his name. If she ever came here again, she wouldn’t know how to find him.
The door opened, and a flaming red SkyWing looked out at Crystal. “I SAID I’D KNOCK OUT ALL YOUR TEETH IF YOU DRAGONETS CAME BACK AGAIN!” she yelled. Crystal smelt Avalanche’s sulfurous breath and almost gagged. She backed up a step.
“Er, I’m Crystal,” she calmly explained. “Clarity’s sister? She said you were a friend.”
Avalanche let out a low growl. “Clarity?” she sneered. “She’s still alive? I haven’t gotten any word from her in almost a year, I’d figured Glacier had offed her by now.”
Were all of Clarity’s friends like this? Crystal snorted. “She’s still very much alive.”
Avalanche gave Crystal a long stare, scanning her up and down. “And you say you’re her sister? How do I know that’s true? Glacier could’ve tortured her for my location and sent you here to kill me.”
Crystal laughed. “If I’m the best Glacier’s got to kill you, then this war would’ve been over long ago.”
“You humble yourself,” Avalanche smirked, surprising Crystal with her sudden change of mood. “If you’re anything like your sister, you could choke Burn with her own tail. Now get your wings in here before you attract more attention than you already have. I’m keeping a low profile.”
That was a minor exaggeration, but Crystal took the compliment; Avalanche didn’t seem like she would give out many more. In all honesty, Clarity had always been the far better fighter. Crystal had only made it to the Second Circle through her apprenticeship with her father, Boreal, and even then wasn’t very far from the top of the Third. At least until Crystal had killed him, Boreal was Queen Glacier’s favorite member of her council. Still, Crystal deeply regretted his death. He was a kind dragon, and not an awful father (which was saying a lot in the Ice Kingdom), but he hadn’t cared what Glacier’s ultimate plans for the Darkstone were. If there had been any other way, Crystal would’ve gone with that route, but she knew that if Boreal had lived, the mining operation would just continue, and all of this would be for nothing.
Crystal stepped into the blue-shingled house. It was just as tacky on the inside as it was on the outside. Series of objects and trash cluttered around it haphazardly, and charcoal was scattered around the fireplace. After checking to make sure no one was watching, Avalanche shut the door behind Crystal.
“So, how did you meet my sister?” Crystal asked the SkyWing. Clarity had been out of the Ice Kingdom a few times, to Crystal’s knowledge, but she didn’t know much else.
“Fracture, of course,” Avalanche arrogantly replied. “You know him?”
Crystal nodded. She’d seen him a number of times before she had left the Ice Kingdom.
Avalanche snorted. “He’s a nutcase, with his ‘visions’ and all, but he sure has connections. Got all five of us together somehow. Me, Clarity, Nautilus, and Trustbreaker. Not quite sure how he really found us all, but it was quite an accomplishment. He still wooing Clarity?”
Crystal shook her head. “No, they’re mates now.”
The SkyWing laughed. “Really? Did they have one of your cute IceWing rituals?”
Crystal had to think for a moment before realizing what Avalanche meant. “Marriage? Do you not have those?”
Avalanche sneered. “‘Course not, it’s stupid and frivolous.”
Crystal frowned a little. If anything was stupid, it was the SkyWings’ weird breeding program thing. Did they just not like romance or something like that? Weird.
“So, why did Clarity finally send word? Did she just finally feel like alerting me that she wasn’t quite dead yet?” Avalanche continued.
The young IceWing shook her head. “I need help getting far away from the Ice Kingdom, and as soon as possible. Clarity said you’d help me through the Sky Kingdom.”
The crimson SkyWing rolled her eyes. “Did she, now? That’s nice of her, just giving me her little sister to take care of after completely cutting off contact for an entire year. You have a map?”
Crystal handed her map over. This SkyWing was starting to get tiring; she could see why Clarity didn’t talk to her often. Avalanche tore it from the IceWing’s claws and opened it. She grabbed a small piece of charcoal lying near her fireplace, and started drawing on the map with it. In a few seconds, she was done.
Avalanche gave Crystal her map back. “There,” she hissed. “Just follow that line, and you’ll be good. Now go.”
Crystal looked at the map and frowned. There was a long black line on it, leading in curves across the Sky Kingdom to the eastern edge. “I didn’t come all this way to get a line drawn on a map,” she growled.
The large SkyWing gritted her teeth. “You’re an ungrateful dragonet, you know that? That’s the best you’ll get: a path through the Sky Kingdom that avoids every dragon in the eastern half of Pyrrhia. I’m not going with you, if that’s what you’re asking. I have better things to do here.”
“Fine,” Crystal hissed back. “I’ll go by myself. Where does it lead?”
“A friend of mine and your sister lives there, along with a bunch of other dragons he’s gathered. He’s a blindingly green SeaWing; you can’t miss him.”
You’re one to complain about blinding scale colors, Crystal thought. She glanced out the window. It was dusk, and she didn’t particularly want to go out into the town at night after the SandWing’s warning. She sighed. “If you’re not going with me, can I at least stay here for the night?”
Avalanche grinned, as she was pleased seeing the IceWing dragonet at her mercy. “Fine, but no longer than dawn. After that, come back and I’ll knock your teeth out.”
Crystal agreed to Avalanche’s terms. She didn’t want to come back here anyways, ever again.
==Chapter 24==
Torrent trudged through the MudWing swamps, one step at a time. If the map was correct, it wouldn’t take very long to reach the animus by flight, but Torrent wanted to make sure he wasn’t seen by any of the MudWings in the city. He would walk a little further before taking off.
The young SeaWing despised the swampy ground. While he was no stranger to water, the squishing mud seemed to get between his webbed claws, and it wouldn’t shake off easily. He kept stubbing his claws or tripping on the tree roots beneath him and it was wearing him out easily. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have much further to go.
It took another hour or two of pushing through the dense swamp before Torrent finally felt like he was far enough away from the city to take flight. He spread his vivid blue wings, clearly contrasting with the greens and browns of the swamp, and took flight within a small clearing. There might’ve been a river here for him to swim in, but this would be faster, and Torrent didn’t want to get even more mud and grime on him than he already had.
He glanced back towards where the city would be, thinking about Mallard. Hopefully she would be alright. He was still worried about whether Queen Moorhen would find out of her helping Torrent out of the passage. What Mallard did struck him as a little strange; she had risked her life for a dragon she had barely known and was willing to betray her queen. Did all dragons show such little loyalty to the royal families? It certainly didn’t seem so, at least in the Sea Kingdom. All the dragons obeyed the royal family’s direct orders, even to an obnoxious degree. They clearly feared Queen Coral, and what she would do. Was Queen Moorhen just not like that? Did her subjects not fear her? Or was it something different, maybe MudWings just didn’t have that kind of obedience to their queen. At least from what Torrent had read, MudWing loyalty was usually directed towards their siblings; that could be the difference. Yet, Torrent hadn’t seen any of Mallard’s siblings around, what had happened to them? Did they die somehow?
The thought of dead siblings turned Torrent to his own three, Orca in particular. He recalled something he had learnt from his schooling with Whirlpool about SkyWings and their funerals, at least before Queen Scarlet had banned the practice. After a dragon had died, the local community would create a pyre at the top of a mountain peak, and place the body there. The SkyWing’s closest friends would then light the body aflame, and leave the pyre until it completely burnt. Apparently it was said that the burning of the body would let the SkyWing’s spirit free, and the spirit would follow the smoke from the pyre to wherever spirits go.
It was clearly different from what they did with their animus dragonets: after binding their mouths shut, they enclosed the dragonets, still living, within stone boxes and dropped them into the sea to drown. Supposedly animus dragons were evil spirits or something that had come back to seek revenge the living, and killing them that way would prevent their spirits from returning again. The tyrannical Scarlet hadn’t banned that practice, apparently even she didn’t want any animuses around.
As Torrent continued flying, he suddenly heard something. Were those . . . wingbeats? They didn’t seem loud enough for a dragon.
“Wait!” a familiar voice called out.
Torrent turned around, surprised at who he saw, flying not too far behind him. “Griffin?” he asked, slightly frowning. “What are you doing here?”
The small gryphon flapped his feathery wings, quickly catching up to the SeaWing and slowing down for him. “Looking for you, of course,” he snorted indignantly, slightly out of breath
Torrent smiled a little. Maybe he wasn’t going to have to do this all alone. If he wasn’t busy flying, he would’ve hugged Griffin.
“Well?” Griffin asked, frowning. “This is your second chance. Are you going to apologize?” He was clearly still a bit ticked off about how they had last parted.
Torrent nodded, and tears almost started to form in the wells of his eyes. “I’m really, really sorry about being so rude and telling you to go away and all that. I took you for granted, but you’re my best friend, and I’m really sorry.”
Griffin frown turned into a smile. “Good!” he said. “You should be! That was uncalled for, and I’m glad you’re sorry.”
Torrent didn’t particularly like Griffin’s righteousness and rudeness in his response, but he would tolerate it for his friend. He had been rude.
“Now that I’ve found you,” Griffin continued, “let’s get home and say hello our new queen!” He started to fly to the east, back towards the Sea Kingdom.
He doesn’t know? Torrent wondered. “Griffin, Orca lost her challenge,” he bluntly stumbled. “She’s dead.”
“Oh,” Griffin said. His smile suddenly faded. “Like, forever dead?”
“Yes,” Torrent hissed exasperatedly. “The only kind of dead.”
Griffin looked around uncomfortably. “I’m . . . sorry, I guess.”
“You guess?” Torrent asked. He didn’t really like the sound of that.
Griffin twitched his feathers uncomfortably. “You did say it would be pretty bad if she was queen, right? Do you still believe that?”
Do I? Torrent wondered. “I mean, it would’ve been really bad if she was queen, but I still didn’t want her dead!”
“You didn’t?” Griffin asked, confused. “But wouldn’t it have been better for her to be dead and not queen than alive and queen?”
Torrent grimaced. Did Griffin just not get it? “No, I don’t want her dead at all!” he yelled. “She should be alive and here with us!”
Griffin just stared at Torrent with a puzzled expression across his beak.
Torrent sighed. “Look, I didn’t mean to sound angry. I’m not. I just wish she hadn’t had animus powers in the first place, and we could all be happy.” He suddenly recalled how Griffin had originally come into being. “No, no I didn’t mean that. Not in that way. Ugh, I’m only making things worse, aren’t I.”
A hurt expression appeared on the young gryphon for a second, but it quickly turned into a grin and an eye-roll. “Yeah, I can tell. Is your awkwardness a new thing, or had I just not noticed it before?”
“Probably the latter,” Torrent quietly replied, with a hint of a smile across his snout.
“Alright. Now, since I don’t particularly want to be locked in Orca’s underwater dungeon corridor for the rest of my life, and you don’t seem to be heading in that direction, what’s your plan?”
“Well, Mallard told me about some dragons mysteriously disappearing to the north, and Orca’s old magical map thing said there was an animus there, so I decided I might as well go investigate.”
Griffin eyed Torrent suspiciously. “More magical drama already? And who’s this Mallard?”
“She’s the librarian Orca and I met her at the Summer Palace.”
“Oh, that Mallard,” Griffin replied, “the one that Orca complained about how boring she was.”
“Yeah, that one,” Torrent replied uncomfortably. “By the way, how did you find me?” Griffin seemed a bit different. He had this weird air of self-confidence radiating off his feathers. 
“Oh, some cool IceWing I met said he’d seen you here,” Griffin replied. “Get it? Cool? Cause he was an IceWing?”
Torrent nodded. What would an IceWing be doing all the way down here? he wondered. “Yeah, haha,” he replied.
“Finally, a laugh. A sarcastic one, but at least you’re showing a little bit of humor.”
A glimpse of a smile crossed Torrent’s snout before he hid it again. It felt so wrong to be smiling, should he be sad? That’s what dragons did when their sisters died, be sad and sulk all the time until things got better? I should be sadder than this, shouldn’t I? “Wasn’t he surprised at seeing you’re, you know — ”
“A gryphon?” Griffin asked. “Nah, he was pretty chill about it.” He chuckled at his own pun again. “Seriously, he was just like ‘Yo, you’re gryphon, right?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I am,’ and he was like ‘That’s cool, I haven’t seen many gryphons before,’ and we totally bonded. It was nice.”
Torrent nodded. He somewhat doubted the exchange was exactly like that, but he supposed it was possible. Or at least not impossible, though strange.
“So, we’re going to find this animus now, right?” Griffin asked. “Full ahead!”
Griffin sped up, boosting ahead of Torrent faster than any dragon could fly. He turned around and called back to Torrent, “Come on! You’re swimming slower than a sea cucumber!”
Torrent smiled. He was glad to see Griffin again, and happy as ever. The two flew further again, far into the great expanse of the MudWing swamps.
==Chapter 25==
The two continued flying over the MudWings swamps for some time, until they finally reached their destination, north of the MudWing Palace.
“There!” Torrent said, pointing a claw at the ground below. There was a large clearing in the woods, where a series of abodes stood, centered around a strange stone tower, intricately carved. A couple of MudWings could be seen walking around from above; Torrent hoped that they wouldn’t notice him or Griffin flying.
The village looked like the right place. Although the map didn’t show Torrent’s location, he thought that this should be around where the blotch representing the animus was. The large tower also looked highly suspect; a mysterious tower seemed like someplace a magical animus would live.
Griffin glanced at Torrent skeptically, but followed him as the SeaWing dove towards the ground. “So, what’s your plan on dealing with this dragon? Are you just going to barge in there and give them a heads up, like, ‘just letting you know but I know you’ve got magical powers and I’ve got a magical dagger thingy, so don’t do anything bad?’”
Torrent thought for a moment. “Mallard said that apparently there have been dragons going missing around here, so I don’t know if the animus will be that friendly. You don’t have any anti-magical things unless you’re touching my dagger, so you should be cautious.”
Griffin snorted. “Yeah, no way am I going near that death weapon; I can guess what happens to me if I’m disenchanted. Guess I’ll just have to fend for myself.”
A grin crossed over Torrent’s snout. Torrent had grown a lot since Griffin’s creation, and at this point, Griffin reached barely above Torrent’s underbelly. If he was in a fight with a full-grown dragon, he would undoubtedly be outmatched.
“What?” Griffin squawked, noticing Torrent’s grin. “You think I can’t fight off anything that comes my way?” He puffed out the feathers on his neck and raise his head up. “I’ll just peck out their eyes or something!”
“Sure didn’t seem like that when River caught you,” Torrent replied, without thinking. Torrent instantly regretted what he’d said. What if that was a sore spot for Griffin? Torrent really didn’t want to even think about what Orca had done to their sister. The SeaWing shivered as he remembered River’s severed head slowly sinking to the ground beneath them. She might have been an annoying brat, but she didn’t deserve that.
Griffin didn’t seem to have taken Torrent’s comment personally, but then again, Torrent really had no idea what was going inside in his friend’s feathery head. Did gryphons think or show their emotions different than dragons? Did Griffin even count as a gryphon, being created by magic? Did Griffin even experience feelings? Torrent sure thought he did, he had shown most of the usual ones, but maybe it was just the magic working through him, making the stone statue at his core react and respond to what happened in the outside world. Torrent tried not to think about that too much; he didn’t have any good answers, and didn’t want to think of his friend as being some soulless automaton.
“So, where do you think this animus is?” Griffin asked, as the two started to get closer to the ground below. “I don’t see anyone or anything down there.”
Torrent frowned. “What do you mean? There’s a whole village down there, I can see MudWings all running around and such!”
“You sure you just haven’t been looking at the swamp for too long?” Griffin asked. “Because I’m pretty sure trees and murky water is all that’s down there.”
Torrent thought for a moment, and glanced again at the village. No, he was sure that there was something down there. He touched the amethyst on his dagger and pointed the steel towards the village. He moved the weapon back and forth a bit, so that his map and Griffin’s enchantment wouldn’t interfere. “There’s definitely an animus down there,” he said. “I can feel it.” Torrent came to a sudden realization. “An animus! That’s it, there must be some magic down there which hides the village from outsiders, and I can see it because the enchantments don’t affect me!”
Torrent flew closer to Griffin and held out the dagger for the gryphon to take. “Here, you can use t—” 
“GET THAT AWAY FROM ME!” Griffin sqwaked, rushing away as soon as he saw what Torrent was doing. “DO YOU WANT TO KILL ME OR SOMETHING?”
Torrent pulled the dagger away in shame. “I think there’s some clause on the enchantment which keeps it from blocking magic I’m fine with,” he muttered. “It’s probably safe.”
“I don’t want to take any chances,” Griffin hissed, glaring at the dagger, then Torrent.
The two reached the edge of the swamp clearing, and landed. Torrent shook squeamishly as his claws sunk within the soft, damp soil. Griffin frowned, still a little irritated over what had happened earlier with the dagger. Hopefully he would forgive Torrent soon.
They walked a little further into the clearing, and Griffin looked up in surprise. “Oh, you’re right,” he observed, slightly surprised, “I can see the village now.”
He turned around and attempted to walk back out of the clearing, evidently wanting to see if he would be unable to see the village again. Suddenly, his beak rammed up against something invisible, and he squawked in surprise. Griffin tried to dig his claws into the mud and move out of the clearing again, but to no avail. His talons only dug through the soft soil, pushing it away.
“It’s an invisible wall,” Torrent said, frowning. “But it keeps things from exiting the area, not entering. Weird. I can get rid of it, if you want.” As if to test, Torrent waved a claw through the area where the wall would be, passing right through it.
Griffin thought for a moment, then shook his feathered head. “Nah, we’ll have plenty of time to get rid of it later. Who knows what purpose it has, maybe it’s keeping something in.” He glanced towards the stone tower in the middle of the village with a gulp. From down below, it looked more like some sort of extravagant temple. “I think we know what happened to those missing MudWings though; I’ll bet they came in here and couldn’t get out again.”
Torrent nodded. That sounded about right. Suddenly, Torrent noticed something in the village. Two MudWings were quickly running towards them. “Hide,” Torrent whispered to Griffin.
“Where?” Griffin asked, snorting. “All the trees are illusory, remember?” Griffin looked out at the two MudWings. “Hello!” he called in a friendly manner. “We come in peace!”
The two MudWings stopped when they reached Torrent and Griffin, looking like they were in some hurry. One of them looked to be around the same age as Torrent, but a little smaller. She had dull grey-brown scales covering most of her body, and a cream underbelly. Her body was similar to the average MudWing, stockier than the other tribes and with a squarish head. A determined grimace rested on her face, and she looked very impatient.
The second loomed over her, and even Torrent. His scales and wings were a dark brown the color of ebony; he didn’t look that old, but pure strength radiated from his very being. A grim glare rested on his snout, as if he was permanently displeased with everyone and everything around him. He looked down at Torrent, then at Griffin, as if he was a father disappointed in his dragonets.
“Come with us,” the smaller one hissed, “now.” She glanced behind them, as if checking to make sure no one was following her and her friend. No one else had appeared to notice the strange SeaWing and gryphon.
Torrent shifted into a defensive position, evidently not liking being ordered around by this strange and possibly hostile MudWing. “What do you mean?” he snapped.
The smaller MudWing seethed. “You and your . . . thing are in danger. We want to help you. If you don’t come with us, you could be killed, or worse.”
“If you’re talking about the animus,” Torrent replied, “I’ve got ways of dea — ”
“Yep, right away!” Griffin interrupted. He exchanged a glance with Torrent and pointed a talon at himself. Torrent suddenly recalled that Griffin, unlike him, would not be immune to any animus magic. Torrent might not be in danger, but Griffin could be.
“Great,” the smaller MudWing muttered. “This way, quickly and quietly.” She motioned the two with a claw, and walked towards the village. Griffin quickly followed, then Torrent after him. The larger MudWing trudged after both followed.
The village’s mudhuts and houses were blocking the sight of the MudWings inside, fortunately, so none of them saw the four skirting along the edge of the village. They trudged through the swampy mud until they reached a small house. The younger MudWing ushered the three inside, glancing around of the entryway to make sure no one was spying on them. The house was somewhat barren on the inside; it looked almost unused. The larger MudWing walked to the center of the room, and dug his claws into the wooden floor. He pulled up a hunk of the floorboard, which cleanly came off, revealing a short staircase beneath. Torrent heard other dragons murmuring.
The younger MudWing went down the staircase, with the other three following, and the older MudWing moving the floorboards back. It got dark, and Torrent’s eyes slowly adjusted to the light, his nightvision activating. A small lantern stood in the middle of the secret cellar, surrounded by five densely packed MudWings.
One of the MudWings appeared to be severely injured, and was wrapped in cloth bandages. She appeared to be asleep. Another was a young dragonet, looking at Torrent and Griffin nervously. The other three stared blankly at the two.
“Glen, what is this?” one of the MudWings hissed. “Why did you bring this dragon and this . . . bird into here? Do you know what would happen to us if Adobe saw you enter?”
“He didn’t, I made sure no one was looking,” the younger MudWing, evidently Glen, snapped back.
“What if he used his magic to spy on you? What then?”
“If he’s using his magic to spy on us now, we’re as good as dead anyways. But I doubt it, we’re clearly not a threat as long as we stay silent.”
Glen turned to the other MudWings in the group and raised her head proudly. “This SeaWing and this, um, bird thingy, entered the sphere today, and left again. They can get in and out.”
There were a couple murmurs of surprise from the other MudWings. “Are you sure you saw that?” the same MudWing who had spoken up earlier asked. “The sphere is invisible, you know, you could’ve judged wrong.”
Glen shook her head. “No, the bird thing was trying to get out of the sphere, but it couldn’t, then the SeaWing waved his claws through sphere, unaffected.”
“Oh,” the MudWing replied sarcastically, “so only the SeaWing can get out of the sphere. Now, how does this help us exactly? Adobe’s enchantment only works on MudWings?”
Glen let out a small growl in frustration. “If he can exit the sphere, it means that we can send a message. We can ask Queen Moorhen for help, or Grizzly can tell his sibs where he is, or anything at all.”
The MudWing snorted. “And what can Queen Moorhen’s armies do against Adobe? They’ll all just get trapped in here with us.”
Torrent, by now, was fed up with these MudWings bickering about him like he wasn’t even listening. “Alright!” he exclaimed, irritated. “Tell me what’s going on here!”
The MudWing arguing with Glen looked at her indignantly. “You didn’t even tell him what was happening?”
“I didn’t have time!” Glen protested. “We had to make sure Adobe didn’t see us!”
The other MudWing scoffed. “And he just followed you in here? Do you really think a naïve SeaWing will be any help?” She turned to Torrent. “If Glen is too busy, I’ll tell you what’s going on. It all started years ago, when Queen Moorhen declared her alliance with Princess Blister.”
==Chapter 26==
Audible groans were heard from the other dragons around the room.
“No, Loam, you are not doing this!” Glen said, almost shouting. “I am not listening to another one of your long-winded stories talking about how good-hearted and brave Adobe used to be. We’ve had enough of that!” Mutterings of agreement could be heard from the other dragons around the cellar.
“You lost your chance,” Loam hissed, twitching her tail, her scales scratching against the ground. “If you wanted to tell him what was going on, yous should’ve told him earlier.”
“Yeah, no,” Glen replied with a small snort. “There’s no way you’re telling him. Petrol is a better storyteller than you are.”
The dragonet in the back raised his head, grinning widely. “I am!” he spoke up. “See, back before the wa—”
“No,” Glen ordered, cutting the dragonet off. “Your stories are just as long as Loam’s. I’m making this quick.” She turned to Torrent and Griffin, who stared expectantly at her. “Right after the war began, and Queen Moorhen started drafting for the armies, a number of MudWings decided that they didn’t want to join the war.”“So you’re all draft-dodgers?” Griffin asked non-judgmentally, peering around at the other MudWings in the small cellar.
Glen shook her head. “No, out of our little group here, only Beaver and Loam were part of the original settlers. The rest of us either got trapped in the village in the years after, or were born in the village, like Petrol and I. Now, continuing the story,” she said snarkily, “this group of maybe a hundred dragons or so soon realized that just running away wouldn’t work too well; someone would find a hundred missing dragons eventually. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, one of the MudWings in their group was Adobe.” Glen hissed the name out like it was grimy swampwater. “Do you know what animus dragons are?”
Torrent and Griffin nodded, they knew all too well.
“Apparently, he’s an animus, so he has some weird magical powers,” Glen continued. “His sibs had all died in a mysterious accident, which sounds pretty suspicious to me, and he just decided to help the group out with his magic.”
One of the dragons in the back spoke up. “He had good intentions when he made the village. He just wanted to help a few MudWings avoid the horrors of war.”
“Shut up, Beaver,” Glen hissed angrily, her claws scratching into the floor. Beaver decided not to press further.
“Now,” Glen resumed, “our ‘friendly’ animus decided that he’d use his magic to create a village for the dragons, and make it completely invisible to the outside.”
This entire thing was made with animus magic? Torrent thought. He moved a clawpad to the amethyst on his dagger. He didn’t even need to touch it to feel the warmth radiating off it. Most of the village around them was built with magic. If Albatross lost it after creating just the Summer Palace with magic, how much of his soul has Adobe lost?
Griffin exchanged a glance with Torrent. It was clear he also understood the implications of what Adobe had done.
Glen continued her story. “Now, for a couple of years after that, things were peaceful. Adobe used his powers only occasionally, mostly for small and frivolous things. It was only after he decided to make the temple did he finally show his true colors.”
“The big stone thing in the middle of the village, is that the temple?” Torrent asked.
“Yes,” Glen muttered. “That ugly thing. He used his magic to create it and the prisons beneath, and decided that the settlers here weren’t grateful enough to him for creating their city. He started demanding that we worship him like some god, and would bestow ‘blessings’ on those who were the most devout. A few even bought into it. Most of the dragons tolerated this for a while, but thenAdobe decided to kill one of the dragons who refused to worship him after they got into an argument. A lot of the dragons started leaving after that, realizing that fighting in the war might be better than having a power-hungry animus in charge. I wish we had joined them when we could. After realizing that dragons were starting to leave, Adobe decided to make a new enchantment around the village: no one except for Adobe could exit it.
“Before that, when we had MudWing outsiders occasionally enter the village accidentally, we’d offer them a choice to either stay in the village, or Adobe would wipe the village from their memories and set them free, not ever knowing they had stumbled in here. After Adobe created the sphere, as we came to call it, they were no longer offered those options. They could no longer leave. Some of these dragons came with their sibs, but others, like Grizzly here, were separated with no means of telling them where he had gotten to. A few dragons asked Adobe to consider letting them leave, but he refused.
“Eventually, one of us decided we had had enough.” Glen grimaced slightly. “My older brother and bigwings, Quake. He led a bunch of us into the temple, myself included of course, and in front of the entire village, told Adobe he wasn’t divine and needed to release the dragons from the village. It was this whole inspiring speech and everything, talking about how if Adobe wanted to lead the city rightfully, he needed to listen to the concerns of those he was leading over.
“Adobe of course, didn’t take being told in front of the entire city that he was some mere mortal very well.” Glen breaths got heavy, and she bristled in anger. “He killed Quake in front of the entire city with his magic, and claimed that he’d do the same for any other dragon who questioned or disobeyed him. And here we are now.”
There was a small pause as the other dragons uncomfortably held their tongues. Glen interrupted it, and glanced at Torrent and Griffin. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Our turn?” Torrent asked, frowning. “What do you mean?”
Glen rolled her eyes. “To tell us how you got in and out of the sphere. Three moons, you’re traveling with a talking gryphon, you can’t just expect to not explain that.”
Torrent grimaced a little. He wanted to help these MudWings, but didn’t really want to explain all that had happened. He turned to Griffin, hoping his friend could explain.Griffin nodded, understanding what Torrent wanted. “For starters,” he explained, “we also knew an animus. That’s how I came about.”
“Oh?” Glen asked. “So were you turned into a gryphon or something?”
“No, no, I’m actually a gryphon, in the flesh. Well, sort of. She enchanted me to life.”
Glen looked surprised that doing something like that was possible. “Go on.”
“So,” he continued, “she was Torrent’s, my SeaWing friend’s, sister. I’m Griffin by the way. Not a gryphon, well, yes a gryphon, but my name is also Griffin because Torrent is somewhat uncreative. Now, Torrent’s sister was really nice, but she used her magic a bit too much and he thinks she might have lost her soul. She was killed in battle.”“Alright. I guess . . . I’m sorry to hear about her death,” Glen replied, her eyes avoiding Griffin and Torrent’s.
“It’s not important,” Torrent grumbled solemnly, keeping his head down. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“So, how was Torrent able to leave the sphere?” Glen asked.
“Well,” Griffin replied, “he has this dagger thing that his sister gave him which lets him remove animus enchantments and make them not affect him, so I think that was it.”
The dark brown MudWing who was with Glen when she found the two suddenly spoke up. “It can remove enchantments?” he asked. “Does that mean it can get rid of the sphere?”
Torrent nodded. “I think it can,” he murmured, “but I haven’t tried doing it before. I don’t know if it actually works or not.”
“It probably does,” Loam spoke up from the background. “I’ve seen Adobe use his magic before, it usually works almost exactly as he speaks the enchantment.”
What would happen if two enchantments conflicted with each other? Torrent wondered. They can’t both work, can they? It didn’t really matter for this though, as far as Torrent knew, his dagger had already worked, and would probably continue to do so.
“We should use it then!” Grizzly said. The large MudWing’s face lit up with a huge grin. “We can be free!”
Glen gave Grizzly a glare. “No, Adobe might come after us, and he might just recreate the sphere to keep the rest of the population inside. We have to settle this permanently.”
Grizzly frowned a little, and his wings sunk.
Glen sighed. “Look, I know you want to see your siblings as soon as possible, but we have a dragon that’s unaffected by Adobe’s magic. We have to take this chance, and end him.”
Loam snorted indignantly. “This isn’t about taking out Adobe, is it? You just want to go rescue your brother first, right?”
“I thought he was dead?” Torrent asked, wondering what was going on. Dragons couldn’t be brought back to life with animus magic, right?
Loam shook her head. “Her other sib, Schist. Adobe placed him in the dungeons beneath the temple a few weeks ago as punishment.”
“If I’m going to go kill Adobe, we’ll have to go to the temple anyways, right? We can just pick him up after,” Torrent replied.
Grizzly still didn’t seem to like the plan, but didn’t speak up.
“Then it’s settled,” Glen said triumphantly. “We’ll go to the temple, Torrent can kill Adobe, and then we’ll free Schist.”
Torrent wasn’t too sure of whether he wanted to kill Adobe or not. Yet, it sounded like it could save a lot of dragons, and Adobe haddone a bunch of bad things. His mother would agree, she occasionally had to kill dragons too, as queen. Wasn’t that what good dragons were supposed to do? Do the right thing, even if it meant killing a bad dragon or two?
“Alright,” Grizzly replied, “but let’s do this as soon as possible.”Glen nodded. “Right before dawn. Grizzly and I are the best fighters, so we’ll go with Torrent to the temple.” Loam scoffed a little at this. “Loam and Beaver will go out into the village and make sure none of Adobe’s followers get in our way. Gravel will stay and look after Petrol and Sediment.”
“Wait, what about Griffin?” Torrent asked.
Glen glanced over at the small gryphon. “What about it? It’s small and would be useless in a fight. It’d just slow us down. ” Griffin let out a small hiss.
“No!” Torrent ordered angrily. “He’s coming with us, no exceptions, or I’m not going. If he wants to, of course.” He glanced over at Griffin. Griffin shrugged his wings and nodded slightly, with a gentle attempt at a smile forming on his beak.
“Fine,” Glen seethed, rolling her eyes upwards. “It can come with us. Just make sure it doesn’t get in the way.”
Torrent gave Glen a cold glare, but she didn’t appear to care, or even notice.
“We’ve got a busy day tomorrow,” Glen warned the others. “Get some sleep, if you can.”
==Chapter 27==
As much as Crystal despised Avalanche, the SkyWing was true to her word. Crystal was able to avoid SkyWing patrols and towns by following the map, even if the journey took her a little longer than she hoped. Eventually, she made it to the east coast, north of the border between the Sky Kingdom and the Mud Kingdom. She had traveled all the way across Pyrrhia, and felt a hint of accomplishment at this feat. It wasn’t something she had ever expected to do in her life.
It didn’t take her much searching up and down the coast before the young IceWing found the town Avalanche had told her about. She gulped and gripped the Darkstone around her neck tensely as she saw wisps of smoke rising in the air. She saw their source below: the charred remains of houses and dragons.
It looked like it had been a couple days since the town had been set aflame, and only a few open fires remained, dying out and clustering around the few remaining fuel sources. Crystal hoped that the dragons who had done this weren’t still around, which seemed pretty likely, considering the lack of movement below. She landed at the ground, and observed her surroundings.
The rancid smell of charred dragon remains filled her nose, making her feel almost nauseous. It wasn’t long before she spotted a casualty: a young SandWing with her scales half-melted off. Crystal looked away and grimaced. This looked like the work of SkyWings, not MudWings. They used their fire freely and destructively like no other tribe. The SkyWing army had gotten to the town before Crystal: fortunate for her, but deadly for the dragons living here.
She passed the remains of a house, with three dragons inside: a SandWing, an IceWing, and a dragonet that looked like it belonged to the two. She turned away, not wanting to see the carnage. She had been fortunate Boreal had taken Crystal on as his apprentice: it meant that she didn’t have to see much of the war, and little of its horrible effects. The only battle she had witnessed was while she was in the northern parts of the Sand Kingdom on a mining operation with Boreal: the infamous Battle of Devil’s Eye and the betrayal of Princess Blackice. She didn’t care to witness that massacre again. She remembered once falling prey to the clamor of excitement and the fervor of war. Of IceWings saying their farewells to their mates and dragonets, proud to be fighting for their queen. After that battle, after she saw IceWings turning on their own SandWing allies in a reckless slaughter, Crystal saw the war for what it truly was.
Crystal moved on through the town, looking for survivors, but the only thing she found was more scorched bodies. Yet, a few of those bodies were clearly those of SkyWing soldiers, laid splayed out on the ground in battle armor. It give her some sick perversion of hope: at least the dragons here didn’t die without fighting back, they took out a few of their attackers first.
She continued on to the center of the town, but still didn’t find any survivors. The SkyWing army was thorough, that enough could be said of them. Suddenly, she noticed a dragon on the ground, a young SeaWing with bright green scales and black spirals across his scales. Crystal walked over to him to get a closer look: he looked like the dragon Avalanche had told her to meet with. Well, it seemed a bit too late for that. The odor of scorched and rotting flesh emanating from the SeaWing was enough to tell her that he was long gone.
Suddenly, Crystal noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye. She whipped around, worried that one of the SkyWing soldiers could’ve returned. She peered around, and saw a small cat jumping into the bushes, a brown tabby with vivid blue eyes. Crystal relaxed her muscles, it was no threat. She had seen cats once or twice while on a mining operation with her father, and thought they were cute, but she obviously couldn’t bring them back up north: they’d freeze to death within days. Apparently some of the other tribes kept them as pets. She wondered if this one was the pet of one of the deceased dragons living here. Was it scared? Sad? Or did it even care? She had no idea what cats thought.
Crystal took one last look at the dead body of the SeaWing and opened her wings, planning to take flight and get out of this wretched place, when she suddenly heard a voice from behind her.
“Excuse me,” it spoke, as if apologizing for interrupting her.
Crystal jumped around in alarm, claws outstretched and ready to use her frostbreath. A NightWing scurried back in alarm, a young male slightly older than Clarity. “I mean you no harm!” he quickly yelled.
Crystal hissed, but backed down. What’s a NightWing doing here? she wondered. She doubted he was in cahoots with the SkyWings. As far as she knew, the NightWings had no alliances with any of the tribes. Had that changed?
The NightWing was around average size for his age, with silvery-black scales covering his body. In the fading sunlight, they all seemed to glow with a slight orange tint, except for a muddled grey one behind each of his eyes. He tried to give Crystal a faint smile, but it was clear it was a facade for sadness. She didn’t blame him if he was a survivor of the SkyWing attack.
“Did you live here?” she asked cautiously, attempting to show a little sympathy.
The NightWing shook his head. The cat which Crystal saw earlier walked out of the bushes, and started rubbing itself against the NightWing’s scales, purring as it did so. “I didn’t live here,” he replied, “but I had a friend who did.” He glanced over at the dead SeaWing on the ground, as if indicating to Crystal who said friend was. “You’re Crystal, right?”
Crystal nodded, frowning. “How did you know my name?” she asked.
“Fracture told me you’d be here,” he replied.
Clarity’s mate? Crystal wondered. Did Avalanche tell Fracture I was coming here? “And you are?” she asked.
“Trustbreaker,” he replied grimly.
Crystal snorted, almost a laugh. “Trustbreaker? You must’ve had awful parents for a name like that.” She thought she recalled Avalanche mentioning a dragon named that.
Trustbreaker shook his head. “It was of my choosing. A penance, if you will.”
“Al-right!” Crystal said with a surprised expression on her face. This NightWing was starting to creep her out a little. “And . . . you’re here to see me because . . .?”
Trustbreaker shook his head again. “No, I came here to pay my respects to my dead friend.”
Crystal thought about it a moment. How had he known the town had been burnt down already? It could’ve only been a day or two, based on the fires still burning. Maybe Fracture stopped by Avalanche’s place, flew directly to the town after it had been attacked, and immediately went to find this NightWing? She supposed it was possible, Fracture was a pretty quick flier the last time she had seen him in the Ice Kingdom.
“Well, I’ll leave you too it,” Crystal replied uncomfortably.
Trustbreaker nodded. “Before you go, Fracture told me to ask you to give something called the Darkstone to me. Do you know what that is?”
Crystal hissed, and wrapped a claw around the Darkstone. “If you want it, you’re going to have to take it,” she growled. “I’m not giving it to some random NightWing I just met, even if he claims to be friends of my brother-in-law.” She sized up the NightWing quickly. He didn’t look like much of a fighter. She could take him on if he attacked. Could Queen Battlewinner somehow have found out about the Darkstone and wanted it for herself? Did she want to destroy the IceWings with it? Crystal wouldn’t let her.
Trustbreaker nodded again, with a sad look in his eyes. “He said you’d probably say that, but he just wanted to make sure. He told me to warn you that keeping it would only cause pain and suffering.”
“No,” Crystal hissed.
The NightWing sighed solemnly. “Okay,” he replied. “That’s all.”
Crystal frowned. Was he just going to give her up like that? If he knew what it did, why would he just let her go? Wouldn’t he want it for his kingdom, or even himself?
Trustbreaker went to the SeaWing’s body, the cat following closely behind. He sat down and started murmuring something too quiet for Crystal to hear. The cat want up to the SeaWing and tore its claws into the some of the body’s melted scales, tearing out bunches of scorched flesh with its teeth.
The young IceWing turned away. She wasn’t really sure where else to go now. She couldn’t go back to the Ice Kingdom. Maybe Avalanche would be willing to help her again. It wasn’t a conversation she was particularly looking forward to, but it was her best bet. She opened her wings and soared west, back towards the SandWing-SkyWing border. She glanced back at the weird NightWing and his cat as she flapped into the air, gaining height, just checking to make sure she wasn’t followed. She wasn’t.
==Chapter 28==
Torrent was awoken by a yell that split his ears.
“GET UP! IF YOU SLEEP ANY LONGER, YOU’LL ALL TURN INTO RAINWINGS!” Glen shouted with a shriek.
Griffin moaned as he turned his feathered head to stare at Torrent with a look of exasperation.
“We’re up,” Loam grumbled, slowly raising her head. “Quiet, or you’ll alert the whole town to our location.”
Adrenaline was pumping through the dragons’ veins as soon as they remembered what task they were planning to set out on, and they were soon awake and ready to leave. After a last minute review of battle plans, Griffin, Torrent, Glen, Grizzly, Loam, and Beaver were out of the small house. Torrent was glad to be out, it was tight and cramped in the hidden cellar, and he was glad to have the open sky above him. It might not have been the vast expanse of the ocean, but it was something.
The sun had not yet broken free of the horizon, and the air was warm and humid, with all the wondrous smells of the swamp mixed in. The town was beneath them, and no dragons were awake yet as far as Torrent could see. The six flew a small way towards the tower before Loam and Beaver broke off, going to make sure the other four weren’t interfered with by outside dragons. The other four flew up to the top of the stone temple in the center of the city. Glen had told them there was an entrance from the roof, so that Adobe could walk out and gaze over his domain.
They landed on the roof, as quietly as possible, so not to alert Adobe to their presence. As soon as Torrent’s paws touched the stone, it crumbled beneath him. He yipped in surprise and lifted back off it, glad he hadn’t fully closed his wings. The stone suddenly reformed itself, pieces of it rising up from the hole Torrent had made. Grizzly stared at it in surprise.
“It’s his dagger,” Griffin pointed out. “You said the whole temple was made using magic, right? It must be preventing the magic from working, causing the temple to turn back into the stone it was enchanted from.”
Torrent nodded, and pulled out his dagger. “How come it didn’t do anything when I was in your house?” he asked Glen.
“The house was made by us, not Adobe,” Glen replied. “Hence the secret cellar. Torrent, get onto Grizzly’s back. He’ll carry you down.”
Torrent complied, and landed on Grizzly, making sure his claws didn’t touch the ground beneath. Grizzly grunted as the SeaWing shifted from side to side, trying not to push down on Grizzly’s fragile wing membranes. After they were settled, Grizzly crawled to a small door on the roof, leading down into the temple. Glen opened it ahead of him.
Torrent squeezed in his wings and limbs, trying to make himself as small as possible, so not to brush against the walls of the stairwell. The four slowly moved down a flight of stairs, Griffin checking ahead of the group for Adobe, or any other dragons. Finally, Griffin waved his talons, indicating that something was there.
“Is that Adobe?” he whispered to Glen.
Glen growled at what she saw through the doorway. A large reddish-brown MudWing lay sprawled across a plush bed, sleeping soundly. She walked through the doorway, when suddenly a high-pitched screech sounded with everywhere around them, the voice of something not quite dragon. Glen covered her ears with the tips of her wings, and the other three did the same. Torrent almost slid of Grizzly when the MudWing did so, but managed to hold on.
After a few moments, the screech stopped. The sleeping MudWing moved himself off the bed, hissing in irritation. “Who dare disturbs me?”
Glen stepped forward, Griffin cautiously entering the room behind her, and Grizzly following while carrying Torrent.
“Glen,” Glen stated, bloodlust in her speech. “You killed my brother, Quake.”
The red MudWing, who Torrent assumed was Adobe, snorted in indignation. “Did I?” he asked. “Or did he kill himself? He knew the consequences for his actions, and faced them. Just like you and your other brother will.”
Glen roared furiously, her blood steaming like a SkyWing with too much fire, but Adobe tsked. “You should know better, Glen,” he continued, “you know why Quake died. I need everyone to obey me for this town to function, and he threatened that.”
“He did not!” Glen protested, fuming.
“He did,” Adobe calmly replied. “Just as you do.” Adobe took a slow look around the room, as if he was appraising his own architectural handiwork.
“GLEN, HERE!” Torrent shouted, realizing what Adobe was about to do. Glen took a step back, and Torrent draped one of his wings over her.
Adobe chuckled at this futile gesture. “Walls, turn into spikes and kill all the dragons in this room other than myself.”
Suddenly, the grey stone started swirling and morphing, and within seconds, sharp spikes reached out with furiosity, aiming for Torrent, Grizzly, and Glen. Torrent squeezed his eyes shut, hoping Orca’s dagger worked as intended. When he opened them again, sharp spikes were spread out in a sphere centered on Torrent, almost reaching Grizzly and Glen. Had the two MudWings had been just a little further from Torrent, they could have been impaled, and the floor would be covered in a sea of blood.
Griffin stood off to the side, peeking his feathered head out of the doorway, thankful that “dragons in the room” hadn’t included him. Fortunately, Adobe’s enchantment was not expecting a gryphon to be in his midst.
Torrent reached out with his dagger, and placed it on a stone spike. He moved a claw to the emerald, which would remove the the enchantments on it, preventing the spikes from reforming. It worked as planned. The stone spikes crumbled into pebbles and dust, cracks starting from their tips, and moving along the spikes to their ends. Torrent proudly smiled, sporting a triumphant grin. He turned towards Adobe.
Adobe rested on his bed with a confused look. He glanced at his claws, as if wondering why his magic hadn’t worked properly, then at Torrent. “What is the meaning of this?” he growled.
“Adobe of the MudWings,” Torrent announced dramatically, “I have come to free these dragons from your claws and punish you for your wrongdoings.”“What wrongdoings?” Adobe protested, looking somewhat anxious. “I’ve done nothing but give these dragons a home!”
“You enslaved us, trapped us, forced us to worship you, and killed us!” Glen hissed. “You’ve done plenty wrong.”
Torrent agreed. Adobe had used his animus magic to do evil. No dragon should have that power, he thought, even if they want to use it for good.
Adobe snarled, then turned his head slightly. “What have you done?” he yelled.
Torrent turned to where Adobe was looked, and gulped. Cracks were appearing on the wall, and light pieces of crumbling rock started to fall from the ceiling above. Torrent’s dagger had not only removed the enchantments on the spikes, but on the entire temple. The whole tower was coming down around them.
“We need to get out of here!” Griffin yelled in worry.
“No!” Glen shouted. “We have to take care of him first.” She pointed a claw at Adobe.
Adobe saw Glen, and attempted to run for the exit, trying to push past Grizzly and Torrent. Torrent leapt at the MudWing animus, dagger in claws, and landed on the MudWing, both of them falling to the ground below. Adobe howled in pain as the dagger embedded itself through a layer of Adobe’s scales. Torrent’s claws nudged against the pearl on his dagger, and the scales around where the dagger punctured Adobe started to turn the color of grey stone.
Adobe let out a shrill scream in terror before the stone quickly engulfed his entire body, turning it to stone and silencing him. As Torrent rode the stone MudWing’s body to the ground, it eerily reminded him of one of Orca’s statues, but he didn’t have too much time to dwell on the thought before the two hit the floor beneath.
When the young SeaWing touched the stone below, it crumbled away beneath him, causing Adobe to fall through the hole and onto the floor below. The MudWing’s stone body crashed onto the floor and shattered, pieces of stone remains flinging everywhere. When the dust settled, there was nothing left but his scattered remains: an eye there, a claw there, all turned all the way through to stone.
Torrent didn’t have time to look at the scene beneath: he fell through the floor, and not encountering any resistance from the one below, through that one as well. He passed through one more floor as well before he finally had the sense to open his wings, and flew up, any piece of the temple he got too close to crumbling. It was a weird and unnerving sense, attempting to fly in such close corridors, but it didn’t take him long to realize that he could just pretend the normally solid boundaries weren’t there.
Torrent flew back up to his three companions, trapped within the slowly falling apart building. “Grab my claws!” he shouted at Grizzly and Glen. They did so, and followed him as he created a hole through the wall of the temple. Once they were free of the building, Torrent let go of their claws and they opened their wings, gliding down to the base of the crumbling tower.
The SeaWing flew back inside the building, where Griffin was. He held out a claw for his friends, but Griffin draw away in alarm. Right, Torrent remembered, I might disenchant him. “Jump through a hole right after I make one!” he yelled.
Torrent flew through the wall again, the stone crumbling as he went through. Griffin trailed close behind him, and immediately after, he flew through as the stones were reforming the wall. Rock cut against him as he jumped through, causing Griffin to seethe in pain, but he made it through with little more than a few scratches.
Griffin and Torrent flew to the ground, where Glen and Grizzly were waiting. Cracks were slowly spreading down the tower above them, and hunks of stone were dangerously falling from above. “You need to get out of here!” Torrent yelled at the two.
Glen shook her head. “I need to get Schist! He’s still in the prisons below!”
She ran into the building, and Torrent quickly went after her, Griffin following. Hunks of rocks were falling from above, and they were scattered what looked like what might have been an beautiful hall at one point. Glen glanced at a hole in the floor created as Torrent stepped into the building and the floor crumbled beneath him. “Down there!” she said.
The three glided down into the basement beneath the entrance hall, Torrent’s eyes adjusting to the dark. A faint rumbling from the crumbling stone could be heard. There was a small tunnel at the end of the room, presumably leading to the dungeons, but it was blocked by a series of rocks that fell from above. Torrent attempted to use his dagger in hopes of getting rid of them, but they didn’t move.
“They were already disenchanted,” Griffin pointed out. Torrent pushed against the rocks, trying to move them away.
Glen nervously glanced up, clawing away at the rubble as fast as she could. “We need to go faster than this!”
Griffin saw a small entrance into the tunnel, too large for Glen or Torrent, but just barely large enough for a small gryphon to enter through. “I think I can get in,” he suggested. “I can try and get your brother out while you two clear away the rubble.”
Glen looked hopefully at Griffin, while Torrent showed an expression of worry. Griffin hesitated, wondering what to do.
“Go now,” Torrent whispered, pulling away a few stones around the entrance. “Hurry.”
Griffin nodded, and scrunched his wings together as close as he could. He poked his head into the gap, and crawled into Adobe’s dungeons.
The dungeons were dark and empty, consisting of a wide tunnel with barred cells on one side. Griffin heard the rumbling of falling rocks above him, and shivered in apprehension. He quickly walked down the stone tunnels. If he didn’t hurry, the entire place would come down on top of his head.
Dimly lit torches were held in place on the side of the damp walls. Griffin passed by a number of empty dungeon cells. It appeared that Adobe didn’t keep many prisoners.
Griffin passed more cells. They were each as empty as the last, and most of them looked like they had never been used. Griffin doubted Schist had been given much company in this place. A simple jail cell for the entire village would have sufficed, but based on the crumbling temple above, Griffin guessed Adobe had a passion for the extravagant.
He peered over at one of the cells. He hadn’t seen one before: there were cells in the Summer Palace, and a prison not too far from the Deep Palace, but Griffin had never visited. Torrent had described one once when Griffin had asked what Queen Coral did to dragons who stole or killed, but that was it.
Griffin finally arrived at the cell he was looking for. A young MudWing lay on the ground, his head down in a state of perpetual boredom. His scales were a greyish brown and he had a cream underbelly, just like Glen. “Schist?” Griffin asked.
The dragon’s head raised up, and he looked over at Griffin. “Yes. What are you?” he asked, frowning. “Did Adobe make you to guard me or something?”
“Close!” Griffin said, surprised that Schist had guessed he was created through animus magic. “Wait, I mean, not close! Adobe didn’t create me, and I didn’t come here to guard you. I’m here to rescue you!”
Schist eyed Griffin, suspicious. “You are?” he asked.
Griffin nodded. “Yep! Your sister sent me.”
“Glen?” Schist asked. “How? Did something happen to Adobe?”
“Adobe’s gone for good,” Griffin replied. “But no time to explain, the entire building is going to fall on us if we don’t hurry.” A loud crash sounded above them, as if proving Griffin’s point. Griffin looked around the area, trying to find keys for the cells. 
“They’re over there,” Schist explained, pointing a claw to a ring on the wall with a few keys hanging off it. “Not sure what the point of it was though. Adobe could’ve just used his magic to trap me.”
Griffin grabbed the ring and quickly walked over to the cell holding Schist. He fumbled with the keys for a minute, trying to find the correct one for the lock. After what felt like an eternity, he unlatched it. The barred door swung open, and Schist stepped out, with a grateful look on his snout.
“C’mon,” Griffin said, waving his talons at Schist. “We need to hurry.” He took a quick glance at the ceiling before running back down the tunnel. Schist followed close behind.
After a rushed walk back, the two reached the end of the tunnel, the passage, now widened from Glen and Torrent’s efforts. “I got him!” Griffin yelled out.
Glen poked her head through the hole Torrent and her were still digging out, and shouted in joy. “Schist!”
Schist waved a claw to her and grinned back. He walked up to the end of the tunnel, and looked through the hole. Torrent and Glen were furiously trying to move away rubble. “Torrent and I will pull you through,” Glen suggested. Schist nodded.
He tucked his wings in as tight as possible, and held out his two foreclaws. Torrent and Glen each grabbed onto one, and pulled him through the small hole as hard as they could. After a lot of scrapes, he was able to get through, falling onto Torrent and Glen. Griffin crawled through after.
“We need to go,” Torrent proclaimed. “The floor above us won’t hold for much longer.”
Glen nodded, and walked to a small stairwell in the corner. Suddenly, a hunk of rock came down, narrowly missing her. “Hurry!” she yelled to Schist.
Schist and Griffin followed her up the stairwell, avoiding the falling rubble. They ran across the entrance hall, avoiding falling rocks and holes. Torrent followed afterwards, flying upwards through the floor, causing it to dissolve and reform as he passed through. The four made it to the exit, where Grizzly, Loam, and a large amount of other MudWings were waiting safely outside of the temple’s walls. They looked back and watched as the cracks slowly spread down the tower and it to crumbled to rubble.
==Chapter 29==
The MudWings started to disperse after Torrent removed the enchantments on the sphere. Some returned to their houses in the village, knowing that while they were free of Adobe, they were no longer safe from Queen Moorhen’s armies. Others left as soon as possible, returning to siblings they were separated from, or to find a new life in the war-torn world. Torrent and Griffin stood next to Glen and Schist at the edge of the town.
“Are you sure we did the right thing?” Torrent asked, frowning. “Queen Moorhen will be able to find this place now. Who knows how many of the dragons here will be forced into the war?”
“What other options where there?” Glen snorted. “It was either that or keeping everyone trapped in here. At least now they have a choice.”
Torrent looked away from the village, towards the swamps surrounding the village on all sides. “Maybe,” he said. “Although I’m worried their only choice is the army.”
“It’s possible,” Glen answered, not making Torrent feel particularly better, “but Moorhen hopefully won’t notice us for a while, maybe even not until the war ends. It’s gone on long enough, hasn’t it? It’s not like it can just go on forever.”
“Yeah,” Torrent said. He turned back towards the village, and saw a MudWing give him a hateful glare, before turning away.
Torrent had only heard Glen and her friends’ views of Adobe, not the rest of the town’s. What if Adobe’s rule wasn’t so bad after all? Sure, he had seemed pretty crazy, forcing the town to worship him and all, but for an animus who had used so much magic, he wasn’t as destructive as Torrent would’ve expected.
As much as he hated to think it in front of Glen and Schist, maybe his killing of their older brother was justified: it wasn’t like Queen Coral hadn’t executed dragons who had attempted to start rebellions before. The village was even smaller than the Sea Kingdom, and open rebellion and civil war inside it would be a massacre.
A MudWing trotted up to Torrent. The SeaWing looked up to see a grinning face lumbering over him, Grizzly. “I just wanted to goodbye before I left,” Grizzly said. He looked down to Torrent. “Because of you, I finally get to see my sibs again! The spirits answered my prayers! Thank you for everything.”
Torrent smiled awkwardly. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he replied uncomfortably. “I hope you find your sibs.”Grizzly nodded gleefully. “I’m sure they’ve been looking since the day I disappeared.” He turned to Glen. “I’ll make sure to visit you here as soon as I reunite with them.”
“Of course,” Glen acknowledged Grizzly. “Now go already! You want to see them as soon as possible, don’t you?”
Grizzly vigorously shook his head in affirmation, and spread his wings. In a few wingbeats, he had lifted off, and flew towards the north. Torrent watched as he became a tiny speck in the distance.
“You’re staying?” Torrent asked as he glanced at Glen, surprised.
“Yep!” Glen replied. Torrent looked slightly confused. “Someone’s got to help these dragons get back on their paws,” she explained. “Unlike the majority of them, I’ve had experience with ordering dragons around. A few moons with Loam and you’d be prepared too.”
Do they need to be ordered around? Torrent wondered. He supposed so, although giving the town coordination and direction might be a less authoritarian way of putting it.
“Where are you and your feathered friend going?” Glen asked. She glanced over to Griffin, who was chatting with Schist about something. They both suddenly burst out laughing, and a warm smile appeared on Glen’s snout. “You don’t want to live with a bunch of grumpy MudWings that all hate you, I take it?”
Torrent shook his head. He saw the glare that MudWing had given him. The majority of the MudWings that had left were ones who hated Adobe and had wanted to get out anyways; a large amount of his supporters would be staying behind, and they wouldn’t be happy with the foreign SeaWing prince who had removed their town’s protection and invisibility. Glen they might eventually forgive, but there was no place for Torrent here.
Torrent glanced at the scrollcase around his back, and pulled out Orca’s map. He rolled it open, and carefully laid it out on a piece of dry ground. He wondered why the dagger didn’t prevent it from working, wasn’t it enchanted? Apparently Torrent could ‘allow’ certain enchantments to work under it, but he wasn’t sure exactly how that was done.
Many of the ink dots were in the same places as they were when Torrent had last checked it, though a few had moved. The orange-ish one in the eastern Sky Kingdom was still there. “There’s an animus in the Sky Kingdom, north of here. Maybe there’s an invisible city of dragons there that needs our help too?”
Glen thought for a moment, and nodded. “Mhm. You wouldn’t happen to have room for a third on your adventure, would you?”
“A third?” Torrent asked, puzzled. “I thought you were staying here.”
“No no, not me!” Glen replied, snorting. “I mean Schist. He seems to be getting along with your bird friend over there.”
Torrent looked over at Schist, still talking with Griffin. “Does he want to come with us?” he quietly asked Glen, so that Schist didn’t overhear. Torrent wasn’t so sure about this. He didn’t know Schist at all, and two was really enough. What was the saying? Three’s a crowd?
“I’ll ask him,” Glen said outright. “Schist!” she yelled to her brother. “Get over here!”
Schist meekly nodded and walked over to his sister. Griffin followed.
“Now,” Glen said, “Torrent has kindly offered to take you with him and the bird.”
Torrent opened his mouth, thinking about protesting that claim, but Schist replied first.
“Leave the town?” Schist asked. “Aren’t you staying here though?”
“I am,” Glen stated, “but I don’t want you staying here for me. In fact, I forbid it. You were always telling Quake and I how you wanted to go out and explore the world when the shield was gone, and now you have your chance.”
Schist looked a little unsure. “We’re sibs though, aren’t we supposed to stay together?”
Glen rolled her eyes and paced back and forth. “Torrent and Griffin can be your new sibs, at least temporarily. I’ll have the entire town.”
“I mean, alright, I guess,” Schist replied. He looked back at the town again. It was the only place he had ever known, and he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to leave it yet.
Glen snorted. “Don’t pretend you’re not excited to go. I know you are. You better promise me you’ll be back though.”
Schist’s expression of unsureness started to turn into a grin. “Alright, I’ll promise!”
“Good,” Glen said triumphantly, “I won’t leave the town until you do.”
Schist turned to Torrent with an excited smile stretching across his snout. “Thank you!” he thanked Torrent. He turned to Griffin, who looked almost as gleeful.
Torrent gave Glen a glare, but didn’t try and refuse Schist. He would’ve liked a bit of say in the matter, but Glen didn’t notice Torrent’s expression, or if she did, she ignored it.
“Now,” Glen ordered, with an expression between a smirk and a grin, “let me get you all some supplies from our food store before you’re all off.”
Glen glided off, while Torrent, Griffin, and Schist waited for her in an uncomfortable position.
“So . . .” Torrent said to Schist, elongating out his words, “are you sure you want to go with us?”
Schist nodded vigorously. Griffin looked up at Torrent hopefully.
“Alright then,” Torrent conceded, trying to hide the slight grimace on his snout. He still wasn’t sure that this was a good idea, but he supposed it wouldn’t do much harm.
Torrent sat in silence while Griffin and Schist chatted about something or other. Torrent glanced over, feeling a little left out. Griffin was his friend, wasn’t he?
It wasn’t too long before Glen returned, carrying jerky, bread, water, and other provisions, such as tarps. Torrent took them from her and placed what he could in his satchel, placing the rest in a large pack that Schist had put on beneath a wing. Torrent turned around, ready to be off.
“Bye!” Schist said to Glen. “I’ll miss you.”
Glen wrapped her wings around Schist quickly in an embrace. “Me too,” she replied, “make sure to visit soon.”
Schist nodded, and turned around. Torrent and Griffin were ready. “C’mon,” Griffin spoke gleefully, “let’s go!”
The three spread open their wings, and took off north, towards the Sky Kingdom, leaving Glen and the MudWings behind.
==Chapter 30==
Torrent’s original plan was to take a shortcut and fly over the Sea Kingdom in order to get to the animus in the eastern Sky Kingdom, but Schist changed that. Being trapped in Adobe’s city for most of his life, Schist had been given no experience in long-distance flying, and he wouldn’t make it that far soaring over water, with little place to set down. Instead, Torrent was forced to adjust their course: to follow the MudWing coast, make a detour inwards to avoid the dense MudWing population in the Diamond Spray Delta, and continue flying up the SkyWing coast until they reached their destination. Torrent was not particularly pleased, but Griffin and Schist didn’t seem to care at all.
The view from above was pretty, but seeing swamps and marshes in every direction got dull quickly. The three flew high, in hopes of not being spotted, which just made the landscape seem more eternal. They crossed the Diamond Spray River towards the end of their first day: it would’ve been even earlier had they not had to avoid the delta. The river was wide, and there were plenty of dragons around it: SeaWing and MudWing merchants dragging barges up and down the river, filled with tradable goods and weapons too heavy to fly. Fortunately, no one paid Torrent, Schist, or Griffin any mind. MudWings and SeaWings were allied, and Griffin didn’t look like much other than a large bird so far up.
Yet after that, they passed into SkyWing territory. This was much more dangerous, because of the war, and the consequences for being caught would be brutal. Torrent might be lucky enough to be held as an important prisoner due to his status as a prince, but Schist would be sent to Queen Scarlet’s infamous arena, and Griffin might be stuffed and sent to Princess Burn as a present. They kept a much more wary eye out, and attempted to stay far clear of where Torrent thought the major settlements were. Torrent was nervous, but Schist and Griffin less so. Aren’t they at all worried? Torrent wondered.
The terrain quickly changed inside of the Sky Kingdom. The trees grew tall, and hills grew into mountains when Torrent looked to the west. It was his first time seeing mountains, even though it was from a distance. They were magnificent. He wanted to fly closer, but knew that they were much further than they appeared, and that the majority of the SkyWings settlements were in that area. They would stay between the coast and the mountains, where the population was sparsest.
Finally, they reached the end of their first day of flying, barely inside the Sky Kingdom. Torrent grumbled, frustrated that they had to make so many stops for Schist. He had hoped to go further, but the young MudWing’s lack of experience had prevented that. It would take forever at this rate.
The three started to set up camp, finding a nice area underneath a dense stretch of trees, where they couldn’t be seen from above. As Torrent and Griffin were setting up tarps, they suddenly smelt smoke and the burning of wood. “FIRE!” Torrent yelled in alarm, turning around to see Schist breathing a small amount of flame onto a wood-pile he had set up.
“Yes?” Schist asked as he stopped his flame, confused.
Torrent growled in frustration. “We need to put that out!” he yelled as he scooped up clumps of dirt with his claws, throwing them onto the budding flames and dousing them. He turned to Schist with a glare. “No fires,” he hissed. “We can’t risk having a passing SkyWing see the smoke in the middle of the night.”
“Oh,” Schist said dismayed. “I’ll be cold though.”
“Well, maybe you should’ve stayed back with Glen in the Mud Kingdom,” Torrent spat.
Schist’s looks fell, and he walked over to a small patch of dirt and buried his snout deep within it. Griffin gave Torrent a look of frustration.
“What?” Torrent asked Griffin. “I’m right, you know.”“It was still rude,” Griffin chided. “And you’re forgetting he’s not a SeaWing used to living at the bottom of the ocean. You don’t getcold, at least not in the way most other dragons do.”
“What do you know about dragons,” Torrent muttered under his breath.“I heard that,” Griffin replied, keeping his calm. “You’re in one of your moods again.”
Torrent gave Griffin a glare. “I’m in a mood?”
Griffin nodded. “Yep. You totally are. And you need to stop acting like that to us just because of it.”
Torrent wanted to protest, but Griffin was right. “Fine,” he admitted. “I’m in a mood. Do you want me to apologize, or what?”
“Do you think you need to apologize?” Griffin questioned.
Torrent clenched his teeth. “Probably,” he grumbled.
Torrent walked over to Schist, taking a deep breath in. Schist looked up with a soppy stare. “Look,” Torrent said, “I’m sorry about saying that. We can’t have a fire, but if there’s any way I can make you feel warmer, I’ll do it.” Griffin nodded in satisfaction.
Schist smiled. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”
Griffin walked up to Torrent, looking quite small against the SeaWing’s wings. “So,” Griffin turned asked Schist, “is it just me, or can Glen be sort of be . . . you know . . .”
“Bossy?” Schist finished, chuckling. “Don’t worry, I see it too. She can get completely insufferable at times. She wasn’t always this way though.” An expression of grief started to form on Schist’s face, his scales drooping. “I guess she kind of took it upon herself to become our bigwings after Quake died.”
Griffin joyful smile became solemn. “Yeah, I understand,” he replied uncomfortably. “Torrent and I’s sister died too. Well, sisters.”
Schist gave Griffin a bit of a questioning stare.
“Ah,” Griffin quickly responded, realizing what Schist was confused about, “can’t see the family resemblance?” Schist nodded.
“Orca sort of adopted me,” Griffin explained, “I mean, maybe she’d be more of a mother to me, since she created me, but I thought of her as more of a sister and all.”
“Was Orca an animus?” Schist asked. “That’s how you were created, right? Through the same magic Adobe had?”
“Err, yeah,” Griffin awkwardly confirmed. “Good magic, though. I think. I’m not actually sure animus magic is good or evil.”
“It’s evil in nature,” Torrent muttered, “but it can do good things occasionally. Rarely.”
“Okay,” Schist said. “So, was Orca like a bigwings to you?” he asked.
“Sort of,” Griffin responded, “I mean, she the older sister, so she did older sister stuff, but she wasn’t even the oldest one of Torrent’s siblings, and SeaWings don’t really have the whole bigwings thing. Our parents are more of our bigwings, so Coral and Gill I guess.”
“Oh.” Schist looked deep in thought for a moment, then his face lit up in surprise. “Wait, Queen Coral?” he asked in shock.
“Yeah, that one,” Griffin said. “Wait, so if I’m Orca’s adopted brother, does that make me Prince Griffin? I like the sound of that!”
Torrent frowned a little. “Griffin, maybe we shouldn’t be telling every MudWing we meet my family history?”
Griffin rolled his eyes in a pronounced fashion. “Schist is literally the first MudWing I’ve told, and he’s going to be travelling with us anyways. He deserves to know our secrets, although they’re hardly secrets. Any dragon can see the starbursts under your wings.”
“Starbursts?” Schist asked, confused.
Griffin nodded, then lifted one of Torrent’s wings up with a talon, revealing the starburst patterns beneath. “See? These mean he’s a royal SeaWing. They can light up too, show him Torrent.”
Torrent pulled his wings back in. “No. I’m not something to show off.”
Griffin grinned slightly, as much as he could with a beak. “Fine, but I’m still going to tell him about Orca.”
“Tell him what?” Torrent snapped. “You already told him she’s the animus daughter of Queen Coral. Well, she used her magic too much, killed our other sister and forced the rest of the SeaWings to forget her, then challenged Coral to the throne and lost. That’s it.”
“Debatable,” Griffin muttered slightly, “and you forgot a lot. Like, we found this crazy old NightWing named Sunscorcher, and read a lot of scrolls, and helped her on her sculpting, though that didn’t go very well, and complained a lot about River too and such.”
“Not important,” Torrent hissed. “He doesn’t need to know everything about our personal lives.”
“Well, isn’t that the interesting stuff?” Griffin argued. “It would be no fun if we just listed Orca’s birth and death dates for him, would it?”
“This isn’t supposed to be fun,” Torrent snarled, “it’s supposed to be sad, and we’re should be grieving and crying or something over her death right now. It’s an insult to her memory.”
“What’s an insult to her memory is you being grumpy all the time,” Griffin retorted. “She would’ve wanted you to think back fondly on our time together and to keep on being happy!”
Torrent stood silent for a moment. Hints of tears started to form in his eyes. He missed Orca. He couldn’t take this anymore. He turned around and walked off into the SkyWing woods.
“He’ll be back,” Torrent heard Griffin say, “I don’t know what’s been with him today, he’s not usually like this.”
Torrent continued walking, until he couldn’t hear Griffin anymore. He sat down, and buried his snout in his claws, holding back tears. He didn’t need to cry, not now.
Suddenly, Torrent heard a rustle in the bushes. Something was there — something large, like a dragon. He pushed away his grief, this was urgent. If the three were caught by a band of SkyWings. . .
Torrent froze. Maybe whatever was there hadn’t heard him? He heard footsteps walking towards him. Torrent crouched in the bushes, peering through the cracks. He hoped the dragon hadn’t noticed him. He held his wings tight against his scales, and waited.
Suddenly, Torrent heard a snap of a stick, almost right in front of him. He jumped outwards in a pounce. A yell of alarm sounded as the dragon beneath his claws rolled away from him. Torrent turned, and tackled the dragon to the ground again. The dragon was smaller than him, and it didn’t take much for him to pin his struggling opponent down to the ground.
The dragon attempted to get free again, but Torrent held on. Finally, his opponent came to a rest. “Get off me!” she hissed.
Torrent looked down to get a better view. It was dark, and it took a moment to realize she had light scales, not the orange-ish colors of the SkyWings he’d expected, but the light-blue scales of an IceWing. Her serrated claws and long horns confirmed this fact. She was around Torrent’s age, maybe slightly older, but smaller. A silver chain was wrapped around her neck, with a dark purple stone at the bottom. She turned her head up towards Torrent, and opened her mouth wide, a hissing noise sounding within her throat. Cold air wafted up towards Torrent’s snout as Crystal prepared her frostbreath.
==Chapter 31==
Torrent took his claws and rammed them against Crystal’s throat, pushing her head away, and her mouth away from his direction, defusing the threat of frostbreath. He pinned her head to the ground, with his paw on her neck. Her scales scraped against the coarse dirt. They felt cold to the touch, like the frozen kingdom in which the IceWings lived.
“What is an IceWing doing in the Sky Kingdom?” Torrent interrogated, growling.
“What’s a SeaWing doing in the Sky Kingdom?” she snapped back.
By this time, Schist and Griffin had heard the commotion. The two hurried over to see Torrent pinning Crystal down. “Are you alright?” Griffin asked Torrent. “What’s an IceWing doing here?”
Crystal glanced over at the newcomers. A MudWing, and some weird feathery pet thing. “What’s a . . . you know, nevermind,” she grumbled. “Let me go.”
“No!” Torrent exclaimed. “You just tried to breath your freezing death breath on me!”
“You’re the one who attacked me,” Crystal hissed. “Now get off me, your breath smells like rotten fish.”
“No. Tell me what you’re doing here,” Torrent ordered. Schist approached her cautiously. He hadn’t ever seen an IceWing before, and was curious.
“I’m just passing through,” she muttered. “I’m trying to get out of SkyWing territory. Happy?”
Torrent thought for a moment. The SkyWings were the SeaWings’ enemies; if she was an IceWing spy, he didn’t need to interfere.
“Maybe you should let her go?” Griffin suggested. “I mean, it’s not like we can just take her with us.”“Yes!” Crystal exclaimed. “Listen to the talking bird.”
“Maybe,” Torrent said, “but she could come back and kill us in the middle of the night.” She’s already tried to kill me once, what if she does it again?
“What?” Crystal snorted. “Why would I do that? So I can see your ugly snout again?”
“Quiet. Better safe than sorry. We can keep her with us for the night, and we’ll decide what happens to her in the morning.”
Crystal gave Torrent a cold stare. Griffin rolled his eyes a little. Schist walked back over to Griffin, and frowned. It didn’t seem like anyone else agreed with Torrent.
“I’ll take first watch,” Torrent commanded. “Schist, get me some rope to tie her up with.”
Schist sighed, and did as Torrent asked, trotting over to one of their leather packs. A few seconds later, he returned with the rope Torrent had asked for. Torrent took it from him, and with Griffin’s grudging help, tied Crystal to a tree, her wings uncomfortably crammed against its bark.
“You know, I could just yell and keep you all awake the entire night,” Crystal pointed out in irritation.
Torrent looked at her with a skeptical look on his face. “Maybe I’ll tie your snout up too,” he muttered. “That way there’s no risk of you using your frostbreath on us either.”
“Alright, alright,” the young IceWing conceded. “I’ll be quiet, and no frostbreath, and my mouth stays open, okay?”
Torrent hesitated for a moment. It would certainly be safer if he tied her snout up. Griffin looked at Torrent, giving him a glance of disappointment. “Fine,” Torrent agreed. “You can keep your snout open.”
Schist and Griffin went to their respective sleeping areas, while Torrent stood, staring at Crystal silently. What is she doing here? he wondered. Maybe she’s the animus I’m looking for?
He pulled out his map, and laid it on the ground, rolling it out. He brushed the dirt off the edges and pointed a claw to where he believed his group was at the moment. The animus marker was still where it was, far north and slightly to the east of his location. This IceWing was not an animus.
“What’s that?” Crystal asked, making Torrent jump out his scales for a second.
He quickly spread his claws over the map, making sure Crystal couldn’t see it. “None of your business,” the SeaWing bitterly hissed.
Crystal squirmed in discomfort. “You know, I could see your map for like, a few seconds, right? There’s a bunch of colored blotches on it. One of them is in the Sky Kingdom. What are they?”
“Shut up,” Torrent snarled, “I told you I’d bind your snout.”
Crystal glared at Torrent. What’s his problem? she wondered. He looked to be the size of an adult, but he had the voice of an adolescent dragonet. Her age, maybe. Slightly younger. She couldn’t see that well in the dark of the night. If she hadn’t been caught by surprise, she probably could have fought him off.
For the next couple hours, Crystal consigned herself to rest. The SeaWing didn’t want to talk to her, and the few times she attempted to strike up a conversation, purely out of sheer boredom, he refused to talk. Eventually, she fell into a sleep, although the discomfort of her bindings and being held upright made it shallow. She was constantly nudged in and out of a dreamstate, flooded by the images of burning SeaWings and NightWings with cats crawling out of their mouths.
After a while, Crystal woke up to movement. The SeaWing had gotten up while she was gone, and the MudWing had replaced him. He was fidgeting with the sticks on the ground, making shapes and patterns with them.
“Hey,” Crystal said, alerting him to her awakeness. “You there?”
Schist nodded cheerfully, glad she had answered. She wasn’t exactly sure how long he had been sitting there with nothing to do but watch her sleep and play with sticks. “Do you have a name?” Crystal asked him. “I’m Crystal, by the way.”
“Schist,” the young MudWing replied. He looked at Crystal’s tail, seemingly fascinated with the long spikes on the end.
Seeing this, Crystal shook the end around. It might do well to befriend one of them, and this one looked kind enough. “They’re tail spikes,” she gently explained. “All IceWings have them.”Schist looked over at his own tail. “Are they uncomfortable?” he asked compassionately. “They look like they’d weigh your tail down, or dirt could be caught between them.”
Crystal laughed. “They’re not too much of a bother, though I might’ve just gotten used to them. I used to poke myself with them when I was a young dragonet, but they’re pretty tame now.”
Schist smiled and shook his thick scaled tail, probably wondering what having tail spikes would feel like himself. “So, how did you end up here?” he asked. “In the Sky Kingdom, I mean.”“Is this an interrogation?” Crystal snorted with a chuckle. “Just joking. Queen Glacier decided she didn’t want me anymore, so I left.” She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to tell this dragon. What if he wanted to turn her in for a bounty or something? Had Queen Glacier put a bounty on her? Probably, Glacier would gleefully murder her own daughter to get what Crystal had taken from her. Not like that was saying much, Princess (or was it Ex-Princess now?) Blackice was literally the worst dragon Crystal had ever met, and her permanent banishment to the frigid islands far north was far from a mistake.
“Ah,” Schist replied, understanding what Crystal meant. If a queen didn’t want you anymore, that was a very serious thing. “I guess I’m kind of on the run here, though not really. I’d be drafted into the army if I was found by Queen Moorhen. Torrent is on the run too, he’s got a bounty on his head.” Schist suddenly worried he might be giving the IceWing a bad idea. “Well, all of him, not just his head. He’s wanted alive.”
Crystal tilted her head upwards, thinking about this. Was Torrent the SeaWing? Probably, Torrent didn’t sound like a gryphon name, if that’s what the bird thing was. Although Crystal wasn’t exactly sure what gryphon names were. Talon, maybe? She remembered reading a scroll about a gryphon named Talon when she was younger. Schist really needed to learn how to hold his tongue better, telling Crystal all that information could be dangerous. If she was a pinch for some gold, turning the SeaWing in could help. She didn’t need money though, she needed to get rid of the Darkstone somehow, to make sure no one could ever use it.
“Neat,” Crystal acknowledged, “so what are you doing with a SeaWing and a gryphon? Do those even exist?”
“I think they exist,” Schist replied, “he was made by animus magic I think.” Animus magic? Crystal wondered. Did animus dragons still exist? She thought back to the Darkstone she was wearing. Animus dragons were certainly dangerous, which was why she needed to make sure this . . . weapon was secure as soon as possible. Yet, if the SeaWings had an animus, what if they used it against the IceWings? Maybe stealing the Darkstone wasn’t such a good idea after all, Crystal thought. It would certainly prove useful if the SeaWings decided to use magic. Had she betrayed her tribe, only to doom them?
“I’m with them cause I want to go on an adventure,” Schist continued, “they helped save me and my town a while back, and I’m here to help them. I miss my sister though. I’m a little worried about her. What if she gets hurt? What if I get hurt, and I never see her again?”
Help them with what? Crystal wondered. She didn’t want to pry too much though. That would only make Schist more tight-jawed, which could be unfortunate for finding out what these dragons were doing here, and how best she could escape them, especially if they decided to kill her. “I have a sister too,” Crystal sympathized, trying to win Schist over to her side, “she’s back in the Ice Kingdom, and I’m worried for her also. Short of a miracle, I doubt I’ll ever see her again. Queen Glacier would kill me if I set one wing north of the desert.”
“Oh,” Schist said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your problem,” Crystal shrugged, her wings rubbing against the rope, “most dragons have it worse than me, cause of the war and all.”
“Yeah,” Schist feigned. He really had no idea. He had never been out of Adobe’s city and he’d only been told about the war from the few unfortunate dragons who had wandered inside accidentally, like Grizzly. He wondered how Grizzly was doing; had he found his sibs yet?
“Well,” Crystal yawned, “I’m going to get some shut-eye now, nice talking to you.”
Schist nodded, and went back to playing with his twigs and sticks. Crystal continued falling in and out of her dreams, until once again, she had noticed that the dragon watching her had shifted: it wasn’t a dragon at all now.
“Good morning,” Crystal smiled drowsily.
Griffin attempted to make a smile with his beak. “Still a bit early for that,” he informed her, “around an hour or two until sunrise.”
Crystal bobbed her head. Hopefully they’d let her out of these ropes, but if not, she was prepared to fight. “So,” she questioned, “what exactly are you? If you don’t mind me asking. Schist said something about animus magic?”
Griffin fidgeted back and forth. “Er, yeah, I was enchanted to life. I’m a gryphon though.”
Crystal continued nodding, as if she was somehow approving him. “Don’t worry, it’s not too surprising,” she assured Griffin, although it sounded a bit like she was assuring herself of that, “we’ve got plenty of magic in the Ice Kingdom, though I’ve never seen anythi — anyone like you. It’s old magic, of course, but it works. Do you have a name? I’m Crystal.”
“Griffin,” Griffin answered.
“Griffin?” Crystal skeptically asked. “As in, you’re a gryphon, and your name is also Griffin? Who came up with that idea?”
“Torrent,” Griffin replied, frowning a little, “he’s the SeaWing.”
“Alright, that’s cool. Nice. Easy to remember.” Crystal didn’t particularly want to offend the gryphon or the SeaWing. “So, what are you doing in the Sky Kingdom? Last time I checked, there weren’t any gryphons here.”
Griffin paused for a moment, wondering how much he should tell Crystal.
“I can go first,” Crystal suggested, hoping to make Griffin a bit more friendly towards her. “I stole some of Queen Glacier’s treasure,” she explained. It wasn’t technically a lie. “Obviously she didn’t take kindly to that, so I flew off.”
“So you’re a thief?” Griffin asked, frowning.
“No, no!” Crystal protested. “Well, sort of, but that’s not why I did it. She stole it from my sister a few years ago, so I decided to take it back.” That was definitely a lie, though Griffin didn’t seem to notice. “I decided to go to a small town on the east SkyWing coast, founded by my brother-in-law, Fracture, but when I got there it was completely destroyed.”
“Fracture?” Griffin asked in confusion. “Is that, like, a common IceWing name or something?”
“Why?” Crystal wondered, intrigued. Do they know Fracture somehow? “Did you meet him? He’s got white scales with a greenish tint and an eyepatch. He’s really, really nice to everyone, but he’s a bit weird. Like, crazy uncle weird.”
“I don’t have an uncle,” Griffin mentioned, “but yeah, that’s him. I met him after I left the Sea Kingdom; I tagged along with him for a bit, and he helped me find Torrent again.” A dark thought crossed Griffin’s mind. “Wait, is he dead?” he asked. “You mentioned that the town was destroyed . . .”
“Fracture? No, not that I know of. Some weird NightWing said Fracture was still alive and kicking, though I’m not much for trusting NightWings.” She suddenly remembered what her goal here was, and talking about her brother-in-law was not it. “Oh yeah, so it’s your turn to tell me what you’re doing in the Sky Kingdom.”
“Well, there’s an animus up in the northeast corner of it,” Griffin explained.
The SkyWings have an animus too? Crystal thought. All these years of Queen Glacier working day and night to get animus magic back in the royal family, and these dragons had just happened upon two? She almost laughed, thinking about what Queen Glacier’s expression would look like if she heard about this. It was ironic. “And you want to ask this animus to enchant something for you?” Crystal guessed.
Griffin shook his head. “No, no, I think we’re planning on killing it.”“That seems like a bad idea,” Crystal snorted skeptically, “last time I checked, animus dragons have magic.”
Griffin nodded. “Well, sure, but Torrent’s got a way to take care of that. He’s got this magical dagger thing which destroys animus magic. It’s a bit frightening, if you ask me.”
“Since you’re enchanted yourself?” Crystal inferred. “Yeah, I can see why that might be worrisome.” She thought back to the Darkstone draped around her neck. If the SeaWing can destroy animus magic, maybe he can destroy it! Maybe . . .
Griffin looked at Crystal, thinking. “You know, I could just let you go right now, if you’d like. Torrent is just a bit paranoid, he really shouldn’t have tied you up.”
Crystal pushed against her bonds, trying to stretch her wings. “Actually, I was wondering if you’d mind me joining you. I really didn’t have any plans, and don’t have anywhere to go. I can fight, not as good as my sister, but good enough.” And if I can get near enough to that dagger to try destroying the Darkstone, this whole thing might be over!
Griffin opened his beak in surprise. “Do you want to?” he asked. “I don’t really have a problem with it, any friend of Fracture’s is a friend of mine, but I don’t know how Torrent would feel. Nor Schist for that matter.”
“Oh, I talked to Schist earlier, I’m sure he’d be happy,” Crystal smiled. This whole ‘making friends’ thing was really paying off.
“Alright!” Griffin supposed. “I’ll talk to Torrent about it in the morning.”
“One last thing,” Crystal suggested, “do you mind getting me out of these ropes?”
==Chapter 32==
“Torrent, wake up!” Griffin excitedly trilled, jumping up and down. “It’s already past dawn!”
Torrent slowly rolled over to see three sets of eyes perched over him. Griffin, Schist, and . . . the IceWing.
Torrent suddenly leaped to his paws, threateningly whisking his tail back and forth. “What is she doing free?” he snarled.
“Relax,” Crystal snorted, irritated.
“She’s going to join us in our quest!” Griffin replied.
Quest? Torrent wondered. When did this become a quest? “What do you mean? We can’t just willy-nilly invite IceWings to join us!”
“Crystal is nice,” Griffin explained. “I met her brother-in-law while you were with Moorhen, and she wants to come with us. Schist agrees with me!” After a quick glance of hesitation, Schist bobbed his head up and down, endorsing Griffin’s claim.
Nice? Crystal wondered in surprise. No one has called me nice before. “Don’t worry, fishsticks.” Crystal assured Torrent, “I’m quiet, it’ll be like I’m not even there.”
“No!” Torrent refused. “We don’t know her, she could be dangerous, or out to get us or something!”
Griffin looked at Torrent and rolled his eyes. “Literally no dragons are out to ‘get’ us, unless you mean Gill, and he hardly counts. Crystal’s also a runaway! She’s escaping from Queen Glacier, you’re trying to stay hidden from Queen Coral and Queen Moorhen. And Queen Scarlet too, now that I think about it. Queen Scarlet might actually be out to get us, I’ve heard she doesn’t like trespassers.”
“I can help you through the Sky Kingdom,” Crystal pointed out, “I know a safe passage through. You’ll probably run into a guard outpost or something otherwise.”
Torrent glared at Griffin with a steely glaze. First Schist, and now this random IceWing? He gritted his teeth. Yet, if Crystal did know a way through the Sky Kingdom, she would be an invaluable asset. He glanced over at Schist. He didn’t want him to end up in Scarlet’s arena.
“Fine,” Torrent conceded with a growl, “she can travel with us for now. But if she tries anything . . .” The SeaWing left the threat unsaid, and Crystal narrowed her gaze.
Torrent thought he could kill her if things came to it. He had killed Adobe justly, hadn’t he? If Crystal betrayed them, she would have to be executed, too. It was what was done to traitors in the Sea Kingdom. Harsh, maybe, but just.
“I’m trustworthy, if that’s what you’re wanting,” Crystal blurted out. Crystal nervously swallowed the lie. She knew it was far from the truth: she had betrayed her patron, her queen, and her kingdom. She wasn’t deserving of trust, or respect. Sure, she had done her deeds for the good of all dragonkind, but that didn’t make it any better. Allowing Queen Glacier to win the war using the Darkstone might condemn the MudWings to death, but it would save many IceWing lives: the dragons Crystal had grown, played, and learned with as a dragonet.
“Get packed,” Torrent ordered Griffin and Schist. “We leave as soon as possible. I don’t want to stay in the Sky Kingdom much longer, it’s dangerous.”
Griffin and Schist gathered the few materials they had out, and packed them away. When they were done, Torrent turned to Crystal. “Well?” he asked. “You say you know how to get through the Sky Kingdom, tell us the way.” He pulled out his map, and pointed to their destination on it.
Crystal nodded nervously. She actually had no idea how to get to where they were going safely, at least all the way there. The map Avalanche had given her went a bit further up the coast from here to the destroyed village, but Crystal wasn’t sure what lied beyond. She would just roll with it and hope for the best.
“We go north of here, avoiding the peninsula,” Crystal replied. This much she knew from her map. “We’ll continue along the coast from there.”
Torrent spread his wings, almost knocking them into Crystal. She glared and took a step back as the SeaWing flapped them, taking off. Griffin and Schist followed shortly after, with their feathered and leathery wings respectively. Crystal continued after them, glancing behind to make sure they was as little trace as possible they’d camped there overnight.
The four flew to the north for quite some time, Crystal in the front, and the other three lagging behind her. Crystal followed the map Avalanche had given her, but it wasn’t too long before she saw the smoldering ruins of the village in the distance. She decided it would be best to steer clear of it: she didn’t want Griffin realizing that the village wasn’t that far into the Sky Kingdom, and that NightWing she had met, Trustbreaker, could still be in the remains of the town. 
After they passed the remains, Crystal started to get a bit more nervous. The war between the SkyWings and SeaWings had primarily taken place on the border between the MudWings and SkyWings, but that was no assurance there’d be no guards patrolling the coast.  Every beat of her wings in the Sky Kingdom was treacherous.
The four continued flying over the Sky Kingdom’s coast, with the expanse of ocean to their right, and the mountains to their left. Trees rose tall, but were only tiny twigs to the dragons far above. The wind swept under the four’s wings until they were sore.
Schist picked up his pace a little, and caught up to Crystal. He looked a bit out of breath. He said something to Crystal, but the words were lost in the rushing wind, grinding against Crystal’s ears. 
“WHAT?” Crystal asked, almost yelling. “Speak up, I can’t hear you!”
“Does the Ice Kingdom look like this?” Schist asked, a bit louder this time, although Crystal still had to strain her ears to make out the words.
“A bit,” Crystal called back. “But only in the south, and in the winter all the trees would be completely blanketed in snow.” The south of the Ice Kingdom was primarily where the lowest-circled dragons resided, but Crystal had spent much more time there than most IceWings of her rank, due to her apprenticeship with Boreal. That’s where the mines were, at least the legal ones. After Queen Oasis’ death, most of the IceWing mines had been moved further south, encroaching on SandWing territory, although Princess Blaze was readily willing to turn a blind eye to it in exchange for Glacier’s allyship.
“What about the rest of the Ice Kingdom?” Schist asked curiously. “Is it really as cold as they say it is?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s frigid to any of the other tribes,” Crystal explained. “There are two primary areas of the rest of the Ice Kingdom: there’s a huge expanse of flat land in the middle, which is mainly just covered in ice and snow for most of the year, and there’s the mountains on the north-east coast, where most of us live. That part is cold and snowy most of the time too.”
“Sounds fun!” Schist replied. Crystal thought he was being sarcastic at first, but then realized that his tone was completely serious: the Ice Kingdom was his idea of fun. “So, can I visit some time?”
“No,” Crystal laughed, the idea completely absurd, “that’s an awful idea! Even if you didn’t die of cold, and weren’t captured by IceWings, you’d be killed by the Great Ice Cliff.”
“The Great Ice Cliff?” Schist asked. “What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s this giant cliff that surrounds the Ice Kingdom,” Crystal snorted, waving a claw in the air as a cold blast of air blew against her snout. “It was enchanted to shoot giant deadly icicles at trespassers. Not a pretty sight.”
“Torrent could help us through then, right?”
Crystal frowned as a shocking realization came to her. If that dagger could remove animus enchantments like she hoped, it could destroy the Great Ice Cliff. The Gift of Defense, which had protected the IceWings for thousands of years, would be gone in a second. Not to mention the rest of the gifts the IceWings had been given.
Crystal looked back at the SeaWing. She had to make sure he never got near the Ice Kingdom, or it could doom her tribe. “M-maybe,” Crystal stammered to Schist.
Crystal slowed her pace down a little bit, and she and Schist slowly moved backwards relative to Torrent and Griffin. In a few seconds, they were flying side-by-side. Crystal took a look at Torrent’s dagger, tucked in its sheath.
“Your dagger looks pretty nice,” Crystal asked Torrent, inching a little closer to him. “Where’d you get it? It looks really fancy. What does it do?” Schist looked slightly disappointed that Crystal didn’t want to talk to him more, but didn’t try to interrupt.
Torrent gave Crystal a glare. “What do you want?” he snarled. “And how do you know it does something?”
Crystal tightened her mouth a little bit. “A little birdy told me,” she answered, completely truthfully. Hearing this, Griffin’s expression changed to a mix between a grin and and a grimace, unsure if he should find this offensive or funny.
Torrent looked over at Griffin. “Really?” he asked in disappointment. “You actually told her about it?”
“It’s not like it’s that important,” Griffin replied. “I mean, how many animus dragons do you expect to meet?”
“She’s an IceWing,” Torrent stressed, “I know I’ve told you about how much magic they’ve still got around. Can’t you just shut your beak for a moment?”
“Yes, I can, but she’s part of our team now!” Griffin protested. “She deserves to know about what we’re doing.”
“No, she doesn’t, and she’s not part of our ‘team.’ We don’t have a team. It’s you and me doing our stuff, and we’ve got some random MudWing who’s just tagging along with us, and now an IceWing who’s helping us through the Sky Kingdom. This isn’t a team.”
“You just described a team, like exactly!” Griffin replied exasperatedly. “We’re a gryphon and a bunch of dragons working together for whatever reasons, which is what a team is! And Schist is part of our team, and so is Crystal as of this morning.”
Torrent groaned, and turned back to Crystal. “Fine. Since birdbrain here wants me to so badly, my dagger destroys animus enchantments and prevents them from hurting me. Without it, we obviously wouldn’t go after super-powered magical dragons. I got it from my sister.”
“Her name was Orca,” Griffin butted in, “she was an animus, and was pretty kind. She also liked to make creepy statues, but I’m not really one to talk since I’m apparently one of them.”
“Wait, like Princess Orca?” Crystal asked in surprise. “So that mea—”
“Just stop!” Torrent yelled at Griffin. “You don’t have to tell everyone that Orca was your creator and my sister, like you’re parading around that you’re some weird feathery prince! She’s dead, and isn’t coming back, so just shut up about it! Also, for the record, her statues were not creepy, you’re the only one who thinks that! Everyone else, not that you’d know everyone else, thought they were really pretty!”
“Excuse me?” Griffin snapped back. “I’m sorry that you can’t get over her death, but you’re not the only one who misses her! She was just as much my sister as yours, and you can’t just tell me to stop talking about her. And I’m literally one of her statues, so yes, I can say they were totally creepy!”
“You were not as much her sister as I was,” Torrent quietly growled. “I knew her for twice as long as you did, and yo — ”
“Quiet!” Schist cried out, flying in-between the two, interrupting their fight. “Please, just stop squabbling about this for once! Crystal and I don’t need to hear about Orca if it’s this much of a problem!”
Griffin gave Torrent a quick glare. “Fine,” he hissed. He slowly drifted a little bit away, and looked away from Torrent. Torrent did the same, leaving Crystal and Schist by themselves, in silence as they continued their long flight to the north-easternmost corner of Pyrrhia.
==Chapter 33==
It was a few more uneventful days until the four finally reached their destination. Torrent and Griffin mostly stayed away from each other during the flight, and when they did interact, it was rarely more than a few cold words. Schist and Crystal talked between each other a bit more, mostly Schist drilling Crystal on the Ice Kingdom and the northern Sand Kingdom (which she had spent a fair amount of time in while apprenticed to Boreal). Crystal found him a little overbearing at times, but he made for nice company, and was deeply fascinated with everything Crystal had to say about her homeland. In some ways, it was nice to have someone that would just listen to Crystal talk about herself.
As they got further north in the Sky Kingdom, Crystal became more and more certain that they wouldn’t be caught by Queen Scarlet’s patrols. It was cold, almost as cold as parts of the Ice Kingdom up here, and SkyWings preferred their climates a tad warmer. Eventually, they had to stop going along the coast and go inland, but it didn’t seem like that would put them at much risk.
As the three moved closer to the interior, the mountain chain rose high above them. It was clear to Crystal that Torrent and Schist were having trouble breathing at those heights, and the four were having to stop much more frequently. It was cold and dry, and eventually they reached heights tall enough that the trees were no more.
It was in the mountains where they finally reached their destination on Torrent’s map: an enormous plateau in the middle of the mountain range, surrounded by snowy peaks all around. The four touched down on the empty expanse of dirt and dry grasses. A herd of yaks was grazing on said grasses, not too far from the dragons, and a few scavengers were herding them around. Seeing the dragons (and the unusual gryphon) not too far from them, they ran frantically towards one of the peaks, abandoning their livestock for safety among the slopes surrounding the great plateau. The four ignored them. The yaks would make for far better meal if needed.
Torrent breathed heavily, still unused to the thin air of the mountains. He attempted to stand up and appear strong, but Crystal knew better. Schist was doing the same, in addition to shivering. The frigid climate of the north-eastern Sky Kingdom was not for him, even when it wasn’t yet winter.
Crystal and Griffin, on the other claw, were doing just fine. Crystal had spent much of her life among the tall peaks around Queen Glacier’s palace, and the cold was no hindrance to an IceWing. She wasn’t exactly sure why Griffin was unperturbed, but she supposed it was something to do with him being an enchanted statue. Now that she thought about, Crystal had never seen him eat. Strange, but not too much of a surprise.
The only visible landmark in the area was a crumbling stone statue in the center of the plateau, sticking out like a SeaWing in a crowd of SandWings. Griffin took a few paces closer to it, and opened his eyes in surprise. “Look!” he jokingly yelled back to the dragons. “It’s me!”
“What?” Torrent scoffed, as he went closer, still gasping for breath. As he examined the statue up and down, he realized Griffin was right, at least somewhat. Although parts of it had crumbled over the ages, it did appear to be a statue of a gryphon, made from a dull marble.
Schist stepped over and examined it curiously. The statue rested on-top of a small granite pedestal. There appeared to be some writing on the base, but even if the MudWing could have made it out, the script was too old for him to read. Was it made by SkyWings? There didn’t seem to be any around.
“It’s not you,” Torrent grumbled. “It’s probably Talon or some other mythical figure.”
“I-it looks a lot like Griffin,” Schist pointed out, shivering. Griffin nodded in agreement.
Torrent shook his head. “No, it’s the other way around. Orca modeled Griffin on descriptions of gryphons from legends. She might have even used drawings of this statue as a base for her own work.” Torrent looked up and down at the statue, then towards Griffin. A sudden movement from Griffin’s head startled the SeaWing for a second. Saying Orca based Griffin off this was an understatement, it was more like plagiarism.
Meanwhile, Crystal had been scanning the surroundings. “You sure your map is right?” Crystal asked Torrent. “All I see around here is the statue and a bunch of yaks; no animus dragons.”
Torrent coughed. “My map doesn’t lie. We might be a little off, but I know there’s one somewhere nearby.” He looked around at the desolate landscape. “If I were an animus in hiding, this is where I would go. There’s no one here.”
“If-f they’re in h-hiding,” Schist shivered, “m-maybe we should leave them alone?” He wrapped his wings around himself.
Torrent shook his head. “They could be hiding because they killed a bunch of dragons, and they’re still an animus. They have magic, and they can use that power to murder and slaughter. We need to continue.”
Schist nodded, even if he wasn’t quite sure he agreed with Torrent’s reasoning. Torrent pulled his dagger out of its sheath, and pointed it around, feeling the amethyst for any warmth. 
“There,” he said, pointing it towards one of the slopes. “I’m picking something up. That’s where our animus is.”
The four walked across the great plateau in silence for what seemed like an eternity. It was a lot larger than it had looked from above, and every time Crystal noticed the mountains ahead, it was like they hadn’t gotten any closer. Suddenly, she looked around at the others nearby, and realized their numbers had dwindled. Only Griffin and Schist were next to her. Where had Torrent gotten to?
She looked ahead, and Torrent almost at the entrance to a small cave, nestled in the mountain slopes. How had he gotten so far ahead? she wondered. We’ve all been walking at the same pace. “TORRENT!” she yelled. She spread her wings, and lifted into flight, going towards him at an uncomfortably low altitude. As she flew towards him, she realized that she wasn’t getting any closer. She looked down, and a strange dizziness overcame her, causing her to plummet straight into the ground. 
She rolled head over tail, the rocks beneath scratching her scales up. Fortunately, all were minor wounds; the pain quickly subsided, and she recovered to her senses. She shook it off, and got back on her feet. It was just scratches and bruises, and they would heal.
Griffin looked over at her, confused on what had happened. She had been flying much faster than they had been walking, but she still hadn’t made any forward progress. How come Torrent — oh. Griffin realized what was going on, this was some animus enchantment, designed to keep them out. It was fortunate it hadn’t been of a more deadly kind. They would need to be more careful as they continued on.
“Torrent!” Griffin yelled. “We need your help with an animus enchantment!”
Torrent looked back, hearing Griffin. He frowned, and thought for a moment, hesitating.
Don’t you dare go on without us, Griffin thought angrily. Don’t even think about it.
After a long moment, Torrent made his choice. He started walking back to the group, and held out his dagger. He disenchanted whatever had been done to the land around them, and Griffin’s vision went shaky for a moment as he readjusted to normality. “Let’s hurry,” he suggested to Schist and Crystal as he ran towards Torrent, finally making progress.
The four finally reached the cave entrance, a small entrance in the cave wall with blackened scorch marks all around the exterior. Torrent poked his head in. “C’mon,” he murmured.
Inside the entrance, the cavern opened up to reveal an enormous oblong room. Shimmering surfaces of gold were scattered around the floor, with a hoard of shining treasure around their edges. Griffin went up to one of the pieces of treasure, a golden chalice with rubies and diamonds embedded around it.
“Wow,” he replied in shock, “I’ve never seen so many shiny objects in all my life. Did Queen Coral have this much in her treasury?”
Torrent shook his head. He didn’t know this much gold existed in Pyrrhia, and this was only the first cavern in the cave system. This animus was filthy rich. Unless. . .
“Queen Glacier didn’t have this much either,” Crystal pointed out. “She preferred gems and silver to gold, though. They fit more with the whole ‘Ice Castle’ theme.”
Schist gave her a look. “Wait, you saw Queen Glacier’s treasury?” he asked in surprise.
Crystal nodded, and held up the Darkstone around her neck. “That’s where I got this,” she fibbed. In truth, she had actually taken it from her father’s laboratory, but she had gone into Queen Glacier’s treasury a couple times, when Boreal had asked her to fetch some gems and metals to test the effects of the Darkstone on inorganic materials. The tests didn’t prove very useful, but it was interesting to see Glacier’s treasury. But this, this was so much greater. The perfect gleam of each and every piece of treasure, as if they were washed by claw each morning.
Griffin held his talons out, and picked up the golden chalice to look at it closer. Torrent saw what he was doing, and yelled out, “Don’t touch it!”
He was too late, and Griffin quickly dropped the chalice, throwing it onto one of the perfectly flat gold surfaces. When it hit the surface, a wave of molten gold splashed up. Griffin jumped back, barely avoiding getting splashed by the feather-searing metal. The chalice slowly sunk into the liquid gold, viscous waves slowly settling.
“All this treasure might be enchanted!” Torrent pointed out. “It could’ve killed you!”
Torrent brought his dagger near a golden crown on the side of his path. The yellow gleam of gold faded to a dull grey stone, showing the gold was truly just pebbles and water, behind whatever enchantment the animus had made on it.
“So it’s not real?” Schist asked, looking closely at a pile of gold coins.
“I’d say it’s real,” Griffin muttered. “It was enchanted to be gold, and unless Torrent goes near it, that’s what it truly is.”
Torrent nodded. “Let’s continue on. I don’t need to spend my time in a room full of fake gold.”
Griffin gave Torrent a quick glare, but followed behind him, Schist and Crystal after.
The four went through a few more rooms full of enchanted treasure, each more glorious and shimmering than the last, until they finally reached their target. A large dome-shaped room was where the path ended, with gold piled up in mountains around the cave walls, a river of molten gold beneath. The walls of the cave were covered in precious gemstones and coated in yet more gold.
At the edge of a mound, a SkyWing perked up, hearing the four walk in. Molten gold coated the bottom of her body, as if she had been sleeping in it. The golden coins around her were all melted and deformed, almost liquified. She stood up, with a glare of ferocity and anger, and took a step towards the group, gold dripping off her tail and legs into puddles on the ground. Torrent could feel the radiant warmth emanating from her scales as she menacingly walked forward.
“Hello,” Schist introduced himself nervously, “I’m Schist, and this is Cr — ”
“I don’t care what you are!” the SkyWing screeched, rage trembling through her voice as her talons shook. “You were sent by Erosion, weren’t you? A bunch of dragonets, that’s what she sends after me?”
“No, no,” Schist continued, “w—”
“LIAR!” the SkyWing yelled, pacing back and forth. “Tell her I’m keeping the animus magic, and if she wants me to give it up, she can enchant Copperhead back to life.” She bared her teeth. “Or maybe I’ll enchant your corpses to tell her.”
Keeping the animus magic? Torrent wondered. Did that mean someone gave her animus powers? That’s possible? He was shocked, suddenly remembering what River had asked before Orca had murdered her. She had demanded that Orca make her an animus, but Orca didn’t think that was possible. But if this SkyWing was telling the truth, it was possible. And it meant that Griffin could’ve been saved without River’s death. Orca could’ve just let River have what she wanted, and no one would have died.
Torrent snapped out of it. This was no time for regrets. “Get close to me!” he yelled at the others. Schist, Crystal, and Griffin huddled up against him, just in time.
“ALL OF YOU BURN!” the SkyWing animus yelled. The air around the four erupted into flame, singeing the tips of Griffin’s feathers. Yet, it stopped short of turning them all to ashes. Torrent stuck his dagger out and rubbed the emerald, and the flames immediately subsided.
The SkyWing animus didn’t even look surprised at what had happened; her face, eternally contorted in anger, didn’t budge. Torrent leapt out at her, claws outstretched, and his dagger ready to stab through the SkyWings scales.
Suddenly, the SkyWing dodged to the right, scraping the tips of her claws along Torrent’s snout and neck, down his gills. Torrent let out a bloody scream as he fell to the ground, making the other three tense up in alarm. The smell of searing flesh filled the room, emanating from Torrent’s gills. It made Griffin want to retch. Torrent twitched limply on the ground, crying out in pain. The scales on the side of his neck had fused together with his gills and the pink flesh beneath from the severe heat of the SkyWing’s claws. Whatever had done this, it wasn’t animus magic.
The SkyWing turned down to look at her victim, grinning in delight. She lifted a claws up, planning to end the twitching SeaWing, when Schist suddenly rushed forward. The SkyWing glanced up in surprise.
“STOP!” Griffin screeched. He lept towards Schist, attempting to pull him back, but was too late.
Schist charged into the SkyWing, throwing the side of his back against her as hard as his body could allow it, throwing her across the room and away from Torrent, into a pile of partially melted gold. The odor of searing scales and flesh filled the room as Schist let out a blood-curdling scream. Griffin was unable to process it. His talons shook rapidly. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be; Torrent should’ve been able to kill her quickly. Schist’s voice quickly subsided. Griffin couldn’t bear to look, and turned his feathered head away, shrinking back.
The SkyWing stepped over Schist’s limp body, smiling as she looked down. The entire right side of his body had blackened scales seared into flesh. Little to nothing remained of his wing membrane on that side. If he was alive, it wouldn’t be for much longer.
Crystal stepped forward, next to Torrent, and looked up to the SkyWing in an expression of shock and anger. Her lips pulled back to a snarl as the SkyWing laughed. The young IceWing trembled for a second, then opened up her jaws and let out a stream of frostbreath all over her enemy.
Any normal dragon would’ve been dead within seconds at a point-blank hit to the face, but when the superchilled breath hit the SkyWing’s scales, it burst into steam, spreading out from the two, and quickly obscuring the two from Griffin’s sight. The steamy enveloped the cave, spreading uncomfortably across Griffin’s feathers, condensing into droplets of water on them.
Griffin hesitated for a moment. What could he do? He couldn’t fight the SkyWing, he’d be burnt to death. He could escape, and maybe save his own life, but that would condemn Torrent and Crystal to certain death. Yet, what other choices were there?
Griffin thought for a moment. If this dragon was an animus, then Torrent’s dagger could turn her to stone. Yet, if another dragon, this ‘Erosion,’ gave the SkyWing her animus powers, then it would instantly make her not an animus when it got near, rendering the dagger useless.
Orca had mentioned something about the dagger being able to have exceptions to what it disenchanted, but only if Torrent allowed the said enchantment to remain. Griffin had been skeptical of going near it, knowing that he could be condemned to his previous mineral state if Torrent hadn’t ‘allowed’ him. That wasn’t a chance he’d wanted to take. Yet, the dagger hadn’t killed him when he’d stood next to Torrent to protect himself from the SkyWing’s enchantment, and Torrent’s map had worked fine when the dagger was around. So maybe there was a chance.
Griffin blindly walked further into the cave. He heard the SkyWing and Crystal chasing each other, like a game of cat-and-mouse, with Crystal continuously spewing her frostbreath, keeping herself invisible. That couldn’t last forever: she’d either run out of frostbreath soon enough, or the SkyWing would get lucky and ‘catch’ her, burning her to a crisp.
“Torrent?” Griffin called out, hoping he was still conscious. If he wasn’t, then they were all doomed.
Fortunately, Griffin heard a faint groan in reply, and followed the sound to its source. He was able to make out the shape of Torrent lying on the ground, the dagger in his claws.
“Torrent,” Griffin said apprehensively. There was no time to worry about his friend’s well-being, or injuries. That could be dealt with if they survived. “I need to you to say, ‘I allow the enchantment giving magic to the SkyWing animus.’ Just like that.”
Torrent let out another groan, and twitched a little in pain.
“Please, please,” Griffin begged, “just trust me. You need to do this, for everyone.”
Torrent muttered out some words that Griffin couldn’t make out, tangled and strewn together. The steam was beginning to clear. Crystal’s frostbreath reserves were at their end.
“You said it, right?” Griffin asked. He didn’t receive an answer. There was no time to try again. Griffin crouched down to Torrent’s claws, where his dagger was. If he was wrong about the enchantment, Griffin would be dead the instant he touched it. He took a deep breath in, and placed a shaky talon on its hilt.
He let out a sigh of relief, maybe a little too soon, after he realized he was still alive and conscious. Griffin picked up the dagger with his talons and spread a feathered wing out, using it to sense wherever the temperature was hottest in the cave. He heard movement in that direction, and decided that was where the SkyWing would be.
Griffin walked over, heart pulsing in terror. He noticed a small pull from the dagger, as if it were trying to return back to Torrent, but ignored it. When he got close enough to the heat source, the steam had emptied out enough for him to see the silhouettes of the SkyWing and Crystal, the former chasing after the latter.
Griffin rushed forward, placing a talon on the dagger’s pearl, and stabbed it with all his willpower into the SkyWing’s leg. It only took a moment before the heat of her scales forced him to withdraw, but that was enough. A grey layer of stone quickly crept up her body, turning her insides to rock. There was a short squeal before it was done, and where a SkyWing animus had been once before, only a statue remained, her face still in a twisted expression of complete and utter rage.
Griffin stepped back as the steam cleared, and dropped the dagger, which slowly clattered across the floor back to its owner. As she clutched the Darkstone around her neck, Crystal stared in silence at the stone SkyWing. Torrent sprawled across the ground in agony. And dropped in a mound of gold coins and countless riches, whiffs of burning flesh emanated from Schist’s dying body.
==Chapter 34==
Griffin stepped over towards Schist, shaking. He looked down at the young MudWing, half of his scales melted into his flesh. He was still alive, his gnarled chest slowly expanding and contracting, but Griffin doesn’t know for how much longer.
Torrent turned his gaze towards Griffin, and attempted to get up and walk over to him. Torrent managed to hoist his body up, but fell again, the pain of the raw seared flesh too much. “What’s wrong?” he asked Griffin, unable to see Schist’s body. “Where’s Schist?”“Over here,” Griffin murmured, holding back tears. “He ran into the SkyWing in order to save you, but got horribly burnt. He’s not going to make it.”
Torrent was silent for a moment. “No, no, he’s got to make it. It can’t be that bad, right? We can turn ourselves over to the SkyWings in exchange for medical care, three moons, I’m a prince, they won’t refuse us.”
Griffin shook his head. “I don’t think he could make it outside of the cave, much less to Queen Scarlet’s palace.”
Torrent roared in frustration, and attempted to lift himself up again, but failed. “This is all my fault,” he groaned. “I shouldn’t have brought him with us, I shouldn’t have gone after the moon-damned SkyWing, I should have just told Glen that he needed to stay with her, and now he’s dead, all because of me.” He put his claws over his face in shame.
“STOP MAKING EVERYTHING ALL ABOUT YOU!” Griffin squawked in anger, his breathing fast. “Schist is the one who’s dying, not you!”
Crystal walked over to Schist, and looked down at him, frowning. She rubbed the Darkstone around her neck between her claws. “I might be able to save him,” Crystal whispered.
“What?” asked Griffin in surprise, whipping his head around to Crystal. “If you plan on using your frostbreath on him, that’s just going to make things worse. It’s hopeless.”
She shook her head, and dangled the Darkstone from her talons. The dark purple stone swayed back and forth. “I might have lied a little when I told you when Queen Glacier had taken this from my sister. My father, a scientist named Boreal, created it in our laboratories.”
“A rock?” Torrent hissed. “It’s not enchanted, I’ve already checked. What are you going to do, pray to your ‘Great Ice Dragon’ with it for Schist to be ‘miraculously’ healed?”
Crystal glared at Torrent. “No. The IceWings used to have animus magic, many, many years ago, passed down through the royal family. In order to make sure our ani — ”
“You’re worse than Whirlpool,” Torrent growled, “We know the history, I’ve read the scrolls. Prince Arctic was kidnapped, Darkstalker killed him, and you ran out of your precious magical monsters.”
Crystal remained calm. “Yes. And for the last two millennia, the IceWing queens have attempted, to no success, to get animus magic, until Boreal, then a simple miner, found an unusual mineral after a cave-in that he hadn’t ever seen before. While trapped down there, waiting for help, he did a few tests, and discovered that it killed insects.”
Torrent seethed. “So it’s a pesticide? You want to save Schist’s life by killing a few bugs?”
“Let me finish,” Crystal hissed. “When Boreal was eventually rescued, he was able to isolate what caused the mineral to act as a pesticide, a small speck of what we call ‘Darkstone,’ distributed throughout the mineral. Not only that, but he discovered that it . . . changes IceWing flesh, and presumably the flesh of other dragons. It allowed the flesh to gain a . . . quality that we believe is the cause of animus powers.” There was a much more technical explanation of how it caused rapid demethylation, but Crystal didn’t have enough time to explain, and she doubted anyone else would be interested.
“Over the last five years, we’ve been able to isolate and purify enough of the Darkstone to create what I have in my talons,” Crystal continued. “If it works as it’s supposed to, I might have falsetto animus powers. I could enchant something to heal Schist.”
Torrent hesitated for a moment. More animus magic? “No!” he exclaimed. “If it works like real animus magic, it means that you’ll lose your soul. You see that SkyWing?” He pointed a talon to the SkyWing, encased in stone. “That’s who you’ll be like, even if it works.”
“What?” Griffin hissed at Torrent. “Orca certainly used more than a healing spell, and we don’t even know if she lost her soul. Same with Adobe, and Sunscorcher, and the SkyWing; you saw all those gold coins, I’m sure they all used their magic to the maximum. It’s just one spell, to save Schist’s life, and then she can destroy it.”
“Animus magic is pure evil, and she needs to destroy that thing as soon as possible,” Torrent hissed. “I’m not letting her use it.”
“Pure evil?” Griffin screeched. “Then what does that make me? You don’t get a say in the matter, anyways, it’s Crystal’s choice. I say Crystal does it.” He looked towards Crystal in hope.
Crystal nodded. “I’ll try,” she said. She looked down at the pile of gold and gemstone covering the SkyWing’s cave, and dragged her talons through a small collection of diamonds. She picked up a small clear diamond next to an octahedral shaped green one. She eyed it for a moment in apprehension. While she had mentioned what Darkstone could do in theory, at least from her work in the lab, there had been some nasty . . . side effects on animal test subjects, radiation burns and tissue destabilization among them. She put those thoughts out of her mind.
Holding the Darkstone in one talon, and the diamond in the other. Torrent tried to get up to stop her, but fall back over, clutching his neck in agony. Crystal took in a deep breath. “I enchant this diamond to heal anyone it touches.”
Suddenly, a wave of nausea and fatigue washed over Crystal. All her muscles seemed to loosen up, unable to keep herself on four legs. Her head went dizzy, and she fell to the ground, her skull hitting the rocks below with a hard bump. Torrent’s heart slowed to a stop as he saw her fall. This was like what happened when Orca had enchanted Griffin.
Griffin walked over to Crystal’s unconscious body, stepping carefully around her wings. He picked up the diamond, which had fallen from her claws onto the stone floor. After staring at it for a moment, he walked over to Schist, climbing over the piles of gold to get to the young MudWing.
Griffin closed his eyes, and hoped for the best. He placed the diamond on the mess of Schist’s melted flesh and scales, and waited.
=Part 3=
==Chapter 35==
Water splashed over a NightWing’s claws as he stepped into a puddle. The NightWing took a glance down at his paw, and shook it, the spray of water droplets hitting two stray cats, curiously looking up at the dragon’s silvery-black scales, tones of orange flashing off them. He tilted his head to look down at his feline companions with a solemn smile.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized to the cats, “I’m sorry you got wet.”
The two cats seemed to accept his apology, and turned away. One of them, a brown tabby with bright blue eyes, scrambled ahead, as if it was keeping watch for any enemies. The second stayed behind, walking side-by-side with the NightWing, the average size for a dragon, but a terrifying monstrosity to something as small as the cat. Yet, the cat didn’t seem to mind the large size of its companion, in fact, it seemed to enjoy the company. It brushed against the NightWing’s leg as he continued to walk onwards through the alleyway.
A third cat decided to join the scene, curious to whatever had convinced its brethren to join the dragon. This one poked its head out from a crack in the wall, then quickly lept out to see what the commotion in the cat world was. It pranced around the NightWing, nimbly dancing between his legs and tail. The NightWing walked onwards, careful not to step on the newcomer.
“Hello, my friend,” he said to the third cat, “what brings you here today?”
He received no answer but a meow, but the NightWing just nodded in agreement. “Do not worry, my furry friend, I do not bite.” He chuckled slightly, revealing his sharpened teeth. “I have food and water, if you would like to join me.”
Evidently, the cat listened, and followed the NightWing down the alleyway, joining the blue-grey cat in the walk. The NightWing continued in this fashion until he reached his destination, and by the time he arrived, four more felines were walking with him. Seven in total.
Tiny droplets of water fell from the dark sky overhead, dripping from the roof of the blue-shingled roof of the building the NightWing was in front of. They fell through the air until splattering in his scales, then slowly rolled off him, leaving behind a shining trail that made his scales look almost metallic. As the cats knew, it had been raining for the past week, in a rare burst of downpour. The SandWings in the western half of the city (which many claimed was an entirely different city altogether) did not like this rain one bit, and many of the cats saw them constantly bickering and complaining about the horrible weather. The SkyWings minded much less.
The NightWing visitor knocked on the door three times, causing more droplets to rush off the roof onto his head and neck. He didn’t seem to mind, but one of his cats sung with each rap against the door he made.
“Quiet, you,” he playfully ordered, and the cat complied. The door swung open, revealing a SkyWing with crimson scales and a scowl on her face.
“I thought I told you dragonets to scra — ” she hissed, before looking up at the NightWing in front of her, her scowl changing to a frown. Not much of an improvement, but at least it was something.
“Hello, Avalanche,” the NightWing greeted her with a calm smile. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“It has,” Avalanche snorted with an air of haughtiness, as if she was attempting to impress her guest with her voice alone. “Get inside before you freeze the entire house. I just got a fire going, and don’t want to let out the heat.”
The NightWing nodded, and took a step through the doorway. His cats followed him, trotting into the doorway and making themselves settled, as if they owned the place. Avalanche frowned.
“I take it your pets are going to stay here too?” she asked with a growl.
The NightWing gently smiled. “Of course. Would you leave these poor creatures to stay out in the rain?”
“My house will be reeking of their p**s in a day,” Avalanche hissed. “And it will be another year before the place smells normal again.”
The NightWing didn’t reply, and Avalanche shut the door after the last cat entered, already knowing what his answer would be. The NightWing looked around the small home to see the fireplace burning bright.
“Are you enjoying the weather?” the NightWing asked Avalanche. “It seems like a cold rain would be a nice break from the usual heat.”
Avalanche rolled her eyes, not caring to make small talk. “Why are you here, Trustbreaker,” Avalanche hissed. “Is it safe to assume it’s not because you wanted to talk about the weather or find some new pets?”
She glared at one of the cats, kneading at what looked like her sleeping quarters. The cat looked back innocently and gave her a meow in response. Trustbreaker smiled.
“He likes you,” he interpreted for Avalanche. “He’s glad he’s found someplace warm. He’s also hungry, and would be very grateful for some food.”
Avalanche snorted. “You expect me to feed him?” she asked in skepticism.
“He’s your guest,” Trustbreaker explained, “and isn’t that why you joined Fracture? To make sure no one starves?”
“I joined because Queen Scarlet killed my brother,” Avalanche hissed. “I joined because hundreds of dragons die in battle each day, fighting in this idiotic war. Not to feed some stray cats. Now, are you going to scold me, or will you tell me why you’re here?”
Trustbreaker sighed, his face falling. “Nautilus is dead. Scarlet’s forces burnt down the village and killed everyone he had recruited.” A couple of the cats looked up at Trustbreaker, as if they were mourning the fallen SeaWing.
“What?” Avalanche hissed in anger. She clenched her teeth. Yet another dragon dead by the claws of her tyrannical queen. “Did Fracture predict this?”
Trustbreaker shook his head. One of the cats walked over to the NightWing and nestled beneath his wing. Trustbreaker curled the cat closer.
A rumble of anger started to come up from Avalanche’s throat, but it produced no flame. “What’s the use of having a so-called prophet if he can’t predict anything!” she exclaimed.
Trustbreaker moved a claw down the cat, gently stroking its fur. The cat purred in delight, rubbing up against the NightWing. He didn’t respond. A rumble of thunder sounded from afar, and the pitter-patter of rain got stronger until it reached a loud buzz. Hisses of the other cats filled the air.
“Keep them quiet,” Avalanche growled, raising her voice over the downpour. “We don’t want anyone poking their snouts in here.”
Trustbreaker nodded, and the whining of the cats quieted down. He continued to stroke the one rubbing up against him, the brown tabby. It stared at Avalanche with a gaze of intelligence.
“So, what do we do now?” Avalanche asked Trustbreaker, narrowing her eyes. She paced back and forth a little. With Nautilus dead, along with all the dragons he recruited to their cause, it meant that Fracture, Trustbreaker, Clarity, and herself were the only four remaining: alone, with no allies. “Our recruiting operation has gone to hell, and the war has only gotten worse.”
“Fracture says he has a plan,” Trustbreaker answer, with a hint of concern in his voice. “He wants you to take Nautilus’ place as recruiter and organizer for now.”
Avalanche snorted. “Me? Has he finally lost it?”
“There are plenty of dragons here that would interested in an end to the war, SandWings and SkyWings alike,” Trustbreaker suggested, “we’ll be here for a few more months; plenty of time to find some potential allies.”
“Unlikely,” Avalanche replied. The rain continued pattering down on the roof, creating a ruckus of sound. “Everyone here just wants to mind their own business and ignore the war. They pretend like it’s not happening, and that Pyrrhia is at peace. There’s no war here, at least that’s what they all claim.”
“Who knows how long that will last?” Trustbreaker asked. “The peace here is already fragile, and I’ve heard that other settlements on the Five-Tail River have been attacked recently. This would be a good place for the IceWing army to enter the Sky Kingdom from.”
“I know that.” Avalanche snorted. “It’s the rest of the twin cities which don’t know. What do you mean, ‘we’ll be here for a few more months?’”
Trustbreaker sighed. “Fracture has managed to set up a meeting with a top NightWing advisor to Queen Battlewinner, but the advisor refuses to hold direct negotiations with IceWings, so both Clarity and Fracture himself are out of the picture. Fracture thinks he might be able to work out semi-official support from the Night Kingdom. Originally, Nautilus was going to attend, but that’s clearly no longer an option.”
Avalanche looked at Trustbreaker with a glare. “And why can’t you go?”
Trustbreaker glanced away. “Too many questions would be raised as to how a NightWing ended up with us, and if the wrong dragon saw me, there could be some serious issues. It’s far safer for everyone just to keep me here.”
Avalanche grimaced. “So I’ll be doing this by myself. Did you know the NightWing I’m meeting with?”
The NightWing nodded, stroking his tabby. “Yes, but not well. He was an ambitious dragon, with his only loyalties to the Night Kingdom and himself. I suspect this one is similar. Stay wary.”
Avalanche laughed heartily. “I’m trusting a NightWing named Trustbreaker already. Wariness is clearly not my strong suit.”
Trustbreaker frowned. “I’ve told you before, my name has little to do with my personality, it’s a remi—”
“I know, I know,” the crimson SkyWing snorted. “I was making a joke. Don’t worry, I’ll be extremely wary of this NightWing.”
The NightWing breathed a slight sigh of relief. “Good. I should also warn you that Fracture expects us to have visitors before the meeting takes place.”
Avalanche grimaced. “More? Is it that sister-in-law of his again? I told her to stay away.”
Trustbreaker nodded, and his cat stared up into Avalanche’s eyes once more as another burst of thunder shook the room. “It is, but this time, she’ll be bringing company.”
==Chapter 36==
Schist walked past a shimmering pool of molten gold, one of his paws stepping slightly closer to the edge than he had intended. He pulled it away as soon as the heat radiating off of the liquid, his heart pounding in fear. He backed away and took a deep breath. It couldn’t hurt him if he didn’t touch it. He squeezed his eyes closed and crouched to the ground, trying to scrunch himself up as small as possible.
An aged MudWing sat in her thatch house, hidden gems tucked beneath her wing. She glared at the three dragonets, curiously poking at her horde.
“What are those?” Glen asked, poking her snout far too close the the MudWing. She received a sharp push from the MudWing’s wing in response.
“Eggs,” the mother growled, lifting up her wing to allow the dragonets a glimpse. There were four oval eggs beneath her wing, the eggshells almost thin enough to see the dragonets inside, waiting to burst free. “You want them?” she growled with nonchalance.
“Yes!” Glen exclaimed in excitement. She hopped around in glee, already excited by the prospect of new siblings. “We’re going to have more sibs!” she notified Quake and Schist. “Isn’t that great?”
Quake towered over his two siblings, and laughed with concern. “No thank, ma’am,” he answered the MudWing mother. “Three is enough for us, and we’re too old to add newborn unsibs.” He smiled uncomfortably, as if worried the mother would give him the eggs anyways. Glen gave Quake a glare and a snort, but didn’t protest.
“Suit yourself,” the mother yawned.
Schist poked his snout curiously at the eggs, counting them. One, two, three, and four. Three were normal MudWing colors — rust, caramel, and beige — but the fourth was a curious color; it was as red as blood. “Will that one be a red MudWing?” Schist quietly asked the mother. “I’ve never seen a red MudWing before.”
“What?” the mother asked, trying to parse Schist’s question. “A red MudWing?” She chuckled. “No, it’ll turn out similar to the others. Haven’t you ever heard of blood-eggs before?”
Schist shook his head, curious.
The mother nodded. “They’re rare, but nothing too special. Their scales can’t be burnt, not even by the hottest flame. Useful in battle against SkyWings and SandWings, or so I’ve heard.” She said the word battle with a hint of disgust, cursing the very idea of war.
Schist turned to Quake. “Was I hatched from a blood-egg?” he asked hopefully, crossing his claws slightly.
“Of course you weren’t!” Glen interrupted before Quake could answer. “Remember when you got too close to that fire?”
Schist frowned, recalling the incident. “Yeah . . .” he replied glumly. He looked at Quake, hoping for him to contradict Glen’s answer, but he didn’t reply.
Now more than ever, Schist was certain that his egg was not the color of dragon blood. He took a talon and rubbed it down the scales on the right side of his neck, feeling the unnatural contours. Where they had once been smooth, they were now rigid and jagged, perverted and fused together by the SkyWing. He turned his neck from side to side, causing his melted scales to lock up and resist his movement. With a jerk he felt a burst of pain: the space between some of them had opened up, causing a wound to open up. Yet, it was easy to ignore. It was nothing compared to when his body had hit the SkyWing’s, and he burned.
It had been two weeks since the fight with the SkyWing. Schist had initially been surprised when he awoke. He had expected to die, but by the same magic that had killed Quake, he had survived. All that had saved him from oblivion was the small diamond. For the first few days, he had been afraid to let it go, worried that the pain would return to him, or worse. Eventually, he gave it up, for Crystal’s sake. She needed it more than he did, or that was what Torrent had thought.
He wanted to be grateful for the diamond, but even though it had “healed” him, there was so much more it could have done. He felt the misshapen scales strewn across his body. Maybe it had kept the burns from healing them, but the scars still remained. It had done the same thing with Torrent when the SeaWing had used it on his burns: it healed his wounds, but the scars of the SkyWing’s claws still remained, visible to any dragon.
Torrent’s scars might be easily seen, but they were nothing compared to Schist’s deformity. Plenty of dragons had battle scars: it was a sign of maturity and strength. But “scar” was an extreme understatement of Schist’s wounds. He took a glance at the pool of molten gold, then winced away at his reflection. He was hideous.
The afflicted scales were spread along his right side, extending down his tail, and creeping up his neck to the base of his snout. Instead of the clean, orderly pattern of interlocking plates on most dragons, Schist’s scales were a mess. They looked as if a dragon had thrown a mound of clay onto the ground, and decided to wear that. In the worst places, it was difficult to see the individual scales, they were so fused together. In others, one had scales piled on top of each of each other, folded up like strewn about scrolls. Some of his scales were being pushed down by others, tearing into his flesh whenever he took a step. If he moved too quickly, blood would seep out. He looked nothing like the dragon he was before.
Schist took a breath, and slowly towards the furthest chamber of the caves, where Torrent and Griffin would be with Crystal. He poked his head into the chamber with a grim smile. Griffin gave him an awkward beak grimace, whereas Torrent avoided looking at Schist altogether, keeping his eyes focused firmly on Crystal.
Torrent had disenchanted the majority of the gold in the chamber, but small specks of the shimmering metal still abounded, strewn about the room. Schist looked at them with disgust. He never wanted to see the metal again.
Schist took a few steps towards Crystal, curled up on the ground, the diamond she had enchanted in her claws. The Darkstone was placed a short distance from her. The light-blue scales of her underbelly gently pulsated in and out, her breath shallow. She fidgeted slightly, lost in her unnatural sleep.
She had been this way for two weeks now, since she had enchanted the diamond. Torrent had remained calm at first, claiming that a similar thing had happened to his sister when she had enchanted Griffin to life, but after two days of Crystal being unresponsive, it became clear this was more serious. She moved occasionally, and she was alive, but not awake. Nothing any of the three did seemed to change that.
They had been trying to give her food and water, but it wasn’t working too well, especially with the food. That was the primary reason she still had the healing diamond—it clearly wasn’t bringing her out the coma, but hopefully it would prevent her dying of hunger or thirst, although considering the state of his scales, Schist was skeptical about how well the thing actually worked. How long was it that IceWings could go without food again?
Griffin was poking through the four’s rations right now, looking through the satchels. He frowned. “We need to get more food,” he notified Torrent and Schist, concerned.
Torrent looked over and confirmed Griffin’s observation with a sigh. “Alright.” He glanced over at Schist. “I’m not going to be any help unless there’s an ocean nearby. You and Griffin can go. I’ll stay and watch over Crystal.”
Schist nervously nodded, with a glance around the cave. His scales ached, but he would be glad get back out of the horrendous cave. He might even try flying again; he hadn’t tried since the fight. He tried to stretch his right wing, even through the gritting pain of his own scales poking and prodding into him, moving in ways they never should have. It wasn’t fun, but it worked, and maybe some time and practice would let him fly again.
“C’mon, let’s go,” Griffin suggested, walking past Schist towards the exit of the cave. The gryphon’s feathered wings brushed against Schist. Griffin only had scales on his talons, the rest of his skin was covered in feathers and fur. Flexible and painless, unlike the monstrosity Schist wore on his side. He followed Griffin to the outside of the cave, his amalgamation of scales objecting to every step.
Torrent remained behind in the cave, with only Crystal’s shallow breath and heartbeat. He twitched his tail in annoyance, then started pacing. He glanced back at Crystal again. The IceWing was still. Torrent growled. “This is why we shouldn’t mess with animus magic,” he grumbled. He stared at the Darkstone in anger, then continued his pacing.
Torrent continued this way for a bit: walking back and forth with no purpose. Eventually, he tired of this, and pulled out his dagger. Over the last few weeks, he had been trying to disenchant all the gold and other magical items in the room, but it was tedious and tiring. He set to work by going to one of the piles of glittering coins and treasure, and swept his dagger across it, turning the precious metal to worthless pebbles.
Suddenly, while moving the dagger through the pile of money, he hit something interesting. He picked it up. A quill, presumably enchanted to be fireproof. Had the SkyWing been writing something with it? Torrent frowned before disenchanting it.
It didn’t take much searching through the pile of pebbles and gold to find the scroll. Torrent disenchanted it quickly (most likely a fireproof spell, but better safe than sorry), then rolled it out along the ground. He read a random segment of it:
I met the most wonderful SandWing while I was in Crosswinds today! She goes by Copperhead (though I would call her Copper if she allowed me), and she’s the most captivating dragon I have ever laid my eyes upon! Her bronze scales shine more than the most priceless jewelry in Erosion’s hoard, and her voice is soft as the sand of, with a hint of the most enthralling coarseness. I first set my gaze on her while fetching letters for Erosion, but was too shy to speak. She noticed me, and asked me what was wrong, and I wish only that I could have answered honestly her question: the only thing wrong was that my scales were not against her own; that I could not hold her claws and spend eternity by her side. Yet, I had my duties to Erosion . . .
Torrent continued reading the diary in contempt. It was the boring musings of some love-struck dragonet. He glanced at the date: around fifteen years ago. Before the war. Still, it was better than nothing. He continued on, skimming through a long and length description of how kind and beautiful Copperhead was, and then a droning piece on how frightened the SkyWing was that her to-be lover would find out about her firescales, which were apparently canceled by some magical bracelet or whatever she had been given to by her SandWing master and guardian, Erosion. From the account, Erosion was also the one who had given animus powers to the SkyWing, whose name was Magma, and had unfortunately rescued her from the normal fate of SkyWings with too much fire, being thrown off cliffs.
The idea of animus powers being spread like that bothered Torrent immensely. Something like that could be given to any dragon, no matter their intentions. It wasn’t difficult for him to think of a few simple enchantments could distribute powers easily: a scroll in which every dragon who read it gained powers, a necklace which gave powers to any dragon who wore it. Though, he supposed, it wasn’t much different than what the Darkstone could do, apparently.
Still, if giving animus dragons powers was possible, was the opposite true? If so, then Orca could have just enchanted her powers away. Had she known that was possible back in the Sea Kingdom, but kept her powers instead? What if she had tried to do that, but failed? Torrent shook his head and put the scroll down. It wouldn’t do well to dwell on the past; he couldn’t change it. Unless, of course, animus magic . . .
Torrent shoved that thought away. Using magic for something like that was just plain wrong, and the prospects were terrifying. He didn’t want to think about those possibilities. He walked back towards Crystal, and glanced around at their satchels, strewn about by Griffin looking through them. He picked up his scroll-case, and emptied it out. A few scrolls rolled out, along with the map Orca had enchanted for him. He rolled it open.
There were only a couple more of the blotches indicating animus dragons east of the Claws of the Clouds mountains. All but one were in the Bay of a Thousand Scales or other SeaWing waters. If Crystal woke up — no, when she woke up — she and Schist couldn’t fly so far over the ocean without breaks. The other animus was somewhere in the huge rainforest in the south of Pyrrhia, almost the opposite side of the continent. Far. There were a number of other splotches to the west of the mountains, and one in the mountains themselves. The nearest animus dragon to them was a yellow blotch along the Five-Tailed River, most likely a SandWing. Maybe that would be their next stop. If Torrent wanted to take Crystal and Schist with him, and they were willing.
Torrent set the map down and turned to Crystal, still unresponsive. He picked up the Darkstone, a short distance from her, and frowned. It created a strange tingling feeling in his talons, as if his scales were vibrating when they touched it. He didn’t like it. He looked closer, putting the stone up to his eye. The stone was dark and cloudy, with shimmers of an unnatural purple light glimmering from within. The SeaWing covered the Darkstone with his other paw, making sure no torchlight was showing through it. The violet shine was still there, casting a faint, almost unnatural light on Torrent’s blue scales.
Torrent took a quick glance at Crystal, making sure she was still asleep. After confirming that, he picked up one of the stones in the cave, and held it up. “I enchant this stone to levitate,” he whispered, ignoring the feelings of shame and fear that it might actually work.
Torrent let go of the grey stone, and it fell to the ground, creating a small clatter. Clearly, the Darkstone hadn’t worked for him. He snorted, and hit the stone away with his tail. It slid across the floor until it hit one of the piles of gold and pebbles, causing a small landslide. Torrent turned back to the Darkstone, wondering why Crystal had been able to use it. He set it down where it was before, the mysterious light still flickering.
He turned to Crystal, the diamond she had enchanted resting on her chest. It had healed both him and Schist, at least to an extent. He rubbed his claws along the scars on his snout, then down his neck, where the SkyWing, Magma, had scratched him. The diamond had healed the open wounds caused by the burn, but the scars still remained.
Although he hadn’t told any of the others yet, his gill covers and the gills beneath had been damaged on that side, and they hadn’t healed back properly. He couldn’t breath underwater on that side anymore, although the other one still worked alright. Torrent wasn’t exactly sure what that meant for his swimming anymore, but he suspected that even if he could swim, it wouldn’t be easy. Even if he did end up returning to the Sea Kingdom, things would never be the same as they once had been. Not like they would have been the same anyways, with Orca, Rift, and River all dead. 
He wondered how Angler would be doing. They had never had a close relationship, although the only dragon Angler had a close relationship was Rift, really, and maybe their father. Angler wasn’t the type of dragon to go out of his way to make friends, even with his family, and had spent most of his time alone in his room, reading or writing scrolls on things no one ever cared about, like the scrolls Whirlpool normally gave Torrent. Still, Torrent felt a little bad about abandoning his remaining brother.
Torrent sighed, and turned away from Crystal. He hoped she would wake up soon. He wasn’t sure what they would do if he didn’t. The SeaWing turned away, and continued his pacing, marching back and forth across the stone floor of the cave.
== Chapter 37 ==
The cold mountain wind brushed Griffin’s feathers as he stepped outside of the cave. He grinned, trying to curl his beak up the way the dragons did it. This was where he belonged, not with a bunch of SeaWings under the ocean. He turned back towards Schist. “C’mon!” he shouted. “It’s great out here!”
Schist slowly stepped under the cold sun, the brisk wind chilling and numbing the spaces between his fused scales. He shivered and winced. It was better than in the cave in some ways, but it was much too frigid. Too frigid for a MudWing to breath fire, not that he wanted to anyways. “It’s cold,” he muttered to Griffin.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it,” Griffin replied, not knowing if Schist actually would. “Try moving around, it helps me.” He didn’t bother telling Schist about the enchantment Orca had placed on him to keep him warm at the bottom of the ocean floor when Torrent hadn’t been looking, it wouldn’t make things better.
“It hurts when I move around quickly,” Schist grumbled. “Remember? I’ve told you about ten times now.”
“Oh yeah, sorry about that,” Griffin responded with a hint of embarrassment. “Let’s get moving, it’ll help you ignore the cold.” He hesitated for a moment. “But slow,” he added, trying to be conscious of Schist’s injuries. “We’ll walk at your pace.”
The two slowly walked across the plateau, the golden grasses furiously swaying in the cold winds. Down the gentle slope, the herd of yaks was grazing, being tended to by scavengers. They saw Schist and Griffin, and watched them warily, but didn’t try to run. A small scavenger dragonet pointed to the two and shouted something, but one of the older scavengers pulled her away.
“Even the scavengers are staring at me,” Schist muttered under his breath.
 “What?” Griffin asked in concern.
“Nothing,” Schist grumbled.
“No,” Griffin said with a frown, “it’s not nothing. Look, it’s alright if dragons stare at you, just cause you’ve got a few more scars than most. Sure, you look a little different, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Schist snorted in contempt, and Griffin glanced at the MudWing. “Well?”
“Fine,” Schist sighed, “I’m just worried about what my sister will say. Now that I’m like . . . this.”
“Don’t worry!” Griffin quickly said. “I saw how much she wanted to get you back; there’s no way a few weird scales is going to ever change that!”
Schist nodded with a grim smile, then turned back to the scavengers. “If we need food, we could take one of their yaks,” he suggested.
Griffin stared skeptically. There were quite a number of them, all carefully watching Griffin and Schist. Most of them seemed to have weapons of some sort. “Probably not a good idea,” he explained, “you’re still not in fighting condition, and the largest ones are as tall as I am.”
Griffin glanced up at Schist. He was almost a full-grown MudWing, three times as tall as  any scavenger. Griffin, on the other talon, was tiny compared to him, and while he was certainly larger than a scavenger, that many posed a threat. Griffin was barely larger than even the yaks. The contrast was even more apparent with Torrent, who had gotten his father’s size.
“Let’s go,” Griffin said. He started walking away from the scavengers, towards the north-east, and Schist followed.
The two continued walking like this for a while, looking around for any unfortunate yaks who had gotten separated from their herd, but to no luck. It was getting close to nightfall, and the two were about ready to turn back and give up hope, when Griffin heard something rustling in a nearby bush.
“Did you hear something?” Griffin whispered to Schist. Schist shook his head. “Just a minute, I’m going to check it out.”
 He walked closer to the bush. It was large, and it was definitely possible that there was a yak behind it, or maybe a deer at least, just something Torrent and Schist could eat. He took a step closer, when suddenly, he heard Schist yell something out.
Griffin turned around to see Schist with a frightened expression on his snout, along with four SkyWings behind him, curiously staring at Schist. A large rustling came from behind Griffin, and a fifth SkyWing rose out from the bush, looking closely at Griffin.
Griffin took a step back and gulped. “We don’t mean any trouble!” he explained. “Just looking for food!”
A few of the SkyWings gave gasps of amazement. “It can talk?” one asked quietly. Griffin winced, having momentarily forgotten that a talking gryphon wasn’t exactly considered normal in Pyrrhia.
The fifth SkyWing stepped closer to Griffin, a dragon a few years older than Torrent, with red and orange scales covering her body. She took a curious look at him while he stood as still as the statue he was enchanted from. When she was finally done sniffing him up and down, she took a step back. “We’ll take them back to Bobcat, and have her decide what to do with them,” she ordered the others.
Griffin shuddered, and folded his wings inwards, drawing another gasp of amazement from the SkyWings. Was this a guard patrol for Queen Scarlet? They didn’t look like guards, but he hadn’t ever seen SkyWing guards before. He glanced over at Schist, but the MudWing looked just as confused and frightened as he was.
The SkyWings marched the two to wherever their destination was. Griffin didn’t even think about trying to resist. The two together couldn’t take on five scavengers in this state, much less five fully-grown dragons. When they finally reached their destination, the sun had set, and the moons (only two of which were visible at the moment) lit up the sky.
The SkyWings looked like they had taken them to a small village on the side of a mountain. Small houses of wood and stone littered the gentle slope they rested on, as if they had been dropped from above and landed at whatever place and angle they pleased. Further up the slope were fields of tilled crops, and herds of grazing yaks and mountain goats. Terraces had been built into the sides, where stalks of corn grew up. 
Griffin looked further up. A couple of SkyWings were flying in the airspace above, traveling to and from the village to the farms surrounding it. The mountain itself raised high above the village, capped by snow at the top. More mountains flanked either side of it, forming the northernmost tip of the Claws of the Clouds.
The SkyWings led Schist and Griffin into the village. The two walked through narrow pathways, the houses on either side of them, as SkyWings looked on. Various dragons of warm hues poked their heads out from the houses, staring as the two visitors trudged past. Most of these dragons had never seen a MudWing in their lives, except for the few who had visited Queen Scarlet’s infamous arena, and certainly none of them had ever seen a gryphon before.
The seven continued through the village until they reached a large building at the village’s very edge, pushed up against the mountain-side as if the mountain was slowly pulling the building into itself. This building was much different than the rest of the village: although it retained the distinctive cubical shapes of the houses around it, it had multiple distinct stories, and roofs were curved instead of flat. It looked extremely old, and chunks of rubble or shingles that had fallen from it littered the ground, forcing Griffin to step around them. A narrow stone staircase was visible in the back of the building, carved around the mountain. It wrapped around the stone until it reached a small landing pad half cut into the stone. A golden-orange SkyWing took off from the platform, glancing curiously at the visitors before quickly flying off to do whatever his business was.
“This way,” the SkyWing in change said to Schist and Griffin, looking at them warily. “Don’t try anything funny.” She didn’t seem to perceive either of them as too much of a threat, though Griffin didn’t blame her. Schist was limping visibly, and it was very evident he was still injured. Griffin was just too small to pose a threat to a full-grown SkyWing, although if he was quick, he might be able to escape.
The SkyWing opened up one of the doors to the building, and beckoned the two in before following after them. None of the others followed. The doors opened up to a narrow hallway, barely large enough for Schist to walk through. Wooden floorboards creaked beneath underneath them as they walked, definitely a fire hazard, especially around SkyWings. Griffin was surprised the building had lasted so long with all this wood throughout it, although so deep into the Sky Kingdom the village would be nowhere near the vicious battles that plagued much of the rest of Pyrrhia.
“Turn left here,” the SkyWing ordered the two. Schist complied, and turned left to see a old wooden door. He opened it, and walked into the room it led into. Griffin and the SkyWing followed.
The room appeared to be a quaint study of some sort. Scrollshelves lined the walls, and in the center of the room there was a large desk with neatly placed scrolls on its surface. An elderly SkyWing sat behind the desk, using the light from a singular candle to read the scrolls. She looked up, and frowned. “Kite, who are these?” she asked, in a long, rasping voice. Her fragile wings were folded in, huddled around her body.
“We found them out while on a patrol,” Kate explained, her voice stiff and emotionless. “I’m pretty sure the brown one is a MudWing. I don’t know what the other one is, but it can talk. Some type of sorcery, I presume.”
The SkyWing stood up, and slowly staggered over to the two. She scanned Schist up and down as he nervously squirmed. She looked at his scorched and fused scales with a frown, then turned to Griffin, lowering her head down to Griffin’s level. A hint of surprised crossed over her face. “Are you a gryphon?” she said curiously.
“Yes,” Griffin replied with a slight air of annoyance. He didn’t particularly want to explain it again.
The SkyWing nodded, then took a step back and smiled. “I am Bobcat. This dragon here,” she pointed to the younger SkyWing, “is Kite, my granddaughter.”
 “Great-granddaughter,” Kite corrected. Bobcat nodded in response, then looked at Schist and Griffin expectantly.
It took a moment before Schist realized what she wanted. “I’m Schist,” he introduced himself, “and that’s Griffin. His name.”
Bobcat nodded. “We haven’t had a MudWing up here in a very, very long time,” she commented, “and barring the statue not too far from here, I don’t think we’ve ever had a gryphon.” She looked at Schist again, this time craning her neck to see his scarred scales. “I take it you had an encounter with Magma?” she said sadly.
“Magma?” Schist wondered. “Does she have scales which can burn on touch?”
“Yes,” Bobcat answered. “Her sister lives in the village. We attempted to do the . . . normal thing with her when she was born, but a SandWing traveler convinced us to let her take the dragonet instead. She came back around fifteen years ago, and after killing a few unfortunate SkyWings, has lived in a cave to the southwest since. I wasn’t even sure she was still alive.”
“Not anymore,” Griffin explained. “We, er, stopped her.”
Both Bobcat and Kite looked at Griffin and Schist in amazement. “How?” Kite asked with a hint of skepticism.
“It was Griffin,” Schist responded. “He used an enchanted dagger to turn her to stone.”
 Griffin nodded. “We still have the statue of her if you . . . want it back.” Neither Torrent nor Schist had wanted to keep the statue around (Torrent thought it was an extremely creepy reminder of Orca’s statues), but Griffin had convinced them to store it a side-cave where it wouldn’t be seen, just in case it ever came in handy.
Bobcat though for a moment, closing her eyes. “Then why are you here? It can’t be pleasant for a MudWing; this cold out here.”
“No,” Schist replied, “but I don’t know how well I can fly anymore, and we have a friend who’s in a coma. She’s being taken care of by another one of our friends, back in the SkyWi — Magma’s cave. We need food and water, and it would really help us out if you could spare some.”
The elderly SkyWing pondered Schist’s request for a moment. She looked over towards Griffin, her eyes staring uncomfortably into his. “Yes,” she finally answered, “but in return, I would like it if you helped out on the fields every so often until you’re ready to leave. If you’re worried you can’t fly, it should help you get back up to strength.”
Schist frowned. Hadn’t they already done enough, getting rid of the dragon who had murdered some of the SkyWings here? “I mean — ”
“Of course!” Griffin interrupted in relief. “I’m sure Torrent can take care of Crystal on his own, and it’s not like we have anything else to do.” 
Bobcat smiled gently. “Then it’s settled. I’m sure some of the other SkyWings will be interested to meet you. I’ll have Kite help bring your supplies back to your other friends.”
== Chapter 38 ==
“Hello, Crystal,” an voice yawned, with a hint of boredom pulsing through it. It sent a shiver down her spine, as if someone had dragged a screeching piece of ice along her scales.
Crystal tried to remember what was happening, squinting her eyes. Everything was blurry. She’d gone to the Sky Kingdom, there was a fight with a SkyWing, Schist had gotten injured. She’d used the Darkstone to enchant a diamond that would save him. Had it worked? She wasn’t sure, using the Darkstone was the last thing she could remember.
As her vision started to clear up, Crystal looked around at her surroundings. She was still in a cave, but it was nothing the SkyWing animus’s cave. A shimmering, ice-like quartz covered the walls of the chamber, and small purple specks like stars covered the ceiling of the chamber, placed seemingly randomly. It reminded her of some of the caverns in the northern Sand Kingdom she’d visited with her father, except with a blinding intensity.
Where am I? she thought in worry. Did using the Darkstone kill her? Was she with the Great Ice Dragon now? If this was the northern Sand Kingdom, how else could she have gotten to the Sand Kingdom anyways? Where were Torrent, Griffin, and Schist? Her head hurt, as if there was something stuck in her skull beneath her horns.
“Your allies aren’t here,” the voice spoke again. Crystal whipped around, lashing her sharp tail out. Behind her stood — no, floated — a shimmering figure of a MudWing, maybe five or so years older than Crystal herself. It was difficult to tell, his transparent appearance didn’t seem fully static. He had a tired look on his face, as if he had forgotten to sleep the night before, and his wings were folded inwards. At first, his eyes appeared to be differently colored, one a light-blue, and the other a golden-brown, but the mismatched pupil size and an unusual wobble revealed to Crystal that the latter was glass. “You’re not dead, if that’s what you’re wondering. You’re dreaming.”
“What?” Crystal asked in confusion. She waved a claw back and forth within the air. It sure felt real. Cold air brushed up against her scales. She peered behind the floating MudWing. Across a long platform of the same quartz-like material that the walls were made from, the preserved corpse of a young NightWing stood solidified, fully encased by the frostbreath of an IceWing, a frozen layer completely covering his faded body. He stood on his hind legs, his wings and forearms trapped within a contorted position, as if he was trying to tear himself apart.
“His name was Starweaver,” the MudWing explained, pointing a talon at the NightWing. He had floated, bobbing up and down, to the other side of Crystal. “He was killed by an IceWing princess, in a heroic, but futile act of self-sacrifice.”
“Why?” Crystal asked, looking around again, still confused. If this was a dream, could she get up? Crystal closed her eyes, and tried to envision waking up.
“Please don’t,” the MudWing replied, evidently able to tell that she was trying to get out of the dream, “I’m not able to talk to you very well from here. The IceWing princess was trying to do the right thing when she killed Starweaver. It didn’t work. Everyone she wanted to save died regardless.”
Crystal frowned, and stared at the MudWing. “Is this some kind of dream lesson?” she asked. “Because I’m not giving Queen Glacier back the Darkstone, if that’s what you’re asking. I know that war will continue if I don’t, and MudWings will die anyways, but I’m not letting her destroy an entire subspecies of dragons.”
The floating MudWing frowned for a moment, flicking a tongue out of his mouth. He twirled a talon in the air, thinking. “Oh,” he finally responded, “sorry, it’s been a while since we’ve talked, and I’m still really tired. No, that’s not what I meant. You’re right, but all the MudWings will die anyways, not that it matters, you’re still on the right course. But whether or not a few MudWings will die just twenty to a thousand years earlier is besides the point. This is just an introduction meeting. Do you know where you are?”
Crystal glanced around quickly. “Somewhere in the darkstone mines south of the Ice Kingdom?” she asked. She frowned. “I shouldn’t have told you that. Why did I tell you that?”
The MudWing smiled. “You used the Darkstone, remember? Unfortunately, you’re not compatible with it, so it’s taking a toll on your body. But that’s alright, that’s how I can talk to you. You won’t be able to use it again though.” The ghostly MudWing shook his wings, the light bending through them. His eyes opened slightly, more alert. “My name is Calamity. You don’t need to introduce yourself.”
“What?” Crystal asked, confused. Suddenly, she felt rumbling in the ground beneath her. She cried out as the pressure in the back of her skull grew.
Calamity frowned. “I need to go now. I can’t talk to you very long, sorry. This will just be a bad dream, alright?”
A large crack appeared between Crystal’s legs, and quickly opened wide. Crystal latched her front and hind claws on to each side, but as the chasm grew and stretched out her limbs, she was forced to let go, trying to dig her talons into the walls. As Crystal started to slide down, she glanced up. Calamity, still floating just above the ground, waved his claws goodbye towards Crystal with a smile. “See you!”
Crystal spread out her wings as the crack continued to open wide beneath her, and tried to fly upwards, but it was no use. She felt no resistance from the air, and continued to fall into the chasm. “Help!” Crystal yelled out in alarm. The line of light above her continued to shrink, Calamity’s waving paw becoming smaller and smaller.
----
Torrent grumbled in boredom, rolling the scroll back and forth across the cave floor, the scroll scuttling around pebbles as it rolled. Torrent bounced it back and forth between his claws. Whatever Schist and Griffin were doing right now, it had to be more interesting than this.
Schist and Griffin had returned to the cave about a week ago, bringing along some SkyWing. After being gone an entire day, Torrent was worried they had been captured at first, but Griffin had explained the situation — the SkyWing, Kite, had taken them back to her village and had given them food and water in exchange for them helping out. Torrent had shown her the statue of Magma they had hidden, but she had left without a word. Griffin and Schist had followed, telling Torrent that they’d come back to visit him and Crystal in a fortnight or so, and would return with more supplies. He didn’t blame them: Schist was still unable to fly, so it took the whole of a day to get to and back from the village. Still, it wouldn’t have taken Griffin alone that long to visit at least once.
He poked into the stores of food Kite had brought them. Salted goat, again. That was all that was in there. It had been interesting the first few times, but what he wouldn’t do for a nice fresh salmon or tuna right now. He missed the cuisine of the Sea Kingdom dearly, and the next chance he got, he would make sure to share it with Schist and Crystal. He didn’t know about MudWings, but apparently IceWings were also fish-eaters.
Torrent turned to Crystal. Still asleep; holding the diamond she had enchanted. He grimaced a little in worry. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything. Torrent knew IceWings could go much longer than most of the other tribes without food and water (barring SandWings, of course), but it had been almost a month since she had been given anything. The healing diamond was probably the only thing keeping her alive, but after what had happened to Schist, Torrent didn’t have much faith in it. He nervously turned back to the scroll, which had slipped from his talons and rolled open across the cave. He glanced at it, reading a segment:
Erosion decided to instruct me in animus powers today! Oh, I am so excited, this was the best day of my entire life! The first thing she did was give me some warnings, and forced me to write them down in this scroll. One, do not use animus magic for trivial necessities: too much use of animus magic can be dangerous for the mind and soul. Two, make your enchantments simple and precise: the magic can occasionally interpret what you intend if you say something vague, but clarity in your enchantments is less risky. While you are using, always speak your enchantments.
Magic figuring out what the user intended? Torrent thought about this for a moment. He hadn’t heard of this before in any of his scrolls, although he supposed it made sense. Although Orca had always said her enchantments out-loud, albeit underwater, Torrent knew that some of the historical animus dragons had used their minds to enchant, and he recalled at least one ancient SeaWing who even enchanted in Aquatic. And in the Talons of Power ceremony, prospective animus dragonets were ordered to just tell their coconuts to move, not explicitly enchant them.
Three, the magic I have given you is a gift. Do not use it against my wishes, ever, or I shall take it away permanently. Four, do not make conflicting enchantments: in this case, only one of them will usually win out, and it will cause erratic behaviour. Five, do not overexert your magic: using magic is like flying, fly too far and you’ll be too tired to fly the next day. Use too much magic or create a larger enchantment than what you’re used to, and the effects will take a physical and mental strain. Six, do not try to bring back the dead using your magic. This is impossible, and wi —
Suddenly, Torrent heard a quiet groan a short distance away. He quickly whipped his horns around to face Crystal. She was moving, just barely, and one of her eyelids slid open. She shook a little.
“Crystal!” Torrent shouted in surprise. “You’re awake.”
Crystal didn’t respond. She tried half-heartedly to lift herself up, but had nowhere near enough strength. She grumbled something out quietly to Torrent.
“What?” Torrent asked in concern, walking closer.
“S-schist?” Crystal mumbled, her one open eye fluttering closed.
“He’s fine,” Torrent explained quickly, “you saved him, you did it!”
Crystal’s head might have shaken a little as a response, but Torrent couldn’t tell. She opened her mouth. “Wa-ater,” she gasped. Torrent noticed she had dropped the enchanted diamond when she awoke.
“Yes, yes!” Torrent shouted, scrambling to get her water. He grabbed one of the leather bags Kite had brought to him, filled with clean water, and dragged it over to Crystal. He opened it up and placed it in front of her snout. She extended a long blue tongue, and tried to lap up the water, every motion an effort for her.
While Crystal was drinking, Torrent grabbed one of the bags of salted goat meat and pulled a few strips out. Tearing them into little pieces so that she wouldn’t choke, the SeaWing placed them right beside the water. “You need to eat something,” he said.
As soon as she was done drinking, Crystal complied, moving her snout towards the goat meat and voraciously swallowing it down. Torrent waited for her to finish. He glanced over at the Darkstone beside her. He had thought about just throwing it off a mountainside, hopefully never to be found again, but had decided not to. He had no idea how it worked, and was worried that doing something to it could have some negative effect on Crystal while she was in her coma.
The moment the IceWing was done eating, Torrent started to question her. “Crystal, the Darkstone. How does it work? Can we destroy it? Where di — ”
Torrent stopped asking questions and grimaced. Crystal wasn’t hearing any of them. She had fallen asleep again, her scaled chest gently rising and falling.
----
“She woke up?” Griffin asked, both surprise and excitement in his voice.
Torrent nodded. “Not for very long, and only once. It was about a week ago, and she hasn’t gotten up since.”
Schist peered in closer to Crystal. She was still asleep, the same as when he had last seen her. The healing jewel had been placed back within her claws by Torrent.
“Has she stirred since then?”
“A little,” Torrent replied to Griffin. “There were a few times when she seemed a bit more awake than before. Just rustling a bit more.”
“Ah,” Griffin replied with an air of disappointment. Maybe this was a sign of her getting better, but maybe not. It could just be a random occurrence.
Kite looked around the cave with an emotionless stare. “There’s a lot of gold in here,” she commented. Much of it Torrent had returned to pebbles (it wasn’t as if he had much else to do), but there were still specks of gold coins dotting the cave.
“Yes, there is,” Torrent retorted, glaring at Kite suspiciously. “It’s not real, if that’s what you’re asking. Magma enchanted it all from the pebbles, and I’ve trying to get rid of as much as possible.”
“Take all you want!” Griffin offered. “We don’t need any of it, and there’s plenty!”
Torrent glared at Griffin. “If you want to take that risk, then you can,” he snarled at Kite, “but I should warn you that animus dragons occasionally put curses on their treasure.”
Kite gave Torrent a glance, and took a step back from the gold, weighing the options.
“It’s fine,” Griffin growled, talking to Kite, but locking his eyes with Torrent. “We’ve been around it for weeks, and no adverse side effects so far.”
Torrent snorted. “Each of these coins was enchanted individually, and the enchantments can’t affect me anyways. Any one of these coins could be enchanted with some dreadful curse, just cause Magma was a little angry that day, maybe ‘cause death and ruin to your family.’ I’m immune to the enchantments, but I’d avoid touching too many if I were you.”
Kite backed a little more away from the coins. “I’m good,” she decided. Torrent cocked his head at Griffin with a triumphant smirk.
Griffin ruffled his feathers in annoyance. “Fine. We’ve delivered supplies, we can go now. Schist?”
The scarred MudWing turned to look at Griffin, before turning back to Crystal. He sighed. “Yeah, alright,” he conceded, walking back towards Griffin, each step a limp.
Griffin flicked his furred tail in defiance, then walked towards the exit of the cave, Kite and Schist following him. Schist looked back at Torrent with a sorrowful gaze, as if he was trying to apologize for Griffin’s rude exit.
After the three left, the cave was quiet again. Just Torrent and the sleeping Crystal remained. He sighed, and turned back to the piles of pebbles and rubble, enchanted gold scattered throughout them. He might as well try to get rid of some more, though it looked like it would still take an eternity.
== Chapter 39 ==
A white flake landed on Torrent’s snout, dissolving into a drop of water as soon as it  landed. He frowned and brushed it away. As soon as he placed his claw down, another snowflake fell to take its place.
The SeaWing took a step outside of the cave’s protection, placing a paw into the cold layer of snow. It collapsed under his weight, and his claws sunk a couple inches into the the ground. The white powder was bunched up against his cerulean scales, chilling them to a temperature that might be uncomfortable to other dragons, but not to a SeaWing born in the frigid depths of the ocean.
Torrent took another few steps out of the cave. Where he raised his claws, a print was left behind, with five deeper imprints from his talons, webbing spread between them. He looked out over the plateau nestled between the mountains raised above him. It was covered in a perfectly smooth layer of white snow. Further away from Torrent he could see patches of golden grasses, speckling the snow like a mottled cow.
At the far end of these was the usual pack of yaks, grazing on the dry grasses that had been left untouched. A variety of hoof prints and strangely rounded prints from the nearby scavengers were scattered around the ground in a sort of maze. A few of the scavengers glanced up at Torrent to keep an eye on him, but by this point, they seem to have decided the dragons residing in the nearby cave weren’t too much of a threat. Torrent gave them a snarl, but they just continued on allowing their yaks to graze. He doubted yak or scavenger would taste much better than goat, but it might be a change.
A cold wind brushed against Torrent, carrying a white flurry into his face. He closed his eyes and turned his head to keep the snow out of them. He picked up a clawful of snow and returned back into the cave, melted water dripping between his talons.
Crystal was still asleep, splayed out on the edge of a hill of pebbles. Torrent took a glance at her claws, making sure the healing gem was still in there. It was. He walked over to her and sat down, resting his blue tail against the cold cave floor.
The clump of snow in his claws was slowly melting, the temperature difference in the cave too warm for it. Torrent placed it on Crystal’s back. A rivulet of water dripped down her wing membrane. He doubted it would do much good, but it wouldn’t hurt at least.
“I brought you some snow,” the SeaWing grumbled. “You get that a lot in the Ice Kingdom, don’t you? Just reminding you of home.” He sighed as more water dripped down Crystal’s wing membrane, forming a small puddle.
Torrent turned to Magma’s scroll. He had decided to read it fully in the past week, after Griffin had left so suddenly. It was one of the worst scrolls he’d ever had to read, barring the four volumes of Whirlpool’s autobiography, but it was better than nothing. He’d also gone over some of the notes he and Orca had written from the scrolls Mallard had given him. It felt like an eternity since that had happened. 
Torrent wondered how Mallard was doing right now. Had she gotten caught for helping him escape? If she had, was she in prison? He hoped not, she didn’t deserve that. Maybe if h —
Torrent suddenly heard some muttering. He turned to Crystal, unsure if he was just imagining it or not. He saw her jaw move.
“Crystal!” he said. “You’re awake!”
One of eyes opened, and she raised her head slightly. “I know,” she muttered. “Why is there snow on me?”
Torrent stiffened up and brushed the snowball off, throwing specks of snow across the room. “It helped wake you up!” he explained. “I think maybe it’s because you’re an IceWing, so maybe snow has healing properties?”
Crystal let out an exhausted snort, unimpressed with Torrent’s discovery. “If snow had healing properties, we’d have won the war by now. I need some food and water.”
Torrent nodded and grabbed the leather bag with water and the goat meat. He started tearing up pieces for Crystal, when she grabbed his talons and gave him a glare, pulling herself up. “I can chew,” she snapped at the SeaWing.
Torrent nodded, and quickly gave Crystal the goat meat. She stuffed it into her mouth, quickly tearing it apart with her razor sharp teeth. While still chewing, she took the leather pouch of water and poured it into her mouth, almost ripping a hole in the bag. She continued eating and drinking like this for a while. Torrent noticed she had dropped the healing diamond, and grabbed it, along with the Darkstone. Crystal gave him a sideways look, suspicious, but didn’t stop until she had gotten her fill.
When she was done, she turned to Torrent, and looked around the cavern. “Where are Schist and Griffin?” she asked, with a nervous look.
“They’re both fine,” Torrent reassured her. He didn’t know how much she remembered from when she last woke up earlier. “Alive. You’re not planning to go back to sleep again, are you?”
Crystal looked at Torrent with a confused smirk. “Believe me, I don’t ever want to go to sleep again. How long was I out?”
Torrent thought for a moment. He hadn’t really bothered to count the days. Since the Deep Palace was far enough beneath the waves that the time of day didn’t make much of a difference, counting days wasn’t too important to the Sea Kingdom. They had a royal astronomer in the Deep Palace, who, in addition to keeping track of the moons, the seasons, the tides, and the undersea current flows, usually created a calendar for the Sea Kingdom, but keeping track of the exact day wasn’t all that important, except for when it came to meetings.
“Fifty days, maybe?” Torrent replied uncertainly. “Maybe more or less?”
Crystal gritted her teeth and winced. Fifty days. That was long. Much longer than she had thought. She tried to think back to her sleep, but her memories pulled up blank. “Well, it’s not like I’m missing anything,” she snorted. “Maybe Queen Glacier will have given up on finding me by now.” She looked at Torrent quizzically. “What happened?”
Torrent craned his neck from side to side. “Not much,” he answered. “I’ve just been here, while Schist and Griffin have been helping prepare for winter at some nearby village.”
“No, fishbrain,” Crystal laughed, “I meant, what happened to me. Why I was out for two months?”
“Oh,” Torrent said. “Something similar happened to Orca after she enchanted Griffin.”
“She was asleep for two months?” asked Crystal skeptically. “And no one suspected anything weird was going on?”
Torrent shook his head. “No, only half an hour, although she was really sick for the next few days. I’ve read a couple scrolls which have said something similar about other animuses.” He glanced over to Magma’s scroll, then back to Crystal. “Use too much magic or create a larger enchantment than what you’re used to, and the effects will take a physical and mental strain,” he repeated.
Crystal nodded, thinking. “And being a non-animus dragon who had never enchanted anything before, creating something to heal others was far too much for my mind and body. Wait. Then how did we, I mean, the IceWings animuses, create the gifts if they had never used their magic before?”
Torrent snorted. “Really?” he asked. “You believe that they’d never used their magic outside of the gifts? Of course they did, they just were never caught, and used magic sparingly enough it never had much of an effect on their souls.”
“Fine,” Crystal frowned, clearly a little uncomfortable with the prospect of her kingdom’s glorified legends being false. “Even then, it’s still a large change from one or two tiny enchantments to the Great Ice Cliff.”
Torrent thought a little for a moment. “They probably made the enchantments slowly. Like when Frostbite made the Gift of Light, or Albatross created the Summer Palace.”
Crystal was slightly impressed. The Gift of Light wasn’t well-known except to the IceWings and the SandWing border towns, and the name of the dragon who created the tree even less so. “The Summer Palace?” she asked. “Is that a SeaWing gift?”
“Sort of,” Torrent responded. “It’s a large palace that one of our animus dragons, Albatross, made. It’s very . . . aesthetic. It would probably be a little more so if Albatross hadn’t murdered most of the royal family after he’d made it.”
Crystal nodded, then looked back at where she had been sleeping. The Darkstone was there, a couple feet away.
“Can you still . . .” Torrent waved his claws around in a circle. Crystal looked at him with a puzzled expression. “. . . er, use magic?” Torrent asked worriedly.
Crystal thought for a moment. “I doubt it.” She turned to Torrent’s scrollcase. “Scrollcase, I enchant you to vibrate for a minute!” she ordered. Nothing happened.
A nervous look passed over Torrent, and he laid a claw on Crystal’s scales, ready to steady her if she fainted again. After it was clear the enchantment hadn’t worked, he let go.
“The Darkstone,” Torrent said as he walked over to it, picking it up. He nestled it in his claws’ webbing, looking at the ethereal glint in it. “You said you got it from the IceWings. How? Is there more where it came from?”
Crystal shook her head. “Don’t worry, this is the only one. It took years to purify enough of the mineral to make this, and it will be quite a while before the IceWings can manage to make more, and that’s just before they start testing and using it. It knocked me out for two months to create a healing stone; I doubt creating something major would be possible for much longer.”
That didn’t assuage Torrent’s concerns. “How long is ‘quite a while?’” he asked.
Crystal thought for a moment. “Ten years? Now that my father is dead, it’ll make it a lot harder for them to purify the mineral. He and I were the only ones who knew the best method. So five years, at least, probably ten. And that’s not including the time to test it out.”
Torrent closed his eyes. Ten years. That was longer than he’d been alive. He was, what, six now? Seven? By the time the IceWings could create another Darkstone, dragonets still in their eggs would be adults. Coral’s daughter, one in which Torrent didn’t know her name, might even be queen. “And by then, the war would be over,” Torrent predicted. “The IceWings would have no reason to use the Darkstone as a weapon.”
“Maybe,” Crystal replied. “Maybe a new war could have started. Me stealing the Darkstone was only a temporary solution to the problem.”
Torrent nodded in agreement. He looked at Crystal, straight in her black, beady eyes. “You do understand how awful it would be if the IceWings got animus dragons, right? If Queen Glacier became an animus?”
“Of course,” Crystal scornfully answered. “Do you think I would have fled the Ice Kingdom if I hadn’t?”
Torrent tapped one of his claws on the cave floor. “How did you steal it, anyways?” he asked curiously. “I’d think something like that would be under guard at all times.”
Crystal sighed, with a slight wince. This wasn’t something she particularly wanted other dragons to hear. “I mentioned to you that my father, Boreal, was a scientist, and had accidentally discovered the mineral which the Darkstone is made from. I was apprenticed to him; he was to teach me the scientific knowledge in the Gift of Wisdom, and I was to serve as his assistant.”
“You served as an apprentice to your father?” Torrent asked. “That seems like it would get annoying, real quickly.”
Crystal shook her head. “No. It’s a normal thing in the Ice Kingdom: parents usually train their dragonets in whatever their practice is. It makes sense a lot of the time; the parents are able to start the training as soon as the hatchling breaks the eggshell, although not every dragonet wants to continue their parent’s legacy.” She thought of her sister, Clarity. Rebellious was one word to describe her. “Boreal wasn’t a particularly . . . affectionate father, either. He was too busy serving the queen to take care of us. By no means was he an awful parent, believe me, plenty of IceWings resent their children, but Clarity and I were mostly ignored. After I had come of age to start my apprenticeship, he took me under his wing and decided to teach me in his art.”
“His art?” Torrent asked.
“He was a scientist. An inventor, as he liked to describe himself. He was the one who discovered the minerals that we used to create the Darkstone, and led the project because of it. After Queen Glacier found out what he was doing, and he convinced her he could bring animus magic back to the IceWings, she placed him on her council, the Empty Circle. He would bring me to the meetings, which is how I found out about their plans for the Darkstone.
“Originally, the council was enthusiastic over the prospects of having Gifts again, but as the war went on, with no sign of stopping, they decided it would be better suited as a weapon. A few months ago, the council held a vote and decided that if the war was still going on, the first thing they would enchant with the Darkstone would be a weapon to destroy the MudWing army. I believe the exact words would have been ‘enchant this spear so that any physical effects it causes on a MudWing soldier are caused on all soldiers.’ Effectively, if they killed one soldier with the spear, it would kill all MudWing soldiers.”
 “Wait,” interrupted Torrent in alarm, “but the MudWings have a draft. Almost every MudWing in the kingdom older than four — ”
“ — would be killed,” Crystal finished. “I know. And none of them seemed to have any problem with that. ‘It’s war, there are no rules. We’ll be able to save thousands of IceWing lives this way.’ It’s what Queen Glacier told me when I spoke up during the council. Boreal didn’t care what they were going to use the Darkstone for, so he abstained from the vote, and continued to work on it.
“Over the next few months, I did what I could to slow down my father. Occasionally we’d have important tools go missing, or test subjects who suddenly decided they didn’t want to be tested on, but it wasn’t enough. He eventually finished the Darkstone, and we found a loyal IceWing who was willing to sacrifice his life for Project Darkstone, as we called it. So, I did what I had to do. I stole the finished Darkstone, destroyed the lab, and killed both the test subject and Boreal.”
“You killed your father?” Torrent exclaimed in horror.
Crystal fidgeted nervously. “I had to, for the sake of Pyrrhia. If I hadn’t, they’d have started on another Darkstone as soon as I would’ve left. Maybe two years before the MudWings would be obliterated.”
“Yeah, but he was your father!”
“So?” Crystal growled defensively. “He was just as guilty as the rest of them! He knew what they were going to do with it, and still worked freely! If your sister was going to destroy a tribe with her magic, you’d have killed her too, right?”
Torrent looked down, clenching his snout. Orca had given him that choice. She’d given him the dagger, and had told him to kill her, but he hadn’t chosen to. Sure, she hadn’t killed anyone else in the end, but what if she’d beaten Coral, and decided to destroy the SkyWings as her next target? It could have happened; maybe Torrent was just lucky. But, even if he had known that, he still didn’t think he could bring himself to kill her. “No,” he muttered. 
“Well, then you’re wrong,” Crystal snapped. “Letting an entire tribe die for the sake of one dragon, that’s just selfish.”
Torrent slowly nodded in agreement. Crystal was right. Maybe now, he’d be stronger. He’d be able to kill Orca, if it had come to that. “So, then what?”
“After taking the Darkstone, I fled to my sister, Clarity,” Crystal continued. “She helped me out of the Ice Kingdom, and told me about a SkyWing friend who lives by the SandWing-SkyWing border. I went to see her, and she told me how to get across the Sky Kingdom, to where I met you.” Crystal made a face of disgust while mentioning Avalanche. “After hearing about your dagger, I decided to join you. If it can disenchant animus magic, maybe it can destroy the Darkstone.”
Torrent nodded. He had thought about that, too, but hadn’t wanted to try it while Crystal was asleep, since it was possible that disenchanting it could somehow harm its user. “Do you want to try that now?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah!” Crystal replied in surprise. She had expected Torrent to have tried it already while she was asleep. Why hadn’t he?
Torrent used a claw to roll the Darkstone between his webbing, nestling it in between his talons. With his left claws, he took out his dagger from its sheath, and brought it to his other forepaw. Crystal opened her mouth, as if to say something to Torrent, but didn’t make a sound. Torrent gently pressed the dagger’s tip onto the Darkstone and rubbed the emerald on its hilt. He waited a moment, then put his dagger away.
“I don’t think it worked,” Torrent claimed.
“Why?” Crystal wondered, sticking her snout towards the Darkstone to peer closer at it.
“There’s a weird light in it that shines on its own,” Torrent explained. “It’s still there. If it had been disenchanted, then I think the light would have faded.”
Crystal frowned, unconvinced. She picked the Darkstone out of Torrent’s claws, and rubbed it on her wing membrane. She closed her eyes, in thought.
“Er, what are you d — ”
“Quiet,” Crystal interrupted Torrent. He shut his mouth, and she continued dragging the stone along her wing membrane. After doing this for a while, she stopped, and her beady eyes fluttered open. “You’re right, I don’t think it worked. It gave me a faint tingly feeling when I touched it before, and that’s still there.”
Torrent grumbled in frustration. “So, how else can we get rid of it? We could drop it into the ocean or into the MudWing swamps, no one could find it there.”
“Maybe,” Crystal replied, “but maybe not. I think I should just keep it with me; it’s safer than risking someone finding it.”
Torrent thought for a moment, and starting pacing back and forth around the room. He wanted to trust Crystal, but the risk was large. “Okay,” he agreed, “but don’t try to use it, and keep it in your bag; don’t wear it.”
“Fine,” Crystal said as she furrowed the scales above her eyes. Does he think this is his choice? She took the Darkstone and placed it in her leather bag, tucking it and rendering the gem unseen. The IceWing then took a step towards the exit of the cave, and stretched out her wings, her muscles slowly loosening up. “Let’s see how hard it is to fly after two months of sleeping, shall we?”
== Chapter 40 ==
“Yak! Where are you?” Schist called out.
Griffin gave the MudWing a skeptical look, before looking down back at his talons to make sure they weren’t too close to the edge of the terrace. “I don’t think that’s going to help,” Griffin explained, “yaks can’t speak.”
Schist sighed. Today, the two had been given the job of bringing the yaks down to the plateau to graze, then back up again. It seemed like an easy job, but keeping a ton of rambunctious yaks in line was harder than it appeared. One of the calves had gone missing, and it was up to Schist and Griffin to find it again, while Kite stood down below, watching over the rest of the herd as they grazed.
“It could help draw it to us,” Schist suggested. “I could’ve sworn I saw it in the area while we were flying!”
Griffin nodded uncertainly, and rustled his feathers. Schist seemed like he had adjusted to the cold climate and high altitude by now, which was just as well with the winter approaching fast. The first snow had arrived about a week ago, and it meant there would be many more to come. Griffin could see small piles of white slush scattered around the terraces, lined on the dark backs of the terrace walls. Griffin had heard about snow before, but had never seen it, of course.
Schist was the same, it was Crystal who had told him all about snow earlier. As soon as it started falling from above, he ran around in fascination like a dragonet, much to the humor of the other SkyWings around. Even when he and Griffin were put to the task of getting snow off a few of the dirt walkways in the village, Schist’s glee didn’t falter.
At the moment, the two were far above the village, searching for the calf in the terrace farms placed on the mountainside. The now dirt-brown terraces were the strangest thing to Griffin: he had neither heard nor read of them before. They covered a large portion of the lower mountainside, like a giant staircase. Each step consisted of the sloped mountainside made flat, and during the rest of the year, green crops would be growing along the flat surface. At the back of each step stood a sturdy stone wall, which Griffin and Schist had occasionally helped repair. A small dirt pathway snaked between the terraces and up the mountain, more for the yaks’ usage than the dragons.
Schist had once suggested flying the yaks up and down instead of leading them, but had gotten a laugh in response. One of the SkyWings suggested that Schist attempt to carry one of the yaks. When Schist had tried, the yak constantly attempted to struggle free, causing Schist to almost drop it as soon as he rose into the air. The yak was scared, but unharmed from its short flight, and Schist decided flying the yaks was not a good idea.
“Over there!” Schist suddenly shouted, pointing to a small calf, not too far away. The two rose into the air, Schist beating his wings in a fragile flight. He could fly now, but only for short periods of time before it became too painful to bear. He doubted he could make it out of the Sky Kingdom before winter completely hit, and trying to fly out of the mountains through the winter was too much for most SkyWings to handle, much less a MudWing. Chances are, the four would have to stay in the Sky Kingdom until spring.
Griffin and Schist landed on the edge of a terrace, where the whining yak calf stood, looking over the edge. Griffin shooed the calf towards the dirt path, and they slowly led it down towards the grazing fields, facing the village far beneath them.
“So, do you want to visit Torrent soon?” Schist asked Griffin. “It’s been over two weeks since we last saw him, and the snow hit.”
Griffin tossed his feathered neck back and forth. “Maybe,” he muttered. Schist gave him an expectant glance, and Griffin continued. “He’s just been so argumentative since Orca di — since we left the Sea Kingdom. Can’t he just move on?”
“He’s not just going to move on,” Schist answered, nudging Griffin with a wing. “Maybe you’re no longer grieving for her, but he still is.”
“But when will he just stop? She’s dead, and nothing can change that.”
A sad expression crossed Schist’s face for a moment. “I don’t really think he’ll ever stop.”
Griffin clacked his beak, and turned to the side for a moment. He swiveled his head back around to face Schist. “What’s with you dragons and this whole grieving thing?”
“You dragons?” Schist asked with a slight expression of confusion. “You’re not a dragon?”
Griffin gave a squawk in confusion. “What do you mean, ‘you’re not a dragon?’ I have a beak and feathers, clearly I’m not a dragon. Did Orca enchantment me to appear as a dragon without telling me?”
“No, no,” Schist reassured Griffin, “I mean, you’re definitely a gryphon. But you were raised as a SeaWing with a SeaWing family and all, so shouldn’t you be considered to be a SeaWing? SeaWings grieve, right, not just MudWings?”
Griffin gave Schist a look of skepticism. “If by ‘raised as a SeaWing with a SeaWing family’ you mean Orca and Torrent locking me in a room to hide me from their family, then sure. Maybe SeaWings grieve, but I don’t. I’m not a dragon.”
Schist swished his tail from side to side, making sure not to excessively move the scales on the right side of his body. “I think Torrent is scared what happened to Orca will happen again.”
“Yes, that’s pretty clear,” Griffin impatiently replied.
“Maybe he’s worried for Crystal too,” Schist suggested.
Griffin nodded, and led the calf towards the grazing fields. This really wasn’t going anywhere. “Yeah,” he acknowledged with a sigh.
The two finally reached the fields, watching the runaway calf closely. Kite was there, waiting impatiently for Griffin and Schist. The rest of the yaks were grazing calmly on the field, and the small one quickly ran into the group unnoticed.
As the yaks continued to graze, Kite waited silently, standing to the side with a rigid face. Schist trotted up to her, and sat down next to her. She gave him a glare. “Do you want something?”
“No, no, not at all!” Schist replied. “It’s just . . . quiet here.”
“Yes,” Kite replied with satisfaction. “It is.”
Schist fidgeted from side to side uncomfortably, some the scales on his right side poking into his flesh. “Does Queen Scarlet not have a draft?” he asked curiously. “I would have thought you’d be in her army.”
“She does,” Kite replied straightforwardly, “but she hasn’t started drafting the SkyWings in the north-eastern part of the Claws yet.”
“Claws?”
“Claws of the Clouds,” Kite explained. “The mountain range we live in. The crown generally avoids dealing too much with us and the other villages around us. It’s cold and high up, and the treaty we signed when they conquered us gives us a lot of choice on how we run the place. And long as we give her taxes and don’t rebel, Queen Scarlet has let us be, for now.”
“Conquered?” Schist asked.
Kite nodded. “Around a hundred years ago, there was a large rebellion, and the entire area took up arms and broke away from the Sky Kingdom. We lasted on our own for a few decades, but eventually the Sky Kingdom decided they wanted us back, and beat our army at Aeolus, a town to the east of us at the base of the Claws. In return for surrendering, the queen at the time let us choose our own rules and such. But if this war goes on any longer, Queen Scarlet might decide she needs more troops, and draft us.”
“Oh, I hope that doesn’t happen. The war should be over soon, though, right?”
Kite curled her wings in. “Maybe. I can fight anyways. If she decides to draft me, I’ll survive. Maybe take out a few MudWings, too. No offense. You’re not a bad MudWing.”
“None taken,” Schist muttered squeamishly. What does she mean by ‘not a bad MudWing?’ he wondered with a frown. A speckle of snow landed on his snout, and the scarred MudWing looked up. Grey clouds were looming, and snow started to fall. Winter had arrived in the Sky Kingdom.
“Come one,” Kite ordered, “we need to get these yaks back to the stables before the storm arrives.” She lashed her tail onto the ground, and called something out to the yaks. They turned their horned heads to the SkyWing, and started following her as she walked back towards the mountain’s base. Schist and Griffin stayed behind the herd, making sure no calves escaped this time.
Griffin glanced at Schist, and caught up to him, walking quickly, at a dragon’s speed. “Er, Schist,” he remarked, “so, you know how you were asking me if I considered myself a SeaWing, and I told you I was a gryphon?”
“Yeah?”
Griffin sighed. “Well, I don’t really know how true that is. I’m not really a gryphon, am I? Gryphons probably aren’t even real, and even if they are, I’m not one. I’m a piece of stone that Orca asked to move on its own.”
Schist nodded, and opened his jaws to say reply, when another dragon interrupted him.
“If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one,” Crystal replied, as she landed herself next to the two. She steadied herself, as she stumbled forwards, out of breath. “Wow, that was a lot harder than I remember,” she muttered to herself.
Torrent landed behind her with a cautious look, wondering if Crystal should have waited a little more before making such a long flight.
“Crystal?” Griffin stammered in surprise. She’s awake?
Schist sprinted over to Crystal and nuzzled her with his snout. “You’re okay!” he shouted in glee, momentarily forgetting about his burnt scales. 
Crystal smiled. “If you poke a recently dead dragon in the head the right way, it’ll move around for you,” she explained to Griffin. “Ever tried it?”
Griffin shook his head in response, spraying small snowflakes that had gathered and melted there off. “When did you wake up?”
“A bit over a week ago,” Crystal replied. “We were going to wait for you to return, but I decided I had recovered enough, and flew over here with Torrent.”
Torrent nodded, as if he was confirming Crystal’s story.
The IceWing peered over at Schist, and looked at his fused scales in shame. “I’m sorry,” she replied with a grimace.
“What for?” Schist replied, brushing it off with a smile. “It’s not your fault, it was Magma who did it.”
Crystal nodded solemnly. “I know, but if I had just enchanted the diamond more specifically . . .”
“It’s fine,” Schist lied, “just some battle scars, nothing to worry about.”
Crystal bobbed her head and dug a claw into the ground. ‘Just some battle scars’ was quite an understatement. Torrent had gotten ‘battle scars,’ but the distorted, discolored scales on his snout and neck were nothing compared to the mess covering half of Schist’s body. 
“Alright,” Crystal acknowledged the MudWing. She glanced up at the snowflakes, now falling quicker. “You said you wanted to see what the Ice Kingdom looked like,” she said, turning to Schist. “Depending on how much snow we get, it looks like you might have the chance. No deadly cliff to cross either!”
== Chapter 41 ==
Winter was long, cold, and dark, but that was nothing to an IceWing like Crystal. Instead of staying in Magma’s cave, the four stayed in the small SkyWing village during the winter, in a tiny, poorly-insulated hut only marginally larger. One of the SkyWings lit a fire for the four to stay warm in the corner on most days. Schist was slightly wary of the fire, for good reason, and would safely away from it, where Griffin would occasionally give him company. Torrent usually lay by the fire, even though he didn’t particularly need it — SeaWings could handle the frigid waters beneath the ocean, a windy chill was bearable.
Crystal, on the other claw, spent a lot of her time outside the house. The SkyWings were all happy to have an IceWing around — whereas most of them couldn’t brave the cold and storm for an extended period of time, the weather here was a balmy day to Crystal. She had no problem collecting firewood, or going to see the yaks, even when the most horrendous of blizzards was out. A few times during the winter months, she had even delivered messages down the mountain to the town of Aeolus, and gotten supplies in return. Being an IceWing, she had gotten a number of weird looks and suspicion, but after explaining that Bobcat had sent her, and after finding a dragon who could read and showing them a small note of proof if needed, they allowed her to make her rounds.
Flying was initially difficult to Crystal. Being asleep for so long had taken a toll on her body, and a number of her wing muscles had started to atrophy. It had been initially difficult for her to make any longer flights, and even moreso to fly during the storms, but it wasn’t too long before she recovered. On the days in which she had been free, she had worked up her flying and fighting skills to get her body back up to its previous health, occasionally sparring with Kite or Torrent.
Kite had received little formal training in fighting, and didn’t fight with the normal SkyWing patterns Crystal had been taught in the required IceWing military training for dragonets. She was nimble, and close to Crystal in size and weight, but Crystal quickly caught onto her technique. She preferred to patiently circle around her opponent, and strike at them with her teeth and claws when they were unsuspecting. Of course, Crystal knew how to combat this — just never be caught off guard. Crystal would feign distraction, causing Kite to rush in at the opportunity, then nimbly avoid the SkyWing’s attack, and push her over while she rushed to get back.
Torrent was a little different for Crystal to fight. Not only was he larger than most of the SkyWings in the village, but he had received formal SeaWing training while in the Deep Palace. SeaWings were one of those tribes the IceWing training had glossed over — SandWings, SkyWings, and MudWings were far more common to fight. The key point of the lesson, Crystal remembered, was “don’t let them drag you underwater,” something even a newly hatched dragonet would know. If a SeaWing pulled you under the surface, you were dead, and were probably a worthless soldier to begin with. Weeding out the weak.
Unlike Kite’s patient strikes, Torrent attacked aggressively, diving straight into the fray as soon as the battle started. At first, Crystal thought the best choice of action was to try evading him and tiring him out, but that proved difficult to work with. Unlike IceWings, who used their spiked tails only as a side-weapon, SeaWings used theirs practically as much as their claws. Wherever Crystal tried to run, Torrent was able to strike her with a frightening amount of force.
Crystal’s second strategy turned out much better. Torrent tended to attack head-on, but ended up turning to the side to use his tail for major strikes. In order to counter that, Crystal nimbly dived beneath his belly as he did so. As she slid under his belly, she would lightly stroke her claws beneath his scales, simulating how she would actually eviscerate his bowels in a real fight. She would just have to do it quickly enough, or else Torrent’s body might fall on her, pinning her beneath.
Crystal had tried sparring with Griffin a few times, but eventually decided it wasn’t worth the humiliation. Even if he was by far the smallest of them, Griffin was probably the most deadly. The first time, the IceWing had been far too overconfident of her fighting ability, and ended up with Griffin on her back, his talons on her throat. He was much nimbler than Crystal, and if he got on her back, between her wings, she wasn’t able to throw him off. He was also easily able to run under her and run his talons along her underbelly (the same move Crystal was able to beat Torrent with).
Eventually, the long winter came to an end, and the four were finally ready to head out again. When they were deciding where to go, Torrent had an answer.
“Here,” Torrent suggested, rolling open his enchanted map and placing the tip of his claw on it. It landed on a small blotch of ink, a pale peach, along the Five-Tail River, not too far from its mouth. “That’s the nearest animus.”
Crystal looked closely, then came to a realization. “I know where that is,” she exclaimed, “I went through the two cities there after I left the Ice Kingdom. My brother-in-law has a friend there, Avalanche. She owns a house with a blue-shingled roof.”
“Did you see any animuses while you were there?” Torrent questioned.
Crystal shook her head. “Nope. The cities are large, and it wouldn’t be hard to hide.” Torrent frowned in thought.
Schist squirmed a little bit. “Maybe we shouldn’t go after another animus?” he suggested.
“No!” Crystal and Torrent said in unison. They looked at each other, then Crystal spoke up.
“As long as there are animus dragons around, they’re a threat to Pyrrhia,” Crystal explained. “You saw what Adobe did? Well just think about it if a queen got hold of that power, and tried to control one of them. It would be chaos; genocide. We have to prevent that.”
Schist looked uncomfortable; not quite sure how to respond. Crystal sighed.
“Look, I know you’re worried about after what Magma did to you. You don’t have to come with us. I’m sure your sister would be happy to have you back.”
Schist shook his head. “No, maybe you’re right. I’m not going to run away, just cause I got a little singed.” He smiled half-heartedly, the fused and melted scales on the right side of his neck stretching upwards. Crystal nodded awkwardly.
“Would this Avalanche let us stay there?” Griffin spoke up. “We’re talking two cities here, it might be a bit harder to find this animus than it was finding Adobe and Magma.”
Crystal grimaced. “It depends how angry she is. She sort of told me she’d knock my teeth out if I came back.”
“That bad?” Griffin asked in surprise. “Well, maybe she was just joking?”
Crystal shuffled uncertainly. “Maybe. A very large maybe.”
“It’s our best bet,” Torrent interrupted. “And if she doesn’t want us, we can find somewhere else. I’ve still got some jewelry from the Sea Kingdom left, so I’m sure we can find an inn if we need to.”
“If you need to,” Griffin protested. “I doubt an inn would turn a blind eye to me.”
Torrent nodded. “We can sort it out when we get there. For now, I just want to get out of the Sky Kingdom.”
“Leaving so soon?” a creaking voice interrupted. Bobcat walked into the house smiling, led by Kite. “Our village not good enough for you?”
“Oh no, we mean no disrespect!” Schist quickly apologized. “Your hospitality has been nothing but wonderful! Torrent just meant he’s nervous being in enemy territory, and it’s a bit . . . cold.”
Bobcat chuckled. “No need to be alarmed. You can leave anytime you want. You’re not slaves or captives. Where do you plan on heading, I might ask?”
“The pair of cities on the Five-Tailed River,” Crystal answered. “Neutral territory, so the war shouldn’t be an issue there.”
Bobcat nodded. “Yes, I believe I’ve heard of the place. If you want a route, I would suggest going along the northern coast rather than the south. We have no enemies on that side, so there will be fewer patrols. Kite has volunteered to guide you through the mountains to the northern coast.”
“Thank you,” Schist said in gratitude. “You’ve done so much for us.”
Bobcat smiled. “No worries!” the elderly SkyWing grinned. “You have all done plenty to repay my favor. Now, good luck!” She waved a claw goodbye, and exited through the doorway.
Kite scanned over the four matter-of-factly. “Are you planning to go now?” she asked. “The weather is pretty good at the moment, but I don’t know how long it will stay that way.”
Torrent nodded in reply, and glanced around. He didn’t see much reason to wait any longer. “Yeah, I think we’re ready.” The four of them quickly got their belongings together. They didn’t have much, which would be good for a long flight. Torrent quickly strapped on his dagger and sheath.
Kite motioned with her wings for the four to follow, and exited out of the doorway. The snow outside was finally melting, and the spring sun was peeking through the cloud cover. Without a glance back, Kite spread her humongous wings, and jumped forward, taking off into the air. Torrent, Crystal, Schist, and Griffin quickly followed suit, struggling a little more with the take-off than the SkyWing they were following.
By the time the four made it to the northern coast, just west of the eastern term up Pyrrhia, Schist was frigid and shivering from being out in the open for so long. Kite dove down, and landed on the edge of a cliff by the edge of the ocean. Looking down off the cliff, cold white waves crashed furiously into the rocks.
“There’s a cave down there,” Kite notified the four sternly. “You might want to sleep in there for the night. It will help keep Schist warm, and will keep you hidden in case a patrol flies by.”
Torrent nodded. “We need a fire, and Schist can’t light one when it’s this cold.” In truth, Torrent wasn’t sure if Schist would be willing to light one, even if it was summertime temperatures. “Can you light one for us? I can find some dry firewood.”
“I’ll go too,” Crystal suggested.
Kite agreed, and waved a claw, beckoning Schist and Griffin to fly into the cave on the edge. Schist took a quick look back at the mountains they had left behind. Somewhere in there was the village that had been their home for the winter. He quickly followed Griffin, and landed in the cave’s mouth alongside the other two. It was damp, and dark enough he couldn’t see much beyond the entrance.
Suddenly, Kite opened her mouth, and let out a burst of flame into the cave. Schist jumped back in alarm, and staggered on the edge of the cave’s mouth, drawing a nervous glance from Griffin. He quickly took a couple steps forward from the cliffside.
Kite continued on into the cave a little further, then stopped moving. “We need to wait for Crystal and Torrent.”
After a few more minutes, the IceWing and SeaWing returned, and the five continued on into the beckoning chamber. The cave twisted upwards for a short amount, then stopped at an dead end, with a large slab of flat rock that could be used for sleeping on. Torrent and Crystal set down the firewood they had gathered, and shuffled back. Kite opened her jaws, and a bright stream of flame came out, setting wood aflame. Schist nervously moved closer to it, desiring the warmth it gave off.
Kite looked around at the others with a frown. “I’ll be taking my leave now. Don’t get killed.” She whipped her tail around, and headed towards the entrance without another word.
“Bye!” Griffin called after her. “Thank you too!”
Crystal looked around at the other three. Schist had moved to the other side of the cave in order to rest, so not to accidentally roll into the fire as he slept. Griffin and Torrent were closer to the flame, and had already set down their belongings.
“Well, I’ll be glad to get out of the Sky Kingdom,” Crystal announced. “Not really a fan of knowing we could be arrested and sent to the the arena at any time. I’ve heard way too many stories about Queen Scarlet.”
Torrent snorted slightly. “We’re not out yet. We still have a ton more flying to do. Are you doing good after today’s flight?”
Crystal snorted. “Of course.” It was true that long flights had been harder after waking up from using the Darkstone, but it wasn’t too much to complain about.
“Schist?” Torrent asked.
He shuffled his wings uncomfortably, the right wing membrane healed, but his scales along it still scarred. “I’ll survive.”
Torrent nodded, and glanced down towards the cave entrance. The sun had just barely set, and the glow of dusk was peeking in. “Good,” he responded inattentively, his ears too focused on the sound of the crashing water below.
== Chapter 42 ==
Griffin shivered, lost in sleep. He nudged his wings, touching the water below. Small droplets climbed up his shaft of his feathers, spreading out and dampening his wings. The cold water broke his sleep, and Griffin raised an eye.
“Water?” he yawned, pulling his wing out of the pool. “Did it rain?”
He suddenly realized that they were in a cave, sheltered from the elements above: this couldn’t be from a passing thunderstorm. Griffin stood up with a start — saltwater had entered the cave while they were sleeping, filling up the entirety of it beneath the four. The tides must have risen while they were asleep.
“The water’s rising!” Griffin called out in alarm, turning to the three sleeping dragons. The fire Kite had made for them was just cinders at this point, and it shed a faint light onto the others, a glowing reflection in their scales.  
Torrent slowly opened an eye, with a yawn. “Yes,” he murmured, not thinking, and rested his head back down.
Griffin walked over to the SeaWing with a frown, and shook Torrent’s head with his talons. “Wake up,” he hissed. “Crystal and Schist could drown.”
“Drown?” Crystal asked, standing up in surprise. She shook her tail, the long spikes on the end rattling back and forth, then stretched out her wings. “I’m, sorry, what?”
Griffin pointed a talon at the water. It had filled up the entrance to the cave, and had only left the small platform untouched. “Water! It’s filling up the cave, and you can’t swim underwater, like Torrent and I. Schist, get up!”
Schist had risen to his paws, the aching pain in the right side of his body dull. “I see,” he muttered.
“We need to get out of here before it gets too high up,” Griffin hyperventilated, formulating a plan. “Torrent and I can breath underwater, so we can help you two through the caves, and if you fall unconscious, we’ll be able to carry you to shore.”
“Wait, you can breath underwater?” Crystal asked in surprise.
“Yes,” Griffin hurried, “how did you think I lived in the Deep Palace with Torrent? It’s a magical thing.” Griffin shuddered a little, thinking about what had happened after Orca had first created him. He did not want anyone to drown today.
Torrent grinded his teeth a little. “He can, but I might not be able to.”
“What?” asked Griffin in confusion.
Torrent sighed, and raised a claw, dragging it along his left gills, scarred from the marks Magma’s burning talons had created. “The diamond didn’t heal my gills properly,” he replied. “I don’t know if I can still breath underwater, or how well. I haven’t really had a chance to try since it happened. I might not be able to carry Schist or Crystal if they lose consciousness.”
Griffin took a peek back at the water and tapped his talons. He could have sworn it had risen up another inch in the time they had been talking. “And if either Crystal or Schist start to drown, I too small to help them either. We need to hurry, and think of a new plan,” he growled. “Anything else we need to know?”
Schist raised a claw. Griffin swiveled his head to look at him, ruffling his feathers. If this went up, they’d all be in a watery grave.
“I’ll be fine,” Schist explained. “I think can hold my breath for an hour or something if I try hard. I’ve never done it before, but apparently it’s a MudWing thing.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Griffin frowned, skeptical of Schist’s claim.
“No, I think that Schist’s right,” Torrent spoke up, “I remember hearing about some battle where the MudWings were able to defeat a small SeaWing battalion underwater because of it.”
“Are you sure you’re not thinking of Queen Fen?” Griffin asked. “She used her animus magic to help the MudWings take the Deep Palace and conquer the Sea Kingdom.”
“No MudWing history, please!” Crystal interrupted. “This plan is also terrible. So everyone else is accounted for, but what if I drown before you bring me out?”
“We have the healing diamond still,” Torrent pointed out, looking around for it. “If you do drown, we can use it to heal you.”
Crystal snorted. “It can’t heal me if I’m dead, and I’m not certain that thing works anyways. Sure, it kept Schist alive, but look how he turned out.”
Schist tucked his tail in shame, and turned the scarred side of his body away from the others. He looked up towards the cave walls.
Griffin glanced over at Schist, and grimaced. Crystal could be just as insensitive as Torrent. “Well, it’s either that or you die,” Griffin decided. “Do you have a better plan?”
“We could just wait,” Schist suggested, turning back to Griffin.
“What?” Griffin hysterically asked. “Do you want her to drown?”
Schist shook his head, then raised a talon to the cave wall. “Look, the stone here is a lighter color than the one down below.” He dragged his talon down the wall, to where the stone changed colors. “And there are barnacles down here, but not above.” The MudWing glanced over at the stone platform. “I think the line is where high tide meets. The platform is above the line, so I don’t the water reaches up to there.”
Torrent and Griffin breathed a sigh of relief. Crystal thought for a moment longer. “And we’ve still got four or so more years until the Brightest Night,” she realized, “so there’s probably no freak moon alignment.” She closed her eyes, calming herself. “Which means we were never in danger to begin with.”
Griffin fidgeted uncomfortably. “Er, sorry about waking you up, I guess,” he chuckled.
“It’s fine,” Crystal comforted. “I would’ve done the same.” She glanced at the water, almost reaching up to the high tide mark Schist had pointed out. “We’re going to have some time before it recedes enough for us to leave, I imagine.” She turned to the other three. “I doubt we’re going to get much flying in today.”
Torrent nodded, then turned to Griffin, swishing his tail back and forth. “Sorry about that,” he muttered.
“What for?” Griffin asked in confusion.
“Not telling you about my gills,” Torrent explained. “With only one working, I don’t know if I’ll be able to live in the Deep Palace again.”
Griffin turned his feathered head back and forth, parsing Torrent’s statement. “Wait, you think I want to go back to the Deep Palace again?” he asked, almost laughing. “No offense, but I don’t ever want to swim again in my life. Maybe it was fun for you, since you didn’t have to constantly hide, and were able to actually breath, but the Deep Palace is no place for a gryphon, magical breathing or not. Believe me, I much prefer real air.”
“Oh,” Torrent gulped in embarrassment and shame. He hadn’t realized Griffin had hated it so much in the Sea Kingdom. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know — “
“No problem,” Griffin replied with a smile. “The situation wasn’t ideal, and I know Orca did the best she could.”
Torrent nodded, and looked at the embers of the fire. They were fading, and if they were going to be here for another quarter of a day, Schist would need the warmth. After placing some more of the firewood he and Crystal had collected, the SeaWing put his snout close to the fire, and gave the fire a short puff of breath. Crystal hid a laugh as the cinders quickly glew an orange, then faded again in the pulse of a heartbeat.
“That’s not how you do it, you silly water-breather,” she directed Torrent. “You have to keep your breath steady and long.”
The end of the SeaWing’s tail twitched back and forth. “And what would a dragon with ‘freezing death breath’ know about maintaining fires?”
“Princess Blaze refuses to make her own fires, and I was unfortunately assigned to taking care of her for a time while she met with Queen Glacier and my father,” Crystal commented, “and it’s not like everything we breath on freezes. It’s like fire-breath, it’s different than normal breathing.”
Torrent frowned, and put his snout a bit closer to the fire, wincing at the heat and smoke. He took in a deep breath, then slowly let out air, barely opening his jaws. The embers started to glow brightly, then suddenly erupted into flame, surrounding the pieces of tinderwood on top. After Torrent was done, the fire had restarted.
“Freezing death breath?” Schist asked Crystal. “That sounds awesome, can I see?”
“Sure?” she replied. “Just stand back. There’s a reason it’s called freezing death breath.”
Crystal turned to a wall of the cave, and opened her mouth wide, breathing in. The other three took a wide step back, not wanting to get too close. She exhaled, and a unnatural hissing noise came from her mouth. A white mist emanated from her mouth in a stream, and as it hit the wall and spread across the cave’s surface, white clouds billowed towards the other three.
Torrent scrambled back in alarm the clouds of gas flooded towards him. “It’s fine!” Crystal called out, noticing his fear. “The clouds are harmless, as long as you don’t get hit by the frostbreath straight-on.”
Torrent meekly looked down as a cloud brushed past his paws. It was cold, and dryer than the ocean air around them, tingling strangely on his scales. As the mist cleared away, Schist walked a little closer towards Crystal. On the wall, where she had breathed her frostbreath, ice crystals had formed, covering the stone surface, and nestling within the cracks.
Crystal smiled in accomplishment as Schist looked on, amazed. “You should have seen what I did to attack Magma,” Crystal said. “I didn’t even know I had that much frostbreath in me.”
Schist nodded, slightly self-conscious of his injuries again. He had heard what Crystal had done before, but hadn’t known what the frostbreath looked like until now.
Torrent and Griffin walked closer to the two, both examining the ice crystals the frostbreath had made.
“You mentioned you had a sister, right?” Schist asked Crystal.
“Yeah, Clarity,” Crystal replied with a hint of surprise. “Why do you ask?”
Schist fidgeted from side to side. “I was just thinking about my own sister, Glen. I wonder if she misses me, or if she’s worried about me.”
“Probably,” Griffin commented. “She was pretty worried about you when she found us.”
Crystal thought for a moment. “Yeah, siblings can be like that. Clarity wouldn’t admit it, but I’m sure she’s worried sick about me. I hope Fracture somehow got the news to her that I made it out of the Ice Kingdom.”
“Do IceWings do families?” Schist asked. “Like, not just siblings, but also parents?”
“Usually,” Crystal explained, “but it varies. Boreal was always too busy to care for me, so Clarity was really the one who raised me. She’s my bigclaws, or whatever you call them.”
“Bigwings,” Schist corrected with a laugh. “Because their wings are big enough to protect the rest of their siblings from harm.” He frowned a little. Maybe Quake was able to protect him and Glen while he was alive, but he wasn’t able protect them dead. That had been Glen’s job. “Usually. What about your mother?”
Crystal rattled her tail a little. “She died before I hatched, so I never actually knew her, but she was a popular general in the war against Queen Oasis, back before Glacier was queen. Clarity says I’m a bit like her.”
Griffin glanced over to the water, and relaxed his wings. “It’s going down!” he stated with relief to the others. “Schist was right!”
Crystal breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s good to know,” she smiled. “I guess I’m not going to die!”
The water level had gone down quite a bit since Griffin had woken the others up, and over the next few hours, it continued to fall. Eventually, it reached the point where the four could walk out of the cave, almost dry. Torrent looked over the edge of the cliff, to the north. A cold salty breeze blew against him, and the sun was high in the sky, over the great ocean to the north. There was no land, at least not as far as Torrent could see. Maybe if you flew far enough in that direction, you’d reach the Lost Continent or some other unexplored area.
Torrent looked to the left, peeking his head over the edge of the cave, and around the corner of the cliff-face. The jagged cliffs continued as far as he could see. That was where they were going: to the south-west, out of the Sky Kingdom. A strong gust of wind pushed his head against the cliff, his left horn almost hitting the rock, and salty water sprayed against his scales. It almost felt like home. He turned, and glanced back at Crystal, Schist, and Griffin, patiently waiting for him.
Crystal spread out her wings, almost hitting Torrent in the neck. “Well, c’mon!” she snorted. “The day’s almost half over thanks to those stupid tides, are we going to go flying, or not?”
She leapt off the side of the cliff face, her tail snaking behind her, gliding a short distance down before flapping her wings, generating lift. Torrent quickly followed, with Schist and Griffin jumping off after him. The four turned to the west, the crashing waves of the sea beneath their wings.
== Chapter 43 ==
Crystal yawned, and tried to turn her head to the side. The sun was almost directly in her eyes as the four continued along the coastline, glinting off the blue waters. The reflection of the sun slowly moved towards its causer, as the great yellow orb started to dip below the horizon. 
How long had they been flying, again? She wasn’t sure, but her wings were exhausted from continuously beating for who knows how long, and she was ready to get a good night’s rest. The IceWing turned to Schist. He looked even worse, actively struggling to fly. Instead of gliding to conserve his wingbeats, like most dragons had been taught since birth, the MudWing was faltering, his breath heavy as he flapped his wings up and down, almost flailing.
The last week or so had been very tiring on both her and Schist, and they were barely more than halfway to their destination. While most dragons would have found this an excruciatingly slow pace, there wasn’t much to be done. The four were flying in enemy territory, which meant that they had to quickly find cover at even the smallest glimpse of another SkyWing in the distance, and at every little hamlet along the northern coast Bobcat had marked, they had to spend hours going out to of their way, flying without break across the ocean. Additionally, Crystal and Schist needed far more breaks than the usual dragon — even after so many months, Crystal was still recovering to her full strength before the coma, while Schist had both never learned proper long-distance flying and was having plenty of difficulties using his scarred wing. This had made flying over the ocean to avoid SkyWings even more difficult, as they occasionally had to stop over the ocean for Schist or Crystal. A few times, Torrent had even let Schist or Crystal rest on his back as he acted as a floatation device for them. Even if he didn’t say it, Crystal could tell that he had missed the open ocean.
“It’s getting late!” Crystal called to Torrent and Griffin, who were a few wingbeats ahead of her and Schist. “We should find a place to sleep.”
Griffin looked back, and gave her a nod. He pointed to the ground and muttered something to Torrent that Crystal couldn’t hear in the wind, then dived. Torrent quickly followed, Crystal and Schist gliding behind him. They landed in a small clearing, a fair ways away from the coast.
Fortunately for Schist, the more south-west they got, and closer to the Sand Kingdom, the warmer it became. The first few nights, he had slept cold (it was too cold for him to create a fire, not that he wanted to anyways. Torrent and Crystal agreed — it was far too much of a risk to create a fire in SkyWing territory), but had acclimated somewhat during their stay in the Sky Kingdom. Crystal could feel the temperature rising every day, somewhat to her dismay.
So, they slept without a fire nearby, taking watches. Crystal was around halfway through her watch, when she heard something not too far away. Voices talking. Crystal stayed silent as she tensed up. They weren’t alone in the forest.
“Did you hear about that new princess?” one of the dragons said. He was close to Crystal, and walking closer. She slowly inched towards Torrent, and shook him gently. The large SeaWing opened one eye, and opened his mouth to speak, before Crystal put a talon over it, signaling him to keep quiet.
“Of course, this ‘Princess Ruby?’” a second dragon sneered. “You don’t believe whatever the queen said, right?”
Torrent slowly got up, staying as silent as possible. There was a large bush between them and the two dragons, but the distance was quickly closing. He drew his dagger out of its sheathe, ready to fight if it came to that. Crystal moved onto Schist and Griffin, slowly waking them up with a tap. They glanced up quietly as she gave them the same signal.
“What do you think I am, a dragonet?” the first snorted. “Tourmaline’s mysterious ‘disappearance’ was clearly just Scarlet killing her off. It’s not like she hasn’t done it before. This poor ‘Ruby’ dragon is probably some unlucky b***ard.”
Crystal took a step towards the bush Torrent was hiding behind, her hind paw stepping on a dry leaf and making a faint crackling sound.
“Poor?” the second asked. “I wouldn’t consider myself poor if I got to live in the pal — did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” the first questioned. Crystal’s heart beat rapidly, her claws shaking anxiously. If they were caught . . . “It was probably a deer or something. We’re too far from the border to see any trouble, it’s why I asked to get assigned here.”
“No, I’m sure I heard something larger,” the second protested. He stepped closer to the bushes, and spent a tense moment scanning them. In the dark, he couldn’t see the dragons behind it, though Torrent could see the crimson scales of his enemy completely fine with his night-vision. There were only two. “Hmm, maybe you’re right,” the SkyWing muttered, as he started to turn back to his partner. “I don’t think I se —”
Torrent leapt through the bushes with a roar with his dagger out, jumping on the shocked crimson SkyWing. As the other one, a large orange SkyWing with a short tail, screamed in fright, Torrent slit his prey’s jugular in one quick motion, blood spraying from the SkyWing’s neck onto Torrent’s neck and chest.
After the quick lapse into fear, the orange SkyWing caught a hold of himself, and quickly pounced at Torrent. He roared in anger, seeing his partner, and pushed the larger SeaWing off the red SkyWing’s corpse, almost knocking Torrent to the ground. Torrent whipped his body around to hit the SkyWing with his bludgeoning tail, but he was too slow, and the SkyWing clawed at Torrent’s neck, drawing red blood from it.
“Get back!” Crystal suddenly yelled. In a short moment of confusion, Torrent leapt away from the SkyWing into the bush behind him, his step immediately followed by a blast of freezing air inches from the tip of his snout. It hit the SkyWing full-on in the face, causing him to scream in agony as Crystal’s freezing death breath sprayed up and down his neck and head, his scales icing together and cracking.
When she stopped her breath, the SkyWing fell forward, landing with a reverberating crack at Torrent’s front paws. He stepped away as dry clouds billowed past him, and turned to Crystal.
“Thanks,” Torrent gruffly mumbled. Crystal smiled and gave him a nod, then turned back to the campsite.
By this point, Schist and Griffin were fully awake, blinking at the scene of carnage that had taken place before them. Blood dripped off Torrent’s face and neck, and a chunk of the second SkyWing’s frozen skull had cracked from the rest of his corpse, blood frozen within it.
“Why . . .?” Schist asked with an expression of shock, speechless. “They weren’t going to find us! He said he didn’t see us!”
“And what if he was lying?” Torrent snapped. “Or maybe he decided to look again due to his sneaking suspicion, or they had kept going our way and ran into us!”
“You killed them,” Schist growled. “You didn’t have to do that!”
“I had to make a decision!” Torrent defensively protested. “It was either them, or us. At least this way, no one got hurt.”
“No one got hurt?” Schist screeched. He pointed a claw to the body of the crimson SkyWing, blood still pouring from his neck. “How is that ‘no one got hurt?’”
Hearing Schist’s screech, Crystal nervously glanced around the empty forest. Hopefully there no one else nearby to hear all of this, or they might have trouble.
“Yeah, but they’re our enemies, they deserve it,” Griffin chimed in. “They’re SkyWings, and guards at it. They’re the bad guys here.”
“What?” Schist growled. “Do you realize who’s been feeding and taking care of you for the last six months? SkyWings! And we literally have an IceWing right here! Out of all of us, I’d think that the non-dragon wouldn’t hate them just because they’re SkyWings.” Crystal took a step back. She wasn’t sure she wanted to get involved in this.
“Yeah, well that’s different,” Griffin answered, ruffling his feathers in anger. “Crystal is on our side; she supports Queen Blister like the rest of us.”
“What?” Crystal scoffed. “Seriously? You think I support that scheming monster?”
“Yes! You’re a traitor to the IceWings, aren’t you?” Griffin claimed.
A small snarl formed on Crystal’s snout. “Just because I betrayed Queen Glacier doesn’t make me any less of an IceWing. If Queen Glacier decided to take me back, I would do it, and happily serve in Queen Blaze’s army. I love my kingdom, and would support Queen Glacier and the Ice Kingdom with any decision they made, short of causing a MudWing genocide. You know, you’re not even a SeaWing,” Crystal hissed. “Why should you be supporting Princess Evil like the rest of them?”
“You’re one to blame Griffin!” Schist muttered. “You’re just as guilty as Torrent, you murdered one of them too!”
Crystal opened her mouth to argue, but Torrent quickly stepped between the three. “Alright, I’m sorry for saving your tails!” he conceded. “Don’t blame Crystal for this, I’m the one who attacked the SkyWings, she was just trying to help me out. Can’t we just go back to sleep now?”
Schist frowned, and gave Torrent a glare. “Fine,” he muttered finally, his scarred snout and scales reflecting the moonlight. He turned back towards the pile of leaves he was sleeping on, and started to lie down.
“Wait,” brought up Crystal in exasperation, “we can’t stay here. If these guards don’t get back to wherever they were dispatched from on time, someone will go looking for them. We need to get far away from here, fast, so they can’t track us.
Schist sighed, looking back at her. “Fine,” he muttered. He opened his wings, and grabbed his bag. The other three did the same, and quickly lifted off into the moonlit night, Torrent leading them with his night-vision. The cold air from the sea brushed against their scales, as their wings, heavy with exhaustion, slowly beat back and forth. It would be a long night, and the four weren’t going to get more sleep anytime soon.
== Chapter 44 ==
Faint candlelight shone off the Great Five-Tail River, taking its place next to the two moons shining that night — one half-full, and one just the sliver of a crescent. The golden light of flame was surprising at first, in comparison to the silver shining moons. The four weary travelers looked up the river to see the source of the light: a city flanked each side of the river, with a great bridge built between the two, stretching up to the height of the buildings nearby. Dots of flame were positioned strategically around the cities in order to light up the surrounding areas throughout the night. Each flame was contained in a small lantern placed atop a pole, and would be blown out each morning, usually by a young SkyWing or SandWing who was given much-needed food in return.
The large bridge of pearly white stone spanned across the Five-Tail River in the center, covered archways orderly arranged across it. Empty market stalls lay side-by-side across the expanse, with a couple SandWings still on the bridge, just dots in the distance to the four approaching. Closer to them were a series of docks on the right bank of the river, with a number of large cubical buildings just a little further in. Behind the four was the mouth of the Great Five-Tail River, where they had flown from.
Crystal pointed a talon to the left side of the banks, where quaint houses with red triangular roofs covered the landscape. “There,” she said, “that’s the SkyWing city. One of those houses should have a blue-shingled roof; that’s where we should go.”
Torrent squinted. Because his nightvision had turned on, it was too dark to make out different colors well, but he thought he saw a roof which looked like it might have appeared blue in the daytime. “I think that’s the one,” he stated, pointing a webbed talon towards it.
Schist flew a little bit further forward. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Schist asked. “Going into a SkyWing city. What if someone heard about how you killed those guards, and finds us suspicious?”
Crystal scoffed. “If things haven’t changed since I was last here, no one’s going to give us a second glance. It’s primarily SkyWings and SandWings, but I think I saw a few MudWings, IceWings, and even the occasional SeaWing around.”
“Maybe nobody will look at you twice,” Griffin pointed out, “but I doubt I’m gonna be ignored.”
Crystal looked over at Griffin. He was right, even if he pretended that he couldn’t talk, bringing what’s supposed to be a mythical creature into a large city could draw a lot of attention. And if Princess Burn got word of it, he’d be stuffed and thrown in her tower.
“Alright,” she replied, “we can try sneaking you in, and if she lets us stay, we can hide you in Avalanche’s house.”
Griffin frowned, not exactly happy about being hidden again, but didn’t protest.
Torrent scanned the area around the blue-shingled roof. “There,” he said, moving his talon a bit further from the river, “it looks like there’s a clearing we can land down in. It’s dark, so hopefully no one should get a clear view of Griffin, and we can walk to your SkyWing friend’s house from there.”
Crystal gave Torrent an okay, and the four moved ahead, slowly gliding over the top of the SkyWing city on the eastern banks of the river. Torrent saw a couple SkyWings down below, but a couple of dragons flying overhead wasn’t anything too unusual, and no one bothered to give the shadows above more than a short glance. As they reached the clearing, a small grassy field, they dove down, Griffin staying above the others to hide behind their wings. 
Fortunately, they were the only ones in the field that night, and Griffin was able to land quickly and quietly. Not wanting to have him be seen, Torrent draped a wing over his much smaller friend, and moved towards the edge of the field, towards a small alley behind a couple of brown-roofed houses. 
“I think the house is this way,” Torrent quietly whispered. “It shouldn’t be too far.”
Crystal nodded. “I’ll go in front and look out for any approaching dragons. Torrent will keep covering Griffin, and Schist will watch from behind.” She quickened her pace, and stepped in front of Torrent without a moment’s notice, walking down the alley. 
“C’mon,” she hissed back at the other three, “the longer we’re out here, the greater the chance we’ll be caught.” Torrent and Griffin followed a short pace behind her, while Schist nervously lagged behind them, watching over his wings for any dragons who seemed like they might be following them. 
They continued down the narrow back-alley until reaching the edge of a larger street. Crystal suddenly stopped, and opened her wings, trying to push Torrent backwards with them. He took a few steps away, almost running into Schist. A SkyWing muttering something angrily to herself walked directly past Crystal, not even giving her a glance. When she passed, Crystal motioned the others forwards with a claw, and quickly took them across the paved road, the cracks in the stone rushing from Griffin’s talons.
The four moved on like this, staying out of sight, until Torrent pointed to a large barn, no, a house, which stood out from the surrounding area like a gryphon in the Sea Kingdom. A blue-shingled roof rested on top, covering the inside from any rain. “I think that’s it,” he pointed out.
Crystal nodded. “Griffin, stay hidden here until I’m sure she’ll let us stay,” she ordered, “Torrent and Schist, come with me.”
The two other dragons followed her directions, and walked to the door of the house. Crystal took a deep breath in, then gave a sharp rap on the old door. A few seconds later, a bright crimson SkyWing pushed open the door in a furious hiss, almost knocking Crystal back.
“You,” Avalanche hissed. “I said I’d knock your teeth out if you came back.” She tapped a few of her claws on the ground in a threatening fashion, glaring at the IceWing in front of her.
Crystal sighed. “I need someplace to stay, alright? Would you mind letting us sleep here for a while?”
“Us?” Avalanche asked with a hint of exaggeration, as if she already knew Crystal had brought friends. She peered her head around the edge of the door, noticing the large SeaWing standing behind Crystal, and the MudWing with half his scales seared off. “Interesting group you’ve brought here,” she clucked. “You said you wouldn’t come back.”
“I know,” Crystal smiled, trying to reply in her sweetest voice, “but we’re really in a bit of a pinch here, and could use a place to rest our wings. If you want payment, we can offer it.”
“Trying to bribe me, eh?” Avalanche snorted, looking over towards Schist in an uncomfortable stare. She scanned up and down his right side, looking over his scars. “What happened to you?” she asked, with an air of condescension. “Fell into a vat of lava?”
“He ran in —” Crystal started to answer for the MudWing, before Avalanche silenced her, pushing her head away with a claw.
“I want him to answer,” she sneered. “C’mon, cat got your tongue?” The SkyWing suddenly gave a slight frown at the mention of cats, and glanced around the area, before turning back to Schist.
“I attacked a dragon with scales as hot as lava,” Schist hissed, shaking slightly. “That’s all.”
Avalanche smiled sinisterly. “I believe I know the type of SkyWing you’re talking about. Unfortunate, isn’t it?” She turned back to Crystal. “Fine, you and your strange friends may stay here, for now. Is it just you three?” She asked this last question with a hint of confusion, as if she was expecting more.
Crystal shook her head. “We have a fourth.” She waved a claw to Griffin, motioning him to come out of hiding.
The small gryphon quickly ran towards the house, not wanting to be caught by any onlookers. Avalanche looked on in surprise. “Well, what is that?” she asked in contempt. “Sorry, but we have enough pets here already.”
“He’s not a pet,” Torrent growled at her. She gave him a look of skepticism, before Griffin spoke up.
“I’m not,” Griffin stated matter-of-factly.
Avalanche nodded with a slight smile, and opened the door wide, for them to enter. They quickly went into the one-room house, trying to make sure Griffin stayed outside for as little as possible. An empty fireplace was in one side of the room, and various items and litter were scattered around the floor, except for in a small corner of the room which was strangely clear.
Crystal furrowed her snout at a pungent scent. “What’s that smell?” she asked.
“Cat p**s,” Avalanche hissed, gritting her teeth. “The nasty buggers are everywhere. You’ll see more of them soon enough, I guarantee it.” She turned towards Griffin, and closed the door behind him. “Hopefully none of them try to eat our pretty birdy,” she commented. She reached a talon out to Griffin, trying to stroke his feathers. He quickly took a step back and gave her a hiss in response, then turned back to the others with a frown.
“Look,” Torrent replied with a growl behind his voice, “thank you so much for letting us stay, but don’t touch Griffin.” He mustered holding back a snarl.
Avalanche licked her lips, flicking her tongue in and out of her teeth, but didn’t make a reply.
Crystal brushed aside a little bit of the clutter, some scrolls, rocks, and burnt firewood, then lied down on the stone floor uncomfortably. She was not particularly looking forward to staying with Avalanche. Hopefully, they’d be out of the city soon.
== Chapter 45 ==
“Get up! Y’all are lazier than RainWings!”
Avalanche’s voice was like a chunk of ice being dropped on Crystal’s head. She slowly opened her eyes to see Avalanche pacing around the room, shaking Torrent awake.
Her wings were sore when the IceWing tried to move them, as if they knew her long journey of flying had come to a pause, and decided to take a break. Even with the interruption, this was the longest straight night of sleep she had gotten, not having to serve a watch for SkyWings. She groaned, and pulled herself to her paws, lifting her body off the floor.
“What?” Torrent grumbled sourly as he raised his head. “Are there SkyWings after us or something?”
“SkyWings?” Avalanche screeched, practically choking. “You think SkyWings are why I’m getting you up? No, I need you to go to the market!”
“Market?” Torrent asked in confusion.
Avalanche snarled angrily. “What, you think you’re just going to stay in my house for free, is that it?” Torrent tried to shake his head in response, but Avalanche was too quick. “As part of your . . . boarding fee, you’re going to go to the market and buy food and supplies for me, and for the rest of you if you’d like.”
“Part of?” Schist quickly asked.
 Avalanche nodded, and pointed to Griffin. “Since he obviously can’t go out into the city, he’s going to start by cleaning up the house. We’ll see what else there is when he’s done.”
“Look,” Torrent protested, clenching his teeth a little, “we’d love to help you out, but we’re looking for an animus nearby, and it’s urgent.”
“Urgent?” Avalanche laughed. “If it was urgent, you should have slept in less. This ‘animus’ can wait another day if you want to be sleeping here another night.”
“Fine,” Crystal crisply agreed, cutting off whatever Torrent had to say. “We’ll go out and get your food. Torrent, you have a way to pay, right?”
Torrent thought for a moment. Yes, he still some jewelry from the Sea Kingdom; if he could pawn it off, it would be more than enough. “Yeah, I can,” he said, “but —”
“It’s fine,” Crystal quickly told the SeaWing. “We’ve waited through the winter already, our animus can wait another day.”
Torrent grumbled unhappily. They had already waited so long in the Sky Kingdom, and the flight had felt like forever. Now, they finally had gotten to their destination, but they just had to wait more? He gave Avalanche a quick glare, to which he received a smug face in response. The SeaWing then turned away to his bag, to pull out a small necklace with rubies, diamonds, and pearls inlaid within it. Avalanche’s eyes opened wide at the sight.
“You coming with us?” Crystal asked, turning to Schist.
Schist squirmed uncomfortably. “No thanks,” he replied, “I’ll just help out Griffin and Avalanche.”
“Really?” Crystal asked, surprised. “I thought you’d want to check out the cities?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered, “I don’t want to attract too much attention.”
“He’s embarrassed ‘cause he’s ugly,” Avalanche rudely commented. “He doesn’t want to scare the poor dragonets with his looks.”
Crystal bared her teeth a little at her. “He’s not ugly,” she hissed at Avalanche. Sure, he had some bad burns and scarring, but it wasn’t the worst she had seen. Well, maybe it was, but it probably wasn’t the worst in Pyrrhia. “And you’re one to talk, your scales look like a red RainWing threw up on them.”
Oops, Crystal suddenly realized, closing her snout tight, maybe I shouldn’t be insulting our host.
Avalanche gave her a long stare, before a toothy grin appeared on her face. “So, you have a little gusto in you after all, do you?”
Crystal gave her a quick hiss, then looked over towards Schist. He tensed up at her look. “Avalanche is right,” he quietly murmured, “I am ugly.”
“And I’m an overgrown bird,” Griffin commented, walking over to Schist. He took his talons, and put them around Schist’s head and moved it up to look at him, directly in the eyes. “Look, it doesn’t matter if you’re ugly, alright? You got those scars from saving all our lives, and you were willing to die for us. I don’t think I could have done what you did, running into a burning dragon just to save a SeaWing you barely knew. And if some eel-brained SkyWing says that you’re ugly, then remember that even if you were the ugliest dragon in the world, you’re better than she could ever be for it.”
Schist smiled weakly, while Avalanche just rolled her eyes. “You’re adorable together, you know that?” she said snarkily. “It’s deplorable. Now, get out of your happy little ‘you saved my life’ friendship circle, and back to real life, where dragons will judge you for a mismatched scale, and toughen up. Are you going with Crystal, or not?”
 Schist gave Avalanche a glare. “I’m staying here. But not because you think I’m ugly, because my wings are tired and I want to rest.”
“You’re not going to rest, believe me,” Avalanche grinned. “But if you don’t want to go prancing around the city, fine by me. You and the bird can help me clean this dump. Maybe scare away a few cats while you’re at it.” She turned to Crystal, and Torrent, who was standing by her with the necklace he had grabbed. “Well?”
Crystal nodded with a glare. “Quick question,” she asked, steadying her voice, “the SandWing who brought me here before, do you know his name? Where he lives?”
Avalanche was in thought for a quick moment, tapping a claw on the scales of her jaw. “Nope, no clue,” she answered, turning back to Crystal. “I don’t keep track of the street urchins, they all just look the same to me. Stand around long enough and I’m sure one of them will rob you, just like any other one of the lawless SandWings who live here.” She pointed to the necklace Torrent had in his claws. “You might want to hide that,” she suggested.
Crystal gritted her teeth. What is wrong with her? she angrly wondered. Griffin, Schist, and now the SandWing who helped me find her? Can’t she just close her snout for a moment, or at least not say something awful every time she opens it?
Crystal turned to the door. “Come on, let’s go,” she muttered, irritated. Torrent quickly followed, and shut the door to the blue-shingled house behind him. He took the necklace and crumpled it up within his left claws, so not to let it be seen.
“Do you know which way to go?” he asked Crystal.
“I think so,” she replied. She pointed a talon towards the west. “The market I saw was in the SandWing city, and I’m sure there’s a jeweler or a pawn shop somewhere along the way.
Torrent nodded, and followed Crystal. They walked to one of the larger roads, where a horde of SkyWings were heading to the west, towards the bridge spanning the Five-Tailed River. A few dragons of other tribes joined the SkyWings in the migration, a small number of SandWings were there, in addition to a MudWing and a weird dragon Torrent couldn’t tell the tribe of — she had what looked like a miniscule barb, but no frill and the long curved horns of a SkyWing.
Crystal and Torrent pushed through the crowd, Torrent towering above them and holding his necklace tightly. He looked over to Crystal, who still appeared a bit miffed.
“Wow, who doused her wounds in seawater?” Torrent asked, referring to Avalanche.
Crystal looked over to Torrent, startled out of her thoughts. “I know, right?” she replied, half laughing, half grimacing. “I’m beginning to doubt my brother-in-law’s taste of friends right now; she has absolutely no redeeming qualities, out of all the dragons in Pyrrhia, three moons, why would he go find her?”
“Go find her?” Torrent asked in confusion, not sure what Crystal meant.
Crystal nodded. “Yeah. At least according to Avalanche, Fracture, my brother-in-law, apparently found Avalanche, my sister, and few other dragons to form some anti-war society or whatever. I met one of the others back in the Sky Kingdom, before I found you.” A look of disgust crossed her face. “It was a NightWing.”
For a moment, Torrent was wondering what was so wrong with NightWings, then quickly recalled his Arctic and Darkstalker legends. Of course. The two kingdoms had hated each other for the last few thousand years. Why would he be surprised that Crystal didn’t like NightWings? Still, it was even weirder that this Fracture had sought out a NightWing. Torrent wondered how Fracture had found one, the only NightWing he’d ever seen was Sunscorcher, and apparently the location of the Night Kingdom was so well-kept, no one else had been there in two thousand years.
The two passed over the great bridge spanning the river, dragons shoving each other aside to get past each other. Loud shouts of vendors in stalls hurt Torrent’s ears, this place was a mess compared to the underwater silence of the Deep Palace. A SandWing on the front suddenly pushed against Torrent, causing the large SeaWing to stagger back. He gave Torrent a glare, then turned back to his business, buying some sort of lotion from a MudWing selling various herbs and homemade remedies, who boasting to the public about how effective they were, particularly in comparison to the quack doctor SkyWing selling mass-produced junk on the other end of the bridge.
“Well, that was rude,” he muttered to Crystal, suddenly turning around to see a young SkyWing in her place.
The SkyWing gave him a strange stare, then shoved what looked like a toad (or perhaps charcoal in the shape of a toad) on a stick in front of Torrent’s snout. “Toad-on-a-stick, great for a morning snack. You want to buy?”
“Er, no thanks,” Torrent replied, taken aback. “I prefer my food raw.”
The dragonet quickly turned away, running up to a pair of grinning SkyWings behind Torrent and giving them the same offer. Torrent turned back, and looked around, peeking over the horns and wings of the dragons crowd front of him for Crystal. It shouldn’t be that hard to find an IceWing within this crowd, a spot of light-blue would stick out easily.
He saw her a few paces ahead, then pushed through the mass of scales and wings to get to her, drawing some growls and sharp remarks. She glanced up when he got there, “Oh, that’s where you are,” she said. “Look, I think that’s what we’re looking for.”
She pointed her talon over the side of the bridge, to a small shop not too far from the store. A wooden sign was atop it, reading “Oryx’s Jewelry and Pawn.” The letters were painted on in a thick blue paint, and the sign was slightly lower on the left end than the right. “C’mon,” Crystal said, pushing further down the crowd, now heading down the other side of the bridge.
Torrent quickly followed, trying to keep up with the smaller and nimbler IceWing. When he turned the corner to get out of the main roads and onto the riverbank, she was already there, waiting for him. The two walked up to the entrance of the pawn shop together, and opened the door. The shop itself was miniscule on the inside: the walls were covered in various cheap junk, and at the back of the room was a small counter with a bored looking SandWing crouching down behind it, most likely Oryx. A small staircase ran up the back of the counter, leading up to what could be Oryx’s home above the shop.
Oryx looked up and flicked out his forked tongue with a hint of interest. He stood to his full height, looking up towards Torrent defiantly. A random pattern of orange scales speckled his backside, interspersed between the pale yellow scales most common among SandWings. “An IceWing and a SeaWing together,” he snorted with a tiny chuckle, “that’s not something you see everyday, even here. What’s the story?”
“We’re not together,” Crystal replied with a feigned smile. “I mean, we are together, but not in that way. I’m traveling with him and a couple other friends, that’s all.”
Oryx nodded, and looked over the two suspiciously. “Well, welcome to Oryx’s Jewelry and Pawn. Best pawn shop in both cities, although I’d have to admit I’m slightly partial. You here to buy or to sell?”
“Sell,” Torrent answered, opening his paw and showing Oryx the necklace.
He nodded, flicking his forked tongue in and out, then held out a claw. “May I take a closer look?”
Crystal clenched her teeth in a bit of worry, but Torrent dropped the necklace into Oryx’s claws. He examined it for almost a minute, then set it back down on the counter. “SeaWing craftsmanship. Not bad.”
Oryx ducked his head beneath the counter for a second, his horns and sail waving back and forth. When he came up, he pulled out a small pouch, and dropped it on the counter, half-opened. Torrent peeked inside to see a cluster of silver pieces of various sizes, stamped with the images of SandWing and SkyWing queens.
Torrent reached a claw out towards the pouch, intending to take it, when Crystal suddenly wrapped her talons around Torrent’s forearm and pulled it backwards. She scoffed at Oryx. “We’re going to need a little more than that,” she demanded. “Three of those pouches, filled to the brim with gold, might be barely enough.”
Oryx chuckled heartily. “Are you trying to bleed me dry?” he asked with slight disappointment. He went back under the counter and pulled out another one of the pouches, half-filled with gold pieces. “How do you expect me to feed my dragonets?”
Crystal gave him a cold stare. “Not my problem. Now, do you want this necklace, or not? I’m sure you’re not the only shop nearby.”
Oryx sighed exaggeratedly, then pulled out another pouch similar to the second. “This is the best you’re going to get, you know. What more do you want, my entire shop? My mate and dragonets?”
Crystal brought her eyes up to his, and gave him a cold hiss, then grabbed the three pouches on the counter. “We’re good,” she said, then turned around, exiting the shop. 
Oryx quickly snatched the necklace from the counter, then looked up at Torrent. “Anything else you want to sell?”
Torrent shook his head, then went out of the shop after Crystal. He glanced over at her, quickly scanning over the coins she had gotten. She handed one of the pouches to Torrent, and he looked at it carefully. “I hope we didn’t take too much,” he muttered.
Crystal looked at Torrent and almost choked on her. He gave her a look of confusion. “Believe me, he’s going to be fine,” she explained, “we could have gotten five times this for that necklace, and he’d still make a profit.”
“Oh,” Torrent replied with a frown, “is it really that expensive?”
 The IceWing nodded vigorously. “Half the dragons in the city would’ve killed you to get that, maybe more. You really don’t know anything about money, do you?”
Torrent fidgeted his wings in embarrassment. “Whirlpool didn’t really teach River and I about stuff like that, that was more what Orca learned.”
Crystal rolled her eyes. “Then what did he teach you?”
“History, writing, science, stuff like that,” Torrent replied. “Although half of it was just him bragging about everything he’d done for the Sea Kingdom and Pyrrhia and all the scrolls he’d written.”
Crystal snorted. “That sounds awful. Living in a huge underwater palace where your primary job is listening to a boring old SeaWing tell stories,” she teased Torrent. “C’mon, let’s get going, we’ve still got a little more walking before we get to the SandWing market.”
The two continued on into, deeper into the western city. As they continued on, the architecture became distinctly different than that of the SkyWings’. Instead of the sharp, triangular roofs of the SkyWing buildings, these buildings had flat roofs, with the occasional dragon peering off them at the procession of SandWings and SkyWings below. The buildings had square or rectangular bases, and were made out of a yellowish-orange stone, although many of the ones closer to the riverbank had a strange mix of the grey SkyWing stone used on the other side of the huge river.
Crystal was scanning the crowds, quickly turning back her head back and forth. Torrent glanced over to her. “What are you looking for? Thieves?”
She shook her head, her faint blue scales flickering in the harsh sunlight. “No, there was a SandWing I met my last time through, and I was wondering if he was still here.”
“Oh,” Torrent replied with a hint of dismay. He looked around the market square. “What did he look like?”
“He had golden-brown scales, and his horns curved slightly outward,” she answered.
Torrent frowned a little, and looked around at the river of SandWings and SkyWings pushing past. There were plenty who fit that description. “Anything else?”
Crystal thought for a moment, then shook her head. “C’mon, let’s get to the market, maybe he’ll be there.”
The two pushed through the crowd and reached a large square in the middle of the SandWing city. Various stone buildings bordered the open area, usually consisting of some sort of shop on the bottom floor. A tall square clocktower rose at the other end of the market-square, with the hands of the clock moving slowly. In the middle of the square was a raised platform, just large enough for a single dragon to take off in flight or land. A number of SkyWings, along with a few MudWings, circled above the area, impatiently waiting for their turn to land, as a yelling SandWing below signaled to them that it was their turn.
The rest of the square was filled with small stalls and a mass of dragons. A few looked like they might have been at one time been arranged in rows, but apparently they had somehow broken free of this arrangement, and were now randomly strewn around the stone square. Wafts of smoked meat hit Torrent’s snout, and he had to take a step back. Shouts of vendors filled the air as more dragons pushed past the two, trying to get in or out of the marketplace.
“Follow me,” Crystal said, grabbing Torrent’s wing with a claw and pulling him along. The bazaar was like nothing Torrent had ever experienced. Sure, there were markets in the Sea Kingdom, but they were quiet, serene, placid. The bright lights of furious flashing in Aquatic was the most overwhelming thing that went on in there.
Crystal pulled Torrent up to a vendor on the edge of the square. “I’d like two of the spiced mutton legs,” she shouted over the roar of the crowd. She pulled out one of the coins from a pouch, and handed it to the SandWing vendor, who returned two golden-brown lamb legs and a few smaller coins. She put the coins back her in pouch, then put the mutton leg in Torrent’s talons.
He put his snout up against it and took a breath in, his belly gurgling. All they had been eating for the last two months was salted goat and yak meat, and he had gotten pretty tired of it by now. He quickly pulled off a large portion of the mutton with his sharp, shark-like teeth, and instantly regretted it.
Crystal laughed as she bit into a much smaller piece. “Spicy, isn’t it?” she asked, chewing on her bit. Torrent nodded, his eyes watering up.
“Yeah,” he muttered, after mustering enough strength to swallow the rest of the piece he had bitten off. It stung in the back of his throat. He stuck out his forked tongue, as if that would help.
“Sorry, probably should’ve warned you,” Crystal smiled. “Northern SandWing cuisine is some of the spiciest in Pyrrhia; it takes a bit of time to warm up to.”
Torrent nodded vigorously. “Yeah, I can tell,” he snorted. “Is IceWing food as bad?”
Crystal shook her head. “Definitely not. It’s mostly seal, polar bear, penguin, and fish. Salty, fatty, and bland.”
“I know the taste,” Torrent replied, “we ate a lot of fish back in the Sea Kingdom, with the occasional shark. Is that a RainWing?” He pointed over towards a stall closer to the center of the market. Dragons of all tribes were crowded around it, forming some semblance of a line. Behind the stall was a slim green dragon standing up on his hind legs and a huge grin. His wings were stretched out wide, with bright colors swirling across them to attract the attention of potential customers. Fruits of all shapes and sizes were placed across the counter, along with a series of small wooden goblets.
“I don’t know what else it would be,” Crystal replied, “let’s go check him out!”
She walked to what might have been the end of the line for the RainWing’s stall, Torrent following. The SkyWing in front of the two gave them a strange look as they got behind her, but quickly turned away.
“Want your fortune while you wait?” a voice quickly asked.
Torrent turned to the left to see a small stall. Pumice rocks, chunks of volcanic glass, and strangely colored crystals lined the counter. The stall’s owner was a small dragon of a kind Torrent had never seen before. His scales were a strange dark yellow, and small dots of white stood out in a line of scales along his neck. He had short spines along his back-ridge, but with a small sail between them, sort of like the webbing between Torrent’s own spines. “Well?” he asked.
Crystal glanced over at him and gave the dragon a little squint. “A NightWing?” she asked, with a hint of disdain.
“Only half,” the hybrid smiled. “Don’t worry, I don’t sting; I’ve got no barb.”
“Can you actually tell fortunes?” Crystal asked skeptically. She didn’t trust NightWings much, even only half of one.
The hybrid tossed his wings back and forth. “Sometimes. If I don’t get anything, you don’t have to pay me.”
“Yeah, no thanks,” Crystal snorted. “I’d prefer to use my money more wisely.”
“How about this,” the hybrid said, turning to Torrent, “I’ll give you two readings for the price of one, it’s not much.”
Torrent debated a little. It’s not like it could hurt much. “Sure, why not,” he replied, looking over at Crystal. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”
Crystal sighed and rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, then pulled out a few coins from her pouch and placed them in the hybrid’s claws. He grinned and set it down to the side. “Now, put your talons in mine.”
Crystal did so hesitantly, and the hybrid closed his eyes, breathing softly. “I think I see something,” he murmured quietly. It’s totally fake, Crystal mouthed over to Torrent.
“I see a statue of you,” the hybrid replied, “in a room of clear ice. You’re not alone.” He took another breath in. “There’s another IceWing there too, his wings are tucked in. He has a small golden bracelet around his left forearm, a dark purple stone inlaid within it.”
Crystal suddenly took her claws back from the hybrid, and he opened his eyes. She gave him a glare. “Well?” he asked. “Are you satisfied?”
“Yes,” she muttered, a little nervous. She had left the Darkstone back in Avalanche’s house with Schist and Griffin, it had to be safe. And she was a traitor, why would there be a statue of her in the palace? Unless . . . what if the Darkstone had worked, and she’d used it to become a true animus. Was that even possible? And if she had . . . Crystal turned to Torrent. Torrent’s dagger could turn animus dragons to stone — what if he’d used it on her? 
“Your turn?” the hybrid said, turning to Torrent. The large SeaWing placed his large webbed paws into the hybrid’s, as the hybrid closed his eyes and hummed.
“I see an island,” the hybrid spoke, “but with no water around it. Instead of an ocean, there’s just sand, with dead and decaying fish all around it. There are sharp rocks sticking up from the dry sea all, and there is a large cliff around every side of the island. The top is a dead forest, the trees all burnt stumps.”
The Summer Palace? Torrent wondered, recognizing the description. Why would it be burnt? And why would the ocean have suddenly dried up?
“Red and yellow dragons are circling around the top. SkyWings, I think,” he continued, “and a crown is lying in the sand, split in two. There are lights dancing in the sky, green and purple.”
“An aurora?” Crystal asked. The hybrid nodded.
“A what?” Torrent wondered.
“Colorful lights appear in the Ice Kingdom sky occasionally,” Crystal explained, “you wouldn’t get them in the Sea Kingdom, you’re too far south.”
Torrent frowned a little. “Maybe the SkyWings win the war?” he asked with a little worry.
The hybrid smiled and shook his wings back and forth. “I’m just the messenger, I’ve got no clue,” he admitted, “but good luck to you both.” He turned away from Torrent and Crystal to the next dragon in line for the RainWing’s stand, a elderly SandWing. “Fortunes told at cheap prices here!” he shouted.
Torrent and Crystal turned away, and continued walking forward. Crystal normally didn’t trust prophecies and visions (or NightWings in general, for that matter), but if he had described the Darkstone, then it had to be legit, right? It seemed like it was too much to just be a coincidence. Yet, it’s not like the vision made much sense — Crystal was a traitor to the IceWings, there’s no way Queen Glacier would create a statue in her honor. Maybe a future IceWing queen would pardon Crystal and induct her as a hero for preventing Glacier from causing a MudWing genocide? Possible, but unlikely. Blackice was the only daughter of Queen Glacier, she’d been banished for her war crimes, and she didn’t seem like the type who’d take kindly to Crystal taking the Darkstone. Glacier didn’t have any living sisters or female cousins, though maybe Prince Narwhal would have a daughter in the future if he married. She supposed Glacier would probably have another daughter, eventually.
Torrent was slightly less concerned about his vision than Crystal. Sure, it would be pretty awful if the SkyWings attacked the Summer Palace, but it wasn’t like it would involve him if they did. He had left the Sea Kingdom for good, and didn’t even know if he could still breathe underwater. All of that — Orca, palaces, queens and kings, the salty waters of the Bay — it was far behind him now, half a continent away.
“Well?” a dragon asked, interrupting Torrent and Crystal’s thoughts. “You don’t seem like you’re from around here.”
Crystal turned to attention. They had reached the front of the line, and the RainWing was grinning at them. “Sorry,” she murmured, quickly reaching into her pouch to pull out a few shining coins. “Are you a RainWing?” she asked.
The RainWing snorted, and a quick succession of spirals flashed across his scales. “I sure hope so,” he replied, “else I’d need a doctor to check me out pretty quick. So, have anything in particular you’re looking for?”
Torrent looked closer at the stand. There was a wide variety of strange fruits on it, probably directly from the rainforest itself. He glanced over at Crystal, who pointed to a small obloid one with a skin of orange and green hues. The RainWing nodded, and grabbed it. With a quick stroke of a razor-sharp claw, he cut a circle around the middle of the fruit, and peeled away the skin a short distance. He handed it to Crystal, who poked the soft orange insides. The only fruit they commonly ate in the Ice Kingdom were berries, and although she had gotten a little more variety while living on the SandWing border, it wasn’t something she’d ate a ton of.
“Mango. Good choice,” the RainWing explained. “Would you care for some cacao? It’s extremely popular.”
“Sure?” Crystal asked, unsure what it was. The RainWing grinned and passed over two of the goblets. Crystal in return handed over the coins she owed. She and Torrent took the goblets in their claws and backed away from the stand.
Torrent took a large sip of the drink in the goblet, a thick liquid the color of a dark wood. He grimaced a little. “It’s bitter,” he muttered.
Crystal laughed. “I’d have thought you’d have learned your lesson on taking big samples already.” She took a sip. It was like nothing she’d ever tasted, extremely rich and bitter, like Torrent had described, but with hints of cinnamon and a strange flavor she couldn’t describe. “I like it,” she commented, quickly finishing off her drink and returning the goblet to the RainWing, who by now was serving the next customer.
Torrent drank a little more, swallowing the rest of it down. Not really his favorite. “It’s . . . interesting,” he commented, placing the goblet on the counter.
Crystal cut off a piece of the orange fruit with her claw and handed it to Torrent. It was uncomfortably sticky, and fruit juices dripped down his talon uncomfortably as he grabbed. He took a small nibble, finally realizing his lesson, and nodded in enjoyment. “Sweet,” he judged the fruit. He quickly gobbled up the rest.
Crystal took a bite of her piece, and licked her forked tongue across her sharp teeth. “Wow, you’re right,” she replied in a hint of surprise, “I think I might be looking forward to more of this when we go to the rainforest.”
Torrent nodded, trying to pick out a strand of the mango that had gotten caught between his teeth. There was an animus in the rainforest, if he recalled correctly. He supposed that was where they would go next. He looked around a little at the crowd, and tapped a claw on the amethyst in his dagger. It was cold; there was no animus around.
“Ugh,” he grumbled in frustration, “we should be searching for the animus here, not buying fruit from a RainWing.”
Crystal grimaced a little. Torrent was right; they were ignoring their purpose. “Yeah,” she sighed unhappily, “but a little bit of fun can’t hurt, will it?”
Torrent shut his mouth, not wanting to argue with Crystal, even if he disagreed. Every moment wasted could mean another dragon being hurt.
Crystal easily noticed his expression of confliction, and wrapped her claws, sticky with mango juice, around his own. “It’s alright,” she said, looking directly into his eyes. “Animus magic or not, dragons will get hurt, and die. You can’t stop that, and you don’t have to; what we’ve done, and what we will do, is good enough.”
The idea of dragons dying no matter what didn’t particularly make Torrent feel better, but he smiled a little for Crystal. She wrapped a wing over his backside and pulled him a little closer, her scales slightly cold to the touch. He moved a little closer, welcoming her embrace. 
She nuzzled him on the neck, her frigid breath steaming slightly against his scales. “C’mon, let’s get our stuff for Avalanche,” she suggested, breaking free and pulling Torrent towards a stall selling copious amounts of overpriced meat.
After buying a large cooked pig, the two headed back towards the blue-shingled house, claw-in-claw.
== Chapter 46 ==
Clouds had formed over the cities as the two finished crossing the bridge, returning to the SkyWing town. A gentle drizzle had begun over the town, and small droplets of water were scattered around the road. Crystal glanced up at the grey skies overhead.
“We should hurry,” she suggested, not wanting to get caught in the middle of a storm.
“Why?” Torrent asked, oblivious. “It’s still the afternoon.”
Crystal pointed a claw upwards. “It looks like it’s going to rain soon.” Torrent looked at her with a puzzled expression, wondering why that meant they should hurry. Crystal sighed. SeaWings. “I don’t want to get wet, and I doubt Avalanche would be happy if her meal is soaked.”
“Ah,” Torrent nodded, only somewhat understanding. “What’s that?” He pointed a claw at a small furry creature beneath an alcove, watching the two pass by.
“It’s a cat,” Crystal explained, “they’re common around the SandWing-IceWing border. They’re sometimes kept as pets. It’s not poisonous or anything, it’ll just run away if you get too near it.”
Torrent decided to try this out, and took a step closer, poking his snout towards the cat. Sure enough, the cat jumped onto a small fencepost nearby, then quickly scrambled to a safe distance away to resume watching Crystal, his blue eyes almost glowing in the overcast weather.
“I think it’s looking at you,” Torrent pointed out. Crystal frowned a little. Strange. There were a few other SkyWings around, walking past the two, but the cat seemed to only be staring directly at Crystal.
“C’mon, let’s go,” Crystal told Torrent. With the hybrid’s prophecies, she’d had enough creepiness for today. The lumbering SeaWing nodded, and continued after her as she paced down the main road. She glanced back, and sure enough, the cat was following her. A second had joined behind it.
The two turned a corner, and started down a narrow corridor, leading closer to the blue-shingled house where Avalanche, Griffin, and Schist were. Two SkyWings were walking in the opposite direction, laughing and chatting. As they passed Torrent and Crystal, they suddenly went silent, and gave the two quick glares. Torrent ignored the two and continued on, not bothering to care for their stares.
“Look,” Crystal suddenly hissed, almost a whisper. In front of them, five more cats lined their path, two on one side of the street, and the other three across from them. All had their large eyes aimed at Crystal and Torrent, patiently sitting down. Crystal turned back, to see the first tabby. He quickly ran past the IceWing and the SeaWing, then turned back, as if beckoning them to go forward.
“Do you think they’re enchanted?” Torrent asked Crystal. Realizing he could check for himself, he pulled out his dagger and placed a talon along the purple amethyst. It was cold to the touch. “They’re not,” he replied, answering the IceWing’s unasked question.
Crystal flicked a forked tongue in and out of her teeth warily, and continued walking down the narrow road. As she passed each of the five cats, they stood up and started to walk behind her and Torrent, as if they were leading a procession. Torrent stopped and stuck a claw out to poke one, though it backed away casually from his touch.
Suddenly, Crystal whipped around and opened her mouth, letting forth a burst of frostbreath onto the ground to serve as a warning to the furry mammals. The cats nearest to the blast scrambled backwards, then continued walking behind her, this time at a greater distance, avoiding the disk of frost and ice that now covered part of the pathway. She snarled at them angrily, and continued walking, tiny droplets of water now drizzling down.
The blue-shingled roof was now within sight, and the blue-eyed tabby was almost there. Torrent, his dagger still out, walked behind Crystal, his head towering above hers. More cats, maybe twenty or thirty, Torrent wasn’t sure, stood at attention on the sides of the path. Crystal gulped uncertainly as the brown tabby pushed open the door to Avalanche’s house just a crack, and trotted inside, its damp coat rubbing against the doorway.
The two slowly walked past the cats lining the walkway, Torrent’s dagger out and ready, but they didn’t meet any resistance. Crystal reached the door, and pushed it open. It created a creaking sound as Torrent followed.
Avalanche was in the room with an unhappy expression on her snout as she looked up at the two, clawing the ground in irritation. Griffin and Schist were nearby; a tiny feline different from the one they had seen before attempting to pounce at Griffin’s furred and feathered tail, as he swished it up and out of the kitten’s reach with a hearty grin across his beak. A fourth dragon Torrent had never seen before was in the center of the room, sitting down as five or so cats lay down next to him, nestling on the inside of his curled tail for comfort.
The brown tabby which had walked inside of the door was rubbing up against the dragon’s forearms and wings warmly, the dragon’s scales a silvery-black with a faint orange tone behind them. The dragon flicked his tongue out and placed a paw on the gently purring cat, tapping the tabby’s fur with each of his claws in succession.
“Thank you, my friend,” he said looking down to the cat. The NightWing turned his head up to the two dragons who had just entered. “Hello, Crystal,” he murmured, attempting poorly to make a smile.
“You!” Crystal hissed with a frown. She hadn’t realized it before, but the brown tabby was the same cat that had been with the NightWing when she’d first met him. “You were back in the Sky Kingdom.”
The NightWing nodded. “Yes, after Nautilus died. I remember you.” The brown tabby looked up at Crystal curiously, his bright blue eyes almost blazing.
“You asked me to give you the Darkstone,” she growled, her face contorted between a snarl and a smirk. “Well guess what? It saved Schist’s life. So screw you.”
Trustbreaker nodded. “He has told me about it. I’m sorry I asked you. As I mentioned, it was Fracture who wanted me to. The next time I see him, I’ll tell him he was wrong again.”
Crystal gave Trustbreaker a glare. The second NightWing she had seen today, if she included the hybrid. “What, couldn’t see the future?”
Trustbreaker snorted a little. “Believe me, if I could see the future, I wouldn’t be here with you today. Unfortunately, that’s not a power that’s granted to all NightWings.” He turned over to Torrent, who was thoroughly confused by all this talk. “I’m Trustbreaker.”
Torrent gave him a intrigued look, and opened his mouth to say something. Trustbreaker sighed. “My name bears no relation to my personality. Please, feel free to trust me, or not if you so choose.”
Torrent looked at the NightWing a little strangely, then turned to Avalanche and back. “So, are you and Avalanche, you know . . . mates?”
The SkyWing sputtered in indignation. “Me and him?” she asked, almost angry that Torrent had suggested the idea, “SkyWings don’t even do mates, not that an ignorant SeaWing like you would know.”
Torrent squinted a little in shame. He had known, but it hadn’t really come to mind.
“Anyways, he’s not available, if that’s what you’re asking,” Avalanche smirked, “he’s still fawning after a scavenger or something, if I recall.”
Trustbreaker immediately stiffened up in embarrassment, and shot Avalanche a look as if to say I told you not to talk about that. Torrent sent him a curious, and slightly concerned expression, and the NightWing sighed. “It’s a long story, and not something I care to discuss,” he muttered, giving the SeaWing a glare of warning.
Torrent dropped the subject, and turned with a jolt to see a cat pawing at his tail. He shook his tail a little to throw the cat off, but that just made it go at him even more.
“So, if we’re doing introductions, what’s with all the cats?” Griffin suddenly spoke up. “I mean, they’re sort of cute and all, and I don’t really mind them, but just . . . why?”
Avalanche laughed in indignation, and interrupted Trustbreaker before he spoke. “They’re his slaves or something,” she hissed out, “some type of evil mind-control or something.”
Trustbreaker sighed and gritted his teeth, evidently frustrated with Avalanche’s snarky comments. “I’m a mind-reader,” he muttered quietly, tapping a claw to a strangely dull scale behind his left eye.
Torrent immediately froze up, and tried to stop thinking about whatever he wasn’t thinking. Don’t think about Orca, don’t think about my dagger, don’t think about Crys — 
“So it’s true?” Crystal spurted out, her claws scraping against the ground. “NightWings can actually read minds and tell prophecies?” Of course, every dragon in Pyrrhia knew the legends and the powers of the mysterious NightWings, especially the IceWings, but this, along with the hybrid back in the market, confirmed the fact.
Trustbreaker nodded. “Some of us, but not all. Our powers come from the moons, and depending on the weather of the night that we’re hatched and how many moons are full, we can get the powers you’ve described.” He looked away uncomfortably, as if he wasn’t particularly pleased to be explaining this.
Avalanche tapped her talons on the ground and snapped her teeth at a cat which had gotten too close to her, making it run off. “You’ve gotten pretty full of yourself, calling yourself a mind-reader,” she commented.
The NightWing sighed. Finding Avalanche irritating was something he and Crystal had in common. “I was born under one full moon, but the weather was a bit cloudy that night, so my powers never fully . . . developed.”
Crystal gave him a hard stare. “Go on,” she growled. She wanted to hear more about this. The NightWings were always so secretive with their powers, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear about them or see them in such detail. If she had still been under Queen Glacier’s service, this would have been critical information.
“I’m unable to receive more than the basest of emotions from dragons,” he replied. “Extreme pain, fear, and glee, yes, but little else. And most of the time, you don’t need a mind-reader to tell that.”
“And . . . cats?” Crystal started to guess.
Trustbreaker nodded. “I’m able to read animals much more clearly, much more so than the other readers I grew up with, and can even relay. Cats, lizards — “
“Scavengers,” Avalanche interrupted with a sneer.
“ — and gryphons, apparently,” the NightWing finished.
Griffin’s feathers immediately stood on end in concern. “Wait, you can read my mind?” he asked. “So, what am I thinking right now?” How many dragon tribes are there in Pyrrhia?
“Seven,” Trustbreaker replied with a slight snap of annoyance. “Believe me, I can hear you loud and clear.”
“Oh boy,” Griffin muttered, glancing over at Schist quickly. “Can you . . . not read my mind?”
“I can attempt,” the NightWing answered, “but trust me, I won’t share any of your thoughts.”
Trust a dragon named Trustbreaker, Griffin though, that’s rich.
The NightWing gave him a sigh of disappointment, and Griffin gulped a little. “Yeah, you know what I’m thinking, right.”
Trustbreaker turned to the three dragons looking at him. “Anything else?” he asked in exasperation.
“Relay?” Schist spoke up.
“Yes,” Trustbreaker said, with just the faintest hint of pride, “it’s something few NightWing mind-readers are able to do. When I reach far enough into one of my companions’ thoughts, so much so that it becomes difficult to tell our minds apart, I’m able to communicate directly with them. It’s entirely voluntary for them to follow me, of course, but that’s something my friend Sapphire helps me with.”
He glanced down at the brown tabby in front of him, the tabby’s bright blue eyes gleaming like sapphires. Trustbreaker raised his right talons, and Sapphire raised a paw in unison. The NightWing then set down his talons and raised his other forepaw, the cat following his motions. After he was done, Sapphire turned back to Trustbreaker, rubbing his coat against the NightWing’s silvery-black scales and purring loudly.
“Three moons, he’s creepy,” Crystal muttered under her breath to Torrent.
Torrent nodded, and glanced over at Griffin with a hint of concern before turning to Avalanche and throwing down the pig he had bought in front of her. “Happy?” he asked.
Avalanche licked her teeth. “A little wet, but good enough for tonight.” She dragged the cooked meat towards herself and gently dug a claw into it.
“So, do you have any idea about an animus nearby?” the SeaWing asked as Avalanche was picking at a small piece of meat.
She thought for a moment. “Nope, never heard of one here. Don’t go out too much. Trustbreaker?”
The NightWing tensed up for a moment, as if preparing for Avalanche to say something rude. “What?” he asked, with a growl in his throat.
Avalanche sighed. “Animus dragons. In the cities. Have you seen any?”
Trustbreaker closed his silver-scaled eyes, trying to recall something. “I believe so. One of my cats saw something a few weeks ago, a large SandWing. He had jewelry hanging around his neck, necklaces and amulets, with two fangs of a dragonbite viper on one of his necklaces. Two silver snakes were wrapped around each of his horns. He was seemingly moving pieces of gold with his mind.”
“Sure sounds like an animus to me. Far too much jewelry seems pretty suspect,” Torrent snorted.
Avalanche frowned a little. “I think I know the dragon you’re talking about,” she said. “His name’s Gila. He’s a crime lord in the western city. I’ve seen him once or twice in the markets; he’s a pretty big deal there.”
Torrent snorted, and started to turn, ready to leave the house. He glanced back to see that Crystal hadn’t followed him as he expected. “Well?” he asked. “Aren’t we going to go find him?” Avalanche let out a small snort.
“It’s late,” Crystal pointed out, “and if he’s a crime lord, he’s bound to have protection of some sort. You can only turn animus dragons to stone, right?”
Torrent grumbled a little.
“The IceWing is right,” Avalanche pointed out with a smirk. “But I think I might know a way to help you.”
== Chapter 47 ==
“Gila isn’t the only crime lord here,” Avalanche explained. “He has a rival, a mongrel named Evergreen.”
“Mongrel?” Schist asked in confusion.
“She’s a hybrid,” Crystal explained, “it means she’s got a parent from two different tribes.” She turned to Avalanche. “By her name, part IceWing and —”
“— and part SkyWing,” Avalanche grunted, annoyed she had been interrupted. “Unimportant. But what is important is that she hates Gila, and I’m sure she would be delighted to have some help in getting rid of him.”
“If he’s actually an animus, I can do that,” Torrent notified her, “I’ll just need to get nearby without anyone else interfering.”
“Do we really have to kill him?” Schist quickly asked.
“Yes!” Torrent and Crystal answered, responding in unison. They exchanged glances for a moment, then Torrent explained. “He’s a crime lord, so he’s definitely an evil dragon. I’m sure he’s already hurt or killed others with his powers. If we can stop him, think of how much we’ll be helping the city!”
“That’s not even considering what he could do in the future,” Crystal put forth. “He could kill or enslave all the dragons here with just a few words, if he chose to. If he’s already made a ton of enchantments, he’ll have lost a lot of his soul already, and is an extreme danger to everyone.”
“Fine,” Schist muttered in concesion.
Torrent turned back to Avalanche. “So, do you know we can find this Evergreen?”
The SkyWing bobbed her head back and forth a little, then looked over to Trustbreaker, tapping a claw on one of his horns.
“One of my cats lives by a small mansion where an Ice-Sky hybrid lives. The mansion is on this side of the river, about a mile north of where we are now,” the gunmetal-scaled NightWing muttered. “One of the hybrid’s bodyguards feeds him pieces of fresh fish occasionally, when no one else is looking, but the other guard chases him off ever time he goes near. He wants to claw the second one’s eyes out, especially after she almost singed his tail. Once, the SkyWi —”
“That’s enough,” Avalanche hissed, slightly amused. “I know the place, I’ve seen it a few times when flying. There’s a large garden around it.”
“Thank you for the help,” Griffin quickly told the two.
“The quicker you find him, the sooner we can leave,” she snorted. “You’re not going to go find Evergreen now, are you?”
Crystal glanced out the door. It was dark, and the drizzle earlier had started to turn into a downpour. “We’ll wait until tomorrow morning,” she suggested. “I doubt Evergreen would be happy if we came by so late.”
Avalanche nodded, picking strands of pork out of her teeth. “Well then, stay quiet at least. I’m shutting my eyes, and you don’t want to see me when I haven’t had enough sleep.”
The next morning, the rain had stopped, and the bright morning sun shone down upon the cities, evaporating the puddles in the road. Torrent woke to a cat gently kneading at some of the scales beneath his arm. He shook the critter off, and glanced around. It was late; he had overslept again.
“Finally awake, are you?” Crystal smiled, looking down. She was alright up, slowly stroking an orange-furred feline. Avalanche and Trustbreaker were in a corner of the cluttered room, and based on the intensity of their conversation, they were arguing about something. Sapphire was at his NightWing’s claws, walking around and between his legs. Griffin stood in the opposite corner of the room, looking anxiously at the NightWing across the room, Schist standing next to him and trying to comfort the small feathered creature.
“Ugh,” Torrent grumbled, frustrated that he had slept in. He felt his side, checking that his dagger was still there, and slowly stood up, stretching out his wings. Without another glance, he started towards the door, not wanting any more delays. As he reached towards the handle, he noticed Crystal standing behind him, ready to go.
“You don’t have to go; I can do this alone,” Torrent muttered. This would be easier if no one else was with him, and he didn’t want to put anyone else in danger again.
Crystal snorted. “Sure you can. Just like you took out Magma alone, right?”
“This is different, he doesn’t have firescales,” the SeaWing protested. “I’m just going to meet with Evergreen anyways.”
“All the more reason for Schist and I to come with you,” Crystal responded, Torrent gritted his teeth a little, slightly insulted. “You can be a little direct sometimes,” Crystal teased. “Not that it’s always a bad thing, of course.”
“Wait, me?” asked Schist as he turned away from Griffin, hearing his name said.
“Yep! I decided that you were going to come with us,” Crystal notified.
“I mean . . . is it really a good idea?” the MudWing asked uncomfortably. “What if I scare off Evergreen or something?”
“All the better,” Crystal replied, giving Avalanche a cold glare. The SkyWing was too enthralled in her conversation with Trustbreaker to return it. “If she’s a crime lord, then having your scars and Torrent’s size for intimidation will be a positive. I don’t want her to think of us as incapable for the job.”
“But what if we are?” Schist quickly asked.
“We’re not,” Crystal assured him. She held up a paw and moved the diamond she’d enchanted to heal between her talons. “And if it turns out one of us gets hurt, I’ve always got this piece of seal-dung to technically heal us.”
Schist nervously walked over towards Crystal, then turned back to Griffin. “What about him?” he asked.
Crystal looked a little bit grim. “He’ll have to stay back here, I think,” she glanced over towards Griffin with a little bit of regret, “sorry, I don’t really see a way to hide you safely.”
Griffin nodded in understanding before glancing over at Trustbreaker again. “Yeah,” he murmured, “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Ground support.”
“Let’s just get going, alright?” Torrent snapped impatiently. He pushed open the door and trotted out it, ducking his head so that his horns wouldn’t knock against the doorframe. Crystal followed closely behind, with Schist on her tail, his scales stiff in anxiety.
Fortunately, Crystal remembered the location of Evergreen’s mansion, and it wasn’t long before they had found it. The house stood out like a backwards scale, much larger and expansive than the others around it. A fence was positioned around the columned building, with a green garden positioned between the border and the actual building. Two SkyWings lazily stood at the entrance of the fence like RainWings, watching for any intrusions half-asleep. When the three dragons arrived, they lifted their heads up, alert to the strange-looking group of dragons.
“Yes?” one asked cautiously as soon as he was sure that the three weren’t just passing by.
“What do you want?” the other hissed angrily. “We don’t allow visitors or proselytizers.”
“We’re here to speak to Evergreen,” Crystal opened with, stepping in front of Schist and Torrent.
“Lady Evergreen,” the second guard corrected with a growl.
“Lady Evergreen,” Crystal said with a smile. “We have an offer we think she might be interested in.”
“As I said, no proselytisers.” Schist noticed a small cat peeking a furry snout out of the hedges behind the fence, staring intently at the scene. Maybe it was Trustbreaker, keeping an eye on them. Poor Griffin.
Crystal continued to smile. “Don’t worry. We’re looking to settle something with a SandWing named Gila, and I believe it might be in her interests to hear us out.”
“She’s not interested,” the SkyWing hissed, getting more infuriated by the second, “now get out of my sight, or I’l — “
The other SkyWing suddenly whispered something in his fellow guard’s ear. She turned back to him with a glare, and sighed. “Fine,” the SkyWing said in annoyance. “I’ll let you in, but don’t even think about trying anything, or I’ll rip all your throats out myself.”
She trotted down the path to the mansion and unlocked the doorway with a small key around her neck, then walked into the house. Crystal, Torrent, and Schist followed closely behind, with the other guard guarding them from the back. The cat quickly lept onto a windowsill that seemed far too high for it to jump, and continued around the corner of the building.
The mansion was nice, but slightly cramped for Torrent, who had to duck his head to avoid tangling his horns in a chandelier. A sole stairwell stood in the middle of the entryway, which the SkyWing headed up, the three following. The group was ushered into a hallway with a formidable working wooden door at the end. The SkyWing knocked on the door. “Lady Evergreen, you have company.”
After a moment, she received a reply that the others couldn’t hear. She nodded, even though the dragon behind the room couldn’t hear her, and opened the doorway, gesturing the three in.
Beyond the door was a large room, with portraits of a few SkyWings on the side walls and two maps hanging a large desk in the middle: one of Pyrrhia, and the other of the two cities. The desk of fine wood in the center had two figures of gold flanking the end, elephants with diamonds for eyes. Gold highlights laced the desk, and the large chair the dragon sat in was decorated in a similar fashion, apparently intended to resemble a throne. Diamonds and rubies dotted wood, sparkling in the faint light coming from scented candles.
The dragon curled up in the falsetto throne was clearly not your normal SkyWing nor IceWing. Spines like icicles dressed her back, with a ring of silver painted around each one. These, and the rest of her scales, were all a pale rose-gold. Thin curved horns which looked far too long jutted out from the back of her skull. Her tail wrapped around behind her and curved up onto the desk, short blood-red spikes coming out of its base and gently resting on a section of the desk with scratches that had been repainted many times over, causing that area to take on a color distinctly lighter than the rest of the wood.
Evergreen looked towards the three visitors with a hint of scorn, tapping a talon with a ring that looked like it could have belong to Queen Coral. “Well?” she asked expectantly, as if irritated by the interruption.
Crystal stepped forward again as the representative. “Lady Evergreen, I am Crystal,” she introduced herself, “and these are Torrent and Schist. We’ve heard that you’ve had troubles with a SandWing named Gila, and would like to put an end to this.”
“You wish to kill him for me?” the hybrid asked in amusement, swirling her talon in a circle. “And how exactly do you plan to do that?”
“He’s an animus,” Torrent pointed out.
Evergreen looked unsurprised. “Yes, I know. Is that what you wanted? To inform me of something I’ve known for what, years?”
Torrent shook his head. “No. I can kill him for you easier that way.” He waved a paw at Crystal and Schist. “We’re, err, animus hunters. We track down and kill animus dragons.”
If Evergreen was intrigued, she didn’t show it. She glanced over at the three in skepticism.
“See,” Torrent explained, “I have this dagger.” He reached towards the sheath hanging around his body and had barely touched the hilt when the SkyWing guard had pummeled into Torrent, pushing the larger SeaWing to the ground. She quickly grabbed Torrent’s paw and twisted it upwards while pinning his head to the ground with her long wing. With a quick tug, Torrent yelled and dropped the dagger to the floor.
Torrent gave the SkyWing a growl as Evergreen motioned for her to let him go. “I’m sorry,” the SkyWing said, “I thought he was going for his weapon.”
Evergreen nodded, and turned back to Torrent, who very slowly picked up the dagger with his other paw and set it back down into its sheath. “As I was saying,” he grumbled, “I’m able to use it to prevent animus magic from working if I can get close enough to him. And if I do that, he’s dead.”
Evergreen flicked her tongue out a little, and thought for a moment. She looked over towards the sole window into her room, where the cat from earlier was now looking in, then quickly returned her attention to Torrent. “I’ll give you a chance, but if anyone asks, you’re not with me. Deal?”
Torrent nodded anxiously.
“Later tonight, Gila is planning to make a large deal with some MudWings selling weapons of some sort on the northwest docks,” Evergreen explained with a smile. “He’ll be there himself, presumably to make sure everything goes according to plan. I’ll arrange for you to be escorted there, and give you back-up if he has bodyguards. You’ll have your chance then.”
“Thank you,” Crystal replied cautiously, glancing back at Torrent and Schist. “We’ll serve you well.”
The hybrid nodded, tracing out a figure out with her ringed talon in the desk. “You will be meeting with Boulder, who will be taking you to Gila, outside my house at sunset.”
== Chapter 48 ==
When the three dragons had returned to the front of Evergreen’s house, the sun was just inches above the horizon, and the clouds in front were lit up a orange-ish gold, like a SkyWing’s scales. The two guards that were guarding the hybrid’s mansion earlier in the day were still there, their eyes drooping slightly. Crystal grimaced, thinking about how hot it would be for them in the summer, standing outside in the dry desert sun for the entire day.
Neither of the two SkyWings gave the three any attention, and there didn’t seem to be any other SkyWings here to meet them. Schist looked left and right, then stepped up to the guards. “Excuse me,” he asked, “do you know where Boulder is?”
He got no response; both SkyWings stood perfectly still. Crystal frowned in suspicion; did something go wrong already?
Torrent moved forward, putting head up against the male SkyWing’s face, breathing up against his scales. “Where is Boulder?” he growled.
“He’ll be here soon,” the SkyWing uncomfortably responded. “Please be patient.”
Torrent backed away with a snort, and looked back towards the setting sun. Over in that direction would be the Great Five-Tail River. The sun had just started to dip below the horizon.
Boulder arrived just after the sun had become completely hidden from view, five other SkyWings following behind him. Boulder was a compact, mean-looking SkyWing with a thick scar running from beneath his chin, down his neck, and onto his underbelly, although it was nothing compared to Schist’s burns. He scanned over the three dragons like he was judging their chance of success, then turned to the two guards.
 “These are them?” he asked gruffly. “Interesting group. Pretty young.”
The female guard nodded. “Apparently, Evergreen agrees,” she sneered. “Are we ready?”
Boulder nodded, glancing back at the three. “Until we get to Gila, you’ll follow my every instruction,” he ordered menacingly. “One misplaced step, and you’ll pay for it.”
 “Fine,” Torrent grumbled apathetically. If he had to follow some irritating dragon to get to his target, so be it. Schist quickly nodded his head in agreement. 
Crystal agreed cautiously. She didn’t particularly like working with Evergreen, or crime bosses in general, but it wasn’t as if there was a better option here. Hopefully, he’d get them safely to Gila, and all would be well.
Boulder spread open his wide wings as the night began, and quickly pushed down, gaining the lift required. “This way!” he shouted to the others. The five other SkyWings beat down their wings in unison, and took off after Boulder. Torrent and Crystal followed after, with Schist having some trouble with his right wing.
“Stay low!” Boulder yelled behind him as the other dragons flew across the Great Five-Tail River, a faint after-glow of the sunset lighting it up. The many lanterns in the two cities had started to be lit, and tiny specks of light were appearing around the area. The group weren’t the only dragons crossing the river at this time — plenty of SandWings and SkyWings were doing the same, possibly returning on a commute. Schist was straggling behind the others, much to Boulder’s annoyance, struggling to just keep up. 
Eventually, they reached the other shore, and Boulder motioned the nine dragons to touch down in a small clearing. “We’re walking the rest of the way north,” he told Torrent, Crystal, and Schist. “Stay out of sight.”
The nine trudged on through narrow alleyways, dark and empty. A few times, Torrent thought he saw a SandWing or two in the darkness, but they seemed to avoid the group that walked past. Boulder gave them a quick glance each, but other than that, he paid them no heed.
Eventually, their path moved closer to the river’s west shoreline, and Torrent saw the water in the distance, looking very appealing to his tired paws. His webbed feet were meant for swimming, not walking, and considering the small number of SeaWings living here, he’d be absolutely invisible underwater. Even if his gills didn’t work so well due to Magma’s attack, he could come up above the surface if he needed to breath, and any dragons watching would barely notice in the darkness.
Torrent quickened his walking to match pace with Boulder. “I could swim,” he suggested, “no one would notice me.”
Boulder gave the SeaWing a cold stare. “No,” he ordered without providing an explanation.
“I’d be able to get to Gila quicker and more silently,” Torrent protested in annoyance.
Boulder suddenly stopped walking, almost causing the SkyWing behind to trip on Boulder’s tail. “I said no,” he growled. “If you can’t follow directions, then you shouldn’t be here with us.”
Torrent grumbled and returned to his place in the line, and Boulder continued on. The SeaWing peeked out at the ocean again. Not too far a distance from where they were, three large piers jutted out from the shoreline, with a few ships, rafts, and barges tied to it, and small wooden crates full of goods and supplies stacked up nearby. In the black darkness, Torrent could see a small ship in the middle of the river, slowly sailing towards the port.
It wasn’t much longer before the nine reached the port, and Boulder motioned them to stop. “Best not get caught,” he warned Torrent, Schist, and Crystal, “the authorities here are under Gila’s payroll.” He pointed a claw to the lantern-lit docks, crates stacked up all around the edges. A few SandWings were sitting around the entrance, muttering and chuckling to each other.
Boulder took his claws and waved them, signaling to the others to follow. The SkyWings quickly followed, with the three others behind. They walked cautiously onto the pier, hiding behind a tower of crates shielding them from the SandWing authorities’ eyes. Torrent looked out to the river on the end of the pier, both of the two cities shining behind them. There didn’t seem to be anyone looking from that direction, fortunately.
Before long, they reached a gap in the towers, where they would be in full sight of the SandWings. Boulder quickly poked his head around the corner, and signaled for the others to stop. When he saw an opening, the small SkyWing took it and ran across the gap. The rest of the dragons still behind, he used his claws to signal when they should run past. Before long, the five SkyWings that had come with Boulder were past, and no one had gotten caught so far.
Crystal was next. When Boulder set down his claws, she nimbly ran forward, with only a quick glance at the SandWings, oblivious to her presence. She reached the other side of the gap, and quickly tried to calm her heavy breath.
Schist stepped forward next, and looked up. A large net was strewn between the two crate towers, and smaller boxes and crates hung from the netting by thick ropes. One of them looked to contain a fruit of some sort, he couldn’t tell the contents of the others. A harness was tied to the net at each corner so that it would hang beneath the dragons carrying it. It looked like some type of carrying net — if the goods were light enough, dragons might be able to carry it together in flight, a lot faster than using a boat or dragon a raft.
Torrent poked Schist, making sure to touch his left side, not his burnt right. The MudWing turned back to attention, Boulder was motioning for him to go. He quickly ran forward, hurrying across the gap to the other side. When he was clear, he took a breath of relief. It looked like he hadn’t been caught.
It was now Torrent’s turn. After what felt like far too long, Boulder motioned him forward. The large SeaWing ran forward in a rush, his tail hitting the planks below in his haste and making a muted thumping sound. Torrent tensed up, lifting his tail to avoid it hitting the ground again, and continued forward until he reached safety. Boulder gave him a quick glare, then turned back to watching the SandWing guards. Torrent frowned. If worse came to worst, they could take on a couple of SandWings, right? There were only two of them, and nine of his group. 
Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. After a moment, Boulder nodded, and the SkyWings in front continued on, still hidden by the crates.
The nine continued across the pier, the cities to their right, off the end of the dock. They soon reached the end, where Boulder pointed a claw to their left, at the end of the crate line. Crystal was the first to look around it. She saw a number of dragons in the faint lantern-light: a MudWing had out a large barrel of some sort, and Crystal was unable to see inside. A SandWing looked over it, grinning slightly, with jewelry around his neck and claws reflecting the faint light from the lanterns, and two silver snakes around his horns. He dipped his claws in the barrel, and what might have been a fine black sand fell through them as he pulled them out. Gila.
Crystal looked back to Torrent, and mouthed ‘that’s him.’ Torrent touched a talon to the amethyst on his dagger, warm to the touch, confirming Crystal’s observation.
Maybe twenty or so more SandWings were positioned in a semi-circle around Gila, and the small boat Torrent had seen earlier was behind the MudWing, on the other side of the pier, a large number of the barrels on its deck. More MudWings were on it, idling about as the one in front talked to Gila.
Crystal turned back to Boulder. “There are too many of them,” she started to whisper.
Boulder put a claw out to silence her, then grabbed what looked like a small black disk from a pouch beneath his wing. He suddenly threw it over the end of the pier, into the ocean below. Black bubbles started to foam out from where it splashed in.
Crystal heard shouts from the SandWings and MudWings; Boulder had exposed their location. She turned to him. “You exposed us!” she started to hiss, thinking the SkyWing had betrayed her. She stretched out his claws, ready to go down fighting, and opened her mouth to prepare frostbreath.
He shook his head and pointed a dirty claw to the water, stained black by whatever he had thrown in. Suddenly, thin metal tubes that had been invisible in the darkness started to rise out of the river, red, orange, and yellow SkyWings holding them in their mouths. There were maybe fifty, although with so many dragons hidden in the water, it was hard to tell. The SkyWings charged out of the water and onto the pier, meeting the SandWings and MudWings to engage in battle.
“You have your chance,” Boulder hissed at Torrent, Crystal, and Schist. “Make it worthwhile.” He ran out from behind the crates with the five SkyWings, ready to join the frey.
Torrent pushed past Crystal into the open. It wouldn’t do any good to hide anymore. The groups had engaged in battle, the SkyWings with more forces than the SandWings and MudWings combined. He saw a few shots of fire blasted and howls of pain stemming from them, lighting up the pier, but the majority of the battle was fought with claws and teeth for fear of setting the dock aflame.
“Look,” Schist whispered, pointing a talon to the wooden boat. As the MudWings had abandoned it to fight alongside the SandWings on the pier, more SkyWings had climbed over the side, some with harnesses and nets similar to the one Schist had seen across the crates. As the MudWings realized what was happening and attempted to return to the boat, the harnessed SkyWings were quickly attaching barrels to the ropes on the net, as unharnessed SkyWings fought off the retreating MudWings.
A few of the nets took off, the SkyWings carrying the barrels upwards and towards the eastern shore of the river. Torrent saw a brave MudWing take into flight, and after evading one of the nets’ escorts, clawed into one of the SkyWings, tearing into her wings as she screamed in pain. He grabbed ahold of her, and unable to hold up the weight of the two of them, the three other SkyWings attached to the net started falling towards the river beneath. Realizing they would be unable to recover, the SkyWings quickly attempted to unlatch the harnesses holding them to the net, and two were able to do it in time. The third desperately attempted to get it to release, but was unable to as water flooded into the barrels and he was dragged underwater with the other SkyWing, who had latched ahold of the MudWing, attempting in vain to drown with her a dragon who could hold his breath for an hour. Before long, the MudWing rushed back out of the water, blood seeping from his scales and staining the water around him.
Back at the ship, more SkyWings were attempting to take off with the barrels, with limited success due to the now aware MudWings, who had crowded aboard the ship. As another MudWing reached one of the harnessed SkyWings attempting to lift off, the SkyWing shot a burst of flame at her, narrowly missing the MudWing, but instead hitting a barrel that one of his allies had tied to her own net.
The MudWing that the SkyWing had aimed at yelled in alarm and attempted to scramble towards the edge of the ship into the water beneath, but was far too late. The barrel suddenly burst open, spreading burning wood and flame across the ship, creating a giant hole in the center of the deck to the hold. The battle suddenly stilled for a few awful moments, dragons suddenly realizing what was going to happen. Suddenly, the entire ship was blasted open, torn apart from its belly, along with the dragons that were on or too close to it. It was followed by the loudest noise Torrent had ever heard, a huge bang.
 Crystal suddenly grabbed Torrent and Schist, trying to pull them back behind the crates as a piece of flaming wood flew over them, into the water below. Torrent looked back at the scene of carnage, unable to hear what Crystal was yelling at him as a high-pitched noise rang through his ears. Parts of the pier were now set aflame, but the dragons were still fighting above their fallen comrades. A large part of the ship had landed on a net, and weighed the SkyWings down as they desperately tried to get free of the now flaming net. A SandWing on the pier had been impaled through the leg by a flaming piece of jagged wood, and screamed in fear and horror as the fire crept up her scales while she was pinned to the dock. Mutilated and charred corpses of MudWings and SkyWings sunk beneath the water where the boat had stood.
Moments later, the intense ringing and pain in Torrent’s ears subsided, and he glanced around the dock. Gila was still there, outside of the continued fighting, nervously playing with a small amulet around his neck. Torrent took out his dagger with a swift motion, and walked towards the SandWing, stepping over the body of a SandWing with a piece of his throat hanging out from his limp neck.
Schist looked back towards the fighting from behind the crates. Boulder was still there, hanging out by the edges of the fight. By this point, it was clear who was winning. Even with all their losses, the SkyWings still outnumbered the other dragons, and with most of the MudWings gone, the SandWings had started to flee from battle. He stepped out nervously, Crystal behind him, and followed a fair ways after Torrent, shying away from the slowly spreading flames on the end of the dock.
Gila glanced over towards Torrent, the large SeaWing close to his location, and suddenly flipped a small rotating piece in the amulet he was wearing. Almost instantly, the roar of battle stopped, and the remaining SandWings and SkyWings froze in place, along with Crystal and Schist. Torrent glanced around at the rest of the pier. Even the flames were no longer flickering, as if they had been frozen in ice. The impaled SandWing’s screams stopped and she went still, unable to move. Torrent and Gila were the only ones still moving around on the dock.
Gila started to casually make his escape, before realizing that Torrent had remained completely unaffected by what he had done. The SandWing nervously backed up, and placed a claw around one of the silver snakes wrapped around his horns.
“Save it,” Torrent snapped, continuing towards Gila. “It won’t work.”
Gila tried anyways, pulling the silver snake off his horn and throwing it a few feet away. It suddenly transformed, the metal growing and twisting into a full-sized dragonbite viper. It reared up and hissed, then charged towards Torrent, aiming to attack.
Torrent continued walking forward, unfazed. When the viper got within a few feet of up, it suddenly shriveled up, returning to its silver horn bracelet form. As Torrent walked past, he pressed the emerald on his dagger and touched its point to the small silver snake, disenchanting it permanently.
Gila gulped, and continued walking backwards. “Look,” he pleaded, “whatever Evergreen is paying you, I’ll pay you double. Triple. Name your price, I’m richer than she is.”
Torrent snorted. “I’m not interested in money.”
Gila smiled, moving further away from the end of the burning pier, the fighting dragons upon it still frozen and unmoving. “Well then, what are you interested in? I can do anything for you, you know. Money, fame, power, whatever you’d like, I can help.”
“I want you dead,” Torrent growled, lunging towards the SandWing, dagger out. Gila tried to touch a green diamond on one of his numerous necklaces in response, but he was too late, and the enchantment was blocked. With a single swipe, Torrent dragged his dagger across Gila’s leg, creating a small spurt of blood which immediately solidified into stone. Gila opened his mouth to scream, but was only able to get it a short way open before the greyness crawled up his scales and into his mouth, fully turning the SandWing animus to stone.
== Chapter 49 ==
As soon as Torrent stepped near enough to Gila, his amulet stopped working, and the bloody battle between the SandWings and SkyWings resumed. Crystal and Schist quickly ran over to Torrent, standing by the now stone Gila, while the SandWings, seeing the state of their employer, continued to disperse, realizing they’d lost. Torrent, meanwhile, looked over the statue of Gila with a frown. The SandWing’s pleading expression was frozen on his face, and he had a stone claw against a piece of his magical jewelry.
Gila’s enchanted jewelry remained untouched by the stone that now formed the SandWing’s scales. Torrent grimaced a little. Who knew what Gila had enchanted — Torrent would have to disenchant it all. He started to the task, and holding down the emerald on his dagger, raised the blade up to the second silver snake around Gila’s horns. He touched the blade to the hornband, causing the spell placed on it to disperse.
Crystal looked up at the SandWing, walking in circles to examine him. Schist poked Gila’s frozen tail barb before quickly pulling his talon back, as if worried it would come alive in response.
“Is he dead?” a gruff voice asked. Torrent turned around. The last of the living SandWings and MudWings had fled, and Boulder was behind Torrent, peering up at Gila with caution.
Torrent nodded in affirmation, and knocked a claw against Gila’s statue. It was solid. “Yes,” he replied. Torrent returned to Gila and raised his dagger, going to cut across a few of Gila’s necklaces to disenchant them.
Suddenly, Torrent felt a claw on his wingblade, pulling him back. He looked back to see Boulder with a frown. “We can use those,” the SkyWing glowered.
“Better you don’t,” Torrent remarked, “you don’t know what they can do; they’re probably dangerous. Sooner they’re destroyed, the better.” He forced the smaller SkyWing away by spreading out his wing.
Boulder growled as Torrent continued his disenchanting, touching his dagger to the amulet Gila had used. The SkyWing waved a claw, and a few more of the SkyWings came over towards Gila’s body. One of them grabbed the end of Torrent’s wing roughly, pulling the SeaWing off the statue.
“Look,” Boulder hissed, walking beneath Torrent’s wing to face the SeaWing snout-to-snout, “this is ours to choose what to do with. We’re the ones who died for this, not you.” he waved a claw over towards the end of the pier, where a large number of SandWing, SkyWing, and MudWing corpses layed down, many burning or singed. “We fought for this, and  you’re not going to take our victory from us.”
Torrent faced the SkyWing down, giving the underboss a cold glare. “This isn’t personal,” Torrent growled, trying to shake the SkyWing free of his wing. “As I said, these are dangerous and need to be destroyed. You wouldn’t want to activate an explosion in the middle of Evergreen’s house, would you?”
Boulder snarled, his face contorted in anger, and spat in Torrent’s face. The SeaWing turned his head, and it landed on the side of his snout. He lunged forward and broke away from the SkyWing grabbing him, going back to Gila’s statue.
Boulder was about to give another order when Crystal stepped in the way of Torrent, giving him a look of warning. “Torrent just wants to make sure you’re safe,” she told Boulder, “but if you want to risk your scales for some jewelry, by all means, be our guests.” She placed her claws around Torrent’s horns and started to drag him away from the statue.
“What are you doing?” Torrent quietly hissed at Crystal. “Do you know what could be in those enchantments?”
“I’m saving your neck,” Crystal whispered back, “Gila was the main threat, not some random enchantments he might have made. And I don’t think Boulder is going to take ‘no’ for an answer.”
She flicked her spiny tail up and looked over to Schist, who was still checking out Gila’s stone barb curiously. The MudWing got the cue, and stumbled over towards Torrent and Crystal, trying to catch up to them. “We got what we came for,” Crystal murmured, “c’mon, let’s get out of here.”
She spread open her wings, with Torrent and Schist quickly following suit, when she noticed that a circle of SkyWings had started to form around them. She gulped slightly; this wasn’t good.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Boulder snarled.
“We helped you with Gila,” Crystal said, glancing back nervously, “that’s all we wanted. You can do whatever you’d like with him and his enchantments.”
A small grin formed on half of Boulder’s mouth, his scales tightening upwards. “You’re coming with us,” he commanded, “I believe Evergreen would like to say goodbye.”
“No thanks!” Torrent snorted, starting to flap his wings. “We don’t need any payment, if that’s what she wants to give us.”
Crystal gritted her teeth as Torrent started to lift off, the SkyWings carefully watching him, awaiting orders from Boulder. Clearly, Evergreen didn’t have a reward in mind for them.
“I don’t believe you have a choice here,” Boulder commented. “Come with us, or we’ll take you by force.” Boulder’s threat didn’t seem to be idle — Crystal saw four SkyWings with a net hung between them. If she refused to fly, they could tie her up and hang her on that from her tail: not an experience she particularly wanted to have. There was no chance of fighting, either, they were hopelessly outnumbered.
“We’ll go with you,” Crystal responded, giving Boulder an icy glare. She looked up at Torrent, who frowned as his webbed paws touched the wooden pier again.
“Good,” Boulder replied with a toothy grin, spreading open his expansive wings. “I’m sure Evergreen will be thrilled to hear about Gila’s demise.” He lifted off, with a few SkyWings going after him. Crystal, Torrent, and Schist went next at the SkyWings’ orders, with a large number of the SkyWings trailing behind the three.
Schist looked down below at the pier. Most of the fires had been put out, but a few pieces of flaming wood still remained in the river, being pushed away along with the corpses of a SkyWings, SandWings, and MudWings. Pieces of the ship were visible, but entirely spread out. More corpses remained on the pier. Schist turned away, not wanting to look anymore.
The return to Evergreen’s mansion was more direct than their flight out — the dragons crossed the river immediately, and headed straight over the SkyWing city, their flight lit by gently-glowing lanterns. Torrent saw the blue-shingled roof below, where Griffin would be right now. Not too far away was their destination, Evergreen’s mansion.
“Down!” Boulder ordered the three as he soared down first, with a few SkyWings following behind. Crystal, Torrent, and Schist did as they were told. They reached the front of the gate, where two different SkyWing guards were. It appeared that there had been a change in shift for the night. After the guards had opened it, Boulder motioned the three through the gate.
As they walked down the path, Schist saw the same cat on the side of the pathway. If Trustbreaker was reading the cat’s mind, maybe he’d be able to know where they were. Schist gently slided away from Boulder towards the cat. It didn’t shy away from him. He brought his head down to look at the cat. “Good kitty, good kitty,” he whispered, “do you want to come inside with us?”
Boulder gave Schist a confused stare. Cute-talking a cat didn’t fit a dragon with scars like that. “No cats allowed,” he growled, “get up, we’re going inside.” Crystal also looked strangely at Schist, until she realized what he was doing. Trustbreaker had read the cat’s mind earlier, if he could do it again, maybe he’d alert Avalanche and Griffin.
Schist nodded. He closed his eyes a little. “Sorry, kitty,” he muttered. With a quick swipe of a claw, Schist cut across the cat’s fur as he stood up, drawing a line of blood. The cat hissed in pain and clawed at Schist’s paw before scampering away. He hadn’t cut too deeply, he hoped. It would heal. Hopefully, Trustbreaker would notice that.
Boulder pushed the three through the mansion’s doors, with a couple of SkyWings following behind him. Crystal looked backwards. If she got a direct blast at frostbreath while Boulder was distracted, they might be able to get out of the house alive — but there were still the SkyWings at the gate to deal with. She decided not to risk it; maybe they’d have another opportunity. If she could take Evergreen hostage somehow, the rest of the SkyWings would be at her mercy.
At the end of the hallway, a SkyWing shoved open the door to Evergreen’s room, then shoved the three through it. Evergreen was sitting as she was when the three had entered the room just the morning before — the short crimson spikes of her tail resting upon her desk. Next to her was a new dragon that hadn’t been there the last time they’d visited. A haughty looking SeaWing with green scales the color of algae stood next to the desk, examining Torrent closely. He held a small scroll which he rested one of his forepaws on, swiveling the scroll on Evergreen’s floor.
“What is the meaning of this?” Torrent burst out with a snarl. “We did what you wanted, Gila is dead.”
Evergreen shook her tail, her spikes rattling and screeching across her desk. She glanced over to Boulder for confirmation. “Yes,” the SkyWing muttered, “they killed him. Magically turned him to stone. The SeaWing made a fuss about us taking the cursed jewelry he was wearing. We brought it back with us, but it’s being taken directly to our eastern warehouse. Didn’t want any stray enchantments here.”
The hybrid nodded. “And the black powder the MudWings were smuggling?”
“Got a fair amount of it before their ship was blown to the Ice Kingdom,” Boulder stated. “Would’ve been nice to know that it explodes when it catches fire. A lot of our crew could’ve used that info.”
Evergreen ignored Boulder’s glare at her, and turned to the three captive dragons. “I applaud you for your victory,” she said with a smile, “I’d like you to introduce you to my friend here.” She pointed her tail to the SeaWing. “This is Sturgeon. He’s the Sea Kingdom ambassador in our city.”
“Well, I’d hardly deign myself to call you my friend,” Sturgeon coughed, exuding an aura of arrogance. “Just to be clear, this meeting is completely off-the-records?”
“Yes,” Evergreen frowned, slightly irritated, “believe me, I don’t ever want to recall meeting you either.”
Sturgeon nodded, then looked over at Boulder. “May you, er, lift the SeaWing’s wings up for me to see?” he asked.
Boulder gave the SeaWing a look of confusion, then turned to Evergreen as if asking her for any objections.
“Go ahead,” she sighed.
Boulder nodded and flicked his tail. The two SkyWings which had come in with him and the three walked to either side of Torrent and grabbed the edge of his wings, digging their claws into his wing membranes as they forcibly spread his wings open. Sturgeon looked down at the bottom of Torrent’s wings, standing a fair distance back in case the struggling SeaWing attempted to fight.
“Yes, yes,” the ambassador muttered in delight, “he really is Prince Torrent! I had thought for sure he was a fake! You see, just the other day, I had a SkyWing attempt to pass her mate off as the missing prince, who she had covered in blue paint! He was the most miserable creature I had seen, though not as bad as this poor MudWing here, it seems so unfortu — ”
“Just give me the money,” Evergreen snapped, getting irritated by Sturgeon’s antics. “I don’t care about your lizard-brained stories.”
“Of course,” Sturgeon muttered, looking slightly offended. He took out a small pouch and handed it over to Evergreen, who clutched at it greedily. “The rewards for finding one Prince Torrent, as promised.”
Torrent gave Sturgeon a glare of anger as Evergreen ripped open the pouch, grinning at whatever she saw in there.
Sturgeon smiled over at Torrent. “You’re going to be coming back with me to the Sea Kingdom,” he stated, “where hopefully, I shall get my reward for returning Queen Coral’s third-youngest prince to the Deep Palace!”
Third-youngest? Torrent thought in surprise. “I’m not going,” he growled in defiance.
“Well, of course you are!” Sturgeon snorted, as if he couldn’t consider anything else.
Crystal hissed at Evergreen. “We had a deal. We helped you with Gila! Let Torrent go!”
Evergreen snorted. “I make lots of deals,” she replied. “Gotta keep up this desk somehow.” She looked down at her desk with a frown. The spikes in her tail had created another few scratches in the lacquered wood. She sighed.
Crystal thought for a moment. “Well, if you want a deal, we can offer you a better one. Torrent is a prince. We’ve got more riches than what’s in that pouch the SeaWing gave you.”
“Really?” Evergreen asked, skeptically. She opened the pouch and pointed it over towards Crystal, revealing inside a necklace with tiny diamonds inlaid all along it. “More than this?”
Crystal nodded confidently, though only half-sure. “Yes. We can supply more.”
Sturgeon started to say something in protest, but Torrent interrupted. “Yeah, I’ve got a ton of jewelry back in the safehouse. We can supply more than that.”
Crystal looked towards Torrent in almost horror as Evergreen grinned from horn to horn. “Oh, really?” the hybrid crime lord asked. “I suppose we might have to check out this ‘safehouse’ of yours, won’t we.” You stupid prince! Crystal thought, gritting her teeth. Torrent seemed oblivious.
Evergreen turned back towards Crystal, scratching behind a horn with a claw. “Don’t worry, your SeaWing friend’s stupidity hasn’t lost you anything,” she stated, “I doubt that what he has is worth anywhere near as much as, say, a sizable portion of Queen Glacier’s treasury, as well as Prince Narwhal’s hand in marriage?”
Crystal’s jaw hung open in shock, unsure what to say. Seeing her expression, Evergreen chuckled. “You’ve been quite a notty IceWing, haven’t you? Apparently, Queen Glacier’s willing to pay a lot to find you and whatever you stole. And I’ve just been so fortunate as to have you fall right into my talons!”
Crystal shook her head in alarm. “You don’t understand what you’re doing!” she protested. “If you return me, thousands and thousands of dragons could die!”
“And why should I care?” Evergreen asked with a sigh. “Thousands of dragons will die no matter what. Pyrrhia is at war; it always has been, and it always will be.”
“No!” Crystal said. “Not like this! Queen Glacier is trying to kill the entire MudWing tribe! She wa —”
“Quiet,” Evergreen hissed in irritation. “I’m a hybrid, a freak. Why should I care about the MudWings, or the IceWings, or any part of the war for that matter? Do you hear that?” She turned to face Boulder, her ears twitching. “I told you to tell my guards to keep that cat away! Do you understand how irritating it can be to have a constant meowing interrupting while I’m wor —”
Suddenly, the doors burst open, and a flood of cats devoured the room. Cats of all sizes, shapes, and pelt colors ran across the floor before any of the dragons could tell what was happening, with a NightWing and a SkyWing closely behind them.
The guards holding Torrent stood in surprise as around five or so cats jumped on each. They tried to shake them off, and were able to fling a few across the room, but more of them kept on coming. One guard screeched in agony and flailed about, almost hitting Torrent, as a cat stabbed its claws into the dragon’s eyes before scampering off. The second tried to claw at a cat running along his spines, but noticed, too late, a second cat jumping up to his neck. With a few bites, the cat broke through a gap in his scales and tore open one of the SkyWing’s artery. Blood burst out of the dragon’s neck, staining the fur of the cats below a dark red.
By this point, the other dragons had recognized the threat. Sturgeon had ran behind Evergreen’s chair and was now curling up behind it like a frightened dragonet. Boulder swiped a paw at a cat in front of him and hit, causing the poor feline to slam into one of Evergreen’s paintings. Boulder smiled in a short-lived victory as the cat slumped down to the floor and didn’t get up, before Torrent whirled around and hit Boulder’s head with his tail. There was a loud cracking sound as Torrent’s tail made contact with Boulder’s skull, and Boulder crashed to the ground, blood dripping out between his horns.
When Avalanche walked into the room, Evergreen was the only dragon left worth fighting, the others were unconscious or dead (the SkyWing who had gotten his eyes clawed had ran his snout into a wall and was now lying on the floor unmoving). Avalanche snorted in irritation and stretched her claws out. She’d only been able to fight one dragon today, and the guards at the gate had been untrained.
Evergreen opened her mouth to say something in protest, but Avalanche was there first. The SkyWing unlatched her jaws and let forth a frightening burst of flame. Crystal jumped to the side to dodge it, feeling the heat uncomfortably against her cold scales. Evergreen lifted a wing in front of her, trying to block the hit, and roared in pain as Avalanche’s flames seared her wing membrane. The hybrid ducked down, trying to use the desk in front of her as cover, causing Avalanche to change the direction of her firebreath to the wooden desk. After a few seconds of intense flame, the desk caught fire.
Evergreen stepped out from under the burning desk and jumped on top of it, wincing as the flames licked against her scales. Using the desk to launch herself, she threw her body at Avalanche, her claws out to attack. Avalanche took a quick step to the side and raked her own talons against Evergreen’s rose-gold scales as she tumbled past. Evergreen quickly turned around, swinging her spiked tail at Avalanche, and smashed it into the SkyWing’s side, the short spikes piercing into the leathery scales just beneath Avalanche’s wing. The hybrid smiled as Avalanche hissed, blood leaking from the SkyWing’s side.
Evergreen tried to pull her tail out from Avalanche’s body, but felt a force resisting it — Avalanche had grabbed ahold of the hybrid’s tail and was keeping it in place. The SkyWing thrust her claws a short length from the tip of Evergreen’s tail, stabbing into the sensitive spot all dragons had. Evergreen screamed as Avalanche used the leverage of her talons, deep within the flesh of the hybrid’s tail, to pull Evergreen’s tail-spines from her body and drag the rest of Evergreen to the ground.
As Avalanche stepped over Evergreen, pulling her talons out from the hybrid’s tail, Evergreen attempted to claw at the scarlet SkyWing’s underbelly, but as she started to rake blood from the SkyWing’s scales, Avalanche stomped on Evergreen’s neck, causing the hybrid to choke. The Skywing placed one of her hind legs on Evergreen’s now fully exposed underbelly and rolled her over, keeping her pinned to the ground, then wrapped her claws around the hybrid’s neck. With a short twisting motion, a loud pop reverberated throughout the room as Avalanche snapped Evergreen’s neck.
Avalanche stepped away, then looked over the room. The desk was still on fire, and it was quickly spreading across the room. Sturgeon poked his head out from behind it. “Mercy, please!” the SeaWing screeched.
Avalanche snorted, and stepped towards him to end his pitiful existence when Schist scooted between her and Sturgeon. “Don’t worry,” the MudWing tried to comfort the frantic SeaWing, “we’re not going to hurt you.”
Avalanche gave Schist a glare, but stepped back. Sturgeon meekly nodded and crawled from behind the burning desk. As he stepped past Avalanche, she suddenly lurched forward and stabbed her claws into the SeaWing’s throat. His eyes flew open in alarm and he attempted to step back, but it was too late. As Avalanche stepped backwards with a smile, Sturgeon collapsed, dead.
Schist glared at the SkyWing in horror. “WHAT?” he yelled. “I said we weren’t going to hurt him!”
“He would’ve notified everyone that we were here and killed Evergreen,” Avalanche growled threateningly. “If he’d survived, everything we’ve done could’ve been lost. We can’t afford that, not after Nautilus. You’ll thank me later.”
Schist stepped forward angrily, and was about to bark a protest, when Torrent interrupted. “Not now,” Torrent mumbled, pointing a webbed talon at the burning room, “later.”
Schist clenched his teeth, and scratched his claws against the floor of the room. Sturgeon’s death wasn’t needed.
Crystal looked around the burning room, then opened her jaws, ready to breath frostbreath and put out the fire.
“Don’t,” Avalanche ordered, “this way, all her wealth dies with her, along with any evidence.” Crystal closed her mouth and turned around.
“Then we need to get out of here,” Torrent suggested, glancing anxiously around at the spreading flames. He walked towards the exit of the room, stepping around Evergreen’s corpse, then exited the door. Crystal, Schist, and Avalanche followed, with Trustbreaker and a trail of cats leaving after them. The group quickly got down the stairwell and exited the mansion. 
As they reached the gate, two SkyWings lay on the ground, both dead. Schist suddenly stopped moving as a horde of cats ran past him, dispersing into the dimly lit streets. He stood completely still and held his balance on three legs, not wanting to step on any. Turning back, Trustbreaker remained with Sapphire by his side, and the cat that had lived by the now burning mansion, now with a large gash in its fur. “Sorry,” Schist apologized, both to the cat and Trustbreaker, “thank you for saving us.”
The NightWing nodded, and looked back up at the burning mansion. A large portion of it had caught flame, and looked like it might soon collapse. Smoke sailed upwards as the fire lit up the night sky.
== Chapter 50 ==
The five dragons immediately rushed back to the blue-shingled house, for fear that they might have been seen. At the door, Griffin was waiting, worried out of his mind.
“Thank the moons you’re alright!” he breathed in relief as the five entered, his sharp talons visibly shaking. “Is anyone hurt?”
Griffin swiveled his feathered neck over at Schist, checking for injuries. The MudWing shook his head. “Avalanche was the only one who really got hurt,” he muttered with a glare at the SkyWing.
Avalanche was definitely wounded, but she walked as pridefully as before, if not more so. The wounds on her chest and underbelly that Evergreen had caused were shallow, and the blood had quickly clotted and stopped dripping. The rest of the red spots on her body was either her bright scales or blood that her own — Evergreen and Sturgeon’s blood was clearly visible on her claws.
Griffin turned to Torrent as the SeaWing stepped through the doorway. “I killed Gila,” Torrent notified Griffin.
“And after killing her and a SeaWing ambassador, Avalanche burnt down Evergreen’s mansion,” Crystal explained. She looked around the small safehouse. Fortunately, they didn’t have too many belongings to put in order.
“Oh, blame me, will you?” Avalanche hissed. “You ungrateful hatchlings, you’re the ones who got into trouble with Evergreen in the first place, and I had to save your tails!”
“Just stating the facts,” Crystal replied back, without emotion. “Not passing judgement.”
“You didn’t have to kill Sturgeon!” Schist roared at Avalanche, filling the void Crystal’s non-judgemental stance had opened. “You can’t just go around killing dragons whenever you want!”
“Pyrrhia’s been in war for the last seven years,” the SkyWing snorted. “The queens can go around killing whoever they’d like; I don’t see why it makes a difference if I do it too.”
The scarred MudWing stomped on the ground. “So you think it’s alright if dragons just kill each other whenever? Sturgeon was innocent, he was just following his orders as ambassador.”
“Innocent?” Avalanche laughed. “Innocent dragons don’t get caught up in the mob. Maybe he should’ve stayed in his place if he wanted to keep safe.”
“It still doesn’t mean he deserved to die!”
Avalanche tossed her wings back and forth. “Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I had to do it. We’ve lost enough dragons already, we can’t lose anymore. Trustbreaker understands.” She peered back at Trustbreaker, looking for support. He uncomfortably nodded; they had lost enough dragons already.
“Crystal said you were part of some peace movement,” Schist barked back, narrowing his eyes, “yet you’re just killing more dragons?”
“Sometimes, dragons have to die,” Avalanche snorted, “this war isn’t going to be stopped by asking the SandWing princesses to talk out their differences. Unless two of them are buried in their graves, the fighting will just go on, and more and more dragons will have to die for them. If a worthless SeaWing has to be killed, then so be it.”
“C’mon, you’re not going to get any further with her,” Griffin spoke softly to Schist.
“Yeah,” Crystal agreed, “and we don’t have time to talk. The authorities could be here looking for who started the fire any second now.”
Avalanche shook her head. “We’ve got time. Gila and Evergreen had most of the authorities under their pay, now that they’re both gone, there’ll be a bit of panic before they can get organized enough to come after us.”
“Oh,” Crystal replied, “so, do we need to go after all?”
“Yes,” Avalanche hissed, “you still have to go, it’s not like the authorities will suddenly stop existing. I don’t want you here anymore, and it’s long past time I get out of this dump anyways. I have some arrogant NightWing to meet with anyways, apparently he refuses to meet with IceWings, so I don’t exactly have a choice in the matter.”
“Fine,” Crystal acknowledged, not caring to hear Avalanche’s griping. She pulled together her stuff, and pulled a silver chain out of her back, the Darkstone swinging from the end, emitting its strange glow. It was still there, much to Crystal’s relief. Trustbreaker glanced over at it, and Crystal gave him a glare. She tucked the Darkstone back in her pack, and swung the bag beneath her left wing. “Let’s go.”
The other five did the same, pulling together their belongings. For the clutter around her house, Avalanche seemed to have little she actually cared to bring with her, just a few fine pieces of SkyWing jewelry. Trustbreaker set out a small bowl of water and another one of meat, for any of the cats who returned to the house. As they walked out the door, it was just barely dawn, and the weather was overcast, a gloomy faint light revealing the cities. Smoke was still rising from the cinders of Evergreen’s mansion.
“Let’s get out before anyone sees us,” Avalanche growled. Crystal muttered something in agreement, and Trustbreaker parted his wings, the cat Sapphire nestled gently in his fore-claws. The six took off into the morning air.
“Where are we going?” Schist yelled at the dragons ahead of him.
“Just south of the cities,” Trustbreaker explained, “a large hill along the Five-Tail River, neutral territory. We’ll stop there.”
The flight out of the SkyWing city was tense, but breathtaking. The sun slowly rose over the mountains to the east, casting long shadows onto the city below. Torrent made sure that Griffin flew directly over the SeaWing and Avalanche, so that his small figure would be blocked from below by their wings. The six weren’t alone in the airspace, SkyWings and SandWings were starting their morning commutes, but they fortunately flew high enough that no one noticed Griffin or bothered them.
Far beneath them, Crystal saw the same crowds of dragons that she and Torrent had seen when they had gone out into the city, but this time, from above. A mixture of pale yellows, reds, and oranges started to crowd the streets, pushing past each other to get to wherever they needed to. The six continued on, unbothered by the dragons below as the sun rose into the sky.
The scenery began to shift as the group left the cities behind them, the buildings became sparse, along with the dragons inhabiting them. Eventually, the hill that had been mentioned appeared, a glorified mound of dirt on the east side of the river. The six tucked in their wings slightly and began the descent to the hill.
As soon as they had landed, Avalanche stated, “I’m going to leave now.”
“Oh, you are?” Griffin asked, pretending that he was going to miss her.
“Yeah, you think I want to stay with you any longer?” she snorted.
“What she means,” Trustbreaker explained, “is that she has to meet with an important NightWing, and should be off.” He stared at Griffin a little closer. “And I will be parting ways too, Fracture wanted to speak with me soon.”
Griffin ruffled his feathers in discomfort. The NightWing had read his mind there; he had been wondering if Trustbreaker was going with Avalanche or if he’d have to stay with them.
“Tell him I said hello,” Crystal replied, slightly irritated, “and make sure you let him know that I saved Schist’s life with the Darkstone. Do it smugly.”
“Using animus magic is nothing to be proud about,” Torrent muttered, “it was a last resort.” The IceWing turned to him and gave Torrent a glare, but didn’t comment.
“I will make sure to notify Fracture of everything,” Trustbreaker stated, almost like it was a vague threat. Sapphire turned his head to Griffin, who gulped as the cat peered into him. “If anyone needs me, I will be at a town called Crosswinds on the Great Five-Tail River after I’m done with my meeting, south of here.”
“Thank you for everything,” Schist grumbled, as if he wasn’t quite sure how thankful he was. Torrent stretched his wings, impatient for the two to leave so that he could continue on south.
Avalanche and Trustbreaker spread their wings back open, and the NightWing cradled the blue-eyed Sapphire in his claws. With a blast of air, the two dragons were off into the sky, each heading in different directions. From the sun’s morning position, Crystal could tell that Avalanche was heading to the north-east, into the Sky Kingdom, whereas Trustbreaker went to the north-west, along the SandWing-IceWing border. Without looking back, the two dragon soared in their respective directions, until they became just small specks nearing the horizon.
“Well, I’m sure disappointed in my sister’s choice of friends,” Crystal snarkily commented, making sure the two were out of hearing range, “Avalanche was worse than a starved polar bear.”
“Oh, come one,” Griffin replied, trying to make a smile with his beak, “they weren’t that bad, were they?” Torrent tossed his wings back in forth, as if he was debating this. Griffin looked over to Schist for backup, but the MudWing gave none.
“I hope I’ve got better choice in friends than her,” Crystal said, glancing at the three others around her. They were much nicer than Avalanche, and not at creepy as Trustbreaker. At least, that's what the IceWing hoped.
“So, where to?” Griffin asked Torrent. “Hopefully somewhere where I won’t have to be stuffed in a house that smells like cat piss?”
Torrent rolled open his enchanted map, and laid it out on the ground as the others crowded around. He pointed a webbed talon to a green dot, in the western side of the rainforest. “I think that’s where we should go next.”
“The rainforest?” Schist commented, with a little surprise.
“What about here?” Griffin asked, pointing a talon to a large mountain on the map in the south of the Claws of the Clouds. On it, a grey blemish stood out, indicating another animus. 
“Jade Mountain?” Crystal wondered.
Torrent shook his head. “No, Jade Mountain has two peaks. That’s Agate Mountain, I think. I thought about going there first, but we’ll want to stay along the Claws of the Clouds anyways, so that we remain in neutral territory, and it’s not much further to the rainforest. And if there is an animus in the rainforest, they should be pretty easy to take out; chances are they’re just a RainWing. Maybe we can catch them sleeping.”
Crystal nodded in agreement. Griffin opened his beak a little bit, as if to say something in protest, but closed it, thinking better of what he was going to say.
“Then we’re settled?” Torrent asked, looking over at Schist.
The MudWing shrugged his wings up a little, not really liking the plan. “It might be nice to see the Mud Kingdom, even if it’s not much of it and it’s far away.”
“Great,” Torrent smiled, glad everyone was in agreement. The SeaWing opened his wings. “In that case, let’s get flying.”
== Chapter 51 ==
To travel to the rainforest, the four decided to fly along the eastern side of the Claws of the Clouds, the mountain range dividing Pyrrhia in two, and at the point where the four were flying, separating the Sand Kingdom from the Mud Kingdom. As they traveled along the border of the mountains, Schist gleefully looked towards the east, to where the rest of the MudWings there. Although the only MudWings they saw were specks in the distance, and the swampy grounds of the Mud Kingdom were too far to be visible to Schist, he seemed to be proud of the kingdom he hailed from, even if he’d visited very little of it outside of the village he’d grown up in.
The weather varied between extremes on the border of the mountain range: from the Sky Kingdom came cold, dry winds which made flying uncomfortably turbulent, and from the eastern marshes hot, humid winds blew, occasionally bringing rain with them. It was on a day like this, a warm shower falling on the four, when Griffin asked Torrent, “What are we going to do if one of the animus dragons isn’t bad?”
“Huh?” Torrent commented in confusion.
“Gila and Adobe were both using their powers to hurt others,” Griffin explained, “and both Magma and Sunscorcher attacked us, so we didn’t exactly have a choice there. What if we find that the animus is just minding their own business in the rainforest?”
“If they’ve got powers, then they’re a danger,” Torrent assured him. “Chances are they’ve already used their magic, and lost part of their soul from it.”
“Like Orca?” Griffin asked with a frown.
“Yes, like Orca,” Torrent snapped back. What is Griffin getting at? “She killed River in the end, and she’s the one who wanted me to kill her,” Torrent reminded Griffin.
“Well, maybe she was wrong,” Griffin replied. “Orca killed River to save us. She just wasn’t able to think of another enchantment in the time she had. Besides, Orca isn’t the only one who’s used magic, what about Crystal?”
Crystal continued flying a moment, then turned back, hearing her name called. “What?” she asked, slowing her pace a little to fall in line with the other three.
“You’ve also used magic,” Griffin explained, “if we end up facing an peaceful animus, then we shouldn’t just immediately kill them.”
Crystal shook her head. “I’m different from a normal animus. Even if I have lost a piece of my soul, I can’t use magic again, as far as I know. I’m not a threat to anyone, the Darkstone is, and that’s why I’m keeping it with me. To make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong claws.”
“What if we can convince the animus not to use their powers?” Griffin put forward.
“That wouldn’t work,” Torrent retorted, “as long as they have powers, they can still use them. We have no way of making sure.”
Schist had flown a little closer by now, and decided to join in on the argument. “We still shouldn’t kill them if they’re peaceful and we can avoid it!”
“Then what would you suppose we do?” Torrent snorted. “If Orca had given me something to remove their powers, then sure, but she didn’t, and I don’t think Crystal would be able to enchant something like that, at least not without killing herself while doing it. I’m not even sure if it’s possible.” Although, if Erosion had given Magma powers, who knew?
“Why don’t we just let them be, or make sure they only use their powers for good?”
Torrent sighed. “Crystal and I explained this already. It’s too dangerous. Animus magic can do awful things, and a lot more dragons could die if it’s not stopped. Better just to make sure it doesn’t exist.”
“Yeah, but animus magic can also do good things!” Schist protested. “It could be used to stop the war, or unite the kingdoms.”
“Do you really want to take that risk?” Torrent asked. “You should know most of all of us that using animus magic like that doesn’t work. That’s what Adobe tried, to use his magic to save dragons. You should be more worried about magic than all of us.”
“Don’t tell me what to think,” Schist snapped.
Torrent snorted. “Fine. It probably won’t matter anyways. Chances are, the animus we meet will be going around torturing RainWings or something.”
Eventually, the four reached the rainforest, a vast expanse of trees stretching out further than Griffin could see. The canopy completely covered the ground, and barring a few rivers, the four’s eyes were unable to penetrate the greenery to see the ground. All of it looked the same to Torrent, and the only way he was able to find his direction was by using his map, the green blemish representing their destination.
After hours of flying, Torrent believed they had found the area corresponding to the ink blotch, though it looked little different from any other section of the rainforest, just a dense plethora of foliage.
“I think we’re here,” Torrent replied. He pointed his dagger below and pressed a talon to the amethyst. It felt mildly warm to the touch, though the SeaWing wasn’t sure if that was just the humidity of the rainforest sticking to it.
The four made their descent to the densely covered ground, the heat and humidity sticking uncomfortably to Crystal’s cold scales. It took a while before they found a spot where they could land, and even then, Torrent’s wings were scratched up by falling branches before he reached the ground. As he walked out of the opening so Schist could land after him, he flapped his wings and gritted his teeth, airing out the scratches.
Crystal looked around the area. The scenery certainly was a change. Ferns and small plants covered the ground, and it felt like wherever she looked, there was a wiry tree to block her path. It might get difficult to get around. “Where to?” she asked, “I don’t see any sign of an animus.”
“Just a moment,” Torrent said, holding out his dagger. Closing his eyes, he spun it around in a circle, trying to feel in which direction the amethyst was the hottest. When he opened his eyes, the dagger was pointed directly at Griffin, who stepped back in alarm.
“Sorry,” Griffin muttered. Torrent sighed, and tried again. He had forgotten that Griffin was included as an animus enchantment.
This time, Torrent thought he had more luck. The gem was distinctly warmer in one direction. “This way,” he commanded, trying to make his way through the maze of trees. The others followed.
“Do you hear something?” Crystal suddenly asked, her ears perking up. She turned around, looking back and forth. RainWings? she wondered. She supposed that if Torrent’s dagger was right, there’d have to be at least one dragon nearby.
She suddenly stiffened up in surprise. It felt like something had just bit her tail. Crystal turned around to see who the culprit was, but instead, she saw a small thorn sticking between her scales, with a few blades of a grass-like plant sticking out of the back. She reached a claw towards the thing, to try and inspect it. But as she moved her paw, it slipped, Crystal lacking the coordination to pick it out. The IceWing suddenly became woozy, and the world around started to spiral into darkness as she quickly fell unconscious.
“Are you alright?” Griffin asked in alarm, turning back to see Crystal fall to the ground. “I think she fell unconscious!” he yelled to Torrent and Schist. “It might be the Darkstone again!”
He turned to Torrent and Schist to see that they were in a similar state. They had also fallen down, and were gently breathing, the plates across their underbelly slowly moving in and out. Well, I guess that theory is debunked.
Griffin suddenly felt a small poke, and waved his feathered wing, trying to shake it off. It was probably another one of those bugs, they had been biting him for the last few minutes. After feeling another bite, he turned around, trying to slap it with his talons. Instead of a mosquito, Griffin saw a small number of thin darts sticking out of his feathered wings and backside. He pulled one out, and inspected it. It had a colorful liquid on the tip.
“It’s a sleeping dart, strange bird,” a voice suddenly said from in front of Griffin. “It’s supposed to make you fall asleep.” Griffin immediately turned to see a small dragon materialize in front of him. She had vivid scales of dark blue on most of her body, with splotches of yellow all across her. She brought her head closer to Griffin, as if inspecting him. 
“Who are you?” Griffin squawked in alarm, taking a step back. As he did so, he suddenly ran into another scaly body behind him. Looking around, a second dragon had materialized, this one slightly older, with a goofy grin plastered on his snout.
“It can talk, like a parrot!” the second dragon observed. The first looked excited at this prospect.
A parrot? Griffin wondered, surprised. There were other birds that could talk?
“Don’t worry, weird little dragon-bird,” she comforted Griffin, “your friends will be fine, they should wake up before too long. I’m Liana, and this is my friend Simian; we’re RainWings! Welcome to the Rainforest Kingdom!”
== Chapter 52 ==
Crystal stared at her reflection, cracked and blurred by the wall of crystalline glass pressed up against her snout. She blinked for a few moments, recalling where she’d been a second before. The rainforest. There’d been something in her paw, and she’d been woozy, and then . . .
“I’m dreaming again, aren’t I?” Crystal snorted, turning away from the mirror-like wall. She remembered this place. She’d dreamt it back in her Darkstone coma. Same as before, a long platform of the same crystalline material extended out her in a bridge across a pit. A NightWing entrapped in ice was at the middle of the bridge, and in front of him floated the strange spectral MudWing.
He flicked his tail with a grin as Crystal turned. “Very true.”
Crystal glanced towards the walls of the cavern. The frozen NightWing seemed to have a reflection in it, but the MudWing was absent. Was this just a feature of her dream, or was there some strange magic going on here? She knew myths of dragons speaking to others in their dreams, but had never really payed close attention to them. She turned back to the MudWing and sighed. She tried to think back to her first dream with him, but the details were still blurry. “So, it’s you again.”
“You sound unhappy to see me,” the MudWing replied. He extended his forepaws and pushed them back, as if he was swimming through the air. The action seemed to propel himself over the bridge, until he reached the point where Crystal stood, almost bumping into her.
The IceWing took a step back. “I can’t say I’m super excited,” she retorted. “What was your name again. “Cal . . . ?”
“Calamity,” the MudWing answered. “Unusual name, isn’t it?” He rolled onto his side midair, resting a wing beneath him as if he was lounging. With a twitch of his tail, he circled to Crystal’s left. She carefully kept her eyes on him, turning as he did. She wasn’t sure how to hurt a floating ghost dragon, but she didn’t want to be caught unaware.
“Yeah, sure. So, who are you, and why are you speaking to me in my dreams? Did Queen Glacier summon you or something to haunt me?”
Calamity snorted. “Queen Glacier? No, nothing to do with that. I’m just a friendly MudWing ghost, trying to give you some advice in your dreams.”
A quiet growl rumbled through Crystal’s throat. “So you’re a ghost? How does that happen? Animus magic?”
Calamity flicked his tongue. “Somewhat right. You’ve had animus magic on your mind a lot lately, haven’t you?”
“Shut up,” Crystal hissed, irritated. It was true. How had he known that? Had he been spying on her? Or maybe he was just a vestige of her own subconscious, manifesting itself in her dreams. “And how does being a ghost let you speak into my dreams?”
Calamity shrugged his wings, Crystal wincing at the strangeness of him doing it unbound by gravity. “Spooky ghost powers. And I told you a little last time we met.”
Crystal frowned, before suddenly recalling some of their conversation. “The Darkstone,” she realized. “You knew about it. You said I was ‘incompatible’ with it. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I said,” Calamity grinned, his tail flicking beneath him. He changed directions in his air-swimming like a shark, causing Crystal to quickly turn the other way, her claws outstretched. “Any holder of the Darkstone is able to use some amount of animus magic, depending on how long they’ve held it and their physical fortitude, but it can’t work well unless you have animus blood.”
“‘Animus blood’?” Crystal asked. “Like, you have an animus parent?”
Calamity nodded. “Or, if you’re lucky, you can get it if you’ve got an animus grandparent. You know what I’m talking about. Your father researched animus genetics extensively.”
“He didn’t determine that it was recessive,” Crystal replied. “It didn’t match the data we had available.” Boreal’s research had been drawn from centuries of secretive IceWing geneticists. How did this MudWing know about it?
“The mechanism is complex,” Calamity explained. “I’ll explain it to you in more detail a few years from now, but animus-determination relies not just on a single allele, but a few alleles of varying rarity, methylation, and some more . . . unnatural factors. The Darkstone is a extremely powerful mutagen. With enough time, it’s bound to give any dragon a few trace cells with the animus phenotype. But unfortunately, one who is incompatible will likely end up dying from cancerous mutations before they develop the magical ability needed to save themselves.”
“Like the animals Boreal tested it on,” Crystal answered, remembering her father’s failed experiments. “Wait, are you saying I’m going to die?”
“Everyone dies,” Calamity yawned.  “But you won’t die from the Darkstone. You haven’t worn it long enough.” He swam up to Crystal’s neck, giving it a small poke where Crystal had previously worn the Darkstone.
She shivered as his talon passed into her, before he pulled it out again. She took a step back. “Don’t do that again,” she threatened him.
“There would be clear markings if you had worn it too long,” Calamity continued. “But there aren’t. Your natural lifespan might be shortened, but in a world like this, how many dragons live out their full natural lifespans?”
“How do you know all this?” Crystal interrogated the MudWing. “About the Darkstone. You know more about it than my dad did. Were you a MudWing spy that got killed by the IceWings?” No, that wouldn’t have worked, he couldn’t have gotten past the Great Ice Wall. “Did the Mud Kingdom have their own Darkstone source?”
“I died long before Boreal hatched,” Calamity tsked. “Don’t fret, Queen Mudhen knows nothing about this, and except for your small group of friends and a select group of IceWings, no one else has any clue.”
“Moorhen,” Crystal quickly corrected him. Calamity shrugged his wings in response uncaringly.
“It’s besides the point what her name is now,” Calamity snorted. “I visited you because I needed to warn you. You and your little troupe are going into the rainforest to find an animus, correct?”
“Yeah,” Crystal said with a frown. “How do you know this? Are you watching us? Is the animus dangerous?”
“Sure, I’m watching you,” Calamity sardonically answered, rolling his eyes. “And the animus isn’t dangerous yet, which is what makes him so dangerous.”
Crystal gave out a huff, letting out a puff of cold white mist onto Calamity. It passed through the MudWing, who seemed completely unaffected. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He appears innocent now, but if you are unable to stop him, he’ll overuse his magic and end up causing the deaths of many dragons,” Calamity yawned, stretching out his wings.
“Are you telling me you can predict the future?” Crystal asked. “Don’t give me that ‘I’m not a NightWing, I can’t do that’ crap. You’re like Fracture, aren’t you, with some weird vague sense of what everyone is doing that you refuse to explain to me!”
Calamity snorted, almost wheezing. “You’re completely wrong,” he laughed. “I’m nothing like your brother-in-law. For starters, I’m half-dead.” He raised up a translucent wing, showing it off to Crystal, who could see through it to the cavern. He gave her a wink and a grin. “I told you, spooky ghost powers.”
Crystal bared her teeth. It felt like this dragon was intentionally trying to get on her nerves. “So what you’re saying is that the animus will kill a bunch of dragons in the future, but hasn’t lost his soul or whatever yet? Why not just say that clearly?”
The ghostly MudWing flicked his tail, and didn’t offer up an answer to his own actions. “You’re correct. So will you promise me to make sure that Torrent kills the animus?”
“No,” Crystal replied, causing Calamity to give out a small sigh. “Sorry. There’s no way I can just trust a weird ghost dragon in my dreams who claims to know the future. I’ll take your advice into account, but no promises.”
“I didn’t expect one,” Calamity continued. “But if you want proof that I know the future, the first thing Torrent will say after you wake up is that his head feels like someone dropped a coconut on it.”
“What?” Crystal asked. “Why would he say that? Did his head get hurt or something?”
“You were drugged by RainWing sleeping darts,” the MudWing quickly explained. “They’re a bit less partial to intruders than they claim to be.”
“Oh. So that’s why I fell asleep.” Calamity nodded to confirm. Crystal sighed. “Alright. So if Torrent says this, I’ll know you can predict the future, but that doesn’t mean you’re not lying to me.”
Calamity grinned, showing his sharp fangs. “You’re right. But is me telling the truth a risk you’re willing to take? A lot of dragons’ lives depend on your decision.”
Crystal glared at Calamity, and suddenly swished her spiked tail through his ethereal body, a small chill running up it. “I hope you realize that this is just making me hate you more.”
“We’re on the same side,” Calamity comforted Crystal. “And in time, I’ll be your most trusted ally.”
Crystal shivered. She hoped that was a lie.
“Well, the sleeping drug is starting to wear off,” Calamity commented, swimming back away from Crystal. “I’ll see you soon. Hope that you remember my name next time. I already know that you will, by the way, I’m just saying that to make you feel slightly guilty for forgetting it.”
“Great,” Crystal grumbled. So now she was having mysterious dreams with an unhelpful undead prophet. “Thanks for the heads up. I’m not going to have to fall into that chasm again, am I?”
Calamity licked his ethereal fangs. “Nope. Just open your eyes.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Crystal laughed. “My eyes are already o —”
Crystal woke up with a start, opening her eyes to the scenery around her. Bright light flooded through her eyes, and a feathered face looked down at her.
“Oh, you’re awake!” Griffin exclaimed. “Finally!”
Crystal attempted to hoist herself up, though her limbs barely responded to her will. 
“What happened?” she groaned. She looked around. She seemed to be on a small pavilion made of woven vines. Behind her, Torrent and Schist were lying down, fidgeting slightly in their sleep. Looking back at Griffin, there were five dragons around the platform, all of various bright colors, hues of purples and oranges Crystal had never known existed. RainWings. She frowned, memories of her dream already starting to drift away from her. That’s right. She’d had a dream. There was an annoying MudWing ghost, and he’d told her something about RainWings? She tried to remember, but it was already fading. “No, no,” she winced, desperately trying to recall it. “Come back.”
“They used sleeping darts on you all and brought us back here,” Griffin answered. He scratched beneath his wing, where there was still a small poke from one of the darts.
Crystal looked around, and noticed the pack she had been carrying over at the edge of the pavilion. The Darkstone! she remembered in worry. It was in there, not around her neck. She staggardly scrambled to her pack, to have a midnight blue RainWing warily step in front of her, blocking her path.
Crystal hissed at the RainWing, baring her fangs. “Are we your prisoners now?” she growled.
“Prisoners?” the RainWing, Liana, asked herself. She chuckled a little. “Oh, don’t worry, we’re not savages. No, no, we normally just put any hapless dragons which wander into our rainforest to sleep and fly them outside the borders.”
“Then where are we?” Crystal asked. She looked out of the corner of her eye. Torrent seemed to be stirring awake. That was good, she’d want another dragon if it came to a fight; she doubted Griffin would be too effective, even against a RainWing.
“Well,” Liana continued, “we don’t usually have dragons fly right up to our largest village, and your talking dragon-bird didn’t fall asleep when we darted him, so we just brought you here for now.”
“Gryphon,” Griffin corrected Liana. 
The RainWing nodded. “He’s much smarter than the other talking birds here!” she commented unhelpfully.
Torrent started to woozily lift his body onto four legs, stretching out his tail. He had heard some of what Liana had said, but was still trying to parse it. They were captured by the RainWings, but apparently weren’t prisoners? He’d trust an eel more than that. He put a claw to his side, and noticed that his dagger was no longer resting against his scales. Torrent glanced around the pavilion, and noticed its jeweled handle next to one of the other RainWings. It started to shake, and slowly moved towards Torrent, but the RainWing put a claw on it with a sigh, and moved it back to where it was. “My head feels like someone dropped a coconut on it,” the SeaWing grumbled.
Crystal suddenly snapped awake at the phrase, her wings stiffening up and her tail smashing into the wooden pavilion. Her dream started to come back to her. There was the ghost MudWing, and he’d told her about the Darkstone, and about the animus. There was an animus here, one who would be very dangerous in the future. Torrent looked towards the shocked Crystal, unsure why she appeared so suddenly agitated. The SeaWing glanced around the rainforest, wondering if they were under attack.
“So, why are you here?” Liana asked. “This wasn’t an accident, was it?”
“No,” Torrent grumbled. “We’re looking fo —”
“For some mangoes,” Crystal quickly interrupted, giving Torrent a look of caution. And cacao. We had some while up north, and it was very delicious. We were wondering where to find some more.”
“Oh!” Liana exclaimed. “You must have met Mallow! He goes up north for whatever reason every so often, taking a bunch of unripe mangoes and cacao with him! It’s so weird, why would he ever want to leave the rainforest?”
“Who knows?” Crystal replied with a smile. “It’s so nice here, isn’t it? Nothing at all like the cold, frigid Ice Kingdom.”
Liana grinned, then looked behind Crystal with an expression of concern. Five young RainWing dragonets were bounding down a small bridge to the pavilion, with an adult RainWing running behind them. “Stop!” the older RainWing called. “Come back, it’s not safe!”
The five dragonets didn’t heed their teacher’s warning, and crowded around the four newcomers. As Schist was just rising, two looked at him curiously. “It’s a MuddyWing!” one exclaimed.
The second dragonet poked at one of Schist’s fused and scarred scales, causing the waking MudWing to flinch in pain. “Wow, what happened to you?” she asked. Schist tried to mutter something in reply, but couldn’t get any intelligible words out.
“Oh, I’m very sorry,” the older RainWing apologized, reaching out a burgundy forearm to grab one of the dragonets by the tail, though the dragonet got away before she was able to grab her.
“Ooh, look at this!” a pinkish white dragonet said in fascination, walking over towards Torrent’s dagger. It was shaking slightly, and moving towards Torrent again on its own. “It moves on its own! It’s magical, like me!”
Torrent tensed up, wondering if he’d misheard the dragonet. Magical, like the dragonet? That couldn’t be right. This dragonet couldn’t be the animus, he didn’t seem evil, or powerful, or anything like that. Torrent gulped. Maybe this was just a mistake; the dragonet could just be playing pretend, or maybe the actual animus had given the dragonet an enchanted object?
He glanced over to Crystal, verifying that she’d also heard what the dragonet had said. The concerned frown on her snout indicated that she also understood.
“Don’t touch that!” the RainWing teacher yelled in alarm, seeing the dragonet trying to grab the dangerous weapon. She quickly lept over to the dragonet and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, dangling the little RainWing from her mouth. “Svo mvere svopfry,” she tried to say, unable to properly reply while holding the dragonet with her mouth.
Meanwhile, Liana and Simian had been rounding up the other dragonets, including one who was pouncing on Crystal’s tail, distracting her from her thoughts. They pushed them back onto the bridge and stood in their way as the dragonets’ teacher, with the final dragonet, exited the pavilion, leading the crowd of dragonets away.
“I’m sorry about that,” Liana continued, “even Bromeliad can’t control all her students sometimes. Now, you’re welcome to stay in our village for as long as you’d like, I’m sure you’ll be able to find someone who can direct you to the best mango trees.”
Crystal thought for a moment, still worried by what she’d overheard the dragonet say. If Calamity was right . . . did she have a choice? “Yes, mangoes,” she said with a start. “Yes, thank you for your hospitality. Can we get our stuff back now?”
“Oh, yes, of course! But please, keep weapons away from our dragonets, and anyone else.” Liana stuttered, worried that she’d been rude to her guests. Torrent walked over towards his dagger, which moved towards him in reply, as if to greet him. When reunited with it, he pressed a talon on the amethyst, and pointed it in the direction to where the dragonets had gone off. It was warm. He gritted his teeth. He couldn’t do this.
Crystal immediately scrambled for her satchel. Opening it up, she saw the Darkstone was still inside. With a sigh of relief, she carefully took the silver chain out and draped it around her cold neck. Seeing that Crystal was putting it back on, Torrent turned towards her, wanting an reason for why she was wearing it again after they’d explicitly agreed to leave it off.
“I want to keep it safe,” Crystal explained. “I need to make sure it’s not lost or stolen; that would be a disaster.” Anyways, if Calamity was right, there wasn’t much danger of her wearing it, as long as it wasn’t for too long.
“Oh, don’t worry!” Liana clucked assuredly. “No one here would ever steal anything! RainWings just don’t do that!”
“Just in case,” Crystal quietly responded. Torrent, meanwhile, had decided he was satisfied with this reasoning — only wearing it for a little bit couldn’t hurt, and it was pretty unlikely she’d be able to successfully use animus magic again.
“Here, let me take you to the hammocks!” Liana suggested. Crystal hesitantly accepted, and followed the RainWing as she glided down off of the pavilion. Torrent, Schist, and Griffin tagged behind her, and tried to keep up with the RainWing as she nimbly glided around branches, using her tail to balance herself mid-flight.
Through the short flight, Torrent realized why he hadn’t seen the village from above: most of the houses had roofs made of leaves, camouflaging the village in a way strikingly similar to the Summer Palace. RainWings stopped what they were doing and uncomfortably stared at the four as they flew past; it didn’t look like they got many visitors here. As they approached a large woven pavilion, Liana made a quick burst up, and glided onto the pavilion, landing like a feather on the vines.
On the other claw, Crystal, Torrent, and Schist landed much less gently. Torrent almost ran into the side of the pavilion, and just reached over the edge, scraping his underbelly on the woven flooring. Griffin had a lot easier of a time landing, stopping mid-flight to touch down, but then again, he was as small as a dragonet. Crystal looked at Liana with a hint of envy — if all the IceWings were as good fliers (or gliders, in this case) as her and the rest of the RainWings, then maybe the war could have been over years ago.
“C’mon,” Liana said, looking slightly smug of herself, “some of the best hammocks are this way.” She quickly took off across the pavilion. The four followed behind her at a walking pace, as RainWings looked on at the little procession.
“Is that a bird?” one orange and yellow colored RainWings whispered to his friend as Griffin walked past.
“No,” Griffin muttered in exasperation, inciting a cry of amazement from the crowd. The four continued on past the onlooking RainWings to a small bridge to another pavilion. Hammocks were strung between the trees all around; many of the ones that sunlight shone directly on were filled with RainWings who were either fast asleep, bathing in the few golden rays that penetrated the rainforest, or were curiously looking at the four newcomers.
“Alright, here we are!” Liana said to the guests. “This is where you’ll sleep while you stay here! Or any other hammocks, but these are my favorites, if you want my expert opinion. I’m sure Olive, he’s the dark green one pretending to be asleep beneath the banana tree, will be happy to tell you about the best mango spots in the rainforest when you ask him!”
“Right, thank you so much!” Crystal replied with a generous smile. She turned to Schist with a bit of anxiety in her eyes. “Schist, go ask Olive about the mangoes. Torrent and I need to talk. In private.”
Before Griffin or Schist could respond, Crystal shoved the SeaWing off the side of the bridge, causing him to spread his wings out in a reflexive glide, almost flying into a sleeping RainWings. With a quick leap, Crystal was after him, gliding down down to the rainforest floor.
== Chapter 53 ==
Torrent followed Crystal, walking through the damp forest floor away from the rainforest village. His webbed feet scrunched on moist leaves, causing mud and dirt to get stuck between his talons. “Where are we going?” he asked Crystal.
“Shhh!” she hissed, pulling him closer. “Outside the village, where RainWings won’t hear us.”
The two walked a little longer, frogs and birds flying above the two, squawking and ribbiting to each other in the all but silent rainforest. Eventually, Crystal reached a distance she felt was satisfactory. She whipped her head around, the Darkstone swinging right in front of Torrent’s snout.
“Get back,” she whispered. Torrent did so, and Crystal opened her mouth wide. A hissing sound emanated from the back of her throat, and frostbreath sprayed onto the ground. Cold white mist spread from the point Crystal had hit, billowing across the rainforest ground. Crystal moved her head to the right, almost hitting Torrent with her horns as she turned. She continued spraying frostbreath in a circle, causing Torrent to move so that he’d avoid being hit. The mist spread across the forest floor, billowing up into the undergrowth.
When the frostbreath mist had cleared, a circle of frozen plants and leaves surrounded Torrent and Crystal. “What was that for?” Torrent asked.
Crystal glanced around at the trees in concern, her head twisting up and down, before answering Torrent. “RainWings can turn invisible, remember?” she explained. “That’s how they were able to tranquilize us. I wanted to make sure we weren’t being spied on.”
“Oh,” Torrent replied, in understanding. Any RainWings that followed them would have been made temporarily visible by the billows of mist.
“The animus,” Crystal started off. “Are you sure they’re here?”
Torrent breathed through his clenched teeth, sharp triangles against his scales. He pulled out his dagger, and moved it around a little, pointing it towards the village. “Yes,” he replied in exasperation, “almost certain.”
“The dragonet, back on the pavilion?” Crystal pressed.
“He’s the one,” Torrent grumbled. “The gem on my dagger warmed when I pointed it at him.”
Crystal sighed. She paced back and forth a little within the circle of ice before looking back at Torrent. “You know what we need to do,” she muttered unsuredly.
“You want me to kill a fucking dragonet?” Torrent roared, his claws clenching the dirt beneath him.
“Quiet!” Crystal hissed. She quickly looked around the forest again. “And yes, I do.” Torrent bristled a little. “Sure, he’s just a dragonet now,” Crystal continued, “but give it seven years. He already knows about his powers, so he’s had to have used his magic already; he could have lot a ton of his soul by now. These are also RainWings we’re talking about, not SeaWings, IceWings, or another tribe which knows the warning signs of soul-loss. They’re letting him run around, telling outsiders about his powers. What if one of the princesses got word of him, and decided to invade the rainforest to take him?” Crystal looked desperate now, her own fears making her more sure of the importance of this. As annoying as he was, she believed Calamity.
“He’s a dragonet,” Torrent muttered.
“So what?” Crystal asked. “Darkstalker was a dragonet, once. Same with Albatross and Fen. Do their names mean nothing to you? By the time he’s as old as we are, he could be under the control of a queen, or have slaughtered the entire RainWing tribe. Or both!”
Torrent grumbled, and closed his eyes. Crystal was right; this dragonet was no different than any other animus. If it came down to killing an innocent dragonet in order to save an entire tribe, or the entire species, from destruction, then getting rid of the dragonet was the right thing to do. “Fine,” Torrent hesitantly agreed.
Crystal noticed Torrent’s hesitation, and narrowed her eyes. “Don’t pretend you’re just doing this ‘cause I told you to,” she hissed. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it together.”
Torrent looked away uncomfortably. “I said I’d do it, alright?” he replied in exasperation. “Even if I don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to either,” Crystal explained, “believe me, I’d much rather leave this up to someone nastier, like Glacier or Burn. But unfortunately, they’re not here.” Torrent didn’t reply. “C’mon, let’s go,” Crystal muttered.
The IceWing stepped out of the circle of ice, and Torrent followed. She took off flying, and carefully returned to the pavilion where Griffin and Schist were, Torrent a safe distance behind her. As they walked across the bridge, Torrent shivered. It felt like all the RainWings were watching him, as if they knew what he planned to do. He told himself they didn’t, it was just that he was clearly an outsider here.
As the two approached, Griffin and Schist were engaged in whispered discussion. Schist turned to Crystal and Torrent with a start, as if he wasn’t expecting them. Griffin suddenly spread out his feathered wings, and leapt of the bridge, flying upwards, towards an empty pavilion.
“Follow me,” Schist ordered Crystal and Torrent with a slight stammer, lifting up, trying to make his way through the branches and leaves. Crystal and Torrent went after him. They reached the pavilion, which Griffin was already standing on, his sharp talons poking into the woven floor.
“We discussed,” Schist said to Torrent and Crystal, giving Griffin a quick glance back. Torrent and Crystal hadn’t been the only ones to notice what the dragonet had said. “We’re not killing a dragonet.”
“We’re leaving the rainforest, now,” Griffin added.
Torrent opened his mouth, ready to protest, when Crystal gave him a sharp poke with a spike on the end off her tail. “Agreed,” Crystal lied, “but we can’t leave now.” She pointed a claw up to the sunset sky. “It’s going to get dark soon, we need to wait until daylight.”
Griffin and Schist exchanged glances. “Alright,” Schist decided quietly, “but we leave tomorrow, at first light.”
“That’s fine,” Crystal replied with a smile. She turned over to Torrent, expecting an answer from him. Schist and Griffin couldn’t understand. Maybe one day. They needed to do this, with or without them.
“Fine,” he grumbled cautiously, not sure what Crystal was intending.
“Good,” Griffin muttered, giving Crystal a stare. He flapped his wings up and down. “The hammocks Liana suggested are down there, and I’m getting tired.”
== Chapter 54 ==
Torrent tossed and turned in the netting of the woven hammock. It kept getting caught around his wings throughout the night, and he was constantly worried that he’d flip over and plummet below, unable to open his wings in time to save himself. All in all, it didn’t look like he’d have a comfortable sleep.
The largest of Pyrrhia’s moons was almost full, at its zenith, when Torrent felt a cold claw tap a wingblade. He shot up with a start, causing the hammock to rock back and forth. “What’s goin —”
“Shhh!” Crystal hissed, putting a claw in front of Torrent’s mouth. She was reaching over to him from a nearby tree, her sharp talons gripping into the tree’s bark and holding her up. The IceWing, afraid of losing her balance, quickly took her claw away from Torrent’s snout and clutched around the tree.
Torrent breathed a sigh of relief, glad it was Crystal there. “What’s going on?” he asked again, this time in a low whisper.”
“Penguin-brained SeaWing,” Crystal muttered under her breath, drawing a frown from Torrent. “We’re going to kill that animus while it’s still dark,” she explained.
“Oh,” Torrent replied, still a bit drowsy. So that’s what Crystal’s plan was.
“This way,” Crystal ordered. She grasped a vine with her talons and used her tail to swing herself onto one of the woven pavilions nearby. Torrent followed, his webbed paws struggling to grasp onto the vine, and his tail too hefty to maneuver around. Fortunately, he was able to make it to the pavilion with a bit of help from Crystal, who grabbed his tail with her serrated claws. He cringed as they poked between his scales.
As soon as Torrent was stably on the platform, Crystal was off. “I think I found where they keep their dragonets,” she whispered, carefully stepping onto a woven bridge. Torrent followed behind, trying to make his pawsteps as silent as hers. The SeaWing glanced around the rainforest, the faint light from the moons being completely sufficient for his nightvision to pick up. There didn’t seem to be any RainWings awake, fortunately for them. In two hammocks not far away, Schist and Griffin should be sleeping.
Torrent felt a pang of guilt. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing them behind their tails.”
“Who?” Crystal asked quietly.
“Schist and Griffin,” Torrent answered, “they thought we weren’t going to do this.”
“And with any luck, they’ll never know,” Crystal hissed. “They don’t understand what we’re dealing with here. Nothing we say will convince them to change their minds.”
Torrent sighed. Crystal was right, he doubted either of them would be willing to go through with this. He wasn’t sure why — Griffin had known Orca and had seen Sunscorcher, and Schist had grown up trapped by Adobe — how come neither of them recognized the menace this dragonet could become, how many RainWings would be hurt and killed by it?
Crystal led onwards, flying cautiously through a tunnel in the rainforest foliage. She seemed to have gotten a much better handle on the strange combination of gliding and flying that the RainWings performed than Torrent, grabbing ahold of vines to assist her in her slow glide. Torrent tried to do the same, but had trouble just staying on track, and ended up getting branches whacked into his snout. Crystal continuously gave him looks of fright, worrying that his clumsy glide would wake up nearby RainWings, though none seemed to notice. He supposed it was good for him and Crystal that they were all fast asleep, but without any guards or watch of a sort, things could prove disastrous — someone could kidnap the queen, steal treasure or eggs, or in this case, kill an animus dragonet. It was fortunate they didn’t have any enemies.
The two reached the area which Crystal thought was the wingery for the dragonets — a giant trampoline of woven vines and leaves, hung between the tall trees of the rainforest. Tall walls surrounded the trampoline made from branches, woven together. At the bottom of the walls, the branches were woven so tightly together it was impossible to see through the thicket, but further up, where it was less likely for a dragonet to stumble out of, they loosened up quite a bit. The two dragons landed on a platform not too far from the wingery. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any RainWings sleeping too nearby the structure.
As Torrent used his nightvision to search for a good flight route over the walls that wouldn’t end up with him stuck in a tree, he asked Crystal, “What will happen when the RainWings find out the dragonet is dead? We’re outsiders, they’ll suspect us first.”
“Maybe, but these are RainWings we’re talking about. Don’t overestimate their abilities of deduction,” Crystal answered. “Anyways, we’ll be out by then. I’ll be getting Schist and Griffin at first light, remember? At the break of twilight, far before any of the RainWings are awake. I doubt they’re early risers.” She glanced up at the sky, as if she was impatient for dawn to approach already.
Suddenly, Torrent whipped around. He heard wingbeats approaching. “Hide!” he hissed at Crystal. She looked around. There was no place to hide.
Two figures touched down at the platform, one much smaller than the other. Torrent gulped as they came into focus. It appeared that Schist and Griffin had been less asleep than Crystal had thought.
“What are you doing?” Schist quietly asked with a growl as the two stepped forward. He glanced behind the two, at the woven mats surrounding the wingery.
“Just going on a short flight,” Crystal replied with a smile, “I couldn’t sleep, and accidentally woke Tor —”
“Stop lying,” Schist interrupted, baring his teeth, “that’s the wingery, isn’t it? Where they keep the dragonets?”
Crystal kept her face grim. “You know this is what we have to do,” she hissed.
“Killing a dragonet?” Griffin hissed, his sharp talons scraping against the platform. “He doesn’t have to die.” He swiveled his feathered head to Torrent. “How could you lie to me?” he spat. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Torrent, do it,” Crystal ordered, “I’ll wait here.”
Torrent glanced over at Griffin, lowering his head. He shouldn’t have lied to him, he knew that, but he had no other choice. For the good of all Pyrrhia. “I’m sorry,” the SeaWing grumbled at his friend. He opened his wings, and flapped them, generating the lift required to propel him forwards and up, towards the wingery.
“Torrent, stop!” Griffin squawked after him. “You don’t have to do this!” The SeaWing shook his head, and continued on upwards, as Griffin debated whether or not to go after Torrent. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t stop the SeaWing. Sure, he could wake up the RainWings, but that might condemn Torrent, all of them even, to death. Yet, if it was him or an innocent dragonet . . .
Schist had already made his choice. The MudWing barreled forward, spreading his scarred wings, and tried to make his way after Torrent. But as he flew into the air, he felt sharp talons scraping against his tail as Crystal grasped ahold of it with her foreclaws. Forced to land, Schist fell onto the platform, crashing upright.
The MudWing growled at Crystal. “Let me past,” he warily ordered her. He stepped to his right, and she followed suit, eyes locked together.
“No,” she answered with a hiss. “I’m not going to let you interfere and get us all killed.”
Schist roared, and lunged forward at Crystal. She tried to side-step the attack, not expecting Schist to turn on her so quickly, but he latched ahold of the side of her neck with his teeth, and tried to use it as leverage to throw the IceWing to the ground.
Unfortunately for Schist, the strange surface of the vines threw him off balance, and as he tried to throw her to the side, Crystal lashed her tail out, cutting him across the back of his neck. He let go of her in surprise, and she took that to her advantage, clawing beneath his wings. Schist stumbled back, but remained undaunted by the few minor scratches he’d received. He slammed his left, unscarred side into Crystal, pushing her over.
As Schist stood over her, Crystal took that to her advantage, and dug just the tips of her claws into the MudWing’s soft underbelly scales as she dived beneath him. He gritted his teeth in pain, and Crystal cringed slightly, pulling her claws outwards a little. Drops of blood dripped onto the woven floor, but it was nothing like the horror she could have caused by digging her claws in deeper to tear through muscles and organs. Schist was still her friend, and while she needed to stop him, she wanted to do it without hurting him severely or irreparably, even if she still had the healing diamond in case of an emergency.
Schist breathed heavily, and Crystal thought he was going to give up for a moment, but the MudWing twisted hard to his right, his fused scales crunching up against each other and cracking, causing blood and pus to seep between them. He tried to bite at Crystal’s neck again, but ended hitting the back of her neck instead of the side this time, along the sharp spines that lined it, causing them to rake along the side of his snout. He suddenly reared backwards, quickly realizing that he’d be unable to attack her there. Griffin stood by, unsure of whether or not to interfere.
“Stop this,” Crystal hissed, turning back around. “We don’t have to fight.”
Schist growled, and once again tried to attack Crystal by slamming into her. This time, she sidestepped the maneuver and hit him with a closed claw, knocking him off balance. Schist staggered a few steps away, then looked back at Crystal. “Yes, we do. When I met you, I thought you were my friend!”
He took another step towards Crystal, lowering his body down. The IceWing took advantage of that, moving just slightly to the side, then jumping up and onto Schist, pushing the MudWing over, onto his right-side, his wing pinned and twisted beneath him. He tried to lift himself back up, but the smaller IceWing pushed him to the ground again. “We can still be friends.”
Schist suddenly turned his head upwards, and opened his jaws. “Schist, stop!” Griffin suddenly yelled out, realizing what Schist was planning to do. As much as he hated her right now, Griffin didn’t want Crystal to be blasted with firebreath, and at such a short range, the rebound of the burst would set Schist aflame too, in addition to the mat of vines holding all of them up. Schist might even end up starting a forest-fire.
Schist closed his jaws, and turned to Griffin, backing down and turning his head to the side. By this time, Crystal had noticed what Schist was trying to do, and had started to prepare her own frostbreath. A thick white mist started to emanate from the sides of her mouth. Griffin looked on in shock, seeing the IceWing open her jaws.
At what felt like the last moment possible, Crystal turned her head to the side, away from Griffin and Schist, shooting out the prepared freezing death breath harmlessly onto the floor. A large number of woven vines were covered throughout by the frostbreath turning white and snapping. Fortunately, the RainWing talonwork was well-made, and past a frozen hole in the floor, the pavilion stood unharmed.
Crystal’s breath slowed as Schist lay down in defeat, not getting back up to fight. Griffin’s heart still raced, his talons shaking. Crystal looked down at the bleeding MudWing beneath her, his blood still on her talons. She closed her eyes in realization at what she’d almost done. If she hadn’t turned her head to the side just moments later, Schist would be dead at her claws.
Crystal gathered her claws against her snout. This wasn’t the time for emotions. She turned around, towards the blurry shadow of the wingery. She couldn’t see Torrent anymore; he would be inside the wingery by now, and the dragonet could already be dead.
== Chapter 55 ==
Torrent slowly swooped down onto the trampoline, his night-vision picking out a spot for him to land, a hardened platform which wouldn’t bounce. He quietly landed, tense as he checked around the area. So far, none of the RainWing dragonets had stirred, much to Torrent’s relief. If one woke up now and decided to cry out for help, it would make the situation very, very tricky.
The dragonets were gently sleeping on the trampoline and around the edges of the platform, some huddled up in groups, and others a small distance off. In the dark, Torrent was unable to see the range of colors that they were, causing the RainWings to all look like shades of black and grey, like NightWings or IceWings. The SeaWing unsheathed his dagger, and pressed a talon to the amethyst. He slowly twirled the blade in a circle around him, feeling the gemstone heat and cool, hoping desperately that it would reveal his observations wrong, and lead away from the wingery. No such luck. The small dragonet he’d seen earlier was where the gemstone was the hottest, by far.
The RainWing animus was fast asleep, and had his tail gently wrapped around his head and neck. The dragonet’s underbelly gently rose and fell as Torrent took a step towards him, carefully making his way around the other dragonets nearby. Torrent gently placed a webbed paw onto the trampoline, slowly feeling it, and lowering his weight so not to shake it up and down. Glancing to his left, another dragonet rolled over, tucking her wing in, creating small tremors in the trampoline. Fortunately, she didn’t wake.
Torrent took another step. Only a few more before the dragonet was within reach. All he had to do was poke the poor thing with his sharpened dagger, just enough to draw blood, and the animus would be turned to stone. The trampoline gently swayed beneath the large SeaWing as he stepped forward again. Almost there now . . .
With a final step, Torrent had reached the animus. If he leaned far enough forward on his front-left leg, he’d be able to reach forward and prick the dragonet with his the dagger right forepaw. He hesitated for a moment. Sure, killing the dragonet would prevent him from causing mass travesty with his powers, but the RainWing was innocent, he hadn’t done anything bad yet. Maybe there was another way. Maybe with the right guidance, the dragonet would avoid the fate of Albatross, of Darkstalker, of Fen.
Torrent thought back to his conversation with Crystal. This was all a maybe. And if the dragonet didn’t receive the right guidance, if he slipped up . . . then he could kill many, many dragons. Sure, it was possible things would turn out alright, but that wasn’t a risk Torrent could take. No, it wasn’t a risk Torrent should make. This was his duty to Pyrrhia, to protect the dragons around him, to keep them safe. Just like his mother’s duty was to protect the SeaWings, his was to protect dragonkind from animus magic.
Torrent made his decision, and reached forward with the dagger, poking the soft membrane of the dragonet’s wing with his dagger, placing a talon on the midnight-black pearl inlaid within it. The point broke through the membrane, causing the dragonet to flinch. For a moment, it looked like he might wake, but by that point, it was already too late. Emanating from the point the steel had scratched, grey stone quickly covered the dragonet’s body. The RainWing attempted to move slightly, but was trapped by it, quickly surrounding his small chest, crawling up his neck and his snout, turning what would have vivid scales in the sunlight to the dull, plain grey of stone. Inside and outside, the animus dragonet was completely frozen, his life snuffed out in his sleep.
Torrent stayed cautiously still. The trampoline had bent further downward from the transformation. He closed his eyes, and started to turn away from the stone corpse, like one of the ancient queens in the SeaWing mausoleum. He didn’t want to look, but the dragonet deserved that much. This was his doing, his choice. He thought about whispering an apology to the RainWing, even though it wouldn’t change what he did. “I’m sorry,” he simply muttered, trying to be half-genuine. Even if the RainWing had to die, the dragonet hadn’t deserved death.
The SeaWing solemnly glanced back up to the night sky, stars blotted out by the dense canopy of the rainforest. The fullest of the moons was barely visible, and it appeared to be sinking towards the horizon. The deed was done, and Pyrrhia was safe from this dragonet.
Torrent landed on the platform outside of the wingery, claws stiff and stable. He looked down, unwilling to meet Griffin’s eyes as the feathered creature tried to meet his. “Torrent . . . ,” Griffin whispered, not sure what else he could say. He swiveled his eyes down to Torrent’s dagger, the faintest spot of red blood on its tip, revealing the fate of the dragonet.
Crystal was still on top of Schist, holding the shocked MudWing to the ground. He was bleeding, and the remains of frostbreath were on the vines not too far from him. It was clear to the SeaWing that there had been some sort of fight. Crystal looked over to Torrent, still uncertain of their decision. She opened her mouth, going to ask what had happened, but Torrent replied first.
“You can let Schist up,” he quietly whispered in melancholy. The image of the dragonet still burned behind his eyes, the gleeful little creature from the pavilion waking up to a dark death. “It’s done.”
Crystal stepped off Schist. The MudWing was silent for a moment, then rose to his paws. He glared directly at Torrent. “You’re a monster,” Schist growled, fury bristling through his amalgamate of fused scales, liquid still seeping between them from the fight. “He was a dragonet!”
“I know,” Torrent acknowledged, not bothering to try and defend himself. Schist was right, wasn’t he? Torrent was a monster, even if he had done it for the right reasons. He’d killed a dragonet. No good dragon would be willing to do something like that.
“Does that not bother you?” Schist yelled. He turned to Crystal. “You’re just as guilty in this!” he said accusingly. She didn’t respond, keeping an emotionless expression across her snout.
Schist stamped a paw on the ground, and breathed a puff of smoke. Crystal tilted her head away to avoid it. “I’m leaving,” Schist stated, “I don’t want to see any of you, ever again.” His wings shot open, striking Crystal across the snout, forcing her to take a step back. She raised a talon up to the wound he’d made, and wiped her claw across it. Blue blood.
Schist turned around, and lifted off into the air, his scars beneath his wing visible. Griffin watched as he swerved back and forth, trying to find a hole in the canopy to fly through, using only the moonlight. Torrent stared down in shame. Eventually, the MudWing was able to break free, and flew out of visibility, the foliage blocking the view of those beneath.
Crystal turned to Griffin. “Are you going with him?” she snapped.
Griffin turned to her with a glare. Maybe he should. He liked Schist, after all. But Schist had said he didn’t ever want to see him again, and Griffin didn’t blame him. He should have done something, tried to stop Crystal or Torrent. Maybe he’d get another chance. “No,” he hissed, “I’m staying by Torrent.”
Crystal wrinkled her snout, then stepped over to Torrent, her tail swishing behind her. Griffin watched her carefully, his beady eyes following her. This was her fault; she was the one who convinced Torrent to do this; to break his and Schist’s trust. But she hadn’t had a choice, right? She alone knew what was going to happen.
“Where to now?” Crystal quietly asked Torrent. She glanced around. None of the RainWings had woken up, it appeared, even with Schist’s yell. She was glad they were such heavy sleepers, but they couldn’t stay here for long. They needed to get out of the rainforest as soon as possible. 
Torrent lifted his head up, avoiding meeting Crystal’s eyes. They had come this far, already. They might as well continue on. “West. To Agate Mountain.” The next animus was there.
Crystal nodded in agreement. “Then let’s go,” she softly said, giving Griffin a quick glance of caution. She unfolded her wings, and took off, Torrent quickly following behind her. It took Griffin a bit longer before he went after them. From the ground, his eyes tracked the two as they rose into the distance. Agate Mountain. Griffin spread his feathered wings open, and followed the two, keeping a pace behind them. As he rose above the canopy, he turned his beak to face the opposite direction. To the east, towards the Mud Kingdom. Now a small blotch in the distance of the night sky, a half-moon lighting his way, Schist appeared in the distance. The MudWing’s wings slowly pulsed up and down as he flew. Loss and solitude was all Griffin felt at this moment.
== Chapter 56 ==
The sun peeked over the tips of the Claws of the Clouds, blinding Griffin’s eyes as morning approached. The brisk mountain air entered his airways, whipping around his feathered wings. Far below, Griffin saw tall trees poking up from the valleys between the mountains like twigs. As his eyes raised up the mountain, the trees dwindled off before cutting off at the tree-line. In front of Griffin were the twin peaks of Jade Mountain, fresh sunlight glinting off its snow-topped cap. Not far beyond it was Agate Mountain — long, long ago, the tallest mountain in Pyrrhia, before an earthquake brought it down, rendering Jade Mountain the greatest.
Yet, being second place made it no less formidable. A large portion of the mountain, including what had once been the peak, had slid off during the ancient earthquake, and the wounds were still visible. A huge chunk of the rock appeared to be displaced to the side of the mountain, and what was once the tallest spot in Pyrrhia now reached only halfway up the current Agate Mountain, the new peak just barely covered by wispy clouds. A shear surface stretched from the new peak to the old, covered by a smooth blanket of snow so blindingly white Griffin had to turn away.
A large valley snaked between Agate Mountain and the nearest peaks, twisting between crags and cliffs. Melting snow ran down the sides of Agate Mountain, creating waterfalls that bounced along the mountainside until they hit the valley beneath. Instead of the stark barrenness of the mountain, the valley was filled with stripes and spots of green grasses and tall, narrow trees.
Torrent and Crystal fluttered downwards, and Griffin followed cautiously. The three landed on the edge of a jagged cliff, lower than the tree line and snow, but on the edge of the valley, too far up for the trees to form more than a sparse coating. Rocks jutted out from the cliffside beneath the three, and the valley floor below was covered with a canopy of trees so dense Griffin couldn’t make out the ground. Above the three stood the new peak of Agate Mountain, towering above.
When Griffin touched down, it took a moment for him to gain his balance — his claws didn’t seem to want to stick to the coating of pebbles and small rocks, crawling between his talons. He stepped over towards Crystal and Torrent, looking up at the two dragons. Crystal gave him a glare of suspicion, and Griffin winced. Maybe he should have gone with Schist.
“The animus has to be here,” Torrent growled in annoyance. He held out his map, rolling it open between his front claws while sitting on his haunches. A greyish blotch appeared where Agate Mountain would be, indicating an animus.
“They’re probably in a cave somewhere,” Crystal suggested, “this place looks like it’s dotted with them.” She looked around the surroundings. True enough to her word, various crannies were nestled in the mountain. An hiding dragon could be in any one of them.
“Or they could be living in the valley below,” Torrent replied, “the forest could easily hide a small hut for a dragon to live in.”
“We shouldn’t go after them if they’re hiding,” Griffin mumbled, knowing he wouldn’t convince Torrent with it. He just received a cold glare from Crystal in response, and silence from Torrent. Without Schist to back him up, what could Griffin do?
Torrent brought out his dagger and placed a talon on the amethyst. It glowed warm as he pointed it towards Griffin. He rotated it around the area, trying to detect a source of heat other than the obvious ones. Torrent ended up with his dagger pointed up and towards the west, to the slope of the mountain near the old, forgotten peak of Agate Mountain, covered by ice and snow. He couldn’t see any caves in that direction, though it was possible that the snow had covered them.
“That way,” Torrent stated, already preparing to fly again. After spending a winter in the northernmost steppe of the Claws of the Clouds, a bit of high altitudes and snow was little problem to him, even if SeaWings were designed for the deep depths of the ocean.
Torrent sighed a little, thinking about the depths of the Sea Kingdom, his home. The cold salty water seemed so peaceful, and swimming was so much more comfortable than flying and walking. Above water, he had to exert so much more effort to stay aloft, or even just stand upright, but underwater, he could just float when there wasn’t a current. Yet, he didn’t know if he’d be able to live there again. Torrent doubted there was any place in the Deep Palace for him anymore. Orca, Rift, and River were all dead. Coral wouldn’t care, and Gill might not even want him back.
While the four were flying along the Mud Kingdom border, Torrent had gone into a town and asked for news from the Sea Kingdom, against Crystal’s advice of caution. The eggs that Coral had laid before Torrent’s departure had been destroyed during the duel with Orca. Angler had supposedly become so reclusive there were rumors he was dead and Queen Coral was just too embarrassed to announce yet another one of her dragonet’s deaths. Coral and Gill had effectively lost all their dragonets. But apparently there were new dragonets in the Deep Palace to replace him and his late siblings’ places.
Even if Gill accepted him back, Torrent only had one working gill, and hadn’t yet tried any sort of deep swimming. Still, his injuries from Magma’s were nothing compared to Schist’s. Torrent glanced backwards quickly, expecting the MudWing to be there. He wasn’t, of course. Schist was gone, and what Torrent had done was irreversible. At the moment, he would be returning back to the Mud Kingdom, probably back to his sister Glen, his one remaining sib.
Torrent took off towards the old peak, Crystal and Griffin trailing behind him. A brisk wind pushed against him as he gained altitude, snow flying into his snout, but he continued on, anxious to find his quarry. As Torrent prepared to land, a sudden gust flung the SeaWing into the snow beneath, causing a dragon-sized indentation to crumple beneath him. He climbed out as Crystal and Griffin landed, making light imprints with their claws and talons. The tips of Crystal’s tail spikes dragged along the snow as she walked up to him.
“I don’t see anything,” she observed, “maybe the animus’s cave got buried beneath the snow, and they got trapped inside.”
“No,” Torrent grumbled, shaking snow from his wings, “that’s unlikely. They could have used their magic to dig their way out.”
“What if they don’t use their magic?” Griffin proposed.
Torrent shook his head again. “They probably would have starved by now if they didn’t.”
“The animus could be an IceWing or SandWing, we don’t have to eat as often as you SeaWings,” Crystal pointed out. Still, Crystal doubted her own words, IceWings hadn’t had an animus in thousands of years. It was why Queen Glacier wanted the Darkstone so much. She supposed it was possible that animus magic could’ve been bred in from another tribe, or a line of animus IceWings had just evaded the queens’ eyes.
“Maybe,” Torrent murmured uncertainty. Using his dagger to sense the location of the magic again, he ended up pointing it into the snow. After resheathing it, the SeaWing spread open his webbed paws, and planted his wings and hind-legs firmly into the ground, using his thick tail for balance. He made a sort of swimming motion with his paws, and started digging into the snow, flinging a chunk behind him, narrowly missing Crystal.
“You’re digging?” Crystal asked. It seemed futile. Maybe if there was a cave beneath that had been open to the air recently, it could just be packed snow they had to get through. But if there wasn’t, and this snow was more permanent, it could just be ice and glacier, and she didn’t think they’d be able to dig through that so easily. But it wasn’t like a SeaWing would know much about that.
Even with her doubts, Crystal stepped around Torrent, and did the same, grabbing hunks of snow with her talons. Within a few moments, they’d created a small hole. More snow started to fall from the wall, causing the walls of the pit continuously collapsed inwards.
Torrent gave a quick glance back to Griffin, who was quietly watching the two. The snow was falling on his feathers. He shook his wings, causing a white dusting to fall from him.
“Are you going to help?” Torrent asked, trying not to sound too demanding.
“I’m too small,” Griffin cautiously replied, “I’d just get in the way.” The hidden meaning of Griffin’s words easily passed between the two unsibs. He didn’t want to help Torrent after what happened with Schist and the RainWing dragonet.
Torrent accepted the answer with a grunt, turning back to the pit in the snow he and Crystal were creating. They continued their attempt at digging while the snow started to let up, and the clouds cleared. As the sun traveled across the sky, the crescent of a small moon trailing behind it, the SeaWing and IceWing continued. Towards the end of the day, when the sun was partway to its descent on the horizon, the two had carved out a large hole within the snow, but still just a blemish on the side of the mountain. By this point, the snow was packed, and each stroke downwards had gotten more difficult.
“I don’t think we’re going to dig our way through this,” Crystal finally conceded, climbing out of the pit.
“It can’t be much further,” Torrent protested, still trying to dig into the snow.
Crystal shook her head. “No, I mean I don’t think we can. It’s almost summertime. This snow must be here year-round, and if it is, it’ll be too packed beneath to dig through it. If there’s an animus trapped beneath, we can’t get to them this way.”
Torrent sighed in frustration. He stopped digging, and stepped out of the pit, his webbing acting like snowshoes. Stupid snow.
“If they’re in a cave, there might be other caves that connect inside of the mountain. We should look for another entrance,” Crystal suggested.
“It’s getting late anyways,” Griffin yawned. He had been playing with the snow as Crystal and Torrent were digging, and had built a few misshapen sculptures from it. Torrent noticed a group of four winged snow piles, one of them smaller than the rest. Squinting at them, it looked a bit like Griffin had made resemblances of Torrent, Crystal, Schist, and himself.
“Fine,” Torrent agreed, “let’s fly around the mountain and look for entrances.”
The first cave on Agate Mountain didn’t seem to hold anything for the three. It was a small indentation in the side of the mountain, running in a diagonal, and it was already occupied by a young grizzly bear. Griffin gulped a little when he saw it. It wasn’t that much smaller than himself, and it had the anger and ferocity of a wild creature. He wouldn’t want to run into one of those by himself.
Fortunately, Crystal had gained plenty of experience with bears in the Ice Kingdom, and dwarfed the ursine. She roared at it and flared her wings in defense, causing it to quickly scamper off. It was smart enough to know that it would certainly lose a fight against a dragon almost twice its standing height.
“Just open your wings wide and roar if you see one,” Crystal explained to Torrent, “unless it has cubs, it’ll run off. They taste alright, too, if you’re hungry, but can be a hassle to take down.”
Torrent nodded, and poked his head into the cave. It was barely large enough for him to fit into, and didn’t look like it led anywhere. Just a crevasse in the mountainside. He snorted in annoyance, and the three continued on.
After a few more dead ends, the sun was setting low in the sky. The three had reached a larger cave, this one reaching far enough into the mountain that the three could comfortably fit on the sloped surface, but with still no luck. Griffin glanced up at the sky. The sun was on the horizon, with the crescent moon above it hidden by a cloud. Another moon was starting to peak over the east. “We should sleep now,” he yawned.
“I’m good,” Torrent growled, pacing back and forth around the back of the cave, “I’ve got nightvision, I can see in the dark. Maybe that’s what happens! The animus only comes out in the dark, so I could catch them while it’s night.”
Griffin closed his eyes, exhausted. “Fine,” he grumbled, “suit yourself.”
Crystal rolled her eyes. Her wings and claws were sore from the flying and digging she had done. “You need to sleep,” she ordered Torrent, dragging her tail on the ground, “we’ve been up since long before dawn. The animus can wait, they’re not going to end the world just because we waited another day.”
Torrent opened his mouth to protest, but decided better. He was tired, and his vision was getting blurry. He needed to sleep, maybe a clear head would help him find the animus better tomorrow. “Okay,” he yawned. He glanced around the cave. The surface was sloped, so it wouldn’t be comfortable, but it would do.
The SeaWing stepped to one edge of the cave and lied down, putting his head at the top of the slope and letting his tail stretch out to the other side. He stretched his wings out, and placed his dagger sheath to the side. Crystal did the same, lying next to Torrent, on the opposite side as Griffin. Gentle moonlight from one of the full moons poked through the cave entrance, casting a silver glow over the three sleeping, glinting off the Darkstone around Crystal’s neck.
Griffin woke to a damp gust of air from the cave entrance. Frigid water brushed against his feathers. He opened an eye, and looked out the entrance. Rain was falling outside, causing the sky to take on a dark-grey tone. Further up on the mountain, where the three had spent the previous day, it would be cold enough to snow. A hint of the sun peeked through the cloud cover, showing Griffin that it was close to midday already.
“You’re awake,” Crystal commented, her voice cold as dripping icicles.
Griffin turned around. Crystal was on her haunches, tearing at a piece of meat from their packs. The Darkstone swung back and forth from the silver chain around her neck. She didn’t look well-rested, and her eyes were sunken. Torrent was nowhere to be seen, his dagger gone with him.
“He left early this morning, before dawn,” Crystal grumbled, seeing Griffin looking at the empty space where the SeaWing had slept. “Woke me up, too.” She didn’t seem to happy about it.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” Griffin exclaimed in worry. Torrent could be anywhere right now! Maybe he was flying south to Jade Mountain? Or east again, to the Sea Kingdom? Or maybe he’d gone into the desert, Griffin thought he remembered seeing a few more blotches there.
“Why would I stop him?” Crystal snorted, confused. She thought for a moment, then laughed. “He’s just checking the mountain for more caves or crevasses. Might as well start early, there are plenty of them to search. SeaWings don’t seem to mind the rain much either.”
Griffin gave her a glare, then turned back to the cave entrance. Another gust of wind splattered against his feathers, lifting them up. He turned back at the IceWing, meeting her eyes in an intense staredown. A few moments passed.
“What?” Crystal exclaimed in frustration. “You want to talk? Fine, let’s talk.” She swished her tail back and forth, the spikes on it scratching the rock.
Griffin hissed, the feathers on the back of his neck fluffing up slightly. “The dragonet. You told Torrent to kill him in the rainforest.”
“So?” Crystal asked. “He’s the one who made the choice to do it! I didn’t force him to do anything.”
“So what?” Griffin snapped, his talons clenching. “You put the idea in his head, you turned my friend into a monster.”
“A monster?” Crystal snorted. “Please. He killed a dragonet. That’s hardly worthy of being a monster. Princess Burn practically eats dragonets for breakfast.”
“And you think that makes it right?” Griffin squawked. “Burn is possibly the worst dragon alive today!”
“Well, I’m sorry,” Crystal spat. She took a deep breath, calming herself a tad. “Really, I am. Maybe killing a dragonet wasn’t the right thing to do, but it’s done, and Pyrrhia has one less dangerous animus for it.”
“Do you really believe that?” Griffin exclaimed. “That a dragon should be murdered for some powers they were born with? Or do you have some ulterior motive?”
“What?” Crystal protested, her claws clenching up. She pushed aside the thought of Calamity, and how she’d met with him the last three nights. She wanted to tell Griffin, to make him understand why they had to have killed the dragonet, but would he even have believed her at this point? And Calamity had explicitly told her not to tell Griffin.
“I don’t!” Crystal claimed. “I’ve been completely honest with you about the Darkstone!”
“Really?” Griffin asked. “I remember what you told us about it when we first found you. I trusted you!”
“That was different. Do you really think I would tell two random dragons and a gryphon I just met about a potential superweapon?” she defended. “Why did you come with Torrent and I anyways? You should have gone after Schist!”
“Maybe I should have!” Griffin snapped. “But I’m not letting you exert your influence on Torrent!”
Crystal huffing in frustration. “You think that’s what this is about? You think I’m trying to make Torrent evil so we can go around Pyrrhia murdering dragonets? I’m trying to help him save Pyrrhia.” She gritted her teeth, and snorted. “I don’t need this.”
She stormed to the entrance of the cave, forcing Griffin to step out of the way so to avoid being trampled. The IceWing stepped into the downpour, droplets of rain beating down on her, and spread her wings, quickly taking off in the storm. Griffin glared after her, his enchanted heart beating. This wouldn’t be the last of this.
Wind and snow circled around Torrent as he tried to cover his head beneath his wings. Even still, the snowstorm beat down on him, particles of frozen water being flinging into his snout. He could barely see through the snow as he climbed up the old peak of Agate Mountain. Somewhere further away, too far for him to see in the blinding snow, was the new peak, exposed after the earthquake thousands of years ago and the old peak slid off the mountain.
An appropriate place for an animus to live, Torrent thought. According to some legends, Agate Mountain had been brought down by the animus Darkstalker himself in his rage. Apparently the IceWings called it Darkstalker’s Talon for that reason. Or was it Darkstalker’s Fang? Torrent couldn’t remember. Once the largest mountain in Pyrrhia, Agate Mountain now served as a stark symbol of the power of an animus. A single dragon could level an entire mountain just by an utterance. The right spell could reshape all of Pyrrhia, or even destroy it.
Torrent stepped to a cap, trying to make sense of his surroundings. There was no place higher up for him to step to, and he thought that he hadn’t landed far from the old peak, so maybe this was the place. The roaring wind whipped around him, pushing him too and fro. His snow-covered webbed paws were freezing. He shook the snow off one, and pulled his dagger from its sheath.
As snow and wind slammed into the SeaWing, Torrent placed a talon on the amethyst. The winds screamed, almost as if in protest. He made the now familiar motion, moving the dagger around in a circle. He felt the presence of Griffin and his map in the distance, a faint heat from the gem, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. He continued to rotate it around, but couldn’t seem to find anything else.
Torrent roared in frustration, bringing his paw down. As his webbed paw dropped, the dagger went with it, accidentally scratching between his scales. He gritted his teeth in pain. It had made a small nik, and droplets of red blood stained the snow, though it was quickly torn away with the wind and replaced with new, clean snow.
As the dagger pointed downwards, the amethyst got slightly warmer. Torrent’s eyes perked up, and the SeaWing kept moving it until it reached its nadir. The dagger pointed directly down, straight into the heart of the old mountain. The amethyst was warm. He closed his eyes in frustration. The animus he was looking for had probably hid themselves beneath the old peak, where Torrent could never get to them. But what could he do but try?
== Chapter 57 ==
Torrent and Crystal had little luck in finding their quarry, and time slowly ached by for the three. The mountainside was many times a dragon’s length, and the summer passed into fall as the three continued looking. Soon, the snow started to creep down the mountainside, covering more and more of it, Torrent’s frustration growing with every inch.
The antagonism between Crystal and Griffin also grew, over the animus dragonet, Schist’s leave, and Torrent himself. Eventually, they decided to stop talking altogether, and Crystal joined Torrent’s hopeless searches around the mountainside, while Griffin stayed in wherever their current sleeping arrangements were, occasionally leaving the area to search for food.
Griffin’s mistrust of Crystal only increased. He approached Torrent a few times about it, but the SeaWing refused to heed his advice, even when Griffin tried to tell Torrent about how Crystal still hadn’t taken the Darkstone off. Torrent had asked Crystal why the dangerous artifact was still around his neck, and she’d assured him that it would be completely inert on her, and that she just wanted to make sure it wasn’t stolen (she had given Griffin a glance while she said that, as if she expected him to take it). To Griffin’s irritation, Torrent believed her. He didn’t understand why, and it was infuriating.
Eventually, he got to a point where his only choice was to take action. One morning, while only a gentle drizzle fell on the mountain (it felt like the rain was constant, which Crystal had complained about once or twice), Griffin decided it was time to see if Crystal had any ulterior motives behind her actions. Knowing he would have hours before the two would return, he walked over to Crystal’s belongings, consisting of a small leather pouch.
He hesitated a second before opening the pouch. Whether he liked her or not, Crystal was still part of the team, and going behind her tail to do this just seemed wrong. That’s what he’d said, way back then, wasn’t it? They were a team: Torrent, Crystal, Schist, and himself. Or, they had been. Because of Crystal, they weren’t anymore. Schist had left. Griffin made up his mind. If Crystal had nothing to hide, it wouldn’t matter anyways.
Griffin carefully lifted the flap on her pouch, and pulled out a couple of food supplies, primarily stuff that he had caught. He moved it to the side, keeping a mental note of where it was in the bag, for when he was ready to put it back. He pulled out the next item, a scroll of some sort. This was of more interest.
Griffin laid out the scroll on the ground, and carefully rolled it open. It was a map of Pyrrhia, a bit different than Torrent’s. The lines was more fine, and claw scratches in the bottom-right corner spelled out something in a script Griffin wasn’t used to. It took him a few moments to figure it out, it was a different version of the script used in the Sea Kingdom, except with strange embellishments on letters that appeared much more curved than the straight lines that the SeaWing script consisted of.
“Property of Boreal,” Griffin read out. Boreal. Griffin remembered Crystal mentioning the name a couple times. Her father, perhaps? It wasn’t very interesting by itself, just a mundane map from the Ice Kingdom.
What was more interesting was a faded black line across the parchment, stretching from the cities where Gila had been across the Sky Kingdom, to the SeaWing coast. Griffin wondered for a moment what it was, then sighed, remembering that this was the same map Crystal had used when leading them through the Sky Kingdom. He glanced at it for a moment with a frown, realizing that the charcoal line only led partially up the coast, nowhere near to where Crystal had claimed she’d known about a safe passage. Apparently she’d lied about that, too. Griffin snorted in contempt. That was just like her.
He pulled out the final item in her pack, the diamond she’d enchanted to heal Schist. He felt better immediately as he held it, but quickly put it back. He didn’t want this feathers turning out like what it had done to Schist’s scales. What if Crystal had enchanted it to do something other than just healing, and that was why it had healed Schist so poorly? It was possible; Griffin wouldn’t put it past her.
The diamond was unfortunately the last thing in the pack. It didn’t seem like Griffin would find anything else interesting in there. Griffin sighed, and carefully packed away the map and the food, trying to make sure they were just as he’d found them, so Crystal wouldn’t notice. He doubted she would anyways, but Griffin didn’t want to take any chances. After he was done, he turned back to the cave entrance. The gentle drizzle continued to patter down, and a rivulet of water dripped into the crevasse.
Hours passed before Torrent and Crystal finally returned. As Crystal stepped into the cave, she shook her body, flinging water droplets from her scales and wings. Torrent had no need to do the same. He grumbled in frustration.
“No luck?” Griffin innocently asked, making sure his question was aimed towards the SeaWing and not Crystal.
“Of course not,” Torrent irritatedly hissed. “We’ve searched this mountainside up and down, but nothing. The animus had to get into the mountain somehow!”
Griffin kept his beak shut, avoiding giving Torrent the answer. He could figure out who was under this mountain for himself. Crystal glanced at Griffin in suspicion. “Maybe we should just go,” Crystal suggested to Torrent, “if we’re not going to have any luck, I’m sure there are other animuses out there.”
What’s Crystal getting at? Griffin wondered. She can’t just be giving up, can she? What does she want? As bored as he was here, Griffin didn’t want Torrent and Crystal to leave, either. This way, while trying to look for an animus they’d never be able to find, at least they wouldn’t be killing more innocent dragonets.
“I’m not leaving!” Torrent growled in protest, baring his teeth. Crystal shot him a glare.
“Sorry,” he mumbled to Crystal, trying to make up for his rudeness. “I just don’t want to give up after all this.”
“Alright,” Crystal sighed, trying to appear understanding. Still, she didn’t particularly want to stay here much longer. It felt like they were just wasting their time, when they could be going after an animus who was actually causing trouble instead of one who wouldn’t even show their snout. She took a look at the drizzly scenery outside. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Time trudged onwards, and the two continued searching. But on a day when Crystal had all but given up hope that they’d find an entrance into the old peak of Agate Mountain, she finally found something.
Frustrated with the poor game Griffin had been catching for them, she had decided to hunt for herself that day, while Torrent continued his search. By this point, they’d circled the old peak more times than Crystal cared to remember, and had gone around the current peak of Agate Mountain multiple times too. Leaving Torrent to search alone, Crystal hunted further down the mountainside, hoping to find a bear or a mountain lion to take down.
As she was attempting to track a fine grizzly that had escaped her talons previously, the IceWing came about one of the larger caves in the side of the mountain. She remembered this one well — it was one of the largest, and had a stalagmite which looked closely like a rearing dragon. Just another dead end. But this time, as she passed by it, a strange tingling sense itched across her scales like if she’d been shocked. She turned back to the cave for a moment, the Darkstone around her neck tingling. The cave looked different somehow, as if the mouth had grown. Had there been a rock collapse?
On a whim, Crystal decided to investigate further, leaving the bear for later. She stepped inwards. The cave formed a small room, with nearly flat flooring and plenty of space, though it sloped slightly downwards towards the back. A little rivulet of water dripped down from the cave mouth. Crystal crawled towards the back. Even in the dim light, she could tell that there wasn’t a pool of water, as she would have suspected. She stepped closer, curious.
The little rivulet of water passed into a small hole in the back of the cave, just large enough for a dragon to step down into. Dull gemstones of a diverse range of colors lined the entrance. How had she not noticed this before?
Crystal poked her head down through the hole, the rivulet of water splashing against her horns. It was difficult to see in the darkness, but the IceWing could make out a large, empty cavern, even greater than the one she was in. The sound of running water could be heard, echoing in the distance, and a gust of cold air blew from behind, pecking against her wings. She’d found an opening.
“Torrent!” she yelled in excitement, running out of the cave, and taking off into the air. She looked around the surroundings, just to be certain that she could find the cavern again. “Torrent!”
She found the SeaWing by the great peak of Agate Mountain, flying around in the distance. She went to join him. “Torrent, I found a entrance!” she clambered, like a giddy dragonet. After so long, they’d finally found it!
“Really?” Torrent asked, skeptical. Had all their work, all their searching, come to an end? Crystal’s nod and grinned confirmed it. Torrent excitedly flew after Crystal, following her on the flight back to the old peak.
“Wait, let me get Griffin,” Torrent stopped, as the two flew past the cave where they had made camp. Crystal frowned. She didn’t see why he had to be involved in this; he’d just try to stop them. Still, she stayed silent. If Torrent wanted to get Griffin, she wouldn’t stop him.
A few minutes later, Torrent returned with a grimacing Griffin. Crystal gave him a smirk of satisfaction, and got a glare in response. The three flew down to the cave together, Crystal leading the way.
When they arrived, they stepped into the cave. “Didn’t we already check this?” Torrent asked, seeing the familiar site. He was sure he’d been here before.
“There was a rockslide or something since then,” Crystal guessed, “and it opened up.
Torrent rushed towards the back, his darkvision quickly adjusting to the dim light. When he reached it, he frowned. A small rivulet of water had dripped to the back of the cave, forming a small pool. He dipped a claw in. It seemed solid, there was no passage.
“Well?” Crystal asked pridefully.
Torrent turned around, and gave her a look of concern. Was this some practical joke she was playing on him? “I don’t see anything.”
Crystal gave him an expression of confusion, and walked over towards him, Griffin following. She looked around his webbed paws, craning her neck to see. She struck the rock with a talon, as if to make sure it was real. “No,” she uttered, shaking her head, “there was something here! I swear.”
Torrent looked around, grimacing. “Maybe you saw a reflection?” he asked. Griffin gave a snort of contempt. He started to step away from the end of the cave, leaving it.
“No, no it was real!” Crystal protested. “I poked my head in it.” She looked back at Torrent, then up at the rock ceiling above him. It looked like it was shaking a little, and dust crumbled down on the SeaWing’s head. “Stop moving,” she suddenly ordered.
Torrent stopped. The shaking above ceased, and no dust fell. Crystal frowned, before an idea suddenly hit her. “Torrent,” she spoke, “go to the cave entrance, fly directly away for twenty wingbeats, then come back.”
Torrent opened his mouth. “What?” he asked in confusion.
“Just trust me,” Crystal told him.
He did as she asked, walking to the edge of the cavern before taking off into the sky. Griffin glanced around in worry. As soon as he left, a rumbling sound took place in the cave, and dust fell from the ceiling. He turned back to the end of the cavern, where Crystal was intently staring. Suddenly, the rocks around the pool of water started to pull apart, and little gems again protruded from the grey-brown stone. The pool drained below, and the rivulet started to flow. A hole into the cave beneath had opened up.
Then, just as it had opened, it started to close again. Crystal looked back around. Torrent was returning from his flight. When he touched down, he looked around the cave again. Nothing had changed from when he’d left. “So, what exactly was supposed to happen?” he asked.
“It’s magical,” Griffin snapped, frustrated, “a passage opened up after you left.”
“The entire mountain is enchanted, I think,” Crystal grinned, “or something like that. Your dagger was preventing us from finding an entrance. So now, all you need to do is let the animus magic work.”
Torrent opened his mouth finally understanding. If the entire mountain was enchanted, that explained why he couldn’t find an entrance. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he nervously replied. “If I let the mountain’s enchantment affect me, then who knows what it could do. Maybe I could disenchant it instead?”
“I wouldn’t,” Crystal replied. “If you do that, all the caves might be collapsed beneath, meaning we could never find our animus.”
“If they live down here, and this is their home, maybe it would kill them,” Torrent suggested. “If they survive, they’ll have to resurface.”
“No, he won’t,” Griffin grumbled. Crystal and Torrent looked down at him, wanting an explanation. “The animus you’re trying to find can’t be harmed that way. He has a spell on him that makes him invulnerable.”
“Him?” Crystal asked with a glare. “Have you been communicating with this ‘him’ without us knowing? You’re a traitor!”
“I’m not!” Griffin hissed angrily. “Seriously? Three moons, you haven’t realized? The animus you’re looking for is the Darkstalker.”
Crystal’s scales instinctively clenched up, and she took a step backwards. She felt dizzy for a moment. Somewhere, below Agate Mountain, the Darkstalker was living? “You’re lying,” she sputtered.
“He’s not,” Torrent muttered, “Agate Mountain has always been associated with the Darkstalker mythos. He brought down the mountain with his magic, which might be why it’s enchanted.”
Griffin shook his head. “No, I think it was Fathom.”
“How do you know this?” Torrent asked Griffin, suspicious.
“I read the scrolls in the Sea Kingdom, just like you,” Griffin replied, slightly offended. “One of the copies of Prince Ripple’s scrolls claimed that Darkstalker was defeated by being buried beneath a mountain somewhere. As Agate Mountain fell the same day the NightWings abandoned their kingdom, according to legend, it would make sense that he was buried then.” 
Torrent looked slightly skeptical. If he remembered his legends right, Darkstalker had killed a bunch of IceWings even after the NightWings left.
“And he’s still alive?” Crystal asked, almost yelling.
“Yes,” Griffin smirked, happy to see the fear on Crystal’s snout, “I think Torrent’s map proves that.”
Torrent paced back and forth. “How long have you known this?” he asked Griffin. “And why have you only know told us?”
“Does it matter?” Griffin huffed. “You’d have killed him all the same, ancient dragon of extreme evil or innocent dragonet alike.”
“How long, and why?” Torrent growled, wanting a serious answer.
“It took me a few weeks to recall,” Griffin replied pridefully, “and no one bothered to ask me what I thought about this endeavor.”
Torrent seethed, letting out a breath in anger. They had been here for months, and Griffin had known about this the entire time without telling them. He was furious. “Crystal, let’s go,” he growled.
Torrent walked over towards the growing pool at the back of the cave, looking down on it. Crystal followed behind him. Griffin stayed still, swiveling his head to watch the two dragons. 
“Dagger, I allow the enchantment on the caves in Agate Mountain to function normally,” said Torrent.
A creaking sound groaned from within the mountain as the hole opened up again. The small multi-colored gems protruded from the cave wall again. Torrent took a step back, so not to fall inwards. When the hole had reopened, he carefully climbed in, folding his wings against his body so to just barely fit. Crystal followed behind him, leaving Griffin behind at the entrance.
== Chapter 58 ==
It took a moment for Torrent’s eyes to adjust to the cavern. The colors around him faded to tones of grey as his darkvision took over. Crystal, on the other claw, could barely see in the darkness. She grabbed ahold of the end of one Torrent’s wings, squinting as she tried to see her way around the cave.
“Is that water?” she asked, hearing a running sound nearby.
Torrent looked down. She was right, there was a small stream running through the cave that the rivulet of water merged into. It came from further above, from a small hole far too tight for Torrent to fit into. Following the stream with his eyes, it went deeper into the ground. More of the small gems poked out from the walls, as if they were bursting through the stone in the cave. He lit up one of his luminescent stripes to let Crystal see, casting a dim light over the cave.
“This way,” Torrent whispered to Crystal, the IceWing letting go of his wing. 
Crystal walked slowly as she followed Torrent, every step carefully placed. The ground was slightly damp, and the stones were slick. The stream was wider than she had thought, water rushing down the narrow slope. Her tail brushed alongside the wall, and suddenly, dim specks of colorful light emanated from the nearby jewels. Magic? she wondered. Or something else? It eerily reminded her of the Darkstone around her neck.
“So, is the Darkstalker really down here?” Crystal asked. Every IceWing knew his legend — the mongrel son of Prince Arctic and a NightWing who’d kidnapped him, the Darkstalker had used his stolen animus magic to murder dragons in their sleep. IceWings, in particular.
“I don’t know,” Torrent truthfully answered. “My map says there’s an animus, but it might not be him. Most of the legends claim that it wasn’t until a year after Agate Mountain fell that Darkstalker finally disappeared, but others claim that Clearsight defeated him earlier with something Prince Fathom, one of my ancestors, enchanted.”
“So Fathom was the one who took down the mountain?” Crystal proposed. “If the Darkstalker had enchanted himself to be immortal, then Fathom could have trapped him in here. Why couldn’t he just enchant his way out?”
“His talisman,” Torrent explained. This part of the legend he’d learned well in Ripple’s scrolls. At the time, he’dd wondered if Orca would have been able to use something like that to protect her soul, but considering Darkstalker’s fate, disregarded the possibility. “It was enchanted so that his animus powers were within it.”
Crystal nodded. “So he might actually be down here,” she whispered. Somewhere beneath her claws, the ancient animus lay. She snarled. “Why couldn’t Griffin have told us earlier? You’d think that being directly on top of literally the most powerful dragon to ever touch Pyrrhia would’ve been kinda important!”
Torrent sighed. “I don’t know. I think he’s still angry over what happened in the rainforest, and this is his way of being spiteful.”
“Well, maybe he should just leave if he doesn’t want to help,” Crystal grumbled. “He put us in danger.”
Torrent gave her a look of concern. “Crystal, he’s still my friend,” he said, “he’s the only thing I have left of the Sea Kingdom.”
“I know, I know,” Crystal continued, exasperating. The stream seemed to contract at this point, and started to run faster. “But I wish he could try being nicer or working with us for a change. What’s done is done. Can’t he stop being angry at us for killing that dragonet already?”
Torrent stayed silent for a moment, in partial agreement. It had been months since the incident, and he didn’t get why Griffin still hadn’t forgiven them. “Yeah,” he replied, “maybe it has something to do with Schist.”
“Maybe,” Crystal muttered. “They were always close.” Suddenly, Torrent stopped, almost causing Crystal to step on his tail. “It’s a dead end,” she commented, trying to see from behind the SeaWing.
Torrent groaned, and moved his head closer. The stream seemed to run through a small passage in the cave wall. He took a step into the cold water, and lit up a few more of his stripes. The passage was small, barely large enough for Torrent to squeeze through, and it looked like it was completely flooded with water.
“No,” he muttered. “Not a dead end.” He clenched his wings together, and stuck his head down into the water. Due to his burned gill, the water didn’t provide as oxygen as he would’ve liked, but it would do. He’d started to squeeze through the tunnel when Crystal grabbed ahold of his tail, and gave it a tug. Torrent raised his head from the water, confused.
“We shouldn’t go down there,” she warned him, “you could get stuck, and I could drown.”
Torrent frowned. “We’ve come this far,” he protested, “maybe we can find Darkstalker! He could be just beyond this tunnel!”
Crystal looked skeptical, and peered into the passage. “I doubt it, and we don’t have any way of knowing how far it goes on. If there are more caves, we need to make sure we don’t get lost.”
Torrent gritted his teeth. They had finally found an entrance, and now it was just more waiting! Still, he accepted Crystal’s suggestions. She was right, it would be too dangerous to go in now. If he got stuck, he wasn’t sure Crystal would be able to pull him out without drowning herself, especially with the running water. “Okay,” he complied, turning back around, “let’s go back.”
The two dragons walked back up the slope, returning to the top of the cavern. As Torrent poked his head above the drizzle of water, he saw Griffin at the top, with a somber expression on his beak. A small leather pouch was strung beneath his wing.
“What’s going on?” Torrent asked Griffin. “We didn’t find Darkstalker, by the way. There’s an underwater tunnel further into the caves, and we decided to wait.” An idea entered Torrent’s head. Griffin was small, and could breath underwater, maybe he could go!
Griffin grimaced a little as Torrent pulled himself up. Crystal went after him, staring warily at Griffin’s pouch.
“I decided I’m going to go,” Griffin carefully stated, swinging the pouch from side to side, “I fe —”
“Wait, what?” Torrent asked in concern, wondering if he had heard Griffin right. “You’re going to go? Like, leave? You can’t just go, you’re my friend.”
“As I was saying,” Griffin continued, unhappy to be interrupted, “I feel like it might be a good idea for us to have some time apart. Just . . . to get out of each other’s currents for a while.” He cast a glare towards Crystal as he said this.
“How long?” Torrent questioned. “Like, you’re going to be gone for an hour, a couple of days, longer?”
“Longer,” Griffin replied. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to come back to the two, at least not while Crystal was still here. They had murdered a dragonet, and he felt ashamed just being around them, for not hating Torrent with all of his soul because of it. “Until I’m ready to come back.”
“What if we leave?” Torrent wondered, worried. “What if you can’t find us again?” The SeaWing was starting to get frantic now. “What if something happens to you, and you get stuffed and locked in Burn’s tower?”
Griffin ruffled his feathers. He was a little glad to see that Torrent was worried for him, but that didn’t change his decision. “If you really have to find me, I’ll might be with Trustbreaker,” he conceded. He was annoyed by this already, he hadn’t particularly wanted to tell Torrent where he was going. For all he knew, Torrent could decide to pop in on him in a few days. “And I don’t need protecting. I can take care of myself.”
Torrent sighed, and paced across the stone. He didn’t want Griffin to leave. Griffin was his friend, his brother. He hadn’t wanted things to come to this. But maybe it would be best for all of them, and when he came back, Griffin would be able to forgive him and Crystal, and they’d all be a happy group again. Without Schist.
“Okay,” Torrent conceded gloomily, “I’ll miss you, you know.”
“I know,” Griffin acknowledged. “I will too.” He wasn’t sure how certain that really was, but he hoped it was true. He turned around towards the entrance to the cave. Only a slight drizzle. Not ideal weather for flying, but probably the best he’d get.
Griffin stepped towards the exit, and turned back to the two dragons. Torrent appeared as glum as the rainy day, and he looked towards the ground, averting Griffin’s eyes. Griffin looked to Crystal, expecting her to be smirking gleefully about his departure, or to at least have a hint of a smile. Instead, her expression was devoid of happiness.
== Chapter 59 ==
Crosswinds was a tumultuous town, and unlike the facade of calm and tranquility that the twin SkyWing and SandWing cities further north along the river held, tensions in Crosswinds had not only simmered to the surface, but had boiled, scalding all the dragons around as the bubbles popped. Although an armistice was technically in place between Burn and Blister’s forces in the surrounding area, to most of the dragons inside, it still felt like war. The primary population of the town was SandWings and MudWings, with the SandWings supporting each of the three princesses in roughly even proportions.
Fights often broke out, sometimes turning deadly, between the MudWings and Blister-backing SandWings against the Burn and Blaze supporters, who had a stiff alliance against the MudWings and the SandWings that had joined them. And unlike the twin cities to the north, Crosswinds didn’t have the luxury of clear divisions — even though the Great Five-Tail River crossed through the town, the vast majority of the population lay on the east, so there were no physical dividing lines. Various groups of each side settled in small neighborhoods, sporadically thrown around the town, and there were few ways for an outsider to tell the difference between these sections, barring the occasional fence hastily thrown up in an attempt to prevent conflict, or more commonly, a painted line indicating where one faction’s turf began and where it ended.
Griffin arrived in the town at night, walking in from the outside to make sure he remained unseen. If Trustbreaker’s directions were right, this would be where he resided currently. He looked around. Not a particularly friendly place to live. As he walked down the street, he noticed the windows of all the residences he walked past were boarded up with planks of wood. A scroll had been hung to a plank with the message “Mudscum And Friends Leave Now Or Die” written on it in a black ink. A hastily drawn sketch of a MudWing with a black cross over its head was placed beneath, with rectangles reminiscent of stakes in each eye. Griffin passed a building which had been burnt down almost completely, with only charred bricks remaining, remnants from a collapse. It took Griffin a few moments to see a single MudWing dragonet huddled in the far back corner of the remains, asleep.
Griffin shrunk down cautiously, quietly passing by. He hadn’t wanted to see Trustbreaker again — the NightWing’s mindreading powers were quite disconcerting, and he’d quickly know everything that Torrent and Crystal had done — but he hadn’t had anyone else to turn to. It’s not like he could go back to the Sea Kingdom to see Orca, and Schist had wanted Griffin to stay away. He supposed he could have gone to see Bobcat and Kite in the Sky Kingdom, but that was almost on the opposite side of the world from here. Trustbreaker wasn’t too far a flight, and Fracture could be with him, the one-eyed IceWing whom Griffin had met after he’d left the Sea Kingdom.
As Griffin continued forward, he noticed a small sandy-coated tomcat lying beneath a stray plank of wood. He stepped closer, and brought his beak down. “Trustbreaker, are you there?” he asked. “It’s me, Griffin.”
The cat leapt up with a hiss, and lashed a paw out at Griffin, who shook his head back in alarm. The cat quickly scrambled off into the distance, leaving a frowning Griffin and a mess of feathers on the ground.
“Not all of the cats here are friendly to me,” a somber voice suddenly spoke from behind Griffin. He swiveled his head around in alarm to see a dragon towering above him, covered with silvery-black scales. “They distrust the dragons around here more,” Trustbreaker continued.
Griffin gave a sigh of relief, realizing that the dragon was Trustbreaker. “How did —”
“— I find you?” Trustbreaker finished. “Your thoughts are vivid words among a sea of images and emotion from the other animals. It wasn’t hard to distinguish them when you came into the city.”
“Oh,” Griffin uncomfortably frowned, “does that mean other NightWing mindreaders could find me?”
Trustbreaker shook his head. “No. Fracture has told me I am the only one here, and even if there were any, your thoughts would be too similar to the dragons around you to receive any special attention. Although they might be curious about one so optimistic in this town.”
“Optimistic?” Griffin asked. He would hardly call himself optimistic. Sure, maybe he wasn’t as grumpy and negative as Torrent was, but he wasn’t optimistic.
“It doesn’t take a mindreader to see that the dragons here have all given up hope,” Trustbreaker explained. “Not that I blame them. I myself am the same way.”
Griffin glanced around Trustbreaker’s forepaws. The cat that was usually near him wasn’t there.
“Sapphire is at my residence,” Trustbreaker explained, instantly knowing what Griffin was wondering. “He’s protecting it from any intruders.”
“Stop doing that,” Griffin hissed. “Reading my mind.”
Trustbreaker looked down, dejected. “I apologize. I don’t have any dragons for company in this town, and after listening to only cats for months, hearing a speaking creature is enthralling.”
Griffin clenched his talons. “Alright,” he responded, “just don’t.”
Trustbreaker nodded, and looked back to the alley. “I’ll try. Let me take you back to where I’m living, and we can talk more there. My friends can find us a path where we’ll remain unseen.”
With a brush of air, the NightWing was off, almost invisible in the shadows and moonlight. Griffin followed after him, trying to keep Trustbreaker firmly within his sights. The two rushed down the moonlit streets, eventually reaching a miniscule house between two other buildings. Griffin stepped inside, Trustbreaker following.
Letting out a quick puff of flame, Trustbreaker lit a small candle, showing that there were only three creatures inside the house: Griffin, Trustbreaker, and Sapphire, staring curiously at Griffin. Trustbreaker stepped to the side, and and kneeled down, resting his underbelly on the floor. Sapphire walked over, and rubbed his pelt against Trustbreaker’s scales. “So,” the NightWing asked, “why are you here?”
Griffin looked around for a comfortable location. “Don’t you know already?” he asked.
Trustbreaker shook his head. “It is not easy to listen to memories, and I have ignored your thoughts since you asked me to.”
Griffin was thankful for that. He didn’t particularly want the NightWing prying around his thoughts and secrets. “Crystal,” he grumbled, “after you left, we went to the rainforest; Torrent found an animus there.”
“And?” Trustbreaker asked.
Griffin closed his eyes, and took in a deep breath. “The animus was a RainWing dragonet. Maybe a year or two old at most.”
Trustbreaker frowned. “A dragonet?” he asked.
“Yes!” Griffin hissed, irritated that he hadn’t elicited a bigger reaction from Trustbreaker.
“Apologies,” Trustbreaker replied, “I’m just afraid I’ve seen far too many dead dragonets on these streets to be too shocked, not that it makes anything right.”
“You read my mind again,” Griffin seethed.
Trustbreaker sighed. “I’m sorry, I’m still catching the wind of this ignoring thing.”
“Fine,” Griffin accepted. “So,” he continued, “the thing is that this isn’t something that Torrent would normally do! Back in the Sea Kingdom, he was kind, and he’d have never killed a dragonet just because he was scared of some stupid powers! He wouldn’t have done it if Crystal hadn’t convinced him!”
“Not the first time Crystal has killed out of fear,” Trustbreaker mused.
“What?” Griffin asked, confused. “She’s killed other dragons?”
“I was in communication with her sister, Clarity, recently,” the NightWing explained. “Apparently, Crystal killed her father before she left the Ice Kingdom to prevent another recreation of the Darkstone. Did she not tell you?”
“No!” Griffin growled. “Her own father? Why?”
“According to Clarity, Crystal is . . . risk-averse. She likes things being under control, not leaving them up to fate. If she had let her father live, there was a reasonable possibility that the  Darkstone could have been remade by Queen Glacier and her father. This way, there was no chance of that. Apparently, Clarity had wanted to go after her sister to get justice after figuring out what she’d done, but Fracture convinced her that going after Crystal could only make things worse, and that we needed to continue focusing on making Pyrrhia a more peaceful place.”
“She needs to be stopped.” Griffin stated.
Trustbreaker shook his head. “Not by us. Fracture knows what he’s doing.”
Griffin frowned, but didn’t argue. He had come here to get away from Crystal and Torrent, not to gather friends to defeat them. Fracture had helped Griffin find Torrent again, and had been kind to him when he was at his worst. Griffin owed the IceWing at least enough to trust him in this.
“In fact, Fracture asked me to take you to him after you arrived,” Trustbreaker continued, “he wanted to meet with you again, directly.”
“Really?” Griffin asked, surprised. “Is here here, in Crosswinds?”
Trustbreaker shook his head. “No. He wants to meet us up north in five fortnights, to this date, on the southern border of the Ice Kingdom.”
== Chapter 60 ==
“Snow,” Torrent mused. A white fleck fell on his snout as it gently drifted downwards. The ground surrounding the cave was already provided with a thin dusting. Crystal walked up next to him, and peered outside. It had finally gotten cold enough that the snow had reached their cave.
The two had still not made their descent into the underground stream. Crystal remained cautious and hesitant, and Torrent had decided it would be fair time to stockpile up food in case winter came early. They’d visited a SandWing town due west of the mountain sympathetic to Blaze’s cause, and Crystal had bought some salted meat and supplies while there, hopefully enough rations to last them for quite a while. While IceWings could go for weeks on end without eating, SeaWings were a little bit less fortunate.
Torrent stepped onto the white layer, his webbed paws creating imprints in the thin film of snow. He looked up the mountain. While the snow might be falling down slowly now, he didn’t know how fast it could speed up. If there was too much overnight, Crystal warned, the two could be trapped in the cave without food and water. Fortunately, the snow could be used if the two required water, and Crystal’s ever-readiness had made sure they wouldn’t starve if trapped.
Crystal hadn’t seemed happy about deciding to stay in the cave if they got snowed-in, but she accepted the risks. Torrent felt like it was the only way — every day now, the underground stream was getting smaller, due to its source being clogged up by snow, and soon the only water would be from snowmelt. Then, the two might be able to get through the hole, and into the caverns further beneath, where the ancient animus Darkstalker slept.
Torrent scraped a talon along the ground, picking up snow on it. “Do you think we should check up on Griffin?” he asked Crystal. Griffin still hadn’t returned, and if he did while the cave was snowed-in, he might not be able to find or get to Torrent and Crystal.
Crystal allowed her talons to sink into the thin layer of snow. Just like home, with Clarity. A place she could never return to, not that she ever wanted to. There was nothing left for her but an execution by Queen Glacier. She frowned, just thinking of her queen’s smug grin, then remembered what Torrent was asking. “No,” she replied. “He wanted some space from us, and we should respect that. He’ll come back in his own time.”
“But what if he got hurt?” Torrent protested. “What if Queen Burn captured him?”
“He’ll be fine,” Crystal assured him. “He went to Trustbreaker, remember? You remember what he did, Griffin is in the best of claws.” She knew this wasn’t entirely true — there were plenty of awful things that could have happened to Griffin along the way, but if he was already dead, there was nothing to do about it. It’s not like there was a delivery service up here, so he couldn’t send up letters anyways. And if he’d wanted Torrent to go after him if he’d been gone for this long, he should have said so.
She had been angry at Griffin when he’d left, but now that he’d been gone for a while, she actually missed the bird-brain somewhat. She missed Schist too, of course, but it’s not like he’d ever come back. He’d given her the choice of his friendship, or the dragonet’s life, and she’d chosen the latter. Maybe Griffin, on the other claw, would be more forgiving. Being alone with Torrent was nice, but it sometimes got quiet, and his companionship didn’t always feel like enough.
The SeaWing turned around, and walked back into the inside of the cave. Crystal stayed outside for a minute longer, letting the snowflakes rest upon her scales, before returning to the inside. The snow was starting to fall harder now.
It was only a few days until Crystal’s predictions proved true, and snow had covered the entrance to the cave where Crystal and Torrent resided. The SeaWing pushed against the snow, and attempted to brush some away from the top, but it was no use. Snow only fell inwards, and Torrent was unable to clear a path. The two were trapped.
Torrent lit up a few of his bioluminescent stripes, providing light for Crystal to see the surrounding cave. She dug a claw into the snow, and got the same results as Torrent. There was no way out of the cave, at least not without going further beneath, just as they had intended. Hopefully, this way, the stream would have dried up enough for them to pass, and they’d be able to go into the caverns beneath to take on the animus waiting there. If not, then they’d just have to wait for the snow to melt to get out of the cave, which could be anywhere from just a few days to months.
The SeaWing climbed down the hole into the cavern beneath, where the stream had been. Water still remained, but instead of the large gushing stream from before, it now was only a rivulet, snaking down the wet bed. The snowfall had stopped the flow, and now, the caves further beneath should be accessible, if Torrent was able to fit through the passage.
“It’s gone!” Torrent called up to Crystal in excitement. Now, finally, after so much waiting, he’d be able to continue.
Crystal uncomfortably climbed down the hole, stretching herself as her claws scraped against the top of the stone step. After getting down, she glanced over at the trickle of water nervously, Torrent’s light rendering it visible.
“C’mon, this way,” Torrent continued, walking along the cave floor, down to where they had been unable to continue before.
Crystal tried to keep up, knowing that if Torrent went too fast, she’d be lost in the darkness. “Wait,” she called out.
Torrent stopped, and turned around. “What is it?” he asked.
The IceWing squirmed uncomfortably, and tapped a claw on the rock below. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” she blurted out. “One of us, or both, could still get stuck in the caverns below, or maybe the water could suddenly floor in. We could wait for Griffin to return, he could do it instead.”
Torrent closed his eyes in frustration. “We’ve already planned all that,” he protested, “we can’t just wait until Darkstalker decides to suddenly awaken, can we?” Crystal shivered at his words, her tail spines ricketing back and forth. The SeaWing frowned, noticing Crystal’s movements. “This isn’t about the stream, is it?”
Crystal shook her head. “It’s about him,” she said, with a hint of terror and menace, “the Darkstalker.”
“He’s just an animus,” Torrent explained, “he’s nothing to worry about. Just like Gila, and that RainWing dragonet, and Magma, except he’s alone, asleep, and doesn’t set things on fire.”
“I know, I know,” Crystal replied. “Logically, I shouldn’t have anything to fear about, at least not more than any of the others we’ve been up against. But he’s still the Darkstalker. He lurks in every dark corner of the Ice Kingdom, he hides within every cloud when we fly. He can enter our dreams, and kill us in our nightmares. Every IceWing has been brought up to fear him and everything he’s touched, and now, he’s literally asleep, just beneath my claws, and I’m going towards him, not flying away in terror. He’s like your Albatross, except Albatross killed a bunch of princes and princess, not random dragonets in their sleep.”
“That’s nothing to be scared of,” Torrent replied, trying to make Crystal feel better, “I’ve killed dragonets in their sleep too, remember?” Crystal gave him a glare. Not helping, he thought. “Alright, I get it,” he continued, “but if we can do this, we kill Darkstalker while he’s asleep, we can make sure that every IceWing dragonet, forever, will be safe from him. Isn’t that worth risking death?”
There are fates worse than death, Crystal thought, remembering a few of the hopefully hyperbolic Darkstalker legends she’d grown up with. She took a deep breath, calming her nerves. This kind of fear wasn’t befitting of her, a Second Circle IceWing, a scientist’s daughter. She couldn’t let her emotions overpower her, no matter how frightening the Darkstalker had been made out to be. “Yes, let’s go,” she answered, now with resolve.
The two continued on through the downwards sloping cave, until they reached the bottom. The small opening was still there, more exposed to the air now that the stream had closed to a trickle. Torrent peered in. He wasn’t sure how far it went, but it looked like it would be big enough for him to fit through, though he didn’t think he’d be able to turn around. Crystal checked her pouch, making sure that they had enough water and food to last them a while.
Crystal took the first step into the tunnel, her paws splashing in the slow rivulet of water beneath. After she took a few steps in, Torrent followed behind, scrunching his wings against his body so he could fit, the tips of his horns scraping on the ceiling. This wouldn’t be a comfortable walk. Crystal touched a claw to the Darkstone, still hanging from her neck. It glinted faintly, being far outshone by the glowing scales on Torrent’s snout that he used to light the way. Just in case, she told herself, as the tips of her tail-spikes dragged through the water.
== Chapter 61 ==
Even though they were at the same distance north, the southern Ice Kingdom felt much colder than the northern Sky Kingdom to Griffin, although some of it could have just been the stark, dreary scenery. Unlike the hills on the edges of the Claws of the Clouds, the hills here were barren and cold, and as the two went further north, they quickly became covered in snow. It was in one of these hills where Trustbreaker and Griffin landed, in a wide crevasse stretching across the landscape like a grinning maw. Griffin’s feathers stiffened up as soon as they started down into it. Something felt off here.
As Griffin touched down, his talons sunk a little ways into the snow. He flapped frantically for a moment, afraid that he’d be swallowed down by it. Fortunately, the snow wasn’t deep, less than a foot. Griffin sighed in relief, looking back towards Trustbreaker. The NightWing started to walk along the crevasse, with Griffin following, his smaller weight making it easier to walk on the surface. Sapphire darted back and forth, running between Griffin and Trustbreaker’s legs. It wasn’t long before they saw their destination. Cradled between the two slopes of the surrounding hills stood a building made of ice-coated stone. The walls glinted in the sunlight, forcing Griffin to look away as they approached it.
The building seemed to be of a rectangular shape, with two great doors, large enough for any dragon, standing in front to guard the entrance. Above the doors, four names were carved, though the script was so old that Griffin was able to make out only a couple of letters. The doors themselves were exquisite, and unlike the crystalized stone exterior of the building, these were made of a shimmering silver metal, and took up most of the front wall. A scene of dragons was carved into the metal, though Griffin was unable to make it out from his distance. Seven pedestals, no taller than the building itself, were arranged in a semi-circle around the doorways, and at the top of each, a statue of a dragon stood. One for each kingdom, Griffin noted. A name was engraved at the top of each pedestal. From the prideful manner each dragon carried herself and the extensive jewelry on many, it was clear that these were royalty, if not queens themselves.
Griffin’s eyes quickly turned to two living dragons, both IceWings, in front of the semi-circle. One paced back and forth, weaving in and out of the circle of pillars. She had light-blue scales, and was around the average size of an IceWing. It didn’t take long for Griffin to notice her eerie resemblance to Crystal.
The second IceWing, Griffin had already been acquainted with. Fracture rested lazily against the central pillar, the one with an IceWing on top, with a nonchalance more befitting of a RainWing than an IceWing. One of his wings wrapped part-way around the pedestal, and his tail curled in the same direction, the spikes on the end folded casually inwards. The faintest hint of a green tint resided in his scales, and a small leather band wrapped around his head and behind his horns. A thicker piece of brown leather was attached to the front of the band, covering the IceWing’s left eye. As Griffin approached, Fracture gave him a happy wave with a paw.
Griffin, Trustbreaker, and Sapphire continued forward, coming within range of the building. The other IceWing noticed them, and ceased her pacing, stepping over towards Fracture to greet them. “Trustbreaker,” she stated with a smile. 
He nodded in reply. “Clarity.” Sapphire trotted over to Clarity, examining the tip of her tail with a paw.
Griffin smiled faintly as he stepped towards Fracture. The IceWing carefully straightened himself up, unraveling from the pillar.
“It’s been a while,” Griffin grinned.
Fracture thought for a moment, unsure of the answer to the question. He tapped a few claws on the snow, as if counting out the time. “I believe you’re right,” he finally responded. “It has been a while since I last saw you!”
Griffin was unfazed. The IceWing never had been able to keep track of time well, at least when Griffin had met him in the Mud Kingdom. “What is this place?” Griffin asked, gesturing around at the ornate surroundings. From the script, it seemed ancient, but the stone was uncracked, and it looked like it was in perfect condition.
“Oh, this?” Fracture asked. “It’s a mausoleum. Important dragons are buried in them after they die. This one is the Mausoleum of Queen Frost and a Few Other Dragons Who Weren’t Well Known Enough to Be Put in the Title.” He waved a claw at the names above the door. “She had it built for her not long after the Scorching.”
“The Scorching?” Griffin asked in surprise. That was, what, five thousand years ago? “And it’s still here?” He was amazed, he didn’t even know buildings from the Scorching still existed. As far as he knew, the only thing that remained were a lot of strange and conflicting legends.
 Fracture nodded. “Mhmm. Just like the IceWing palace, the place was enchanted by an animus to constantly rebuild itself, which is why this place is in such beautiful condition. Apparently, there used to be a city built around here, but now, all that’s left is snow and ice.”
Griffin looked around at the surroundings. Other than the mausoleum itself, the only other thing in the small valley was a flat surface of snow. No trace of any ancient city. He turned back to the entrance of the mausoleum. It being enchanted would explain why it had felt off when he’d arrived.
“Well!” Fracture suddenly announced. “It looks like our last arrival is finally here!”
Griffin looked up. Not too far off in the distance, a familiar crimson-red SkyWing was flying towards in their direction. He quietly groaned. He wasn’t particularly excited to see Avalanche again, though he wasn’t too surprised.
Avalanche landed hard in the snow, making a dent with her paws as her enormous wings caused a thin layer to blow away. She had a sour expression on her snout as she saw Griffin alongside Fracture. As she stormed towards the IceWing, Griffin took a step back, allowing her through.
“I did what you asked. Morrowseer provided the prophecy, as you were expecting,” Avalanche grumbled. She held out a scroll to Fracture, who quickly pulled it out from between her claws, and let it roll open. The old paper unfurled before him, and Griffin caught a glimpse of a few words waving in the wind. When the land is soaked in blood and tears.
Fracture scanned the scroll for a moment. “Wonderful, wonderful!” Fracture chuckled. “Utter nonsense, but a literary masterpiece! If Nautilus had lived to see it, he wouldn’t have suspected a thing!”
“Ah, yes, Nautilus,” Avalanche sarcastically quipped, “too bad he’s dead.”
“I told you,” Fracture calmly replied, “I didn’t know that the SkyWings would attack.”
“That’s not what you said!” Avalanche hissed, smoke billowing from the edges of her mouth. “You said, and I quote, there had been a possibility of Queen Scarlet discovering the town. And now, he and all the dragons he recruited to our cause are dead.”
“It was a small possibility,” Fracture explained.
“Oh, eagle-guts!” Avalanche roared. “You should have told us, if you knew there was a possibility at all. He could have prepared, and maybe not all of them would be dead right now. Now, who else here has a ‘small possibility’ of dying? Could the NightWings have chosen to kill me? If you knew there was a ‘small possibility,’ would you have told me?”
Fracture didn’t answer the question for a moment. “He knew the risks,” he stated, “you know them, too.”
Avalanche snorted. “Ah, yes. The risks of having your stupid fortune-telling turn out to be wrong. Now then, since you can’t seem to predict if a dragon falls up or down, why should I trust your word over an actual NightWing prophecy?”
“Because sometimes, my results are correct, even when they’re wrong,” Fracture replied. “I found Trustbreaker.”
“A stray NightWing is easier to find than a wooden spoon in Queen Scarlet’s silverware,” Avalanche snapped. “If the prophecy is false, as you claim, then why do we have to follow these stupid instructions anyways? ‘The largest egg in mountain high.’ Convincing the princesses to make me Queen of the SandWings sounds easier than that.”
“If we follow the directions, it should become true,” Fracture told her. “And as for the difficulty, I’ve done this before. I have a pretty good idea of where they’ll be, and what you have to do to obtain them.”
“Oh, so now it’s a true prophecy,” Avalanche grumbled. “Thanks for nothing.”
Fracture ignored her comment, and turned back to Griffin with an exhausted smile, as if he was trying to say ‘this is what I have to deal with’. “Welcome to the second gathering of the Talons of Peace,” he said to Griffin. “You’ve already met Trustbreaker, and Avalanche, of course —”
“— and Nautilus is dead, so unless you want to talk to his rotting corpse, you don’t need to meet him,” Avalanche butted in.
“— and the IceWing to my right is Clarity, my mate,” Fracture ended. Clarity waved a paw, as if to say hello to Griffin.
“Crystal’s sister,” Griffin inferred. Clarity’s smile turned into a disturbed frown at the mention of her relative.
“Yes,” Fracture answered. “We, us four —”
“— originally five,” Avalanche interrupted.
Fracture sighed. “Originally five, are the founding members of the Talons of Peace, an organization Nautilus created with the objective of ending the war, and hopefully, to help bring a lasting peace to Pyrrhia for as long as possible.”
“Just you four?” Griffin asked, skeptically. Ending a world war seemed like a big goal for only four dragons.
Fracture shook his head. “We’ve recruited other members from all over the continent, and Avalanche here has just made us an ally with the NightWings. If Morrowseer’s plan continues as is, then hopefully we will have plenty more dragons joining our ranks soon.”
“We would have had even more if Nautilus and all the dragons he recruited hadn’t died,” Avalanche quipped.
“I know,” Fracture muttered. He looked over at Trustbreaker. “Did you recruit the SandWing?”
Trustbreaker nodded solemnly. “I did,” he answered. “I also had my cats spread recruitment and anti-war posters around the Scorpion Den while I was there. Hopefully, they should be effective.”
“They will be,” Clarity spoke up, assuring the NightWing. “The SandWings are tired of their kingdom being split between three queens. The war has gone on far too long. They’ll be willing to join us.”
As the dragons continued to talk, Griffin looked over at the four names written over the two doors to the mausoleum. Now that Fracture had mentioned the name of Queen Frost, it wasn’t difficult for Griffin to tell that one of the engraved names was hers, Frost. He scanned the name beneath. It shared a few of the symbols of the script, and he was able to make out that the first half of the name probably contained the word ‘Star.’ A two-part name. A NightWing. Now that he’d taken a closer look, a lot of the symbols here looked like they could’ve evolved into the modern script. He moved on to the name directly to the right of Frost’s. It took a moment of comparing, but it looked like Falcon, a SkyWing name. He had expected the mausoleum to contain the bones of Queen Frost, and maybe her mate and sons, but these were dragons from other tribes entirely.
“Though four dragons went into the caves, only one returned,” Fracture suddenly stated, startling Griffin. “She was never able to get past the guilt of being the only survivor, or so the legends claim.”
A brisk wind brushed past Griffin, rustling his feathers. “She?” he asked.
Fracture nodded. “Queen Frost. Or, Princess Frost, as she was known as the time. Did you figure out the names?”
Griffin shook his head. “Not yet. One of them is Falcon, and another begins with ‘Star,’ but that’s all I got.”
Fracture grinned. “Very good!” he praised Griffin. Griffin shifted uncomfortably. It felt like he was a dragonet being praised for mastering a fighting technique. “You were close. Frost, Falcon, Starweaver, and Mica were their names.”
“Why were they all buried together?” Griffin asked. “They sound like they were from different tribes.”
“Well, for one, it was just after the Scorching when the mausoleum was created,” the IceWing explained. “The dragons had just defeated the scavengers, and the kingdoms had only just been set up. The first war between the kingdoms didn’t take place until after Queen Frost’s death. But I don’t think that was all of it. Queen Frost fought alongside these dragons, and was just as willing to sacrifice her life as the rest. They developed loyalty, camaraderie. No inter-kingdom war could have changed that.”
“Was she the first IceWing queen?” Griffin asked. He’d read a bit about the Scorching. Apparently, one of the things which helped the dragons win the war was the setting up of the queen system, to unite all the loose clans and villages of dragons under seven banners.
Fracture shook his head. “No, but close. She was the second. The first queens are up there.” He waved a claw towards the seven pedestals, one for each queen. “Frost wasn’t even born until after the Scorching.”
“Wait,” Griffin replied, confused, “you said that the four dragons fought alongside each other, but that this was after the Scorching and before the first wars. Who did they fight?”
The scales around Fracture’s snout wrinkled together in a frown. “Well,” he answered, his voice almost a whisper, “it’s been told that there are a series of tunnels beneath the hills in these parts, and that they penetrate the surface beneath this very building. The legends claim that the mausoleum was built not only to serve as a grave for the four, but also to seal something beneath.” His words were drawn-out and carefully crafted, as if he was taking his time to say exactly what he needed to.
Griffin shivered, and drew his eyes downwards. Maybe that was what he had sensed when he’d first arrived. Not just the magic embedded in the stone and ice of the mausoleum, but whatever awaited beneath.
“So, why did you bring me here?” Griffin asked. “Do you want me to go into the mausoleum? Is there . . . something in there?”
Fracture shrugged his wings up and down. “Maybe, but it’s all just rumor and legend,” Fracture chuckled, and Griffin noticed the faintest lick of discomfort in his voice. “Still, it’s enough to keep away any IceWings or SandWings who know what’s good for them.”
“So, it’s alright if I just go in?” Griffin pressed. “It’s completely safe?” He took a step towards the mausoleum doors. Curiously, they appeared to be fused together by a thin layer of ice over them, eternally shut.
 Fracture mirrored his movement, and stepped between two of the pedestals, blocking Griffin’s path. “It’s best to leave legends alone,” the IceWing warned. Griffin saw a hint of fear in his expression, something he’d never seen in Fracture before. “They may have a wisp of truth in them.”
“But,” Fracture continued coldly, “I can tell you this. You will stand outside these doors three more times. Once to kill, once to grieve, and once to live.”
A shiver swept through Griffin. “Is that a prophecy?” he asked, his voice almost shaking. Once to kill, and once to grieve . . . who was he going to kill? Who would die?
Fracture didn’t answer, and locked his one eye with Griffin.
“Can you see the future?” Griffin demanded. If this was a real prophecy, he wanted to know for certain.
“I cannot see the future, but I can see the past,” Fracture smiled, “and to many, that makes me a prophet.”
Griffin ruffled his feathers, frustrated with the cryptic reply. Knowing the past couldn’t explain a prophecy. “Fine,” he hissed in irritation, “so then, what did you bring me here for? Not just to give me prophecies-but-not-prophecies, I hope?”
“Can’t I just want to see an old friend?” the IceWing asked. Griffin didn’t buy it. Fracture sighed, and turned to a small leather satchel on the snow next to him. He pulled out a pale-yellow object from it, and cupped it in a paw, handing it to Griffin. Griffin accepted it from him, placing it in his own talons. It was a wax sculpture of a MudWing, with each scale carved intricately into the material. It didn’t take long before Griffin recognized it as Schist, before he had received his injuries.
“Always keep it safe and close to you,” Fracture asked Griffin. “I want you to visit him. He’s with his sister, in the city where you found him.”
Griffin cupped the sculpture. It had a strange feel on his talons, and reminded him of oddly waxy feeling of the underwater SeaWing scrolls. “He said he never wanted to see me again.”
“He’s had time,” Fracture explained. “Maybe he’ll have changed his mind.”
Griffin nodded, and held the sculpture close. Noticing the the base of Schist’s paws had started to deform from his grasp of it, he gently placed it in his own pouch for safekeeping.
Fracture looked away from Griffin, and turned to Trustbreaker, who was conversing with Avalanche and Clarity, Sapphire resting at the base of his paws.
“Trustbreaker,” Fracture called. The NightWing stopped the conversation, and looked over to the green-tinted IceWing. “I need you to go with Griffin to find Schist. There’s a MudWing there you need to recruit. Her name is Asha.”
== Chapter 62 ==
Crystal and Torrent waded through the water of the tunnel, Torrent so close to Crystal that their scales pressed together. A large number of the SeaWing’s stripes were activated, casting a faint blue glow down the tunnel. Torrent himself could see in the dark, but this way Crystal could also see. On the walls of the cramped tunnel were more of the gemstones from before. Each colorfully lit up as Torrent and Crystal brushed against them, their hues mixing with the blue of Torrent’s glowstrips.
The SeaWing tried to keep his body as compact as possible, but the sharp walls still scratched against his scales, although the dampness of the air made it more tolerable. Crystal had asked once if he’d wanted to try and turn back, but he’d refused her offer. If they went back now, they’d have wasted all this time for nothing. Plus, Torrent wasn’t even sure he could turn around in this cramped space.
Suddenly, Crystal stopped, causing Torrent to trip on her tail and fall onto back. He quickly lifted himself back up.
“What’s wrong?” Torrent asked. The SeaWing tried to crane his head around Crystal to see what had caused her to halt.
“There’s a split,” Crystal observed. “The tunnel leads two ways.”
Torrent frowned. “Should we just choose one? I suggest left.”
Crystal shook her head. “Step back a little.”
Torrent tried, carefully splashing backwards. Crystal, watching him from in front, also took a couple steps. After she felt like it was far enough, she looked down at the fork in the tunnels, and opened her mouth to let loose a smidgen of frostbreath. Immediately, the surface of the water started to freeze over, and Crystal stopped. The small, quickly melting piece of ice started to float over towards the right path.
“I think we should go to the right,” Crystal explained, “that’s the way the water is flowing.”
Torrent nodded in understanding. He was the SeaWing, he had grown up with ocean currents all his life. Why hadn’t he thought of that? “Wait,” he quickly said, before Crystal started to walk down the right passage, “we need to mark our path so that we can find our way back.”
Crystal understood Torrent’s logic. Maybe finding which way the stream was going would lead them further into the caves, but when they came back, that technique wouldn’t work anymore. “Let me pass,” she asked.
Torrent stepped into the left passage, the intersection giving him just enough room to spread his wings slightly and turn around. Crystal walked past him, then gave a short blast of frostbreath onto the walls of the tunnel they had just come from, the air around Torrent suddenly dropping a few degrees. A glittering white layer remained after she stopped and the mist dispersed. It would take a very long time to melt, and could guide them on the way back.
The two continued on down the right path, and struggled through the passageways. At each split, Crystal performed a similar routine, marking the path they’d come from, then using her frostbreath to detect the downstream direction of the river. It felt like they were in the maze of tunnels for hours, maybe longer, before the two finally reached what looked like an end to them. Crystal breathed a sigh of relief as the tunnel started to open up, and a gasp of wonder as she saw what lied beyond.
“What is it?” Torrent asked, walking past the IceWing as she stepped aside. “Oh. Wow.”
The tunnel opened up into a humongous cavern, many times the size of any dragon. More of the colorful gemstones from before poked out from each nook and cranny of the wall, and were no longer just vivid specks. Now, the crystals protruded from the cavern, the largest reaching the size of a dragon’s paw. As Crystal stepped near them, bright pulses of colored light lit up, and spread through the cavern like a wave, the light being passed between each adjacent gem.
In the center of the cavern stood a pit, with more of the gems extruding from the walls. The small stream that the two had been wading through continued a short distance before dropping into the pit, arcing over the side and splashing onto the larger gemstones, then falling below. Torrent and Crystal stood on a ledge around the edge of the pit, with a few exits from the cavern thrown around the ledge.
Crystal stepped to the edge of the pit, peering over the side while crouching to maintain her balance. She beckoned Torrent forward and he followed. He dipped the end of his tail over the edge and lit up the stripes on the end so Crystal could see. The pit just seemed to go down, with no semblance of an bottom. The waterfall from the stream fell in, but neither dragon could hear where it hit the ground.
Reaching over, Crystal tapped a claw to a large green gemstone protruding from the pit at a slant. As the tip of her talon touched it, it glowed a bright green, causing the gemstones around it to light up in unison. A wave of light passed down the pit, allowing Crystal to see further down. The light slowly faded as it got farther and farther from her.
“Are they magical?” Crystal asked. Torrent pulled out his dagger, and pressed a claw to the amethyst. It was faintly warm, no matter which direction he pointed.
“I think so,” the SeaWing guessed, “I can’t imagine anything else lighting up like this.”
Crystal tapped a claw to the end of Torrent’s tail, prodding one of his bioluminescent stripes. “I thought it might be like one of your stripes.”
Torrent thought for a moment. “Maybe,” he responded. Were his stripes magical? He didn’t think so. “Which way?” he asked. They could go down into the pit, or take one of the other exits from the large cavern.
Crystal thought out loud for a moment. “The pit seems to go deeper, but we don’t know if that’s where the Darkstalker will be,” she explained. “And, it might be dangerous to fly up and down in the limited space. So, let’s try one of the other caves first.”
She pointed to a small hole in the wall part-way around the ledge she and Torrent were standing on, a few yards up the side of the walls. The two carefully walked around it. Torrent, being the larger one, went first. He stood on his hind-legs, and reached to the edge of the entrance, using his tail to keep himself balanced. After he had grabbed ahold of it, he pulled himself up, stepping on a few of the gemstones in the wall to hoist himself, causing a flurry of light.
Crystal went next, and climbed up a few of the larger gems towards the hole. As she approached the exit, she and Torrent grabbed each others’ claws, and the SeaWing helped pull her to the top. The next cave was less impressive. It was wide, but flat, the ceiling only inches above Torrent’s horns. More of the gems protruded from the walls here, along with the floor, forcing Crystal and Torrent to watch their steps so as to avoid stepping on them and poking their paws. As Torrent went forward, lighting his stripes up again to light the way, Crystal used her frostbreath to mark the entrance of the cave.
They continued on, passing through the low-roofed cave into another one, this one at such a steep slant the two dragons had to practically walk on the walls. After a few more caves, Crystal making sure to mark all the entrances, the two ended up in a curving cave, with a floor shaped like a SeaWing’s back.
“What does it say?” Crystal suddenly asked.
“What?” Torrent replied, confused at what Crystal was referring to.
“Your stripes,” she explained further, “that’s what they’re used for, right? To talk underwater?”
“Oh!” Torrent realized. A few of his stripes were lit, but he hadn’t really been paying attention to what it meant. It had been so long since he’d last spoken Aquatic, but he’d never forgotten it, of course. “Er, ‘pungent TreeWings red enjoy had.’”
Crystal laughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Torrent snorted, “I’m just lighting up random stripes. Were you hoping for a secret message or something?”
“Sort of. Anything more interesting you can say?”
“Sure,” he offered. He lit up a couple of stripes in succession, causing the cave to go into darkness for a second, before having light burst from his scales. “There, I said ‘Crystal.’”
“Great,” Crystal laughed, “now say something nice about me.”
Torrent thought for a moment, then repeated his show, letting out a few more stripes afterwards.
“What does that mean?” the IceWing asked.
“Er, Crystal has a large tail,” Torrent explained.
Crystal burst out laughing. “A very SeaWing thing to say,” she teased. Torrent looked back at her in confusion.
Crystal snorted in amusement. “Calling someone ‘big-tailed’ is usually an insult to IceWings,” she answered. “We usually go for, ‘your tail is so sharp and spiny, it could poke more holes in a SandWing than the Great Ice Cliff.’”
Torrent waved his tail back and forth. His tail might be able to crush the skulls of his enemies, but it definitely wasn’t ‘sharp.’ “Well then, you have a very, very, sharp and dangerous tail,” he acknowledged, flicking on and off the correct stripes to repeat his message in Aquatic.
The two walked forward a bit more. “You know, you should try and teach me Aquatic,” Crystal suggested.
Torrent put on an expression of amusement. “Aquatic?” he asked. “But you’re an IceWing; you don’t have glow-stripes.”
“Just to read it,” Crystal clarified. “It would be fun! Then, the next time I meet SeaWings talking about me while thinking I don’t know what they’re flashing, I could just chime in and embarrass them.”
Torrent chuckled. That did sound sort of amusing. “It’s hard,” he warned Crystal. “They say if you don’t learn it as a dragonet, you’ll never be able to learn it.”
Crystal shrugged her wings. “Bet they never tried teaching it to an IceWing, then. After we take out, er, the Darkstalker, we might have plenty of time while waiting for Griffin. Why not then, to pass the time?”
Torrent thought about it. She was right. He didn’t know how long it would be until Griffin returned, and he didn’t just want to abandon him. It could be days, or months. The two passed into another cavern, this one wide and flat, with a roof only inche — wait. Torrent suddenly realized that this was the same cave they had been in before.
“Crystal,” he alerted her. “I think we’re going in circles.”
She frowned, and glanced around the cave. It did look suspiciously similar, but she couldn’t find the entrance they had come in, nor the mark of frostbreath she’d made on it. She looked around again. “Are you sure?” she asked.
Torrent nodded. “I remember this. See? There’s the scratches my horns made on the rock.”
Crystal looked up, seeing the faint scrapes in the blue-ish glow. “In that case, shouldn’t the entrance be over here?” She walked over to where she’d thought they had exited from. There was nothing resembling an exit, just a curved wall with more of the gemstones poking out.
“The entire caverns are magically created,” Crystal recalled. “They closed up when you tried to bring your dagger in without allowing the enchantment.
Torrent nodded. “Yeah. I thought they were originally made by Fathom, but I think I was wrong. Darkstalker has been sleeping in here for thousands of years, what if the caverns were made by his magic leaking from his body somehow, saturating the walls with animus magic and creating all these gemstones?”
Crystal gulped. “In that case, maybe the caverns are . . . alive? You know it’s possible, Griffin came to life from stone originally.”
“And if the caverns are alive and magical,” Torrent finished, “they could be changing their position around us. Which is why we can’t find the passage we came from.”
Crystal closed her eyes. Marking the passages with her frostbreath might have all been for nothing. “But your dagger still works, right?” she asked. “If the caverns are moving around us, could you use it to still find Darkstalker.”
“Maybe,” Torrent replied skeptically. He pulled it out again, and pressed a claw to the purple amethyst. Crystal took a step back as he waved it in a circle around him, detecting the direction in which it was the hottest. “This way,” he said, pointing the steel across the cave.
The two walked to the other side of the cave, Torrent’s dagger out and continuously telling him the appropriate direction. Finally, they arrived at a small exit, and entered into another cavern. Torrent’s dagger suddenly turned away, sensing the their target was now in a different direction.
“Is Darkstalker moving?” Crystal asked, seeing Torrent’s dagger rotate away.
The SeaWing shook his head. “I doubt it,” he replied. “But maybe.”
Crystal thought for a moment. “What if the caverns don’t just shift themselves around,” she suggested with concern, “but warp the space beneath the mountain? That would explain why the direction your dagger points in is changing, it’s not the direction that’s changing, it’s the space itself.” The IceWing stuck a wing out, and waved it up and down, as if trying to detect these changes herself.
“It’s possible,” Torrent acknowledged. When he’d allowed the enchantment on the caves to work on him, it must have also allowed the caves to move around (or move everything else around in comparison?). What else could they do? It frightened him. After so long not having to worry about animus magic, here he was, in the lair of the most infamous animus of all time, vulnerable to this magic.
Noticing his fear, Crystal wrapped her tail around Torrent’s, keeping the sharp spines along her tail folded inwards, laying them against Torrent’s scales. “C’mon, let’s go,” she quietly suggested. From her voice, Torrent could tell that she was also worried.
The two continued on, weaving in and out of the passages, colorful gems lighting up as they brushed against them. Suddenly, a breeze pushed past Torrent from the next opening. He looked out, and downwards. The pit they had seen when they first came out of the tunnels was there.
Crystal peered over the ledge. They were positioned in a small hole in the cave wall. Torrent’s dagger pointed downwards, into the pit. “Well,” she sighed, “I guess we know which way to go.”
Torrent nodded, and leapt from the precipice, spreading out his wings. Crystal quickly followed. The two tilted their bodies to the side, flying in tight circles as they descended into the depths of the cave, so not to crash into the glowing gemstones on the side. Even if it was only a few minutes until they reached the bottom, it felt like they were gliding hours.
The two had to land carefully, so as to avoid cutting their claws on the numerous protruding gemstones from the cave floor. Here, the gemstones were much more concentrated than before, and some grew larger than Torrent’s head. It felt like they couldn’t step anywhere without a burst of colorful light.
Crystal accidentally brushed one, causing a purple glow to emanate. “There are more of them here,” she extrapolated. “If these things grow because of the Darkstalker’s magic, it would make sense that the more of them there are, the closer we’re getting.”
The small stream that had fallen down the pit landed in a gully, and traveled a little further into the cavern before opening up into a large reservoir of water, half-filled. Crystal and Torrent walked along the left edge, and the vivid gems around them lit up, providing them enough light to see. Torrent continued to hold out his dagger, making sure they were going in the right direction.
Eventually, the two reached a large tunnel in the side of the larger cavern, leading away from the underground reservoir. After checking to make sure it was the right direction, Torrent went in. Crystal shot a blast of frostbreath on the side, even knowing it probably wouldn’t make a difference.
Suddenly, a bright light appeared in front of them, causing Torrent to turn away for a moment. When he looked back, he saw a series of the colorful crystals in front, colored a vivid black. The ground started to rumble, and Crystal took a few steps backwards, pulling Torrent’s tail to cause him to do the same.
“What’s going on?” Torrent asked, confused. Was there an earthquake? If the roof of the cavern fell down on them this far down . . . well, that would be the end of them.
The gems in front of the two started to pulse in a strangely hypnotic spiral pattern, causing Crystal to feel slightly dizzy as she watched closely. The floor beneath the two dragons started to shake up, causing them to crouch so not to be knocked over. The spiral pattern started to rise up from the ground, growing larger and pulling more stones from the ground beneath them. A form began to take shape: the crystals had congregated, moving on their own, to create a humongous glowing dragon with stubs where its wings would be, and sharp gems for scales and bones.
Torrent gulped. This wasn’t good.
The amalgamation took a step forward, its crystal tail screeching as it dragged against the floor, the thunderous landing of its claws shaking through the cave.
== Chapter 63 ==
The Mud Kingdom was similar to how Griffin remembered it — a warm humidity that stuck to your feathers, with a long expanse of swamp and marshes in every direction. To avoid being seen, Trustbreaker and Griffin followed the suggested path Fracture had given them almost perfectly, and had Crosswinds left the exact day he’d wanted them to. In the time Griffin had stayed with the NightWing, he’d become a lot more comfortable with the idea of the NightWing being able to read his mind. Trustbreaker seemed to have gotten much better at ignoring Griffin’s thoughts, and he was never judgemental. Ironically enough, Griffin had started to trust him.
Sapphire poked his head from between the talons of the NightWing’s foreclaws, and looked out, seeing the swamps slowly drifting beneath them. As the wind whipped around his fur, he pulled his head back into protective cover of Trustbreaker’s claws, hiding from the gusts. The two continued to fly, Griffin’s sore wings still beating. 
Eventually, Griffin saw his destination beneath him, the familiar clearing where Adobe’s village once stood. A mound of unearthed stone stood in the center, where the MudWing animus’s tower had stood before it been disenchanted. The houses and mudhuts of the village had been rebuilt, and it seemed even more populous than when Griffin had left. Many MudWings looked up curiously at the approaching visitors, and some of those that recognized Griffin gave either expressions of excitement, or threw glares. A large number of MudWing dragonets, apparently from multiple sib groups, were playing at the edge of the village, chasing each other through the tall marsh grasses or hiding there. Griffin smiled. It looked like he and Torrent had done at least some good.
Trustbreaker and Griffin touched down on an open road, their talons sinking into the soft ground. The NightWing let out Sapphire from his claws, and the cat shook out his fur and pawed at the dirt, glad to be back on land again. The MudWings started to crowd around, whispering to each other as they gave side-glances to the visitors.
Suddenly, the crowd opened up as dragons pushed each other to the side, trying to get out of the way. Two dragons walked down the opened road, and Griffin gave a small gulp of anxiety. Glen trotted down the path, forming a small snarl as she saw Griffin, though it was quickly hidden. Dwarving her was a humongous MudWing with scales the color of autumn, and a permanent frown plastered on his snout. He walked with his head raised high, and his wings tucked in almost gracefully. A golden breastplate was positioned beneath his neck, with gems embellished around it. A crown was engraved on it, clearly visible.
The MudWing gave Griffin a look of confusion, and turned to Glen. “What is the meaning of this . . . thing?” he hissed. “And a NightWing? If you expect the crown to be placated by feathered dragons, I’ll remind you that you’re speaking with Queen Moorhen, not the Princess Burn.”
“Apologies, your highness,” Glen replied, saying ‘highness’ with a hint of scorn and sarcasm. “I’m afraid our meeting will have to be suspended. Can someone please lead Prince Granite to the quarters we’ve planned for him?”
Prince Granite gave her a glare of ferocity, not happy that he was being delayed, but made no sign of refusal. An unfortunate MudWing led him off from the crowd.
Glen walked a few steps closer towards Griffin, carefully examining Trustbreaker and Sapphire. All the eyes of the MudWing crowd were on them. Suddenly, she whipped around. “Get out, or I’ll have you hung by your tails!” she roared at the other MudWings. In a flash, the crowd had dispersed, with each dragon scrambling away, leaving Glen alone with Trustbreaker and Griffin.
Trustbreaker stepped forward with a nod of his head. “I am Trustbreaker,” he introduced himself, receiving a small snort from Glen in amusement as his name. “I am a member of a movement working towards the end of War on Pyrrhia, called the Talons of Peace.”
“Never heard of it,” Glen remarked with an eyeroll.
“You will soon,” Trustbringer assured her. He reached into a leather satchel, and pulled out a rolled up scroll, then passed it into Glen’s claws. “Can you read?” he asked.
Glen nodded, and accepted the scroll. She quickly rolled it open, and scanned the writing. “A prophecy?” she asked skeptically.
Trustbreaker nodded. “From the Night Kingdom itself. I promise that you shall be hearing more of it soon, but for now, you have been selected as one of the first to receive it.”
Glen frowned a little. “What are you doing with him?” she asked with a hiss, pointing a claw to Griffin. “Let me guess, you foretold it? Or you’re just here by ‘coincidence?’”
“There are no coincidences,” Trustbreaker cryptically answered, “but while we traveled together, we had separate goals in coming here. I can promise you that I am not acting with him, whatever your views of Griffin might be.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you on this?” she chuckled. The NightWing gritted his teeth and resisted talking back to her. “Fine then, but what am I supposed to do with this?”
“Spread it,” Trustbreaker pleaded, “let every dragon in the Mud Kingdom know of the five dragonets and the end of the war.”
“They won’t be happy that we’ve got another decade of war coming,” Glen muttered, “and I’ve got enough problems with Queen Moorhen as is, I doubt she’ll be happy that our ‘rebellious village’ is spreading pacifist propaganda too. But I’ll hang your prophecy on a wall or something. Do you need anything else?” She started to look a little impatient to Griffin.
Trustbreaker nodded. “I am looking for a dragon named Asha to recruit to the cause of peace.”
“Asha?” Glen asked in surprise. “I think she decided to come here a few weeks ago, without her sibs, funny enough. She’s in the cracked mudhut on the edge of the village.”
Trustbreaker nodded. “Thank you,” he replied, “your generosity will not be forgotten by the Talons.”
“It’s not a problem,” Glen answered, her voice a little softer than before. “Most of the dragons here want the war to be over just as much as you do. If you’re looking for recruits, I know Loam and Beaver would also be interested. Ask around, you’ll find them.”
Trustbreaker thanked Glen again, and wandered off towards the edge of the village, going to find Asha. Glen turned to Griffin with a glare. “And why are you here?” she hissed through gritted teeth.
“I wanted to see Schist,” Griffin mumbled guiltily. What had Schist told Glen to make her so angry with him?
Glen snorted. “You shouldn’t have come back here,” she spat.
“Please, just take me to him,” Griffin pleaded. “I need to make this right.”
Glen scratched her talons in the dirt. “I would normally tell you to get out of my sight or I’d pick out all your feathers one-by-one, but Schist refuses to tell me what happened. Explain, and maybe I’ll think about it.”
Griffin sighed, and closed his eyes. “Alright,” he stated, “if you’re wondering about Schist’s scars, he got those from a SkyWing with firescales. He did it to save Torrent.”
“From how Schist came back, it didn’t seem like Torrent deserved saving,” Glen snapped.
Griffin locked eyes with her. “He’s the one who killed Adobe for you,” he squawked. “You wouldn’t have any of this without Torrent.” He almost added a comment about how ungrateful Glen was, but just managed to hold his tongue.
“He hurt Schist,” Glen responded, feeling her anger was completely justified. “So, why did Schist come back calling you monsters?”
“Torrent killed an animus dragonet on the advice of an IceWing,” Griffin clearly stated.
Glen frowned, and thought about this for a moment. If she came to a conclusion, she didn’t tell Griffin. “The SeaWing isn’t with you. Where is he right now?”
“I went separate ways from Torrent for similar reasons as Schist.” It wasn’t entirely true — he was planning on going back to Torrent, and had really left because of Crystal, but it seemed a good enough explanation.
Glen tapped her talons on the dirt for a moment, locking her eyes with Griffin. Her gaze soften up a little. “Fine,” she conceded, “I’ll take you to him.” She turned around, and started heading towards the center of the city. Griffin quickly followed.
It was only a quick walk before they reached a small house, similar to the others, on the side of the path. It was the last one on the row before the path reached the ruins of Adobe’s tower. Griffin looked at the hunks of stone, lying almost haphazardly on the ground. Somewhere beneath that pile was where he’d met Schist, saving him from Adobe’s prisons.
Glen opened the door to the house, and ushered Griffin inside. Schist was resting on his underbelly, his burned side turned away from the door. He looked up and saw Griffin, creating a expression of confusion, relief, and sorrow on his snout, as if the MudWing was unsure what to think.
“I thought I told you to stay away,” Schist quietly muttered.
“Oh?” Glen asked, giving Griffin a glare. “I can make him leave,” she notified her brother.
“Wait!” Griffin protested as Glen stopped towards him threateningly. “Please, I’m really really sorry for not trying to stop Torrent and Crystal! Just let me talk!”
Schist thought for a moment. “Alright,” he grumbled unhappily. “Glen, can you give us a little privacy?”
Glen nodded, and stepped around Griffin, shutting the door behind her, leaving the two alone.
“Why are you here?” Schist asked as soon as Glen closed the door. He stood up to face Griffin, his scales clashing and pushing against each other as he did so.
Griffin wasn’t quite sure himself. Because Fracture told him so? That didn’t sound right. “Because I’m your friend,” he answered.
Schist shook his head. “You’re a coward,” he replied.
Even though Schist hadn’t put menace behind his words, they still stung.
“You could have stopped Torrent,” the MudWing continued. “I saw you spar with Crystal back in the Sky Kingdom; you and I could have easily taken her on if we worked together. We could have saved an innocent dragonet’s life, and you just stood there.”
“I know,” Griffin accepted. “I should have done something, but I didn’t, and I’m sorry for that, really. Can you forgive me?”
Schist looked downwards at his claws and huffed. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe I can. Eventually.”
Griffin took a step closer to Schist, but the MudWing moved back, shaking his head.
“I don’t hate you,” Schist continued, “or even Crystal or Torrent. But I need time. If you came here to be with me, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to stay.”
Griffin’s feathers drooped in dejection. “Okay,” he whispered. He wanted desperately to ask when Schist would be ready, or when Griffin would ever see him again, be he stayed silent. Torrent and Crystal had let Griffin go, and it was time for him to do the same with Schist. “I can do that.”
Schist turned around, and lied back down on the floor, folding his wings inwards. Griffin opened his beak, wondering if he should say a goodbye or not, but Schist made no motion to start one. “Bye,” Griffin awkwardly uttered, and received no response. He looked away in shame. He shouldn’t have said that.
Griffin shuffled to the door of the house, and opened it. Glen was patiently waiting outside. He gave a glance back towards Schist before leaving, and noticed that Schist had done the same. Their eyes uncomfortably locked for a moment before Schist broke away the stare. Griffin turned away, and left the house. Glen shut the door behind him.
Griffin looked down the road. Trustbreaker was at the end, talking to a few other MudWings. He walked over towards the NightWing, who looked towards him with an solemn expression. As Griffin came closer, Trustbreaker’s expression dropped, feeling Griffin’s pain. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Griffin wallowed. It wasn’t really fine, but it’s not like he had expected anything else to happen. What was he thinking, that Schist would suddenly be all glad to see him? Sapphire rubbed against Griffin’s leg. “Are we ready to go?”
Trustbreaker nodded, and glanced around at the other MudWings. Griffin recognized Loam and Beaver among them. “We head to the Claws of the Clouds Mountains,” the NightWing announced, Sapphire crawling back into his claws. “We will be residing there for a period of time.”
“For peace!” a MudWing standing next to Trustbreaker shouted. The group took off, with Griffin spreading his wings to follow.
Before he took off, Griffin reached into his satchel, and pulled out the wax figure of Schist that Fracture had given him. His handling of it had started to warp it a little, and part of the soft wax had melted slightly. Griffin thought about just tossing it onto the ground behind him. Maybe Glen would find it, and take it back to Schist. Still, he returned it to his satchel, unable to muster the strength within him to throw it away.
== Chapter 64 ==
Crystal took a step back, scanning their surroundings. There was only forward, through the monster, or back to the underground lake. The tunnel wasn’t thin, but she also wasn’t sure if it would be wide enough for the two to get around the crystal monster. Maybe if she distracted the monster, Torrent would be able to get past it, and find Darkstalker? It was the only plan she had.
She sized up the thing. It was made of the glowing stones, and was much larger than either of the dragons. If it worked though animus magic, she didn’t know if it could be killed, and it certainly didn’t seem like it could be destroyed. She glanced at Torrent. Could his dagger work on it?
As if to answer her question, Torrent charged forward with a roar, trying to run beneath the creature’s underbelly. He stabbed his dagger at a green talon of the crystal dragon, but it screeched ineffectively off the stone. The creature raised the claw and brought it down, Torrent ducking out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed. Apparently, Torrent’s allowance of the enchantment on the caves let this thing exist too.
While the creature was focused on Torrent, Crystal had snuck around to its other side. She opened her jaws, and let out a blast of freezing death breath on the side of the creatures neck. After the mist had cleared, she saw that a few of the gemstones on the side of it had started to fissure. “Hit there!” she yelled at Torrent.
The rock creature started to turn to Crystal, and Torrent leaped up onto its back and slammed his tail into its neck, where Crystal had blasted her frostbreath. Stone crumbled onto the floor from where Torrent had hit it, leaving a large round dent in its neck. He had done some damage, but nothing effective. The SeaWing groaned in frustration.
“Get past it while I distract it!” Crystal yelled at Torrent. As the crystal dragon’s claws came down, she nimbly evaded them, then let out a second blast of frostbreath.
Torrent hesitated for a moment, unsure if he should go on without Crystal, but he quickly jumped off the back of the crystal dragon, behind it. A few of the gemstones on the ground pulsed bright colors as he ran past, trying to get deeper into the cave. Suddenly, a giant stone tail hurled into him, knocking him into the wall of the cavern with a thud.
Crystal let out another blast of frostbreath while the creature was distracted, dodging beneath it and trying to aim at the base of its tail. “Torrent!” Crystal yelled in alarm. “Get down!”
Torrent’s eyes blurred, and he started to stagger as he got up. He’d been slammed into the rock wall, but it felt like nothing had broken. That was good. Hearing Crystal’s warning, he saw the giant rock tail of the crystal dragon swinging across the cave, going right towards him. He dizzily dove to the ground beneath it, folding his wings inwards.
As the stone tail hit the wall, Torrent scrambled away. From where Crystal had used her frostbreath on it, it started to crack. With a crash, the crystalline tail fell away from the dragon, crumbling apart on the floor below. Torrent, still wobbly, ran to the other side of the cave to avoid being crushed by the falling rocks.
The crystal dragon quickly positioned itself in between Torrent, Crystal, and the tunnel leading further into the cave. The gemstones on the wall behind it started to pulse black, and more large colorful stones rose up from beneath the cave floor. The stones quickly attached themselves to the crystal dragon, reforming the broken tail. Crystal winced. They’d done nothing. There was no way they could destroy this thing.
Torrent staggered away, still slightly unsure of what had just happened. Crystal gulped, and looked back and forth. If it could follow them, she didn’t know how much danger they could be in. “Retreat,” she yelled at the SeaWing, who looked at her in confusion. As the crystal dragon started to lumber towards them, Crystal started to run back into the caves, with Torrent following behind.
The two didn’t look back until they were back in the cave with the reservoir. When Crystal glanced over her wings, there didn’t seem to be anything there. “It didn’t follow us,” she observed with a frown. She glanced over at the underground lake, as if expecting the crystal dragon to rise out of it at any time. It didn’t.
“We need to go back,” Torrent said, panting heavily, “you got its tail off, maybe we can defeat it that way.”
Crystal shook her head. “Did you see what it was doing?” she asked. “It was guarding the tunnel. It wanted to make sure we couldn’t get to the Darkstalker.” She glanced around at the surroundings, looking at the crystals. “There’s less animus magic here,” she hypothesized, “maybe it can’t come all the way out here.”
“So we could lure it?” Torrent suggested. “Then destroy it after it’s drained of animus magic?”
“No,” Crystal sighed, “even if it did come out here, which it probably wouldn’t, I don’t think destroying it would be helpful. You saw it repair itself, if it can do that, the caves might be able to make more of them. And we don’t even know how much further the Darkstalker is. If the animus magic is more concentrated the closer we get, who knows what the caves could do. We’ve seen the caves change positions, for all we know, as soon as we get too close a bunch of spikes will impale us. Going on would be suicide.”
Torrent banged a claw against the cave floor. “So what?” he asked in frustration. “We give up?”
“We don’t have a choice,” Crystal notified. “I don’t want to give up either, but there’s nothing else we can do. We’re not going to get to the Darkstalker in there; we just need to wait until he wakes up.”
“We don’t know how long that will be,” Torrent protested, “it could be tomorrow or a thousand years, or never!”
“I know!” Crystal replied. “Do you think I want this either? I’m just as frustrated as you are.”
Torrent took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry, this isn’t your fault. I shouldn’t be getting angry at you.”
Crystal smiled. “It’s fine.” She glanced back towards the cave they had come from. “Maybe we can’t kill him today, but if he ever wakes up, we’ll be ready.”
“And we’re still alive.” He looked towards Crystal, and relaxed a bit. “Alright. Let’s get out of these caves. Darkstalker can wait.”
Crystal looked around them again. The reservoir of water was to their left as they continued backtracking the path they had been on. The glow of light from the colorful gems glinted off the water, creating what looked like vivid stars in the reflection.
When the two reached where Crystal had thought the pit they entered through was, she groaned. Looking up, all that remained was an indented ceiling. It had closen off above them.
“Now what?” Torrent asked, worried. If the cave had shut above them, they could be trapped down here, and they could only survive so long with their limited amount of food.
Crystal turned back to the way they came from. “The cave is guarding the Darkstalker somehow, right?” she asked. “Maybe if the cave knows we’ve given up, it’ll let us leave.”
Torrent furrowed his snout. That sounded silly, but he supposed it was possible. “Cave!” he roared, his voice echoing through the chamber. “We gave up, you win! Now let us out!”
He received no response. The cave didn’t seem to move at all. Why was he even talking to an enchanted cave? He doubted it had any idea what he was saying. Though, considering Griffin, it was possible. The SeaWing growled threateningly, and waved his dagger in the air. “If you don’t let us go, I’ll use my dagger to disenchant you! Then all of us will die, Crystal, me, you, and Darkstalker! You like that?” He didn’t actually think it would kill Darkstalker, but it was worth a shot.
Still, nothing happened. Torrent paced along the shore of the lake. “Torrent,” Crystal suggested, “what it doesn’t know language, so it can’t understand what you’re saying? Maybe if we continue going away from the Darkstalker, instead of towards him, it’ll figure out that we’re trying to leave.”
“We did go away,” Torrent muttered, “and we’re at a dead end.”
Crystal shook her head, and pointed a talon to the underground lake. “We could go that way. We followed your dagger to get here, maybe we could go the opposite way to get out.”
Torrent moved his dagger around again. Sure enough, going across the lake would lead directly away from Darkstalker. Maybe it wouldn’t work, but it much better idea than just trying to disenchant the caves.
“Alright,” he agreed, stepping into the water. He crouched when it got deep enough, laying his wings flat on the surface. His neck was partially turned and submerged, so that both his working gills and his lungs could be used. The water here was frigid, but a SeaWing and an IceWing would have no problems with that. “Climb on.”
Crystal carefully stepped onto Torrent, placing her foreclaws on the bony tops of his wings, near Torrent’s body. Her hind legs rested on his wing membranes, and she curled her tail to prevent it from dangling into the water. Fortunately, the fin-spines on Torrent’s back were not sharp like an IceWing’s.
Torrent sunk down a little into the water from Crystal’s added weight, but fortunately, he was large enough that he was still able to keep himself afloat by spreading out his wings. Swishing his tail back and forth in the water and using his webbed paws to paddle, he propelled himself forward into to the lake.
The journey across the lake was long and slow, with Torrent and Crystal gently bobbing forward. The lake was still, and there were no waves to be seen except for those that the two dragons made.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Torrent muttered.
“Going down into the caves?” Crystal asked. “It’s not like we knew they were alive.”
Torrent shook his head. “I mean, yes, that was a bad idea, but I just meant this in general. Going after animuses.”
Crystal thought for a moment, keeping her head still so not to make the swimming any harder for Torrent. “Maybe,” she replied, “but we did some good, didn’t we? You stopped Adobe and saved Schist, and together we got rid of Gila. He was a crime lord, and with both him and Evergreen gone, that’ll be a lot of dragons helped.”
“Yeah,” Torrent acknowledged with a sigh, “I know. But I killed a dragonet. Did Magma even deserve to die? She was just minding her own business. Same with Sunscorcher, even.”
“You knew the risks of letting them live,” Crystal notified. “Any one of these dragons could have potentially destroyed Pyrrhia. It’s our duty to prevent that, right?”
“I know,” Torrent responded, “but I just don’t like killing innocent dragonets, and it’s not like we even made a difference.”
“What do you mean?” Crystal asked. “There can’t be that many more animuses, right?”
“There aren’t,” Torrent answered, “but it’s not like killing all the animuses will even get rid of magic. It’s spread through families. Enchanted objects will still be out there, and more animuses will be born. I was once told that the MudWings made sure that they didn’t have any animus dragons by killing all the sibs of the animus. So what does that mean? If I really want to get rid of magic, I have to kill more innocent dragons, just to prevent something that might not even happen.
“My sister, Orca, was an animus,” Torrent reminded Crystal, “that means I’d have to kill every member of my family, including myself. I don’t think I can do that, just for the sake of getting rid of magic. That can’t be the right thing.”
Crystal shook her head, rocking Torrent to the side. “You’re right,” she finally conceded. “I love you, and I’m not going to let you die for this. If it means risking more animuses, then we’ll just have to take that risk.”
The two continued on through the placid lake for what felt like an eternity. Finally, Torrent thought he saw something in the distance. A shore, and an end to the underground lake. Torrent regained a burst of energy, and splashed his tail faster. When they finally reached shore, Crystal climbed off of Torrent, and the SeaWing stepped onto the shore.
“Finally!” Crystal breathed a sigh of relief. She stretched her legs and wings out, glad to be off Torrent’s uncomfortable back.
Torrent arched his back, feeling a load lighter with Crystal no longer there. He glanced down the path on the edge of the lake, then to the other end. “I don’t see anything,” he muttered. He tested his dagger again, and the wall they had reached was directly opposite the way Darkstalker was. The cave hadn’t opened up an exit for them.
Crystal glanced at his grim face, and closed her eyes in worry. If the cave didn’t open for them, she didn’t know if they could ever get out. “C’mon, cave!” she yelled. “Let us out!” There was no reply.
Torrent tapped a talon against the wall. Nothing. It was solid. He growled, and paced back and forth for a minute, before letting out a sigh. He looked over at Crystal. “Now what?”
“I don’t know.” She glanced down to the floor, then back up, into the stone ceiling. “It has to be nighttime outside,” she yawned. “Maybe we should just sleep, and hope that we can figure something out in the morning?”
Torrent fidgeted uncomfortably. He didn’t want to just leave the matter; he wasn’t even sure he could sleep, knowing that there might not be a way out. A quick glance into Crystal’s eyes showed she felt the same way. Yet, she was right. He was tired. “Alright,” he agreed.
He laid himself on the side of the lake, resting his tail and hindquarters within the chilled water. Crystal crouched down next to him, and curled her body around his, and placed a wing over him, her cold scales touching his own.
It might have been morning when they woke up, but there was no light other than the steady faint glow of the colorful crystals to show it. Torrent slowly rose to his feet, pulling his tail from the water and gently sneaking under Crystal’s wing so not to wake her. She woke up anyways, her head perking up.
Torrent glanced around the cave again, then took a step back when he realized that his surroundings had changed. Crystal gave a gasp of surprise. On the shore of the lake, where there had just been the stone wall of the cavern, an upwards-sloping tunnel had now appeared.
“I think the cave answered us,” Torrent grinned optimistically.
“Don’t be so sure just yet,” Crystal replied cautiously. Even so, she looked relieved.
After gathering their small set of belongings, the two set off into the tunnel. The slope was gentle, and at some points, it almost looked like the floor had been made into crude stairs. As the two continued upwards for what felt like hours, the colorful gemstones on the wall slowly shrunk, and started to creep back into the walls. Torrent felt his dagger occasionally. The magic around them was getting weaker; the cave was letting them go.
Torrent looked backwards with a pang of guilt. He was just letting Darkstalker go. The most famed evil animus of all had been right there, and Torrent gave up. Couldn’t he have tried harder? Couldn’t he have done something else? Was he just a coward?
Yet, he looked back at Crystal, and knew the two of them had made the right decision. Had they stayed down in the caves, one or both them could have died, and all for nothing. Here, they were alive. And they had each other.
As the two got closer to the surface, the tunnel started to expand. At the point where Torrent could no longer see any of the colored gems indicating a suffusion of animus magic, it was now a full-fledged cavern. Fortunately, there were no major offshoots, preventing them from getting lost. It wasn’t much longer before the bright light of day hit their eyes.
Torrent turned away, his nightvision having to adjust to the sunlight, but Crystal was used to the bright light of snow blindness. “Look!” she exclaimed, pointing out a claw.
As Torrent’s eyes changed to better see his surroundings, he saw what she was pointing towards. His eyes followed her talon, and landed on a peak in the distance, with a smooth field of snow sloping down its sides to another, muted, peak. Agate Mountain. “Wait,” he commented, “if that’s Agate Mountain . . .”
Crystal poked her head around the side of the cavern entrance. “There’s another peak over there,” she observed. “I think we’re in Jade Mountain.”
Torrent’s eyes scanned the distance between the two in surprise. Had they actually traveled that far? It seemed possible, but based on how long he was swimming with Crystal, the distance seemed too short. Yet, Crystal had guessed that the cave could warp around space and make distances seem longer or shorter. If that was true, it definitely seemed possible.
Torrent turned back to the cave, and quietly thanked it, receiving a confused look from Crystal. “The cave let us go,” he explained.
Crystal shrugged her wings, and turned away, back to Agate Mountain. They had been there so long, it had started to feel like home. “Shall we go?” she asked Torrent.
The SeaWing nodded, and the two spread their wings together, their scales glinting in the bright sun.
== Chapter 65 ==
“I’m so tired of caves,” Griffin remarked.
Trustbreaker glanced over to look at him as he pushed the boulder behind the two, sealing the cave entrance.
“I’ve just had to live in so many,” Griffin explained further. “Magma’s cave in the Sky Kingdom, all those caves near Agate Mountain, and now this one. Three moons, even the Deep and Summer Palaces could count as caves of a sort. It would be nice to live somewhere else for a while, wouldn’t it.”
Trustbreaker glanced around the cave the two were in at the moment. He and Sapphire thought it was fine, but the NightWing didn’t bother to interrupt Griffin’s rant. He continued to listen, trying not to hear what Griffin would say in his thoughts before Griffin actually spoke them.
“Wouldn’t it be great to sleep under the open stars for a while?” Griffin asked. “I never got much of it, but I love the open air. It’s just so freeing, right?”
Trustbreaker finished pushing the boulder shut, and stroked Sapphire. “I suppose,” he answered, “but I like caves myself. They remind me of home, as funny as it is. Is this your way of telling me you’ll be leaving?”
Griffin grimaced awkwardly. “You heard my thoughts?” he asked.
The NightWing solemnly nodded. “My apologies. It can be somewhat difficult to ignore them as I’m talking directly to you.”
Griffin sighed. “It’s fine.” It wasn’t as if he had any more secrets to keep from the mind-reader by this point. “So, yeah, I think I’m ready to go now.”
He hadn’t meant to be gone this long, but getting caught up with the Talons had taken so many months. In all honesty, he had enjoyed his time with Trustbreaker and the Talons. Asha, the dragon Fracture had asked Trustbreaker to recruit, was one of the kindest and most driven dragons Griffin had ever met. And while Griffin had initially gotten a bad impression of Loam from Glen, it turned out that she wasn’t so bad after he’d gotten to know her better.
Yet, while working with the Talons to set up this place had been enjoyable, Griffin felt guilty about being gone from Torrent for so long. Torrent was his best friend, his brother, and Griffin believed he owed some loyalty to him. He was a bit worried that Torrent and Crystal might have already left Agate Mountain after the better part of a year, but Trustbreaker had suggested to Griffin that if that was true, Fracture would have told Griffin where they would be. Still, Griffin wasn’t so sure — Fracture’s ‘premonitions’ didn’t always seem so accurate, at least from what Avalanche had argued, though it wasn’t like Avalanche was a particularly trustworthy source either. Hopefully, they’d waited. Hopefully. If they didn’t, Griffin supposed he’d just come back here.
Trustbreaker nodded, a bit unhappy to see Griffin leave. “In that case, I will prepare provisions at once,” he responded. “I wish you the best of luck, and by the names of the moons, let this not be the last time we meet.”
“Er, the same,” Griffin said. “I’ll miss you.” he stroked a talon across Sapphire, who purred in reply.
With a twist of his tail, Trustbreaker whisked off, Sapphire prancing along behind him. Griffin walked down into the caves, alongside the river running through them, going to get his stuff. It was a good time to leave. Still early morning, no rain, and hopefully no SkyWing patrols overhead. He only had a few more goodbyes to say, and then he’d be off.
The flight back to Agate Mountain wasn’t tense at all, and it was almost cathartic. Having a bit of time to himself was good for Griffin, and he enjoyed being able to sleep under the stars, even though he knew the slight risk of being come across by a watching SkyWing, SandWing, or MudWing. The weather was fair on most of the days, with only a slight drizzle part way through, and the moons were bright.
Yet according to Trustbreaker, the night would be much brighter in just four years, when all three of Pyrrhia’s moons were full. It only happened once a century, and many dragons would be lucky just to see it once, though some very lucky dragonets might live to see it twice. Griffin wondered — would he be able to see it twice? He nor anyone else in Pyrrhia knew how long gryphons lived, and even if he found out somehow, Griffin, being an enchanted statue, wasn’t sure if he’d count. Did that mean he’d just live forever, unless he was somehow killed (though if he wasn’t even alive, would that even be killing)? Griffin wasn’t sure; his body hadn’t seemed to grow in his lifetime, in contrast to Torrent’s. So maybe in another hundred-and-four years, he’d still be around, watching the same spectacle again, while Torrent, Schist, Crystal, Trustbreaker, Fracture, and every other dragon Griffin knew would all be dead and gone. It seemed lonely.
Trustbreaker claimed that in the Night Kingdom, the ‘Brightest Night’ was always a time of suspense. Apparently, dragonets born under three moons had strengthened gifts of mind-reading and prophecy, which could make them either a great blessing, or a curse. Griffin had asked him if Darkstalker was one of these, but Trustbreaker had replied that he didn’t recall the name, which had seemed strange to Griffin, considering how many scrolls on the ancient NightWing animus had come from the NightWings themselves. Although it wasn’t like Trustbreaker himself wasn’t strange. Hopefully, it wouldn’t matter much — if all had gone well, Torrent and Crystal would have taken care of the sleeping Darkstalker, and the magical presence under Agate Mountain would be gone.
The great peak of Agate Mountain stood tall in the distance to the flying Griffin, with the secondary old peak a flat nub off to the side, a wing of flat snow stretching between the two. A blast of cold wind swept beneath Griffin’s feathers. 
Griffin approached closer, heading towards where he thought he had left Torrent and Crystal. It had been long enough that he was no longer even sure exactly where the cave had been, but he had hope. The sky was still clear here, fortunately, and he could see a good difference. A blue dragon would stand out vividly here, much more than Griffin’s dull feathers.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Griffin saw his target — a cerulean blue spot in the distance, on the ground. For a second, Griffin was worried that the dragon might be a different SeaWing, but that seemed unlikely. How many SeaWings ever came here? As Griffin approached, the blue figure turned their head, and took off towards Griffin. As the two converged, it became more clear that it was Torrent in the distance.
“Griffin!” Torrent shouted when they came within hearing distance, with a hint of surprise and relief on his snout. “You’re back!”
Griffin smiled, and started to fly past Torrent, veering to the side to allow Torrent room to make a turn. The SeaWing did so, and the two continued towards Agate Mountain. “Yeah,” Griffin replied, “it’s been a while.”
Torrent nodded. “It really has,” he spoke, almost in wonder. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” he expressed, “when you were gone for so long, and with no word, I just assumed . . . you know.”
“Yeah,” Griffin grimaced, slightly uncomfortable, “I wasn’t really sure how to contact you, since the Talons of Peace don’t really offer any messaging services.”
“The what of what?” Torrent asked, confused.
“The group that Trustbreaker and Avalanche are in,” Griffin explained, “they’re a peace group.”
Torrent shrugged his forearms, keeping his wings flattened out. “So you were with Trustbreaker after all?”
Griffin nodded with a slight sigh. Why was Torrent asking so many questions? “Yeah, we spent most of our time in Crosswinds and some caverns beneath the Claws of the Clouds.” He didn’t bother mentioning that he had gone to see Schist, Griffin didn’t want to get started on that discussion so soon after returning. “So, how have things been here?”
Torrent grimaced slightly. “We didn’t end up killing Darkstalker,” he grumbled. “That was months ago, I think. Haven’t done much since. Er, yeah. This way.”
Torrent sailed down with Griffin, heading to the same cave that Griffin had left them from. Had Torrent just given up? It didn’t seem like him, but then again, it had been the better part of a year. Griffin was surprised that they had stayed here so long, instead of going after another animus. He remembered there being more blotches on the map past Darkstalker. He was thankful, though, that Torrent had remained here for so long, even if it only made him feel more guilty for abandoning them and expecting them to wait.
The two gently touched down on the fresh ground, in front of the cave Crystal had found. Torrent poked his head in, and Griffin quickly followed. He looked around. It was more cluttered than when he’d left. Torrent and Crystal’s belongings were at the side of the cave, and a leather pouch with water was to the side of the entrance. Various SandWing foods were also piled up; apparently the two had been visiting a nearby town to buy it. It seemed a bit risky, considering the war, but Griffin understood why.
“Where’s Crystal?” Griffin asked, surprised that the IceWing wasn’t in sight.
“In the cave beneath this one,” Torrent quickly answered. “She’s sleeping right now, so let’s wait until she’s awake to tell her you’ve returned. I’m sure she’ll be glad.”
Griffin nodded, and glanced around the cave again. He was somewhat relieved. He was sorry about being rude to Crystal before he’d left, but still wasn’t sure if he fully forgave her for what happened with Schist and the RainWing dragonet. This way, he’d have a little more time, though it still made him more anxious. Here he was, all prepared for this, but now he just had to wait even longer. He scratched a talon on the ground.
“Alright, that’s fine,” Griffin answered. He set down his satchel, on the opposite wall of the cave from where the majority of Crystal and Torrent’s stuff was.
Torrent carefully positioned himself between Griffin and the end of the cave, as if trying to prevent Griffin from going back there. Griffin was slightly suspicious. Had Torrent killed Crystal or something, and her corpse was back there? It seemed unlikely. Torrent was probably just a little uncomfortable about seeing Griffin again, after him being away for so long. Understandable.
As soon as Griffin’s stuff was in place, Torrent spoke up. “So, do you want to go catch up on a flight or something?” he asked. “Or a walk, if your wings are sore.” Griffin gave him a glance of confusion. “I don’t want to wake Crystal,” Torrent explained.
Griffin nodded. “Sure,” he answered. It would be good to stretch his legs out, after having been flying all day. “That sounds fun.”
== Chapter 66 ==
The two walked across the damp soil, Agate Mountain rising high above the two. Even if dragons were the largest creatures to walk across Pyrrhia, Torrent was humbled by the mountain. He was nothing to it.
Small trees grew off to the side of Torrent and Griffin’s path, shading their way slightly. It was sunny today, a rare occurrence in the late spring here. Still, snow remained at the top of the mountain, and the smooth sheet stretching from the old peak to the new remained unmelted. A small stream ran in front of Torrent and Griffin. Griffin carefully stepped over it, whereas Torrent splashed through, as if it wasn’t even there.
“So what happened?” Griffin asked Torrent. “Why didn’t you defeat Darkstalker?”
The SeaWing sighed. “It turns out that he had some defenses. Because I had to allow the animus magic of the caves to go down there, it was able to prevent us from getting to Darkstalker. They’re alive or something, like you.” Griffin felt somewhat uncomfortable at that remark. “Crystal and I escaped, but we weren’t able to get to him.”
“You gave up?”
Torrent glanced away, as if he was ashamed. His webbed paws continued to walk forward. “I suppose so. Better that we escape with our lives, and it’s not like Darkstalker could actually do anything bad with his magic, being asleep.”
“What if he wasn’t asleep?” Griffin asked.
Torrent frowned, confused. “What do you mean? Wasn’t he enchanted to be asleep?”
Griffin shook his feathered head. “I mean as a hypothetical. What if he wasn’t asleep, and was just staying down there, minding his own business for the last two-thousand years?”
Torrent thought for a moment. “It’s Darkstalker. Out of everything the legends said about him, idle and conservatory of his powers wasn’t one of them.”
“But what if he had a change of heart? Would you still leave him alone?” Griffin pressed. What he really wanted to know is if Torrent had changed — if he no longer believed that any animus, innocent dragonet or not, should be killed.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Torrent answered, “we had to leave him alone. There was no way we could have killed him, and at least this way, we kept our lives.” He nervously tapped a few of his claws on the ground while walking.
Griffin sighed, and gave up. He didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. “So, you and Crystal just stayed here the entire time after giving up on Darkstalker? I remember a few more animus dragons in the Sand Kingdom, why didn’t you go after them? Decided to stop trying to kill them?”
Torrent shook his head. “No. We thought about it, but, er, decided it was a bad idea. Too far, and we wanted to be back for you.”
Griffin felt a little guilty again. He had made the two just stay in Agate Mountain the entire time. “Ah,” he acknowledged. The two had started to walk upwards along the mountain, and the path had started to thin, forcing Griffin to walk directly in front of Torrent and swivel his head around to talk to the SeaWing. “I did a lot of flying,” he stated, trying to change the subject a little.
“Where to?” Torrent asked.
Griffin grimaced a little. “Trustbreaker brought me to see Fracture, in the southern Ice Kingdom. I saw Avalanche and Crystal’s sister there. I, um, also visited Schist.”
Griffin had expected a larger reaction from Torrent to this, but he remained calm, and treated it as ordinary. “Oh,” Torrent replied, “is he doing well?”
“Sort of,” Griffin murmured. “He’s with Glen, in Adobe’s city. She’s doing very well, at least. They seem to be in negotiations with Queen Moorhen.”
“She’s reasonable,” Torrent pointed out.
Griffin shrugged his wings up and down, unsure of Torrent’s claim. “I hope so. Anyways, Schist decided he didn’t really want me around, so I went to the Claws of the Clouds with Trustbreaker, and worked with a couple MudWings to set up a sort of hideout.”
“Ah,” Torrent replied, not really paying attention, “sounds interesting.”
 Griffin glanced towards Torrent with a sigh, still continuing to walk up the side of the mountain. At this point, they were now a considerable height above the woods they had been walking alongside, and there was a nice view over the valley below. “I just wanted to apologize,” he let out with a puff.
“For what?” Torrent asked, somewhat uncertain.
“For leaving you for so long,” Griffin answered, “I shouldn’t have just let you and Crystal wondering if I’d ever come back.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Torrent murmured.
“Also, with Darkstalker,” Griffin continued. “I knew he was under Agate Mountain, and I kept it a secret from you. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No worries,” Torrent grumbled, still pacing up the mountain.
 “Yeah, but you could have gotten seriously hurt,” Griffin protested. “What if Crystal had gone into the caves and you somehow suffocated her by it? Or if Darkstalker really was awake? Look, I’m sorry for keeping that from you, and I don’t want our friendship to be like that. We should be open with each other.”
Torrent uncomfortably squirmed, eliciting a sigh from Griffin. It was bluntly obvious by now that he was trying to hide something. “Torrent,” Griffin sighed.
“So, was that whole apology just for this?” Torrent snapped back.
Griffin shook his head, his feathers waving back and forth. “No, no! I meant everything I said. Look, you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.”
“It doesn’t matter anyways,” Torrent grumbled. “Crystal and I were planning to talk to you together, but it’s not like we could have hid it. We had an egg, alright?”
Griffin blinked for a moment. “An egg?” he squawked in confusion. “With Crystal? You mean, a dragon egg, not like you’re hatching fish eggs together?”
“Yes,” Torrent replied in exasperation, “a dragon egg. Our dragon egg.”
“But why?” Griffin exclaimed.
“I love her, and she loves me back,” Torrent growled defensively. “Alright?” He tensed up his talons, digging them into the damp ground.
Griffin fluffed up his feathers, and sighed. “Alright,” he muttered unhappily.
The two continued their walk in mostly silence, and after providing limited conversation with each other consisting of short snippets and directions, they returned back to the cave. Torrent went inside first, Griffin trotting in afterwards. He still wasn’t sure exactly what to think. Why Crystal? Couldn’t Torrent had chosen someone with . . . more qualms about killing dragonets? Someone who wasn’t willing to lie so much? It felt slightly hypocritical thinking about it, considering his own apologies to Torrent.
“Crystal!” Torrent called out, his voice echoing off the cave walls. “Griffin came back while you were sleeping. I told him.”
So she was actually sleeping, Griffin inferred. Slowly, Crystal’s yawning blue snout peeked over the ledge at the back of the cave. The Darkstone swung back and forth around her neck as she lifted herself up, setting her and Torrent’s egg a safe distance above before doing so.
To Griffin, it was strange seeing it. Two overlapping tones of blue covered the thick surface, darkening where they intersected, and brightening where neither took place. The shades were scattered around the eggshell with neither rhyme or reason, forming mishapen blobs. Light reflected off its surface, tossed around the cave. It was large to the sub-dragon sized Griffin, and from the way Crystal carried it, it seemed close to the maximum weight that Griffin could hold while flying.
Crystal looked at Griffin cautiously, as if she wasn’t sure what to think of him. “Their name will be Austral or Aurora,” she stated, uncertain if Griffin was interested in the information or not.
Griffin glanced at Crystal again. “Why is she still wearing the Darkstone?” he asked, turning to Torrent for an answer.
“You can ask me,” Crystal hissed, frustrated. “This way it’s safer, and it’s not like I can use it for magic anymore. You come back, and the first thing you do is accuse me?”
“I was just curious!” Griffin defensively answered. “You know what it can do, you should be more suspect of it. What if you got magic suddenly, or even became an animus permanently?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Crystal grumbled. “Unless you’re related to an animus, which I am not.”
“And how are you sure of that?” Griffin squawked.
“My father learned it in his research,” Crystal lied. It had Calamity who’d told her, but he’d asked her not to tell anyone about him, especially not Griffin.
“Ah yes, the father that you killed,” Griffin muttered. Crystal grimaced slightly. “Oh, did Torrent not know about that?”
“I knew,” Torrent sighed, his wings drooping. “She told me in the Sky Kingdom.”
“And you didn’t tell us?” Griffin questioned. “Maybe if you had, there’d be a RainWing dragonet still living, flying around the rainforest happily!”
“That was me,” Torrent stiffened up. He’d hoped for at least a day before this tired debate came up again. “I did that, not Crystal.”
“Yeah, well she was the one to convinced you to,” Griffin retorted. He scratched his talons on the ground, and puffed out his neck. “She’s an awful influence on you, getting you to kill innocent dragonets.”
“Oh please,” Crystal growled, “just like before you left, you think I’m some sort of monster, somehow forcing Torrent to do my bidding and kill animuses?”
“Well, how would you like it if I killed your dragonet?” Griffin snapped “Torrent’s sister was an animus, so could his dragonets.”
Crystal stepped a little closer to the egg, and gave Griffin a cold glare. Torrent took a step between the two.
“Ok, maybe that was too far,” Griffin muttered in a half-hearted apology, speaking directly to Torrent, “but you need to stay away from her. She’s a bad influence on you, getting you to murder dragonets.”
“She’s my mate,” Torrent growled quietly.
“He’s not your pet to take care of and make sure the scary IceWing doesn’t ‘corrupt’ him,” Crystal snapped at Griffin. “Torrent can think for himself, just like me, and if you wanted a say in our relationship, you shouldn’t have abandoned us for a year.”
“Please stop fighting,” Torrent grumbled, glaring at Griffin.
Why can’t he see I’m just trying to help? Griffin wondered in frustration.
“It’s late, and I’m sure Griffin is tired from his flight,” Torrent sighed. “Maybe when he’s had a better night’s rest, he’ll think more clearly. Crystal, let’s go.”
Griffin bitterly wanted to make a remark as the two left, but held his tongue. The dragons exited the cave, making sure to carefully carry the egg down the ledge into the next cavern, leaving Griffin alone, his feathers twitching in rage, starting to regret returning so soon.
== Chapter 67 ==
The first rays of the sun peeked through the cave, glancing off Griffin’s eyes. He opened them. The cave was cold and had a slight damp feel to it, although it might have just been the early morning humidity. Yesterday had gone bad. That was for certain. Maybe he should apologize. He wasn’t sure if it would make a difference. Griffin shut his eyes tight and nestled his beak into his feathers. He was still tired.
Loud pawsteps sounded behind him, and suddenly, webbed paws shook him awake. He peeked up to see Torrent standing over him, anxious. Griffin pushed the SeaWing’s cold scales off his feathers.
“Have you seen Crystal?” Torrent asked worriedly. He glanced around the surroundings, as if he was expecting her to be hidden against a wall like a RainWing.
“No,” Griffin said with a yawn, “maybe she just went out for an early flight?”
“She took our egg,” Torrent pressed in alarm. Griffin frowned. That seemed unusual.
Torrent trotted to the side of the cavern wall, poking through some of the food and supplies they held. Griffin crept to his paws, and peered around the SeaWing. “What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Crystal’s stuff,” Torrent gulped, “it’s missing. Same with my dagger.”
Griffin thought for a moment, still a bit zoned out from being asleep. “Wait, she left?” he asked.
“Yes!” Torrent roared angrily. “She left, and I don’t know where she went!”
Griffin took a step back, alarmed by Torrent’s outburst. “Maybe she went down into the caves again? If she took your dagger, she might be trying to kill Darkstalker.” He glanced down to the ledge, leading further down.
Torrent shook his head. “And she took our egg with her? This is all your fault!” he turned to Griffin with a hiss. “You threatened our dragonet, and now she left to keep it safe!”
“I didn’t mean it!” Griffin protested defensively, taking another step back. “It was a hypothetical, that was all! I don’t kill dragonets, that’s what you do.”
Torrent curled his webbed claws, and growled. “You should have never come back,” he spat. “You were gone for almost a year. You had no right to judge us, and now look what happened!”
“I’m sorry, alright?” Griffin squawked back. His talons shook a little. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.” He sniffed a little.
Torrent gave him a furious glare, and tensed up. He turned away without replying, and started towards the cave. “I’m going to try and find her,” he muttered. “If she didn’t leave too long ago, she can’t be too far. Maybe she’s nearby, and I can clear this whole misunderstanding up.”
Griffin started after Torrent, but received a fierce glower from the SeaWing. “I can help find her,” Griffin suggested, “please, let me try and fix this.”
“No!” Torrent snarled. “This is all your fault. If you had just shut your beak and not threatened us, this wouldn’t have happened! You think she’ll be glad to see you?”
Griffin sighed, and looked down. This really was his fault, all of it. He let Torrent go, and glanced to the back of the caves. What had he done? Crystal hadn’t done anything wrong, and he had started to make baseless accusations against her. He had been an awful friend to Crystal, and an even worse brother to Torrent. Maybe Schist was right for rejecting him.
Torrent stepped out from the cave entrance. It wasn’t raining, but the day was gloomy, and a thin layer of fog had fallen. “Crystal!” he roared, hoping she’d respond. Maybe she had just gone to one of the other caves nearby? It was hopeful, but he received no answer. “Crystal!”
Torrent spread his wings wide, and took flight. He flew upwards, alongside the side of the mountain, continuing to call out Crystal’s name. He looked around, but even the thin fog made it difficult for him to see far from this point. He continued onwards, flying through the cloud layer beneath the mountain’s peak. Droplets of water stuck to his scales and wings as he blindly flew through the clouds, dripping past them and making the SeaWing damp.
He burst through the clouds, seeing Agate Mountain in all its glory. It was cold up here, almost uncomfortably so, and the thin air made it more difficult to breath. He looked around, through the few holes in the clouds beneath. No sign of a flying IceWing. “Crystal!” he roared again, unsure if it would be much use. Where could she have flown? The Rainforest? The Great Five-Tail River? Jade Mountain? The Sand Kingdom?
A cold gust of wind pushed against the SeaWing, the water droplets on his scale freezing into shards of ice. He brushed them off with his frontpaws as he soared in circles above the mountain peak, scanning for anywhere he might have missed, but still no sign of a light-blue IceWing. Wherever Crystal was, it wasn’t here.
On the other side of Pyrrhia, an IceWing flew through blasts of snow, almost rendering her blind. She pulled her egg close to her, huddling it against her scales, making sure her hybrid dragonet wouldn’t slip into the maelstrom of ice and snow below. It had been weeks of straight flying, and her wings ached, but her end goal was finally within sight. She was in the southern Ice Kingdom, not far from the mines where her father, Boreal, had once stumbled upon the rocks that now formed the Darkstone around her neck.
Crystal touched to the ground, the vicious wind slamming her against the snow. She curled around her and Torrent’s egg, using her wings and falling on her back to cushion it. As she got up from the dragon-shaped impression in the snow, quickly being refilled by the blizzard, she held her egg in one paw, and used the other to check the pouch at her side. Inside was the map she had received from her sister so long ago, the small diamond she’d enchanted to heal Schist, and Torrent’s dagger, cutting against the side of the pouch, trying to free itself and return to its owner. She lifted it out, and carefully held it. It tugged against her claws.
Placing her egg down between her hind legs, she used one of her forepaws to hold the dagger, and placed three talons of her other forepaw around the small black pearl inlaid in the hilt. The one which would turn animus dragons to stone. Her memory harked back to the NightWing hybrid who had told her fortune. A statue of me, in a room of clear ice.
She now thought she knew what the room of clear ice was, she had seen it in her dreams. It was where Calamity resided. She had last seen him two months ago, where he had warned her that Griffin would be a threat to her. She hadn’t listened at the time, but now, she was sure. The pearl on Torrent’s dagger could turn animus dragons into stone, and if Griffin was right, and she was somewhat of an animus now, or would be, that meant her. That was what the hybrid had seen, her corpse, turned to stone. Well, that wouldn’t happen. Her fate wouldn’t be set in stone.
Crystal twisted her talons hard, pressing into the hilt of the dagger. For a moment, she thought her claws would break first, but suddenly, the pearl came out with a pop. She clutched it, letting the dagger fall to the ground. It started to move on its own, returning to its SeaWing owner. She let it go. She didn’t need it.
The IceWing dropped the pearl into her pouch, and picked up her egg, brushing off the snow. She continued forward, into the storm. The winds tried to throw her to the side, but she stood strong, not relenting from her path.
Suddenly, she saw a figure in the distance, a spherical black eye watching her, but within seconds, it receded into the storm. “Hello?” she called. She received no answer. She extended her talons, but still continued forward.
Eventually, she reached her target. Seven stone pillars rose above her, with a large building, coated in ice, behind them. Here, the storm seemed to recede, unable to penetrate around the building. A sculpture of a dragon stood atop each pillar, greeting Crystal as she walked between them. She continued up to the doors of the mausoleum, unable to read the script, but able to see the scene of battle on the door. A MudWing with a missing wing, bleeding out from her belly, tore out the throat of a burning SkyWing. A crowned IceWing let out a blast of frostbreath at a NightWing. A second SkyWing plunged his talons through the scales of his own chest, and his blood dripped onto the ground beneath.
The Mausoleum of Queen Frost. Another gust of wind hit against Crystal, as if trying to push her closer to the doors, into the building. Crystal dragged a talon along the outline of the IceWing in the carving, encircling her. She saw little resemblance to the modern-day Queen Glacier, but hundreds of generations between them could do that. 
Crystal moved her talon to the area between the doors, a faint indentation between the two gates running vertically up and down. As she drew her claw along it, it was clear that there was no open space between the solid slabs of ice-covered metal, not even a crack. The two “doors” were actually fused together. There was no entrance. She took a step back, and sighed. The wind roared in her ears, as if telling her to persevere.
Placing her egg in the thin snow to the side, Crystal took a claw on her right forepaw, and scratched her left forepaw, cutting through the scales in her palm. A trickle of blue blood started to dribble down it. The IceWing lifted her paw, and placed it on the line between the two gates, on top of the thin layer of ice. Just like the MudWing in her dreams said it would, her blue blood started to spread from where her paw, moving up and down until it reached the top and bottom of the doors, staying on the line between the doors. Crystal started to feel a little light-headed, but stood up and maintained her concentration.
There was a saying in the Ice Kingdom about blood. Crystal struggled to remember it exactly in her swoon, but it was something about how the Great Ice Dragon had granted the IceWings the first three gifts — magic, frostbreath, and blue blood. Of course, Crystal didn’t know the truth of it herself. She had never believed in the old legends much, even being surrounded by animus magic all her life. Yet, the blue blood was one of the things that distinguished the IceWings from other dragons; it made sense that an IceWing queen’s mausoleum would be enchanted to only open from it.
The blood continued to spread in the indentations in the ice as Crystal got more dizzy. It split at the top and bottom, and turned to the left and right, then continued to move around the corners until the strands met at the edges of the gates, forming a blue outline to the doors. As Crystal stumbled backwards, using her wings to catch herself, her blood glew a bright blue, and the ice started to melt away. As the glow of the blood faded, the vertical line between the two great stone doors deepened, the doors unfusing.
Crystal, still a little woozy, picked up her egg, and pushed against the doors, slowly moving the huge chunks of stone open. The wind viciously hit against her, as if trying to assist her entry. Eventually, she was able to get the two doors open enough that she could step through them. The IceWing took a deep breath, and looked back at the blizzard behind her. For a moment, she thought she saw a figure within it, watching, but it was only a glimpse.
As Crystal walked across the boundary, and the great gates started to close behind her, a shock rose up through her scales, causing them to clench and contract. She held her egg against her scales, trying to protect it. While Crystal’s eyes adjusted to the light, an otherworldly wind wrapped around her, drawing the IceWing and her dragonet further within.
=Part 4=
== Chapter 68 ==
Four years later . . .
A thunderclap shook the air over Possibility. It wasn’t often that rain fell in the twin cities, now made one, but when it did, the heavens burst asunder, like all the missing rain from the desert to the west decided to focus itself here. This time, the Great Five-Tail River had finally broken free of its walls, and had flooded the stores and houses along the banks. Extensive repairs would be needed for the buildings along there. The SandWings and SkyWings owners would have to pay hefty fees. Fortunately for Goanna, her father had had the sense to buy their tavern a fair ways up from the riverbanks.
Goanna slammed a mug of ale in front of a SkyWing at the bar. He took it with a snort, not paying her as much as a ‘thank you.’ Goanna glowered, and twisted one of the rings on her claws. Five years ago, the SkyWing would have been cowering in fear, groveling before her just for this drink. Not that she’d ever would have been found serving then. But that was five years ago, before her father had been murdered in cold blood. Goanna’s brother had told her how lucky she was at the time, to have been with him on a trip to Burn’s court instead of in her father’s place, but luck was the last thing Goanna had felt.
Since then, Goanna had been biding her time at the urging of her brother. As she continued twisting the ring on her claws, his words reverberated through her ears. “What would Father had wanted? Remember what Father said, if you keep your mind and your powers under lock and key, no one can harm you.” Well, that had certainly worked well for Father, hadn’t it? Her brother had told her that it was Father’s overuse of his powers that led to his demise, but Goanna disagreed. He hadn’t used them enough. Father had hidden in the shadows like a coward, whereas if he had taken charge and put an end to his enemies once and for all, he could have ruled Possibility like a queen. Goanna knew why her brother didn’t want her to use her powers. He was jealous. She had been the one to receive Father’s abilities, not him. She was always Father’s favorite. She, Goanna, would have inherited his empire. If he hadn’t died.
“Hey, Goa!” a SandWing yelled from across the room. “Fetch us another round!”
Goanna growled quietly, and he and the other dragons at his table laughed. Her blood boiled as she heard her father’s name tossed around. They were glad he was dead. They had benefited from it. That’s what everyone said, his and Evergreen’s deaths had been the greatest thing to happen in the history of Possibility. But if they knew what she could do, they wouldn’t be laughing. They would prostrate themselves, and plead for her generous mercy. One day, Goanna would be more powerful than her father ever was.
Still, Goanna got to work, loosening the tap to fill up the mugs. Carrying three of them in one of her front claws, she teetered on three legs to the table. One of SandWings gave her a nasty grin, whereas the snout of another clenched up in displeasure as she came closer. She placed the mugs on the table and started her return to behind the bar.
“Why did you take me here?” the second SandWing muttered under his breath. “You know what Gila did to my sister.”
“Oh c’mon, lighten up,” the first snickered. “Think of it this way, you get to order his daughter around. If that doesn’t give you a little satisfaction, what will?”
Goanna whipped around, the barb on her tail twitching, wanting to stab the SandWing through the brain. She shot a glare through him. He gave her tail an instinctive glance of alarm, but quickly relaxed to his ordinary expression of schadenfreude. “What?” he asked with a chuckle. “You know he deserved it.”
Goanna’s scales shook in rage, the claw with her ring twitching. She could use it, just to show him how much power he really had over her. It wouldn’t be the first time. A SandWing who’d mocked her father mysteriously drowning himself in the river. A SkyWing who’d worked for Evergreen impaling himself on a SandWing who’d abandoned Goanna after her father’s death. No one knew the real culprit of course. How could they? But not here. Not in front of everyone.
“Well?” The SandWing growled, his smile starting to fade. He leaned a little closer to Goanna, his tail twitching. “You have something to say to me?”
Suddenly, a flash of lightning lit up the dim room, a crackle of thunder shaking through the building. Goanna turned towards the doors of the tavern as the doors slammed open. A SeaWing ducked his head through the doorway, the top of his horns just barely missing the wooden frame. Rain dripped from his scarred gills, and a worn leather strap fastened itself around his torso, a sheathed dagger hanging from it. Goanna froze up.
“A SeaWing?” the SandWing snorted. “Don’t see many of your type around here. Did you accidentally take a wrong turn and swim halfway around Pyrrhia?”
The SeaWing frowned, and cocked his head, examining the SandWing up and down. He turned his gaze to Goanna, and placed his claws against the hilt of his dagger. Immediately, the two SandWings and the SkyWing at the bar stood up, their muscles stiffening, preparing for a fight. A few of the other dragons in the background watched warily.
“I’m only here for her,” the SeaWing growled, his voice low and reverberating.
The SandWing that had first spoken to him let out a hearty laugh, and relaxed, waving his wing in a friendly motion. “Aren’t we all? But you have to admit she pours a good drink, and it’s far more fun to keep her like this. If you squint hard enough, you can even pretend you’re ordering her father around! C’mon, sit down for a moment. It’s pouring out there, and I’m sure Goanna would be glad to start you a tab.”
The SeaWing was unmoved by this gesture. “I’m not interested in revenge,” he carefully stated, his words slow.
“I know who you are,” Goanna hissed, the hint of fear in her voice clouded by the burning rage.
The SeaWing turned his head back to Goanna, tapping a claw on the hilt of his dagger, the webbing between his talons wrapping around the end. “Do you now?” he asked, a wisp of exasperation in his voice.
Goanna bristled, the fin on her spine jittering in fury. “Your name is Torrent. My father’s murder is on your claws,” she seethed, raising out her talons. She pointed the one with the ring she had been fidgeting with earlier straight at the SeaWing.
Torrent frowned for a moment, thinking. Her father’s murder? He thought back to the dragons he’d killed. Her father would be a SandWing. The numbers had grown in the past four years, but based on her being in Possibility, he thought he had a pretty good idea of who she was referring to. “Gila?” he questioned.
“Die for me, you bastard!” Goanna roared, with a flick of her ringed talon.
Torrent stared back at her, unimpressed. A few of the other dragons snickered.
Goanna glanced down at her talon. Why wasn’t the ring working? She moved her talon again, but still no response. Had she enchanted it wrong? It had worked every other time she’d used it.
“Not going to work on me,” Torrent snorted, by now used to this. He finished drawing out his dagger, holding it firmly within his claws. Two gems were inlaid within it, easily in reach of his talons, alongside an empty hemispherical indentation in the handle.
Goanna gritted her teeth, looking to her side. The SandWing that had been laughing was standing there, somewhat unsure at what was going on, and what his place was in it. He was soon to find out. Goanna took a step backwards, and pointed her talon at the SandWing instead. His body immediately stiffened up, and he let out a short yelp of surprise as his limbs started moving on their own. He stumbled towards Torrent, and with a rigid, unnatural movement, his claws swept at the SeaWing’s throat.
Torrent stuck his dagger out, slashing it across the space in front of him, bringing the blunt of the blade down on the SandWing’s claws. Immediately, the SandWing relaxed and crumpled to the ground, confused at what had just occurred. Goanna glowered, and pointed her ringed claw again at the SandWing. This time, his body didn’t respond.
“As I said,” Torrent muttered, “that’s not going to work on me.”
As much as Goanna wanted to stab through the SeaWing’s throat with her barb and tear out his heart, she knew that she was at a disadvantage without her enchantments working. She glanced backwards. Close to the bar was a staircase leading to the upper floor of the tavern, where her room and belongings were. Torrent took a step forward towards Goanna, and she whipped around, scrambling for the stairwell. As she looked back to see the SeaWing slowly continuing forward, she stretched out her talon again, and quickly dragged it from the second SandWing to the ground in front of Torrent. Lifted up by some invisible force, the second SandWing yelled in surprise as he flew across the room, practically flying at Torrent. As he approached the SeaWing, the force disappeared and his body collapsed, skidding across the wooden floor. Goanna did the same for the SkyWing at the bar and a third SandWing before clambering up the staircase.
Torrent looked down at the dragons at his feet, and stepped over and around them as they tried to get up. None of them attempted to stop Torrent, too confused and frightened by what was occuring. As he slowly followed Goanna up the staircase to the rooms above, the dragons remaining in the tavern scrambled for the doors, pushing each other aside to rush into the storming night, the wind and flood seeming more hospitable at this point.
When Torrent reached the top of the staircase, he saw a short, dimly lit hallway in front of him, doors lining the right side. He raised his dagger up, pointing it towards the right, and nudged a talon against the purple amethyst. As he slowly walked along the hall, the amethyst warmed, indicating that he was getting closer. He reached the final door of the hallway, and pointed his dagger at it. This is where Goanna would have fled to. Another thunderclap shook the tavern.
Torrent opened the door, pushing it open. Goanna was at the opposite end of the room inside, furiously digging through a small drawer, throwing out small pieces of jewelry and scraps of scrolls. Torrent sighed, still in the doorway. “Whatever you’re looking for, it won’t work on me,” he muttered.
“I’m not looking for something to use on you,” Goanna growled. She found the target of her search, and pulled out a small green diamond, glinting in the faint light of the room. Torrent’s eyes opened wide as he saw it, and it took him a moment too long to rush forward, trying to get close enough to Goanna to prevent the enchantment from working. Goanna glared, and crushed her claws around the diamond. Unlike a normal gemstone, it immediately crumbled into dust. Torrent leapt forward at the SandWing, but landed only on the wooden flooring. Goanna had disappeared into thin air.
Torrent roared in frustration as more thunder crashed. He lifted himself up, and looked back down. Where Goanna had been, only sparkling green dust remained. The SeaWing slowly dragged a talon through it, pushing it aside and drawing a line through what remained. Just a little too late. Again.
== Chapter 69 ==
Two scrolls sprawled out in front of Griffin on the ground. At the moment, his eyes were focused on the one closest to him, a documentation of recent events in the war. Even if neither he nor Torrent were actively involved in it, it was good to stay informed. To know what places were safe for Torrent, and what places weren’t. It had been almost two years since the MudWings had left the alliance with Blister and joined Burn, after Torrent’s aunt Tempest died, but that was old news by now. Blister had tried to persuade Queen Moorhen back to her side once again, but had been unsuccessful. So much for the ‘master manipulator.’ A large battle had taken place between a SkyWing and an IceWing army, with the SkyWings winning, a surprise considering the number of forces on each side. This set back the string of gains the IceWings had made into SkyWing territory in the previous year. The rebellion in the northern Mud Kingdom had continued, Moorhen’s forces too occupied with holding their southern coastland from SeaWing onslaught to quench it.
Griffin scanned the scroll for any mention of the Talons of Peace. He felt like he had a bit of a duty to see if they had any news, since he was technically a member of the group. Well, that and he was borrowing their house in Possibility. Hopefully they wouldn’t mind about that. He knew Trustbreaker wouldn’t care, but if Avalanche came back from her post suddenly, there might be a little trouble. There was little news on the Talons. Apparently Queen Scarlet had put out a bounty for some SkyWing in her army that had defected to join them, and a SeaWing and MudWing had unsuccessfully tried to stage an anti-war protest together.
Griffin glanced up at the second scroll, the map of Pyrrhia that Orca had enchanted to show the location of all animuses. The small beige blotch in Possibility had disappeared. That was a good sign. Hopefully that meant Torrent had succeeded. The pewter blotch had moved again, this time from the rainforest to the desert.
Suddenly, the door to the house cracked open, and Griffin glanced over. Torrent stepped into the room, folding his wings inwards to fit through the doorway. His snout crumpled up as water dripped from his scales onto the floor. “It still smells like cat here,” he muttered.
Griffin nodded in conformation. “How did things go?” he asked. “Good?”
Torrent shook his body back and forth, causing droplets of water to fly from the spines on his back. Griffin unfurled a feathered wing, placing it over the scrolls to make sure they didn’t get water on them. “No,” Torrent grumbled, “same as the past two. She used another one of the green thingies to escape. It’s as if they’re being handed out like Blister’s propaganda posters.”
Griffin grimaced slightly. “Sorry,” he apologized.
“Don’t be,” Torrent sighed, “not much you could’ve done about it. I should’ve gone for her faster. Apparently she was Gila’s daughter. Goanna or something.”
A slightly surprised expression crossed over Griffin’s beak. “Really?” he squawked. “Maybe she got the diamond from him?”
“It’s possible,” Torrent replied. He recalled Gila having something similar. “She also knew who I was, at least that’s what she claimed.”
Griffin thought for a moment, tapping a talon. “Maybe one of the SandWings there that night told her about you.”
“Maybe,” Torrent frowned, “or maybe there’s some secret animus network we don’t know about. You have to admit it can’t be coincidental that all these dragons have the same enchanted green diamond with makes them disappear. That’s three now, four if you include Gila’s. Three again if it’s actually just the same one. Is she still on the map?”
“Nope,” Griffin sighed. “Could it have just killed her?”
“Far too convenient,” Torrent muttered. “Maybe someone else is also trying to pick off animuses. But maybe not, it could be whoever enchanted them has the power to teleport them somewhere not on my map. Like the Lost Continent, or the Really Deep Palace, or somewhere like that. How many blotches are there left?”
“Three,” Griffin stated, glancing down at the map. “Two if we don’t include Darkie.” Torrent felt a pang of loss at the name. Darkstalker, at Agate Mountain. Where Crystal had abandoned him and their unhatched dragonet. Griffin glanced up at Torrent, seeing the effect the name had caused.
“That’s not many,” Torrent acknowledged, pushing away those thoughts and trying to hide his expression from Griffin. It had been four years, with still no sign of Crystal, and not for lack of searching. It was as if she just disappeared off the face of Pyrrhia. He wondered sometimes, what if someone had taken her and their egg? An animus, magically moving her from afar? He had come up with a number of theories where she had been taken, but it didn’t explain the missing pearl in his dagger. An animus acting from far away couldn’t touch it. The rest of the dagger had returned to him a few weeks after Crystal had disappeared, with no trace of where it had been.
“Yeah,” Griffin answered, “there’s the pale yellow one on the west coast, and the greyish one that keeps moving around. I’ve been tracking that one’s movements, and there’s a pretty clear pattern going on. The blotch will sometimes fly between places, but the only places I’ve seen it instantly jump or disappear from are in the rainforest and in the desert, slightly north of Burn’s stronghold.
“The old palace?” Torrent confirmed. “So the animus might not be able to teleport freely? Just between the two places?”
Griffin nodded. “That’s where I suggest we go next. It’s closer than the rainforest and on the way to the coast. We’d have to fly through the desert, but that’s unavoidable.”
Torrent frowned. He was not a particular fan of the desert. He had mainly been trying to avoid it on his travels. The desert was no place for a SeaWing; even ignoring hostile SandWings, it was dry and waterless. Not his favorite environment. “Do you think this animus has something to do with the diamonds?”
“Possibly,” Griffin spoke. “The teleportation seems like it could be a lead.”
Torrent nodded, as if it would somehow confirm the two’s theory. “So, we fly out tomorrow?”
----
Torrent woke to the sound of claws on wood, as the handle of the door was turned from outside. He jolted awake. Had one of the Talons returned already? Or was it an unwelcome visitor?
Torrent didn’t have time to make a decision before the door was pushed open, revealing an IceWing behind it. Torrent blinked for a moment, shocked by who was standing in front of him. “Crystal?” he asked. How had she known where to find him?
The IceWing shook her head, and gave Torrent a glance of confusion. “No, but close.”
Griffin stood up behind Torrent and gave out a short yawn. He glanced at the IceWing in the doorframe. “She’s Clarity, Crystal’s sister,” he reminded Torrent. “You met her a couple years ago when I visited Trustbreaker, remember?”
Torrent nodded, and sighed. It was too good to be true. Clarity had the same light-blue scales and shortened horns that Crystal did, but her snout was slightly too long, and her wings too muscular.
Clarity gave Torrent and Griffin a disapproving frown, looking back and forth between the two. “I wasn’t expecting company,” she stated. “I was told no one was using the Possibility house.”
“Sorry,” Griffin quickly apologized. He glanced around at the floor. It was in good condition fortunately, the two had packed up what little stuff they carried the previous night. “We needed a place to stay, and were going to ask Trustbreaker or Avalanche, but neither of them were here.” Griffin glanced worriedly to the still open door. It was still dark out, the moons lighting the early morning, but he still was concerned. “Can you close that, please? I don’t want anyone to peer inside and see me.”
Clarity looked backwards, then stepped forward, shutting the door behind her. She looked towards Torrent again, this time more judgmentally. “Since you’re here already, I might as well tell you there’s no certain news of my sister’s whereabouts anywhere. Definitely not in the Ice Kingdom.”
“Thank you,” Torrent grumbled politely. At least from what Griffin had told him, Clarity didn’t think particularly well of Torrent, and still blamed him for her sister’s disappearance.
“I’m not doing this for you,” Clarity stated outright, confirming Griffin’s suspicions. “But if you do want to know, there have been rumors of a SeaWing-IceWing hybrid in Possibility. He might be yours. I believe his name is Typhoon?” It was evident that there was a bit of scorn behind the word ‘hybrid’ when Clarity spoke it, as if the very idea of her having a hybrid relative dishonored her family.
Torrent shook his head. “I visited him a few days ago. He’s as old as I am, he’s not Crystal’s and my dragonet. Unless there’s magical time-travel involved. Which thinking about it, is slightly less far-fetched than it sounds. Did you know that Crystal and I apparently spent a month beneath Agate Mountain? It was just a night for us.” He paused, attempting to avoid reflecting on that time. “Er, anything else?”
Clarity rolled her eyes, uninterested. “A few high-ranking IceWing officials relating to my father’s work were assassinated in the past couple of months.”
Her father’s work. The Darkstone Project, returning animus magic to the Ice Kingdom, Torrent recalled.
“Apparently they were turned to stone when it happened,” Clarity continued.
Torrent’s eyes opened wide, and he exchanged a glance with Griffin, who evidently had the same theory. Crystal had presumably taken the black pearl on Torrent’s dagger before she had left, the one that turned animus dragons to stone. The connections with the Darkstone experiments, to give ordinary dragons animus magic, hardly seemed like they could be coincidental.
“That seems promising,” Torrent calmly answered, hiding his excitement. It was too soon to know for sure.
Clarity stepped forward on her paws and looked over the small one-room house. She carried a small satchel with her, and seemed to be wondering where to put it down.
“We’re planning on leaving,” Griffin suddenly stated, “so you don’t need to be worried about sharing the house with us.”
Clarity bobbed her head, as if she was satisfied by this. “That’s good,” she declared, “things might get a bit busy here. I came down here to do some recruiting and preparations.”
“Preparations?” Torrent asked, confused.
Clarity gave him a look of surprise, and a slight scoff. “Have you been living under a rock?” she asked. “The Brightest Night. When the dragonets hatch. We’ve only got a few weeks left.”
“Ah, that,” Torrent stated. He hadn’t been keeping track of astronomical events, and a false prophecy that didn’t really concern him nor Griffin wasn’t really something he cared too much about. “A quick word of warning, not all the dragons here are partial to the prophecy and the Talons. I know I’ve heard word on the street that most of the dragons don’t buy it.”
Clarity rolled her eyes, and gave Torrent an exasperated glare. “Yes, I realize that. Hence, why I’m recruiting. Things will get better after Moorhen tries her crackdown.”
“Crackdown?” Griffin asked, concerned. He hadn’t heard about this.
“Nothing that concerns either of you,” Clarity explained, waving a claw aside, “but up until now, Queen Moorhen has been pretty lax on allowing her troops to hold and share pro-peace opinions, as long as they don’t desert, turn traitor, or support the northern guerrilla. Everyone knows even Moorhen herself doesn’t want to be part of the war. But Burn and Scarlet are forcing her to stop this practice, and start punishing those who are against the war. In one day’s time, she will be releasing a statement to her underlings, telling them that the Talons of Peace and pro-peace MudWings are enemies of Burn’s alliance and the crown.”
“And how does this help you?” Torrent wondered. It seemed to him that suppressing anti-war opinions would be pretty harmful to the Talons of Peace.
“Because it gives us notoriety,” Clarity grinned. “There are plenty of pro-peace groups around, but Queen Moorhen has decided to place the blame on the Talons in particular for this anti-war sentiment. Every MudWing in the swamps will soon know that the Talons of Peace are the ones who are fighting to end this war, and that we’re the ones who are going to be supporting the Dragonets of Destiny in ending the war. She’s legitimized us as a force among the public, and there’s no way this will just be kept to the Mud Kingdom.”
“So by claiming that you’re the enemy, she’s made all her enemies effectively part of the Talons,” Griffin continued.
Clarity nodded. “Exactly. Tomorrow, the Talons of Peace will no longer just be a random group of dragons fighting for the end of the war, we’ll be an entire movement.”
“That’s good,” Torrent yawned. “I think.”
Clarity clenched her teeth and flashed him a glare, irritated that it seemed he had ignored her. “Yes. It is.”
Griffin picked up his satchel, and looked through it quickly. Everything he needed was still there. Food and water, supplies, the map Orca enchanted, and the wax statue of Schist that Fracture had gifted him. Over the years, it had been somewhat demolished. It was difficult to make out a few of the limbs as they had melted into the rest of the body, and dirt had stained the surface. Still, Griffin kept it. “We should probably get going,” he suggested to Torrent and Clarity. “We’ve got a flight through the desert ahead of us, and it’ll be difficult to get me out of the city after the sun rises.”
Clarity nodded, and watched as Torrent picked up his own satchel and hung it on the leather band in which his dagger’s sheath hung from. “Good luck,” the IceWing said.
Griffin gave her a wave of his talons in response, and peeked through a crack in the door. No one seemed to be out there at the moment, and it was still dark, at least as dark as it could be with two moons out. A good time to leave. Griffin grabbed the end of Torrent’s wing and pulled him towards the door, the SeaWing scrunching up to get through it.
== Chapter 70 ==
Daytime in the Sand Kingdom was inhospitable to most dragons other than the finned residents of the desert, but out of every tribe, it treated the SeaWings the worst. Torrent was no exception to this rule, and as such, planned the two’s journey out in accordance. With the assistance of a SandWing in a small village he and Griffin stopped by in the neutral lands of the Great Five-Tail River, and some proper coinage to ensure no questions were asked, Torrent planned out a route through the Sand Kingdom. The two would fly almost directly from the river to the coast, passing north of Burn’s Stronghold. The entire flight would take less than a week of travel, and the SandWing helpfully gave Torrent tips on where to find watering holes that he could sleep in during the day, as the two would be flying only during the night to avoid the worst of the heat. Torrent was pretty sure Griffin would be fine with the temperatures, as he’d been able to handle the cold of both the ocean depths and the northernmost reaches of the Sky Kingdom with no trouble. He wasn’t quite sure if it was due to him being a gryphon or being enchanted to life, but it was useful regardless.
The nights of the Sand Kingdom were much less formidable than the day, and Torrent’s night vision would be a bonus to remaining undetected by any SandWings. As such, the two spent their nights flying — a cool but comfortable temperature for Torrent. It was a few nights into their journey, close to the stronghold, when they realized that they were not alone.
It was at towards the end of the night that Torrent first noticed the shadow of wings far to the right. This posed no problem for them, he had seen plenty of SandWings on nighttime flights, but they were easily evaded due to their lack of night vision. He turned to Griffin, and offered him a warning.
“There’s a dragon out there,” he explained. “On our right.” He could barely see the dragon in the distance, but a distinct grey shape was visible against the background of stars dotting the heavens.
Griffin glanced to his left, where the stronghold would be. “Maybe they’re just going to the stronghold?” he asked.
Torrent nodded in agreement. It seemed most likely. Yet as the two continued on, Torrent was able to see that the dragon was flying almost alongside their path, not crossing it. They started to slowly drift closer. The SeaWing frowned. Unless it was another SeaWing, it seemed unlikely that the dragon could detect them from that far. Maybe it was just a coincidence? It didn’t seem like they were intentionally flying at him and Griffin, else they would have gotten a lot closer by now.
Torrent winced as their paths began to merge. It had started to become clear the three were all heading in the same direction, and whether he liked it or not, there would be a confrontation. He placed a claw on his dagger and unsheathed it, drawing Griffin’s attention. Pointing the blade at the dragon in the distance, Torrent moved his talon to the amethyst. It was hold. So the dragon wasn’t the animus.
“What is it?” Griffin asked, somewhat concerned.
“They’re flying in the same direction as us,” Torrent stated. “They’re not the animus we’re after, but whoever they are, I think that we’re looking for the same animus.”
“Can they see us yet?” Griffin responded, trying to keep his voice quiet, but at the same time, be louder than the roaring wind pushing past the two.
Torrent shook his head and flapped his wings, gaining a little more height. “Not unless they’re a SeaWing. But I don’t know how long that will last.”
The two didn’t have to wait much longer. Just a few minutes later, the dragon veered out towards the left, the black shadow growing as they approached Torrent and Griffin. Torrent frowned. He had hoped that the dragon would leave them alone, but it looked like they were on course for a confrontation. “They’re coming closer,” he alerted Griffin.
“It’s just one dragon?” Griffin queried. Torrent nodded. “Then we can fight them off if it comes to that, right?” Griffin continued. “Two against one?”
“I think so,” Torrent responded. “Let’s land.” Torrent certainly wasn’t a bad flyer, and because of his numerous travels, would even be considered to be one of the better ones in the Sea Kingdom. But as a SeaWing, flying and fighting while it was not what he was built for, and he and Griffin would have a better chance on the sand beneath. The two soared down, lowering their height. The second dragon in the distance followed them, the dark shadow gliding downwards.
As the two continued their descent, Torrent started to get a closer look at the dragon pursuing them. He snorted in surprise. “A NightWing?”
As the NightWing continued to get closer, Griffin was finally able to see her, squinting. Her scales were a similar color to Trustbreaker’s, a smooth dark grey, but of a somewhat darker shade and without the hints of orange that appeared when light reflected off his in the same way. Instead, the moonlight on her scales gave off a more natural hue, a silvery color. Additionally, she was worn and thin, unlike Trustbreaker, and the edges of her ribcage could be seen pushing against the mesh of her scales. In one of her claws, she held a thin scroll.
Torrent stood up, his webbed talons resting on the sand, preventing him from sinking down into it. She was a large dragon, but not as large as he was, and most certainly not the largest dragon he’d ever faced; Sunscorcher beat any dragon by a gigantic margin. Her eyes narrowed as she landed in front of him, carefully positioning herself so that she was between him and the path they had been flying on. She evidently did not care to let them get to where they were going.
The NightWing took the scroll in her claws and shoved it down into the sand beside her, leaving both her foreclaws open for a fight. She glanced at Griffin, and gave him a small frown, oddly unsurprised. “What business do you have here?” she growled, baring her teeth at the two.
“It’s none of your concern,” Torrent replied stiffly, running a webbed paw through the sand.
She snarled, flickering her forked tongue in and out. “Unless you want problems with the NightWings,” she ordered, “you need to leave, now.”
Torrent frowned. The NightWings? So she was with the whole Night Kingdom, not just a lone dragon. He hadn’t seen very many NightWings before — Sunscorcher, Trustbreaker, and the hybrid in Possibility who had told him and Crystal’s fates? He winced just thinking about it, trying to push that memory from his thoughts. It wasn’t something he needed or wanted to recollect on now.
“We don’t want problems with the Night Kingdom,” Torrent answered carefully, “but we have a dragon we need to attend to, and we’re not going to turn around just because some NightWing said so.”
The NightWing hissed, and crouched down slightly, as if she was preparing to leap forward in attack. Torrent glanced over to Griffin. He had taken his pack of supplies off, and would be ready for a fight.
“Let us through,” Torrent commanded with a growl, “or we’ll go through by force.”
“I’m not going to let you kill him,” the NightWing hissed, a anger rippling through her body.
“Kill who?” Griffin suddenly spoke up. The NightWing didn’t answer his question, though he had a pretty good idea of who she was speaking of. The animus in the desert.
“How do you know we’re planning to kill him?” Torrent asked. “Who told you?” The SandWing animus back in Possibility had also known that they were going around, killing animus dragons. Who had told her? Was it the NightWings? Were they the ones who made the green diamonds?
“I can read your minds,” the NightWing huffed, flashing yellow teeth. “I know exactly who you are, and all your next movements. Now leave.”
Griffin thought for a moment, and squinted as he the side of the NightWing’s snout. “I know you can’t read my mind,” he stated. “Trustbreaker told us that only dragons with the special teardrops by their eyes can do that.”
“What?” the NightWing asked, slightly confused. “Whoever this Trustbreaker is, they’re lying. Seriously? Who believes a dragon named Trustbreaker?”
“Really?” Griffin asked in a tone of mockery. “Well then, what am I thinking?”
Torrent let out a snort of amusement as the NightWing remained silent. “Now,” he asked again, “will you let us pass? Or do we have to fight?”
She let out another snarl. “I’m not going to let you kill him.”
Torrent glanced over at Griffin, who returned it, ready for a fight. “I’ll give you one last chance,” Torrent replied, stepping forward, closer to the NightWing. “Now, will you let us thr —”
Before Torrent could finish his sentence, the NightWing leapt at him, claws outstretched and aiming for his neck. Even ready, Torrent was taken aback, and turning to the left to avoid his throat being torn out, her claws dug into his side, beneath his wings. The SeaWing tried to hold his ground, but the sand gave way beneath him, and the NightWing flipped Torrent onto his side.
Griffin was immediately there, and clawed at the much larger NightWing, raking his needle-like talons along her scales. She roared in pain and turned around to whack Griffin away with a paw. He lept off her backside, but her maneuver gave Torrent enough room to stand up, and slam into her. She was pushed back by it, but managed to hold her ground even in the slick sand due to the lack of room that Torrent had to push her. She returned her gaze to Torrent, and ducked beneath his wing, drawing a line of blood with her talons in the scales connecting the SeaWing’s wing membrane to his body, just barely avoiding tearing the membrane itself.
Torrent shouted out as her claws sunk in, and twisted around to get away from her, trying to slam his heavy tail into the NightWing. Unfortunately, she was too close to its base for an effective hit, and caught it with her foreclaws as it swung. Her claws dug beneath his scales, and the NightWing pulled, grappling Torrent to the ground. He bounced against the sand, and as the NightWing reared up to strike at him, Griffin attacked her again from behind, raking his talons against her side. She twisted around and hit him with a closed paw, too quickly for Griffin to dodge. He was knocked away, and the NightWing opened her jaws. A sulfurous odor emanating from her mouth, as she prepared to let loose a blast of flame at the prone Griffin.
As she prepared to spark her fire reserves, Torrent jumped to his paws, running into the NightWing before she had a chance to respond. Torrent barrelled her over into the soft sand, and the NightWing’s hiss softened, realizing that a blast now would hit both her and Torrent. With a twist of her neck, she turned to the SeaWing to try and bite the side of his neck. Yet, stopping her fire-breath had taken too much time, giving Torrent a chance to slam a webbed paw against her neck. The NightWing snapped up at Torrent, but he kept his weight down, fixing her neck to the sand beneath her, choking her. As the NightWing desperately tried to claw at Torrent with a forepaw, he tilted to the side and fell on top of her, pinning her forearm to her underbelly, and keeping her from getting back up.
Within long, the NightWing started coughing, trying to get air. Torrent let up the paw on his neck, and she wheezed for a moment, catching her breath while glaring furiously at him. Griffin carefully got up. It hurt where the NightWing had hit him, but it didn’t seem like anything was broken. That was fortunate — he doubted his bones were as strong as a dragon’s. He stepped over towards Torrent, who still had the NightWing held down, glaring as she tried to wriggle out from beneath him.
Torrent stared down. She wasn’t an animus, but she was still dangerous. She was right — if she went back to the Night Kingdom with news of them, there might be trouble. Torrent didn’t know how powerful the NightWings were, but the local lore was pretty clear that you didn’t want to fight against them. If the two let her go, they might have the Night Kingdom after them. Yet if they didn’t, and decided to kill her instead, the NightWings would probably realize they did it all the same. If she couldn’t read minds like Trustbreaker, she had to have found out about them from somewhere.
The NightWing continued to glower impatiently as Torrent tried to decide what to do, looking for an opening to escape. If she wasn’t an animus, Torrent didn’t particularly care to kill her either. Animus dragons posed a threat to all of Pyrrhia, but regardless of what she was doing here, she didn’t have that power. It wasn’t his duty to kill other dragons. He glanced over to Griffin. The feathered creature clacked his beak in a frown. “Any ideas?” Torrent asked, unsure what to do.
Griffin swiveled his head down to the NightWing, and rubbed a feathered wing against his side, still aching. He sighed. If she knew who they were, then maybe she’d tell them how she knew. “What’s your name,” he squawked, “and what are you doing here?”
==Chapter 71==
“Nightreader,” the NightWing answered, her hiss full of vitriol. She struggled again, testing Torrent’s grasp, but the SeaWing didn’t budge.
“Nightreader?” Griffin repeated. “Do you have prophecy powers?”
“Yes, like all NightWings,” she spat.
“Should’ve predicted our movements,” Torrent muttered under his breath, receiving a glare from Nightreader.
Griffin thought for a moment. He didn’t believe her. She had already lied about having mind-reading powers, and from what Fracture had told him, the NightWing prophecies were false. Still, according to Trustbreaker, the NightWings did have visions, even if it was only a few of them. It would explain how she knew who they were — if she had seen that they were coming to kill the animus, that might also explain why she had met up with them.
“What are you doing here?” Griffin asked. “You still never answered that.”
The NightWing kept her jaws closed for a second, as if internally debating whether to reply or not. She fidgeted again. Griffin was about to ask the question again, this time a little more forcefully, when she finally answered.“I’m here to give orders to our animus, Stonemover,” she finally responded. She gritted her teeth a little as she said his name.
“Our animus?” Torrent spoke. “You mean, the Night Kingdom has an animus that’s working for them?”
Nightreader stayed silent. That was worrying. If the NightWings had an animus working for them, then who knew what they could be doing with its powers? Torrent was surprised he hadn’t heard about it yet, but then again, the NightWings were known for being secretive. But if they had aligned themselves with the Talons of Peace, as Griffin had suggested, why hadn’t they used their animus to end the war? They had an unlimited supply of power, but chose not to use it. It struck Torrent as surprisingly cautious. He would have thought most queens would have used an animus for power disregarding its dangers. Yet, the NightWings had this power, and had chosen to stay safe, when they could have ruled Pyrrhia with it. Odd.
“What are these orders?” he pressed. “What has your animus enchanted?”
Nightreader kept her jaws sealed, unwilling to divulge these secrets.
Torrent grumbled in frustration. “We’re going to find your animus either way. If you don’t tell us what it’s doing, we’ll find out soon enough.”
The NightWing bared her fangs. “I have orders for him to build a third tunnel.”
“Tunnel?” Griffin questioned.
“A portal between parts of Pyrrhia,” she muttered. “It’s what he’s been enchanting.”
Griffin brightened in realization. So that was why the blotch had been moving back and forth on the map; the animus was making portals. Portals didn’t sound so bad, at least not compared to whatever the animus could have done.
“How did you know who we were?” Griffin said.
Nightreader let out a quiet laugh. “You really think you’re that secretive? NightWing intelligence has picked up a few reports of a SeaWing and a small bird-like creature appearing near animuses who’ve died or disappeared, and I wanted to warn Stonemover. It’s not very hard to put the pieces together.”
“Do you know anything about green diamonds?”
Nightreader gave Griffin a strange glare, and shook her head. “No clue.”
Griffin winced. So the NightWings, and presumably their animus, had nothing to do with whoever was warning the other animuses and helping them to get away. Which meant that after Stonemover, and not including Darkstalker, there was only one more animus on the map they needed to visit; one last chance.
“So, what should we do with her?” Torrent asked, turning to Griffin. “We can’t just let her go, can we?”
Griffin thought for a moment. Maybe they had rope they could tie her up with? Still, there wasn’t much to tie a dragon to in the desert, and leaving her to be discovered so close to Burn’s Stronghold would practically be a death sentence, or worse.
“Look, please,” Nightreader suddenly spoke up, “don’t kill him. He’s a good dragon. He’s only doing what he’s been told.”
Torrent frowned, and turned back to him. He could feel that her heart rate had risen. “Your animus?” he asked. “What do you care? His powers make him a danger. You know what they can do? You know who Darkstalker was, don’t you?”
He felt the NightWing give a small shiver, as if just saying the cursed dragon’s name summoned his spirit to haunt Pyrrhia. “He would never hurt anyone with his powers,” she stated, certain in her words. “Really. I don’t think he has it in him.”
“What if your queen told him to?” Torrent questioned with a small snort. “Would he turn traitor to your kingdom? Or would he willing to kill a thousand dragons with his powers for her?”
Nightreader winced a little, as if this wasn’t the first time she had thought about this scenario.
“I’m not willing to let the NightWings have the power of an animus beneath their wings, no matter how good-natured you think he is,” Torrent preached.
“What if we leave our queen?” Nightreader pleaded. “Will you let him live then?”
Torrent was surprised. She was willing to betray her queen for this animus? “He’s just your queen’s weapon. Why do you care if he lives?”
Nightreader sighed. “He’s my brother,” she growled. “I’d be willing to betray every NightWing queen there’s ever been if it was to save him.”
Torrent frowned. It was bad enough killing a lone animus, but killing two siblings just seemed wrong. “I can’t just let him go,” he replied, still unwilling to budge. “How do I know he won’t just return to your queen, or use his powers for some other nefarious purpose? Don’t tell me he’s a good-natured dragon again. Even the greatest animuses can turn to awful dragons if they use their powers.”
Torrent thought back to Orca. She killed River and wanted to take over the Sea Kingdom, and she had certainly been a good dragon. He wouldn’t have ever thought her a killer, at least not until Sunscorcher. He looked at Nightreader again. If her sibling was an animus, then in a strange way, she was in the same position he’d been so many years ago. What would Torrent have done if a strange dragon had tried to kill Orca?
“What if he gets rid of his powers?” Nightreader suggested desperately as she shifted under the sand. “Maybe he can enchant himself to be unable to use his magic? I’m sure he would if I asked him to.”
Torrent’s ears perked up in surprise. Was that even possible? He knew from Magma’s that animus powers could be given, but could a dragon be enchanted to be unable to use their powers? He didn’t see any reason why not, but something about it struck him the wrong way. Enchanting a dragon like you would an object. Being able to force them to do something, like what Goanna had done, but even more direct. Of course enchanting dragons was possible, though horrible. That much was clear from some of the fables about Darkstalker.
Griffin seemed to think similarly. He turned to Torrent. “We could prevent bloodshed this way,” he suggested. “And this way, our animus won’t get away.”
Torrent sighed. It might be a little risky, and he wasn’t quite sure it would work, but he really didn’t want to kill this dragon. Other than the RainWing dragonet, all the animuses he’d attacked had been doing something harmful with their magic. If Nightreader was telling the truth, and Stonemover was just making portals, Torrent really wasn’t keen on adding a second dragon to that list.
“Fine,” he hesitantly agreed, “I’ll spare him if he enchants himself to be unable to use his powers.” Nightreader started to relax, though Torrent kept an eye on her. If he had heard one thing about NightWings, it was that they were good liars.
Torrent slowly stepped off of the NightWing, letting Nightreader turn over and carefully get to her paws. “Don’t try anything,” he growled.
“I won’t,” she snorted. “I have enough honor to stay to our deal. If you do too, that is.”
Torrent glanced around. Sand, with no sign of another dragon nearby. “How far is he?” he asked Nightreader.
“Behind the hill over in that direction,” Nightreader responded, pointing a talon across the desert. “Only a short flight.”
Torrent withdrew his dagger, drawing Nightreader’s gaze, and swiveled it around until it pointed in the direction the animus would be. It matched up with Nightreader’s directions. She was telling the truth, almost to the Torrent’s surprise. “We can walk,” he still answered. He didn’t want Nightreader to fly off to warn her brother and give him a chance to enchant something.
Griffin started in the direction the two were pointing at, his fragile bones still sore as he walked, his talons slipping through the soft sand. Nightreader continued a distance behind him, Torrent next to her, dagger still out.
The dune was much further than it had looked to Torrent, and the moons had swiveled across the sky by the time the three got close. Dawn was still a few hours away, but Torrent was starting to regret his decision of making them walk. Nightreader still hadn’t made an attempt to betray them or escape, much to Torrent’s surprise, but he was still on edge.
The three stepped up to the mountain of sand. “This way,” Nightreader suggested, pointing them to the right of the dune. Griffin complied, and they slowly paced around the edge, their paws and talons leaving marks in the sand, quickly swept away by the dry winds of the desert. 
As Torrent peeked around the edge of the dune, his target came into view. A large NightWing, a similar size to Nightreader and slightly smaller than Torrent, lay in the sand, his snout partly buried beneath it. From a distance, he looked like he could have been a huge rock half-covered by the dune, though the texture of his dark grey scales gave him away. A small sack was a short distance away, a desert mouse crawling on it, looking for an opening. As the newcomers approached, it quickly skittered away.
To the NightWing’s left was the side of the dune, and implanted in it, Torrent saw an eerie hole, giving off a feeling that he could only be as that of nothing. Where the sand ended around it, it just seemed to fuse and disappear, like someone had plastered darkness on the dune, the edges flaking and peeling away.
The NightWing still didn’t seem to have noticed the new arrivals. Griffin turned to Torrent, and poked him with a talon. Torrent turned to stare at him for a little. He hadn’t really thought about it before, but in some sense, Griffin had the same odd feeling to him. If he squinted close enough, the edges of his feathers seemed out of place imposed with the sand on the ground, and the dim light from the moons seemed to hit him in a unusual way. For a moment, Torrent was a big creeped out by it, but his vision quickly shifted, and Griffin returned to the normal look Torrent had been seeing for the last decade.
“Look at him,” Griffin hissed, pointing a talon at the resting NightWing.
Torrent turned, wondering what Griffin was talking about. “Yes?” he whispered back.
Griffin sighed. “He looks like her, doesn’t he? Sunscorcher?”
Torrent frowned, and looked again. Griffin was right. The NightWing in the sand had a resemblance to the animus Griffin and Torrent had met with Orca, though of a much smaller size. He wasn’t quite sure why: maybe their snouts were similarly shaped, or their wings were both slightly shifted back compared to their forelegs, but he did notice the similarity. He supposed the two could be related — animus magic did run in families, after all, and how many other NightWing animus lines could there be? Torrent glanced over at Nightreader again, wondering why he hadn’t noticed the same resemblance in her until this point.
“Stonemover, it’s me,” Nightreader suddenly introduced herself. The NightWing in the sand, who Torrent guessed was Stonemover, raised his head, loose sand falling from the cracks between his scales.
Slowly, the animus crept to his paws, lifting himself up. Compared to Nightreader, he was in great shape. His ribcage was hidden behind his underbelly, instead of protruding through the thin scales there. Still, his posture was very different. Even if he was physically stronger, the NightWing held his head low, glancing up at his sister in a sort of submission. His scales shook slightly, and his dark eyes radiated a look of haunted fear, though they were aimed at a point behind any of the three arrivals. Torrent glanced behind him to where Stonemover was staring, though his night vision confirmed that there was nothing but air, sand, and the occasional cactus in that direction.
“Nightreader?” Stonemover asked softly, almost mumbling the name.
Nightreader nodded, then took a nervous glance back at Torrent and Griffin. Stonemover’s eyes seemed to have adjusted by now, and the two came into his view. Shaking, he lowered his head more, and took a step back. Torrent’s claws clenched up, worried that the NightWing would try to make a run for it, but he seemed too shocked to try and escape.
“Who are they?” Stonemover whispered. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Oh, this was an awful idea,” he lamented to himself, “now the SeaWings have captured us. Queen Battlewinner will kill us if the SeaWings don’t.”
Nightreader winced. “Don’t worry, we haven’t been captured,” she quickly explained, “and we can’t say her name in front of outsiders, remember?”
“Battlewinner?” Stonemover clarified. Realizing his mistake, he tensed up. “Sorry,” he murmured.
Griffin rolled his eyes. “Trustbreaker already told me her name; it’s not a problem.”
Nightreader frowned, the scales around her mouth almost clenching into a snarl. “I can see why your NightWing friend is called that, then.”
Griffin opened his beak, planning to defend Trustbreaker, but what if Nightreader was right? Trustbreaker said he had taken on his name for something he had done. What if that was betraying his queen’s trust? Maybe it was smart of the NightWing to not use his original name; if it was found out, the NightWings could come for him. Griffin put these worries to rest for a while; right now, they needed to deal with Stonemover.
“What is that?” Stonemover asked, slowly swiveling to Griffin. He looked more frightened than curious. “What do you want?”
Griffin gave out a quick sigh. He didn’t care to explain exactly ‘what’ he was to another dragon yet again. Maybe Stonemover would just figure it out eventually; he was an animus himself. “We’re animus hunters,” Griffin squawked, introducing himself and Torrent.
Stonemover flinched. At this point, his head was so low to the ground his scales were almost against the sand, and it looked like his scaly tail was curled around a leg. “You’re here to kill me?” He sighed. “I suppose that’s for the best.”
“They’re not here to kill you,” Nightreader gently responded. “I made a deal with them. Something that I think will benefit us all.”
“Please comply with us,” Griffin stated, shaking his head. This dragon was so pitiful, he wasn’t even sure he would have it in him to hurt him. Although Torrent probably would. “We need you to enchant yourself to be unable to use animus magic.”
The scales around Stonemover’s eyes narrowed in concern. He turned towards Nightreader, as if asking her for confirmation on what to do.
“Do it,” Nightreader answered, “if you can’t use your magic, you won’t be losing your soul.”
Torrent was a little surprised by this notion. He’d expected that Nightreader would say something like ‘they’ll kill you if you don’t;’ not that she’d have her own reasons to want her brother’s magic gone. Had Orca ever considered that option? Torrent would have certainly preferred that to what had happened. But would she have even done it willingly?
“But what about Queen Ba — our queen?” Stonemover protested. “If I give up my magic, she’ll kill us when we return to the Night Kingdom.”
“Then we don’t go back to the Night Kingdom,” Nightreader answered. Stonemover’s eyes lit up in surprise, as if the idea of leaving hadn’t ever occurred to him. “We can desert and hide from her. Pyrrhia is big, and she doesn’t have eyes everywhere.”
There was a bit more excitement and relief in her voice than Griffin would’ve expected. Maybe she isn’t such a fan of how their queen has been using her brother’s powers and soul, he wondered.
“Well, C’mon, get to it,” Torrent snapped, tired of the delay.
“It’s too late,” Stonemover grumbled, his front talons shaking. He glanced down on them, and placed the right forepaw one over the left, trying to steady it, though the shaking only got worse as he did so. Torrent clenched his claws around his dagger, almost poking into the scales on the underside of his claws. It now became a little clearer what Griffin had meant by him looking like Sunscorcher — it wasn’t so much that familial resemblance, but his manner of movement. The trembling fear in his voice, his aloof gaze, the terrified look he gave off, as if he could see something that wasn’t there. He glanced over at Griffin, checking if he was ready for a fight. If Stonemover refused, they might need to fight both him and Nightreader.
After a tense moment, Stonemover spoke again, finishing his thought. “But I can try.” 
Torrent felt a pang of pity for Nightreader and her brother as his claws relaxed, and instead of the foreboding Sunscorcher, he suddenly reminded the SeaWing of Orca. She’d said something like that the last time Torrent had seen her, that it was too late for her, for her soul. He thought he understood what Stonemover was trying to say: Stonemover believed that he’d used too much magic already, and had lost his soul, but was still willing to remove his magic. Maybe it wouldn’t bring back his soul, but it would protect others from him. Torrent turned to Nightreader for a minute. She didn’t seem too concerned. Maybe she was denying it, like Torrent had so many years ago. Pretending that Stonemover was completely fine; that the magic hadn’t affected him. Torrent didn’t blame her; he had done the exact same thing with Orca. If she wanted to believe that, he wouldn’t try and stop her. It was the animus he was worried about.
As Stonemover opened his mouth, Torrent looked towards him in a slightly different light. It wasn’t Torrent, Griffin, nor even Nightreader whom he was afraid of, it was himself. Still, Torrent prepared to plunge his dagger into the NightWing’s neck as Stonemover started to cast his enchantment, in case he tried something.
Stonemover spoke his words strung-out, his voice quivering as he did so. “I enchant myself to be unable to use animus magic.”
There was a momentary pause where no one spoke. It didn’t seem like anything had happened, though Torrent knew that the effects might be invisible. “Tell the dune to move,” Torrent ordered Stonemover. It wasn’t a coconut, but it would work well enough as a test.
Stonemover fidgeted his talons nervously. “Dune, move,” he commanded. There was no response as the dune remained in the same place. He glanced towards Nightreader nervously. “It didn’t work.”
She grinned, and untensed her wings in relief. “I know!” she replied in excitement. Torrent stepped aside as she walked towards her brother, then wrapped a glittering black wing over him in an embrace. “It’s great, isn’t it? Now we don’t have to worry about your soul, and we won’t ever have to return to the Night Kingdom!”
Stonemover stared out at the dune, not feeling the same excitement as his sister. Torrent exchanged a quick look with him, causing the NightWing to gulp. Off to the side of the three, Griffin had meanwhile set his pack down on the ground, and had pulled out a scrollcase from it. After a few attempts with his unseemly talons, he unlatched the scrollcase, pulling out a rolled up piece of parchment paper from it. Keeping it gently pinched between his talons so the desert winds wouldn’t whisk it away, Griffin rolled it open, scanning over the enchanted map inside. The map still showed a blotch representing Stonemover. That was worrying.
Griffin motioned Torrent over and the SeaWing lumbered through the sand. “Look,” Griffin asked, “Stonemover’s blotch is still here.”
Torrent looked over it and frowned. “So he’s still an animus?” Which enchantment had Stonemover meant didn’t work? Was there some way he could tell, that Torrent didn’t know of? An animus sixth-sense?
Griffin nodded and thought for a moment. “I suppose that makes sense,” he decided, “he did enchant himself to be unable to use animus magic, not to no longer be an animus.”
Torrent frowned. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be a problem. He glanced back to the NightWing, his sister still celebrating. “I could remove the enchantment and have him do it again,” he suggested, “I’ve already allowed it to function around my dagger, but I think I can still disenchant him.”
Griffin shook his head. “It should be fine. He can’t use magic anyways, and doing another enchantment would just cause him to lose more of his soul. But we could bring them along with us when we go west.”
Torrent snorted, finding the suggestion absurd.
Griffin frowned. “I’m serious. This way, we could make sure he doesn’t suddenly regain his powers, and maybe whoever’s been giving out the green diamonds will come and find him to give him one.”
Torrent flicked his tongue, still unsure. Maybe Griffin was right; if the NightWing did come with them, it would be safer.
“They also don’t have any place to go,” Griffin continued. “We could refer them to the Talons of Peace, and maybe find out what else Stonemover has enchanted.”
“Can we really trust that they won’t turn on us in our sleep?” Torrent asked.
“We’ll just be careful, right?” Griffin suggested. “From Nightreader’s relief at Stonemover’s powers being removed, I don’t think she harbors many ill feelings towards us.”
Torrent closed his eyes and sighed. He was still uncertain. These dragons had been their enemies up until a few moments ago. But, he trusted Griffin’s judgement. “Fine,” he answered, “I’ll try it out. But you have to convince them.”
Griffin nodded his feathered head and walked over towards the NightWing siblings. “Hey,” he called, getting their attention. He looked over towards Nightreader, as the NightWing turned her head down to match his gaze. “If you’d like, you can join Torrent and I.”
Stonemover frowned for a moment, the glanced to his sister. “You’re not considering it, are you?” he asked, seeing the thoughtful expression on her snout. “Didn’t they want to kill me?”Nightreader tapped a claw in the sand. “Maybe, although they’ve still made less threats than Morrowseer has. They chose to help us, didn’t they?”
Stonemover muttered under his breath. “I’m not sure I’d describe it as helping us.”
“Your powers are gone,” Nightreader pointed out, “and it’s not like we can just go back through the portals to the Night Kingdom. We’re in the middle of the desert, and don’t have anywhere else to go — and we need food and water, which they have.” She frowned. They might also be helpful when Queen Battlewinner inevitably tries to reclaim Stonemover for herself.
Stonemover grumbled a little, and gave Griffin a nervous glance, but didn’t protest.
“So, you’re joining us?” Griffin asked. “Willingly?”
Nightreader nodded. “For now,” she replied. “We’ll re-evaluate after we’re out of the desert.”
Griffin wasn’t quite sure he liked the sound of that. ‘Re-evaluate.’ Still, he didn’t press it.
Nightreader turned back to her brother. “Do you want to find that SandWing you’ve been dating, to see if she’ll join us, or to say goodbye?”
Stonemover’s snout tensed up. “We . . . broke up,” he grumbled unhappily. “She doesn’t like me anymore, and told me I’d changed, and become too . . . emotional. I don’t think she wants me to return.” He glanced down at his claws, as if he was worried they were going to start strangling him.
Torrent had an idea of what Stonemover really meant. Stonemover’s mate had left him because of whatever his magic had done to his soul, apparently. He wasn’t quite sure he blamed her.
Griffin spoke up. “Then, if you’re decided, we should get flying to the west.” He pointed a sharp talon towards the east, where the colors of dawn were slowly starting to become visible in the sky. “We have a few hours of flight until we reach our next rest stop, and we’ll want to be there before the sun reaches too high.”
==Chapter 72==
It had been two days since Nightreader and Stonemover had joined Griffin and Torrent, and the brutal heat of the desert sun was finally cooling as dusk fell upon them. The moons were a bit brighter than Torrent would have preferred that night, as the light shining from them illuminated the dunes and dry skies not only to them, but to other watchful eyes. Griffin held out Orca’s map within his talons, silver beams of moonlight glittering off the blotches of ink. As his strained eyes watched the slow movement of the grey blotch traveling to the west, towards a yellowish blotch on the coast of Pyrrhia, he felt a cold presence on his feathered wings, as if someone was watching him.
He quickly swiveled his head midair to see Stonemover, who spread his wings in shock at Griffin’s turn, having to quickly flap the leathery membranes to regain control and steady flight. “Sorry,” he whimpered, like a young dragonet apologizing for setting his family’s abode on fire. “I was just curious.”
Griffin sighed. He flapped his wings instinctively, realizing he had lost a little altitude. “Just ask next time, alright?”
Stonemover fidgeted from side to side uncomfortably, although midair it seemed much more like a sweep. Griffin banked to the left, closer to the NightWing until their wings were practically touching. He held out the waxy scroll to the left, closer to Stonemover so the NightWing could see. “It’s a map,” Stonemover stated.
Griffin nodded. “It’s an enchanted map of Pyrrhia,” he explained. “It shows the location of all animus dragons. It’s how we found you.” He pointed a talon to the grey blotch, somewhere to the northwest of the “heart” of Pyrrhia, in the northwest corner of the desert. “That’s your blotch. So whenever you used the portals, we could see you traveling back and forth to the rainforest.”
“Oh,” Stonemover stammered, as if he was embarrassed of his movements being tracked. “So you were . . . spying on me?”
Griffin shrugged his wings a little, causing a quick bout of turbulence in his flight. “I mean, sort of. I could see whether you were in the Sand Kingdom or the rainforest, but that was all.”
Stonemover looked slightly ashamed. “Queen Battlewinner spied on me occasionally,” he murmured. “She has an enchanted mirror that she used.”
“Wait, she has enchanted objects? Did you make it?” Griffin was concerned now. If the NightWing queen was able to spy on dragons, she could be looking at them right now, unless they were all huddled up against Torrent. He gulped a little.
Stonemover nervously shook his head. “I don’t think we have many others. I didn’t make it either, some animus from thousands of years ago did. Where are we going?”
“Huh?” Griffin asked, surprised at the sudden turn in the conversation. He glanced down at the map again, and pointed a talon to the yellowish blotch on the west coast of Pyrrhia, at the edge of the desert. “Oh, here. There’s another animus here. We’re going to pay them a visit.”
The NightWing frowned. “Why am I still on the map? I thought I wasn’t an animus anymore.”
Griffin glanced over to Torrent. He was flying a bit behind him, near Nightreader. He really needed to tell the SeaWing about the mirror, sooner than later. “You’re still an animus,” Griffin explained, “you just can’t use your powers. That’s what you made the enchantment do, right?”
Stonemover looked a little lost in thought, as if he was having trouble recalling the moment. “Right,” he softly responded. “So, who enchanted the map?”
Griffin winced. He didn’t feel like there was time to get into Orca right now, and he didn’t particularly want to be the one to bring that subject up. “Just a sec,” he interrupted, “I need to talk to Torrent.
The NightWing looked a bit uncomfortable as Griffin angled his wings, falling back to where Torrent and Nightreader were flying. After regaining his stability, he turned towards Torrent. “Stonemover just mentioned that the NightWing queen has an enchanted object she can use to spy on dragons.”
Torrent thought for a moment. “So?” he asked. “My dagger will stop it.”
Griffin shook his head, the wind blowing his feathers back and forth. “Not if one of us is too far away from you, and out of your dagger’s range. Maybe that’s how the NightWings found out about us; it could have been used on me while I wasn’t nearby.”
Torrent flicked his tongue out, concerned.
Nightreader spoke up. “It’s called the Obsidian Mirror. It’s been with the NightWings for as long as we can remember, and it allows its user to see and hear anyone they want with it. I don’t know if that’s what was used to find out about you, but it’s possible.”
“So they might have been watching us this whole time, and we could receive a nasty NightWing surprise when we get to the coast,” Griffin speculated. “Delightful.”
Nightreader grimaced. She didn’t particularly find this idea appealing, either. “Maybe,” she answered, “but I’ve still got a while before I’m scheduled to return to the Night Kingdom, and the Mirror doesn’t tend to be used unless it’s needed. The queen doesn’t use it herself, and most dragons find it . . . unappealing. It has bad vibes.”
Torrent knew exactly what she was talking about. The uncanny feeling around enchanted objects. Though he was surprised that it was so bad around this thing it dissuaded the NightWings from using what would be an extremely valuable tool. In a way, that only made him more concerned.
“So as long as we only talk about where we’re going near Torrent, and keep traveling, they won’t be able to find us,” Griffin suggested. The idea didn’t particularly appeal to him, and it seemed a bit temporary at most, but it was better than nothing. He rolled up the map between his talons, and put it in his satchel. It would be better if he didn’t have it out in plain sight, just in case the NightWings were watching. Given the measly number of blotches left on it, it wouldn’t be difficult for their plans to be guessed. “I’ll go tell Stonemover.” In a few short flaps, Griffin had propelled himself forward, leaving Torrent and Nightreader behind.
There was a short moment of silence between Nightreader and Torrent. Nightreader finally broke it. “So,” she stated curiously, “why do you hunt animuses?”
Torrent snorted. A bit heavy for small-talk. “Well,” he responded, uneased, “they’re dangerous.” Realizing from her expression that she wouldn’t accept just that answer, he sighed and continued. “Animus dragons can do anything they want with their power, whether they want to help others, or use their magic for their own selfish and evil reasons. And most dragons would prefer to do the latter. Every animus represents a threat to all of Pyrrhia. The risks are just too high.”
Nightreader frowned, and thought for a moment. “I disagree,” she stated. “Most dragons wouldn’t want to use their magic to harm others. We just want to live our lives, and be happy. There are some who just want power for the sake of power, but no matter what the scrolls say, that’s just not true of everyone.”
Torrent grunted. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe most dragons are good, or at least not evil. But there are still those out there who would use it to harm, whether by nature or by circumstance. And the whole soul-losing aspect. Sure, an animus might start out using her powers without hurting others, but she’ll change. She’ll want to use her powers more. Then, she’ll use them for power, to harm others. And if it goes on too long, who knows what she would do with them? Genocide an opposing kingdom? Worse?”
Nightreader took a quick glance away from Torrent. He followed her eyes to Stonemover, who was meanwhile conversing with Griffin over something. She turned back to him. “Why do you kill them then? Instead of taking their power like you did with Stonemover?”
“Most of the ones I’ve met wouldn’t agree to something like that,” Torrent replied, slightly unsure of the truth in his words, “and I didn’t even realize it was possible, or if it would work.” I still don’t, he thought with concern. Griffin had told him Stonemover’s blotch was still on the map. What if he still had his powers? What if he had fooled them into thinking he had gotten rid of his magic? “By killing them, I can be absolutely sure they don’t use their powers.”
Nightreader flicked her forked tongue in and out of her teeth. “You should avoid killing whenever possible,” she commented.
Torrent snorted a little. Sure, that was ideal, but he wasn’t quite sure she understood the risks involved. If she did, she would agree with him, wouldn’t she? “Your brother,” he stated. “You knew that the magic would have an effect on his soul. Why did you support the Night Kingdom using his magic?”
NIghtreader scoffed a little. “Support them? I didn’t have a choice. I had my orders; there was nothing else to do about it. Anyways, by using his powers, we’re hoping we can bring the war to an end sooner. Sort of.”
Bring the war to an end? Torrent hadn’t heard anything about NightWing involvement in the war. Supposedly, they wanted to remain neutral. Though, he did recall Avalanche mentioning meeting NightWings, years ago. “Do you know what the Talons of Peace are?”
Nightreader glanced over and nodded. “Yes, I know them.”
“Have you heard of a SkyWing named Avalanche?”
“I’ve met her,” Nightreader answered. “Years ago, Morrowseer took a few other NightWings and I to meet with her.”
Torrent remembered that name. Morrowseer. If he recalled correctly, He was the one who created the Dragonet Prophecy. Griffin was probably the one who mentioned it, he was always far more involved in the Talons than Torrent was. “Did you find her as despicable as I did?” he chuckled.
Nightreader shook her head. “She didn’t really stand out as rude one way or another. Though I suppose that might be because NightWings are generally somewhat . . . confrontational. Are you part of the Talons?”
“No,” Torrent replied, “but Griffin has a number of connections to them.” It was funny that they both knew Avalanche. He supposed Pyrrhia was smaller than it seemed.“About Griffin,” Nightreader said. She glanced over towards him, as if making sure he was too far to hear her. “What exactly . . . is he?”
Torrent sighed. “He’s enchanted. Not as in he’s a dragon who was cursed to become a gryphon, but an animus brought him to life.”
“An animus?” Nightreader wondered, eyes wide with curiosity. “Who?”
Torrent averted his eyes. “It’s not important,” he grumbled.
The NightWing laughed. “You can tell me. I’m not going to report you to my queen. Was she the one you were referring to when you were talking about animuses earlier? You did say she.”
Torrent thought back for a moment. Had he really been thinking about Orca then? He supposed so. “Fine,” be begrudgingly replied, “she was my sister. Her name was Orca.”“Wait, Orca?” Nightreader asked in surprise. “As in, Princess Orca? Seriously? You’re a prince?”
Torrent rolled his eyes a little. “Yes. As far as I know, there aren’t any other Prince Torrents.”
“It’s not an uncommon SeaWing name,” Nightreader answered, “and we’re only required to learn the princesses of the kingdoms, not the princes. Otherwise, well, how many dragonets has Queen Cor . . . er, your mother had?”
Torrent didn’t really keep track. From what he remembered from the little news of the Sea Kingdom he got, the SeaWing princesses kept mysteriously dying, many times still in their eggs, so his parents had to keep having eggs in hopes of a heir surviving. Because of that, he now had more brothers than he could count. A few of the ones just younger than him had had dragonets by this point, but their heirs suffered similar fates, only the male dragonets surviving. Not that it was really his concern. “Too many.”
“Wait, so Princess Orca was an animus?”
Torrent nodded. “Through Albatross’s line. She hid her powers well. Only Griffin and I knew back then, although there are bound to be more by this point who’ve figure it out.”
“So are any of your other siblings magical?” Nightreader questioned. “Animus magic runs in the family.”“I know,” Torrent responded, “and as far as I’ve seen, Orca has been the only one as of yet. There’s no other blotches in the Sea Kingdom in my map, though we did meet an SeaWing animus a while back. Probably a fourth cousin once removed or some other distant relative. He got away. With how fast my mother is spewing eggs out, there might be more eventually, though there’s no point in worrying for now.”
“So,” Nightreader asked slowly, “with Orca . . .”
“What happened?” Torrent chortled. “How did she die? No need to be indirect about it. She’s been gone . . .” Torrent gently glided as he counted years off on his talons, “. . . seven years? Eight?” He looked a bit longingly behind him, towards the direction of his dragonet home. Had it really been that long? “She used too much magic, and started to lose her soul. She killed a couple dragons. She challenged our mother, and lost. That’s all.”
“Who did she kill?”
“You won’t remember her, but my sister River.” The blank expression on Nightreader’s snout confirmed Torrent’s suspicions. “Additionally, she killed a NightWing animus named Sunscorcher. To be fair, it was in self-defense.”
“Sunscorcher?” Nightreader asked in recognition.
“You know her?”
Nightreader nodded. “She was a NightWing animus from five hundred or so years ago. The sister of an ancestor Stonemover and I had, and the last time we had an animus in the NightWings. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but supposedly she had a falling out with the queen, which eventually led to her committing regicide in a . . . particularly gruesome fashion. Sunscorcher fled the Night Kingdom, and no one ever saw her again. Everyone all figured that she’d died or had gone off to find the Lost Continent or something.”
Torrent snorted. “Well, she’s good as dead now. Very dead, in fact.” He glanced in front of him, to the west. Somewhere, only days ahead of him, was the west coast of Pyrrhia, and the great ocean to the west. He would be glad to feel the salty sea on his scales again. “Guess we’ll see who’s next.”
==Chapter 73==
Torrent was not wrong. The four flew as quick as they could by only night, and reached the SandWing coast before a week passed. From above, the ocean and the desert met in a clear boundary, where a thin line of brown separated the golden sand from the turquoise waters. A burst of salty air pushed past Torrent, and down below, he could see the waves of the water gently crashing against the sand, where gentle dunes of sand met them in a similar pattern. It was as if the waves had only changed material, and continued their journey from the water onto the desert, and further across it.
The location of the animus was obvious. Near miniscule patches of greenery and a singular palm tree stood a tiny hut in a cove, the only structure within sight. The roof was covered with palm fronds, and it appeared to be only a singular room from above. Unless the animus had enchanted it somehow. For all Torrent knew, it could be the size of the Deep Palace on the inside. There was a small wooden door, closed at the moment. Torrent started to dive down, before Nightreader suddenly called out, asking him to wait. He turned his head back up.
“Are you planning to offer the animus the same choice as you did my brother?” Nightreader questioned. “To get rid of their magic?”
Torrent sighed. He thought about it for a moment. It was true, that Stonemover hadn’t been able to use his magic, but he still wasn’t quite certain that it had worked. It would be safer if he didn’t. “I can try,” he responded, “but if we’re attacked or threatened, I can’t offer any assurances. Make sure neither you nor your brother interfere.”
Nightreader frowned, and glanced over at Stonemover, but didn’t comment further. Torrent angled his wings, gliding downwards, with Griffin, Nightreader, and Stonemover all following. Before long, they reached the sand in front of the house. Clawprints were positioned around the door. They were fresh — the wind hadn’t covered them up, and the surf hadn’t washed them away.
Torrent stepped forward, up to the door. He’d barely be able to fit into the frame.
“Should we knock?” Stonemover squeaked out.
Torrent didn’t knock. “Reveal yourself, animus!” he roared, immediately throwing his weight against he door. 
Almost falling off its hinges, the unlocked door slammed around, causing a shuddering throughout the house. A piece of palm leaf fell off the roof, fluttering onto one of the spines on Torrent’s back. A SandWing rendered motionless by the surprise stood inside the hut, organizing a miniscule shelf of scrolls in the back. She turned herself around quietly, staring at the intruders.
“Er, I wasn’t expecting visitors,” the SandWing replied, taken aback. She moved her neck to peer around behind Torrent, seeing the three others behind him. “But, um, welcome.” She glanced around the small hut, as if checking if there was enough room for all of them. She flicked her barbed tail out to the side, invoking a twitch from Torrent, but only used it to move a scroll from out in the center of the hut to the edge. “I have agave wine, if you want to come in for drinks.”
Torrent frowned, confused by the SandWing’s reaction, and stepped into the hut, ducking his horns to fit through the door. Was this a trap for him? The SandWing walked a bit further towards where a small cabinet of palm wood stood, one door open enough. As the SandWing continued, a small glint of light in it caught Torrent’s eyes, and he leaped towards her, claws out stretched. She let out a yelp of surprise, and jumped back, her tail instinctively curling up in front of her, flashing her poisonous barb.
“Make another step towards the cabinet, and I’ll slit your throat,” Torrent growled.
“Torrent!” Griffin squawked in shame. The SandWing hadn’t tried to attack them at all; the threat of violence was completely unnecessary. Torrent looked over at Griffin, and shook a horn towards the cabinet with a glance. Griffin took a step into the hut to see what had caused the SeaWing’s reaction — a small green diamond, dust covering the surface of the gem, rested in the cabinet. Just like the ones the other animuses had used to escape. “Wait, don’t attack her,” Griffin hissed in warning. Maybe the SandWing would be able to tell them what it did, and where the other animuses had gone.
“No agave wine?” the SandWing asked, utterly confused.
Nightreader stepped into through the door, Stonemover groveling behind her. “Agave wine is fine,” she snorted. “Our SeaWing friend can just be a bit hasty.” She gave Torrent a glare. He had said he wouldn’t attack her first, hadn’t he?
“It’s, er, in there.” the SandWing commented, twisting her neck to look around Torrent, who kept moving to position himself between the animus and the palm cabinet. “You’re welcome to serve it yourself. I have plenty. Dragons may die, but wine is better aged!”
Griffin stepped into the fray, behind Torrent. Torrent frowned as Griffin opened the other door, revealing a few watertight barrels of palmwood. He took one out, along with a few similarly fashioned cups. It looked like the SandWing had made the woodware herself.
“Is this it?” Griffin asked. The SandWing nodded quickly, and took a few more steps back. Griffin pulled out five cups and a barrel, and carrying them in his talons, wobbled over on two legs to the center of the hut, where he set them down. The SandWing walked over, and filled them each a cup. Stonemover and Nightreader sat down by a pair, and Torrent cautiously moved away from the cupboard. As he set on his hind and raised a cup to smell the drink, his tail twitched behind him, still cautious that the SandWing would make a move.
“I’m Nightreader,” Nightreader started as she took a sip, then turned to her brother. “The NightWing next to me is my brother, Stonemover. He’s an animus. Well, he used to be. Am I correct that you’re the same?”
Torrent took a sip, almost spitting it out. Was she sure it was wine? It was stronger than he’d expected. He glanced back up with a frown. Something seemed different about the SandWing. Just compared to when he first saw her, she seemed . . . older. The alcohol, perhaps?
The SandWing smiled, but fidgeted a bit uncomfortably. “Yes, you’re correct. You really did your research, didn’t you?”
“Griffin,” Griffin introduced, “and the overly-violent SeaWing is Torrent.” Torrent let out a hmph as he heard this. This SandWing was the enemy. They shouldn’t be sitting down and drinking agave wine with her; they should have slit her throat out by now.
The SandWing nodded. “That’s alright. He wouldn’t be the first violent dragon on Pyrrhia I’ve met. I’m Jerboa. You’re the first visitors I’ve had in quite a long time, you know that?”
“Jerboa?” Torrent interrupted. “You mean, like the Jerboa?” He thought back to the scrolls he had read. He remembered Jerboa being mentioned a few times, but there were many conflicting legends around who she truly was, or if she had truly ever existed. Some SeaWing scholars had claimed she’d created the Eye of Onyx before the Scorching, others believed she’d created the Dreamvisitors around the time of Darkstalker. Whirlpool’s explanation was that she wasn’t real at all, Jerboa had just been been created by the SandWing Queen Shrub to justify her usurping of Queen Scorpion through explaining the creation of the Eye of Onyx, which had probably been around much longer. The queen and her descendents’ stories had continuously changed over time, hence the amount of misinformation surrounding Jerboa.
Jerboa shook her head with a chuckle. “No, that was my mother. Very long gone, I’m afraid. She died around five-thousand years ago; I’m almost all that remains of her now. Now, what has brought you here? I’m afraid I don’t use my magic to give out favors, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”
“No,” Torrent answered. “We’re not here for favors. I’m an animus hunter, and I’m here to kill you.”
“We’re willing to let you live if you give up your powers,” Nightreader said with a glare at the SeaWing.
Griffin thought for a moment. “And if you explain the green diamond in your cupboard,” he quickly added.
Jerboa stood quiet for a moment, pondering what had just been said. She chuckled kindly. “Look,” she explained quietly, “I really don’t think that’ll work. You see, after I hatched, my mother put a charm on me. Unfortunately, I’m unable to be hurt.”
“We have ways around that,” Torrent growled. “You’re not safe, even with your magic.”
Jerboa tapped a claw. “In that case, I would like to take the former choice, though I’m still willing to tell you about the diamond.”
“Wait,” Griffin asked, not sure if he had understood her correctly, “you’re saying that you’re going to let us kill you?”
The SandWing nodded. “Of course. I’ve been around thousands of years, and have done everything a dragon could do, except perhaps dying. I’m quite exhausted, to be honest. Immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and I never had a choice in the matter. If you can get rid of my mother’s curse, I’d be very grateful.” She glanced down at her paws, and chuckled as she gulped down a sip of wine. “I can already see scales my dulling of age. Although a bit of time to get my affairs in order would be nice.”
Torrent was somewhat relieved. The SandWing didn’t seem like a bad animus. This way, there’d be one less animus to worry about, and he’d be helping her out.
“Torrent can do that,” Griffin answered, “but we need to know about that green diamond.”
Jerboa stood up on all fours, setting down her empty cup. “Oh, that thing. I haven’t had it for very long. A couple decades, at most. As short as the Dragonet Queen’s reign. You wouldn’t know her. Her reign was too short to have been recorded.” She turned around, and started walking over towards the cabinet.
Torrent finished the last sip of his wine, and put down the cup as he watched the SandWing walk over. As she opened the doors of the cabinet, it suddenly struck Torrent, slightly later than it probably should have, that Jerboa might not have been telling the truth. “DON’T TOUCH THAT!” he roared, pouncing at Jerboa, who was pulling the green diamond from the cabinet.
The surprised SandWing threw the diamond up in surprise as the enormous SeaWing tackled her. Torrent used a wing to knock the diamond away as he pushed Jerboa down, crashing into the cupboard behind her. As he quickly overcame the confused SandWing, the green gem sailed through the air, sliding across the floor. When it came to a rest at his paws, Stonemover picked it up, holding it to the air as light glinted through it.
Torrent whipped around, and seeing yet another animus with a green diamond, he roared, “Let it go!”
With a squeal, Stonemover did just that, tossing it into the air as he lurched back. Griffin leaped forward to catch it mid-air, clutching it tightly in his talons as he crashed into Stonemover, tumbling over him.
Suddenly, a burst of green light spread through the room. Torrent looked away, the glittering light reflecting in Jerboa’s dark eyes. When it faded, both Griffin and Stonemover were gone, leaving behind specks of green dust and now, only three dragons.
==Chapter 74==
“WHERE IS HE?” Nightreader roared in anguish, furiously whipping around the room as if expecting her brother to be hiding on one of the shelves. Torrent looked at the diamond’s remains in shock, still standing on top of a hapless Jerboa. “WHERE IS MY BROTHER?”
She turned around to Torrent. “You knew what that was,” she hissed. “What did it do? It was enchanted, wasn’t it?”
Torrent tensed up. Was she accusing him of this? “This isn’t my fault,” he growled.
“No, it completely is your fault!” Nightreader roared. Jerboa looked away uncomfortably. “You could have just not tackled Jerboa, or not yelled at Stonemover, and this wouldn’t have happened!”
“Jerboa might have been trying to use it to escape,” Torrent snapped back. “She could have been lying this whole time, about who she was, just to save her scales.”
“And so you scream at my brother? What did you think was going to happen there, that he was going to try and escape too? Well, congratulations, he’s gone!”
Torrent whacked the end of his tail against the flooring. “You think I’m happy about this? Griffin’s gone too. Do you think I wanted this to happen?”
Nightreader opened her jaws to respond with vitriol, but decided better of it. She took in a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “We just need get them back.” She turned to Jerboa. “You said you knew something about the green diamond.”
Jerboa sighed. “A SandWing gave it to me,” she explained. “She came to me with a young SkyWing to tell me she was an animus, and asked me if I wanted to join her and her protégé. She was frustrated with the queens or something like that, and figured that because of the tales surrounding my mother and her dissent, I’d be willing to help her out. I didn’t, of course; I’ve long decided that I would keep my magic out of affairs like that. Still, she gave me the diamond, and told me that if I changed my mind or was in a pinch, I could crush it and it would take me to her.” Jerboa flicked her tail across the ground. “Never heard more of her after that. Figured she’d gotten caught and executed, or maybe crossed the wrong animus’s path. Or maybe just given up.”
Another SandWing animus? Torrent wondered. The only female SandWing animus he’d met other than Jerboa was Goanna, who seemed a bit young. Anyways, if the green diamonds just teleported them to this animus, it would have been absolutely useless for Goanna to use it.
“I’ve seen other animuses use them before,” Torrent explained to Nightreader. “I’m pretty sure they’re teleportation devices.”
“Yes, I got that,” Nightreader snorted. She glanced down at the dust which remained from when the diamond had been crushed. “You’re the one with the animus-locating map. Where could this SandWing be?”
“Not on it,” Torrent muttered. “I’ve looked for other animuses after they’ve used similar objects, but there’s nothing. They might be hiding from it somehow. Griffin had been the one holding it anyways, so it’s not like it’s much use. For all we know, the animus who enchanted it could be dead and buried.”
Nightreader paled a bit at that prospect. If they were teleported to the buried body of a dead animus, Stonemover could have suffocated by now. Torrent had a similar thought. Did Griffin need to breath? He wasn’t sure, he thought Orca had done something to change that, but it was so long ago, he wasn’t sure if it was just letting Griffin breath water, or not needing him to breath at all. Maybe the SandWing had been given a water grave?
“I don’t think so,” Nightreader replied, her voice shaking, as if she was unsure of herself. “You said they disappeared off the map completely, right? If you’re right, then you would have seen the animuses spots before they suffocated.”
Torrent nodded a little, feeling a slight sigh of relief. So, maybe Griffin was fine. Hopefully.
“We could find another animus,” Nightreader suggested. “Maybe there are more green diamonds. We could use one ourselves.”
Torrent shook his head. “I don’t think so. Stonemover and Jerboa were the last ones I was looking for. Maybe an animus I killed had one.” If he had seen one in Magma’s hoard, he would have disenchanted it. He remembered that Gila had tried to use one, but that was most likely the same one Goanna had. Maybe if they went to the ruins of Adobe’s tower . . . but it would take years to clear away all the rubble, if it hadn’t been ransacked already. Who else could’ve had one? Sunscorcher?
“Do you have any ideas?” Nightreader asked Jerboa.
The SandWing shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she answered softly. “I don’t know anything else. But, er, if you’re planning to go somewhere else, I’d still like my request to be fulfilled. It might seem silly for someone as old as I am, but I’m getting a little impatient.” She chuckled a little.
Request? Torrent wondered. “Oh, right,” he muttered. The SandWing wanted him to remove her immortality enchantment. “Any last . . . preparations?” he asked awkwardly.
Jerboa shook her head, and smiled anxiously. “You’re the only dragons I’ve talked to for quite a while, and any friends I’ve had have passed on by now. I suspect I’ll have some time after you remove it, regardless.”
“Fine,” Torrent muttered. Something felt weird about this. Was it a trick? The SeaWing lifted up his curved dagger, and walked up to the SandWing. He moved the tip to a point between her horns, on one side of her fin. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Jerboa answered, almost in a demanding tone.
Torrent touched his claw to the emerald. For a moment, it didn’t seem like anything had happened. He squinted at Jerboa. Was she getting older? He couldn’t tell. “That’s it.”
Jerboa nodded, and backed away from Torrent. She placed her claws around one of the unspilled cups of agave wine, and took a sip. “The two of you should go. Save your friends. Would you like more wine for your journey?”
“We’re good,” Nightreader quickly replied. “Torrent had too much as it is.”
Torrent glared, but didn’t protest. He looked back towards Jerboa as Nightreader shoved him towards the exit. Was he really just going to leave her here, peacefully? This hadn’t been what he intended, but at the moment, Griffin’s fate and whatever SandWing animus took him seemed far more important than Jerboa.
“We need to go after them,” Torrent muttered as Nightreader pushed him through the exit.
“And where do we go?” Nightreader asked with a snort. “We don’t have any leads. They could have been teleported anywhere in Pyrrhia by now. Or not in Pyrrhia. We can’t go somewhere we don’t even know about.”
Torrent paused for a moment. “No, but Griffin has a friend who might be able to help. An IceWing in the Talons of Peace leadership who might know something. Fracture.”
The SeaWing put a paw over his eyes as the sun glimmered, blinding him.
“Good luck!” Jerboa called after the two. She said something else, but the words didn’t seem to register in Torrent’s ears.
“What?” Torrent asked, looking behind him. He stared into the empty house. Where Jerboa had been just a moment before, sunlight now only glinted off dust, falling slowly through the air.
“She apologized for something,” Nightreader replied. “Something about wax.”
“Huh,” Torrent frowned. He shook his head. “No clue. It’s probably not important.”
==Chapter 75==
It felt as if all the water had been sucked from beneath his scales. The heat was oppressive, like he was sitting on a firescales dragon. If Stonemover had thought the desert was bad, it was nothing compared to where he was now.
Yet, he wasn’t quite sure where that was. The NightWing gently opened an eye, wincing as the hot air hit against his eyeball. He instantly let out a cough as sulfuric fumes worked their way down his throat. It took a moment for his vision to adjust to the view around him.
The Night Kingdom? he wondered. He looked around at his nearest surroundings, his vision still blurry. Stonemover was positioned on a large metal platform, quite warm to the touch, but not so much that it would sear his scales. To his right was Griffin, woozily attempting to stretch a wing, but being stopped by a thick metal band wrapping around both his wings and his underbelly. Stonemover suddenly became aware of a similar device on him, scratching and contorting his wing membrane and scales. He attempted to move a leathered wing, but it just scraped beneath the metal band, unable to get free. As he took a sulfurous breath, Stonemover noticed a second metal band, this one much smaller and around his neck, though not constricting him enough to choke. As he dragged a claw around it, it felt strangely perfect, with no scratches, blemishes, and seemingly no way for it to be removed. Stonemover wondered how it had been placed on him. Looking over towards Griffin, Stonemover noticed a similar band around his neck, hidden beneath his feathers.
As Stonemover’s eyes further adjusted, he gulped slightly. Beyond the edge of the metal platform was a sea of molten lava, like the flows in the Night Kingdom. The rough black surface of the lake broke in pieces to reveal bright cracks of orange light. More metal squares, all empty, floated on top of the lake in the orange glow, drifting slowly from side to side. Stonemover took an instinctive step back, and surprisingly, the shifting of his weight didn’t cause the platform to tilt. There was definitely some sort of magic going on here — had there not been, the two would have been burned alive by the metal heating up. Stonemover tried to strain his eyes, but the thick smoke prevented him from viewing the edges of the lake. He winced as his eyes watered from the toxic air.
“Where are we?” Griffin muttered groggily.
“Er-it looks a little like the Night Kingdom,” Stonemover replied without thinking. No, that couldn’t be it, could it? If some place like this existed there, he would have known about it by now. He’d flown over and around the island enough times to have seen every inch of it. Unless they were underground . . .
“The Night Kingdom?” Griffin asked, confused. “Trustbreaker told me it was in the southwest peninsula.” Griffin looked around the metal platform. The pack he had been carrying, including the map Orca had enchanted, was nowhere to be found. That was worrying.
Stonemover shook his head nervously. He shouldn’t have said that. The Night Kingdom’s location was supposed to be a secret. A very, very, very important secret. Queen Battlewinner would have had him dipped in lava for that. Though it wasn’t like it mattered anymore, now that he’d deserted her. Unless they actually were on the NightWing island, in which case they were probably dead. “No,” he answered Griffin, “that’s SandWing territory. Whoever your NightWing friend is, they were probably lying to you.”
Griffin frowned a little. Contrary to his name, Trustbreaker was one of the most trustworthy dragons he’d met. Why would he lie?
Stonemover sighed and continued, knowing Griffin didn’t believe him. “We live on a large island north of the Sky Kingdom,” he replied. “I don’t think this is it, though. I’d heard rumors that there were other islands not far from it, but that they were even more inhospitable than ours. This could be one of them.” Stonemover looked around again, as if hoping to get an answer, but the sulfurous smog obscured it.
“Inhospitable?”
Stonemover nodded uncomfortably. “Volcanic. It’s quite awful. Little sun, and it feels like you’re constantly being choked from the air. Almost no food. This place is like that, but even more terrible.” The NightWing shivered a little, even in the horrid heat. “Though there’s far worse out there,” he whispered. “We’re lucky to have not ended up someplace like that.”
“Like that?” Griffin wondered.
Stonemover averted his eyes and shrunk his wings inwards, as if he didn’t want to talk about it. Griffin didn’t press further. A bright bubble of lava popped up in the distance.
After an awkward moment of silence, barring the sloshing back and forth of the lava, Stonemover spoke up. “I miss her,” he muttered. “Thorn.”
Griffin wasn’t sure what to say in response. He opened his beak, considering trying to be optimistic, when a crashing sound in the distance suddenly broke his concentration. He twisted his head around to see a figure in the distance, the smoke wreathing around them.
As Stonemover followed Griffin’s gaze, the figure came closer. It wasn’t long before the two could tell that it was a dragon, appearing to be walking on top of the lava. As they walked closer, Griffin tensed up a little. If this was the NightWing island, or something similar, that means that it might not have been on Orca’s map. This dragon could be an animus.
When it came closer, the figure became clearer, and Griffin saw an ancient SandWing, her head bowed low as if she could no longer lift her neck, and her claws almost shaking as she slowly stepped forward. Instead of his initial guess, that she was walking across the lava, a bridge of stone appeared to rise up in front of her where she stepped, the lava parting. If she was the one who set this thing up, she certainly didn’t look the part — she wore no jewelry or honors, and her posture was certainly deferential, as if she was uncomfortable being around the two.
As she approached the two, the SandWing unfolded a wing, revealing two buckets hung on her wing-spurs. She lifted them off, and placed them on the metal platform in front of the two. Griffin peered down. One was filled with an greyish colored liquid, and the other had a number of fish within it. Apparently, she had come to give them food and water.
The SandWing sat down expectantly on her hind-quarters, hunched over. From this perspective, Griffin saw a large burn scar stretching from her jaw down her neck, onto her underbelly, miscoloring the pale yellow scales it crossed. It looked nasty, but nowhere near as bad as the scars Schist had. Griffin wondered how he was doing; if he’d ever want to see Griffin again. Not that it mattered now, unless Griffin could get out of this . . . prison. That seemed to be the primary purpose of the lava lake. So was this dragon the jailer?
“Are you the one who enchanted the green diamonds?” Griffin growled.
The SandWing thought for a moment, then let out a cough, unable to breathe properly. Not that Griffin blamed her, the smog here was noxious. He wasn’t sure how long he or Stonemover could last out here without succumbing to the sulfurous fumes themselves. 
She shook her head, indicating what Griffin had thought. She wasn’t the one in charge here. “Oh no,” she hoarsely murmured. “I’m only Gazelle. I’m no animus. That would be Erosion, my master.”
Griffin’s ears perked a little. Erosion? He was certain he’d heard that name before, but he couldn’t put a talon on it.
Gazelle coughed again, and glanced at Stonemover warily. “Please don’t try anything,” she asked. “The metal bands around your neck will prevent you from dying if you fall into the lava, but they won’t stop it from burning you. They also stop your animus powers from working until my master gives you permission.”
“Please,” Stonemover pleaded suddenly, “this is all just a misunderstanding. You see, I can’t use anim—”
Griffin grabbed Stonemover’s muzzle with his talons, shutting his mouth close. Stonemover grimaced as his teeth scratched the very edge of his forked tongue. If Erosion wants animuses, and this SandWing found out that Stonemover couldn’t use magic, that meant they could be expendable, Griffin thought. Gazelle must have heard Stonemover, but she remained unresponsive, as if she hadn’t quite made out what Stonemover had said.
“Please eat and drink,” Gazelle suggested. “You must be quite thirsty, and I’m sure it will make your meeting with my master much more favorable.”
Stonemover winced a little as Griffin let go of his snout, and spat out a drop of blood. He peered over the ashen water. It didn’t look very appetizing, and nor did the food. “I’m not hungry,” he muttered quietly, more scared than defensive.
“We’re not eating,” Griffin stated.
“You don’t need to worry about poison,” the elderly SandWing attempted to reassure them, “if Erosion had wanted you dead, she would have done it already.” After neither of them made any motion towards the buckets, she sighed. “In that case, would you please follow me?”
“And if I don’t?” Griffin spat angrily.
Gazelle sighed, and let out another cough. She flicked her tail slightly, and Griffin felt a tugging on the metal collar, dragging him towards the bridge of land Gazelle had come from. He attempted to dig his talons into the metal to resist the pull, but only heard a shrill screech from the platform as his talons scraped across it.
“Please, if you don’t want to drink or eat, follow me. My master would not be happy if we were too far delayed. She is quiet exuberant to meet you.”
Griffin spat into the lava, causing a small fizzling noise. He glared up at Gazelle as she stepped to the side, motioning with a wing for Griffin and Stonemover to cross the land bridge. Griffin did so, keeping a defiant posture and his beak held high. Stonemover crawled after him, nervously looking back and forth to each side and checking the narrow bridge before he placed each paw.
As the two walked forward, Gazelle followed behind them, the ground sinking into the lake of lava behind her steps when Stonemover glanced back. Her breathing was heavy as she continued at the back, wheezing as her tail swished back and forth.
The walk across the bridge wasn’t as long as Griffin had expected. He could have easily swam it, had it been water instead of lava. Maybe he still could. It wouldn’t kill him, but apparently it would still cause pain. Would it damage his body? He shivered just thinking about it as an orange bubble burst up to the right. It certainly felt hot. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to swim it, even as a last resort.
Eventually, the two reached the edge of the bridge, and Stonemover let out a great sigh of relief as he finally stepped on stable ground. The area around them appeared to be rocky, littered with sharp stones, but the smog around them made it somewhat difficult to see far. Gazelle walked past them, and turned around. “Follow me,” she asked, “we’ll be out of the smog soon enough.”
The SandWing stepped down into a small crevasse between the rocks, just big enough for a large dragon to enter. She seemingly stepped through the stone wall, as if it wasn’t there. The entrance is hidden by animus magic, Griffin presumed. Stonemover followed her in, while Griffin glanced back and forth. Maybe he could make a run for it? No, he doubted it. His wings were bound; there was no way he could fly, and if this was an island like Stonemover had suggested, he couldn’t get off it. He grumbled unhappily as he entered the crevasse.
It was only a few steps down before Griffin suddenly gasped, fresh air hitting his lungs (or gills, or whatever he had — he wasn’t quite sure himself). Stonemover was even more elated. The crevasse had led into a thin cavernous tunnel, an unnatural light permeating through it. Gazelle took in a large breath of air, and breathed a sigh of relief, before motioning the two on, the tunnel widening ahead of them. A sound of scratching claws echoed through it; apparently they weren’t the other dragons down here.
As the three moved forward, the tunnel suddenly split in two, with a small offshoot to the left. Griffin glanced down it, but had little time before walking past it. He suddenly heard the sound of claws in front of him, and saw two young MudWings, maybe the age of 5 or 6, walking the opposite direction. They appeared similar enough in appearance that Griffin suspected they were siblings. Each had a metal collar around their necks, against reddish-brown scales, though their wings were unbound. Stonemover averted his eyes as they passed, turning his head to the ground, and they snickered slightly as they saw Griffin. After walking past them, Griffin heard them whispering something to each other, but was unable to make it out. If he remembered right, MudWing sibling groups usually had more than two dragons in them, almost always at least three. Were there more of them somewhere? It seemed weird to have MudWings here, especially considering that they had already met a SandWing.
The next dragon he saw surprised him even more. As the three passed another offshoot tunnel, a strangely colored dragon stepped out, a intrigued expression on his snout. Instead of the usual uniform or layered coloration of scales, the dragon’s patterns consisted of mishapened blobs, either pitch black or dark brown. His conical horns seemed slightly too large for his head, his snout almost as tall as the rest of his skull. A similar metal band was around his neck, passing across various blotches of scale colors.
“Hey!” he called out in excitement, his voice cracking to a squeal. Pushing along the tunnel wall past Gazelle, who had attempted to block him by stepping in his path, he stepped up to Stonemover, who uncomfortably looked away. “Are you new here? What’s the bird thing? Are they your familiar or an animus?”
Griffin snorted, a bit irritated that the dragon had asked Stonemover what he was rather them himself. He opened his beak to make a comment, but Gazelle pushed the dragon away first. “Not now,” she grumbled. “Erosion is expecting them.”
The dragon gulped a little at this, as if hearing the name itself worried him, and took a step back, allowing the three to pass. As the three moved forward, Griffin noticed another dragon in front of the, this one the bright blue color of a SeaWing.
“Eel brains,” Griffin cursed, grimacing. He recognized this dragon, unfortunately — this SeaWing was an animus that he and Torrent had tried to kill a few years back, but had used a green diamond to escape. Griffin should have suspected that he’d have ended up here. He bowed his feathered head low to the ground, attempting to put Stonemover’s grey body between himself and the SeaWing.
It wasn’t enough. The SeaWing glanced over as he passed the three, and his already sour glare turned into an expression of rage. “He tried to kill me!” he roared furiously at Griffin. With a lash of his broad tail, he slammed Stonemover aside as he rushed towards Griffin, the NightWing giving off a squeal. As Griffin extended his claws, ready to defend himself against the charging SeaWing towering over him, an invisible force suddenly pulled the dragon back, throwing him into the wall. The SeaWing attempted to charge again, but his claws could only scramble against the rock ineffectively, straining against a similar metal band around his neck.
“Do you know him?” Gazelle creaked, flicking her tail as the enchanted collar held the SeaWing against the tunnel wall.
“Unfortunately,” Griffin replied, catching his breath. For a moment, he had been worried the SeaWing was going to crush him beneath his paws. He cringed thinking about it. “He’s not a friend.”
Gazelle nodded, as if she fully understood. As the SeaWing yelled expletives at Griffin, Griffin glanced back at the long burn scar running beneath Gazelle’s neck, jagged, as if a dragon with talons of fire had torn into Gazelle’s scales. Just like the three scarred lines that ran along Torrent’s gills. It finally dawned on Griffin where he heard the name Erosion before.
“Gazelle,” Griffin spoke up. “Do you know of a dragon named Magma?”
The ancient SandWing immediately tensed up, her barbed tail curling up and twitching. “Don’t mention that name in here,” she hissed. “Erosion doesn’t want to hear it.” 
Griffin’s suspicious were confirmed. Four years ago, the firescaled SkyWing Magma had attacked Griffin, Torrent, Schist and Crystal because she’d thought someone named Erosion had sent them after her. Erosion was the SandWing who had taken Magma from the Sky Kingdom as a dragonet, and had granted Magma her animus powers.
“We’re here,” Gazelle grumbled, the slightest hint of anger within her voice, as if she still held a grudge against the deceased SkyWing.
Two large doors of iron stood at the end of the tunnel, three crowns engraved on each, the lines far too perfect to have been made by claw. Stonemover looked up to them quietly, and took a scoot back, intimidated. His claws started to shake anxiously. “I don’t like this place,” he whispered to Griffin.
Griffin shook his feathered wings, though they rubbed painfully against the band keeping them locked in place. He ignored Stonemover. Whoever this Erosion was, she was just another animus. Nothing to be frightened of.
==Chapter 76==
The flight back to Possibility was tense. Torrent could tell that Nightreader was frightened for her brother, and that she blamed him for what happened. Honestly, she was right. It was completely his fault. He had acted rashly, and if he had only trusted Stonemover, or Jerboa, or had just asked either of them to put down the green diamond, this whole situation could have been avoided, and his wings wouldn’t be sore from the flight.
Although Griffin had told him about the mysterious IceWing, Torrent had never met Fracture himself, and had no idea how to find him. He had hoped the two would have just flown into Fracture on the path, like Griffin had met Fracture after he’d left the Sea Kingdom, but there was no such luck. If Fracture really could predict the future and know things he had no way of knowing, he apparently didn’t care enough to seek them out. So instead, Torrent and Nightreader were flying to Possibility. Clarity had mentioned she’d be making preparations there for the Brightest Night, so hopefully, she’d still be there. And as Fracture’s mate, she of all dragons might know where he was. Unless, of course, he’d decided to suddenly disappear off the face of Pyrrhia.
Torrent suddenly noticed Nightreader glancing over at him, and quickly brushed away his glower, and along with it thoughts of Crystal and their dragonet. “Yes?” he yelled, making sure the NightWing would hear him over the loud wind rushing past the two as they flew to the northeast.
“This IceWing we’re going to find —” Nightreader started.
“Clarity?”
Nightreader shook her head, the wind beating past her horns. “The other one.”
“Fracture?”
“Yes,” she responded. “You said you’ve never met him. How do you know he can help us? He could by lying about whatever powers he has.”
Torrent thought for a moment. “I don’t know, for sure. But Griffin trusts him, and he’s the leader of the Talons of Peace. That’s good enough for me.”
“Wait, he’s the leader of the Talons of Peace?” Nightreader asked. “But he’s an IceWing.”
Torrent glanced back with her in confusion. “And?”
“Well,” Nightreader stammered awkwardly, “I’m just surprised he’s working with the NightWings. Or that we’re working with him.”
“Because of the Darkstalker thing?” Torrent clarified.
“Yes,” Nightreader said with a slight grimace. “The Darkstalker thing.”
An awkward moment of quiet ensued after that, the wind noisily pushing past the two flying dragons. Nightreader decided to break it.
“So,” Nightreader opened, “you were a prince. What was that like?”
“What do you mean?” Torrent asked. He thought back to his time in the Sea Kingdom. It had been so many years, many parts of it had faded from his memory. He remembered the big things, of course, like his siblings, but the individual details, like the names of the guards around the palace were lost to him. Well, that wasn’t quite true, he remembered Seashell a fair amount. Less how she’d constantly slacked off at her job, but what Torrent’s mother had done to her after getting fed up with her.
“I dunno, say, what were the meals like?” Nightreader replied, a hint of contempt in her voice.
“Oh, usually very good,” Torrent answered obliviously. “We had two chefs at the palace for most of my time there, Jawfish and Gar. Gar was much older than Jawfish, and apparently she’d been serving us for decades, since my great-grandmother I believe, Queen Tidepool. You could certainly taste why she had been around so long, even with the limited ingredients we had, her meals always seemed unique. Unfortunately, she had some gill problems, and was only able to serve us every so often. Jawfish was decent for a chef, though his dishes got somewhat repetitive after a wh . . .”
Torrent stopped his rambling, as he noticed the resentful glare Nightreader was giving him from the side. “Er, would you like to talk about something else?” he asked quickly.
“No, no,” Nightreader grumbled. “Just feeling hungry, with all this talk about food.”
Torrent thought for a moment. That sounded like a fib. “So, what about you?” he asked. “How was the food in the Night Kingdom?”
Nightreader suddenly let out a vicious laugh, causing Torrent to be taken aback, his wings bursting upwards in an out-of-rhythm flap. “Food? What food?”
Torrent frowned, unsure what she meant.
The NightWing rolled her eyes. “Sorry,” she apologized, “you wouldn’t have known. Hopefully, you can understand that I’m not too keen to talk about . . . that place. The Night Kingdom. It’s a bit of a secret, you see.”
Torrent nodded slightly, still confused.
“I can tell you this: the Night Kingdom is not a home, and it’s no place for any dragonet to be raised. I might have a bit of an ulterior motive for getting my brother to join you, if you haven’t guessed already — to get him and I away from there, permanently. And strength in numbers, if they ever come for us. I never want to go back again, or even think about it.”
“If you don’t want to think about, we don’t have t—”
“No, no,” Nightreader interrupted, “I enjoy complaining about it a little, and you should probably know at least part of it. So you can understand why we can’t go back. We’re dying there. I mean that in both the figurative sense, and the literal. The air is toxic. It’s poisoning our lungs, and our minds. And food? Just look at me.” She waved a claw to her breast-bones, her dark scales wrapping tight around them. “You saw how Stonemover was. He has muscles on his bones, his wings are strong. That’s because he’s been out here. I helped convince them to get him off the island; honestly, I wasn’t even sure he’d be able to survive back there. He was starving, much worse than me. Coughing constantly, he could barely breath. For their only animus, you’d think Morrowseer would pay much more attention to his health.
“But there’s almost nothing there. The forests were all dead or dying, and so was any prey. So no, we didn’t have chefs, not even royalty. We ate because we had to, and believe me, rotted meat doesn’t taste good, even when you haven’t eaten anything else in a month.”
Torrent was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. He hadn’t ever experienced anything like that. In the Deep Palace, he had never went a night hungry, and even after he’d left, things were never that bad. There was almost always something.
Nightreader sighed. “It’s fine,” she grumbled. “It’s not your fault, and it’s not like you can do anything about it.” She thought for a moment, as if wondering how true what she’d said was, but then sighed once more, rejecting that idea. “So, what was your family like? There’s rumors, you know, about Queen Coral, was she . . . ?”
Torrent snorted, almost laughing. He balanced his wings out as a gust pushed him slightly upwards, away from Nightreader, then flew back towards her. “She was a fine mother, if that’s what you’re asking, I’ve heard of much worse. Not particularly caring, especially to her sons, but I suppose that might have been a good thing. She’s queen; her duty is to every SeaWing, not just her family. If you’re asking about her . . . violent streaks, those have been much exaggerated. She’s certainly killed more than a few dragons, but it’s rarely undeserved. Well, most of the time. She’s harsh, but not cruel, compared to the other queens. And she avoids using executioners if at all possible, almost every dragon put to death is sentenced by her own webbing.”
“Is it true?” Nightreader questioned. “What happened with Princes Blister? Were you there?”
“With Blister?” Torrent wondered. There was quite a lot that had happened with Blister. “If you’re asking if Coral attacked Blister, that part’s true. I wasn’t at the Summer Palace when it happened.” Torrent grimaced a little, remembering how he’d been told about the incident after returning to the Summer Palace. How he’d been told of Rift’s death. The dragon who’d told him was a SeaWing he’d never seen before, maybe around as old he Torrent was now, and whose scale color Torrent couldn’t even remember. “You do know . . . why that happened, correct?” he asked with a frown.
Nightreader thought for a moment, then awkwardly remembered. “Oh. Prince Rift — I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to —”
“It’s fine,” Torrent answered quietly. “It’s been so long now, and we were never that close.” He said this last phrase with a hint of regret in it.
“So,” Nightreader opened, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I was just curious . . .”
Torrent snorted a little. “If you’re talking about the conspiracy theories, as far as I know, there’s no sort of curse on my family. As I mentioned, Orca was the only animus, and she’s long dead. I have no idea about the dragonets who died after I left, I’ve never met any of them. Angler too — he’s always been the quiet type, just because he hasn’t been seen in years doesn’t mean he’s dead, and with the rest of the dead princesses, it seems silly for Coral to be hiding his passing. As for me, I’m obviously not dead. And Rift, Orca, and River all died of relatively separate causes, there wasn’t anything weird happening there.”
“Wait, who?” Nightreader asked, confused.
Torrent chuckled, a bit grimly. “River. You wouldn’t know her. Just a moment.” He pulled out his dagger, and maneuvered closer to Nightreader, passing it to her claws. “River was my sister, the same egg clutch as me. Orca killed her after she used too much magic, and made it so only Griffin and I would remember her to cover up the murder. I’ve heard rumors of déjà vu about her, but nothing too interesting.”
“So you’re telling me there’s a SeaWing princess, just . . . erased?” Nightreader asked. She felt a small shiver run down her tail, and her talons tensed around the dagger’s hilt. The tales she’d heard of the Darkstalker were bad, but as far as she knew, he had only killed dragons in horrific fashions with his magic. What Orca had done, removing someone — it made her much more glad her brother couldn’t use his magic anymore. Not that she could imagine him ever doing something like that. Even if he lost his soul, or whatever it was, that couldn’t happen.
“Almost completely,” Torrent answered. “If it weren’t for Griffin or I, it would be like she never existed. Poor Moray. She interacted so much with River, I can’t imagine how much of her memory must be missing. I’d be surprised if she, or even Queen Coral, hadn’t noticed at least something.” Torrent extended his claws out to Nightreader again. “You’ll forget her again after I move away with the dagger.”
Nightreader bared her teeth in a worried grimace. Knowing what would happen made it worse. An entire portion of her memory, just completely erased? She hesitantly returned the dagger to Torrent, who banked to the left, away from Nightreader. How would it feel? What if she forgot mo— 
After flying out of range from Nightreader, Torrent returned to her side. She had a blank expression on her snout, as if she had just woken up. “Sorry, I dozed off,” she muttered, “what were we talking about?”
“Nothing,” Torrent replied with a sigh. This wasn’t the first time that this had happened. Griffin had told both Schist and Crystal about River in the Sky Kingdom years ago. He’d tried multiple times, all fruitlessly. Thinking about them hurt. All of them were gone. Schist had left. At least Torrent had an idea of where he was, unless he had died by now. Crystal had left too, with her and Torrent’s dragonet still in the egg. A dragonet he might never meet. And now, Griffin was gone, and the only hope Torrent had to finding him was an IceWing with unreliable powers that Torrent had never seen.
Hopefully, Clarity would still be in Possibility.
It was dawn when the two reached Possibility, and the crowds of dragons on the streets of the cities — no, the singular city, now that the two had merged — were just starting to bloom. Nightreader tensed up as the first rays of sunlight hit her eyes. “We’ll be seen,” she commented unhappily.
“It’s fine,” Torrent answered. “There are dragons of all tribes here. A NightWing won’t be too out of place.”
Nightreader frowned. “Even NightWings?” she asked. She was slightly jealous of any NightWing who was able to live in Possibility, though she was slightly doubtful there were any. She didn’t see any NightWings below in the crowds of yellows, oranges, and reds, and doubted that Queen Battlewinner would be willing to let a stray NightWing live here.
“Well, the only NightWing I’ve seen here was Trustbreaker,” Torrent answered, thinking back to his previous stays. “So at least one. Oh, there was a NightWing hybrid here too. SandWing, I think. He told Crystal’s and my fortune. Not that either of ours came true, of course.”
“Crystal?” Nightreader queried as she watched the dragons below, still searching for any hints of black or dark grey scales.
Torrent tensed up slightly. He wasn’t particularly keen on talking about her. “She is . . . was my mate,” he explained softly. Had they really been mates? He supposed so. They would’ve been a family too.
“Oh,” Nightreader answered, slightly ashamed for asking. “I’m, er, sorry for your loss.”
“She’s not dead,” Torrent snorted. Though he didn’t know that, did he? He doubted it, Crystal wasn’t the type of dragon would just go somewhere and die. “She disappeared with our egg a few years ago. The dragon we’re going to see now — that’s Clarity, Crystal’s sister. She’s the mate of Fracture, the IceWing I think can help us.”
“So, he’s your brother-in-law?” she asked. “Or your brother-in-law-in-law? I’m not exactly sure how the IceWing marriage system works.”
Torrent shrugged his wings slightly, before tilting them forward and spreading them out, heading downwards. The two were nearing the blue-shingled house where Clarity would hopefully be. “Maybe. I’ve never really thought about him like that. As I mentioned, I’ve never met him.” An uncomfortable thought came to Torrent’s mind. “You don’t find it . . . weird or anything that my mate was an IceWing, do you? And that I’m a SeaWing?”
Nightreader snorted; Torrent should’ve known she wasn’t that petty of a dragon. “I can’t say I’m a fan of IceWings, or at least the Ice Kingdom, but I’ve got no problem with relations between tribes. Stonemover mentioned he was with a SandWing, didn’t he?”
“Hmph,” Torrent stated. He wasn’t sure what she meant about IceWings, but it wasn’t like he could expect more. “He mentioned that he broke up with her, right?”
Nightreader laughed. “If you’re asking if he’s available, I think it was a little too recent for him to find another partner. And I thought you said you didn’t like animuses.”
Torrent swooped down closer to the ground, tucking his tail, slightly embarrassed. “It’s not really that I don’t like animuses,” he grumbled, unsure of his statement, his voice trailing off as the two landed on the paved road. He saw a few stares from nearby dragons. Most likely surprised to see a SeaWing and a NightWing together — SeaWings weren’t common here, and NightWings were altogether unheard of.
Nightreader noticed the stares, but ignored them. She didn’t care to deal with it; right now, her focus was on finding her brother. “Is that it?” she asked, pointing at the small blue-shingled house.
Torrent nodded, and stepped up to the door, rapping his webbed talons on it. It creaked open slightly, and the white snout of an IceWing looked up at him. The SeaWing breathed a sigh of relief; Clarity was still here.
“Get inside quickly,” Clarity hissed in frustration, “you’re interrupting us. Did you bring that here?”
“Sorry,” Torrent muttered. “And yes, the NightWing is with me.”
The door opened a bit wider, and the two dragons walked into the room. In addition to Clarity, who quickly shut the door behind them, a second IceWing was peered curiously at the two. The light greyscale dragon offered a friendly wave with his paws to the newcomers. “Hello!” he stated. “Welcome! Are you here to join the Talons of Peace?”
“You’re back soon,” Clarity complained to Torrent, ignoring the other IceWing. “Where’s Griffin? He didn’t turn into the NightWing, did he?”
“He’s, er, missing,” Torrent stated, “which is why we’ve come here.” He glanced over to the second IceWing. “Fracture?”
The IceWing gave Torrent a look of conclusion, and Clarity burst out in hysterics. “Fracture? You have to be kidding me!”
“I’ve never met him,” Torrent answered, shooting Clarity a glare.
She rolled her eyes, and pointed a sharp talon to the second IceWing. “That’s Hvitur. He’s a member of the Talons, has been for the last few years. Who’s she?”
“I’m Nightreader,” Nightreader stated matter-of-factly. “I take it you’re Clarity?”
Clarity didn’t respond with an answer. “What is a NightWing doing here? Did Morrowseer send you? I thought he refused to send NightWing emissaries to meet with IceWings or some seal dung like that.”
“I’m not with Morrowseer,” Nightreader hissed, baring her teeth slightly.
“Do you want to join the Talons?” Hvitur suddenly spoke up. “We’re always recruiting, you know, if you want to work for a noble cause, as opposed to a war the only benefits the queens while the rest of Pyrrhia suffers.”
“You sound too stiff,” Clarity analysed Hvitur, turning to him. “Like you’re just repeating someone else’s speech or something.”
Hvitur glanced away, slightly hurt at Clarity’s criticism. “It’s not like I’m going to be on recruitment duty, you know,” he protested.
Clarity ignored him, and turned back to Torrent with a sigh. “I was just giving Hvitur directions for his mission. He’s heading to Queen Scarlet’s palace after this, to pick up the SkyWing egg before it hatches on the Brightest Night. The prophecized one. Hvitur will be meeting Avalanche there, so she can pass it off to him before he takes to where we’re hiding the other Dragonets of Destiny.”
“Why not just use Avalanche’s dragonet?” Torrent suggested heedlessly. “Griffin mentioned he was due around the Brightest Night, and you’ve already got his egg safe.”
Clarity’s scales tensed up in alarm, drawing a gaze of confusion from Torrent. She gave Hvitur a quick side-glance before returning to Torrent. “If you remember,” she carefully stated, “these are prophecy dragonets, we can’t just pick-and-choose.” Seeing Torrent about to bark back a response, she hissed, “We can talk more about this later.”
Torrent frowned, but didn’t press further. Clarity clearly didn’t want to talk more about this, and her fangs were so close it looked like she would bite Torrent’s snout off if he tried to force it.
Clarity returned to Hvitur. “So, you know what you’re doing? The flight path you’re following to the Claws of the Clouds? Where you’re meeting Avalanche?”
“Straight south from the rendezvous point, then west before I get close to the MudWing border. And I’m meeting Avalanche by the monastery ruins just south of the palace,” Hvitur replied, grinning with confidence and excitement. “Don’t worry, I know what I have to do.”
Clarity nodded. “You should leave now. You have a long flight ahead of you. May the Great Ice Dragon’s wings beat with yours.”
Hvitur bowed his head to Clarity, and turned to the side, Nightreader stepping out of the way as his spiked tail trailed past. He reached down to a leather satchel, then headed straight towards the door. “Only seven more years of this war,” he grinned back, before pushing the door open. “I’m counting down the days. I’ll make sure the dragonets are raised well.”
In a swish of his tails, he leapt through the entryway, into the winds of Possibility. Torrent shut the door behind him, the wind slamming it closed, and turned to his ex-sister-in-law.
“He thinks the prophecy is real?” Torrent asked, an disapproving growl behind his voice.
Clarity bristled, her scales standing on edge, and the spines along her back and tail raising up defensively. “You can’t say that!” she hissed, glancing over towards Nightreader.
Nightreader snorted. “What do you mean ‘he can’t say that?’ I’m a NightWing. Morrowseer made up that cursed prophecy. I was there when he gave it to Avalanche. I know exactly how real it is. I’m just don’t know how you know it’s fake.”
The IceWing scratched a sharp talon on the floor of the house. “Fine,” she muttered, “but it’s a secret, and the NightWings of all dragons should be worried about the reaction if the queens all found out that the mystical prophecy turned out to be the manipulative scribblings of some old geezer. What would they say about your powers then?”
Nightreader’s tail twitched. “I’m not loyal to Morrowseer anymore, as I mentioned. That’s not my concern anymore.” Torrent picked up on a slight hesitance in her voice. She might have deserted the NightWings, but Nightreader didn’t seem to keen on them being exposed.
“Sure,” Clarity answered sarcastically, with the hint of a grin. “But if you ever decide to make it your concern again, your kingdom’s secret is in safe claws, or so I had planned. Only the four of us still around were supposed to know about the fake prophecy: Fracture, Avalanche, Trustbreaker, and myself.” She turned to Torrent suspiciously. “So what I’m curious to is how you found out.”
“Griffin mentioned it, so don’t blame me,” the SeaWing said.
“Ah,” Clarity answered, remembering that Griffin had been there when Avalanche had returned from her meeting with Morrowseer. “You understand why you can’t tell anyone about the fake prophecy, correct? We need all dragons, even members of the Talons of Peace, to believe it’s true, and to have faith in its truth. Most dragons have problems with the war and the queens — their friends and families have died because of it — but they don’t think there’s anything they can do to stop it. And maybe they’re right. There’s no way just one dragon can stop the war by themselves. But that’s why we need the prophecy. The dragons of Pyrrhia need to have hope that someone can end the war, and when the dragonets finally make their decision, everyone across the continent will respect it. The queens only have power because they’re recognized by their citizens as being leaders, and if one of the three princesses is recognized as being the legitimate rule by everyone, dragons will stop fighting for the others.”
Torrent frowned. He wasn’t quite sure Clarity’s plan would work out that way. What if the princesses and the queens just ignored the dragonets decision, and decided to keep fighting? Could the armies really refuse their orders? “Isn’t there another way than fooling everyone?” he questioned. “Dragons will be dying for a lie; for a fake vision.”
Clarity shook her head. “No. The more who believe in the prophecy’s truth, the more likely it is to become true after all. We’ll finally have peace on Pyrrhia.”
Nightreader fidgeted a little, drawing the IceWing’s gaze. She looked somewhat uncomfortable at this discussion herself.Clarity frowned, but her expression turned to a smirk. “Don’t worry, NightWing. Your kind won’t be able to hide your secrets from Fracture.”
Nightreader stuck out her forked tongue mockingly, taking Clarity aback for a second.
“You mentioned Avalanche’s dragonet,” Torrent stated, ignoring the exchange that had just taken place between the IceWing and NightWing. “Flame’s what she’s naming him, right? Since it’s fake, just use him as a prophecy dragonet, don’t bother with whatever Hibtur or whatever he’s called is doing.”
“Already ahead of you,” Clarity answered. “He’s backup. In case Hvitur fails, or the dragonet he fetches proves too unwieldy, we’ll substitute him in. We’re not using him as the primary, since he isn’t actually born on the Brightest Night, and Fracture has mentioned that if we try to use him, things could get a little . . . troublesome. Apparently, he’s even meaner than his mother.”
“He will?” Nightreader wondered in confusion. 
Clarity smirked. “You’ll see soon enough. Speaking of my mate, since we have a NightWing here herself, I just wanted to make sure you got our communications about the dragonet you’re supplying. Morrowseer is bringing the male dragonet, not the female? Starlight, or something like that?”
“Starflight,” Nightreader corrected, sounding slightly annoyed she was being asked this, “and yes, Fatespeaker will be brought to the coastal meeting point.”
“And she’s being hatched somewhere dark?” Clarity questioned, a slight hint of nervousness in her voice.
“Yes, your strange request is being followed,” Nightreader snorted, “though that’s pretty much the entire Night Kingdom.”
Clarity breathed a sigh of relief, much to the confusion of Nightreader and Torrent. “Good. Trustbreaker will be happy to hear that. Just make sure that all of this stays between us three.”
Nightreader shrugged her wings in agreement, as if she didn’t really care, and Torrent nodded. “Whatever the Talons do is little of my business,” the SeaWing grumbled. “I’m trying to hunt animuses, not end the war.”
“In that case, why are you here to begin with?” Clarity interrogated. “You mentioned that Griffin was missing? Fracture won’t be happy to hear that, unless he already knows. He likes Griffin quite a lot, you know.”
“There was an accident with an animus,” Torrent explained, “and we believe Griffin was teleported somewhere outside of Pyrrhia, along with Nightreader’s brother. I need Fracture to find him. He can do that, right?”
Clarity frowned slightly. “That’s not really how his powers work. He doesn’t remember seeing much outside Pyrrhia before, though he’s mentioned meeting some bug dragons or something like that once or twice. Griffin might already be dead this time around, unfortunately.”
Torrent gulped. “He can’t be,” he protested. “You don’t know this, right? It’s just a guess?”
The IceWing averted her beady black eyes a little. “A lot of time, someone disappearing means they’re dead. But I don’t know for certain. I was planning on returning to him after this anyways, to spend the Brightest Night with him, so I can take you.”
“Great,” Torrent grumbled, not relieved much. Nightreader had a similar expression of worry on her snout.
“I hope you’re up to flying more,” Clarity stated. “He’s west from here, maybe a bit north, almost to the coast. We’ll meet him in the hills of the Neck.”
==Chapter 77==
With a twitch of Gazelle’s tail, the two great doors in front of Griffin and Stonemover slowly started to open, without even a touch. The two had to step back to avoid being hit by them as they opened outwards. Stonemover whimpered as he glanced inwards at the room inside, Griffin looking on in awe.
Erosion’s chamber held the shape of an gargantuan cylinder, the ends above and below slightly tapered, so the walls curved in slightly. The room was almost completely empty, barring a disk in the center, at the same height in which the three had entered, halfway up the cylindrical room. A fragile bridge of stone stretched from the doorway to the disk, far too thin to hold the disk’s weight aloft naturally. While normally a dragon could have easily just flown across the gap, the bridge certainly seemed much more intimidating to Griffin and Stonemover with their wings bound. One wrong move, and they would fall to the pit beneath.
The top of the stoney chamber was what had first caught Griffin’s eye. The ceiling of the cylinder was covered in glittering gemstones of all colors, like little stars. Each of them glowed with an unnatural light, providing the dim ambience of the room. As Griffin moved carefully to cross the stone bridge, he glanced down. There was no clear end to the pit beneath the cylinder, so Griffin had no clue how long a fall would be. The dim light transitioned unexpectedly to pitch darkness as one went further down, with tiny specks of light dotting the area, seemingly floating.
As Griffin took a step forward, the view didn’t change, and the specks of light seemed to follow along with his eyes. He turned his head back and forth, trying to make sense of it, but the pattern of light didn’t change with his perspective. Maybe they were further than they seemed? He extended a talon, reaching it off the stone bridge. Even though the closest speckles of light looked liked they were many tail-lengths away from on the bridge, Griffin’s talon started to reach out towards the speck of light, and his entire view seemed to warp around him, bringing him closer. His talon reached towards a blue light as he singled it out, or possibly it was the other way around. His feathers bristled as a cold feeling wrapped around his forearm, tightening around it, and pulling him closer to the light.
Suddenly, Griffin felt a jolt in his neck, thick claws wrapping around it. For a moment, he had forgotten he’d even had a neck. His vision narrowed, and the field of light moved past him, specks returning to their rightful places. Had he fallen off the bridge? He glanced up again to the ceiling of crystals, then turned to see Stonemover, lifting Griffin up by the neck. “Let go!” Griffin coughed, placing his talons on Stonemover’s paw.
Stonemover set Griffin down on the stone bridge. Griffin felt like he had just woken up. What was happening? Where were they again? He glanced back to the specks of light. “They’re stars,” he murmured. Griffin glanced up, confused. Stonemover’s eyes were full of fear, and his paws were trembling.
“You shouldn’t get too close,” Stonemover whispered. “Don’t bring it closer.”
“On the contrary,” a thick voice reverberated, power and authority dripping from it. “You fear what you are, animus. You fear what you came from. What you could be.”
Ahead of the three, on the other side of the stone bridge, a huge SandWing walked towards them. A golden crown rested on her horns, and a jeweled bracelet wrapped around each of her legs. She spread her wings, a shadow casting down from nowhere behind her.
Griffin looked up to her defiantly. This was Erosion. She was the one who had brought them here. “What are you talking about?” he hissed at her demandingly.
She laughed, dragging her tail along, her barb scratching against the rock bridge. “They are friends of mine. They allow me to make this world more perfect. As they do with your NightWing companion.”
Stonemover shook his head. “You should stay away. You don’t know what will happen.”
Erosion snorted. “I know plenty. I have traveled to places and seen sights that would break your puny minds. And I have returned, to share my gifts with this disgusting world.”
“You sound pretty full of yourself,” Griffin quipped. “I take it you’re this Erosion I’ve heard so much about?”
Erosion ignored the comment. “I am. I welcome you to my home.” She turned around, her tail dipping through the field of lights beneath the bridge, the strange mismatch of distances causing Griffin to feel queasy. “Follow.”
Gazelle behind them, Griffin and Stonemover walked to the edge of the stone bridge, stepping on the floating disk in the center of the room. A great golden throne stood upon it, with gemstones scattered across it almost haphazardly. Erosion crawled upon it, and spread her wings as she sat. Griffin glanced to the side of it, spotting something familiar. The leather satchel he had come with was at the side of the throne, Orca’s map rolled up and sticking from it along with the tail of the wax statue of Schist that Fracture had given Griffin. It didn’t seem like the map would serve very useful to Erosion, fortunately or not. She’d already found most of the animuses on Pyrrhia, almost like she’d been doing Torrent’s job for him.
“Animus, join me, swear your allegiance before your new Empress of Pyrrhia, and bow,” Erosion demanded, raising her head high. Gazelle lowered her neck to the ground, tucking her wings inwards. 
Stonemover shifted uncomfortably, unsure what to do. Griffin hissed. ‘Empress?’ Did she have plans for world domination or something? Was she trying to get other animuses out of the way? “And if we don’t?” Griffin questioned. “Do we end up your prisoners, like the others in the caverns?”
Erosion laughed. “Prisoners? What do you think I am, a kindly RainWing? Those dragons are those who have joined me. Those who refused me are at the bottom of the lake of lava.”
“I accept,” Stonemover grumbled quietly, knowing he had no other option but death.
Griffin glared at him, then at the SandWing. “Fine,” he hissed at Erosion. “We accept.” He lowered his feathered had, Stonemover alongside him. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice.
Erosion snorted. “I was asking the animus, not you. There’s no use in trying to hide it from me. I know you’re not an animus; I’ve heard that you’ve been attempting to hunt us instead.”
“So?” Griffin asked. “Are you going to kill me, then?” He trembled a little bit. He was completely defenseless right now. She could do it easily, magic or no magic, if she wanted to. Just a stab of her tail barb.
“I will not,” Erosion stated. “You will be useful leverage against the SeaWing who travels with you, so he does not interfere.”
Griffin frowned. She was planning to use him as a hostage against Torrent. That complicated things. Nothing like that had happened before. Would Torrent let him die in order to get to Erosion? Griffin wanted to say no to that question, but he wasn’t quite certain of the answer himself. Four years ago, Torrent wouldn’t have cared.
“I also wanted to thank you,” Erosion continued, “you and the SeaWing were the ones who killed Magma, if I recall.” Gazelle opened her eyes, surprised. “She had become a nuisance.”
Griffin went cold for a moment, and his feathers bristled up in anger. So that was Erosion’s fault. Without Magma attacking them, Schist wouldn’t have been scarred. Maybe things could have turned out different.
“What do you want me for?” Stonemover quietly asked.
Erosion stood up from the throne, slithering off it. Her eyes narrowed “As I’m sure you know already, five thousand and five years ago, dragons defeated the scavenger menace by banding together. Previously, dragonkind had remained almost completely isolated from one another, constantly at war, allowing us to be picked off one by one. But no longer, when dragons chose the queens. The strongest dragons of each tribe, the queens led us to victory, covering the continent with the ashes of our enemies.
“Yet, after the Scorching, the queens grew weak. Instead of being the strongest dragon of each tribe, the original goal of the system, queenship was passed down only within family lines. Pyrrhia has been weak and divided since then. My goal is to make sure that only the strongest dragon of Pyrrhia rules it, like it is supposed to be.”
“And that would be you, of course,” Griffin snorted. “Is it just me, or does animus power tend to go to the heads of its users?”
Erosion gave him a glare. “Animuses are the rightful rulers of Pyrrhia, not these poseurs pretending to be queens. We are by far, the most powerful dragons, and the most capable. Yet, we have been persecuted for millennia, by queens, cowards, and murderers like you and your SeaWing friend. Only the IceWings got it right; Queen Frost’s decision to introduce magic into the royal bloodline gave her kingdom three thousand years of peace and prosperity, but because a few unfortunate outliers like Darkstalker, Fen, and Peregrine, the most powerful dragons have been prevented from leading. And you see the consequences: we have had twelve years of war, dragons dying left and right. Can you tell me that’s not wrong?”
“Sure, but having animuses in charge? That’s ten times worse.” Griffin replied. “The only reason the IceWing regime was able to last so long was that their animuses refused to use their magic to prevent their souls from being lost, and calling it ‘peace and prosperity’ is a complete exaggeration.” Griffin thought back to Adobe. Controlling his city with no regard for his subjects’ interests, and murdering dissenters. And here, Erosion already seemed much worse than Adobe had been.
Erosion shook her head. “I wouldn’t call it soul loss. There is no sense of loss, only the opening of one’s soul to truth. The IceWings never understood this, and because they were couldn’t, they never realized that the . . . incidents they had were caused not by some magical loss of morals, but by a distancing of oneself from the world beneath them, listening to too much of the truths behind our existence.” She swished her barbed tail back and forth, staring past Griffin. “But that is little concern for me. I know well the dangers of using too much magic, and as such, I don’t use it except for in the most critical of emergencies.”
“Really?” Griffin pointed a talon at the golden throne. “You’re just telling me that, or this entire room wasn’t made with magic? Or was it just an emergency.”
Erosion grinned, her pointed teeth almost shining. “Oh no, it was used with magic, just not mine. That is why I require so many animuses here.” Stonemover shuddered, realizing what Erosion meant.
“Almost every one of the enchantments in this place was made with the magic of someone else,” Erosion explained, her talons curling around the edge of the throne. “A few from Magma, whose powers I gave to her to help me capture others, and most from those animuses in the caverns. By enslaving them, all their powers and magic are mine, and I can use limitless magic with no concern for my own soul, or whatever you choose to call it. Occasionally, I’ve had an animus tend to lose themself from using too much, but because I can control them, there’s little risk to anyone else. The lava lake solved that problem permanently, at least before I had a few too many decide to use it when I wasn’t looking.”
Griffin shook uncomfortably. Erosion could use magic without losing her soul. If she wasn’t aiming for world domination, it could almost be something that Torrent would have been proud of. It was almost funny. Well, there’s your answer, Orca. You wanted a way to prevent yourself from losing your soul, here you have it. He turned towards Stonemover and made eye contact with the nervously shaking NightWing. Griffin understood. Stonemover wasn’t able to use his powers anymore, and if Erosion found out he was useless to her, he would end up dead. At least Griffin was safe as a hostage.
Erosion yawned, and turned to Gazelle, who had been waiting patiently with her head turned down. “I believe we have conversed enough. Bring these two to their quarters,” she ordered the elderly SandWing. “I must prepare myself for the assault on Crosswinds.”
==Chapter 78==
The Neck of Pyrrhia had long belonged to the SandWings, gained in one of the innumerable wars against the Ice Kingdom centuries ago, even though it was almost uninhabitable to any SandWing. The land was cold and brittle, and little grew in it, whether in the flatlands of the east, or the forested hills in the west. It snowed often, though the amount seen in the northerly parts of the Ice Kingdom was rarely seen. There were a few SandWing outposts in the area, but few SandWings could stand the cold. It reminded Torrent somewhat of the northerly Sky Kingdom. Even though it was at a much lower altitude, the temperatures were similar. He recalled the winter spent there. If it weren’t for the company of Crystal, Griffin, Schist, and Kite, it would have been almost unbearable. Yet their company had made it feel almost warm.
Nightreader recalled some of the more contemporary history of the Neck as the three flew over it, paying little heed to her surroundings due to the slim chance of a SandWing or IceWing seeing them from the sparse tundra. Though it belonged to the Sand Kingdom, IceWing mining had encroached on the northern border of the Neck in the years before the war. Tensions had escalated, and for a time war seemed almost inevitable, but Queen Oasis’ death had changed that. As soon as Blister allied with the SeaWings and MudWings, Queen Glacier sent out a diplomat to Princess Blaze, offering her army and allyship in exchange for the Neck. Given how useless the terrain was, Blaze easily accepted, and the mining operations intensified within days, an IceWing named Boreal in control of the operation, using force to remove the SandWings inhabiting the land.
Though it was in a peace at the moment, parts of the Neck had been the site of major battles between Burn and Blaze’s forces, the most infamous being the Battle of Devil’s Eye, when Princess Blackice ordered all SandWing forces killed indiscriminately, friend and foe alike, then murdered Blaze’s General Vicuña with her own poison. While Nightreader was too young to have been involved herself, Morrowseer considered it one of the greatest successes of Quickstrike and the NightWings in the war, removing one of Blaze’s greatest assets. Nightreader felt it was shameful, just pointless death. Yet, Morrowseer, and many of the other NightWings, were willing to do anything it took as long as it meant escaping that horrid island. Nightreader didn’t blame them. Even if some privately disagreed with his methods, all NightWings understood Morrowseer’s motives well.
Nightreader turned her head to the side, wind pushing against her scales. Clarity was flying stiffly behind her, completely silent. Nightreader missed a beat of her wings intentionally, and allowed herself to fall backwards towards the IceWing. Clarity looked away, pretending that she hadn’t noticed Nightreader.
“So, you’re part of the Talons of Peace?” Nightreader opened, trying to be friendly.
“I help run it with three other dragons,” Clarity muttered, not particularly in a mood for conversing.
An quick silence ensued between them, as Clarity didn’t leave open any room for Nightreader to respond. Nightreader thought for a moment. “Are you accepting recruits right now?” she asked. She wasn’t quite sure that she wanted to join the group, but it might be good to have the opportunity in the future.
“We’re always accepting recruits,” Clarity snapped back, “but not you.”
Nightreader gave Clarity a glare, baring her teeth slightly. “I thought the Talons of Peace were accepting of all dragons,” she hissed.
Clarity turned to her in confusion, then felt a sudden twinge of shame. “Three moons,” she muttered, embarrassed, “that’s not what I meant.” Nightreader continued frowning, looking for further explanation.
“The Night Kingdom is already working with us,” Clarity sighed, “but you mentioned you abandoned your queen. It would make things tricky if the Night Kingdom found out that we accepted a NightWing they’re not on good terms with and didn’t tell them. It could pose troubles for our alliance.”
Nightreader understood that. Morrowseer wouldn’t be happy with the Talons if he found out they were hiding her. “What about Trustbreaker?” she asked.
Clarity tensed up. “Who told you about Trustbreaker?” she demanded worriedly.
“Griffin did,” Nightreader sighed. “You mentioned him a few times too. He’s a NightWing, isn’t he?”
Clarity squirmed uncomfortably. “Trustbreaker is different,” she answered cautiously. “He’s been with us since the beginning, and he’s never been a part of the Night Kingdom. Morrowseer wouldn’t be interested in him.”
Nightreader doubted that. If anything, that would make Morrowseer even more interested. “We keep very close track of NightWing eggs,” she pressed, “and as far as I know, none have been stolen or gone missing. I haven’t heard of any deserters either.” That wasn’t exactly true—there was a NightWing who had escaped to what was now Possibility before Nightreader was born for a few months, but he’d been eventually captured with the help of the Obsidian Mirror and sent back to the Night Kingdom for punishment. “Nor do I know of any NightWings named Trustbreaker. Who is he?”
“None of your business,” Clarity growled. “If you ever meet him, you can ask him yourself.”
Nightreader twitched her tail, but sensed that she wouldn’t get anything more out of Clarity. She’d just have to meet with this Trustbreaker herself one day, whoever he was.
The three continued their flight for a few more days, each of the three moons getting brighter each night. It wasn’t long before they’d all be full, shining over Pyrrhia for the brightest night in a hundred years. On the final night, as the three full moons started to rise over Pyrrhia in all their glory, illuminating the ground almost as much as the sun would, Nightreader, Clarity, and Torrent arrived at their destination, deep within the hills of the Neck of Pyrrhia.
The sky was calm during their approach, as if the weather had stalled just for them. Clarity led the group, bringing the three down into a wide crevasse within the hills. Flakes of snow gently fell around them, resting on Nightreader’s scales before quickly melting.
As the three touched down within the soft snow, leaving deep clawprints within it, Torrent touched his claws to the dagger at his side, wrapping his webbing around it. Nightreader saw his muscles tense up. She looked around. They were the only dragons in sight. “What’s wrong?” she asked, unsure what the threat is.
“Everything,” Torrent grumbled, “this whole place feels wrong, like you ate rotten tuna, or someone stuck sand between all your scales. Can you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“The buzzing.” Torrent growled and bared his sharp, shark-like teeth. “It’s like there’s a bunch of voices talking around me, but so quiet I can’t make any of them out. It’s irritating.” As if to demonstrate this, Torrent swatted at his ear with a claw, bringing the blade of his dagger dangerously close to it. “I hate it.”
Nightreader squinted her eyes closed, trying to listen. Nothing. Maybe SeaWings heard different ranges of sounds? They did live underwater after all. She shrugged her wings.
“Follow!” Clarity yelled backwards. “I want to reach Fracture before the night is over!”
Nightreader looked upwards, into the sky. Even with the light dusting of snowflakes, it was mostly clear. The three full moons lit up the white field of ice and snow within the crevasse. She trudged forward as Clarity walked further along the crevasse, attempting to keep up with the IceWing, who had no difficulty walking through the snow. Moving her claws out just to plunge them back into the snow seemed to only make the NightWing colder.
Torrent followed along with them, his webbed talons keeping him above the top of the snow’s surface. After what felt like an hour of walking, the three finally saw something ahead of them, illuminated by the moons’ vivid light. A tall rectangular building stuck out of the snow, its sides covered in ice, and two great doors in front. Between the building and the dragons, seven huge pillars stood in a semi-circle around the doors, a figure of a dragon resting on each of them. Torrent put a talon to the amethyst on his dagger. Warm. “It’s enchanted,” he growled, moving past Nightreader and Clarity to get closer to the structure.
Suddenly, a figure appeared from the snow, as if arriving from nowhere. An IceWing stepped out from the interior of the semi-circle of pillars out towards Torrent, causing the SeaWing the stop in his tracks. The intense moonlight caused a light green glow to almost radiate from the IceWing’s scales, and a leather eyepatch was wrapped over his left eye. He smiled warmly. “I would stay away from that,” he suggested to Torrent. “It’s quite old, and it may collapse if you get too near. The few enchantments on it are the only things causing it to stay up.”
Torrent poked his head over the IceWing’s neck, towards the building. Intricate designs were carved on the two doors, beneath the layer of ice. “What is it?” he asked demandingly.
The IceWing in front of Torrent smiled, carefully positioning himself between Torrent and the building. “It’s the mausoleum of the second IceWing queen, Queen Frost. It’s where she’s buried. Quite a beautiful piece of history; it would be a shame if it was hurt somehow.”
“I’m not planning to hurt it,” Torrent frowned, even though that was what he had just been planning to do. “The doors are fused shut.”
“That’s because they’re not meant to be opened,” the IceWing explained. “I doubt the honorable Queen Frost wanted anyone to disturb her remains.”
Torrent turned to the IceWing, looking at him in his eye. The IceWing sounded like he knew more than he was letting on. Torrent held his gaze steady. The buzzing noise was still there, and the SeaWing slapped a claw up to his ear.
“I take it you’re Torrent?” the IceWing asked. “I’m Fracture, and I’ve heard quite a lot about you.”
Torrent took a step back, embarrassed that he’d been so rude to the dragon he’d come to ask for help.
“Fracture!” Clarity called out, walking towards her mate across the snow, Nightreader trudging behind her. “Stop scaring him!” she scolded.
“I’m not scared,” Torrent growled. Still, he wasn’t even quite certain of that. This place was freaky. It sent jitters down his scales, and he could sense something was off here, more than just the animus magic. Was Fracture an animus himself? It would explain him having powers, whatever those were, and he appeared to know more about this place than he had let on. His white scales were slightly green-tinted, maybe that had something to do with the green diamonds? Doubtful, green tints were uncommon in IceWings, but by no means were they rare.
Fracture spread his wings out as Clarity leapt towards him across the snow, bringing her into an embrace. She dragged the dull edge of a sharp claw along the back of Fracture’s neck, brushing aside his spines.
“It’s been a while,” Fracture sighed, folding the spikes on the end of his tail in between her own.
Clarity nodded. “I’ve been busy,” she apologized. “But I made it here for tonight, at least.” She rested her horns on his, then glanced upwards to the light-filled sky. “The first brightest night in a century. I’m fortunate to have been alive for it.”
“More fortunate than you can imagine,” Fracture grinned, invoking a lighthearted snort of scorn from Clarity. “It’s as beautiful as always.”
Nightreader let out a short cough, sending out a puff of grey smoke with it, drawing the two IceWings’ attention.
Clarity gave her a glare, irritated to have her reunion with her mate interrupted so soon, but knowing that they had business they needed to attend to, she drew back from Fracture’s embrace. “We have guests,” she explained, “we can catch up later.”
Fracture nodded, and turned to the two dragons who had come to see him, a light dusting of snow settling on their scales. Torrent shook his body, causing it to come off in a flurry.
“I’m Nightreader,” Nightreader introduced herself. “You’re the leader of the Talons of Peace?”
Fracture tossed his wings back and forth in a shrug, dragging them through the snow. “I brought all five of us together after the war started. The other four, including Clarity, run most of the day-to-day operations. I’m just a glorified messenger.”
Clarity smiled. “It’s three of us now, remember? Nautilus died.”
Fracture thought for a moment, as if a bit unsure of this, then nodded his head in agreement. “Yes, you’re right, he did.”
“He’s being humble,” Clarity continued. “He does a lot more than just messenger work. He formulated many of the our plans, and the whole Dragonet of Destiny thing was his idea.”
Fracture shook his head. “No, that was Nautilus after he died.”
After he died? Nightreader wondered in confusion. Can Fracture talk to ghosts or something like that? She was skeptical. Most NightWings underwent training so they could make themselves seem like they had powers such as mind-reading and prophecy. It seemed likely that this ‘Fracture’ was doing something similar. “Torrent told me you were a seer or something,” Nightreader explained. “We came here because my brother and Torrent’s friend Griffin went missing, and Torrent thinks you can find them.” She let across a slight tone of cynicism in her voice, doubtful that Fracture could actually do this.
Fracture frowned, and thought for a moment. As a snowflake fell on the tip of his snout, his eye lit up in a flash of realization. “Stonemover and Griffin are on a lava-covered island northeast of Pyrrhia.”
“Lava-covered island?” Nightreader stammered. “You mean they’re in the Night Kingdom?” She tensed up, and winced. She shouldn’t have said that, not in front of two IceWings. Nightreader thought for a moment. She hadn’t mentioned Stonemover’s name, had she? And it sounded like Fracture knew of the Night Kingdom already. Maybe Fracture actually had some sort of supernatural abilities. Or, this ‘Trustbreaker’ had just given away NightWing secrets to him.
“The Night Kingdom?” Torrent asked with a frown. “You mean it’s a volcanic island?” Nightreader resisted baring her teeth. A SeaWing knowing about the Night Kingdom could be even worse than an IceWing, considering how easy it would be for them to stage an attack. Still, Nightreader thought Torrent seemed unlikely to fly across the world to his mother just to tell her that.
“Yes,” Nightreader admitted. “We live on a practically barren island. I told you how horrible it was, didn’t I? That’s why.”
Fracture shook his head, invoking a frown from Nightreader. “No, they’re on a different island,” he explained. “Part of the same chain, and not too far from the Night Kingdom, at least relatively, but this one is a lot smaller. At least from what I’ve heard. I’ve never been there myself.”
Heard from who? Nightreader was about to ask, but Torrent spoke first.
“I had been told there weren’t any islands outside of Pyrrhia,” he commented. “That’s why SeaWings tend to stay in the Bay.”
Fracture smiled. “There’s much you’ve been told that’s wrong,” he answered, invoking an eye-roll from Clarity.
“He means that there’s much more beyond Pyrrhia than what you’re taught,” Clarity explained. “There’s plenty of island chains to the north.”
“The Lost Continent too?” Torrent asked, recalling the numerous conflicting legends. 
Clarity nodded. “It’s real. Pretty far west.”
“Don’t go there,” Fracture quickly warned. “It’s full of lies and plants.”
Nightreader tapped a claw in the snow for a moment. “They’re right,” she explained hesitantly. If these IceWings already knew about the NightWing island and places beyond it, it wasn’t like it would hurt to be open, at least with Torrent. “I remember reading a transcript of a scroll diary in the Night Kingdom’s libraries about how the NightWings traveled across the northern sea after the Darkstalker rose to power, in order to escape him and find a new home. Most of them were too small, cold, barren, or had something else wrong with them. Eventually, they found the island they were on now, and decided to settle there.” She remembered how she’d read the description of the NightWing island as a dragonet. It had been described as a paradise, with rainforests filled with clean water and bounties of food. The description of it in the scroll to the stark reality of how it was two thousand years later had given her dreams and nightmares for months.
Torrent nodded slowly. “Where is the island they’re on? The northern sea is big.” In truth, Torrent didn’t know how large it was.
“No clue,” Fracture answered. “As I said, I’ve never been there.”
Torrent groaned. “So we have no way to find it?”
Nightreader looked down uncomfortably at the snow. “I think I know how we can find it,” she muttered unhappily. “I mentioned earlier that our queen had a way to spy on us. The Obsidian Mirror. I know how to use it. If I could get to it, I might be able to find Stonemover and Griffin with it. And if that fails, the scroll I mentioned had relatively detailed information about how far and in which direction the NightWings flew in their search for a new home. I remember having to skim over it all when I was a dragonet.”
Torrent flicked his tongue out, a little worried. “You’d have to go back to the Night Kingdom,” he warned. “You deserted your queen. You could be imprisoned for it. Or worse.”
“I know,” Nightreader seethed. The last thing she’d wanted to do was return to the volcanic island, and now she had to go back, right after she’d escaped. “But anything for my brother. If someone asks why I was delayed, I can make something up. Maybe I’ll say you attacked Stonemover and I, and we had some trouble getting rid of you.” It wasn’t too far from the truth, but she might be able to create a better story. If Morrowseer, Princess Greatness, or Queen Battlewinner found out what had really happened, there was a good chance of ‘or worse’ happening, and she wouldn’t be much help to Stonemover if she was drowned in lava.
Torrent nodded, thinking. At least now, they had a plan. They knew where Stonemover and Griffin were, sort of, and if Fracture was right, they weren’t dead. That was a relief. Hopefully, he’d be reunited with Griffin before too long. “Thank you for everything,” he said to Fracture and Clarity, bowing his head.
Nightreader gave them a nod, but still had a frown on her snout. “How did you know Stonemover was my brother?” she asked Fracture. She still wasn’t quite convinced that Fracture was telling the entire truth here, or if he actually had powers like Torrent and Griffin had claimed.
The light-green IceWing paused for a moment, then looked straight towards Nightreader, making direct contact into her eyes with his own. “I can see what might have been,” he explained quietly, “and occasionally, what may yet be.”
“What does that mean?” Nightreader growled. “Are you saying you have prophecy powers?” Real ones? It seemed unlikely, but the IceWings had numerous enchanted artifacts lying around from before the time of the Darkstalker. What if Fracture had found one of those, and was using that? She looked him up and down. The only material item Fracture had on him was his eyepatch. Maybe that was it.
Fracture shrugged his wings from side to side, then stretched them outwards, extending one around Clarity. She reached her claws towards her mate. “The moons are almost at their zenith,” Fracture pointed out. He pointed a claw upwards, towards the three bright moons, causing the ice to glow white. They huddled close to each other, and it seemed they would almost meet when they reached the top of the sky. “I can’t see the future myself, but if you want a prophecy, I have one to give you.”
Fracture spread his wings wide, and wrapping his spiny tail around Clarity for balance, he lifted up his two forepaws, turning his head to the sky, the light of the moons scattering across his scales. After a few moments, he looked back towards Torrent and Nightreader, and moved a claw to his eyepatch, lifting it up to reveal a plain white orb beneath it, in contrast to the black bead of his other eye, in which the scaly lid around it he quickly closed. The light of the three moons reflected within his white eye, and Fracture opened his jaws, speaking in an emotionless tone as if he was reading directly from a scroll:
“When the stones of old awaken, the fires of death must burn. 
When the lives of many have been taken, the ground of Pyrrhia will be turned. 
From the deepest black, to the eternal flames. 
Join the tablet forgotten, and the fumes untamed. 
With the frozen claws, let darkness be tamed. 
And an ancient evil, shall death be thy name. 
The land that is all but lost, will be the refuge of the dark. 
Across the bridge of light and frost, must the waters of life be sparked.
When darkness lights the frozen earth, and lost souls wander the forsaken land.
Three will come to devour the sun, and the queens will make their final stand. 
A deadly message will be told, forgotten from the days of old. 
Chilled to death with freezing cold, and they will be crowned with the cursed gold. 
The night will last a thousand years, ’till the rays of light can glow once more. 
Unless the chosens can unite the tribes, to lead them in a peaceful war.”
The four dragons stood silent for a moment, as Fracture remained completely motionless. Snow continued to fall lightly, and the light of the moons reflected bright from the white ground, causing Torrent to squint. The three moons reached further towards their zenith, climbing higher in the sky.
Clarity stopped the silence, reaching a talon towards the top of Fracture’s snout, and folding the leather eyepatch down over the white, pupil-less orb in his eye-socket. He shuddered for a moment, then lowered to a resting position, placing his two forepaws in the snow below.
Nightreader frowned, her talons curling in the cold snow. ‘Lives of many taken?’ ‘Devouring the sun?’ ‘A thousand years of night?’ That sounded like a bad thing, though not so believable. “Is it fake, like the Dragonet Prophecy?” she asked.
Fracture smiled, although Nightreader could tell that there was exhaustion within his scales. He shook his head. “It’s quite real, but the future is malleable. What occurs and what doesn’t depends on our actions.”
“You said you couldn’t see the future,” Nightreader snorted. “In that case, how did you see a prophecy? IceWings can’t do that.”
Fracture nodded. “You’re right, I can’t. Someone gave it to me.”
“Who?” Nightreader asked. If it was a NightWing, such as this Trustbreaker she’d heard about, she would know that it’s fake. NightWings had been faking prophecies for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Fracture grinned, almost like he found the situation hilarious. “You did.”
Nightreader bared her teeth. “What?” she snorted. She’d never made up a prophecy before. “You’re mistaken, it’s Morrowseer who does that.”
Fracture shook his head back and forth, snow falling from his horns. “Try to remember,” he spoke, almost pleadingly. He looked into her with his beady black eye.
Nightreader stood stiff for a moment. Remember what? For a second, she thought she heard something, like a dragon in the distance whispering something to her. She listened closely, as if expecting to hear something more, but the moment was gone. She shook her head, a thin dusting of snow rolling from her neck. “This is silly,” she hissed at Fracture. “You know as well as I do that NightWing powers are fake.”
“Yet your brother can make tunnels that moves dragons thousands of miles in a moment,” Fracture retorted. “Is it so inconceivable that his sister could have told the future?”
Nightreader stared at him, unsure what Fracture was trying to get at.
Clarity let out a bellowing laugh, then turned to Fracture. “Don’t bother, darling,” she snorted. “You’re just confusing her more.”
Nightreader bared her teeth at her, frustrated. Her brother was in mortal danger, and these IceWings were telling her prophecies that they claimed she’d made up? She glanced up. The moons were almost at the top of the sky. Nightreader sighed. “Thank you for the help,” she grumbled bitterly. Powers or not, maybe Fracture was telling the truth, and Stonemover was where the IceWing had said he was. It was their only lead.
Fracture nodded. “I don’t think we’ll see each other again,” he said to Nightreader, “but only time will tell. May the moons grant you luck on your search for your brother.” He turned his gaze to Torrent. “And I hope you find Griffin. He’s a great friend, you know. You’ll find a SandWing animus named Erosion on the island.”
“Erosion?” Torrent asked. Where had he heard that name before? He couldn’t put a claw on it.
Nightreader looked to Torrent. “The flight to the Night Kingdom is long, and we’ll want to head back east to Possibility first,” she explained. She turned back to Clarity. “Do you plan to come back with us?” she asked.
Clarity shook her head. “It’s the Brightest Night. I plan to celebrate it with Fracture, then we head north to the Ice Kingdom. The Talons are in good claws with Avalanche and Trustbreaker, and we have plenty of time before we’re really needed again.” She turned towards Fracture. “Seven years, right?” she asked.
Fracture swished his tail across the bright snow, the spikes on the end of it leaving behind a trail. “It’s usually closer to six,” he commented, “and we still need to find a second SeaWing, since Squid isn’t here. Although a RainWing would do quite well instead. Maybe an IceWing, this time? That would be fun. But it’s not urgent.” He enclosed his wing around Clarity tighter, while she wrapped her tail over his.
Nightreader nodded. She was somewhat relieved Clarity wasn’t returning with them, though she wouldn’t have said it to her snout. “C’mon,” she said, turning towards Torrent. “Let’s go. We have more flying ahead of us.”
Torrent sighed. His wings were already sore. SeaWings were supposed to swim long distances, not fly. But if they were going over the northern ocean, maybe he’d have a good chance to swim there. He and Nightreader walked across the snow, away from the embracing IceWings in front of the ancient mausoleum. 
As they continued across the crevasse, looking for a place to take off, Nightreader turned towards Torrent. “Is his eyepatch enchanted?” she asked.
Torrent shook his head. “No,” he answered quietly. “No animus magic about him. Let’s get out of here. I hate this place.”
Nightreader nodded, and the two spread their wings, wind rolling piles of snow over as they lifted from the ground. Torrent looked towards the stars, only a few barely visible in the bright sky. The three moons had finally reached their zenith, overlapping each other at the very top of the sky, though not covering one another. Moonlight spread over Nightreader’s wings, dots of white and silver speckling them. Torrent breathed slowly, looking up towards the moons again. Somewhere, wherever he was, Griffin would be viewing the same sky, the first Brightest Night in a hundred years.
==Chapter 79==
Gazelle led Griffin and Stonemover from Erosion’s chamber, the two great doors slamming behind them. Stonemover let out a sigh of relief, as if he had been holding his breath the entire time they were in there. The three stepped down the warm chambers, unsure what was happening. It was hot in here, though nowhere near as much as it should be naturally, given the volcanic activity. Right for a SandWing, and normal for a NightWing, but less so for others.
“Are we going back to the lava pit?” Stonemover whined quietly. He didn’t seem to keen upon returning there, and nor was Griffin.
Gazelle shook her head. “You’re being taken to your chambers, where you’ll stay until Erosion needs you. The caves aren’t large. It’s not easy to get lost.”
“That’s good,” Griffin muttered sarcastically. It would be larger than where he was confined to in the Deep Palace, at least. “Why are you doing this?”
The elderly SandWing turned her head around, frowning. “Me?” she asked. Griffin nodded. She thought for a moment. “Same as you,” she answered. “I don’t have a choice here. She’ll kill me without a second thought if I try to escape, and it’s not like I have any leverage over her; she could easily enchant a rock to do my job. No offense intended.”
Griffin snorted. It sounded like Erosion and Gazelle had done their research on him and Torrent. “None taken. I thought you could control the animuses, like what you did with that SeaWing. Couldn’t you use them to take down Erosion?”
Gazelle chuckled, although it turned into a wheeze. After she caught her breath, she shook her head. “I can move their bodies around, but I can’t make them use magic. Only Erosion can do that. I don’t even know why she still keeps me around. Nostalgia, I suppose. She’s quite a bit older than she looks. I am too, even though I do look pretty old. My mother served her father, a minor noble, when Erosion was growing up. His head ended up on a pike after a princess he supported failed her royal challenge, and his daughter was put on the streets. Quite a shock. I suppose she likes me because I remind her of that time, before his death. But don’t mention I told you that, she doesn’t like to appear sentimental.” 
That was a bit of a shock. The Erosion that Griffin had seen emanated only cruelty and arrogance. “How do you control them?” Griffin asked. “The animuses. Is the enchantment on the metal bands?” He shook his feathers, the band around his wings rubbing painfully.
“Oh!” Gazelle exclaimed, startling Stonemover. “I can get rid of the one around your wings, only the one around your neck needs to remain. You’re not able to leave the island without her permission anyways, it’s mainly to make sure no one tries and ends up drowning.” She flicked her tail back and forth, causing Stonemover to take a jump away from her barb. In a clink, the bands around Griffin and Stonemover’s wings and body split into two, and fell to the ground. Griffin stretched out his wings, glad they were finally free, while Stonemover rubbed his claws on the soft scales of his underbelly, rubbed raw.
Gazelle stepped by them, picking up the two metal bands and placing them under her wings. “I’ll put these back in storage,” she said, then turned to Griffin. “About your question, there’s two enchantments, one on the collars around your neck, and a second on a scale within my tail, one in Erosion’s tail too. That’s what lets us, and only us, control you all. The enchantment is somewhat long and detailed, and I doubt Erosion would be happy if I told you it. She has it written down in a scroll in the storage room, along with the rest of the enchantments she’s used. She’s very careful with magic, even if she knows it’s not her soul which is getting hurt from using it.”
Griffin spread out his wings once more, flapping it up and down. He was a little confused. Gazelle had told him Erosion would be unhappy if she told him the enchantment, but then went on to say where Erosion has every enchantment written down? She had also told him about Erosion getting sentimental. Maybe Gazelle was a bit more willing to work against Erosion than she had originally let on.
Stonemover stood up, tensed. “You said that she enchanted your scales?” he asked, a bit worried. “I thought it wasn’t possible to enchant living materials . . .”
Gazelle scoffed. “And who told you that?” she asked. “Your queen?”
Stonemover averted his eyes, confirming Gazelle’s suspicions.
“There’s quite a bit more to animus magic than what most dragons know,” Gazelle chuckled. “And it can be quite difficult to tell the lies and the myths from the facts. You should ask Erosion about that. She’s dedicated much of her life to learning about animus magic, and how to use or abuse it. She can be a bit intimidating at first, but she’d be happy to share what she knows. It’s one of her favorite topics to talk about.”
Griffin found that very difficult to believe. Stonemover muttered something under his breath that Griffin couldn’t make out, and it didn’t look like Gazelle had heard him. “Sounds like she’d get along with Torrent,” he sarcastically replied. “How many animuses are there here?”
Gazelle glanced back at him in concern, then from side to side. “You should probably stop asking questions,” she muttered. “It make dragons suspicious.”
Griffin took that as his cue to be silent. If Gazelle was really on their side, he should put at least a little faith in her. And if she wasn’t, then asking again wouldn’t help.
The SandWing led Griffin and Stonemover down one of the tunnels they had passed by on their way in, which ended in a few caves budding out from it. Griffin peered in. Only one dragon was there at the moment, another SandWing. She was reading a scroll, laying on the ground. A variety of rings were on her talons, holding the piece of paper down to the rocky floor.
“That’ll be your room,” Gazelle stated, coughing, “although I doubt you’ll have to stay in there long.”The SandWing’s ears perked up. “We’re leaving soon?” she asked, glancing up hopefully at Gazelle.
Gazelle nodded. “I’ll be back here before too long,” she notified Griffin and Stonemover. “The metal bands are heavy, and they’re starting to strain my wingblade.” She lifted up her right wing as if to show them, the two restraints being carried beneath it. She glanced over to Griffin. “Also, the answer to your question is ten, including Stonemover and Erosion.”
Making a wide circle, Gazelle turned around, her barbed tail trailing behind her, leaving Stonemover and Griffin with the SandWing on the ground. “Glad that old hag is gone,” she grumbled. “She thinks she’s so special, just because Erosion likes her. She should consider it to be an honor here, among all us animuses.” The SandWing turned to Griffin. “And what are you?” she sputtered.
“A gryphon,” Griffin answered matter-of-factly, not caring to answer the rude question with more specifics.
“Great,” the SandWing hissed. “Don’t molt in our room.” She looked over towards Stonemover. “Did Erosion have to remove your powers or something? She did some stuff to my rings. I can’t use them unless she tells me to anymore.”
“Powers?” Stonemover asked, confused. “I think so,” he lied, knowing that he’d removed his own animus powers before even arriving on the island. It might be bad if Erosion, or any of the other animuses here found that out. “That’s what this collar thing does, right?” He tugged a little at it with his claws.
“I meant your NightWing powers, not your animus powers,” the SandWing growled.
“Oh,” Stonemover stammered. He’d forgotten that he’d had those. “Er, yeah,” he lied, “can’t do any mind-reading or future-telling now. Very frustrating, you see. It’s like someone, um, clawed my ears off. Awful.”
The SandWing rolled her eyes, and flicked her barbed tail across the stone. “Do you have a name?”
Stonemover quickly nodded. “Stonemover,” he answered.
“I’m Griffin,” Griffin added.
“No one asked you,” the SandWing hissed, baring her teeth at Griffin. “Are you even an animus? I’m Goanna.”
Griffin clenched up, his feathers standing on end. Goanna. That was the name of the animus Torrent had attempted to kill in Possibility. Gila’s daughter. That wasn’t good. Torrent wouldn’t be very popular here, and that SeaWing alre— 
“Well?” Goanna exclaimed angrily. “I asked you a question. Are you an animus, or not?”
Griffin thought furiously, trying to make something good up, but he didn’t have enough time. Before he could respond, a furious voice sounded from behind him.
“There he is!” a voice roared. “I told you he was here!” The SeaWing Griffin had seen in the hallway earlier was standing in the tunnel, along with the two MudWing siblings Griffin and Stonemover had passed by, and a SkyWing that Griffin unfortunately recognized. That was the third of the animuses that had escaped. Griffin took a step back, bumping into Stonemover. He glanced behind the four dragons in the tunnel. The strangely colored dragon was peering in from where it intersected with the main tunnel, curious about the commotion, but Gazelle was nowhere to be seen. This was really not good.
“What’s going on?” Goanna asked, standing up from her scroll. “I was just having a conversation with our new NightWing friend.”
The SeaWing pointed a talon at Griffin. “He works with that SeaWing,” he snarled. “The one who made us use the cursed diamonds and get stuck in this place to begin with.”
Stonemover took a step back in fear. “Please don’t bother him,” he quietly pleaded.
In response, he received a shove into the wall from Goanna, causing him to clench up in fear. “He helped kill my father,” Goanna seethed in rage, spit dripping from her teeth onto Stonemover. She turned back to Griffin, who had backed up a bit further, trying to place all of the dragons within his view. “Can I kill him?” Goanna asked.
The SkyWing shook her head. “Erosion wants him alive,” she snorted, “but I doubt she’d be too angry as long as he’s not dead.”
Goanna grinned, flicking her barbed tail into the air and stretching out her claws. “How ‘not dead’ do you mean?”
Griffin took another step back as Goanna, the SeaWing, and the SkyWing started to close in on him, leaving Stonemover, the two MudWings, and the strangely colored dragon by the entrance of the tunnel. Suddenly, the SeaWing rushed forward, webbed paws outstretched. Griffin scrambled back as the SeaWing ran towards him, attempting to grab Griffin with his claws.
As he hit against the back of the wall, Griffin reached out his talons and dived beneath the SeaWing, ripping across the SeaWing’s gills in streaks of red. The SeaWing roared in pain, and tried to turn around, pinning Griffin’s tail down with a paw as Griffin attempted to run beneath his leg. Realizing that he was caught, Griffin twisted around, attempting to pull his tail out as he clawed beneath the SeaWing’s wings, ripping through a tendon. The SeaWing reared back in agony, letting Griffin’s tail free.
Suddenly, Griffin let out a scream of pain as something sharp stabbed into his side. He swiveled his head around to see Goanna smirking as she ripped her barbed tail from Griffin’s back leg in a mess of blood and feathers. As Griffin took a step away, feeling the world around start to go dizzy, the SeaWing slammed a paw down on Griffin’s neck.
“That was for my father,” Goanna hissed, anger dripping from her voice.
One of the two young MudWings glared at Goanna, still watching from the tunnel. “I thought you weren’t going to kill him,” the MudWing muttered. “Erosion is going to be sooo angry. You’re gonna get in trouble.”
“Quiet,” Goanna growled, turning to the MudWing, “or you’ll be next.”
The MudWing who spoke took a step back in alarm. Their sib frowned, and suggested, “Erosion might have Brightsting Cactus somewhere, and if she doesn’t, she can probably get some. Or just use Goanna’s magic to heal him.”
Goanna’s scales stood on edge, and turned her head back to Griffin. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t have to.”
“Please stop!” Stonemover pleaded, taking a small step towards Goanna. The SandWing slashed her barb in the air, inches away from Stonemover’s snout, causing him to jump backwards.
“Just leave it,” the strangely colored dragon whispered solemnly to Stonemover, “there’s nothing you can do to stop them.”
Griffin yelled as the SeaWing dug his talons along Griffin’s neck, pulling out feathers and drawing blood. “If I had my magic, I could do much worse to you,” the SeaWing threatened, “but thanks to you, I don’t.” Wrapping his claws around Griffin’s head, he slammed it into the ground below.
“Give me a turn,” the SkyWing snorted. She breathed out a puff of smoke. “Maybe I’ll set his wings on fire. That would be pretty painful, right?” She shoved Goanna aside, walking around to Griffin’s left wing. Griffin attempted to flap it and get up in despair, but the SeaWing held his paws on Griffin’s neck, preventing much movement. Things were starting to get black for Griffin now, his vision blurring.
The SkyWing tried to grab Griffin’s wing with her claws, but his wing claw scraped against her scales as he struggled, drawing a slight trickle of blood. “You’ll pay for that,” she growled. 
Her claws moving too fast for Griffin to see in his quickly blurring vision, she wrapped them around Griffin’s wing, holding it in one place against his body, and the other at the far end of the wing. She brought the second claw back with sudden force, the snapping of thin bones sounding throughout the cavern.
==Chapter 80==
Torrent and Nightreader flew above the ocean north of Pyrrhia, flying above the cold waves. There was no land in sight, and it was fortunate that Nightreader had made the journey to the Night Kingdom enough times to know how to conserve her energy so she could fly the entire way. Torrent, on the other claw, had little worry about that; when his wings started to get sore, he just dove into the ocean, swimming alongside Nightreader.
Nightreader had originally thought about taking the tunnels her brother had created into the Night Kingdom, before realizing how risky that would be. With Torrent with her, she’d have to find a way to sneak him past the guards constantly posted on the tunnel. It would be much quicker, sure, but the risk wasn’t worth it. So, the two flew towards the island, the plan being that Torrent would wait in the waters nearby while Nightreader collected the scroll she needed.
A light rain started to fall on the two partway into the flight, while Torrent was flying besides Nightreader above the surface. The waves started to pick up slightly, the salty spray from it feeling good against Torrent’s wings as he flew low. It was unfortunate that the NightWings couldn’t live in the water, they had so much of it around. “Are there fish near your island?” Torrent asked.
Nightreader shook her head. “Not much,” she replied. “The volcano poisons the waters, and we overfished what little fish we had years ago. The population hasn’t returned.”
“Volcano,” Torrent stated. “I’ve heard of those in scrolls before, though I didn’t think Pyrrhia had any. There was a story about an animus who caused one to erupt in order to get revenge on the kingdom who had banished her. Not sure where the story took place. Maybe the Lost Continent, or somewhere like that. They seem kind of scary, with lava and ash flying everywhere.”
“You’re not wrong about them being scary,” Nightreader snorted. “There was a small eruption a few decades before I was born, and apparently it killed a bunch of dragons. A few of the older NightWings remember it. There’s lava all over the islands, but most of it is pretty slow, so it’s not too threatening unless someone pushes you into it. Our scientist Mastermind thinks that the volcano will erupt again within my lifetime, much larger than the last one. He says no one will be able to survive.”
“No one?” Torrent asked in concern. “It’s good you left then, isn’t it?”
Nightreader shrugged her forearms, flicking her forked tongue in and out. She didn’t seem too happy about it. “I don’t want my kingdom to be destroyed.”
“Why not just move?”
Nightreader laughed. “Believe me, we would if we could. None of the other unclaimed islands we’ve looked at are able to support the Night Kingdom food-wise, as small as the kingdom is. The IceWings own some larger islands in the north of their kingdom where they exile the criminals they won’t execute. They’re freezing cold, and are barely more than frozen icebergs, but at least it’d be something. Our queen led an attack on one of them a few years ago, but it didn’t go well. They met resistance from a small number of IceWings who’d been banished there, and we were slaughtered. Our queen was injured, badly from what I’ve heard. And the mainland is heavily occupied.” She looked over towards Torrent. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the Night Kingdom is not strong. We have a couple hundred dragons at most, the majority of them even weaker than I am from starvation. You remember how easily you and Griffin were able to take me on. That wasn’t because I’m untrained. If we faced an attack from any decent number of dragons who felt threatened by our territory claim, we’d be massacred.”
Torrent was silent for a moment, unsure what to say. Things really didn’t sound good for the NightWings. Maybe his mother would be willing to help them? Torrent doubted it, and it’s not like she’d ever listen to some random prince who’d disappeared years ago.
Suddenly, Nightreader’s head perked up, and she looked in the distance in alarm. “Dive into the water!” she ordered Torrent with urgency. “Now!”
Unsure what was going on, Torrent folded his wings against his side, diving down into the water with barely a splash, swimming beneath the surface. Nightreader continued her flight above the surface, angling herself barely upwards. As she started to rise, Torrent saw what Nightreader was worried about. In the distance, two black dots were slowly moving towards them. They weren’t alone.
Nightreader smiled as the two NightWings approached her, though it quickly turned into a frown. The NightWings had changed their course, flying slightly to the left in order to pass closer to her. That was unexpected; most dragons tended to avoid Nightreader, knowing who her brother was. She held back a gulp of alarm as she recognized who they were. The first was a smaller blueish NightWing around Nightreader’s age, his ribs poking from his scales. Windtoucher. He carried a small purplish-black egg within his claws, and was panting heavily from the flight. He hadn’t gone off the island too many times before. Normally, Nightreader was the one who did that.
The second dragon was the one Nightreader was worried about. The NightWing she had been most hoping to avoid. The only dragon in the Night Kingdom even Princess Greatness took orders from. Morrowseer. Even in the daytime, he was intimidating. No matter how little he ate, the NightWing’s muscles were always strong, his body filled out. He was even larger than Torrent, and no matter his mood (which Nightreader wasn’t sure could be anything but perpetually frustrated), had an expression on his snout like he was hoping he’d just kill any dragon he looked at with his eyes.
Unfortunately, he was the dragon Nightreader had to work with the most. She hadn’t gotten much of a choice, with her brother being an animus, but at least it meant she got to go off the island more than most of the other NightWings. It had made most of the dragons there quite jealous of her, including her and Stonemover’s parents, but it was worth the costs. Still, Nightreader had wanted to avoid Morrowseer on her hopefully quick return to the island.
Morrowseer’s constant frown turned into a snarl as he came up Nightreader, his sharp fangs too close to her snout. “Fly with me,” he ordered. Not seeing much of another choice, Nightreader turned around, gliding along with Morrowseer and Windtoucher. She thought about glancing down, to see if Torrent was watching from beneath, but that would just draw more suspicion. And if she could see the SeaWing, Morrowseer could too. Hopefully he was far beneath the surface.
Nightreader bowed her head to Morrowseer. “The mission was a success, sir,” she lied.
Morrowseer gave her a glare, his mood unchanged by positive news. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here. You should have taken the tunnels to the island. And you should have been there long before now.”
Windtoucher tried to keep his eyes averted, but shot a quick glance at Nightreader. She ignored it. She was higher up in the NightWing pecking order than he was just because of her brother’s powers. Doubtless Windtoucher wanted to displace her, but both knew that there was little he could do to cause that. Well, he wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
“Stonemover needed to go to the exit point of the third tunnel to start it,” Nightreader fibbed, keeping her voice calm. She’d decided that mentioning her encounter with the ‘animus hunters’ in her lie would be dangerous. Morrowseer didn’t know how the specifics of how animus magic worked, and she wasn’t wrong either. At least for the previous two tunnels, her brother had gone to the exit points to find an appropriate spot to place them. “I went with him. I thought it would be closer to fly over the ocean than back to the desert tunnel, especially with rumors of a battle.”
Morrowseer frowned, although that said very little about what he was thinking. He beat his enormous wings, the current created by them almost sucking Windtoucher inwards. Finally, he turned back to Nightreader with a growl. “Don’t try to fool me. Stonemover’s orders were to build the third tunnel. Yours were to return directly to the island as soon as you gave him his new orders, not to fly with him.”
Nightreader glanced down, feigning shame. Morrowseer let out a puff of smoke. “You disobeyed my orders in order to spend more time with your brother. Weak and pathetic,” he scolded her. “Your duty is to your kingdom first, not your family. I will be making sure that Princess Greatness hears of this after I return from dropping off this egg with the Talons.”
Nightreader lowered her head. She held back a smile. If everything went right, she’d be long gone before Morrowseer ever returned to tell Greatness anything. “I apologize, sir,” she quietly answered. “But if you only allowed me to spend more time with h—”
Morrowseer let out a roar, baring his fangs. “No buts. You should be groveling in thanks that you get to see him at all, or that you get to leave the island. Most NightWings do not get that privilege. You are treated much too well.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I spoke out of place.”
The huge NightWing snorted. “Yes, you did. We will speak of this later. Return to the island.” He was quiet for a moment, as Nightreader waited for him to dismiss her. He turned back to Nightreader again. “Were you followed?”
“Followed?” Nightreader asked, her scales tensing up. “No, I was very careful to make sure I left under the cover of night.”
Morrowseer glanced upwards, as if checking what time it was. Nightreader’s story checked out—she and Torrent had left during the night. “I thought I saw a blue speck following you,” he muttered.
Nightreader smiled, and glanced behind her, as if checking herself. “It could have been a cloud, or a bird, or a shark.”
Morrowseer glanced down, with Nightreader following his gaze. Torrent was nowhere to be seen, fortunately. He glanced back up. “Make sure you’re careful in the future,” he ordered, receiving an enthusiastic nod in response. “You’re dismissed. Return to the island.”
“Thank you, sir,” Nightreader said as she raised a wing to turn around, the two NightWings flying past her, heading towards the mainland. As sure she was soon as they were far enough, she let out a sigh of relief. Morrowseer wouldn’t be on the island, at least. That was good.
After Nightreader was certain the two NightWings were completely out of sight, she glanced down towards the water, and motioned with her claws for Torrent to surface. For a moment, she was worried he’d lost her while beneath, but a splash broke through the ocean’s waves as the SeaWing lifted into the air, water dripping from his scales. He glanced towards her, then back behind him. The two NightWings were gone.
“Who were they?” he asked cautiously.
“The small one was Windtoucher,” Nightreader explained, “and the big one was Morrowseer. I think I mentioned him while we were with Clarity.” Torrent nodded in confirmation. “He’s the second most important NightWing, before Princess Greatness and behind our Queen, moons bless her soul. He leads all our operations with the Talons of Peace, and was the one who wrote the Dragonet Prophecy. Since the queen’s injury, he’s been in charge of most of our . . . war interference.”
“If your queen is injured, why doesn’t Princess Greatness just challenge her?” Torrent asked, confused.
Nightreader snorted. “Greatness isn’t the leader type. She doesn’t particularly want to be queen either. Her primary duty is communicating the queen’s instructions to the rest of the kingdom for her. She’ll obviously have to challenge her mother eventually, but she seems to be putting it off as much as possible, and if she did become queen, she’d just become a figurehead for Morrowseer.”
Torrent glanced up. The sky above seemed to be greying, though the light rain had seemed to have subsided. A light whiff of sulfur reached his nose. Nightreader seemed to have noticed it too. “We’re getting closer to the island,” she notified him, “so you should try and stay out of sight. Beneath the water.”
Torrent nodded. “So the plan is that you go onto the island while I wait nearby?”
“Yes,” Nightreader replied. “There’s a large bay surrounded by ash-covered beaches on the southern end of the island, with cliffs around it. Stay just inside of it while I’m on the island, and when I return, flash your light-up scales to tell me you see me, so I know you’re following me. After that, you’ll swim beneath me until we reach a safe distance, then surface.”
“What if something goes wrong, and you don’t return?” Torrent asked. “How long should I wait before going in after you?”
Nightreader thought for a moment. “Wait as long as you can. There’s always the chance I’ll be delayed by something unimportant or other. If I don’t return, don’t come after me. Leave, and see if you can find Griffin and Stonemover by yourself. You’re a SeaWing, you can navigate the ocean better than I can, and if you find him, Stonemover could help. It would be suicide to try and enter the island on your own, you don’t know it at all, and a big blue SeaWing will stick out like an extra wing there. There’s not much water to hide in, unless you can swim in lava.”
Torrent didn’t like that, just abandoning her if something went wrong, but it made sense. “I can do that,” he affirmed. “Do you know where the Obsidian Mirror is?”
“I think so,” Nightreader answered, “Princess Greatness has it somewhere in her chambers, I believe, but I think she’d notice it if it went missing, and they might go after me.” She wasn’t particularly keen on using it. It had a dark feeling to it, something much worse than any object Stonemover had ever made.
Torrent drew out his dagger and passed it to Nightreader. “The amethyst on that gets warmer when you point the dagger towards an enchanted object, just in case you have trouble finding it. If you don’t want to take it, you can at least prevent anyone else from using it. Tap the dagger to it while pressing a claw to the emerald, and the mirror will be disenchanted. While you’re using the mirror, make sure the dagger isn’t too close, or it won’t work.”
Nightreader took the dagger carefully, as if it was made of glass. She turned it over. There was a small spherical indent on the hilt, where it looked like a third gem should have gone. The faintest of claw marks seemed to have scratched around the indent. She wondered what had happened there. “Are you sure about this?” she asked. “Your sister gave it to you, and it’s your only protection against animus magic.”
Torrent snorted. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone else has used it. And if something happens to you, it’s enchanted to return to me. Speaking of that, it’ll tug on you when you’re holding it to try and go back to me. Just don’t let it out of sight or keep it too long, and it’ll probably be fine.”
Nightreader nodded, and glanced forward. The sky was getting darker with smoke and smog. She crunched up the scales around her nose. She wasn’t excited about returning to the Night Kingdom. “See you, then.”
Torrent nodded, and dove beneath the water. Nightreader watched him swim out of sight, then turned forward with a boost of speed. As the oppressive smoke started to surround her, a landmass in the distance, the volcano rising high into the air, and the orange glow of lava emanating from the NightWing island, obscured by the dark smog. The water beneath her started to grow clouded and dark.
Home sweet home.
==Chapter 81==
Nightreader decided that the first thing she’d try and find would be the scroll. That would be the easiest thing, and it was much less risky than sneaking into the princess’s chambers to use the Obsidian Mirror. It was almost certainly in the library, so that was where Nightreader was headed.
She touched down on a wide rock ledge, a river of lava stretching beneath it down the side of the volcano. If she traveled alongside it, it would take her to the NightWing fortress and the many caves leading towards the interior of the volcano. That’s where both the library and Greatness’s room would be.
As she walked along the ledge towards the entrance of the fortress, a large gateway of black stone, she saw two NightWings guarding it. Twilight and Skullboiler. Neither of which she was particularly worried about, as she took precedence over both of them.
“You’re back?” Twilight asked as she saw Nightreader approach. “We took bets on happened to you.” She bared her teeth in a frown. “I thought you’d been caught by an IceWing. Now I owe Skullboiler my next three meals.” She glared over at Skullboiler, who hunched her head inside her wings.
“I knew you were going to come back,” Skullboiler quietly said, trying to tone down the slight pride in her voice. “Will you take me with you the next time you leave the island?”Skullboiler was one of the older dragonets on the island, around six, but she wasn’t allowed to leave the island until she was ten. Nightreader felt a pang of pity. She remembered that time, waiting until she turned ten to get off the island, but she’d been given an exception, first leaving when she was eight. When Morrowseer had taken Stonemover to make the tunnel at the rainforest, he’d pleaded to have Nightreader come with him. Nightreader had been anxious for a while of what Morrowseer would do to her because of Stonemover’s begging, but eventually, Morrowseer gave in.
For all their bravado, Nightreader knew that Morrowseer and Greatness were terrified of what Stonemover could do, and especially when she was younger, Nightreader had done what she could to keep them on edge. As long as they knew she could tell Stonemover what to do, she had power over them. When she broke a rule, her punishments were lighter than the other dragonets around her for fear of invoking her brother’s ‘wrath,’ and even now, whatever Morrowseer had in mind for her punishment wouldn’t be too severe. Still, she always had to be wary; if Greatness, Morrowseer, or Battlewinner became too frightened of Stonemover, or thought he was becoming disloyal or losing his soul, they’d get rid of him. No one wanted another Sunscorcher or, moons forbid, another Darkstalker.
Nightreader hated using her brother’s position to increase her own say, but it had worked to an extent. She’d served as his advocate, suggesting, and occasionally even arguing with Morrowseer over how Stonemover should use his magic, usually trying to prevent any use of it. Morrowseer knew just as well as she did the price of using animus magic, but he had other plans about how to use it, hence the tunnels. Stonemover was just a tool to him, one with limited uses before it had to be thrown away. Still, the tunnels had been one of the few enchantments Nightreader had protested little against. The horrid island was slowly killing her brother, and making the tunnels gave Stonemover a chance to escape it. And apparently, meet other dragons and fall in love.
“Sorry,” Nightreader apologized to Skullboiler. “You know that’s not my decision to make.”
Skullboiler looked down, crestfallen, while Twilight gave her a snarl. “Wait your own turn like the rest of us,” she hissed, turning to Nightreader with anger and envy in her eyes.
Nightreader didn’t respond, and continued her smile. “Unfortunately, I can’t stay for long,” she continued. “Morrowseer wants me to catch up with him.” This was a flat-out lie, but she doubted anyone would see through it. Morrowseer would be gone for at least a few days, and by the time he returned, she would be long gone with Torrent.
Twilight muttered something under her breath, then gave Nightreader a glare. “Go on,” she ordered.
“You might want to avoid your father,” Skullboiler notified her as Nightreader walked into the fortress. “He’s in his mood again.”
Nightreader nodded with a sigh. Her father was the only parent she and Stonemover had growing up, since their mother had plunged herself into lava when they were barely two years old. He was ill-tempered, prone to fits of rage, and spent his days wandering around the fortress. And just like Nightreader, he knew very well that he had a little extra protection from retribution due to his son’s powers. Fortunately, parenting in the Night Kingdom was loose at best, and Morrowseer had been very insistent on raising the kingdom’s animus himself, with little interference from his father. This left Nightreader in an in-between state when it came to growing up, thanks to Stonemover’s insistence, much to Morrowseer’s annoyance, that Nightreader be around him almost constantly.
Nightreader entered the fortress with a glower of determination on her snout, walking at a steady pace towards the library. She passed a number of NightWings on her way, but few decided to even greet her. It wasn’t far before the paved dark stone of the fortress turned into natural caverns, and the temperature of the air started to rise. A fork in the caves loomed ahead of her, and she took the left passage. The right led further into the volcano, whereas this way went to the library.
The library floor was covered from wall to wall with wooden shelves of scrolls, messily organized, but it wasn’t nearly enough to hold the wealth of knowledge in the library. Piles of loose scrolls covered the floor, and Nightreader had to tread carefully to avoid stubbing a claw on one, or even worse, ripping a scroll open. A thin NightWing stood across the room, sorting a pile of scrolls and placing them on a shelf. Mastermind, the Night Kingdom’s researcher and scientist.
Nightreader stepped across the floor towards Mastermind, who didn’t seem to notice her approach. “Excuse me,” she stated.
Mastermind slowly turned his head towards Nightreader with a sigh. He looked down at her with an undeserved expression of pity. “Nightreader,” he said with a frown. “I was busy sorting these scrolls. I was looking to see if there are any records of this interesting material I’ve been experimenting with recently. Quickstrike’s son, whatever his name was, recently had to . . . complete an order involving a MudWing scientist, and kindly sent me back a sampling of her research. She appears to have created this highly volatile powder of some sort, very dangerous and not for your talons, and I’ve been attempting to discover its components to recreate it. Greatness is quite hopeful.”
“Ah, interesting,” Nightreader muttered impatiently. “Do you know where that scroll about the NightWings’ journey from the old kingdom was? The really old one?”Mastermind thought for a moment, then pointed a claw at a shelf of scrolls. “It should be over there, with the other ancient history materials. Did you tell Stonemover about my offer?”
“I did,” Nightreader replied. She hadn’t. “He doesn’t accept, sorry. It’s nothing personal, he just wants to use his magic as little as possible.” Mastermind’s ‘offer’ was experimenting on animus magic and its users, and based on the state of some of the other dragons who’d come out of Mastermind’s ‘experiments,’ Nightreader didn’t want her brother joining in.
“Oh, that’s a disappointment,” Mastermind snorted. “Think of how much we could learn about animus magic! It’s quite an anomaly, you see, I can think of few fundamental principles to explain it. Imagine how useful it would be if we could control it! Do you know what lodestones are? I made an interesting discovery not too long ago by using some of that and some old chainmail mesh. I call it ‘lodestone-lightning.’ Unfortunately, I’ve been having quite some trouble recreating it, and your brother would be quite valuable.”
Nightreader resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “He’s a bit busy working on the tunnels at the moment. Speaking of that, have you seen Princess Greatness recently?” If she wanted to sneak into Princess Greatness’s room, it would be good to know she wasn’t in there.
“She’s in a meeting with a dragonet at the moment, punishing her for sneaking into my laboratory without permission. Very just. But make to tell me if Stonemover changes his mind, and wishes to devote himself to the pursuit of knowledge!”
Nightreader nodded and thanked Mastermind for his help, then stepped across the floor of scrolls towards the shelf Mastermind had pointed out, keeping her tail lifted so not to topple over any of the small piles accidentally. When she reached the shelf, she grabbed a few scrolls and put them under her snout to read. Night Kingdom Currencies, Volume 1: Pre-Darkstalker. Post-Scorching Wars, Rebellions, and Democratic Microstates. Not what she was looking for, but a good sign.
It took her awhile before she found the one she was looking for, even just skimming the titles of the scrolls. The Diary of Listener. That was the one. The original scroll had decayed, but a few centuries ago, someone had reconstructed what was left of it. Nightreader rolled it open a little bit, and glanced down it. The original author had done a good job of documentation, day by day she wrote about what direction the NightWings had flown, for how long, and what they had seen on the way. It might be imperfect, but Nightreader thought she could construct a map from the scroll of the surrounding islands, and if she had a glimpse at wherever Stonemover and Griffin were, she could find the island they were looking for. She quickly tucked it in her satchel and left the library, paying a final glance to Mastermind. Even with the purpose she was using it for, she felt slightly bad about stealing the scroll from the library, knowing it wouldn’t ever be returned here. Oh well. Hopefully no one would ever need it to find the old Night Kingdom or something like that.
Princess Greatness’s room was off-limits, but the Night Kingdom was small enough she didn’t bother to have any guards posted on it. Other than the Obsidian Mirror, it wasn’t like there was much of value in there. Sure, a cunning dragon could steal some of her jewelry and hide it, but if they attempted to pawn it off, news would travel fast. There were only a couple hundred dragons, all stuck on a small island for their entire lives, and everyone knew everyone.
Nightreader traveled within the twisting tunnels quickly, keeping her ears and nose open to make sure she didn’t run into any dragons unexpectedly. She felt her satchel move, and glanced down in worry before remembering what Torrent had said about his dagger — it would try and return to him. That shouldn’t be a problem. Nightreader headed down a tunnel with a small trickle of lava running through part of it, heating up the tunnel intensely and making her wrinkle her snout at the sulfurous smell. She’d be glad to be out of here soon.
As Nightreader entered Greatness’s room, she was unimpressed. It was a bit of a mess — a few scrolls scattered about, along with various gems and jewelry. The sulfurous smell lingered in here too, Nightreader was a bit surprised that the princess hadn’t attempted to find a new cave. Maybe this one had a convenient location. A small wooden box caught Nightreader’s eye. Greatness had used the Obsidian Mirror publicly a few times, and that was where she normally put it. The object gave off eerie vibes, so Nightreader understood why Greatness would want to have it somewhere she couldn’t see it.
Nightreader took her satchel off and put it to the side of the room, where Torrent’s dagger was too far to affect the mirror. She then stepped towards the box. As her talons wrapped around the wood, she felt a chill jolt through them, running along her scales. Almost uncontrollably, she started to shake. Even in the balmy room, she felt cold. Nothing Stonemover created had ever felt like this. Sure, the tunnels gave her a sense of artificiality and ‘wrongness’, but this was different.
As the NightWing lifted the lid to the box, she suddenly felt a talon dragging along her backside, and whipped around. There was no one there. She sighed, and glanced back at the box. Inside it was the Obsidian Mirror. For the power it had, the object wasn’t particularly decorated, appearing just as a plain oval mirror of black stone. Nightreader glanced into it. Her own reflection appeared, staring straight back at her.
Nightreader shook her head. She was just imagining things. “Stonemover,” she muttered, and breathed a puff of smoke onto it. The figure of her brother appeared, slightly distorted, in the mirror. Nightreader let out a sigh of relief. He didn’t look particularly happy, but at least he was alive and safe. Nightreader frowned as he saw a metal collar around his neck. Maybe he was imprisoned somewhere? Near the border of the mirror, Nightreader could see another dragon she hadn’t seen before, with brown and black splotches all over his body. She looked beyond Stonemover to see the wall of some sort of cave.
Nightreader let out a groan. He was underground. That wasn’t helpful; there was no way she could see find out what island he was on from that. The mirror was useless. Nightreader set the mirror down on the stone floor and breathed a blast of flame on it, getting rid of the image. Maybe there was someone else who’d be helpful to see.
“Griffin,” she whispered, then gently opened her mouth to breath more smoke up. The mirror’s surface shifted, until Nightreader could see Griffin in its reflection. She opened her eyes wide, and winced. Torrent would not be happy. Griffin was in a sorry state, blood mixed with feathers all over him. His eyes were bruised, and a trickle of dried blood on his beak. One of his wings looked completely out of place. A large stab wound was visible on his leg, the feathers and skin bulged around it. That didn’t look good.
Nightreader looked beyond Griffin to see smoke and lava. At least he was outside. Fracture had mentioned lava, or something like that. It wasn’t anywhere on the NightWing island that Nightreader had ever seen. Beyond him, she saw the peak, although she wasn’t quite sure ‘peak’ was a fitting word. The island was small, though the obscuring smoke made it seem much larger than it really was. To the side of the peak, she thought she saw another island in the distance, this one larger. “Can you zoom in or something?” she muttered to the mirror, knowing it would have no answer.
Nightreader held the mirror up to her eye, and squinted, trying to get a better view of the island in the distance. Two peaks. One higher than the other. Wait, no — two islands, not two peaks. Two volcanic islands, three if the rock Griffin was on was included. All in a row. That seemed hopeful.
Nightreader glanced over to the satchel. It looked like it had moved a few feet since she’d set it down, like it was trying to escape. The dagger, again. Opening the satchel, she pulled out the scroll, and rolled it open, one end of it hitting the other side of Greatness’s room. She quickly read from the top, looking for any keywords that might match with the island she’d seen in the mirror. There were a number of volcanic islands that Listener had seen, but only once in the scroll did she mention three near each other, all of which were completely inhospitable. That sounded like what Nightreader was looking for. After a quick apology to it, the NightWing made a minuscule tear in the scroll to mark the day in which Listener had come across the island.
She rolled the scroll up, and exchanged it out for the dagger, then turned to the Obsidian Mirror. Nightreader doubted anyone would be too sad to see it gone, and wasn’t even sure that Greatness would realize that it didn’t work anymore. She breathed a puff of flame on it to clear the image, then brought Torrent’s dagger close it, her claw on the emerald.
The Obsidian Mirror started to vibrate, as if it was in pain from the dagger being so close. Nightreader grabbed at it with her talons, though the small disk shuddered, as if trying to escape. She snorted. “Die, you stupid thing,” she hissed, then brought the blade of the dagger to the mirror’s surface.
The obsidian seemed to warp from the blade’s touch, ripples traveling through it as it started to become liquid beneath her talons. “Three moons!” Nightreader yelled, a bit more loudly than she’d intended as she dropped it, although it seemed more like it dripped through her claws. Was this what was supposed to happen? On the stone floor, the Obsidian Mirror seemed solid once more. With a growl, Nightreader stabbed the blade into it again.
Following a ripple across its surface, a small bubble popped on the liquified stone where the dagger touched its surface. Black mist started to spread from the surface, creating a quiet hissing noise. Nightreader narrowed her eyes, her talons shaking. Whatever this mirror was, she wouldn’t let it get the best of her. She held the blade to the mirror’s surface, as the ripples across the stone started to grow. The hissing grew louder, as if the mirror was screaming out in pain.
Suddenly, a loud rumble resounded beneath her, shaking Greatness’s room. A necklace fell from one of Greatness’s shelves, and the ground vibrated. Everyone in the Night Kingdom would have felt that. Nightreader’s breath quickened. The volcano? Nightreader brought the dagger away from the mirror suddenly, causing it to become fully solid once more. She looked around her, then back at the mirror. Had it caused that? She turned her snout to the dagger, and shuddered. The emerald her claw was against had visibly cracked down the middle.
Nightreader wasn’t sure what had happened, but she didn’t want to risk harming Torrent’s dagger any more, or far worse, causing the volcano to erupt. She carefully set the Obsidian Mirror back in its box, then placed the dagger in her satchel with the scroll. She had gotten what she’d really come here for.
As Nightreader left Greatness’s room, and walked down the halls towards the stronghold’s exit, the sound of clawsteps reached her ears. She froze, looking around for a place to hide, but unless she wanted to swim in a lava pool, there was nowhere. Suddenly, Princess Greatness walked down from the other end of the tunnel, not quite running, but quickly trotting towards her room.
The princess glanced at Nightreader as she passed, as Nightreader returned a smile of innocence. “Nightreader,” Greatness said, “you’re back.”
Nightreader nodded quietly, trying to think of what to say in response.
“You need to get out of here,” the princess demanded, “did you hear the rumble? The volcano might erupt any moment.”
Nightreader presented an exaggerated gulp to the princess. “Mastermind said we had years before it erupted,” she protested.
“He’s been wrong before,” Greatness muttered. “Maybe it’s still too early, and it was just a rumble. But you need to get out of here. These tunnels could collapse at any moment.” She glanced back towards the tunnel Nightreader had come from anxiously. “There’s something I just need to get.”
Nightreader nodded and smiled as Princess Greatness ran on. That was close. It was fortunate that Greatness was in too much of a rush to wonder why Nightreader was coming from her room, but it might not be like that the next time Nightreader saw her. She needed to get out.
Nightreader hurried towards the exit of the tunnel. No more rumbles had sounded since the first one. That was good. The chaos caused by the volcano erupting might be slightly beneficial to helping her get out, but it would be disastrous for her kingdom. They still had another seven years before Morrowseer’s plan would be done, and they weren’t at all prepared for an eruption.
As she reached the exit of the stronghold, she noticed that Skullboiler and Twilight were still there. Twilight had her wing wrapped around Skullboiler, pulling the NightWing in close. Both were tense, and Skullboiler’s scales were shaking. Twilight kept glancing back to the volcano, thinking it could erupt any minute. Skullboiler whimpered slightly, and Twilight glanced down to her. “It’ll be alright,” Twilight comforted her, though her own voice was shaky.
A rare display of affection in the Night Kingdom. As Nightreader looked back towards the stronghold, she saw other dragons behaving similarly, huddling together in fear of the volcano looming over them.
“You’re leaving?” Twilight asked Nightreader with a frown.
Nightreader glanced back to her. “Er, yeah, there’s something with the tunnel I need to check up on quickly.”
Twilight flicked her tongue out and bared her teeth. “So you’re just abandoning us? Going to escape the Night Kingdom while we’re all burned alive?”
“No,” Nightreader lied, “just need to check on something. I don’t think the volcano is ready to erupt yet.”
Twilight glared at Nightreader, but didn’t move to stop her as Nightreader walked past her. “Coward,” she hissed, holding Skullboiler closer to her.
Nightreader didn’t respond as she exited the stronghold. Twilight was right. Nightreader was a coward, and was abandoning the Night Kingdom. She winced. She had to keep her goal in mind. Saving her brother. That was all that mattered right now.
As she reached the ledge she had landed on, Nightreader spread her wings wide, and lifted off into the air. As she flew towards the bay, the air felt clearer already. She sighed as she glanced back towards the island, the lava casting an orange glow around the volcano. It wasn’t as if there was much she could do to save the NightWings, and her brother was already paying the price of his soul for his help. She felt a small pang of nostalgia as she flew away, but it quickly faded.
Torrent sat beneath the bay of the NightWing island as a rumble shook through the water. The water irritated his scales, small particles of ash getting between his gills, causing them to sting irritatingly. He flicked his tongue impatiently. Hopefully Nightreader would be back soon. He didn’t think she’d betray him — he supposed she could turn him into the NightWings, although it wasn’t like they could hurt him down here. Nightreader also didn’t seem like that type of dragon, one who broke the trust of her friends. Then again, Torrent wasn’t sure how well he knew her. He’d thought he’d known Crystal, but she’d left.
Just thinking of her hurt. He’d loved her, and she’d loved him. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, and maybe they’d made some poor decisions, but he’d been happy with her, hadn’t he? Well, not really. They’d been worried and frightened, rightfully so, of the powers they were dealing with. Torrent had still been grieving over Orca.
But for a while, things had been alright. The winter in the Sky Kingdom, after Crystal had woken from her coma. Torrent and Crystal had almost been able to set aside their anxieties, knowing there was nothing they could do but wait. That was back when Schist and Griffin were with them too. And Agate Mountain, too, when Crystal and Torrent had only had each other. After they’d given up on trying to find Darkstalker, and were just able to be with each other, nothing else to do. For a while, Torrent had wondered if Griffin would ever return, and if the two of them could just live on Agate Mountain forever. It would have been a nice life. Away from the war, from the queens, from magic. Just them, and their dragonet, no other dragons for miles around.
Maybe that was the key to happiness. Giving up. The two of them had wanted to protect Pyrrhia from animus magic, but that wasn’t possible. Only after they’d finally decided that Darkstalker was off-reach were they able to be together. Sure, everyone was in constant danger from animus magic, but if Torrent could just ignore that, maybe he’d be happy, like he’d been then. Maybe things would go wrong, or maybe they wouldn’t. It would be better for everyone if he just didn’t care.
Still, good things never seemed to last. Crystal had left, for whatever reasons she had. Why hadn’t she told him? Was it Griffin? Torrent? Something else altogether? Torrent bristled a little as the ash stung his gills. He raised a paw up and rubbed at one, feeling the indentations of the burn scar Magma had given him. His damaged gills made things difficult when swimming, but not impossible. As long as he wasn’t too active, or the current wasn’t too strong, it was alright, and he wouldn’t run out of breath while underwater.
Suddenly, it clicked together for Torrent. Magma. That’s where he’d heard the name Erosion before, in her diaries. Erosion was the SandWing animus that had taken Magma as a dragonet, had given her animus powers, and if Torrent had remembered right, Erosion had killed Magma’s lover, Copperhead. Torrent had never come across Erosion in his travels, and had just suspected she’d died somehow. He’d been horribly wrong — she was the animus who’d made the green diamonds, and she had Griffin and Stonemover now. And she knew how to give others magic. That was dangerous. The last thing that Pyrrhia needed was more animuses.
Torrent suddenly glanced up. A dark shadow was overhead, above the water. Nightreader had finally returned. Torrent flashed his scales, telling Nightreader ‘I’m here’ in Aquatic. Nightreader seemed to notice, and flew off, away from the island. Torrent followed her for a distance before surfacing.
As the SeaWing’s snout burst through the water surface, he breathed a sigh of relief. Nightreader was above him. “Nightreader!” he called, as she descended closer to the surface. Diving slightly down again to gain speed, Torrent emerged from the water with the spread of his wings, taking off into the sky above. Nightreader covered the satchel she held, trying to protect it from the spray.
“Did things go well?” he asked, concerned.
Nightreader grimaced a little and thought for a moment. “Sort of. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I found the scroll and the mirror, and think I know where Griffin and Stonemover are.”
Torrent nodded, breathing a sigh of relief. She’d been successful. “What’s the bad news?”
“First, Griffin,” Nightreader responded. “He’s injured. Badly. Really badly. His wing is broken, and I think he has a SandWing barb wound. But he’s alive. Stonemover is fine.”
Torrent bristled with fury. Erosion would pay for that.
“Second,” Nightreader continued, “the Obsidian Mirror. I don’t know if your dagger worked.”
Torrent took a breath to calm himself. “It probably did,” he responded, “disenchanting objects doesn’t really look like much.”
Nightreader shook her head. “That’s the problem. Something happened.” She pulled out the dagger from her satchel and passed it off to Torrent. He narrowed his gaze as he examined it. The emerald within it was cracked slightly. That was new.
“I’m sorry,” Nightreader apologized. “When I tapped it to the Obsidian Mirror, that happened. Oh, and the mirror started bubbling, and the volcano shook.”
“The volcano shook?” Torrent asked, surprised. That definitely wasn’t supposed to happen. He didn’t think that was possible with just the dagger. “Maybe the mirror had some type of protection enchantment on it,” he hypothesized. “But that’s alright. I think the dagger will still work.” The crack didn’t look bad, and as Torrent pressed a talon to the amethyst, it gave off the normal ambient warmth that it generated from being near the emerald and the rest of the dagger.
Nightreader nodded. “But I think I know the way we need to go. We’ll have to hop between a few islands, and it might not be the straightest route, but we should make it.”
“I hope so,” Torrent replied. If Griffin had been stung with a SandWing barb, Torrent wasn’t quite sure how much longer he had left. “We need to hurry.”
Nightreader pointed a talon towards the northeast. “That way,” she responded. She glanced back once more towards the NightWing island, now a speck of dark clouds in the distance. She would be glad to leave it behind.
==Chapter 82==
As Griffin opened an eye, he winced in pain, shutting it again. His wing and leg ached, sending out sharp pains. He just wanted to go back to sleep again. 
It took Griffin a moment to remember where he was, and what had happened. Erosion’s island. He’d been attacked by three of the animuses there. One had stabbed his leg with a barb. Griffin could definitely feel that, the pain of the poison throughout his leg made it difficult to move. And another had broken his wing.
Griffin gulped, not wanting to see what had happened to it. He could feel the ache, but as long as it didn’t move, it was bearable. How bad was the break? A barb wound, that was almost normal. It didn’t feel good, and Griffin guessed that the poison would be more likely to kill him than a broken wing. But it was different. If Griffin survived, would he ever be able to fly again? He hoped so. He thought wing bones healed for dragons, but wasn’t quite sure for himself. The healing diamond that Crystal had created would’ve come in handy right now, but unfortunately, no one had seen her in years. Griffin still blamed himself for that — if he hadn’t come back, if he hadn’t reacted the way he did, maybe she’d still be with Torrent. Well, it wasn’t as if the diamond was that reliable anyways.
Griffin tried to move his left wing slightly, but yelped out as pain ripped through it. He finally opened his eyes, and swiveled his head to the side to look. He could see a few pieces of wood stretched upon the mess of his wing, holding it place. Layers of cloth were wrapped beneath and around splints, with more cloth holding his wing against the rest of his body. Griffin pecked at one of the pieces of cloth with his beak, then twisted his head around to look at his leg. Bandages were wrapped around it, and unlike the uncomfortably dry bandages on his wing, these were wet, although the smokey air of the island seemed to be quickly drying it out. They had a slightly pungent smell to them. A matted mess of blood and feathers peeked out between the bandages.
Griffin glanced around at his surroundings, careful not to try moving his wing while looking. He was near the entrance to the caverns, somewhat closer to the pool of lava than he’d like. Thick smoke lifted up in the air around him. To his side, Griffin noticed the dried husk of some sort of plant, though he wasn’t quite sure what.
Suddenly, Griffin heard clawsteps from the hidden entrance to the caverns, and tensed up, causing more pain in his wing. He gritted his beak together, and tried to relax. It wasn’t like he could fight or run in this state anyways.
Gazelle walked out from the small gully, the old SandWing coughing and wheezing as she took a breath of the smoke. She glanced towards Griffin after she was done. “You’re awake.”
Griffin looked over at her, and let out a sigh of relief. “The splint and bandages . . . ?”
Gazelle nodded. “That was me. I’ve treated worse. You should heal, in time, although I’ll need to get more cactus soon.”
“Thank you for this,” Griffin replied with gratitude. Gazelle had saved his life. If he had been questioning whose side she was on earlier, Griffin believed he knew now.
“You should be safe here for now,” Gazelle comforted him, though she quickly glanced back to the ditch.
“Stonemover?” Griffin asked hurriedly, realizing that the NightWing was still in the caves. What if the animuses went after him?
“He’s good enough, much better than you.” Gazelle winced. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”
“Your fault?”
Gazelle sighed. “Yes. It’s my duty to make sure that the animuses don’t hurt each other. After Ichthyes attacked you earlier, I should have known better than to leave you alone while he was free.”
Ichthyes, Griffin thought, that must be the SeaWing’s name. Gazelle was right; what had happened to Griffin was mostly her fault. Yet, Griffin didn’t feel angry towards her — she’d cared for him afterwards, and kept him alive. Well, maybe just a little angry, but not that much. “It’s alright. What happened after I fell unconscious?”
“Not much. I came in and forced the animuses to stand down. Stonemover wasn’t attacked, and I put the three aggressors on the platforms.”
Griffin quickly glanced over towards the lake of lava, as if expecting to see the three animuses.
Gazelle shook her head. “They’re not there anymore. Erosion is taking the animuses to Crosswinds. She wants me to bring you too.”
Griffin looked upwards to the sky. “Did they leave already?”
“There’s a portal inside the cave,” Gazelle explained. Right. Griffin should have expected that. “Do you think you can walk with my help?” She nervously looked back towards the cavern entrance again.
“Maybe,” Griffin said with a frown. He tried to stand, but winced in pain as it shifted his wing. His leg still ached. He didn’t think he could put too much pressure on it either. “What are you worried about?”
Gazelle sighed. “Erosion deactivated my control over the animuses for the time being. She wants to make sure I don’t interfere in Crosswinds. So I can’t prevent them from killing you anymore, which is why I’ve waited until the last second to take you to Erosion, when they’ll all be gone already.”
“Alright,” Griffin gulped. “So, is it safe now?”
“I think so.” Gazelle walked over to Griffin and kneeled down as low to the ground as she could. “Can you climb on me?”
Griffin grasped at her fin with his talons, causing Gazelle to grimace in discomfort. Using it, he pulled himself up onto her back, trying to move his wing and injured leg as little as possible. Gazelle stood up, wheezing heavily, and staggered towards the ditch, carrying Griffin on her.
Suddenly, Gazelle let out a howl of pain, and collapsed to the ground. Griffin rolled to the right, away from his broken wing, and cringed in pain as he instinctively attempted to spread it out to soften his landing. He fell on his back near the edge of Gazelle’s wing, the bubbling pool of lava not far from his feathered head. He pulled his tail in, away from the treacherous edge, and attempted to roll to his paws, avoiding the use of his stung leg.
Gazelle yelled again in pain, and Griffin looked over. His eyes opened wide as he saw who had attacked Gazelle. “Nightreader?”
Nightreader gritted her teeth as she her claws plunged deep into Gazelle’s tail, pinning it to the barb to that the SandWing couldn’t stab her. Gazelle turned her head towards Nightreader, and lunged back, ready to bite at the NightWing, before the feeling of a sharp blade on the back of her neck made her freeze.
“Don’t move,” Torrent growled, the SeaWing looming over Gazelle, “or your head will hit the ground before your next breath. Your magic is useless now.” He turned towards Griffin, and quickly glanced up and down at his injuries. “Should I kill her?”
“What?” Griffin asked, confused. Questions were running through his head. Where had Torrent and Nightreader just come from? Had they been hiding? How had they found the island? “No! Don’t hurt her! She’s a friend!”
“Ah,” Torrent replied with a frown, glancing at the bandaged barb wound on Griffin’s leg, then at Gazelle’s barb. He hesitated for a moment, before slowly lifting his dagger from Gazelle’s neck.
“Please,” Gazelle stammered at Nightreader, as blood started to spread across her scales from where Nightreader’s claws were stabbed into her tail.
Nightreader frowned, and slowly removed her blood-soaked talons from Gazelle’s tail, causing a gush of blood. “Don’t try anything,” she ordered.
Gazelle squeezed her eyes together in agony, and curled her tail over towards her front paws. With one, she reached into a small satchel at her side and pulled out a cloth bandage meant for Griffin. Gritting her teeth, the elderly SandWing wrapped it tight around her wound, as the cloth quickly stained red.
“Her name is Gazelle,” Griffin quickly explained, wincing as he pulled himself away from the ledge. “She’s not an animus. You’re looking for Erosion. She’s the one who gave Magma her powers.”
“I know,” Torrent answered. He paused for a moment, then walked towards Griffin, relief pouring over his snout. He stretched his wings out to embrace his friend.
“Don’t touch the wing!” Griffin stammered, causing Torrent to realize that maybe physical contact would be better later. Griffin curled his beak into a smile. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” Torrent answered. “Nightreader told me you were injured, and I was worried we wouldn’t make it in time.” Torrent held out his dagger towards Griffin, a talon on the emerald. Griffin noticed it was cracked. That was new.
The tip of the dagger tapped the metal collar on Griffin, and it divided into two parts which fell to the rock below. Although orientated funnily, the feathers beneath Griffin’s neck looked clean compared to the rest of his blood-stained body. “Wait, how did she know I was injured?” Griffin asked.
“Long story,” Nightreader snarled impatiently. “I’m glad you’re having a happy reunion, but where’s my brother? You can catch up after I find him.”
“Is he the NightWing? He’s inside the caves, by the portal,” Gazelle quietly whispered, clutching at her bleeding tail. “Erosion is taking him to Crosswinds.”
Torrent glanced over to the small gulley where the entrance to the caves was. “This way, I think” he directed her.
Gazelle frowned. “How did you do that?” she asked. “See the entrance. It’s enchanted to be invisible.”
“Torrent has a dagger which prevents animus magic from affecting him,” Griffin quickly explained.
Gazelle opened her eyes wide in understanding. “You’re the SeaWing Goanna was talking about?”
“Goanna?” Torrent asked. So she was here. Along with the SeaWing and SkyWing he and Griffin had tried to kill. Well, it wasn’t like Torrent didn’t know that already. “Probably.”
Gazelle nodded, and pointed a talon to the top of Torrent’s snout, then to his left gills, where his burn scars ran. She then stretched her head upwards, and pointed the talon to her own scars, running down her neck towards her underbelly.
Torrent snorted. So she’d known Magma too. “Believe me, we got off lightly,” he answered, thinking of the scarring Schist had sustained on half his body. His own scales shuddered, just thinking of how painful it must have been. He turned towards Griffin. “Are you coming with us?”
Griffin shook his head. “I don’t think I can really walk. I’ll stay with Gazelle. I can trust her.”
“Let’s go,” Nightreader hissed impatiently, walking towards the entrance of the tunnels. Torrent walked behind her, the enchantment to hide it fading as he stepped past.
The two hurried down the tunnels, Nightreader knowing Stonemover’s life could depend on it. Still, she should have asked for directions. A few side tunnels poked off the the main tunnel, though Nightreader chose to ignore them. The entire area was eerily empty. Although there were signs that other dragons were living down here, there was no one else within sight.
Before long, the two reached the iron doors leading to Erosion’s chamber. Nightreader quickly clutched her talons around the door, and tried to pulled one open, revealing the chamber inside. As she did so, a strong gust of wind blew from behind her, almost pushing the two into the room. Torrent looked upwards, at the colorful gemstones dotting the ceiling. He frowned. It reminded him of Darkstalker’s caverns. With Crystal.
As the wind from behind slammed the doors shut, Torrent glanced downwards. The scene of speckled lights that Griffin had seen was no longer there, instead, he saw a yellow-brown sandy soil far beneath him, small trees dotting the landscape. Peering his head over the edge, he saw a number of dragons flying in the space between the ground and ledge Torrent was on. Apparently this was the portal, presumably to somewhere near Crosswinds.
“Stonemover!” Nightreader called out. Torrent followed her line of sight across the narrow rock bridge, to Erosion’s throne. Three dragons were resting on the small disk of rock floating about the portal, hundreds of feet above the ground far beneath. Along with Stonemover stood Erosion and the SeaWing animus.
Erosion had a surprised look on her snout, though it quickly turned to disgust, as if she had eaten a foul-tasting beetle. “Ichthyes, fly to the rest of the animuses,” she ordered, flicking the tip of her tail. The SeaWing, almost mechanically, spread his wings and jumped off the disk, gliding down.
Stonemover glanced over towards Nightreader, and the worried expression on his face turned into a toothy grin at seeing his sister again.
“Are you alright?” Nightreader yelled out, starting across the narrow rock bridge to the floating disk, Torrent following behind her, dagger out.
Stonemover nodded, and started to walk towards her, but quickly stopped with a shudder as he felt the point of Erosion’s barb against his throat.
“Don’t come closer, and don’t try to follow me,” the SandWing animus hissed, “or the NightWing dies.”
Nightreader stiffened up, and glanced back towards Torrent. “Listen to her,” she pleaded, seeing Torrent momentarily flutter his wings, as if aching to fly at Erosion and cut her throat out.
Torrent paused for a moment. If he flew at Erosion now, she’d have no chance of escaping, and if she wasn’t bluffing, and ended up killing Stonemover, that would be two animuses dead. It would be a win for everyone, wouldn’t it? His gaze fell on Nightreader’s worried eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Torrent sighed, unhappy at the prospect of letting Erosion go. Stonemover might have been an animus, but his powers were gone, and he didn’t deserve to die. Nightreader probably would have stopped him anyways if he’d tried to go after Erosion.
Erosion let out a laugh. Wrapping her claws around Stonemover’s ribs, she threw herself and him over the edge of the disk, falling into the sky below. As she and Stonemover crossed the boundary of the portal, it disappeared with a flash, causing the bottom of the cave to become plain rock, leaving Torrent and Nightreader peering over the fragile ledge. Once more, Stonemover was gone.
==Chapter 83==
Nightreader and Torrent left the tunnels to see Griffin attempting to tend to Gazelle’s wound. He glanced over to the two, and frowned as he saw that Stonemover wasn’t with them. Nightreader had a look of rage on her, while Torrent’s expression was just sour.
“What happened?” Griffin asked, concerned. Had Stonemover been hurt?
“She got away,” Nightreader snapped, “and took Stonemover with her.”
“There wasn’t anything we could do,” Torrent muttered.“I know,” Nightreader snorted in irritation.
“Erosion won’t hurt him,” Gazelle spoke up as she turned towards Nightreader. “She wants him for his powers.”
“Yes,” Nightreader seethed through bared fangs, “that’s the problem. He doesn’t have any powers. Torrent forced him to enchant himself so he couldn’t use them. That’s how we got stuck together in this mess in the first place.”
“Oh,” Gazelle replied, worried. “That could be a problem.”
“We need to get to Crosswinds,” Nightreader said. “That’s where you said she was taking him, right?”
Gazelle nodded. Torrent frowned. “What is Erosion planning?” he asked Gazelle. “Why Crosswinds? It’s much smaller than Possibility, and much less friendly.”
Griffin agreed with Torrent on that, he’d spent enough time in Crosswinds with Trustbreaker to prefer Possibility much more to the war-torn town on the river.
Gazelle opened her mouth, and let out a wheeze as the smog entered her lungs. She continued coughing for a minute, before finally being able to speak. “Erosion is planning on taking out the three SandWing princesses, and eventually the rest of the queens, with magic. She’s going to kill Burn first, who is going to be in Crosswinds in three days to host a fight between herself and some SeaWing prisoners, hoping to improve loyalty and morale among the MudWings in Crosswinds who might still be rooting for Blister.” Gazelle let out a gasp after she finished speaking, coughing again.
“Why is she going to Crosswinds herself?” Torrent asked. “Couldn’t she just use her magic to kill all the queens from afar?”
“She wants to make it a public spectacle,” Nightreader suggested. “You can’t be queen unless everyone knows it.” She glanced at Gazelle, whose silence affirmed her theory.
“Then that’s even more reason to hurry,” Torrent said with urgency, glancing over his wing back the way he and Nightreader had flown from.
“Quick reminder,” Griffin stated, “I can’t fly. Please don’t leave me here.”
“The three of us can take turns carrying you,” Torrent replied, “you’re pretty light.”
“It’ll slow us down too much,” Nightreader answered.
Torrent scowled. He closed his eyes, and pondered on it for a moment. How could they use to get Griffin back over the ocean without it slowing them down too much? A memory flashed into his head — back in Possibility, before it was called that, where Evergreen’s SkyWings had carried off the MudWings’ barrels using nets strung between four of them. If the three of them could get a net, and find a way to attach it without hindering their flight, maybe they’d be able to carry Griffin with it, distributing the extra weight over all three of them. It would be far less dangerous than what the SkyWings had done too, as Griffin was less explosive, and both Torrent and Griffin could breathe underwater in case Nightreader or Gazelle fell in.
“I have an idea,” Torrent stated, quickly explaining what Evergreen’s SkyWings had made, and how they could adapt the idea here.
Griffin gulped. That didn’t sound safe. Sure, he couldn’t drown, but if he fell while they were over land, especially from a large height . . . maybe they could tie him on or something. Hopefully, very well. “Alright,” Griffin hesitantly agreed, “Gazelle, do you have any rope or netting in the supply cave?”
“Yes, both,” Gazelle answered. “SeaWing, if you want to get them, the supply cave Griffin mentioned is in the first hallway on the left, third cave down on the right.”
“Bring some more bandages for Gazelle and I too,” Griffin added, “maybe some food and water, if we need more. Oh, and there’s a scroll in there with a list of enchantments Erosion has made, that might come in use.”
“I don’t think this will work,” Nightreader finally spoke up. “I did the math. We’re too far to make it to Crosswinds in time to stop Erosion’s plan. Even if we fly with almost no sleep, it’ll take us at least two days, maybe more, to get to Pyrrhia, and another three to get to Crosswinds. If we fly directly from here, Princess Burn is as good as dead.”
“Directly from here?” Torrent asked. “Do you have another idea?”
Nightreader grimaced a little. “Unfortunately, I do. Stonemover created a magical tunnel from the NightWing island to the rainforest, and another one from there to Burn’s stronghold, where you and Griffin found us. It’s one day to the island from here if we go directly instead of island-hopping, and another day and a half east from there to Crosswinds if the winds are with us. We’ll be exhausted when we get there, and practically sleepless, but it’s possible.”
“We can get Griffin more Brightsting Cactus quicker that way too,” Gazelle pointed out.
“Brightsting Cactus?” Torrent asked.
Gazelle pointed a talon to the dried husk of fruit on the ground. “The juice is an antidote for SandWing poison, at least for dragons. It’s what I soaked the bandages on his leg in, but it dries up quickly in this heat. I think he’s mostly stable for now, but he’ll need more or it’ll get worse soon.”
“Goanna did it,” Griffin explained to Torrent. He glanced over at Gazelle. “You can fly fine, with your tail?”
“I’ll survive,” the elderly SandWing answered.
Nightreader averted her eyes from Gazelle, ashamed. “Then we all get to go back to the Night Kingdom together. Just one problem: the entrance to the tunnels is about halfway up a small cliff on the beach you were near,” she said, referring to Torrent’s short stay beneath the bay by the island. “There are always four guards posted in the cave to guard the tunnel, by the princess’s orders. I don’t think we can sneak past them.”
“We could take them on,” Torrent suggested.
Gazelle slowly shook her head. “I doubt it, unless you have magical fighting powers. I’m too old and weak to be of much help fighting, especially with my tail injury, and Griffin is in no shape to do anything.”
“She’s right,” Nightreader agreed, starting to formulate a plan. “I don’t think I can convince the guards to let you through, but I might be able to distract them.”
==Chapter 84==
Griffin hated the feel of the net beneath him, how powerless he was with his wings bound. The netting swayed from side to side with the motion of the dragons, and Griffin was constantly worried it would flip over or tilt too far. Griffin knew he was tied in because of the uncomfortable rope wrapped around his three uninjured legs, rubbing against his feathers, but he wasn’t looking forward to dangling from the net. Hopefully, he’d get his wings back soon. How long would they take to heal?
As the net shifted around, it was a struggle for Griffin to keep his limbs and feathers from getting tangled in it, especially his broken wing. It reminded him a bit of when River had captured him in the Sea Kingdom in a similar net, and how she’d threatened Griffin and Torrent before Orca had brutally murdered her. Griffin had never known River, and that had been the only short conversation he’d ever had with the late princess, but at least from what he’d heard from Orca and Torrent, he was glad he hadn’t known her better. 
At the time of her death, Griffin hadn’t grieved for River, and didn’t understand why Torrent had thought Orca killing her in the way she did was a sign of Orca’s magic affecting her. But as he’d grown, Griffin finally understood — awful or not, River was Torrent and Orca’s sister. Sure, they didn’t get along, ever, and River, frightened of Orca’s magic, had even threatened to kill Griffin and Torrent, but that didn’t make killing her right.
But Griffin wasn’t sure if Torrent was right about it having been a sign of Orca losing her soul. She’d reacted trying to protect Torrent and Griffin, just as scared as River had been. Griffin still thought that she would’ve done something different if she’d had more time to think. It was like when Schist and Crystal had fought in the rainforest, and Schist had almost used his firebreath on Crystal. He’d been trying to save a dragonet, and until Griffin had stopped him, had been too focused on that to care what happened to Crystal.
Griffin’s heart still pulsed as he thought back to that night, so many years ago now. Maybe things could have been different, if he’d only done something. Maybe if he’d helped Schist subdue Crystal, they’d have reached Torrent in time to save the RainWing dragonet. Maybe Torrent and Crystal would have given up. Maybe Griffin and Schist would still be together right now.
Instead, he’d just stood on the pavilion, and watched as Crystal and Schist fought, and Torrent had murdered an innocent dragonet. He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive Torrent for that, so instead, he just pretended like it hadn’t happened. For a while, he’d blamed Crystal for it. Torrent wouldn’t ever kill a dragonet willingly, Griffin knew he surely wouldn’t. So he’d deluded himself into thinking Crystal had poisoned Torrent’s mind, so it wasn’t Torrent’s fault. Griffin wasn’t so sure that wasn’t true now. Maybe Crystal had had something to do with it, but it was Torrent who’d chosen to do it, out of his own free will. Whatever free will was — as a rock enchanted to life, Griffin wasn’t quite sure he even had it himself.
Griffin thought about Schist, and what he was doing right now. Was he still in the Mud Kingdom, where Griffin had seen him last? Did he have a mate? Dragonets? Maybe the latter. From what Schist had told him, Griffin didn’t think MudWings had mates, just sibs. So maybe things wouldn’t have ever worked out between them. Maybe he would have decided Griffin was a better sib than a mate. Three moons, Griffin was the only one of his species in a world of dragons. He wasn’t quite sure he was even alive. It’s not like they could have had dragonets, or hatchlings, or whatever family they might have raised together.
All these maybes. Griffin sighed, and glanced up towards Torrent’s light-blue underbelly, with his leather pouch dangling at his side. Inside it, Torrent had put Orca’s map of animuses and the wax statue of Schist that Fracture had made Griffin; Erosion had kindly left them in her escape with Stonemover. It would be good for Griffin to stop thinking about the past. The future might be kinder, whatever that would be. Other than Darkstalker, the animuses at Crosswinds were the only ones left in Pyrrhia. If Torrent won whatever would happen with Erosion, that would be it. No more animuses for him and Griffin to hunt.
Torrent and Griffin would stick together, of course. Whatever had happened in the past, it was behind them now. They were brothers. But where would they go? They’d spent the last four years, up until now, just the two of them, roaming Pyrrhia, going after animuses. Would they still do that, even without a goal in mind? Griffin wasn’t sure Torrent could. At least since he’d left the Sea Kingdom, Torrent had always needed something to do. He was on edge the entire time they were in the Sky Kingdom, anxious to go after another animus. Even in the freezing cold, he’d volunteer to go on patrol missions with Kite, or help out around the village, just so that he’d have something to do.
Would he try looking for Crystal? Maybe. Even with no leads after four years, Griffin knew Torrent missed her, and wanted to find his dragonet he’d never known. Griffin wasn’t a fan of that idea. In addition to everything else, he didn’t think he could forgive Crystal for putting Torrent through all that pain. Torrent wasn’t be able to raise his dragonet, and the dragonet would grow up without their father. Crystal had taken that from him, permanently, and there was nothing she could do to make up for it.
Griffin wasn’t so sure for himself, but maybe Torrent would be able to find someone else again. He glanced up towards Nightreader. Both she and her brother might be candidates, if they decided to stay with him and Torrent. Stonemover seemed nice enough, but a bit . . . fidgety. He hadn’t even tried to help Griffin back when Griffin had been attacked by the animuses. Griffin didn’t hate him for that, but he didn’t seem particularly brave, or courageous. Nightreader seemed alright. She was driven, like Torrent, and she was willing to do anything to protect her loved ones. Griffin hadn’t known her for too long, but he liked her better than Crystal.
As the net swayed beneath him, Griffin let out a sad laugh, lost to the winds. Look at him, matchmaking. His own single barely-existent relationship had ended poorly; he had no reason to think he’d do better pairing up dragons. It was shameful. The net ride had given him far too much time to think. Anyways, it would be better to consider the challenge in front of them. Erosion was still poising to take over the Sand Kingdom, and the four of them still didn’t have a plan on how to actually defeat her and her animus legion, even if they actually reached Crosswinds in time.
The four approached the NightWing island during night, flying so low to the water Griffin kept getting his feathers wet. Sharing the extra load of Griffin had worked well, at least for Nightreader. The harnesses around them and having to fly in tandem had proved a little tricky towards the start, but the group had seemed to have quickly gotten the hang of it. Although, Nightreader was still worried about Gazelle — she seemed to be far more exhausted than the other two dragons, and kept coughing and wheezing throughout the flight.
The moons were starting to light the night sky up less and less, as all three waned in the aftermath of the Brightest Night. Nightreader had told the other three that this was a good thing. Having to live at the bottom of the ocean, where the light of the moons never reached, SeaWing night vision was far better than NightWings’, and Torrent would be able to alert everyone to any watching NightWings far before the NightWing could see them.
Nightreader kept nervously glancing towards Torrent as they flew closer to the island, cloaked in smoke, but the island seemed clear, at least of watchful NightWings. Sailing across the bay, the three dragons gently landed on the rocky beach in unison, so not to hurt Griffin.
After they quickly untied Griffin, Nightreader motioned the other three over to the side of a steep cliff, where it would be more difficult to see them. Gazelle and Torrent grabbed the net, ropes, and makeshift harnesses as Griffin limped over towards Nightreader. The cliff above them was rocky and sharp, and as Griffin pressed up close to it, to risk his chance of being seen by any dragons above it, black pebbles fell from it into his feathers.
As Torrent and Gazelle reached the cliff, hiding against it, Nightreader took a step back, looking to see if there were any dragons above them. It seemed clear, but Nightreader knew that there would be four NightWings guarding the entrance to the tunnel, and they’d need to be out of the way before the other three could get past.
“I’m going up,” she whispered to Torrent. “Remember the plan. After you see that the four guards have flown from the cave, and they’re too far to see you, bring Griffin up with Gazelle.”
Torrent nodded in understanding, while Nightreader stepped away from the cliff, onto the thin beach of rocks, waves crashing at her paws. She spread her wings wide, and allowed a gust of wind from the ocean to carry her upwards, towards a ledge around halfway up the cliff, where the entrance to the tunnel would be.
The cave opened in front of Nightreader, and she entered into its mouth, puffing up her scales to seem more confident than she was, as if she knew she was supposed to be here. She smiled as the first whiff of clean rainforest air entered her nose, pushing aside the stench of sulfur that clouded the island. The light of a small fire grew closer, along with four bored-looking NightWings surrounding it. And beyond the fire was the disk-shaped hole of the tunnel.
Even if it was Nightreader’s own brother’s claw-work, it still gave her the creeps, like if the cave wall was a scroll, and someone had decided to rip a hole in it. Still, it was her freedom from this island. This time, hopefully forever.
“You need to get out of the cave, now!” Nightreader yelled urgently, rushing towards the four guards, who immediately noticed her. She intentionally breathed heavily, trying to make it sound like she’d become exhausted just coming here.
Two of the NightWings quickly glanced towards each other. “What is it?” one asked in worry.
“The tunnel,” Nightreader panted, allowing one of her forelegs to buckle for added effect, “it’s an emergency. Stonemover told me he enchanted something wrong, and that the tunnel is unstable.”
“Unstable?” one of the guards repeated.
Nightreader nodded. “He thinks it might trigger an eruption this time.”
“Eruption?” the same guard repeated, his eyes wide. He quickly glanced back towards the tunnel, and took a step back, almost dragging his tail into the fire-pit before pulling it back with a squeal. “Was that what happened a few days ago? We need to warn the princess and get her to safety!”
“Hurry!” Nightreader shouted. “I don’t know how long the tunnel will last!” She stepped aside, motioning the four NightWings to run past. The two who had glanced to each other when she first walked in scrambled for the exit, almost trying to fly in the cave, while the two others followed. Nightreader had almost breathed a sigh of relief when one of them stopped.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” he asked, confused.
Nightreader shook her head. “I need to stay here. Stonemover thinks there might be a way to delay it, and I’m going to see if I can try that.”
“Ah,” the guard said, a blank expression on his snout. He continued looking at Nightreader, until it suddenly turned into a frown.
Nightreader’s claws tensed up. This wasn’t good. If she needed to subdue this NightWing, she thought she could. He was barely more than a dragonet. Brave, and wanting to do his service to his kingdom and queen. He didn’t deserve to be attacked. Maybe she just didn’t look scared enough? At least according to her lie, she was supposed to be risking her life by staying behind. She gulped slightly, and allowed her claws to shake. “Don’t worry,” she smiled, trying to sound slightly unsure of herself, “I’ll be fine. If it doesn’t work, I’ll make sure that I get out in time.”
“It’s not that,” the NightWing said, still frowning, “I’m just confused. Twilight mentioned you were here a few days ago, when the rumble happened, why wait until now to do anything about it?”
“Stonemover just realized it,” Nightreader snapped with urgency. She glanced back to the tunnel, and tapped her claws impatiently.
“I thought he was still on the mainland; I haven’t seen him here, and no one said he’d returned.”Nightreader snorted. “Have you ever seen Stonemover before? He’s not the type to greet everyone and loudly proclaim his return to the island.”
“Oh,” the NightWing answered, thinking about it, “you’re right. Sorry about all this. Is there anything you need me to help you with? I’d be glad to lay down my life for the Night Kingdom, so please don’t send me aw—”
The young guard didn’t have time to finish his sentence, as the body of a huge SeaWing leaped out of the dark, tackling the guard to the ground. The NightWing tried to yell out, but Torrent stomped his paw on the NightWing’s snout, shutting it closed. The guard reached out to the side, attempting to claw at Torrent, but the SeaWing stayed on top of the NightWing’s back, using his second forepaw to grab ahold of a horn and control his head, while forcing him to stay down with Torrent’s much greater weight.
Nightreader winced. “Sorry,” she muttered to the NightWing, “this is really important.” The NightWing continued to flail about, trying to get free of Torrent. He scratched at the forearm holding his jaws shut, causing Torrent to pull it back.
“You’re a traitor,” he hissed with menace, glaring at Nightreader. “You joined forces with the SeaWings?”
Nightreader snorted. “Far from that. He’s just a friend. He also isn’t planning to kill you,” she said, giving Torrent a glare of warning. “So when you go back to Greatness, it might do you better not to tell her that we passed through here. You’ll likely be punished for your failure to protect the tunnel from a single SeaWing. But if you do decide to tell Greatness, be warned that if the NightWings ever go after Stonemover or I again, my brother will not hold back in using the full extent of his powers to stop you.”
Torrent frowned at this threat. Even if the threat was empty and Stonemover wasn’t able to use his animus magic anymore, Torrent didn’t the idea of him using his animus powers for something like that. Animus magic could kill or maim a dragon in almost any possible way, no matter how gruesome. Darkstalker’s killing of his father being a perfect example. He wondered if that was what the poor NightWing guard was thinking of now.
Nightreader turned to Torrent with a hiss. “I told you to wait until the guards had all left! He was just about to leave!”
“Didn’t sound like that to me,” Torrent muttered, “anyways, I saw three of them leave.”
“You saw three,” Nightreader replied exasperatedly. “I told you there were four, you stupid fish-eater, can you count?”
“I can count,” Torrent snapped, “that’s why I came. I saw three leave, not four, and was worried something bad had happened. There was one left, and I knew we could take them on two-against-one if it came to that.”
Nightreader sighed, rolling her eyes. “Thanks, I guess,” she muttered. She glanced towards the tunnel exit. “I’ll get the other two,” she stated, careful not to share their names in front of the NightWing guard. If the Obsidian Mirror wasn’t disenchanted after all, it could still be used to spy on them only with a name.
She quickly ran from the cave, leaving Torrent and the NightWing guard behind. The NightWing struggled again, trying to claw out from beneath Torrent, though the SeaWing didn’t let him move.
“I’ll knock you out if you keep trying to escape,” Torrent growled. The NightWing hissed back viciously but stopped moving, defeated.
It wasn’t long before Nightreader entered the cave again, and Torrent glanced over to see Gazelle and Griffin following slowly behind her, Griffin limping as he attempted to walk the long distance.
“Cover his eyes and turn him to the left,” Nightreader ordered Torrent, who placed his webbed paws over the NightWing’s eyes. She quickly glanced down to the young NightWing. “If you so much as scratch him with your teeth, I’ll tear out your throat,” she threatened, knowing that the bacteria from a NightWing’s bite could be fatal. “You won’t be much use to Princess Greatness then.”
As Torrent blocked the NightWing’s vision, Griffin and Gazelle trudged behind him towards the tunnel, the netting and ropes on her back as she carefully held her injured tail above the ground. They disappeared into the dark expanse of the tunnel, causing a small lurching motion in Torrent’s stomach as they crossed the barrier into an area that shouldn’t exist. Nightreader grabbed one of the spears the NightWing guards had left in their quick rush.
“You can let him see now,” Nightreader said, placing the tip of the spear directly on the young NightWing’s neck. As Torrent removed his paws, the NightWing saw the spear, and tried to hold back a gulp. He was unable to, and the spear gently pressed into a space between his scales, though not hard enough to puncture.
“After the SeaWing gets up, keep your neck bared. Don’t try to attack, and don’t come after us.”
The NightWing nodded slightly as Torrent stood up. He walked around behind Nightreader, and glanced at the tunnel. “I allow this tunnel to remain enchanted,” he muttered as he touched a talon to the dagger at his side, knowing that he’d be unable to pass through otherwise.
Nightreader slowly backed away from the NightWing, who remained motionless, eyes slanted downwards. “You know what Darkstalker did,” she snarled, issuing a final threat before backing into the tunnel. “Stonemover can do much, much worse.”
Torrent entered the tunnel first, with Nightreader facing backwards, still holding the spear in position. As he continued down through it, he suddenly felt a strange boundary within the tunnel, almost as if he had splashed down through the water surface. His scales rattled from his snout to his tail in succession, and the air got lighter. He took in a deep breath, and felt the clean air of the rainforest in his lungs.
Eventually, the tunnel came to an end, and moonlight shone down on his eyes as he exited into the branches of a dark tree. He quickly climbed down it as Nightreader stepped backwards, then dropped the spear, turning around and leaping onto the rainforest floor.
Torrent glanced around, and saw Griffin and Gazelle not far from them, the two conversing hushedly. He walked over, and frowned as he saw Griffin visibly shaking, fear within his wide eyes. He breathed heavily, and it looked a little like Gazelle had been trying to calm him, though she stopped speaking as Torrent had approached.
“Are you alright?” Torrent asked worriedly.
Griffin quickly nodded, and gave off a weak smile. “Yeah,” he answered shakedly, even though something was obviously bothering him, “I’m fine.”
Torrent frowned. What was wrong? Maybe the SandWing poison was starting to affect Griffin more? Or maybe it was just being in the rainforest again. Torrent remembered far too clearly what had happened the last time he was here. The last time he’d seen Schist.
He glanced back at Nightreader. She seemed almost blissfully unaware, too happy she was off the island. “Which way is it to the next tunnel?” Torrent asked. He wasn’t sure if they’d have much time before the NightWings came after them, if the guard had decided to tell Greatness, and Torrent didn’t want to stay in the rainforest any longer than he had too. He wasn’t too keen on ending up drugged by one of the RainWings he’d met here four years ago. He doubted they’d be as hospitable as last time, considering that Torrent had killed one of their dragonets.
Nightreader pointed a talon towards across a small stream. “Not far away, it’s on the side of that boulder over there.” Torrent followed her claw to a greyish boulder half-covered by moss. Sure enough, a similar hole to the one they’d just emerged from was there. Torrent almost had to look away as he saw it, it gave him the feeling like he’d be lost inside it if he stared at for too long. For a short moment, it felt like the edge of the boulder was starting to peel away around the hole, revealing something beneath, but Torrent blinked too quickly, and whatever it was, it was gone. He shook his head and gave out a yawn.
“Come on,” he suggested to Griffin, “let’s get out of here. We’re almost to the Sand Kingdom.”
Griffin gulped, and slowly stepped towards the hole.
“Don’t worry,” Gazelle assured him quietly, “you’ll be fine.”
As Torrent, Nightreader, and Gazelle walked into the tunnel, disappearing into the side of the boulder, Griffin hesitated slightly, looking at the boundary of where the tunnel met the grey stone of the boulder. The crack between the two widened slightly before him, and bright lights danced, trying to draw him in closer. He turned straight ahead and walked forward into the tunnel, ignoring the flashes of light in his peripheral vision as he crossed the boundary while pieces of the world flaked off behind him. There was nothing for him to be scared of.
==Chapter 85==
The four flew into Crosswinds after dusk, when it would be much harder for the watchful eyes of the SandWings and MudWings in the town to spot the three dragons and the gryphon overhead. While the city was technically neutral territory, it was far from hospitable to either SeaWings or NightWings. As they came closer to the city, Griffin saw the shadow of the town from the holes within the net he was carried on. Smoke coming from fires within Crosswinds distorted the view of the stars and moons overhead.
“There,” Torrent said, something catching his eyes. “I can see a makeshift camp in the distance, on the other side of the city.” He pointed a webbed talon into the distance, towards a shadowy blob. “There are dragons running about it, setting up tents. I think that’s where Burn is staying.”
“She’s early,” Gazelle commented. “Princess Burn is supposed to be coming directly from a meeting with Queen Scarlet at her palace. She wasn’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow morning.”
“She must have left early,” Torrent muttered with a frown. “Now we’ll have less time to survey the surroundings and plan.”
Gazelle shook her head. “This is good,” the SandWing croaked. “Erosion was also expecting her majesty to arrive later, so she might have to change some of her plans.”
“We could warn her!” Griffin suddenly suggested, yelling up from the net so that the dragons above could hear him. “Maybe she’ll call off the fight.”
Torrent snorted. “Doubt it,” he replied, “I’ve never met her, but from the stories I’ve heard, Burn isn’t exactly the ‘call off the fight’ type. But if Burn is prepared for Erosion’s challenge, that could screw up Erosion’s plans.” He turned his head towards Gazelle. “You’re the only SandWing here. You would be the one going.”
“I should go,” Nightreader suddenly spoke up. “Burn is much more likely to listen to me, a mystical future-seeing NightWing, than an ordinary SandWing.”
Gazelle looked over towards her. “Are you sure?” she asked, concerned.
Nightreader nodded. “This is what us NightWings are trained for from birth. Influencing dragons like Burn with powers and lies. It’ll be no problem.”
“Maybe a princess like Blaze, but Burn?” Torrent spoke up, skeptical. “I’m sure you’ve heard the tales of her ruthlessness and unpredictability.”
“Burn is rash, but she isn’t stupid,” Nightreader explained. “She’s gotten this far in the war. She won’t risk angering the NightWings.”
Gazelle and Torrent looked a little worried, but neither protested. “We can get Griffin some more Brightsting Cactus while you’re gone,” Gazelle commented.
The four stayed silent for a moment before Griffin broke it. “We should land outside of the city!” he called up. “I think I see the Talons’ safehouse not far from here!”
Nightreader left the safehouse at dawn, flying towards the camp on the east side of the city. She didn’t bother trying to stay hidden — she was no Quickstrike, and doubted she’d be able to get close to Burn without being spotted. Unfortunately, that meant that it wouldn’t be long before rumors of a NightWing in Crosswinds spread all the way to the Night Kingdom, but it wasn’t like they’d be interested in Crosswinds anyways, considering what Erosion was planning to do here. That would definitely ruin Morrowseer’s careful plans. But, it did mean that Nightreader would want to be out of Crosswinds as soon as she got her brother back, so that no NightWings would come looking for them here.
Nightreader spread her wings wide as she flew over the NightWing camp, slowly gliding down towards it. A number of SandWing soldiers hurriedly conversed with each other as they saw the approaching NightWing. As she touched her paws on the ground, a few nervous soldiers surrounded her, holding spears out.
She smiled, pretending like none of the weapons could even touch her. No doubt, some of the soldiers were attempting to cloud their minds, believing falsely that she could tell what they were thinking. She stared directly at one of the guards who looked especially anxious, a brownish-yellow SandWing with a few missing claws on one of his hind legs. From his expression, doubtless he had something he was trying to hide. Maybe he’d killed an ally in battle, or secretly had treasonous opinions about the war.
Nightreader smiled at him in particular. “Don’t worry,” she said soothingly, “I’m not here for any of you. The NightWings have a message we need to deliver to Princess Burn.”
A few more SandWings had appeared nearby, whispering to one another, wondering what the NightWings would be telling their queen.
“Give it to me,” a soldier with a chipped horn suggested, “we can pass it on to her.”
Nightreader snorted with indignation. “That won’t be necessary. This is for Princess Burn’s ears and hers alone. Our message is quite urgent, and I doubt the princess would be happy to hear that it was delayed.” She looked back towards the quiet SandWing with the missing claws, silently threatening that she’d expose whatever secret he held.
“Er, yeah,” the SandWing with the missing claws stuttered. “We’ll take you to her majesty right away.” He turned around, avoiding Nightreader’s eyes, his scales shaking as he led her towards a large tent within the center of the camp.
Nightreader continued after him, a few of the other soldiers staying a cautious distance from her as they followed. She held her head high as she paced through the camp, not bothering to so much as glance at the SandWing soldiers staring as she passed. Back in the Night Kingdom, she remembered practicing this pose and walk time and again with other dragonets. Emanate arrogance and superiority, she remembered her instructor telling them, make sure every dragon knows you’re that much better than them, and that they’re not worth your time. Although most NightWings never had much contact with the outside tribes, they’d worked for centuries, maybe millenia, to cultivate the NightWing image and the mystique surrounding them. That and their line of animuses was all they had. And after this, they wouldn’t have the latter.
As they approached the tent, the guard walked up to the entrance. “Your majesty,” he called out, voice shaking, “you have a visitor. She’s a NightWing. She says she has a message to deliver to her in.”
There was a short pause, and the guard hunched his wings together, almost hiding his head between them. Nightreader realized that he was far more scared of Burn than of Nightreader herself. Glancing at the missing talons, Nightreader wondered how he’d gotten that injury. The cut looked far too clean to have been done in battle. A punishment, maybe? NightWings punishment was usually closer to ‘dipping heads in lava’ than cutting off talons, but Nightreader had heard some of the kingdoms mutilated criminals like that.
“Let her in,” a voice growled from inside the tent. “I think I know what she wants.”
She does? Nightreader wondered. That seemed unlikely. Yet, if there were future-telling IceWings, she supposed there could be mind-reading SandWings too, although she’d never heard of Burn being able to do something like that.
There were only two dragons inside of the tent when Nightreader entered. The first wasn’t difficult to recognize. Princess Burn was larger than Morrowseer, and somehow even more intimidating. Scars from battle covered her golden scales, and each of her muscles pulsed with energy, as if they just dying to crush the next hapless dragon who approached. Burn stared down at Nightreader with black, beady eyes, with absolutely no hint of fear of Nightreader’s possible powers within them. She had nothing to hide, and any dragon who attempted to judge her or her actions would become a lifeless husk beneath her blood-stained claws. Any interest she had in the NightWing was purely curiosity, as if she wanted to rip Nightreader apart to find out what made her tick, or place her on a shelf somewhere.
The second SandWing was far smaller than Burn, and appeared to be fitting a set of chainmail on the behemoth SandWing. A pattern of black diamonds studded his scales and wings, and he had a slightly concerned expression on his snout as he looked towards Nightreader. Prince Smolder, Burn’s brother.
Nightreader gave a quick glance back, to see that the soldier who had led her into the tent had already fled. Burn didn’t seem to have any worries about being left with only her brother and a possible enemy. If Nightreader had been an assassin, it wouldn’t have been hard for her to throw two chakrams and slit the two’s arteries, then be out of the camp before they bled to death. Brave and overconfident. Or maybe Burn knew the risks, and just didn’t care.
“A NightWing,” Burn scoffed, eyeing Nightreader’s dark scales instead of directly looking into her eyes. “Are you here about that idiotic IceWing I killed? It appears that Morrowseer’s prophecy can’t come true without a SkyWing dragonet. How unfortunate.”
IceWing? Nightreader wondered, confused. SkyWing dragonet? The Dragonet Prophecy? Did Burn mean she’d killed Hvitur? Nightreader winced a little, thinking about the friendly IceWing she’d met back in Possibility. Hopefully, his end had been as quick and as painless as possible.
“Prophecies tend to work in mysterious ways,” Nightreader answered, holding her scales still in an attempt not to show fear, “but I’m not here to quibble over Morrowseer. We wish to warn you that we have foreseen an attempt on your life during your fights in Crosswinds.”
Burn cocked her head, staring at Nightreader for a moment, this time, valuing her horns. She let out a bellowing laugh in response. “I already know there will be attempts on my life. It wouldn’t be much fun if there weren’t any. Smolder, how many assassination plans have we uncovered already?”
“Three, your majesty,” Smolder sighed. “Not including the SeaWings you’re fighting.”
“Three,” Burn snorted, looking back towards Nightreader’s talons like she wanted them for herself. “And now you’ve ruined the surprise of a fourth. I was hoping this would be exciting.”
“Your highness,” Nightreader pleaded, “you need to heed my warnings. This will be a magical attempt.”
“Don’t tell my what I ‘need’ to do,” Burn growled, baring her teeth, fangs stained brown with blood. She flicked her tail back and forth, drawing a worried glance from Smolder. “I’m not scared of any dragon, animus or not. Have the NightWings chosen a side?”
“No,” Nightreader answered, “but thi—”
“Then you’re still our enemies,” Burn continued, raising her barbed tail as Smolder ducked beneath it.
Smolder rolled his eyes, though Burn was too focused on Nightreader to see it. “Your majesty,” he interrupted, “I’m totally not saying you shouldn’t kill her, but if the NightWings joined one of your two weakling sisters, that could turn the tide of the war. And not in a good way for us.”
Burn flicked her tail around and placed the barb on Smolder neck, making the prince squeal slightly. She gave him a stiff glare, then dropped her tail to the ground as Smolder stifled a sigh of relief. “Then take the NightWing prisoner,” she ordered. “If her prophecy turns out to be as false as Morrowseer’s, we can ransom her off to the Night Kingdom, or if they’re unwilling to pay, she’d make a fine addition to my tower. I have SeaWings to kill. Make sure the crowd is as excited as I am when you introduce me, or you’ll be joining the SeaWings.”
Nightreader gulped as Burn went to trying to place her chainmail on herself, and Smolder stepped towards Nightreader with a pitying glance. Well, things could have turned out worse. Sure, she’d be drowned in lava if the NightWings decided they wanted her back, and stuck in Burn’s ‘weirdling tower’ if not, but if she was lucky, maybe Erosion would cause a big enough distraction for her to escape, and somehow get her brother back at the same time.
==Chapter 86==
“No need to thank me,” Smolder said as he exited the tent with Nightreader. Nightreader hadn’t been planning on it. She’d thought Burn was bluffing about killing her, but then again, killing a friendly emissary just for the fun of it did seem like a very Burn thing to do, and Smolder had convinced her out of it. The plan to warn Burn might not have been such a good one after all.
Nightreader looked around, and continued to keep her head raised high in pride as SandWing soldiers looked on in curiosity, and occasionally fear. Smolder was weaponless, and didn’t look like the greatest of fighters. If Nightreader had to, she could fight him to escape, but the worry would be that the other SandWing soldiers would attack, far outnumbering her. Maybe if she got alone with him . . .
“Don’t think I was trying to help you out back there,” Smolder explained, “I haven’t survived this long by telling my sister not to kill dragons. Believe me, I put my own scales at risk back there. I know her well enough to say that she was seriously debating killing me for ‘talking back.’”
“Mhmm,” Nightreader murmured in idle agreement, even though she suspected Smolder wanted her to ask why he’d asked Burn not to kill her.
Smolder continued talking anyways. “You see, I’m just looking out for my own interests. Burn might have killed for that, but if she killed you and the NightWings joined one of my other sisters, she’d certainly lose the war, and I’d lose my head. I prefer my head being on.”
Nightreader snorted. It was like Smolder was trying to convince her of his own intelligence and cunning, even if he was certainly no Blister. Still, Nightreader could sense that for all his talk, he had at least one good scale on him. More than that, she wasn’t sure.
“So, er, Princess Burn is very sorry for offending you and the NightWings,” Smolder suddenly stated, realizing that Nightreader still could mention this to her NightWing superiors. “She’s just a bit antsy from her visit with Queen Scarlet. The arena was quite disappointing this time, and Burn only got to kill a single IceWing. And I had to go with her. She doesn’t like me too much, if you couldn’t tell. She’s usually a much more reliable ally though, so I’d really suggest that the NightWings support her. Hey, would you be willing to set up talks with your queen?”
“No,” Nightreader stated outright, not buying any of it. Princess Burn had kept her SkyWing allies for this long, so Burn might’ve been more reliable than Princess Blackice, but not by much. It looked like Smolder was leading her towards the edge of the camp, and she could see a large number of dragons, almost all SandWings and MudWings, gathered in the distance. Where the fighting spectacle would soon take place.
“So, about this animus threat,” Smolder hurried, knowing he didn’t have much longer to stop it, “anything else you can tell me?”
Nightreader shook her head. “Not much,” she answered, “most of the vision was vague, but I saw an SandWing using magic to attack your sister. There’s always the small possibility it could be metaphorical, but I doubt it.”
“It can’t come true though, right?” Smolder asked. He lowered his voice slightly, not wanting to be overheard. “The Dragonet Prophecy says the dragonets will end the war, and we’ve still got seven years.”
“It’s possible,” Nightreader lied, “the Dragonet Prophecy says ‘two will die and one shall learn,’ but never states when exactly they’ll die. Maybe Burn will die today, and it’ll be another seven years before the second queen ends up dead. Or maybe Burn will be maimed so badly she has to drop out of the war. Or maybe the animus will be defeated. Who knows. As I mentioned, prophecies tend to work in mysterious ways.”
Smolder furrowed his eye-ridges and flicked his forked tongue in and out, unsure what to do. “Well, thank you and the NightWings for warning us, even if we aren’t allies yet. I’ll make sure our soldiers are prepared for an animus threat.” His voice seemed to shake a little as he said the word ‘animus.’
Smolder motioned Nightreader over to the edge of the camp. Nightreader could see more clearly now what was happening. A large area of empty land had been marked off with stones, creating a makeshift arena. At all spaces around the borders were a huge number of SandWings and MudWings, some of which were Burn’s soldiers, some Crosswinds residents. A roar of applause and shouting rose from the crowd.
“Over here,” Smolder quickly directed Nightreader, moving over to a small portion of the border where the crowd of dragons had thinned. Apparently a small section for dragons more important than the rest of the rabble. A few SandWing soldiers were guarding the edges, and the only other dragon within it was a grumpy looking MudWing, who didn’t look at all pleased to be there. He gave Nightreader a cautionary look as she entered, then looked back to the arena. One of the SandWing soldiers, a young one with her left foreleg somewhat smaller than her right, kept looking over at Nightreader as the NightWing pretended not to notice.
Smolder whispered something to one of the other soldiers, whose expression suddenly changed to one of surprise, and than anxiety. Smolder shooed her away. Most likely to send out a word of alarm about the animus threat. Not that Nightreader thought it would help much against Erosion. Unless Burn decided to suddenly heed Nightreader’s advice and call off the fight, it was all up to Torrent, Gazelle, and Griffin now.
Suddenly, the roar of the spectators grew, and Nightreader saw Burn walk out into the field, the sun glinting off her chainmail. She stretched her claws and breathed a puff of flame into the air.
“Hooray, she can breath fire,” the MudWing next to Nightreader sarcastically grumbled.
As Burn reached the center of the field, she stopped, and turned around, her claws itching for a fight. It wasn’t long before four of her guards brought the fight out towards her. Two SeaWings trudged towards Burn as the guards prodded them with spears. Their wings were bound tightly to their bodies with chains. Nightreader was worried for a moment that one of them was Torrent, but looking closer at them, it was clear neither was him — one was green, and the blue one was far too small. Probably captured soldiers. Nightreader felt a pang of pity for them. She doubted either would get out of this alive, and was certain both had realized it by now.
The green one suddenly whipped around, standing on her hind legs and roaring at the guards, but they quickly prodded her with their spears, making sure not to injure her in any substantial way before the fight. “Blister will make you pay for this in blood!” she growled.
The second one, a light blue color, kept his eyes focused downwards, as if he was trying to accept his fate as he walked towards Burn.
Suddenly, Nightreader heard a dragon yell something in the distance. “Burn is a cruel monster! We don’t want her as our queen!”
Burn’s head whipped around to the source within the crowd at the edges of the arena, but decided not to move towards it. A small commotion started as soldiers entered the area of the arena border that the protest had emanated from. Before long, two SandWings dragged the limp body of a MudWing onto the edge of the arena, his head visibly smashed inwards. After making sure everyone watching the arena could see the fate of the protester, the SandWings heaved the body back through the crowd, leaving a trail of red blood behind them as SandWings and MudWings quickly moved out of their way.
As Nightreader gave a quick glance to the MudWing next to her, she could see him visibly biting his tongue with a snarl forming. He glanced over to Nightreader and gave her a glare, as if warning her not to mention the treasonous thoughts he was thinking right then.
“Stay here,” Smolder suddenly whispered to Nightreader, almost pleading her not to try and escape. The prince walked out into the arena with a smile, drawing cheers from the SandWings and MudWings watching.
“Welcome, welcome!” Smolder shouted, motioning with his paw for the crowd to be quiet. “Loyal subjects of the honorable Queen Burn and her esteemed allies, I thank you all for coming here today! I present to you, her majesty, the mighty Queen Burn, rightful queen of the SandWings!”
He quickly bowed his head to his sister as the crowd roared. Burn continued to keep a frown on her snout, as if irritated that she hadn’t killed anyone yet and had to listen to her annoying brother give a speech.
“In front of you today, far from deserving the honor of being ripped apart by our queen’s claws, are two SeaWings, enemies of our alliance. Far beneath the ocean’s surface, where the light of day never reaches their eyes, these slimy eels plot with the greedy false queen Blister to destroy the Sand and Mud Kingdoms. Blister has sold her soul to these water-breathing creatures, and plans to enslave the Sand Kingdom under their rule. I ask you, what punishment do these immoral worms deserve for murdering our soldiers, for slaughtering our innocent civilians?
“DEATH!” the crowd chanted in a muted tone, though they quickly were able to reach unison. “DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!”
Nightreader hissed, mildly disgusted. She liked Smolder somewhat less after that speech. ‘Plotting? Slaughtering?’ Almost laughable. If anyone was plotting, it was the NightWings. Torrent was hopefully somewhat nearby, but Nightreader was sorry he had to hear all this. It almost made her hope Erosion ended up killing Burn after all.
As the crowd continued to chant, Nightreader noticed that most of the MudWings within it didn’t seem to be going along with it, and the few who were didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic. The MudWing next to her was completely silent. Nightreader wasn’t surprised — only a few years ago, the MudWings were allies with the SeaWings and Blister. The MudWings here had fought along SeaWings; they couldn’t believe any of the fictions Smolder was making up. She supposed that was why Smolder was going to the trouble to make this speech, and hosting this event. A lot of the MudWings here, and anywhere on Pyrrhia, still viewed Burn as their enemy, and she needed to change that.
“Yes!” Smolder shouted as the chanting died down. “And death they shall receive! But us SandWings and MudWings are far more honorable than these creatures. We will give them an opportunity to prove their worth, and live. Ancient law dictates that the queen must be the most powerful dragon in the land, and if her majesty loses to two scummy SeaWings, she isn’t worthy to be our leader.” He said this last part almost with a laugh, trying to suggest that the idea that Burn was unworthy was completely absurd.
Still, Nightreader could see a hint of worry in Smolder’s eyes. Something could always go wrong, and if Burn ended up killed by a SeaWing prisoner . . . well, things wouldn’t end up very well for Smolder. He didn’t seem like the type of dragon who enjoyed taking risks, unlike his sister Burn, so Nightreader guessed she was the one who came up with the fight idea, not him.
Nightreader glanced around the arena edges quickly. No sign of Torrent, Griffin, nor Gazelle. Nor her brother, Erosion, or any of the other animuses. After that speech, she decided that she wouldn’t feel so bad after all if she escaped Smolder’s ‘imprisonment’ and the cowardly SandWing ended up punished for it, but she’d wait at least until one of her group appeared.
“So!” Smolder continued. “Let the fight begin!” He started walking back towards Nightreader as the SandWings guarding the two SeaWings stepped backwards, leaving them with Burn.
The green SeaWing glanced over at her blue ally, and motioned for him to move around Burn. He nodded, and the two slowly walked towards the princess, keeping a distance between themselves and her. As they got into flanking position, one on either side of Burn, the SandWing princess remained unimpressed, flicking her tongue out from boredom.
With a sudden roar, the green SeaWing rushed at Burn, the blue one hesitating slightly before running at his opponent, either accepting or ignoring his imminent death.
As the green SeaWing attempted to slam into Burn, claws out and jaws open, Burn moved quickly, like a flash of lightning. Nightreader was surprised at the SandWing princess’s speed; for such a large dragon, Nightreader had expected her to move much slower. The green SeaWing’s fate was sealed within an instant, her claws barely scratching the surface of Burn’s golden scales as Burn’s barb flew through her throat before quickly being pulled out again, sticky blood dripping from its razor-sharp point.
The second SeaWing tackled at Burn with his claws ready, but barely nudged the SandWing. With a burst of speed, Burn’s claws sailed beneath his underbelly, drawing streams of blood as she threw him into the air like he weighed nothing. When he hit the ground, he didn’t have time to stand up before Burn pinned him down with by slamming her paw on his chest, crushing his lungs as she dug her claws far beneath his scales. He flailed once with his talons, swiping at Burn’s thin layer of chainmail uselessly, before Burn’s claws wrapped around his throat, ripping out a glob of pink flesh as she teared them into him.
Nightreader shuddered. If Burn had decided to kill her in the tent, she wouldn’t have had a chance at survival. Maybe Burn’s overconfidence wasn’t so ‘over’ after all. The fight seemed over as soon as it began.
The crowd was silent for a moment, as shocked as Nightreader, before bursting into cheers and applause. “QUEEN BURN! QUEEN BURN! QUEEN BURN!” they chanted, as Burn lifted the body of the blue SeaWing into the air for everyone to see, parts of his flesh and throat dangling to the side as Burn’s foreleg became covered in his red blood. She tossed his body to the side as Smolder walked back onto the battlefield with a grin Nightreader could tell was clearly feigned. He seemed just as disgusted as she was, maybe more so. Just far more cowardly.
“The outcome of this battle proves beyond a hint of doubt no one ever had that her majesty, Queen Burn, is the most powerful dragon in the Sand Kingdom, and is the most worthy to be queen! As soon as the false princesses are disposed of, Queen Burn will usher in a new golden era of SandWing success and victory, where our allies shall stand beside us, with the SeaWings and IceWings trembling before the might of the SandWings, MudWings, and SkyWings!”
“So, I ask” Smolder stated, “are there any foolish supporters of the false queens who wish to fight, and be defeated, in their place? Any dragons in this crowd who believe themselves more worthy to be queen than Burn?”
The crowd was silent for a moment, before the sudden shout of yelling dragons at the far end of the arena broke it. SandWings and MudWings appeared to be thrown to the side by an invisible force, creating a clearing in the crowd along the arena’s border.
A huge SandWing, almost as large as Burn, stepped through the empty space, into the of the arena. A golden crown arrogantly sat on her horns, and she was grinning like things had gone even more perfectly than she could’ve ever imagined. She spread her wings wide, letting the sun glint off her shining golden scales. “I, Erosion, am the most powerful dragon in Pyrrhia, and its rightful ruler. I challenge Princess Burn for the SandWing throne!”
==Chapter 87==
The crowd was silent as Erosion walked out onto the arena. For the little jewelry she had on, only the simple crown and the two golden bracelets around her forearms, she was quite impressive. Unlike the animalistic ferocity and power Burn emanated, Erosion gave off an aura of prestige and regality. Burn snarled at her approacher, fangs bared.
Nightreader gave a gasp of relief as she looked behind Erosion. Behind her were nine dragons, including Stonemover and the SeaWing animus she’d seen with Erosion. All of them were looking in the same direction with a glossy look on their eyes, as if they were in some sort of trance, each with the silvery collar around their necks.
Smolder looked over towards Erosion with caution, and flicked his barbed tail back and forth in the air. On signal, twenty or so SandWing soldiers rushed out from the crowd, running claws outstretched and barbs ready towards Erosion. Erosion hardly paid them a glance, and when the first one had only a few yards between him and Erosion, he suddenly burst into fine black charcoal, before his remains were blown away by the wind. A second SandWing who was unable to stop herself in time met a similar fate, before the rest of the soldiers stopped in their tracks, realizing that even approaching Erosion would be certain death.
Erosion continued to step forward on the battlefield, as every dragon’s eyes were on her. “Well?” she asked, glaring straight at Burn. “Do you accept my challenge?”
Before Burn could reply, Smolder quickly interrupted. “She can’t! Only royal family members are allowed to challenge for the throne,” he responded, walking back on the speech he had made earlier. “The SandWing royal family has held the throne for millennia, and has proven itself to be the most capable and powerful bloodline in the kingdom. A non-royal SandWing becoming queen would be disastrous, and chaos would reign.”
Erosion visibly rolled her eyes. “Ah, yes, ‘powerful’ is just the word I’d describe you with, Prince Smolder,” she sneered. “Couldn’t even save your mate from your own mother, could you? And how did your mother die? Poked in the eye by a scavenger, of all things, and started this pointless war.”
Smolder glanced down to the sand shamefully, with no words to respond to that.
“Well, my new subjects,” Erosion continued, “this war has gone on long enough, and you’ll soon thank me for bringing it to an end. The reason your families are dying is not because of the strength, but the weakness of the royal bloodline. As Smolder reminded us all not too long ago, ancient law going back to the Scorching dictates that the queen is the most powerful dragon in the land, which neither of the three sisters is. That is why you suffer — their weakness and cowardice. I am here to bring in a new age of peace and prosperity for not only the SandWings, but all of Pyrrhia. So, Burn, I ask you again — are you a coward like your siblings, or will you fight me for the throne?”
Burn didn’t need convincing to fight, even with an animus enemy in front of her. She’d waited all her life for this — a fight which actually mattered. “I will crush you under my talons, and let the sand run red with your blood.”
“Then it is settled,” Smolder quickly added, “Queen Burn of the SandWings will fight Erosion for the throne fairly, without trickery or magicks, and the winner will—”
Erosion snorted, and tapped a talon to one of her bracelets. Suddenly, one of the spears of the soldiers who’d attempted to attack Erosion rose up from the ground, then pointed itself towards Smolder. Smolder’s eyes grew wide, and he took a step back as the spear sailed towards him, aiming straight towards his head. He yelled in terror, but the spear missed his skull, turning abruptly at his eyes and twisting itself around his snout into a coil, muffling Smolder’s yell and silencing him.
“The duty of queen is given to the dragon who wields the greatest power,” Erosion commanded as Smolder rolled onto the ground, struggling to get the spear off his snout as it tightened. “As the strongest dragon in Pyrrhia, I will dictate the rules of the match. If Burn’s cowardice overcomes her, and she is unwilling to fight, then she isn’t worthy of that duty.”
Barely paying a glance to her struggling brother, Burn charged at Erosion with a terrifying roar, Erosion stepping forward to greet her. Nightreader winced. This wasn’t going to end well for Burn, though considering the previous fight, Nightreader didn’t feel much pity for her.
As Burn swiped an enormous paw at Erosion’s snout, Erosion took a step to the side, narrowly avoiding it. Burn continued her swipes, but none were able to even touch Erosion’s scales. If Nightreader had thought Burn was fast, the SandWing princess was nothing compared to Erosion. The animus’s speed was faster than any dragon could have moved naturally, but Nightreader was surprised at how slow it was compared to what Erosion could have done. Nightreader could still see where Erosion moved, and how, she was far from a blur. Had she wanted to, Erosion could have forced one of her animus slaves to enchant her bracelet to give her the power of teleportation, but she seemed limited.
Still, Nightreader thought she understood. Gazelle had said that Erosion was creating a spectacle here, just like Burn had done. Erosion wanted the SandWings and MudWings in the crowd to recognize her as queen, and was keeping her use of magic to a minimum, making it seem plausible she wasn’t even using it at all. Maybe to make them view the battle as more legitimate, or to seem less intimidating?
Burn roared at Erosion, and wings outstretched, attempted to tackle her. She failed, as Erosion snuck beneath Burn’s wings, grazing the tip of her barb along beneath the leathery membrane and onto Burn’s backside, without puncturing. She was just toying with Burn. Nightreader knew as well as Erosion did that Erosion could have turned her enemy into ash instantly, but she had chosen not to. She was drawing out the fight, exciting the crowd, pretending Burn had a chance at winning.
As Erosion walked out from Burn’s wing, the SandWing princess suddenly lashed out her barbed tail, aiming it towards Erosion’s neck. She hit spot-on, the barb puncturing through Erosion’s scales and into her throat. Burn grinned and turned around, pulling the barb out to reveal a gaping hole in Erosion’s neck, blood dripping from it down onto the dirt below. The crowd cheered, roaring in excitement as Burn lifted her head triumphantly, the smell of Erosion’s blood enthralling them.
Erosion took a step back, and suddenly staggered, clutching her claws at her neck as they became stained with her own blood. Nightreader snorted, knowing she was feigning her shock. Sure enough, as she lifted her claws away, the bleeding had stopped, and pink flesh started to grow in the hole, the wound mending itself. The dragons started to shout in astonishment, few of them having seen such a display before. In seconds, golden-yellow scales had regrown, the wound having fully healed.
As Burn looked around towards Erosion in surprise, Erosion opened her jaws, letting out a great burst of flame. Burn ducked to the side as the flame spread across her scales, scorching the edge of her wing. She bared her teeth, the pain barely bothering her.
“As you can see,” Erosion snarled, “Burn is as mortal as her mother. Throw a second scavenger at her or any of her sisters, and we’d have another decade of pointless war.”
Burn let out another roar, attempting to leap on Erosion as she was talking, but Erosion ducked beneath Burn, meeting the princess’s underbelly with her claws. Clawing her wings into the ground, and using that to propel the front of her body upwards, Erosion threw Burn behind her, the SandWing rolling through the air and falling onto the hard ground, her back and fin down.
“Under my rule, any soldier will have the same powers of healing that I have!” Erosion proclaimed loudly. “Injured veterans will regain lost limbs at my touch, dragons on the brink of death will be flying the next day!”
Burn tucked her left wing beneath her body, and used it to quickly rise to her paws, turning back towards Erosion. As Burn attempted to tear her teeth into Erosion’s neck, Erosion quickly leapt out of the way, grabbing the back of Burn’s tail in her jaws. Burn let out a howl as Erosion’s sharp teeth tore into her flesh, her mouth becoming stained with Burn’s blood. Digging a paw into the ground, Erosion twisted her neck around, and with a strength far more than any dragon could use without magic, she flung Burn into the air. The SandWing princess attempted to spread her wings to stabilize herself, but was already on her back, and sailed across the arena before crashing into the ground on a wing, rolling and sliding before finally coming to a stop on the opposite side of the battlefield from Erosion.
Burn attempted to place down a paw to prop herself up and resume the fight, but she faltered, and was unable to muster the strength to get back on her claws. Showing no fear, she stared directly into Erosion’s eyes as the animus slowly stepped across the battlefield towards Burn, ready to finish her off. Panic started to ensure in the crowd, dragons yelling and shouting, some cheering for their near queen, others frightened and confused.Nightreader glanced over to her side. The MudWing seemed to be focused on the battle now, though didn’t appear to be leaning either way. She looked back across to the other end of the arena, where Stonemover stood with the other eight animuses. This might be a good time to get across the arena and closer to him, while everyone was distracted.
Nightreader stepped around the edges of the arena, behind the watching crowd keeping her head down as she tried to get closer to her brother. Meanwhile, Erosion continued slowly pacing towards Burn with a smirk. Burn stuck out her wing, her own blood dripping across her body from scrapes and scratches. She tried to stand up again, but faltered. Something in one of her back legs appeared to be fractured, or out-of-place.
“All done?” Erosion asked with a laugh. She turned to the crowd, gazing around. “Here, before you, is your queen! Unable to rule! Watch her die beneath my talons, far too weak to protect her kingdom and tribe!”
Erosion turned back to Burn, and continued her march forward, stretching her bloodsoaked talons out as she prepared to become queen.
==Chapter 88==
As Erosion stepped to get closer to Burn, a dragon suddenly stepped in her way. Prince Smolder, his scales shaking, walked directly in front of his sister, his talons gripping the deformed spear around his snout, still keeping it closed.
Erosion tossed him an expression of amusement. “I see you think you’re trying to be ‘brave,’ pretending that you can protect your sister?” she chuckled.
With a final tug, the spear ripped off Smolder’s snout, taking scales with it. Blood ran down his snout and jaw, dripping onto the dirt below. “Animus magic has never been allowed in royal combat,” Smolder quietly answered. “If you want to get to Burn, and to the SandWing throne, you’ll have to get through me first.”
Erosion laughed. “If I had any pity left in my, I would use it on you. Unfortunately, I don’t. This is no longer the age of weak, puny queens, pretending to squabble amongst each other just so that they can ignore the suffering of their subjects,” she hissed. “Step aside, prince of old, your bloodline only represents failure. This is the age of the animus, and no dragon can defeat me.”
She took a step forward, about to tap her bracelet again, when her eyes suddenly turned to the crowd, noticing a disturbance in it.
“Are you sure about that?” a voice yelled from the crowd. A flash of blue pushed through the yellows and browns of the mass of dragons, as Torrent stepped into the open arena, holding his dagger in his right foreclaws as he stepped between Erosion and Smolder.
Erosion winced as she saw that the SeaWing had entered the fray. “How did you get here?” she hissed. “I told you not to follow me.”
“You see, I have powers far beyond your imagination,” Torrent snorted, invoking whispers from the crowd. “And by that, I mean I flew here. It was a long flight, so I’m somewhat tired. Would it be too much to ask for you to just give up now and let me kill you? You know as well as I do that you can’t hurt me.”
Erosion bared her teeth, and swished her barbed tail back and forth. Torrent aggressively moved forward, causing the SandWing to take a cautious step backwards, before casting a nervous glance towards the nine other animuses behind her, still in her control. The horde of watching dragons started talking among each other, wondering how this SeaWing could make Erosion, the animus who’d defeated even Burn, defensive.
Torrent looked back towards Smolder, and gave him a glare of disapproval. Smolder returned an awkward grin, scratching behind his horns with a claw, even as blood continued to drip down his snout. “I, er, don’t actually have anything against SeaWings,” the SandWing prince quickly explained to the SeaWing prince. “I was told to say that.”
Torrent gave out a quite growl, then glanced over towards Burn. “Get your sister, and everyone else out of here while I’m keeping Erosion busy,” he ordered.
Smolder rapidly nodded, then turned to his sister, still lying on the ground. “Hyena! Scorch!” he called. “Help me carry Queen Burn away! Other troops under my command, help get all SandWing and MudWing civilians away from the battlefield in an orderly fashion!”
The mass of dragons started to yell and shift in panic, and dragons started to rush away from the arena, pushing aside dragons behind them to get out. Two SandWing soldiers nervously ran out towards the injured Burn, who snarled as they approached. Along with Smolder, the three lifted up the collosal princess, slowly carrying her away.
Erosion’s beady eyes followed Burn, but quickly turned back to Torrent. For a moment, she had thought about trying to stop their escape, but at the moment, she had a larger threat on her mind. There would be other chances to get rid of Burn, but first she needed to deal with Torrent. The SeaWing snarled, and moved closer to Erosion, causing her to take a step back in alarm.
“Bring him out!” Erosion roared to the dispersing crowd. Within moments, an elderly SandWing pushed through the sea of dragons, dragging a net behind her.
Erosion toothily grinned as Torrent looked on in horror. Gazelle stepped into the open space of the arena, dragging the injured Griffin behind him in the net they’d carried him in. Griffin struggled slightly, attempting to tear a hole in the net, but Gazelle turned around to him with a hiss, flicking her tail and placing her barb at the top of Griffin’s head.
Gazelle stepped up to Erosion, placing the net with Griffin nearby, then flicked her tail again threateningly.
“I warned you not to follow me,” Erosion hissed. “Take even another step closer, and Gazelle’s barb will go through your friend’s head.”
Torrent stopped, still holding his dagger. His snout contorted in rage. “You don’t have to do this,” he growled at Erosion. “You don’t need to rule Pyrrhia, or use your magic.”
“Maybe I don’t need to rule, but Pyrrhia needs me,” Erosion replied, flicking her tongue.
Torrent bared his teeth at Erosion, but didn’t respond. Erosion smirked, then it turned into a slight frown, and she cocked her head to the side in confusion. Something seemed slightly off about Torrent’s expression. Scanning it, Erosion saw that his ears weren’t folded back to match his anger.
Suddenly, Erosion yelled out in pain, as she felt something stab through her tail. She whipped it across the sand, and looked at Gazelle in shock as Gazelle’s barb was torn out from far within Erosion’s tail, ripping out scales and flesh with it.
Erosion a step backwards, glaring in fury at Gazelle. “You traitor!” she screamed, as the flesh and scales on her tail started to regrow.
Gazelle bowed her head low. “I’m sorry,” she whispered quietly.
Erosion’s eyes narrowed, and she turned to the nine animuses behind her. “Ichthyes, kill her!” she ordered with a yell.
The SeaWing didn’t respond, and blinked a few times, then turned towards Erosion. His frown suddenly turned into a grin. “No.”
Suddenly, the sandy dirt beneath Erosion rose up, forming solid spikes as thick as a dragon’s arm, puncturing through Erosion’s neck and brain. Erosion’s eyes went wide as her claws flailed around. She attempted to open her mouth, as if trying to speak an curse, but it spasmed, causing her to bite off half of her black tongue, which fell to the ground below, the tongue quickly regrowing in her maw.
As blood poured down the spikes of stone from the holes in her neck and head, the flesh and scales around and within it attempted to regrow, but was unable to do so due to the solid spikes in the space where they were supposed to be. Instead, a amalgamated mass of blood, flesh, and scales started to grow on the two spikes, the pressure causing Erosion’s neck and skull to tear apart from the inside. The rest of her body violently spasmed, as Griffin attempted to scramble away in the net so not to get hit by the randomly swinging barb. He heard a crack from one of her wings, as it dislocated itself.
The rest of the animuses quickly realized they were now free of Gazelle’s control. The SkyWing animus stepped forward with a sadistic grin. “I enchant her organs to burn!” she screeched in glee, as Erosion’s insides started to melt, the growing flesh and scales turning to a scorched mush. The spasms continued, whatever enchantment she’d placed on herself unable to allow her to die.
Gazelle quickly reached down to the dirt, and grabbed one of the scales that she’d dislodged from Erosion with her barb string. Taking a step back from the Erosion’s horribly disfigured body, still stuck on the spikes within her, Gazelle tore open the cloth on her tail, where Nightreader had injured her. Taking in a deep breath, she quickly yelled out in pain as she stabbed the scale into her raw flesh as far as she could, knowing that if she failed, both she and Griffin would end up like Erosion, or worse.
==Chapter 89==
“Freeze,” Gazelle commanded quietly, gritting her teeth through the pain. She flicked the end of her tail, now bleeding again, across the dirt. Each of the animuses that had previously been under Erosion’s control stiffened up, their breaths becoming shallow, unable to move any more than was required to live.
She turned around towards Stonemover, and pointed a curved talon at him. The metal collar around his neck split into two parts, each falling onto the dirt below. Stonemover’s legs shook, and he took a step forward, free.
“Stonemover!” a dragon yelled, one of the few remaining members of the fleeing crowd. Nightreader ran onto the arena towards her brother, and embraced him with her wings in a hug. “Are you hurt?”
Stonemover shook his head. He glanced towards Erosion, still spasming as her body tried to heal herself, then quickly turned back, preventing himself from retching from the smell of burning flesh. “I’m fine,” he whispered. “You saved me.”
Nightreader snorted. “Of course I did,” she laughed, “although I think Gazelle did most of the work.”
Gazelle smiled, a slight sadness behind it. “We never would have made it here in time if you hadn’t taken us to the Night Kingdom.”
“You took them to the Night Kingdom?” Stonemover asked in alarm.
Nightreader nodded. “Don’t worry,” she soothed him, “everything went fine.” Still, it wasn’t like this would go unnoticed. There was no way that Morrowseer wouldn’t realize what happened. She glanced over at Gazelle. “Still, it would have been a little nice to have known about the plan in advance.”
“We made it up after you left for Burn,” Torrent said, as he walked towards the group. He looked over at Griffin, still tied up in the net, and extended his claws, ready to help get Griffin get free. “I take it that didn’t go so well?”
“It could have gone worse,” Nightreader answered. “Anyways, everything worked out, didn’t it?”
Nightreader noticed Gazelle, her expression downfallen. Following Gazelle’s line-of-sight to Erosion, Nightreader noticed that Erosion had stopped moving, and although huge bags of scale and muscle hung from her skull and throat, resting on the spikes of rock, her flesh was no longer trying to mend itself. She’d seemed to have gone still. The spikes of rock suddenly crumbled, and her broken body fell to the dirt.
Torrent had noticed this too, and looked over towards Gazelle. “I allow the enchantment controlling the animuses to remain,” he quickly spoke, realizing they’d be free if he got any closer to her.
“Is she dead?” Stonemover stammered, trying to avoid looking at Erosion’s corpse.
“I sure hope so,” Torrent muttered. “Whatever hell she just went through, I wouldn’t wish on any dragon. I think her healing enchantment nullified when I got too close.”
“If you move away, will she come back to life?” Nightreader asked.
Torrent thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. Both the healing and burning enchantments will still work, but according to Erosion herself, animus magic can’t bring back the dead, so I think she’s dead forever.”
“Wait, Erosion said that?” Griffin asked, confused.
“I found an old diary of Magma’s back in the Sky Kingdom,” Torrent explained. “Erosion had given her a lecture on animus magic, and had mentioned that.”
“Is it true?” Griffin asked. “I mean, if animus magic could bring me to life, and if it could give others their own magic, how do we know she was telling the truth?”
“We could test it,” Torrent replied, glancing over at Erosion’s body.
“Please don’t,” Gazelle whispered, “she doesn’t need to be in any more pain. Let her rest in peace.”
Torrent nodded solemnly, respecting Gazelle’s wishes. “I suppose it won’t ever matter again, will it? These eight and Stonemover are the last animuses in Pyrrhia.” Not including the sleeping Darkstalker, of course. Torrent stepped over to Erosion’s corpse, holding his breath to avoid the noxious fumes of burned flesh, bringing back the memory of Schist’s fight with Magma. With a quick swipe of his dagger, Torrent disenchanted all the curses that had been put on her and her golden bands. He quickly turned back to Griffin, and putting his dagger away in its sheath so not to accidentally use it on his friend, carefully started untangling the netting. They might still need to use it; Griffin was still unable to fly.
“What should we do with them?” Griffin asked. “The other animuses.”
“Just make them do the same thing Stonemover did, remove their powers,” Nightreader suggested.
Gazelle flicked out her forked tongue. “Some of these dragons have done bad things,” she replied, pointing a talon towards the injured Griffin. “Maybe they deserve justice.”
“Some of that might only be because they’ve lost parts of their souls from using their magic,” Griffin advocated, “and we don’t know their histories. They could have been forced to use their powers by others. Erosion, for example.” Even for the three dragons that had attacked, Griffin wasn’t quite sure wanted to think of them as deserving punishment. Had Orca not died, that would have meant she’d have had to answer for crimes, even if what she’d done was caused by losing her soul after all. And while Griffin wasn’t quite sure how it worked in the Sea Kingdom with princesses killing princesses. For killing River outside of a royal challenge, Orca could have been executed.
“The important thing is that they don’t keep their powers,” Torrent said. “They’ll be able to live out the rest of their lives without being able to use them to hurt others. If their queens want to inflict justice, they can do so.”
Nightreader looked towards her brother with a smile, then over in the distance, where Burn’s army’s camp was. She could see Smolder and a few other SandWings tending to Burn’s wounds. Smolder suddenly lifted up his head, and looked back towards her. They locked gazes for a few moments, before he turned back to his sister.
“You need to decide what you’re going to do quickly,” Nightreader told Gazelle, “I think Smolder will let us go, but I can’t say the same for Burn.”
“I’m personally not a fan of being stuffed and put in her weirdling tower,” Griffin added urgently.Gazelle nodded, and thought for a moment before turning towards the eight animuses. She twitched her barbed tail, wincing in pain. “Each of you, enchant yourselves so that you are no longer an animus, all enchantments on you no longer function, and none of the enchantments you’ve made work anymore.”
In unison, each of the eight dragons spoke the enchantment, their mouths stiff and clenched. As Torrent finished freeing Griffin, he pulled out the enchanted map, and rolled it open. It had worked. Unlike Stonemover’s blotch, each of the other animuses seemed to have disappeared on it. Maybe because Gazelle had made them enchant themselves to be no longer be animuses, as opposed to just being unable to use their powers anymore.
Gazelle looked back to the other three dragons and Griffin. “You should go.”
“Wait, what about you?” Griffin asked. “Are you coming with us?”
Gazelle smiled, and looked over towards the town in the distance. “I don’t think so. My wings are tired and old. I think I might just settle down here, as just another SandWing. This way, I can free the animuses after you leave. If I try while you’re around, they’ll kill you, powers or not.”
“What?” Griffin protested. “They’ll do the same for you!”
She shook her head. “I will wait until some of the SandWing guards are around and can decide what to do with them. Smolder is in debt to me, and he, along with all of the SandWings here, are more likely to listen to a SandWing than a SeaWing, NightWings, or a gryphon. I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
Griffin glanced nervously towards Smolder, then back to Gazelle. “Alright,” he conceded. “I guess this is goodbye, then?”
Gazelle chuckled. “Maybe, maybe not. Who knows what the future holds?”
Griffin grinned back, trying to curl the sides of his beak. “I hope Crosswinds treats you well, then!” He leaned over towards Stonemover and Nightreader. “Should we say goodbye to the two of you too??”
Nightreader gave Stonemover a quick look, then turned back to Griffin. “I don’t think so,” she replied. “It’s not like we have anywhere to go, so we might as well just stick with you for now.” She turned to Torrent, and gave him a smile. “Plus, there’s still the Obsidian Mirror to worry about.”
“That’s good,” Griffin replied, “it can get a bit boring only having Torrent around to talk to.”
Nightreader gave a small nod in agreement.
Torrent snorted. “I’m quite interesting,” he pouted, before his expression turned to a grin. “So, if that’s all settled, it’s time to go?”
Nightreader, Griffin, and Stonemover all nodded in succession. Torrent reached into his satchel, and pulled out the three makeshift harnesses he’d stored, and attached them to the net. As Gazelle helped to fit one around Stonemover, Nightreader and Torrent put their own on, and helped tie Griffin onto the net. The three dragons pulling it taught, they each spread their wings, and with a burst of wind, lifted off in succession.
As the three started to rise into the air, Griffin looked back towards Gazelle as she waved a paw at them. He smiled, and waved his own talons back to her.
“So, where are we going?” Stonemover asked nervously, noticing that they were flying south.
“Somewhere the NightWings can’t find us, or hurt us ever again,” Nightreader responded. She looked forward. Towards the edge of the horizon, the flatlands turned into hills, and the hills turned into snow-capped peaks. “How about Jade Mountain?”
==Epilogue==
Jade Mountain was the tallest mountain of Pyrrhia, having surpassed the peak of Agate Mountain after the earthquake two-thousand years ago. The two twin peaks it sported were said to be among the most beautiful in Pyrrhia, although the IceWings had occasionally claimed that some of their own peaks (which no other tribe was ever able to see) were far greater in magnificence. Whether true or not, Jade Mountain had a certain appeal to it — whether it was its height, its proximity to the ocean, or how it belonged in territory controlled by none of the queens. It was far from the war, and a long distance from most other dragons, most of a day’s flight from any of the small SandWing settlements bordering the Claws of the Clouds, and further from the Scorpion Den, the closest decently-sized city to it.
Two years had passed since the Brightest Night, and although the four living near the peak of the mountain rarely had anyone else for company, they were happy and content with each other. It was a sleepy night when Nightreader and Torrent’s eggs hatched; a light rain drizzled from the skies, and the three moons were barely obscured by the clouds. The cave they had been living in for the last two years was situated midway up the mountain, low enough to be below the snow line, but far enough up that they’d be unlikely to be disturbed by any curious young SandWings who’d decided to take a secret sightseeing tour of Pyrrhia’s fabled tallest mountain. Trees partially covered the entrance, although once one knew it was at the bottom of a small cliff situated partway between the two peaks, it wasn’t too difficult to find.
The cave itself was cozy enough, and the four had made it their home. A small fire that either Nightreader or Stonemover had started slowly burned towards the front, heating the cave. Vines had been draped over the cave entrance, partially to hide it, and partially to protect it from the roaring winds this high up on the mountain. At the back of the cave, a tunnel led further into the labyrinth of caverns beneath Jade Mountain, which could be either be a fun and engaging playscape for curious dragonets, or a dangerous arena full of drops, places to get stuck, and possibly deadly animus magic, depending on if you were Nightreader or Torrent. Even if he’d checked many times and had never found any hint of tunnels connecting to the enchanted caverns beneath Agate Mountain, Torrent was still suspicious.
Around halfway towards the back of the cave, a nest was situated against the cave wall, made of dirt and sand (Torrent had insisted on bringing sand from the beaches due south of the mountain, where he excitedly planned to take the dragonets for at least four days every cycle of the smallest moon). Three eggs huddled together in the nest, each the perfect size to fit in two paws. The largest was the color of a moonlit ocean, a deep dark blue flecked with hints of gold. The other two were smaller, and similar to each other in color, both consisting of interlocking blue and black spirals covering their entire surface. Their largest difference was where the spirals intersected: whereas the spirals of one of the eggs remained distinct, the border of the colors sharp and thin, the spirals fused together in a midnight blue on the other, and it was different to tell where the spirals of one color began, and the spirals of the other ended.
The shells of the eggs were each thin, and as Nightreader gently brushed a talon over each of them, it felt like they could break with just a little too much pressure.
Nightreader turned her head towards Stonemover and Torrent, who were both watching her intently. “I think they’re going to hatch tonight.”
Compared to two years ago, Nightreader looked far healthier than after she had just left the NightWing island. Her ribs were longer visible, and the muscles holding her wings up were strong. Prey around Jade Mountain was far better than on the volcano, and the hunting skills Nightreader had been forced to develop on the island just to keep her and her brother from starving had come in use. None of their dragonets would ever have an empty stomach.
Torrent grinned. “This cave will be pretty crowded soon,” he laughed excitedly. Nightreader nodded with a smile.
Stonemover’s snout turned up, but then he looked towards the cave entrance with a small frown. “Where’s Griffin?” he asked worriedly.
“He’s meeting with the Talons of Peace in the Neck, remember?” Nightreader answered.
“I know, but I thought he was supposed to be back by now?” Stonemover responded. “He was supposed to return a day or two ago.”
“Probably just got delayed by weather,” Torrent commented, brushing off his worries. “He can take care of himself, I doubt anything happened. It’s too bad he’ll miss the hatching, though. I’m sure he’ll be devastated.”
Nightreader quickly glanced back to the three eggs, then opened her eyes wide. “LOOK!” she yelled, almost making Torrent jump up in alarm. “They’re starting to vibrate! I think this one’s going to hatch soon!”
Torrent rushed over to the nest, with Stonemover slinking behind him. Sure enough, the spiraled egg with distinct colors was furiously shaking, something rocking it back and forth from the inside. Suddenly, a crack appeared in the surface of the egg, the shell splitting apart to reveal the tiny dark blue scales of a dragonet’s snout. As the dragonet pulled back into the shell, the membrane beneath the hard surface came with it. A small paw stretched through the hole that was made, breaking off another piece.
The little dragonet pushed his head through the eggshell again after his paw, breaking the egg apart further. As he got his head fully through the shell, he looked curiously at the three dragons closely watching him.
“Hello, Loresearcher,” Torrent greeted the dragonet, stretching out a talon huge in comparison to the dragonet. The dragonet brought his paw on it, then licked it. “That’s the name you wanted for him, right?” Torrent asked his mate.
“Mhm,” Nightreader nodded affirmatively. She stretched out her own claw, and brushed it gently along the dragonet’s scaled head. He turned his head up at her, and wiggled his body, struggling to get out of his. With a crack, the hole widened, and the young dragonet broke free of the egg. He shook himself and spread out his stubby wings, as Nightreader brushed pieces of eggshell from him. He had just barely the hint of vestigial webbing between his claws, and a small fleshy bump on the bottom of his chin. The white dotted scales along his neck were slightly larger than they would be for a NightWing, and appeared to shed a faint glow on Nightreader’s dark scales. Hints of gills appeared beneath the large scales running down his neck, but they looked far too small to be functional.
“You’re a mother now,” Torrent grinned at Nightreader.
Nightreader nodded, and looked back at Torrent, seeing the slight sadness in his eyes. She knew he’d been a father for years before this, but had never been given the chance to see his dragonet. But now, he could.
Suddenly, a sound outside the cave made Torrent tense up, like talons had landed on it. He stood up in a start, and cautiously put his claws on his dagger. “Who’s there?” he demanded.
“Just me,” a familiar voice answered, and Torrent breathed a sigh of relief. Griffin stepped forward through the vines, into the cave. He looked tired, with a stiff expression on his beak.
“I’m so glad you’re alright!” Torrent said. “I was worried for a moment you’d been captured by SandWings or something. Come over, Nightreader and I’s dragonets are hatching! You’re just in time!”
Griffin slowly nodded, and took a couple of hobbled steps towards Torrent, then stopped, still a few yards from the nest.
Torrent looked at him with a frown. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Griffin shook his head. “Nothing, just haven’t been around for a while, and am worried about your dagger disenchanting me.” He pointed a talon towards Torrent’s dagger.
Torrent cocked his head in confusion. It had been years since Griffin had been worried about the dagger, why was he unsure about it, now of all times? Still, it wasn’t a big deal. “That’s alright. I allow the enchantment on Griffin to remain enchanted. Better?”
Griffin stood completely still for a moment, then nodded. “Yes.” As Torrent turned back to his new son, Griffin walked over to the dragons huddled around the nest, and crouched down, examining Loresearcher. The dragonet looked back, and curiously returned Griffin’s stare, as if unsure exactly what he was.
“This is Uncle Griffin,” Nightreader introduced. She pointed and looked at Stonemover. “That’s your Uncle Stonemover, and the big blue dragon is your daddy, Torrent. I’m your mommy, Nightreader.”
Loresearcher looked to each in term, then started to crawl out of the nest, feeling a small rumble beneath him. Suddenly, another scaled snout broke free, this time from the gold-speckled egg. The dragonet, eager to escape her egg, clawed away at the surface until it broke free, allowing her a first glimpse of light. She scrambled out of the surface and immediately stretched her small fragile wings wide, as Loresearcher looked at her, sniffing her tail. He nibbled on the end slightly, invoking a paw-swipe from his sister, although her lack of coordination caused her to fall to the ground. Griffin gently cupped Loresearcher in his talons, pulling him away from his sister.
Nightreader put her snout up against her daughter’s, and nuzzled it, the dragonet pawing at her mother’s nostrils. Nightreader glanced over to her brother. “This is Midnight,” she explained to Stonemover. “She looks a little like you, doesn’t she?”
Stonemover nodded slightly, though he didn’t seem so sure of that himself. Midnight’s SeaWing features seemed somewhat heavier than her brother’s — her spine was more clearly webbed, and her scales less organized, close to the pebble-like pattern Torrent had. Similarly, she had dark-blue splotches all across her body that could have been glowstripes, just barely lighter than the rest of her scales. Beneath her deep blue wings were dots of gold, like colorful stars in the night sky.
“Well, I think she looks more like Griffin,” Torrent laughed, knowing how absurd the notion was. “Right, Griffin?”
As he turned to Griffin, his expression dropped. Griffin’s front talons were latched tightly around Loresearcher’s head and body, the dragonet struggling to move. With a blank stare on Griffin’s face, Griffin twisted the talons holding Loresearcher’s body, a small crack sounding as he broke the dragonet’s neck.
Nightreader’s expression quickly shifted, first to confusion, shock, and then rage. With a roar of fury, her scales almost bursting from her skin, she leaped at Griffin, claws outstretched. As Griffin dropped the dragonet’s limp body, she slammed her paw into his neck, tearing into his flesh with it and holding him up against the wall by his throat.
“YOU KILLED HIM!!!” she screamed, rage emanating from every sound she made. “WHY DID YOU KILL HIM!?!”
Griffin’s eyes went wide in confusion as he looked straight into Nightreader’s. He clenched his front talons around her paw as the NightWing choked him, attempting to respond but unable to speak.
“Darling, let poor Griffin go,” a voice sighed from the front of the cave. “It wasn’t his fault. He was enchanted to do it.”
Nightreader turned herself towards the cave’s entrance, her eyes bloodshot, her teeth totally bared in a snarl. She dropped Griffin, blood dripping from his neck. Torrent gulped as he saw the dragon standing there, his legs shaking in shock. He let out a deep growl. “You.”
Crystal laughed, scratching a razor-sharp talon along the cave wall. “That’s not a nice way to greet an old friend, is it? It’s been, what, nine years? No, six for you, correct?”
Although she looked much the same as when Torrent had last seen her, instead of being cautious and uncertain, Crystal’s voice seemed to radiate confidence. She dragged her white talon further along the cave wall, a screeching sound reverberating. Beneath her left wing dangled a leather sheath, where two intertwining snakes forming the handle of a black dagger poked out from it.
“A new mate and now a family, I see,” Crystal clucked. “You didn’t forget me, did you?”
Torrent seethed, barely able to keep his breath under control. “You forced Griffin to kill my dragonet.” His claws tensed up. Whatever his feelings about her had been a moment before, now he was ready to tear out her throat without hesitation.
Crystal snorted. “Not me. Her.” The IceWing guestered with a wing behind her. A dragon stepped from behind the vines, her beady black eyes staring straight beyond Torrent with an distatched expression. Unlike any dragon Torrent had ever seen before, her scales were a pale light-blue, like the color of a clear sky over the ocean, and pale white blotches, like fluffy clouds, dotted her wing membranes. Although her horns were curved slightly, wispy-thin spines followed the ridge of her back until they reached the edge of her tail, where they spread out into what looked like a small ball of spikes. Thin white glowstripes covered her neck, body, and tail, and every so often, one seemed to light up at random.
She stepped forward, side-by-side with Crystal, a silver chain hanging from her neck, the perfectly spherical Darkstone swinging back and forward on it. Behind it, her scales seemed to be melted together into a light purple hemi-spherical indent in her neck. Like a shackle, a thick iron band was fused around her left forearm with three chainlinks dangling down from it, a thin line across it indicating where it had been joined around her scales.
“Do you recognize her, Torrent?” Crystal asked, a small hiss escaping from her throat.
Torrent looked at the dragon, her beady black eyes staring straight into Torrent’s own turquoise pearls. Was she . . . no, how could she be? His and Crystal’s dragonet would have hatched six years ago, but this dragon looked like a full-grown young adult, at least a few years older than that. Still, how many SeaWing-IceWing hybrids were there on Pyrrhia?
“That’s right,” Crystal smiled. “She’s your dragonet. Her name is Aurora. She’s been waiting all her life to meet her father, you see.”
“Why?” Nightreader hissed, her blood boiling. “Why would you kill him?”
“And Torrent chose you as his mate,” Crystal jeered, turning towards Nightreader, quickly examining her up and down. “A poor choice. Your SeaWing mate has let his feelings get in the way of his logic, and his mission. He chose you, even knowing that your dragonets would be the spawn of not one, but two animus bloodlines?
“Torrent, how stupid do you have to be to not realize that at least one of your dragonets would likely be an animus?” Crystal thought for a few seconds, doing the calculation in her head. “I already know from our dragonet surviving the Darkstone process that you have the gene. And if it was also passed onto your mate, as was likely, it’s about one in two. If it did occur, you should’ve known you’d have a big choice to make: allow your animus dragonet to fly free, or decide they’d have to go the way of that sweet little RainWing dragonet you killed so many years ago. Fortunately, Aurora has made that choice for you, and that burden has been lifted off your wings.”
“We knew. We didn’t care,” Nightreader growled. She looked back to the nest. Loresearcher’s limp body lay still on the cold cavern floor next to the bleeding Griffin, but Nightreader could grieve later. She still had two dragonets living. Midnight was in the nest, looking at her brother’s corpse in alarm, whereas the final dragonet was still in their egg. “Stonemover, protect Midnight and the egg.”
Stonemover fearfully looked over at Crystal and Aurora, then back at her sister. Shaking, he stood up, his claws outstretched. Nightreader stepped forward, between the nest and the two dragons at the front of the cavern.
Crystal rolled her eyes, and drew the snake-hilted dagger from its sheath. Now that Torrent had a better view of it, he could that inlaid between the hilt and the blade was a light-blue scale, matching the color of Aurora’s. A hole seemed to have been cut through the scale, and a pitch-black pearl was placed inside, nestling close against it. The obsidian blade of the dagger twisted back and forth, like the horn of a SkyWing.
Crystal held the dagger out, almost teasingly. “Well, now you see where that went.”
Torrent roared, and charged forwards at Crystal, pulling out his own curved blade. He attempted to stab his dagger into her side, but Crystal side-stepped the blow with ease. Instead of what could have been a fatal swipe, Torrent’s dagger barely scraped Crystal’s scales, not puncturing hard enough to break through them.
As Torrent ran past Crystal, she swept her claws beneath his wing, dragging her blade through his flesh, ripping through it. Torrent roared in pain, but took the opportunity Crystal’s positioning had made. Even as blood started to drip, and the dagger tore in further, Torrent twisted his body to the side, his powerful tail forcefully slamming into Crystal’s ribs. 
As the wind was knocked from her lungs, the blow sent the IceWing skidding across the cave, towards the hard wall. Without hesitation, Torrent turned towards Crystal, even as his blood dripped on the stone beneath, and jumped into the air, his claws outstretched and his dagger pointing down. Crystal was only saved by her dragonet, Aurora barreling into Torrent as he flew through the air, knocking him off-course and into the ground, the two rolling together, locked in battle.
Aurora wrapped part of her tail around Torrent’s as they rolled, the needle-like spines digging into his scales. She ended up on top of him, and swiped a paw, rigid talons out, at her father’s snout, claws tearing through scales. Torrent seethed in pain, and grappled ahold of Aurora’s forearm with his own, then propped his wing up, turning his dragonet over. Aurora continued to dig her tail spikes into Torrent’s flesh, and popped upwards, biting at Torrent’s snout with a snarl.
With a lunge forward, Torrent placed his left forepaw on Aurora’s underbelly, then swiped his dagger across her neck. She pulled it backwards just quickly enough to avoid getting her throat slit, as the dagger’s blade got caught in the silver chain around her neck, ripping it from Torrent’s grasp, causing it to skid across the the rock floor. As Torrent reached to get it back, Aurora’s claws stretched out, blocking him and tearing into the left side of his neck. Torrent planted one of his back claws on Aurora’s wing, folding open as he tore into the membrane, causing her to hiss, releasing her grip.
The SeaWing jumped forward, trying to reach his dagger, but Aurora twisted herself around him, grasping her talons around the base of Torrent’s right wingbone, keeping him locked in place. She stomped her other forepaw on Torrent’s head, narrowly avoiding Torrent’s horns as he bucked his head up.
While Torrent and Aurora fought, Crystal had gotten up, shaking any injuries off, and had walked towards Nightreader. The NightWing hissed, enraged.
Crystal snorted. “Let’s make this quick.” She feigned a lunge forward, obsidian dagger out, causing Nightreader to rear up slightly, ready to block Crystal. As Nightreader swiped forward at Crystal with a paw, the IceWing easily slid around her, raking her sharp claws along Nightreader’s tail, drawing strings of blood from it.
“Don’t let her cut you with that dagger!” Torrent roared in warning, before Aurora slammed his head to the ground again, silencing him. He tried to turn over, but Aurora kept her grip on him.
“Easier said than done,” Crystal laughed, swiping her dagger in front of Nightreader’s snout. Nightreader jumped back in alarm, as Crystal smirked. She held her dagger out, and took a step back, aiming the blade towards the young Midnight in the nest, now behind her.
Nightreader roared, and charged at Crystal, doing exactly what the IceWing had wanted. Crystal stepped to the left, avoiding Nightreader’s reckless charge, while keeping her claws holding the dagger out in front of the NightWing. Grabbing the back of Nightreader’s neck, Crystal, brought the blade of her dagger against Nightreader’s throat.
“Torrent! Don’t you want to see your new mate die?” Crystal called, pressing the blade into Nightreader’s scales, not hard enough to break into the flesh beneath. Nightreader stayed motionless, knowing Crystal could kill her in a swipe. She looked at Torrent sorrowfully, knowing what was about to happen.
“CRYSTAL, LET HER GO!” Torrent screamed. He desperately attempted to struggle forward, towards Nightreader, but Aurora didn’t budge. He turned to Crystal, his breath a panic. “It’s me you want! Please, kill me instead, she hasn’t done anything to you!”
Crystal tsked. “Torrent, you’re so self-obsessed, thinking this is about you. You have nothing to do with it. Believe me, this is far from personal. You’re just a soldier in Calamity’s war, and you’ve served your purpose quite well. But now it’s time it’s time to discharge you, and someone needs to clean up the little mess you’ve left behind.” She glanced towards Midnight, seeing the remaining unhatched egg, the limp body of Loresearcher behind her, and Stonemover frozen in fear in front of them. “Unfortunately, that means a couple dragonets have to die, and you made the mistake of having them. It’s the only way. I hope you understand.”
Crystal stared down at Nightreader with a toothy grin, flicking her tongue out. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun raising your dragonets in the next life. Maybe you’ll even be able to predict me coming!” While touching the black pearl in the dagger with a talon, she dug the blade lightly into Nightreader’s throat, just barely enough to draw blood. Torrent struggled to get free from Aurora as the first drop fell, and Nightreader’s dark scales nearest the incision started to turn a crusty grey.
“STOP!” Torrent cried out, desperately trying to get free. With a twist of his neck, he chomped his teeth into Aurora’s shoulder, ripping out a hunk of flesh. Aurora momentarily let go, and Torrent reached for his dagger, but by that point, it was too late.
A crust of stone started to spread from Nightreader’s neck, covering her body scale by scale as she looked onwards, shaking as she felt her body becoming enclosed, her flesh turning to rock. The transformation rose up her snout, and the last part of her body Torrent could see were her frightened eyes, the color draining out of them as they turned into a uniform grey. As the life left her body, Crystal took a step back, leaving Nightreader nothing more than an empty statue.
Torrent roared in grief, and turned as Aurora again attempted to pin him down, slashing at her ribs with his dagger. The tactic worked, and it cut through inches of her flesh, causing her to rear back in pain. Torrent started to get back up to his paws again before Aurora relentlessly attacked again, trying to tear through his wing membranes.
Crystal gave Nightreader a pitying glance before turning back to the nest. Stonemover’s eyes were wide, and he stood frozen in fear, still looking at what was left of his sister. As Crystal walked forward, Stonemover suddenly stepped in front of her.
“I w-won’t let you pass,” he whimpered, shaking as fear flooded through him.
“Your bravery is futile,” Crystal snorted, twisting her black blade from side to side, just the slightest drop of blood on its surface. “I haven’t been ordered to hurt you. But you can die if you want to.” She stepped forward, dagger out, causing Stonemover to take a step back, almost onto Griffin.
As Aurora tore at Torrent’s wing, he feigned a strike at her snout, causing her to take a step behind Torrent. Putting all his strength behind the attack, Torrent twisted his body around, swinging his bloodied tail into Aurora’s side, knocking her over. As she struggled to get up, she coughed out a splatter of a purplish blood. Torrent turned on her, ready to finish her off, when he saw Crystal attacking Stonemover.
With a rapid slash, Crystal drew her dagger across Stonemover’s side, just a hint of blood pouring from it as the stone started to climb up his body, his glossy grey scales becoming muted tones. Torrent roared, and flung his dagger across the cave. His aim was on-target, andiIt landed in Stonemover’s side, causing him to yell in pain. Although much of his scales and wings were already covered with the crumbling rocky sheen, the stone stopped spreading across him.
Crystal glared at Torrent tensely, the two locking their stare for a moment. She held her dagger out threateningly as Torrent took a step forward. Suddenly, she turned towards the entrance of the cavern, Torrent following her eyes. Aurora had moved there, and soft rain dripped down her scales, washing away violet blood.
“Griffin,” she ordered, like she’d already figured out the solution to this puzzle, “bring me the remaining egg.”
Griffin had no choice but to comply as his muscles went stiff. With Stonemover barely able to move, and Crystal between Torrent and the nest, there was no one able to stop him. Walking over Loresearcher’s dead body, he picked up the final egg, blue and black stripes melding together, and staggeringly carried it to Aurora. She calmly watched her father, seemingly bewildered by him.
Torrent charged at Crystal, narrowly avoiding a swipe from her dagger. “Why?” he growled, taking a step back. “What do you want from me?”
“It’s cute you still think this has anything to do with you,” Crystal hissed. She playfully swiped at him with her dagger, causing Torrent to take another step back. He just needed to get close enough to Stonemover, and he’d be safe from it.
As Aurora carefully stared at Torrent, Griffin held the egg beside her, shaking. The situation was hopeless. Nightreader and Loresearcher were dead, Stonemover was practically trapped, and Griffin himself was under Aurora’s control. Torrent couldn’t take both Crystal and Aurora on, and would be dead within moments. Griffin’s beak tightened. He was so useless. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t allowed himself to get caught, this would never had happened. Why hadn’t Fracture been at the Mausoleum?
Fracture’s words echoed through Griffin’s head. You will stand outside these doors three more times. Once to kill, once to grieve, and once to live. His prophecy had come true. Griffin had gone to the Mausoleum’s entrance to meet with the Talons, and Crystal and Aurora had ended up coming out from it, the latter enchanting him, forcing him to kill Loresearcher. Griffin thought back to his first meeting at the Mausoleum. Fracture had given him the small wax statue of Schist, and had told Griffin to keep it safe and close. Griffin had done just that, but this had still happened. It was still in the leather satchel at Griffin’s side.
Suddenly, Griffin realized what he had to do. While Aurora was focused on Torrent, Griffin reached his talons into his bag, feeling for the statue. After six years, it was much more of a blob than a dragon now. Griffin tore off what might have been Schist’s two wings, and rolled the wax between two of his thin talons, melting it slightly. Moving so slowly that Aurora wouldn’t notice, Griffin raised his talons to his ears, and put a ball of wax inside each. The room became quiet.
“Torrent, Nightreader, I’m sorry,” he whispered before latching his claws around the egg, spreading his wings, and jumping from the cave, taking off into flight.
Immediately, Aurora turned around to see Griffin attempting to make his escape. “Griffin, I order you t—”
“LAALAALAA I’M NOT LISTENING!” Griffin shrilly screamed, the wax with the high-pitched noise drowning out Aurora’s command, Griffin unable to hear any sound she made. “OH, THE DRAGONETS ARE COMING, THEY’RE COMING TO SAVE THE DAY!”
Aurora snarled, and opened her own wings wide, jumping into the sky after Griffin as Torrent took another step back from Crystal. Crystal, startled, looked over at her daughter, attempting to follow after Griffin. In her sudden moment of distraction, Stonemover’s claws clenched around Torrent’s dagger, pressing one against the emerald to make sure the stone wouldn’t continue spreading. Gritting his teeth, he pulled it from his flesh, blood running from the wound, Stonemover quickly tossed it over at Torrent.
The SeaWing caught it by the handle, and turned towards Crystal with a menacing glare. As Crystal turned back and saw what had happened, she gulped, and took a step towards the exit. Torrent took a step forward, his claws tight around his dagger, blood dripping from his wounds. Crystal gave a short glance towards Midnight, but decided the risk wasn’t worth it. Torrent charged at her with a roar, but she ducked to the side, the SeaWing’s dagger grazing the scales on her back. She swiftly turned and fled towards the exit of the cave, spreading out her wings to take off into flight.
As Crystal attempted to make her escape, Torrent started to go after her, opening his own wings, but suddenly stopped as Crystal lifted off. He folded his wings in, and glanced back towards the back of the cave. Midnight was still in the nest, her small head just barely poking from it. Stonemover was beside her, a stoney sheen covering his scales, talons soaked in blood as he clutched the wound from the Torrent’s dagger. A statue stood where Nightreader had once been. Torrent looked his gaze back towards the exit of the cave, into the sky above, where Crystal was flying away, then walked back towards the nest.
He crouched down by Midnight. She shied away from his touch at first, but quickly changed her mind nestling herself within his webbed paws. Torrent still had one dragonet, and he needed to protect her.
==Post-Epilogue==
A strong wind blew through the swamps, picking up dirt and stinging against Schist’s cracked scales. Schist barely noticed. After eight years, he was used to it. When every step crushed his scales together, the pain had settled into the background, and as long as he kept his mind focused on something else, it was ignorable.
“Schist,” a voice spoke up. “You okay?” Glen moved a talon to tap a claw on the left side of Schist’s neck, then thought better of it.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Schist answered. Falling out of his trance, he glanced around him, taking in his surroundings. Glen was next to him, in the middle of the small camp she’d set up. Various tents had been set up in the roots of trees, forming gnarled pathways across the water surface. Maybe a hundred or so MudWings were gathered in the watery swamp, some climbing over the roots, and others swimming through the water.
“Do you want to go soak in a mud pool, or visit the healer’s tent?” Glen asked.
“I’m fine,” Schist snapped, sounding a bit more irritated than he’d intended. If his sib had noticed or felt hurt, she didn’t show it. Since Schist’s return, Glen had completely changed her mood towards him. Instead of being demanding and controlling, she seemed much more cautious, and more conscious of how Schist was feeling and what he was thinking. Even though he knew she was just trying to be helpful, it annoyed Schist. He didn’t need special attention from his sister, she didn’t need to treat him differently from the rest of her troop just because of his injuries.
“Alright,” Glen smiled, and turned to the side. A small golden pendant in the shape of a star swung from her neck, a ruby embedded in the center. Schist eyed it warily. Glen had found it a few years ago, before Moorhen had attacked the village. She’d claimed that it had been a gift from a friend, but Schist knew the truth — Glen had found it in the ruins of Adobe’s tower. She’d avoided answering his questions when he’d asked if it was enchanted, and what it did if so, but Schist had some clue. Compared to the other MudWings she’d fought beside, she seemed stronger, more agile, and less prone to injury. She was able to fly longer, even when every other dragon around her was exhausted.
Whatever. Schist wanted nothing more to do with animus magic, especially if it was something Adobe had made. Adobe had taken their bigwings from them, and Schist didn’t want to touch anything he’d made. But if Glen was willing to use it, that was her choice to make.
“General!” a voice suddenly yelled, as a grey-brown MudWing surfaced through the water, climbing up onto the roots Glen and Schist were perched on. “Permission to speak?”
Glen immediately turned her head, looking over at the MudWing. “Permission granted,” she responded. “Good news, I hope?”
The MudWing shrugged his wings back and forth. “Maybe,” he replied. “We’ve caught a dragon outside of our camp.”
Glen frowned. “One of Queen Moorhen’s spies? I didn’t think she had that many resources to spare on us.”
The soldier shook his head. “Er, no, we don’t think he’s with the crown. He’s a NightWing.”
Schist’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “A NightWing?” he suddenly spoke up. “Does he have a cat with him?”
The MudWing nodded. “Yes, a blue-grey one. Are you acquainted?”
“He visited seven or so years ago, back when we still had the village,” Glen snorted. “Took a few of our dragons, told us about the prophecy and left. He’s with the Talons. He’s safe. Bring him here.”
The MudWing bowed his head, and dove back into the swamp-waters, splashing Schist. Schist frowned. Trustbreaker was back? Was Griffin with him? What about Torrent and Crystal? It didn’t sound like it, or else the soldier would have reported that to Glen. Why had he come, and why now? Most of the MudWings in Glen’s rebellion were supporters of the Talons, or at least indifferent, could it have something to do with that?
Before long, three MudWings came walking down one of the root pathways, along with a silvery-black dragon standing between them. The dappled sunlight through the leaves of the trees seemed to give him a slight orange glow, and a livid cat rested on his back, sleeping quietly, oblivious to his surroundings. Sapphire, if Schist remembered correctly.
The three MudWings brought him up before Glen, Trustbreaker with a sorrowful expression on his snout. Glen tsked. “How did you find our camp? It’s supposed to be secret.”
“It was foretold,” Trustbreaker replied. Sapphire stretched out on his back, before falling back into sleep.
“I thought you couldn’t tell the future?” Schist asked warily.
“It wasn’t me,” the NightWing explained, “the Talons’ prophet told me the way.”
“Morrowseer?” Glen quickly asked. “He’s the one who did the prophecy, right?”
“Yes, he did foresee the prophecy,” Trustbreaker replied. “The Talons of Peace wanted to ask you of something.”
“What?” Glen sighed. “We’re busy right now, and our numbers are small. We can’t provide troops, if that’s what the so-called Talons of ‘Peace’ are looking for.”
Trustbreaker shook his head. “We want you to hold off your assault on the MudWing capital until after the war has ended.”
Glen looked at him for a moment, locking her eyes with his. She suddenly burst out laughing. “You’re serious?” she snickered. “You want us to wait, what, five years, according to your prophecy?”
Trustbreaker nodded. A stray wind blew through the swamp, rustling through Sapphire’s fur.
“And why would we do that?” Glen interrogated. “This is the best time to strike. Queen Moorhen’s army is split between the IceWings, SeaWings, and us. She won’t be protecting her capital. Up to this point, we’ve had to fight hit-and-run, but we’re recruiting from further north. The MudWings are tired of Queen Moorhen letting Burn, Scarlet, Blister, and Coral trample over them. They’ll answer our call, and with the capital beneath our wings, we’ll force Queen Moorhen to declare the north’s sovereignty.”
“It won’t work,” Trustbreaker sighed. Glen bared her teeth slightly. “Your army isn’t near big enough for a full assault, and the draft has taken away most of the sib groups that would’ve joined with you. Even if you manage to take the capital, your losses will be tremendous. The MudWing army may be divided, but numbers-wise, it’s the strongest in Pyrrhia, and is too organized right now. She’ll pull her troops back to the capital, and surrounded by enemies loyal to the crown, you’ll be crushed. If you manage to capture Queen Moorhen and force her to declare your independence, it still won’t matter. Queen Scarlet will attack, and your lands will be hers for the taking.”
Glen growled, slightly annoyed at his explanation. “Is this a prophecy?”
Trustbreaker nodded solemnly. “Somewhat. It’s a list of outcomes that hav — that could occur if you attack the capital now. But after the war ends, troops will return to their homeland. They’ll have lost sibs and friends. Moorhen’s army won’t have time nor energy to get back into action to protect against your rebellion, and she’ll easily concede the northern territory to you. Three years after the war is over, the earth will shake, and you will have a bloodless victory. Continue your guerilla now, if that’s what you think is best, but wait until the war is done to go after the capital.”
Glen flicked her tongue in and out, unsure whether to trust Trustbreaker or not. “I’ll need confirmation,” she skeptically replied. “Some prediction of the near future. Can you provide that?”
“Yes,” Trustbreaker answered. “I was told you would ask for that, and I’m prepared. Tomorrow morning, Moorhen’s forces will attack your camp, hoping to attack you by surprise. If this comes true, please consider my advice.”
Glen hissed. “They’re planning an ambush? Do they have spies? Who betrayed our location?”
Trustbreaker sighed, and looked down at the roots, ashamed. “Petrol.”
“Petrol?” Schist asked in surprise. “He wouldn’t betray us.” He couldn’t. Petrol had grown up in Adobe’s village with Schist. He’d known Petrol since a dragonet.
Glen glared at one of the MudWings that had brought Trustbreaker before her. “Bring Petrol to me,” she seethed. The soldier quickly bowed his head, and turned around, going to get reinforcements.
As he watched the MudWing disappear out of view, Schist turned back to Trustbreaker. “So, is Griffin . . .”
“He’s alive,” the NightWing answered. “Fracture and Clarity are going to visit him as we speak.”
“That’s good,” Schist responded, unsure what to think of it. “What about Torrent and Crystal?”
Trustbreaker looked away uncomfortably, as if there was something he wasn’t telling Schist. “Also still alive.”
Schist frowned. ‘Alive’ wasn’t the most positive of descriptors. But it had been seven years. Whatever had happened to them, they weren’t the same dragons (and gryphon) Schist had known. Neither was he.
Trustbreaker stepped to the side as three MudWings pushed Petrol in, the MudWing’s teeth bared. He hissed at one of the guards, but didn’t attempt to fight them. He looked up towards Glen, who disapprovingly glared back at him.
“Is it true?” she growled. “You betrayed our camp’s location to Queen Moorhen?”
Petrol was silent for a moment, as he locked eyes with Glen. Finally, he spoke up. “They said they’d give everyone but the ringleaders mercy. We’d be able to stop this stupid fight against the crown that we’re unable to win.”
Glen roared furiously, attracting the attention of the other MudWings around. They watched her curiously. “You’re a traitor to our rebellion!” she growled. “How stupid can you be to trust the crown? You think they’ll give us mercy? Everyone who they don’t massacre right away and ‘spare’ will be put in their army to die in a suicidal rush against the IceWings.” Glen sharpened her claws on the root beneath her, then stepped forward, her talons raised. Petrol flinched back, and closed his eyes with a whimper.
“Glen, please,” Schist suddenly pleaded. “This is Petrol. He just wanted to help make things right. Give him mercy.”
Glen glared at her sib. “You heard what he said. Everyone but the ringleaders. Schist, you’re my brother. You’re included in that group. He knowingly would have allowed you and I killed.” She turned back towards Petrol, her teeth bared. “We can afford mercy in times of peace. But not in times of war, where our lives are at stake. So, I’ll give Petrol mercy. The same mercy he has given us.”
Glen suddenly lunged forward at Petrol. Petrol let out a shrill scream of terror, and tried to put his claws up to protect himself, but Glen was too fast. Her jaws closed around Petrol’s neck, and tore into it, her talons holding him down. In an instant, she had ripped out his throat, blood dripping from her jaws and down her scales, staining red the golden medallion around her neck. She turned towards the MudWings watching her.
“Let this be a warning to anyone who chooses to betray the rebellion!” she roared, spitting out a hunk of flesh and blood. “When our sibs’ lives are at stake, there can be no mercy! Only justice!”
As Schist stared down at Petrol’s body, the young MudWing still shaking before finally going still, Glen turned to the soldiers. “Make sure that the entire camp hears of this,” she ordered. “I don’t want rumors. I want everyone to know that Petrol’s punishment was just.”
The MudWings glanced at each other, and three quickly scampered away into the swamp, leaving two behind. Glen set her gaze on Trustbreaker. “I believe your prophecy,” she stated. “Thank you for the advice. I will make a choice on what you have told me.”
Trustbreaker bowed his head slightly. “No. Thank you for considering the information I’ve brought you. May the winds be at your side.”
The NightWing glanced towards Schist in a silent expression of apology, then walked back across the bridge of roots, carefully stepping around the trickles of blood running from Petrol’s corpse.
----
My dearest Diamondback, I apologize that I have been unable to write to you until this point. Queen Blister does not allow us to communicate back to the Sand Kingdom, and just by writing this, my life may be in grave danger. So that this message isn’t traced back to me if found, it is unsigned, but the phrase ‘a finished tale of an IceWing’s tail’ should both warm your heart and verify my identity. Do not try to write back, for both my safety and yours.
I hope that the war has not gotten the best of you, and that our dragonet is safe. While the physical rift in our relationship has only widened, I feel like our feelings for each other will never die. This is no place for a dragonet, but I hav— 
A dull scratch sounded on the door, muted by the water enclosing it, and the handle started to turn. Angler looked up from the small piece of scroll in a start, and turned towards the door to his bedroom.
It opened quickly, and an irritated teal SeaWing ducked his head as he entered Angler’s chamber, his horns almost hitting the top of the frame. The huge SeaWing squeezed through the doorway, golden bands around each of his ankles.
Father, Angler flashed, irritated, please leave. I’m busy. I just made a breakthrough.
King Gill condescendingly examined his dragonet’s room. Angler didn’t seem to be taking well care of it. Remains of fish bones were scattered around the water, giving it a sickly taste. Angler himself didn’t look too good either — his milky-green scales were dull, with grime between the cracks, and his ribs were barely visible, far too thin for a SeaWing prince. In the center of his room, where Angler was now, dense rocks and pieces of metal were holding waxed scrolls to the ground, with black claw-scratched notes resting beside them. More scrolls were piled up to the side of the room.
Angler himself stood with his wings clenched in, his neck hunched over as he read one of the numerous pieces of scrolls. He growled quietly. 
Gill growled back. You weren’t at the hatching today. Everyone in the Royal Family was there but you.
As I said, I was busy, Angler snapped. No one missed me. None of my brothers care for me anyways, I’m too old. How many are there now? Seventeen, myself not included?
There were eighteen. Twenty-one now. Do you even know their names?
Do you? Angler laughed back. And why should I care? Mother sure doesn’t.
Turtle, Cerulean, and Octopus.
Did you pull those out of Mother’s scrolls, or was it the other way around? You’ve got twenty-one other sons to go bother, why do you pick on me? Go bother one of the others, or see if you can keep Mother from Coast for a second.
Gill bared his teeth, barely holding back a roar of anger. Princess Coast was murdered two weeks ago!
Angler looked over towards his father, trying to put on a expression of grief. I’m sorry for your loss. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was reading this scroll.
Gill swished his tail from side to side, creating a wave of bubbles across the room. It’s been eleven years, Anglerfish! Rift is dead, and you need to come to terms with that. You can’t just live out the rest of your life in this dumpy room. You’re a prince, and my eldest son. You should be doing princely things, like . . .
Like fighting in the war? I’ll pass. Anyways, you’re wrong. Angler glanced down to his scroll quickly.
Gill shook his head. No, I’m not. Dragons just die sometimes. That’s just how this world works, and you have to move on, and create your own life. He’s not the only one. Coast, Orca, Tempest, Seahorse, Torrent . . . it just happens.
I’ve come too far to believe that, Angler scoffed. Look at this letter! He grabbed the scroll he was reading, and shoved it towards his father. See, read right here! It sa— 
Gill roared and swiped his paw forward, ripping the letter from Angler’s claws with a tearing noise, throwing the pieces to the ground. No one wants to hear your stupid conspiracy theories anymore!
Angler quickly rushed towards the ripped letter. Gill swing his tail in a circle as he turned around, creating a wave that uplifted some of the rocks on the floor, disorganizing the collection of scrolls and papers Angler had carefully placed.
Gill turned. I’ve had enough of this.
As Gill left the room, Angler got to work setting things in their positions again. As soon as he was done, he took the two pieces of the scroll Gill had ripped, and placed them together, using his talons to pin them. He started to read it again, this time able to finish the entire thing without interruption:
My dearest Diamondback, I apologize that I have been unable to write to you until this point. Queen Blister does not allow us to communicate back to the Sand Kingdom, and just by writing this, my life may be in grave danger. So that this message isn’t traced back to me if found, it is unsigned, but the phrase ‘a finished tail of an IceWing’s tail’ should both warm your heart and verify my identity. Do not try to write back, for both my safety and yours.
I hope that the war has not gotten the best of you, and that our dragonet is safe. While the physical rift in our relationship has only widened, I feel like our feelings for each other will never die. This is no place for a dragonet, but I have recently learned that Queen Blister has been most successful in her ventures, quite fortunately. The war seems to be coming close to an end, and it appears that the SeaWings will be our fine allies for many years after. Hopefully, the domestic issues that Burn has caused will be healed, through violence or through a more powerful alliance.
I shouldn’t feel any need to remind you, but the Scorpion Den is a dangerous place. I worry for your safety. Even those who claim to be on our side may be supporting a rival queen. It is clear that Blaze’s IceWings are especially dangerous, and her allies, hidden in darkness, might kill you at a notice’s glance. There will be no truly peaceful resolution to this war or any future ones, which is why Queen Blister has been treating us all so well.
I came up with a few suggestions for names of our dragonet, but I’m still unsure as to what exactly we’ll plan on calling her. I may be here for a while longer, so do not plan on waiting for me. My cousins are dull, but loyal. Go to them, and make sure they get the same advice I’ve given you in this letter. Cold and shadowy traitors to Queen Blister are all around, and while they pretend that they don’t want to be violent, they’ll hurt both you and our dragonet if they realize my importance to her. I have recently been promoted to a great position, and report directly to her, so I will hopefully be able to provide future warnings, if things do not go sour. There is possibility that the evil is directly in our midsts, when we thought we were allied with good dragons, so I would avoid there.
Angler had already figured out the name of the SandWing who’d sent the letter from a previous message in the same clawscript he’d found. It was Quill, like the quills on the end of an IceWing’s tail. And Diamondback, the SandWing he was writing to, didn’t have a dragonet, at least according to the records he’d found. So whatever this message was trying to say, it was written in code. ‘Cold and shadowy traitors’ — IceWings and NightWings? Some warning about that? Queen Blister was secretly forging an alliance with the IceWings and NightWings? It seemed strange, but possible.
The entire message seemed out-of-place, and strange, but the part which grabbed Angler’s attention was the phrase ‘the physical rift in our relationship.’ It had to be referring to Rift. Quill wouldn’t have included it otherwise. Angler had been skeptical of Blister’s story of Rift’s death since the start. Could he still be alive somewhere?
Angler placed the pieces of the letter down, and turned to a few long scrolls, next to each other. The first was a list of Blister’s troops consisting of a name from each SandWing in her army. The next scroll over was a more recent documentation of battles that had occured, with a record of dragons that had participated in them. Sorely lacking, but it was something. Angler had scratched faint tallies on the first scroll, one for each battle the SandWing had participated in, and had found something strange — there were a ton of SandWings without tallies, much more than the registered death count and the errors in the documentation. Blister had hundreds, maybe thousands, of troops that had never participated in a battle.
Each of these dragons had their names circled, and were written down by Angler in a separate scroll. While a number of these he’d been able to explain as desertion or casualties, many of these dragons had little record of existence since the war had started. They had disappeared off the face of Pyrrhia. Quill was one of these.
Angler turned to a separate scroll, this one a letter he had found addressed from Blister to Angler’s mother, suggesting that Coral having her own soldiers spy on each other to promote loyalty, and explaining how it had worked very well for Blister. Alongside it was a half-finished response from Queen Coral, rejecting the idea in slightly unflattering language. While the letter itself was uninteresting, it was important for one reason — Blister had given an example of a soldier, Warthog, that she had used this technique on. And Warthog was on the list of mysterious SandWings who had never participated in a battle.
Another letter caught Angler’s eyes, one of the oldest in his collection. A draft of a letter that Queen Coral had sent Blister, a couple of years before Rift’s death, towards the start of the war.
Dear Princess Blister,
I would be glad to provide temporary land in the Sea Kingdom during our alliance, although I should mention that we are on somewhat short supply of empty land. It would be helpful to provide more information as to what the purpose of this land would be, and if it would need to be arable or not.
Signed,
Her majesty, Queen Coral.
Angler had looked for more letters following the exchange, but there didn’t appear to be any. He had even asked his mother about it. She barely remembered the conversation, but thought that she might have remembered telling Blister during a Summer Palace visit that she could use one of the islands in the east of the bay. Not very helpful, it was called the Bay of a Thousand Scales for a reason, but it was a start.
Angler pulled out a map of the Sea Kingdom, numerous islands with small lines dragged through them. He’d find Rift one day, but until then Blister would just have to wait for Angler to drag her corpse down to the bottom of the seafloor.
----
Kite awoke from her dreams to the acrid smell of smoke. It took a few moments for it to wake her, as the SkyWing covered her snout with her wings, then flapped them to push away the smell. But when she finally had regained consciousness enough to realize what was happening, she raised her head in alarm, her eyes wide open. “Fire,” she whispered.
Kite burst through the doors of her small house, and looked in horror at what was happening. Fire had spread through the village, catching every piece of wood in sight alight. Kite looked upwards, towards the peak looming above them. The dry fields of corn were aflame, being eaten alive by the fire. “No,” Kite stated, almost unable to believe it.
She looked around at the village, the fire slowly spreading towards her location. Dragons were starting to panic, running from their houses as they realized what was happening. “FIRE!” Kite roared, trying to wake up any SkyWings still asleep. “FIRE!”
This wasn’t supposed to happen. There were precautions in place. No dragonet could have done this accidentally. Were they under attack? Kite scanned the area, but it didn’t look like it. She turned to the first SkyWing who got near her, grabbing him by the wing. He turned towards her. Kite knew him. Sparrow. He was trustworthy.
“Get everyone organized and safe first,” she ordered him, drawing the attention of a few other SkyWings. “Keep calm. Try and salvage what you can, but don’t put anyone at risk. I need to find Bobcat.”
Before Sparrow could respond, Kite took off, flying towards the edge of the village, at the base of where the plateau met the mountain. Her heart raced as she saw the flames from above. The sloped roofs of the village center, Bobcat’s residence, all on fire, sending smoke up into the sky above.
Kite quickly dove down in a panic, towards the small entrance of the ancient building. Fire was all around it, pieces of the house starting to crumble and fall beneath it. Kite didn’t care. Her scales would protect her. She needed to get her great-grandmother to safety.
As she started towards the burning doorway, she felt talons grasp around the end of her tail. Kite whipped around to see a young SkyWing, barely an adult. Glide. She seemed out of breath, and desperate. “Don’t go in,” Glide pleaded.
“I have to,” Kite growled back, then turned back to the building. As she was about to walk forward, she suddenly heard a rumble. The pillars keeping it up started to crack, as the fire removed the structural support. Kite jumped backwards as the whole house collapsed on itself, spraying embers into Kite’s scales. After a burst of flame, all that was left was a heap of burning rubble.
Kite stared on in shock for a moment, her eyes glazed over. “I’m sorry,” Glide whispered, though it was like Kite didn’t hear. Bobcat, her great-grandmother, her greatest friend, the SkyWing who had raised her, made Kite who she was, who made the entire village what it was today. Dead.
Kite shook her head back and forth. She could grieve later. Right now, the SkyWings needed safety and leadership. She turned towards Glide, away from the embers of the house, joining with the fields of crops behind it. “How did the fire start?” she growled.
“I-I-I’m not sure,” Glide stammered. “Goat was there, and she was holding something, and there was a dragonet, her dragonet.”
“Goat doesn’t have any dragonets,” Kite answered. “She’s forbidden from having any, since—”
Kite gulped in fear as she realized what must had happened. Goat was forbidden from having dragonets because she was Magma’s niece, which meant that she could potentially hatch a dragon with firescales. Too much fire, stolen from the belly of their sibling, burning everything their scales touched. It must have done this.
“Where’s Goat?” Kite seethed, staring directly into Glide’s eyes.
Glide pointed a talon up towards the sky, towards the west. Kite followed it with her eyes, until she saw a dark figure in the distance, lit by the moons. For a moment, Kite thought it seemed too bulky to be a dragon, until she realized that the dragon seemed to be holding some sort of platform beneath her, carrying something on it. Goat, escaping with a dragonet.
“Where’s the dragonet? Does Goat have it? Were there two? Which one does she have?”
“I don’t know,” Glide whimpered. “She woke everyone nearby up. She was crying and yelling, and she was holding something small and blackened, it smelled like burnt flesh. It might have been another dragonet, I’m not sure. It might have had yellow scales but it was hard to see. Then there was another dragonet, and everything was on fire and there was more yelling and screaming but this time from other dragons. Are you going to go after her?”
Kite considered it for a second. Go after Goat, avenge Bobcat’s death, make sure that any firescales dragonet was dead. She glanced back towards the crops, then over to the flaming village. The other SkyWings needed her right now. This was the duty Bobcat had given her. Everyone’s safety was her first priority. “No. Go around and make sure everyone is awake and away from their homes. If there’s any food you can salvage, do it, but don’t put your life at risk.”
Glide quickly shook her head up and down, then spread her wings open, flying the short distance back towards the village. Kite opened her wings, feeling the wind picking up beneath them, then gave a quick glance back towards the village center, now a smoldering piles of wood. She desperately wanted to go and look for Bobcat, but knew that there was no chance of her survival, and she’d just be putting herself at risk. She couldn’t do that — she was in charge now, and her village couldn’t lose two of its leaders in one day. They had a long winter coming ahead of them, and they needed her. And if Magma had been born anew, ready to avenge her death, everyone needed all the protection they could get.
----
Torrent walked through the alleys of Crosswinds, a thick shawl wrapped around his wings and body. His snout peeked out from it, and he cautiously looked around, trying to avoid any dragons. The dim moonlight shone on the edge of his tail, illuminating his cerulean scales faintly.
He heard a faint whimper, and looked down, beneath the cloth. A small dragonet rustled in his foreclaws, awakening from her sleep. Torrent felt a pang of guilt seeing Midnight. He had worked to protect Pyrrhia from animuses, but hadn’t even been able to protect his family. He didn’t deserve a dragonet.
Making sure that no one was watching, the SeaWing quickly walked out from the alleyway towards a run-down house. Some of the bricks looked like they had been scorched. A poster fluttered in the wind, hung up the house next door. “Go Home, Swamprats.” Torrent had wanted to take Midnight to Possibility instead of Crosswinds, but it wasn’t like there was much of a choice. He couldn’t trust the Talons anymore. They had connections to Crystal through Clarity, and if she ever came back to finish the job, that would be where she’d look first. Here, Midnight would be hidden.
Torrent knocked on the door to the house. Midnight whimpered quietly. Hopefully, this was the right place. The door creaked open a crack, and the beady black eye of a SandWing poked through it. “Who is it?” a voice quietly croaked.
“It’s Torrent,” the SeaWing responded. He lifted the shawl up slightly, showing Gazelle his blue scales.
“Torrent?” Gazelle asked, a hint of confusion in her voice.
“Yes,” Torrent replied. “From two years ago? Erosion?”
“Erosion,” she hissed, a pang of anger in her voice. “Oh, you’re that Torrent,” she answered, suddenly recalling who he was. “Come on in.”
The ancient SandWing carefully opened the door, allowing Torrent to enter, as he still carried Midnight. He set the dragonet down, and she curiously looked around dingy house. There wasn’t much there, not that there was room for Gazelle to have much.
“How many Torrents do you know?” Torrent snorted, carefully watching Midnight as the young dragonet started to walk around the small room. She waddled over towards Gazelle, sniffing the SandWing.
Gazelle smiled as she saw Midnight, and reached out a talon, which Midnight quickly grabbed onto. “Just you, I think. I’m sorry if I seem distant, my memory has been faltering a bit lately. Erosion used to do something to help with it, but her magic is gone now.”
Torrent frowned. He’d heard of this, how occasionally the most elderly of dragons could start to lose their memories. He wondered how old Gazelle really was — he knew she’d been with Erosion for a long time, maybe her life had been extended somehow. Was she over a hundred? Maybe more? How many Brightest Nights had she seen?
“Is she yours?” Gazelle asked Torrent, looking over at Midnight.
He nodded.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Gazelle tsked. “It’s not safe, especially with her.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Torrent responded. “I thought some of the dragons might recall me from two years ago. You sent us a letter, remember? We became local heroes or something? Don’t dragons recognize you?”
Gazelle thought for a minute. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m just another SandWing here.” She turned back towards Midnight. “She’s cute. She’s yours and the NightWing, right? Night-something? How is she doing?”
Torrent went stiff. “She’s dead.”
Gazelle’s eyes opened wide. “Oh,” she apologized sunkenly. “My, er, condolences. Is Griffin . . . ?”
“He helped with it,” Torrent growled, his voice a rumble of anger.
Gazelle uncomfortably turned back to Midnight, who was cautiously checking out Gazelle’s barb.
Torrent remained stiff for a minute, an awkward silence ensuing between the two. He broke it with a sigh. “I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Anything,” Gazelle answered. “I’m so sorry. You must need all the help you can get.”
“I want you to take care of Midnight.”
Gazelle froze for a moment, and Midnight pounced at the tip of her tail. Gazelle swiftly swung it out of the way, making sure the young hybrid wouldn’t accidentally puncture herself with Gazelle’s barb. “Midnight,” she whispered. She uncertainly gazed at Torrent. “I-I suppose I can try. Why . . .?”
“I can’t protect her. I don’t know how to raise a dragonet. And I don’t know if she’ll be safe around me.” Torrent looked down towards Midnight again, a guilty expression on his snout. “Thank you, so much. I’ll make sure to visit. I promise I’ll repay you somehow.”
Torrent looked down into his satchel, and dug through it for a few seconds, before bringing out a small bracelet of glittering white pearls. He placed it in Gazelle’s talons, the SandWing taking it unassuredly, her talons shaking.
“It’s the last of the jewelry I brought from the Sea Kingdom,” Torrent explained. He grimaced, and gave Midnight a quick glance back. “Just please, make sure she never ever uses her powers.”
“Powers?” Gazelle asked in surprise. “You mean . . .” she tapped a claw to the scales beneath her horn.
“No,” Torrent answered. “She can’t read minds. I need to make sure she doesn’t lose her soul.”
“She’s an animus?” Gazelle asked, her scales stiffening slightly. She turned down to the dragonet, playfully weaving around one of Gazelle’s back paws. The silly dragonet was suddenly far more intimidating.
Torrent nodded. He reached into his satchel again, and pulled out a small piece of folded parchment paper, a name scrawled on its surface. “Speaking of animuses, Stonemover asked me to give this to you. It’s a letter he’s been meaning to send for a while. He wanted it sent to the Scorpion Den, to a dragon named Thorn.”
Gazelle took it quietly. “Of course. But . . . you’re sure?”
Torrent looked away shamefully. “Yes.” He looked back at Midnight, then walked over towards the exit of the house, flipping the shawl back over his horns. For a moment, he thought about turning back, giving his daughter a final glance, but decided better of it. “Goodbye,” he muttered, as he opened the door.
As Torrent started to leave, Midnight, who was still curiously checking out Gazelle, noticed. The dragonet started to crawl after her father, but was too slow. As the tip of Torrent’s tail moved from the entryway, he shut the door behind him, preventing his dragonet from leaving.
Torrent looked out onto the empty night streets of Crosswinds, his dagger dangling from a sheath at his side. It was better this way. Midnight was safe from him, and Crystal, and anyone else who could hurt her. He reached into his scrollcase, and pulled out the map Orca had made, so many years ago.
“What would you think, Orca?” he whispered to the air. “Is this what you wanted?”
He turned his head down to the map, the ink glittering in the moonlight. There were four blotches remaining on it. Agate Mountain — Darkstalker. Jade Mountain — Stonemover. Crosswinds — Midnight. And now, a new one . . .
Torrent let out a roar of anger, and stabbed two claws into the scroll, tearing holes in the waxy paper. He swung his paw through it, ripping two large gashes in the map. Enraged, Torrent grabbed onto the parchment, almost tearing it in two as one of the gashes expanded. He flung it into the distance, but the wind caught ahold of it, blowing it into the house next to Gazelle’s. Torrent grabbed his dagger from its sheath, and threw it at where the map was, the steel clattering against the bricks. It wasn’t be much use. It would just come back.
“I don’t care what you want, Orca!” Torrent roared into the night. “You’re dead! You’ve been dead for ten years! Ten long years!”
Torrent took a deep breath, attempting to calm himself. Orca was long gone, and there were no such things as ghosts. She wasn’t coming back, but her stupid enchantments could still affect those still living.
Torrent was done. Done with everything. Done with animuses, and eggs, and other dragons. Even if the fourth blotch was in the Sea Kingdom, and his parents had finally had another animus dragonet, Torrent could care less. If the rest of his family got massacred — the rest of the Sea Kingdom even — it wasn’t any of his business. He wasn’t going back to the Deep Palace. Ever.
Ten years ago, he had told Orca that he wouldn’t kill her. And even if Torrent now had a second animus sibling, that still stood. No more dragons would die at his blade.
----
Fly. Fly. Fly. It was all Griffin could think, as he soared from Jade Mountain, Torrent and Nightreader’s egg in his shaking talons. The wind whipped at his feathered ears, threatening to rip the gunks of wax from them. He knew Aurora couldn’t be far behind him, but didn’t dare turn around. One small delay, and both he and the dragonet could be dead.
Griffin wasn’t sure how long he flew, unable to look back in his terror. It felt like hours had passed, as the sky darkened to the colors of midnight. As Griffin soared, the mountains turned into hills and forests, the muscles in his wings shaking as the extra weight of the dragonet exhausted him. When he was finally unsure he could keep flying on any longer, Griffin finally looked behind him. Neither Aurora nor Crystal were anywhere in sight. Had he lost them?
Griffin slowly descended to the ground, careful not to drop the fragile egg. It was shaking gently. Trees and bush covered the area. That was good. He could hide. If Aurora or Crystal caught up to him, they would fly straight past him.
Sticks and twigs poked into Griffin’s wings and flesh as he landed in the forest, catching and ripping away feathers. For a moment, Griffin was slightly jealous. Dragons had scales and leathery wings, they never had to deal with their feathers pulling out. He laughed slightly, crickets chirping over him. It was such a small thing compared to what had just happened, but being slightly irritated at Orca for not making him a dragon instead somehow made him feel a little better.
Griffin struggled through the underbrush until he came across a small tree, a little hollow inside. Too small for a dragon, but just the right size for Griffin. Placing the egg down inside, Griffin hurriedly gathered a few fallen branches, placing them up against the hollow to hide it from any dragons who approached. Specifically, Crystal and Aurora, if they came down here. He climbed inside, as the egg shook.
“It’s okay,” Griffin said quietly, doubting the dragonet inside could understand him. “It’s safe. You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you here.”
As if responding to Griffin’s words, the small dark-blue snout of a dragonet shoved itself through the eggshell, cracking it in pieces around it. The head of the dragonet inside seemed to shake and thrash, outside of its control. The egg vibrated, the dragonet struggling to get free.
“Is there something wrong?” Griffin asked, worried. Was this supposed to happen? It seemed like the dragonet had trouble controlling its movements. Suddenly, the dragonet drew its head back in, and slammed it against another side of the egg, cracking a small hole through it. It flailed its limbs around, trying to escape from the egg.
Griffin paused for a moment. Should he help the dragonet? It seemed to be having trouble getting free. Would that just hurt it more? He put two talons on part of the egg, and gently pried a piece off. The dragonet inside seemed to be a dark-blue color, with splotches of a lighter blue around its scales and wings. No gills, but webbing between his claws, and instead of glowscales, he had normal scales that looked slightly flattened. As Griffin looked closer, he noticed that while one of the dragonet’s eyes was a dark-purple, the other was a milky white, with no iris or pupil. The hybrid dragonet shook back and forth, some of his muscles tensing up and going limp. He scratched at the wall of the egg.
Griffin gently put his claws around the dragonet, lifting him up. The dragonet’s small claws scraped against Griffin, but Griffin didn’t care. He held the dragonet against his feathers. “It’ll be alright,” he whispered as tears dripped from his eyes. “It’ll be fine.” Griffin wasn’t sure of his words. The dragonet continued to violently shake. He didn’t seem at all fine, and there was nothing Griffin could do. He wasn’t sure if the dragonet would survive until morning. And then Griffin would have killed two dragonets, double the number that Torrent had.
“Ink, that’s your name, right?” Griffin asked, holding the spasming dragonet close. That was what he remembered Torrent and Nightreader choosing for this egg. “It’ll be alright, Ink. Everything will be alright.”
Griffin continued to hold the dragonet with him. He wasn’t sure when, but at some time during the night, he started to fall into a light sleep. He awoke to the sound of rustling outside the hollow in the tree.
As Griffin opened an eye, the dragonet was still shaking, though much less than the night before. A thin ray of morning light had fallen into the tree’s hollow. Griffin looked outside, unsure what had made the noise, when suddenly, a white snout poked into the tree, Crystal’s beady black eyes looking curiously at Griffin and the dragonet.
Griffin yelled in anger, pushing the dragonet off him as he extended his talons. He swiped his talons through the IceWing’s snout, drawing a ray of blue blood as she jumped back with a yelp of surprise. “I WON’T LET YOU HURT HIM!” Griffin hissed, ready to lay down his life.
“Three moons, what was that for?” the IceWing yelled back, moving her claws up to her snout and brushing away a trail of blood. Griffin looked at her closely for a minute, and realized that’d he’d been wrong. “Clarity?” he asked in confusion. “What are you . . . ?”
“See, I told you he’d be here!” the familiar voice of Fracture shouted, muffled by the branches in front of the hollow.
“Yes, you did,” Clarity growled at her mate, tongue tinged with bitter sarcasm, “I’m glad your powers have been so useful.” She turned back to Griffin, then looked over at the struggling Ink on the floor of the hollow. “Queen Glacier banished me from the Ice Kingdom.”
“What?” Griffin said, still confused. “Did she find out about the Talons?”
Clarity shook her head. “No. My sister decided to pay me a visit, and apparently had some of Glacier’s soldiers following her.”
“Crystal,” Griffin hissed, seething with rage. His feathers ruffled up. She was behind this too. Maybe that’s why she and Aurora had been lying in wait at the Talons meeting Griffin had gone to, instead of Fracture and Clarity.
“Did something happen with her?” Clarity asked.
Griffin gulped, his talons shaking. He didn’t want to tell Clarity and Fracture what had happened. What he had done. “She was at the Mausoleum when I went there. They caught me, and her animus daughter enchanted me to follow her commands. They brought me back to Torrent, Nightreader, and Stonemover, and their three eggs. They attacked, and Aurora forced me to . . .”
Griffin trailed off, though Clarity got the message. “She hurt me too,” Clarity growled, rage and hurt in her words. “My son, Polar. Queen Glacier took him from me after she met with me, and Crystal intended for it to happen. I don’t know why, but she wants to hurt us. The Talons, or maybe me personally. We’ll stop her, and even if she’s my sister, I’ll make sure we both get our revenge.”
“Our son,” Fracture grumbled unhappily.
Clarity turned to him with a hiss. “This is your fault, you know. Why didn’t you know this was going to happen?”
“I just didn’t know!” Fracture protested. “It hasn’t happened before! It wasn’t supposed to happen!”
“I’m starting to agree with Avalanche on how useless you are,” Clarity snorted.
Suddenly, Griffin felt small claws hitting against his leg. Ink was spasming again, flailing around. Griffin looked open to the dragonet, his heart racing. “Please,” he said, turning to Clarity and Fracture, “you need to help him. He’s Torrent’s dragonet.”
“Is Torrent ali . . . alright?” Clarity asked, quickly changing the word.
“I don’t know,” Griffin responded. “I barely escaped with my life. It wasn’t looking good for him when I left. I doubt it.” And even if he was, if he saw Griffin, he might just kill Griffin himself after what Griffin had done to Loresearcher.
“Griffin, can you bring out Ink?” Fracture asked.
Griffin looked down at the flailing dragonet. “Yeah.” Griffin hadn’t mentioned Ink’s name to Fracture, had he? If he knew it already, did that mean he had foreseen this? Griffin frowned. Could he trust Fracture? Still, he picked Ink’s shaking body, and brought out the small hybrid dragonet to Fracture, gently setting him on the forest floor.
Clarity looked on in shock as she saw Ink, then looked over towards Fracture. “He’s . . .”
Fracture nodded. “I know.” The green IceWing lifted his claws up to his head, and lifted his own leather eyepatch off, carefully moving the band behind his horns. Even though it was so big it covered half the dragonet’s snout, Fracture placed it over Ink’s milky-white eye, wrapping the leather band around thrice so that it wouldn’t fall off. Ink instantly calmed, as the shaking stopped. The young dragonet, exhausted, curiously looked around at Griffin and the two IceWings, unsure where he was.
“How did you know that would work?” Griffin asked hesitantly.
Fracture smiled, and opened his scaled left eyelid, the one that the eyepatch had been covering. A milky-white globe, just like Ink’s, appeared beneath it, without an iris or pupil. “Ink has been blessed with a gift like mine.”
“Blessed?” Griffin asked, skeptical. “By whom?”
Fracture shrugged his forepaws. “I don’t know. The Great Ice Dragon, perhaps? The SkyWings’ god of rebirth? But whoever gave us these powers, there is something, very, very wrong about this world, and all of us are at the center of it.”
“Something wrong about this world,” Griffin whispered, repeating Fracture’s words. He remembered the stars in Erosion’s cavern, the chills of evil he felt when going through Stonemover’s tunnels. “Fracture,” Griffin spoke, with a frown. “Did you know this was going to happen?”
Griffin looked up to the IceWing hopefully, and Fracture closed his left eye, his gently smile turning into a grim expression. He didn’t answer.
“Please tell me,” Griffin pleaded, shaking his head back and forth. “Tell me you didn’t know what Crystal was going to do. You’re my friend, right?”
Fracture averted his eyes, looking down towards Ink. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
Griffin shook his head back and forth, tears in his eyes. “You knew???” he accused Fracture. “You knew the entire time, and you let Crystal kill Nightreader and Loresearcher? You could have warned us, but you didn’t? You let them die!”
Clarity turned towards Fracture with a hiss of her anger. The green IceWing backed away slightly with a gulp. “I couldn’t warn you!” he protested. “There are powers at play much greater than you can imagine, and if I had tried, no one would have gotten anything good out of it!”
“You asked me to meet you at the Mausoleum,” Griffin hissed, “even knowing that Crystal and Aurora were waiting for me. That’s why you weren’t there.”
“Why?” Clarity growled, baring her teeth at her mate as she stepped forwards threateningly. “You told me when we met, that you wanted to use your powers to make a difference in the lives of dragons. To make everyone happier. To make Pyrrhia a better place.”
“There was nothing I could have done!” Fracture snapped. “Yes, fine, I knew. But I wasn’t allowed to interfere with it. Years ago, I made a deal, and that was part of the conditions. Calamity would have killed us all if I had tried to stop Crystal, and this all would’ve been for nothing!”
“Calamity?” Griffin growled. “Who is Calamity?”
----
A chilled wind blew past Crystal and Aurora as the two walked through the now-familiar valley leading to the Mausoleum of Queen Frost, their clawprints in the snow being quickly blown away and covered. The Mausoleum cut through the winds as the two entered the area around it, the seven ancient queens staring down at them from each of their pillars. This place still gave Crystal the chills, even after having lived here for the past ten years.
Everything hadn’t gone exactly as planned. Crystal had meant to kill all the dragonets, but had only managed to get one of them. Hopefully Calamity wouldn’t mind. She’d generally been quite successful in her missions. Selectively turning a few IceWings to stone in order to delay the Darkstone program had worked quite well, and to make things better, she was now quite infamous in the Ice Kingdom. She would have loved to have seen the look on Queen Glacier’s snout after each report.
Still, she felt bad about what she’d done to her sister. Separating her from her dragonet — it was cruel. But Fracture had gotten too bold, and had broken the terms of his agreement. He needed to get the message that he couldn’t do that anymore, at least until his inevitable betrayal. Polar would be alright. Crystal had given her nephew the healing diamond she’d enchanted.
Crystal looked back towards her daughter. The IceWing-SeaWing hybrid walked behind her, the iron band around her forearm clanking as she walked. “I’m proud of you,” Crystal smiled, a little awkwardly, “you did really well.”
Aurora paid no heed to her mother, and remained silent. Crystal knew by now not to take offence. That was just her daughter’s way of showing satisfaction. She rarely felt the need to talk more than necessary. If she had emotions about the fight with Torrent, she didn’t share them. It was how Crystal and Calamity had trained her.
Crystal turned her eyes to the Darkstone dangling at Aurora’s neck. The IceWing grimaced slightly, seeing the hemispherical scarring in Aurora’s scales behind the pendant. Something similar had happened on some of the animal test subjects Boreal had used the Darkstone on. Crystal hadn’t worn it long enough to get anything like that, but Aurora had had it on it practically the day since she hatched, and it had burned a hole in her neck, killing off all the cells around it. Crystal felt bad, and had protested to Calamity, but there was little she could do. Crystal herself wouldn’t have been able to use the Darkstone much more than she’d already had, and it would have killed her if she’d kept wearing it — Calamity had said something about animus blood being needed, and Aurora had gotten that both through her father and the amount Crystal had worn it herself. She also knew that it was more painful than Aurora had let on: the scars on the hybrid’s neck were just what could be seen on the exterior. The Darkstone poisoned the flesh, and animus magic poisoned the mind.
Crystal turned around, and walked to the doors of the Mausoleum, covered in ice. She stood still for a moment, preparing herself for what was about to happen. Opening the doors wasn’t a particularly enjoyable experience. Still, she tore her claws into her forearm, a small trickle of blue blood running from it. As it ran from Crystal’s body, the blood moved magically to the indentations in the doorway, melting the ice. When it was done, the doors were ready to open.
Crystal staggered forwards, woozy, into the Mausoleum, Aurora following behind her. The doors slammed shut, as the two entered the small area. Inside was a crystalline casket, the body of an ancient dragon preserved within. The remains of Queen Frost. Crystal snorted, and blew a quick burst of frostbreath on it. As she took a step back, the floor of the Mausoleum started to open up in front of her, revealing a passageway leading down into the system of caves beneath the Neck.
The two dragons climbed down into the tunnel beneath the floor, a chill rising up Crystal’s scales, the cold, damp air of the caves entering her lungs. The tunnel ahead led mostly down, and was so dark Crystal could barely see. Aurora was much better at this, so Crystal stood to the side, her daughter in front of her. The only light source in this part of the caverns were the occasional flashes of Aurora’s glowstripes and miniscule specks of light on side of the cave. Tiny pieces of darkstone dust. Crystal grinned. Queen Glacier would kill both her daughters to get her claws on this.
The feeling of magic permeated the air here, giving off an intense feeling of wrongness, like the cavern had just been shoved into Pyrrhia where it never should have been. Crystal wasn’t quite sure that was so poorly a way to put it either. This cavern, and those far beneath it, literally shouldn’t have been in this world. Here the three dragons who lived inside the cavern were nestled within the clutch of their enemy.
Aurora and Crystal continued down the tunnel for what felt like an indefinite period of time before it started to open up into a wider area. Suddenly, the texture of the walls changed, and a dim blue-white light started to fill the tunnel, allowing Crystal to see clearly again. The walls and floor became covered with an ice-like texture, with rigid spikes of milky-white stone extruding from the caves. Glittering white stone covered every inch of the cave, or as Calamity called it, the Crystal Caverns. Appropriate, given Crystal’s name.
Yet even after living here for much of tine years, the place still made her feel strange, although it could have just been the blood loss. It had been ten years, hadn’t it? With the animus magic permeating the whole thing, time worked strangely down here. There was this constant feeling that she wasn’t supposed to be here, that this was no place for a dragon. This wasn’t her home. It couldn’t be. For Aurora, on the other claw, she had been hatched here. The Crystal Caverns were where she belonged. Crystal could see her daughter relaxing slightly as she crossed the barrier onto the gleaming white stone, as if the pain of the Darkstone was subsiding.
The two walked further into the caverns, as it grew to the place she had seen in her dreams. The cavern opened up into a great chamber, strikingly similar to the one Erosion had created. A wide crystalline bridge spanned from end to end, above a field of sharp stone and glowing quartz beneath. Above, the dark glint of darkstone specks crowded the ceiling. Crystal and Aurora arrived at one end of the bridge, and looked down its length. At the other end was a hole in the cavern, leading deeper into the Crystal Caverns, where Pyrrhia truly ended. Calamity had warned them of going too far without him. They could get lost, and never find their way back to Pyrrhia above. Or end up far worse.
In the middle of the bridge stood the frozen corpse of a young NightWing. Starweaver. One of the four dragons who’d come down here five thousand years before, only for three to sacrifice their lives in vain. As Crystal and Aurora walked closer to the corpse, a bright light started to emanate from it. The ethereal figure of another dragon started to tear itself away from the corpse, until the floating translucent figure of a MudWing floated a few feet outside of Starweaver, gently bobbing up and down.
“You’re back,” the ghostly MudWing said, a slight smile on his snout.
Crystal politely bowed her head in respect to Calamity, even knowing he didn’t require anything of the sort from her or Aurora.
“We killed the female NightWing and the animus dragonet,” Crystal explained, “but we had complications.”
Calamity snorted. “There are always complications,” he said, “it’s what makes life bearable for me.” He glanced over at his phantasmal paw and laughed. “Although calling it ‘life’ and ‘bearable’ are vast exaggerations. Let me guess — Fracture?”
Crystal nodded. “Unsurprisingly. It turns out he gave Griffin a gift years earlier that allowed him to escape from Aurora with one of the eggs. Not her fault, of course.” She glanced back towards Aurora, who remained still as she watched Calamity.
“I know,” Calamity smiled. “Fracture’s done it before. If it’s anyone’s fault for something going wrong, it’s probably me. Definitely me. And speaking of stuff going wrong, you killed the wrong dragonet.” He swished his ghostly tail through the air, wisps of light running off it.
It took a moment for the MudWing’s words to set in. “I . . . did?” Crystal asked, confused. “The dragonet Griffin killed wasn’t the animus?”
Calamity shook his head. “Nope. That was Loresearcher. Midnight was the animus, and she’s still alive.”
“I’m so sorry,” Crystal apologized with a gulp. “Does that mean . . . ?”
“That you all are doomed?” Calamity chuckled. “Yes, but not any less doomed than usual. Don’t worry, there’s nothing to apologize for. You don’t have to worry, this isn’t that unusual. As I said — complications.”
“Do you need me to kill her?” Crystal asked. “If you know where she is, I can get rid of her easily. She might be an animus, but she’s just a dragonet, right?”
Calamity shook his head. “No. It’s too late for that. But we will need to make a few changes in our plans.” The MudWing spectre looked deep in thought for a moment. “If Midnight and Ink are the two still alive, it means Pyrrhia gets a bit more time than expected, so we’ll have to give the SkyWings a bit of extra help. Anyways, it’s fine. Loresearcher would have caused a lot of trouble for everyone had he lived.”
Calamity turned to Aurora, and made a swimming motion, floating through the air towards her. Only his right eye seemed to move as he turned. “I believe it’s around time for us to make our move on Pyrrhia. Aurora, Crystal. There’s two more dragons I need you to kill for me, but it might be a little more difficult than your last mission.”
“Just tell us who, and we’ll do it gladly,” Crystal spoke. She bowed her head, and looked towards the ground shamefully. She’d failed. Killed the wrong dragonet. It was fortunate that it wasn’t too big of a mistake, else all of Pyrrhia could have been doomed. She couldn’t fail this time.
“There’s a SkyWing queen I need you to kill for me, five years from now outside of the Caverns,” Calamity told Aurora. “A few dragons with animus magic are going to interfere a bit too much for my liking. Torrent has been quite useful to me, but he unfortunately left a couple of gaps in his work. You can keep the animuses themselves alive since they’ll be convenient to have around later, but I need the queen dead. I also need an enchanted item from her treasury. Something that’s been there for quite a while, biding its time as I’ve used it from here.”
Aurora nodded firmly.
“And me?” Crystal asked eagerly, wanting to make up for her recent failure. “Do you want me to go with her?”
Calamity shook his head. “No. Your target needs to be killed two years after hers. Not that time matters much here. In your case, I need you to take a piece of the SandWing queen’s treasure too, then kill her. In that order. I have a few special instructions for you.”
Crystal laughed. “What are you trying to do, start another War of SandWing Succession? Playing Queenmaker here?”
Calamity grinned, gleaming phantasmal teeth showing in his jaws. A bright light flashed across the glassy surface of his left eye. Real, unlike the rest of his body. The MudWing chuckled. “Something like that.”
----
Rain poured down from the sky, flooding the valleys between the mountainous expanse. Thunder crackled as what felt like one of the worst storms in years passed through the Sky Kingdom. A flash of lightning momentarily lit up the bodies of two SkyWings, resting in front of the doors leading into the SkyWing treasury.
Aurora’s first solo mission had been far easier than she had expected. With most of the SkyWings in the area fervently watching the fight on top of the of keep, the treasury was practically unguarded. Not that Queen Ruby cared too much for treasure.
Aurora stepped out from the doors, into the heavy rain as it hit against her sky-blue scales. The item Calamity had wanted was in her right forepaw. She looked down at it curiously as the blood of the two SkyWings started to run over Aurora’s claws, mixing with the puddles of water pouring down from above. Two golden chains dangled between Aurora’s talons, leading to a small smooth stone of polished amethyst, the color bright purple. Two small golden plates bent in the shape of dragon wings extended from each side of the stone. It was dusty, as if no one had touched it in decades, maybe even longer. The Eye of Amethyst, as Calamity had called it.
Aurora spread her wings, and took off in a burst from the entrance of the treasury, into the brunt of the storm. Winds whipped against her neck and wings, the Darkstone being thrown back and forth from her neck. She clutched her prize tightly in her talons. She had one more task to do before she could return to the Crystal Caverns, making the week-and-a-half journey back. Then, Calamity would move the time inside it forward, and it would be her mother’s turn.
Aurora landed on a small ledge opposite the the roof of the SkyWing’s keep, nestled beneath the peak of the mountain above. She had a direct line of sight to the dragons across the large gap between her and the plateau of the peak, but the SkyWings there were far too busy watching the challenge between Tourmaline and her mother to notice Aurora in the roaring rainstorm. The sky lit up as a burst of lightning struck nearby, sending a booming thundercrash towards the dragons.
Aurora looked down at the Eye of Amethyst, still nestled tightly in her talons. She took another one of her claws up to the scar on her neck, and winced as an aching pain jolted through her body. She brought it back down to the chain holding the Eye, and opened it up, stretching the golden chain around her horns. The Eye of Amethyst dropped from her talons, and swung from her neck, the golden chain just slightly longer than the Darkstone’s silver one. A small tingle of power and energy brushed against Aurora, her expression unfearful. Calamity had told her there was nothing to worry about, so she didn’t need to worry.
As the tingle subsided, Aurora glanced towards the two dragons fighting beneath, eyeing the fight closely. She saw Queen Scarlet roar out in anger, tipping Tourmaline onto her backside. Scarlet leaped on top of her daughter, attempting to tear her talons into Tourmaline’s face, but Tourmaline had different ideas. With her front claws, Tourmaline held her mother away from her snout, as Scarlet ruthlessly tore at Tourmaline’s forelegs. As she did this, Tourmaline started to use her back talons to rip at Scarlet’s exposed underbelly, ripping through scales and flesh as Scarlet’s blood poured down onto Tourmaline, fusing with Tourmaline’s blood in the puddles of water beneath the two.
Scarlet screamed in pain, and with a burst of energy from Tourmaline, slipped off her daughter as she stepped onto a blood-soaked rock. Scarlet fell on her backside, trying to use her huge wings to break her fall. Immediately, Tourmaline leaped from her paws, onto her mother’s exposed belly. She tore her talons into Scarlet’s neck and chest, her mother screeching in pain.
“You shouldn’t have come back, Mother,” Tourmaline hissed, spitting onto her mother’s snout, the saliva fusing with droplets of water as it ran down the black venom scars on the side of Scarlet’s snout. As the exhausted Scarlet struggled futilely, Tourmaline raised her head up in pride. The crowd around her fell silent. Aurora mumbled a few words under her breath, clutching the Eye.
Tourmaline’s talons clenched around her mother’s neck as she yelled into the crowd, “FOR THE SKYWI—” Suddenly, a blinding burst of light shot down from the sky, Tourmaline’s words were cut short as an arc of lightning sailed through Tourmaline’s head and tail, into the ground below. The sizzling smell of burnt dragon flesh filled the mountaintop. Aurora gritted her teeth and held her claws out in front of her to prevent herself from falling off the narrow ledge as pain shot from her neck through each one of her nerves, her paws shaking and her vision running blurry.
There was a moment of silence as Tourmaline’s charred body fell to the side of her shocked mother. Queen Scarlet was still for a moment, unsure what exactly had happened, before she stood up, blood pouring from her wounds. She snorted, and looked down towards her daughter’s corpse. With a quick shove, Scarlet pushed Tourmaline from the edge of the peak, and Tourmaline’s body fell into the valley below. As she hit the sound, a crack echoed up from beneath.
The crowd erupted into chaos. Some of the many SkyWings who had supported Queen Ruby during her short reign flew from the mountain, knowing it could mean execution if they remained. Aurora gaze caught on two SkyWings in the group of fleeing dragons, one a tiny dragonet, the other with steam emanating from her scales, a SeaWing quickly trailing behind them.
Aurora turned her heavy gaze towards Scarlet, the SkyWing queen still unsure exactly had happened. As she looked around, Queen Scarlet’s eyes turned towards Aurora, her odd sky-blue scales easily recognizable. Aurora locked eye-contact with the newly remade queen silently, before she spread open her wings, rain pummeling down on her leather membranes. With a leap from the cliff, wind picked up beneath Aurora as she sailed towards the west, leaving the mountaintop behind her.
From behind her, the sound of a SkyWing crying, “Long live Queen Scarlet!” reached Aurora, the chant being quickly uptaken by more SkyWings nearby. “Long live Queen Scarlet! Long live Queen Scarlet!”
Aurora didn’t bother to look back. She had done what she’d come here for, and the swinging golden chain of the Eye of Amethyst now hung from her neck, the Darkstone beside it. The SkyWings didn’t know it, but they had been part of something far greater than any of them. It was time for a few changes to be made to Pyrrhia.
To be continued in Stone Cold...
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon)
Category:Content (Lapisdragon3)
Category:Genre (Adventure)
Category:Fanfictions (Completed)
Category:Genre (Tragedy)