Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy (Rewrite)

~ Prologue ~
The copper dragon emerges from the mouth of the cave into the sunshine, which gleams as it lands on her scales. Smoke curls from their shiny surface as she unfurls her wings to take flight, with countless small, sharp, jet-black stones clutched in her arms.
Then she pauses. A puff of smoke uncoils from her nose and her blue-fire eyes trail across the peaks of gray stone in silent surveillance. The only sound is her long, thin tail lashing across the ground. She folds her wings back and draws herself forward to the edge of a rocky ledge which overlooks a plunging ravine. It’s then that it becomes clear what alerted her, as a much louder clattering sound follows the first and in the ravine below, there’s a glimpse of scales the color of desert sand.
The copper dragon intakes a sharp breath, her crescents of claws making a scraping sound against the rocks. She watches the sand-colored dragon intently as he limps slowly but steadily through the ravine, a stream winding through gravel and sandy mud. He hauls himself past a large tumble of boulders, then disappears out of sight behind them.
Pebbles clatter down off the ledge in a spray of grit as the copper dragon flings her wings open and dives down into the ravine, throwing her wings open to break her fall as she draws nearer to the ground. Smoke makes a thick shroud around her and her powerful wingbeats thump the air as she peers at a dark tunnel hidden in the side of the ravine. From inside, she can make out a glimpse of flame reflecting on pale scales. There’s a grinding sound of rock against rock and a barbed tail slips out of sight.
The copper dragon spends one more minute hovering there, staring at the tunnel. Then she whirls around and soars away.
~
The dragonets are laying around the hall, crunching on the remains of food stripped away from animal bones, their minders huddled in the corner, discussing something in tense, hushed voices, when a muffled thud comes from down the tunnel that leads to the cave entrance.
Seven heads immediately turn to the commotion. The SkyWing named Kestrel snarls. “What in the - ”
A tremendous crash shakes the cave and the distinct glow of a dragon’s flame lights up the entrance hall. A spurt of smoke bursts from Kestrel’s nose and she races towards the tunnel with the SandWing named Dune close behind her as the dragonets look on in growing fear. The sound of a brief scuffle echoes off the walls of the tunnel.
Then, only a few heartbeats later, a compact SkyWing emerges into the cavern. A fine coat of golden chain mail, adorned with rubies and amber drops, hangs sleekly off her polished, dark orange scales. A row of tiny rubies is embedded between the scales over each of her eyes, and more rubies edge the top of her enormous wings, glittering in the torch light. A circlet of gold and diamonds rest between her horns. Her bright yellow eyes, lidded and seeming to dance with flame of their own more than a mere reflection of the torches, survey the space.
“Isn’t this interesting,” she says in a purring voice. Smoke shrouds her, pouring from her nostrils in a steady stream and coiling thickly around her horns, as she paces closer to the five dragonets. They draw together on instinct and the brown dragon steps forward, spreading his wings, as if trying to protect them behind his huge, mud-colored wings.
The dark orange dragon observes him curiously. A small squeak of fear comes from the golden SandWing-like dragon as several SkyWings come storming into the central cave, gripping the writhing forms of Kestrel and Dune tight in their war-scarred, flame-colored talons. Before long, smoke is thickening every last inch of the space, making the dragonets cough. “Get him,” the queen orders with a flick of her tail.
She’s gesturing to the blue-green SeaWing crouched in the corner of the cave next to a dark blue river that cuts through the rock, his tail dangling in the shallows, petrified with his face full of terror. He whirls around and dives into the river but he’s not fast enough. SkyWing talons slam down on his tail and more of them grip his limbs and wings and he shrieks as he’s hauled back over to the rest of the SkyWings.
“Who - who are you?” demands the SeaWing dragonet, clearly trying to sound braver than she feels as she steps forward.
The dark orange dragon regards her. “I’m offended you don’t know that,” she says, pressing a talon to the chainmail over her chest. “My name is Queen Scarlet of the SkyWings, of course. I’m only the most important dragon for miles and you are in my territory.”
The SeaWing regards her with an expression on her narrow, dark blue face that’s plain to read: fear hanging on the edge of hope. “Are you going to take us out of here?” she asks in a desperate tone.
“No,” gasps the small black NightWing dragonet, his voice strangled.
Scarlet snorts smoke, then turns to her SkyWings without answering. “kill them,” she says with a decisive flick of her tail.
“No!” wails the golden SandWing. She lunges forward, only to be held back by the SeaWing, who grabs onto her tail. She struggles and thrashes, letting loose anguished cries, as the SkyWings slam the three guardians hard against the stones, forcing grunts from their snouts, and pin them down, clamping their mouths shut with their talons.
“Let them go!” the MudWing says, panicked.
Scarlet peers at him, smoke hovering around her face. “I’m doing you a favor, MudWing,” she says, “These are your captors, no?”
“No, they’re keeping us safe!” the SandWing wails.
Her protests are not listened to. The Skywings snap the neck of Dune and drop him to the ground where he lands with a heavy thud, black eyes horribly empty, wings flopping out at either side. They do the same to Webs, allowing his body to roll across the rock as it lands.
The SandWing howls. The MudWing dragonet looks on blankly, unseeing, horror making his thickset brown body go rigid.
“Don’t kill her,” Scarlet says to the SkyWings who are having trouble wrestling the thrashing Kestrel into submission. “A SkyWing of all dragons, betraying me in this way? That deserves worse than a clean, merciful death. Bring her over here,” and she holds out her talons, curling her claws.
The SkyWings bow their heads in agreement, seeming relieved that they don’t have to attempt to kill her themselves, with scratches from her wildly thrashing talons marked across their faces and scales, and they shove her, fighting every single step, over to the SkyWing queen, pinning her against the floor before Scarlet’s dark orange talons bedecked with threads of gold. Scarlet observes Kestrel while Sunny’s sobs grow more and more muffled. Then, without warning, she clutches Kestrel’s snout roughly in her talons., allowing her smoky breath to plume into Kestrel’s face. “I’ll be the last face you’ll ever see,” the SkyWing queen hisses, “That’s what you get for betrayal.”
And as the SkyWing is trapped, snarling, in place, by the countless talons of her own tribe, fighting hard but unable to escape, Scarlet rakes her gold-tipped claws viciously across her throat. The dark red dragon goes limp instantaneously, wings sagging against the stone floor.
“Kestrel!” Sunny wails.
A thin ribbon of blood unspools from the jagged wounds on Kestrel’s neck, spreading across the unyielding gray rock. Her eyes slide shut as her breathing grows shallow. Scarlet gives a flick of her tail and the surrounding SkyWings release Kestrel, allowing her body to drop to the ground, where it slackens, barely stirring.
Scarlet stretches out her talons, now stained delicate pink with blood, and turns to the five dragonets. Only one year old each, gazing, rigid with shock, at their SkyWing savior. “As for you,” she purrs, letting out a steady stream of white smoke, “How would you feel about finally being free…?”
Part One
In the Sky Kingdom
~ Chapter One ~
Fire-colored Dragons
The IceWing’s pale blue scales are the color of sky reflected in the snow on the distant mountain peaks. His eyes are slightly darker blue and glittering with malice. Extra horns like a ruff of icicles stand out around his head. A long claw scratch from some former battle has barely begun to heal, with dried blood still sticking to the scales around it. He hisses, darting a deep blue, forked tongue between his icicle-sharp teeth.
Clay faces him from across the arena, breathing hard as blood unspools from a scratch on his neck. The tip of his wing is stinging from the IceWing’s freezing breath. He can see beads of silvery liquid dripping through the IceWing’s glacier-blue scales, mingling with dark blue IceWing blood. The liquid the color of midnight stains Clay’s claws and spatters the gritty sand, turned warm by the sun that blazes down from overhead.
“Come on, finish him already!” calls Scarlet from the balcony above, her gold chain mail jingling as she does. The crowds sat in the tiers around take up the chant, words rising into one overwhelming roar.
Fjord races at Clay with his front talons outstretched, gleaming in the sunlight, and Clay barely dodges in time. Fjord’s long, whip-thin tail snakes around and whacks Clay across the face, momentarily blinding Clay. Instinctively, he lashes out with his front talons, aiming for the healing scratch across Fjord’s neck. He makes contact: his claws snag in the wound and he tears with all his might. Blood spatters Clay’s scales, sticky and dark blue, and Fjord reels backwards with a howl, his steel-bound wings beating at the air. In that moment, Clay makes his strike, swinging his talon with its full weight at Fjord’s skull, connecting with a ringing sound of impact that echoes deafeningly across the sand. 
Fjord snarls with anger as he stumbles back, sinking onto his haunches. He’s breathing hard, huffing through his teeth, dazed and bleeding badly. It’s time to make the final blow, Clay knows it. But he can’t help hesitating, scratching at the mark Fjord’s serrated claws made in his scales, feeling the blood ooze free, the adrenaline pounding in his head. The same protest rises up in him even now that it’s been so long. I don’t want to kill him. But he knows there’s only one way the battle can end. 
It’s kill or be killed. 
Clay’s tail brushes the sand and his talons kick sand up into the air in a pale arc as he flings himself at Fjord. The IceWing, dazed by Clay’s blow to his skull, doesn’t react fast enough, snapping his head towards Clay too slowly, and Clay manages to grab his snout between his claws, muffling his deadly breath. He clamps Fjord’s jaws shut as the IceWing’s teeth hiss with freezing air that can’t escape, and lashes out with his muscled back legs, slamming his back talons into Fjord’s throat and tearing. 
Fjord’s muffled howl of pain abruptly cuts off and Clay staggers back, talons dripping blood, as Fjord collapses to the ground with a heavy thud, bound wings flopping against the sand, body going limp. Clay turns away from the sight as the crowd surges up with massive cheers. 
“Clay, the MudWing champion, everyone, is the victor of this fight!” announces Vermillion, swooping overhead. Clay allows two SkyWing guards to guide him out of the arena as the cheering like thunder shakes the ground, forcing himself not to look back at Fjord’s dead body, lying in a growing puddle of dark blue life force, unmoving on the sand.
It’s kill or be killed, he tells himself, like he always does. It’s kill or be killed.
 
~
The moment Clay is free, he spreads his wings and flies. Over the palace, over the jagged teeth of the peaks, the wind rippling through his wings, the sun blazing down in the enormous clear blue sky. He swoops down once the glitter of blue water comes into sight and lands with a thump on the mud that lies at the edge of the riverbank.
The first thing he does is plunge into the river, despite its stinging cold, allowing its currents to wash the dark blue IceWing blood out from between his claws and scales and teeth, clear the caked dust and grit from every last inch of his body, ‘till he can emerge from the surface and drag himself up onto the riverbank shivering, gasping, and clean.
It seems like it should become easier, now that it’s been five years in the Sky Kingdom, but it feels like it never really does.
But it’s what Scarlet wants, he tells himself, stretching his limbs out across the sun-warmed mud as he eases himself down. The feeling of the slippery substance spreading across the stinging injuries on his belly makes him sigh in relief and he scoops mud up in his talons to press some against the scratch Fjord made in his throat. And she saved us. If it wasn’t for her, we would still be imprisoned in those dark caves. 
The memories of the first year of his life are admittedly hazy, barely more than a talonful of remembrances of dark rooms, hazy torches, and the shouting and pain inflicted by a dark red female SkyWing, but thanks to Scarlet’s frequent recountings, he knows what happened to him and the other dragonets five years ago: they were being held prisoner in a cave under the Claws of the Clouds Mountains by cruel dragons who wanted only to take advantage of them and hurt them… until Scarlet came along and saved them out of the compassion in her heart.
The first year of Clay’s life was only darkness and pain. How could he possibly be so ungrateful to the dragon who rescued him by starting protests or even trying to escape like Tsunami so often mentions? He couldn’t hurt Scarlet like that when she’s done so much for him.
He finishes his mud nap as the sun is setting along the horizon and flies back to the kingdom with mud drying on his claws and in the seams of his scales, caking into grit that crumbles away in the wind, swooping down to snag a goat that he sees foolishly standing on an exposed, grassy mountain ledge as he passes by it. As he passes over a ridge of peaks, he sees Scarlet’s grand palace, the heart of the SkyWing kingdom, emerge fully into view, as breathtaking in the setting sun as it was the first day he saw it, stretched across the mountaintop, sparkling with hidden gold and glorious in its sweeping, grand size and sheer breadth.
It’s beautiful, but more than that, it’s home.
He swoops closer and hovers there, beating his wings to stay afloat, just admiring the sight of it as he often does. It’s carved into the gray-and-black rocks of the peaks, consisting of stone towers, turrets, and spires piercing the sky. Half of it is inside tunnels and caves while the other half is open to the sky and bristling with defenses. The palace is busy as usual, the air surrounding it thick with fire-colored scales and powerful beats of enormous wings as dragons fly every which way, from tower to tower, coming in with reports, sailing out with messages. More fire-colored dragons crawl across the mountain face, busy at work even now as the sun is setting, digging and blasting out new palace extensions with fire, covering themselves with thick layers of gray and brown stone dust. 
Next to it, of course, is the impossible-to-ignore arena, a bowl of rock like an empty lake, with sand at the bottom and sheer walls. Above the walls are the rows of benches, balconies, and caves from where spectators watch the action. Surrounding the arena are the hundreds of rock spires like dozens of upright, bristling spears, spread out in a huge circle. Each rock spire contains a dragon trapped at the top, thin metal clamps pinning the outer edges of each of their wings against their bodies. Every single one, Scarlet’s prisoners.
Most of them, prisoners of war.
When Clay first heard that phrase, he didn’t fully realize what it meant. He had just been freed from under the mountain, a one-year old dragonet brand new to the world, and he had never heard of the SandWing War of Succession, had never seen the piles of burning bodies. He didn’t know yet about SandWing royal conflict transformed into a world-wide battle. It’s safe to say he understands it, now, though, as he faces down battle-scarred dragons in the arena and sees the bodies burned and smoking in the ravine.
Clay can’t help his gaze trailing over the prisoners, bound and miserable, and he remembers it all too well, the days when he was one of those prisoners, too: he can recall to this day the feeling of the sharp clamps digging into the membranes of his wings, the way looking over the edge made him feel ill.
But then Scarlet realized our value and now we’re honored guests, Clay thinks, pushing the memory away. He throws his wings wide, unbound by the harsh metal clasps, and swoops across the palace, angling around the SkyWings busy at work. As he does, a whiff of smoke enters his nose, making him cough on its acrid scent, and an awful shudder passes through his wings as he realizes the source: two SkyWings have just carried the corpse of an unknown crimson dragon to the ravine where the remains of the war fatalities are dumped, and set ablaze to the body, causing a thin spire of dark gray smoke to trail over the kingdom. Clay can’t help but watch with a low, sinking pit in his belly as the two SkyWings set fire to the body and hover for a moment over the smoke, their wings just brushing against each other, before wheeling and flying away.
Leaving the body to blaze down into ashes and singed bones.
It’s impossible for Clay not to think about Fjord, his body certainly treated with much less ceremony than that, dumped somewhere, surely, to rot, a once beautiful, glimmering, proud dragon. A dragon who had family and friends who dared to hope that maybe he would come home.
It’s part of the war, he tells himself, shaking his wings and tearing his gaze away from the ravine. It’s necessary. 
He wheels away and continues on his flight over the palace. It’s impossible not to notice, he thinks to himself, the way the war has slashed this kingdom with sharp claws. The collapsed towers and the scorch marks along several walls stand out ugly and stark against the glamour.
Will it ever end? He battles a vague sense of despair many days, seeing the pile of bones grow higher and higher, watching more and more prisons shackled atop the gray stone spires. 
So many dragons seem to be holding out for the mysterious prophecy as their way of keeping hope alive amidst the darkness, yearning for it to come true and save them: "Just two years," they say desperately, "And the dragonets of destiny will be here to save the day." But Clay isn’t entirely convinced anymore, as much as Sunny is resolute, that these saviors truly will ever show up to save them, nor that if they ever do, they will really be able to make a difference.
And besides, by then, it will be too late. 
How many dragons will Clay have killed under his claws before the war is brought to an end?
He squeezes his eyes shut before opening them again. His thoughts are always darker on the days of the arena battles.
At least I’ll get to see the others soon. That thought manages to considerably brighten his dreary mood and he quickens his flight.
Emerging over the far edge of Scarlet’s kingdom, more forested peaks come into view, along with the glimmer of the sea. But Clay doesn’t continue all the way to the forest, instead, he wheels sharply in the sky and banks down towards his and the dragonets’ special place.
They’re already there, he can see them as he grows closer, specks of four unique colors that become more and more distinct the farther down he swoops, facial features and sizes and markings. He soon lands on the rocky mountain ledge that overlooks the palace, from where the peaks of even the highest towers are visible: the chimney of the crematorium, billowing smoke, and the lookout area for the guards near the outer wall of the palace, where several fire-colored guards are currently gathered now, angled to watch for attacks from IceWings or SandWings.
“Clay!” Sunny jumps to her feet and jumps right at him, throwing her arms around his neck. He beats his wings against hers in greeting and presses his nose briefly against the top of her head. “Hey, Sunny.”
The small dragonet’s scales are bright golden-yellow - an unusual color for a SandWing, whose primary colors are dusty like desert sand - and appear like rippled sunshine. It’s rather difficult to distinguish her as a SandWing at first glance for many reasons aside from her scales, as her eyes are dark green like forest leaves rather than the usual solid black color of a SandWing, and her tail lacks the venomous barb of normal SandWings, curling into a harmless point. The only way to tell is to get close to her, where in close proximity, it becomes obvious that she radiates heat from her scales just like the rest of her tribe. Clay can feel this sunny, desert heat now, as her golden scales press against his own. When she opens her wings, dark speckles are visible on the undersides, and a few are visible running along her neck and the base of her tail. 
“Hey, Clay,” Tsunami thumps her tail against his side as he releases Sunny. Unlike Sunny, who looks so unique compared to the rest of her tribe, Tsunami is a true SeaWing from nose to tail-tip. She has deep, royal-blue scales like sapphires that shimmer like cobalt glass in the sunlight and contain hidden, pale, emerald-green flecks underneath them, Her eyes are translucent green and her wings are azure, the color of the sea, with starbursts shaped like webbed talon prints concealed on the undersides. Her form is sleek and elegant and her thick, powerful tail, the one all SeaWings have, is sprawled to her side.
Starflight, his nose buried in a scroll as usual, looks up briefly to wave a wing in Clay’s direction. His scales, true to the name of his tribe, are midnight-black, with glints of purple and deep blue in them that come out when the sunlight strikes them just right. Compared to powerful Tsunami, he’s skinny, with sinewy shoulders and a narrow space between his wings. His claws are black and his snout is crinkled in its perpetually worried expression. The scattered silver scales on the underside of his wing glitter just like fractured light in the night sky, spraying outward in a pattern not unlike a splash of water.
Clay waves back and beams at Tsunami, then at Glory, who yawns in response. “Hello,” she says, sounding bored as ever. She’s without a doubt the prettiest of all the dragonets, and possibly the prettiest dragon Clay has ever seen. She was the only color that existed in the first year of the dragonets' lives. Her eyes are as green as emeralds and her color-changing scales, the trademark of her tribe, the tropical RainWings, are dazzling. She has soft wings, feathery ears, and a slender body, with a long, thin tail. The sunlight shimmering on her scales makes whorls of violet drift through clear sky-blue.
“So, how were everyone’s days?” Sunny asks brightly as Clay settles himself down on the sun-warmed rocky ledge and places the goat down in front of his talons, his mouth watering.
“Boring,” Tsunami answers, crunching down loudly on the last few bites of a cow. “No new visits to the SeaWing Kingdom at all,” her dark blue tail lashes against the stone, indicating her frustration.
“At least you get to go home at all,” mumbles Glory, a ripple of green passing through her scales that quickly vanishes. Starflight, running his claws further down the parchment of the scroll as he reads, murmurs something that sounds vaguely like agreement.
Tsunami narrows her sea-blue gaze in Glory’s direction. “I didn’t choose my role,” she says rigidly. “So don’t blame me for it.”
Glory draws herself up, ridge flaring.
“Tsunami is right,” Clay says, reaching out to place a talon on Tsunami’s. “None of us chose our roles, but we have them now, and the important thing is, we all handle them the best that we can. Tsunami is lucky to get to see her home, but she’s also in a lot of danger. Each thing we all do comes with its own unique risks and benefits, yea?”
Glory holds Clay’s gaze for a moment, then glances away. Her ruff slackens and she huffs through her nose. “I suppose so.”
Tsunami’s gills give one last angry pulse, but she lets it go, as well, relaxing herself back onto the stone and letting her tail go still. “I was just saying,” she says with a short shrug, “No new trips today.”
“Well, you did just bring Gill back,” Sunny points out, clearly trying to sound encouraging. “That was a big deal. Queen Scarlet probably just thinks you want a rest before going back there again.”
Tsunami hesitates, then acquiesces with a grunt and buries her snout back into the remains of her meal.
Clay crunches a bite of his own and thinks about that. He would be lying if he said he’d never once been jealous of Tsunami’s chosen role as spy for the SeaWing kingdom that gave her the relative freedom to go back and forth between the two kingdoms when she chose, and opened up the chance for her to do what Clay had wanted for so long: to see her family, to get to know the culture of her kingdom, to experience her true home. But he knows it’s also crazy dangerous, trying to hide her subterfuge, her most recent task being the most risky thing she ever attempted: kidnapping Coral’s husband who was running the war effort and bringing him back to the SkyWing kingdom to be one of Scarlet’s prisoners of war, crippling the SeaWings in their war effort and devastating Queen Coral.
I wouldn’t want that risk, Clay thinks, and I definitely wouldn’t want to be forced to choose between two homes. 
“How was your day, Sunny?” he asks the gold SandWing to break the silence.
She brightens. “It was great,” she says cheerily. It’s the response she gives every single day but Clay never tires of her optimism. “I got to meet some SandWing guests that I never have before,” she reaches out to rest her tail over his and starts, “What about you - ” then stops, a guilty expression appearing on her face: clearly, she only just remembered that he had an arena battle earlier that day and she knows he doesn’t like to talk about it. She turns to Starflight instead. “How was your day?”
Clay gives her a grateful smile and returns to his goat, feeling the warmth from her scales radiate against his own.
They’re definitely not the usual assortment of dragons, the five of them: a SeaWing, a RainWing, a MudWing, a NightWing, and a… kind-of SandWing, as many describe her, yet Clay can’t imagine any other dragons as best friends. He knows they all remember the shared imprisonment that marked the early years of their life and it’s what has kept them bonded together this tight over all this time… well, that and their shared status as outsiders in this kingdom of fire-colored dragons. But as Clay gazes around at the others, vibrant Glory and stubborn Tsunami, optimistic Sunny and even scroll-worm Starflight, as always, he secretly hopes that maybe it’s more than that: that they were meant to be together.
~
A SkyWing messenger arrives as they’re finishing up their meal, summoning Clay, Tsunami, and Starflight to the throne room. All five of the dragonets spread their wings and soar over the palace, banking steeply downwards to soar in through one of the open caverns. They pass through the smoky tunnel, lit with flaming torches and the occasional skylight cut through the rock overhead and wide enough for three of them to walk side-by-side, sloping downwards deeper into the mountain.
Before long, light becomes visible at the end of the tunnel, and the roar of clattering, clanking, and chattering from up ahead grows louder and louder, until they all emerge onto a wide balcony with no railing, two levels up from the ground floor, overlooking the vast and impressive Great Hall of the palace. The balcony runs all the way around the hall in a large square. Above it, Clay can see five more levels of balconies, and above that, open sky. Everywhere he looks are fire-colored dragons, hurrying everywhere, glowing in the setting sun. Large windows are carved into the walls all the way up, so the hall is flooded with sunshine. The designs of talon prints, inlaid with gold, that run through the stone under their claws, and the gold veins that trace through the walls, branching into flames or tracing shapes like clouds in the rock, give the floor and walls the illusion of little rivers of fire running through the stone.
That goes to show how powerful Scarlet is, Clay thinks admiringly as he along with the others wait for an opening in the bustle of the hall to head across the hall. Even with all the gold lying right at their claw tips, no dragon would ever dare to steal any from her.
“Come on, let’s go,” hisses Tsunami, and she darts out into the crowd of fiery scales, following the trail of talon prints. Clay does so more slowly, gazing around the hall as he does. He’s here often enough that it’s a familiar sight and yet even after so many years, the sheer amount of dragons crowding the space with their busy, orange and red wings never ceases to amaze him. SkyWings fly from level to level, hopping across the great space and dodging wings and tails as they go. Some of them exchange small message scrolls in midair; others carry buckets of water, clean animal skins, or platters of food. Everyone seems either very busy… or if as they are trying to look very busy, Clay thinks to himself.
They reach the other end of the hall, keeping their wings tucked close to themselves to avoid confrontations with grumpy SkyWings, and Tsunami leads them confidently into Scarlet’s throne room.
The queen is seated on top of a rock column carved in the shape of clouds, staring expectantly at the dragonets as they enter. The wall opposite her is entirely open to the sky, revealing a steep drop and jagged rocks below. The gold tracery in the rocks and floor is so immense here that it’s difficult to see at first through the blaze of reflected sunshine and gives the room the oppressive heat not unlike a funeral pyre.
“Dragonets,” purrs Scarlet as they all obediently line up before her and kneel down, stretching out their wings. “Welcome. Sunny and Glory, to your places,” she gives her long, thin tail a commanding flick. 
“Okay,” Sunny says agreeably. Her scales gleam just as bright as the gold in the floors and walls as she bounces over to the golden birdcage hanging next to Scarlet’s throne and flaps her wings to fly up to it, wriggling her harmless tail inside the small, delicate shape. She curls up there with her tail flopped over her nose to watch the room.
Glory, meanwhile, meanders over to her tree: a sinuous curving shape with four branches and no leaves, carved from a single spear of pale gray marble, with a delicate silver chain dangling down the side that leashes her to the sculpture during arena battles. She loops herself over the branches, and winds her tail fully around the trunk.  A slow pulse of crimson teardrops wander through her scales, settled into shades of lovely dark gold and navy blue.
Clay tears his gaze away from her and bows his head respectfully to Scarlet as she addresses him. “MudWing dragonet,” she says in her sinuous voice, “Congratulations on putting on a thrilling fight today.”
“Thank you, your Majesty,” Clay sinks himself even lower against the gold-dappled sun-warmed stone, trying to focus on the way the heated metal blazes against his scales and not on the memory of Fjord’s throat tearing under his claws and his anguished scream cutting off.
Scarlet turns her elegant head to Tsunami. “SeaWing dragonet,” she says, “Tomorrow you will be fighting Gill of the SeaWings.”
Tsunami’s scales turn pale. She rears up in protest, making Starflight instinctively wince and throw his wings over his head, and flaps her wings open, filling the throne room with dark blue scales. “I can’t,” she protests, “You can’t make me do that. I know him, that’s not fair - ”
“You will address me Your Majesty,” Scarlet says, her voice turning frigid in the space of heartbeats. She draws herself up, casting a shadow over the five dragonets, and glares down at Tsunami. With her eyes glittering and her enormous wings spread at her sides, she radiates a palpable aura of danger. “And you will not dare protest my orders. Just because I am merciful enough to give you the freedom to do as you wish does not mean you may act as if you are on the same level as me.”
“Your Majesty,” Clay starts, resisting the urge to throw himself in front of Tsunami in a weak attempt to protect her from the figure of pure rage and power staring her down. He bows his head low, hoping she can’t sense his fear. “Tsunami doesn’t mean to challenge your authority.”
“Yea, I kind of do,” Tsunami snaps.
Clay rests his talon on hers. “She doesn’t mean to challenge your authority,” he repeats, taking the risk of holding Scarlet’s gaze. “She’s just upset at the idea of having to fight one of her family members and emotion is clouding her judgement. She knows that you are the one truly in charge, your Majesty, and I know she respects you very deeply.”
Tsunami glares at Clay, raw anger in her gaze, then drops it to the ground with a defeated huff through her snout.
Scarlet’s wings sink back down to her side and she settles back in her throne. “You’re lucky the MudWing has some sense, SeaWing,” she tells Tsunami in a short voice, lashing her tail to curl over her talons.
Tsunami lowers her head, as if trying to conceal from Scarlet the rage that lurks in her expression.
“Your - your Majesty,” Clay says tentatively. “I understand your reasoning, but surely, you could see why this decision would cause Tsunami a great deal of pain and perhaps you could spare her the - ”
“Don’t push it, MudWing,” Scarlet says coolly, “Tsunami will fight Gill tomorrow in the arena and I won’t hear any more discussion.”
“Y - yes, your Majesty.”
Scarlet resettles herself on top of her throne. Clay can’t help but glance over at Glory and Sunny. Sunny is gripping the thin bars of her bird cage in her talons, her expression full of sympathy as she gazes across the space at Tsunami. Glory, meanwhile, looks like she slept through the whole thing. Next to Clay, Starflight is petrified, his head ducked low.
“Starflight,” Scarlet barks suddenly, making the small black NightWing dragonet jump. “Any progress in your powers?”
“N - no, your Majesty,” Starflight stammers, bowing so low that he almost topples over his front talons. “I haven’t seen any more progress recently. But I’ve been under the stars every single night - ”
Scarlet flicks her tail to silence him. “I want progress soon, NightWing,” she tells him, ruby-encrusted brows arching.
“Y - yes, your Majesty.”
“The three of you can go now,” Scarlet tells them, letting out a faintly disapproving sniff.
Tsunami takes the lead, storming out of the space with her thick tail slithering across the gold-patterned stone behind her, and Clay hurries to follow her, along the trail of gold talon prints and down one of the narrow tunnels that branch off the main hall, leading to their sleeping caves. Starflight, meanwhile, flies upwards, to rest on his perch that’s open to the night sky.
“Sorry, Tsunami,” Clay whispers to her as they head down the torch-lit tunnel, voice echoing off the stone walls.
She sighs, making her gills flutter. “It’s fine,” she says, “You tried your best. I appreciate that,” she twines her tail briefly in his, then disappears into her sleeping cave as they pass by. Clay heads past into his own and curls up on top of densely layered animal skins and feathers, trying to keep thoughts of Fjord and Gill and Tsunami’s hurt as much as he can as his eyes slide shut.
~ Chapter Two ~
The New Prisoner
Clay wakes the next morning to the smell of smoke, the sound of wingbeats, and a very loud voice telling him, “Clay, wake up, wake up!”
He peels his eyes open and recognizes Peril pacing back and forth on the stone floor in front of him, her long, thin tail lashing excitedly. Smoke coils from her bright copper scales, thickening in Clay’s small cave. 
“What’s going on?” he asks, pushing himself upright and rubbing at his tired eyes with the back of his talons.
“Come on!” without another word, Peril whirls around and races out of the cave. Clay hurries to follow her, unfurling his wings as he does so the tips of them brush the stone walls, and sees her copper scales ahead. What’s going on? he thinks, his brain feeling slow and muddled with sleep as his talons race, slamming painfully against the floor. His heart is racing painfully.
Peril pauses at the end of the tunnel as Clay catches up, out of breath and huffing through his nose, then throws her wings wide and soars up through the vast hall, dragons scattering every which way to avoid her deadly, smoking scales. She doesn’t seem aware of how they cling to the very edges of the halls with hatred and fear battling in their expressions as she sweeps across the vast space. Clay struggles to keep up with her, beating his wings, 
The sky is clear and blue, the air frisky and cool, and the sun dazzles on Clay’s scales as he follows Peril through one of the huge windows and angles his wings to catch the breeze, slowing to a stop next to Peril. She hovers in the sky, pouring smoke out from her nostrils, dazzling in the sunshine. As he nears her, he feels the heat from her deadly firescales against his flank - the ones that have made her so reviled by the dragons of her kingdom and feared by every dragon, the ones that press scalding, disfiguring marks into the scales of her enemies, into the scales of any dragon that she touches - except for him. Clay has never known why, but only he is impervious to her flaming touch.
“Down there!” Peril says breathlessly, and she jabs her talon at the largest of the entrance tunnels of the palace, leading directly to the vast main hall: immediately distinguished by its huge archway cut into the stone. On the small landing that extends before the tunnel, a small scuffle is taking place. Clay’s eyes widen in surprise as he sees flashing teeth amongst red scales.
“What’s going on?” he exclaims.
Peril grins wickedly, showing her perfect teeth, white and not the slightest bit stained or blunted by age or hard battle. The veins of gold running through her glimmering copper wings shimmer as they catch the light. “Scarlet found a new prisoner,” she says, “But not a prisoner of war. Basically, this SkyWing committed some crime against Scarlet a long time back and Scarlet thought she was dead but she was found recently skulking around the peaks, as if she was trying to spy on us!” Peril huffs smoke. “The nerve. So yea, she’s not going up into the arena - she’s going to be put in a special cage in the Great Hall while she awaits trial. Only really bad prisoners get put in there.”
“Wow,” Clay remarks. He’s heard of SkyWing prisoners before - it’s hardly uncommon for SkyWings to somehow displease Scarlet and get thrown up on a pillar with the rest of the prisoners of war. But he’s never heard of any special cage reserved in the Great Hall before. He’s can’t help but be curious at what this dragon could have possibly done that was so bad.
“Come on, let’s get a closer look before they go inside!” Peril says, and she dives down before Clay can respond. He feels vaguely uneasy at that idea, but he pushes it down and tucks his wings in against his body to follow her.
The SkyWing prisoner is putting up quite a fight, but she’s being forced into submission. Her wings are double-clamped, folded over twice against her sides, and the SkyWing guards around her, a team of at least five of them, have forced cuffs onto her wrists and ankles. As Clay watches, a sixth SkyWing returns, holding a length of chain in his talons, and the five SkyWings force the prisoner’s jaws shut so the sixth SkyWing can throw a chain around them and exhale flame over the two loose ends, welding them together, a bubbling mess. 
The SkyWing prisoner tries to snap but she can’t open her jaws. Smoke billows furiously from her nose, containing hints of flame, but she seems to realize that more fighting will do no good and slackens her body in surrender. Finally, Clay can get a good look at her. His very first thought is that she seems very, very familiar. Her scales are red-gold, the color of rust and flame, and her orange-yellow eyes are full of fire. She’s an enormous dragon, with giant wings, and it’s clear she’s seen some harsh battles: there’s a burn scar on her cheek, her talons are blunt, and her scales are rough and chipped.
“When did you say she committed this crime?” he asks Peril, unable to stop studying the SkyWing.
He senses Peril’s frown of confusion more than sees it. “Oh, I don’t know. I think I heard somebody say it was five years ago.”
Five years ago. Clay’s mind gives a sharp tug and at that exact same moment, he sees something on the SkyWing prisoner’s throat he hadn’t before now, concealed in the folds of the scales on her neck.
Three deep gouges, old but horribly painful just to look at all the same, marring her scales in an ugly way. Clearly, the failed remains of an attempt on her life, as scars like that could only come from a killing blow.
A flash of memory pierces Clay’s mind like a scar of burning glass: claws slashing across a dark red throat, and the growing pool of blood.
“I have to go,” he tells Peril, and he whips around and soars away.
~
His first choice would have been Tsunami, but he knows she’ll be getting ready for her day in the arena, as will Glory: having her scales polished and cleaned so she’s ready to be displayed on the balcony for the spectators, which leaves only Sunny and Starflight. It’s not a hard decision. Clay banks in the air and swoops across the palace to Starflight’s open-air sleeping perch.
Starflight is busy when Clay flaps his way down, searching through his precious scrolls, tucked away in several shelves that curl around the space. He’s muttering furiously to himself as he picks through all his scrolls. The blazing sunshine makes the jet of his scales even more stark than usual. Every few seconds, one of the silver scales on the undersides of his wings will flash.
“Starflight, I need your help,” Clay manages, out of breath. His heart is throbbing in his ears.
Starflight turns, clearly with great reluctance, clutching scrolls in both his talons. He refuses to meet Clay’s gaze, instead fixating on the ground with his wings shaking. “Can’t it wait?” he asks, audibly stressed. “I need to find my NightWing scroll so I can read the section about powers again because - ”
“I know, and I know that’s important, but - ” Clay struggles to catch his breath. “I really need you this time, Starflight, I mean it.”
Starflight worries at the edge of one of the scrolls. “Can’t you ask Sunny instead? She’s probably just socializing right now, anyways.”
“I could, but you have the best memory of any dragon I know. If anybody could possibly confirm this thing for me, then it’s you.”
Starflight’s eyes widen and he ducks his head, clearly self-conscious. “Thank you, C - Clay,” he stammers. He turns one of the scrolls over in his talons, then finally, he lets out a soft sigh. “Okay, I guess I can help.”
“Thank you. Now come on!”
Clay leads Starflight down to the hall, swooping through one of the windows, and navigates through the mess of dragons darting every which way to reach the lowest level of the balconies, where he hangs over the edge. Starflight joins him, out of breath with his wings askew, and Clay desperately scans the bottom of the hall. Then his eyes alight on what he’s looking for.
“There!” he gasps.
Starflight’s gaze follows his to the SkyWing prisoner, trapped under a metal grid like a pinned squirrel. She’s seized the bars and is rattling them angrily, adding even more clatter to the usual clamor, but nobody glances at her.
“Whoa,” Starflight breathes.
“Am I right?” Clay turns to Starflight, his voice taking on a begging tone. He can’t remember the last time he’s cared about something as much as he does about this - if he ever has, in his whole life. “Is that - ”	
Starflight presses his front talons over his head and blows out a long, uneven sigh. “Yes,” he says weakly, “That’s Kestrel. Our old captor.”
~
Clay rejoins Peril on Scarlet’s balcony, the largest of the balconies that jut from the caves overlooking the arenas. Scarlet hasn’t emerged yet - thankfully for Clay - and Clay doesn’t see Glory anywhere, which disappoints him. He had been hoping to try to slip a word to her before the arena battle began. The fight is clearly about to begin, however, so it’s good he arrived when he did: the seats are packed to bursting with SkyWings, as well as a few SandWings and MudWings, desert-white and mud-brown speckled here and there.
“Where did you go?” Peril hisses to him as he settles down on the sun-warmed rock next to her, leaning back on his haunches.
“I had to talk to Starflight about something,” he whispers back to her. On his right, he feels Starflight shift, wings settling at his sides.
Peril looks as if she’s about to say more, but snaps her jaws together immediately as the sound of talons comes from the cavern opening next to them. Clay folds his wings back in respect as two of the guards, flanking the balcony, release trumpeting roars, loud enough to make Clay’s ears ache, and as he stands up straighter in anticipation, he sees every single dragon in the stands snap to attention: across the stadium, heads bending, wings tipping, talons crossing, silence falling, an immense, stifling blanket over the vast space.
It’s into this silence that Queen Scarlet emerges, stepping out onto the large balcony. She spreads her wings, catching the sunlight in the reflection of her orange scales, her luxurious jewels, the fine golden links of her vest. From the stands comes the sound of the assembled dragons, all hissing in respect. Clay tips his wings towards her and crosses his talons as he’s supposed to, as always, honored that he is allowed to be up here, in such a coveted place.
It’s a sign that she really trusts and respects us, he thinks with a familiar flush of pride in his scales.
Several more large SkyWing guards fly up to the balcony now that Scarlet has arrived, lining up along the stone ledge. Two SkyWings disappear into the stone tunnel at Scarlet’s gesture and Clay can’t help but look up in anticipation, knowing what comes next. A moment later, the SkyWings emerge, pushing Glory’s marble tree out onto the balcony, with Glory curled up on top of one of the branches, her scales the color of deep red rose petals. As her tree is rolled fully into view from the darkness of the tunnel, the blazing sunshine directly strikes her body, and indescribably brilliant colors explode through her scales - constellations of gold sparks, galaxies of swirling violet, pale blue nebulas.
Clay can’t help but admire the RainWing’s beauty. He’s seen this ritual countless times but it never fails to take his breath away.
Gasps and murmurs sweep through the crowd, as always, the spectators awed by the show Glory is putting on. Scarlet preens evidently in the attention, as if her scales are the ones shifting in the sunshine, pawing at her vest.
Clay glances from Scarlet to Peril, who is looking annoyed - she usually does when Glory is unveiled, for some reason - wondering if he could possibly get away with sidling over to Glory during the heat of the battle and whispering a word or two to her, but he doesn’t get the chance to think any more about it, because just then, Scarlet announces, “Bring in the combatants.”
Tsunami. Clay’s stomach gives a horrible twist. He had been so occupied with thoughts of Kestrel, he’d forgotten to worry about his friend. He whirls to face the arena and cranes his neck over the edge of the balcony, just in time to see Tsunami emerge from the large, black tunnel that leads in and out of the arena, her scales turned to pure sapphire as they reflect the sun. 
Vermillion, the announcer, lands on the sand below, spreading his red wings. “I give you, Tsunami, champion of the SeaWings!” he announces.
The crowd cheers and screams for Tsunami, familiar with the confident, talented, and powerful SeaWing dragonet who always dominates the arena with her presence. 
Tsunami, however, doesn’t even glance at them. Her scales are paler than usual and her tail is tucked close to her talons. Her gaze is fixed on the sand and she doesn’t look up even as three of the SkyWing guards on Clay’s right fly up to the tops of the prisoners’ stone spires and crowd around one of the prisoners, a massive, pea-green SeaWing nearly twice as large as Tsunami. He goes willingly, allowing the guards to unclip his wires and carry him down to the arena, gripping him firmly by the arms, and drop him onto the sands of the arena.
“This is truly a spectacle we have in front of us,” says Vermillion, gesturing towards both dragons. “For several years, now, our SeaWing champion has fought to earn the trust of her family and her kingdom, and it has paid off: she has brought us Gill, famed commander of the SeaWings, and husband to the Queen herself. Will the SeaWing champion be strong enough to hold her own against such a formidable foe? Let’s see! Claws up, tails ready, fight!”
Tsunami doesn’t hesitate. Before Vermillion even calls out the final command to begin, the SeaWing dragonet is racing across the arena and throws herself at Gill, who twists to evade her with fluid ease. She skids on the sand as she lands with a dull thud, and he regards her calmly. “Tsunami.”
She snarls and lunges a second time, but he grabs her wrist with his huge talon and holds her at length, her claws scratching helplessly at the sand, skittering across the surface. “Tsunami,” he repeats, more loudly.
Clay isn’t aware that his claws are digging into the stone ‘till the scraping sound registers in his ears. It’s almost harder to be forced to see Tsunami fight than to fight himself; he wishes he could volunteer to take her place, leap into the arena, claws bared, fight her fight for her. But she would never allow that, nor would Scarlet, so the only thing he can do for her is watch.
Does she feel everything I feel, he wonders like so many times before, down on the sands?  Does she feel the hesitation to make the blow, the turmoil of killing another dragon, the fear of the inevitable guilt that follows? Or has she hardened herself to the point where she no longer feels it? They’re the only two out of the dragonets who are forced to fight in the arena battles, and yet, they’ve never once discussed their battles, so it’s impossible for Clay to know.
What he does know, however, is that this time will be unlike any before for Tsunami. This time, she’s facing her own family, her own blood, who she got close to while undercover, only to be forced to betray and now, kill.
“Tsunami, please don’t do this,” Gill is telling his daughter, his voice calm and level, deep and baritone. His dark green eyes are full of sadness more than fear or anger as he holds the panting Tsunami at length. “We can figure out a way out of this together. You don’t have to be her pawn any longer.”
Tsunami gazes into his eyes and something flickers in her expression. “I…” she begins to say.
“You can be a good dragon,” Gill tells her, voice becoming hushed. “You don’t have to be a monster, my dear daughter.”
A tug pulls on Clay’s heart. Next to him, Peril appears bored, her tail lashing across the stone, and Scarlet’s expression is showing increasing irritation, but on Clay’s right, he sees Starflight looking deeply torn. 
Clay drops his gaze to his talons, plain and brown with long, white claws, looking so innocent, having caused so much damage and hurt.
Does… does fighting the arena battles for Scarlet make Clay a bad dragon?
Does it make him… a monster? Like the cruel jeers and taunts thrown so commonly at Peril, who wounds and injures without caring?
I don’t want to do this anymore, the thought almost takes his breath away with its sudden intensity. I don’t want to be this anymore.
“You don’t have to do this, Tsunami,” Gill whispers. “I promise.”
Tsunami’s expression breaks. A single tear leaks free from her eye. Clay holds his breath, positive that she’s going to agree with what her dad pleads of her, that she’ll vow to stand up against Scarlet’s reign, refuse to kill him, and all hell will break loose, all they’ve ever known shattered to pieces.
Instead, she grits out, “Yes. I do.”
He doesn’t fight back as she slams against him and pins him to the ground. A choked sob rattles from her throat as she snaps his neck. The resounding crack echoes around the arena, deadened of sound.
Then the crowd erupts into uproarious cheers, All throughout the stands, dragons are leaning over the top of the arena walls to throw small jewels at Tsunami, little emeralds that bounce off her dark blue scales.
Tsunami doesn’t respond. She’s gazing down at Gill’s body and as Clay watches, his heart twisted into a painful knot of grief for the horrible anguish he knows his friend must be experiencing, she crouches down and presses her cheek briefly against Gill’s unmoving chest, as if in a final farewell. Then she pushes herself upright and leaves the arena without waiting to be dismissed.
~
It’s evident that Tsunami doesn’t want to talk about the fight, withdrawn and subdued at dinner, and Clay definitely doesn’t want to think about it, so he keeps quiet and none of the others dare to bring it up, dancing around the topic in conversation about nothing in particular, instead. The dinner feels about the same as it usually does, for the most part, in this way, but for as much as Clay adores food, he can’t muster the slightest appetite, too busy scratching anxiously at the rock below him, head cluttered full of worried thoughts.
“Starflight, if you don’t stop that, I’m going to rip your ear off,” Glory snaps at the NightWing, who for the last several minutes has been tapping his claws repeatedly against the stone. He stops immediately, wincing.
“He’s just worried,” Clay blurts out, unable to resist jumping to his defense. He knows Starflight is concerned about the same thing he is.
Glory’s green gaze roams to Clay, narrowing suspiciously. “Worried about what? You say that you like know something.”
“Yea, you do seem really anxious,” Sunny chimes. “Like, you haven’t even touched your dinner, and that’s not like you at all,” he thinks for a moment she’s teasing but her words are earnest, her expression open and concerned.
Clay exchanges a glance with Starflight across the small space. Starflight’s expression seems to say: just tell them.
“Okay, fine,” Clay relents. It would be nice to get the huge, heavy worry off his chest. “Did you all hear about the new prisoner today?”
“I was busy,” Tsunami says, the first time he’s heard her speak all night. Her voice sounds so normal that it surprises him.
“I heard Scarlet talking about it when I was on my tree,” Glory answers with an indifferent lift of her wings. “So what? That’s nothing new.”
“It was Kestrel.”
The effect of his words is immediate. Red and orange flickers through Glory’s scales like lightning through the clouds in a storm, tearing through her shades of light green and blue, and Tsunami inhales, straightening up so fast that she accidentally whacks Clay with her tail. Sunny squeaks in shock.
“Kestrel?” Glory repeats, her voice expressing clear disbelief. “Like our former captor, Kestrel? Are you sure you weren’t imagining it?”
“I saw her, too,” Starflight says, shifting his wings uncomfortably. “Inside the prison. She had the scars on her neck. It was definitely her.”
A shudder runs through Clay. Sunny presses her talons over her snout with a squeak and Tsunami pushes a long exhale through her nose.
“That can’t be right,” Glory begins to pace back and forth. Flickers of light green and red zigzag through her scales, fighting with blue. Her long, thin tail lashes across the stone, sending pebbles skittering over the edge.
“I mean, I guess we never saw her die,” Tsunami says with a great deal of uncertainty in her voice. “Though, I did think she must have been…”
Sunny jumps upright, possessed with a sudden manic energy. “That’s amazing!” she says, clapping her talons together. “Kestrel is alive!”
Glory gives Sunny the most incredulous look Clay has ever seen from her. “How is that amazing?” she demands, voice taut. “Do you not remember - ”
“Glory,” Clay murmurs.
She turns her heated look on him, then drops it with a huff, collapsing back onto the stone. The red and green fade from her scales but don’t leave. She curls her tail over her talons and rests her snout on top with a sigh.
“Sunny,” Tsunami says in a much more measured, but clearly disbelieving voice, “Glory is right. Kestrel was awful. How can you be happy she’s alive?”
“She might not have been a perfect parent,” Sunny says stubbornly, undeterred by Tsunami’s words, “But she’s the only one we ever had, and I want to see her,” she spreads her wings, as if about to fly away, but Starflight stops her, reaching out a talon towards her. “Sunny, you have that thing tonight.”
Sunny’s wings visibly slump. “Oh. Right.”
It’s not every single night, but very frequently, Scarlet will throw huge parties in the hall of the SkyWing palace, and in the same way that Glory is put forward as entertainment during the arena battles, Sunny is considered entertainment for the parties, hung in a small golden bird cage which reflects the colors of her scales. She’s very social, always eager to talk with others. Clay has never once seen her disappointed at the idea of going to one before.
“We can go see her tomorrow,” he tells her, feeling bad for her, and he reaches out to rest his talon on hers.
She brightens. “Okay. Thank you, Clay,” suddenly, her small golden ears prick upwards. “We should all go together!” 
Glory’s ruff flashes red and orange immediately, but she doesn’t speak up. Starflight looks alarmed. “Oh, I - I don’t know,” he says, reaching up to scratch at his snout with his claws. “Is that such a good idea?”
“I don’t mind that idea,” Tsunami says, to Clay’s surprise. Her claws flex against the rock. “I have some words I’d like to say to that dragon.”
“Tsunami,” Sunny protests.
“I want answers,” Tsunami snaps, turning on Sunny with her gills pulsing with anger. “I want to know why she held us captive in that horrible cave for the first year of our life and tore us away from our homes. For the longest time, I’ve thought I would never be able to get those answers.”
“I’d like answers, too,” Glory says unexpectedly. She raises her snout from her talons. “I have some questions I’d like to ask her.”
“I’m down if everyone else is,” Clay agrees. Deep down, he’s not sure how to feel about the idea of seeing Kestrel close up again, following so many years, but he knows he can’t leave the other dragonets to go at it alone. If they’re going, then so is he, and he’ll protect them with claws and teeth if he has to.
All eyes turn to Starflight. He bows his head, ears twitching, then mumbles something vaguely like agreement. “Okay. Okay, I’ll come.”
“Good, glad that’s decided,” Tsunami says, pushing herself upright. “Now I’m going to go to my sleeping cave for the night. I’m tired,” and without another word, she spreads her azure wings and launches herself into the sky.
“Yea, I should head to the party,” Sunny agrees. She nuzzles Clay’s shoulder briefly with her nose, then she follows Tsunami. Glory mumbles a farewell and does the same, and Starflight shoots a nervous glance at Clay. “Bye,” he murmurs, and with a last wave of his wing, he takes after Glory.
~
~
Clay can see the reflection of the stars in the delta but they’re blurry and indistinct. The water laps over his claws as he crouches on the muddy riverbank, feeling it sink into the gaps in his scales but while it can ease the ache of his day-old wounds, it can’t ease the turmoil inside his heart.
Hidden beneath the worries about Kestrel is an anguish so immense it’s piercing through all else, a freezing spike driving through his chest. In the night where more insignificant thoughts are stripped away, in the darkness that bares the truth, his quiet demons become immense and all-consuming.
Am I a monster? 
It’s not an idea completely foreign to him. Especially in the earliest days as the Sky Kingdom’s MudWing champion, he fought with deep, intense feelings of guilt, grappled with it every single night in his dreams.
But overtime, he came to overpower the guilt. He never grew to enjoy killing like Peril, but he at least was able to tolerate it, or so he thought. Now, he feels the pain buried for so long come rushing back, overwhelming him.
How many dragons have I killed? he can’t even remember, and suddenly, rivers of blood seem to run from his claws. How many have I hurt? 
He doesn’t even know the answer, and that’s the scariest part. Their faces all blur together at this point.
I didn’t have any choice, he tells himself weakly, but in this moment, under the stars, it doesn’t feel true. It feels like a reassuring lie, one of those he tells himself every single day in the sunshine. I’m fine. I’m fine. 
He used to tell himself he could never kill a single dragon, when Kestrel threw him against walls, demanding that inner monster to come out, recounted to him the story of the day he tried to kill the dragonets on their hatching day. He told himself that when he was first dropped on the arena sands.
But when he was pinned against the baking arena sands, bleeding out within an inch of his life, he discovered that he was wrong.
Clay is so lost in his miserable thoughts and memories that he doesn’t register the sound of powerful wingbeats approaching him. He only realizes he has company when a wave of heat sears the scales on his back and Peril lands in the mud next to him, her firescales warming the mud around his talons. 
“Whatcha doing?” she asks him, cheerfully oblivious to the dragging darkness of his thoughts like a whirlpool. The starlight glittering on her copper scales makes her appear just as bejeweled as Queen Scarlet. Her blue-fire eyes look like the sky bundled up and set ablaze but to him, they never seem to burn. Clay feels his wings lift a little bit despite his misery just with her presence.
“The usual,” he answers, scooping up a talonful of mud to let some drip through his claws. “Trying to become one with the mud,” he grins, hoping to see her smile, and he’s reward with the flash of her bright white teeth.
They’re quiet for a moment, with the glimmer of light refracted next to them and the immense quiet of the night all around them. Peril stretches out her wings, the veins glittering almost delicately in the starlight, and she tilts her elegant, triangle-shaped head towards Clay. “I know I’m not great at reading dragons,” she says, “Generally. But I think you seem kind of sad.”
Clay’s wings flick back in surprise. He thought he was hiding it well. “Why do you think that?” he asks to deflect, unable to hold her gaze.
“Because your eyes are big and mopey and they look like they’re dripping out of your face,” Peril answers immediately, “And they’re not usually like that. And I don’t really like seeing them like that, so can you tell me what’s sad and maybe I can fix it for you. I’m always good at setting things on fire, I could set your problem on fire. Did someone make you sad? I can set them on fire, too! Then they would never make you sad again, I swear. They wouldn’t dare.”
She’s so fierce, blazing up in defense of him. He chuckles, scratching at his snout to cover his awkwardness. “Well. You don’t need to go setting anybody on fire, okay? I mean, the dragon making me sad is kind of… me, so.”
Peril jumps up and down, flapping her wings and blasting him with heat. “That’s not fair,” she protests, “I can’t set you on fire.”
Clay laughs. Her nose wrinkles as she seems to realize how ridiculous she sounds, but she seems pleased that she managed to make him laugh. “That’s more like my Clay,” she says, reaching out to nudge his wing with hers. He feels the heat of her touch briefly, lingering in his scales, but it doesn’t burn.
My Clay. He likes the sound of that. He wants to be the Clay she thinks he is, a brave, heroic and fearlessly kind dragon, the dragon he is in her eyes, but instead… Peril must see the sadness come back into his expression because her expression shifts back to a very intense concern. “Why are you making yourself sad, anyways?” she asks, her brows furrowing. “You shouldn’t do that.”
Clay shrugs, letting out a small, awkward-sounding laugh. “I mean, I’m not trying to. I’m just thinking… do you think I’m a bad dragon, Peril?”
She blinks, clearly taken aback. “No! No, of course not. You’re an amazing dragon. The best dragon I happen to know, in fact.”
“But…” he trails away, the words he can’t speak swallowing him. “I hurt dragons, Peril. A good dragon wouldn’t hurt dragons like I do.”
“I do, too,” Peril says with a shrug. “Who cares? It’s what Scarlet wants us to do.”
“But - ” Clay shuffles his wings. “Don’t you ever think that maybe… I don’t know, we shouldn’t just do what she wants us to do blindly if that thing is wrong? I mean, we could step up and say something.”
“Why would we?” Peril’s tone sounds confused. He can see it in her eyes, clear of the anguish that torments him. He knows she’s never once had the thoughts that he does, the voices in his head that tell him he’s evil for what he’s done. To her, every single arena battle is just one more dragon out of hundreds.
“Because - because it’s wrong. I can’t explain why, it just is,” he reaches out to seize Peril’s talons, feeling the heat bake his claws, and he sees her eyes widen in surprise. “Don’t you feel it, too? Don’t you feel like a monster?”
“No, I don’t,” Peril says, confusion in her voice growing deeper alongside something that sounds like hurt. “I was born to kill dragons, that’s what Scarlet says, and I like killing other dragons. It’s just who I am. And if you could accept that’s who you are, too, I think you would be a lot happier, Clay.”
But I don’t want that to be who I am. Whatever Kestrel told me, whatever Scarlet says, I don’t think I was meant to be a killer.
So what am I supposed to do?
He murmurs something like agreement, keeping the rest of his thoughts to himself. Peril inches closer to him to rest her wing over his shoulders and the curve of her shoulder just brushes his, like standing too close to a volcano. They stay there on the river bank for a long time, the blurry reflection of the galaxies overhead rippling in the surface of the dark water before their talons.
~ Chapter Three ~
Venom
The dragonets keep quiet, each wrapped up in their own worries, as they meet up the next morning outside the palace. Clay takes the lead, navigating through the crowds of dragons to the bottom of the hall, where he sees the rusted steel of the grate trapping Kestrel and a flash of her dark red scales.
“Over here,” he calls softly over his shoulder to the other dragonets, and he slips across the tiled floor over to Kestrel’s cage.
The dark red dragon opens her eyes immediately when they reach her, and when her gaze lands on Clay, her wings flare open in surprise, smacking against the underside of her bars. A grunt of shock causes a puff of thick smoke to leave her nostrils as the other four line up on both sides of Clay.
“Kestrel!” Sunny cries. She pushes forward, past Tsunami who tries to grab her tail, and grips the bars. “We’re so glad you’re alive!”
“Not all of us,” mutters Tsunami mutinously, and Glory scoffs an agreement.
Kestrel snaps at Sunny and the golden dragonet draws back. “I’m surprised you all are,” she says, regarding the five of them with unpleasant yellow eyes, Up close, the scars on her throat are even uglier, mutilated flesh and scales twisted around the places where Scarlet’s claws gouged her. The burn scar on her cheek is faded, but there’s a clearly much fresher cut on her chin. “I didn’t think you stupid worms could survive a day in this place.”
The harshness in her words burrows under Clay’s scales in a place he thought he couldn’t be hurt anymore, a reminder of all his worst flaws. He ducks his head, unable to find even a single word to speak to her.
Tsunami steps forward. “I don’t care what you think,” she says rigidly, “I just want answers. Why were you and Webs and Dune holding us prisoner?”
Kestrel snorts smoke. “We weren’t holding you prisoner. We were keeping you dragonets safe so you could fulfill your duty. Scarlet is holding you prisoner.”
“Don’t say that about Scarlet,” Clay feels a flare of defensiveness. “She’s kept us safe all these years. She’s been nice to us. She saved us.”
“Oh, is that what she told you?” Kestrel’s eyebrows arch. “She told you she saved you, did she? From the big, bad, mean dragons who kidnapped you?”
“I don’t see you providing evidence to the contrary,” Tsunami points out, voice tense and brittle with anger.
“She’s been lying to you,” Kestrel’s forked tongue flicks in and out, between her teeth. “I bet she never told you about why we were keeping you in the cave under the mountain, did she? A SeaWing, a MudWing, a NightWing, and whatever you want to call that one,” she points at Sunny, “All in one place?”
“I’m right here,” Glory says loudly.
Kestrel shoots a baleful look at the RainWing dragonet. “Well, you’re just a lazy, useless RainWing, so you don’t matter to this, do you?” she snaps.
“Shut up about Glory!” Tsunami snarls.
“Glory’s so much more than useless,” Clay adds, another flare of defensiveness burning inside his chest at Kestrel’s words.
“That’s not the point here,” Kestrel hisses, “The point is, have you ever thought to question Scarlet’s ‘savior’ story, even just once? Can you not think of a single reason why someone would have wanted the four of you together, and kept safe, hidden away from the world and out of sight? Not even one?”
Clay blinks at her. Is he really that stupid? He can’t think of a single reason why any dragon would want to keep him and his friends in that way.
Then Starflight lets out a grunt, a sharp exhalation of air, like somebody jabbed him in the stomach with their tail. “The brightest night. Five eggs born to hatch on the brightest night… will come to end the fight…”
Clay’s brow furrows. The words sound familiar, but he can’t think what they come from.
Then -
“The Prophecy?” Tsunami says, incredulity dripping from her voice. “Starflight, come on, you can’t really think - ” she turns to Kestrel suddenly, whipping around so fast her wing whacks Clay’s side. “That can’t be - ”
The glitter in Kestrel’s eyes must tell the SeaWing all she needs to know, because she sinks to the ground with a shaken huff of breath.
“We’re the dragonets of destiny?” squeaks Sunny, pressing her talons against her snout.
Kestrel drags her tongue over her teeth. “Well, you were supposed to be,” she says, Her gaze darts to Glory. “It didn’t work out like it was meant to.”
“Yes, I got the message that I’m a mistake,” Glory says in an even, almost bored-sounding voice. “You don’t need to keep reminding me.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Clay says. His brain is working much too slowly and he feels dumbstruck, dazed. “We just can’t be.”
“Well, you are,” Kestrel snaps. “We - the Talons of Peace - were trying to protect you so the Prophecy could come true when Scarlet discovered our hiding place, stormed in, killed us, and took you all away, here, to her Kingdom. She didn’t save you out of the kindness of her heart, because we were cruel captors. She took you because she knew the purpose you were meant to serve and she wanted to keep all of you under her claws, where you couldn’t go stopping any wars. If she’s ever told you she respects you, it’s a lie, you idiotic, useless worms. She kidnapped you from your true home and then lied to your whole lives about who you truly are and why you’re here in the first place. So no, she didn’t save you, MudWing dragonet.”
Clay feels like Tsunami just hefted her mighty SeaWing tail and slammed it into his understanding of the world, shattering it into pieces. His brain is buzzing with confusion, unable to process Kestrel’s words. He slumps to the ground and covers his head with his wings. “It can’t be. It can’t be.”
Warmth radiates against his scales as Sunny comes over to his side and places her small wing gently across his back. “It’s okay, Clay,” she says in a soft voice “This is a good thing! That means we can end this horrible war and save so many dragons! It means we were meant to find each other, all of us!”
Clay barely hears her words. The buzzing in his ears is much too loud, drowning out all sound.
Kestrel lets out a derisive scoff. “Then again,” she says in a scathing voice, “It’s clear to me now that it was a foolish idea to ever waste a single second of my time trying to protect all you dragonets. You’re all so useless, there’s no way you could ever manage to save the world from the war.”
“Stop it,” Tsunami says in a brittle voice. “Stop saying terrible things. We don’t want to hear it. We don’t care what you have to say.”
“Then why did you come here to visit me?” asks Kestrel. Her voice bores into Clay’s brain, deeper and deeper. “You wanted the answers. You got them.”
“That’s it,” Tsunami snaps. “We’re leaving.”
There’s the sound of her powerful wingbeats and Sunny’s wing slides from Clay’s back. Clay removes his head from under his wings to see the SeaWing flying away, Glory and Starflight close behind her. His gaze darts to Kestrel, who glares at him. “You ever find that inner monster?” she hisses at him.
Clay straightens up, his claws digging into the rock. “Yes, I did,” he tells her, “I’ve fought so many battles in the arena - ”
“Ha, the arena,” smoke coils around Kestrel’s horns. “You think that’s anything like the real world? That’s no more than Scarlet’s playground and you’re no more than her precious toy, dancing around to please her. You won’t survive a single second in the real world when you have to kill to stop the war.”
“Stop being mean to Clay,” Sunny says, in a voice that sounds close to tears. “I don’t remember you being so awful. Why can’t you be nice to us?”
Kestrel laughs, an ugly, harsh sound. “Niceness doesn’t exist in the real world, naïve dragonet. Get that in your head now or you’re dead.”
Clay can’t listen to any more. He feels like acid is being poured in his ears. He blunders as he tries to stumble away from her, throwing out his wings in an awkward fashion, and flings himself into the sky. Even his flight, so familiar, feels clumsy and awkward under her intent, scorching gaze. He can almost hear her cruel voice calling after him, “Your whole life is a lie, useless dragonet!”
~
Peril strides into the arena to relatively muffled applause, sweeping her wings out at her sides. Clay hears the sound of one of the prisoners overhaed snarling as they’re unhooked, but he doesn’t glance up. He feels cold and numb from nose to tail-tip despite the hot sun blazing down on his scales, and he can’t stop staring at Scarlet. She’s perched on her usual large, flat rock, her long, thin, orange tail uncoiled so it dangles across the stone platform, her expression one of lazy smugness as she gazes out over the arena she oversees.
How could you do this to us? Clay wants to beg her. How could you lie to all of us for so long? 
The prisoner in the sky howls. Clay can’t help but glance over at Starflight, who is crouched to his right with his wings tucked in close, looking miserable, then to Tsunami, fuming on his left with her thick tail lashing. Glory, sprawled on her tree, looks as content and asleep as ever, with occasional small bubbles of violet and blue drifting peacefully through ivory and gold. Sunny is nowhere in sight: she’s never around for the arena battles.
“On the sands today,” Vermillion announces, “We have Horizon the SandWing - formerly, and unwisely, a soldier in Blaze’s army. Having successfully won four battles thus far, he now has been challenged to a match against the Queen’s Champion, Peril! Claws up, fire ready, and fight!”
Horizon is a pale yellow SandWing, with a single gold loop in his ear, speckled with darker brown markings like droplets of amber. He shrinks back against the far wall as he faces Peril across the arena. She stalks slowly towards him, tilting her copper wings to reflect the sunlight. Her long tail snakes across the sand, and the smoke rising from her scale makes her outline blurry.
Horizon crouches, then leaps over Peril’s head and flees to the other side of the arena. Wiser than many of the other challengers who try to fight Peril, it’s evident he’s not even going ot attempt to lay a claw on her. His wildly darting eyes tell Clay that he’s searching for an escape, but Clay knows he won’t get one.
The battle is short but brutal, just like so many of the ones Clay has seen involving Peril before. Horizon’s screams intensify into one long, ear-shattering wail as Peril pins his wings against his body, burning through them with her deadly claws, smoke thickening the air in a heavy shroud. Clay winces, unable to bear looking, and he wrenches his head away.  Her words during their conversation the previous night bounce around inside his head.
Does she really not care? How can she hurt her enemies so badly and not see that it’s so wrong? 
It’s all too much to bear, in this moment, the revelation about Kestrel and his fears of being a monster and the sickening sounds of Horizon’s dying screams as he throws himself at Peril, burying his face in her shoulder. A keening sound of agony escapes him as black marks crawl along his wings. He’s killing himself because he’d rather die quickly than suffer at Peril’s claws in a drawn-out fight and Clay buries his face in his talons, unable to stand watching.
For a long, horrible moment, as the echoes of Horizon’s dying screams fade away, it’s silent in the arena. Then there’s a ripple of disappointed murmurs. Clay dares to lift his head from his talons and sees Scarlet rising to her talons, gazing down at Horizon and Peril in evident disappointment.
“Well, that was boring,” she says, a heavy sigh in her voice. “I expect a better performance from my prisoners and from my Champion.”
Peril bows her head, fixing her gaze on the sand. Clay winces. How can he possibly feel bad for her knowing what she’s done?
I’ve done the same thing.
Scarlet huffs smoke out through her nose and opens her mouth, clearly about to say something else, but in that exact moment, a whirl of wings from Clay’s right catches his eye, making him whip around, and he gazes blankly in shock as Glory rears up in a blaze of sunflower gold and cobalt blue. She snaps her thin chain like a reed and launches herself off the marble tree. Her mouth is wide open, hinged like a snake’s, her brilliant wings beating the air.
“This is what you get for lying to me and my friends,” she hisses, “Our whole lives!” and a jet of black liquid shoots out of her two longest fangs.
Scarlet’s guards lunge forward but they’re not fast enough. Scarlet shrieks, tumbling backwards. She dodges fast enough that the venom misses her eyes or throat, but not fast enough. It lands in a spatter on the side of her face, leaving a sprinkling of inky markings all the way down her shoulder.
For a heart-stopping breath, there’s only silence, the worst silence Clay has ever endured.
Then a horrible sizzling sound reaches Clay’s ears, and the SkyWing queen begins to scream.
~
Clay has never known pandemonium as immense as what erupts in that moment as the SkyWing queen tumbles against the ground. She throws her wings immediately over her face, but Clay catches a glimpse of what the venomous spray is doing, and it’s enough to make bile rise, churning, in his throat.
The black drops on the SkyWing queen’s face are bubbling and smoking, and the scales underneath them are melting, that’s the only way to describe it, causing the side of her face to slowly drop like ice melting. Scarlet lurches backwards, screaming that horrible, unending scream, and clawing at her face as if she could possibly claw the droplets off her face, but the damage is done.
Clay is frozen, gazing blankly at the queen in horror, when suddenly, wings are beating around his head, talons shoving at his side.
“Run, run, we have to run!” Tsunami screams in his ear, slamming her body against his with what is evidently all of her might. When he doesn’t move, his brain cooperating much too slowly, she curses, grabs his forearms in her talons, and hauls him into the air herself, wings beating heavily.
Something about the wind in his face jolts him and he throws his wings open so they can catch the wind. Tsunami releases him and soars away, and he follows blindly, flapping his wings frantically to follow her. He’s aware of Starflight at his right wingtip, and Glory to his left - Glory. Her scales are acidic green and her jaw is clenched so tight it looks like it might snap her jaws in two.
“What about Sunny?” Clay calls to Tsunami.
“Right here!” the golden SandWing is suddenly flapping her way up to join them, her gray-green eyes enormous with fear. “What happened?”
“Not right now!” Tsunami shouts as she banks to avoid dark red wings flapping in her face. “All you need to know is that we’re in danger now and we need to get out of here as soon as possible, then we can figure things out.”
“What about Kestrel?” Sunny asks. 
None of the dragonets even bother to answer her. Glory just gives her a glare. She gives a small unhappy sigh. “Never mind,” she murmurs.
They all navigate together through the melee of screaming and wings, running on blind instinct to escape. Clay keeps his gaze riveted on Tsunami’s sapphire-blue scales and just flies fast as he can.
Before long, they break free from the worst of the chaos and Tsunami banks sharply toward a waterfall that bursts from a nearby peak. Clay can feel Sunny’s warmth close on his tail. The rocky cliff flashes by beside them as they drop towards the base of the waterfall. Tsunami leads them closer to the bellowing water, whisking through the spray. Clay closes his eyes for a moment, turning his face into the mist of droplets, as if it can conceal him from this reality.
The sounds of the palace fade behind them, swallowed by the waterfall’s roar, as they plummet further and further. The waterfall bounces over outcroppings of rock, divides into smaller cascades, pours in long, straight sheets, then shoots out in bursts like dragons of water lashing out with their claws. At the bottom, Clay can see a glittering ice-clear lake, with the Diamond Spray River crawling out the other side, through sloping hills toward the sea. Stubby trees and ragged scrubland, brown and green, edge the lake at the base of the mountain.
Tsunami angles suddenly towards a dark gap in the wall near the bottom of the waterfall.  A moment later, they all touch down on the muddy banks of the lake, in a thick copse of trees beside a small cave nearly concealed completely by the roaring wall of water. Clay feels the mud squelch under his claws but he’s too emotionally overwhelmed to even enjoy the sensation of its warmth.
“Come on,” Tsunami says with a flick of her dark blue tail. “Let’s get inside the cave before angry SkyWings come looking for us.”
Nobody argues. Clay trails in with mud sticking to his talons and tail, following Tsunami. The cave is small, with a sloping ceiling, and walls speckled dark gray and black, turned damp with the moisture of the waterfall. 
They’re all quiet and subdued as they spread out through the cave. Glory immediately curls up in the corner of the cave with her long, thin tail tucked tight over her snout, clearly not in the mood to talk to anybody or explain why she did what she did. Tsunami paces the length of the cave in the back, her webs making flapping sounds on the stone, tail leaving a muddy streak behind her. Sunny lays down in the entrance, the faint sun shimmering on her golden scales, to gaze outside through the curtain of shimmering water droplets cascading past, her expression desperately hopeful. Watching for Kestrel, Clay realizes. She’s hoping the SkyWing will somehow escape and come find them.
Starflight, meanwhile, lays down on one side of the cave, in the shadows where he can blend in, and starts tugging on his talons. “I wish I had my scrolls,” he mutters in an unhappy voice. Mud spatters his flanks and wings.
Clay gazes around at all of the dragonets, scattered throughout the cave in various states of misery. He wants to bring them together, soothe their fears, but he’s not the big, grand heroic dragon he wants to be. He’s just a big, clumsy, stupid MudWing who only knows how to follow orders and believe lies, who just lost his home and had all that he ever thought he knew shattered to pieces.
I can’t help them. I can’t fix this mess. I’m useless. 
Despair rises over his head. He stumbles over to lay down near Starflight and buries his head under his mud-spattered wings.
Part Two
An Egg The Color of Dragon Blood
~ Chapter Four ~
The MudWings
Light dazzles through the curtain of moisture as the dragonets emerge from the cave, scales stiff with caked mud, to see the rising sun make brilliant rainbows in the cascade of the waterfall and feel spray soak their faces.
“So, where do we go now?” asks Glory. Her voice is rusty. It’s the first time Clay has heard her speak since the previous day.
“The MudWings are closest,” remarks Tsunami, pointing her nose down the direction of the Diamond Spray River.
A shiver runs through Clay’s wings and his claws sink into the mud under his claws with anticipation. He could go home, see his family… spend time in the kingdom that was stolen from him by their guardians…
But Starflight shakes his head. “The MudWings are allies of the SkyWings, remember?” he says. “It would be so dangerous to stay there.”
Clay’s wings sink in disappointment. How had he not thought about that? 
“I’m confused,” Sunny says. “The SkyWings are friendly towards us. Scarlet likes us. Why would we be in danger by the SkyWings?”
“Didn’t you hear what Kestrel said?” Tsunami asks, her green eyes narrowing. “We were never really welcome guests in the Sky Kingdom like Scarlet told us we were. We were only ever prisoners, Scarlet just told us that we weren’t because if you don’t know you’re a prisoner you won’t try to escape.”
“And even if that weren’t the case,” Starflight says in a kinder tone, “And we had always been their allies, what happened to Queen Scarlet burned that bridge. They’ll be out for us now that we hurt their queen.”
Clay doesn’t miss the fact that he said we, when really, they all know that it was only one dragonet amongst them. 
Inevitably, all eyes dart to Glory. She acts as if she doesn’t realize, her gaze following a bird that darts through the clouds overhead.
“How did you do that, Glory?” asks Tsunami. “Really. I mean, you never told us you had any secret, fancy venom-spitting abilities!”
Glory shrugs. Red chases through her ruff and disappears. “It was never important before today.”
“Venom-spitting abilities?” Sunny asks, bewildered.
Nobody answers her for a long moment. Finally, Tsunami sighs. “Glory shot some kind of venom at Scarlet that injured her somehow. That’s why so much chaos erupted and why we’re probably considered criminals now.”
Sunny’s wings flare open. “Glory!” she cries. “How could you have done that? Scarlet kept us safe. She protected us for so long - ”
“She lied to us,” Glory says, coiling her tail around her talons. “And did she protect us? Really? Throwing Clay and Tsunami in the arena?”
Clay winces, drops his gaze. Next to him, he senses a ripple of tension come from Tsunami’s scales to waver on the air.
Sunny sighs. “Okay, but you could have at least asked us first before…” she trails away. “Never mind.”
“It was an impulse decision,” Glory says.
Tsunami lashes her tail. “Well, we clearly needed to get out of there anyways,” she says, “So I think instead of wasting any more time discussing this, we should focus instead on where we’re going next. Hiding in this cave is nice but it’s not going to keep us safe for very much longer. Starflight, I know the MudWings are allies of the SkyWings, but I think they’re our best shot.”
“My family will be there,” Clay says hopefully. “I’m sure they would be willing to protect us and keep us safe.”
“That’s true!” Sunny says, her dismal expression brightening.
Starflight looks worried, his tail tip stirring the mud around his claws, but finally, he relents with a huff of breath. “Okay. I can agree with that. But I don’t think we should all go marching over there together, at least not at first, especially not with you in tow, Tsunami. They’ll see you as a potential enemy. since you’re a SeaWing. Me and Sunny going could be dangerous, too. I think it should be just Clay first. He can introduce himself, ask around, and then, if he finds dragons that agree to protect us, the rest of us can follow him.”
“Oh - okay,” Clay agrees. The idea of going home tugs on his chest so powerfully, but he can’t ignore that he had hoped he wouldn’t be alone.
“Too dangerous,” Sunny says with vehemence in her voice, shaking her head, “Clay can’t go alone! I’ll go with him, then he’ll be safer.”
“I can go,” Glory says unexpectedly. 
They all glance at her. 
“What?” she says with a shrug. “Nobody will care about me being there - it’s not like I’m important.”
“Glory,” says Clay, feeling a twinge. “You know that’s not true. Just because you’re not part of the prophecy doesn’t mean - ”
“I meant because RainWings aren’t part of the war,” Glory says, flicking her wing as if to brush aside his words. “They won’t care if I’m there. But I can also do this,” she closes her eyes and is silent for a few moments. Tsunami opens her mouth, clearly about to ask what she’s doing, then closes it again as brown spills across Glory’s scales. Amber and gold glint in the cracks and along her underbelly, and the rising sun seems to melt her to the warmest color of earth.
Her eyes open again, and suddenly, a MudWing is standing next to Clay - well, kind of. “I think you’re still too pretty to be a MudWing,” he says dubiously, which makes Glory’s eyes glitter with amusement. His face flushes. “I mean, you know. You’re too graceful and elegant and whatever.”
“Nonsense,” Tsunami says, a smirk slipping across her snout as she glances towards Clay. “You’re just as pretty as Glory, Clay.”
Sunny nods vigorously.
Clay wrinkles his snout at Tsunami. “I’m not sure how to take that.”
“Neither am I,” Glory admits. “Was me turning myself into a MudWing a mistake?”
“Jokes aside, Clay is right,” Starflight says in a matter-of-fact tone. He nods towards Glory. “You’re too long and graceful, and that ruff around your ears isn’t very MudWing. Also, MudWing’s tails don’t curl like that. According to A NightWing’s Guide to Pyrrhia, MudWings have thick, armored scales, flat, broad heads with nostrils on top the snout; and muscular, robust bodies with thick, muscled limbs and enormous wings. They’re larger and stronger than most other Tribes, including RainWings, who are more agile, and their tails are prehensile like that so they can wrap around tree branches in the rain forest - ”
“Three moons, please stop,” Glory groans, clutching her talons over her ears. “Or I’m going to fly away to the rainforest right now.”
“If you fold back your ruff so it’s hard to spot, and you keep your tail straight,” Sunny remarks, “I think you could pass,” she reaches up a talon to bat at Glory’s RainWing ruff and experimentally pushes it down against her neck.
Glory huffs. “I can do it myself.”
“Okay, well, if we are going to enact this plan, can we get started?” asks Tsunami with a restless flap of her wings. “Being out in the open like this is making me nervous and we don’t have much time before dragons come looking.”
Clay’s stomach lurches and he suddenly feels dizzy. His family, his home, he’s going to get to see things that have only existed in his dreams.
The farewells are a blur, quick twines of tails and brushes of wings, and before Clay knows it, he and Glory are spreading their wings and taking flight, along the Diamond Spray River, towards the sea and the swamps.
~
The flight takes them full days, stopping as night falls to rest their wings, hiding in foliage as blazes of flame light up the sky overhead. They don’t speak much as they curl up in the brush and try go snatch some sleep. Before the sun rises the next morning, they’re soaring again, flying close to the river bank so their amber and brown scales can blend into the colors of the shore.
“I think we’re almost there,” Glory says.
Clay swoops down to run his talons through the water and realizes with a tingle in his scales that it’s grown warmer. “Yes. We are.”
The sun begins to peek over the horizon ahead of them, and Clay sees the glitter of vast ocean in the distance. The land rolls down like unfurling dragon wings, through scrub-covered hills of pale brown and dark green.
Clay forgets to worry about Scarlet’s venom wounds sizzling against her scales and angry SkyWings; he forgets to worry about Scarlet’s lies and the illusion of his past; he forgets to worry about Kestrel and her cruel words; he forgets to worry about a prophecy assigned to him; he even forgets to worry about arena-shed blood and his inner monster. His wings beat to the rhythm of his heart, faster and faster, pushing him through the air.
The Mud Kingdom, it’s so close. His own dragons, the world he’s imagined, dreamed of since he was a tiny dragonet.
A faint roaring sound reaches his ears as they draw nearer, one he recognizes as that of a waterfall. He and Glory glide right through a mist of moisture hanging in the air, kicked up from the river crashing against tall rocks and creating a bubbly wake, and soar over the lip of the crashing water, wings thrown out to catch the fierce breeze. Ahead of Clay, he can see the river branching into a hundred small streams as it wanders through marshes into the sea, and he can see the homes of MudWings - tall mounds made of mud, several dragons high and several more wide, jutting out of marshes like brown claws.
Fierce joy wells up in his heart.
Then Glory lets out a hiss through clenched teeth. “Clay, look down.”
Clay does, and what he sees makes a shudder of pure horror run from wingtip to wingtip.
Right below them, between the ridge and the marshes, is a battlefield littered with dead dragons.
~
“Three moons,” Glory mutters.
They stay in the air, circling the battlefield slowly. The river below the waterfall is muddy and dark with spilled blood, and it doesn’t run clear again as far as Clay’s eye can see. The ground is churned up into mud, but not welcoming mud - mud with blood and bones ground into it, with broken bones sticking out like tree branches smashed by a storm. The dragon bodies are so covered in mud that they all look like MudWings, but here and there Clay can see the bright shimmer of icy blue and the near white of desert-sand scales. One IceWing was dropped at the base of the cliff not far from the waterfall and the spray casts a small rainbow over his shredded silver wings and bloodstained scales.
“This battle must have just happened,” Glory points out. “In the last few days, I mean. Look, some of the fires are still burning,” she points to the orange flames that speckle the muddy ground, belching ugly, foul-smelling black smoke into the sky. Clay can see brown-scaled limps sticking out of the burning wreckage and tries not to throw up. Those are the corpses of MudWings burning.
He finds he can’t answer Glory’s words. He can barely even breathe. He thought he knew the war before now, seeing battle-scarred prisoners show up on top of the towers, seeing corpses hauled in by SkyWings to burn, seeing blasts of flame outside the palace and the aftermath of battles in crumbled towers.
In this moment, he realizes how naïve he was. Kestrel’s words about Scarlet’s arena being no more than a playground slam into him like a collapsing brick wall. The Sky Kingdom was a safe, cozy bubble compared to this, and in this moment, the only thing in the world Clay wants to do is just go back.
“And we’re supposed to stop this,” he doesn’t even realize he spoke the words until he sees Glory giving him a bewildered look. 
“We are?”
“Yea. I mean, we’re - we’re the dragonets of destiny,” Clay wants to curl up, throw his wings over his head, but he forces himself to keep staring at the corpses on the battlefield, keep talking even though he’s numb. “That’s what Kestrel said. Dragons - they - they’re counting on us to save them.”
Glory gives a small scoff. Clearly, she’s not willing to put stock into anything Kestrel said, but Clay can’t let the idea go. 
We could be heroes. We could stop all this suffering… but as soon as the thought is born, a small spark in the dark, it’s stifled and dies. His wings sink slowly at his sides. Who am I kidding? I could never be a hero.
I’m a monster. 
The darkness clouds in his brain, of the suffering in front of him. He knows he’ll never forget the sight of this battlefield as long as he lives.
A wing brushes his. Glory hovers next to him, giving him probably the gentlest look he’s ever seen from her. “Clay,” she murmurs, “It’s okay.”
“No. It’s not,” he gestures weakly at the burning MudWing corpses. “This isn’t okay. I thought I knew about the war, but this - ”
“I know. I know. But hovering over it and being upset isn’t going to do any good, okay? So let’s keep going. You can see your family, remember?”
If they’re even alive. The mere idea hurts too much to bear and Clay pushes it away. “Yea,” he says, trying to infuse in his voice a confidence he doesn’t feel, as if he can make himself believe it. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
They wheel in the sky and continue onwards, but even as they move quickly, it’s impossible not to take in the sight of the battle below. Clay can see evidence of the IceWings’ freezing breath, even now, when most of the ice would have melted. Some of the bodies below are intact, but twisted into horrific positions of agony, their mouths agape as if they were frozen mid-scream. Several patches of dirt glitter with tiny ice crystals, where blasts of cold air must have missed and frozen the ground instead. On some of the corpses, body parts were sheared off in sharp, clean lines, where half a limb had been frozen and then fallen away. Clay can feel bile rising unbearably in his throat.
“Blaze’s army must have attacked the MudWings,” Glory says in a quiet tone, seemingly more to herself than to him. 
“Why do you say that?” Clay asks despite his better judgement. He can never remember the alliances of the war very well - he’s never had reason to, before today. All of his arena opponents tended to blur together.
“See, there are IceWings and SandWings,” Glory points out, “That’s Blaze’s alliance.”
Right. “And the MudWings and SkyWings are Burn’s,” Clay recalls, “Along with some SandWings. And Blister has the SeaWings.”
Glory nods. “All of this over some trivial SkyWing throne dispute,” she says in a disgusted tone, a wave of green rippling through her scales.
Clay’s talons clench. He remembers the tale of Queen Oasis dying in the desert before any of her three daughters could challenge her for the throne, leaving the kingdom in upheaval with three heirs and no way to decide which one should be the next queen. He recalls how each sister of the three formed alliances and vowed to each battle for their own right to the throne - and it makes him feel sick, knowing how the same war continues, eighteen years later. How many dragons have died for the sake of such a useless, preventable fight?
He tries to push the thoughts away as he and Glory fly down to the marshes. “There,” Glory says quietly, tilting her wings. Clay sees a small circle of seven MudWings on the ground near one of the mud towers. They seem to be practicing a formation - turning and lashing out and defending their flanks without losing their positions, moving together as a fluid unit.
Clay takes a deep breath. This is it. Time to meet dragons of my own tribe. 
Wind that smells of the sea whistles around his ears as he swoops down alongside Glory. Reeds bend and duck away from the breeze of their landing. Clay feels his claws sink into wet, marshy dirt, and a shiver of joy runs along his spine despite his dismal mood. I won’t let anything ruin this for me. 
The MudWings hear them land and whirl around, teeth bared. Clay throws open his wings and holds up his front talons, trying to look harmless. Please don’t let my first encounter with my Tribe be an attack, he prays.
All seven brown dragons stare at Clay and Glory for a moment, as if confused. Then the biggest one shifts her wings and makes a dismissive noise deep in her throat. Immediately, as if the noise was some kind of instinctive cue, they all turn their backs and return to their formation practice.
Clay blinks at them as the dragons shift left and dart forward one at a time, clawing at an imaginary assailant. The biggest dragon grunts orders now and then, although they sound more like suggestions than commands. “Watch your tail on the outside - save some energy for the next thrust - don’t forget the signals from the inner wings,” she calls. Clay can’t help but get lost admiring the way they work together so fluidly, as if they are all extensions, talons and wings, of the same dragon, one entity in several bodies, following a rhythm that is clearly deeply familiar, all aligning themselves, with wings tilted, to each other.
Then Glory nudges Clay, shaking him out of his trance. “What do you think?” she whispers to him.
Clay lifts his wings uncertainly. It’s as if they’ve already forgotten Glory and Clay were ever there. “Maybe we should ask someone else?”
Glory shifts on her talons, then huffs through her nose and raises her voice, making Clay wince. “Ahem,” she says loudly, “Excuse me.”
The biggest dragon gives a grunt and turns back to them, arching her brows. “Carry on,” she tells the rest of the soldiers, who give murmurs of assent, then slithers over to face Glory. Her thick bulk slides easily over the mud, giving her a sinuous grace even though she’s just as solidly built as Clay, something he can’t help but envy. Patches of mud and grass are plastered over several recent wounds on her sides and neck, and one of her horn tips is broken off; Clay realizes with a lurch she must have been part of the recent fight.
“Look, I’m sorry there’s only two of you remaining,” the MudWing says in a blunt voice, “But we’re not looking to add anymore. We’ve only lost one in three years, and that’s because we’re focused and we don’t bring in unsibs.”
Unsibs? Clay almost asks, but swallows the word back just in time. Act like you know what they’re talking about, stupid, he reminds himself.
“We’re just looking for a safe place to rest,” Glory says, shuffling her talons again in the mud. “We’ve been through a lot and - ”
The MudWing sighs, rubbing her talon over her snout. “Yea, and so has everyone,” she says, but despite her gruff words, Clay thinks he can sense reluctant sympathy running through her tone. “Like I said, I’m sorry you lost so many and I know the war is horrible, but I won’t compromise my sibs, not for anything. I’m their bigwings. It’s my job to protect them,” she runs her gaze over Clay from wings to tail tip. “I’m sure you know how that feels.”
Clay bites back temptation to ask what a bigwings is, and why in the world she thinks that he would know what it feels like to be one, knowing he can’t dare reveal his lack of knowledge like that. “Well, okay,” he manages, his wings settling with disappointment. “I’m sorry we bothered you.”
The MudWing gives a soft grunt of acknowledgement and she’s turning away when Glory speaks up again. “Hold on,” she says.
“What now?”
“We don’t want to join your - your troop, or whatever,” Glory says. “We just want a safe place to rest that’s out of the reach of the war, that’s all. We’re not looking for a group to join, if that’s what you were thinking.”
Clay can feels drops of morning dew dripping on him from the leaves overhead and a shiver runs through him. He stirs the mud with his tail and tries to look as if he stands around in swamps every day. A growing sense of despair is rising in his chest as the MudWing remains quiet and unyielding.
“Please,” Glory adds.
Clay clasps his muddy talons together, a shiver running through his wings. Where are we going to go, if they won’t accept us? worries run wildly through his head. Will we ever be safe anywhere, ever again? 
The MudWing is quiet for a moment longer. Then Clay sees the ridges on her back relax. “I wasn’t going to mention this,” she says in a soft tone, “Because I still don’t think it’s a very good idea, but - ” she turns and points her talon across the marshes. “Some very stupid or very brave MudWings - depends on how you want to look at it - have dug out a bunker over that way. You can find it in the closest area of solid ground, next to a tall rock - just find the path and follow it, you’ll know which one I mean when you find it. They’re planning on starting an alliance of sorts, to protect victims of the war. Stockpiling medicinal supplies, hoping to keep certain dragons out of the way during the next battles so they have time to recover - mentally and physically. And most importantly for you two, providing a home for unsibs who have been stranded by the war.”
Clay hardly dares to breathe.
The MudWing turns back to them, sympathy showing itself more clearly in her gaze. “If you’re looking for a safe place,” she says, “I can’t promise you that’s it. Nowhere is really safe in this world, anymore. But that’s probably the safest place I can think of for two MudWings stranded from their troop.”
“Thank you so much,” Glory says, bowing low. Clay echoes her, copying her movements.
The MudWing’s brows twitch and Clay wonders if that’s not ordinary MudWing behavior, but the dragon doesn’t comment. “Go on, now,” she says with a wave of her wing, and without another word, she turns and slithers back over to her troop, rejoining them with ease. They sure do look a lot like her, Clay thinks, similar face shapes and body structures, almost as if they’re all siblings.
Glory tugging on the tip of his wing shakes him out of his reverie. “Come on,” she tells him, “Let’s hurry and find that bunker.”
~
The path that the MudWing told them about is not difficult to find: a raised dirt trail that winds between dragon mounds and swamp grasses. Clumps of reeds swish in the breeze and gnarled trees speckle the marsh here and there. Most of the trees are covered in hanging vines, though when Clay looks closer, he can see that some of the vines are actually thick coils of crimson and olive-green snakes. The deep croaks of bullfrogs warble through the air.
Clay and Glory follow this path side-by-side, Glory taking the lead, placing her talons gingerly on the dirt. As they trail along, Clay peers into one of the giant mud puddles they pass, trying to spot a particularly loud bullfrog, when suddenly, a pair of eyes blink open in the middle of the mud.
Clay jumps back, nearly knocking Glory into the marsh on the other side of the path. “Watch it!” she hisses, flaring her wings open to stay upright. 
“There’s a dragon in there,” Clay whispers, ignoring her sharp words. Upon looking closer, he can also see two ears like his sticking up behind the eyes, and two nostrils poking out of the mud in front. The eyes regard him narrowly for a moment, then slide shut, and the dragon sinks below the mud again.
“There’s one over here, too,” Glory whispers back. Clay turns and sees that what he originally dismissed as a submerged log is actually the long, ridged back of a dragon, lying just below the surface of the mud. His nose rests on a rock, his eyes are closed, and he’s snoring softly, surrounded by the warm ripples.
“Gosh, they look comfortable,” Clay says. He reaches the tip of his tail out and pokes it into the swamp just to feel the warm currents eddy around his sore scales. This is what I’ve been missing, he thinks, my whole life… 
Glory shudders. “Are you kidding me? I could never sleep in mud. My dreams would be full of quicksand and mosquitoes and gloopy muck that would never wash off,” Clay thinks of the RainWing, with her pristine scales in glorious shades, so very carefully tended to, and can’t help but smile to himself.
Now that Clay is looking, he sees more submerged dragons in every mud pool, some snoring gently. The sun is climbing higher in the sky and as the rays begin to spread across the swamp, some of the dragons begin to rise up from the mud, opening their wings wide and basking in the mud. Others emerge from the mounds through low doors hacked out of the muddy bases.
“It’s like we’re not even here,” Glory murmurs.
She’s right. None of them take any notice of Clay or Glory, which strikes him as odd, now he thinks about it. The dragons seem uninterested in the strangers in their midst. Clay notices, that they stay in their troops, each somewhere between five and nine dragons, talking only to the other MudWings in their own group. One group of six all come out of the same mound and then form a circle around it, stretching their wings and necks and tails in unison.
Another group of eight dragons bubbles up from the shallows of a muddy lake and take to the sky, one at a time, following the biggest in a large swoop around the swamp. After a few moments of circling, the biggest, who seems to be the leader, dives into the reeds and rises up again with a crococdile thrashing in his talons. He lands on an island of dry ground, and the other seven land beside him. All eight of them begin to rip up and eat the crocodile together.
“I don’t actually know that much about MudWing life,” Clay muses thoughtfully, fascinated to observe the dragons going on about their morning routines. “Starflight never really talked too much about MudWings.”
“Maybe they’re like army troops,” Glory guesses, “You stick with your own soldiers. Maybe that’s what makes them such strong fighters along with their physical power: they have these little loyal units within the army.”
“Maybe,” Clay agrees. He likes the sight of how close the dragons with in each group appear to be. It makes his chest feel warm.
This is my tribe. These are my dragons. I’ll be welcome here, I know it. 	They continue on the path and at one point, as Clay is twisting around to keep studying the village, he finally meets a pair of eyes - the only ones looking his and Glory’s way. They’re a shade of pale amber, and they belong to a small light brown MudWing with a healing mud patch stuck across his nose. His horns are not yet full grown, but he’s not a very young dragonet, either - if Clay had to hazard a guess, he would say about his and Glory’s age. He’s staring at Clay curiously, boldly. On instinct, Clay smiles and waves a wing in his direction.
The little MudWing blinks and darts back into his mound.
The path leads under one of the trees heavy with snakes and away from the center of the village, toward an area of the swamp where there wae fewer, more isolated mounds, and as they draw nearer to a large lake filled with swaying reeds, Glory points out that the path diverges. To their right, it winds through the swamps and appears to lead upwards to firmer ground. “This way?”
Clay squints up ahead. The path continuing directly forward ends at the lake and beyond that, he can only see more marshes and mud. Turning right seems to be their best option. “Yea, let’s do that,” he agrees.
Before long, they’re climbing over the crest of a hill and onto solid ground. The sea is now at their backs, and in the distance, Clay can make out a line of dark green trees that he realizes must be the rainforest, home to the RainWings. Light green grass ripples in all directions before them, and Clay can see MudWings moving about in farther off fields: looking closer, he sees that they’re walking up and down neatly cut, tended rows of some kind of plant.
“They’re growing food,” he realizes. It hadn’t occurred to him to think about the MudWing kingdom containing grasslands, as he’d only ever thought of the swamps and mud, but only now does he remember the swathe of green land that separated the brown swamps from the RainWing forest on the maps.
“Look, there’s the rock!” says Glory distracting him. She hurries through the grass, her amber-toned shoulders cutting through the stems, causing them to swish with her movements, and Clay rushes to follow her, heart skipping.
They slow at the base of the tall rock the MudWing referred to, and Clay sees a wide tunnel fringed by crumbling dirt. He can just glimpse the flicker of torchlight from somewhere far below and his tail lashes with excitement. Before Glory can stop him and before he can think better of it, he plunges head-first into the hole and starts burrowing his way down into the depths of the tunnel.
The rocky walls brush his flanks, surprisingly sturdy, and Clay realizes they’re packed with firm dry clay to hold them in place. Turned warm by the summer sun this close to the surface, he feels it hug his scales. The tunnel twists and turns and he’s aware of Glory at his tail as he quickens his pace.
Unexpectedly, the tunnel levels out and Clay bursts out into a large bunker. The walls are packed with more dry clay, crumbling in places, and torches line the walls, their flickering flames providing warm illumination. The ceiling hangs low overhead, and the space is small and almost cramped. The breaths of MudWings and the heat of their bodies thicken the dusty air. 
The moment that he enters, several MudWings whirl around, wings flaring open in surprise. They’re battered, dragons covered in scars and wounds and bandages, with huge, terrified, and angry eyes, claws bared and ready. Clay instinctively throws his talons and wings up as theiir hostility prickles against his scales. “We’re harmless,” he says, ducking his head. “We’re just here because a MudWing told us that this was a safe place to come for protection.”
“They would be right,” says a voice, and a dragon emerges from the rest. He’s a bit smaller than Clay, but definitely larger than Glory, with warm golden-amber eyes and a recent claw-mark wound on his tail. His scales are a dark amber color that reflects the torchlight warmly. He gestures to the rest of the dragons in the cave to relax, and they settle back into their former positions, the scales on their backs smoothing down. 
“Who are you?” he asks Clay, padding over to him across the hard-packed dirt floor. His gaze darts to Glory as she appears.
“I’m Clay,” he says, feeling suddenly awkward being confronted by a member of his own tribe who’s clearly around his own age and is so clearly in charge of this place. “And this is… umm, Lilypad.”
Glory wrinkles her snout at him.
“I’m Reed,” the dragonet says, giving Clay a tired smile. “I’m the one who started this whole alliance. If you’re seeking protection, you can have it here,” his gaze darts briefly over them. “I assume you two are unsibs?”
“Uhh…”
Glory trods on Clay’s talon, clearly trying to get him to say yes, but Clay isn’t sure whether or not he should. If he wants to earn this dragon’s trust, then going around lying definitely isn’t the best way to go about it. 
Reed tilts his head.
“It’s kind of a long story,” Clay says awkwardly.
“Probably not one that should be told in here,” Glory adds, glancing around at all the dragons who could hear them.
“Then let’s head outside,” Reed says easily, and he gestures with his wing for Glory and Clay to go first out the tunnel.
The sun is hanging in the middle of the sky as Glory and Clay emerge. Reed settles himself back on his haunches in the grass, the sun blazing down on his amber scales, and gestures for Glory and Clay to begin talking.
Clay exchanges a glance with Glory, then takes a deep breath and begins. 
By the time Clay finishes explaining, Glory jumping in occassionally with information Clay forgot, Reed looks stunned. He rubs at his head hard with his talon. “I can’t believe you were prisoners of Queen Scarlet for five years and managed to emerge alive on the other side. That’s unheard of.”
“So, will you take us and our friends in?” Glory asks.
Reed tilts his head thoughtfully towards her, then nods. “I couldn’t turn away dragonets in need,” he answers steadily. “You’re victims of this war just like any of us are, now and you deserve a safe space to heal.”
Clay feels a twist of guilt sink in his stomach. I’m not a victim. Not even close. if Reed knew about the countless dragons Clay killed in the arena under Scarlet’s rule, would he still see him as a victim in need of help the same way? Or would he see him for what Clay knows he truly is… a hidden killer with a strength for killing and violence and a monster buried deep inside?
“Though I don’t know how everybody else will feel about taking in a SeaWing and a SandWing as well,” Reed adds, oblivious to Clay’s thoughts.
“They won’t hurt anybody,” Clay promises, pushing the guilt away. “They’re our friends. We trust them with our lives.”
“Well, if they need help, too, I can’t turn them away,” Reed says, giving a sad smile. 
Clay exhales a shaky breath of relief. His friends will be safe. “Thank you so, so much,” he tells Reed, his voice wavering.
“Of course,” Reed’s smile is so warm and welcoming that Clay feels guilt threaten to crush him.
Glory knocks Clay’s wing lightly with her own, pulling him from his worries. “I’m going to go find the others,” she tells him, her wings already spread to fly. Shimmers of color, milky blue and violet, push their way briefly through the amber and brown on the undersides of her wings before disappearing.
“Okay. Be safe,” Clay twines his tail in hers. She soars away, her form soon disappearing into the sky as her scales wash light blue.
Reed’s gaze follows Glory away. “That’s why her name sounds odd,” he says in a tone of realization, “She’s not a MudWing. She’s a RainWing.”
“Oh. Yea.”
A tiny smile tugs on Reed’s snout. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t mind at all. Though I will say, it’s a rare dragon that manages to be friends with dragons from so many different tribes without clawing their snouts.”
Clay’s claws dig into the dirt. He debated even while he was giving his explanation of their time in the SkyWing kingdom on whether or not he should tell Reed the truth about the first year of his life: Kestrel’s imprisonment, living under the mountain, and the prophecy, the kidnapping that led to him being so close with dragons from so many other tribes. Part of him wants so badly to get it off his chest and feel less overwhelmed by the confusing memories and the knowledge and baggage that is associated with them inside his head, and besides, he feels guilty lying to a dragon who is doing so much to help him. But then another part of him knows that he shouldn’t say anthing without the other dragonets’ permission: they need to figure it out themselves, before all else.
Before he can decide, Reed is speaking again. “Come on. I want you to meet my sibs.”
“Sibs?” Clay echoes.
Reed stares at him, blinking. Then realization seems to dawn on him. His wings flare wide with instinctive shock. “You never lived in the MudWing Kingdom?” he exclaims. “Even before Queen Scarlet took you prisoner?”
Clay shakes his head.
“Wow, so you don’t know anything about the lifestyle of the MudWings…” Reed is quiet for a moment, then he collects himself. “Well, we’ll need to get you caught up on that soon as possible. But first, come meet my sibs.”
~ Chapter Five ~
Siblings
Inside the torchlit cavern, Reed summons five dragons to him with a flick of his tail. They crowd around him immediately, and Clay can see their close bond at a first glance: their scales brush together casually and indiscriminately, their tails and wings twine without thought, their words tumble over each other as they greet Reed, welcoming him back, and say hi to Clay.
“Clay, these are my siblings, Sora, Pheasant, Marsh, and Umber,” Reed explains, indicating each dragon with a flick of his tail. One of them, Clay realizes, is the small dragon he saw spying on him in the village. He has his eyes fixed on Clay again even now, huge and wide. Clay smiles and waves at him. He blinks those pale amber eyes, then ducks out of sight behind Pheasant.
“Hello,” Clay greets all of them.
Reed gives them a quick explanation of Clay’s situation, thankfully simplifying it, “He was taken prisoner by Queen Scarlet at a very young age, so he doesn’t know anything about us MudWings and our way of life,” he tells them, and they blink curiously at Clay. “Pheasant, could you give him a tour?”
The female dragonet tilts her wings towards Clay in greeting. “Of course, Reed,” she says steadily, nudging her brother’s neck with her broad snout.
A tour. Excitement tingles through Clay’s wings and he sweeps his tail eagerly across the baked clay. He’ll get to learn about his tribe…
~
Pheasant shows him the area near the Diamond Spray River, explaining that low-born MudWings live there, then leads him through the villages, the mud mounds growing progressively taller, the space larger. As she does, their wingbeats matched steadily to the same pace, she explains the basic customs of the MudWings, riveting Clay’s attention solely on her words.
“I can’t believe you don’t know about sibs,” she says, shaking her head. “Our sibling groups, well, they define us, in the MudWing Kingdom. They’re the core of who we are as a tribe. In our groups, we siblings stick together, for always. We learn to hunt and survive together, we grow up together, and we live together for the rest of our lives. And when we’re at war, we all fight as a group. Every MudWing troop is a hatching of siblings. Except for the ones who’ve lost too many, and then they try to find unsibs to form a new troop with.”
So that’s what that MudWing was referring to when she thought me and Glory were ‘unsibs,’ Clay thinks. Three moons, how sad. 
“How many have you lost?” he asks without thinking, and then winces as he realizes how horrible of a question that might be.
Darkness passes over Pheasant’s face. “One,” she answers. She doesn’t elaborate and Clay mentally whacks himself in the face with his wings.
They pass by more of the mud mounds, the ones and Clay asks about them. Pheasant explains that each one is called a sleep house and that each one houses a sibling troop, “Every single sibling will share one sleep house,” she says, “Sleeping there together every night.”
Clay thinks of his lonely cave back in Scarlet’s palace where he slept all alone and a sudden sense of isolation makes him feel cold.
Pheasant also explains how dragonets are born and raised, something Clay listens closely to. “There are no couples in the MudWing kingdom,” she tells him, “So you won’t see any dragonets being raised by two parents. MudWings have a breeding night once a month and then everyone goes back to their own sleeping houses. We stay in our sibling groups and that’s all the family we need.”
“Oh,” Clay can’t help being disappointed by that. Maybe deep inside, he had been hoping for the ideal of a normal family to welcome him: a mother and a father sharing a home, spreading their wings to take him in.
Well, even if my mother and father don’t have a relationship, I’m sure they’ll be happy to see me all the same. And I  have siblings, too! 
“MudWing dragons lay our eggs in warm mud nests protected by walls of hot rocks,” Pheasant continues, “They’re so safe that mothers never need to check on them, so the dragonets are usually born when the mother isn’t even there. The firstborn is always the biggest, and their first task is to help the other dragons out of their eggs by cracking their shells from the outside. That firstborn is called a bigwings, by the way - and Reed is the bigwings of our group.”
Affection and pride warm her voice when she speaks about Reed. It’s evident how much she loves and respects him, and Clay can’t help but feel a tiny twinge of sadness. Even if I do find my sibling group, he thinks, it won’t be the same. I’ll almost be like an unsib ‘cause I’ll have missed the bonding experiences of growing up alongside them, fighting alongside them, learning alongside them.
Will I ever really belong here in the MudWing Kingdom, or will I just be an outcast wherever I go? 
An even heavier thought than that crosses his mind, making his heart sink. And if so… is that what I deserve?
~
The other dragonets show up as the sun is setting the next day, flight-weary with specks of mud all across their scales and tired eyes.
“You’re okay!” Sunny cries, seeing Clay. She flings her forearms around his neck as she bursts into the bunker and he beats his wings against hers. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says, relieved, feeling her warm scales against his own. “I was really worried something would happen to you on the flight here!”
Sunny pulls away and Clay reaches out to brush wings with Glory and press his talon against Tsunami’s, then twines his tail with Starflight. The small black dragonet ducks his head, shifting his wings closer to his body.
“Hi, Clay,” he says softly. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
A shout echoes through the cave. “Why is there a SeaWing in here?” demands one dragon, flapping his wings anxiously. A bad scar rips across his snout, disfiguring one eye, and his throat is patched with leaves.
Tsunami lashes her tail. Sunny places a talon over hers and murmurs something to her.
“It’s okay, she’s not from Blister’s army,” Clay tries to reassure the dragon, “She’s just my friend. We’re not part of any army.”
“Clay is right,” the dragonet named Marsh says, hurrying over. His brown eyes flicker briefly over the situation and his wings twitch anxiously, but he addresses the dragon with a remarkably steady voice. “Remember, she’s one of the dragonets who was held captive in the SkyWing Kingdom.”
The dragon regards Tsunami, then turns away with a huff, wrapping his thick tail around his talons.
“I can leave if I’m not welcome here,” Tsunami says, her voice tense.
“No, it’s okay,” Clay brushes his wing against hers. “You’re welcome here, I know you are. Reed said it was okay… right?” he looks to Marsh.
The twitchy dragonet nods. “He said that any friend of Clay who had endured violence from the war was welcome,” he recites.
Tsunami still looks worried, but before the conversation can continue any further, Reed emerges into the bunker, carrying leaves. He places them down in a bundle on the ground and turns to the dragonets. “Welcome to the bunker!” he says. Clay sees his gaze trailing curiously over Starflight before returning to Tsunami. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you’d like.”
Tsunami tilts her wings respectfully. 
“Thank you so much for helping Clay!” Sunny bursts out, and she runs over to Reed and wraps her talons around his leg.
The bigger dragon blinks at Sunny in surprise, then a smile spreads across his face. “Of course,” he says, nudging her with his snout.
Clay’s chest grows warm. He reaches out on instinct to brush wings with Reed, who turns his kind smile towards him.
“Reed, Marsh, it’s almost night-time,” says a voice, and Sora pokes her head into the cave. “Are you coming to join us?”
“Of course. We’ll be right there,” Reed gives a quick goodbye to Clay and the dragonets, then hurries up and out of sight into the tunnel. Marsh is quick to follow, peeling his gaze away from Clay to race after his bigwings.
“Well, I’m going to go the delta,” Tsunami says. The torchlight reflecting on her scales makes them shimmer like azure glass. A vague anger haunts her expression but Clay can’t tell who it’s directed at. “I’m not welcome here.”
“I’’ll come with you,” Glory says unexpectedly. “I don’t want to sleep in dirt and mud. Yuck,” she’s abandoned her MudWing appearance now, allowing muted shades of light green speckled with white to inhabit her scales.
“I’ll stay here,” Starflight says softly. “It seems safe,” he reaches out to brush his wing against the wall, as if for balance. Clay feels his chest ache for Starflight and reaches out to rest a wing over his shoulders. “I can stay here with you, if you want,” he offers the NightWing.
Starflight gazes at him with big eyes, then shakes his head. “Don’t worry about me. You can go squish yourself down into blobby mud or whatever I bet you want to do,” his voice takes on a lightly teasing tone.
“I do want to do that,” Clay admits, which makes Starflight snort in amusement.
“I’ll stay with him,” Sunny offers, moving to stand close to Starflight, and he gives her a grateful smile.
“Okay,” Clay squeezes the talons of both of the dragonets, waits to make sure that they look comfortable, curling up together in the corner of the cave, then he heads upwards through the tunnel, claws sinking in the dirt. He emerges into the cold glitter of starlight, seeing dusk fading along the horizon. His wings spread to catch the wind, tasting of the sea, and he allows it to carry him back down to the marshes, where he swoops down to land in a pool of mud.
Mud. Mud! 
He laughs with delight as he feels his body sink into the squishy substance warm from the day’s blazing sun. He revels in the way the murky water sloshes soothingly over his scales, as if reminding him, all will be okay. He rests his head on a rounded rock jutting from the mud, allowing his wings and limbs to float on the surface, and just soaks in the blissful feeling.
I’m home, he tells himself. Worries crowd into his mind, for Kestrel and Peril and Tsunami and Scarlet and his family, about the prophecy and the SkyWing Kingdom and the dead dragons on the battlefield, but he tries to focus on the feeling of the mud on his scales and nothing more. I’m home. 
~
Clay approaches Reed the next morning as the MudWing is sorting through medical supplies that are stocked in niches along the wall. There’s a nervous anticipation in his stomach, afraid to ask what he knows he needs to ask, but desperate for the answers that have evaded him his whole life.
He needs to know about his family.
“Hey, Clay,” Reed says as Clay comes over to him. He turns and his gaze trails over Clay, glittering with amusement. “I see you slept wall last night.”
Clay is suddenly aware of the dried mud caked on his scales. “Maybe,” he says sheepishly, scratching some away from his shoulder.
Reed laughs. “You’re a real MudWing now,” he says, and he whacks Clay affectionately with his tail. His words make warm bubbles of happiness float through Clay’s chest. He thinks I’m a real MudWing… 
“Anyways, is there anything you wanted to ask me about?” Reed asks. “You looked like you had some kind of question when you came over here.”
Nerves overtake Clay’s small happiness in an instant. He scuffs at the ground under his talons. “I wanted to - to know about my family?”
Reed’s expression becomes more serious. “You mean, you want to try and find them?”
When Clay nods, Reed exhales slowly. “Okay. Well, let’s head down to the marshes, and you tell me everything you know about your birth.”
~
As they stand on the dirt path Clay and Glory walked two days ago, next to burbling mud and a huge bullfrog, Clay explains to Reed that his egg would have disappeared six years ago, and that it was ‘the color of dragon blood.’
The moment he says this, Reed’s wings snap sharply with energy. “I know where to go,” he says, “Come on, hurry!”
Pure shock zaps through Clay’s wings like an electric shock.
He knows where my family is. I’m going to meet my family. 
He scrambles to get aloft then flies after Reed, shock buzzing throughout his head. His heart begins to pound, to the rhythm of his wings, a powerful throbbing inside his chest. The family that he lost when he was taken six years ago, the family that he dreamed of all this time even though he wouldn’t let himself admit it, finally…
Reed touches down next to a lake filled with reeds, the place where the dirt path ended the previous day. It’s in an area away from the center of the village, an area where there are fewer, more isolated mounds. Here, next to the lake, there is a lopsided mound with a crumbling hole through the top, as if a dragon had punched through the mud in a rage at some point.
“This is the sleep house of a dragon named Cattail and her siblings,” Reed tells him, voice carefully neutral. “You should have hatched here.”
Clay realizes he’s holding his breath as they draw nearer to the sleep house. This is where he should have hatched. It’s much warmer and wetter than the cold, bare cave under the mountain, or the cold, bare cave he had in Scarlet’s palace, he thinks. But he can’t help noticing that there’s a heavy smell of rotten vegetation and no sign of life from the last mound. Reed pauses outside of the sleep houses and Clay glances at the stagnant, reed-choked water of the lake.
“Well, here we are,” Reed says.
Clay tears his gaze away from the water. The sleep house suddenly seems very, very tall and very intimidating, and his claws root to the ground. “What if she doesn’t like me?” he blurts out. “What if she doesn’t want me?”
Reed’s tongue darts between his teeth. Before he can answer, a wide, flat snout pokes out of the doorway. A pair of yellow eyes glare at him.
“It’s a pair of dragonets,” growls the MudWing, “Chattering like crows while we’re trying to sleep.”
“I’m s - sorry,” Clay stammers. Great first impression! “We didn’t mean to be loud. We’re just looking for - for a dragon named Cattail?”
The MudWing squints at him, then withdraws into the mound. Clay can hear grumbling and grunts and wings flapping, as if the MudWings inside are scrunching around to let one of them climb over the others.
At last, a thin brown dragon scrambles out into the open. She shakes out her wings, which have dappled patterns of paler brown scales, and frowns down at Clay and Reed. “What do you want?” she asks them.
Clay can’t breathe. He can’t believe it. So many years of imagining and wondering and fearing and daring to hope, and here he is - 
Finally face-to-face with his own mother.
He finds he can’t speak. Mercifully, Reed jumps in for him. “Cattail,” he greets her with a respectful nod. “I’ve brought this dragon here today because he thinks he might be your son - the red egg from six years ago, remember?”
Cattail stares at Clay. Her eyes are brown like his, but with a ring of yellow around the black slit of a pupil. Clay’s heart feels like it’s about to burst. “I - I’m sorry I’ve gone for so long,” he stammers, “But I’m home now, and - ”
Cattail’s head swings to Reed. “So?” she says.
Clay blinks. Reed doesn’t look surprised, more so resigned. “Can you tell Clay what happened to his egg?” he asks the MudWing.
“We sold it to the Talons of Peace,” Cattail says with a shrug. She stirs the mud around her talons with her tail, looking very much like she’s just putting up with this conversation until she can go back to sleep. 
“You - you sold me?”
“Why not?” Cattail says dismissively. “There were six other eggs in the hatching. They didn’t need you.”
Next to Clay, Reed shifts his wings, but Clay barely registers it. His head is still buzzing, but now, it’s not out of nervous anticipation. It’s out of the shock, slowly sinking in, that his mother never wanted him. She never looked for him, she never wondered where he went after she sold him away. She got rid of him, willingly, and has never missed him a single day of his whole life. 
He doesn’t even realize he’s crying ‘till he hears the drop of the tear landing in the mud below his talons. Suddenly, Reed’s wing is brushing his. 
Cattail looks uncomfortable, and she takes a step back towards her sleep house. “Look, I’m sorry,” she says, “And I wish you luck, I do. But there’s no room our troop for clingy little dragonets, and that’s all there is to it.”
Clay can’t listen to a single word more that she says. He allows Reed to guide him away. All his dreams are thudding like stones in his stomach.
In his lowest moments, when he was lonely and doubting his trust in Scarlet and hurting from old scars, he always told himself that there was someone out in the world waiting for him to come home. He imagined finding his mother and father, seeing them open their wings to him.
If only he had talked to someone from his tribe a lot sooner, he thinks bitterly. It would have saved him a lot of useless dreaming.
Reed leads him back onto the path, the lake sloshing at their talons, and twines his tail in his. “I’m sorry, Clay,” he tells him.
Clay blinks tears out of his eyes. “It’s fine,” he mutters, staring into the thick reeds in the lake, suddenly unable to meet Reed’s gaze. The rotting vegetation makes his nose hurt. “At least now I know I don’t have a place here.”
Reed is quiet for a long moment. Then he says, “That’s not true,” and he reaches out to press his mud-stained talon over Clay’s, forcing Clay to hold his gaze. “You know,” he tells him, “Me and my siblings, we’ve been wondering about the missing red egg from our hatching for a long, long time.”
It takes Clay a moment to register what he says, his brain clouded over with hurt. Then he gasps. “You mean - you’re my brother?” 
Reed smiles a bit sadly, a bit hopefully and Clay can’t help it. He launches himself at the smaller dragon and throws his arms around his neck. Reed staggers back, but he’s laughing as he wraps his wings around Clay.
“I’m so glad we found you,” Reed says fiercely. The protectiveness and the joy in his voice warms Clay to the very tips of his claws.
Clay squeezes his eyes shut. “Me, too.”
~
That evening, outside their sleep house, Reed gathers his siblings together and announces to them, “We found our missing sib!”
They all turn to Clay, who’s standing there with beads of mud sliding down his scales, and joy floods over their expressions. “It’s you!” Pheasant cries, and she throws herself at him, flinging her wings around him.
“I told you he had a familiar feeling, I told you!” Umber yelps, and he bundles into Marsh, almost knocking them both into the marshes.
Clay grins so hard it hurts as he clings to Pheasant. She pulls back and Clay reaches out to grab each of their talons individually, feeling their mud-stained claws clutch his like a lifeline: littlest, bright Umber, twitchy Marsh who looks almost identical to soft-spoken, shy Sora, second-largest Pheasant with her lighter brown underbelly, and of course, bigwings Reed.
“I can’t believe we found you,” Sora says, ducking her head.
“You should have been with us all along,” Reed says as Clay seizes his talons, giving him a grin that warms him from nose to tail tip.
Then Pheasant steps forward, reaching out to trace the edge of Clay’s wing with her claw. “He’s not just our brother,” she says, making the others tilt their heads. “Look at him. He should be our bigwings.”
The grin fades from Reed’s face as he studies Clay from wing tips to talons, and his wings slowly sink at his sides. “That’s true,” he says.
Clay wants to bring that grin back. He doesn’t understand what’s wrong. “I can’t believe I found you all,” he says again. He’s overwhelmed by a strong urge, gazing at them, to wrap every single one of them in his wings. He might barely know them, but all he wants to do is protect them forever.
Is that because I’m their - their bigwings? he realizes he doesn’t even fully know what the term means.
“What is a bigwings?” he asks Pheasant.
“You don’t know what a bigwings is?” exclaims Marsh. He’s silenced by Umber hitting him with his tail. “Silly, you already know that,” Umber says crossly. “Reed told us that Clay never grew up here, remember?”
Pheasant smiles affectionately at her brothers, then turns her attention back to Clay. “Well, like I told you, a bigwings is the dragon that tries to break all the rest of the clutch out of their eggs,” she explains. “And from then on, the bigwings takes care of all the others. Some troops get unlucky and their bigwings can be bossy, or too weak, but we got a good one,” she reaches over to nudge Reed affectionately with her tail, then she stops and ducks her head awkwardly. “I mean, you would have been good, too, I’m sure…”
Reed tugs up a clump of marsh grass and starts shredding it without looking at Clay. 
Did I do something wrong? Clay thinks, bewildered. He can’t tell why a sudden tension has dropped over the warm reunion.
“So I’m the bigwings of you all?” he asks. “Or I was supposed to be?”
Reed drops the shreds of the marsh grass to the ground. 
“Yea, but since you were gone, well, we always just assumed Reed was our bigwings,” says Marsh, shuffling his wings. “We didn’t mean to replace you, Clay. We’re sorry.” 
His expression is mournful. 
“You didn’t replace me!” Clay protests. "How were any of you supposed to know I was your bigwings if you only ever saw my egg before I disappeared?” He can’t help but feel like his being here has made something go terribly wrong. I don’t want to tear you all apart, he pleads, I don’t want to hurt any of you! 
“Clay is right,” Pheasant says, giving the sorrowful Marsh a gentle nudge with her wing. “We had no way of knowing.”
“Besides, that’s not important now,” Reed says, still refusing to meet Clay’s eyes as he tears up another clump of marsh grass, “Because now he’s back and he can be bigwings like he always should have been.”
“But you’re our bigwings, Reed,” Sora says, probably before she can stop herself. She clamps her talons over her snout immediately.
“I thought I was.”
Clay fidgets, his claws twisting deep into the marsh grass. He doesn’t know what to say with this thick tension that’s prickling across his scales.  He doesn’t want his siblings to be upset or hurt. What can I say?
“Reed,” Umber starts. The MudWing glances over at his brother, nodding at him to speak. “Should - should we tell Clay about - ” he trails away, but it’s evident that the rest of the MudWings know what he’s talking about.
“I don’t want to think about it,” Sora says, tucking her tail in close to her body.
“He should know, though,” says Umber stubbornly.
“Tell me about what?” Clay asks.
Reed sighs. “You’re not the only sibling we’ve lost, Clay,” he says in a somber tone, “It’s the reason we wanted to start this alliance,” he nods in the direction of the waterfall, continuing to speak in a hushed voice. “Two days ago, in the battle by the cliff, we lost our sister Crane.”
The sentence slams into Clay like a heavy blow. Tears prick his eyes with the realization that he’ll never get to meet one of his own siblings.
“That was our first battle,” Sora murmurs.
“It was awful,” Umber says in a small voice. A shudder runs through him from wing tips to claws.
Clay’s mind flashes to the battlefield they flew over on the way here, and his stomach twists as he realizes: one of the dead bodies he flew over was his own sister.
Reed bows his head. “I was not the bigwings I wanted to be.”
Immediately, four voices tumble over each other in a rush, a clamor of vehement protests. “You were! You were!”
“You were amazing, Reed,” Pheasant says firmly, reaching over to rest her tail on her brother’s.
“We’d all be dead if it weren’t for you,” Marsh agrees. They all have the same expression as they look at Reed. Clay can see that it’s trust - faith that their bigwings will take care of them, no matter what happens. And he can see equally that their words don’t seem to reach Reed.
“But it’s all right now,” he says, “Because you’re back, Clay, and you should be our bigwings.”
Clay meets Reed’s amber eyes and in them, he can see all the worries he’s ever experienced himself… all the fears for his friends, all the things he would do to protect them, all the ferocity of how much he cares about them. He feels the same way now for his siblings, though he’s only just discovered them. He feels instinctively like they are extensions of his own claws and wings. 
But how could he possibly take Reed’s role as the bigwings when he’s never been a true MudWing, when he’s never been a member of this troop? He’s never known their scuffles and disagreements, their struggles and fights. He wasn’t there to protect them during their first battle or mourn with them over Crane, he’s never endured their suffering and all their triumphs, he hasn’t grown up alongside them, learning every single tiny thing there is to know.
They must feel the same way, too. He can tell they do, he can see it in the eyes of all of his siblings, gazing around at them, their uncertainty. He can almost see the questions spinning behind their brown eyes. Could he be our bigwings? Really? And Clay already knows the answer.
“Reed,” he says softly, and he reaches his talon out to his brother. “I won’t take your role. I couldn’t take your role. It wouldn’t be right. But I would - I would like to get to know you all. If that’s okay.”
Reed hesitates. Then the spines on his back relax and he takes Clay’s talon, mud-stained claws gripping tight. “We want to know you, too.”
“Yea!” Umber says. The others clamor over each other to welcome him, and Clay rises to his talons and throws open his wings. Marsh tackles him first, wrapping his arms around his neck, then Umber climbs up onto his back and Sora presses against his side. Pheasant brushes her wing against his and Reed clutches to Clay’s talon and Clay grins ‘till his face hurts, surrounded by them.
I do have a place here.
I have siblings.
~ Chapter Six ~
Nowhere To Belong
Clay is woken early the next morning, sprawled and fast asleep in a pool of mud, by a furious and demanding voice yelling, “Where is he?”
He scrambles out of the mud, dragging himself onto solid land, and whirls around, dripping mud from his tail and wings, to see a familiar copper dragon facing down two MudWings across the marsh from him. Smoke curls from her scales and nose and her claws make the mud around her bubble.
“Where is he?” she demands again, lashing her tail furiously. The MudWings she’s glaring back up nervously, tripping over their tails. “You have to know where he is. You have to have seen him! I won’t ask again!”
“Peril!” he cries.
She whirls around. “Clay?”
He bounds over to her, leaving a trail of mud, and flings himself into her wings, making her gasp in surprise. He throws his arms around her neck. “I was so worried,” he tells her.
She hugs him back. Her scales burn against his but he couldn’t care less. “I was, too,” she tells him, “I’m so glad you’re okay, Clay.”
He pulls back, but doesn’t let go of her talons. “How have things been in the Sky Kingdom?” he asks, searching her face. “Is Scarlet okay?”
Why do you care? his mind whispers. She lied to you, your whole life. 
But he can’t help himself. Scarlet might have lied, but she took care of him, too. She was the closest thing to a parent that he had for a long, long time.
Peril ducks her head, unusually subdued. “Scarlet is gone,” she says, “She disappeared yesterday. Nobody knows where she went to.”
“She’s alive, though?”
Peril nods. Clay wonders if Glory would be relieved about that news. “Well, I’m just glad you’re okay,” he tells Peril again.
“I need to go search for black rocks,” she says suddenly, her copper tail lashing through the mud. “Will you come and help me look?”
“Of course!”
~
They stay in the underbelly of the peaks, climbing through ravines and hopping from ledges. Peril’s copper scales shimmer against the plain gray rock and Clay feels his wings brush hers as they leap the small distances.
“Here,” Peril darts into a small crevice in the side of a ravine, and Clay follows her, wiggling his way in through the narrow gap. He breathes a small spurt of flame to light up the cave and his wings brush the stone. Peril takes the lead in the narrow space, her tail tip brushing against Clay’s snout. He can feel the heat of her scales reflected off the walls of the small tunnel.
“Are you going to go find Scarlet?” Clay asks, trying to find a way to break the silence.
Peril is silent for a moment. Then she answers, “I don’t have to. Scarlet will come back for me. I know she will. She cares about me.”
Clay has doubts about that. Before he heard Kestrel’s news, he never would have questioned it for a heartbeat: he was certain in his knowledge that Scarlet cared about him, about Peril, about all the dragonets, that though she of course she wasn’t perfect, she tried her very hardest to protect them.
But now, all those hopes feel just as idealistic as his dreams of his parents, dreams that would never end up coming true. Scarlet never cared about him or the other dragonets, they were only ever toys to her. All she ever did was force Clay to become a killer… and the worst part is, he let her.
“You don’t think so, do you?” Peril asks, clearly taking his silence in the worst way. There’s a faint waver that appears in her voice.
Clay’s talons clench. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but he doesn’t want to lie to her. “I don’t know,” he admits, which is close enough to the truth. “But I also think you don’t need her, Peril. She made you do so many bad things. You can find a new place to belong, that’s better than the SkyWing Kingdom, and you can find new dragons that will love you more than she ever did.”
“Nobody else wants me, Clay,” Peril says, lashing her tail. “I’ve killed and hurt so many dragons. You’ve seen it. Not even my own tribe wants me.”
They emerge into a larger space, open on all sides. Clay breathes out flame to light up the space and Peril paces over to the very back of the cave to run her talons over the floor, Clay’s flickering flame reflecting on her scales. She continues to speak as she picks up a shard of gray-black rock and carries it over to place it down in the middle of the cave. “You’ve seen them avoid me.”
“Peril…”
“You might be able to cozy up in your tribe with your friends and be home,” she adds, her voice becoming increasingly brittle. “But I can’t.” 
“Peril, I’ve done just as much as you have,” Clay says desperately. “I let Scarlet turn me into a killer, too. I don’t deserve to belong anywhere.”
“Yes, you do,” Peril sets down another rock, not looking at him. He’s never seen her blue-fire eyes so subdued. “You might have killed dragons but you never became a monster. You kept your conscience. I stopped caring, that’s the difference between you and me. I stopped feeling anything.”
Clay finds he doesn’t have words. He just watches her firescales shimmer like copper glass, glowing with radiance in the darkness of the cave. The copper threads in her wings glimmer like small rivers of fire in the shadows.
“I don’t have anywhere to go, now,” she says softly, finally looking up at Clay. “And Scarlet is gone and I don’t know if she’ll come back. I don’t who will become queen next if she doesn’t, or what will happen to me when they do, and I’m so - I’m so afraid, Clay…”
Clay’s heart feels like someone is trying to rip it out of his chest. He opens his wings and she steps right into them. The most dangerous dragon in the world, shivering in his arms. He holds her close, burning against his scales.
“I only feel safe when I’m with you,” she tells him. “But - but I know I can’t stay with you forever.”
“Why?”
“Because you deserve someone better than me.”
Clay’s heart cracks. “Peril, that’s not true. You’re a good dragon. Please, listen to me. You don’t have to blame yourself…” his words stop because does he even believe himself, really? He loves Peril, he does, but he’s not one of the dragons she tortured in the arena with a sly smile on her snout, nor one of the dragons who watched her sweep her wings out as she entered, sunlight glinting off her copper wings, as if their demise was no more than a game to her.
She spoke about the dragons she had killed so casually, as if they never mattered. Unlike Clay, she never kept count. Unlike Clay, she never cared.
She must see something in his expression, because she pulls away. Her wings float slowly down to her sides. “I knew it,” she murmurs. “You blame me, too.”
“Peril, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do!” she lashes out. Her wings shake. “Everybody does. After what I’ve done… after what I’ve been through… I’ll never belong anywhere.”
Her words are such a reflection of the anguish inside Clay’s own heart that all he can do is gaze at her, so pretty and so broken. She’s the only dragon in the whole world, he thinks, who could ever understand him.
He steps closer to her, holding out his talon. “Peril, it’ll be okay,” he tells her softly, wishing he could just take away her pain. Protect her from herself with every last one of his claws, his sturdy, robust scales, all of his fire.
But before he can say any of that, the sound of talons coming from the tunnel makes them both whirl around. A heartbeat later, a dark gold face appears in the opening of the tunnel. “Clay,” Glory hisses. “You have to get back, now.”
~
The three of them fly together back to the MudWing swamps, over the grasslands and the scavenger den, dipping lower as they draw near. Glory shimmers out of view, her scales fading to sky blue, and Clay banks downwards to land on the bank of the delta, pressing himself down into the mud. He coats his scales thoroughly, then takes the risk of drawing closer, splashing through the river and spreading his body low against the opposite bank. From this vantage point, he can see two large SandWings standing amidst the mud.
“You must have seen them,” hisses one of the SandWings. Her voice is familiar, cold and cruel, and with a shudder, Clay recognizes her. Burn, contender for the SandWing throne and harshest of the three siblings. Widely considered the most dangerous dragon on Pyrrhia, even meaner than Queen Scarlet. Even with as blurry as Clay’s memories of his past are, he remembers the minders discussing how she destroyed the SkyWing egg that had been meant for the Prophecy and killed Hvitur, the IceWing who brought it back, forcing Webs to steal a RainWing from the rainforest inside: that being Glory.
She’s massive, with pale yellow and golden scales that Clay has heard radiate heat like a desert horizon, covered in jagged scars, one of which is a particularly vicious burn along the majority of her flank, marks of her many battles. The muscles in her back ripple like wind over sand dunes and her poisonous tail is coiled up above her. Her obsidian-black eyes have no white in them, orbs of pure, menacing black, glittering. Her talons are twice the size of Clay’s and while she’s royal, she doesn’t adorn herself with any accessories. Her claws and teeth are stained dull red with all the blood she’s shed.
“We haven’t,” says one MudWing anxiously. Her wings are pressed against her sides and Clay can nearly see her trembling. “I swear.”
Burn flares her wings threateningly, the air around her body shimmering with heat, and Clay’s stomach gives a sickening lurch. He knows there’s no way Burn would ever hesitate to kill a dragon in cold blood in front of their tribe, just in an attempt to get her way. His talons clench in the mud. Is he brave enough to jump in and save her, to be the hero that the prophecy demands… to be more than the monster that Scarlet made him?
Before he has to decide, there’s a flash of copper scales and Peril lands in the mud before Burn, spreading her shimmering wings to block the MudWing. “I already checked,” she tells Burn, her voice bold and unafraid. “I asked several MudWings around here and they all said they hadn’t seen anything.”
Burn’s tongue flickers in and out between her teeth. Dark blue scales catch Clay’s eye and he looks past Burn to see Tsunami buried in one of the swamps, her scales so caked with mud that only a single glimmer of her usual sapphire is visible, appearing no different from any MudWing. Her eyes are closed but Clay sees them open briefly, flash of green between her lids.
Get out of here! Clay tries to gesture at Tsunami, giving a wave of his wing, but she gives her head a stubborn shake. Clay can’t help but admire her sheer refusal to hide away while other dragons are in danger.
“This isn’t any of your business, SkyWing,” Burn hisses at Peril. “You’re no more than Scarlet’s pet, and now that she’s gone, you’re useless. You don’t know how to do anything without her leading you around on a golden leash. So go away, and let me and my SandWings handle this situation.”
Peril’s wings flare. She takes a step towards Burn, and Clay can’t help but feel a twinge of satisfaction seeing that Burn moves backwards. “Scarlet might be gone,” she growls, “But I can still kill you with a single touch, while you can’t lay a single claw on me.”
Burn gives a low growl in her throat. “I can find him,” she tells her, “The MudWing, and rip him from limb to limb. Do you want that?”
Peril shuts her jaws immediately. Thick white smoke spirals up from her scales, curls from her nose, but she remains silent.
“I didn’t think so,” Burn looks past Peril as if she’s not even there, at the MudWing she was previously interrogating. “I’ll believe you that you haven’t seen them,” she hisses, forked black tongue flicking in and out. “Because I don’t think even you thick-skulled MudWings are stupid enough to go behind my back when you know what will happen to your tribe if you do. But if I ever do find out that a single one of you were lying to me…”
The powerful SandWing leaves her words to linger on the air for a long moment, menacing black gaze trailing over not just the one MudWing, but over all the MudWings in the area. Then she spreads her wings open and launches herself into the sky, the muscles in her back rippling like wind over dunes as she soars away. Her line-up of SandWing guards rise up to follow her.
The MudWing looks shaken. She collapses hard on the dirt path and folds her wings over her head.
Clay rushes over to Peril. “Peril,” he seizes her talons, “Burn is so dangerous! You didn’t have to take that risk for us - for me.”
Peril gives Clay the saddest smile he’s ever seen and releases his talons. “Of course I did,” she says. “And now I have to leave.”
Clay is aware of Tsunami’s gaze prickling on the side of his face. “Why?” he asks, hurt stabbing through his chest. “Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll figure it out as I go,” Clay can hear the emptiness in her voice. He opens his mouth, to try and help her, to say whatever it takes to convince her to stay, but she just shakes her head. “I know what you’re going to say, Clay, but you’re wrong. I could never belong here.”
Before he can say a single word, Peril spreads her wings and lifts into the sky.
Clay turns as Tsunami comes over to him, mud dripping from her sapphire scales. “Are you okay?” she asks him.
Clay smiles, brushes his wing against hers. “Of course,” he doesn’t tell her he feels like he’s dying inside. 
She doesn’t look completely convinced, but thankfully, decides not to press him. “Come on,” she tells him, “We should go talk to the others.”
~
~
Sunny, Starflight, and Glory are hiding together in the bunker. It’s mid-day, so Clay isn’t surpried to see that Glory is fast asleep, her long, thin tail tucked over her snout, clouds of blue drifting through her scales. Starflight jumps to his talons immediately the heartbeat that Clay and Tsunami enter.
“Is everything okay?” he asks them anxiously.
Tsunami explains the story to Starflight while Sunny comes over and presses up against Clay’s side. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she tells him.
He presses his snout to the top of her head and his wing spreads out instinctively to rest over her shoulders.
“I can’t believe Peril would defend us,” Starflight says when Tsunami finishes recounting the tale.
Tsunami glances over at Clay. “Well, it wasn’t us she was defending,” the blue dragon says, raising her brows in Clay’s direction.
Clay blinks at her. She gives an amused snort and nudges him with her tail.
Starflight paces back and forth. “How much longer can we stay here?” he frets. “Burn isn’t stupid. She knows this is the most obvious place we could have gone after our escape and there’s no way we can be safe here for very much longer, especially if us being here is endangering all the MudWings here..”
“Where else could we go?” Glory asks, opening her eyes and revealing that she’s awake. “We’re not safe anywhere with Burn on the hunt.”
“Nobody is safe in this world,” Starflight says, “Now that Blister has turned the whole world into a huge battlefield.”
“We should try and change that,” Sunny says.
They all look towards her. She gazes around at all of them, her expression hopeful. “We’re the dragonets of destiny,” she says, “We’re destined to be heroes. So many dragons are hoping for us to save the world.”
“That was what the Talons of Peace wanted for us,” Tsunami says, her voice tense. “That doesn’t have to be what we want for ourselves.”
“But how could we let down dragons who are depending on us?” asks Clay. “Nobody else is going to do if it we don’t.”
Tsunami lashes her tail. “I’m not saying I don’t want to help other dragons,” she mutters, “I just don’t want to do it the Talons of Peace way, okay? I never want anything to do with them ever again.”
“We don’t have to do it their way,” Clay says. “We can do it our own way. We have our own destiny now, free of the Talons or Scarlet.”
He’s aware of a gaze resting on his cheek and glancing around the bunker, he sees that nearly every single MudWing is gazing at them, their eyes enormous as they reflect the torchlight. Whoops, Clay thinks, scratching at mud caked on his neck. Maybe they should have been more careful with their words.
“I’m with Tsunami,” Glory says, closing her eyes again. Her scales are a subdued murky purple and blue in the torchlight. “I  mean not that I get a say or anything, I’m not a part of the prophecy, but personally I don’t think we owe anybody anything. We’re just dragonets who just escaped a terrible situation.”
“Yes, we do!” Sunny lashes her tail. “We’re the dragonets of destiny - we have to come and save the day. That’s what the prophecy says. We can’t just sit around and hide while all over the world, dragons are dying.”
“I agree with Sunny,” Clay says. He can’t help thinking of the burning dragons on the battlefield, their expressions contorted with suffering. His siblings grieving over Crane, the prisoners he killed in the arena, scarred and beaten, the blood that stained the sands, the traumatized dragons surrounding them.
We have to help. We have to be the heroes we were meant to be. 
But then there’s that voice, rising up from the darkness inside of him, whispering, You could never be a hero. You’re a monster. 
Tsunami growls low in her throat. “I think - ” she starts, but she never gets the chance to finish her sentence, because just then, the clumping of talons sounds from the tunnel and Reed emerges into the bunker, accompanied by Umber and Marsh, then Sora and Pheasant following just behind.
“We have news,” Reed says, his expression grim. “According to one of our spies, Blaze’s army are planning on striking again in the next few days.”
All around the cave, wings flare open in alarm and Starflight flinches, ducking his head low. Clay moves to stand close to the small NightWing as cries of protest ring out from around the cave. “But we just had a battle!”
Reed sighs. “I know,” Clay can see in his dull amber eyes so much fear: fear of losing another sibling, fear that he won’t be able to protect his siblings, that he won’t be strong enough, powerful enough to keep them safe.
Clay looks over at Starflight, crouched next to him, Sunny who is staring at Reed in horror, tail-lashing Tsunami and narrow-eyed Glory, and he feels those same doubts stir like eyes opening in the marshes. He’s killed dragons in the arena, but that hardly means he’ll be strong enough to fight in a full-scale battle, let alone manage to protect all of his friends.
If something happens to one of them, I’ll never forgive myself.  It’s my job to protect them… but what if I can’t? What if I’m not strong enough? 
“I can’t promise to make the battle not happen,” Reed addresses the dragons of the bunker, stirring Clay from his worried thoughts. “But I can promise that I will try to protect all of you from involvement the very best that I can,” he then turns to Clay, “Clay, are you coming with us?”
Clay glances over at the dragonets. “Do you mind if I - ” he starts.
“Of course not, stupid,” Tsunami says, whacking him with her tail. “Go be with your siblings. We’ll be fine. I’m going to the delta, anyways.”
“Yea, and I can stay with Starflight,” Sunny says, padding over to him on soft talons and pressing herself close to his flank. Starflight ducks his head.
“Okay,” Clay brushes wings with each dragonet, save for Glory, who he knows doesn’t like physical touch. He waves at her instead, then heads over to his siblings, who despite looking anxious, greet him warmly with open wings.
He flies with them over the marshes, wings beating into the dusk, and before long, the rest of them are touching down on the island of dry land surrounding their sleep cave. Umber, plastered head-to-toe with clods of dirt, gestures proudly towards the sleep cave with his tail. “Notice anything?”
Clay blinks and turns his gaze to the sleep cave to study it. He tries to recall how it looked before and he thinks that maybe it looks larger, slightly longer, and he sees fresh mud plastered on one side rather than dry.
“It’s bigger,” he says, feeling slow. Is there something he’s not getting?
Then Pheasant grins. “We expanded it for you. So you can sleep in here with us, like you always should have from the start.”
Clay gazes at them, disbelieving, then a burst of joy makes him flap his wings eagerly. “Thank you so much,” he says, hugging each of them. They each hug him back warmly with clutching arms and beating wings, but when Clay moves to hug Reed, the smaller dragon won’t meet his eyes, and turns away.
“Come on,” he says, “We should get some rest.”
Clay feels a twinge of worry but he tries to push it down. He allows the other dragonets to go in first, then climbs in last. The sleep house is a dark and crowded space, illuminated only so faintly by the light from the entrance. Inside, wings knock indiscriminately and Clay can see the outlines of the others, flopped over each other with no care for personal space, tails and wings twined. He squashes himself down into the barest space he can find, with Sora on his one side, curled up with her wings over her head, and Reed on the other.
“Thank you all for doing this for me,” Clay says, his voice sounding loud in the dark, quiet space, muffled by the close quarters.
“Of course!” they all chime. 
“You’re our brother, Clay,” Umber says happily. “You belong with us.”
“Yea,” Pheasant says, a smile in her voice. “This is how it should have been all along.”
But then… where would that have left Reed? 
“We’re glad you’re here, Clay,” says Marsh, “Now our sib group feels like it’s finally complete.”
“Don’t say that, Marsh,” Sora speaks up, surprising Clay. He’s barely heard her speak a word before. Her voice is muted. “Crane isn’t here.”
A dead hush falls over the group. Clay winces.
“Sorry,” Marsh murmurs.
“It’s okay, Marsh,” comes Pheasant’s kind voice. “I know what you mean. It has felt like something was missing before when we knew we were missing a sibling but we didn’t know who it was. Now we know, it was always Clay.”
Clay should feel warm. Hearing those words is all he’s ever wanted. But he doesn’t feel warm. He feels cold and worried about the other dragonets and whether or not he’ll be able to protect them, worried about Peril and where she’s going to go now that Scarlet is gone, worried about the upcoming battle.
“Yes, and Clay is wonderful,” says Umber.
Clay’s chest hurts. If he knew about all the blood I’ve shed, would he still think I was so wonderful? “Thank you,” he manages.
They all lapse into silence, then, as starlight glimmers into the sleep hole, and soon, the sound of overlapping breathing fills the space. It’s so warm in the sleep hole, with the body heat of six dragons all mingling together.
This is where I was meant to be all along, he thinks. But somehow, he can’t quite believe it when he knows, deep inside of him, that him being here is already causing a tear amongst his siblings, tearing a hole in Reed.
If he stays for too long, Clay is afraid it might tear his siblings apart.
~ Chapter Seven ~
Rising Tension
“If you’re planning on fighting in the upcoming battle, then all of you will need to know how to work as a team,” instructs Pheasant.
Clay exchanges a glance with Tsunami. They’re standing in the swamps on the outer edge of the village where Clay first met the MudWing troop who pointed him and Glory to the alliance, talons trenched in mud. Pheasant, Umber, Marsh, Sora, and Reed are surrounding them on all sides. 
“I’ve always fought on my own,” Tsunami says dubiously, stirring her tail through the mud and making a face. “I don’t know about that.”
“I think it sounds great!” chimes Sunny. Her enthusiasm is untampered by the mud that sticks to her golden scales, dirtying their shine.
“Urggghhhh,” Glory groans, putting her wings over her head. “Why is it so gloppy in this kingdom?” 
She shakes mud from her scales, spattering Starflight, who’s standing next to her. 
“Hey!” he protests, fending her off with his wing.
Pheasant looks like she’s trying not to smile. She gives Clay a glance, as if to say, are they always like this? 
Clay nods and amusement glitters in Pheasant’s eyes.
It was Sunny’s idea, of course, to ask the MudWings for help in battle training, as Clay and Tsunami have only ever fought in arena battles and Starflight, Glory, and Sunny are entirely inexperienced save for some practice battles mostly for fun here and there as younger dragonets. Clay thinks the idea was solid, but in practice, it’s not turning out to work so well. They might be good friends, but it’s clear none of them have any idea how to be a cohesive team, and that’s unsurprisingly what Clay’s siblings are founding their training on.
“I know it might seem difficult,” Reed says with incredible patience in his voice, “But it’s worth it. Knowing you can trust your team-mates to have your back is invaluable in battle and understanding your team-mates, even more so. Having knowledge of how each member of your team operates is so important for forming offense and defense that is crucial to keep yourselves safe.”
“Reed is right,”  Clay tries to encourage his friends. “Tsunami, I know we’re both more familiar with fighting alone, but we’re not in the SkyWing Kingdom anymore, right? We’ll be stronger if we work together.”
Tsunami hesitates, and in the silence, Clay hears Umber lean over to Sora. “Look at him,” he whispers, “He’s a natural bigwings!”
Clay tenses, though he doesn’t fully understand why. Then he sees Reed’s talons clench in the mud, and Pheasant hushes Umber. Before he can say something to calm the situation, however, he hears wingbeats.
“Wrong,” says a frigid voice.
Clay jerks his head up as heavy talons land with a thump in the mud just behind his siblings, spattering mud in the air. A dark red SkyWing with chipped, battered scales regards them coldly with smoke pouring from her nostrils.
Kestrel. 
Clay immediately feels small, like that young dragonet cowering in the stalagmites as her claws swung towards his snout. It was one thing when he was looking down on her from high in the sky, staring down at her through the bars of a cage, but seeing her like this, free and in her fully glory, looming over him, makes him shrink back on instinct, his wings pinning tight against his sides.
“Kestrel,” snarls Tsunami. Her dark blue tail lashes furiously. “What are you doing here? How did you manage to get free?”
“The Sky Kingdom is under new management,” Kestrel answers, her tongue flicking between her teeth. “The new queen let me go.”
New management. Clay feels a twinge of worry as his mind darts to Peril. Will the new queen let her stay, even with all the horrible things she did, or will she force her out of the kingdom? What will happen to her?
“But that’s not important,” Kestrel says. She stalks over to the dragonets, swatting Marsh aside like a fly as she pushes past.
“Hey!” Pheasant says angrily, stepping forward to her brother’s defense as Marsh scrambles to his talons, looking shaken. Reed immediately steps in front of him, spreading his wings to protect him.
Kestrel doesn’t spare a single glance at the MudWings. Her gaze is fixed on Clay, who prays his trembling isn’t too evident as he sees her eyes glitter with cold rage. He swallows down his fear and looks past Kestrel to hold Reed’s gaze. His brother looks terrified and angry and confused. “Reed, go,” he hisses through gritted teeth. “Take the others away and get out of here. I’ll be fine.”
Reed hesitates. Then he flicks his tail to summon their siblings around him and soars away, Umber, Marsh, Sora, and Pheasant following swiftly, leaving the dragonets alone with Kestrel, who stops right in front of Clay.
“Did my lessons teach you nothing, MudWing?” she spits. “You don’t rely on other dragons. I don’t know who has been cramming your head with that sappy nonsense, but it’s all lies. You must be self-reliant and cruel,” she seizes his snout in her claws. “Where’s that inner monster I saw when you hatched, when you attacked all the other dragonets in the nest?”
“That wasn’t Clay attacking us,” Sunny chirps, “That’s just the MudWing custom. Bigwings break the other eggs in their nest - ”
“I don’t care,” Kestrel flicks her tail sharply and Sunny immediately clamps her jaws shut. “You killed dragons for Scarlet,” Kestrel hisses, smoke pouring out between her teeth as she does. “I know what you can be.”
Silence rings. Clay struggles to jerk his snout away from her grip, but he can’t. “I don’t want to be that,” he grits out in despair, his talons clawing at the mud as he tries to escape. “That doesn’t have to be who I am.”
“Face it, MudWing,” Kestrel says softly. “You’ll never be able to protect your friends if you don’t embrace that inner monster and - ”
Her words are cut off in a roar and she releases Clay, whipping fire around her. Clay stumbles back to see Tsunami step back, gripping a red scale between her sharp teeth. She spits it out onto the dark mud.
“Leave Clay alone,” Tsunami snarls. Her gills are pulsing with fury.
Kestrel picks up one of her scales and studies it, then tosses it back into the mud without a backwards glance. She turns her furious glare on the other dragonets and Clay staggers over despite the fear pounding in his blood to step in front of them, spreading his wings. “Leave them alone,” he manages. 
Kestrel stares down her snout at him. Then she gives a dismissive snort through her nose. “I give up,” she says, “All of you are lost causes.”
“Kestrel,” Sunny says. She scrambles through the mud to throw her arms around Kestrel’s leg. “I know you don’t mean that. You took care of us when we were younger. You kept us safe. You want us to stay alive.”
Kestrel pries Sunny’s claws from her leg and throws the SandWing back into the mud, causing her to skid on the slippery surface. Starflight leaps to catch Sunny, and helps the mud-spattered dragonet stagger upright. Clay bares his teeth, wishing helplessly that he was so much stronger, so much braver. He can kill dragons in the arena but he can’t stand up to protect his friends.
“You’re wrong,” Kestrel says. “I never cared about any of you and I never will,” she’s turning to leave when Tsunami pounces on her, grabbing her tail and digging into the vulnerable spot with her claws. Kestrel yanks her tail free and gives a snarl of pain. “What do you want, SeaWing?” she demands.
Tsunami draws herself up. “I want you to show us something,” she says, “I want you to show us the cave where we grew up.”
From behind Clay, he hears Starflight inhale sharply, and shock tingles through his own scales. The cave? His vague, blurry memories surface.
Kestrel is silent for a long moment, her tail lashing through the mud. Then she asks, “Why in the world would I do that?”
“Because you owe us,” Tsunami snaps, “Because you stole six years of our lives and you deserve to pay us back in some way. And because if you don’t, there’s no way I’m ever going to even try and make the prophecy come true.”
“Tsunami,” Sunny protests.
“I mean it,” Tsunami insists, unyielding. “I will go back to my home and lay around in the depths of the sea and let the war rage on endlessly forever if you don’t take me and my friends to see our cave, and I mean that.”
Clay can see Kestrel’s jaw pulsing. Is that true? he wonders. He can’t believe Tsunami would really do that. But, he realizes, Kestrel would believe that, and surely, that’s what Tsunami is banking on. Kestrel believes in the inherent selfishness of all dragons. Of course she thinks Tsunami is serious. But does Kestrel really care enough about the war - about the prophecy - to listen? 
Kestrel and Tsunami remain in a silent stand-off for several moments. Then Kestrel huffs smoke. “Fine, you insolent SeaWing,” she snaps. “I will take you and your friends to see your cave. Maybe being back there will jolt some memory in you of your duty and remind you that I was doing the right thing all along.”
She turns, spreads her wings, and soars off. Tsunami flaps her wings hard to follow her. Clay hurries to leap into the air and follow Tsunami over to the tall shapes of the peaks, with Sunny close at the tip of his tail.
~
Kestrel banks down into a crevasse that cuts through the rocks, a small, relatively shallow ravine. Clay’s talons land with a thump on a stream that runs over pebbly gravel and sandy mud as he joins the dark red SkyWing. Sunny lands next to him with a softer sound, along with Starflight and Glory.
Kestrel leads the dragonets over to a mossy pile of boulders, hauls her body up on top, then disappears. Tsunami clambers up onto the rocks as well and peers inside. “There’s an entrance in here!” she says with a lash of her tail, and she wriggles her body into a narrow, dark crevice in the side of the ravine. Clay follows her and the soft blue glow of the luminescent stripes lining Tsunami’s powerful body fills the cave - a trait universally shared by all SeaWings.
The tunnel takes a sharp right, then a left, then goes down at a steep angle for a few steps. Clay can feel Sunny’s snout brushing his tail and the collective talon steps of all of them echo off the walls of the cave. Only the familiar presence of his friends keeps Clay from bolting back to the surface as the tunnel straightens out, takes them around another corner, and ends at an enormous gray boulder. Clay is aware of his heart thumping madly in his ears.
What am I so terrified of? 
In the illumination of Tsunami’s scales, Clay sees Kestrel grip a long, sturdy stick jammed under the rock, holding it in place. She moves it to the right with a sharp jerk of her talon, causing the boulder to slowly roll aside with a soft scraping sound. A huge, dark cave comes steadily into view.
“Three moons,” Tsunami breathes.
Kestrel stomps inside and all five of them file in after her. Old torches line the walls and on instinct, Clay heads off to light each one with exhales of flame, illuminating the cave with softly flickering flame. The torches reveal a yawning ceiling, sharp teeth of stalactites hidden in shadows as they hang downwards, and looming shapes of stalagmites dripping with moisture.
A loud splash makes Clay whirl around. For a heartbeat, he panics - then relaxes as he realizes it was just Tsunami jumping into a dark blue river that runs along the back of the cave. 
“Three moons, Tsunami, a warning would be nice next time,” Glory says irritably as Tsunami emerges from the depths of the river, her scales flickering with red annoyance as she brushes water off of them with her tail.
Tsunami ignores Glory as she floats serenely in the river, ducking her head and splashing water over her scales. She moves so gracefully, so fluidly, that Clay feels like a gawky brown blob just looking at her. She proceeds to swim up and down the narrow channel, powering herself with her thick tail and webbed talons, her head held high as she moves speedily through the current.
“It’s just a river,” says Glory.
Tsunami flicks a spray of water at the RainWing with her tail, which makes Glory hiss and fend Tsunami off with her dark blue wing.
“I wonder if any of our old scrolls are in here,” Starflight says as he brushes his talons along the wall, gazing at the cracks embedded in the stone. Across the cave, there’s a scraping sound as Sunny hauls herself up a stalagmite, digging her claws into the grooves to pull her body upwards. She curls herself around the top of the stalagmite but can’t reach the stalactite above.
Clay moves closer to one of the torches to feel the heat of it waft faintly against his scales and presses his eyes shut, blocking out the light. He knows the other dragonets are busy reminiscing, but he doesn’t want to.  The idea of the memories being stirred from the depths of his mind scares him.
Then a wing nudges his. His eyes open with reluctance and he sees Tsunami standing next to him, dripping all over the stony floor.
“Come on,” she says, flicking a spray of cold water at him from the tip of her tail, “Let’s go check out the battle cave.”
No, no, no, anywhere but there, Clay thinks, panic surging up in his throat. His tail flicks anxiously.
Tsunami’s brow furrows. “What’s up with you?” she asks him, “Why are you so freaked out about seeing this place? It’s just caves.”
Clay ducks his head. His claws scratch at the rock. “I’m scared of what I’ll remember,” he mutters, ashamed of his weakness.
Tsunami tilts her head towards him. “What, Kestrel being the worst?”
“I…” Clay trails away with a weak shake of his head. Yes, he knows that’s what he’s afraid of - and he almost can’t bear it. But he knows he can’t let his friend down. “Never mind. I’m fine. I’ll come with you.”
Tsunami leads him down a twisting tunnel that eventually opens out into a large cavern. It’s a maze of stalagmites and stalactites, giant claws thrusting out of the ground and casting ominous shadows against the walls. Clay heads across the room to light a torch and its glow reflects in the surface of the river, which runs from the central cave all the way down to the battle cave.
Tsunami goes to crouch down next to it, dipping her talons in the water. Clay finds himself drawn to the stalagmites. He wanders through, seeing claw marks and old scorch marks scattered across the rock here. Memories flood back to him as his talons brush the surface, of horrible training fights with Kestrel: dodging her talons and her flame, clawing his way fearfully up stalagmites to escape her, pain shooting through his body as she flung him against rock and slammed him to the ground, yelps and gasps of pain, aching scales.
“She hurt us so much,” he doesn’t even realize he voiced the words aloud, talking more to himself than to Tsunami. “It wasn’t okay, was it?”
Tsunami’s wing brushes his, dampness transferring from her scales over to his. He sees a sadness deep in her dark blue gaze, one so frequently buried beneath the anger. “No,” she says softly. “It wasn’t.”
Clay touches claw marks embedded in the rocky side of one of the stalactites, marks of suffering he thought he forgot. “It was so long ago,” he says, “I was so young, but somehow, I remember it to this day. I think - I think maybe it’s still carved into my scales, all the thing she did to me. To us.”
Tsunami doesn’t speak, just listens, her dark blue gaze reflecting the torch light like the depths of the river, trained on his face.
Clay continues, feeling far away from his body, lost in thoughts. “ She wanted to sculpt me into a monster so badly and… maybe it worked.”
“Clay…”
“She taught me in violence. It was all I ever knew, because of her. So when Scarlet forced me to become violent… I guess I just let her.”
Tsunami takes his talons into hers, webbed and damp from the river, and she looks him in the eye. “You’re not the terrible dragon you think you are,” she tells him, “You know why?  Because all the violence you’ve ever committed or experienced has been outside of your control: it was always forced upon you. But whenever you’re given a choice, you always make the right one, Clay.”
Clay stares at the claw marks in the stone.
Is that true?
“You said earlier that you didn’t want to be the dragon Kestrel wanted you to be,” Tsunami goes on. “And you don’t have to be. You can choose.”
“I can choose,” Clay repeats. He looks up at Tsunami. “Just like we can choose our own destiny, the five of us, now that we’re free.”
“Yes. We’re free, Clay. You are free.”
Clay lets his gaze trail to the ceiling, the dripping stalactites. “I hope you’re right,” he says. “I hope I do have a choice. I hope that even if I was born with violence inside of me, even if other dragons tried their hardest to bring out a monster in me, I can choose not to be that way. I hope I can choose to be a hero, someone who helps other dragons rather than harms them.”
“You can,” Tsunami says. She hesitates, then adds, “I guess that we all can.”
Clay twines his tail in hers. “Come on,” he tells her. “Let’s go see if we can find what the others are all up to.”
“Starflight is probably scrounging for scrolls in the study cave,” Tsunami teases as she and Clay head across the cave, and Clay grins.
Sure enough, they find Starflight searching around the study cave, poking his nose into crevices. He’s collected a small stack of scrolls in the middle of the room, mildewy and tattered at the edges, but surprisingly intact. Tsunami slithers off back to the central cave, but Clay flaps his wings and flies up to one of the perches of the study cave, draping himself over the ledge. He tries to remember days spent studying in the cold dimness.
“Find anything interesting?” he asks Starflight.
The NightWing jumps. His black scales blend smoothly into the shadows and when his wings flare, the stars gleam brighter than usual in the sunshine that streams in through the sky hole which carries in scents of the outside. He keeps his head down as he busies himself with his scrolls. “Yes,” he answers.
I can’t believe I’m actually asking Starflight to tell me about his scrolls, Clay thinks with a grin. “Like what?” he asks.
Starflight picks up one scroll. It has a silver gilt edge and Clay thinks he vaguely recognizes it, Starflight’s old scroll about NightWing powers. Starflight tucks it under his wing, then loads the rest into his arms. “Stuff about the different Tribes,” he answers, “Different climates and food to eat in lots of locations. I thought it would be good information to have.”
Clay sees Starflight stagger as he tries to carry all his scrolls and he hops down from the ledge to help him carry some. “Here.”
Starflight gazes at Clay, then looks away, his head dropping again.
They meet back up in the central cave just as Glory emerges from her sleeping cave with whorls of blue swirling through her scales. Kestrel whacks Glory’s side with her tail as she passes by the RainWing dragonet, storming in from the direction of the battle cave. “We’ve wasted enough time here,” she spits at Tsunami, tongue flicking in and out of her teeth. “We’re leaving. Now.”
They’re on their way back, flying up and out of the narrow ravine, when Clay glimpses copper scales barely concealed behind the edge of a peak, a smoking tail dangled over a ledge, and two blue-flame eyes watching him go.
~
The sun is setting by the time the dragonets return to the swamps and the bunker. Starflight, Sunny, and Glory head inside, while Tsunami flies off to the Diamond Spray Delta. Kestrel heads away to the peaks, muttering furiously.
Clay, meanwhile, goes off in search of his siblings.
He finds them sat in a circle outside their sleep hole. He’s swooping down to join them when the tone of their voices makes him pause.
“What if we lose another sibling?
That’s Sora. His wings slow, and he stops short, their voices, unaware of his presence, drifting to him through the cooling evening air.
“We won’t,” says Reed, resting his wing soothingly over Sora’s shoulders. “We know better this time. We’ll stick closer than we did before, and we’ll fight three times as hard. I swear, I won’t let any of you get hurt..”
“We trust you, Reed,” says Pheasant. Her gaze wanders around their circle. “I trust all of you. There’s nobody else I’d rather fight alongside.”
“We’re a group,” says Umber. “And I know we’ll be stronger this time than before, because this time, we know what we’re fighting for, and we know how we have to fight to hold onto what’s most important to us.”
Clay’s chest warms with love for his siblings, despite the anguish he feels thinking of Crane. But what Marsh says next makes his claws go cold.
“Yea!” the little dragonet says, “And also, we have Clay this time! He won’t let anything happen to us. He’ll keep us all safe.”
“You’re right,” Umber says happily. “We have another dragon who will protect us and fight alongside us.”
Clay sees with a sinking feeling in his heart, that Reed’s expression contorts. Pheasant clearly doesn’t miss this. “Reed,” she starts.
He rises suddenly to his talons with a lash of his brown tail. “I’m tired,” he mutters, “I want to go to sleep,” he turns without another word and disappears into the entrance of their sleep hole, leaving a resounding silence in his wake.
“Marsh!” Sora protests, whacking her brother with her wing. “Why don’t you think about things before you say them?”
“I didn’t - ” Marsh looks confused. “All I said was that Clay would keep us all safe.”
“Yea, and how do you think that feels for Reed? To him, that just sounds like you’re saying Clay will keep us safe - like he couldn’t.”
“I didn’t mean that!”
Sora stands up. “I love Clay,” she says softly, “And I’m so glad we found him. But Reed is our bigwings, not Clay, and that will never change. Reed is the one I trust to protect us. I mean, we barely even know Clay…”
“He was meant to be our bigwings,” Umber argues. “He should have been our bigwings all along. I love Reed, of course I do, but we can’t ignore Clay.”
Pheasant looks devastated. “Everyone,” she begins, “There’s no need to argue. This isn’t what Crane would have wanted! Clay already said he doesn’t want to take Reed’s place, so Clay can be a part of our troop just like any ordinary MudWing would have been, and Reed can stay our bigwings.”
“But what if - what if Clay would be a better bigwings?” Marsh whispers. “He’s a dragonet of destiny and he’s so strong and confident and kind, and he tries so hard to protect his friends. Look at what he said earlier when he was talking to that SeaWing - and how he sacrificed himself to protect all of us by giving us a chance to flee! If he had been bigwings all along, maybe…”
Sora whirls around and disappears into the sleep house without listening to another word, her shoulders trembling as she does.
“Clay might not have been able to save Crane, either, you know,” Pheasant murmurs to Marsh. “You can’t assume that for sure.”
Marsh’s shoulders sink. “I just don’t want to lose another sibling,” he whispers, and he buries his face into Pheasant’s shoulder. Umber throws his wing over his brother’s shoulders and Clay knows he can’t stay. He turns and glides away as quietly as he can, over the swamps with his heart feeling shattered.
It’s as he touches down on the bank of the delta, the mud squishing under his claws, that he realizes why Marsh wants so badly to believe in Clay, to the point that he would even claim Clay should be the bigwings over Reed. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Reed - it’s that he wants so badly for a miracle that will assure him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he won’t lose someone else, and if Reed can’t be that miracle, he has to hope that maybe, Clay can be.
Clay, however, knows he can’t. He’s not a miracle. He’s only a dragon who is tearing his family apart without even trying. Reed is afraid of being replaced, hurt by the idea that his siblings don’t trust him, and everyone else is torn between who to believe in, who to choose, who to follow. Clay was naïve enough to think he could just tell Reed that he didn’t want to be bigwings in his place, and that would quell the conflict, but he was wrong.
Reed is their bigwings by heart, but Clay is their bigwings by blood.
Clay is closing his eyes, trying to just block out reality, when the soft sound of wingbeats reaches his ears, making him turn his head. His dismal spirits lift ever so slightly as he sees a small golden shape approaching in the dark.
“Hey, Clay,” Sunny says as she lands next to him. She twines her tail with his. “Are you okay? I was surprised you didn’t stay with your siblings.”
Clay gazes into her dark green eyes, so bright and reassuring, full of all the light and hope it feels Clay lacks in himself. He wants so badly to pour out all his hurt and pain in this moment, but he can’t force her to bear it. It’s his task to protect his friends, not to make them carry his weight for him.
“I’m okay,” he answers. “What about you?”
Sunny snuggles close against his side. He feels her heat radiating against his scales: unlike Peril’s baking heat, hers is basking and gentle. Her head comes to rest against his shoulder and he smiles despite his worries. “I…” she begins to speak, but then suddenly, she goes quiet. Her golden ears twitch.
“Do you hear that?” she asks Clay.
Clay listens, confused. At first, he doesn’t. Then, his ears begin to register it, a slow start that begins to swell in sound, louder and louder. It’s one dragon singing, he realizes, but more and more are joining with every single passing second, catching on. A shiver runs down his spine. Not only that, but after a moment more of listening, Clay recognizes the song.
“Oh, the dragonets are coming…” 
Clay and Sunny exchange glances, both too shocked to speak.
“They’re coming to fight… for they know what’s right… the dragonets…” it’s a song Clay remembers hearing occassionally in the Sky Kingdom, sung in snatches by drunk guards when they thought Scarlet couldn’t hear, a rousing bar song, SkyWings singing along fierce and proud. Back before he knew he was one of them, when the dragonets of destiny were a mere concept he hoped for.
Now, he hears the song swell, glimmering in the air. It’s not that rousing bar song chanted by the SkyWings, instead, something gentle and plaintive, almost eerie. There’s a melancholy quality to the singing that’s impossible to ignore: something soft and mournful, aching with grief and loss, all the suffering of the war experienced, all the fear of so much more of it that is to come.
The MudWings are singing.
Clay and Sunny both take flight at the same time without hesitation, wings brushing as they wheel towards the swamps. They hover over the grasslands and Clay sees Starflight and Glory emerging from their bunker, along with several of the MudWings from the alliance, battered and bruised. Throughout the swamps, MudWings are emerging from their sleep houses to sing, rising up from the pools of mud, climbing up onto rocks and into trees to be heard. Countless heads tipped back to the sky, singing with all their might and heart.
Next to Clay, Sunny begins to sing along, too. Like ancient ghost whispers, as if the spirits killed in the last battle and all those before it have returned to the swamps for one final night, the voices rise up. Clay closes his eyes and tears sting his eyes as the true feeling of the song crashes into him.
It’s hope. 
These MudWings are afraid. They just faced a devastating, cruel battle, and as soon as possibly the next day, they will be forced to face one more. They are terrified of losing their loved ones, their siblings, of dying themselves, even if they can’t admit to themselves, even if they are hardened warriors.
And yet.
They have hope.
This song means something, even to dragons hardened on the battlefield beyond belief, even to dragons broken almost beyond cynicism. They believe in the dragonets and the prophecy. For the first time, Clay’s dreams of doing something big and legendary, of being a hero, seem like they belong to this world instead of merely his imagination, more idealistic dreams that will never come true.
The wind swells in his wings. He tips his head back and sings and wingbeats register, approaching from the direction of the delta. Without having to look over, he knows it’s Tsunami as her throaty voice joins the rest. Among the voices, Clay picks out more familiar ones: Sunny next to him, Starflight’s clear tenor, and perhaps to his surprise, most of all, Glory, belting out the lyrics.
Concealed by the anonymity of the night, safe in this precious moment caught between terror and yearning, so many dragons can open up their hearts, at least for one heartbeat, let down their battered guards, and hope.
Wingbeats flap in Clay’s ears. He opens his eyes in time to see Glory and Starflight flying up to join them, starlight glittering on Glory’s scales, which reflect the night sky, dark purple with whorls of midnight blue. Starflight looks like a miniature galaxy with the undersides of his wings containing captured stars. Glory rises up to hover next to Tsunami while Starflight moves close to Clay.
The five of them reach out and link talons, in unspoken agreement, in this moment, as the song echoes over the fearful, hopeful marshes.
They can choose their own destiny, and their choice is to be heroes, and save the thousands of dragons across the world, who, just like these MudWings, are holding onto desperate hopes amidst grief and terror, that some day, even if not now, then soon, the war will come to an end… that maybe a better future does exist for them, somewhere in that far-off, glowing horizon.
~ Chapter Eight ~
War
The battle begins at the crack of dawn.
Clay hears the screams and shouts before he sees the fight, jolting him from sleep. His wings spread and he glances over at his friends, who are curled up all around him in the bunker, and they all immediately rise to their talons. They don’t hesitate to follow him out of the bunker and through the tunnel.
The screams are even louder outside. Clay rises into the sky and sees the battle waging, to his horror, in the very swamps themselves. Sleep houses are smashed and slumped into the mud, trees crack and topple to the ground. Clay’s heart thumps with fear. He knows he has to go find his siblings and make sure they’re okay, but his friends are here, too, needing his protection.
He glances desperately over at them. Glory catches his gaze and waves her wing. “Go protect your siblings,” she tells him. “We’ll be fine.”
Clay hates himself for it, but he soars off across the marshes, towards his siblings’ sleep house. The MudWings are trying desperately to beat back the IceWings and SandWings, and drive them out of their territory. Wings whack Clay’s and he hisses in pain as talons rake his flank. In this vicious melee, all he can see are churning scales and glittering claws ad teeth. He tries to rise above it to scan, searching desperately for familiar scales, familiar faces.
“Reed!” he calls. “Umber! Marsh! Sora - ”
A body tumbles into Clay. He beats his wings to stay upright and claws grab around his neck as wings flap against his. “You’re okay!” yelps Marsh. “Come on, come help us, we have to keep our sleep house safe!”
Clay follows on Marsh’s tail through the melee. Wings and tails whack around his face and he focuses on Marsh’s brown scales to lead him. Before long, his siblings’ sleep house comes into view, ad his siblings, fighting for their lives against a pair of IceWings and a SandWing, bright scales glittering against the dark, murky backdrop of the marsh. Clay intakes a breath in alarm as he sees that Umber is already bleeding from IceWing claws. Clay knows from experience how painful it is to be clawed by an IceWing - since their claws are ridged to grip sleek ice, it’s like being clawed by four dragons at one instead of just one..
Reed shoves the IceWing away with a powerful thrust of his talons, then, as she stumbles, slipping on the slick mud, her wings already shredded and bleeding, he thrusts her into the marsh ad holds her body under. Clay looks on, his mind buzzing with shock, as Reed keeps the IceWing’s head buried under the mud until the twitching of her silver tail goes limp and she sinks down.
“Everest!” shouts the second IceWing. She finally manages to struggle free from Pheasant’s claws and races over to the marsh. Reed doesn’t stop her as she grabs the IceWing’s body and hauls it out of the mud onto land, dripping with mud that runs in rivulets through her polished scales. The second IceWing snarls, the whirls around to Reed, frost breath hissing through her teeth.
“Reed!” shouts Pheasant and she jumps in front of Reed, tumbling him aside. Clay sees what’s going to happen and he plummets towards the IceWing, crashing into her from above just as she releases her frost breath and tumbling them both into the mud. When he flails his way out, he sees that most of her icy blast hit the mud, causing silver ice crystals to form on the surface - but not all of it. He whirls to Pheasant and sees her clutching her wing, which is so cold its steaming as ice crystals form on the membranes, and gasping in pain.
Umber dives into the mud, abandoning his SandWing enemy, and clutches mud in order to throw a talonful of it over Pheasant’s injury. Marsh jumps in and grapples with the SandWing while Sora looks on in horror.
“You saved my life,” says Pheasant, stunned.
Clay stumbles over to her and grabs her talons. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says, relieved.
A scream slices through the air. Clay whirls around as two more SandWings come swooping down to land in front of them, spreading their huge wings, radiating heat like a desert horizon. The sunlight reflects dazzlingly on their sand-pale scales and gleams on the black barbs on the ends of their tails. They step forward and glowing orange fire hisses around their teeth.
Clay’s ears roar. “Get back!” he shouts. He shoves Reed and Umber behind him, flings his wings wide, and braces for the heat. Their blasts of fire crash into him and he endures the searing pain with gritted teeth. 
“Clay!” shrieks Umber.
The red-hot pain makes Clay howl but he keeps his wings held open. Finally, the fire fades, and Clay pants, looking out to see his brown scales turned bright red, but in only a few seconds, they fade back to their normal color.
“Blood red egg,” Sora says softly.
Both of the SandWings gaze at him, expressions blank with shock, and Clay takes advantage of their surprise. He throws himself at one of them, beating his wings around their head to disorient them, and ends up knocking them back, landing on top of them. He knows he should kill them, but he can’t bring himself to make the blow. Whatever Kestrel and Scarlet told them, he can’t do it. He knocks them out instead, clonking his talon against their head with a dull thud that makes them slacken. Marsh, meanwhile, with the help of Sora and Pheasant, wrestles the bigger SandWing into submission, squashing them down into the mud, and Umber and Reed work together to tackle the third one to the ground.
Clay grins around at his siblings. 
“We’re a perfect team!” Marsh says happily, waving his tail. “Thank you for saving us, Clay!”
“Yes, thank you, Clay!” Umber grins.
Reed steps back off the body of the injured SandWing, releasing them: apparently lacking the heart to kill them. They give Clay one more terrified, confused look, then flap awkwardly into the air and fly off without a backwards glance, followed by their partner. Reed wipes the SandWing blood on his claws off on the mud and then looks up to gaze in anguish at Clay.
Clay’s feeling of warmth fades. “Reed?”
Pheasant reaches out to touch her wing to Reed’s but he pulls away. He draws his tail close to him, refusing to meet his siblings’ eyes. “I couldn’t protect you,” he mutters. “But Clay… you can. You can protect them like I can’t. You should have been the bigwings all along. So go ahead, take charge.”
“Reed, you’re our bigwings,” Sora protests.
Reed shakes his head. “Clay can protect you better than I ever can and you deserve someone who will keep you safe. If the best thing I can do for all of you is to let Clay be the bigwings instead, then that’s what I’ll do.”
Clay hears his voice wavering and it cuts through his thick, armored scales and stabs him through the heart. He can tell how much it hurts Reed to make that sacrifice, to give up his siblings’ trust and his own role, worse than that, he can hear the anguish of feeling that he’s failed his siblings.
“I won’t let you,” he says.
Reed blinks at him.
Clay spreads his wings. “You are their bigwings, Reed. Not me. I have my own sibs to keep safe, and I need to go make sure they’re okay.” it’s tugging on his heart, worry for his friends. His siblings have Reed, but his friends have nobody, and he needs to lend them all of his claws and teeth to help them.
Besides, he can tell deep down, as much as it hurts, that if he stays, he won’t protect them: he’ll only destroy them even further.
Reed bows his head, in acceptance or resignation. Without another word, Clay lifts into the air and soars back over to the bunker. As he does, he sees with a gasp of horror that SandWings are trying to force their way into the bunker, trying to get past two battered MudWings blocking the way.
Clay is swooping over to help when he hears wingbeats following him, and he sees Reed shoot past him. Umber, Marsh, Sora, and Pheasant follow, and the five dragons land in front of the entrance to the bunker, spreading out with their mud-colored wings wide. “Go back inside!” Reed tells the MudWings.
They turn and dart back inside the bunker. Clay banks in the air and that’s when he sees his friends. Tsunami is lashing out with her claws and her powerful tail to hold back two IceWings. Starflight is crouched behind her, his wings over his head. Glory spits sprays of dark venom at advancing dragons - though Clay notices she aims at flanks and shoulders and sides, avoiding wings - places that will injure them but won’t kill or cripple them. Sunny is beating her wings anxiously. “We have to stop this fight!” she protests but Tsunami doesn’t listen, swinging her powerful tail, and of course, neither do the soldiers.
One IceWing stumbles back, shrieking, as Glory’s venom bubbles on her flank, and flaps away frantically. The second is opening their jaws to blast ice at Tsunami. Clay leaps in front of her, pulling heat up into his chest as he does, and lets out a stream of fire, shooting it between the teeth of the IceWing. He tumbles backwards, batting at his steaming jaws frantically with his wings.
“Clay!” Sunny throws her arms around his foreleg.
He leans down to nudge his head against hers, then straightens up. From here, the village turned to a battlefield is horribly visible: smashed homes, toppled trees, dragon corpses staining the mud with blood. The sight stabs Clay like a shard of ice. My home. The war is tearing it apart.
“We have to stop this,” says Tsunami, and Clay realizes she’s gazing out over the battlefield too, her expression grim. Blood cakes her scales but her sapphire color still glimmers through. “You’re right, Sunny.”
Sunny brightens.
“But how could we possibly do that?” Starflight asks. “We can’t - ” his words are cut off as suddenly, Sunny shrieks and points. “Look!”
Clay whirls around and his eyes widen as he sees a huge wing of SkyWings, spread out in a v shape in the sky, swiftly approaching. The sun glitters off their red and orange scales and their enormous wings make a cascade of powerful wingbeats as they swoop down towards the swamps.
The MudWings look up, seeing their saviors, and rejoice, reaching for their allies. The SkyWings crash into the IceWings and SandWings.
“The SkyWings wouldn’t help under Scarlet unless they had to,” Starflight says softly. “But the new queen must be different.”
With the aid of the dragons of fire, the tide begins to turn, and the MudWings and SkyWings are able to start forcing the SandWings and IceWings out of the swamps, battling them back with fire and claws. 
“Go hide,” Clay tells Sunny, Starflight, and Glory. “In the bunker. Me and Tsunami will fight.”
“Hide while you go and die for me?” Glory says. “No thanks,” and she dives after Tsunami, who has already flung herself at a nearby SandWing. 
Clay pushes Sunny away. “Go hide,” he tells her urgently.
“I can help!” she protests.
“At least go with so you can protect Starflight, okay?” Clay says.
Sunny glances over at the NightWing, who is huddled into his wings, in his ‘terrified stalagmite’ pose with his head drooping. She nods and leaves Clay’s side and goes to give him a nudge with her talons, pushing him to the bunker. 
There must be a way to protect my home without using violence, Clay thinks, Without having to kill or harm dragons. Kestrel has to be wrong. 
He thumps over to join Glory and Tsunami and jumps in front of Glory as an IceWing leaps towards her. He blasts fire at the IceWing’s jaws, then, as the dragon stumbles backwards, swings his tail at their head. He misses, connecting with their shoulder, and they grip him in freezing talons that burn his scales, the chill radiating off their bodies sending shudders through his body.
“Do we really have to do this?” Clay croaks as the IceWing’s teeth hiss with the sparkling smoke of their powers. “Do we have to kill each other?”
The IceWing snarls.
“I know you have a family you want to go home to. I have dragons who don’t want me to die,” Clay whispers. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“You’re naïve.”
“I’m not,” Clay says. “I just have hope. I have hope that maybe the world can learn to get along without a bunch of killing,” he senses a couple MudWings and SkyWings gazing at him from nearby. 
The IceWing allows freezing breath to hiss through the gaps in his teeth, but he doesn’t immediately blast Clay. Trapped under the dragon’s freezing claws, Clay is reminded suddenly of facing Fjord in the arena. But this time, he doesn’t have to kill… he won’t kill. Not for Scarlet and not for Kestrel.
His strength doesn’t have to be used for killing and violence; it can be used to protect his brothers and sisters, his friends. He doesn’t have to become a monster, though so many have tried to force him to become one.
He doesn’t have to be a killer. He can be a bigwings.
Clay shoves the IceWing back with his talons, sending him staggering backwards, slipping on the ice, then knocks him out with a swing of his talon. The IceWing drops to the ground and Clay hauls him gently by the scruff off of the battlefield, resting him in tall stalks of grass that conceal him. Then he whirls around, intent on plunging back into the fray to protect Tsunami and Glory, who are struggling against a huge SandWing, but then sees he doesn’t need to.
All across the swamp, IceWings and SandWings are struggling away from their enemies and lifting off in droves. From the edge of the field, a huge, burly SandWing commander is shouting, “Retreat! Retreat!”
Clay watches the enemy army fly away, their scales glittering in the rising sunshine. The SkyWings leave, too, carrying their dead in their talons, red and orange bodies swinging in the grasp of their claws. As they do, Clay sees a familiar gleam of copper scales flying in the back of the arrangement, and he recognizes the shape of Peril as she soars away, following her tribe.
Then he turns. The sun rises over the distant sea, and spills its glimmering light over the bodies of MudWings, their allies, and their enemies alike, scattered, dead, across the swamps of the MudWing Kingdom.
Part Three
The Dragonets of Destiny
~ Chapter Nine ~
Peril
It takes the whole day and most of the night to collect and burn all the MudWing bodies.
Wordlessly, Clay works, and Tsunami, Glory, Sunny, and even Starflight all help, pulling the bodies out of the mud and hauling them to the bonfires. The sick black smoke thickens the air and churns Clay’s stomach. It takes digging through the swamps to find all of them, ones that sank down deep. He has to numb himself to the horror, try to disconnect himself from the reality, or the sheer misery of it overwhelms him and becomes too much to bear.
Most of the MudWings ignore the SandWings and IceWings, but Clay grabs them, too, building a separate bonfire for them with the help of his friends, and placing them on, their white and desert-pale scales burning, too. Columns of smoke rise up from their corpses, spiraling up into the deep blue sky.
They also have to rebuild the destroyed sleep houses. Clay helps random sibling groups pack mud back onto torn sections, or completely rebuild. They give him confused glances but he does so, anyways. Sunny and Starflight follow him around, helping him work on the houses, ‘till all their scales are splattered with mud. More dragons use thick, rock cauldrons to scoop up the worst of the swamp water, sullied by blood and gore, and carry it away. Tsunami and Glory join these groups, carrying fresh water back from the delta above the waterfall to refill the swamps and provide fresh water for dragons to drink while working.
The sun is rising over the sea by the time the worst of the damage has finally been cleared up. Clay staggers back to the bunker and finds that it’s packed with injured dragons, receiving medical attention from Sora, Umber, Marsh, Pheasant, and Reed. Clay hugs each of them, so relieved that they’re okay he feels like he could faint - even Reed, who won’t meet his eyes. Pheasant goes to lay down in the corner, tucking her frost-burned wing, heavily plastered with thick mud and leaves, close to her body. Sora shows him how to apply mud and mix medicinal leaves to plaster against wounds. He finds that it comes naturally to him, finding the injuries and treating them, even though the sight of the ugly wounds oozing dark red blood over brown scales, and the pained hisses and gasps of the dragons he treats make him feel sick to the stomach.
The sun must be around the middle of the sky by the time Glory comes over to him and gives his wing a tug. “Get some sleep, stupid,” she tells him.
He glances past her and sees Tsunami fast asleep, with Sunny laying under her wing, her tail twined together with Starflight’s. Clay goes over to join them and lays down, pressing himself close to the NightWing. Glory joins them, too - keeping her distance, but allowing Clay to hold her talon. Clay falls asleep tangled with his best friends, the sound of their breathing lulling him to sleep.
~
Clay sleeps so long that he wakes up the next evening, shaken awake by a muted purple talon. “Clay, someone wants to see you,” says Glory.
Clay mutters a thank you to her as he heads past, having to drag his talons. He wants to go back to sleep. Or maybe eat some dinner. Dinner sounds good. His tongue runs over his teeth. It’s only when he’s almost at the end of the tunnel that it occurs to him to wonder, Who could it possibly be?
The moment that he emerges from the tunnel, he gets the answer to his question.
Peril is standing there, surrounded by the sinking sun’s rays. They reflect on her copper scales and bring out threads of gold in her wings. She’s wearing the saddest smile on her face that he’s ever seen.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she says. “I saw you battling yesterday.”
Clay walks over to her and twines his tail in hers. “I saw you yesterday, too,” he says, “Flying back to the kingdom with the rest of the SkyWings,” something occurs to him, and his eyes widen. “Were you - were you the one who alerted the SkyWings to the battle and brought them all here?”
Peril hesitates, then gives a small nod. “I’d been keeping an eye on you for a few days before that,” she admits. “I know that seems creepy, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and seeing you - it made me feel better. Anyways. I saw the troops this morning and I knew I had to go alert Ruby. She might have kicked me out of the palace, but I couldn’t - I couldn’t just do nothing.”
“The new queen kicked you out?”
Peril nods. “I’m not surprised,” she says. She gestures her wing weakly at the grass around her talons, which has shriveled and blackened, curling smoke into the air, and the dirt which has been burnt black by her claws. 
“Peril…”
“I don’t know why I did it,” Peril says. “I thought I did it just to keep you safe but maybe… maybe there was a tiny part of me that wanted to do something good for once in my life, to save dragons instead of hurt them,” she looks up to hold his gaze, “Maybe I wanted to be a hero like you are, Clay.”
Clay shuffles his talons. “I’m not really a hero,” he says, embarrassed.
Peril gives a soft laugh and hits him lightly with her wing. “My humble, handsome, hungry, Clay,” she teases.
Her words make Clay flap his wings and she laughs. She used to tease him with the words when they were much younger, seeing how flustered they made him. Her expression sombers quickly. “So, yea. That’s why I did it.”
“You should tell everyone here that,” Clay urges her, “They would be so grateful. You saved so many lives by doing that, even if you were only a few minutes quicker than a MudWing messenger would have been, you know that, right? Even if you’re not accepted in the SkyWing Kingdom, you could be, here.”
Peril is already shaking her head.
“Or you could come with me and my friends!” Clay urges her. “Wherever we go next. We’re going somewhere - I don’t know where yet - but we want to try and stop the war, since, you know, we’re the dragonets of destiny.”
Peril doesn’t look surprised by that news. Clay realizes she must have overhead Scarlet talking about it at some point, probably to Burn. She just looks resigned. “Clay, I can’t come with you all,” she says.
“Why?” Clay feels crestfallen. “I know you think my friends won’t like you but after you stood up for us, and then saved everyone yesterday - and besides, if you want to be a hero, I know you could do great things, Peril - ”
“No, it’s just, I don’t think… I don’t think I deserve to come with you,” Peril says slowly.
“Don’t say that.”
“You’re the kind of dragons they write prophecies about,” Peril says, giving him that sad smile again that makes his whole chest hurt. “You’re heroes and saviors, you and your friends. And I’m - well, I’m the opposite of that. I’m the bad guy, if you want to call me that. I’m - I’m the villain.”
“I’m not a hero!” Clay says again. “You’re the one who saved everybody yesterday. And I know you blame yourself for killing dragons, but you were like me and Tsunami, Peril. You weren’t given any choice. You had to.”
“Only because of you,” Peril says. “Every good thing I’ve done, it’s only been because I wanted to be good like you. Without you, Clay, I would never have seen anything wrong with what I did. I would have gone around thinking I was great, perfectly fine, as a killer, as Scarlet’s pet murderer, forever. Queen Scarlet - she didn’t force me to be a killer, even though that’s what I’d like to believe. You and Tsunami would have been executed if you’d said no - but I could have fought back against her. She can’t lay a talon on me; she couldn’t have stopped me. And at some point,” she gives a shrug, “I started to enjoy it. I didn’t see any wrong in it. I didn’t care about how dragons feared me. So no, I wasn’t forced. I let myself become that way. I chose it without knowing I chose it, but I chose it all the same, and I have to just live with that.”
“Peril - ”
“I let myself become someone who didn’t care, is what I’m saying. But you never stopped caring. You were given the choice to become a monster, somebody who hurt without caring, but you chose to be something else. I guess I feel like I can’t be one of you - a hero - unless I can do that, too.”
She blinks her blue-fire eyes at him, her voice heavy with grief, but not without certainty. “I’m going to go and find Scarlet,” she says, “And I know what you’re going to say - but I have to. She’s the only parent I ever had.”
Clay thinks of Kestrel. How, despite how horrible she was, he knows deep down that he cares about her. Even now, he feels a twinge of worry for her, wandering around the mountain peaks. “I understand.”
They’re quiet for a moment. Peril looks as if she’s about to leave, and Clay feels a moment of panic. Don’t go. 
“But, Peril,” he blurts out, and she glances up at him. “What if Scarlet takes out her anger on you?”
“How, exactly?” Peril asks. “There’s only one good thing about me, and it’s that no dragon can hurt me. Well… except you, I guess.” her wings waver.
Clay takes her talons in his, feeling her heat draw into his scales, and he wraps his wings around her, resting his forearms around her neck. “That’s not the only good thing about you, Peril,” he tells her.
She leans her forehead into his. “You make me hope that’s not true,” she tells him in a soft voice.
The setting sunlight brushes over their scales. The faintest whiff of a breeze from the sea almost overpowers the reek of blood and death. Clay closes his eyes, trying to savor this moment forever, knowing soon, she’ll be gone.
“Clay,” she says.
“Yea?”
“There’s something I’ve needed to say to you for a long time, but I’ve never got up the courage. Now, though… I’m leaving you for a long time, and I don’t know when I’ll see you again, so I think I should tell you now.”
Clay opens his eyes to see her blue-fire eyes gazing down at her talons. She keeps them fixed there as she says slowly, in a halting voice, “I know you won’t feel the same way, and that’s okay, but I just want you to know that - that I love you, Clay. Romantically, I mean. And I have for - for a long time.”
Shock buzzes through Clay’s scales. He almost jerks away but realizes what she’ll think if he does. She refuses to meet his gaze. Her body trembles, wrapped in the cradle of his wings, and her claws are visibly shaking.
She’s so hopeful, so afraid, the threads of yearning weaving through her voice alongside dread, and Clay wants so badly to tell her that he feels the same way. He wants her face to light up and shine as bright as the copper threads running through her wings. But he also knows that he can’t lie to her and the truth is, he has no idea if he feels the same way for her as she does for him. 	He’s never felt that way for her before, for anyone - whatever loving someone that way is supposed to feel like. He’s only ever seen her as a friend.
“Peril,” he says.
She raises her gaze to his finally and she must see the truth in his eyes because her expression cracks. “I know,” she murmurs, her wings settling slowly at her sides, “You don’t feel the same way. That’s okay. I just wanted you to know.”
“Peril,” Clay reaches out to grab her talons as she starts to pull away, feeling her scales burn against his. “I don’t know if I feel that way for you - there’s a lot of things I need to figure out. But I do love you, so much. You’re one of my favorite dragons in the whole world and I want you in my life.”
Peril smiles, that sad smile again. Clearly, it’s what she expected, and it sends a pang of sorrow through his chest. If only he could give her what she wants so desperately, if only he didn’t have to break her heart. “I’m lucky that you want me in any way,” she says, squeezing his talons.
For a moment, they’re quiet, the setting sun cloaking them both in hazy comfort that can allow Clay to pretend that it doesn’t have to end. Then Peril pulls away and her wings spread at her sides. “I have to go,” she says.
Clay’s heart aches but he knows he can’t try to talk her out of it anymore; she’s clearly made her choice. “Okay. I won’t stop you,”  he says. “But before you go…” he pauses, then adds painfully, “Please be careful, okay?”
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I do have a tendency to cause small disasters everywhere I go,” she says, “Like lighting things on fire and getting dragons mad at me and stuff. But I’ll try, for you, Clay.”
“Okay.”
She pauses, then blurts out, “You’ll come visit me, right? When this is all over?”
“Of course. You’re my best friend, Peril.”
“When - when this is all over - and I’m not an evil dragon anymore - and there’s no more war - do you think we could try just being friends?” she asks, opening and closing her talons as if she wants to hold his but doesn’t dare let herself. “And doing stuff together - like normal dragons do? You know, going on flights and sharing dinner and walks on beaches and things that friends do?”
Her words form an image in Clay’s mind. It’s a dream that seems so far away, but maybe, someday, someday… “I’d like that,” he admits.
Peril’s smile is as bright as the sun rising over the sea, her copper scales as dazzling as its reflection on the waves. She throws her wings around him one last time, then lifts into the sky. He cranes his neck to watch the shape of her grow smaller and smaller until it disappears out of sight amongst the peaks.
~ Chapter Ten ~
Forgiveness
Clay is helping tend to wounds when Starflight comes running into the bunker, his expression urgent. “Clay, come here, now!” he says.
Clay rushes outside following Starflight, his heart thudding with panic, mind whirling with wild fears over Peril, his siblings, his friends - and sees his friends clustered around something in the grass nearby. Starflight leads him over.
Kestrel’s body is lain in the stems. Blood is crusted around the wounds in her throat, torn anew. Her wings are shredded, sticky with clumped red. Dirt is caked on the ridges of her chipped scales and she coughs, an ugly sound. It’s clear from the wheeze that her breath makes as it leaves her that she’s dying.
Next to her, Sunny is weeping softly, her talons over her face. Starflight goes to crouch next to the SandWing and reaches out to rest a black wing over her side. Tsunami’s talons are clenched in the grass, her scales turned pale. Glory looks indifferent, reaching her wing up to cover a bored yawn.
“What happened?” Clay asks his friends, gaze darting from one face to the next in confusion.
Sunny is crying too hard to speak. Tsunami twines her tail with the distraught SandWing’s and says, “She got caught up in a battle with a SandWing patrol that was flying this way, as she was coming to help us.”
“According to her,” mutters Glory.
“One of them got her with their barb,” Tsunami continues, and she nudges Kestrel’s tail aside so it flops on the grass, revealing a deep, oozing wound on her underbelly that makes Clay’s stomach lurch. Kestrel snaps at Tsunami and curls her tail back over the wound, her wings giving a sharp flap.
“She’s not going to live much longer,” Tsunami finishes. It’s hard to read her tone.
“Yea, and I bet you’re so happy about it,” spits Kestrel, full of hostility and spite even two inches away from death. A spurt of flame spits out of her snout, scorching the grass and almost burning Clay’s talons.
“We’re not happy about it,” Sunny protests. “We’re not, Kestrel!”
“I am,” Glory says.
Sunny flaps her wings. “Glory!”
Red flickers through Glory’s ruff. “Should I not be?” she says. “Kestrel has been horrible to me. I’m not a mushy ball of forgiveness like you or Clay.”
Clay thinks about that. Is he? Does he forgive her? 
Kestrel gives a low growl in her throat. “Whatever you dragonets tell yourselves,” she hisses, her tongue flicking between her teeth, “You’re not as great as you think you are. You’re useless without the Talons of Peace. You’re useless without me. You have no idea what you’re going to do or where you’re going to go next. Go to the dragons who actually know what they’re doing.”
“I’d rather not go to dragons that are going to chain me in a cave for six years of my life, thanks very much,” Glory yawns.
“You’re not part of this, useless RainWing. What you think doesn’t matter,” Kestrel snaps at her.
“Leave Glory alone,” Tsunami growls. “And we can handle things on our own. We’ve been doing it so far up to this point.”
“Tsunami is right,” Clay says, hoping he sounds more confident than he feels. “The only dragons we need are each other.”
Kestrel’s tail flicks with displeasure. “Fine, insipid worms,” she snaps, “Do what you want. At least I won’t have to be here to see you fail.”
“You don’t mean that, Kestrel,” Sunny says, placing her talon on Kestrel’s flank. “I know you have faith in us - in the prophecy - to stop the war.”
Kestrel snorts flame at Sunny, making her jerk back. “An incomplete set of dragonets with a defective SandWing,a cowardly NightWing, an insipid SeaWing, whatever that pathetic stand-in for a SkyWing is, and a MudWing who won’t stop crying over a little shed blood long enough to actually fight?” the SkyWing snorts. “Yea, right.”
Sunny flinches. Tsunami snarls, her tail lashing so hard it smacks Starflight in the side, making him yelp. “Shut up right now.”
“Sunny isn’t defective,” Clay says, anger flashing in his chest. “Glory isn’t pathetic. Starflight isn’t cowardly. Leave them all alone.”
“What about you?” Kestrel hisses, lifting her head from the grass with effort that makes her tremble. “You know I’m right, MudWing. Whatever you say, you must know deep down that you’ll never be able to protect your beloved friends if you can’t fight. You’re worthless if you can’t unlock that inner warrior, just remember that. A useless dragon whose friends are better off without him.”
Her words slash through his chest, raking across his scales. He takes a step back, whatever words he was going to say dying in his throat.
“How dare you!” shouts Tsunami. “We wouldn’t be friends if not for Clay - we wouldn’t even be alive if not for Clay..”
Kestrel doesn’t respond. Her gaze is fixed on Clay.
“Clay, you have to know she’s not right,” Tsunami says stubbornly. “She’s just a mean, horrible dragon and she’ll die bitter and selfish and cruel.”
Clay ducks his head and continues to hold Kestrel’s eyes. “You’re wrong,” he says, feeling a shiver run through his scales as he says it, but he does. The presence of his friends strengthens him, gives him the courage he needs. “I’m going to make the prophecy come true without violence, and I’m going to keep my friends safe all the way - all without having to kill or hurt a single dragon.”
He senses the gaze of all his friends on him. “So leave me alone,” he says, “And leave my friends alone.”
Kestrel is silent. Then she gives a snort of a laugh. “Whatever you say, MudWing,” she says. “You - ”  her words cut off in a wheeze. A shudder of pain goes through her body and she gives a weak spasm.
“Kestrel!” Sunny cries.
The SkyWing huffs smoke through her nose, her breathing sounding ragged and painful. “You dragonets think I’m so terrible,” she coughs, “But I’m not the real enemy here. I’m the one who sacrificed a whole year of my life to raise you, to protect you and keep you safe. I’m the one who came back to the SkyWing Kingdom after so many years to try and rescue you - the one who got thrown in a SkyWing prison for your sake - and the one who, just now, got myself killed coming back to try and save you pathetic excuses for dragonets.”
“We know, Kestrel,” Sunny says, wrapping her wings around Kestrel’s neck. “We’re so grateful for - for all that you’ve done for us.”
“I’m not,” Glory says coldly.
“Well, nobody asked you, anyways, useless RainWing,” Kestrel snarls.	
“Stop calling Glory useless!” Tsunami shouts. Her azure wings flare open so violently she tumbles Glory to the side. “You’re not the hero you think you are, you know,” the blue SeaWing snarls. “You’re just a mean, horrible dragon who inflicted suffering on a bunch of dragonets just because you were unhappy, and even worse than that, you refuse to ever take accountability for a single bit of it.”
“Because I was right,” Kestrel snorts. “Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, I made so many sacrifices for you. I did so many things for you, and all you ungrateful brats have done in return is cause me misery.”
“I don’t care that you did that,” Tsunami says softly. “Because it doesn’t make up for abusing us for the first year of our life and still treating us terribly to this day. And you know what? I know the reason you’re saying all this is because you want us to forgive you. You want to hear us thank you before you die.”
Smoke coils from Kestrel’s snout, but she doesn’t dispute Tsunami.
“But it’s not happening,” Tsunami says, “Not from me.”
“Not from me,” Glory echoes. “I’d rather die myself than forgive you for what you’ve done.”
“Not from me,” Starflight says. Clay looks to him in surprise, as do Tsunami and Glory. He shuffles his talons in the grass and doesn’t elaborate - but he doesn’t take it back, either. His dark wings are rigid.
“I forgive you, Kestrel,” Sunny says. “You were just trying to keep us safe,” she glances up at Clay. “You forgive her, right, Clay?”
Clay gazes at Kestrel. She holds his gaze, her horns shrouded by smoke, violent, defiant, even in her very last moments holding onto life. Injured, battered, leaking blood from shredded wings, wheezing for air, she’s hardly someone to hold a grudge against. She’s dying because she tried to save them. 
He should be grateful for all that she’s done, like she said. How could he possibly tell her he doesn’t forgive her when she’s dying in such a horrible way, all for the sake of him and his friends? 
Besides, it’s not like she’s an evil dragon. She might be mean and cutting, but she’s someone who has sacrificed her whole life for the sake of peace, someone who cares about ending this terrible war, someone who tried, albeit in a deeply flawed way, to keep them safe and alive so they could fulfill the prophecy. She might not care about them, but she cares about the Talons of Peace.
She’s a hero, a hero who did so much for him and his friends. Clay should give her some peace before she dies.
He ducks his head low, so low that he can feel her smoky breaths stirring against his snout and he says, “I don’t forgive you.”
Her eyes turn to slits. “You - ” she starts, but she never gets to spit out one final, cutting word. 
With a sudden spasm, one final wheeze of smoke, Kestrel takes her last breath. 
~
They build a pyre for her, and all together, they drag her to the fire, clutching her wings, her talons. They dump her in the crackling blaze that roars around a cluster of branches and watch her body go up in smoke. It’s a solemn affair and Sunny’s face is tear-streaked. Clay tries to detect any sadness inside himself, but the only emotion he experiences is a vague sense of relief.
On the walk back to the bunker, Glory falls in beside him. “I’m surprised,” she says. “You’re such a mush-ball. I was sure you would forgive her.”
Her voice is teasing as she nudges him with her wing, but there’s a deeper question underlying her words. Clay looks over at her, the warm drops of amber that trail through her violet scales, shifting shades of blue. There’s a trickle of Kestrel’s blood spattered across her narrow shoulder.
“I didn’t want to,” Clay says. “She hurt me too much,” it’s simple enough but it’s the truth.
Glory nods. They reach the entrance to the bunker and in a rare, rare gesture of affection from her, Glory brushes her wing against his.
Clay smiles at her, heart welling with affection, then turns, spreads his wings, and heads off across the marshes. 
He finds his siblings surrounding their sleep house, sharing bites of an alligator among themselves, talking in subdued voices. They’re battered and plastered with medicine and their expressions are haunted.
As Clay draws closer, he overhears a snatch of Reed saying, “I know it will be hard, Pheasant, but we’ll help you every step of the way. Promise.”
“Reed is right,” Sora says, says, leaning against her sister’s side. “We won’t let you figure this out alone.”
“We’ll bring you lots of snacks, too,” Marsh offers.
Pheasant smiles, wan but full of affection and gratitude. “I couldn’t ask for better sibs in the whole world,” she says.
“What’s going on?” Clay asks, landing on the island next to them.
They all jump, then relax when they recognize Clay. Reed immediately drops his gaze, his body tensing up, and anguish clouds his expression.
“Pheasant’s wing,” Umber explains, gesturing to his sister. Her injured wing remains plastered with mud and leaves, blackened around the edges. “Due to what that IceWing did, she’ll never be able to fly again,” his voice is brittle with hurt and his words send a shard of pain through Clay’s heart.
“Pheasant, I’m so sorry,” he says, reaching his talons out to her. 
She takes them and gives them a squeeze. “It’s okay.”
Shame washes over Clay. He feels his talons sinking into the dirt and bows his head. “I’m sorry - if I had just been faster, then maybe - ”
“It’s not your fault, Clay,” Reed says. Clay looks at the bigwings in surprise and sees his gaze heavy with grief. “If anything, it’s mine,” he adds. “I’m the one who should have protected her, but instead - ” his voice breaks.
“I already told you, don’t blame yourself,”  Pheasant says fiercely. “It’s a war. Things happen. I’m lucky I’m not just flat-out dead, really.”
Reed ignores Pheasant’s words, reaching out and grabbing Clay’s wrist. “Clay, I’m sorry,” he says. “That I resented you and blamed you. I want you to know that I trust you. I really think you should be our bigwings.”
Clay can hear the sincerity in his voice, the earnestness beneath the hurt and grief. He’s certain in his decision. It’s more than self-doubt. Clay turns his head to gaze around at the rest of his siblings. Little, bright Umber, nervous, twitchy Marsh, shy, soft-spoken Sora, kind, protective Pheasant, Reed.
He tries to imagine a life with them. Hunting alligators with them in the swamp, helping them farm, taking care of dragons in the bunker, always five pairs of wings brushing his, a safe, warm home at the end of the day, with his tails and talons intertwining with them as they flop across the dirt. Laughing with them, learning their inside jokes, making their own, sharing plentiful dinners under the sunset as it glitters on the distant line of the sea. Training with them in battle formations early in the morning, fighting alongside them.
Giving them orders, instructing them on what to do, how to fight, spreading his fire-proof wings to protect every single one of them.
He might not know them very well yet, but he knows in this moment that he could, if he wanted to, and he knows equally that despite his time with them being brief, he would die for each of them in a heartbeat, the dragons who took him in without question. They are the family he has always wanted.
And if he stays, he will tear them apart.
He’s already seen it in his brief stay: Reed’s discomfort and doubt, their uncertainty and fear, the fighting and conflict over who to trust. How could he possibly do something he knows will hurt his beloved siblings?
Looking around now, he can see it in their eyes - they want him and are afraid of him at the same time. If Clay did become their bigwings, long-term, what would happen to their loyalty to Reed, who they have always followed? What would happen to Reed himself, forced to follow Clay but desperate to protect them his own way, comparing himself to Clay at every single step?
And also, Clay thinks, he doesn’t know anything about MudWing life. He doesn’t know troop formations or even how to hunt in a swamp. How could he lead them into battle? It could never be like the closeness the six of them already have - no matter how hard they all tried to make it work.
There is really only one way to protect Clay’s siblings, he realizes, as much as it might hurt. He has to leave them - and leave Reed as their bigwings, the way he always has been. He can keep them safe better than Clay ever could, and their sibs wouldn’t be forced to choose between them.
So he shakes his head. “No,” he says to his siblings. “Reed is your bigwings. You trust him and you need him. I couldn’t replace him, even if I tried.”
Reed raises his head, pride warring with disbelief on his face. Umber, Marsh, Pheasant, and Sora look relieved and sad at the same time.
“Besides,” Pheasant says, and she smiles. “He can’t stay with us. There are other dragons that need their bigwings,” and she reaches out to brush Clay’s wing with her good one. It takes a moment for Clay to realize, but when he does, warmth floods through him and his heart swells in his chest.
She’s right. He thinks of his friends - fierce, protective Tsunami, optimistic, sweet Sunny, intelligent, nervous Starflight, and of course, sarcastic, independent Glory. They need him just as much as his sibs need Reed - their own bigwings to protect them with all of his claws and his armored scales.
“Pheasant is right,” he says. “I have to stay with them. I have to go.”
Dismay passes over all their faces. “You have to leave?” asks Umber, having climbed on Sora’s back to make himself heard. “Why?”
“You don’t have to, Clay,” Reed protests. “You could still join us, even if not as our bigwings. There’s more fighting ahead, and we could always use another strong dragon at our side - plus, you’ll always be our brother, you know.”
“I know,” Clay says. He is admittedly tempted - wants to know his brothers and sisters, and it would be so easy to slip into this easier life, with no prophecies to worry about and no angry queens hunting him. 
But deep-down, he knows he can’t do that - not really. He thinks of the scorched bodies on the battlefield. He thinks of the war-scarred prisoners he faced down in Scarlet’s sunbaked arena. He thinks of hauling MudWing bodies out of the marshes to burn on pyres, the way the smoke of the burning bodies smelled on the air, of the wounds he treated in the bunker, the scents of blood and leaves thickening the air. He looks at Pheasant’s wounded wing and thinks of Crane, his lost sibling, even Kestrel, brought down by war, too. Above all else, he thinks of the MudWings singing that night, yearning for the prophecy to come true, hoping, despite their scars, for the dragonets to come save them. 
“I can’t,” he says, shaking his head. “I have a destiny to follow. Me and my friends - we’re going to try to stop the war.”
“Then we wish you luck,” Reed says, and he rises to his talons.
Clay’s siblings take the cue and rise as well. Clay tries to push down a wave of pain at the idea of leaving them as he opens his wings. They pile on all at once, flinging arms around his legs and neck, wings thrown around his, five warm, sturdy MudWing bodies plastered with dirt clinging to his. Umber climbs up onto his back using his tail and hugs him from the back of his neck.
“We’ll miss you, Clay,” they all clamor. Clay squeezes his eyes shut to savor the moment as it lasts. He tries not to think about how many of his siblings will make it out of this war alive. I’ll save them, he vows. I’ll save them all. 
He never wants to let go, but he knows he has to. He pulls back, but keeps holding Reed’s talons. Their eyes meet and Clay gives him one last, fierce hug, trying to convey his feelings without words. Then he pulls back.
“I love you all,” he tells them as he spreads his wings. Hearing them shouting it back to him over the roaring of the wind in his ears makes tears burn his eyes as he forces himself to flap his wings harder and soar away.
~ Chapter Eleven ~
The Next Step
Clay sees Cattail on his way back to the bunker, helping her siblings hunt down an alligator in the marsh. Clay hovers in the air to watch. Her teeth close around its tail while the angry dragon who snapped at Clay and Reed for being loud grips one of its legs, and the largest of the set, who must be the bigwings, grabs its neck and snaps it cleanly in its talons. Clay tries not to think of the way Fjord’s neck broke in half in his own, or of Tsunami killing Gill.
The troop work together to drag the animal onto an island of dry land next to the swamp, their scales spattered with marshy water. Clay hesitates, knowing he should just leave, but he can’t help himself. He swoops down to land next to his mother’s troop, opening up his talons. “Cattail?”
Her gaze darts to him. She grunts and runs her teeth over her tongue, snapping up a scrap of food. “What do you want now, little one?” she asks.
Clay glances at her siblings. She gets the message and rises to her talons with clear reluctance. Grumbling, she marches over to the dirt path, her tail leaving a slimy path in her wake, where she turns to face him.
“What is it?”
Clay takes a deep breath, trying not to be hurt by the clear disinterest in her expression. “I just wanted you to know I’m leaving.”
Cattail’s wings shift. She looks like she wants to go back to her meal. “Well, good luck,” she tells him, “Wherever you go next.”
“Thank you. I just wanted you to know…” he hesitates. He wants to be angry at his mother, but the more time he’s spent with the MudWings, the more he’s realized that it’s not really her fault. He grew up on tales of what a family was supposed to look like, a mother and a father and dragonets, but that’s not what normalcy is for MudWings. In his mother’s eyes, she’s not being mean to him, she’s just treating him as is normal for any MudWing. 
Besides, Clay is all too aware that she might not be alive whenever he does come back from the war. He doesn’t want to hold a grudge against her only to find that she’s dead when he gets back and regret the time he wasted on anger that he could have spent on some kind of fondness. He might not have forgiven Kestrel, but he doesn’t want to hate his mother forever.
“I wanted to let you know that I don’t blame you,” he says with an exhale. “I understand that you never meant to hurt me. It’s just - what I expected isn’t what’s normal for MudWings, and I realize that, now. I have a family with my siblings - your other dragonets - and I’m content with that. Also - well, I was hurt that you sold me at first, but if you hadn’t, I never would have met my best friends. So I guess, even though it hurt - thank you for what you did.”
Cattail looks taken aback by his words. She’s quiet for a moment, sucking on her teeth, as if trying to decide the flavor of them on her tongue like a new type of prey. Finally, she says, “I am sorry that I might have hurt you, dragonet,” she says. He tries not to be hurt that she clearly doesn’t remember his name. “For what it’s worth, if much, I’m glad to know you’re alive.”
“Th - thank you.”
“We’ll never have a relationship,” she says bluntly, “Just so you understand. But I suppose I am glad I got to meet you.”
“Me, too.”
She regards him, then she finishes, “You seem like you’ve turned out a pretty good dragon,” he says, “I’m sure you’re a great sib.”
“I like to think I am,” Clay says, thinking of his siblings, then of his friends. He knows he needs to get back to them. “Speaking of,” he says, opening up his wings, “I need to get going. My friends are waiting for me.”
Cattail’s brows arch. “Well, I need to get back to an alligator,” she says, “Goodbye, dragonet,” she doesn’t try to hug him, or even squeeze his talons, but he doesn’t really mind. She turns and slithers away, back to her sibs.
He watches her rejoin them, explaining the conversation with a few grunts, then tuck her snout into the alligator and start tearing into it. He smiles to himself, then launches into the sky to head back to the bunker.
His friends are waiting outside when he arrives in the day’s warm, gauzy sunshine, sat in a pile in the grass, splitting a cow between them that Tsunami must have caught in the grasslands. Clay swoops down to join them.
“Hey, bigwings,” Glory says, “We left some for you,” she pushes a portion towards him, appropriately large, and happiness tingles through his scales as he crouches down next to the cow, his tail brushing against Sunny’s.
“So,” Tsunami says as they’re finishing up the food. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but have we all agreed that - despite the fact that the Talons are generally awful and the prophecy completely screwed up our lives - we do want to try and stop the war, since we might be the only ones who actually can and also war is terrible and we’re all very sick of seeing dragons suffer and die?”
Clay looks around at his friends. Starflight looks unhappy, scratching worriedly at his neck, but he doesn’t dispute Tsunami. Glory is crunching on a bite of cow and doesn’t answer, which seems to be a yes. 
Sunny nods with vehemence. “Yes!” she says. The sunlight glitters on her scales, making her gleam like treasure. “We have to fulfill the prophecy!”
“So where do we go, then, if we want to go about doing that?” Glory asks, “I mean, that’s a great idea in theory, and all, but we’re just five dragonets who don’t know like, anything about the world. We’ve been prisoners our whole lives. How are we supposed to know what to do or where to go?”
Her words stop Clay in his tracks. She’s right. It’s a great fantasy, the idea of saving the world, but in practice… what are they going to do?
“It would be practical to head to the sea next,” Starflight says. “I mean, if this whole thing does revolve around the three heirs - Blister, Blaze, and Burn - it would only be sensible to meet all of the heirs to make a good judgement.”
“That’s good logic,” Glory agrees with a nod. “Annoyingly. Starflight, could you ever be wrong for once?”
“I’m all down to go to the sea,” Tsunami says. Her words are casual but Clay can see the longing in her expression as her deep blue gaze trails to that far-off glimmer of the ocean. “I wouldn’t mind seeing my family again.”
“I don’t know,” Sunny says. She scratches at the grass. “I mean, isn’t that kind of hiding? Shouldn’t we go confront the war head-on?”
“How do you suggest we do that?” Glory asks. Sunny flinches and the RainWing softens her tone. “I just mean, it’s not that simple.”
“I know how you feel, Sunny,” Clay says, “But Glory is right. We need to know more before we can form any kind of plan.” 
Before Starflight can form any plan, most likely, he thinks, smiling slightly to himself.
“Okay, then let’s do it,” Tsunami says, jumping to her talons.
“Right now?” asks Starflight, alarmed.
“Yes, right now!” Tsunami asks. She grabs Starflight in her talons and swoops into the air before Starflight can stop her. He wriggles in her grip, his black wings flapping helplessly at the air, shouting out protests.
Glory laughs, a clear, bright sound Clay almost never hears from her, and flings herself into the sky, tail whipping out to keep her balance. Sunny grins and bats Clay with her wing. “Come on!” she tells him, and she springs into the sky. His wing brushes hers as he flies up alongside her and their tails twine with ease, her heat warm against his flank, the wind whistling around them.
“Let’s go!” Tsunami shouts. She lets Starflight go, flapping his wings madly to keep his balance, and shoots off towards the sea.
“Who died and made you queen?” Glory shouts after her back. She makes a face in Clay’s direction, then without warning, shimmers out of view. Clay blinks in surprise, then hears Tsunami yell, and up ahead, Glory becomes visible, having grabbed onto Tsunami’s tail to slow her down. 
“Hey!” Tsunami thrashes.
Sunny shoots forward and tries to pry Glory off, and Starflight jumps in to help. Clay beats his wings to catch up, laughing breathlessly, and bundles into Starflight, Glory, and Sunny, sending them all tumbling to the side. Tangled together, they all beat their wings and wave their tails to stay in the air. Tsunami grabs onto Glory and beats her dark blue wings in the RainWing’s face.
They continue to push and shove playfully as they make their way through the sky. Clay spreads his wings, the wind rippling gloriously through them, the sun bright and warm dazzling on his scales, surrounded by blue.
I might have been a monster in the past, he thinks, but I’m not anymore, and that’s what really counts. 
He knows he might not be able to rid himself of the guilt for a long time, but he’ll try his best: to forgive himself, let go of Kestrel’s grip on his mind, and look towards the bright future instead of dwell on his regrets. He knows who he is, now, deep inside, no matter what he’s ever thought in the past. He knows what he’s here to do - and that is protect his friends, no matter what. 
~ Epilogue ~
Peril emerges from the cave to dazzling sunshine and settles herself on the rock ledge just outside, curling her tail over her talons. Rock - one of the very few things that her firescales can’t burn or destroy.
That and the scales of one particular MudWing.
She can see him from here - his familiar laugh was what woke her from sleep. The sun reflects off his brown scales, bringing out amber and gold under scales like concealed treasure. It’s too far away to make out his features but she can recognize the shape of him, his broad shoulders, his powerful limbs, his bulky physique and of course, his huge, mud-colored wings, that always wrapped around her so warmly - his embrace the only place she ever felt safe.
Now, looking upon him from afar, she aches to spring from her ledge and fly across the blue over to him, throw herself into his open wings. Knowing that he likes her back only makes the flame in her heart burn even brighter.
But she can’t. She doesn’t deserve him, not yet: not as she is now, a villain, a monster. Someday, though, she tells herself, she will. She has to.
She spreads her wings to soak in the sunshine and can’t help but glance down into the ravine that stretches to her right. She thinks of the day she saw that crippled SandWing slipping down the stream along the pebbles, which reminds her of the truth she’s never gotten up the courage to tell Clay - that she is the reason he was brought to the Sky Kingdom, so very long ago.
I’ll tell him someday, she thinks. When the war is over. Because he’ll survive the war. He has to. I won’t let him not survive. I refuse. 
She’ll burn to death whoever tries to touch a single scale on his handsome body.
Her gaze shifts to the SkyWing palace, the shape of it just visible over the peaks - the place she’s forbidden to ever return to again. Ruby climbed onto Scarlet’s rock throne and ordered Peril into permanent exile.
Anger flashes bright hot in her chest and she pushes the thought away. In absence of anything else to think about, her mind returns, like it always does, to a brilliant orange, bejeweled, and deadly dragon: Queen Scarlet.
Complicated can’t describe the way she feels every single time she thinks of her queen. She hates her, she misses her, she’s terrified that she’s dead. She wants Scarlet to be proud of her, she can’t stand the idea that she won’t be.
I have to find her. 
If she can’t be with Clay, to protect him and be his, then going to find Scarlet is the only purpose she has in life, now.
The thought gives her some energy - well, perhaps energy is too positive of a word, but it gives her a reason to stand up, at least. She rises to her talons and even though she knows she shouldn’t, she can’t help but scan the vast blue for Clay and his friends, just wanting to see his familiar shape one more time.
Her gaze catches on five colors standing out against the sky nearby - Clay and his friends are much smaller now, but she can make them out clearly all the same, the brown speck amongst them flapping steadily along them. They must be heading to the Kingdom of the Sea next - tracking their travel path, Clay can see that they appear to be heading along the coast down to Pyrrhia’s tail.
Her tail lashes with worry. What if something happens to Clay and she’s not there to keep him safe? If Clay dies - fire flashes in her mind, searing pain in her brain - no, she can’t even stand the thought. She won’t even entertain it. Clay is so strong and surrounded by all his friends. There’s no way that he’ll get hurt. She’d fly across the whole ocean to save him.
Clay, she thinks, gazing at his shrinking shape. She knows he can’t hear her thoughts across the distance - he’s no telepathic NightWing - but she tries to send them out anyways, thinking maybe he’ll be able to sense her concern from so far away, at least subconsciously. I don’t know where you’re going next, I don’t know what you’re planning, but please… whatever you do, stay safe. 
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Completed)
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)