The Dagger

This is a fanfiction written by Night.
----
==Prologue ==
"We'll be safe... I can fight it."
A black hand, groping in the darkness, fell upon a curve in the rock floor. One that seemed to fit his hand perfectly. He yanked on it, hoping it would come out. No success. He pulled again. Nothing. Harder. Something dislodged and emerged from the hard floor. The dragon couldn't see what it was at first; it was so dark that he couldn't even see his own hand. But then, when he turned the object just right, a whitish gleam hit his eyes.
The dragon turned it over in his hand, feeling how light it was and how swiftly it cut through the air. He held it up, and in the little light that was in his prison of stone, he could see what the object was: a wickedly sharp, twisting dagger.
==Chapter 1: Northern Murders==
"No... you can't..."
Princess Arrowhead of the IceWings found that her assessment was easier than expected. As it turned out, the climb that she had to make was only about 100 feet (which to a dragon is not vert tall), the fencing match she had to participate in was against dragons who, as she herself had thought, must have never trained, and her flying test couldn't have been easier. Give me a real challenge! she thought as she walked out of the assessment room, rolling her eyes.
"Wait!" said a voice behind her.
Arrowhead turned around to see a female IceWing with a jewel hanging from her necklace swooping down from an observation platform. As the dragon landed, Arrowhead recognized her mother, Queen Frost.
"What is it, mother?" asked Arrowhead.
"A matter of high importance," the IceWing Queen replied swiftly. "Come around this corner with me so we can talk in private."
As the two dragons rounded the corner, Arrowhead wondered what could possibly be so important that the Queen couldn't mention it in front of her most trusted guards, which had been the only dragons beside the Queen herself allowed to attend Arrowhead's assessment.
The Queen stopped and looked Arrowhead in the eyes. "A string of murders have been committed in the Northern Ice Kingdom," said the Queen.
"The Northern part of the kingdom?" scoffed Arrowhead. "Impossible! Only IceWings can survive there, and only for a short period of time."
"Yes," responded the Queen, "I am well aware of that, Arrowhead. But nonetheless, bodies have been brought back to the palace by my soldiers. IceWing bodies."
Arrowhead nodded. "And?"
"Well, the soldiers said that they didn't even see the murderer."
"IceWings are well camouflaged in the snow."
"But my guards see everything. And I mean everything. They are convinced that these murders were more than just a normal uprising or a mentally ill dragon trying to get back at someone. They believe that they were supernatural, influenced by something we don't fully understand." The Queen bore a grave look on her face.
"You seriously expect me to believe that a supernatural force is behind these murders?" asked the Princess skeptically.
"Yes, and I want you to investigate them."
"But mother, I have much better things to do in the palace and the royal area of the kingdom than go on a scouting mission because some hallucinating guards said something idiotic!"
"That's an order. Besides, if you're so sure that nothing unusual happened, the mission will be quick, right?"
To Arrowhead's disappointment, she couldn't argue with a direct order from her Queen. And the part about how the mission should be quick did make sense. "Fine," Arrowhead huffed. She turned around, beat her wings, and flew down the frozen hallway to the frigid outdoors.
==Chapter 2: Unprecedented Power==
"I will never put it down!"
A NightWing stood, stone-faced and rigid, in the center of a snowstorm. Snowflakes swirled around his great black horns, occasionally landing on one, giving it an eerie white sheen. The dragon's eyes flashed with a tranquil madness very rarely found in any being.
He lifted one hand up and opened it to reveal a black hilt with a bloodied silver blade. It seemed to whisper to the dragon as he looked at it. He had found the dagger twenty years before, in his cell on the NightWing island. He had been a very old dragon then, over one hundred ten. In the years since he had acquired the dagger, however, he had aged much and aged well, too. The dragon was now one hundred thirty, many years older than most of his kind.
The dragon clutched the weapon in his hand. He felt as though he could never let go of it. In the dagger's presence, he did not even feel any suspicion about the fact that when he had gone to sleep the afternoon two days before, the dagger had been stainless, and when he had awoken, the dagger had been bloody and shining with red liquid.
The NightWing sensed that something was coming. He had flown to the Northern Ice Kingdom to escape harm in the Night Kingdom as soon as he had escaped from the prison with the help of the dagger. He knew that it was never quiet in the Ice Kingdom for long, especially when a strange dragon was in their kingdom. If they knew he was a NightWing, they would kill him for sure.
Suddenly, the dragon heard the beating of wings and looked up at the sky. Blue and white scales gleamed from high in the cloudless sky, getting closer by the second. The NightWing raised his dagger and wrapped his talons firmly around the hilt. He let out a long, low growl.
A female IceWing landed in the snow, sending up snowflakes all around her. She wore a necklace and an armband with three diamonds. Royalty, by the looks of her.
"Attack!" she ordered the soldiers behind her.
Two burly male IceWings charged toward the NightWing just in front of a leaner, stronger looking one. More soldiers waited for the female's orders. Must be part of their battle plan.
The black dragon grasped the dagger in reverse, prepared to defend himself, but the weapon shot out of his hand. Infinitely surprised, the dragon stared at the hand where the hilt had rested just seconds before. He then watched with amazement as he saw the most baffling scene in the last century of Pyrrhia history.
The dagger returned like a boomerang and stabbed one of the soldiers in the back of the head. The IceWing's eyes rolled back as he fell to the ground, landing face-first in the cold snow.
The NightWing's eyes widened as the dagger turned in midair and slit the second soldiers throat. Blood gushed from the wound and turned the snow red as he fell.
The third IceWing turned around and ran, but he wasn't fast enough. The dagger caught him in the shoulder, causing him to shriek and fall, breathless and wincing with pain. The dagger then bore down on him, stabbing through his back. The IceWing let out a bloodcurdling cry before dying and collapsing into the snow.
The royal IceWing looked horrified, along with the rest of her soldiers. "Retreat!" she shouted. "Get far away from that thing!" She beat her wings wildly and flew away with her other soldiers.
And the dagger returned to the NightWing's hand.
==Chapter 3: Making Camp==
"It calls to me..."
Arrowhead flew as fast as her wings could take her, the icy white landscape blurring beneath her as she picked up speed.
"By the teeth of the Great Ice Dragon, what was that thing?" yelled one of her soldiers from behind her.
"He- he didn't even use it!" another exclaimed. "It just came out of his hand... and it stabbed our soldier!"
"I don't know what that thing was," answered Arrowhead, "but we need to make camp far away from it."
She finally swooped down and landed in an area glittering with snow just like every other, but with small, ice-covered rock walls jutting out of the ground for the dragons to rest against.
The soldiers landed beside the Princess, panting with fright in their blue eyes. Arrowhead immediately began giving orders. "Polar, go catch something for us to eat, preferably something big. Seal, you go send for reinforcements from the palace after we've eaten; this thing is not to be messed with, whatever it is."
Seal nodded and Polar took off west. There were three IceWings beside Arrowhead and Frost still left at the small makeshift camp. "Well?" asked one of them gruffly. "What was that thing? NightWings don't just hang around in the Northern Ice Kingdom without good reason. But the ones that do; well, they don't usually last long."
"I know," answered Arrowhead. "That's why I'm so confused. Maybe he's only been there a couple days. After all, the murders were only committed a couple days ago."
"So that might solve the question of why the NightWing is still here," said Seal, "but what was that dagger? It came out of his hand! And then it attacked an IceWing!"
"He couldn't have thrown that thing," interjected another. "It kept turning in midair to strike the next dragon."
"It almost made me think there was some kind of invisible dragon there," said another.
Then, Seal whispered, "No. The dagger did that by itself."
With this horrifying thought, the dragons ate when Polar returned and then made makeshift beds after Frost had left for reinforcements. 
"Once we're well rested," said Arrowhead, "the reinforcements should be here. And then we attack the NightWing. We need to kill it and get that dagger so we can destroy it."
All the soldiers nodded.
Determination set in inside Arrowhead's mind. They needed to kill this monster and destroy the dagger. At whatever cost.
Category:Genre (Horror)
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon)
__FORCETOC__
__NOEDITSECTION__
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Mature Content