Murder in the Palace of the Moors

A reimagining of the War of SandWing succession by FourFlames, taking place shortly after the events of Assassin. The MudWings are still allied with Blister in the Great War.
Note: As might be expected of a story named for murder, this fanfiction includes some graphic content such as blood and violence.
== Chapter 1- Two Birds ==
Dry reeds concealed trouble, like tigers preparing to chase, or dragons premeditating regicide.
The morning was cold beneath the broad shadow of a distant stormfront. A tight-knit throng of MudWing gardeners shuffled below the windows of their plateaued adobe Palace, pruning the overgrowth of waterlilies which swamped its base and dredging up dead roots.
A comet sliced through the sky, thrown like an enormous unholy grin. There was an awkward heave, an uncoordinated bark of alarm, and the sound of five hundred pounds of weight slamming into the packed-clay floor on the balcony above. 
The gardeners heard this and scattered into the nearby marsh.
Moorhen's silhouette crumpled onto its foretalons. As she lay scanning her quarters in outrage and pain, tears of gore squeaked from the spear skewered through her body. She could sense the point slipping around inside her flesh as her lungs expanded and contracted; its shaft was wedged through the gap in her spinal vertebrae. She contorted herself in an attempt to tear the foreign object free from her torso, painting messy talons bright red from clutching her wounds. The weight of the lodged spear only shifted as she struggled; its deadly tip inched ever closer to her vitals. 
Sharp claws clicked on the tile behind her. "It's a good spear. Costs a fortune. You're lucky to have it through your gut."
Her unfocused eyes registered a dragonlike shape moving towards her.
The intruding dragon’s molars gnashed in a cruel snarl before it advanced on her.
----
The SkyWings are taking advantage of optimal climate and terrain. It will be harder to resist their forces on the offensive march--
Prince Wigeon leafed through one report after the other, half-awake and rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He could hardly take interest in the hastily written list of huts needing replastering on his left when there were urgent updates on the war to be read. While it was his duty to manage both, only one determined whether his tribemates lived or died in battle, after all. His sibs were out training for war themselves, leaving him alone with Moorhen.
The caramel dragon left his alcove and rounded the corner of the queen's room, ready to discuss the ambush data, when he was stopped short by what he saw.
An unfamiliar SandWing paced back and forth beside the tribe's bigwings, who gripped the slippery floor as though she clung to her very life. The dragon towering over her moved with surprising agility and skill as it stalked about, emitting a rhythm of deep chaffing noises like charging fire. 
Moorhen herself, as always, was a bastion of regal strength. Warm, viscous blood flowed from her stomach in a metallic spray, but she betrayed no fear. The corners of her mouth quivered tersely. Bravely.
"You're not making this fun for me," spat the SandWing in her face, trying to get some sort of reaction out of her.
With a shaky lunge Moorhen snatched it in the thinly protected skin on its ears, and proceeded to rip downwards through the other side of its cloak.
The result was a roar of surprise that quickly distorted into fury. 
The dragon seized her by the throat and forced her beneath it, the muscles in its arms trembling as it strained itself to keep her steadily pinned. She spasmed to gain footing but her thick talons slid backwards on their own blood, pulling her feet out from under her. They struggled on the ground, tumbling and seething. Claws pressed into Moorhen's face hard enough to pierce scales. 
I have to intervene, Wigeon told himself decisively, mustering up his courage. He rushed the dragon from the side, knocking it from his sister with a miscalculated stumble. It quickly righted itself and whirled to face the prince. Glittering black eyes burned past him into the wall as it computed the best ways to kill him off.
Wigeon dropped to the ground and rolled aside as the cloaked dragon leapt from the Queen and accelerated at him, furling his wings to protect him from the rush of hot air as a blast of fire sailed over his head and incinerated a tapestry on the far wall. His feet skidded across the floor; friction burned against his armored skin. Around him, chunks of hot rubble rained onto the floor and exploded on impact.
Shallow breaths allowing, Wigeon charged again at the SandWing like an oncoming freight train. With his talons outstretched for a powerful frontal blow Wigeon sprang-- right into the direct path of a barb slash, which slid across his outer skin and scored a jagged line down the side of his cheek. He bellowed in pain, wiped away the blood, and rushed his enemy once more, pressing them closer to the window each time. If I can just get them in the air, he thought. Maybe I can use my weight to my advantage. The more he watched the intruder, however, the more doubtful this plan seemed; the dragon was almost double his size. If he had been as powerful as Moorhen, maybe this plan would make sense.
"I'll give you some credit for your bravery," the assassin admitted, as the fresh wound dripped down its soft ear. "It's commendable, if not amusing." With that comment, it slammed down hard on the prince's chest, and sent him tumbling across the remainder of the room. Prince Wigeon collided with the wall with a thunk, his leg crushed under the weight of his body. "Unfortunate that I have to put you in your place."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you."
Moorhen pounced from behind onto her perpetrator, throttling it around the neck with her beefy arms. It gagged and seemed to sway against her weight, like a tree about to fall, only to tumble onto its back and force the spear straight through the other side of her body. She lay there stunned.
The assassin turned back to Wigeon and sank a filthy claw into his gut, pinning him fast to the spot on which he crawled. "Checkmate." The teeth hovering inches from Wigeon's face contorted into a curt, leonine smirk. All of the singsong honey in its voice was gone within two blinks, replaced by vicious brutality as its huge tail pierced through his throat and crushed the air from his insides. He squeaked; the dragon's heavy talons planted him into the ground like a weed being stamped out. His heart physically pulsed against his insides, pounding and punching in opposition to death.
Across the room, the queen shivered feverishly; it had taken all of her effort to stand for this long, and instantly at Wigeon's defeat he could see this passion-fueled fight for life fading. Blood and spit mingled on the floor, her face splashing against the pool of fluid with every futile attempt to pick herself up-- but the battle was over. 
Moorhen cringed like lightning had shot through her head. Empty eyes stared up at the ceiling, eerily still-- she was a disgraced statue, gazing into the void in utter stupor, like she was surprised that she had died.
I should have saved her, Wigeon thought with a twinge of guilt. Then something kicked down hard on his forehead, and his pity was snuffed out with the crack of his vertebrae shearing through each other.
== Chapter 2- Correspondence ==
The act of sorting would calm Prince Sienna normally. Now the disorganization of the folders only reminded him that they had sloppily folded into each other moments before Wigeon's life was terminated. 
Sienna combed through Wigeon's unfinished envelopes, fretting over the death counts from their recent clash with SkyWings in the west. It had always been a grim business receiving messages from the generals, but he found it increasingly difficult to hold himself together as he read over these officers' reports. Never before had every dead MudWing felt like a personal injury.How did you do it, Wigeon...
He found it highly inappropriate that he and his siblings should be continuing the work of his brother while the rest of the tribe was allowed time to lament over the assassination; it was against his principles, disrespectful to his siblings. 
Whatever the other tribes said about MudWings being warlike, it wasn't true. War demanded things of his tribe-- if they wanted to survive-- that defied their culture. They were not bloodthirsty; they were bloodbound. There was a difference.
The deaths of his two closest sibs had rattled his world irreparably. Stunned him into grief, addled his brain. He couldn't always perceive when he was being spoken to anymore. And yet his royal duties called him back into action, before he was really ready for them, when part of him was still transfixed by the unfamiliarity of an empty room. 
To Sienna's understanding, Wigeon was studying recent battles before he died. He knew this because all of the mail naturally ended up in Wigeon's chamber, one way or another, and because military data is precisely what was lying in an unshuffled mess on the floor of the room where he was killed. Most of them reported military failures on the tribe's part; as Sienna read them, he could feel the pervasive impatience of their patron SandWing princess seething through every word. Her tolerance for error would not last much longer, and it was clear that she preferred the SeaWings' naval brilliance over the MudWings' code of honor. He curled his lip, knowing his dragons needed Blister's protection far more than she needed them. 
He stared absently at one of the chess pieces on his drafting table and moved it across the patiently charted map of Pyrrhia, remembering that SkyWings were on the move near the edges of the Diamond Spray. He figured that his tribe's forces were not in the proper position to lead an offensive attack against them, but was comforted by the idea that they at least had an escape route around the coast.
The sentiment seemed to have infected much of the tribe as well. The kingdom had already rushed to defend itself in whatever way available; members of the public were quickly gathering in traditional ceremony to prepare the last remaining female sibling of Moorhen-- Grebe-- for the crown. But Sienna knew Grebe was no bigwings, and had little experience telling anyone what to do. She was only their queen because she was their only female successor.
As he inspected a few mountain passes on his map of Pyrrhia-- hoping they might be able to contest the SkyWings' sheer numbers by cutting off their direct supply line-- his eyes fell to an unopened envelope stamped with an ornate yellow wax seal.
The color rushed from his face. Blister's insignia. 
He drew the parchment towards him and unfurled the scroll curled up inside. The handwriting was sharp and evenly spaced, as though it had been carefully planned to march across the paper in a neat line.
This was not the cramped writing of one of Blister's servants, but of the princess herself.
::To the office of Queen Moorhen, it began. We have been investigating the murder of Commander Tempest and have found insufficient evidence connecting any of your independents to an act of treason. Unfortunately, I regret to inform you that the SeaWing Royal Council has put pressure on me to call off the "secret deal" I had extended to your tribe. Queen Coral will not be sharing her spoils of war with you. In addition, there will be no reinforcements to deal with those SkyWings you mentioned. I can only hope that this minor setback will motivate you to fight harder. I would much prefer knowing your soldiers aren't dying for a less generous dragon's cause, wouldn't you agree?
::You are a reasonable Queen, Moorhen-- I'm sure your dragons can broker some sort of... arrangement with Coral. She's been interested in the coast lately; perhaps you can use that to your advantage.
::Best of luck.
Panic gripped Prince Sienna. Queen Coral was an impossible dragon to negotiate with; she settled for nothing less than what she wanted and cared little for whether the MudWings got the short end of the stick. 
He needed no letters to comprehend how much this hurt their chances of surviving a SkyWing invasion. Queen Coral would take the Diamond Spray and turn on them if they didn't agree, but without that land, they'd lose their strategic escape route.
Three moons, he thought nervously. We're going to become the first tribe to go extinct in the war. 
As Sienna worried himself with options, Prince Curlew entered from the other room. His helpless honey-colored eyes pleaded with Sienna, the hope in them so ruthlessly crushed that the busy dragon had to avert his gaze. Cradled in his arms was the murder weapon, half polished and encrusted with shards of dry blood.
"Yes?"
"I took the spear to the crafters to have them identify it," Curlew murmured, his voice shivering. "It's not good--"
"What do you mean?" demanded Sienna hotly, a temper creeping over him. "Is it a shoddily made spear? Would you like to ask Moorhen?"
"--news. I was going to say news."
The awkward tension only increased, and for a moment there was nothing to say.
Then Curlew sighed. "Sienna, I want you to look at this," he said, expending a great deal of effort to raise his voice. "Can you see the faint ridges? In the spiral pattern? It's a narwhal horn spear. This was wrought by a SeaWing." He tapped it as though afraid to run his finger along the ridges.
Sienna glanced from the letter, then to the narwhal spear. Resentment boiled in his throat.
Of course Queen Coral would do this, he thought furiously. That petty mollusc would kill our queen over an alleged soldier's death... and she has everything to gain from it.
== Chapter 3- Moray ==
The SeaWing’s scales crawled as she paced irascibly about the chamber, trying not to entertain her feelings of doubt. She couldn’t help but wonder whether she had made this decision out of pride for her tribe or out of selfishness. Does it matter? Mother will love what you did regardless of why. She'll say you're so clever Moray, and no one will think you're a boring know-it-all anymore, because you got revenge for Tempest and won the Diamond Spray and all kinds of riches for the queen to build our palaces.
A smallish dragon stood beside her in enduring patience, waiting for the restless SeaWing princess to calm down. Moray’s stripes had been flashing at an incoherent speed for the past hour.
“Personally, I don’t trust how your tribe always seems to know when to make the right deals with the right dragons,” said the decidedly female compatriot to Moray, her dark eyes glittering. “But with you being a council member, I assume, you understand why my kingdom would need a sizable military force at its disposal.” 
"Whyever you would recruit the MudWings for that is beyond me," snorted Moray. “I can completely understand why you would need more allies. That being said, I hate your current allies.”
“They are completely disagreeable as a culture, aren't they? But there are convincing enough reasons for us to overlook our judgement of their character, if they're useful enough.” She squinted at Moray curiously. “Does this offend you?"
"Personally I don’t care who the SeaWings support,” Moray grumbled testily. “Aside from Coral, the rest of our council doesn’t give a whale’s carcass about who wins the SandWing throne."
“Careful, SeaWing,” mused the conspirator drily. "You're starting to sound a bit seditious."
"I'm completely serious though. When this war is over and done, the SeaWings won’t want a petty alliance as a consolation prize, whoever wins. You can tell your queen that.”
"I'm sure my queen is well aware."
"Who did you kill, anyway?" Moray dared to ask. "I hope it was someone important. Our commander did die in that so-called peace negotiation."
"You doubt my judgment, princess? You asked for revenge and I gave you my word. It will be enough to leave them at the mercy of your tribe." 
"But that doesn't answer my question," said an irritated Moray, flicking her tail. "I would like to know whose blood is on my talons."
The other dragon's pupils contracted into threads despite the darkness of the cave. "Why, who other but their beating heart herself?"
Moray hoped against all hope that she had misunderstood the other dragon. But she knew she hadn't. The coyness of her ally betrayed everything. "But that's an unforgivable act of war."
"Let me put this in perspective for you," said the assassin. Moray blinked and there were new clawmarks gouged down the wall. "You’re alive right now because you're going to help us pocket the MudWings. I weeded out the biggest moral opposition to that outcome. A few royal dragons needed to be taken out of the picture."
Moray shook with anger. "I asked you to deepen their debt to us and you went and put negotiation off the table!"
"Oh, but their debt to the SeaWings is now as equally enormous as it is to any other faction in the Great War. I've little doubt they'll fold completely if pressed on any front right now. This means you are in a unique position to smooth things over for the benefit of us both."
"But they can't know I'm connected with this if things go south for us."
"The MudWings join us, or it's your life, fool princess. If you want every trinket they own in your stupid queen's talons too, you'd better do some convincing." 
The voice which spoke-- erased of emotion-- was not asking. "Good little talk. Let's meet again, say, half a moon."
== Chapter 4- ==
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Category:Content (FourFlames)
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