Countdown to Halloween Short Story the Third

This is a short story written by FourFlames for the 2014 Halloween Countdown. Enjoy!
== Chapter the First ==
Thorn concluded her speech, and the crowd of eagerly listening SandWings cheered and applauded. Her chest felt warm and fuzzy with pride.
Searing, in fact.
Her talons moved up to her neck, where the Eye of Onyx normally rested against her scales. The metal was now hot to the touch and it grew hotter by the minute, undeniably branding its own silhouette into her like a hot poker. She yowled and yanked the Eye from her neck-- snapping the chain off the jewelry-- and dropped it with a clatter into the dunes. Electric tendrils reached out of the inlaid cabochon and wandered across the sand as though it were walking. She took one look at it, turned, and fled into the desert, leaving the piece of treasure at the mercy of her confused Outclaws.
It stumbled towards the Obelisk and paused for a moment. Whatever soul was lurking inside the Eye-- if there was one at all-- seemed pleased.
There was a clink as the treasure settled itself on the headstone.
== Chapter the Second ==
Blaze was sitting in her boring little tower.
"Glacier?" she yelled, calling over her shoulders. "What do you think, topaz or blue topaz? It's so hard to decide. I mean, they're the same, but, like, two different colors."
There was no reply. Blaze shrugged and kept staring at the mirror. After about two seconds she turned around again. "Glacier?"
The IceWing trotted into the room, for about the fiftieth time that morning. "Blaze, we're late for breakfast. Pick something out and hurry. Or I will bite you. I'm very hungry, you know."
"Yes Glacier, I know," said Blaze, winding the rubies from yesterday around her neck. "But gold looks too drab. And the other gems are not different enough."
Glacier rolled her eyes. "Just put on all of them if you're so unsure."
"But then they'll look mismatched," whined Blaze, throwing her talons up in the air. "I don't know what to wear!"
"It doesn't matter, Blaze. We need to eat," growled Glacier as she picked up Blaze and rushed her out the door.
== Chapter the Third ==
Blaze broke away from Glacier-- racing back towards her mirror-- but she tripped over her tail and fell down the stairs. "Ouch!" she screamed as she fell on her face over and over again. She finally collapsed after falling on her face for what felt like a hundred times in front of an erratically jerking door. Huffing and dusting her scales off, she put her talons to the doorknob, figuring it was one of those hidden wardrobes she kept finding all over the place.
"YOW!" she screeched. The metal was incredibly hot. She drew her paw back and blew on it. Then she turned back toward the door and drew herself up, glaring angrily at it. "Who do you think you are, simple door? I am the princess of the SandWings!" She opened her mouth and breathed some fire on the door, but nothing happened. The door was iron, but the SandWing didn't know it.
"Oh, fine," Blaze harrumphed, turning around in defeat. "Someday I shall vanquish you, evil door!"
"And I shall vanquish you," said the door, transforming into Queen Oasis. At least, it looked like Queen Oasis to the stupid princess, except a little more white... and bony... and her eyes crackled with yellow electricity. That was new.
"Oh, hi mother," said Blaze dismissively. She held up her two necklaces in either talon. "So what do you think, topaz or blue topaz?"
== Chapter the Fourth ==
Glacier panicked. "Blaze? Blaze?" She paced the hallway, fiddling with her serrated talons. If Blaze was hurt, her alliance would be in a great deal of trouble. She peered down the stairs cautiously. "Blaze, are you okay?"
No answer.
Glacier slid stealthily down the stairs, claws extended, ready to shred whatever had silenced Blaze. At least, she was fairly certain this was what had happened. The chatty SandWing was never this silent for long.
She crashed face-first into something hard and metal and backed up. She was standing in front of the door leading to the desert, and Blaze wasn't in the room.
Oh dear, Glacier thought, hurrying to the door, ready to wrench it open. She touched her talon to the doorknob-- a sizzling sound came from it as her talons began to scorch at the touch. She half-shouted and toppled backwards over herself.
"Looking for someone?" hissed a familiar voice as Glacier returned to her feet. She wheeled around, startled-- she had never expected to hear that voice again.
"Oasis? Is that you?"
"Yes," replied the former SandWing Queen, stepping out of the shadows. She did not resemble her old self at all-- there was no substance to her body, just a barren frame of withered bones. "And if you're looking for Blaze, she's right here." 
The younger princess peeped her head out from behind her mother.
"Oh, thank goodness," Glacier sighed. "Come on Blaze, let's go. Thank you, Oasis-- although I'm not sure how you're here."
"Glacier. Old friend," said the skeletal Queen Oasis, stepping in front of them. 
Glacier was uncomfortably familiar with that tone of voice. Particularly oily... she wants a favor.
"Blaze is unfit for the throne without you, Glacier. The rest of the royal family has joined me in the underworld, and now I have to make sure you can never abandon her."
"Oh, I see. I don't like where this is going," the IceWing growled. "Unfortunately for you, I'm hungry, and when I'm hungry, I'm not the politest."
"Hnf!" laughed the skeleton, knocking its jaw bones together. "IceWings have such high standards for 'politeness.' Things have always been very different in the Sand Kingdom-- no one gives two camels' droppings about how hungry you are, not even if you're a queen. They just do as they're told, and they'll stab you if you give them an opportunity to do anything else."
Glacier had heard that one before-- no one else could be as paranoid as Oasis was. "You really are Oasis," she said, raising a surprised eyebrow. 
Queen Oasis' skeleton groaned flatly and shook herself off. "And I'm really trusting you to protect my daughter."
She wrung her talons together, and Glacier lifted off the ground.
== Chapter the Fifth ==
"Wha--" Glacier was immediately alert as she floated off the floor without ever flapping her wings. Something blue-- it looked like a suit of crystals-- was slumped beneath her...
Her body.
"OASIS!" she roared, clawing at the air furiously.
"Hold still," said the skeletal Queen, clenching her claws together like she was closing them around a small rabbit.
"Mother!" Blaze protested. "Stop that! I don't like it! Something's down there... AUGH! Mother, what are you doing?!"
"Me? I'm not doing anything," she crooned. "The Onyx is. But I wouldn't expect you to know that, Blaze."
The IceWing queen lurched downwards, crashing through the floor and plunging into what she could only assume was the void. Above her, she could see Blaze's body lying unconscious on the tower floor.
Glacier yelled all the profanities she knew at the top of her lungs and then descended into darkness. 
== Chapter the Sixth ==
Glacier opened her eyes slowly, blinking in the harsh light of the midday chamber. Her eyelids fluttered for a second.
"B-Blaze?" she called out.
"Glacier... I'm dizzy...." said Blaze somewhere next to her. 
The IceWing queen turned confusedly, scanning the room-- there weren't any SandWings, just the IceWing sitting in front of her. 
Wait a minute.
"Is that... Blaze?!" cried Glacier, stumbling backwards. "Y-you're me, but... I'm not in a mirror?"
"Uhhh... wait! I recognize you! You're me! I know because I stare at that face all day!" said the IceWing with Blaze's voice. She reached out and brushed her own face, running her paws over the curvature like she was applying makeup. Glacier's eye twitched with mild irritation at the sensation of having her face poked.
"I can't believe mother did this! This is so mean! I don't want to be an IceWing, I want to be a pretty SandWing! I mean, not that you're an ugly dragon, sorry to offend you."
Glacier still felt as grumpy and hungry as she had been in her own body. "No offense taken."
"I wish I could walk right up to mother and hit her," snorted Blaze. "Wait, no. I want to wipe that bony grin right off her face!"
Somehow Glacier doubted that Queen Oasis's skeleton could grin without any skin or muscles.
"Well?" demanded Blaze. "How are we going to do it?"
Glacier couldn't answer. "We'll start by getting your incompetent guards to DO something about it, I suppose."
== Chapter the Seventh ==
Glacier stormed down the stairs with a force of discipline that made the real Blaze cringe. A patrol of IceWings was flapping around, chatting off duty. "Hey!" the 'SandWing' yelled sharply, waving her talons. "Explain to me why I just saw an intruder in the palace! You're guards, not monkeys! Get out there and do your job!"
The IceWings stared at each other in amazement, then turned back to her incredulously. "We don't take orders from you," they said, flying off laughing.
"Wow," said Blaze, flying up to Glacier. "I didn't know other dragons looked at me that way."
"Oh...I'm... I'm sorry... I thought you knew..." said Glacier, annoyed that the IceWings had shrugged her off. "When I get my body back, I'll---"
"You'll what?" said a sarcastic voice behind her. She whipped around to see the skeletal SandWing Queen standing in the opening.
"I'll flay you alive," spat Glacier. "And hang your body from the palace terrace."
"Foolish dragon, you cannot kill me," replied Queen Oasis with a yawn. "I'm already dead."
"Wait---" said a confused Blaze, putting two and two together. "How are you here if you're dead?!"
"Huh, I wonder," laughed the skeleton, the jewel clamped tightly to her neck shining in the light. "It's unfortunate that the one child who survived didn't have a functional brain to figure it out. Good thing you've got auntie Glacier to fill your shoes, mmm?"
And then she vanished.
== Chapter the Eighth ==
Blaze lunged forwards with a strength she had never felt before.
"I am too smart, and everyone loves me!" she roared furiously.
The SandWing princess crashed forward, head over talons, through a cloud of smoke that she could have sworn was Queen Oasis seconds before. Her mother had just done the most mean thing to her ever, and she wasn't going to forget it. She rolled towards the window at high velocity, suddenly realizing she was speeding towards the glass.
"GLACIER!" she yelled. She fell backwards and broke through the glass, screaming as she went.
Her head crashed into a dune and she almost lost consciousness, but her rage drove her on. Snorting dizzily, she sat up on the sand. An IceWing soldier swooped down towards her.
"Are you okay, your highness?"
"No," hissed Blaze, suddenly feeling strange, like something was controlling her. She tried to fight it, but her--- Glacier's--talons closed around the dragon's neck and began to throttle it. She wanted to release her grasp, crying, but she only flung the innocent dragon across the sand. Red liquid was trickling towards her feet, seeping into the sand. The victim's face was smothered with its own blood.
"I'M NOT OKAY!!!" screamed Blaze, throwing herself into the ground. She was completely fixated with the blood spattered on her talons, completely ignoring the dying dragon as it drew its last breath.
== Chapter the Ninth ==
Glacier swooped out of the window, diving towards Blaze. She was a bit annoyed with Oasis... if it even was Oasis. She spiraled down towards the ground, extending her talons for landing gear.
"Blaze?" she called, looking around. She didn't understand why it would be so hard to find her out on the sand; after all, it was her body and IceWings really stand out in the desert. She scanned the horizon a little while longer before a long white and pale blue body slithered up to her, stained with dragon blood.
Glacier jumped backwards. "What happened?!" Her surprise quickly turned into rage. "Who did this to you? Who attacked you?!"
Blaze shuffled her feet. "Glacier, I wasn't-- it was--"
Glacier stopped, dead serious. She stared down at Blaze's bloodstained claws with a sudden understanding. "You--- you just murdered someone."
"YES!" screamed Blaze, falling on her side. "IT'S HORRIBLE! I'M HORRIBLE! I DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO KILL THEM! LOOK AT THE POOR DRAGON!" She cried, pointing to a limp IceWing nearby.
Glacier's eyes flitted between Blaze and her guard, still struggling to connect the dots. "Then why did you kill them?"
"Because I didn't. Someone else did."
Glacier honestly found this story more plausible than the possibility of Blaze killing another dragon. "How?"
"Well," Blaze said, terror gripping at her, "I think someone is controlling me."
== Chapter the Tenth ==
"Tick tock," smirked Queen Oasis, smoothing the Onyx on her chest. She paced across the room to the window, staring out of its colorful orange glass. She smashed it boredly, just to make someone else's job more difficult. Maybe some servant would get blamed-- who cared?
The former Queen paced back and forth, curling her tail.
"What is there left to do, Blister," she whispered to the Onyx, "than to execute your perfect plan?"
== Chapter the Eleventh ==
Blaze felt the strange feeling surging up her talons again. "GLACIER!" she screamed.
"What now?" the IceWing groaned in frustration. Blaze came crashing down into her, and as she tried to pull away, noticed that the serrated claws were digging into her shoulder viciously.
"This isn't like you at all!" yelled Glacier, wriggling out from under her ally. Glacier's body was still lacerating her arm like it was in a trance, except it was attached to Blaze's perfectly ordinary state of mind that was probably still debating what jewelry to wear.
It was at that moment that a huge figure landed beside them, stirring up dust and sand as it tilted its wings to land. "Time's up," Queen Oasis laughed, and pulled out none other than the Eye of Onyx.
"WHAT?!" screamed Blaze, her eyes lolling manically. "YOU'RE GOING TO KILL US?!"
"No," Queen Oasis replied. Her white skeletal frame began to turn as black as her empty eyes. "Just a nice little family reunion here."
Blaze pointed at the Eye in recognition. "Oh, that thing! 
"That thing killed Blister," Glacier reminded her. "Don't touch it if you're not the true queen."
"I know that," said Blaze, daring to slap her ally. "What are you going to do with it, mother?"
Oasis said nothing as she flipped open the Onyx harness. An orange wind began to blow (yes, the wind was visible), swallowing the surrounding desert in its mighty vacuum. 
Glacier attempted to pry herself away from the accelerating gusts, but the sand was slippery and didn't help her grip whatsoever. 
"CAN'T.... HOLD ON... MUCH LONGER...." screamed Blaze, and she somersaulted over Glacier's head into the Eye, which glowed with a hellish power. 
Glacier screeched and clawed at a single shrub, knowing very well that the fate of her kingdom rested in this tiny plant, but lost her grip and tumbled backwards straight into the Onyx...
...only to disappear in a flash of purple lightning.
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)
Category:Fanfictions (Completed)
Category:Content (FourFlames)