The Scorching (Stormcloud)

War Between SkyWings and SandWings
	This FanFiction is written by Stormcloudtheskywing. Please don’t edit or use any character’s names without permission. Thanks so much! By the way, the prologue takes place right after the Scorching, when scavengers are trying to take back Pyrrhia. 
	Queen Cacta of the SandWings. That’s what everyone called Cacta. She wished her mother had never died. Cacta wasn’t ready to be queen, and the SkyWings knew it.
	
Prologue
	
	Ricochet jumped off her throne and clutched the red dragon’s neck in her sharp talons.
	
	“Say that again.” She hissed.
	
	“T-The battle went well Your Highness!” Sarlittis gasped.
	
	“NO!” Queen Ricochet barked. “The other part.”
	
	Barely releasing her grip Sarlittis, Ricochet dragged herself and the other dragon to the right side of the SkyWing throne room and snatched up a crying dragonet. 
	
	“Tell me the truth or your precious dragonet dies.” She tossed Star to one of her guards, they caught her and put a claw to the main artery on Star’s neck.
	
	“No! Please!” Sarlittis reached one talon toward her daughter, using the other to pry the queen’s talon off her neck.
	
	“Tell me!” Ricochet roared.
	
	“We-We lost.” Sarlittis gasped for air when Ricochet released her and settled back on her throne. 
	
	With a flick of Ricochet’s tail, the guards threw Star out the window and watched as she plummeted down, down, down.
	
	“NO!!” Sarlittis cried. 
	
	She tried to run to get her dragonet but guards held her back. Sarlittis’s heart sank to her toes. 
	
	“No!” Ricochet jumped down and fetched the dragonet, seconds before impact. 
	
	“Stupid dragons,” She hissed as Star rushed toward her mother. 
	
	“I told you plain as day that right flick meant throw the child, left flick meant toss her to her mother.” Queen Ricochet put her diamond shaped head in her talons and shooed the guards away.
	
	“So we lost again?” She affirmed, quite a bit more calmly than she had before.
	
	“Yes, Your Highness.” Sarlittis mumbled still clutching her daughter.
	
	“To scavengers?” Queen Ricochet couldn’t believe that things less than half their hight could defeat them so easily.
	
	“I may be young but, I certainly know that we shouldn’t keep losing to scavengers!” 
	
	“Yes, Your Majesty.” Sarlittis said.
	
	“Have we won any battles?”
	
	“No.”
	
	Queen Ricochet shook her head in disgust. 
	
	“There must be a way to even up the odds. I know! We need to join all the tribes together. I figure I need to be queen of most of the tribes. That way, it’s highly unlikely that those puny scavengers will get back their island.”
	
	Queen Scorpion glared at a scavenger right as it jabbed it’s spear thingy into her foreleg.
	“YOUCH!!!” She shook her leg and stomped on the creature.
	“Majesty!” Her lead General, General Bushel, ran to her side and examined her “wound”.
	“Get away from me! I’m fine. Win the war!” She waved him away. 
	Three scavengers jabbed at her, while three more climbed up her legs. They felt like furry spiders crawling all over the SandWing queen.
	“Hey-ouch!-get-OUCH!-off me!” She flew straight up into the sky and all the scavengers fell off her and crashed into the sand below. Scorpion flew twenty miles back to her castle.
	“Honey! Cacta?” Queen Scorpion called for her daughter, Princess Cacta.
 A voice called out, “Mommy? I’m in the Library!”
Scorpion rushed to the Library and laughed when she saw her three year old dragonet surrounded by thousands of scrolls stacked on every side of her.
“Are you? I only see scrolls!”
“Behind the scrolls,” Cacta rolled her eyes as her mother’s poor joking skills.
Scorpion forced her daughter to stop reading and clean her up. Cacta painfully pulled out each tiny scavenger sword.
“Honey, Sweetheart, I’m gonna have to go back out there. I won’t be the type of queen who sits around and does nothing while her dragons get killed.” Scorpion knew her daughter hated her war trips.
“Mommy!” Cacta whined. “Don’t go!”
“Darling, just...read your scrolls while I’m gone. I promise it will seem like seconds.”
If only. If only it did. If only it was.
	Time stopped. General Bushel leaped forward to catch Her Falling Majesty. The scavenger released the sword wedged in Queen Scorpion’s chest. It jumped to the ground and took off running. Dragons and scavengers alike stopped fighting and stared at the gold dragon. No one moved a muscle. Neither did she.
	Queen Scorpion of the SandWings was dead.
Chapter 1
	
	Queen Cacta sat herself upon her throne. She puffed up her chest, trying to look bigger and more queenlike than she was.
	“Come in.” She ordered when a rasping knock almost went unheard.
	“You’re-” General Bushel stopped to swallow her ‘Majesty’ “Queen Cacta. We are being attacked by SkyWings.”
	“Why?” Queen Cacta asked, relaxing her regal pose.
	“W-why?” Bushel chocked. “We-We-Well we didn’t ask them!” Said the alarmed and astonished General.
	“Well. Do.” She mused.
	Queen Ricochet roared as she swooped down from the sky. She landed on a SandWing and narrowly dodged his wildly swinging poisonous tail.
	“How rude! What would your queen think? Killing other dragons. Or...trying to-at least.” Ricochet stabbed a claw into the SandWing’s heart. He stopped squirming and blood spilled out of his mouth. Ricochet swiped a claw in the blood pool and wrote,
	Don’t mess with Her Majesty Queen Ricochet
	“Luckily my queen doesn’t care.” Queen Ricochet licked the blood off her talons. She wished that she had more blood to make her name bigger but, SandWings knew the SkyWing queen did it. That’s all that mattered.
	She. Queen Ricochet of the SkyWings. She was going to take over the Kingdom of Sand and rule two kingdoms! 
	Her army was winning. As long as no other tribe in Pyrrhia knew that the Kingdom of Sand was weak, the throne of the Sand Kingdom would soon be hers. Hers forever. Being an animus, she considered just using her power to fight but, she would use her power once-and only once-to make sure she lived forever as Queen of the SandWings and SkyWings!
	“STOP!!!!!!!!!” 
The order roared over all the shouting and fighting in the battlefield. Everyone froze and turned to look at a shiny gold-black dragon hovering in the sky. The SkyWings flapped their wings to raise themselves up next to their queen.
	“Queen Ricochet.” Bushel started.
	“I will never surrender.” She hissed.
	“Why...” He continued. “Why are you fighting us?”
	“Who wants to know?” Queen Ricochet asked with a touch of amusement in her voice.
	“Queen Cacta of the SandWings.”
	“I want the throne.” Queen Ricochet replied. “I can do a better job than her. She is too young for the throne. Even she knows it. She can have it when I die.”
	“We won’t let you. We don’t want no SkyWings on our sand.” A voice called from the frozen battlefield.
	Queen Ricochet hissed but more voices agreed.
	“Yeah!”
	“Down with the SkyWings!”
	Soon they started chanting,
	“Down with the SkyWings! Down with the SkyWings! Down with the SkyWings!”
	“QUIET!” Bushel’s low voice shook the desert sand like a colonial sifting for gold. 
	“Now,” Bushel continued when everyone stopped yelling. “Resume.” 
	The SkyWings were the first to commence the fighting. They swooped down from the sky and attacked SandWings. The SandWings fled in terror.
		“What is happening?”
	Queen Cacta was in her throne room. It was a small room-maybe big enough for 6 or 7 adult dragons to stand next to each other-wings closed. The roof was widely domed and gold pillars stretched from the gold floor to the gold-brown roof. The large space between pillars was empty, so the hot breeze floated through the room occasionally. Two french-doors opened onto a small hallway leading toward stairs. The throne was set in the exact center of the room.
	“Queen Cacta, our SandWings are fleeing. The SkyWings...won.”
	“No! I will not lose the kingdom two weeks after I receive it. Fight harder.” Queen Cacta paced the room, barely saving herself from falling off the edge every time.
	“Don’t you see?” the soldier asked. “We can’t. We can’t fight any harder than we are.”
	“Try” Queen Cacta insisted.
	“Alright. I’ll regather our forces.” The soldier relented.
	
Chapter 2
	
	As soon as the soldier was down the stairs, a ruby red dragon, with large wings and smoke seething out of her nostrils casually stepped in between two pillars from the outside and entered the Throne Room.
	
	“Nice place you got here.” 
	
	Queen Cacta whirled around to come face-to-face with Queen Ricochet of the SkyWings.
	
	“Waaaaaaa!” She pressed herself backward against the arm of her throne.
	
	Without backing up, Queen Ricochet studied her wing horns closely, using her teeth to scratch off any hint of yellow. Queen Cacta noticed the blood stains on her talons.
	
	“Oh.” Queen Ricochet barked noticing Queen Cacta’s gaze. “Like the ssssstainssss? I got them from ripping the heartsssssssss out of SssssandWingsss. One more wouldn’t make that big of a differencccce. Right?” She hissed.
	
	Queen Ricochet leaped toward Queen Cacta.
	
	“What do want? I’ll give you anything! Stop killing my dragons!.”
	
	Ricochet stopped and hissed. “Anything?”
	
	“Well. Almost.” Queen Cacta mumbled.
	
	“I WANT YOUR THRONE!!” Queen Ricochet roared.
	
	Her talons reached out to grab Cacta’s throat. Her claw scarred Cacta’s back as she turned to jump off the throne. She landed face first on the ground. Queen Ricochet jumped on top of her and snatched her throat in her talons, ready to snap it.
	
	“Fine,” the small squeak moused out of the scrunched dragonet queen. 
	
	“What?” Queen Ricochet asked, dumbfounded.
	
	“Fine. Have my throne but, leave my dragons alone and don’t kill anyone.”
	
	Ricochet let go of Former Queen Cacta’s throat and stepped off her, obviously annoyed she didn’t get to kill the old queen. 
	
	Queen Ricochet of the SandyWings whistled so piercingly, Cacta fell off the Throne Room. But, she remembered her ability to fly just in time. The entire mob of SkyWings “visiting” the Sand Kingdom floated to her side. She whispered instructions to them and they flew off again but not before they took something of value to the SandWings.
	
	General Bushel whipped his head up when he heard loud wingbeats. SkyWings were headed toward them, holding something in the middle of them all. Bushel caught a glimpse of a squirming bright gold dragon with ruby necklaces and silver bracelets.
	
	Queen Cacta.
	
Chapter 3
	Bushel growled and leaped toward one of the SkyWings. 
	“Down, slave,” he ordered, using his tail to shove him back. 
	“WHAT THE HECK DID YOU CALL ME?!” Bushel shook his wings furiously. 
	“Oh. Didn’t you hear?” The SkyWing, Storm, asked smugly. “Your queen forfeited. All hail Queen Ricochet of the SandyWings!,” The SkyWings chanted. 
	“What?! Queen Cacta’s...dead?” Bushel was shocked. 
	“No. She just gave up the throne. Here she is,” the SkyWings dumped Cacta in a crumbled heap in the middle of the bleeding SandWings. 
	The SkyWings flew off. Smoke and flame poured out of Bushel’s nostrils. 
	“You gave us to the SkyWings?” He affirmed slowly. 
	“No.” Cacta coughed. “I rescued you from them.” 
	Bushel just glared at her, eye twitching. 
	“They wouldn’t have stopped. They would never have stopped fighting. Each day, they’d come with more and more SkyWings until we were wiped out. She was seconds away from killing me, if she had succeeded, you would be dead.” 
	“Neither would we’ve. Wed’ve done...something. Maybe ally?” 
	“Really?” Cacta gave him a skeptical look. “You seriously want all of Pyrrhia to know how weak we are right now?” 
	“Well. I guess not. But, maybe the IceWings?” 
	“No.” Cacta ordered firmly. 
	“I recall you aren’t queen anymore. Only queens order me around.” 
	Cacta sighed a small flame, fiercly aimed for Bushel. She didn’t like having her sacrifice for her kingdom thrown in her face like that. 
	“I GAVE IT UP TO SAVE YOU!!” Angry tears rushed in, flooding Cacta’s flaming eyes. A volcano of anger exploded in her chest she gave the sky over Bushel’s shoulder a death glare, forcing her tears to recede. 
	“You gave the throne up to save you.” Bushel’s pointer talon pointed angrily at Cacta’s chest. 
	Smoke and flame flew out of Cacta’s nostrils. She glared at Bushel for a few minutes before opening her jaws and letting fire explode out of her mouth. Bushel leaped to the side, seconds before the flames would have burned his face. 
	“WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?!?!” He whipped around to face Cacta, who had a smug-but-evil look on her orange/gold face. 
	Bushel shook with fury. He was just about ready to kill his former queen. But, a complex plan, boiling in his mind stopped him. He needed her. 
	
	Queen Ricochet of the SandyWings settled herself gleefully onto her new throne.
	“Your Majesty,” A guard said, entering the throne room. “I have the SandWings you asked for.”
	“Perfect,” Queen Ricochet purred, then laughed evilly. She had ordered for random dragonesses and dragonets to be brought to her. 
	“What should we do with them,” the guard quickly added, “Your Highness,” when the queen glared coldly at him.
	“Kill them all,” she said with a Duh. You should have known that, sound in her tone.
	“W-What, Majesty?” The guard fumbled over his words stupidly.
	“What don’t you understand?” The queen snapped her jaw open and tossed a large rat in it, shutting it once more. A whole bin of dead rats on a stand right next to her was free to her use. “Kill the wretches as a warning to anyone who dares to defy me.”
	“But-But Ma’am. Killing a dragoness or even a dragonet is against the rules! They have to be in a war for us to kill them without the penalty of death!”
	Queen Ricochet stared blankly at him. “So?” She asked. “Kill them!”
	The guard mumbled angrily to himself as he headed down to the cellars. His keys jangled on his tail.
	“Are we free to go now?” A dragoness asked in a cell.
	“Sure. Your fate from now on is not on my conscious.”
The dragoness shot him a confused look. “Why not?”
	“’Cause I’ll be dead.” The guard said angrily.
	“Dead? Why? Did you do something wrong?”
	“I will’ve by the time I’m done with you.”
	The dragonesses understood and created a protective circle around the dragonets. A SkyWing/SandWing hybrid yelled, “THAT’S NOT COOL!” at the guard and rattled the bars of his cell. 
	“I know. But, I have to follow her orders or my family with be painfully killed.”
	No one was sure whether or not to believe him but, a few gave a him pitying look and an “aaawww!”
	As the guard dragged the dragons out of the cell one by one, he was able to sneak some poison gas in the rest of the ones in the cell. By his calculations, the gas would kill them in three hours. But first, the gas would attach itself to the scales of the dragons and stay there, slowly killing them. Painfully killing them.
	“I’m angry,” Cacta said as she calmed down. “I’m angry that I had to give up my throne to save my people.”
	Bushel considered arguing with that but, with a lot of self-control, he was able to let it go. A LOT of self-control.
	“It’s alright. We’ll get the throne back. I promise.”
	“What made you so calm now?” Cacta asked.
	“I realized that arguing about what happened would not change the fact that we are now the SandyWing tribe and all hybrids have been sentenced to death. Obviously, Ricochet doesn’t want SkyWing blood to mix with SandWing blood, only the tribes mixing.
	“We have to get the throne back now. She dragged off one hundred dragonets and dragonesses to be killed.” Cacta said.
	“Fine,” Bushel said. “Here’s my plan.”
Thus Ends Part One.
VERY VERY BIG WORK IN PROGRESS I HAVEN'T READ IT IN A YEAR.
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)