Fire and Ice

== Fire and Ice ==
Some ties go more than skin deep.
Ash is a soldier, loyal as anything to Queen Ruby. She will fight to defend her queen and kill anyone who stands against the SkyWings.
She was never supposed to meet Kite. To have a chance to change Pyrrhia's future. To start a crazy adventure that might bring everything she ever knew and loved come crashing down around her. But that isn't stopping her.
Destined to fail. Doomed to fall. Determined to succeed. 
== Prologue ==
A bright red dragon flew out of the camp. This was not unusual. It was a SkyWing army camp, after all. But what was unusual was the direction she was going. 
The Claws of the Cloud Mountains loomed overhead, but Kite wasn't scared. She had taken this route so many times before. She hesitated for a moment before she went in. Would he be excited when he heard her news? Or horrified? I don't care, she decided. I will look after it anyway. 
"Kite? Is that you?" 
A voice was calling her from the cave. "Yes, it's me," she whispered softly, and swooped gracefully (or as gracefully as her precious cargo would allow) into her true love's glittering white arms.
She hadn't meant to fall in love with an IceWing, really she hadn't. In fact, she had meant to kill him. That was how they met, in a deadly battle to the death. But Frostbite had talked her out of it, made her see how truly awful this war was. "Why are we killing each over this war?" he had asked her. "I've never met Blaze, and I don't want to. The SandWing Queen could be Burn or Blaze or Blister or even a scavenger for all I care!"
She had laughed, and as she had laughed, she had fallen in love.
"Kite?" Frostbite's kind voice brought her back to reality. "What are you carrying, dearest?"
"Um." This is it, she thought. "An egg. Our egg."
Frostbite gasped, and pulled her into the tightest hug ever.
"You're not upset? Or angry?" Kite asked him, hardly daring to believe it.
"Of course not! This is the happiest day of my life! Of both of our lives! Kite, I love you!"
"Oh, there's an egg, too? My, but how tragic!" 
The cold, cruel voice spoke from outside the cave. It belonged to an amber dragon, coated from head to toe in jewels.
"Queen Scarlet!" gasped Kite, trying to hide her egg.
"Oh, but it's too late for that. I've already seen it! Kite. Commander Aerial has been so, so worried about you."
Scarlet took the egg and smashed it against the floor. In one, frighteningly fast move, she swiped of Frostbite's head. Kite realised that she was about to die. Not without a fight! I'll stay strong until the end. But what had she got left to live for?
"Oh, don't look so worried. I won't kill you now. No, no, that wouldn't be at all thrilling. I've been needing new blood for my arena. You'll make a fine addition."
And then the whole world went black.
==Chapter One==
Ash was mad. Raving mad. It had been her idea in the first place to let Swift stay, and now? Swift had been partnered with Phoenix, and Ash had been partnered with Kite. Kite?!?! The crazy old SkyWibg had been in Scarlet's arena, and had never fully recovered. Some sort of scandal with an IceWing, Ash remembered, during the great war. Euuurgggh. IceWings. Yet another reason not to like them. Back to the point. 
Ash's mind was like that, always sailing across and leaping from thought to thought with little or no warning. That's a good thing. It means I can process attacks quicker, and react faster. It'll come in handy when I'm a guard. 
All her life, Ash had been trained for just one purpose: to become a SkyWing guard. You couldn't be the daughter of Commander Aerial and not be expected to. As far as Aerial was concerned, her daughter's life didn't really matter until she turned five, and could legally, properly, train.
To Ash, however, it mattered a lot. Ash did reasonably well in school. She was well-liked, popular, even, and had a troupe of dragonets who followed her around and hung onto her every word. But she didn't have a friend. When Aerial mentioned offhandedly that her old friend Skylark was bringing her daughter to see their family, Ash was over the moons. She burst into the cave and demanded to see this dragonet, who turned out to be a hybrid called Swift. Swift was the most interesting person Ash has ever met. She was shy, but warmed up considerably a few minutes after Ash had metvher and turned out to be hilarious and witty. And she had seen the whole of Pyrrhia! Or almost all of it. Apparently you couldn't see the Ice Kingdom because it was protected by some sort of spear-shooting innocent-dragon-killing cliff. But Swift had gone up to it, and seen snow, and met RainWings! Swift was the dragon who really taught Ash about acceptance. Despite maintaining the belief that SkyWings were the best tribe ever, Ash learnt a lot about the other tribes and grudgingly admitted that maybe- MAYBE!- she had been wrong to assume that all the other tribes were awful. (IceWings were still awful, though. They were the absolute worst!)
For a long time, Ash had sensed that there was something troubling her friend. Swift eventually confessed that she was worried- her parents were so obsessed with touring the kingdom that she was sure she would have to move on soon. Ash listened to her with a patient smile, but inside her mind was whirring. Just a few minutes later it was all settled- Swift would train to be a SkyWing guard with her.
And now here they were, about to begin training, and what?!?! Had Swift trained for her whole life to become a SkyWing guard? Had Swift been the champion of every single Under Five's sporting team in the kingdom? And had Swift been told by Queen Ruby herself that she would make a fine guard some day? No, she had not! But Ash had.
Ash understood that her mother couldn't play favorites. That giving her own daughter the second-best fighter in the whole Sky Kingdom (the very best was Aerial, of course) as a partner would look very bad. But wasn't Swift essentially her daughter? They lived in the same house, had three meals together each day, and really Ash and Swift were sisters. But no, Ash had been partnered with Kite. No matter how many times she said it, the words sounded false. Untrue.
Ok, maaaaaaybe I'm making too big a deal out of this. Maybe. 
She sneaked a peak at Kite. The blood-red SkyWing was glaring at her with enough venom to freeze over a pond (Ash had never seen a pond be frozen over by venom, but she was sure that Kite's glare could manage it).
Or then again, maybe I'm not. 
Ash sighed, and stifled a yawn. Her mother was still talking. Some kind of thing about the honour and greatness and stuff about being a SkyWing guard. As though she and the other trainees hadn't heard it at least a million times before. Even Swift looked bored, and (as far as Ash knew) the hybrid had never heard one of her mother's speeches before. Come to think of it, she wasn't sure Swift had ever heard her mother say anything that consisted of more than one sentence. Ash ducked through the crowd, making a beeline for her friend.
"It's awful, isn't it?" Swift hissed, not even bothering to turn to greet Ash. "When will it end?"
Ash smothered a giggle. "When she gets tired if talking. It usually only takes a few days..."
Swift looked around, eyes wide. "Seriousl- Oh, I know that face. You're having me on, aren't you?"
Ash smiled, and then put on a very accurate impression of Commander Aerial's face when she was trying to impress Queen Ruby. "Maybe. Maybe not."
Both dragonets couldn't hold it in a moment longer. They broke down in fits of giggles, receiving several glares from the older guards. 
"Sorry!" gasped out Ash, with tremendous self-control on her part.
From high above, on her suitably imposing-looking platform, Commander Aerial looked down disapprovingly. "...and I hope our young apprentices will renounce their immature ways and grow up into excellent soldiers."
"She'd make the most excellent professor..." Ash hissed to Swift. "I mean, all she needs is a history book and a pair of intimidating spectacles!"
Swift shook silently with laughter, tears almost rolling down her cheeks. 
At long last, the whole cave errupted with applause. Finally. Ash rolled her eyes. She mimed polite clapping along with everyone else, and the cave gradually emptied. Ash put a talon over her mouth to hide her yawn, and found herself blinking back tears. She trailed slowly after the rest of the group, thinking. Why is everything so moons-blasted awful? She wanted to scream, to yell, to fight, to do something. Anything! But despair was like that. You couldn't claw it away, you couldn't attack it with a dagger, you couldn't stab it with a sword until it yelled for mercy. It was just there, weighing you down, impossible to get rid of. She sighed. If only she didn't like Swift so much. It would be easy to hate a dragon for this- this injustice, this hurt. It would be so easy to...
Crack!
Ash's head was on fire. Her whole skull was blazing, the pain blinding. She blinked slowly and found two blazing orange eyes looking directly into her own. 
"You think you've got it made, haven't you?" a voice hissed dangerously.
"I... what? Do I know you?" Ash tried.
"I'm Raven. I would say I'm pleased to meet you, but I'm really not."
"What have I ever done to you?" Ash asked, outraged that anyone was treating her this. "And why did you break my skull?"
"I didn't break your skull, stupid!" Raven retorted. "Dragon bones are as hard as diamonds. I'd have thought you would have known that, being the daughter of Commander Aerial and all that." She spoke off-handedly, but Ash could sense the bitterness behind her words. A lifetime of anguish and jealousy. What had given her that idea? Perhaps it was a quote or something.
"Then why did you... temporarily injure my skull, then?" Ash tried.
"Because I wanted to give you something to remember me by. Do you know, any commoner who behaved like you did today would be instantly thrown out of the guard?"
"I-"
"Whispering, not paying attention, giggling through the Commander's speech?" Ash tried to interrupt, but Raven cut through her. "I've been fighting my whole moons-blasted life to be where I am today! And I have to work at least twice as hard as any high-born SkyWing dragonet does to get half the respect you're used to. And for every one of me, there's at least fifty dragons who would have made better guards than me, but never even got the chance to try. So yeah, that's right, go with your friend and pay no attention to anyone, lord it over the rest of us. Because," her voice dropped to a dangerous hiss. "Because if there's fifty dragons after my job, there's at least a thousand who would swap places with you in a heartbeat."
And then she was gone, leaving Ash with a blinding headache and a sense of doubt and insecurity that she was sure hadn't been there before. 
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Genre (Adventure)
Category:Content (BuzzieOfTheSkyWings)