Ivy Flickers

Written by Siren

**Warning:** This fanfiction is canon turned on its head, shaken around a lot until a few important bits fall out, then dropped back on its feet and called a piece of readable literature. Read at your own risk.

*Note:* *This story takes place during the main timeline on this wiki. It also takes place during the events of* The Lost Continent*,* The Hive Queen*, and* The Poison Jungle*.*

## **Prologue**

*Over two thousand years ago . . .*

Topaz flew above the treeline, clutching the gem in his talons so tightly that it was a wonder it hadn’t cracked. The young SkyWing animus knew he should be happy that he had escaped Queen Crimson’s deadly claws, but all he felt was grief and dread.

A few months ago, Queen Crimson had decided to stamp out the animus line, for reasons unknown to anyone but her. Perhaps it was because of the news from the Sea Kingdom, where the queen’s son, a SeaWing/IceWing hybrid named Albatross, had discovered his animus magic in a rather gruesome way. Topaz shuddered in the sky just thinking about it, imagining the pain Sapphire must have felt as the clamshell ripped off her claws.

Topaz had thought that he and his mother, the other SkyWing animus, would be safe, especially since neither of them had ever used their powers more than a few times, and all of those had been little spells to help Queen Crimson.

But he remembered the night a couple days ago, when the moons were shining bright as they rose over the peaceful mountain kingdom. The young Queen Scorpion had been threatening attack for the past week, but that thought was on no one’s minds as they soared through the crisp black sky, or bartered with a few late customers, or sat in their houses eating whatever delicious dinner they had caught that evening.

Topaz was huddled in one of the back corners of his house, curled up below a large window in the fading sunlight with a new scroll from the RainWings. The fascinating rainforest tribe was quite possibly the most revered tribe in Pyrrhia, with their deadly venom, camouflage scales and impressive knowledge of various mystery fruits.

The RainWing scroll had reached an exciting climax, with the main character about to go into battle when there was a loud thump at the door. Topaz looked up from the scroll, slightly irritated at the distraction from the great story. His mother and father looked up from where they were scorching a boar for dinner and glanced at the door, their expressions growing concerned as the thumping went on, louder and louder until Topaz’s sister Owl threw the door open with a cranky huff, angry at being awoken so abruptly.

The split second before Owl yanked the door open, Topaz knew something was wrong. He couldn’t place the wrongness, exactly, but he knew something bad was about to happen.

“What?” Owl growled at the intruders, and Topaz knew that she was going to get a severe talking to later. “Can’t you just knock like a civ-”

Whatever Owl was going to say was cut off with a sharp gasp. Topaz’s eyes drifted down to her back, where Owl’s yellow-orange scales were turning red, red as the sunset, red as Queen Crimson’s scales, red as blood. Topaz dropped the scroll with a dull thud as the realization hit him, his eyes and his parents’ eyes unable to pull away from Owl. *Red as blood, because it* is *blood.* Topaz realized with a jolt of fear.

“What did you do?” Topaz’s mother roared.

Owl’s killer yanked the dagger out of her torso, and Topaz’s sister dropped to the ground. “Queen’s orders.” the soldier said, stepping over Owl’s body and into the house.

Seven other soldiers followed him, stepping over Topaz’s sister like she was nothing but a large, annoying puddle. Only one of the soldiers, a dragonet that looked only a few years older than Topaz, stopped over Owl’s body, her face a mask of horror and pity. She leaned down and closed Owl’s eyes, making it look like she was sleeping. If you could ignore the gaping wound on her chest and the stillness of her body.

“What do you mean, queen’s orders?” Topaz’s father asked, his heartbreak clear on his face. “We’ve always served Queen Crimson; we’re some of her most loyal subjects.”

“Queen Crimson has decided that she wants all animus dragons executed. They’re too much of a liability to the kingdom.” The first soldier said, his face void of all emotion.

“B-but she wasn’t an animus.” Topaz found his voice, even if it was wobbly. “And we know to be c-careful, like the IceWings.”

“The queen doesn’t care. Albatross mutilated his sister the very first time he used his magic. What might happen to you? Anyway, ordinary dragons can have animus dragonets, it’s malevolent poison. Maybe she-” the soldier jerked his head back at Owl, “wasn’t an animus, but her dragonets could have been.”

Topaz knew tears were glittering in his eyes, but he couldn’t stop them. His whole family was going to be killed, because of something they had no control over.

The soldiers watched Topaz’s family with cruel disinterest, waiting to see how they reacted. Topaz’s mother acted first.

She grabbed an emerald from one of the vases and shouted at it “As long as Topaz is touching you, no dragon can hurt him!”

Topaz felt a faint tingling in the air, the way he always did when an animus spell was performed. He didn’t know if other dragons felt it too, or if it was a side effect of animus magic. Topaz felt the tingling before his mind registered the actual words of his mother’s spell.

But then his mother was throwing the emerald to him, and then he caught it. Three soldiers rushed Topaz’s mother, slamming her against the stone walls of their mountainside home. Three more soldiers, one of them the dragonet Topaz had noticed earlier, attacked his father, pinning him to the hard floor.

The last soldier ran at Topaz, whose talons were still clutching the emerald, and slashed at his throat. Her claws bounced off. With a snarl she tried again, slashing and stabbing and biting. Nothing hurt Topaz.

When the other six soldiers came off of Topaz’s mother and father, letting their limp bodies slide to the floor, Topaz shook himself out of his trance and leaped out a window, holding the emerald as tight as he could, beating his wings furiously.

Normally, six adult soldiers could have overtaken a small dragonet like Topaz, but Topaz was fast when he was desperate, and he was desperate now. The emerald might keep them from killing him *immediately*, but they could easily rip it from his talons if they caught up to him.

Now Topaz was soaring over the Claws of the Clouds mountains, trying not to dwell on what just happened. *What I need,* he thought, *is a friend.*

Topaz dropped for half a second as an idea struck him. *I’m an* animus*. I can* make *a friend.*

He circled over the mountain range, trying to find a good spot. Finally, he saw a small, relatively hidden cave with a patch of mud at the front. Topaz dove for the cave and landed clumsily in front of the mud, as his front talons were still clutching the emerald.

Topaz debated for a moment about how the spell would work. He didn’t want to enchant a dragon to be his friend, that would be a little cruel. He also didn’t want to turn a rock or something into a dragon, *that* would be weirder than Topaz could handle.

*Maybe I could turn a scavenger into a dragon. That wouldn’t be* too *weird, and scavengers are supposed to be more intelligent than the average cow, but not nearly as smart as a dragon.* Topaz thought.

*I guess I’ll turn a scavenger into a dragon, then. But maybe I’ll let it be a scavenger sometimes, so it could hang out with his scavenger friends or something.*

Topaz thought for a second about how he would word the spell, writing a few variations down in the mud. He thought he had a good idea, until a disturbing thought occurred to him.

*I’ve heard of pet scavengers murdering their owners.* Topaz remembered. *What if the scavenger I enchant ends up being ungrateful and attempts to kill me?*

He thought about enchanting the scavenger to never want to kill him, but that seemed wrong, even if it was just a scavenger. *Maybe I’ll word it so that the spell only works on the* right *scavenger, the kind that won’t assassinate me in my sleep.*

Finally, he came up with something that he thought would work. Finally, he stepped away from the scratched mud, nodding profusely.

Topaz raised the emerald until it was at his eye level. He took a deep breath, then muttered his spell at it.

“I enchant this emerald so that the first time the right scavenger touches it, the scavenger will turn into a five-year old SkyWing dragonet. The scavenger will continue to age after this. Then, when the sun sets, the scavenger will turn back into a scavenger, but when the sun comes back up it will turn back into a dragon. I enchant this cycle to repeat indefinitely.”

The jewel started to tingle in his claws, and Topaz felt a sense of excitement. *Now to go to a scavenger den.* The closest one was a day’s flight away. Topaz lifted into the setting sun, thinking, *this time tomorrow, I’ll have a friend!*

But halfway through the journey, when the three moons were at their highest point in the sky, a storm blew in, seemingly out of nowhere. Dark clouds covered the sky, blocking any light the stars and moons might have given, leaving the world below blind except for the brief flashes of lightning that cracked through the sky. Rain pelted through the air, making the sky seem like it was underwater.

Topaz had practiced flying in storms, but never like this. It seemed like a hurricane had blown in from the Sea Kingdom, but that would be extremely unlucky. *Almost there . . .* Topaz thought, weakly.

But then a particularly strong gust of wind caught hold of Topaz and smacked him into a mountain peak. He twitched once, then stopped moving, and the emerald dropped out of his limp talons.

The next day, when the storm was over, a curious MudWing found the dead animus and the emerald beside him. He knew it was animus touched, but he couldn’t figure out how to work the enchantment. Topaz had worded his spell to only work on the right scavenger, and his mother had worded *her* spell to only work on Topaz. So the curious emerald was passed around for thousands of years, slowly decreasing in value. Until now.

### **Chapter 1**

Ivy still couldn’t believe her luck.

She had a boyfriend (at least she thought she did; she still wasn’t entirely sure how Leaf felt about her).

She was living in a town called Hope, where the main goal of the town was to teach all humans and dragons that there wasn’t really much difference between the two species.

And possibly the best improvement:

Ivy. Could. Speak. DRAGON.

Granted, there were a few words she didn’t know, but Ivy was about as fluent as Wren and Sky, and she considered that a huge development. After all, it had only been about seven months since she left the underground village of Valor.

After she had helped terrify Valor and Talisman, Ivy, Leaf, Wren, and Sky had looked for the little gold dragon Ivy and Leaf had given the treasure to, but had been unable to find her. So they had gone to the village Cranberry and Rowan had been building using the treasure they stole from the mountain dragon palace.

Grove, Cranberry, and Rowan had built the village fairly quickly using the trees and caves that were already there, but very few people knew of the village and only a few of those who did know about it decided to live there. When Ivy and her friends had arrived, Wren had shaken her head at the lack of people and disappeared with Sky for a few days.

When she came back, she brought at least half a village of people that Wren said were refugees looking for a place in the Indestructible City. Ivy still giggled at the memory of the astonishment on Thyme’s face.

A week or two after the arrival of the refugees, people began trickling in from other villages, like Talisman or Valor. The people from Talisman mainly came because they wanted to meet the girl with the dragon, although a few came because they didn’t like their new ruler.

Everyone that came from Valor liked Brook, they just wanted to learn more about dragons in full sunlight rather than underground. Everyone was let into Hope, provided they passed a quick test.

Ivy, Leaf and Wren spent hours debating what to put on the quiz, and eventually came up with one, very important question: Are you, or have you ever been, a dragonmancer? If you answered no you were let in.

Ivy was in one of the trees around Hope, watching for dragons. Cranberry, the official mayor of Hope, liked Valor’s idea of Wingwatchers, and used it. It was a much fairer system than Talisman’s old system, where an apprentice would ring a bell and be unable to go to safety.

She was sitting on one of the tallest branches on the tree, closing her eyes and letting the wind catch her hair. It was a calm morning. The sun was out, there was a nice breeze, and the clouds were puffy sheep on the horizon.

“Did you bring the notepad?” a familiar voice hissed.

“Ye-es. Forgetting things is what *you* do, not me.” a second voice whispered back.

“Ex-*cuse* me, who was the one who brought the pencil last time when *you* forgot it.”

“Well, that was *once*. *You* are always forgetting essential things. It’s really quite annoying. *I* think you should be taken off Wingwatchers immediately and put somewhere else.”

There was a sharp, offended gasp, and the sound of a hand brutally slapping flesh.

“Well, who was the one who learned Dragon first?” The first voice said, then continued without waiting for an answer. “ME is who. Not *you* Ms-I’m-a-Genius-Because-I-Remember- Everything.” The first voice had risen above whispering, and was quickly rising towards shouting. “What do you have to say to THAT?”

“You are being too loud. You need to quiet down, or *shut up*,” the second one smarmed, her voice barely audible.

The first voice started growling, probably about to say something unflattering to the second voice in Dragon.

Ivy opened her eyes and sighed. Even though a dragon probably wouldn’t hear a few humans arguing, it was better to be safe than sorry.

She swung down from her branch and landed quietly on the branch below her. Two pairs of eyes looked at her from their branches on opposite sides of the tree. “Violet,” Ivy said, “Daffodil is as good a Wingwatcher as you. Daffodil, you really do need to be quiet. And please don’t slap Violet.”

Violet smirked at Daffodil, rubbing a red blotch on her arm. Daffodil scowled back at Violet, then turned to Ivy and asked, “What if she really deserves it though?”

Ivy tried and failed to suppress a grin. She still couldn’t believe that Daffodil and Violet were here. Barely a few days after Wren showed up with all the refugees from the Indestructible City, some people from Valor had shown up, wanting to learn about dragons. Violet and Daffodil had been at the head of that herd.

Ivy made another effort to squash her smile. When that didn’t work, she turned to Violet. “You did bring the notepad, right?” One of Cranberry’s new ideas for Wingwatchers was to have each group contain at least one good Dragon speaker. That person would listen to any conversations of dragons that happened to pass by, and write them down. This way, they would know if dragons were planning to attack Hope, or if they knew where the little gold dragon was.

Violet sighed. “ Yes, Ivy. I’m not Daffodil.”

Daffodil glared at Violet, then turned to Ivy and said, “This is one of the occasions where a smack really is best for Violet. Allow me.” She raised her hand, and Ivy reached around the trunk and rested a hand on her arm. She could hear wing beats about a mile away, and quickly coming closer.

Daffodil tilted her head at Ivy, then seemed to hear the dragons flying closer. Daffodil let her hand drop away from Ivy’s, then curled into a ball in the leaves, her green tunic hiding her as effectively as an invisibility necklace. Violet pressed herself against the tree’s trunk and pulled a notepad and pencil out of her bark-colored tunic. Even though all three of them spoke Dragon fluently, Violet was the fastest and quietest writer, so she was assigned the notepad.

Ivy pulled herself back onto her branch and stilled herself, making her blend into the foliage. Soon, she spotted the dragons flying overhead.

She could immediately see that they were all sea dragons; their blue and green ocean-colored scales were a dead giveaway. There were eight that she could see from her perch, although she guessed that there were more. All of them were clutching ropes of opals, rubies and gold, and a few were also holding small trunks, probably also full to the brim with treasure.

Below her, Ivy could see Daffodil gaping at the mounds of jewels, and Violet furiously scraping things down, describing the lavish group of dragons above them. Ivy thought that the dragons would fly overhead, not even glancing at the humans below, when a roar split the sky.

A year ago, Ivy would’ve shivered with fear at the sound, but now she could understand the words in the roar.

“Tide!” a pale green dragon came into Ivy’s view, a worried look on his face.

The dragon at the lead, a pretty dragon with plumes of purple swirling along with her blue scales, turned around to look at the dragon who had shouted. “Yes, Kelp?”

The pale dragon, Kelp growled back, “I dropped something. It couldn’t have been too long ago, but one minute it was there and the next it was gone!”

Tide’s voice remained calm. “What was it?”

“It was an emerald. It was fairly small, that was probably how it slipped through my claws.”

“Was it the one Queen Thorn thought might be-” she said a word Ivy didn’t know - “touched?”

“Yes. I didn’t mean to, it just fell. I think we should go look for it.”

All the dragons in the group turned towards Tide, who brought one of her treasure-shrouded talons to her chin as if she was thinking. Finally, she said, “Queen Thorn wanted us to get this to Queen Coral as quickly as possible, right? And it was just a small emerald; Queen Coral won’t mind too much. Besides, if it was-” she said the word Ivy didn’t know again- “touched, then we would probably know by now, right?”

The other dragons in the group nodded, then sped off in the direction of the sea, only Kelp left hovering in the air. He cast a rueful look behind him, as if he wanted to disobey Tide and go find the emerald. Eventually, however, he flew off behind the other sea dragons, their scales blending like part of the ocean was flying through the sky.

Ivy, Violet and Daffodil stayed huddled in the tree for a little while longer, making sure that the sea dragons really were gone, and that no more dragons came. Then, Ivy climbed carefully down the tree, scraping her knees against the bark. Daffodil and Violet followed her, Violet clutching the notepad to her chest.

“Did you get that?” Ivy asked, her voice lower than normal but above a whisper.

“Yup,” Violet said, holding up the notepad. It was covered in scribbles, not only telling the conversation but describing what the dragons looked like and where the green dragon had thought he dropped the jewel. Ivy smiled, then turned around and walked back towards the village, Daffodil and Violet right behind her.

Even though she lived in Hope now, and had been living there for months, Ivy still felt a little shocked when she saw the town.

All of the houses were built in trees, or around trees, camouflaged against the branches. They were hard enough to see from the ground, let alone from the air. The entire town encircled a clearing with a deep lake. They used this as a market square, and one of the few entrances to the underground part of Hope.

Some of the people from Valor and some of the refugees from the Indestructible City hadn’t felt safe aboveground, even with the amazing camouflage. Luckily, there were a bunch of caves right underneath Hope, and everyone that didn’t feel safe in the sun had dug it out. Now it was like a mirror image of Hope right under the town. Even though Cranberry was still the mayor of both the surface and the underground parts of Hope, they called the caves Reflection.

Ivy pushed her way past the first line of treehouses and shops, waving to people as she saw them. She saw a trio of people in green Wingwatcher uniforms heading out to take her place. In the group, Ivy saw a kid a few years younger than her clutching a notepad, jumping up and down in excitement. Ivy felt her smile grow wider, more genuine as she waved at the group.

Soon, Ivy and her friends were at the edge of the treeline, where a figure was leaning against a tree, waiting for them. Whoever it was was nearly invisible in the shadows of the forest and the dark green of her uniform.

Foxglove peeled herself off the tree and asked “Did anything interesting happen?”

Violet nodded and handed the notepad to Foxglove. The older Wingwatcher scanned Violet’s precise writing, then looked up. “Why did you think this was important?”

Ivy stepped forward, and pointed to the description of the emerald. “This could pay for a flock of sheep from traders *and* still have enough left over to add onto the library. And look,” she pointed to another section of the writing, “it can’t be too far away, Sky could probably fly three people to where it was dropped.”

Foxglove shook her head. “Ivy, it says here that it was a small gem. It couldn’t possibly buy that much . . .” her voice trailed off as she realized her mistake.

Ivy smiled, then said “Remember Rowan’s lessons? Tiny for them is small for us, small for them is large for us, and large for them is too big for us.”

Foxglove nodded, then said “Can you take Wren and Leaf on Sky to find it?”

Daffodil’s expression suddenly slipped into outrage. “Why not me, Ivy and Violet?”

Foxglove sighed. “Remember, you and Violet are working on the new Wingwatcher’s guide.”

Daffodil’s face lit up. “Oh yeah.” She grabbed Violet’s arm and dragged the protesting girl over to an entrance to Reflection, calling over her shoulder “See you later, Ivy!”

Foxglove handed the notepad back to Ivy. “You know where Wren and Sky are, right?” Ivy nodded. “Ask them if they’ll go with you to get this emerald.”

Ivy nodded again, then walked across the clearing to get to the school.

There were two schools in Hope. One of them, the main school, the one with math and writing and history and everything else Daffodil hated was underground. The people of Hope were okay with their houses being aboveground, but not the school. Ivy reasoned that they thought if the school was underground the children wouldn’t constantly be looking up at the sky the way every aboveground village everywhere was. Hope was no exception to this rule.

But there was a secondary school in Hope. It was on the edge of the town. It was fairly large, and it was just a single room. But Ivy liked this school better than the one in Reflection. It was made out of all types of wood, the unique colors of the bark twisting artfully together, and the structure seemed perfectly blended together as if it had grown that way.

There were paintings of dragons all along the walls, red-gold, ice-blue, and jade-green scales glittering in paint. Some of the portraits were beautiful, the best artists in the village hired to paint them. Others were painted when Wren gave a bucket of paint to the littlest kids and showed them a blank wall. These were more - the best word Ivy could think of was *abstract* - and you could only tell they were dragons if someone showed you.

But Ivy’s favorite feature of the school was the roof, which didn’t actually exist. Sky could be seen swooping in and out of the school at any given moment, sometimes with Wren or an excited kid that wanted to ride the dragon.

Ivy walked up to the door and read the sign on it. *Stage 2*. In the beginning, Wren had organized everyone that wanted to learn about dragons into a group called Stage 1. Stage 1 was fairly small, consisting of Ivy, Daffodil, Violet, Foxglove and Leaf, plus a few kids from Valor. About a month later, when everyone that had been in Stage 1 was fluent in Dragon and knew everything that Wren and Sky knew about dragons, most of the rest of the town had wanted to go to Wren’s school. There were too many people that wanted to go, so Wren divided them into two groups: Stage 2 and Stage 3. Stage 2 was mostly children and Stage 3 was mostly adults, and Stage 4 was in progress for the few people who hadn’t decided to join until now.

Ivy pushed the door open, doing her best not to make any noise and interrupt Wren’s class. The door opened on the side of the classroom, out of sight of Wren or her students.

The classroom was lit up by the sun shining through the non-existent ceiling, but there were enough tree branches above to block just enough sunlight and provide just enough shade. There were pillows scattered on the smooth stone floor, on which about fifteen people Ivy’s age or younger were scattered, their heads turned attentively towards the front.

Wren was standing in front of a rack of various household objects, all sized for dragons. There were also a few large bits of scrolls that were covered in symbols of moons and claws and fire with little notes in Human written on the side. Sky was right next to Wren, as usual, and took up about a fourth of the space inside the school. He was chiming in every few sentences as she talked. Ivy decided to listen to the lesson for a bit, just because it sounded fairly interesting.

“A couple of days ago,” Wren said, “Someone asked why we should learn Dragon. They said it’s just an exotic language, right?”

A couple of her students nodded.

“Well,” Wren continued. “What if you’re stuck in a dragon’s house-”

“-Or you need a dragon’s help-” Sky interrupted.

Wren dipped her head at the pale orange dragon. “Yes, that too. If you ever need to speak to a dragon, or just to ask them to please refrain from eating you, knowing Dragon is important.”

One of the students, a girl about seven years old, piped up and said, “I heard that you killed a dragon to free Sky. Why didn’t you talk to it instead of killing it?” Ivy studied the girl’s face, but she seemed genuinely curious.

Wren winced, which Ivy smiled a little at. If Heath had come to Hope and rumors had started that he killed a dragon, he would have reveled in the rumors and probably would’ve encouraged them. When people found out that Wren had killed a dragon, she had done her best to downplay the slaying without lying.

Sky jumped in, seeing the expression on Wren’s face. “First off, General Sandstorm was kind of evil. And annoying. Also, he was planning to attack the Indestructible City, so Wren killing him stopped that. Anyway, I had asked him nicely many times to please let me go, and he didn’t. The sudden appearance of a talking human wasn’t going to change that.”

Wren nodded, then added, “And please remember that any rumours you hear about my sword-fighting skills are false.” The latest rumor going around was that Wren could disarm an opponent and have her sword at their throat in under five seconds. Ivy had no idea if that was true . . . but it would be easy to check.

No one noticed Ivy as her hand slid cautiously down her waist towards the pouch where she kept her dagger. She took out the dagger and adjusted her stance, waiting for the right time. Only one student, a boy a year or two younger than Ivy, noticed her, the rest of the students’ gazes fixated on Wren as she described Sandstorm.

The boy tilted his head, recognizing her. His eyes flicked down towards the hand that was holding the dagger then back up at Ivy’s face, his eyes questioning. Ivy put a finger to her lips and jerked her head towards Wren. The boy seemed to understand her plan and he turned back to Wren and her dragon, a slight smile on his face.

Ivy took a deep breath, then lunged across the classroom yelling hysterically, her dagger in front of her ready to stab Wren in the heart.

Ivy was almost at Wren, and she wondered if she should slow down before she actually stabbed her friend. But Wren swung her sword in a dangerous arc as soon as Ivy was within reach, knocking the dagger out of her hands. Wren’s sword then swooped quickly back and stopped a millimeter away from Ivy’s throat. All of this was accomplished in under three seconds.

For a moment, Wren’s eyes were unfocused. Then she recognized Ivy and swung her sword away from Ivy’s neck and back into the sheath on her back. Wren scowled at Ivy, who gave Wren her most brilliant smile and said, “You shouldn’t tell lies, Wren. It’s poor form for a teacher.”

Sky beamed at Ivy, then flicked his tail, sending her dagger skittering back towards her. Ivy bent down to pick it up, and when she came back up she saw Wren frowning at her. “Did you come here just to make a fool of yourself, or did you actually have something to say?” Wren’s voice was gruff, but Ivy knew that she wasn’t actually mad.

“Yes, actually. A dragon emerald was dropped somewhere nearby, and Foxglove wants me, you, Sky, and Leaf to try and find it.”

Wren nodded. “Okay, just let us finish this lesson. We should be done in an hour or two.”

“See you then,” Ivy said, opening the door of the school and stepping outside. Before she closed the door Ivy heard the sounds of Wren trying to corral her class and Sky smothering giggles.

Ivy walked out of the woods and into the clearing in the center. While other people from Hope, especially the ones that lived mostly in Reflection, felt a little nervous about going into the clearing, Ivy loved it. In Valor, there were only a few holes where you could see the sun, and even then it was obscured by trees. Here in Hope, trees disguised everything, so the sun barely poked through the foliage.

But in the clearing, there were absolutely no trees to block the sunlight. In the clearing, wind-whipped freely around Ivy, not stifled by enormous tree trunks. Ivy knew most people skirted around the clearing, terrified that a dragon would suddenly swoop out of nowhere to make you their dinner. But with the sun warming her face and the wind catching her hair, Ivy knew the clearing was the closest she would ever get to flying on her own power.

The clearing ended far too soon, and Ivy sighed before stepping out of the sunlight into the shadows of the trees. She walked through the trees, heading towards one of the larger treehouses where sounds of clanging and shouting echo through the forest.

Ivy climbed up the ladder to the entrance to the battle training house. She walked through the doorway and had a lightning-fast impression of flashing swords before something heavy hit her. Ivy lost her balance and tipped towards the open door and the long drop below.

Leaf reached out and caught her before she could fall. “Sorry for slamming into you,” he said.

“No worries,” Ivy replied with a smile.

Leaf nodded and let her go, then turned back to his trainer, who was putting his sword back in the sheath at his side.

“Your boyfriend’s really improving,” the burly man said, grinning at Ivy’s flushed cheeks. “In a few weeks, he could take on a dragon!”

Ivy let out a tentative chuckle, and Leaf smirked. “I suppose that’s because of my superior training methods,” the trainer continued, sticking out his chest and making a dramatic expression.

Ivy didn’t like Leaf’s trainer that much. His name was Boar, and he came to Hope after a stint working as a guard in the Indestructible City. Ivy was prepared to look past this, but she didn’t like the way Boar acted around some of the people of Valor, especially Wren. He always looked down his nose at her and went out of his way to not get within a hundred feet of Sky. He was one of the few who had refused Dragon lessons and told outlandish stories where he slew dozens of dragons and stole tons of treasure. Boar reminded Ivy of her father, but all people were welcome in Hope.

“Why are you here, Ivy?” Leaf asked, taking her mind off Boar.

Ivy told him about the gem, and Leaf nodded. “I can go now,” he said.

“We’ll be ready in a few hours,” Ivy told him.

“Great!” he said, giving her that sweet smile she had fallen for back in Valor. Leaf hung his sword on the wall and walked to the ladder. He climbed down first, then shouted up to Ivy, “Be careful, one rung is wobbly!”

Sometimes Ivy liked how protective Leaf was of her, other times it was just annoying. This was one of those times. Ivy had noticed the wobbly rung when she had climbed up, and she had been fine. But she didn’t let her slight irritation show on her face and climbed down carefully.

“What do you want to do?” Leaf asked once Ivy was on the ground. Ivy gave him a quick smile, then shot off to the trees without answering. She heard him follow her after a few seconds and knew he would catch her soon; Leaf was much faster than her.

Ivy increased her speed, narrowly dodging trees and people. Soon she burst into the clearing. Leaf was right behind her now. “Ivy…” he said as they neared the lake. “Don’t do it-”. But Ivy was already jumping into an area of the lake she knew was steep.

She sank to the bottom in a cloud of bubbles, startling several large fish. Ivy opened her eyes and smiled underwater at the frantic fish, resisting the urge to laugh. The cool water refreshed her, restoring the energy that the run had taken from her. She looked at the surface of the water, several feet away. Ivy floated there for a few more seconds, then kicked her legs, propelling herself from the bottom of the lake to the surface.

She gasped for air, then turned to Leaf, who was standing on the very edge of the lake, staring at her with enormous disdain. “You’re crazy, Ivy,” he said, shaking his head, but a smile was poking at the edges of his mouth. Ivy grinned back at him, then surged partly out of the water and grabbed Leaf’s wrist.

Normally, Leaf would’ve had no problem staying dry on the beach, but he was still panting a little from the run, and Ivy had surprised him. She yanked Leaf headfirst into the lake, making a splash that nearly submerged her again.

Leaf flailed around for a few seconds under water before he kicked to the surface. “Seriously Ivy?” he gasped between breaths. “Seriously?” Ivy managed to bite her lip for a few seconds, then let out a bark of laughter, followed by uncontrollable giggles. Leaf shot her a mock-offended face then flung a spurt of water at her. “Hey” Ivy shouted and splashed him back. Soon they were both laughing as they splashed each other with the lake water.

“Are you two done?” a familiar voice asked. Ivy looked up to see Wren smirking down at them both, Sky grinning next to her. “I let class out early to look for the emerald, not to referee a water battle that Ivy is obviously winning.”

Leaf scowled at his sister, then surged up out of the lake to grab Wren’s hand, but Wren jumped back before he could. The young dragonslayer frowned at Leaf. “I don’t really want to swim now, Leaf. But thanks for asking so politely.”

Ivy noticed Sky’s grin turning slightly evil. Then he swung his tail around and hit Wren in the back. She toppled forward into the lake with a scream. Unlike Ivy and Leaf, Wren came up almost immediately and glared at Sky.

“Oops. That was an accident, Wren,” the dragon said unconvincingly. “Here,” he extended a talon and hauled Wren out of the lake.

“Thanks,” Wren told him, then turned to Ivy and Leaf. “If you want to help us find the dragon emerald, then please get out. If not, that’s fine too.” Leaf was the first out of the lake, but Ivy wasn’t far behind. Leaf was most likely coming because he hadn’t let Wren out of his sight since her trip to the Indestructible City. Ivy, however, was coming because she had never really seen a dragon jewel.

“Are you sure you can carry all three of us?” Ivy asked Sky.

“I think so,” Sky answered. Sky held out a talon to help Wren climb onto his back, then Leaf. *I* still *can’t believe I’m getting on a dragon!* Ivy thought as she settled herself on Sky. *A year ago I hadn’t gotten within fifty feet of a dragon, and now I ride on one at least once a week!*

Once all three of them were secure on Sky’s back, the dragon took a deep breath, then flapped his powerful wings. Soon the four of them were soaring over the treetops. Ivy turned her head to the noon sun above them. She closed her eyes, feeling the wind rush past her face and the sun warm her skin. She listened to the chirps of the birds as they scrambled to get out of Sky’s way, their indignant squawks a song for no one but Ivy.

*I could stay like this forever.*

“Earth to Ivy,” an amused voice said, jolting her out of her trance. Ivy opened her eyes blearily to see Wren and Leaf staring at her.

“We’re supposed to be looking for the emerald, remember?” Leaf said.

“Yeah, sorry,” Ivy said. Leaf turned around, but Wren gave Ivy a smirk before turning her eyes back towards the ground.

Ivy liked Wren, and she was pretty sure that the fiery teenager liked her too. But Ivy was also kind of jealous of Wren. Sure, Ivy could speak Dragon now, and sure she was friends with Sky, but Wren was the first human in a long time, maybe the first human *ever* to speak Dragon, and Wren had a special relationship with Sky that Ivy knew she could never come close to rivaling. Plus, Wren was almost as good as Leaf with a sword, and she was quickly catching up to him. Ivy had taken one sword-fighting lesson and had managed to hit herself over the head with the hilt and knock herself unconscious. Ivy didn’t take any more fighting lessons after that.

They flew in ever-widening circles over the forest, looking for anything sparkly. Soon Sky was panting from the effort of flying with three people on his back. “I think we should land soon,” Wren said, looking concernedly at Sky.

Suddenly, Ivy saw a flash in the corner of her eye that *could* be sunlight reflecting off an emerald. “Down there,” she said, pointing to a small clearing that the flash had come from. Sky nodded and spiraled down to land.

“Leaf, can you help me look for wingflower for Sky’s sore wings?” Wren asked her brother as the three of them slid off Sky’s back. “Ivy, since you have good eyes, can you look for the emerald?”

Both Ivy and Leaf nodded. Wren and Leaf walked into the forest, Sky laid down with a sigh and spread his wings out, and Ivy walked through the clearing, her eyes scouring the grass for the jewel.

*Is this stealing?* Ivy wondered. *Will us taking this emerald start another human/dragon war?* She thought for a moment. *No, the dragons didn’t care enough to get it back. If they wanted it back, and we beat them to it,* then *we would be stealing. But what we’re doing now isn’t stealing, it’s scavenging.* Ivy smiled. The word for human in Dragon was scavenger, so what she was doing right now was just living up to the name of her species.

Ivy looked around for a few more minutes, but she didn’t see anything unusual. *Maybe all I saw was a reflection on a puddle’s surface or something.* She was about to turn around and apologize to Sky, when she saw the flash again. Ivy spun around and saw an emerald about the size of her head resting on the grass about a hundred yards away.

She let out a sigh of relief and walked towards it. As she came closer, she felt a kind of quivering in the air. It felt as though someone had reached through the folds of the universe and pulled out the emerald, ready for Ivy to find it. She couldn’t decide whether the feeling was bad or good.

As she got even closer to the emerald she saw that it had red-gold lines through it, like it was cracking, even though Ivy could see that it was in perfect condition. She knew from her classes in Valor that the lines on the emerald made it less valuable, but she thought it was beautiful.

Ivy felt herself being inexplicably drawn towards the glittering jewel. The feeling went beyond wanting the library or sheep that the emerald could buy. It also went beyond wanting the emerald itself as her treasure. Ivy wanted something *inside* the emerald, something she couldn’t see yet.

Soon she was right in front of the emerald. Ivy could hear voices whispering, but she couldn’t discern any of the words. Something inside her warned not to touch it. But another part of her told her to touch it.  *Am I going crazy?* Ivy thought. *It’s just a jewel.*

 The birds fell silent as Ivy hesitated, the wind stopped whistling through the trees and the clouds seemed to freeze in the sky, as though they knew something monumental was about to happen. Then Ivy leaned down and laid her hand on the emerald.

Pain erupted throughout Ivy’s body as the lines on the emerald wound themselves up her arms, turning every place they touched the color of blood-stained gold. The fire seeped into Ivy’s skin, burning up her insides as well as her outsides. Her limbs felt like someone was stretching them much farther than they could stretch. Her back felt like something with sharp claws was trying to dig its way out as painfully for Ivy as possible.

Her head was being pulled in new directions, the bones screaming as they bent and twisted and pulled. Twin daggers seemed to be pushing themselves out the back of her skull. Her teeth were suddenly, bigger, sharper, cutting into Ivy’s lips and tongue before the rest of her mouth got larger too. Something sparked at the edge of her eyesight, washing amber across her vision before it went back to almost normal.

The fire was burning, burning up her stomach and along her throat. It built up along her mouth until she couldn’t hold it anymore. Ivy let out a terrible scream, projecting her pain into the world, but the fire wouldn’t leave.

Sky lifted his head from the snail he was studying to see Ivy writhing on the ground. “IVY!” two voices shouted as Wren and Leaf ran out of the woods. Ivy managed to stand up, but nearly fell then dropped to all fours.

The world was getting smaller, somehow. The top of Ivy’s head was brushing against the branches of the trees, and her eyes were level, maybe even higher than Sky’s. She was looking down at Wren and Leaf, who were staring at her with strange faces.

Finally, the pain stopped. Ivy’s bones stopped changing and her limbs stopped stretching and the fire settled to a pleasant warm feeling in her throat. She felt stronger, faster, *better*. The expressions on her friends’ faces though, were almost as bad as the pain.

Sky looked a little shocked, but mostly confused, as if someone else had popped in and taken Ivy’s face. Wren’s face seemed to hold no emotion, like she hadn’t decided how she was going to feel and was blank for now. But Leaf’s expression was the worst. He was looking at Ivy with such disgust and horror that she immediately wanted to run, but to Leaf or away from him she wasn’t sure.

“Leaf?” Ivy asked. Her voice sounded different, deeper, more gravelly.

Leaf’s eyes widened. “No. Oh, no no no,” he took a step back, fear entering his expression now.

“Leaf?” Ivy asked again, taking a step towards him. Leaf froze for a second, then bolted into the forest.

“Wait!” Ivy shouted and tried to follow him. But heavy things that felt like great pieces of fabric got under her feet and she tripped, face-planting on the ground in front of Wren. Ivy picked herself up and looked at her friend.

“Wren?” Ivy was worried Wren would run away with Leaf. *Why* did *Leaf run away?* Ivy wondered. She had a theory, but it wasn’t possible.

Disbelief and amazement began to war on Wren’s face as she stared at Ivy. “Ivy?” she asked incredulously. “Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?”

Sky found his voice. “Look,” he said, pointing to a large puddle Ivy had noticed earlier, except now it was much smaller.

Ivy walked carefully over to the puddle, trying not to trip over the fabric-things or the strange third leg that she had just noticed right behind her other two. She stayed on all fours, because for some reason that was easier than walking normally.

The puddle was clear and reflected every leaf on the trees perfectly. Ivy took a deep breath, then looked at her reflection. A dragon stared back.

### **Chapter 2**

*No. Not possible.* Ivy thought. She stared at the reflection that couldn’t be hers. The dragon in the puddle was actually rather pretty. She was obviously a mountain dragon, and had red-gold scales that matched the lines on the emerald perfectly. She had horns that were midnight black and eyes that were the precise shade of amber. Whenever Ivy lifted her hand-*No, talon*-the dragon did too. When Ivy flicked the third leg, which she now saw was a tail, the dragon did too. But the thing that really convinced Ivy that she was a dragon now was the expression of her reflection. The dragon’s eyes were wide and her face lit up, matching what Ivy saw on her face whenever she looked in the mirror.

Ivy pulled her gaze from the puddle and looked at Wren and Sky. They were both staring at her in disbelief. “I’m a dragon,” Ivy breathed, hardly believing it herself. Then she realized what she was saying. “I’m a dragon,” she repeated, louder. Then she yelled “I’M A DRAGON!” and launched herself into the sky, flapping her new wings as hard as she could. She fell a second later. Ivy glared at the sky. “I *said* I’M A DRAGON!” She tried again, willing her wings to work.

This time she didn’t fall. Ivy pumped her large wings sending herself soaring above the trees. She flew in one direction for a few moments, then tried to turn around. There was lots of awkward flapping around in the sky before Ivy figured out how to use her tail to position herself right. Soon she was swooping around above the clearing, revelling in the fact that she could fly. Ivy thought she saw a shape moving in the trees below, but soon it disappeared.

“Ivy!” Wren shouted from the clearing. “I know this is all very exciting and amazing, but can you please come down so we can talk?”

Ivy responded by executing a perfect spiral into the clearing, then realized that she didn’t know how to land. She flapped around in confusion for a few seconds, then decided to stop moving her wings to see if that would help her land. In the end, all Ivy managed to do for a landing was fall on her stomach with her face in a bush.

She got herself untangled from the bush while Wren and Sky laughed. “I’d like to see you try to land with no experience as a dragon whatsoever!” Ivy protested as she brushed dirt off of her scales. “I think I did a pretty good job, given the circumstances.”

Wren cocked her head at Ivy. “How *did* you turn into a dragon?” she asked. “I didn’t see anything before you screamed, so I have no idea what happened. Sky, did you see anything?”

Sky looked at his talons. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “I saw a really interesting snail, and I didn’t look up until Ivy screamed.” He looked back up at Ivy. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Ivy assured him. She was used to craning her head up to look at Sky, so it was weird to be at eye level with him. Ivy pointed at the emerald, which was sitting innocently in the grass next to her. The weird feeling was gone from the air now, or maybe Ivy had just gotten used to it. “I just touched the emerald, and then I turned into a dragon.”

Ivy noticed Wren had a strange gleam in her eye. “It really hurts though,” Ivy warned Wren. “Like, I wanted to stab myself to stop the pain.”

Sky’s eyes widened and he extended his wing, blocking Wren’s path to the emerald. She batted it aside. “I think a little pain, or a lot of pain, is worth becoming a dragon,” she said. Ivy nodded. Wren walked forward. She took a deep breath, then leaned down and touched the emerald.

And nothing happened.

Wren stared at the emerald for a few seconds. Then she sighed, and pulled her hand away. “Oh, well,” she said. Then she looked up at Ivy. “You were the one that deserved it, anyway.”

“I’ve got an idea!” Sky exclaimed suddenly. Ivy and Wren turned to look at him. “Remember those dragons that flew overhead a few weeks ago talking about Jade Mountain Academy and the little gold dragon, Sunny?” Ivy nodded. She hadn’t been in the Wingwatcher group that had heard it, but she remembered the jump of joy her heart gave when she heard about it, followed by the realization that she couldn’t go to the school.

“Well, now Ivy and I can go!” Sky continued.

*I wonder what a dragon school would be like!* Ivy wondered. *Will it be like our schools, or totally different? Do they take all types of dragons, or just one or two? How many dragonets do they take?*

“What about me?” Wren asked. “You’re probably going to be there for at least a few days, and I need to be there to stab any dragons who try to abduct you in the eyeballs!” Wren made a ferocious face, and Ivy did her best not to laugh. “Besides,” Wren added, “I can help you remember stuff by talking to you in Human.”

“Okay,” Ivy said. She turned to Sky. “ Before we go, can you give me lessons on being a dragon? Stuff like how to land?” She gestured towards the flattened bush.

“Sure!” Sky replied.

Wren went off into the forest to try and find Leaf while Sky showed Ivy how to land properly. After a few more crash landings Ivy had it down pretty well. She wouldn’t be anywhere close to the best flier at Jade Mountain, but she probably wouldn’t be the worst either. After landings they worked on flying. Ivy thought she had looked graceful when she flew for the first time, but Sky had confided that she looked like an insane bat. He showed her how to angle her wings and tilt her body just so to help her conserve her energy and fly faster.

By the time Wren came back, the sun had sunk below the trees and Ivy was exhausted. When she saw dragons overhead, she hadn’t realized how much difference their tails and talons had made as they flew; all she usually focused on was where they were headed and what their faces looked like. But even though Ivy was tired, she felt stronger. *It’s because I’m a mountain dragon,* she realized. *They’re built for flying.*

Suddenly, she spotted Wren coming through the trees. “Did you find him?” Ivy asked, bounding over to her.

“No,” Wren answered. “But I did manage to catch these.” She held up two dead rabbits. “Maybe tomorrow I can work with you on hunting.”

Sky looked at the carcasses and shuddered. “I don’t understand how you can eat something that was living just an hour ago,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Wren told him. “I got something for you too.” She dug around in her pack for a few seconds then pulled out a pile of peaches with a flourish.

“Wow, where did you find that many peaches?” Ivy asked Wren, handing her a sharp stick to impale the rabbits with.

“I found this cluster of peach trees a few miles that way,” Wren replied, gesturing wildly to the forest as she tried to start a fire. “Aargh!” she growled suddenly. Sky looked up from his half-eaten peaches in alarm. “My hands are covered in peach guts,” Wren explained. “I can’t start a fire with wet hands.” She stood up and started rubbing her hands on her tunic, looking anxiously up at the purpling sky. Ivy knew that they needed a fire before dark, before the rabbits went bad.

A thought suddenly struck Ivy. *Fire. I might have fire.* There was no reason to think she didn’t, after all, her scales were fairly normal for a mountain dragon, unlike Sky’s strange pale orange scales. Ivy looked at the pile of relatively dry kindling and thought of fire. Of flickering red-orange flames, the heat of a good fire on a cold night, the sparks rising through the air on a tall column of smoke. She took a deep breath and thought of the fire that had risen up inside her after she had touched the emerald, of the heat that still rested in her throat. Then she exhaled, willing herself to breathe fire.

A burst of flames spurted out of her mouth and hit the stack of sticks, turning it into a roaring bonfire. Sky and Wren turned to the fire with shocked expressions. Ivy was honestly just as surprised as they were.

Sky was the first to speak. “Seriously? Seriously?” He turned his head to the sky with an anguished expression. “Oh *sure* give the scavenger fire, not the dragon that has always been a dragon!”

Ivy looked at Sky. She hadn’t meant to make him feel bad about not having fire. She knew that was a sensitive area for him, like how Wren always changed the subject whenever her life in Talisman came up.

“Well,” Wren said matter-of-factly. “If you had fire, you would’ve burned up the bush you were tangled up in and we would’ve met. So, what would you rather have? Fire, or me?”

Sky brought his claws to his chin for a moment, feigning a look of thoughtfulness. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that for a moment. On one talon, I could have fire and be a welcome member of my tribe. On the other talon, I could know this weird little human.”

“Hey!” Wren yelped, and shoved Sky. She couldn’t actually move Sky though, given that he was more than three times her size, but he pretended to stagger as he laughed.

“You *would* choose Wren over fire, right?” Ivy asked.

“Of course,” Sky answered. “I mean, if I hadn’t, Leaf would probably be dead, you would probably be dead, and a lot of Valor would be dead too.”

“Well, you’re cheerful,” Ivy laughed, bumping her shoulder against Sky’s. She was a little bigger than him now, so he actually swayed a bit.

“Hey, it’s true,” Sky protested. He looked up at the sky. “Look at that sunset.”

Ivy followed his gaze. The sky was pretty, purples and oranges and pinks swirling together like spilled paint on canvas. The sun looked like a ball of fire as it sank slowly lower. Soon, it was touching the horizon.

She felt a tingling all along her scales, like the prickling she felt when she ran a long time. The Sky and the trees were getting bigger, until they were their normal sizes, or at least *Ivy* was her normal size. Sky and Wren were staring at her again. Wren opened her mouth, and somehow Ivy knew what she was going to say before she said it.

“You’re human again, Ivy,” Wren told her.

Ivy was extremely disappointed. She thought that she would be happy if she could be a dragon for even just one day, but now she knew what it felt like to fly, and she would never experience it again.

“You know,” Sky said, seeing the look on Ivy’s face. “We could still go to Jade Academy. I could just bring two humans...” he trailed off as Ivy shook her head.

“There’s no point,” she told him. “Let’s just go back to Hope.”

“Well, we’re not going anywhere in the dark,” Wren said sensibly. “Let’s eat, sleep, then go back in the morning.”

“Okay,” Ivy replied. She poked glumly at her rabbit, despite not eating the entire day. She curled up in the remains of the bush she had destroyed as a dragon and fell asleep to dreams of fire and flight.

She woke up to Wren shaking her gently. She yawned as she sat up. The sun hadn’t come up yet, and Sky was next to Wren, blinking blearily. “Come on,” Wren said. “We should get going now.”

“Okay,” Ivy told her and started helping Wren clean up the clearing, eradicating all evidence of their fire and meal. Suddenly, she felt the same sensation that she’d had the night before. The first sliver of sun poked itself over the eastern horizon as if it wanted to see Ivy turn back into a dragon.

“Huh,” Ivy said, and flicked her tail and flapped her wings, to see if they worked right. She flexed her talons and stretched her neck. It all seemed to be in working order.

“I wonder why you’re a dragon again,” Wren said. She walked up to Ivy and poked her scales. Ivy was pretty sure Wren wouldn’t do that if she didn’t know Ivy was under there. At least, Ivy hoped she wouldn’t poke a strange dragon, but she could never be too sure with Wren.

“I think it has something to do with the sun,” Sky offered. “I mean, you turned back into a human when the sun set, and you turned into a dragon at dawn, so maybe the emerald makes you a dragon during the day and a human at night.”

“That makes sense,” Wren told him.

“Hey, this means we can still go to Jade Academy!” Ivy exclaimed suddenly.

“I don’t know,” Wren said. “You’ll turn into a human at night, and someone might see you.”

“I’ll be really careful,” Ivy begged. “I can share a cave with you and Sky so you can hide me at night. Please, Wren! It’s a dragon school! I have to go!”

Wren sighed. “Okay. But we’re going to have to come up with a backstory, and come up with a name for you. Sky is fine, but I’m pretty sure Ivy isn’t a mountain dragon name.”

“They have names like birds of prey, red and orange colors, red and orange gems and names that have something to do with fire, right?” Ivy said, recalling Wren’s lessons.

“Right,” Wren said. “How about Falcon? Garnet? Burn?” Ivy shook her head no to each name Wren called out. None of them seemed right for her, like a tunic that didn’t quite fit.

“Orange?” Sky suggested. Ivy wasn’t entirely sure whether he was joking or not, so she wrinkled her snout at him.

“How about Flicker?” Wren asked.

“Oooo, I like that,” Sky exclaimed. “It’s like a subtle hint that she changes, I mean *flickers* every dawn and dusk.”

Ivy liked it too. It reminded her of Violet and Daffodil, who could switch between being best friends and worst enemies in an instant. “Flicker it is then.”

Wren nodded then said, “Okay. But we should probably hurry. Jade Mountain is about a few hours’ flight away, and we want time to talk to whoever runs the school.”

Sky extended a wing to help Wren climb onto his back and they were about to leap into the sky when Ivy heard wingbeats. The three of them hurried into the trees just as the dragons flew overhead.

There were three of them, a scowling blue sea dragon, another sea dragon, this one green and panting, and a desert dragon with a scar on his snout that seemed to be leading the way. Wren let out a small gasp when she saw the desert dragon, and Ivy asked her quietly, “Who is he?”

“General Sandstorm was about to kill him when he died,” Wren whispered back. Ivy nodded and turned back to the dragons. Ivy wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard the blue one growling about stupid prophecies.

Once they were sure that the dragons were gone, they walked out of the trees. Ivy watched the dragons fly away and realized something. “Hey, isn’t Jade Mountain in that direction?” Ivy said, pointing in the opposite direction of the trio of dragons.

“Huh,” Sky replied. “Anyway, don’t you think we should be going to Jade Mountain now?”

Ivy took one last look at the dragons then flapped her wings, sending her soaring above the treetops. She heard Sky joining her in the sky behind her, and put on a burst of speed so they could get to the mountain before noon.

Ivy turned around to see if Sky could keep up and noticed Wren rubbing her face and staring at a spot in the clearing. She looked away quickly, not wanting to embarrass Wren. *I didn’t know she’d be that upset about me being a dragon and not her.* Then Ivy realized Wren hadn’t been staring at the emerald. She’d been staring at a spot in the forest. *Where her brother disappeared.* Ivy remembered with a jolt. *Leaf was the only real family Wren had left. Yes, there’s Rowan, but she‘s always busy with Hope. Leaf was the only one that always took time to see Wren. And now he’s gone.*

After a few minutes of flying in silence, Wren broke the silence by explaining a backstory. It was simple, and no major details were involved.It was a little flimsy, but pretty easy to remember, and sad enough that no one should look into it.

Whenever Ivy went outside on a Wingwatcher mission, she could see Jade Mountain. It was tall, and steep, so she hadn’t been able to see the top of the mountain too well, especially since she was supposed to stay under the trees whenever she went outside. But now Ivy could see for herself the forked peak illustrated on the maps she’d read, and wondered why they hadn’t called it Twin Mountain or Snakehead or something like that. She also saw dragons of all colors walking on the mountaintop, flying around and swimming in the small creeks that fed the roaring river down below.

When Ivy had heard about the dragon school on the mountain, she was a little skeptical. She couldn’t imagine turning a lifeless mountain peak into a school dragonets actually wanted to go to. Even Valor had been pretty cramped and dull. But now Ivy could see patches of soft-looking moss and gorgeous flowers dotting the mountain. There were large rounded rocks to sit on and little alcoves for shade. She heard Wren and Sky gasp behind her and Ivy knew they had seen the mountain too.

“Let’s land there,” Wren said, pointing to a side of the mountain that was empty of everyone except two black dragons. Ivy tilted her wings and veered for the two night dragons. She did her best to land the way Sky had taught her, but she was still a little wobbly.

The two dragons jumped back in alarm as Ivy and Sky touched down in front of them, and Ivy saw now that one of them had a bandage over his eyes, and the other had a silver scale next to each of her eyes and a natural band of silver scales around one of her ankles, which were features Ivy had never seen before, in real life or in a book. Her talons itched for paper and a pencil to draw the pair of them.

The four of them stared at each other for a few moments before Wren hissed to Sky in Human, “Hi, we would like to join your school.”

“Hi, we would like to join your school,” Sky parroted in Dragon.

The dragon with the silver by her eyes visually relaxed. “Oh, okay,” she said. “I’m” -she said something like Speaker of Fate. Ivy wrestled it around in her head and figured out that her name was Fatespeaker- “and this is Starflight.”

Starflight waved slightly off to the right of Ivy and Sky, and Ivy realized he was blind. “We’ll take you to Sunny,” Fatespeaker said. “She’s the one running the school now that Clay’s working with Peril in the Sky Kingdom and Tsunami’s, um, away.”

Ivy nodded, and Fatespeaker turned around and started walking to the school. Starflight followed her, and Ivy and Sky followed them. They walked through a set of winding tunnels that had caves carved in them at random intervals, and translucent leaves set into holes in the ceiling and walls that let in cool green light. There were dragons inside the mountain too, huddled in multicolored groups of two or three, talking or looking at scrolls. The school reminded her of Valor, but much bigger and lighter.

Soon, the four of them stopped in front of a cave, through which Ivy could see beautiful tapestries of the desert and piles of blankets. “Sunny should be here soon,” Starflight said. “Tell her you want to join the school, she should let at least one of you in.”

Ivy stepped inside the cave, marveling at everything inside it. The cave answered a few of her thousands of questions about dragons, such as whether they slept in beds or not, and if they liked their habitats. Sky followed her, looking slightly nervous. Ivy remembered that the last time he had been in a dragon dwelling, he had been captured by sand dragons.

Fatespeaker moved to follow him, when a small swamp dragon ran into the tunnel, panting slightly. “Someone stole someone else’s prey, and now there’s a big fight!” he said. “Can you try to calm everyone down?”

“Yes,” Starflight said, and followed the brown dragon around a corner.

“Wait for me!” Fatespeaker cried. “You’re fine waiting for Sunny, right?”

“Yep,” Ivy replied. Fatespeaker dipped her head at Ivy, then ran off after Starflight.

“Okay,” Wren said in Human once Fatespeaker was out of sight. “You remember your backstory right?”

Ivy groaned, and so did Sky. Wren had spent the entire flight to Jade Mountain explaining the backstory, and going over it again and again. “Ye-es, Wren,” Sky told her. “We’ll be *fine*.”

“I just don’t want you to get captured again,” Wren protested. “Remember Sand-

Ivy heard talons clicking on stone and shushed Wren, who made an outraged face and leaned against Sky’s neck.

Whoever it was drew closer, and then a small gold dragon poked her head into the cave. Even though Ivy had been expecting her, the dragon still took her breath away. Ivy could see now that she was a desert dragon, although for some reason her scales were much brighter and she didn’t have a tail barb. She looked a little surprised to see two strange dragons in her cave and asked tentatively, “Um, who are you?”

“We would like to be students,” Ivy said, trying to keep her shock out of her voice. She remembered Sunny’s talons lifting her onto a wall, her wings propelling her and Ivy through the air, those eyes staring at them and the treasure. “I’m Ivy- I mean Flicker, and this is Sky.”

Sunny relaxed. “Ohh, okay,” she said. “I’m Sunny. We have a-” She said something like sky wing. *Wait,* Ivy thought. *Maybe mountain dragons aren’t called mountain dragons by other dragons. Maybe they’re called SkyWings. That seems right. So I guess ice dragons are IceWings, sea dragons are SeaWings, and so on.* Ivy saw on Sky and Wren’s faces that they had reached the same conclusion.

“-in each winglet,” Sunny continued. “Except for the Jade Winglet, which only has Winter and Kinkajou, now that Peril’s off with Clay. I guess I could put two SkyWings in there for now,” she let out a little laugh. “Jade Winglet is getting stranger by the day.”

“You have no idea,” Wren chuckled in Human.

Sunny finally noticed Wren on Sky’s back. Her expression became slightly more complicated. “You have a scavenger!” she said. Sunny leaned forward and examined Wren, who gave her a disgruntled look. “Is she tame?” Sunny asked Sky. “We’ve had a scavenger here before, and he caused a big ruckus when he got out of his cage. Are you sure this one won’t run away?”

“My pet is well trained,” Sky said with an excellent straight face. “I assure you that Wren will stay with me at all times.”

Wren smacked him and yelled, “I am NOT your pet!”

“Aww, she’s so cute!” Sunny said. “Well if you’re sure. Luckily, your new clawmate, Winter, likes scavengers too, so you should make a good pair.”

“Flicker and I have to share a cave,” Sky told her hurriedly.

“Why?” Sunny asked. “The whole point of Jade Mountain is to get to know other dragons.”

“Uhh,” Sky said, trying to come up with a reason.

“It’s not that we don’t want to get to know other dragons,” Ivy said quickly. “It’s just, um, I get seizures sometimes at night, and my brother’s the only one that can calm me down.”

“Okay,” Sunny said, looking at Ivy with a touch of pity. “That seems fair. Winter and Kinkajou are used to sharing a cave anyway.” Sunny turned around and walked down the tunnel, motioning for Ivy and Sky to follow her.

“It’s lunch now,” Sunny informed them. “So you can eat in the prey cave then get to your first class.”

They walked along the winding tunnels for a few minutes, until they came out into an enormous cave. There was a barrier blocking the mouth of the cave, so none of the prey could get out. There were dozens of chickens, three cows, a net full of fish and a handful of deer, as well as a few other animals running around being chased by dragons. Ivy was a little surprised, and Sky looked queasy as he watched a sand dragon rip the head off of a chicken.

Sunny pointed across the cave of frantic prey and yelling dragons to a bubbling creek and a mountain of fruit where a white-blue IceWing and a small pink-yellow-blue-purple RainWing were sitting together. “That’s Winter and Kinkajou,” Sunny told them. “Tell them you’re in their winglet now, and they’ll help you around until you get the hang of things. Now, I’ve got to do some things.” She walked off through the tunnels, leaving Ivy and Sky in the cave.

“Come on,” Ivy said, taking off over the tangle of dragons and animals. Sky soared behind her, and they landed next to the stream. The two dragons immediately looked up, although the RainWing’s expression was more surprised, while the IceWing looked suspicious.

“Who are you?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“Um, I’m Flicker,” Ivy said. “This is Sky, we’re new students.”

“Oh!” the smaller dragonet said. “Hi! I’m Kinkajou, and the overly suspicious IceWing over there is Winter. I’m glad we finally got some new clawmates, it’s been weird without a MudWing or a SkyWing. It’s also weird that we got two SkyWings, but that’s fine. Are you hungry? Do you want some fruit? Also, school is AMAZING, you’re going to love it. There’s a library and an art cave and history and healing and I love it so much!”

“First of all,” the IceWing said. “I think it is perfectly reasonable that I would be suspicious if a pair of strange dragons landed in front of me. Secondly, SkyWings eat meat, not fruit.”

Kinkajou wrinkled her snout at the IceWing. “You don’t know that! Maybe these two don’t eat meat.”

“I’m a vegetarian,” Sky said tentatively.

Kinkajou’s eyes lit up. “Finally, a *sensible* dragon!” she exclaimed. “I don’t understand how ‘normal’ dragons can stand eating something alive and wriggling.” She passed Sky a mango. He took a bite out of it, then stared at it as if it was the best thing in the world.

“Why did you come to Jade Academy?” Winter asked Ivy as Sky devoured the mango.

“Um,” Ivy began. It was hard to remember their backstory when Winter was staring at her with those deep blue eyes.

“Our mother escaped the Sky Kingdom…” Wren prompted her.

“Our mother escaped the Sky Kingdom with our eggs,” Ivy repeated. “She, uh, she didn’t like her job. We roamed around Pyrrhia for years until she died a few weeks ago, so we decided to come here.”

“Oh,” Kinkajou said, and her colorful scales turned stormy gray and dark blue. Ivy stared at her. She knew rainforest dragons had camouflage scales and she had assumed when they weren’t camouflaged they were a mix of colors, but the same colors all the time. *But no one’s really seen RainWings, so we were probably wrong.* By the way Sky and Wren were both staring at Kinkajou, Ivy guessed neither of them had seen a RainWing before either.

“Sorry for staring,” Ivy said, recovering her wits first. “Neither of us has ever seen a RainWing before. I thought you had camouflage scales, but apparently I was wrong.”

“It’s alright,” Kinkajou replied brightly. “We actually *do* have camouflage scales, see?” Her scales faded, leaving nothing behind but a ripple. Then she reappeared, her scales back to pink and yellow. “But when we aren’t camouflaged, we’re usually the colors of our emotions. But we can also change colors by choice, when our emotions aren’t too strong.” Kinkajou turned neon green, then back to pink.

“Are you a vegetarian too?” Winter asked. It took Ivy a second to remember what they had been talking about earlier.

“No, but I will eat fruit sometimes,” Ivy told him.

“Here, then,” he said, and ripped a leg off of the deer he had been delicately eating. When Ivy was a human she had seen other people take down animals while hunting and cut them into pieces, which made her feel sick. But apparently as a dragon she didn’t feel as empathetic for prey.

“Thanks,” Ivy said Winter, then took the leg from him, breathed a small flame on it to cook it, and took a bite. Kinkajou and Sky watched with slightly disgusted expressions.

“I guess we’re the only smart ones,” Kinkajou said, jokingly to Sky.

“Ha!” Wren laughed in Human. “Did I tell you about the time this very smart dragon named Sky got himself captured the *very first time* I left him alone?”

Sky twisted his head around to glare at Wren, then picked up a plum from the fruit pile and poked Wren in the face with it. “You must be hungry, Wren. Here. Eat it.” He poked her again, and Wren slapped his claws then grabbed the offending plum.

“I will eat this, but just because I’m starving,” she told him, then bit into it. “By the way, I’m sorry about the smart-dragon comment.”

Sky gave a quick nod, then turned back to Winter and Kinkajou, who were staring at Wren with wide eyes. “You have a scavenger?” Winter asked.

“Yeah,” Sky said nervously. “Is that weird or something?”

“I think they’re fascinating,” Winter said. “Why isn’t it trying to run away?” He leaned forward and jabbed Wren with his claw. She gave him a disgruntled look and poked him right back.

*I guess she* will *poke a strange dragon.* Ivy reflected, remembering the thought she’d had the other day.

Winter noticed the sword on Wren’s back.”You let her keep her claw thing?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sky said. “She hasn’t stabbed me yet, and she probably won’t stab you, unless you annoy her.”

Wren smirked at Winter and patted the hilt of her sword.

“He’s kidding,” Ivy said, shooting a stern look at Wren and Sky. *Maybe.*

“Where did you find her?” Winter asked. “How did you tame her? Did she make that claw, or did she steal it?”

Sky looked panicked in the barrage of Winter’s questions, and was saved by a loud gong.

“That means it’s time for art class!” Kinkajou exclaimed, sounding genuinely excited. Even though Ivy had only known her for a few minutes, she had already gotten the impression that the little RainWing got excited about lots of things. Then what Kinkajou had said registered with Ivy.

“Art classes,” she said. “There are art classes here?”

“Of course,” Kinkajou responded. “Weren’t you listening earlier?”

“Umm,” Ivy said. She didn’t want to come off as rude to her first prospect as a dragon friend, but Kinkajou talked very quickly and it was hard to pick out individual things.

Luckily, Winter came to her rescue. “To be fair, Kinkajou,” he said. “I’ve listened to you talk for a while, and I still have trouble hearing every word. Flicker’s talked to you for a few minutes, so I’m just impressed she managed to get the gists of what you’re saying.” Winter had an elegant way of speaking, and Ivy found herself wanting him to talk more, just to hear his sharp accent again.

“Sorry,” Kinkajou said, then continued talking. “We really should be going, shouldn’t we?”

“I guess,” Sky said. He stood up, and Ivy followed suit.

“Let’s gooo!” Kinkajou yelped, then flapped her wings, speeding out of the prey cave.

Winter growled something that sounded like “*Kinkajou*,” then flew after her. Ivy and Sky followed, and soon they landed in another cave.

“Wow,” Ivy gasped. She tried not to show how shocked she was but it was hard. There *had* been an art cave in Valor, but it was very small and had very little supplies. Paint was expensive to make, so only adults were allowed to use it, and even then they had to pay. There was an art room being constructed in Reflection, but it wouldn’t be done for another few weeks, and even then it would only be slightly bigger than the one in Valor.

This cave however was enormous, even by Ivy’s new dragon standards. It was smaller than the prey cave, but it was still pretty big. There were small dragon carvings posted around the room, and a few more hanging from the ceiling. There were paints, lots and lots of paints in all shades and hues, with canvases propped up beside them, most of them blank.

“Wow,” Ivy said again.

“I’m guessing you’re impressed,” Winter said.

“Uh-huh,” Ivy said. “Is this all for the students?”

“Yup!” Kinkajou answered brightly. “Isn’t it amazing?”

Two more dragons came into the room, a SkyWing, a NightWing and another RainWing. They milled around, and occasionally stared at Sky.

“Um, are these guys in our winglet too?” Ivy whispered to Kinkajou.

“No, silly,” she replied. “They’re part of the Quartz Winglet. They’re joining us because we only had two members, but I guess now we have four!”

An IceWing, a SandWing, a SeaWing and a MudWing came in and they all paced around, waiting for something. Ivy was about to ask what it was when Fatespeaker burst into the cave.

“Sorry-sorry-sorry,” she panted. “I got distracted. But are you all ready for art class?”

“I have a question,” the SandWing asked. “Who are they?” he pointed at Ivy and Sky.

“These are our new students!” Fatespeaker answered. “They’re names are, uh. . .” she trailed off.

“I’m Flicker, and this is Sky,” Ivy finished for her.

“Right,” Fatespeaker said, but she looked a little doubtful. “Anyway, we’re painting today! You can paint anything you want. Get to it!” She gestured towards the blank canvases and the paints.

The other dragons stormed the paint table, but Ivy and Sky decided to wait it out. Once everyone had taken what they needed, Ivy and Sky set up their canvases by the paint table.

Ivy looked at the blank canvas, but nothing came right away for something she wanted to draw on such a large space. *I guess I’ll just start painting and see what happens.*

She dipped her paintbrush into a pot of paint and spread the color across the canvas. She then brushed another color, and another, using increasingly fine brushes as she added details. By the time she realized what she was painting, it was too late to turn back. *Should I destroy it?* Ivy wondered. *No*, she decided. *I’m pretty sure all dragons know the story too, after all, it was a dragon queen that Stone killed.*

Ivy had painted a desert at night. The SandWing palace before the wall was built was on the other side of a dune. There was a large desert dragon on the dune, glaring down at the three rough sketches Ivy had drawn of her dad, aunt and uncle. She hadn’t painted any of their expressions yet; she always found it easier to draw faces once the rest of the drawing was done.

She looked over at Sky’s canvas to see what he had painted. What Ivy saw was a mess of green splattered all over the canvas with a big blob of blue in the middle. He was frantically dumping more paint on it, trying to make it better, but was just making it worse and worse.

Ivy was trying to figure out what it was when Wren turned around and asked, “Do you know what it is?” Ivy shook her head as discreetly as possible, and Wren said “It’s the lake in Hope.”

Ivy giggled quietly. Sky turned his head around to glare at her, then went back to his painting. *It* could *be Hope’s lake,* Ivy thought. *If you turn it upside down, tilt your head, and turn off the lights.*

She smiled and turned back to her canvas, using her claws now to paint details. She drew the dragon queen’s scales, the stars in the night sky, the individual coins spilling out of Rose’s pilfered treasure bag. Ivy paused over their faces though. If she was going to paint it the way Heath told it, she should draw a terrified expression on the dragon’s snout and a brave face on her father’s. But Ivy knew Heath well enough to know he’d be the one terrified, not the queen. But she shouldn’t paint a noble face on the dragon queen either; from what she’d heard about the SandWing, she wasn’t the kindest queen. *I guess I’ll settle in between.* Ivy decided.

She painted a petrified face on her father, using the way he’d stared at Sky in Valor as a guide. Ivy drew a scared but protective expression on Stone, mixing the way he’d looked at Rose and the way he’d looked at Smolder. Rose was the easiest. From what she’d heard of her aunt, and from what she’d gathered by meeting her, Ivy thought Rose was like her, nervous around dragons but in awe of them as well. She painted for Rose the expression Ivy had seen when she’d looked at her dragon reflection. Ivy made the dragon queen angry, but also a little smug, like in her mind she’d already defeated the humans below her.

*There’s something missing,* she decided. Ivy thought for a minute then remembered an artist in Hope that had been a refugee from the Indestructible City. He liked to put small hidden messages in his paintings, so only someone who really looked could see it. Ivy thought for another moment, then dipped her claw in deep red paint, one of the few colors she hadn’t touched. On each of the dragon queen’s horns she drew a message in the blood-colored paint. She wrote it twice, once in Dragon and once in Human.

*There are two sides to every story.*

### **Chapter 3**

Ivy took a step back and looked at her painting. It was the best work she’d ever done, and it would probably still be if she had done more than one painting her entire life.

“Okay, everyone,” Fatespeaker exclaimed. “Time’s up!”

“But I’m not finished yet!” Kinkajou said, sounding alarmed. Ivy snuck a glance at her painting and saw a backdrop of green, with thousands of small seemingly random splashes of color splattered about. It looked rather like the RainWing herself.

“That’s fine,” Fatespeaker said. “This is just for fun, to see how far you could get in an hour.”

*An hour!* Ivy thought. *I’ve been painting for an* hour*?*

“You can all go.” Fatespeaker told them, and the entire Quartz Winglet left together, and Fatespeaker hurried off behind them. Ivy, Sky, Winter and Kinkajou stayed behind and cleaned up the paints.

Once the paints were all cleaned up, Ivy saw Winter staring at his painting with a complicated expression on his face. “What’s that?” Ivy asked, leaning forward to get a good look at it.

Winter flipped his painting over and hissed at her, “Nothing.”

“Sorry,” Ivy said, feeling apologetic, but also curious as to what his painting was. “I didn’t know it was something private.”

“No, it’s fine,” Winter told her, looking a little guilty. He noticed her painting, which was still propped up on the easel. “May I look at yours?”

“Sure,” Ivy told him.

Winter walked over to her painting and stared for a while. “This is amazing,” he said, finally looking up. Ivy smiled. Even though she’d been drawing for years, it still felt nice for someone to tell her they liked her work.

“It takes a lot for Winter to say something nice,” Kinkajou said jokingly and came over to them. She looked at Ivy’s painting for a moment, then breathed, “Wow.”

“Do you seriously think it’s good?” Ivy asked nervously. She thought they’d be appalled by the expression she gave the dragon queen, but apparently not.

“*Yeah*,” Kinkajou said. “Like, you-could-be-a-professional-artist good.”

Ivy felt herself being buried in visions of what her life would be like as a dragon artist. That was a job she’d actually want to do. It would mean she could spend every day drawing dragons, and get paid for it. She’d have access to the best pencils and paints, instead of just scraps that the teachers throw away. *Ivy the Artist,* she thought wistfully. *That sounds nice.*

*Wait,* Ivy realized. *I can’t. I can never have a normal dragon life, or a normal human life. I’ll constantly be hiding.*

“No,” Ivy told Kinkajou. “I could never be an artist.”

“Why?” Winter asked. He looked into her eyes, like he was trying to break down the flimsy wall that held her secrets in.

“You said something about a library?” Sky asked hurriedly. “Can you show us? We haven’t taken a tour yet.”

“Sure!” Kinkajou said. “I want to borrow something anyway. “She led the way down the tunnel, and Sky followed her. Winter stared at Ivy for a few more moments, then turned to walk behind them. Ivy let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and ran to catch up.

They walked through the tunnels of the mountain while Kinkajou chatted to a genuinely interested Sky about how the school was created after something called *The War of SandWing Succession.* Something nagged at Ivy about that name, but she shoved it down.

“Here it is!” Kinkajou said, stopping in front of a cave as large as the art cave. The library wasn’t that different from the ones in Valor and Hope. Other than the fact that it had scrolls instead of books and it was built for dragons, the libraries could be identical. There were piles of soft mosses and leaves scattered around with piles of blankets as places to lie down. The entire side of one wall was translucent green leaves that let in a little light, but not too much.

Starflight was behind a desk, slotting scrolls into clever niches and stamping them. He raised his head when they came in and called “Who is it?”

“It’s Kinkajou, Winter, Flicker and Sky!” Kinkajou replied.

There was a SeaWing and a SandWing in the library, and they looked up from their scrolls in alarm when they heard Kinkajou speak. They picked up their scrolls and left quickly with a hurried goodbye. Ivy was a little puzzled by this, but Winter, Kinkajou and Starflight didn’t seem to have noticed.

“Who’s Flicker and Sky?” Starflight asked.

“The new students,” Sky told him.

“Huh,” Starflight said, wrinkling his brow. “Fatespeaker had a vision, and she told me that your names were Ivy and Ember.” He gave a little snort, not noticing the shock on Ivy and Sky’s faces. “Although I shouldn’t have believed Fatespeaker, even though she says her visions are real, I know they’re fake.”

“Excuse me,” Fatespeaker said suddenly, poking her head in the cave. Ivy jumped a little; she hadn’t realized Fatespeaker was behind them. “My visions are *totally* real. I’ll admit we didn’t become king and queen of the NightWings, and the comet didn’t come back and crush us all, but this vision felt *so real*.” She turned to Ivy and Sky. “Are you *sure* your names aren’t Ivy and Ember?”

“Positive,” Ivy told her, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. *How did she know my name’s Ivy?* Ivy wondered. *She got Sky’s name wrong, but I guess the name his mother gave him before she threw him in the river* *could be Ember.*

“Why then,” Winter asked, “did you panic when Starflight said the word Ivy?”

“Our mother wanted to name Sky ‘Ember’, but she decided against it,” Wren whispered to Ivy.

“Our mother wanted to name Sky ‘Ember’, but she decided against it,” Ivy told Winter. “I was just surprised Fatespeaker knew that.”

“OK,” Fatepeaker said, and left the cave.

“Okay,” Winter echoed, still looking suspicious. Ivy had gotten the impression that suspicious was his resting state.

“Did you come here to borrow a scroll,” Starflight asked, attempting to diffuse the tension in the room, “or just to scare away Pronghorn and Snail?”

“I was wondering if you still had that-” Kinkajou said a word Ivy didn’t know- “History scroll.”

“Maybe,” Starflight said and started rummaging around behind the desk.

“Um,” Ivy asked hesitantly. “What does animus mean?” She repeated the word Kinkajou had said. She’d never heard it before, and she saw by the expressions on Wren and Sky, they hadn’t either. It sounded a little bit like the dragon word for soul.

“How do you not know that?” Winter asked sharply. “Haven’t you heard of Anemone? Stonemover? Albatross? *Darkstalker*?”

Ivy shook her head no to each name. *Should I know these dragons?* Ivy wondered.

 “You seriously have *never* heard of Darkstalker?” Winter said incredulously.

“Nooo,” Ivy told him, hoping that she wasn’t blowing their cover.

Winter stared at her, as did Kinkajou and Starflight.

“Tell them your mother didn’t tell you a lot of stuff,” Wren advised.

“Our mother liked to keep us in the dark,” Ivy said. “She said that knowing less was better for our safety.”

“Yeah, our guardians were the same way too,” Starflight offered. “An animus is a dragon that can enchant anyone or anything to do whatever they want.”

Ivy felt a shiver run down her spine, although she wasn’t sure whether it was from fear or excitement. On one talon, a dragon with animus magic could enchant dragons and humans to speak the same language so they would all get along, or enchant a lake to never run dry. On the other talon, an animus could enchant dragons they didn’t like to hurt themselves, or enchant themselves to be ruler of the whole continent.

“Oh!” Sky exclaimed suddenly. “Like a necklace to make the wearer invisible, or an emerald to turn a scavenger into a dra-”

“Sky!” Wren interrupted loudly, and shoved him a little.

“I mean cow!” Sky said hurriedly. “An emerald that turns a scavenger into a cow.”

Wren sighed. She closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose and muttered, “You are absolutely *terrible* at keeping secrets.”

“Does your scavenger always look so stressed out?” Kinkajou asked, arching her neck to peer at Wren.

“Oh, that’s what was making all that squeaking,” Starflight said. “And I found your scroll, Kinkajou.” He held up a fairly thick scroll with warm brown wood handles that read *Animus History* in Dragon. Kinkajou took the scroll from him and slid it into a black pouch around her neck.

“If you want,” Kinkajou said to Ivy. “You can borrow this after I’m done with it. It should answer some of your animus questions.”

“Thanks,” Ivy told her. Then she remembered something and turned to Starflight. “Do you have any scrolls on SkyWing animus dragons?” When Ivy had realized she was a dragon yesterday, she had been confused for a little bit. She’d had fantasies where she became a dragon, and although she wished she’d be an IceWing or a RainWing (her two favorite dragon types), she’d assumed that she would be a SandWing, because those were the dragons her life was tied to most. Now that she knew it was probably an animus spell, she guessed that it would have been a SkyWing that enchanted the emerald, because she’d become a SkyWing.

“SkyWing animus dragons?” Starflight asked. “I don’t think there have been animus dragons in the SkyWing tribe for thousands of years, if ever. But I can look. Oh, and Winter?” he added. “The scavenger scroll you requested was returned.”

Kinkajou giggled. “Your scavenger obsession is so *cute*. I mean, I can understand getting excited about adorable sloths, but scavengers? They’re just weird-looking monkeys, except much less cute.

“I do not have a scavenger *obsession*,” Winter growled.

Starflight pulled a scroll out of a niche in the wall. “It’s called *Scavenger Facts That Will Surprise the Most Informed Scavenger Enthusiast*,” he reported innocently.

Winter snarled at Starflight then snatched the scroll out of the blind librarian’s talons and shoved part of it roughly into his pouch. “I do *not* have an *obsession*,” he growled again, trying to stuff the rest of the large scroll into the pouch while Sky winced at his efforts.  Eventually Winter gave up and left the scroll hanging precariously out of the pouch. He looked up to see Kinkajou and Sky laughing silently and Ivy unsuccessfully trying to hide a smile behind her fist.

“Let’s go down to the prey center!” Kinkajou suggested brightly once she had recovered control of her giggles. “I don’t know about you, but I’m STARVING! I’m going to have to eat something now, otherwise I won’t be able to sleep, I’ll be so hungry.”

“Wait, what time is it?” Ivy asked suddenly. She wasn’t completely sure about what would happen if she transformed in front of all the dragons in Jade Academy, but she knew it wouldn’t be good. Best case scenario, they would just stare at Ivy, and she would be able to get away. Worst case scenario, they would eat her immediately and then proceed to question Sky.

“An hour before sunset, why?” Kinkajou said, pointing to a gap in the rock that wasn’t covered by the strange translucent leaves. Ivy walked over to it and peered out. The sky was just beginning to turn a light shade of orange rather like Sky’s scales, but the sun wouldn’t set for a while.

“No reason,”  Ivy told her. “But I would like to get something from the prey center with you, if that’s fine.” Ivy didn’t know how often most dragons ate; she assumed they ate less often than humans, but all she had to go on was Sky, who’s appetite varied from day to day.

“Of course!” Kinkajou said enthusiastically. “Let’s go!” She grabbed Ivy’s arm and dragged her towards the prey cave and shouted behind her, “See you later Starflight!”

“I’ll look for a SkyWing animus scroll!” he called after them.

The little RainWing was strong for her size, and soon they were at the mouth of the prey center. There were less dragons in the cave than there had been that morning, and Ivy was relieved. But she noticed that most of the dragonets looked up in alarm when Ivy, Winter, Kinkajou and Sky came in, and a few actually bolted out of the cave, clutching their partially eaten dinners as they darted past. Ivy noticed Kinkajou casting mournful looks over her shoulder at them, and a wave of complicated blue-gray-green-orange rippled across her scales.

“You okay?” Ivy asked, and nudged Kinkajou’s side. She assumed, from her very limited study of RainWing scales, that darker colors were sadder emotions, and brighter colors were happier.

“Yeah,” Kinkajou said. She looked around, and her scales suddenly went back to pink and yellow. “TAMARIN!” she shouted, and bounded over towards the fruit pile where a RainWing with calm lavender and yellow scales was sitting eating a banana with her tail wrapped around a bluish-pink SeaWing’s tail. The SeaWing was holding a gray speckled fish in her talons, but she wasn’t eating it. Instead she was staring at the RainWing in a way that Ivy recognized as the way Leaf had stared at her before she’d turned into a dragon.

*Don’t think about Leaf.*

The RainWing looked up when Kinkajou slid to a stop in front of her. “Hey Kinkajou,” she said softly, smiling.

“Hi Tamarin!” Kinkajou said. She looked at the SeaWing and a flicker of black darted across her scales before being replaced by a rather forced-looking yellow. “Hi Anemone.”

“Hello *Kinkajou*,” Anemone said with a wrinkle on her snout. Ivy wondered how Kinkajou could’ve made Anemone dislike her so much. It seemed to her that the enthusiastic RainWing was impossible not to like. Anemone nodded at Winter as he landed beside Kinkajou and tilted her head in puzzlement at Ivy and Sky. “Who’re they?” she asked Winter, pointedly ignoring Kinkajou.

“They’re the newest members of our winglet,” Kinkajou told her.

“I wasn’t asking *you*.” Anemone said to Kinkajou. The two dragonets glared at each other, and Ivy guessed from the similarities between their glaring competition and Daffodil and Violet’s frequent arguments that soon one of them was going to crack and launch themselves in a bursty of furious rage at the other.

Ivy extended her wing between the two of them, hopefully preventing an escalation into Violet-and-Daffodil-like behavior. “I’m Flicker, and this is Sky,” she said to Anemone, pointing to Sky.

Anemone batted aside Ivy’s wing to look at Sky. “Seriously?” she said, lifting an eyebrow at him. “Sky the SkyWing?” she scoffed. “That’s a weird name. But I guess it goes with your freaky pale scales.”

Sky looked down at his talons and wrapped his wings around himself. Wren bared her teeth and growled “How *dare* you,” at Anemone. Luckily, she growled in Human, but it was still a little suspicious.

“Anemone,” Tamarin said gently, and unwound her tail from Anemone’s.

“Sorry,” Anemone told Sky, not sounding very sorry at all. “But I mean, your scales *are* pretty weird.”

“I know,” Sky said. “I should be used to it by now, but I guess I’m not.”

“Why are they paler than normal SkyWing scales?” Kinkajou asked.

“Um, it’s a. . .” Sky trailed off.

“Hereditary scale defect,” Wren offered.

“Hereditary scale defect,” Sky repeated.

“Okay,” Anemone said. “I’ve just never seen that be-”

“Princess!” a voice yelled, and a grayish-blue SeaWing landed next to them.

*Princess!* Ivy barely managed not to shout dozens upon dozens of questions about what it would be like to be a dragon princess. *I should’ve known Anemone wasn’t normal,* Ivy thought. *She has a higher way of speaking, and that pink pearl bracelet on her wrist must be fairly expensive.* At least those were Ivy’s back-of-mind, rational thoughts. She was mostly wondering about why a princess would be at Jade Academy, and how Anemone would’ve fallen for a RainWing like Tamarin if she was a *SeaWing* princess, and if maybe Anemone would happen to a have a diary to write down every aspect of her life that Ivy could steal without her noticing.

“What?” Anemone asked the new SeaWing.

“You know your mother doesn’t like you hanging out with the Jade Winglet,” the SeaWing said.

“But Turtle’s in Jade Winglet, and she doesn’t mind him being there,” Anemone argued.

“Turtle’s away right now, and *you’re* an heir, not him,” the SeaWing told her.

“Fiiiiiiiine, Pike,” Anemone grumbled, and picked up her fish and stormed off after Pike.

“Sorry,” Tamarin said to Kinkajou, and followed after them to the other side of the cave.

“Why doesn’t Anemone’s mother want her to associate with the Jade Winglet?” Ivy asked Winter. A thought struck her. “And why does everyone run away when we come in? It happened in the art cave, in the library, and when we walked into the prey cave just now. What don’t I know?”

“Oh, that,” Kinkajou answered. “Everyone just thinks that the Jade Winglet is cursed.”

“What?” Sky asked, his eyes as wide as the moons. “Our winglet is *cursed*?”

Winter scoffed. “It’s not *actually* cursed. It’s just that bad things seem to happen when Jade Winglet is around, and all of the members of Jade Winglet have strange powers or have been involved in some kind of catastrophe.”

“What do you mean?” Ivy asked. *Strange powers! Catastrophes! Curses! I* knew *this school would be amazing.*

 “I can explain,” Kinkajou said to Winter. She turned back to Ivy and Sky. “Okay, so there used to actually be seven dragons in this winglet, like there’s supposed to be. Moon, Qibli, Umber, Carnelian, Turtle-” a wave of angry-looking black, orange, and red washed across her scales when she said Turtle’s name, but it was quickly swallowed up by pink again- “Winter, and me.”

“Wait,” Ivy asked, interrupting her, “How long ago was this story?”

“About a month ago, why?” Kinkajou said.

“Oh,” Ivy said, feeling a little disappointed. She’d hoped that it would’ve happened at least a few years ago, to add to the dramatic factor in the story. “No reason.”

“Moon has mind reading and prophecy powers, and she had a vision that there would be an explosion, and tried to warn all of us.”

*Mind reading and prophecy powers! Some dragons* have *those?* Ivy concentrated really hard and squinted at Kinkajou, trying to read her mind. *Maybe only NightWings can do that.*

 “The explosion was set by Umber’s sister, Sora, who was trying to kill Icicle, Winter’s brother, because Icicle had killed one of Sora’s sisters. But the bomb exploded too late, and it killed Carnelian and a NightWing, and hurt Tamarin. Umber left the school with Sora so she wouldn’t be executed for murder.”

“Wow,” Ivy said faintly. “That story does make it seem like Jade Winglet is cursed.”

“And I’m not even done,” Kinkajou told her. “I’ll try to keep it to a minimum, since the whole Darkstalker thing would take ages. So, basically, on our adventure, we found Winter’s brother, who’d been turned into a SkyWing, and then Winter went on an adventure with him that ended up with him disowned from his royal family-”

“Wait,” Ivy interrupted Kinkajou. “Winter, you’re from a royal family?”

“Yes,” Winter said and lifted his chin. “I’m an IceWing prince. I’m the cousin of Queen Snowfall.”

“Ex-cousin,” Kinkajou interjected. “They disowned him. *Any*way,” she continued, “While he was gone, Turtle met Peril, and then *they* went on a little adventure together. During all of this, by the way, I was in a coma because of Peril’s really annoying and pretty evil dad, so I *missed* all of that, which was TOTALLY UNFAIR, and I’m still grumpy about it.”

“I’ve only known you for less than a day,” Sky told Kinkajou, “and I’m already pretty sure that you never stay mad at anyone for longer than a few hours.”

Winter snorted. “That is true Kinkajou; don’t try to deny it.”

“Fine,” Kinkajou said. “But just let me finish the story.”

“Um, who’s Peril?” Sky inquired.

“How do you not know that?” Winter asked incredulously.

“Our mother didn’t tell us stuff, remember?” Ivy told him.

“Okay,” Winter said. “Well Peril’s a SkyWing that has too much fire, also known as firescales, which means that everything she touches burns.”

“Oh,” Ivy said, trying very, very, very hard not to yelp all the questions she had. *Why does she have firescales? Can she read or write? Are there any materials she doesn’t burn? She must be a valuable weapon in war, has anyone ever used her that way?*

“So,” Kinkajou continued. “Peril and Winter ran into each other. Literally. Peril accidentally burned Winter, and he was dying. Then Turtle decided that was a good time to make a dramatic scene and reveal that he was an animus by healing Winter.”

“Wow,” Sky breathed.

“I know, right?” Kinkajou said. “So Peril got angry for some reason, still not entirely sure why, and left to go kill Queen Scarlet, so she did that, and then when everyone got back together, they found this magic scroll. Qibli and Winter got into a fight over it, so Peril burned that too.” Kinkajou paused and brought a claw to her chin with a thoughtful expression. “Peril spends a lot of time burning things,” she reflected. “But anyway, it turns out that when the magic scroll burned, it gave its magic powers back to the dragon that had enchanted it, Darkstalker.”

Winter growled at that and lashed his tail, accidentally hitting a cow. He grabbed it and squeezed it to kill it before ripping into it with another snarl. That reminded Ivy why she’d come down to the prey cave in the first place, and she grabbed a tasty-looking grapefruit from the fruit pile and took a big, juicy bite out of it. Sky looked too riveted in Kinkajou’s story to eat, but Wren had grabbed an orange and was nibbling on it distractedly.

“Darkstalker was this NightWing animus that could read minds and tell the future, even better than Moon could. Two thousand years ago, he had enchanted himself to be invulnerable and immortal. But his friend Fathom had enchanted a bracelet to put him to sleep, and then Fathom buried him under a mountain. But when the bracelet broke about seven months ago, he woke up.”

“Darkstalker used the powers he’d gotten back from the burning of the scroll to create an earthquake, because entrances are very boring unless they’re dramatic. Then Turtle enchanted a stick to hide him, because Turtle was named very aptly and never takes action, like, ever, and Darkstalker went to the rainforest to become king of the NightWings. After he did that he went to the lost kingdom of night, and Turtle woke me up, which was the one smart thing he did his entire life.”

“Then Qibli followed Darkstalker because Qibli is totally in love with Moon, then I stole a pouch of magic-scroll-bits from Peril’s dad and then Darkstalker went to war with the IceWings, and then Qibli enchanted something to stop the war with Anemone’s magic. Then *I* enchanted a strawberry using the magic-scroll-bits I stole from Peril’s dad that turned Darkstalker into a dragonet with no memory of his former life named Peacemaker. . .” she trailed off. Winter’s face was alight with fury.

“You WHAT?” he roared at Kinkajou. The few dragons that were left in the cave looked up at Winter’s roar and bolted out of the cave, leaving them alone in the cave except for all the prey.

“Oops,” Kinkajou whispered.

“So you mean to tell me that when I met Foeslayer, sorry, *Hope*, the dragonet she had with her WASN’T a dragonet that someone had thrown away that she had rescued like you told me? IT WAS *DARKSTALKER*?” Winter bared his teeth and extended his wings to make himself look bigger. “Don’t you think I would have liked to know that LITTLE BIT OF INFORMATION?”

“We would’ve *told* you, but we were worried you would kill him!” Kinkajou protested.

“Well, I’m certainly going to kill him now!” Winter said and stomped off towards the mouth of the prey cave.

Ivy flapped her wings and soared to land in front of him. Winter glowered at her and turned sharply to get around her. Ivy jumped to the side and blocked him. He tried again and she got in his way again, spreading her wings to create a sort-of wall to slow him down long enough to talk to him. Winter snarled at her. “Get *out* of *my way*.”

All of Ivy’s front-of-brain, human thoughts were screaming at her to get out of Winter’s way before he ate her. It took all of Ivy’s willpower to ignore her fight or flight instincts and reason with herself that Winter was *not* going to eat her, at least, not until the sun went down.

“No,” Ivy told him. “You’re not thinking straight right now. You’re off to kill a dragonet that’s done nothing wrong, at least in the life he’s living now, so if you killed him, that would be cold-blooded murder of a dragonet.”

“Actually, it would be well justified punishment of a killer, so GET OUT OF MY WAY!” he tried to shove past her, but Ivy held her ground. Winter was bigger and stronger than Ivy as a dragon, but he was angry and not thinking completely straight, and Ivy had stopped enough of Daffodil and Violet’s frequent fights to know how to hold herself to block someone. Ivy grabbed his shoulders and forced him to look slightly down into her eyes. His furious expression froze into something close to panic, but not quite, as he stared at her.

“Flicker?” Sky asked, sounding unsure as to what she was doing. Ivy didn’t really know what she was doing, but it seemed to be working. Winter wasn’t *completely* murderous anymore, so that was good.

“She’s got this,” Wren said confidently. Ivy wasn’t sure whether to be grateful for her friend’s support, or start panicking a little, so she just ignored Wren.

“You need to calm down, Winter,” Ivy said, looking straight into the depths of his icy gaze. “Right now you’re really angry, and you want to hurt Peacemaker-”

“Darkstalker,” Winter growled. “His name is Darkstalker.”

“No, his name is Peacemaker. Kinkajou’s smart enough to erase any hints of Darkstalker’s personality from Peacemaker, so the dragonet you want to kill so much right now *is* Peacemaker, not Darkstalker. So take a deep breath, and when you’re calm, if you still want to kill Peacemaker, we’ll talk about that and come up with a solution that you’d feel comfortable with, deal?”

Winter glared at Ivy, then closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them again, his gaze was calmer. He wasn’t perfectly serene, but he wasn’t ruled by his anger anymore. She let go of him and took a step back. “Do you still want to kill Peacemaker?”

Winter lashed his tail. Finally he growled, “No.”

Ivy heard talons clicking against stone, and a few seconds later Sunny burst into the cave, panting a little. “Is everyone okay? I heard roaring.” She looked around the cave and saw most of the prey huddled up in a corner, Kinkajou and Sky by the fruit pile watching Ivy and Winter, and Ivy and Winter barely a step apart, sizing each other up. Sunny tilted her head curiously.

“We’re fine,” Ivy told her, and backed away from Winter.

“Actually,” Sky said. “I was wondering if you could show us where our cave is.” Ivy glanced around and noticed that the sun had sunken close to the horizon, and it was probably only a few minutes before it sank beyond view entirely.

“Really?” Kinkajou asked, sounding disappointed. “You can’t stay just a little longer?”

“No, sorry,” Ivy said. She faked a yawn, trying to make it sound convincing but not too over the top. “I’m really tired.”

“Sure!” Sunny said, and led them out of the prey cave and through the tunnels of Jade Mountain. Ivy was sure she saw heads poking out of caves when they went by, but they darted out of view as soon as she looked at them. Sunny turned another corner and then they were in a stretch of tunnel with only one cave. Sunny gestured for them to go into the cave.

“Is it okay?” Sunny asked anxiously when they’d stepped into the cave. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I just put this together. Is it awful?”

“No, I love it,” Ivy told her truthfully. Sky nodded his agreement. There were two piles of leaves and mosses on the ground that were arranged into nest-like beds that looked pretty comfortable to sleep on. There were two empty wooden scroll racks by the entrance to the cave as well as one by each bed. A woolen maroon blanket that looked a little too small for a dragon was folded neatly in a corner.

“Thanks,” Sunny said, looking relieved. “Since Queen Ruby didn’t send you I didn’t know what you would like, so I just guessed.”

“You did great,” Sky assured her. “We’re used to sleeping on the forest floor, so this is perfect.”

“Thanks,” Sunny said again, looking a little mollified. “I didn’t know what a scavenger would like, so I just put in a blanket.”

“It’s great,” Wren said. “At night, Ivy can hide under it, so that way no one questions why Sky has an extra scavenger.”

“She’s squeaking!” Sunny yelped delightedly. “Does that mean she likes it?”

“Yep,” Sky said.

“Oh, good,” Sunny said, apparently not questioning how Sky knew. “I don’t know how Tsunami organizes all of this; *now* I understand why she’s Head of School and not me. But now that she's off to Pantala, I have to do it all myself.”

“Where’s Pantala?” Ivy asked.

“Um, nowhere,” Sunny said hurriedly. “Hey, do you mind answering some questions for me so I know what scrolls you like so I can stock your cave?”

“Is it okay if we do it tomorrow?” Ivy asked, glancing nervously at the sun and the dark, reaching shadows it was casting across Jade Mountain as it descended towards the west.

“It’ll be really quick,” Sunny said. Ivy got the impression that she was trying to draw attention away from her verbal slip-up with Pantala, whatever that was.

“Get it over with quickly, so she leaves without being too suspicious,” Wren advised. “If she thinks something’s up, she might come back later to investigate, and we don’t want that.”

“All right,” Ivy said, trying not to sound too rushed. “But I’m really tired, so could you please make it as quick as possible?” It occurred to Ivy after she spoke that she was wasting a lot of time telling Sunny that they wanted to get this over with quickly.

“Okay, I was just wondering what types of scrolls you like,” Sunny pulled a blank scroll and a bottle of ink out of a pouch around her neck and asked, “So, do you like adventure stories?” Ivy nodded enthusiastically, and Sky nodded as well, although not as vigorously as Ivy. Sunny smiled and wrote something on her scroll. “Histories?” This time Ivy was the less excited one, while Sky nodded so much it looked like his head was about to fall off his neck. “Ancient legends?” Both of them nodded very animatedly. “Encyclopedias?” Sky nodded, but Ivy shook her head. Ivy had been so excited when she turned nine in Valor and she’d finally got to study all the plants and birds of the continent. One week later she’d been kicked out of that class for falling asleep in the middle of a lecture on alpacas. She hadn’t been trying to, it was just so *boring*. “Okay last one,” Sunny said after she’d written down all their answers. “Romance scrolls?” Sky shook his head exuberantly and Ivy wrinkled her nose. Sunny laughed. “Me neither,” she said. “I just don’t get the point of them.”

Sunny rolled up her scroll and closed her ink jar. “I’ll talk to Starflight, see what I can get for you. Good?”

“Yes, thanks Sunny,” Sky said.

“I’m always happy to help. We want to make sure everyone has a great time at Jade Academy.”

Sunny waved then turned around and left the cave. The sound of her talons clicking as she walked away had barely faded before Ivy felt the tingling that seemed to come with the transformation. Ivy flexed her fingers and rotated her neck while she edged to the side of the cave, out of view of anyone who happened to pass by. Finally she let out a breath. “That was *way* too close.”

“Definitely,” Wren said. “We have to get to this cave earlier, just in case anything else pops up. And, Ivy, if you don’t mind, could you please talk in Human? Just as an extra precaution.”

Ivy opened her mouth to argue, then thought the better of it. Wren was a little paranoid around other people, or dragons, but she was paranoid for a reason. “Okay,” she said, switching to Human.

“Now,” Sky said. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m actually tired. I’m going to get to sleep, you can do what you want.” He laid down on one of the bed-nests, letting out a contented sigh.

“I’m tired too,” Wren said. “Are you Ivy?”

“Yep,” Ivy lied. She felt too excited to sleep after the day’s events, but knew that she’d regret not sleeping tomorrow.

Wren helped her pick up the maroon blanket (which looked a lot bigger now that she was a human again) and drape it over herself. The blanket was heavy, and weighed down on her limbs and chest, making it difficult to move or breathe. Ivy opened her mouth, getting a mouthful of thick woolen fabric for her trouble. “Are you *sure* I won’t suffocate under here?” she choked through the blanket.

“Well if you do,” Wren said. “At least we won’t have to hide you anymore. I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” she reassured Sky, who had gasped. “I’m sure Sunny wouldn’t have given us a blanket that would choke a human. Now go to sleep.” Wren leaned down to pat Ivy’s back and ended up patting her chest instead, which really didn’t help Ivy’s breathing problem. There were rustling noises as Wren laid down, and then there was silence.

*Why can’t I just uncover my face a* little *bit, just so I can breathe,* Ivy thought grumpily after trying to get to sleep in vain for a while under the suffocating blanket. *I could understand why I would have to be under this blanket if we were in the main corridor. But we’re not! We’re at least two turns away from anyone else, and we would hear if anyone was coming, and then I could dive under the blanket.*

Ivy sighed, a sound that was immediately stifled by the blanket. She knew Wren was right to have lots of extra security measures. But it was hard to be grateful to Wren when she was buried under what seemed like a million tons of thick blanket.

A thought suddenly nagged at Ivy, and she tried to shove it down before it formed fully. But it was hard to ignore it, when she was lying in hot, choking darkness to avoid being seen, memories of the day playing over and over in her head.

*Maybe Jade Academy isn’t the place for me.*

### **Chapter 4**

Ivy was walking with Winter on the slopes of Jade Mountain. They were just wandering the peaks, laughing about something Ivy couldn’t quite remember. No one else was in sight, and she was alone with Winter. A week ago, she would’ve been a little nervous to be near a dragon like Winter, but today she was invincible.

The sun was high in the sky, pleasantly warming her scales, nowhere close to setting. Ivy was at Jade Mountain, the school of her dreams, and she didn’t even have to hide from the many dragons in its halls. And her wing was brushing against Winter’s, like a silent assurance that nothing bad would happen while he was there.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” Ivy asked him, stretching her neck up towards the beautiful golden sun.

“Yes,” Winter admitted, spreading his wings to catch the sun. Light bounced off of his wings and his scales, making him glitter like a freshly cut diamond.

“It’s the perfect day for flying,” Ivy said, then launched herself into the sky. Winter followed her, and they swooped and dove and spiraled into the clouds, blasting through puffy white clouds and dancing through the blue sky. Finally, they landed on the ground, smiling as they caught their breath.

Ivy snuck a glance at the sun, but it was still high in the sky, hours away from setting. Something about the seeing the sun high above addled her senses, made her say something she never would have said otherwise. “I like you Winter. I’m glad we met.” The second the words left her mouth she regretted them, and clamped her talons over her snout, wishing that perhaps the world would be nice enough to let her dissolve into a puddle and avoid any more embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” Ivy said hurriedly. “Please forget that I ever said that.”

Winter took a half-step away from her, then tilted his head at her, as if trying to see what made Ivy tick. “I’m glad we met too, Flicker,” he said, and gave her a little smile. Winter’s eyes focused on something behind her. “Look at that sunset!”

“What?” Ivy yelped and spun around. Somehow, the sun had sunk until there was an hour left until dusk, and it was rapidly approaching the horizon. “No!” she cried and took a step away from Winter. *This isn't real, this can’t be real, please don’t let it be real!*

“Flicker?” Winter asked and stepped towards her. Ivy stumbled back, feeling the traitorous sun hit the horizon and her dragon form slip away from her. She shrank to what felt like the size of an ant and her scales melted into useless skin and her talons cut back into flimsy fingernails and her wings vanished into her back leaving her human.

And being human can be dangerous in the company of a dragon.

Ivy and Winter stared at each other, shock painted across Winter’s features. And then his expression changed to one of fury, of pained, heartbroken fury that Ivy had never seen on anyone before.

Winter lunged for her, his jaws open wide, a growl coming from the depths of his throat. His sharp white teeth came for her, and Ivy was frozen in place. His teeth closed around her, and Ivy braced for the pain-and then she opened her eyes.

Ivy panted under the thick blanket, adjusting her eyes to the darkness and her mind to reality. *It was just a dream,* she thought, trying to calm her racing heartbeat. Ivy was relieved, but a part of her was a little disappointed. The sun had felt so good on her scales, and she wondered vaguely how she could’ve imagined that from the stifling heat and blackness of the blanket.

Suddenly the darkness became much less absolute as a familiar figure tugged the blanket off of Ivy’s head, letting in faint moonlight and cooler air. “You okay Ivy?” Wren asked softly.

Ivy wrestled the rest of the blanket off of herself, finally giving herself a breath of air that wasn’t choked by woolen fabric. “I’m fine,” she told Wren. She noticed Sky’s grumpy and tired face in the background. “Why are you two awake?”

Sky held up a slightly bruised-looking foreleg. “You *kicked* me,”

“I’m sorry,” Ivy said. *So* that’s *why my foot hurts so much.* She sat up and brought her throbbing right foot up to her nose to get a closer look at it. It was bleeding a little, but none of her toes seemed broken.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Wren asked. “You were sleeping peacefully for a while, and I’m pretty sure I saw you smiling just a few minutes ago. But you must’ve had one demon of a nightmare; I’ve never seen anyone kick out as violently as you did just now.”

“Yes,” Ivy said, then remembered the beginning of her dream. It had certainly ended as a nightmare, but it hadn’t begun as one. “Well, kind of. Hey, why were you up, anyway?”

“I was going to sleep, then I decided to keep watch,” Wren answered.

“How do you not need sleep?” Sky asked Wren. “Are you some kind of superhero or something?”

Wren barked a laugh. “It depends. I can’t shoot fire from my eyeballs or crush a rock with my bare hands, so no superpowers there. But if someone threatens you?” Wren smirked, an expression made even more dangerous by the shadows hiding half her face. “That’s when you don’t want to mess with me.”

Sky groaned. “I’m going to count ‘super-angry-vengeance’ as a superpower. And since Ivy can turn into a dragon now, that leaves *me* without any superpowers. I mean, really. All I ask for is a little something. It doesn’t have to be as drastic as Ivy’s-”

“Shhhh!” Wren interrupted him, putting a finger to her lips and gesturing towards the mouth of the cave. Ivy strained her ears until she could hear talons clicking against stone, coming closer and closer to their cave.

“Hide!” Wren whispered, but Ivy was already diving under the blanket and kicking it over her feet. Once she was completely covered by the blanket, she noticed a tiny spot of moonlight still peeking in. She shimmied herself over until she could see the little hole she’d ripped in her scramble to get in.

*Whoops. But I mean, what are the odds that someone will see me through here, even in broad daylight? And now I can see what’s going on! Whoever it is will probably pass right by anyway.*

Ivy pressed her eye to the hole, and made herself as still as possible. The talons grew closer, and then the dragon who owned them stopped in front of the mouth of their cave. *What’s Winter doing here?* she wondered.

Winter took a step into the cave and looked around. “What are you doing here, Winter?” Sky asked.

Winter seemed to notice Sky for the first time. “I didn’t think you’d be awake.”

“What are you doing here, Winter?” Sky questioned again. “Shouldn’t you be in your cave?”

“Where’s Flicker?” Winter shot back. Ivy felt a jolt of terror go down her spine. *Does he know? Did he have the same dream as me? Maybe his mind-reading friend, Moon is still here and she told him everything about me. Maybe he was in the clearing when I transformed for the first time and he knew all along and he wanted to see me to confirm.* Ivy took a deep breath, trying not to make too much noise. *Calm down, Ivy,* she told herself. *If Winter knew you were a scavenger, he would’ve probably freaked out or at least yelled a bit when he met me.*

“She’s um, she’s on a walk?” Sky said, making sound like a question.

“Where?” Winter demanded.

“Uh, she’s-” Sky stammered. “She’s at the library? I mean, she’s at the library. She, um, she wanted to find a good scroll.”

“That’s strange,” Winter said. “I was just at the library, and no one was there.”

“Well, um,” Sky looked flustered under the onslaught of Winter’s questioning.

“Hmm,” Wren thought aloud. “We want to drive him away quickly without making him too suspicious, like Sunny.” She tapped a finger to her chin for a second.  “I got it!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Sky, tell him that today was your mother’s birthday. She was feeling a little sad, and she couldn’t sleep. She said she was going to the library, but maybe she wanted some time alone to think.”

“Um,” Sky said. “Today, I mean yesterday, was her, I mean our, mother’s birthday, and she wanted some time alone to think.”

“Close enough,” Wren said.

“Oh,” Winter said, sounding a little guilty. “Well then, tell her I was here, and I’d like to talk to her tomorrow.” He paused. “And tell her I’m sorry about your mother.” He turned around and walked out of the cave.

Ivy waited until she couldn’t hear Winter’s talons as he walked away anymore. Then she waited a little longer to make sure he wasn’t coming back. Then she waited some more *just* to make sure no one else came by their cave. Soon Ivy was falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

She woke up half a second before she felt the tingling sensation of turning back into a dragon. She threw the blanket off of her face and stretched her muscles and her wings, which always seemed to be a little cramped after a night of being a human.

Ivy guessed based on the light coming into the cave that it was barely dawn, which was earlier than when she’d turned into a dragon the day before. She got the feeling that whatever magic that had been coursing through her veins had turned her into a dragon as early as possible this morning, to make up for last night.

Ivy stretched for a little longer, then decided it was time to get on with her day. She walked over to Sky, who was sprawled across both his bed and hers, his wings splayed out and his talons askew and his tail flopping all over the place. Meanwhile, Wren was curled up into a ball, barely taking up any room next to him.

“Wake up,” Ivy said, and leaned down to nudge him. He groaned and rolled over, almost crushing Wren. “Come on, Sky, it’s time to get up.”

“Nghhhh,” Sky argued, more or less. “I barely slept at *all* last night, just let me sleep a *little* longer.”

“Fine,” Ivy said, and stood back up. “I’ll be down at the prey center.”

“Mmmkepf,” Sky replied, and waved a talon in Ivy’s general vicinity before burying his head under the suffocating blanket of torture Ivy had hid under the previous night.

Ivy walked along the tunnels, trying to remember the way to the prey cave. She hit two dead ends before finally coming out into the prey center. There were three other dragons in the cave, but like the day before, two of them ran out when they realized that a member of the Jade Winglet was coming into the cave. Ivy looked closer and realized that the last one in the cave was Winter, his diamond scales glittering pristinely even as he ripped apart a silvery fish.

“Hi,” she greeted him as she sat down on a boulder next to him. She thought that she saw the ghost of a smile cross his face, but it quickly disappeared before she was sure.

“Hello, Flicker,” Winter said, and held out a piece of fish. “Are you hungry?”

Ivy thought about that for a moment. She’d been hungry in the brief moment before she’d turned into a dragon after she woke up, but now she wasn’t. Apparently, her appetite changed as well as the rest of her. “No, thank you.”

“Then why did you come down here?” Winter asked.

Ivy debated how to answer. *Tell him a part of the truth,* a voice that sounded a little like Wren’s whispered in her head. “Sky told me that you came to our cave last night, and you were wondering where I was.” She paused, trying to gather her thoughts. “I’m sorry that I left early yesterday, it’s just sometimes hard to remember that she’s not here anymore, and yesterday I just needed some space.”

“It’s fine,” Winter said, then took a breath. “I’m sorry about yesterday, I just get really angry sometimes. I’m trying to work on it, but it’s difficult. I thought I’d scared you away last night.”

“I can understand why you were angry. I would’ve been angry too, in your situation. And by the way, it takes more than a little shouting to make me break down in tears.”

Winter smirked. “I can see that. Well then, I’m sorry for assuming that my little outburst made you run away.”

“Good,” Ivy said.

“Oh, that reminded me!” Winter said. He reached into his pouch and pulled out a small scroll and an identical pouch. “That’s why I was at the library last night,” he said, giving the items to her. “Well, actually I was just there to pick up a pouch for you, but Starflight was there and gave me the scroll you were looking for.”

Ivy hung the pouch around her neck. She looked at the scroll, which was labeled *SkyWing Animus Histories*. It was smaller than she’d expected it to be, but maybe SkyWings didn’t use their animus magic that much. “Thanks,” she said.

“Oh, my gosh, that was so CUTE!” a familiar voice exclaimed suddenly. Kinkajou surged into view right next to Ivy, and she jumped; the RainWing’s scales seemed to be even brighter this morning than they were the day before. “That was the BEST romantic scene I’ve ever witnessed! AND that’s including when Winter admitted to Moon in the rainforest that he liked her! AND when Tamarin told Anemone she had a crush on her! I thought you guys would be PERFECT for each other yesterday, but I wasn’t sure about it until now!”

Ivy’s cheeks felt like they were on fire. She hadn’t known if dragons could blush, but now that she knew, she thought maybe this time she wouldn’t have liked to find out. Next to her, Winter had paled, if that were possible, but his eyes were furious.

“KINKAJOU!” he shouted. “HOW LONG WERE YOU *STANDING* THERE?”

“Ever since you came down here,” Kinkajou answered cheerfully. “I knew you went to Flicker’s cave last night, so I thought you’d had your big dramatic love-at-first-sight confession scene, and I’d thought I’d missed it. So I followed you to see if you’d meet Flicker and you DID! AND you hadn’t even had your big confessions yet! This is amazing! I *told* you you’d find someone else, Winter, and you did! I was RIGHT! Take *that* Anemone!”

“No, no, no, no,” Ivy said quickly. “You got that all wrong. We’re not-unless you want-I mean-um-you see-I already-uh-” another thought occurred to Ivy and she cut off her stumbling train of thought. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘take that Anemone’?” Ivy asked.

“Oh, I told Anemone about the fight we had yesterday and how Flicker intervened and I said you guys would totally become a couple and she said no way and I said let’s make a bet and now that I won she has to eat nothing but fruit for a week! Ha!”

“That’s not fair!” Anemone said, crawling out from under a rock ledge. She pointed at Ivy. “*She* said they weren’t a couple, so technically *I* won, and now *you* have to eat fish for the rest of the week.”

“WHAT IS GOING ON?” Winter roared, but no one was paying attention to him anymore.

“But it totally looks like they’re a couple!” Kinkajou argued. “They’re just denying it because they’re embarrassed, but it’s obvious to anyone with eyes,  *Anemone*.”

“Seriously?” Anemone asked. “Obvious? Please. That was just a conversation. Only you would see budding romance in a *conversation*.”

“Just a conversation? He went by her cave last night! He went to the library late at night to get her a pouch and a scroll! That was totally a token gift of his true feelings!”

“THAT WAS NOTHING!” Winter bellowed. “I JUST HAPPENED TO GO BY THE LIBRARY LAST NIGHT!”

“See?” Anemone said. “*Not* a token of his true feelings. Only a *moron* who knows absolutely *nothing* would think that. *No one* falls in love after just one day.”

“Really?” Kinkajou asked, her cheerful pink-and-yellow scales blotted out by angry orange and black. “What about you and Tamarin? I know for a *fact* that you had a massive crush on her from the day you met her.”

“That’s different! Alright, I’ll admit that maybe Winter is pining for Flicker-”

“I AM NOT *PINING* FOR FLICKER!” Winter shouted.

“-but Flicker definitely doesn’t have a crush on him.” Anemone continued, studiously ignoring Winter’s shouting.

*Do I?* Ivy wondered. *Do I like him? I mean, I like his fierceness and the way he says exactly what he’s thinking instead of trying to say things bluntly, and I can’t deny that he’s handsome. But I’m human and he’s a dragon. Plus, I told myself I wouldn’t fall in love again so quickly, after what happened with Leaf.*

Kinkajou bared her teeth at Anemone, which rather surprised Ivy; she hadn’t thought Kinkajou was capable of getting angry at another dragon. Anemone growled back at Kinkajou and lashed her tail, smacking the forgotten remains of Winter’s fish and sending it flying through the air to slap Winter in the face. Winter snarled and took a menacing step towards Anemone.

Ivy decided their fight had gone on long enough and stepped in between Kinkajou and Anemone, spreading out one wing to block Anemone from Winter. “Everyone, calm down,” she said. “Kinkajou, Winter and I are not romantically involved, we’re just friends. Winter, Anemone didn’t mean to hit you in the face with a fish. Anemone, you are not going to make Kinkajou eat fish for a week.”

“You can’t make me do anything!” Anemone said. “*I’m* a *princess*!”

Ivy remembered one day back in Valor when she was investigating her dad. She’d been caught where she wasn’t supposed to be by a worker only a few years older than herself. When he’d asked what she was doing, she’d played the ‘I’m a princess’ card and demanded for him to let her go on her way. He’d immediately let her go with a nervous expression, and Ivy had felt awful. She’d arranged a month or so later for him to get promoted as a way to say sorry. “Yes, but you’re not my princess, and you’re not Kinkajou’s princess either.”

Anemone sighed. “Fiiiiine. I wanted to do something else anyway.” She tilted her chin up royally and stalked off with an annoyed huff.

Ivy tucked her wing in and took a step away from Kinkajou. She took a deep breath and shouted, “HELLO! IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN HERE?” Kinkajou jumped, and her scales flashed a startled bronze color.  “IF SO, PLEASE COME OUT SO WE CAN TALK!”

She waited, but no one popped out of the various crevices and niches in the prey cave with a guilty expression. “Right,” she said, and turned to Kinkajou. “I am very mad at you.”

“You don’t sound mad,” Winter said, and Ivy shushed him.

“Quiet. I’m trying to *sound* angry to get a guilty apology out of her, or at least I was *trying* to before you blew my cover.” A big smile erupted on Kinkajou’s face and pink and yellow flooded back onto her scales. “Don’t you dare,” Ivy told her.

“I knooooow, I won’t,” Kinkajou said. “But you’d be so CUTE together!”

“Who’s so cute together?” Sky asked as he came into the prey cave with Wren. He walked over to the fruit pile and handed a few raspberries to Wren.

“Winter and Flicker. Don’t you think they’d be an adorable couple?” Kinkajou giggled.

“You are very *annoying*, Kinkajou,” Winter growled and flung a bit of fish at her. She dodged and made a face at him.

Sky looked alarmed. “I don’t know! Don’t ask me! I’m not good at this kind of thing!” Wren laughed.

“Hey, what’re you doing up?” Ivy asked, trying to draw attention away from the possibility of her and Winter as a couple. “I thought you wanted to sleep.”

“I did.” Sky said ruefully. “But Wren decided it was time for us to get up, so that was the end of any chance of me sleeping in. Wren is very loud when she wants to be.”

“I am,” Wren agreed.

“Hey, Kinkajou,” Sky said. “I was wondering what the exact wording of the spell you used to defeat Darkstalker was.”

“Oh, it was genius,” Kinkajou assured him. Sky picked up a banana and walked over to a large ledge to eat it. Kinkajou sat next to him, chattering excitedly.

“Could you tell me what Darkstalker did on your little adventure?” Ivy asked Winter. “I know Kinkajou told me a little but-” Ivy thought of a way to say what she wanted to without offending the little RainWing.

“-but Kinkajou’s explanation was woefully inadequate,” Winter finished for her.

“Hey!” Kinkajou yelped. “I told her all the important bits! Or most of them anyway! It was *not* ‘woefully inadequate’! Tell him, Flicker!”

“Uh,” Ivy said. She felt like she was back in Valor, trying to find a way to dissolve a problem between Daffodil and Violet, without angering either of them.

“Kinkajou,” Sky interrupted. “You were saying something about a NightWing named Shapeshifter?”

“Oh, yeah,” Kinkajou said, and bounded back over to Sky’s ledge.

Ivy gave Sky a grateful grin and turned back to Winter. “So, Darkstalker?” she asked. *The name* Darkstalker *is kind of creepy,* Ivy mused. *I wonder if dragons assumed things about his personality based off of his name. Maybe he knew that, and subconsciously tried to live up to the assumptions other dragons made about him.* Ivy wondered where this line of thought had come from, as she usually didn’t think psychologically.

“Yes,” Winter said, and launched into a fascinating story about a magic bracelet and a comet, an all-powerful scroll and a dragon with scales like fire, an earring enchantment and a crown, and a war that almost brought about a prophecy of doom, before a SandWing stopped it with a library card. Ivy noticed Winter’s voice getting angrier throughout the narrative, but he wasn’t shouting, and he seemed to be angry at Darkstalker and the spell he’d put on him, not Kinkajou’s strawberry solution.

“Wow,” Ivy breathed once the story was over. “I can’t believe you did all that.” Winter shrugged, but he looked a little proud of himself. “I also can’t believe Anemone’s an animus.” Ivy said the word ‘animus’ with the same reverence as she’d once said ‘dragon’, back down in Valor. “Why didn’t she turn me into a frog, or something like that when I’d ordered her around just now?”

Winter gave her a faint smile, before it was quickly swallowed back into his icy expression. “Well, actually, the bracelet she was wearing prevents her from doing any spells that would affect a dragon’s free will in some way, so there was no point in even trying.”

“Oh,” Ivy said. “That’s reassuring.” *I wonder if she could cast a spell that would affect me,* Ivy wondered absentmindedly. *Because my free will isn’t a dragon’s, it’s a human’s. So if she really wanted to, she probably could have turned me into a frog. And hey, maybe I would keep turning back into a human at night. Now* that *would be an interesting way to live.*

“Yes, it is,” Winter said. “Otherwise, Kinkajou would probably already be some sort of animal life.”

“Why do they hate each other so much?” Ivy asked. “From the short time that I’ve known her, I’ve gathered that it is physically impossible for Kinkajou to dislike someone for any amount of time.”

Winter half-smiled again. “That is true, but Kinkajou makes a special allowance for Anemone. Sometime during the whole Darkstalker adventure Anemone found out that her brother, Turtle, had a huge crush on Kinkajou. She decided to do something nice for him, and put Kinkajou under a love spell. Anemone unenchanted her later, but Kinkajou never really forgave her.”

“Because she is a CONNIVING SEA VIPER and doesn’t deserve to be forgiven,” Kinkajou hollered from her perch. “And by the way, it’s class time soon.”

Winter sighed royally. “It’s almost time for history.”

“Why do you hate history?” Sky asked. Ivy remembered him being excited when Sunny offered history scrolls the night before. Ivy liked history, but sometimes she found it a little boring. “I think it’s fascinating.” Sky continued.

Wren nodded. “History can help us figure out gaps in our knowledge about dragons.” Sky fought to keep his face blank, but Ivy knew that wasn’t the reason he was excited for history. He just wanted to learn more about everything.

“Normally, I would agree with you,” Kinkajou said, soaring down from the ledge. “I mean, I think everything is exciting. But Webs has a way of making the most interesting things sound mind numbingly *boring*. Trust me, you’ll agree by the end of today’s lesson.”

“Okay,” Sky said, not sounding like he believed Kinkajou. “We’ll see.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Winter said, and led the way out of the prey center into the tunnels of the school. Ivy noticed heads quickly ducking inside caves as they passed, but she realized that she’d almost gotten used to the stares that followed Jade Winglet. Winter took a few more turns heading deeper into the mountain. He beelined for a cave at the end of the tunnel, where Ivy could see racks of scrolls and a small desk and smell a faint smoky scent, like the remains of a fire.

Winter walked purposefully into the cave and sat down on a slightly elevated slab of stone on the floor at the back of the room, as far away as possible from the scroll racks. Kinkajou flopped down next to him on a patch of moss and Ivy sat down next to her. Sky went to the front of the room to sit on a pile of leaves, and turned his attention to the rack of scrolls with an interested expression.

A few minutes later a loud gong rang twice, and a winglet walked in, but Ivy didn’t recognize which one. They settled themselves on the various places to sit in the classroom as far away as possible from Ivy, Winter, Sky, and Kinkajou, and snuck glances at Sky’s pale orange scales.

The gong rang again three times, right before a SeaWing burst into the cave, panting a little. His scales were dark green and he was about the size of a small adult dragon. “Hello,” he said in between breaths. “Sorry that I’m late. To our new students, my name is Webs, and I’m your history teacher. Now, where were we?”

He walked over to the desk and unrolled a scroll. “Ah, yes,” he continued.  “SkyWing history three thousand years after the Scorching.” A chorus of groans echoed around the cave. “Now, now,” Webs said, looking down his snout at them. “Let’s begin.”

*What’s the Scorching?* Ivy wondered absentmindedly. She thought for a moment. *Maybe that ‘Storm of the Dragons’ thing five thousand years ago that the old traveler talked about is the same thing as the Scorching, and dragons use it for dating? That sounds about right.*

Ivy turned her attention back to Webs and tried to listen to whatever he was talking about. He was explaining about something to do with the end of special abilities in the Sky Kingdom, but it was really hard to concentrate on his lecture. Webs had a voice that faded into the background without even trying, and he droned in a dull tone, like even he didn’t care about what he was talking about.

Ivy tried to listen for a few more seconds, then gave up, and pulled her scroll out of her pouch. She tried to unroll it quietly, but a crinkle escaped her talons. Ivy looked up in alarm, sure that someone would take the scroll away from her, but no one had noticed. Most of the dragonets in the cave were staring off into space, although a few, like Sky, were actually paying attention and were writing down notes, and Webs was too absorbed in the scroll he was reading from to see anything. Ivy let out a breath of relief, then turned back to the scroll.

*A History of Animus Dragons in the Sky Kingdom,* Ivy read. *The first SkyWing animus dragon was Sunstone, a SkyWing/IceWing hybrid. It is widely believed that the IceWing tribe was the only tribe with animus dragons, until two animus dragons ran away and had dragonets, in the Kingdom of the Sea and in the Sky Kingdom, bringing the line of animus dragons in the Ice Kingdom down to one.*

*Sunstone was born almost three thousand years after the Scorching, and once the queen found out what she could do, enchanted a few things that helped bring the Sky Kingdom riches, territory and power. Sunstone married and had one dragonet, a female named Kite. Kite in turn helped the queen and had dragonets as well, one female with no power and a male named Topaz who also inherited animus magic. Sunstone died in a war with the RainWings, leaving Kite and Topaz the only animus dragons in the Sky Kingdom.*

*But then tragedy struck. In the Sea Kingdom, Albatross, the animus IceWing hybrid, found out he had magic by enchanting a shell to pull off his sister’s claws. Queen Carmine thought that if one animus dragonet could cause so much pain, two would be uncontrollable. She sent her guards and killed all of Sunstone’s descendants, snuffing out the animus line forever in the Sky Kingdom.*

Ivy felt bad for the animus dragons, even though she hadn’t known them. *Why did she kill them, even though they hadn’t done anything wrong?* Ivy wondered. *Those poor dragons.* She noticed that there was some more left on the scroll, and unrolled it a little, trying not to make any noise.

*A List of SkyWing Animus Enchantments,* Ivy read. She felt her excitement growing. This was where she would find the exact nature of the spell she was under! She unrolled some more.

*Very few things had been enchanted by the SkyWing animus dragons, as they knew that using their magic would make them lose their soul. Therefore, all of their enchantments have been listed here.*

*The Stone of Truth: This stone was Sunstone’s first enchantment. It was used for interrogative purposes because it glowed red when someone was lying and blue when someone was telling the truth. However, it was lost over a thousand years ago, and probably has been destroyed.*

*The Jeweled Fountain: This fountain was carved by Sunstone’s own claws and then enchanted to spill forth gold and rare jewels. Sadly, it was broken beyond repair by Queen Carmine in her successful attempt to rid the Sky Kingdom of any animus magic.*

*The Healing Statue: This was Sunstone’s last enchantment; a small glass statuette of a dragon that healed all the injuries of whoever touched it. It was destroyed less than a year after its creation when a spy got into the castle and shattered it.*

*The Tree of Scrolls: This tree was based off of the IceWings’ tree of light, except instead of light, this tree grows scrolls. One of Kite’s two enchantments, this tree grew all the scrolls that had been written at that time, until Queen Carmine had it uprooted and burned.*

*The Assassin Dagger: This dagger was the last SkyWing enchantment (at least the last SkyWing enchantment that can be confirmed) and was enchanted to kill any dragon it was ordered to do so. Queen Carmine ordered this spell to be eradicated as well, and had it smashed by a boulder.*

“Flicker!” Webs shouted, distracting Ivy and pulling her from her reading. “Are you reading in my class?”

Ivy didn’t know what the right answer to this question was. She wasn’t sure whether she would get in more trouble for lying or admitting that she was reading. “No?” she said unsurely.

“No?” Webs repeated. All the other dragonets in the class were staring at Ivy now. “Well then, do you know the answer to the question I just asked? What was the name of the SkyWing queen that ended animus magic in the Sky Kingdom?”

Ivy stifled a laugh, realizing that she’d just read the answer. “Of course, Webs,” she said as sweetly as she could. “Queen Carmine.”

“Oh,” Webs said, looking a little surprised that she actually knew the answer. “I apologize then.” He lifted up his scroll and began droning on again, and everyone went back to what they were doing.

Winter leaned over and hissed in Ivy’s ear, “How did you know that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ivy whispered back as innocently as she could, holding back giggles. “I was listening to Webs the whole time.”

Winter scoffed. “I highly doubt that. Unless you have some kind of superpower, no one can fully pay attention to Webs.”

Ivy smiled. “No, I don’t have a superpower.” She held up her scroll as discreetly as she could for Winter to read. His sharp eyes scanned the page, and when she lowered it, he was smirking.

“Poor Webs,” he said, shaking his head in mock despair as she stuffed the scroll back into her pouch. “He didn’t stand a chance.”

Ivy flashed him a smile and was about to respond when the gong rang again. The other winglet in the cave left, as did Webs, and Kinkajou hauled Ivy up off of the floor.

“Come on!” Kinkajou said, pulling Sky off the ground as well. “Have you guys seen the rest of Jade Mountain yet?” Ivy shook her head. “No?” Kinkajou continued. “Well, we have to show you! There’s a forest and a waterfall and a flower field and a river and a crystal cave! It’s really pretty and we have to show you! We’ve got enough time; there’s an hour before our next class, let’s go!” She took off down the tunnel leaving the rest of them to dash after her, with Ivy vaguely wondering if Kinkajou ever got tired.

The RainWing dragonet dashed through the twisting tunnels of the school and leaped through an exit, flapping her wings and soaring into the sky. “Wait up!” Ivy shouted, and Kinkajou spun around, hovering in place.

Ivy hesitated on the edge of the hole in the cave for a second, looking down at the earth below. It was littered with sharp rocks, and Ivy knew that if she fell, death would be instant and unforgiving. *But I* won’t *fall,* Ivy chastised herself. *I’m a* dragon *now. I have* wings*.*

Ivy hurled herself into the sky, pumping her wings as hard as she could. For a minute, she was using too much energy to stay in an improper flying position, and so she adjusted her wings and her tail until she was hovering almost effortlessly next to Kinkajou. Ivy thought Kinkajou would comment about how she stopped at the edge of the cliff, but apparently she hadn’t noticed.

A second later, Winter and Sky jumped into the sky as well, and Kinkajou led the four of them around Jade Mountain. She pointed out fields of sunshine-colored daffodils and ruby-red roses and royal blue violets, the large waterfall that cascaded from one of the peaks of the mountain and sprayed the surrounding area with glistening foam, the river that wound around the other peak before dropping into a deep cave sparkling with crystals that reflected the water over and over again. Ivy was so dazzled by the beauty of it all that she was surprised when she flew over the forest and it looked sickly and mostly dead.

“What’s wrong with the forest?” Ivy asked as they landed on the ground. Dry leaves crackled underneath their talons and a strong-looking branch broke easily into splinters with only a little pressure from Ivy . A slight breeze stirred the trees, sending a little storm of dead leaves to the ground and making the trees groan and crack.

“It hasn’t rained in a while,” Kinkajou said, looking sadly at the trees. “We’ve only had little sprinkles that do almost nothing to help this forest. Sunny’s been watering the flowers to keep them alive, but no one’s been helping these trees.”

Ivy looked up at the sky. It was overcast, and darker clouds were moving across the backdrop of blinding gray. “At least it’ll rain soon.”

“Yeah,” Sky said. His stomach grumbled, and he ducked his head in embarrassment while Wren laughed.

Kinkajou laughed as well. “Don’t worry, I’m hungry too. Come on, I’ll show you where you can find the best blueberries *ever*.” She soared up to the mountain, and Sky followed her, Wren still giggling.

“I’m going to hunt for a mountain goat or something,” Winter told her. “Do you want to join me?”

Ivy thought for a moment. On one talon, if she went with Winter, she could see how a real dragon hunted and could probably figure out how to hunt by herself. On the other talon, if she hunted by herself, maybe natural dragon instincts would kick in, and she would be able to hunt by herself. A plus for the latter option would be that if Ivy turned out to be totally terrible at hunting, at least no one would see. “I’ll hunt by myself,” she said.

“Okay,” he replied, and took off towards a mountain near Jade Academy, his silver wings shining as he soared above the mountain. Ivy watched him for a moment, then turned back towards the forest.

She narrowed her eyes, searching for any movement, any sign of prey. After a few minutes, she saw a flash of brown fur running deeper into the forest. Ivy shot after it, tucking her wings by her side and running as fast as she could, which was quite a bit faster than when she was a human. But the deer was fast too, jumping over fallen trees and keeping its footing on the uneven rocks on the ground. Ivy kept running into the large bushes the deer was able to dart through and getting scraped by long branches. She would’ve spread her wings and flown to catch her prey, but the trees made an inescapable canopy above her, making it impossible to fly. *Apparently hunting* won’t *come naturally for me,* Ivy thought ruefully as she tripped over a small hole in the ground.

She chased the deer for a few more seconds until they emerged into a small clearing. Ivy’s teeth were a few feet behind the deer when it darted into a small gap between two trees. Ivy growled in frustration and shot a blast of fire in the gap between the trees.

She realized her mistake half a second after the fire left her mouth and clamped a talon over her snout as if that would help anything. The blast of fire hit the dry, dry tree, and, for a second, nothing happened.

Then the tree lit up in a blaze of flames. The fire quickly consumed the tree and jumped to another, and another. Ivy turned around to run out of the clearing, and suddenly, the flames were there, an impassable wall of fire.

Ivy spun around, desperate to find a way out of the fiery death trap she had made for herself. She spotted a gap in the flames, and dashed towards it. But before she could reach it, a flaming tree fell out of nowhere and blocked her escape, sending roaring tongues of fire higher than she could jump over.

She looked around to see if there was any other way out, but there was none. It was then that Ivy remembered that she was a dragon, and therefore had wings, so she looked up at the dense canopy of tree branches above her. She’d much rather crash through branches then try to run through fire.

But the flames were up there too, consuming the tangle of limbs and branches above her. *Maybe I can wait until it burns through, and then I can fly out,* Ivy thought, but then realized that would take too much time, and time was a luxury she didn’t have.

The fire jumped from the trees to the grass, racing towards her. Ivy flapped her wings as hard as she could, trying to keep the flames at bay. It worked, at least partly. The flames recoiled, but the wind from her wings fanned the fire, making it even bigger. It didn’t help that flaming chunks of tree kept falling from the sky, feeding the fire.

The flames had burned greedily through the trees that immediately surrounded the clearing, but the dry forest was eager to provide more and more firewood to keep the blaze going.

Ivy’s wings were a little tired, but she wouldn’t let herself stop. The fire actually seemed to be dying down just a little. Maybe if she kept it up, it would go out just enough for her to escape.

Then a small flaming branch fell from the canopy and struck Ivy’s wing. It bounced off immediately and barely left a mark, but Ivy stopped flapping her wings instinctually, just for a second. But it was enough for the fire to race forward, swallowing Ivy in a firestorm.

For a second, she didn’t feel anything. Then she was burning, the flames racing across her back and her wings and her tail. The fire blistered across her scales, sending sharp bolts of pain down into her skin. It was worse than when she’d turned into a dragon; that pain had been a little balanced by the feeling of getting stronger, and it had decreased as it went on. This fire seemed to get worse as the seconds went on, increasing in heat.

Ivy would’ve yelled for help by now, except, the last time she had screamed she would’ve set herself on fire again to get that expression off of Leaf’s face. But as the flames reached an intensity Ivy was almost incapable of comprehending, she lost all control of anything she did and screamed as loudly as she could, writhing in pain.

“Flicker!” a familiar voice shouted. Ivy was certain it was a hallucination, as the pain had dulled, and some tiny part of her brain was sure that couldn't be good. But then the voice shouted again, and a wave of silvery cold shot through the forest, extinguishing most of the fire around Ivy. The flames roared in response and seemed to move faster, spreading across the clearing to reclaim the forest.

Winter ran into the clearing, spraying another burst of icy frostbreath from his mouth as he did. The frigid air snuffed out the rest of the flames in the clearing, giving Ivy a breath of relief. Then another wave of pain set in and she screamed again, although not nearly as loudly as the first time.

Winter hesitated above Ivy, then wrapped his wings around her. She was surprised and confused for a second, then realized that his cold wings provided some relief for the pain. Ivy leaned into him, her breathing slowing. A wave of darkness came up to greet her, and she fell into it gratefully.

### **Chapter 5**

Ivy woke up to darkness. It encompassed everything that she saw, and for a moment, she was worried that she had died, and this was her fate, lying forever in blindness. After Ivy had this terrifying thought, she realized that there was a cloth lying over her eyes.

She lifted a talon (and Ivy was sure it was a talon because she could feel her wings folded underneath her and her tail flopping off the side of whatever she was lying on) and pulled the cloth off of her face. It scraped across Ivy’s scales, and she winced.

Once the cloth was off of Ivy’s face, she could see cool green light that matched the library’s. She could see blurry shapes, and she had to concentrate for them to turn into real objects. There were shelves lining the room filled with pastes and jars of various substances, with colorful flowers strewn about the room.

Ivy turned her head and saw a large dark purple blob. She squinted, and the shape solidified into Fatespeaker, who was studying a long scroll intently. After a moment, she looked up at Ivy and jumped in surprise. “You’re awake!” she said. “Does anything hurt?”

Ivy opened her mouth to say no, but that action pulled on something that pulled on something else that stung when it moved, and she winced. “A little,” she answered truthfully.

“Sorry about that,” Fatespeaker said. “I’d give you another sleeping dart, but we don’t do more than one dart every twenty-four hours, and you already had your’s yesterday evening.”

“That’s fine,” Ivy told her. “I don’t want another sleeping dart; it doesn’t hurt that much.” Then Ivy’s thoughts jumped to something that she didn’t want to think about. “How long have I been here?”

You’ve been out for almost a full day. Sky, Winter and Kinkajou didn’t leave your side for hours yesterday, but right before night fell I convinced them to leave and get some sleep. Apparently, it was a good thing I did.”

Ivy’s heart was racing. *She saw. She saw and she knows and now she’s going to tell everyone.* Ivy tried to calm herself down. Maybe Fatespeaker had left too. “Did you. . .” Ivy trailed off, trying to think of a way she could ask that wouldn’t tell Fatespeaker anything she didn’t already know. *Did you see me turn into a human?* She finished in her head.

“Yes,” Fatespeaker confirmed. For a second Ivy worried that Fatespeaker had read her thoughts like Moon could, but then she realized that if Fatespeaker could read minds she’d already know that Ivy wasn’t a dragon. “But don’t worry, I won’t tell,” Fatespeaker continued. “Does Sky know?” she didn’t wait for an answer. “I mean, of course Sky knows. He’s your brother. That’s why you two wanted to share a cave. That’s a terrible animus curse, to have to turn into a scavenger at night. It must be hard to live with.”

It took a second for Ivy to process Fatespeaker’s words. *She doesn’t know everything! She thinks I’m a dragon, I just turn into a human at night. It also sounds like she thinks I’ve always changed species with the sun. So technically, if I don’t correct her, and just let her think what she wants to think, I’m not technically lying.* “Yeah,” Ivy said. “It is.” That was actually true.

A golden head poked into the cave. “Oh good, you’re up!” Sunny said as she stepped into the cave. “Fatespeaker said your burns were really serious, so I’m glad you’re okay! She wouldn’t let anyone into this cave last night, so I was worried. But you seem to be healing now, so that’s great!” Sunny turned to Fatespeaker, and Ivy mouthed a quick ‘thank you’ behind Sunny’s back.

Fatespeaker nodded then said to Sunny, “I think she’s all right. I’m not a certified doctor though, so it’s hard to be sure.”

“I’m fine,” Ivy said, and stood up to prove it. She was a little wobbly on her talons, but otherwise she really was fine. “See?”

“I don’t know if you should be standing,” Fatespeaker fretted, taking a step towards Ivy.

Ivy stepped away and told her, “Really, I’m okay.” She felt guilty when a hurt expression crossed Fatespeaker’s face and continued hurriedly. “Sorry. But I really am fine. You did a great job.” A second after she said that, Ivy realized that she didn’t actually know what Fatespeaker had done. She looked down at her talons and saw ropes of healing burned scales covered by a glistening translucent substance.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t make the burns go away completely.” Fatespeaker said. “They’ll fade, but you’ll still have pretty nasty scars.”

“*I’m* sorry that I didn’t close off the forest entirely,” Sunny interjected. “I knew it was a fire hazard, but I thought that since it hasn’t been that hot, a fire wouldn’t start. I’m so sorry that you were there at the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time.”

Ivy realized the little predicament she was in. If she didn’t tell Sunny the truth about the fire, Sunny would feel so guilty. But if Ivy told her how the fire really started, Ivy would become the laughingstock of the school. She sighed. The least she could do was ease Sunny’s guilt a little. “The fire’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

“No it isn’t!” Sunny said fiercely. “Don’t you dare lie to make me feel better! I’m the one at fault here, not you.”

“No, you’re not,” Ivy told her. “I was hunting in the forest and my prey got away. I shot a burst of flames at it, and the entire forest caught fire.”

Fatespeaker and Sunny stared at her for a moment. Then Fatespeaker let out a sharp bark of laughter, flapping her wings in amusement. Ivy looked sheepishly down at the ground and Sunny giggled a bit. Finally, Fatespeaker gained control of laughter and panted, catching her breath. “Seriously?” she asked. “That’s absolutely hilarious.”

Just then, the gong rang twice, and Fatespeaker’s head turned towards the doorway. “It’s time for my class with the Jade Winglet,” she said, then turned back to Ivy. “If you really do feel fine, then you can come with me.”

“I will, thanks,” Ivy said. She hesitated for a moment, then asked, “May I please have a mirror?”

Fatespeaker and Sunny’s reactions were immediate. Fatespeaker yelped, “I can’t even tell where most of your burns are!” which was in direct contrast to what she had said earlier, and Sunny exclaimed, “You look fine, trust me!”

“Please?” Ivy asked.

“Why do you want to see yourself?” Fatespeaker asked.

“Well, for the obvious reason. And I also want to be able to guess how long Winter’s going to be yelling at me as soon as he knows I’m awake.”

Fatespeaker smiled and wordlessly walked over to one of the most crowded shelves in the cave. She pushed it aside, revealing a large mirror behind it. Ivy looked at it a little apprehensively. From Sunny and Fatespeaker’s reactions, she thought that she wouldn’t be able to recognize herself.

It wasn’t all that bad though. Burns and scorched scales were everywhere, but Ivy thought they would mostly heal in a few months, and she could still easily see the color of her scales underneath. The only burn on her face was on the side of her snout, and it was one of the smallest wounds on her body. Ivy opened her wings to check for damage, but they only seemed to be a little singed, and she would definitely still be able to fly.

“How long do you think Winter will be yelling at you?” Sunny asked, half joking, half serious.

Ivy brought a talon to her chin, trying to imitate a thoughtful expression. “My estimate is thirty-eight years, five months and two days, give or take an hour.”

Fatespeaker laughed and said, “That sounds about right. Now we should probably go before we’re late.” She walked briskly down the hallway with Ivy jogging to keep up. The gong rang again three times, and Fatespeaker muttered, “Crocodile tongues,” and broke into a run. Ivy did her best to keep up, but she was still a little unsteady and entered the small cave a few steps after Fatespeaker.

Sky, Winter, Wren and Kinkajou all turned to the entrance when Ivy walked in. “I- Flicker!” Sky shouted and ran over to give her a hug. Ivy winced and he stepped back. “Sorry. I’m glad you’re fine now.”

“I’m glad you’re okay, Ivy,” Wren said, giving her a warm smile.

“Flicker!” Kinkajou yelled, and bounded over to Ivy. She stopped an inch away from Ivy, and her wings twitched like she wanted to give Ivy a hug too, but was restraining herself. “You’re awake! I can’t believe it. I mean, I can believe that you’re awake; Fatespeaker’s a great doctor, but what I can’t believe is that you’re my second best friend to have an overnight stay in the hospital wing, *and* it’s because of burns too! I mean, I’ve been in a hospital with a precarious condition too, but not at school, and not because of being set on fire. Ooh, you, Tamarin and Winter should start an ‘I-almost-died-by-fire’ club! Wouldn’t that be amazing! Wait, maybe you could change it to the ‘I-almost died-but-I’m-fine-now’ club, so I could join. But that would mean a lot of dragons could join. Hmm. I’ll come up with something.”

Ivy laughed. “I’ll think about it.” Kinkajou had a way of turning the worst situations into something fun. *Well, maybe not something fun,* Ivy revised in her head, *but definitely something else.*

“Do you know what caused the fire?” Winter asked, ignoring Kinkajou. “If you do, then we can work on stopping any more fires before they start.”

Fatespeaker started snorting in laughter, and Ivy shuffled her talons. “Um, so, about that,” she said to Winter. “I, um, I sort of maybe accidentally set the forest on fire while I was in there.”

Winter stared at her. “You *what*?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Ivy asked. “I said that I set the forest on fire.”

“You,” Winter growled. “set *yourself* on FIRE?” His growl suddenly turned into a roar mid sentence, and Ivy was a little impressed by how quickly he could change volume.

“No!” Ivy said. “I was *trying* to set a deer on fire, the forest and my scales were just unforeseen casualties.” Fatespeaker’s snorting escalated into full-blown laughter, and Wren chuckled along with her.

“Well maybe you should have FORESEEN that setting a dry, dense forest on fire would result in you getting SET ON FIRE as well as the forest!” Winter yelled. Sky stepped forward as if to stand between them, but Ivy blocked him with her wing. She knew that Winter needed to yell himself out now, so that he wouldn’t stew too much later.

“Why are you mad?” Ivy asked, genuinely curious. “I mean, it’s not like I set *you* on fire, so why are you yelling at me?”

Winter looked taken aback for a moment, then said, “Well, if you set yourself on fire *again*, I’m going to have to risk *my* scales to rescue you again.”

“What if I promise not to make you rescue me next time? I mean, I’m not saying I’ll set myself on fire again, but if I do, I promise to either rescue myself, or at least not scream and force you to help me. Sound good?”

Winter was quiet for a while as he formulated a response. “Why don’t you just yell back at me like a normal dragon? It’s very hard to stay mad at you when you’re not getting mad at me.”

Ivy smiled. “All right, then.” She rearranged her expression into something fiercer and more dragon-like and glared menacingly at Winter, making Wren laugh even louder.

“How DARE you shout at ME!” she suddenly roared at Winter, who jumped back. “Me setting myself on fire has nothing to do with YOU! If I want to set myself on fire, then I’m GOING to, whether you like it or not, icicle-breath.” Sky and Kinkajou started giggling, and Winter looked a little shocked.

Ivy dropped her angry expression and shrugged. “Yeah, arguing isn't for me. I mean, I can’t even come up with a good insult. Icicle-breath is just stating facts, honestly.”

“If you two are done arguing,” Fatespeaker said. “could we please get on with today’s lesson?”

“Okay,” Ivy said cheerfully, and maneuvered around Winter to sit on a large boulder. Kinkajou and Sky flopped down next to her, and Winter sat down on a boulder across from them after a second of stunned silence.

“Ahem,” Fatespeaker said, then started in on a lesson that seemed to be much less informative and quite a bit more ‘don’t do this’. She was telling a story about a pink-yellow RainWing, an IceWing ex-prince, a mind-reading NightWing, an animus SeaWing and a SandWing with a scar on his snout. They apparently left school to go on an adventure and ended up nearly getting killed multiple times until a giant evil dragon that was coincidentally named Darkstalker murdered them.

By the end of the story, Kinkajou and Sky were giggling again and Winter was rolling his eyes. After the last line, Fatespeaker looked up and asked, “Now, what’s the moral of the story?”

“To come up with more original names so that it’s a little less obvious what you’re talking about?” Winter suggested scathingly.

“*No*,” Fatespeaker said. “The moral of the story is to not leave school to go on dangerous adventures that get you killed.”

“But we didn’t get killed!” Kinkajou cried. “We turned out okay, and I bet we’ll turn out fine on our next adventure too!”

“You got put in a coma,” Fatespeaker said to Kinkajou. She pointed to Winter. “*You* got set on fire and a mind-alteration spell on you, Moon was brainwashed by a psychotic dragon who talked to her in her head, Turtle was nearly killed by his sister then was thrown in a dungeon by Darkstalker, Qibli was kidnapped by his grandfather and then summoned a sandstorm to stop a challenge for the throne, and Flicker would probably set herself on fire again.”

“Hey!” Ivy protested. “I would *not* set myself on fire! There’s like an eighty percent chance that I wouldn’t. All right, seventy-five percent. But still! That’s a majority!”

“I think you’re just proving my point,” Fatespeaker told her. “Most dragons don’t have a twenty-five percent chance of setting themselves on fire.”

*Most dragons have been dragons since they hatched, not getting changed by a weird spell, if that’s what this is.* “Fine,” Ivy said to Fatespeaker. “I won’t go on any adventures until my flammability is down to ten percent.”

Fatespeaker opened her mouth to say something when the gong rang again. Kinkajou leapt up and shot out of the cave with her usual amount of energy, shouting “Sorry, I just remembered I have to do something!” behind her. Fatespeaker followed her, racing only slightly slower than Kinkajou.

“I’m going to go to the library,” Sky said. “Do you want to come with me?”

“No, thank you,” Ivy said. “I’d like to continue reading this, if you don’t mind.” Ivy held up the scroll in her pouch. Winter shook his head in agreement, and Sky walked out of the cave.

Wren turned around as Sky turned a corner and called, “Don’t set yourself on fire while we’re gone!” Ivy glared at where she had disappeared and heard Sky giggling as he walked.

“May I show you a quiet place to read?” Winter asked. “It’s very calm.”

Ivy deliberated for a moment. “Okay,” Ivy said. Winter led her through the winding tunnels of Jade Mountain, gradually going deeper, until Ivy couldn’t hear the wind brushing against the mountain anymore, and Ivy had to carefully light a torch so they had a bit of light in the darkness.

They walked for a while longer, until the torch had burned down to embers. Ivy heard the whisper of tiny wings and felt the air getting cooler as they went deeper into the heart of the mountain. She was about to ask Winter if he was lost when they turned one last corner into a cave.

Ivy’s jaw dropped and the torch fell out of her talon, extinguishing on the ground. But she didn’t need its light anymore, as the cavern was filled with phosphorescent moss hanging from stalactites and growing on rocks and glowworms dotting the cave ceiling like living stars that cast an eerie and calming blueish green light around the vast space. There was a large lake in the center of the cave, as reflective as a mirror and just as still. Twisted rocks grew sparsely from the ground and the roof of the cave, with wicked sharp points that could impale a dragon if they were unlucky enough to have one fall on them. Crystals clustered in corners and jutted out from walls, catching the light and distorting it, turning the cave into a bit of an optical illusion.

“What is this place?” Ivy breathed. The cave smelled cool, and a bit like a wind on a cold day.

“I found it when I was exploring,” Winter shrugged. “I don’t think anyone knows about it, even Sunny.”

“It’s amazing.” Ivy felt herself whispering, as if talking any louder would ruin the calm atmosphere of the cave. “Why did you show me this? I would’ve kept it as my own little secret place.”

Winter shrugged again. “It’s a good place to read. And anyway, I think you’re pretty good at keeping secrets.” Ivy felt a bolt of fear that he’d figured it out for a moment, then Winter continued, “I mean, no one seems to know about Darkstalker yet,” Winter growled quietly and clawed a nearby patch of moss, “so I’m guessing you didn’t tell anyone the truth.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t.” Ivy reassured him. “I won’t tell anyone about this cave either.”

“Good,” Winter said, sounding a little relieved. “Please don’t set it on fire, either.”

Ivy sighed. “I’m going to be hearing about that for years, aren’t I? Flicker: The dragon who set herself on fire. Not exactly the look I was going for when I came to this school.”

Winter snorted. “Well then, maybe you shouldn’t have set yourself on fire.”

“Wow!” Ivy said sarcastically. “I *never* thought about that! Huh. I *shouldn’t* have set myself on fire. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.”

“Didn’t you want to read?” Winter asked. “I thought you’d do that, instead of commentating on my excellent advice.”

“Yes, your majesty,” Ivy said, giggling a little. She walked over to a ledge overlooking the lake and laid down on it, pulling out the SkyWing animus scroll and curling comfortably around it.

“Not you too,” Winter grumbled, and walked over to a boulder. He pulled out his scavenger scroll, and sat down on the rock to read it.

Ivy smiled and unrolled the scroll, rereading it to see if she had missed anything. There was the small story of the first SkyWing animus, and the little blurb of spells. There was nothing there about someone randomly enchanting an emerald to ruin Ivy’s life. *Let’s be reasonable,* Ivy told herself. *It didn’t* completely *destroy my life. I mean, it made me a dragon.* It didn’t help. *It turned me into a dragon just so I could hide in terror every night for the rest of my life.*

She sighed. *Maybe it wasn’t a SkyWing enchantment. Maybe it was an IceWing enchantment or something.* Ivy went to roll up the scroll when she noticed that there was a bit left curled tightly up at the bottom of the scroll.

She pulled on it, trying to get it to unfurl. It seemed like it didn’t want to do the one thing it was supposed to do. *Well, too bad,* Ivy thought at it as she tried again, trying not to rip the scroll. It didn’t work, and she peered closer to see what was blocking it.

There was a small stone wedged between the paper. Ivy reached out a claw and delicately inserted it next to the stone, wiggling it around. After a few twists, the rock fell out. It was pale, pale gray, almost white, and smoothed until it was round. Ivy dropped it into her pouch to investigate, and possibly shout at later, and unrolled the rest of the scroll. Here was what she was looking for.

*The Last Enchantment,* the scroll read. *Although these last two enchantments cannot be confirmed, it is believed that the Assassin Dagger was not the final SkyWing animus spell. When Queen Carmine’s guards attacked Kite and Topaz, some scrolls say that Kite enchanted an emerald to protect her son from the guards.*

*Topaz escaped, and took refuge near the Mud Kingdom. A strong storm killed him only days after he’d escaped, but before it did, a MudWing that lived near Topaz’s final resting place said that he’d heard the SkyWing putting an unusual enchantment on the emerald, that he repeated word-for-word:* *I enchant this emerald so that the first time the right scavenger touches it, the scavenger will turn into a five-year old SkyWing dragonet. The scavenger will continue to age after this. Then, when the sun sets, the scavenger will turn back into a scavenger, but when the sun comes back up it will turn back into a dragon. I enchant this cycle to repeat indefinitely.*

*The emerald was tested, of course, but the spell did not work on the scavenger the MudWing caught, and it was assumed that the MudWing was wrong. The emerald’s worth is currently two gold coins, although that is expected to decrease.*

The scroll ended abruptly, leaving Ivy to think. Now she knew the exact wording of the spell on her, which answered a few questions. She now knew that she was five years old as a dragon, which was a little weird from Ivy’s perspective. Why couldn’t dragon ages line up nicely with human ages?

She also knew that it wasn’t a week-long enchantment or something like that, which Ivy had guessed already. But now she knew that another animus spell probably wouldn’t work on her, because ‘repeat indefinitely’ seemed pretty iron-clad from other enchantments, although Ivy didn’t know much about animus magic, so she could be wrong.

*And even if another animus spell would work on me,* Ivy thought, *I would have to choose between dragon and human, and I don’t know if I want to do that. On one talon, I could have fire, and claws, and* wings*. On the other talon, I kind of like being able to run on my own two feet beneath the dragons’ talons and find out all the fascinating things about life in the sky, things I can’t ask about as a dragon without making other dragons suspicious. On the third talon, I can’t really attend Jade Academy as a human, and I really like Winter and Kinkajou, and I’d have to leave them if I was human permanently. On the fourth talon, I’ve only been away for a few days, and I already kind of miss Daffodil and Violet, and all of Hope, and I’ve been trying very hard not to think about Leaf.*

Ivy growled quietly and lashed her tail in frustration a second after she had that thought because she realized that she’d just thought about the exact person she was trying not to think about.

Ivy’s tail hit a pile of small jagged pebbles and fragments of rock and she yelped and jumped up as sharp edges dug into the burns on her tail.

“Are you alright, Flicker?” Winter asked, hurrying over to her.

“I’m fine,” Ivy said. “It’s just these very annoying burns.” She turned around and glared at her tail.

Winter ducked to see the serrated rocks digging into the patches of black scales on Ivy’s tail. He winced. “I would put that in water if I were you.” He pointed to the still lake in the center of the cave.

Ivy shuddered. The temperature out of the water was a bit chilly, and she didn’t want to imagine how figid the water itself would be. “I’m good, thanks.”

Winter rolled his eyes. “You need to put something cold on your burns. Either you jump in the lake, or I spray frostbreath all over you, which will be much less pleasant than jumping in the water. It’s your choice.” Ivy deliberated for a moment then leapt into the lake.

The lake was just as cold and even deeper than she’d feared. Ivy took a sharp breath almost unconsciously at the chill and how quickly the glowworms faded out of sight as she sank.

She started sputtering and choking and swam to the surface. It was hard to swim as a dragon, and her tail and wings kept getting in her way and dragging her down, but after a few moments Ivy found a way to position her tail where it wouldn't get in her way and her wings where they could help power her up through the water.

Ivy’s head broke through the surface and immediately regretted it. Amazingly, it was even *colder* with part of her above the water and part of her below it. Winter watched her flail around, looking faintly pleased with himself. “I am v-v-very m-mad at you m-mister,” Ivy told him between chattering teeth.

“Well, do your burns still hurt?” Winter asked.

Ivy concentrated, trying to feel her scorched scales underwater. She didn’t feel any pain from her burns, although she couldn’t feel anything from her other scales either, so she could just be numb from the cold. “No,” Ivy admitted. “But it’s way too cold.”

She flapped her wings and thrashed her tail, hauling herself up out of the water. She flopped onto the rock floor of the cave and spread out her wings. Winter snorted and Ivy knew she probably looked like an overweight walrus. But her short little swim had sapped her of all her energy, and she was too tired to do more than stand up and put her scroll into her pouch.

Ivy realized a second after the scroll was in her pouch that her pouch was sopping wet. *Oh, well. I can dry it off later.* “I’m going to go back to my cave,” she told Winter.

“All right. Do you remember the way?”

Ivy nodded. Winter tipped his head at her then turned back to his scroll. Ivy set off along the tunnels, grabbing a stick and setting it on fire. She was halfway there when she saw something move in the darkness.

“Hello?” she called. She was out of hearing range of the cave and the rest of Jade Academy, and it would be a few minutes’ walk before she would be able to run into any of the students. “Is anyone there?”

Silence answered her. Ivy shrugged. It was probably just one of the bats or something. She turned around to continue, when invisible talons grabbed her. She twisted and tried to scream, but she was still sluggish from her swim, and her attacker pinned her arms to her side and muffled her. Ivy’s torch dropped to the ground and her assailant dragged her into the darkness.

### **Chapter 6**

Ivy struggled, trying to break out of her captor’s grip, but her attempts were feeble, and since she didn’t know exactly where her kidnapper was, she couldn’t really do anything.

After a short walk, Ivy was thrown into a cave. She quickly righted herself and glared at the doorway, where she could see a ripple of invisible scales. “Show yourself!” she commanded, not really expecting her attacker to listen. So she was surprised when color started pouring across the dragon’s scales, forming the shape of a dragon Ivy recognized. “Kinkajou?” she asked as the RainWing dragonet became visible.

“I have some questions for you,” Kinkajou said gruffly, her scales swirling in red, black and orange, which would have been slightly threatening except for the little dots of pink and blue that Kinkajou didn’t seem to be able to squash.

“Let me get this straight. You kidnapped me and dragged me to this cave, just to ask me a question? Doesn’t that seem a little over the top? And how were you able to fight me? I’m bigger than you!”

“Hey, I’m the one asking the questions! And I want to ask you *multiple* questions, not just one. And Queen Glory trained me herself, plus you’re kind of awful at fighting. Like seriously. Give me a little challenge.”

“Hrmph,” Ivy said. Apparently, being a dragon did not automatically mean she was good at fighting, or hunting, or anything that dragons seemed to be instinctually amazing at. *And I’m not asking to be absolutely amazing. I’m just asking to be mediocre at dragon stuff. Is that too much to ask?*

“Back to my terrifying interrogation,” Kinkajou said. “So here’s what you need to know: I am on a mission. A very important mission that *cannot* be interrupted. And you are messing up my plans. So I need to know whether you like Winter back.”

“Wait, what?” That was not what Ivy had been expecting.

“Ever since Moon chose Qibli over Winter, I’ve been trying to find Winter the perfect soulmate.” Kinkajou paused, then added, almost under her breath, “Although Qibli really should have chosen Winter, not Moon. Everyone could see it.”

“I don’t think I should be hearing this,” Ivy said, and edged towards the door, trying to get past Kinkajou. Kinkajou opened her wings to block Ivy’s path, and Ivy leaned back against the wall. “I mean, it’s really none of my business.”

“Yes, it is!” Kinkajou cried. “It’s your business since Winter’s totally in love with you, and I don’t know if you like him back or not. So you have to tell me, so I can know whether I should try to shove you two even closer together, or try to get Winter interested in another dragon. Changbai’s pretty nice, for an IceWing at least, and I’m pretty sure that Barracuda has a crush on Winter. So you have to tell me now, otherwise I’m going to talk to Changbai. Do you like Winter or not?”

“I’m pretty sure Changbai wouldn’t appreciate being kidnapped by an overenthusiastic RainWing,” Ivy said, trying to dodge Kinkajou’s question.

“How do you know? You’ve never met her. And anyway, you didn’t answer my question. Do you like Winter or not? It's not that hard, just yes or no?”

Ivy realized she wasn’t getting out of answering Kinkajou. *I think I do? But whenever I think about Winter I remember Leaf (don’t think about Leaf) and I don’t think I’m ready to fall in love with someone again so soon.* “I don’t know,” Ivy told Kinkajou truthfully.

Kinkajou studied Ivy for a second. “Argh!” she exclaimed suddenly, making Ivy jump. “It’s so *hard* to tell what you’re thinking without being able to read your scales! Why can’t *all* dragons’ scales change color with their emotions? Then everyone would know what everyone else was feeling all the time, and I would know if you’re telling the truth! Argh.” She looked at Ivy for a moment longer and sighed. “I think you are telling the truth, though. But it would be nice if you could decide whether you liked Winter or not. So if you could please make up your mind right now, that would be great, thanks.”

“Sorry,” Ivy said. “Um, should I tell Winter about this, or do you want to keep this a secret from him?”

Kinkajou’s scales flared bright orange, lime green and violet, washing away the traces of black and red. “Oh no. Definitely do *not* tell him. He would *kill* me if he knew I was going behind his back trying to find someone who liked him.”

“So, it would be good payback for someone who’d kidnapped me and kind of threatened me?”

Most of Kinkajou’s scales went green. “Please don’t tell him. I promise not to kidnap you ever again, unless I really need to.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Ivy assured her. “As long as you stop making cracks about how I set myself on fire.”

“But I *haven’t* been saying anything about how you set yourself on fire,” Kinkajou objected. “I mean, I did have some awesome jokes lined up, are you saying I can’t use those?”

“No. And I would also like to leave this cave some time today, please.” Ivy took a step towards the mouth of the cave, looking expectantly at Kinkajou.

The RainWing sighed, her scales now a pale blue-lavender color, and stepped aside. “I *would* like to go to the prey center, if you can handle that without setting yourself on fire.”

“Kinkajou,” Ivy said warningly.

“Fiiiiiiiiine. I just wanted to do one. I was serious about the prey cave though, I’m hungry, and you must be *starving*, because, I mean, you slept pretty much an entire day. And I’m really hungry after suntime, which is only like a few hours, so I can’t imagine how hungry you must be.”

Ivy considered that for a moment. Now that Kinkajou had mentioned it, she was kind of hungry. Scratch that, *really* hungry. “All right, then.”

“Let’s go!” Kinkajou cried, and shot off down the tunnel like a whirlwind of pink-spotted yellow flowers.

Ivy grabbed her tail before she could disappear and yanked her back. “Can we go at the speed of normal dragons, for once?” she asked.

“Okay,” Kinkajou grumbled, and yanked her tail free of Ivy’s grip.

“Can you tell me about the rainforest?” Ivy had been wondering about the impenetrable mass of trees ever since she’d learned about it in Valor. Her curiosity had doubled when she’d learned that Wren and Sky had never been in there either, despite having been everywhere else on the continent. *I wonder how dragons fly in there, with all the trees in the way. Oh, wait, maybe that’s what Kinkajou’s long tail is for, so she can swing on tree branches like a monkey. That must seem so strange to outsider dragons. I wonder if any visiting tribes ever crash into trees.*

“Sure!” Kinkajou said, jolting Ivy out of her thoughts. Kinkajou launched into a lecture about adorable sloths, gorgeous flowers, and towering trees. Ivy listened, fascinated, and almost didn’t notice when they came into the prey center and a few dragons bolted out of the cave.

Kinkajou led the way over to the pile of fruit and picked up a yellow-green fruit. “This was probably gathered by Mangrove,” she said, taking a bite. “He specializes in starfruit.”

“Wait, you have fruit gatherers?” Ivy asked. She’d thought that only humans had those, but apparently dragons did too. “What other jobs do RainWings have?”

Kinkajou swallowed. She held up her claws and started counting on them. “Well, there’s fruit gatherers, healers, tree-gliding instructors, a few guards with blow darts, venom trainers-”

“*Venom* trainers?” Ivy interrupted. “RainWings have *venom*?” Ivy felt like she was about to float right out of her own scales and hit the moons. “Does it come out of your claws, or your teeth, or ooh, maybe a wrist stinger? Does it shoot out, or is it more like a snake’s where they have to bite to get the venom in your system. How potent is it? Does it kill you, or does it just sting a bit? Do you have venom, or do only adult dragons have it?”

“Whoa, slow down,” Kinkajou said. “All RainWings above the age of a few months have venom, so yes, I have it. And it shoots out of our fangs, see?” Kinkajou opened her mouth wide, looking a bit like a viper. She tilted her head slightly up and shot little black droplets out of her two long fangs. The venom hit a nearby coconut and started sizzling.

Ivy hurried over and watched the coconut melt into a fizzing pile of black mush on the ground. “Wow,” she breathed, and reached out one claw to poke it.

“Don’t touch it,” Kinkajou said. “If venom gets on your scales or wings it starts melting your scales, and it *really* hurts. It won’t kill you, though, unless it gets in your eye or into your blood from an open wound, then you’re dead in minutes.”

“Wow,” Ivy said again. She turned back to Kinkajou. “Sorry for interrupting. Are there any other jobs in the rainforest?”

Kinkajou thought for a moment. “Well, there was the job of being Queen,” she said.

Ivy wanted to launch into about seven million questions, but she didn’t want to annoy Kinkajou, so she just asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well, until Glory came along, we had five queens who alternated every month. Then Glory decided that she needed to be queen all the time, not just once a month. So she challenged Magnificent, who was the queen at the time, for the throne. They had a contest, which involved the four other queens and me and some innocent sloths, and Glory won, naturally, so now she’s the queen of the RainWings! And the best part is, I totally helped her to win the crown, so now Queen Glory is totally in debt to me. But I’m also her best friend, so I don’t mention it to her. At least, I don’t mention it *that* much.”

. “That’s amazing,” Ivy said. A thought occurred to her. “How old is Queen Glory?”

“Oh, she’s seven years old. But that doesn’t mean she’s not an awesome queen! I mean, this school is amazing, and it’s run by Tsunami and Sunny, and they’re only seven too! Plus, Glory also conquered the NightWings with no casualties, and now they’re living happily in the rainforest under Queen Glory, so that makes Glory the best queen ever, since no other queen has ever ruled two tribes, so yeah. Plus, the queen of the IceWings, Snowfall I think it was, is only like seven years old too, and she’s an okay queen, so no one should say Glory’s a bad queen!”

“I wasn’t saying she was,” Ivy said soothingly. “I was just curious. I’m sure she’s one of the best queens in Pyrrhia.” Ivy grabbed a mango. “How did she conquer the NightWings, anyway?”

Kinkajou rolled her eyes. “I should’ve known you’d ask,” she said.  She started talking about a volcano and a prophecy and some scientist dragon that made her scales flash black and orange whenever she said his name.

Ivy was utterly fascinated. This story was even more interesting than Kinkajou’s explanation of the rainforest, and almost as riveting as the Darkstalker story. *Why can’t* I *have adventures like this? My big exploit was breaking into the SandWing stronghold, and that was just throwing a handful of sand and pebbles! I mean, I guess turning into a dragon and setting myself on fire is kind of exciting, but it’s nothing compared to facing down a giant evil nightmare dragon or invading an erupting volcano as part of an invisible army! Come on, interesting quests! Willing adventurer over here!*

Before long, Kinkajou’s story was finished, as was Ivy’s mango. “I can’t believe you did all that,” Ivy said as she washed the mango juice off her claws in the stream.

“Neither can I,” Kinkajou admitted. “And I lived through it. Although, to be fair, no one really expects to be knocked unconscious by a shape-shifting RainWing then wake up just in time to meet a giant two-thousand-year old immortal NightWing with insane superpowers.”

“Do you ever get tired of all the excitement?” Ivy asked. “I mean, you conquered an entire tribe, then barely a few months later Moon had a prophecy that ended up with you having to pretty much save the entire world. Do you ever want a few years’ relaxation?”

“What? No way!” Kinkajou cried. “It’s fun saving the world and defeating the bad guys! I mean, it is nice to have a bit of a vacation now and then, but never longer than a few months! I can’t wait for the next villain to rise up and make everyone cower in terror until Kinkajou the Brave and Mighty saves the day! Maybe you can help too! Every hero needs a sidekick, right? Turtle was mine, and then he told me he loved me which was weird, so I’m glad he’s gone now. But you’d be a good sidekick! You could be Flicker the, um, the Fiery! That’s good right?”

Ivy thwacked Kinkajou with her tail. “I thought we agreed no more ‘Flicker set herself on fire’ joke!”

“I wasn’t talking about that!” Kinkajou argued. “Well, I was a little. But I was mostly thinking about how you yelled at Winter! I mean, it was more of a jest yell, but still!”

“All right, fine,” Ivy said, relenting. “But I doubt there are going to be any more adventures any time soon.”

“Maybe,” Kinkajou said mysteriously. “You don’t know that.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re going to cause an explosion or make Anemone enchant something just so that you can ‘save the day’?”

Kinkajou laughed. “How dare you uncover my secret plan! Now I guess I will have to kill you to keep my secret, Mwa ha, ha, ha, ha!”

“Oh, no!” Ivy cried, playing along. She put a talon to her forehead. “I’m too young to die! Please have mercy, O’ great and terrible villain!”

Kinkajou giggled, and Ivy laughed along with her. It felt good to just laugh with a friend, which was something Ivy hadn’t done very often, even back in Valor with Violet and Daffodil. Her two friends were always arguing about something, and most of Ivy’s role in the friendship was to keep Daffodil and Violet from killing each other. In Hope, Ivy had spent most of her time working on the village, securing the treehouses and helping Wren in the school, so she hadn’t had much time to just hang out with a friend. It was a little weird but also nice to be with someone who wasn’t actively trying to frustrate someone else, even if that someone was a dragon.

“Hey, would you like to fly with me under the stars tonight?” Kinkajou asked. “It’s almost nighttime, and I doubt that you're sleepy, since you slept for so long.”

“What?” Ivy said, all remnants of giggles gone. She looked towards a large opening in the cave wall and saw the sun halfway past the horizon like a ball of fire falling in slow motion. It could only be a matter of seconds before-

“I have to go,” she said, standing up.

“Why?” Kinkajou asked, but Ivy was already running for the cave mouth as fast as she could. If she could just get to her cave. . .but she could already feel the tingling that came with the transformation.

Ivy darted out of the cave and flung herself around a corner and into a shadowed little nook just as she felt her scales changing back to skin and her wings folding into her back. Ivy curled into a ball, grateful that she was still wearing the dark Wingwatcher uniform she had worn on the day she touched the emerald.

Kinkajou burst out of the cave and looked around. Her gaze passed over Ivy’s hiding spot twice, but she didn’t see her. “Flicker?” Kinkajou called. “Flicker?” She picked up something off the ground and looked around for a few seconds more, then turned and walked down a tunnel, still shouting Ivy’s dragon name.

Ivy let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and looked around. No one was in the cave tunnel, so no one had seen her. She slid out of her hiding place carefully and walked all the way back to her cave. It took her much longer than it had when she was a dragon, especially since she kept having to duck out of the way whenever she saw someone.

Finally she walked into her cave. Sky was lying on his bed staring out the crack in the wall, flicking his tail nervously. Wren was pacing around the cave, muttering to herself. Sky saw her first.

“Ivy!” he yelled, bouncing up off his pile of leaves. “You’re not dead!”

“Did anyone see you?” Wren asked, hurrying over. “And why are you late? The sun set a few minutes ago! You need to be more careful.”

“No, no one saw me,” Ivy said. “Well, Kinkajou almost did, but I was able to hide in time. I’m sorry that I’m late, I wasn’t looking at the sun.”

“We’ve been having too many close calls,” Wren said. “Sunny almost saw the other day, and we know Fatespeaker knows. Now Kinkajou’s sure something’s up? I think we should leave tonight.”

“No!” Ivy and Sky cried together. “We can’t leave!” Ivy said. *I’ve only had about three days of dragon school, and I was unconscious for one of them!* “We don’t even know what Sunny did with the SandWing treasure yet!”

“That’s easy to find out,” Wren dismissed. “Sky can go down to Sunny’s cave now and ask her what happened to it. There’s no reason for her to lie to him; and even if it makes her suspicious, we’ll be gone tomorrow.”

“Come on, Wren,” Sky pleaded. “I finally have dragon friends, and I’m learning so much about other dragons! Can we please stay?”

Wren looked at him, and her expression looked like she was trying to figure out how to say something. “Do you think Kinkajou and Winter would still be friends with you if they knew the truth?”

Sky opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything. *Would they still be friends with us if they knew the truth?* Ivy wondered. She wanted to think that they would, but she’d only known them for a few days. *Maybe they’re totally different dragons on the inside.*

“I’ll be really careful,” Ivy promised. “Every day, an hour before sunset, I’ll come to our cave, so we can be completely sure that no one will see me.”

Wren still looked worried, so Ivy put her fingers on Wren’s arm. Wren looked at where they touched, and a faint blush crossed her cheeks. “Please, Wren,” Ivy begged.

Wren pulled away from Ivy and put a fist to her forehead, closing her eyes. She sighed. “All right. Against my better judgement, we can stay.”

“Yes!” Sky cheered, doing a little flip in the air.

Wren glared at him. “*If* you don’t draw any more attention to us, and you do exactly as I say to stay hidden. Sky, that means only speaking Dragon, and not acting like you know absolutely nothing about other dragons. Ivy, that means no more setting yourself on fire, and you have to hide under the blanket from dusk until dawn.”

Ivy and Sky nodded frantically. Ivy did not want to spend another night under the suffocating blanket, but if it meant she got to stay, she’d do anything.

Wren held up the blanket, and Ivy crawled underneath. The heat was just as stifling as she’d remembered, if not more so. The blanket weighed heavily on her, scratching painfully against her burns. *Oh,* Ivy realized. *My burns don’t magically go away when I become human again. They just move and shrink to adjust to my new form.*

 Ivy heard Sky tramping around, muffled by the blanket, and the rustling of leaves as he settled down. Then she heard talons clicking in the tunnels outside their cave as the rest of Jade Mountain settled down. Once, she thought she heard someone shouting “Flicker!” faintly, but she might have been imagining it. It felt like hours of lying under the blanket, trying to get to sleep. But Ivy was too wide awake to sleep, no matter how much she tried.

Eventually, she gave up, and pulled the blanket off herself. It wouldn’t hurt to go for a little walk, just to tire herself out, right? *Seriously, what are the odds that anyone sees me and thinks,* Wait, that’s Flicker! She turns into a human at night! I need to tell everyone immediately. *I mean, really.*

Ivy sat up slowly. Although she knew that she’d be fine, most likely Wren would make her stay under the blanket all night. She looked over at Sky and Wren. Sky was flopped halfway out of the bed, his wings splayed and his tail akimbo. He was taking up half the cave just by himself. Wren was lying by the edge of his wing. She looked asleep, and Ivy didn’t want to wake her up.

Ivy crept by her. She was almost at the door when she felt a hand grab her ankle with an iron grip. Ivy had to bite her lip to keep from shouting. She looked down and saw Wren glaring up at her. “Don’t you *dare*,” Wren hissed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ivy whispered back, trying to deny Wren’s accusation.

“I know you Ivy. You were planning to go for a little walk. Would you also like a sign that says all our secrets for anyone to read?”

Ivy rolled her eyes. She knew why Wren was paranoid, but it was still a little annoying. “Wren, I’m just going for a walk. No one will see me, and if they do, they’ll just think I’m Sky’s pet human or something.”

Wren sighed and let go of Ivy’s ankle. “Fine. But don’t blame me when you get eaten.”

“I won’t,” Ivy said cheerfully. “But you don’t have to worry about that, because no one will see me.” She waved at Wren and walked out of the cave.

Ivy walked along the tunnels, not really going anywhere. She kept to the edges of the tunnels, where the shadows were thickest, to appease Wren. She didn’t realize where she was headed until she saw the soft green glow of Winter’s cave. Somehow, she had made it all the way down there in the dark, without tripping over anything. She was about to turn back when she heard voices speaking in hushed tones. Ivy wanted to leave whoever was speaking to their privacy, but curiosity got the better of her. She crept into the cave and positioned herself behind one of the stalagmites, one of the few areas where luminescent moss didn’t grow and where she could hear everything the voices said, even if she couldn’t see who they were.

“She is a little strange,” someone said. Ivy instantly recognized it as Winter. She gave a little jump when she heard him, even though it was only logical that Winter was in his own cave. *Are they talking about me?* Ivy worried, then brushed off. Those were Wren’s thoughts, not her’s.

“Yeah,” another familiar voice said. *Why would Kinkajou be here?* Ivy wondered. *Didn’t Winter say he hadn’t shown this place to anyone else?* “She left right in the middle of talking to me. And she left her pouch behind.”

*They* are *talking about me,* Ivy realized. *And I left my pouch behind! It must not have shifted with me. Maybe they read the scroll and they figured it out!* Ivy shook herself mentally. *Come on, Ivy. What are the odds that they read a scroll that is probably outdated and think that it’s true? Just keep listening.*

“Why would she do that?” Winter asked.

“I don’t know,” Kinkajou said. “But she was running *really* fast. She might’ve dropped it accidentally. But I don’t know why she was going so fast. I’m not *that* scary.”

Winter snorted. “You’re not scary at all, Kinkajou. And you said she was laughing and having fun until she just decided to run?”

“Yeah. I was talking about the NightWing Exodus and she seemed really interested, and suddenly she just ran.”

“Hmm,” Winter said.

“And that’s not even the most interesting part,” Kinkajou said. There was the sound of paper rustling. “Read this.” *Oh no,* Ivy thought. *Wren was right, and now Kinkajou knows.*

There was some more paper rustling, and then Winter said “Hmm,” again, sounding interested. Ivy edged to the side of the stalagmite, trying to see his expression, but his back was to her, and Kinkajou was angled slightly away from Ivy’s hiding place, so she couldn’t see her expression that well either. But from what she could see, Kinkajou looked like she was trying very hard not to blurt something out but wanted to build up momentum for her big reveal.

“Isn’t it *interesting*,” Kinkajou said, raising an eyebrow conspiratorially.

“Yes,” Winter admitted. “Especially the last part.” He paused, then whispered, “Do you think Flicker’s actually a scavenger enchanted by this animus spell?”

Ivy’s heart stopped. *They know, they know, they know,* her mind sang, and this time, there was no voice that tried to convince her otherwise.

“Seriously, Winter?” Kinkajou asked. “You’re so obsessed with scavengers; lay it off a little, will you? There’s no way a *scavenger* would be smart enough to pose as a dragon. Now stop interrupting my big dramatic reveal.”

Ivy kept holding her breath. Would Winter buy it?

“I am not *obsessed*!” Winter argued. He sighed. “You’re probably right. Scavengers are smart, but not nearly smart enough to pose as a dragon.”

“They’re just hairless sloths,” Kinkajou muttered. “Anyway, that’s not what I wanted you to notice. I wanted you to notice this,” she pointed at a spot on the scroll.

Winter snorted. “*The Stone of Truth*? That’s a mouthful.”

“That’s what I thought too. But then I saw this.” Kinkajou reached into Ivy’s pouch and pulled out the rock that had blocked part of the scroll.

*Could that be the* Stone of Truth*?* Ivy wondered. *Tucked away inside a scroll for centuries? Surely not. Someone* must *have read the scroll before me. Someone must have put it in there as a practical joke.*

“Do you intend for me to think that a long-lost animus-touched object was just hidden inside a scroll at Jade Academy?” Winter asked. “Seriously, Kinkajou? Did you actually think I’d believe that?”

“I know, I know.” Kinkajou said. “It seems so outlandish. But watch this.” She took a deep breath, and said to the stone, “My name is Kinkajou.”

The stone lit up blue.

Ivy was shocked. She’d kind of been expecting it, but it was still bewildering. What were the odds that Ivy would come in contact with *two* animus-touched objects, and not just enchanted by any animus dragons, but by SkyWing animus dragons, who apparently had only enchanted a few things.

“May I see it?” Winter asked, holding out a talon. Kinkajou gave it to him, and he held it up to his face. “Flicker is actually a scavenger.”

In the millisecond before the stone lit up, several thoughts raced through Ivy’s head. All of them were telling her to run, to wake up Wren and Sky and make them fly all the way back to Hope, preferably before Kinkajou and Winter came to investigate. But then the stone lit up red.

*Huh?* Ivy was confused. She was glad that the stone had said Winter had lied, but why? He had actually told the truth. *Wait. The spell on the emerald said sunset and sunrise, but the spell seems to be giving me as much leeway as possible. Sometimes I transform a little late, and sometimes a little early. Maybe the spell is. . .helping me? I don’t know the specifics of animus magic, but maybe there are loopholes that I can squeeze through? But the spell on the stone was pretty specific, so I shouldn’t have been able to get away with it.* Ivy thought for a minute. *Maybe it’s because they didn’t say my real name. Maybe there’s an actual SkyWing named Flicker, and the stone just decided to assume that Winter meant that Flicker. Maybe it’s because scavengers are actually called humans.* That was a lot of maybes, but since it worked, Ivy wouldn’t question it.

Kinkajou rolled her eyes. “See? Now I have some *sensible* questions of my own.” She grabbed the stone out of Winter’s grip. “Flicker is an animus.” The stone lit up red again, which did not surprise Ivy in the least, although it would have been nice if the animus who enchanted the emerald, Topaz, had included animus magic in his little spell.

“How is that a sensible question?” Winter asked. “There hasn’t been a SkyWing animus in centuries, what makes you think Flicker’s one?”

“Maybe she’s a hybrid,” Kinkajou retorted. She turned back to the stone. “Flicker is a hybrid.” Red light washed over Kinkajou, making her look very slightly evil. She frowned. “Flicker is a normal dragon.” The stone lit up blue. Kinkajou sighed. “I guess she can’t be my sidekick then. Ooh, maybe she’ll annoy Anemone enough for her to take off her bracelet and enchant Flicker to have some sort of curse! That would be interesting.”

Winter tilted his head at the stone, apparently ignoring Kinkajou. “But Flicker can’t be normal. She has seizures.”

“Huh.” Kinkajou said. “I forgot about that. Flicker has seizures,”  she said to the stone, and more red light lit the cavern. Ivy’s eyes were starting to hurt. “Why would she lie about that?”

“Maybe she just wanted an excuse to share a cave with her brother.” Winter said. He yawned. “I am going to go back to our cave.” He reached for the stone, but Kinkajou pulled it back.

“Oh, no you don’t. I have a feeling I let you have this, you’re going to keep me up all night by asking the stone about scavengers, and I want to get a decent nights’ sleep.”

Winter frowned. “Fine. Let’s go.” He walked briskly out of the cave, and Kinkajou dropped both the scroll and the stone back into Ivy’s pouch before hurrying after him.

Ivy stayed where she was for a few minutes, thinking. She knew Winter and Kinkajou were going to be even more dubious about her now, and she debated whether or not she should go to their cave and try to steal back the stone. But it was too risky, and when they realized it was missing, their suspicions would be pointed at Ivy. She also thought about telling Wren. But she knew that Wren would immediately make them leave, and Ivy wasn’t ready to leave Jade Mountain yet. As long as she was careful, they would be fine.

She walked all the way back to her cave, being extra careful this time around. It was uphill going back, and very annoying to have to climb over boulders she could easily step over as a dragon and leap over fissures that were nearly invisible in the darkness.

Eventually, she was standing in the mouth of the cave. Sky was still splayed across the cave, and Wren was curled up next to his side. Ivy didn’t think she was tired, though. If anything, she was even more wide-awake than she had been before she took her walk. *Why not tempt fate a little more tonight,* Ivy thought ruefully as she walked away from the cave.

This time she knew where she wanted to go. She walked along the tunnels leisurely, keeping an eye out for dragons. Soon she was in the mouth of a cave that was open to the night, letting the light of the moons and stars in. Once Ivy was sure that no dragons were nearby, she climbed up onto a boulder and sat facing the opening of the cave, appreciating the view.

The sky was the color of fresh ink, dotted with stars that shimmered and sparkled, diamonds in the night. The trees and mountains reached up from the ground like dark fingers, blotting out the stars they touched. One of the moons was almost full, and the other two were shining crescent claws in the sky. Crickets chirped and buzzed, singing a melody to the stars. The air was fresh and cool, a faint breeze bringing a vague scent of water and earth and smoke.

Ivy sighed. Everywhere on Jade Mountain was so beautiful, and it wasn’t fair that she had to be so careful to stay hidden. *Well, almost everywhere,* Ivy realized with a stab of guilt as she saw the charred and twisted remains of the forest she had set aflame.

She sat there, taking in the scene, until the moons sank beyond the mountains in the distance, and the crickets slowly ended their song, and the sky turned a shade of pale rose, and the sun appeared on the horizon casting gold across the ground and giving Ivy back her scales and wings and claws.

Once Ivy was completely dragon again, she moved for the first time in hours, stretching and flexing her sleeping muscles. She had been thinking of excuses to give Winter and Kinkajou when they inevitably questioned her, and had been practicing the right expressions to match. It felt that each excuse and lie was burying Ivy deeper and deeper, even though she couldn’t possibly tell her new dragon friends the truth.

“More interrogation,” Ivy muttered to herself as she walked down to the prey center. “Hooray.”

### **Chapter 7**

Ivy was finishing her third strawberry when Winter came into the prey center. *Breathe,* she told herself. *He doesn’t know that I know.* “Oh no!” she said as he came over to her. “I’m turning into a dragonet!”

He frowned at her. “That’s not funny.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I thought it was.” Ivy tried to gauge whether he was madder at her than he’d been yesterday or not. “Hey, I’m missing my pouch, do you know where it is?” Better to get the inevitable questions out of the way before Wren and Sky came down.

“Kinkajou has it,” Winter answered. He narrowed his eyes at her. “She said you dropped it when you left the prey cave in such a hurry last night.”

*Don’t immediately start giving excuses, then he’ll know something’s up.* “Yes, I did. May I have it back?”

“Why did you leave the prey center so quickly last night?” Winter asked. “Was there an explosion I didn’t know about? Did you have a vision? Did you turn into a scavenger?”

*Stay calm.* Apparently, just because the stone said he was wrong, didn’t mean Winter was giving up on his scavenger theory. “Really? That’s the best you can come up with? That I turn into a scavenger? Come on Winter, you’re smarter than that. What happened was I just remembered that I had to do something, and I was late.” *Generic excuse, maybe he’ll buy it.*

“What exactly were you late for?” Winter questioned.

“My mother had left a few things behind in the Sky Kingdom, and the queen wanted to get them to me.”

“Why didn’t Sky get them? What’s the queen’s name?”

“Sky didn’t get them because I didn’t tell him about it, and the queen’s name is Ruby. Duh.” Ivy was grateful that Wren had figured that out and included it in her lessons.

“Why didn’t you tell Sky? He’s your brother isn’t he?” Winter’s second question seemed to be less rhetorical and more like he was questioning if he was.

“I didn’t tell Sky because my brother gets emotional sometimes, and he isn’t very good at dealing with serious things.” That, at least, was true.

“But didn’t you say he helped you with your seizures?” Winter pounced. “That doesn’t seem like something you would trust to someone who can’t deal with picking up his mother’s things, if you even get seizures.”

Ivy looked down at her talons, trying to rearrange her expression into one of guilt. “I don’t actually get seizures. I was just nervous about sharing a cave with a strange dragon that I didn’t know. If you want, I can explain to Sunny and she’ll split Sky and me up into separate caves. *Please don’t take me up on that.* It would be impossible to hide her transformations from a clawmate.

“Oh,” Winter said, leaning back for a moment. “That’s fine, you don’t have to do that.” Then his expression went back to angry and he said, “Kinkajou and I looked through your pouch.”

“Why?” Ivy asked. “I mean, I guess I kind of deserved it, running away like that, but I wish you would’ve asked first.”

“Because you wanted to hide something from us?”

“No, all I have in there is a scroll. Because you wouldn’t like it if I went through your cave, even though you probably have nothing incriminating in there.”

“Are you sure there’s nothing else in the scroll? No animus-touched objects or anything?”

*You would make a terrible interrogator, Winter,* Ivy thought absentmindedly. *Sure the furious face is terrifying, but you betray way too much information.* “What do you mean, animus-touched objects? I mean, there was this stone that blocked part of the scroll. Wait, are you saying that stone was animus-touched? No way.”

“That stone was the Stone of Truth.” Winter said.

Ivy dropped her jaw and tried to make her eyes wide but not too wide. “That’s amazing. I can’t believe I found a lost enchanted stone in that scroll.”

“Why did you want that particular scroll?” Winter asked. “Did you know that the stone was inside it?”

“No, I just wanted to learn more about my tribe’s animus history. My mother didn’t tell me stuff, remember? Maybe we should give the stone to Sunny. If she can manage an entire school, I think she can handle one little stone.”

“Why not keep it?” Winter hedged. “Wouldn’t you like to keep it, since you found it? Or at least give it to your queen?”

“I don’t want to keep something like that. It doesn’t belong to me. And I probably should send it to Queen Ruby, since technically it belongs to her tribe.”

Winter nodded. “All right. But I would like to keep it for a few more days, if that’s alright.”

Ivy couldn’t say no without sounding suspicious. “Okay.” She turned to a patch of air next to Winter and asked, “Is that alright with you, Kinkajou?”

She waited for a few seconds until a sheepish Kinkajou came into view as purple and yellow spilled across her scales. “Yes, that’s fine. How did you know I was there?”

“Oh, please. I don’t think it is physically possible for you to miss out on any action, even if it’s just some pointless questioning.”

“That’s true,” Kinkajou said brightly, glowing pink spots appearing along her scales. Ivy thought she could just watch Kinkajou change colors all day without getting bored. “Sorry for spying.”

“It’s fine,” Ivy said, waving a talon. She picked up a guava and tossed it to Kinkajou before grabbing another strawberry for herself.

“I thought you said that you ate meat too,” Winter said. “Are you actually a vegetarian?”

Ivy grimaced. “No, I’m not, I just like cooked meat much better than raw and, I’m, um, a little bit nervous to use my fire again. I don’t want to set myself on fire *again*, and give you another excuse to laugh at me.

Winter frowned. “Have you ever set yourself on fire before, or is this something you just did at Jade Mountain?”

Ivy debated how to answer him for a moment. If she told him only since Jade Mountain, he would probably get even more suspicious. If she lied, and told him she’d set herself on fire before, he would probably be a bit less suspicious of that particular mistake.

“No, I’ve set myself on fire a few times before. My mother just put out the fires fairly quickly, before I got any bad burns, and I healed pretty quickly. I’ve never really had very good control over my fire.”

Kinkajou laughed. “Is that a SkyWing thing, or just a Flicker thing?”

“Just a Flicker thing,” Sky said as he came into the prey cave and stood beside Ivy. “Hey, can I borrow Flicker for a minute?”

“Go right ahead,” Winter said, flicking his tail. Kinkajou waved, and Sky grabbed Ivy’s forearm and dragged her out of the prey center and into a cave nearby. Ivy noticed that Wren was glaring daggers at her.

“What?” she hissed once they were alone.

“I followed you last night,” Wren said. “You found an enchanted object that could betray all our secrets, and then you let it fall into Kinkajou’s talons? What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t mean to!” Ivy protested. “And I didn’t know it was animus-touched until just last night. Plus, it didn’t show Kinkajou and Winter the truth, it lied.”

“I was wondering about that. The only explanation I could come up with was that the emerald made you an animus too, and you unknowingly enchanted it to lie.” Wren looked around and picked up a pebble. “Try to enchant this to turn into a grape.”

“Um, okay.” Ivy held the pebble up to her eye, and imagined it as a small purple fruit. Nothing happened.

“Try saying ‘I enchant you to turn into a grape’,” Sky suggested.

Ivy concentrated on the pebble in her claws and closed her eyes. “I enchant you to turn into a grape.” She opened her eyes. Nothing had happened. “See? I’m not an animus.” She dropped the small rock. “What I think happened with the Stone of Truth is it decided to help me.”

“Explain,” Wren said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I think that the stone chose to leap through a loophole or something. Like, maybe there’s some perfectly normal SkyWing named Flicker in the world somewhere, and the stone decided to answer questions about her, because my name’s not Flicker.”

“That’s good.” Wren sighed. “But I still think we should leave immediately. They’re going to figure it out eventually.”

“No!” Ivy said. “You promised we could stay!”

“That was before *someone* found a magic truth stone and also a scroll that tells the exact wording of the spell on you. Winter and Kinkajou aren’t idiots; they’ll find out soon, especially if they talk to Fatespeaker.”

“Please, Wren?” Sky asked sweetly. “Can’t we please stay just a few more days?”

Wren sighed. “Fine. You can stay two more days. But you have to ask Sunny about the treasure right now, so that if anyone gets any closer to figuring it out, we can leave immediately, and never have to come back. That’s the best deal you’re going to get.”

“All right,” Ivy subsided. “Let’s go talk to Sunny.”

“This way,” Sky said, and led the way up a few tunnels and around three corners until they were standing at Sunny’s office. The small golden SandWing was bustling around, jotting things down on scrolls and occasionally staring out a small crack in the rock cave. She didn’t seem to notice the two dragons standing in her doorway, and Ivy had to clear her throat to get Sunny’s attention.

“Oh,” she said as she finally looked up. “I didn’t see you standing there. Is everything okay? Is there a problem?”

“No, uh, we just, um,” Sky stuttered trying to come up with the right words.

Wren rolled her eyes. “We wanted to know what you did with the treasure you took from the scavengers.”

“We wanted to know what you did with the treasure you took from the humans -scavengers,” Sky recited.

“Where did you hear about that?” Sunny asked. “I don’t think I told very many dragons about it.”

“We heard about it in class,” Ivy said smoothly. It disturbed her how easily lying was coming to her now. *I really am my father’s daughter,* she thought ruefully.

“Okay,” Sunny said. “Well, after I took it from them, I gave most of it to my mother, the queen of the SandWings, and I kept a little bit of it to pay for this school.”

“Oh.” That was a better answer than Ivy had hoped for. She was glad that Sunny had given the treasure back to the SandWings, and she was also happy that she’d kept enough of it to build Jade Academy. “That’s really unselfish.”

“Thank you,” Sunny replied with a smile that made Sky look a little dazzled. “Do you have any more questions for me?”

“No, thank you,” Sky said. He walked out the door and back down the tunnels to the prey cave, and Ivy followed him. They sat back down next to Winter and Kinkajou, and Sky passed some walnuts up to Wren.

“What did you talk about?” Winter asked.

“I um,” Ivy said, “I told him about last night, how I went to get the rest of our mother’s things.” She cast a look at Sky, who thankfully caught on quickly.

“I wish you had told me, Flicker,” Sky said.

“I know, I’m sorry. Next time I will.” Ivy realized a second too late that there definitely would not be a next time, so she shouldn’t have said that. “What classes do we have today?” Ivy asked.

“I think we have music with the Silver Winglet, and the Copper Winglet,” Kinkajou said. She looked over at the only other dragon in the cave, a green and gold RainWing sitting on the other side of the fruit pile. “Hey Boto!” she shouted at him. “Don’t we have music with your winglet today?”

Boto looked a little shocked to be spoken to. “Um, yes?”

“All right, thanks!” Kinkajou called. She turned back to Ivy. “We have music next. I can’t wait! We haven’t had music in two weeks, ever since Newt accidentally fell on all the instruments and broke them. I wish Qibli was still here, he’s *amazing* at drumming. Are you guys good at music?”

Music was one of the many things that Ivy wasn’t allowed to do in Valor, and hadn’t had time for in Hope. “I don’t think so,” Ivy said.

“Me neither,” Sky agreed. “But I still want to try.”

“Me too!” Ivy said. She had seen human instruments before, and wondered how dragons’ instruments were different. *Maybe their instruments are really different, or they have new ones I’ve never heard of.*

“Class should start right about. . .” Kinkajou paused tilting her head. “Now,” she said, a second before the gong rang.

Ivy laughed. “Impressive.”

“Let’s go!” Kinkajou shouted, and shot off out of the prey cave and along the tunnels. Sky ran after her, but Ivy hung back with Winter.

“Why did you ask me about a dozen questions about why I left in such a hurry last night, but you don’t ask Kinkajou why she dashes everywhere like she’s always late?” Ivy asked Winter. “I mean, I feel like you have a bias.”

Winter almost smiled. “I think I have a reason to be biased. You and your brother are *very* suspicious.”

“I get the feeling that almost everyone is suspicious to you,” Ivy joked. “I mean, if you can be wary of *Sky*, of all dragons. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“And that’s exactly what makes him suspicious!” Winter scoffed. “The fly he’s so unwilling to harm is obviously planning to take down Pyrrhia, and Sky should know that.”

Ivy laughed. Soon they were in the music cave. It was big, with a skylight in the roof, and was rounded in a way that looked designed to amplify music. There were at least ten other dragons in the cave, all of them banging and strumming various instruments. Ivy looked around through the chaos and saw Kinkajou enthusiastically shaking a tambourine and creating enough noise to be easily heard above the rest of the class, with Sky next to her hesitantly running his claws along a cello, creating a faint twanging that Ivy could barely hear over the racket of the rest of the cave. She could also see Sunny lying on a ledge above the class, her talons surreptitiously clamped over her ears. Ivy could understand why; the noise was deafening. But she could also almost hear a rhythm, a song in the sound, even though it seemed so disorganized.

Winter did not take an instrument, but walked over to the side of the cave and closed his eyes. Ivy was a little disheartened by his reluctance, but she walked over to the rack of instruments that hadn’t been claimed. There were only a few of them left, and she could see why no one had taken them. There were two strangely shaped pipes bound together that looked like it would fall apart the second anyone touched them, a cracked bowl strung over with fraying strings, and a small mallet next to a punctured drum.

Ivy was about to give up and join Winter on the side of the cave, when she saw a glint of bronze against the wall. She walked closer, and brushed the dust and grime off the familiar shape.

She dragged the large harp away from the wall and stood in front of it, hesitating. Ivy had seen one or two people playing the harp in Valor so she knew the theory, but she didn’t know much beyond that she should pluck strings, which was fairly obvious enough. Would everyone else notice that she was doing it wrong? But then Ivy saw an IceWing blowing fiercely into the wrong end of a pipe, and decided no one would notice, or care, if she got it wrong.

“Come on, Flicker!” Kinkajou shouted over the clamor of music, dancing towards Ivy while shaking her tambourine frantically. “Don’t be a scaredy scavenger!”

*That’s truer than you know,* Ivy thought. She hesitated, then ran her claws across the harp strings. A strange sound emerged from the instrument, high and low and in between all at the same time. Ivy wasn’t sure whether to wince or play it again.

She reached out again and just plucked one string on the left. It let out a deep resonance. Ivy pulled another string on the opposite side, then another, then another. Soon she was plucking strings all over the harp quickly, without following any particular pattern, until she was almost playing a melody, one that was fast and out of tune, but in harmony with the rest of the class. Ivy was fairly certain that anyone who had played the harp for longer than five seconds would cringe at her song, but she didn’t care.

“Go Flicker!” Kinkajou cheered and adjusted her shaking to match Ivy’s beat, but her pace just a tiny bit faster than her’s. Ivy accepted her challenge, and started playing even faster. Kinkajou increased her speed, and so did Ivy, her claws flying across the strings. After a few more changes in tempo, Kinkajou stopped trying to one-up her, and Ivy matched her pace back to her’s, and they played in sync for a while.

Then Ivy heard a frantic drumming playing to Ivy and Kinkajou’s music, but just a little bit faster. She looked up to see a SeaWing wildly pounding on the large set of drums across the cave, grinning at her. She smiled back at him and increased her pace to be swifter than his.

Kinkajou noticed what Ivy was doing and rattled her tambourine even faster. The SeaWing drummed faster, and another dragon realized what they were doing and started shaking his maracas to join the game. Soon another dragon joined in, and another, until the entire cave was playing along with the racing pace.

Sunny uncovered her ears to listen, and even Winter looked mildly interested. Ivy’s claws felt like they were going to fall off, but she kept playing faster and faster, until one of the strings on Ivy’s harp broke apart with an anguished *twang*.

Everyone immediately stopped at the grating sound, and Ivy looked up apologetically at Sunny. “Sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine,” Sunny said brightly. “We knew instruments were going to break when we made this cave.” A MudWing, who Ivy assumed was Newt, looked guiltily down at his talons. “You can keep playing if you want.”

But then the gong rang, and everyone in the cave streamed towards their next classes, except for Winter, Kinkajou and Sky, as usual. Winter pulled himself off the cave wall and groaned. “Next class we have is Herbs and Healing,” he said.

“I’m not a big fan of Herbs and Healing either,” Kinkajou confessed. “It’s about as boring as history.”

“It can’t be *that* bad,” Sky said. Ivy noticed that Wren looked interested about this idea of ‘Herbs and Healing’.

“It is,” Winter said. “It’s all humdrum lessons about veins and muscles and such. I’m guessing even that SkyWing who suggested it is deeply regretting it.”

“Who teaches it?” Ivy asked. “I’m guessing Fatespeaker, since she runs the hospital wing.”

“Yes, it’s Fatespeaker,” Winter confirmed. “Usually Clay manages both positions, but he’s helping at Queen Ruby’s palace, so it’s Fatespeaker for now.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Kinkajou said with an unusual lack of enthusiasm. She ran off down the tunnel, but she was going slowly enough that Ivy, Winter and Sky were almost able to keep up with her.

They entered a cave that looked a lot like the hospital cave, with light streaming through cracks in the walls and ceiling, and shelves lining the cave walls stocked with various bottles and potted plants. There were two posters on the wall, one of a MudWing with labeled bones, and one was of an IceWing and showed all the veins and muscle groups.

Fatespeaker was watering the plants when they came in, and turned around when she heard them sit down on boulders. “I know this is going to be boring,” she said, “but please at least try to pay attention. I’m not Webs.”

Then she started in on a lecture about wings and how they worked, occasionally gesturing towards the two diagrams. Fatespeaker’s voice was easier to listen to than Webs, but Ivy still found herself drifting, and stared out one of the cracks in the cave wall at the cheerful blue sky poking through the masses of puffy white clouds. Ivy saw out of the corners of her eye that Winter was also gazing absently out at the sky, and Kinkajou fiddling with her claws, and Sky stared at Fatespeaker with drooping eyelids. Wren seemed to be the only one that was actually paying attention, which Ivy found ironic. Leave it to Wren to be the only one listening to a dragon anatomy lesson in a class full of dragons.

Finally the gong rang twice, and Kinkajou jumped up excitedly, while Sky blinked alarmedly. “Thank you for not falling asleep,” Fatespeaker said. “I’ll see you again in a day or two.”

“Bye!” Kinkajou said, waving as Fatespeaker left the cave. Kinkajou glanced at the window and then suddenly grabbed Ivy’s forearm. “I forgot! There’s something I wanted to show you!”

“Really?” Ivy asked, trying to pull free of Kinkajou’s iron grip. “I thought you’d have shown me all of Jade Mountain by now?”

“This isn’t at Jade Mountain!” Kinkajou said. “It’s at Onyx Mountain, and it’s this really cool abandoned monument or something, and I only found it a few days ago and it’s super weird and mysterious and hidden and did I mention how cool it is? Maybe it’s the start of a new prophecy! That sounds plausible, right? Plus, I haven’t shown you *all* of Jade Mountain. I haven’t shown you Stonemover’s cave yet, although no one really goes there because he’s super boring and moans about how pathetic he is a lot and so yeah, let’s go already!” She tugged on Ivy’s arm, dragging her with impressive strength towards the mouth of the cave.

“For once, I agree with Kinkajou,” Winter said regally. “Not about the prophecy part, to be clear. I haven’t seen this ‘abandoned monument’ yet, but I sincerely doubt that an old hunk of rock or whatever it is can be the start of a prophecy. However, I do agree that Kinkajou should tell us about anything that she thinks could be important, for example, turning Darkstalker into a dragonet.”

“What do you mean for once?” Kinkajou yelped. “I have great ideas all the time that you should listen to, thank you very much. Moon could have *totally* had a vision about this monument, and maybe she’s off on an adventure with Qibli and Tsunami and Turtle *right now* to save the world again!” Kinkajou frowned. “Actually, I don’t like the sound of that. Why would she want Turtle with her on a mission to save the world and not me? I’m great at saving the world! Much better than mopey Turtle.”

“What you were *supposed* to say,” Winter said icily, “is ‘I’m sorry Winter for not telling you that I turned Darkstalker into a RainWing dragonet. From now on, I promise to tell my friends everything.’”

*Was that a jab at me?* Ivy wondered. *Is he trying to hint that I should tell him and Kinkajou everything about me?*

“I didn’t turn him into a RainWing dragonet!” Kinkajou protested. “I turned him into half RainWing, half NightWing hybrid.”

“Oh, much better,” Winter said sarcastically. Ivy could see him building up into an argument about Darkstalker, and she stepped between him and Kinkajou before their heated conversation could turn into one like the one on her first day at Jade Academy.

“I would like to see this mysterious monument, if you don’t mind,” Ivy said, putting a talon on Winter and Kinkajou’s shoulders, in case either of them decided to leap at the other.

“Sure!” Kinkajou said. “Do you two want to come too?” she asked Winter and Sky, who had been hanging back in a corner.

“Okay,” Sky said.

“Yes,” Winter grumbled after a seconds’ consideration. He turned to Ivy. “Why do you always side with Kinkajou?”

“Because Kinkajou’s always right,” Ivy answered with a blinding smile, earning her laughter from Kinkajou and Sky.

Winter glared at her. “Let’s just go already,” he growled.

“All right!” Kinkajou shouted, and bolted off down the tunnels. Sky ran after her, flapping his wings to try to keep up.

Ivy hung back, not wanting to strain her legs and wings to even attempt to keep up. “Do you know the way to Onyx Mountain?” she asked Winter.

“Yes,” he said. “But, just so you know, there’s a forest on it, so no setting anything on fire.”

Ivy groaned. “I made a deal with Kinkajou that she wouldn’t make any jokes about it. Is there any chance I can make the same pact with you?”

Winter snorted. “Not a chance. Qibli kept reminding me that I got set on fire by Peril, so now that I finally have a chance to bug someone else about something, I’m not giving it up.”

“Fine,” Ivy said. “As long as you never tell Qibli about me setting myself on fire. If he teased you about getting set on fire by someone else, I can’t imagine how much he’d joke about *me*.”

“We have a deal,” Winter said. “Now, let’s go to Onyx Mountain.”

He led the way down the tunnels and leapt through an opening into the sky. Ivy had been a little worried that her wings wouldn’t work as well after she set them on fire, but they still felt fine when she launched herself into the sky after him.

Ivy had to squint to see anything, as the clouds covering the sky seemed to reflect the sunshine instead of blocking it, and Winter’s scales were shining in the light, like he was a burst of sunlight himself. She almost crashed into a cliff, and as Ivy righted herself she was glad Winter had taken the lead. She didn’t need any more jokes to be made at her expense.

After a few minutes of flying, they landed on a small mountain smothered in tall trees. Kinkajou was pacing in front of the forest, and Sky was lying on the ground next to her, looking exhausted.

“Finally!” Kinkajou shouted, making Sky’s head pop up in alarm. “What took you so long? I’ve been waiting for you before I showed Sky the weird monument thing, but I didn’t know you’d take so long!”

“Kinkajou,” Sky gasped, “are you *sure* you’re not a SkyWing? I’ve never seen any dragon fly so *fast*. And you’re not even tired! You must have some kind of superpower or something.”

“Thank you,” Kinkajou said, a few spots of purple appearing on her scales. “But really, let’s go!”

“Can we go at the pace of normal dragons?” Ivy pleaded. “You’re probably used to flying in forests, but we’re not. Can you at least go slow for a little while?”

“Fiiiiiiiine,” Kinkajou said. Sky picked himself up with a groan, and then the four of them walked into the snarl of trees.

It was dark under the dense canopy, and there wasn’t a lot of space to squeeze through in between the trunks. The forest floor was littered with twisted roots and prickly shrubs, and Ivy accidentally put her foot in a thorn bush when she wasn’t looking down. The forest was also full of noises, and Ivy could only recognize some of the sounds.

Sky jumped when an owl let out a particularly loud hoot, and Winter chuckled. “Even your scavenger’s not this jumpy.”

“I find that remark deeply offensive,” Wren said in Human from Sky’s back. “Even though it is true.”

“Am I the only dragon who thinks this forest is creepy?” Sky protested. “Because it is. Super creepy.”

“Come on guys!” Kinkajou said. “We’re almost there!”

“What’s that sound?” Ivy asked. She could hear a rushing sound, like a thousand librarians telling her to shush all at once.

“All *I* can hear is far too many animals making far too many loud noises,” Winter said haughtily. “And IceWings have *much* better ears than all the other tribes.”

“Yes, yes, IceWings are amazing,” Ivy said. “Well, I hear something, so I’m going to check it out.”

She tilted her head to listen to the sound and try to pinpoint where it was coming from. She shoved her way through a wall of thick bushes and started walking deeper into the woods. Ivy heard Winter groan behind her and start following, and she allowed herself a small smile.

“I don’t understand why I’m doing this,” Winter grumbled as he pushed through the bushes too. Ivy paused, letting him catch up with her.

“Hang on,” Kinkajou said, and Ivy saw her turn and look around through the dense forest. “I think I’ve been going the wrong way.”

“Seriously?” Sky asked, brushing a spiderweb off his face. “We’ve been hiking in the wrong direction?”

“I think Flicker accidentally found the right trail,” Kinkajou said. Then there were crashing and rustling sounds, and then Kinkajou tumbled to the ground on the other side of the bush wall, shaking leaves off her wings with a big smile. “That was fun!”

“Wait for me!” Sky said, and then there were some thrashing noises, and then he popped out of the shrubbery too. “That *was* fun!”

“No it was not,” Wren argued, shaking leaves and twigs out of her hair. “Unless your definition of ‘fun’ is getting wacked in the face with sticks and showered in leaves.”

“You two are very strange,” Winter said, shaking his head. “Do you know which way to go now, Kinkajou?”

“Um,” Kinkajou said, getting up and looking around. “I think so? Well, maybe. Kind of? Actually. . .no.”

“So we’re lost then,” Winter said. He put a talon to his forehead. “Can we ever go anywhere or do anything without getting set on fire, or something exploding, or a giant evil villain rising from the ground to take over the continent, or getting lost in the woods?”

“How about we follow the sound I heard?” Ivy suggested. “And even if that just makes us more lost, it’s a small mountain, and if we keep going in one direction, we’ll eventually just end up at the edge. But for now, let’s just try to find whatever’s making that sound. Deal?”

Winter pricked his ears. “All right, now I hear it. It just sounds like a waterfall, but whatever.”

Ivy led the way through the thick tangle, following the sound. After a few minutes of walking, a drop of water fell from the dense canopy of branches above them and landed on Ivy’s snout. Then another splashed on her wing, and another on her back.

She looked up and noticed that there was the sound of heavy rainfall above the treetops. She must have been paying too much attention to the waterfall and not tripping that she had missed the coming storm.

Now that Ivy had acknowledged the rain, it seemed to all fall from the canopy at once, drenching Ivy and pelting her with bits of sticks and leaves.

Winter glared at Kinkajou through the pouring rain. “Now it’s raining. Who’s great idea was it to come here in the first place?”

“Come on guys, it’s not *that* bad,” Kinkajou said. She lifted her face towards the canopy and squinted. “It’s just a little bit of water, no big deal.”

“No big deal,” Winter muttered. “Only a *RainWing* would say something like that about something so completely and obviously horrible.”

“Hey!” Kinkajou yelped.

“Everybody, calm down,” Ivy said. “We’ve still got a lot more walking to do. It’ll take even longer if we fight.”

“Fine,” Winter grumbled, and let Ivy take the lead.

It took longer to push their way through the forest in the rain, since they all kept slipping on newly formed mud puddles and soaked moss, plus Ivy kept having to pause and make sure she was listening to the waterfall and not the downpour.

Finally, they found what was making the sound. It was a waterfall, so Winter was right. The waterfall crashed down into a flowing river a little ways away. The river gushed swiftly until it came to multiple thick trees that had fallen in the river’s path, halting it to almost a trickle beyond the dam that gurgled into a long, deep canyon then ended abruptly. The river roared and churned at this indignity and ripped at the fallen trees and the surrounding shore, trying to find a place to go.

“Wow,” Kinkajou breathed, staring at the river. Sky echoed her, and even Winter looked mildly impressed.

Ivy was astounded too, but she was also worried. And as she kept staring at the river, she felt the strange terror rise. What was she so instinctively afraid of?

Then she noticed how much water was pouring into the river, water that had nowhere to go, water that would be an extremely powerful force if it was released. Then she saw how fragile the fallen trees really were, how many cracks were already in them. Then she realized that if they needed to fly away all of a sudden, they wouldn’t be able to without wasting valuable time breaking sticks and tree branches to open a space big enough for them to use their wings.

Ivy saw Wren come to the same conclusion and the two of them looked at each other in alarm while Winter, Kinkajou and Sky stared obliviously at the river.

*The dam won’t break,* Ivy tried to assure herself. *What are the odds that it’ll break right now, while we’re here?* The odds were pretty low. If Ivy were by herself, before she’d come to Jade Mountain, she wouldn’t be so worried. But trouble followed the Jade Winglet around like a shadow, and the odds always dipped far below their favor.

“I think we should go,” Ivy said.

“Why?” Kinkajou asked. “It’s so pretty and terrifying but mostly pretty! I wish Moon were here to see this!”

“Because-” Ivy said, but she was interrupted by a cracking sound louder than the loudest thunder she had ever heard. All five of them turned to the river in unison to see fissures spreading across the wall of trees. For a second, it looked like it might hold. Then, with another noise that sounded like an explosion, the dam broke, and like a vengeful tsunami, all the water came rushing towards them.

### **Chapter 8**

“RUN!” Ivy shouted, and dashed away from the enormous onslaught of water. The trees pressed in on her, making nearly impossible to run, let alone fly. Winter, Kinkajou and Sky all ran with her, but the river was gaining.

The water smashed into Ivy, nearly bashing her onto the ground before a strong current lifted her up and tossed her around within the wave. Branches and large stones swirled around inside the water, smacking into her.

Ivy struggled to the surface, taking a deep breath and fought to keep her head above the raging water. Next to her, Winter, Kinkajou and Sky all broke the surface, all striving to keep their heads above water too.

“Grab onto something,” Ivy choked, grabbing a sturdy-looking tree that was rooted to the cliff. She stopped surging forward with the river, but the water yanked at her, trying to get her to let go.

Kinkajou and Sky both latched onto a craggy stone that stood against the water and pulled themselves out of the water onto it. Winter reached for another tree that was growing out of the cliff, but before he could get to it, a stone hurtled through the water and conked him in the head. He slumped, and sank, being dragged along swiftly with the current.

“Winter!” Ivy shouted, and lunged for him, keeping one talon firmly wrapped around the tree. She just barely grabbed him and hung on, stretched between Winter’s weight and the tree hanging over the furious water.

The tree bowed over the river, it’s branches touching the water and its leaves being ripped off with the force of the tide. There was a sharp cracking sound. *Oh no,* Ivy had time to think before the tree snapped in half, and she was dragged along with the racing current.

She scrambled along the side of the cliff for anything she could grab hold of. It was even harder to keep her head above water with an unconscious Winter she had to keep above the water too. The river roared towards the end of the long gorge, where a forbidding rock face loomed, ready to crush them. Ivy tried to swim away, but the water was much stronger than her.

“Flicker!” Kinkajou shouted, and a long branch smacked down next to her. Ivy didn’t need further instruction and grabbed the branch, holding it as tightly as she could. On the other end, Kinkajou and Sky held on too, bracing themselves against a large rock.

Ivy pulled herself along the branch, fighting the water the whole way. Finally she reached the rock Sky and Kinkajou were standing on, and pushed herself and Winter up onto it with their help.

Kinkajou and Sky fell back and caught their breath. Ivy wanted to lie down too, but instead she leaned over Winter, shaking him and pounding his chest, trying to remember her lessons on what to do to get water out of someone’s lungs, even though the same theory probably didn’t apply to dragons.

After a minute of alternately shaking and pounding Winter, he sat up suddenly and started coughing up water. Ivy slumped back in relief. “You’re alright!” she said.

“What happened?” Winter rasped. “I remember hiking, and then there was a flood, and then something hit me?”

“Yes,” Ivy said, pointing towards the water below them. In the minute she had spent trying to revive Winter, the water had calmed down, although there were still little whirlpools and rapids scattered here and there. “We kind of made a new river.”

“How did I pull myself out of the water if I was unconscious?” Winter asked.

“*You* didn’t pull yourself out of the water,” Ivy said, a little offended. “You’re not that amazing. *I* did.”

“You?” Winter scoffed. “No way.”

Now Ivy was definitely offended, “Seriously, Winter,” she started, but Kinkajou beat her to it.

“Maybe Flicker should have left you in the river if you were going to tell her there’s no way she could have saved you. If *I* almost drowned and someone saved me, I would not immediately start insulting them. Come on, Winter.”

“You’re right,” Winter conceded. “I apologize, Flicker. I was disoriented.”

“You must have hit your head harder than I thought,” Ivy said. Wren chuckled, and Ivy leaned closer to peer at the bump that was starting to push up on Winter’s forehead. “I’m being serious, actually. That looks pretty bad. We should go back to Jade Mountain and get that checked out.”

“You should probably get looked at too,” Sky said, gesturing towards Ivy. She realized that she was covered in new bruises and scratches that she hadn’t noticed, and her burns were starting to ache from the power washing.

Ivy sighed. “All right,” she turned back to Winter. “Are you okay to fly?”

Winter stood up slowly, extending his wings and flapping them experimentally. “I think so.”

“I hope we don’t find out you’re not while flying,” Ivy said. “Are you sure?” Winter nodded, and then Ivy launched herself into the air, carefully avoiding the trees. Winter, Kinkajou and Sky followed her, and the four of them squeezed through the dense canopy of branches and into the sky.

There was even more rain above the forest, and it soaked Ivy as thoroughly as the raging flood had. The wind was much stronger too, whipping the dragons around in the storm and disrupting their course.

*How did the storm get here so quickly?* Ivy wondered as she struggled towards Jade Mountain. But she couldn’t devote any of her attention to the question, as all of her energy was spent just trying to stay aloft. It was much harder flying in a storm than in calm skies, and Ivy had to pay attention to the shifting wind currents and shaking water off her wings.

As they flew closer to Jade Mountain, Ivy could see three figures waiting outside the caves, one with golden scales that shone even in the storm, and two the color of shadows that she could barely see through the rain. *Uh oh,* Ivy thought as she landed in front of the dragons.

“Where have you been?” Sunny asked. “This storm came out of nowhere, we were so worried!”

“Why do you look so banged up?” Fatespeaker demanded, stepping towards Ivy and Winter. “I just finished healing you from all your burns!”

“Um,” Ivy said, shuffling her talons. “There was kind of a flash flood?”

“How?” Starflight asked. “There hasn’t been enough water for there to be any kind of overflow, much less an entire flood, even with this storm.”

“We were on Onyx Mountain,” Kinkajou said. “There was this kind of dam blocking the water, and then it just exploded, and then there was this huge wave and then we nearly died again! It was so awesome!”

“This is why you shouldn’t leave Jade Mountain,” Fatespeaker chastised. “Because then you get set on fire or murdered or drowned! Didn’t you listen to my lesson?”

“Isn’t Onyx Mountain technically part of Jade Academy?” Winter interjected. “Haven’t you been talking about expanding part of the school to the forest over there?”

Fatespeaker glared at Winter. “Well, it isn’t a part of the school *yet*, wise guy. So, you did actually leave Jade Academy to have your little adventure.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t make a school on Onyx Mountain,” Sunny said. “If there’s one flood, then there’s bound to be another. Maybe we shouldn’t risk it.”

“I still don’t understand how there could have been a flood,” Starflight fretted. “We checked on the river on Onyx Mountain just a few days ago, and it was low then. If you factor in the days of no rain, then there’s no way there could have been a flood, even with a dam blocking most of the water, and this freak storm. It’s just not possible.”

Ivy trusted Starflight, and she also trusted the instincts that were telling her the flood was strange, as was the storm that was raging as they talked.

“We can figure out how it happened later,” Fatespeaker said. “Right now, Winter looks like he has a pretty bad bump on his head, and Flicker has dozens of cuts and bruises all over her, and Kinkajou and Sky look a little worse for the wear too. Plus, it’s raining, so let’s go to the healing center and discuss this later.”

“You’re right,” Sunny said. “All of you, inside, now.”

Ivy gladly followed Sunny’s orders, and walked through the entrance into the caves. It was much drier under the mountain, and sheltered from the screaming wind. Everyone else followed her, and Fatespeaker led the way towards the healing cave, dripping water as she went.

When they got to the healing cave, Fatespeaker walked over to two of the raised platforms and waved for them to lay down. Ivy compiled easily, and Winter did too, after a moment's hesitation. Fatespeaker fussed over them, applying bandages and salves while Kinkajou, Sky and Wren watched, and Sunny and Starflight left.

Finally, when all of Ivy’s new cuts and scrapes were covered with the glistening ointment, and Winter’s head was wrapped with a white bandage, Fatespeaker stood back, satisfied. “There. Now, could you please try to not get hurt for a while? You’re burning through all my supplies.”

Winter sat up, but Fatespeaker gently pushed him back down. “Oh no you don’t,” she said. “You’re staying here until I say you can leave.”

“Fine,” Winter grumbled.

“Can we stay too?” Sky asked.

“Sure,” Fatespeaker said. She washed her talons off in a bowl of water and walked over to a small desk and unfurled a scroll.

The rest of them stared at each other awkwardly for a moment, then a pale greenish blue RainWing walked into the cave. “I heard you were hurt, Kinkajou,” the dragon said, looking vaguely in the direction of Kinkajou, and Ivy recognized her as Tamarin.

“She’s fiiine,” someone else said, and Anemone popped her head into the cave. She saw Kinkajou and grinned. “Did you cause another disaster?” Anemone asked snidely. “Will we have to evacuate the school *again* because of you?”

“Oh, stuff a mango in it, Anemone,” Kinkajou said, her scales swirling from green-yellow and violet to black and red and emerald.

“That’s not very nice,” Anemone said sweetly.

“You know what’s not very nice?” Kinkajou asked, then continued without waiting for an answer. “Putting a LOVE SPELL on me!”

“Why are you still mad about that? I was just trying to do something nice for my brother, jeez, no need to go *on* and *on* about it.”

“I don’t CARE if you were trying to do something nice. You shouldn’t have messed with my feelings! Especially for *Turtle*, of all dragons.”

“Don’t talk about my brother like that! He’s actually half-decent, if you’d give him a chance.”

“You only like him because he made you an animus! Didn’t you try to kill him just a few weeks ago?”

“That’s different!”

Ivy started to sit up and try to diffuse the fight, but suddenly Fatespeaker was there, pushing her back onto the platform. “This is the best fight they’ve had in ages,” Fatespeaker whispered in her ear. “It’ll be hilarious to see how it turns out.”

“Huh?” Ivy asked.

“They won’t kill each other, don’t worry,” Fatespeaker said. “It’s just fun to watch them argue.”

“All right,” Ivy said, lying back down. “But if it gets too serious, I’m intervening before you get another patient.”

Fatespeaker winked at Ivy, then turned her attention back to Kinkajou and Anemone.

“How, exactly?” Kinkajou asked. “What I heard is that you lost your soul and went evil and tried to kill everyone before Turtle stopped you.”

“I--” Anemone said, then tapered off, looking at a loss for words.

“Yeah, see? How do we know that your soul is back? Maybe once you turned evil you *stayed* evil? And why did Tamarin suddenly fall for you? Did you put a love spell on her?”

Anemone’s expression turned back into outrage. “How DARE you! Of course I didn’t! Don’t you remember the soul spell?” The SeaWing raised the wrist with the pink pearl bracelet. “Or are you too stupid to remember that?”

“Anemone,” Tamarin said, putting a talon on her shoulder, “please don’t call Kinkajou stupid.”

“Why?” Anemone challenged. “I can’t believe you’re friends with her. She’s a walking disaster.”

“We’ve been friends for *years*,” Kinkajou bragged. “I think it’s *you* who should leave Tamarin alone.”

“Kinkajou, Anemone is allowed to be friends with me,” Tamarin said. She turned back to Anemone. “Can you show me what you wanted to before we came in here?”

“Sure,” Anemone said. Tamarin walked out the cave mouth, and Anemone followed her, but not before casting one more nasty look over her shoulder at Kinkajou.

Kinkajou sniffed. “It’s so comforting that she might be the next SeaWing queen. And with animus magic, who could stop her?”

“I don’t think she wants to be queen,” Ivy said. “I think she knows that if she were the SeaWing queen she couldn’t be with a RainWing, and she’d rather be with Tamarin then take the crown.”

“I don’t know what I’d prefer,” Kinkajou said. “Her as a queen, with the entire SeaWing army and treasury at her disposal, or her married to one of my best friends.”

Sky laughed. “Well, there are still years before Anemone has to make either of those decisions.”

“Yeah,” Kinkajou said. “That’s a slight glimmer of hope.”

“Flicker, you can go if you want to,” Fatespeaker said. Winter started to get up, and she continued, “Not you. You’re staying for the night.”

“Why?” Winter asked. “I feel perfectly fine. I’ve had worse injuries.”

“Yes, but right now you’re in school,” Fatespeaker answered, “and what I say goes. That means lay back down until I say you can leave.”

“Why aren’t you making Flicker stay?” Winter challenged. “Her injuries are much worse than mine.”

“No actually, they’re not. Yes, she has more external wounds, but that bump on your head is pretty bad.”

Ivy was a little confused. Why was Fatespeaker letting her leave, when just a few minutes ago, she had been lecturing them on staying put? Ivy tilted her head at the NightWing. Fatespeaker caught her glance and flicked her tail at the window. Ivy noticed that the storm had started to clear up, revealing that it was almost sunset. Ivy nodded, and Fatespeaker turned back to Winter.

“Fine,” he agreed grudgingly.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ivy said. She stood up, and she and Sky walked along the tunnels to their cave. “Oh!” Ivy gasped, when she saw what was inside.

All four of the scroll racks were stuffed with scrolls, some smaller than Ivy’s SkyWing animus scroll, and some large, taking up half a shelf. Ivy walked closer and read the titles on the scrolls. There was a large scroll labeled *The Adventures of Nimbus*, a newer-looking scroll called *The Ancient Night Kingdom*, and one titled *The Death of Queen Jellyfish and Other Unexplained Murders*, as well as at least a dozen others.

“I thought I was the bookworm, not you,” Wren chuckled, breaking Ivy out of her trance.

“Actually, they’re scrolls, not books,” Ivy corrected her. “And you still are. I’m still not a big fan of human books, but dragon books are so fascinating!”

Wren sighed. “I’ll get you to like reading someday. And please don’t say ‘human’. We don’t know who might be listening.”

Ivy groaned quietly. “Yes, Wren.”

“It’s fine,” Wren said. “Do you want to take the scrolls with you when we leave Jade Academy tomorrow?”

That one sentence completely ruined Ivy’s mood. *We’re not going to stay. We’re leaving tomorrow, and I might not even get a chance to say goodbye.*

Wren noticed Ivy’s expression. “Hey, we had a deal. We’re leaving tomorrow at noon, okay?”

Ivy sighed. “All right. Am I allowed to say goodbye to Winter and Kinkajou?” How would they take it? Would they ask a bunch of questions, or would they just accept it?

“Yes,” Wren said. “As long as you make it quick, and try to come up with a good reason why.”

“I’m going to read,” Sky declared, and pulled *The Ancient Night Kingdom* from the scroll rack, then laid down on his nest-bed to read it. Wren sat down next to him and started reading too.

Ivy felt really tired, so instead of reading, she walked over to her blanket and pulled it over herself, so Wren or Sky wouldn’t have to do it when she turned back into a human. She felt her eyes closing and she drifted off to sleep.

Ivy was drifting through blackness. She was vaguely confused by this, as normally she dreamed vividly or not at all, never in between. But mostly she was just floating along, her mind pleasantly blank. Suddenly she felt a tugging sensation. Ivy tried to resist, but the pulling was stronger than her, and she was yanked into another dream.

She was surrounded by fog, gray, whisps covering everything she could see. She was human, and the cold mist sank into her skin. Ivy turned around, trying to get an idea of her surroundings, and her eyes collided with a dragon’s.

The first thing Ivy noticed were the dragon’s eyes. Her eyes were like fire, scorching through Ivy and leaving a charred mess behind. Her scales were a sharp contrast to them, darker than a NightWing’s scales, darker than a stormy night, even darker than the blackness Ivy had been floating through.

Ivy took a step back, or at least tried to. This dragon radiated terror and fear, making Ivy’s heart thump faster and making her breathing ragged, and paralyzing her where she stood, so she couldn’t move a muscle.

The strange dragon leered, displaying all her sharp white teeth at Ivy’s obvious terror. “That’s always satisfying,” she said. Her voice was sharp and smooth at the same time, and her fiery eyes cut into Ivy sharper than knives. Shouldn’t she have had to blink by now?

“It’s just a dream, it’s just a dream,” Ivy told herself, trying to calm her racing heart. “I’m fine. This is just a dream.”

The dragon laughed. “Yes, it is, for now. But it doesn’t have to stay one.” The dragon took half a step back and spread her wings. *She has four wings!* Ivy realized. The dragon’s wings were a shade of tarnished gold, like Ivy’s mother’s old necklace.

“If I wanted to,” the dragon continued, “I could pull you out of this dream right now. I could rip off your limbs, or set you on fire, or impale you with spears. A thousand things are possible when you’re *me*.”

Ivy felt a shiver run down her spine. She believed this strange, terrifying dragon. She wasn’t sure exactly why the dragon seemed to want to torture her, but she did.

“The Queen!” a voice shouted, and a new dragon ran through the fog. This dragon’s scales were colored like oceans and summer leaves, except for one silver scale by each of her eyes like Fatespeaker’s but bigger, and silver scales under her wings. She looked like both a RainWing and a NightWing. *A hybrid, maybe?*

The black dragon, The Queen, growled and whipped her head around to glare at the newcomer. “*What*, Colorchanger? Can’t you see that I’m busy?”

“I told you to leave Ivy alone!” Colorchanger said. That made Ivy feel a little hopeful, until Colorchanger continued, “She’s *my* experiment!”

“So?” The Queen countered. “You want to see how she reacts to different situations. I’m just trying to help. Don’t you want to know what she’d do if I burned off her wings, or smashed her tail with a rock?”

“No, I do not. I told you, I just wanted to turn her into a dragon to see how she’d react. I don’t need you sending fires or floods or threatening her until she goes insane.”

“Well, you owe me. I’m keeping your little experiment a secret from Jaguar so she doesn’t torment Ivy for liking Winter, and from Tropica so she doesn’t do crazy outlandish things like drop a plane from the sky.”

“That was you, remember? You stole a plane from over the Bermuda Triangle, tied Leaf inside and dropped it on Turtle the last time we tortured Jade Mountain.”

“Whatever,” The Queen dismissed, waving a talon. “And I still can’t believe you messed with the Stone of Truth. I thought you didn’t want to change too much on this timeline.”

More spots of green were appearing on Colorchanger’s scales. “Yeah, well, I told you I wanted them to stay at Jade Academy for at least a few weeks, and if Winter and Kinkajou had figured it out, then they would’ve left immediately. It’s bad enough as it is that they’re leaving tomorrow.”

“That’s why I did the flood. I thought if Ivy lost her leg or something, she’d have to stay at Jade Academy until she healed.”

“I don’t want her to stay at school because she lost a limb! And anyway, I thought you wouldn’t like trying to kill someone with water after your mother-”

Shadows whipped out of nowhere and wrapped around Colorchanger, tying her to a black obelisk that had appeared in the fog. Colorchanger’s scales flashed completely to green, except for splashes of red and white. *Did The Queen do that?* Ivy wondered. *Is that another power dragons can have?*

“You don’t *talk* about what you read in my *head*,” The Queen hissed in a voice that was somehow even more terrifying than when she was talking about all the ways she could kill Ivy.

“Why are you so sensitive?” Colorchanger asked. “It happened more than a thousand years ago, get over it.”

The Queen narrowed her eyes, and the ropes of shadow constricted around Colorchanger The RainWing/NightWing hybrid’s scales turned several shades paler. “All right, all right!” she said. “Just put me down now.”

The shadows disappeared, and Colorchanger stretched, her scales shifting back to emerald green.

“You say you don’t want Ivy to be mortally injured,” The Queen asked. “But you still want to see what she’ll do in certain scenarios, right?”

“Yes,” Colorchanger said, looking wary. “What do you have in mind?”

The Queen dipped her head at Colorchanger, a faint grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. Colorchanger tilted her head like she was listening to something, and suddenly her eyes widened and a smile erupted on her face as golden studded with tiny dots of violet took over her scales. “Are you sure?” she asked. “I thought you liked Wren?”

The Queen shrugged. “She’ll be fine. They won’t be after *her* anyway. And if something does happen to her, we can just make another timeline.”

“I love this plan!” Colorchanger declared. “I’m going to go find a good place to watch.” She disappeared into the mist, and The Queen turned back to Ivy.

“I almost feel sorry for you,” The Queen said. “Almost. Not really. You’ll be fine.” She grinned again, and her eyes seemed to blaze even hotter. “Now, it’s time for you to *wake up*.”

Ivy jolted awake, her breathing even faster than it had been in the dream. *If it was a dream.* She shook herself. Of course it was. There was no way those dragons could exist, if half the things they said were true. *Other timelines? Controlling dreams? Torturing Jade Mountain? Not possible.*

Ivy realized that she needed more air, and threw the blanket off of herself. For a second she worried that she’d woken up Sky and Wren again, but they were still asleep.

She looked around, trying to calm her racing heart. Then she noticed something in the shadows. Ivy crept closer. There was a shadow where there shouldn’t be, something darker than the rest of the moonlit cave. Then the shadow moved.

Ivy jumped back, as the shadow came into the moonlight and she could see what it was. It was an enormous black snake, big enough to wrap multiple times around a dragon’s neck.

The snake hissed and slithered towards the mouth of the cave, then turned back as if it was waiting for Ivy. Then Ivy realized several facts at once. *The dream* was *real. And The Queen, or Colorchanger I guess, sent this snake. But why?* The snake seemed to want Ivy to follow it. *But I’m smart enough not to fall into that trap.* Then another thought occurred to her. *What are they planning to do? They said something with Wren? So I have two options. Stay safe, and* don’t *follow the creepy snake. Or, do something completely idiotic and quite possibly play right into their talons.*

Ivy sighed, then walked over to the mouth of the cave. The snake glided through the mountain, and Ivy followed it. She didn’t see a single dragon, so either no one was awake, or the snake knew exactly the right routes to take to avoid everyone. Finally, they stopped in front of a cave Ivy hadn’t seen before, where she could hear voices coming from inside.

The snake turned around, and stared at Ivy. She wondered whether she had misjudged the entire situation and she was about to become snake food. “From now on,” it said in The Queen’s voice, and Ivy jumped, “all bets are off.” Then it dissolved into shadows, leaving Ivy alone in the tunnel.

She debated going back to her cave, but then she heard Sunny say “What do you mean, Sky is Ember?”

Ivy gave into her curiosity and pressed her ear to the cave wall.

“Let me explain,” Fatespeaker’s voice said. “We don’t really know what happened to Peril’s brother.”

“But Osprey said he saw Kestrel kill Ember,” Starflight interjected. *Isn’t Ember who Fatespeaker thought Sky was?* Ivy remembered. *Is this Ember character Peril’s brother?* “Why would he lie?”

“Maybe he thought that Kestrel had killed Peril’s brother,” Sunny said. “But how would she fake it?”

“I don’t know,” Fatespeaker admitted. “But look at the evidence! I had a vision of Sky, but I thought his name was Ember--”

“Fatespeaker, your visions aren’t exactly the most reliable source of information,” Starflight said. “You also thought that we would become king and queen of the NightWings, and that Flicker’s name was Ivy.”

“My visions are *totally* real!” Fatespeaker cried. “We could *still* become the rulers of the NightWings! It just might take a decade or two. All right, I’ll admit that Flicker’s name is not actually Ivy, but I got one name right. Listen to the rest of my evidence! Sky has pale orange scales, like Peril has bright orange scales.”

“I overheard Sky tell Anemone that it was a genetic scale defect,” Sunny said.

“Well,” Fatespeaker shot back, “if it is, then why doesn’t Flicker have it? And isn’t it so convenient that their mother’s dead so we can’t check their story? Also, their mother left the Sky Kingdom because she didn’t like her job?” Ivy winced. That part had been her idea, and it hadn’t occurred to her until just then that it was a really flimsy and pathetic excuse. “Come on,” Fatespeaker continued. “Queen Scarlet wouldn’t let anyone leave her kingdom for any reason. She would definitely hunt down someone who left her rule because they didn’t like their job, even if just to send a message to the rest of her subjects.”

“Maybe Scarlet didn’t know?” Sunny suggested. “Or maybe she was too busy with the war and she forgot?”

“Fine,” Fatespeaker said. “But what about Flicker? She’s probably at least a few years younger than Sky. Who would their mysterious mother have an egg with?”

“Another SkyWing runaway,” Starflight said. “Or her husband ran away with her, or maybe Flicker’s a hybrid. Well, probably not the last one, but the first two are possible.”

“I have one more piece of evidence,” Fatespeaker said. “Have either of you ever seen Sky breathe fire?”

All the pieces suddenly clicked for Ivy in the moment of silence after Fatespeaker’s last declaration. Peril had too much fire, and she had to have gotten it from somewhere. Ivy didn’t know how firescales hatched, but she guessed that it would be with another dragon in the same egg, one they took fire from. That dragon would have no fire, like Sky. Wren had found Sky in a river, with an adult SkyWing searching for him. Maybe that dragon was Kestrel, and she hadn’t meant to kill Sky. She wanted to keep him safe from Queen Scarlet, so she just pretended to kill him. Wren hadn’t known this, so she had pulled Sky from the river. . .and now Ivy was here, just in time for Sunny, Starflight and Fatespeaker to find out.

“No,” Sunny admitted eventually. “But that doesn’t mean anything! Maybe it’s just a coincidence.”

“There’s an easy way to check,” Starflight said.

“I’ll talk to him,” Sunny volunteered. “Hopefully this is all a big misunderstanding,”

Ivy decided she had heard all she needed to hear, and stepped away from the cave wall. She took a step towards her cave, then stopped. *Would it really be so bad if Fatespeaker, Sunny and Starflight found out? It seems like all they want is to reunite Peril with her long lost brother.*

*But it’s Sky’s choice whether or not to tell them. If he knows all the facts, then maybe he’ll tell them the truth. They shouldn’t find out by forcing him to reveal the truth.*

She made her decision. *I have to go warn Sky.*

*This is currently a work in progress, please be patient as I do not update this very often.*