Wings of Evolution (WoF AU)

Chapter 30

Sparks of hope

It had been an agonizingly long three days since the last battle. Spark was happy about that, but it also left her with nothing to do but walk around, show dragonets fire tricks, and go on patrols.

The fire tricks were the only fun part of being bored.

Spark was always careful, and every time a dragonet got too close she could move away usually without them noticing, the dragonets' parents weren't too happy about this, but most of them had eventually decided that if Spark ever harmed a dragonet then they could take it up with the queen and figure it out from there.

Spark had learned early on to not pay attention to voices that weren't talking to her because usually they were talking about her and she didn't really like hearing what they had to say.

Dragonets were different though, too young to know that Spark was an anomaly, and too innocent to realize what she would be doing if there had been a battle that day. They were genuinely curious and happy about what Spark could do. Which was refreshing in comparison to hearing the soldiers mope about how she would kill them in her sleep if they stepped out of line.

Spark smiled down at the three dragonets watching from the required three tail lengths away. If any got closer then Spark would shake her head and leave just so they knew that that wasn't allowed. She didn't like leaving though, so it was a good thing that these dragonets were accustomed to her.

Spark held her talons out and breathed a small stream of flame into them, letting the dragonets watch with wide eyes as the flames along Spark's body grew at that point, dancing along her talons with beautiful accuracy.

Spark couldn't remove the fire in her scales, but she could control it somewhat, letting certain areas become hotter or less hot with a thought. She imagined it would be similar to what a rainwing would do with their scales, but far less complicated.

Doing so, she made fun patterns of fire on her scales, as well as shaping the fire in the air to her whims, stars, ribbons, flowers, and bugs.

Overall, Spark enjoyed that far more than what she was doing a few hours later.

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Spark led three nightwings on a patrol, it was a regular patrol, but Spark was fairly sure that she needed to never do patrols again.

She would land every so often, look at interesting things, eventually set them on fire by accident, and then she would keep going.

Spark hated patrols because she never had enough time to observe the land. She could never really get into it. So she was always really interested in something, or barely able to focus on her own wingbeats. No in between.

Spark was pretty sure that Soulseer sent her on patrols to keep her from getting bored and trying to go to the market, which would result in a lot of loss of property, and possibly life. It wasn't working though, because Spark was almost ready to go to the market anyway just to spite her.

Soulseer hadn't even let her see Ash for a month. Which was totally unfair, Spark was being a perfect soldier. She'd only accidentally killed one of their own three times in her career, which was a new record as far as she could tell. Didn't normal soldiers accidentally kill their own all the time?

But apparently, Spark was different. She was always different. Spark hated the word 'different.'

One of the soldiers with her let out an alarm whistle and went into a dive, followed closely by the other two. Spark sighed and followed them, expecting a false alarm, since there had only been one patrol where they'd found anything, but she blinked at the skirmish that had broken out. If they'd been Soulseer's allies they would have surrendered immediately and answered the captain's questions, but they were fighting back.

Which meant that Spark was expected to kill, fighting back was an offense to the throne, yada yada yada.

Spark launched into the battle, pouncing near the seawing and making an undignified squeak as the blue dragon threw one of Soulseer's nightwings at Spark. Huh. that had never happened before.

The black dragon collided with Spark mid-pounce, screaming as he immediately burned into a corpse. Whoops. Soulseer wouldn't be happy about that. Sort of confused and annoyed, Spark searched for their leader, immediately picking out a large mudwing fighting off both remaining nightwings by himself, a small sandwing had pounced onto one's back and the Seawing was already coming to help.

Spark paused, deciding that she would definitely kill at least one nightwing if she went in right then, and jerked her head sharply as she caught a flash of white scales in the trees. She contemplated going that way, but the two nightwings were losing quickly. Bah.

She rushed forward, making her scales get as hot as they could, letting the flames dance high so everyone would know who she was.

She pounced right on top of the mudwing, feeling the sensation of smooth scales burning. She got off him and turned to assess the two nightwings, who had already been taken out of the fight by the seawing. Unconscious she was pretty sure.

Spark yelped as someone pounced on her, turning as she saw the mudwing who should have been dead by now. She watched in confusion as he continued to not be dead, even though he was standing right on top of her. Curious.

He got off quickly though, dancing on his toes, repeating the word "hot hot hot..." as the seawing came to his side, examining Spark with a critical eye. Spark was focused on the mudwing, feeling something odd as it became blatantly obvious to her that he would live, even after far too long of an exposure to her scales.

It was... impossible, but also amazing.