Wings of Evolution (WoF AU)

Chapter 31

Wings of night

The Skywing was surprisingly hard to get a read on. Her thoughts were like flames that burned his senses and made concentrating on them difficult. But after the initial torrent of emotions at Clay not dying, she calmed somewhat, leading her mind to cool enough for Starflight to venture inside.

He deemed it safe enough to come out, leading the icewings with him to examine the dragon that burned from the inside. The grass below her was long since scorched but she was only staring at clay as a single thought repeated.

He lived.

The two nightwings who had come with the skywing were unconscious, dreaming dreams of victory in battle and other such things. One had a faint and unreliable futuresight power that had saved her life when Tsunami came barreling in, but the other was just an ordinary nightwing.

And both of them were connected to the eye.

The skywing on the other talon had no correlation to Orca's eye, and didn't seem to even know it existed, though she was so focused on Clay that Starflight wasn't sure.

Tsunami frowned at Starflight but didn't tell him to go back into hiding, watching the skywing warily, "why aren't you attacking?"

The skywing sighed, "oh, that. Well I don't really feel like it. Those guys are out cold so it's not like they can tell Soulseer how naughty I've been. I would much rather sit here and try to figure out why this interesting mudwing didn't die when he touched me." She adopted a thoughtful look, tilting her head in inquiry.

Clay blinked at her, and seemed to see nothing wrong with sharing secrets. "I'm fire resistant. I hatched out of a blood-red egg," he said proudly.

The skywing took a few minutes to process that, while Tsunami gave Clay a disapproving look that he completely missed.

"Alright," Tsunami said, "well you can go now I guess?"

The skywing blinked, "but we haven't even exchanged names!"

Tsunami rolled her eyes, "I'm Tsunami. That's Clay, the nightwing behind you is Starflight, the Sandwing is Sunny and the icewings aren't telling anyone their names."

The skywing nodded, turning around to glance at the dragons behind her. "I'm Spark. I have firescales," she pointed at Tsunami, "don't get closer than that or you might die if I accidentally spread my wings."

Tsunami blinked and stepped backward, "can you go now?"

Spark sighed, "I don't really want to. What are you guys doing?"

Tsunami made an exasperated noise, "we're on opposite sides, are you sure you can't just go home?"

"What? But then Soulseer would definitely know I did something wrong! I need to wait until these two wake up, at least." Spark was genuinely shocked at the idea.

Clay elbowed Tsunami, "stop asking her to leave, she's being nice. Besides, it's not like anyone could stop her from doing anything."

Spark nodded, as if that certainly was what she was doing. "Yep. though I don't know if I could kill you if I tried."

Clay nodded, as if that made perfect sense. Starflight would have been on Tsunami's page too if he couldn't hear their inner thoughts, Spark worrying about what would happen to her brother if she didn't get home, and Clay wondering if Spark knew his siblings. It was kind of sad how obsessed both were with the fellow spawn of their parents.

Starflight sighed, knowing that neither would know any of this at the end of the day. They would part ways and the two strangely coordinated souls might never meet again unless on the field of battle. Plus Spark herself might ruin their plans to overthrow Soulseer.

Kill two birds with one stone.

Yeah, that works. Starflight opened his mouth as Tsunami tried again to get Spark to leave. "Do you have any siblings, Spark?"

Spark blinked and looked at Starflight, "yes, my twin brother, Ash."

Clay blinked, "that's cool, is he back in the night kingdom?"

Spark's wings drooped and she sighed, "yes. He's with Soulseer... she's been using him to make sure I be a good little firescales."

Clay shook his head, "my siblings are stuck there too as soldiers."

Spark perked up, "maybe we could help each other! You can help me get Ash out, and I can help you get your siblings out!"

Clay blinked and looked at Tsunami, "I really like this idea. Tsunami, can Spark come with us!"

Tsunami frowned, narrowing her eyes, but she looked at Spark, remembering how troublesome it was to have a firescales on the opposite side. "Yes... she can come, as long as she doesn't go back to Soulseer, ever."

Spark nodded, "I can do that!" She masked the twisting guilt inside her with a smile, but Starflight could feel the slight regret that she hadn't even explained anything to Ash. He wouldn't know why Spark had disappeared. Hopefully Soulseer would keep him in good shape just in case Spark came back.

Spark would come for him, if Tsunami's plan took too long. Starflight could see very few futures where she didn't get impatient and storm the NightWing palace herself.

It was a very awkward time as they crossed the mountains, trying to figure out how to make Spark as inconspicuous as possible was difficult.

Eventually they just gave up and let her do whatever. They stopped at one of the bases in the mountains, and Tsunami was pleased to find that they were trying their hardest to grow greentop. It was sort of working, the plants were growing, but not as much as Tsunami wanted, so she decided to use this as her test group. She instructed the skywings to just let the plants do whatever, water them if they got too withered, but otherwise don't touch them.

Starflight didn't see how this would help, even with Tsunami's mind explaining it over and over as she tried to figure out if it would really work. The base insisted on sending a messenger to Scarlet, and Tsunami let them.

Starflight could see how this would result, but he didn't say anything because Tsunami wasn't paying attention to anyone again. Thankfully people other than Tsunami knew the way from here and weren't about to let her lead them too far south again.

They were about to leave the base and head off when an angry red skywing tailed by two far less angry but still annoyed skywings appeared out of the sky. Starflight winced at the sheer ammount of anger emanating from the group, sort of surprised that a wing of SkyWings wasn't called an anger.

They landed majestically and queen Scarlet took several minutes to chew Tsunami out. "You didn't even consult me! AREN'T I THE LEADER OF THE RESISTANCE?! Why did you go galavanting out to MOONS KNOW WHERE without telling me! ARE YOU PLOTTING BEHIND MY BACK?!"

Tsunami apparently wasn't fazed, and she yelled right back, "I didn't have time! I'D JUST LEARNED ABOUT THEM AND I WAS WORRIED THAT SOULSEER WOULD SOMEHOW GET TO THEM FIRST!" she huffed, "I respect you, queen Scarlet, but I wasn't even sure if you'd be interested."

They glared at each other for a good two minutes. Starflight started counting. He got to eighty five before Tsunami started lashing her tail and stepped aside, "well, here are the icewings, I'm sure they'll be interested in coordinating our ideas with you."

She gave the two icewings a meaningful look as she backed away and let them get over their shock. They blinked and rushed forward, quickly summarizing what their queen had decided, and somehow salvaging Tsunami's mistake. Starflight was grateful that Scarlet was the confrontational type, otherwise it might have been harder to even have known that she suspected Tsunami of going behind her back.

After the initial explanation, Scarlet nodded, "alright, you're all coming with me back to the sky palace so we can put this all into effect."

And there was no refusing the queen of the skywings.