An Honest Conversation - Wings of Fire

An Honest Conversation

Disclaimer: Tui T. Sutherland is the eternal Queen of the FanWing Kingdom.

A brief note to readers:

This story functionally serves as a rewrite of Darkness of Dragons, chapters 28 and 29. Please ensure that you have read through that book in its entirety before reading this.

The first three paragraphs of this story are Queen Sutherland's words: you can find them near the beginning of the original chapter 28 (17 paragraphs in, to be precise). There are also a handful of sentences scattered throughout that are either identical or close derivatives to what was originally written.

-(Q)-

Darkstalker sat on an outcropping just above him, blocking the route to the sky. He plucked a stone from the cliff and conjured it into a compact ball of flames, setting it spinning beside him like a haunted imitation of the sun. The glow illuminated the cramped crawl space around Qibli, barely large enough for a dragon the size of Darkstalker to turn around if he squashed his wings in and stood on his own tail as he did it.

All around Qibli were claw marks in the stone, hundreds upon hundreds of scratches, some of them firm and bold, others tiny and slanted to fit in around the others. A discarded scrap of rusty metal wires lay near the opening, frayed and looped around a trio of misty white gemstones.

His tail brushed something the size of a tooth. When Qibli bent to pick it up, it turned out to be a mouse skull rubbed almost smooth as velvet.

Darkstalker was motionless as the high walls that surrounded them, frowning at Qibli as if he were contemplating which of his limbs would be the most satisfying to yank out. Qibli tried to avoid his glare, and scanned the overhead for potential routes of escape. He had a few questionable ideas, but they required the assumption that Darkstalker was about thirty times stupider than he really was. It was a pretty grim situation, being hundreds of feet underground and guarded by the most dangerous dragon in all of Pyrrhia.

Then, suddenly, Darkstalker's face lit up. "I've got it!" he said. He turned to the light and cleared his throat ostentatiously. "Enchant this ball of flames to turn blue for three heartbeats whenever I tell a lie."

Qibli flicked his eyes cautiously at the little sun between them. Darkstalker stared proudly at it. "Now," he said, "I am a tiny little scavenger with tiny pink paws."

A wave of bright blue washed over the ball, recoloring the entire cave into the hues of winter. And then, the flame went back to its quiet, orange glow.

"There we go," Darkstalker said. "I need you to trust me with what we're going to be discussing. Bad timelines spring up if you don't."

Qibli raised an eyebrow at Darkstalker. Does he really think I'm that gullible? Surely he enchanted the flames in other ways than that. He could have added anything to that enchantment in his mind, like a spell to make the color change only when Darkstalker's lies were obvious. I'm not going to be fooled that easily.

"Ah, yes, yes, I know what you're thinking, Qibli," Darkstalker said hastily. "Perhaps I did something nefarious with this fire, like put a spell on it in my mind. Fair enough, let's try this again." He pointed his snout at the ball of light. "Undo that last enchantment, and stay the same color regardless of what I say. Now—" He plucked a second rock from the cliff and said, "Enchant this rock so that it only follows the animus commands I speak out loud. Now, turn into a lit torch whose flame turns blue for three heartbeats whenever and only whenever I speak a lie."

The stone transfigured into a long wooden torch, sporting a deep orange flame that danced in-time with the flickers on the fireball. Darkstalker shoved the base of the torch into a crack against the wall. "There we go," he said. "Now I can't deceive you."