Reminiscence - A Wings of Fire Fanfiction

Prologue

The sun was setting on Pyrrhia, its golden glow setting the oceans ablaze and the sand gleaming. A city in the middle of the harsh desert was going to sleep, slowly bringing down stalls and tucking their dragonets to bed. The sound was slowly going down, chatter quieting. But in one corner, several dragons were definitely not going to be resting soon.

The hooded dragons stumbled among themselves, trying to keep hold of the ferocious dragon between them. Their mismatched scales were grimy from the dust in the alley being kicked up from the ruckus of the dragons.

The dragon twisted and squirmed, clawed and roared at the cloaked figures holding her, but it was no use. The dragons each had grips like steel, and they didn't seem like they were just going to let her go.

"Get OFF me you pig-hearted yellow-bellied toads!" She yelled, and struck out, giving one of the bigger of the five dragons holding her three vicious scratches on their snout. The hurt dragon growled at her and said with a menacing tone "You'll stay quiet, or you'll lose that tongue of yours,"

"And once I've done that, we'll see who's really yellow-bellied,"

That shut up the dark dragon, her face turning slightly green at the thought of her tongue being cut out.

She looked around properly for the first time, wondering where she was. She had been around the Scorpion Den quite a bit, knowing almost every dark corner and alleyway, but this part was completely unknown. It had the same pale sandy brown walls that the city had, but instead of dozens of shops and streets that usually lined the walls of the Den and the usual yells from the merchants, it was silent. The kind of quiet that just crept up on you, that slithered around you and made you look twice.

The small houses were the only source of interest, and even then were not that appealing. They had black squares for windows, and were made of the same stone as the walls, blending in, and seeming a part of the Scorpion Den themselves, like they just grew there.

The dark dragon could feel eyes watching her, not just her guards (captors was a more precise word) but dragons from the bleak houses. The occasional glimmer on an eye or flash of jewelry or the shine of scales from the setting sun were the only hint that any dragon did live here, and that the spirits of the dead weren't looking down upon her.

From the glimpses of scales she could see, they weren't just the usual pale SandWing colour or even the occasional SkyWing or MudWing, but were shades of blue and green, and even some purple and pink. They could be some SilkWings or RainWings, but the brightly-colored tribes never came to the desert, not being able to cope with the heat.

Hybrids maybe? The dark dragon thought, The sun could just be playing tricks on my eyes, and the heat makes your brain go funny anyway.

But before she could inspect further, her scratched captor pushed her along again, and she lost sight of the dragons on the houses.

"Move along, the boss doesn't like it when we're late," the big female said. They hurried along, tripping over the uneven cobblestones of the alley, and arrived at one of the stone homes. It looked just like the others: plain, boring, dirty, but with one noticeable difference - there were windows. With all the other houses, you could just look in and see what the dragon was doing, but at this house, the windows were boarded up, bringing more secrecy to this corner of the quiet neighbourhood of the Scorpion Den.

The door was a pale brown, bleached from its former colour by the glaring sun and the grinding sand, proving how long the decrepit building had been there.

One of her captors, not the one she had scratched that was on her left, that kept glaring at her with her ice-blue eyes, but the one to her right, a skinny male with azure scales. At least, the scales on his arms, legs, and tail were, she couldn't see the rest of him, the black cloaks that her kidnappers (captors wasn't the right word anymore) all wore covered most of the dragon's bodies and were held together by a silver clasp of talons holding hands. She called them Fishface and Meanie.