(3rd Pov Sunny)
Dangling wet vines smacked against Sunny's snout as she flew up into the treetops. She remembered what she'd learned from the RainWings and rainforest flying and kept her wings tucked and close. She couldn't use her tail to swing from the trees like they did, but she was small enough to maneuver through narrow gaps and swerve quickly.
But the three NightWings were right behind her, roaring angrily.
'I should lead them back to the tunnels and the others. Glory needs to know that they're not loyal - she need to lock them up and keep an eye on them.'
'For how long?' Sunny wondered. 'Forever? They'll never be trustworthy; they'll always be plotting to overthrow her. What do you do with dragons like that?'
One of her wings hit a branch as she flew past and a family of monkeys went leaping off into the trees, howling and chattering with alarm. She twisted to glance back and saw a bolt of fire engulf one of the monkeys as the NightWings attacked them, thinking it was her.
'They won't be foolish enough to follow me all the way back,' Sunny thought, 'even if I can keep ahead of them for that long. They won't let themselves be caught. What will they do instead?'
She narrowly missed knocker herself out with a giant tree branch, ducking to avoid it at the last second.
'The same plan, just without me. They'll go to Burn and tell her we're here in the rainforest - where her army can find us easily. I need to hide. I need to think.'
She curled into a ball and threw herself into one of the dragonfruit trees, where the leaves were huge and overlapped one another like scales. Her momentum nearly carried herself out the the other side, but she was able to fling her talons out and hook onto the trunk, slamming her body into it. She froze in place, clinging to the rough bark, hoping the NightWings lost sight of her in the dark.
"By all the moons, Strongwings!" Fierceteeth swore from somewhere to Sunny's left. "How could you let her escape?"
"Sorry," his voice mumbled.
"She's gone," said Preyhunter. "We'll never find her now - not without running the risk of a RainWing spotting us."
"Let's get out of here," said Strongwings. "Before she brings back reinforcements."
"Talons and tails!" Fierceteeth hissed. "We needed her!"
"We still have useful information for the next SandWing queen," said Preyhunter. "They all want to know where the dragonets are. If we hurry, we'll be the only ones selling that information, and we don't need the SandWing as proof. We're NightWings; everyone believes us."
"Makes sense. Let's go," Strongwings said.
And with a flurry of wingbeats, the dragons headed for the dark open sky above the trees.
Sunny's claws were trembling with the effort to stay still. She took a deep breath.
'If I go back and tell the others, we can follow them. But by the time they listen to me - if they listen to me at all - the NightWings will be long gone.'
Sunny was used to the way her friends talked over her all the time. If she really wanted to be heard, she usually had to get Clay's attention and have him make her suggestions for her. Which wasn't fair - she had good ideas! - but her friends never expected her to have anything useful to say. They also didn't trust her to keep secrets; they hadn't even told her about it when they were all planning to escape their guardians. All they wanted was for her to be cheerful and supportive and agree with everything they wanted to do.
Would Glory even listen if Sunny tried to tell her about the rogue NightWings? Wouldn't she be too busy? What if she just rolled her eyes at Sunny, the way she often did?
"I don't want to be 'distracted' from worrying about the prophecy," Sunny muttered. "I want to do something."
Like stopping the NightWings. 'I could follow them right now. I might be the only dragon who can stop them before they tell Burn where we are.'
'Maybe if I do, my friends will see that I can do important things, and then maybe they'll listen to me about the prophecy.'
She thought guiltily of Starflight and what he would think when he finally woke up and realized she wasn't there, taking care of him.
Then she thought of what her friends had said about her in the Obsidian Mirror, and she thought about Morrowseer's smug, evil face, and she thought of all the dragon in Pyrrhia waiting for the dragonets of destiny to save them.
'I'm doing this. Even if I have to fulfil the prophecy alone, I will.'
Sunny clambered up through the branches and lifted off, following the black dragons into the night sky.
* * *
It was easier to follow the NightWings that Sunny would have expected. Her sharp eyes could catch the movement of their small, silver underwing scales flashing against the sky, and they weren't make much effort to be quiet, either. Or maybe loud and flappy was how NightWings always flew.
They were also slower than Sunny and got tired more quickly, so she had to be careful not to pass them accidentally, especially during their frequent rest stops.
The sun was rising behind them when they reached the far edge of the rainforest where the jungle shifted into sparser forest and marshes, the outskirts of MudWing territory,
The Claws of the Clouds mountains stood out sharply above in the growing light like a line of jagged, broken teeth. Most of the mountains in the southern part of the range were not as tall as the ones in the north, where the SkyWings lived.
But there was one exception: Jade Mountain.
The second tallest mountain on the continent was easy to spot, and not just for its towering size. Sunny remembered the picture on the map of Pyrrhia they'd had underground. In reality the two crags at the top looked even more like sharp fangs sticking into the air. One of the scrolls had said that from certain approaches, the tip of the mountain looked exactly like the head of a snake, lunging out of the ground to attack the clouds. As far as Sunny could tell from the map, Speartip Crag was much bigger than Jade Mountain size in both height and width by a large amount.
(Side note: No, Jade Mountain is not going to be the petrified remains of a Dalamadur or a Laviente. I've already had that idea and it originally was going to be that, but I've changed my mind.)
'Jade Mountain.' Sunny frowned. Someone had said something recently about Jade Mountain. Something she needed to remember. 'What was it?'
Nothing came to her as the sun slowly lit up the mountain's fangs.
Sunny had been worrying all night about how she would hide from the NightWings in the daylight. They didn't seem to be watching behind them, but it would be hard to miss her golden scales once the sun was reflecting off them. She wished she had Glory's camouflage scales. Really, any of her friends' skills would be helpful, instead of her own total like of powers.
But as the sky grew pinker and brighter and then started shading from grey to blue, the three NightWings flew lower, their wings drooping, until finally they landed beside a small river.
Sunny kept her distance, choosing the tallest tree she could find and tucking herself among the branches, close to the truck. She fixed her eyes on where the NightWings had gone down and pricked her ears. She could hear they're distant muttering, with Fierceteeth the most distinct. It sounded as if they were planning to sleep for as much of the day as they could and then fly at dusk.
'They've been breathing volcanic ash and living on dying rotten scraps, probably for their whole lives,' Sunny thought. 'No wonder they're not exactly in great shape.'
After a while, the trees stopped rustling and the dragon voices fell silent. A few minutes later, one of them - Sunny guessed Strongwings - started snoring like a herd of congested hippos.
'Now what do I do?' Sunny wondered. This was the perfect opportunity to wreck their plans, if she could figure out how. 'Could I fly to the RainWing village and get back with reinforcements before they wake up?'
'No. It would take me all day just to get someone to pay attention to me. I can do this myself. I have to.
What would Tsunami do? Would she go down there and kill them?
I don't think I could do that - even if I could do that.' She paused for a moment. 'What would Stormcaller do?'
She thought of every interaction she had with her NightWing friend and everything she'd seen him do.
'He wouldn't kill them,' she thought. 'He would most likely go and fight them until they listened to him. Or he would say vague and mysterious things that no one understands to try and mess with them.'
Then Sunny realized something. 'I can mess with them!' she thought. 'But how?'
She stayed unmoving trying to think like Stormcaller. Thinking of how he dealt with Cascade and Whirlpool. He just beat up Cascade, so that wouldn't work.
Whirlpool, on the other talon. Stormcaller had attempted to scare and threaten the SeaWing, then he tricked him and killed him. Whirlpool had instantly thought that Stormcaller was on his side, and Stormcaller used that temporary trust against the SeaWing. Getting him to not be ready for Stormcaller's attack.
Sunny couldn't and wouldn't kill the NightWings, like Stormcaller did to Whirlpool. But what did they have that she could exploit. Her mind went straight to the prophecy, when she thought of the NightWings supposed powers. Every time she did, it felt like icicle-sharp claws were digging into her scales.
'Stupid NightWings and their deceitful all-knowing high-and-mighty -'
Sunny sat up so fast she nearly fell off her tree branch.
'All-knowing.'
There was one thing she could do to mess with the NightWings.
She could steal the Obsidian Mirror.
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Onto the next chapter
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(3rd Pov Sunny)
This was one of those ideas that Sunny's friends would totally ignore if she suggested it, but would love it like crazy if it came from Clay or Tsunami. It was also something they would never, ever let her do herself. Too dangerous! Too risky! Send a dragon with fighting skills or camouflage scales. Not their undersized, cheerful, silly little sister.
'Well, I'm the only one here. And I know I can do it.'
She waited until the sun was halfway up the sky, and then she carefully worked her way closer, hopping from tree to tree and giving herself as much cover as she could. There were a few spots where she was exposed and her golden scales caught in the light, but when she finally came to rest on a branch within sigh of the NightWings, all three of them were sleeping soundly.
'Stormcaller's messages and Starflight said there were never any NightWing guards posted in their fortress. They're used to being so isolated that no one could find them to attack them. It didn't even occur to them to leave someone awake to keep watch.'
She snorted. 'They probably also figured np one would dare attack a group of amazing all-powerful NightWings.'
Fierceteeth was curled in the curve of Strongwings' underbelly, with her tail draped over his and her head resting on his shoulder. Sunny had no idea hoe Fierceteeth could sleep through those tree-rattling snores.
Preyhunter lay closer to the river, scrunched into a tight, dense ball, with his wings tucked close to him. In the daylight, Sunny could see how dull his scales were and how ill they all looked. Even Strongwings, who was built large ad burly, looked underfed, and his snores rasped heavily as if his lungs and throat were lined with claws.
Sunny studied the ground around Preyhunter until she spotted a corner of black glass sticking out from under one of his wings. He was keeping the Obsidian Mirror very close.
'How can I get it without waking him up?'
She glanced at the other two again, then quietly slid down her tree until her talons touched the grass. The river bubbled over smooth gray rocks, not much more than a stream. Small purple wildflowers bent under her claws as Sunny tiptoed over to the sleeping NightWings.
He looked miserable, even in his sleep. His jaw was clenched, his talons twitched defensively, and his forked black tongue flicked in and out as he muttered something to himself. When Sunny crouched beside him, she realized he was shivering.
'I guess it was pretty hot, living on a volcano.' The air didn't feel cold to her, here on the outskirts of the jungle, but perhaps he wasn't used to it. Or perhaps he was sick.
If felt strange to be so close to an unfamiliar NightWings. For the first six years of her life, Sunny had known exactly seven dragon: Clay, Tsunami, Starflight, Glory, and their three guardians, Webs, Dune, and Kestrel.
Two of those seven were dead now. She knew the guardians had never been particularly kind to the dragonets, but they were still the only parents she'd ever had, and she missed them. Her friends never stopped to grieve for Dune and Kestrel - she wasn't even sure they were sad about their deaths at all. She'd tried not to show how it upset her, but at night, curled up beside Clay, when she was sure he'd sleep through it, sometimes she'd let herself cry for them.
She reached toward the sliver of obsidian, but before she even touched it, Preyhunter whimpered in his sleep, and she snatched her talons back.
None of the dragons moved for a long time
'Maybe this is a bad idea. I could make things worse if I get myself caught.'
But if could get the mirror away from them, that would be one less weapon in their claws. They'd be flying blind, with no idea what Glory was planning and no way to know if Burn would receive them with open wings. Not to mention Sunny could probably use that mirror for herself.
She reached out again and noticed the trembling that shuddered through Preyhunter's scales. Maybe he wasn't cold. Maybe it was a nightmare.
'Maybe he's dreaming about the terrible things he's done. Or perhaps he's dreaming about the volcano exploding.'
She hesitated, and then unfolded one of her wings, spreading it gently over his back. She was too small to cover him completely, but the warmth that radiated from her scales spread as far over him as she could reach. She held her breath, trying not to touch him.
Preyhunter let out a long, shuddering sigh, and then the shivering stopped. He took another deep breath and Sunny saw the tension in his snout, jaws, and neck relax. A ripple went through his wings and his claws unclenched. He stopped muttering, and even his closed eyes seemed to smooth over, as if were shifting into a deeper, calmer sleep.
Sunny waited a long moment, feeling sorry for this dragon even though she really didn't want to. She couldn't help wondering what she herself might have been like if she'd grown up on the NightWing island. Desperate and sad? Mean and hungry?
She reached for the mirror, and suddenly Preyhunter spoke.
"Please."
Sunny froze. His eyes were still closed. Across the clearing, Fierceteeth shifted her wings and coughed.
"Please don't make me," Preyhunter said, more softly. "Mother, it's awful."
A stab of sympathy shot through Sunny, and she curled her tai in closer. 'Remember what he's planning and what he said and what he's done.' But it was hard not to imagine herself in his scales.
Gently she used her front talons to slid the mirror out from under his wing. Her warmth had relaxed her grip on it, so he wasn't clutching it so tightly, and it only took a moment until it was resting coldly between her claws. The obsidian felt thin, like a layer of ice, and the edges were sharp as teeth. Sunny could see her distorted reflection in the dark glass.
She took a careful step back, then another, and folded her wings back in. Preyhunter made a lost, mournful noise, and his claws twitched as if he were trying to pull the warmth back.
'Will they guess I'm the one who stole it? What if they come looking for me?'
She glanced around the clearing. A large, flat gray boulder took up most of the ground between the three dragons, with bright yellow dandelions dotting the edges like topaz gemstones around a pendant.
'I'll leave them a message . . . . Something that won't sound like me. Maybe something that will scare them.'
Her own heart was drumming frantically against her ribs like a caged bird. She wanted to get out of there before any of them woke up. But she had a strong feeling that there was something to this idea.
She dipped her claws in the dark red mud that lined the river and wrote on the boulder, in tall, jagged letters:
TURN BACK. YOU FLY TOWARD YOUR DEATH.
'Totally spooky,' she thought. with satisfaction. it even looked like maybe it could have been written in blood. 'That should at least creep them out, even if it doesn't send them scurrying back to the rainforest.'
Sunny took a step back, and then suddenly Strongwings let out the loudest snore yet, and Fierceteeth rolled over to swat him with her wing.
"Shut your noisy snout or so help me I will rip it off with my claws!" she hollered.
Sunny bolted into the sky and didn't stop flying until she reached the dense green canopy of the jungle again.
When she finally glanced back, there was no movement from the NightWings' copse of trees. Strongwings had even started snoring again.
'I guess she was yelling at him in her sleep. Or she went right back to sleep and didn't notice me there.'
Sunny carefully tucked the mirror under one wing and used her talons to clamber up and along the trees until she found a spot where the leaves overlapped so thickly it was like a small green cave around her. She studied the mirror. What had Preyhunter done to activate it?
"Starflight," she said softly to the cold obsidian surface, and then she breathed a small plume of smoke across the surface.
As it had before, the smoke twined and twisted around the mirror, then vanished. Sunny could feel the mirror thrumming faintly between her claws. It was a horrible - a sick, slithering, sensation through her blood, as if it were pulling something out of Sunny's heart.
A faint black tendril of smoke curled up from the center of the mirror, barely visible in the green-tinted sunshine. It didn't speak, but when Sunny leaned closer, she could hear the faint sound of breath going in and out.
'He's alive.'
Two pale blue wisps of smoke drifted by, close to the edge of the mirror.
"I've never seen anything like it," whispered one.
"The queen said this is what 'fire' can do," murmured the other. "It seems almost as bad as venom, if you ask me."
From their voices, Sunny guessed they were two of the healer RainWings she'd befriended while she was helping take care of Webs. RainWing healers were odd, specializing mostly in saying comforting things and offering more fruit to eat. But occasionally they were really specifically knowledgeable, like about jaguar bites, or what to do if you ate too many mangoes, or how to make salves for the tails that had been used for swinging from rough branches one too many times.
"I'd rather be Kinkajou than him right now," said the first. "She's healing well."
"Did you see the messenger who was here before?" the second curl of blue smoke moved, looping around the black smoke as if checking on it, and then sliding back to the first. "That big brown dragon sent a message for Sunny. I wasn't sure whether to tell him we haven't seen her. I don't want to worry the queen when she has so many NightWings to deal with."
"I say don't start a panic. She's around somewhere."
This was similar to the RainWings' attitude toward their own missing dragons, some of which had been gone ass long as a year by the time Glory rescued them. 'Well, that's fine,' Sunny thought. 'I don't need or want my friends looking for me. They have enough to do.'
The black smoke stirred, as if the faintest breath of win had touched it. "Sunny?" Starflight whispered.
'But . . . poor Starflight.' She curled her tail in around her talons and sighed.
"Shh, we woke him by talking about her," admonished the first healer. "Let's get him another sleeping dark."
Sunny cleared the mirror and held it between her claws for a moment. She disliked it more and more the longer she held it. It had a chilling wrongness to it, like the tunnels, that made her scales as if invisible spiders were crawling all over her.
But there were things she needed to know - like what the warring SandWing queens were plotting. The Obsidian Mirror could help her figure out if any of them was an immediate threat to Sunny's friends.
'I should at least try one of them. The most dangerous one.' She hesitated, and the whispered, "Blister," to the dark glass.
The pale yellow twist of smoke that rose from the center this time had the same chilling stillness that Blister had; it barely even moved in the breeze.
"Be careful!" it hissed suddenly, and Sunny flinched away from the mirror. It was unsettling to hear Blister's voice as if she were on the nearest branch over. "Close it up. Is head ready to go? All right, give him his gold, and tell him I'll be there in a moment with final instructions." The smoke dipped for a moment, then turned as another small twister touched down. "Anything?"
"No sign of any SeaWings, Your Majesty," said the new arrival. "We waited half the day."
Blister hissed, low and long. "I'll win this war without them, then," she growled. "Burn will be dead within a fortnight, and then I'll kill Blaze with my own talons, and the SeaWings will get nothing when they come slithering out of the ocean begging for forgiveness. They'll find my claws and the entire force of the SandWing army waiting instead. Coral has no idea what vengeance can really look like. Don't touch that," she snapped abruptly.
"Sorry, Your Majesty. What-"
"It's my plan to end this war once and for all," Blister said in a dark voice. "Without the SeaWings or the NightWings. So stay away from it. Any word from our spies in the Ice Kingdom?"
"No sign of the dragonets yet. Perhaps-"
"I know," Blister snapped. "They could be somewhere else." There was the the sound of paper crackling. "I've been considering the possibilities. Hiding in the rainforest, perhaps."
Sunny felt a chill down her spine.
"Or perhaps they're dead," said the soldier. "Especially if they tried going to the rainforest, from what I've heard about the place."
"Hmmm," Blister mused. "Dead. They'd never do anything so convenient for me. Even with a NightWing assassin after them. Supposedly, he killed that Stormcaller dragon, which I doubt, if anything Morrowseer says can be trusted. Speaking of dragons I'm going to dismember as soon as I get my claws on them."
'She doesn't know he's dead - how could she?' Sunny gripped the branch below her, feeling terror shudder through her scales. 'At least she's not searching the rainforest yet.'
"It doesn't matter," said Blister, her voice suddenly brisk. "I'm done with prophecies. I mean, I'll still kill the dragonets when I find them, but first I have a war to win. My new plan will take care of Burn - and then the stronghold will fall, and the throne will be mine." There was a chilling rattling sound, and the twist of smoke seemed to get a little darker.
"How-" began the soldier.
But just then Sunny heard a roar from the NightWings' clearing.
'Uh-oh.'
She wanted to know what Blister's plan was - but she needed to know how the three NightWings were reacting, and if she was in any danger right now. She cleared the mirror quickly, whispered "Fierceteeth" to it, then breathed smoke across it again.
Immediately, three curls of black smoke popped up on the glass, rushing around one another like small tornadoes.
"How could you lose it?" Fierceteeth's voice snarled.
"I didn't lose it," Preyhunter snapped. "Somebody stole it."
"Right out from under your snout?" Fierceteeth growled. "How, exactly?"
"I don't know!" Preyhunter yelled.
"I do," said a trembling voice that barely sounded like Strongwings. "It was the Darkstalker."
Sunny tilted her head toward the mirror. 'What's the Darkstalker? What could be scary enough to terrify a dragon as big as Strongwings?'
The other two NightWings didn't respond for a long moment. Finally, Fierceteeth hissed, "That's just a ghost story for little dragonets. There's no Darkstalker, or if there ever was, we killed him centuries ago."
"No, he's real," Strongwings said, edging toward hysteria. "Everyone knows he's still out there somewhere, and now he's found us. Look at this message! We're going to die!"
"It could have been someone who wants us to think he's the Darkstalker," Preyhunter said dubiously.
"But who else would know we ha the mirror? Who else would know that we're flying to our death?"
"Snap out of it, Strongwings," Fierceteeth barked. "Someone is trying to scare us, that's all. You know the story. The Darkstalker, if he did exist, died a long time ago."
"No. He couldn't die," Strongwings whispered. "They buried him, but they always knew he'd come back one day."
Sunny had never heard of this mythical dragon, but she had a feeling that Stormcaller did. He seemed to know just about everything when it came to legends and myths. 'It must be a NightWing legend. Lucky for me.' She hadn't expected to tap into an old superstition.
"Maybe it was that SandWing," Fierceteeth said, then immediately let out a dismissive snort. "No, that stunted salamander wouldn't have the teeth for something like this. She must have gone back and told someone we had the mirror. I bet this was Deathbringer. Seems like something he would do, from what I've heard of him."
Sunny was obscurely flattered and offended at the same time. She flicked her tongue at the dark glass.
"But Deathbringer would just kill us," argued Preyhunter. "Strongwings was right about one thing - this is what the Darkstalker does, according to the stories. He plays with his prey for days, making sure they're nearly paralyzed with terror before he strikes."
"Yes, exactly," Strongwings said. "He'll come back the next time we sleep and kill just one of us, or-"
"So let's not be paralyzed with terror," Fierceteeth snarled. "Let's go. The Kingdom of Sand is on the other side of those mountains. We can be there in a few days if we stop moaning and clutching our tails. Come on." Her smoke tendril was nearly interwoven with Strongwings', as if she were trying to heave him into the sky with brute force.
"But the message-"
"We can't go back," Fierceteeth said. "Glory will kill us more definitely than any old NightWing animus ghost, and if she doesn't, we'll be the RainWings' prisoners. I'll take my chances in the desert, even without that mirror."
The argument didn't go on much longer. Soon the sound of wingbeats thumped across the smooth obsidian.
Sunny tilted the smoke together and breathed fire across it again until there was nothing but silence and darkness on the face of the mirror. The slithering inside her faded, but she felt more tired and sick than she had in a while. 'I hope I don't have to use this thing too often. So I'd better try to keep an eye on them.'
She ducked through the leaves and flew straight up until she slipped through the whispering green canopy, straight into the blinding sunlight.
On the western horizon, already no bigger than claws, she could see the three black shapes winging away toward the mountains. She followed, feeling better and stronger with each movement of the sun on her scales.
'The Kingdom of Sand. The desert. Just on the other side of those mountains. I'm going home.'
END OF CHAPTER
A/N
Hope you all enjoyed the chapter
I don't really have much to say, so let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
See you all in the next chapter
bye