(3rd Pov Sunny)
The plan was to go straight to the rainforest.
As tempted as Sunny was by the idea of meeting her father, she was more worried about her friends. She needed to get back and war them, fast.
But the weather had other plans.
A gale-force wind howled down the mountains that night, carrying with it was the worse storm Sunny had ever been caught in. Not that she'd encountered many, living in caves her whole life - but there was that one hurricane in the Kingdom of the Sea, and Sunny was sure that this was worse.
Or maybe it felt worse because she was caught outside with no shelter and rapidly becoming very, very wet.
The rain pelted her eyes and dragged down on her wings, while the wind kept trying to slam her into the cliffs, and the whole time, thunder roared as though the clouds were playing drums on the mountaintops.
And despite all that, Stormcaller was completely fine. The NightWing was barely even fazed by the strong winds and relentless rain, and he didn't even flinch at the lightning and thunder.
"You aren't built to fly through weather like this," Stormcaller said, as if he was built to fly in weather like this. "We can rest at Jade Mountain. Looks like you'll be meeting your father sooner than you expected."
Thoughts clouded Sunny's head as they veered toward Jade Mountain, the one solid thing she could identify in the driving storm. 'Will he be there? Will he want to meet me? Will he be scary, or awful, or dangerous? Will he be like Orca, the crazy animus SeaWing who killed all those dragonets?'
It was nice to have Stormcaller with her, so she didn't have to meet her mysterious, powerful, potentially homicidal father alone.
Soaking wet, exhausted, and shivering from the cold and anxiety, Sunny finally crash-landed in a cave high up on the mountain's south side next to Stormcaller. She stumbled to a stop, scraping her scales painfully on the rocky floor, and shook out her wings in a flurry of droplets.
Stormcaller spread his wings and his chest let off a fiery red glow like he had done in the Ice Kingdom. An aura of warmth flowed off of him and began to dry Sunny off. it also lit up the cave a little bit.
It was dark inside, and Sunny thought it was unlikely that she's have accidently wandered into the exact cave where her father lived. Surely there were other caves all over the mountain.
Stormcaller held up a thick branch that he found in the dim light he was letting off and set one end ablaze with a plume of fire. The flickering light revealed a gap in the rocks in the back corner. When the two of them investigated, they found a sort of natural tunnel that seemed to lead further into the mountain, to a cave system that probably ran all the way through it.
"Do you want to meet your father now, or stay here for the night?" Stormcaller asked, gazing into the tunnel.
She hesitated, leaning against the stone wall. Should they rest here and fly on in the morning? Maybe they could leave unnoticed and come back when she had more dragon with her. Not that she didn't trust Stormcaller's capabilities, it's just, would he be able to survive a fight with a potentially homicidal animus dragon?
'But how could I get this close to my father and not try to see him?'
She thought of Peril and Kestrel, and how Peril thought they'd have more time to get to know each other. 'You never know what might happen.'
That decided her.
She faced Stormcaller and put on as brave of a face as she could. "I'm ready to meet my father," she said.
Stormcaller blinked at her a few times before smiling, more than she'd seen him smile before. "I'll lead the way, if it makes you feel any better."
Sunny nodded and internally let out a sigh of relief. It did make her feel better.
She followed Stormcaller for what felt like a long time. She marked tunnels with her claws whenever they came across a fork in the tunnel because Stormcaller didn't. He moved along as if he knew where he was going, which Sunny didn't doubt. They passed caves dripping with stalactites, clambered over rocks like giant bubbles, flew over a dark pool with no ripples when the firelight reflected eerily across the glassy surface.
It felt familiar, being underground like this. She wondered if other dragons - especially more SandWings - would be more unnerved by these surroundings. Stormcaller didn't seemed bothered by it, but then again, nothing seemed to faze the NightWing. But this was so similar to the small, enclosed world she grew up in. She almost expected to turn a corner and find the study cave, with the map spread against one wall and scrolls piled in the corner and her friends arguing over who would play Blaze when they acted out the history of the war.
"Have you been here before?" Sunny asked Stormcaller.
"No." The older NightWing shook his head.
"Then why do you seem to know where you're going?" Sunny said.
"I'm tracking your father," he said, pausing for a moment in a low passageway with a low, craggy ceiling before continuing onward.
"You're tracking him?" Sunny looked at him confused. "How?"
"You know that weird feeling the tunnels give off?" Stormcaller asked, glancing back at her. She nodded, thinking of the strange hole in the boulder and tree. "Well, all animus things give off that strange feeling, even animus dragons. Sometimes it's just so small that you can't notice without knowing how to. That's how, I'm following the feeling of that, well, feeling."
That actually made a little sense to Sunny. But that only raised the question of how Stormcaller was able to feel the unfeelable feeling.
The torchlight flickered suddenly, dipping and swaying, and then Sunny felt it as well: a gust of wind, whistling down the tunnel from far away. Then she heard it: the sound of rhythmic breathing that rasped quietly somewhere.
A few paces ahead, Stormcaller stopped in front of a cave and Sunny held her breath. He stepped of to the side, allowing Sunny to go in first.
'This is it,' she though, glancing inside and let out a low exhale.
At first, as she edged closer inside, the cave looked empty . . . but then the firelight reflected off something black and glossy in the shadows against the back wall.
Scales. Black scales, rising and falling in sleep. It was a NightWing for sure.
Sunny stopped and stared at the slumbering dragon.
'Is that my father?'
He was bigger than Thorn, but slightly smaller than Stormcaller. Deep lines were etched into his face, so he looked as if he were in pain even in his sleep. His talons were curled awkwardly into stiff shapes and his tail flopped heavily on the ground behind him, barely moving as he breathed, as though it were made of stones.
Sunny took a quick breath in, and then stepped closer.
It wasn't just his tail. Other parts of of the dragon - his back legs, his shoulders, the edges of his wings - looked heavier and thicker than a normal dragons scales.
'Like he's actually turning into stone. Is that possible?'
She peered at the section of tail closest to her. The black scales looked like dark pebbles here, sinking into the skin beneath.
She was so preoccupied, studying this odd phenomenon, that it took her a moment to realize that the dragon's eyes had opened, and he was staring back at her.
"Oh!" she gasped, jumping back. "I'm sorry! I didn't - I mean - I didn't mean to wake you - I was - the storm -"
"I don't bite," he said in a deep, serious voice.
"Oh," Sunny said again. "Well. That's good. You mean you don't bite other dragons, right? Like me? Are you being reassuring?"
He blinked slowly at her. "I don't bite . . . other dragons."
"Great," said Sunny, not feeling very reassured. It was unsettling how he hadn't moved a muscle of his body as he spoke to her, even his jaws seemed to hinge very slowly open for him to talk.
"That's good," Stormcaller said, making himself known by stepping halfway into the cave. "You're Stonemover, right?"
The NightWing looked at Stormcaller for a long moment, not answering, and he looked worried. "Yes," he answered slowly. "Have you come to . . . . drag me back?"
'It is my father. It's really him. He's still alive and right here in front of me. And he doesn't look crazy and homicidal. He just looks . . . sad.'
Stormcaller let out a small laugh, and the sat down. "No, we're not here to drag you back to the NightWing island, or what left of it, I suppose." He muttered the last part.
The worried expression on Stonemover's face slightly lightened. "Are you with the Talons, then? How did they find my name?" he questioned.
"We're not from the Talons," Sunny said. "I'm Sunny, and this is Stormcaller. Do the Talons come here? Oh, right, Kestrel said we could send her a message through you. I guess that would be useful when you're an underground movement and never know when you'll have to hide."
"True," he said. "After all, I am not going anywhere."
"Oh," Sunny said, glancing at his scales. "Because - what happened to you?"
"You are noisier than the Talons," he observed, but without any anger in his voice. Stormcaller slightly chuckled. "It is my animus curse."
"Really?" Sunny said. "This happened to you when you used your magic? I thought you'd lose your, you know, soul or something, not . . . this." She waved her claws at the petrified scales weighing him down.
"I turned the magic on itself," he said. "The curse appears in my scales now instead of taking my soul." He sighed through his nose, a sad, windy sound with drifts on smoke. "Too late anyway."
"Too late for what?" Sunny asked.
"My soul." He managed to turn his head a fraction toward her with an eerie creaking sound. His dark eyes were as still and unreadable as the underground cave lake. "The things I have done."
"You mean like building the tunnels," Sunny said, and now there was a definite flash of surprise all the way through his eyes. Then it faded, and his eyes narrowed as he examined her from horns to talons, and then did the same to Stormcaller. It might have been scary once, his expression, except that the rest of him was so pathetic and sad. he could hardly even move. Sunny didn't feel afraid of him at all.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I'm -" Well this felt awkward, just throwing it out there midcoversation. But how else could she tell him? Was there an easy, not shocking way to break this kind of news? "Okay. The truth is, I'm your daughter. Thorn is my mother. I only found her, just - wow, just yesterday - no, two days ago - and she told me about you and -" Sunny talked on, not sure what to think of the expressions darting across Stonemover's face" confusion, suspicion, hope, dismay, maybe anger? "And I wanted to meet you - I hope that's - I hope you - well, I know it's weird, because she never got a chance to tell you about me, so-"
"We had eggs?" he rasped.
"You had me," Sunny said. "An egg, one dragonet. Just me." She looked down at her talons. "Mother wanted to tell you. but she never got your note. She didn't know you were here until she found it yesterday. She's been looking everywhere for you."
Her father sighed through his nose and closed his eyes. "I though she'd given up on me."
"She might have now," Sunny said, trying to prompt more of a response. Why didn't he care more? Why hadn't he tried harder? She felt a wave of sympathy for her mother. "Why didn't you go look for her?"
"I'm not the right dragon for Thorn," he said. "Perhaps I never was."
"She obviously thought you were," Sunny pointed out. "She really worried about you."
He sighed again. 'He sighs a lot,' Sunny thought, wishing she could poke something into his nose to make him stop. "There's nothing I can do. I did all the wrong things . . . a long, long time ago . . . and nothing can change that."
Something suddenly scrabbled in the dark nearby and Sunny nearly leaped onto Stonemover's back in terror.
Stormcaller moved the torch around and then down, and the light reflected off tiny little eyes and pointed ears and wet russet fur.
It was a fox, sauntering into their cave as bold as anything. Sunny realized it had come down another passageway, and she could feel the wind coming from that direction as well. 'The passage must lead to an exit out of the mountainside.' The fox carried a dead squirrel in its jaws, and it gave Sunny a scornful look, as if it certainly didn't expect her to dare pick a fight with someone as tough as him.
"Shoo," Sunny said sternly. "So find yourself another cave."
"Oh, this is dinner," Stonemover said. He hinged his jaw open, and to Sunny's wonder, the fox trotted over and dropped the squirrel right into his mouth. It stepped back and gave Sunny another haughty look as Stonemover began to chew.
"Wow," Sunny said. 'Are foxes intelligent, too, like scavengers and felynes? What if all animals are smarter than we think they are? Is there going to be any prey left that I won't feel bad about eating?' She opened her mouth to say something, but Stormcaller spoke first.
"You enchanted an animal," he said with an underlying tone of anger in his voice. It was just then that Sunny remembered what the NightWing had said when they were prisoners in the Kingdom of the Sea. About how animus magic was dangerous and had endless possibilities. Was that really true?
Stonemover nodded his head, even though the way Stormcaller spoke wasn't a question. "Turns out it works on animals," he said, "if you're desperate and try hard enough."
Sunny folded her wings in and shivered. "That's creepy."
"Dinner doesn't mind," he replied, and it took her a moment to figure it out.
"You call the fox Dinner?" she said.
"Why not?" His shoulder moved an infinitesimal amount, the smallest of shrugs.
"Because that's peculiar," she said. "And really creepy for him, if he knew what you were saying."
"I didn't think about it," he said. "I've never introduced him to anyone before. Anyway, I only enchanted him to bring me food every few days; he still has a fine ordinary life as a fox, I'm sure."
As if in answer to this, Dinner shook himself vigorously, scattering water all over Sunny and Stormcaller, and then trotted out of the cave again.
"I mean," Stonemover concluded, "I had to do something, or I would have starved."
Stormcaller eyed the spot where the fox disappeared for a moment before turning back to face her father.
"I can't believe I have a daughter," Stonemover said, and Sunny felt a little warmer toward him, hearing the sadness in his voice. "I used to dream - I would think about what our dragonets would look like, if Thorn and I ever - but I thought it was too late."
"I bet you didn't picture me," Sunny said ruefully. "I don't have the SandWing tail barb and I also don't have any cool NightWing powers. I always thought maybe I looked weird because of the prophecy, somehow, but-"
He would have sat up if he could, she could tell. His head twitched a little closer to her. His breath smelled like squirrel. "Prophecy?"
"About the dragonets saving the world and stopping the war," Sunny said. "You know. You must know."
"Yes," he mused.
"I'm one of them," she said. " 'Hidden alone from the rival queens,' that's me. It's kind of a long story.'
"But-" he started, and paused.
And then Sunny was scared, because the look in his eyes was the look of news she didn't want, and it was righteousness and pity and truth-is-the-important-thing and she didn't want it, she didn't want him to say it.
"Stop, don't," she blurted, but at the same time he said: "But's don't you know? The prophecy isn't real."
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Onto the next chapter
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(3rd Pov Sunny)
"Hmm," Stonemover said, studying her expression. "You did know. You know it's fake."
"Well, I've heard that," Sunny said. The walls felt as if they were tilting in toward her. She curled her claws and twitched her tail, avoiding his eyes. "That's what Morrowseer said. But why should we trust him?"
Stonemover managed to look fairly amused. "Morrowseer wouldn't make himself seem any less powerful if he could ever avoid it. He must have been forced to tell you the truth, for some reason."
"He was manipulating us, like always," Sunny said. "But just because I don't like him doesn't mean the prophecy couldn't be real."
"Oh, little dragon," Stonemover said, and she got the feeling he'd already forgotten her name. "I promise you the prophecy is not real. I was there when they came up with it. i was also there when the NightWing scribes were ordered to write more about our so-called powers, building them up in every scroll, every story. Queen Battlewinner planned that carefully. But no NightWing has had any power to see the future or read minds in over a hundred years, if anyone ever did. That is the truth."
Sunny wanted to throw things and yell like her mother did when she was angry. "NightWings," she growled. "You guys make it really, really hard to like you. Why are you telling me this? You obviously haven't told the Talons, or everyone would know."
"Because I suspect I am dying," he said with a dry cough, "and someone should know, then who?"
Stormcaller looked at her father with a somewhat disappointed look.
"Well, hooray," Sunny said. "Lucky me." She tucked her tail around her talons and hunched her wings up. After a moment, she said. "Really? Are you really dying?"
"I'm always dying," he answered, which also made Sunny want to poke him in the nose. She honestly had no idea why her mother had ever liked this dragon.
'But at least he's telling the truth. That's more than I can say for most of the grown-up-dragons I've ever know.' She tried to push down the bitterness she felt about NightWings and all their lies; she tried to look down at just Stonemover, her father, and see him as his own dragon, not one of a tribe.
'He's really sad. Imagine if I had been born with animus powers into a terrible place like the NightWing island. The queen must have used him from the moment they found out what he could do. he never had a choice about what to do with his life. Maybe nobody does. Even though I want to end the war so badly, maybe there's nothing I can do.'
The prophecy was really fake. Her life was really a lie. She was really not special, and she was really not destined to save the world.
She looked over at Stormcaller, who had a mix of emotions on his face: disappointment, a little anger, and . . . . sympathy - no, empathy. She looked back at her father, whose eyes had closed. His breathing was starting to slow down, as if he were falling asleep again.
"Can we stay here tonight?" she asked.
"Please do," he said quietly.
Stormcaller blew out the torch and sat down just outside the cave entrance. Sunny curled up in a ball in the warmest corner of the cave, across from Stonemover's petrified scales. She rested her chin on her front talons, feeling like her own scales were made of stone, too, heavy and exhausting to lug around. She wished she could wake up back in the cave under the mountain two months ago, before any of this had happened, when she still believed in the prophecy, their destiny, a wonderful future, and perfect parents waiting out there for all of them.
Her eyes closed, and her sadness drifted away into sleep.
* * *
Sunny was back in the stronghold, wandering through Burn's weirdling collection, except instead of a tower, it had become an endless maze of increasingly creepy oddities. Every time she turned a corner, a new disturbing thing lurched toward her.
She realized Flower was sitting on her shoulder, holding on to her neck like one of the rainforest sloths and chattering quietly to herself.
This was comforting only for a moment, and then a massive skeletal thing suddenly loomed out of a shadowy doorway, with the strange, hungry-looking skull from the weirdling tower attached to its neck. It had no wings and massive legs and small pathetic arms. But despite all that, it looked all the more terrifying.
Sunny leaped aside, pressing her back against the wall. She closed her eyes.
'Stop. Stop. Don't be scared. This is just a dream. You're safe now, far away from Burn.'
She imagined the bright rolling sand of the desert, trying to change her dream surroundings by force of will. After a few moments, she felt the warmth of sunlight on her face, and she opened her eyes.
It had worked. She was standing on the desert sand . . . and right in front of her was a scavenger.
Sunny started back with a yelp of surprise, and so did the scavenger. But it didn't turn and run, and it didn't scream. it just stood there and blinked at her with enormous brown eyes.
She reached up to her shoulder. Flower was still there. this scavenger in front of her was not Flower - Sunny had never it before.
'Aw,' Sunny thought. 'It's so cute.' She guessed it was female, like Flower, although this one seemed smaller and younger. Seeing Flower . . . that's probably why she was dreaming about scavengers, although it was surprising to dream up one she'd never seen before. A long, dark mane flowed from the scavenger's head down the middle of her back, and she had the same adorable little nose and monkey features as Smolder's pet, including the long, thin, clever paw with no claws on the end.
Sunny tilted her head at the scavenger's paws. Wait. She was holding something - something about the size of an orange, which caught the desert sunlight with a shimmer of blue.
While Starflight had been trapped with the NightWings, he'd found a way to communicate with his friends by dropping into their dream using an old animus-touched sapphire called a dream visitor. Apparently there were three of them out there in the world somewhere, and he had found one on the NightWing island. Glory had explained it to Sunny and Clay and Tsunami when they got one of Stormcaller's letters, rolling her eyes as if she couldn't believe they'd forgotten that one sentence in one scroll they'd studied years ago. Sometimes she could be as bad as Starflight, although nobody would dare tell her that.
Sunny took a step toward the scavenger, but she didn't flinch back. Instead, she took a step toward Sunny, holding out her free paw. She pointed at Flower and chattered something.
'Am I not dreaming? Is this real? Could a scavenger possibly have a dream visitor? How would it have gotten a dragon jewel like that?'
Sunny inhaled sharply, flaring her wings. 'The only possible way: by stealing it. From the queen of the SandWings, twenty years ago.'
"Where did you get that?" she asked, flicking her tail at the jewel in the scavenger's paw.
The scavenger looked down at the dreamvisitor. Her eyes widened, and the desert sand behind her sudden went blurry. Sunny caught a glimpse of black shapes around her, towering against a background of trees in moonlight.
With a muffled yelp, the scavenger gave Sunny a fierce look, clutched the sapphire to her chest, and vanished.
"Wait!" Sunny shouted. "I need that treasure!" She pounced on the spot where the scavenger had been, digging frantically in the sand. But of course it was gone, popping out of her dream as abruptly as it had popped in. And there was no way to get her back - the scavenger was the one who had the dreamvisitor, and therefore controlled where she went and who she saw.
'But why would she visit me? And how? I thought you could only visit the dreams of dragons you've met before. Or seen . . . she must have seen me somewhere, sometime while we were traveling around Pyrrhia, Although I'm sure I didn't see her.'
Sunny sat down, sweeping her laws through the sand.
'So if I can figure out where, maybe I can find her - and the stolen SandWing treasure.'
She closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to bring back those blurry dark shapes that she'd glimpsed behind the scavenger, just for a moment. They'd looked familiar. And there had been trees, too - so it wasn't the Kingdom of the Sea, or the Sky Kingdom. Were there scavengers in the rainforest?
'The trees didn't look tall enough.'
Sunny's eyes snapped open. 'The forest between the mountains and the desert. Where I saw the ruins of the old scavenger den. The little scavenger was in the ruins. Which means now I know where to start looking.'
END OF CHAPTER
A/N
Hope you all enjoyed the chapter. I know it's a little short, but that was the last part of part 2, and within the next chapter or two you're all gonna get a lot of new lore and information, so stay tuned.
Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Especially you ConeGuardian, you told me you had an idea.
See you all in part three
bye