Wings of Fire:
A new dawn
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Hello! Perhaps you remember me from before, @MoththeSilkHiveNightSand. My plan for my other novel was for some big prophecy to happen. I know the main character is OP (that's what my friends said too), but I'm ok with it. Sometimes you just need one of those cheesy little fanfics about things that just don't make sense. But whatever. That was like a year or two ago so my writing has changed a LOT. and I mean a LOT. Big shoutout to my friends who I will not name bc they don't have fandom accounts, and I'll respect their confidentiality. If you knew my old account and need to tell me smth just contact me at my user page.
Please do NOT edit this page. Message me if there's a spelling mistake. I really don't like others messing with my stuff. But please feel free to leave any canon names I accidentally used in the comments section. All canon names I used such as Wren, Ivy, Sky, Prince Cliff, Princess Mink, Peacemaker e.t.c, were used because they are canon, so that I can represent certain characters in a certain light. Other names have been used because they are only minor characters in the franchise. (By the way, I replaced the SilkWing Violet from the Copper Winglet with Dusky. I forgot he existed when I wrote this.) Thank you!
Also by the way this story takes place in roughly 5,016 AS (YRS After Scorching). ALSO by the way all my fanfictions are connected. (I'm now realizing how OP LunaStar [the main character] is [why do I make all my characters so OP?] [I need to redo like half her character page LOL]) Soooooo Luna appears a lot in them.
I'll be writing most of this on docs and be doing other stuff so don't expect too many updates. Just enjoy the book and hopefully I'll finish it one day! (i hope i don't take forever and it doesn't turn out like my last trainwreck [not to say my old one wasn't good i enjoyed writing it]) I'm trying to get past writers' block rn lol. I used the app Sketchbook to create the cover.
Enjoy!
MAJOR WARNING:[]
Can you guys, like, actually stop editing this page without my permission? some dude deleted, like, the entire author's note and changed it to "loser," and then told me to go get a job. Like, what? I'm not going to reveal my age, but I'll say I'm under 16, which I'm pretty sure is the legal age to get a job. And someone wrote that there was a sign in the dorms saying that puke and poo goes in the toilet. STOP EDITING THIS PAGE LIKE SERIOUSLY *wheeze*.
Some Characters and Some Such Nonsense:[]
Don't ask me why but I decided to make images of my OCs on picrew so HERE THEY ARE (I made them with Hellosunnycore's Picrew "TOON ME! <<A>>":.png "LunaStar the NightWing (as a human).png (318 KB)")
.png "Summer Azure the SilkWing (as a human).png (321 KB)")
Lol Luna's gallery photo's caption is so big
PART ONE: Jade Mountain Academy[]
Winglets:[]
The Star Winglet:[]
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HiveWing: Bumblebee
IceWing: Princess Mink
LeafWing: Spruce
MudWing: Terra
NightWing: LunaStar
RainWing: Peacemaker
SandWing: Prince Oryx
SeaWing: Princess Auklet
SilkWing: Summer Azure
SkyWing: Prince Cliff
Humans: Aster, Lilac, Tuna, Yarrow
The Gold Winglet:[]
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HiveWing: Andrena
IceWing: Princess Floe
LeafWing: Laurel
MudWing: Mahogany
NightWing: Starseer
RainWing: Silver Maple
SandWing: BrightSting
SeaWing: Aquamarine
SilkWing: Rosy
SkyWing: Peak
Humans: Cardinal, Junco, Robin, Vine
The Jade Winglet:[]
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HiveWing: Bristletail
IceWing: Alabaster
LeafWing: Princess Ivy
MudWing: Briar
NightWing: Stargazer
RainWing: Basil
SandWing: Horus
SeaWing: Princess Lotus
SilkWing: Agathina
SkyWing: Prince Alder
Humans: Sterlet, Zinnia, Ash, Acorn
The Silver Winglet:[]
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HiveWing: Lepidoptera
IceWing: Princess Aurora
LeafWing: Honeysuckle
MudWing: Princess Topaz
NightWing: Artemis
RainWing: Dewdrop
SandWing: Pale
SeaWing: Wave
SilkWing: Holly
SkyWing: Feather
Human: Pebble, Cherry, Peony, Lavender
The Copper Winglet:[]
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HiveWing: Ladybug
IceWing: Frigid
LeafWing: Sorrel
MudWing: Chestnut
NightWing: Everwinter
RainWing: Toucan
SandWing: Tan
SeaWing: Seaweed
SilkWing: Dusky
SkyWing: Rouge
Humans: Daphne, Abelia, Deutzia, Chive
The Quartz Winglet:[]
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HiveWing: Vespa
IceWing: Boreas
LeafWing: Evergreen
MudWing: Mosquito
NightWing: Oracle
RainWing: Banana
SandWing: Sandy
SeaWing: Salty
SilkWing: Papillon
SkyWing: Cerise
Humans: Dahlia, Juniper, Oak, Bottlebrush (Yes, I know it sounds like this dude cleans bottles a lot)
The Bronze Winglet:[]
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HiveWing: Apocrita
IceWing: Wolverine
LeafWing: Sycamore
MudWing: Bayou
NightWing: Bloodmoon
RainWing: Peacock
SandWing: Python
SeaWing: Aethia
SilkWing: Brimstone
SkyWing: Sparrow
Humans: Creek, Pansy, Lobelia, Dianthus (sounds very Greek)
The New Prophecy[]
Wings of fire
Bane of Blood
Moonborn or not
Drought or Flood
Wings of Bluefire
Eyes of ice
For those who are naughty
And those who are nice
They cannot escape
Their howling fate
To die at the hands of Sorrow
In the field of Moon roses and the field of yarrows
The Story[]
Prologue:[]
“Hope,” whispered a voice from the darkness. A purplish-black dragon emerged from the rainforest ferns, gesturing to the silver egg that was laid out in the moonlight. “Do you think she’ll hatch?” What an odd question; eggs were meant to hatch. Although, perhaps this dragon meant 'Do you think she'll hatch tonight.'
“Yes,” said Hope, clutching her RainWing-NightWing dragonet closer to her as he stared up at the moons. He was barely a year old, and the final battle against the Breath of Evil had been won. He began writing songs, but his voice was a little off-tune. Hopefully he’d find someone to sing them for him; Hope didn’t want broken ears by the time he was old enough to go to the prestigious Jade Mountain Academy, where he could sing all he wanted and go pester his clawmates.
“Are you sure?” said the purplish dragon again, stepping closer to her egg.
“Yes, Silverstar,” sighed Hope. “I’ve seen plenty of gifted hatchings. This one will have both powers of the tribe and be great and all. I’m sure of it.” She’d already told Silver that she was over two thousand years old; Silver was just sad that she’d been trapped the whole time, living for only a minute here and there. She also knew that Peacemaker, Hope’s dragonet, was really Darkstalker.
“Where are Justice and Celestial and Ironclaws?” asked Silverstar worriedly. “They said they’d be back an hour ago--”
“Relax,” said Hope. “Your worries only make the egg restless. Project positive energy, not negative.”
Suddenly, a tall NightWing with round glasses walked out from behind a tree, carrying a basket of fried fruit and toast. Behind him trailed two female NightWings, one with blue-ish scales flecked with small silver diamonds and one with gold scales instead of silver on her wings, and amber eyes.
“Sorry about that,” huffed Ironclaws, pushing his glasses up his snout and setting the basket of food on a boulder. “The lines were longer with the New Moon Festival.” He wrapped one of his wings around Silverstar and she leaned into him. Silverstar’s two triplet sisters stood next to her, watching the egg rock from side to side.
Suddenly, a crack appeared, jutting outward, and then rolled out a small, coughing dragonet. Her scales were metallic black with hints of purple-to- turquoise, making her look like a large, polished gemstone. Her eyes were wide and starry purple-to-turquoise, and enormous silver teardrop scales shone on the corners of her eyes. She had a listening look to her, as if tracking all the older dragons’ thoughts…
“Oh moons and miracles!” exclaimed Silverstar, rushing to her dragonet and picking her up. Even Peacemaker waddled up to the newly hatched little dragon, dropping a strawberry in her talons. The dragonet shoved it in her mouth, red juice dripping from her lips.
“What shall we name her?” asked Ironclaws softly.
“LunaStar,” Silver whispered. “Luna the savior. She’ll be our little hero.”
And just like that, a new dragonet looked into the stars, and at her parents, knowing full well that her whole life was about to begin.
Part One[]
Chapter One:[]
four years later...
LunaStar couldn’t be bothered to pack her chest. Really, if she’d had a say in her mother’s rash decision, she’d have stayed firmly in the talons of the rainforest, flying through the spray of rushing waterfalls and reading with her sloth and eating mangoes and strawberries and bananas. But there she was, stringing a bag over her chest and filling it with her most prized possessions: her gold and leather notebook adorned with crystals; her sparkling, curved, star-studded hourglass; her inkwell and feather. She touched her winding, spiraling, twining silver-gold earring self-consciously, feeling the odd warmth of the magenta-to-turquoise star-shaped crystal dangling from it.
She was a simple dragon; write her books, do her things, live with her parents in the smithery. But her parents wanted other things. They found it annoying instead of comforting that Luna guided them in the right path.
Her magenta-to-turquoise eyes scanned the rainforest below the cliff she was perched on, watching dragons rise to the skies and drop down into the valleys that dotted the landscape of the forest. She was born under the light of two full moons, so she could read minds as well as foretell the future. She could carefully trace paths to find the best possible outcome for a situation, but she preferred to stay in the moment, mainly because her foreseeing had led to some very under-excitable hatching day surprises. She’d saved her sister, Freedom, from a falling tree once. She’d been grateful, and her parents even more, but they were still wary of her powers.
Suddenly, she felt a talon tap her shoulder, and a dragon’s head popped around the corner of her vision.
“Peacemaker, I’m not in the mood,” she snapped, turning her gaze back to the landscape below.
“Well I certainly am!” he shouted, almost piercingly, right in her ear. He was half NightWing, half RainWing, with small fangs displayed when he grinned and dark scales dotted with other colors, like as if he were a giant parrot instead of a dragon. He had a bouncy vibe to him, as if he could never stop moving. I know what you’re thinking! he thought to her. And don’t even start. I KNOW that you think you can get away with it but you can’t!
“Ahh, really?” said Luna, “because I really don’t want to go to this stupid school about ‘understanding’ and ‘intertribal friendships’. Most dragons already hate us for being NightWings, and you just know it,” she snapped, then drew back, knowing that her words were more hurtful than she intended them to be.
“It will be alright, okay?” he said, trying to be hopeful instead of downcast. “Plus, the acceptance letter said we’d be in the same winglet, so at least we’ll be together.” And maybe she’ll stop grumbling about everything all the time.
“I do not grumble all the time!” snapped Luna, earning herself a grin from Peacemaker. All right, fine, she thought, staring at her talons. I’ll try to fit in at this new school. It was hard, though. She was a mind reader, so she’d be more useful at figuring out the moral of a dragon than learning math or science. She knew which winglet she was in, at least: the Star Winglet, a newer winglet added when they expanded further into Jade Mountain. She had her badge; it was of a silver-gold dragon on a magenta-to-turquoise circular disc that was clipped onto her bag. She looked at it for a long moment, then rose to the sky, beating her big, dark wings with hints of other colors, flecked with silver scales that looked like midnight stars. Her silver teardrop scales shone in the corners of her vision, as she rose up into the night sky. Her metallic dark purple to dark turquoise scales were almost completely hidden against the backdrop of the dark sky, illuminated by one of the three moons. She carried her chest of stuff with her, trying to balance out the weight of her belongings for the flight ahead.
She turned her head to peer at Peacemaker, who was flying alongside her, his large black flecked with rainbow wings beating the air around him. He flared his sparkly rainbow ruff at her, and he winked with one of his blue eyes. Come on, Luna, he thought mischievously to her, grinning wildly.
She did have some crinkle-sparkle feelings going on, but that was but a minor inconvenience. She knew that he was just a dragonet, only a dragon who was her friend. She pushed those feelings away and pledged that she’d never have them for as long as she lived.
Luna just glared at him, saving her breath for flying. She was prepared not to like this stupid new school and she wouldn’t try for as long as she lived. So she flew on, darkness in night, towards a place where she never longed to be.
***
LunaStar stood at the mouth of an enormous cavern, leafing through a scroll that was given to her by a jumpy NightWing dragon with the MindReading scales by her eyes, but had no special NightWing ability whatsoever.
She rolled the scroll out and read:
Welcome to Jade Mountain Academy, LunaStar!
Using the Information that you and your Winglet have given us we were able to come up with a schedule that fits everyone's needs. There is also a list of afterschool activities you can enroll in.
Your Winglet’s advisors will be Hope and MoonWatcher
Period: | Class: | Teacher(s) |Joining Winglet
Period 1: Talk Circle (with 1-2 advisors) NONE
Period 2: History (with Webs & Hope) Bronze Winglet
Period 3: Math (with Qibli) Jade Winglet
Period 4: Science (with Cricket) Silver Winglet
LUNCH & SUN TIME/FREE PERIOD
Period 5: Music/Art (with Mightyclaws & Luna)Gold Winglet
Period 6: Humans (with Sky, Ivy, & Wren) Copper Winglet
Period 7: Library Time (with StarFlight) Quartz Winglet
END OF DAY/EXPLORATION TIME
Extracurricular Activities are as follow:
NightWing Powers Training: with MoonWatcher (in the astronomy tower)
Cooking experiments: with Peril (in the kitchen & prey center)
Hunting: with Clay (in the prey center)
Reading: with Starflight (in the library)
Gardening: with Willow (in the gardens)
“Ha!” Luna said, rolling up the scroll again. Peacemaker caught up with her with his scroll and Luna promptly shoved the gardening section in his face.
“Gardening?” cried Peacemaker. “As if this wasn’t exciting enough!” he squealed all the way inside. As Luna’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, she could see stalactites and stalagmites carefully smoothened at the points so as to not hurt any young dragonets. A large banner made of purple and blue flowers said:
Welcome, Students!
Luna had the brief feeling that the mountain rumbled beneath her talons, but that was just a result of two brawny MudWings rushing by. Behind her, a green SeaWing about her size was hugging her large, crowned mother goodbye, and Luna suspected that it was the SeaWing Queen. Another SeaWing, like a larger version of the one her age, rushed past and exclaimed, “Auklet!” before giving Queen Coral a great big hug and ushering them in. Luna found an entrance labeled “Star Winglet” and went inside.
The cave was illuminated by several coloured glass globes filled with FlameSilk to give the cave an undersea as well as rainforest appearance. Vines with big flowers that had magenta and orange claw-shaped petals and ferns on them were strung on stalactites making it comforting, almost like a little taste of home. A large shelf stood on one wall, with books in one row, and scrolls on the other. In the middle of the room there was a large, round, stone table with a bowl of berries on it and several blank scrolls and full inkwells, and to the left of the cave opening was a big board with the words Assembly Soon written neatly across it in chalk. Luna’s tail trailed on the floor behind her as she walked forward to see three openings in the cave wall, carved smooth to pass through. They each had a name plate with three or four names on them, probably dorms. LunaStar searched to find her name on one, and found hers on the right, next to the bookshelf. It was covered by long vines of leaves and magenta, orange, and white orchids with tiny bluebells popping up in between, and it hid the inside from other dragons. The other two dorms were similarly made, but with different separations. One had a white, gold, and blue SandWing tapestry that had two flaps that went inward, and one had a screen of water, a rushing waterfall blocking the view of the room beyond. She paused for a moment, then inspected the nameplate on her dorm.
LunaStar, Princess Mink, Summer Azure
Huh, she thought. So I’ll be sharing with a princess. From the stories she’d heard, princesses could be needy, greedy, and brats, so she wasn’t exactly the most excited dragon in the universe. But from the stories that Queen Glory would tell Luna’s mother about the Queendom of Ice, Princess Mink wasn’t that annoying, just maybe a little too caring, like if someone showed up at your front step every day asking how you’re doing and then giving you a hug. But really, she was fine. She didn’t need mock sympathy or even normal sympathy. All she wanted was peace and quiet and normality, not that seeing everyone’s thoughts all the time was normal in any way.
She walked into her dorm and surveyed the space. A large platform at the top of the cave had several stalagmites holding more colorful glass globes with FlameSilk inside of them strung on flowering vines -- the same flowers as the ones blocking the view of the cave from dragons outside -- and a cascading waterfall flowed down past several more ledges and platforms into a river that bubbled out the wall to the right of the cave entrance. The waterfall itself came from the same platform that had the source of the light globes, from a small slash in the wall that was too small for any dragon to fit through. Luna could see which bed was hers; behind the higher part of the waterfall, below the ledge where the waterfall was coming from, there were several colorful pillows and blankets with white designs, and a deep, large cut in the wall where you could put books and scrolls and there was even a small outcropping inside the cut where a bag could be hung.
Below that, there was a spot with a large polar bear rug with several chunks of ice molded into unidentifiable shapes and sizes that seemed to have little snowflakes shaking inside of them. Luna remembered that she’d read that the IceWing royal palace had enchanted ice like that, and that it was made so it could not melt in any way shape or form. She also read that it couldn’t be broken in any way, so how had it been broken? Maybe it didn’t apply to royals, because that was obviously Mink’s bunk. The carved shapes were very odd, mainly because if Mink were an artist, she’d at least make the unidentifiable blobs look like something.
Next to that, strung between two large stalactites, was a large, blue silk hammock with a ladder hanging from it, just barely touching the smooth floor. It was probably for Summer Azure, the SilkWing of the winglet. Luna read that SilkWings went through a process called metamorphosis, like butterflies, and that they only got their wings at age six, so that explained the ladders. Luna had a brief flash of a silver, extremely light purple dragonet with large butterfly wings laughing, sitting on that hammock, her antennae twitching. So that meant that she did go through metamorphosis, it was just probably during school or before school.
Wait -- now that Luna thought about it, she thought into the future, and saw that Summer just went through her metamorphosis, so the ladder was probably just because she was a new learner and still needed to strengthen her skills.
Luna walked over to a large, wooden shelf where several scrolls were tucked into the bottom and books into the top. She unrolled a scroll and peered at it for a moment, before putting it back. She didn’t want to read; she wanted to put her things away and go to bed. She flew up to the rock ledge with the pillows and blankets and hung up her bag on the natural shelf, then put down the chest she’d been carrying and putting down for the past few minutes. Then she shut her eyes, and sleep came for her in a heartbeat.
She is working in her shop. She peers out the window, covers her flowering cactus garden with a strap of fabric, attaching it well so that it won’t get blown away by the storm. In the Opal Oasis, storms come frequently, making the residents hide away. But a NightWing prophet had come from far away and told her that a big storm was coming, far bigger than he’d ever seen before. She is scared, but she is well prepared. She hurries outside and secures boards over the windows, and goes back in and secures more inside. She bolts the door shut and breathes flame into a lantern, and stares into the flame for a minute, before hurrying down a flight of stairs into a cellar.
“Good,” she whispers. She sees that she’s well stocked with lizards and apricots, so if the storm were to stay longer, she would at least have something to eat. She goes back upstairs and tends to the sick SkyWing dragon on a bed in the main room. She is dying, and she knows that. But she could live, even if it meant taking odd medicines. She soothes the SkyWing with an elixir, hoping she’d stop stirring in her sleep. She goes through a narrow hallway, keeping the lantern close to her. She’ll need it in this dark. Just then, she spots a blue light ahead, and she exhales, knowing what it is.
In the middle of the room is a big, circular stone holder, with ancient triangular patterns painted on it in white. In the holder is a large, blue flame, burning in the hearth, warming her bones and strengthening her soul. Behind it hangs a large white tapestry with a gold outline, and depicts a tan SandWing holding up a circular blue flame outlined in gold. She breathes in the blue flame, before flying up, up, up, into the small chimney overhead. She blows the blue over her home, knowing that protecting the safehouse is all that matters. Then she ducks back into the chimney, and moves the tapestry aside, before going into a dark passageway, lit by the light of a single lantern.
There she knows there is no escape.
She smiles, feeling the tendrils of blueness seep into her scales.
One more day, she thinks, one more day before it’s all mine.
And with that, her dark gaze disappears into the night, where she cannot be seen.
LunaStar woke up to giant eyes staring her in the face.
She yelped and nearly fell off her sleeping platform, before she steadied herself and saw the SilkWing she knew was Summer Azure, whose turquoise eyes were cheerful instead of evil. When she opened and closed her wings, Luna saw that the inside -- the part that was hidden when both wings were pressed together over her spine -- was a more violet-blue than the outside, which was light purple patched with white, with tiny dark purple flecks and speckles. Luna almost thought she was part NightWing, like the HiveWings, because of how dark the purple was, but then she realized that she was just based off a certain butterfly and not in fact related to NightWings whatsoever. She also seemed a bit twitchy, and her antennae kept moving in odd ways, as if tracking the movements of passersby. She was wearing an odd raindrop earring that hooked onto a large butterfly wing earring her color that looked a lot like RainWing ruff. She was also wearing an odd fluffy golden-brown scarf, and Luna could see from this dragonet’s near past that it was the same odd color as her cocoon when she went through metamorphosis.
Luna took a deep breath and stared at the dragonet. “Why were you watching me?” she asked with genuine displeasure, knowing that the dragonet would stay happy no matter what.
“You seemed a bit stressed out,” Summer offered, looking her straight in the eye. She wasn’t afraid of confrontation, and Luna liked that. Luna could see from her thoughts that she could stand up for herself, as well as be a good friend.
Then Luna remembered what she’d said, and looked at her, confused. “What do you mean?” she asked.
Summer showed her her thoughts, and of Luna twitching, rolling around, and breathing unevenly. It seemed nothing like Luna actually would be. “I know you’re a mindreader,” said Summer ruefully. “I saw it from your teardrop scales, and you seem to always be listening to something, but something you’re able to control, like you can block it out. I guess it would make for faster conversations that way, and I’m pretty good at building a mental barrier to keep mindreaders from getting into my secrets so that’s good.” She looked down at her claws and fiddled with them. “At least, that’s what I think. No one really listens to me because they think my tribe is weak for being subordinate to the HiveWings. But that’s far from true. My mother, Adonis and Sister, Pipevine were both in the Crystalis from Yellowjacket hive. They tried their best to reach out to more SilkWings to find LeafWings who potentially knew how to combat mind control, due to their vast knowledge of plants.”
“I don’t think your tribe is weak,” Luna offered, getting her bag out of her nook and slinging it across her chest. “Your tribe had to, because HiveWings have natural weapons and mind control and the Book of Clearsight. And plus, your young dragonets can’t fly before metamorphosis, so Ex-Queen Wasp could have used that against you. So it was better to wait until LeafWings attacked, I guess.”
Right, Summer thought to her. That would make sense, I guess. Better to stay quiet until you find a way to break free.
Luna smiled, and suddenly a loud commotion broke the silence and rang out from the main room. Luna heard loud, crushing thoughts and had to fade the noise out of her mind, before her claws landed safely on the ground and she was able to shout above the noise to Summer. “Let’s see what's going on!” she suggested, and Summer nodded; but not before clapping her talons over her ears and letting her antennae feel the vibrations. Luna opened her thoughts to her and Summer thought, I can feel them fighting.
Summer led the way out the room and Luna frowned at the noise, before her eyes registered what was happening.
A dark green LeafWing with gold spikes and horns and deep hazel eyes was busy arguing with a SandWing with black diamond patterns on his scales, who was a little short and had brighter black eyes than any other SandWing. From the Winglet List, those were Spruce and Prince Oryx. They seemed to be arguing about something to do with Royalty, and, judging from the Winglet List, their Winglet probably had the most of that. Nearly half of the Winglet were connected to royals in some way, so dragons were prone to arguments with each other. It hadn’t occurred to Luna that she could be caught up in one of these arguments, mainly because she was a mind reader and a seer and she could easily tell them which one of them was right.
Suddenly, a black dragon with a long, graceful neck burst into the cave, with green eyes and green underscales, a scattering of silver scales patterned across her wings like stars in the night sky. Another, more worried dragonet followed her, with smooth purplish-black scales with hints of blues and greens, with teardrop scales next to her dark green eyes. Her eyebrows were furrowed and it seemed like she had a headache, but Luna already knew her, and she knew who suggested her as their Winglet Advisor.
“Hey Hope, Hey Moon!” said Luna excitedly, sidling up to them. “Hope I can’t believe you’re our history teacher! I didn’t know you taught.”
Hope massaged her temples and gave Moon a worried look. When Luna tried to read her mind, it was like a barrier keeping her out, but she caught snatches of maybe I should have stayed -- Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if -- oh he was nice -- Why did I let him … ? -- What if I -- but the rest was blocked out, like if she was a professional mind-blocker.
Moonwatcher, the dragonet -- who was about eight years old -- stepped between the quarreling LeafWing and SandWing. Moon gave the SandWing an almost quelling look, that seemed to project that the SandWing was the one at fault here. “So you must be Sunny’s new half-brother,” she forced, trying to break the tension. “It must be nice in the royal palace.”
“And you must be mother’s most trusted advisor’s girlfriend,” he teased, standing up taller even though he was still much shorter than Moon. Then he turned peaceful and started singing: “Qibli and Moonwatcher flying in the sky, getting all K-I-S-S-Y--”
“All right that’s enough,” Hope interrupted, her face expressionless as she kept her eyes on Oryx. But Luna could hear him murmur, “first comes love, then comes--”
She stifled a giggle, before catching Summer cracking up too. Maybe they could be friends. That would be good. Most dragons hated Luna for being a mindreading NightWing, but Summer didn’t seem to mind. She saw in her mind that Summer only cared about personality; she seemed to have a prickly wall of thorns around a dragonet named Bloodmoon, a NightWing dragonet Luna had seen in the village from time to time. She seemed to snap at everything that looked at her, including the dragons who’d moved to the forest after the defeat of Queen Wasp, just before Luna was hatched. She was black with hints of red and underscales of deep maroon and her red eyes always had a glint to them. She was probably hatched to one of the unhealthier dragons, because she had bloodshot eyes and raspy breathing. Luna realized that she was in the Bronze Winglet, and that they would be in History, the second period, together. She shuddered. Bloodmoon seemed like the type of dragonet who you’d want to stay away from, not speak to or share class notes. Luna made a mental note not to speak to the prickly dragon during class at all, for fear that she’d come out scarred for life.
Suddenly, A loud gong rang through the halls, and Summer looked at Luna excitedly.
“Yes!” she exclaimed.
“What?” asked Luna abruptly, thoroughly confused.
“Finally,” she said. “Come on, let’s go to the Assembly.”
Chapter Two:[]
LunaStar was tugged into the main cavern, where Several dragons stood on a raised platform and students were positioned all around. Several of them were whispering in voices that weren’t really whispers at all, and about sixty to seventy dragonets filled the cavern in total. The same banner from earlier that day hung above the raised platform, where the teachers were standing.
Now that Luna remembered it, she had seen a board saying “Assembly Soon” in the main Winglet Cave. She hadn’t quite registered it at the time, but she could have seen into the future that an Assembly would happen. Luna could hear snatches of dragons’ thoughts and blanked them out, keeping her mind focused on whatever the teachers would say.
A SilkWing with graceful caterpillar-green wings stepped forward into the light, her four giant wings spread out so that the light globes behind her cascaded green light onto the students. She had worls of blue, white, and gold along her wings, neck, and arms, and her antennae waved in graceful movements, not as twitchy as Summer’s. It was probably Luna, the great savior of the tribes and the dragon LunaStar was named after.
“Students,” said Luna the SilkWing importantly, bowing to the dragonets in the enormous cavernous clearing. “I am Luna, your art teacher, and I am pleased to announce the opening of the completed Jade Mountain Academy.” She grinned at a dark blue dragon with white triangles along his spine and snout and orange splotches on his wings and tail. She turned back to her students and her face became serious again, but LunaStar could hear from her thoughts of lessons that it was just a mask over her actually bubbly emotions.
“Yes, yes,” said a tall, brawny, royal-blue SeaWing with emerald undertones and a loud, shouty array of inner thoughts, shoving Luna aside. Luna gave her a mock hurt look and tried to look mortally offended and serious and cool all at the same time, resulting in a very interesting expression on her face. “I am Tsunami!” shouted the SeaWing, flinging her massive, spiral and star-web patterned wings aside, showering the students with blue flowers, which was a bit overkill if you asked Luna.
“I’m the Head of School,” the blue dragon continued, marching importantly from one end of the stage to another like a soldier. “So it is my job to make sure there’s no fighting, no dawdling, and certainly no PROPHECIES, because we’ve surely had enough of that.” She cleared her throat. “Also, no calling this place a ‘Fancy Hugging School’ or ‘Snuggle-Buddies’ because that’s rude and stupid. This school is to learn, not to insult.”
“Ahh, yes,” muttered a Silvery IceWing dragonet besides LunaStar. Her scales had sharp, gray-ish patterns on them and she was alert and sharp, scanning the room around her. She had two gold hoop earrings on each ear, with a small azure hanging from each one. She fluffed out her wings and thought, This school is so stupid, honestly. I couldn’t be bothered to understand why Clay and Sunny and Starflight and Tsunami would even try to put up with these losers.
Luna didn’t think those thoughts were that nice; this IceWing clearly needed a class on manners, even though that was just a thought. Luna found out she was Wolverine, from the Bronze Winglet. A small, thin MudWing stood on the other side of Luna, Terra from her own Winglet. She caught the picture of a large but thin female MudWing with a thin snout and elegant wings. Her scales were a deep mahogany brown inlaid with specks of yellows and oranges and reds, so it looked like each scale was one fire, and each was shiny like Ice. She had amber underscales and blue eyes, which were odd for MudWings. She wore a long, string necklace with little pearls on it, which she got from the Queendom of the Sea. Auburn would love it here, Luna caught Terra thinking wistfully, and realized that the dragon she’d seen was Auburn. Another, smaller version of Auburn popped into Terra’s mind, just with amber eyes and gold hoop earrings with little circular ambers on them. Amber would too, thought Terra. Ohh I miss them. Apparently Auburn was her BigWings, with similar fire-resistant scales as Clay. Amber was the second oldest, followed by a deep brown male named Bayou, from the Bronze Winglet. After was a male named Chestnut, from the Copper Winglet. Finally was Terra.
Luna knew that Terra felt alone -- it was similar to the feelings Luna had just begun to get from herself. She missed her sister, Freedom. She was named after a dragon who’d been friends with Luna the SilkWing for a short while, before she met her perilous end.
Speaking of SilkWings -- Summer Azure sidled up to Luna, standing just between her and Terra. She looked at Starflight, who’d begun to talk about responsibilities and hybrids and ‘intertribal connections’ that were ‘the baseline for future ambitions’.
“Three moons,” she huffed. “Wow, I really hope we don’t get in trouble. Because I’m sure Starflight will give us a long, boring lecture on how it’s important to be ‘nice’ and not ‘be bad little dwagonies’!”
Luna stifled a laugh, and finally, Tsunami sounded a large bronze gong. She yelled “free time!” and a stampede of dragonets rushed towards the classroom caves. Summer gave her an unhelpful shrug and motioned towards the hallway that led to the underground pools and the art room.
Luna followed summer through the wide passageways with bright, colorful glass globes with bright light radiating from them. The FlameSilk must have been added recently -- it was quite uncommon to find anything that bright. She ducked into a cavern bathed in sunlight, with light reflecting off the walls. A huge metal structure hung off the ceiling, shining with more glass globes. A bunch of wooden dragon sculptures with glass beads for eyes were positioned on shelves, organized by tribe and eye color. Thick canvases were shoved into a crevice on the back wall, to the left of the dragon sculptures, and next to them were several jars of paint brushes, and then colors of paint. Silks and dyes were laid out on a table for people to take, and several jars of beads were positioned there as well. There was clay for sculpting, and blank scrolls and pencils for sketching, and a stack of easels laying on the far left of the room.
Summer bounded over to the wooden dragons, and picked two up. She found a thin, graceful NightWing with Luna’s eye color, and an elegant SilkWing with hers. “Let's paint each other!” she suggested. “Although I kind of suck at painting.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” Luna offered, then took several different colors of paint and several sizes and patterns of paint brushes and pencils to color the sculptures with. She sat down at one of the tables and curled her tail around her hind legs. Summer set the SilkWing down in front of Luna, and got to work on her own.
Luna mixed white with purple and a little red, then mixed in hints of dark blue to get the perfect blend. She painted the Wings, then the body, spreading out the paint in even layers. Then she shaded the inside of the wings with dark blues and purples -- both sculptures were of dragons on pedestals in flight. She added little splotches of white and spots of black and dark purple with the smallest brushes she could find, before shading her long antennas with sparkling purple and magenta and coating them with silvery white to add a shine to them. She shaded some more, getting in each scale and making sure it looked exactly like Summer, before getting some thin, wavy, clear paper made of some unrecognizable material and cutting it up and painting it, making it look like Summer’s earrings. She attached it with glue, and then put a rain-coloured bead on each two golden hoops and attached them to her ears. Then she found a small lantern with a holder just big enough to fit the dragon sculpture on top and breathed a small plume of flame into it, and she saw that it was built so that the steam could escape the top, where the dragon sculpture was, and dry the whole thing. After that, she applied a thick layer of varnish and set it down proudly. She thought it was pretty good.
“Oh my gosh!” exclaimed Summer. “That’s so good. Mine isn’t as good though,” she added ruefully. She showed Luna hers, and Luna thought that the paint was a bit lumpy in places, but was still a pretty accurate representation of herself.
They decided to go back to their dorm and put the sculptures together on a rock shelf between their beds. Summer was beating her wings hard to stay up, and Luna saw how much pain it put her in.
“Try to glide on air currents instead,” Luna offered, showing her. They decided to go outside, and it took up most of their morning. They flew, and flew, until a group of RainWings came out and began to have their Sun Time.
We should get lunch, thought Summer. Luna nodded; together they flew to the Prey Center and, just as Summer glided down to the fruit section, Luna spotted a scraggly mountain goat. She flew down in a tight spiral and picked it up, then flew up and killed it in one, swift motion. Then she flew back and landed beside Summer.
“Hey Luna!” she exclaimed excitedly. She cut open a mango with a slice of her claws and stuffed pieces into her mouth. Apart from them, there was only one other dragon in that part of the cave; a cherry-red dragon aptly named Cerise, with jumpy thoughts but a quiet appearance.
On the far side of the Prey Center, a long table with a metal box with a latch that opened outward stood, with a small fire burning below it. Behind it, a square-shaped stone indent in the walls looked like frozen air was leaking out, probably filled with FrostBreath to keep food cool. Several metal objects that Luna knew -- pots, pans, bowls, plates, forks, knives, spoons, spatulas, tongs -- were piled up at a small metal box with a sort of hollowed out pipe that her mother once made back home, that she called a “sink” and a “tap”, because when you “tapped” on the handle, water would pour into a “sunken” rock or metal box. A copper, reddish dragon with glowing golden veins on her wings stood behind one of these tables, hurrying from place to place and doing odd things with different foods -- kneading some sort of dough made out of fine wheat; mushing tomatoes into sea salt and grains of black pepper; grating yellow cheese using a metal plate full of holes. Her eerie blue eyes like burnt-out skies tracked all of these foods as she mixed sauces with her tail and worked with expert talons. Sometimes the food would sizzle when she touched it, and her mind was like a fiery wall, but she didn’t seem to notice, and Luna wondered if there was anything going on in that blazing head of hers. Luna figured out that she was the school chef, Peril, and was a firescales who found love in cooking.
Luna sidled up to the strange fire-dragon, keeping her tail coiled around her protectively without knowing exactly what Peril felt, as her mind reading didn’t seem to be working with her glittering brain.
Peril didn’t seem to notice, until, without moving her head up or moving her eyes from her work, she said, “Like my newest creation?”
Luna peered at the circular dish she was pulling out of the metal furnace, covered in reddish tomato sauce with melted cheese and little bell peppers and onions on top. It smelled delicious; there was no lie in that. “What is it?” Luna asked, pointing a claw to the great-smelling thing.
Peril dropped it in front of Luna, and Luna jumped back, after almost smashing into Peril’s fiery arm. “Don’t worry,” Peril laughed suddenly, flicking her flammable tail into the air and making all flames disappear off her bronze scales. “Queen Snowfall found an old bracelet in her treasuries, and it turns out it made the wearer -- if they were firescales -- be able to control their power. She got Turtle’s ‘double the stuff’ bowl to mass produce the thing, and Queen Ruby’s gonna distribute it throughout the Queendom. Turns out that dragons actually need it -- they don’t wanna be burned badly by Firescales.”
“Oh,” said Luna, peering down at the odd food again. “Umm… what is this?”
“I call it… pizza!” Peril said proudly, slicing the ‘pizza’ into four equal parts with a knife. “I named it that because -- woah this might sound weird -- when I was taking the first model out of the oven I got burned and yelled ‘PIZZA!’ really loudly so that’s what I’m naming it!” She hastily shoved two slices each onto their own plates and handed one to Luna. “You’ll be my taste tester,” said Peril excitedly. “Wow I hope this goes well!”
Luna took a bite, and tasted it, soaking up the flavor. The tomatoes and cheese gave it a smooth texture and a sweet taste, and the bread-like base made it crunchier, like prey. The onions and bell peppers gave it leafy flavors and overall made it taste… perfect, actually. Luna thought this might be her new favorite food. (although, when she looked into the future, she saw that Peril would make something called Sushi and that she would like that even more, and she could even feel the taste in her vision.)
“Wow, this is…” Luna smiled. “This is ten out of ten!”
“Thanks sooo much,” Peril said with a small smile. “I’ll appoint you to taste tester number one!” Peril grinned widely at this idea, and Luna couldn’t help but laugh at Peril’s phrase.
Summer came over and gave her likings, saying that it would be good if cut up prey was on there, too. Slowly, other dragons came, and Luna could practically feel the happiness radiating off Peril. Luna felt proud of herself; helping Peril show off her culinary expertise was definitely something to be proud of. Right? Luna scrunched up her snout in thought, when she felt a tugging on her tail. Who was it now? If they were going to tug on her glorious tail she would shred the living daylight out of them--
It was just Summer Azure, beckoning to a far-off corner of the cave where they could chat. LunaStar walked over there and plopped herself down, her ‘glorious tail’ (Yes, very glorious, thought Luna) laying gently over her front talons. Looking left, then right, Summer leaned in to whisper. “I thought just for a second,” she began, before hesitating, “I saw a letter tucked into the underfolds of a SkyWing’s wing. Prince Alder, son of Princess Eminence.”
“So?” whispered Luna back, staring at Summer. She caught startling news from her friend’s thoughts. “Oh no,” said Luna worriedly. “No, no, no…”
“Yes,” sighed Summer. “Queen Ruby, leader of the SkyWings, is dead.”
Chapter Three:[]
“Dead?” LunaStar yelped, her mind reeling. Her mind-reading skills were turned into a tizzy and she felt as if she might explode. “How can she be dead?”
“Someone killed her, silently. I mean, she disappeared,” Summer explained. “Her royal guards found her blood and some of her scales on her bed and a window slightly open. Some of the other guards said they spotted something odd outside.”
“You got that all from a letter?” Luna questioned.
“A very royal letter,” Summer replied, nodding dumbly.
“This is no time for jokes!” LunaStar was suddenly on her talons, making a few other dragonets look at the pair oddly before resuming their chatter. “I mean,” she hissed, sitting back down silently, “that we shouldn’t take this lightly. She was our queen. Queen, I tell you, queen. Everyone loves her! She does everything great in her Queendom -- I mean -- really --” Luna sputtered out. Really, did she take care of everyone? Did anyone have anything against her? Luna thought back to all the decisions that the young Queen had made and came to the conclusion that it was someone within… someone who had wanted something for a while…
“Wait,” said Luna abruptly. “Who’s the new queen?”
“I-I’m not sure,” said Summer, thinking. “She’s her second cousin and the closest relative at the moment so I think so…”
“You cannot base your assumptions on ‘thinking so’,” said Luna, in a near shout. “You must ‘know so’. What if she doesn’t agree with the Academy? What if she pulls all the SkyWings out and Prince Cliff has to leave? I mean, I don’t know him, but he sure must be sad! Wouldn’t you be sad if your mom suddenly dies and a lunatic takes her place? And what if she takes over the Claws of the Clouds Mountains and shuts down the Academy?!”
“I feel like I’m being patronized,” said Summer wryly. She flapped her wings wildly and sat down, leaning on her front talons. “She can’t shut down the Academy!” she announced grandly. “Jade Mountain is an official universal Landmark and a ‘Talons of Peace-run’ organization that is protected by their dragons! She can’t remove us from a Mountain that isn’t even hers!”
“I hadn’t thought about that!” said Luna, realization hitting her like a waterfall in the face. She wasn’t talking about what Summer had said, though. It was something related to that topic. “Oh no! What if Sanctuary is shut down?” Sanctuary was a small town somewhere in the Sky Queendom full of hybrids and tribrids made by the Talons of Peace, initially to observe humans, before they were found out to be smart instead of worthless prey and established Trade Routes and several cross-continental trips led by dragons getting humans to and from the continents, mostly for vacations. It was initially started by a dragon named Redwood, a LeafWing interested in creating a tourism side of ‘economy’, whatever that meant.
“We should discuss this in our room,” Luna suggested, getting up. She knew they couldn’t talk about this revelation out in the open, that was for sure. So the pair made their way to their dorm, both of them thinking, thinking, thinking about what had happened, their eyes to the floor.
When the pair reached their dorm, and Luna poked her head inside, she saw Princess Mink fast asleep on her polar bear rug, clutching one of her blobs to her chest and snoring lightly. Luna made a ‘shush’ gesture to Summer, one of her claws over her mouth as she inched closer to her nook. After flying up in quick, silent wingbeats, she snatched a spare scroll and quickly made her way to the main Star Winglet room.
“Okay, so what do we know about this?” Luna wondered aloud. Summer Azure seemed to be in a little bit of pain, and she clutched her stomach with a slightly disgruntled expression. “Uh… Summer?” Luna asked. She waved a talon in front of Summer’s face, the eyes of her best friend glassy and faraway. “Summer?”
“I need to … use the bathroom,” Summer replied, then ran away as fast as she could.
Well THAT was weird, Luna thought. She remembered reading a study that said that most Dragons only needed to use the bathroom once or twice in their whole lives, which made sense, kind of, because where did all the poop go? That certainly made sense, because it wasn’t like they had a way of disposing of it or a system in place to do so. And if it only happened once or twice in a lifetime, there was really no use of all the resources needed to dispose of it properly. Which really begged the question: if the Dragonets of Destiny or their Guardians ever needed to use the bathroom, where would it go? They couldn’t keep it in a stinky pile in the cave, could they? And now Luna’s head hurt thinking about all those things, so she really needed to sit down and rub her talons over her temples for a second or two.
“What’s up with you?” a familiar voice suddenly asked. Luna spun around to see Peacemaker, his mouth in a smirking grin.
“What do you want?” Luna grumbled. She tried not to show it, but she was kind of glad he was there. Sure, he was insufferable at the worst of times… but he was like family to her. No, much, much more than that. But that was a thought she chose not to have. She could share the news with him, but she wondered what he would say. Would he help investigate? Would he get angry at Summer for snooping around in someone else’s business? So she held her tongue… for now.
Finally, after a few minutes of contemplating life, Summer came back, looking relieved. Apparently that was a sensation one felt after using the bathroom, although Luna thought that it was strange. She gave a slight shake of her head and picked up the scroll she’d carelessly tossed aside during the moments she was listlessly scrutinizing a dragon’s digestive system.
“So… you said that Eminence is Queen Ruby’s second cousin?” Luna asked. She should have said “So… you said that Eminence is Ex Queen Ruby’s second cousin”, but somehow it didn’t feel like Queen Ruby was actually dead. In hiding perhaps… but certainly not dead. “How does that even work, by the way,” she continued. “I read that Ex Queen Scarlet killed all her sisters. Then how come Eminence exists? Is there something I’m missing?”
“Yeah. One of her sisters had a dragonet who was raised far away but she came back after the war as an adult. DUH.”
“Oh.”
Luna frowned and thought for a moment. “Wait… why are we even doing this? If the letter was true, wouldn’t our teachers hold an assembly?”
“I guess you’re right,” Summer sighed.
They agreed to wait until their teachers held an assembly on the topic, but nightfall approached rapidly with no sign of another assembly for the day. We’ll wait for tomorrow, Luna thought to herself as Hope announced that they all had to go to sleep. She flew up to her sleeping area and sank into the fluffy pillows and let dreamland take her.
“It should have been my throne all along,” hisses a voice. “I can’t believe you didn’t bring me before.” The SkyWing paces the home where she’d been kept all along, hoping she wouldn’t be late to her coronation.
“Emi, please,” whispers the SandWing for the millionth time. “You know that my purpose was to keep you protected. It’s the will of the Blueflame.”
The SkyWing calms down, the familiar SandWing she’d held so close to her heart staring at her with a begging look in her eyes. Mercifully, she nods at the dragon on the other side of the Blueflame holder, with its white triangular patterns and beautiful tapestries. The SandWing is her original guardian’s daughter, who’d passed away a few years prior. If the SkyWing didn’t know any better, she’d immediately abandon her throne and live a quiet life with the SandWing. But she knows her place. She knows the destiny she’s set to follow. And she won’t give that up.
“You,” she barks to the dragon across the flames, a peevish NightWing who goes by the name of Shadowtalon. “Give me a prophecy.”
“These things don’t just happen,” he spits. “They come on their own. I’m not Clearsight.” He’s a prophet, but a stupid one. But if he wasn’t useful, he’d be dead already, and, by the time the authorities find his dead body, the SkyWing will be out of this misery and where she belongs.
“Emi, you don’t have to do this,” whispers the SandWing. “You can live here, with us.”
“It is my purpose. Doesn’t your stupid blueflame tell you that?”
The SandWing is taken aback by the SkyWing’s harsh words. The SandWing’s tail barb goes up and her eyes glow with blue fire around the corners. “I’m the last Blueflame left,” she whispers, but this time her voice is cold. “I have a destiny of my own.” She stalks toward the SkyWing, her eyes threatening to tear the SkyWing asunder, boring into her like dragon claws into its prey.
The SkyWing roars and blasts red fire at her pale golden yet glimmering blue opponent, which she knows is useless because of the SandWing’s powerful Blueflame. She claws out at the SandWing and tears viciously through one wing. The SandWing isn’t even rattled, though, and Blueflame generates in the place of her torn wing membranes.
“Go away,” she says in a voice unlike her own, spreading her blue wings out and staring down her snout at the SkyWing. The SkyWing doesn’t respond, so she fortifies her statement with, “Go away or I will rip you apart and cast your body up a flagpole to show the world what happens to those who do not cooperate!”
Finally, the SkyWing takes the hint (although it was more like a clear threat), and escapes into the skies above, knowing she’d pushed her limits and was done for if she ever stepped talon in the house, for the rest of eternity.
LunaStar woke up in a cold sweat. She didn’t know how she felt all hot and clammy and… sweaty. Dragons weren’t like humans. They didn’t have sweat glands or pores or got pimples. So why was she sweating? Dragons didn’t even drink water, let alone sweat.
You’re being silly, Luna told herself. After all, you DID just have a nightmare. At least, she thought it was just a nightmare. She was pretty sure.
Although… nightmares, and dreams in general, were just connections of fragments of memories. But Luna hadn’t met any big SkyWings like that before. She certainly didn’t meet any SandWings with blue fire.
Blue fire? She thought incredulously. Now I’ve really gone off the deep end!
Then a loud gong echoed through the halls, and she was suddenly more alert than before. She sighed, shook her head, and made her way to Summer’s hammock, and subsequently began shaking her friend ferociously to get her up.
“WHY?” mumbled Summer, who looked like she’d been snuggling in a pile of feathers and fur. “Do you have to wake me up this way?”
“Yes,” Luna said between her teeth. “It’s not as bad as when I had to sing in a school concert back in the Rainforest. The singing wasn’t the part that was bad; I’m known around the Rainforest as one of the best singers, alongside Peacemaker, of course. No, the bad part was that it was my cousin Heartstride’s birthday the night before, and we went, and we stayed up til’ dawn. So my parents had to wake me up by dousing me with freezing-cold water from the Queendom of Ice. Not the best way to wake up in the morning.” The gong went off a second time.
“OKAY FINE I’M UP!” Summer shouted to no one in particular, or perhaps to the gong.
“That’s what I like to hear!” Luna grinned. “Now, come on, let’s go to our first class or we’ll be late!” She pulled Summer into a bustling stride towards the entrance, giving her just enough time to snatch up her things.
Princess Mink was already awake, a bit over interested in the blob-sculptures from her palace. She lifted her tiny, white head, that seemed to be feathery and grayish, like she really was a mink, and stared at the pair with her wide, deep blue eyes. She stood up, gathered her things, and followed with a subdued stance.
“I think our first class is this ‘talk circle’ thing with our advisors,” Summer mumbled, peering down at her scroll with glimmering aquamarine eyes. She looked up at Luna. “Make sure to block out all our clawmates’ minds. You don’t want a headache on the first day!”
“Technically it’s the second day, but alright.” Luna entered the Star Winglet common room alongside Summer, who sighed dreamily. Luna gave her a look and mouthed, "what?"
Summer jerked her head at their Winglet’s SandWing, Oryx, who was busy laughing at Peacemaker about some inside joke that Luna didn’t dwell on. Luna gave her a look. Now she understood. Summer had a crush! A crush! To be completely fair, Luna wasn’t that different; her crush on Peacemaker hadn’t been quenched at the least.
“Let’s just go now,” Luna muttered under her breath. Summer raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything, following Luna to a spot next to Peacemaker and Oryx, who were busy contemplating the meaning of life.
“All right, dragonets, settle down,” yelled Hope, their advisor for the moment, over no noise whatsoever. She resettled her wings, which had been flung akimbo, and let her front talons fall between her hind ones, almost like she was stopping herself from doing something. “Today is our first class, the talk circle, which is basically just a group discussion so you dragonets can get to know each other better. Umm… let’s start with our names, our tribes, and our favorite color.”
“Of course,” Peacemaker whispered. “There’s no way that we could pass on the favorite color part.” He wrinkled his snout. “Do I even have a favorite color? I think not.”
“Shhh,” shushed Oryx. “We might get in trouble! Then how are we supposed to run away later?”
“Oh yeah, you’re right,” whispered Peacemaker back, to which Luna rolled her eyes.
The first one to talk was a HiveWing who was mostly black, dappled with fuzzy swathes of yellow and had black-rimmed eyes. Her thoughts were quite bouncy and loud, with a lot of thoughts about a dragon named Sundew and another named Willow. “My name’s Bumblebee,” she said, “and I’m a HiveWing, although that’s a bit obvious. And my favorite color’s lime.” She blinked at Hope, who smiled at her.
“Lime, not green?” asked Hope.
“N-noooo.” Bumblebee’s tone was suspicious. “Green is very… stupid.” LunaStar caught memories from her, her deep traumas she didn’t want to think about. Luna then realized she was one of the dragonets involved in the Lost Continent Prophecy, which was believed to be the last. She was probably scared because of how the Breath of Evil left green residue over everything, but she loved the color lime because it was between yellow, the color of her tribe, and green, the color of her mothers’ tribe (Luna also found out that Bumblebee had two sets of parents; the first was a pair of LeafWings named Willow and Sundew, and the second was a SilkWing named Blue and a HiveWing named Cricket)
“I feel like we shouldn’t be using that word,” Hope said, a little too cautiously.
“My uncle uses it all the time,” replied Bumblebee. “He’s all like ‘Luna, your tapestry for the Temple of Clearsight doesn’t look stupid, it’s beautiful’, and ‘but, Dusky, these dragons are stupid’, and ‘AHHH! THIS STUPID OVEN BURNT MY FINGER!!’. It’s exhausting, really.”
“Ahh, yes, Swordtail,” murmured Hope. “He's been causing a lot of trouble with Qibli, that guy. Gotta keep tabs on the troublemakers, whoever they may be.”
A small knock sounded on the wall of the Winglet’s cave, and a golden-yellow SandWing poked her head inside with a half worried, half excited expression. “Hope, the Winglet Humans are here,” she said, “and, Prince Cliff, may I have a word with you--” she paused “-- in private?”
“Y-yes, Miss Sunny,” Cliff replied, getting up and following Sunny out of the cave. LunaStar and Summer Azure exchanged glances; Prince Cliff, the dragonet of (Luna willed herself to remember that it was now Former) Queen Ruby, wasn’t by any means a troublesome dragonet, so the only reason he’d be requested to leave was because of what the pair dreaded.
“Alright, dragonets!” Hope shouted with an abrupt clap. “Each Winglet has four human students. Ours are Aster, Lilac, Tuna, and Yarrow. I trust you’ll treat them with respect?”
“Yes,” chorused the dragonets.
Four humans, each about the size of the part of a dragon’s arm from their elbow to their talon, walked in, casually chatting in Human, which, really, sounded very chirpy, like a cacophony of overgrown squirrels. The one heading the clan of sorts was willowy and tall, with tanned skin covered in patches of lighter shades (Luna remembered that it was a rare condition in humans called vitiligo). She had sharp, elvish ears with small spiked gold earrings, and long, bright yellow-orange hair in what seemed to be tiny braids (called dreadlocks, Luna remembered) that was held together near the end by golden clasps, two locks in front of each of her ears and the rest dangling down behind, with so much more hair that it had to be tied in a ponytail. She had small, light yellow growths from her head, in what seemed to be the shape of deer antlers, and a tiny orange flower on the left. She wore tall, dark purple boots over yellow fishnet stockings and a short purple shirt, complemented by a yellow-orange oversized leather jacket with sun prints and a matching spiked choker. Her eyes glittered brightly, her left one turquoise and the one on her right magenta, and her lips were painted purple. The only way Luna was able to identify the ‘human’ way of describing them was because of the scrolls and books she read and the humans she’d met whilst in the rainforest; simply describing them as having ‘dark skin with a yellow thatch of fur on their head’ wouldn’t really be very descriptive. This human seemed much more advanced, and was busy making faces at the other three as she carried a large yellow duffel bag and a suitcase.
The one who stood mostly next to her had short, dark purple hair in a bob around her smooth, peach face, lighter patches of vitiligo on her as well (perhaps it was more common than Luna thought?), sparkling aquamarine eyes standing out like gemstones. She wore a light purple skirt with a pink heart print, a matching lacy top, and a loose dark purple unbuttoned blouse with flower patterns. Her cheeks, forehead, and knees were covered with light purple and pink bandages, a matching choker around her neck, probably because she wasn’t careful enough on her light purple and pink rollerblades. She had purple heart-shaped earrings on her elvish ears and a flower in her hair, with the same abnormal deer-antler growths sticking out of her head.
The third, laid back in a sleepy slouch, had short, bright red hair and bangs that didn’t quite cover her face, bunched up in the middle and the sides. She had two long strands in front of each of her tiny, more rounded elf ears, a magenta hoop earring on each. She had matching magenta eyes, a long pearl hairclip on the right side of her head of the same color, and a matching teardrop necklace over a dark pink and red shirt with a sort of dark pink sweater on top that looked like a whole chunk was gouged out of it. She wore a dark pink beret that was smushed up against those interesting abnormal deer-antler growths, hers pink, and she wore dark red pants on top of pink boots. She was profusely yammering on to the fourth one, who was looking a great deal distressed.
The fourth one was the most mysterious out of them all. He had tanned skin with shimmering ice-blue eyes, two, thin markings on his cheeks, and short, curly blue hair, the back layer in dreadlocks. He wore a plain white shirt underneath a dark blue argyle-patterned vest, dark blue jeans, and light blue shoes… but none of this was particularly astounding to Luna. What was, though, were that his abnormal growths were thick, long, dark blue and curled around his head like ram horns.
Luna took an instinctive step back, accidentally brushing her wing with Peacemaker’s, her eyes trying to look at everything but that one human. The human whose aura was all wrong… like a rogue animus, according to the scrolls.
Suddenly, the human whipped his head around and his glittering blue eyes met Luna’s purple-to-turquoise ones with a cold smile. He smiled, slowly, sending chills up Luna’s spine.
Luna didn’t know what was wrong at first.
But it was something.
Something only one dragon could know about.
Chapter Four:[]
The whole of the talk circle class, Luna twiddled with her talons and waited for the gong to signal the second period. She did everything to avoid that human’s eyes, yet he kept smiling at her non-threateningly, as if everything was fine and he wasn’t the creepiest little thing ever. But Luna knew that she really shouldn’t be creeped out by him; he was basically made of the same stuff as the others, except for one thing…
Luna could hear their thoughts.
It wasn’t the quiet hum she was taught in the rainforest. It was like a gushing wave of dragon words, translated from human, or, perhaps, she was hearing human. But it was so strange. Even when she’d met other humans it wasn’t like this. They were basically the same as dragons, excited about the new school and new life and yadee-dah. The only problem was that Luna couldn’t hear the tiny blue human’s thoughts. It seemed like he had nothing going on in his brittle little head.
The one with the yellow-orange hair was Aster. She was much like Luna, with her glittering color scheme and quirky personality. She told them her name, that she came from a small tribe of humans in the east rainforest peninsula, and that her favorite color was gold. Apparently she also had a golden cat named Star, who sassily tiptoed out of Aster’s bag and sat on her head. Overall, Luna and Aster had actually gotten along quite well, bonding over their love of art, music, and storytelling. She really did distract Luna from Yarrow, who didn’t emit any aura, unlike normal dragons or humans.
The second one was Lilac, with her rollerblades, and said she came from the same place as Aster. Her favorite color was purple, obviously, and she demonstrated her roller-blading skills by doing a few flips. But, of course, Star had to get in the way and Lilac ended up flipping over and crashing, resulting in a first-day trip to the infirmary. The little human reminded Luna of Summer Azure, with her gentle yet serious attitude.
Tuna was the third one, who was quite grumpy and grouchy and obsessed with the color red. She grumbled whilst everyone else laughed at the stupid things Star did, which was a lot of things.
But the fourth… Yarrow didn’t have the slightest bit of a unique personality. He calmly spoke, his words laced with slyness and coldness, no hint of warmth in sight.
Luna did all she could to avoid staring into his dark, icy blue eyes, shying away from every chance. She didn’t know why she was so creeped out; he was JUST A HUMAN. REALLY. She wasn’t freaked out by the others, and they were all made of the same squishy mixture of flesh, blood, and bones! Really, she should just calm down and deal like this like any normal dragon, to get over the unsettling feeling and move on with life.
But this tiny human was so SURREAL. If only Luna could read his thoughts. She betted she’d hear creepy thoughts about death and darkness in his teensy-weensy little skull.
Suddenly, the loud noise of the gong rang through the halls, and there was the sound of shuffling talons as dragonets got up to go to their next class. Luna got up, too, stretching her talons and trying to remember what her next class was. Was it Math? Science? Art? Luckily, she didn’t have to take out her own scroll; Summer took out hers and was busy reading out which class they had next. Luna hadn’t noticed at first, but there was a map of the Academy at the back of the scroll. Hmmm, thought Luna. Perhaps Summer and I could go explore later. It certainly seemed like a good idea.
“Next is History, with the Bronze Winglet,” noted Summer, following a step behind Luna as she began to exit the cave.
Luna rolled her eyes, but caught herself midway. “Wait… isn’t Hope our History teacher?” Somehow she’d forgotten, but at least she remembered now.
“It appears so. And a teacher named Webs. I hope he’s not boring.”
“Gosh, with a name like Webs there’s no guarantee.”
As Luna walked out of the cave, she felt a sharp poke at the back of her leg. She spun around to see the little human, Aster, with her arms crossed and her cat on her head.
“Uh, this may sound a bit awkward,” Aster began, “but I’ll need a ride on your back. I nearly got squashed already by the brown one and I’m not prepared for it again.” She shot a look at Terra, who gave her an apologetic smile, which, judging from her thoughts, was sincere.
“Alright then,” Luna decided, reminding herself that squashed clawmates weren’t exactly the go-to for school. She angled her wing downward so that Aster could clamber up it. “Hop aboard.”
“Thanks,” said Aster, brushing a lock of her braided orange-gold hair out of her face. She grinned, then rested her head on Luna’s back, and Luna smiled back at her. Perhaps I was wrong, she realized, swinging her head back in front of her so that she could see where she was going. Maybe coming here wasn’t such a disaster after all. Then her expression flattened, and she had an annoying thought. It took me this long just to realize that? Wow, Luna, wow.
Just then, she had a flash.
Darkness
Falling
Cold blue eyes
A hiss
She jolted out of her haze with a start. What was that?
She realized that Summer had already made her way through a hallway, and Luna hurried along behind her, noticing a small human on Summer’s back, too. Had Luna been so zoned out she hadn’t noticed that human, Lilac, ask Summer the very same question that Aster had asked her? What was that, anyways? A vision of the future? Those cold blue eyes reminded her of something, but what?
She trudged ahead, keeping her eyes low to the ground, and suddenly it came to her. Could it have been Yarrow? She pressed her thoughts for another answer, but it gave her none, except for a glittering outline around the being in her vision. No, this being must have been a dragon. An IceWing, maybe, from the way the light glinted off their scales? She couldn’t really tell. The thoughts kept slipping away right when she had them.
She pushed herself forward more, scarcely focusing on the way the curving stone walls smoothened out or how the globe-lights above shone all sorts of brilliant colors. She scarcely noticed that she’d set talon in the History Cave, a round cavern with an open-air skylight, piles of scrolls on scroll racks and books in bookshelves, a large map of Pyrrhia and Pantala covering a swathe of the back wall, and a chalkboard with what looked like a holder with markers in it attached to the wall beside it (the markers in question were probably chalk markers). Somehow she’d noticed all of this, or rather, her brain had noticed all of this, as she wasn’t particularly in control of it, and her mind was scanning every known possibility of who the chilly IceWing from her vision could be. She racked her brain so much that when she sat down and Aster slid down her back, she only managed a small nod that might mean, “you’re welcome,” after Aster thanked her for her kind gesture.
When she finally blinked out of her haze, she looked up, glassy-eyed at the two teachers hastily scrawling things on the chalkboards, taking out blank scrolls, and making the writing tools neat. She was seated on a plush mauve carpet shot through with rings of orange and teal, and next to her was Summer Azure, eagerly waiting for the lesson to begin (she was a bit of an amateur Historian), with Peacemaker and Oryx chirping behind them about inane, silly things that tiny dragonets usually spoke about, such as making armpit farts.
Of the two History teachers, Hope was perhaps the calmest, although she twisted her talons together slightly this way and that. Webs, on the other talon, was a nervous wreck, not bothering to shield his thoughts, which were a flurry of madness, so Luna opted to stay out of his busy mind. His scales were a green-blue, a bit pruned with old age, with a long body and tail, and a mostly-healed scar near his tail. He seemed to be quite grumpy on the outside, and a bit subdued, as if he thought he wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. But then, as all the students filed into the classroom, his posture straightened, as if the weight brought upon him wasn’t much.
Luna immediately blocked out everyone’s thoughts, especially the thoughts of Bloodmoon, the dragonet hatched from the unhealthier NightWings with prickly thoughts and feelings. She radiated anger, with some odd undertone, as if she was nervous and hiding something. First day jitters? Unlikely. She seemed like more of a dragon who’d be excited at the prospect of tormenting her clawmates the moment she met them.
“Alright Dragonets and Humans!” said Hope over the ruckus, her expression halfway between a smile and some form of seriousness. “I’m Miss Hope, and this is Mister Webs. We’ll be your History teachers.” She paused, likely for effect, before continuing. “This term we will be learning about the scorching, and pre-scorching events, which will be represented in the tapestries given to us by Miss Luna, our arts teacher. As you all know, she was part of the team of ten dragons sent to defeat the Breath of Evil.”
Several dragonets oohed and ahhed and proceeded to chitter chatter about the Breath of Evil, or what they knew of it, especially Peacemaker and Oryx, who were determined to get in trouble in the funniest of ways this year.
“Dragonets!” Hope practically shouted, clapping her talons twice slowly, then three times fast. “Every time I do that, I want you to clap back the same way I did then focus on me, got it?” She gave Oryx and Peacemaker a hard look. “That means NO TALKING, got it, dragonets?”
Oryx and Peacemaker nodded pleasantly, giving her the biggest of smiles.
“Good,” she said briskly, continuing her lesson. “We’ll do attendance, then I’ll tell you about what we’re doing today. First on our list is… Aethia?”
“Here!” yelped a SeaWing seated next to a small HiveWing.
“Apocrita?”
“Here!” said the small HiveWing.
“Aster?”
“I’m here!” shouted the orange-haired human, seated next to Lilac between Luna and Summer.
Hope went through the rest of the list, ordered alphabetically, and then motioned to Webs. He pulled out seven large sheets of paper, and some markers.
“Today we’ll be making a timeline of all the known events that have happened during and since the scorching. You’ll be in groups of four, each group with two to three dragons and one to two humans. Make it look nice and flashy, because at the end of the term we’ll be comparing what we learned with what we already know.” Hope clapped her talons together, her dark green eyes glittering with readiness. “Alright, your groups are as follows. Whoever I call first in the group must collect their paper and four markers, got it?” She waited for everyone to nod, which they did, albeit reluctantly, as many of them were half-asleep.
“Alright!” she shouted suddenly, waking dragonets and humans alike from their sleep. “Here’s our list: Auklet, Brimstone, Python, and Dianthus.” Auklet walked up to Webs and took a sheet of paper and four markers.
“And then… Bayou, Sparrow, Bumblebee, and Lobelia.” Bayou did the same, handing a marker to each of his three group members.
“Peacemaker, Oryx, Apocrita, Lilac.” Peacemaker -- I kinda wish we were in the same group, thought Luna, her twinkly sparklethoughts taking over her consciousness -- made his way to Webs and proceeded to follow the steps Bayou had before.
“Sycamore, Cliff, Pansy, Tuna.” As Sycamore -- a quiet, gentle LeafWing in the Bronze Winglet -- went to collect the paper and markers, Luna noticed Bloodmoon casting a longful glance at him, as if she liked him. That NightWing? Liking that LeafWing? Strange, but maybe the LeafWing could make her less grumpy.
“Peacock, Mink, Spruce, Yarrow.” Peacock stood up and did what she was supposed to do, like everyone else had.
“Wolverine, Terra, Aethia, Creek.” As Wolverine stood up, Luna cringed, remembering her to be the grumpy IceWing who believed that Jade Mountain was useless. Luna also noticed that the only three beings left were her, Summer Azure, Aster, and… Bloodmoon. How was she supposed to work with that?
She had no more time to contemplate, because, by that moment Hope was already saying, “LunaStar, Summer Azure, Bloodmoon, Aster,” and Luna was doomed to working with Bloodmoon for the rest of the period.
Luna struggled to her talons, a strange feeling prickling up her spine, as if someone’s gaze was tracking her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the cold blue of Yarrow with his group, his mouth in a tight, creepy smile. Nevertheless, she briskly walked up to the teachers and collected markers and large scrolls for them to work on. Summer Azure was rubbing her chin thoughtfully (the way an old dragon might whilst remembering something important or from long ago), her eyes staring up at the ceiling. Aster had somehow managed to climb on top of Luna, which Luna had not consented to, but didn’t really care. It wasn’t like Aster was doing anything particularly frustrating, so what was there to be bothered about?
“Just put the scroll down already,” seethed a particularly malicious voice, jolting Luna out of whatever haze she was stuck in. Bloodmoon (no surprise there) sat down and curled her tail around her talons. Her wide, deep brown eyes flecked with red and amber (Luna thought they were just red; apparently she was wrong) blinked at Luna with wide-eyed boredom, as if they’d rather be looking at anything else right now.
“Alrighty then,” replied Luna, not wanting to get into another fight with this dragon. She put down the scroll and markers and Aster slid off her back.
Summer took a marker and uncapped it, before writing in bold, purple letters,
Timeline, Since the scorching
She practically shoved Luna, Bloodmoon, and Aster out of the way as she made the following timeline:
-
PRE-SCORCHING:
Humans ruled most of the lands, governed by separate nations, all afraid of the prehistoric dragons that ruled these lands. These dragons had no tribes.
-
DURING SCORCHING::
Humans began capturing these dragons, in hopes of training them to become weapons, but killing most of the eggs in efforts to exterminate all dragons who weren’t under their rule. This plan backfired, and big angry mommy dragons attacked the humans. During this time, a stupid human named Cottonmouth went with one little dragon to a faraway land (now known as Pantala, and set up home there, before aptly turning into a plant that ended up being used for the greater evil.
-
AFTER SCORCHING::
dragons began becoming more tribes and splitting off into different regions based on their common features. Queens were chosen.
-
MID 3000s, SOMEWHERE::
Albatross went crazy and massacred most of the royal family, including the Queen, his own SISTA. Queen Pearl ascended to the throne, before passing a law that made the use of animus magic illegal. Prince Arctic absconded from the Royal Palace for fear of persecution because he was all smoochy with a NightWing named Foeslayer, and his dragonets were hatched. Darkstonker existed, and caused a bunch of bad stuff to happen, mainly because he was a selfish animus dragon with mindreading and prophecy powers that were super OP not gonna lie.
Bloodmoon stared at what Summer had written before. “It’s very…” she struggled for words, “biased.”
Summer smiled. “Exactly!”
“But that wasn’t the point of this exercise,” said Bloodmoon.
Summer frowned. “So? It tells history how it really happened.”
“That’s unnecessarily biased, though,” Bloodmoon scoffed. “What would happen if the teachers saw it?” (Author's note: Hope would go pale, probably faint, or, possibly, agree. She'd probably throw Peacemaker some wild looks tho)
“They’d agree wholeheartedly.” (BONUS AUTHOR'S NOTE: Future events will make her take back her words *mwa ha ha*)
“LunaStar, tell your friend here that twisting History into biased nonsense isn’t how you do work. It should be purely factual, without any emotion.”
“You have no emotion.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re, like, the Emo Queen.”
“I have plenty of emotions. For example, annoyance is an emotion I feel when I’m around imbeciles like you.”
“I know more than you. I’m hardly an imbecile by that definition.”
“GUYS,” Luna snapped, eager for class to just end already. “QUIT FIGHTING AND FOCUS. PLEASE.” She snatched the paper from Summer, who gave her an injured look and looked in the opposite direction. “First of all, you shouldn’t bias it, because that’s not factual, it’s entirely opinionated.