Portals in the Night

Chapter 3

Qibli woke up to something cold whacking him in the face.

"GET UP, SAND-SNORTER!!!" Yelled Winter, who was poking Qibli with his tail.

"What happened?" asked Qibli, who was now sleepily trying to protect his face from Winters' blows.

"GETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETUPGETU- Oh, you're awake!"

"I'm going to ask again, what happened?"

"Uh, I think it's pretty obvious what happened!!! We were knocked out by that guard! You know, I think that there is a suspiciously high level of corruption in the SandWing government. But back to the problem at hand! How do we get out of here!?!?!?!?!?"

Qibli looked around and realized that they were in the prisons below the palace. "Ummmmmmmmm... We yell for help???"

"THAT IS-- actually a really good idea," said Winter.

"HELP!!!" They yelled

A guard shouted down the staircase, "Yes?" he asked.

"WE HAVE BEEN THROWN DOWN HERE BY A CORRUPTED GUARD!!! CAN WE PLEASE GO NOW!?"

"How do I know YOU'RE not a corrupted guard!?!"

"WH- WHY WOULD WE BE GUARDS??? COME DOWN AND SEE FOR YOURSELF!!!"

"Oh yeah, now that I think of it I did see a guard who was supposed to be watching the front gates come down here dragging a sleeping SandWing and an IceWing, I guess that must be you guys! Huh! Silly me! I can't believe I forgot about that!"

Winter and Qibli looked at one another. How could this guard be so stupid?

"...DUDE!!! YOU LITERALLY HAVE THE WORST MEMORY EVER!!" They shouted.

"Okay, okay, I'm coming down to get you out now!"

"FINALLY!!"

The guard came down and unlocked the cell. Qibli left the cell, and hurried to the front gates, where he knocked out the other, corrupted, horrible guard that had knocked them out, and he and Winter flew off to get Jerboa.

As the palace faded away in the distance, Qibli asked, "So, tell me again how Darkstalker escaped?"

"Well, what I think is that somehow Chameleon did something, because I don't think that there is an evil cult working for Darkstalker who would somehow hatch a new animus and use a three year old dragonet to bring Darkstalker back, and Kinkajou did say that one of the pieces of Darkstalkers' scroll went missing a while ago."

"But that raises the question: why didn't Chameleon just take all the scroll pieces? It would have stopped us from doing what we did last time."

"That would have made him more suspicious. If he had taken all of them, we would have known that something fishy was going on."

"Okay...Ugghh!!! I can't believe that Darkstalker has escaped! I mean, we go through all that he did to us, and we defeat him, but then he just comes right back after just three years!!!!!!!"

"Well, hopefully this time we can defeat him forever." Winter said.

They soon arrived at Jerboa's hut by the sea.

"Jerboa? Where are you!?" shouted Qibli. "It's Qibli and Winter! We've come to tell you that Darkstalker has escaped! Where- Oh no."

They had come too late. Darkstalker's army of NightWings had evidently gotten there before them, and had trashed the hut, burned it to the ground, and captured Jerboa. But suddenly, Jerboa appeared out of thin air over the spot where her hut used to be.

"Where did YOU come from!?" exclaimed Jerboa.

"More to the point: where did YOU come from!?!?" asked Qibli.

"Well, I came from Darkstalker's weird prison. But how I got here is a different story entirely. I put my mother in a block of ice and buried her under my hut. Then I had this necklace that teleported me to her when I grabbed it, and I'd just appear in my hut."

"Wait... WHAT!? YOU KILLED YOUR MOTHER!? But she enchanted you to be invulnerable! Why would you freeze her in a block of ice for that!?" Winter was a bit alarmed by Jerboa's actions.

"Well, that was the only good spell she ever cast on me, the others were: turned me from a rock into a dragon, make me stop growing a bit smaller than her, mind wipe, rewind time to make me a dragonet again, triple my love for her, mind wipe, make me forget about this promise she made me, and so on and so forth, for 1100 years."

"WHAAAAT!? But WHY!?"

"Because she was powerful, and I gave her the idea to change me to make me the perfect dragonet."

"Okay, well, can we talk more about that later because you are coming with us!" said Qibli.

"Ummm... To do what, exactly?" asked Jerboa.

"To come back to Sanctuary with us and help brainstorm how to stop Darkstalker!" "Alright, fine!"

They went back to Thorn's palace, told her about the guard, rested for a bit, and then headed off to Sanctuary.

____________________________________________________________________________ Wow! That was a long chapter! There might be a long wait for the next chapter. Like 1-2 weeks. But if you really want me to continue sooner, just comment in the chat, and I'll consider working overtime. Luckily the school year is almost over, and I'll have more time to work on this over the summer. Bye!