Wings of Fire 1: The Hidden Secret

~Chapter 15~

Raindrops hailed down on Moonflower's head. She tucked her wings in close to her sides and narrowed her eyes against the pouring rain.

Her friends were nowhere to be seen. Moonflower strained her ears, but she couldn't hear their voices or their thoughts at all. All she could hear was rain.

Suddenly she heard a twig snap behind her. Moonflower whirled around just in time to see an orange-red barbed tail disappeared behind a cluster of trees. Moonflower walked forward slowly, trying to be stealthy, but the mud under her talons squelched uncomfortably. She changed her scales to the same green and brown as the rainforest behind her.

Then an orange-red dragon leapt out of the trees and sprang onto Moonflower, pinning her to the ground. A brown barbed tail hovered just above her heard. Moonflower opened her jaws to scream, but the strange dragon wrapped his claws around her snout and glared at her with red-brown eyes.

Moonflower could feel her invisible scales turning pale green with fear. The stranger narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at her.

I hope she doesn't know who I am, the stranger thought. But...does she know about—everything? What happened to me as a dragonet? Does she know about how I'm forced to live in the old Night Kingdom? At that awful volcano? What if she's a mind reader? Those scales beside her eyes look...suspicious. Should I kill her?

Moonflower shivered. The stranger hissed at her and wrapped his claws tighter around her snout, making her wince.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "Why aren't you having sun time, like a normal, lazy RainWing?"

Then everything went dark.

~~~~~

Moonflower sat up, gasping for breath. She knew that what she had seen wasn't a nightmare; it was a vision. Nightmares never felt so real. Nightmares didn't give her the same dread she had felt. She didn't think, this is going to happen some day, during nightmares.

Darkmagic was sitting beside her. Fierceclaws and Squelch were still asleep, curled up next to each other. Shadow was just walking over to Moonflower and Darkmagic. They were all sitting on one of the sun time platforms. The sun was just visible beyond the treetops. The sky was stained pink and orange because of the sunrise. Moonflower stretched her wings out and flared her ruff.

"I had a vision," she announced to Darkmagic and Shadow. "And — I think we have to go the the Night Kingdom."

"The volcano?" Shadow guessed. She shuddered and wrapped her wings around her self and glanced down at her talons again. "I hated it there."

"You lived at the volcano?" Moonflower asked in surprise. "But...I didn't...oh."

"We weren't there long," Darkmagic explained. "Shadow hatched three days before the NightWings evacuated."

Shadow looked petrified. "I still remember that day."

Darkmagic tented one wing over Shadow's back. Fierceclaws growled in her sleep and almost clawed Darkmagic's talons. The NightWing jumped away with a yelp.

"I'm sorry," Moonflower said to Shadow. "But I feel like we have to do this."

She briefly explained her vision to Darkmagic and Shadow. Shadow's eyes widened and she started trembling. Darkmagic's eyes narrowed and he put one wing around Shadow again.

"That sounds...scary," Shadow said softly. "Do we really have to go to the old Night Kingdom?"

"I don't think we have a choice," Darkmagic said. "If this dragon is a threat to our home, then we need to get rid of him."