Wings of Honor: Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 17: Consequenses Consequenses

"I have to get back to my sleeping cave." Moon said, leaping to her feet and slipping on the wet stone.
"Oh." Turtle said, "uh, sure. Did you figure something out?" He said, turning to me.
"I hope so." I responded. "Can you lead us back?"
We hurried up the tunnel, leaving wet footprints behind us, I told him about the conversation I heard around the night before. "I wonder if I should tell someone." I said not pretending I wasn't nervous.. "Like Starflight or Sunny? Or — Tsunami?" I shivered all the way to my toes at the thought of trying to tell the ferocious and legendary SeaWing about something like this.
"I don't think so." Marvin said, cutting off Turtle for the second time.. "I'd say keep it to yourself until you know more. You never know if someone will —"
"Shh." Moon put out her tail to stop us from moving up. We were near the history cave again; the lingering smell of chilly smoke filled the air. The distinctive smell of Winter's frostbreath. There were a few dark imprints on the ash-covered floor, surrounded by the marks of several talons. Likely the casualties of the explosion, at least, before they were moved to be medic'd up.
Someone was in the cave, poking around the ashes.... there were two dragons arguing, I could sense them. I knew Moon could too. Marvin ran forward, finger over his lips to motion us to stay quiet. We crept forward until we could hear the voices clearly.
"We'll use the dreamvisitor to tell Glory tonight. She needs to know about Bigtail, at least — but maybe she can also tell us what to do."
It was Sunny, all her thoughts twisted and tangled in in a web of guilt and grief and distress.
"I'm the Head of School," Tsunami said. "I can tell you what to do. That's my job and my favorite thing in life, I mean, seriously." I admired her attempt at trying to break the tension, but Sunny was barely listening. Barely listening to anything really.
"Should we shut down the school? Send everyone home?"
"That's what she wants," Tsunami said fiercely, her mind bristling like it was full of prickly thorns. Me and Moon heard her pick up a piece of debris and throw it at the wall. "Sunny, you know Queen Scarlet must have been behind this. She's trying to destroy this great thing we're building, and we won't let her."
"But what if she hurts more students? And who's working with her? And how can we stop her if we can't find her? And how can we keep them all safe?" Sunny's voice broke down.
"We'll catch the dragon who did this." Tsunami said with a newfound conviction. "I promise, Sunny. I will rip them apart myself." I saw in her mind already ripping apart a grey dragon and tossing it off of Jade Mountain.
"I should send a message to Queen Ruby about Carnelian," Sunny said, watching the ashes of a map crumble under her claws. "Maybe we should notify all the queens, in case any of them want to withdraw their students."
Tsunami groaned. "That means my mother will be here by sunrise, and Anemone will be gone twenty seconds later." There was something about her mother, Coral, that she didn't like. From what I could gather, she was very clingy, and hovered over all her daughters, watching their every move.
"How did it start?" Sunny wondered. There was a shuffling noise as she came closer to the entrance. "Umber said there was an explosion ... and it must have been something near the doorway, where Carnelian was ... Tsunami, what's this?"
In the hall, Moon and Turtle exchanged glances.
"I don't know," Tsunami said. "But I know I hate them. There are others all over the floor, buried in the ash. I've already been stabbed a few times and it's like they have TEETH. I practically have to dig them out of my scales. No, don't give it to me; it'll just attack me like the others did."
Turtle held out his little ball of thorns and gave Moon a look. She nodded, guessing it was the same kind of thing Sunny and Tsunami had found.
Apparently that wasn't quite what the look meant, though, because he nodded back and then stepped past me and into the history cave. Moon jumped back, startled.
"Hey!" Marvin whispered loudly and tried to intercept, but he was still wet and slipper. I was as stunned as everybody, but hurried after him.
That would have been a useful moment for mind reading! Moon thought to herself. I snorted. She would have voted for staying hidden, but it was way too late for that.
Tsunami and Sunny whirled around and blinked at them.
"Turtle!" Tsunami said. "You shouldn't —"
"Hey, sorry." He said. "We heard what you were saying and — I might know what this is." Turtle held up the thorn ball, which matched the one in Sunny's palm.
Moon tried to take shallow breaths. The air in here smelled worse than smoke; it smelled like scorched dragon flesh. It was colder, too, this close to the melting film of frostbreath. The ashes drifting over her claws were heavy and damp; they got in between her scales and stuck to her wings like insidious gray cobwebs. It was horrible, in every way.
Horrible, too, was the instant flare of suspicion from Tsunami's mind. What is Moon doing here? And another Nightwing? Why was she listening to us?
Sunny's reaction was less suspicious, but perhaps only because she was too tired and worried to think of it.
"Yeah? What are those?" Tsunami asked her brother. "And where'd you get that one?"
"Moon got hit by it when the explosion went off." Turtle said, pointing to the wound on her shoulder. "I'm pretty sure I've seen these before. After the attack on the Summer Palace, we found things like it on several of the surviving SeaWings." He turned the ball over and cut into it with one of his claws, revealing a bright green interior. "It's a seed pod. It comes from something called a dragonflame cactus, which grows only in high altitudes, in the mountains."
"How did you figure that out?" Sunny asked.
"My mother tortured a SkyWing prisoner until he told us," Turtle said matter-of-factly. Me, Sunny, and Tsunami all winced. "He said the SkyWings use the cacti as bombs, because when they come into contact with fire, they explode, sending fiery bits of cactus and seed pods everywhere. I think the idea is that if you tried to exterminate them by burning them all, they'd first of all attack you back, and second of all release all these seeds so that a hundred more cacti would grow from the ashes. Kind of a cool evolutionary thing that makes sense if you're a plant trying to survive on a mountain full of fire-breathing dragons, right?"
He looked up and caught the expressions on their faces, finally reading the room. "But, uh, horrible, obviously."
"So it's a SkyWing weapon." Tsunami said. She studied the floor. "Probably set with some kind of long fuse, slowly burning until it reached the cactus. Hidden somehow. Hmmm."
Marvin had already familiarized himself with every possible use for such a weapon. I didn't realize he had also disappeared.
"You think one of our SkyWing students did this?" Sunny said, running through the list in her head. Flame is pretty angry at the whole world — Fatespeaker and Glory were both worried about his aggression problems. But he's more the type to lose his temper and start a fight over prey, not plan to set a fire from a distance.
"Or someone who was told what to do by a SkyWing," Tsunami pointed out. "A SkyWing like Queen Scarlet, for instance." She paused, then added, "Or ... there is another SkyWing here. One who's betrayed us before."
Sunny was already shaking her head. "It couldn't be Peril."
"Why not?" Tsunami said. "We don't know what she's capable of."
"No, I mean, it couldn't be," Sunny retorted. "She couldn't touch a cactus like that without it blowing up. Think about it."
Tsunami frowned, then snorted grudgingly. "I hate it when you're smarter than me."
I giggled. Sunny then realized that we were all still here.
"You should go back to your sleeping caves." she said. "We've told everyone to stay there until we figure out what to do next." Oh, I shouldn't have let them hear me speculate. What if they tell everyone? I keep forgetting to act like I'm in charge instead of one of them. "Please don't say anything about this for now, all right?"
Everyone nodded, Turtle handed his evidence over to Sunny.
"I'm sorry about all this." Sunny started. "It's so awful. It shouldn't have happened here."
"But we'll get to the bottom of it." Tsunami promised. "We'll find the dragon who set that bomb, and then I will tear off his wings and hang him from the eastern peak of Jade Mountain."
Sunny winced. "Tsunami, yuck."
"Can we check on Tamarin before we go back to our caves?" Moon asked softly.
Tsunami shook her head. "Clay is taking care of her. We'll let you know soon how she's doing."
Moon nodded, and then we followed Turtle out into the tunnel again.