Wings of Fire: The Glorious Tower (dead)

Part 4: Bighorn

Bighorn stood outside the courtroom doors nervously, waiting for the bussiness-dragon in it to go out. He turned to the others who were waiting too, with an apprehensive expression on their faces. Well, most of them were so. Andromeda looked very much as if she wanted to rip off his tail barb and stab him with it. Bighorn would have fought her, but he needed to put his hate aside and get to the Glorious Tower.

"Why am I the one to explain the whole thing to Queen Glory? Y'know... I feel kind of sick. Maybe," Bighorn coughed, "Maybe Caribou can tell her."

Ember sighed. "Bighorn, you're like the spokesman of our group. I know you have stage fear, but you can do this."

"You kinda have to, though." Dolphin joked. Bighorn glared at her. "Three moons." Dolphin muttered. "I was only trying to lighten the mood." Bighorn couldn't but smile and chuckle a little. For some reason, Dolphin made him feel better. 

Suddenly, Aloha giggled a little. Bighorn looked at her, confused. "Why did you laugh?" he asked her. She smiled devilishly. "You like Dolphin!" Aloha burst out laughing. "DO NOT!" He yelled, flustered. "DO TOO!" She yelled back. 

"Guys." Caribou interrupted them both. "Can we not act like hatchlings?"

Aloha stuck her tongue out to Caribou. "Whatever, Mom." 

Just then, a RainWing with ashy-grey and red scales strutted out of the courtroom doors, looking very pleased with herself. Her happiness wavered as she took in the scene happening in front of her. Andromeda sighed. "Don't even ask." She nodded cautiously, and glided down the stairs. 

"Well," Toad said, "at least we can go inside now." 

Aloha sighed. "Well, we'll stay out here, then."

"No, don't do that! I mean that we need you in there too." Caribou said.

The Courtroom was, to say the least... not what he had expected. Being a guard in Queen Thorn's palace, he had seen the courtroom a couple of times. It was huge, and had a skylight on the top. A red and gold carpet flowed from the entrance all the way to Queen Thorn's throne. There were small piles of cushions in columns next to the carpet, for the courtiers to sit on. Or for the majority of the SandWings in the capital, in case she needed to make an announcement. The aura it gave off made you feel small and unimportant.

Queen Glory's courtroom was not like that. It wasn't half as big or imposing the SandWings' courtroom was. It had a low hanging ceiling made of loosely tied leaves and flowers. In fact, it was so low that all Bighorn had to do was jump up and his claws could brush the tip of one of the spectacular flowers blooming there. There were four thrones, simply raised wooden seats clearly meant to be sat on by the King and Queen, and the royal siblings. The aura it gave of was almost motherly, a force that was kind most of the time, but if you made it mad, well... it could be as deadly as its tribe's venom.

Queen Glory sat on the big throne to the right, flanked by Princess Stellar and King Victorious. Queen Glory was wearing a flower crown of orchids and glory flowers. and had scales of leafy green and purplish grey wings, and red under-belly scales. But there was something off about them. It had an old, faded, feel to them, as if they had been painted on an ancient house, many, many, years back. Princess Vivid's scales were brighter, but the NightWing-RainWing hybrid had only gotten her RainWing scales on her wing membrane and border of her limbs, kind of like accents. Right now, they were yellow, contrasting sharply with her other purple scales.

King Victorious was pure NightWing, and he had the standard NightWing look: scales as dark as night, with grey wings and under-belly. Prince Vivid, however, was the definition of NightWing-RainWing hybrid. He kind of had the build of a NightWing, but he had light purple scales, so light no NightWing would ever be able to achieve them. His wings... wow. That's all that could be said. Wow. They were swirling with what seemed to be exclusively dark colours, in the patterns of constellations and endless galaxies. They were so beautiful that Bighorn almost deluded himself that if, for a moment, he got close enough to touch them, he could be sucked into the deathly beautiful expanse that was space. Almost.