Inscrypion x Wings of Fire : Leshy's Endgame

Prologue (Darkstalker)

Darkstalker sat on top of the mountain. He has seen this thousands of times before. He would be tricked by a RainWing into becoming powerless. However, it was not his gift of seeing the future that happens to be why he remembers this so clearly. He can't see any future regarding the RainWing's involvement, not that he can understand why that would be the case. Rather, it's because the magic used was far more powerful than any of them would expect.

Darkstalker would forever be trapped in an infinite loop, going through the same well-over-2,000 years of his life from a carefree dragonet to his defeat. Meanwhile, the insolent little brat he was doomed to become would have a peaceful, quiet life. At first, the animus assumed it was intentional, a way for him to make up for his past mistakes, to reform himself. But that is quite clearly not the case. Every time, he would walk through the same motions, having forgotten about his previous actions the moment he makes the egg crack even a slight amount and he won't remember until the exact instant he's on this mountain with everyone staring him down. Nothing was there to change anything. No one else suffered from what he's suffered through for the past 5,000 times he's been doing this. The dragonets that caused this all that time ago have got to be dead by now, surely.

He gets to live forever, but at what cost? He has no free will. Come to think of it, as the ancient hybrid realizes, he never had free will in the first place, even way back when things were true, their first time happening. He always followed the brightest path his prophetic abilities led him. He never explored the unknown. He raises the strawberry to him. Let's get this over with, he thinks, curtaining his thoughts from Moonwatcher. Instead, he says, standing at his full height and spreading his wings (blacking out the sky) while doing so "You are a bunch of small-minded little lizards." By this point, he already hates himself for saying it, but he's too far gone. The only way for him to be saved is to once again repeat the same motions and hope that, on the next time his life loops, something drastic happens to change his path. "What? You thought I'd taste this strawberry and decide 'Mmm, wow, that's worth giving up my magic for?'"

What hurts more than anything is that eating the strawberry is his exact plan. It's the only way for him to try again. He fears he's at the point now where he gets quite giddy with the knowledge that he gets to relive his life, to see his mother (or at least, the dragon he remembers as his mother, as the Foeslayer standing before him now simply can't be her... she doesn't act like her) and sister again... and Clearsight. Hopefully, things will change and pull Darkstalker off the loop so he can actually enjoy his life and not have it scarred by tragedy.

He pulls the leaves off the fruit, trying his hardest to still keep to how these events played out numerous times before. And that even means having to pretend he doesn't know it was his own scroll, his own magic, that did this to him. "Or did you have Turtle enchant this? Or perhaps another secret animus I don't know about?" He knows who did it and how. He knows he can just cut the act and reveal that he knows, but he had to play the part or risk losing his chance to start fresh with the hope that something will change.

"It doesn't matter, you boring, ordinary creatures. I can't be enchanted by anyone!" Except for my own magic that is surrounding this stupid berry. "I'm smarter now!" No, I'm even more stupid than I was before my 2,000 years of sleep. "I've made myself completely safe!" I'm anything but safe. Please, let this next one be the final time I do this. "Nobody's animus magic will work on me!" Three moons, I still can't believe I would say the same thing twice. How dumb I must have sounded. "Which means no one can ever stop me." Except a RainWing with a mere scrap of my scroll.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he popped the strawberry into his mouth and swallowed. He couldn't bring himself to give his mother a hateful look anymore. He can feel himself falling apart. And now that he ate it, it doesn't matter what he says or does. He can laugh in their faces and tell them that he'll see them again and that he knew their plan from the start.