Wings of Evolution (WoF AU)

Chapter 25

Hidden alone from rival queens

Everyone froze where they were as the ice began to crack. It spread down the frozen dragon, cracking cracking cracking.

Frost gaped at it, looking over at Echo with horror. Frostbreath. Echo had used an icewing exclusive ability. Sunny suspected that after this the icewings would view the cavewings differently. How different that might be was unknown because she didn't have a chance to gouge Frost's reaction.

Large chunks of ice fell from the dragon, her shackles falling off as easily as if they'd never been bound to her. Echo was still right in front of her, gaping as the nightwing took in a sharp breath and opened her eyes. As a result, Echo was the first thing she saw as her pained eyes dulled, confusion and fear replacing them.

She released a flame, her enemies were obviously icewings, and while Echo didn't look like one, his coloring was similar enough that this dragon who'd just woken up after who knew how long probably didn't care.

Echo was still looking at the ice that had fallen from the nightwing, and didn't see her drawing flame. Sunny's words died in her throat as Starflight stepped in front of Echo just in time, letting the flame cover him.

Sunny squeaked, watching those flames with horror. She was supposed to be better than her ancestors but watching those flames changed that ideal entirely. Frost was right, anyone who would attack Starflight deserved to be encased in ice for the rest of their life. Starflight was the sweetest most broken dragon that Sunny had ever seen, and somehow he kept on going.

She pounced on the black dragon, screaming, "Leave Starflight alone!" She clawed at the larger dragon, but generally, she wasn't doing much damage. The nightwing seemed mostly surprised at this all, watching Sunny with shock as her gaze slowly floated across the room.

"Sunny, stop it!" Starflight said over her anger. She stopped abruptly and looked over at Starflight with shock and relief.

"You're alright?" She turned away from the offender and examined Starflight, watching the burns as they finally entered her mind to see that they were minor wounds. They wouldn't impair him at all.

Starflight sighed and nodded, looking at the nighwing Echo had freed with a critical eye. He inclined his head, "I'm sorry about that. We've had a stressful few hours. I'm Starflight, this is Sunny, and uh... that's everyone else."

The nightwing looked at their group again, eyes lingering on Echo as she watched them all with confusion. "I'm Foeslayer... how long was I... what year is it?"

Starflight calmly explained to her and Foeslayer gaped at them, "w-what? Did Diamond forget about me? She promised all types of a terrible revenge! I find it hard to believe that she didn't do anything. Besides..." she looked down with sorrow, "they're all dead now, aren't they..."

Starflight nodded with certainty. "I don't see any future where they aren't."

She looked up at him, meeting his eyes, gaze wandering to the silver scales on the outside corner of each of Starflight's eyes. She looked at each dragon, in turn, gaze lingering on Echo and Frost. That was the third time she'd done that as if she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. "So no one was wiped out, the war ended eventually? The icewings... forgave us?" she asked questioningly as if she didn't quite believe it.

Frost snorted, after Foeslayer had been freed, he'd given up on trying to stop them. "I wouldn't call it forgiveness. The icewings were almost wiped out." He stood up straighter, almost proud, "but we lived anyway."

Foeslayer seemed a bit disturbed about that, but not overly surprised. "Well, thank you for telling me."

Tsunami rolled her eyes, "don't mind frost, he just hates you. Sure, the icewings were almost wiped out for mysterious reasons, and sure we didn't know they still lived until like... two weeks ago? But what really matters is that you know how nightwings work, right? You might be able to help us."

Foeslayer looked questioningly at Tsunami, "help with what?"

Glory sighed as Tsunami tried to figure out how to explain this, gave up, and elbowed her, "Glory will explain because she's better at this than me."

Glory gave her a look, which Sunny suspected meant revenge, but took in a deep breath. "Your current queen, Soulseer, is the worst dragon I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. She seems to have it in her head that the world belongs to her, so about three years back she invaded the rainforest because everyone knows the rainwings don't fight back. She captured our queen and I took charge of our wing of the rebellion, got most of the mudwings on our side, and started up a war to keep her from taking over the world.

"The main problem is that our lovely seawing princess here has a sister who's current queen, she's an animus, and also evil. She teamed up with Soulseer, and now there's a whole huge war that we're losing because of mind control. The Skywings are on our side but the Sandwings are all over the place because like twenty years ago their queen was killed by a scavenger and none of the princesses could decide who to take over.

"Plus I'm pretty sure the queen of the mudwings was assassinated, but there's no proof of that anywhere and no one can agree on anything."

She stopped, gave Tsunami an annoyed look, and let her deal with the outcome.

Sunny was surprised about the sheer amount that they had to figure out in order to win. But it was starting to look plausible if they could get this alliance with the icewings right.

Foeslayer blinked a few times and cleared her throat, "are there uh... animus dragons among the nightwings?"

Tsunami looked at Starflight for some reason, and he shrugged, "there was one a few years ago, but he died in an accident. They hadn't been keeping very good track of his bloodline, but he had a brother and his dragonets haven't shown any powers."

Foeslayer looked happy for some reason but didn't explain anything about her question. "And do you know how good her seers are?"

Starflight frowned at the ground, "anyone who wants to live in the future is too disconnected from the present to make any headway."

---------------------------------------

Every Vote gives Foeslayer another happy memory!  :D