Wings of Evolution (WoF AU)

Chapter 37

Find a seawing egg of deepest blue

In the sky kingdom, Tsunami was going insane in her own way.

As compensation for being left out, Tsunami finally gave Scarlet three of her most useful spies, the scoop on their plan for the greentop, and the details on their failed mission from last year to steal the soulreader.

It was only after knowing all of that and several more of Tsunami's most embarrassing secrets that Scarlet gave in and let Tsunami go home. Near the end there, Tsunami was pretty sure Scarlet had done half of that just to see her squirm, and to see how many more bribes she could get out of her.

But finally, after a week of haggling and arguing about strategy, Tsunami was able to go home at long last.

Bleh. Scarlet was exhausting.

So was Spark, the strange skywing with too much fire, she was obsessed with Clay in a confusingly possessive way. The other skywings gave her a large berth and even though Scarlet said that she was fine with using Spark, she still gave the firescales suspicious looks all the time, saying things like "if the nightwings hadn't taken your egg, you would be dead at the bottom of egg breakers cliff."

It seemed a bit harsh to Tsunami, but Spark didn't seem to care whenever it happened. She would just nod as if this was the natural order of things, and continue on her merry way. Spark was also very happy about leaving though, so Tsunami wasn't sure how the strange skywing really felt about the whole situation.

The group finally left, which was a huge relief to everyone, especially the icewings who seemed not at all happy about life in general since leaving the ice kingdom. But everything was fine. Tsunami was fine. She tried distinctly to keep from thinking about the three spies she'd given away, or the information she'd shared. Or the secrets that were no longer secret... yeah. Tsunami was fine.

As base four appeared in the distance, she was finally the slightest bit calm for the first time in a week. Distance from Scarlet worked wonders.

---

"WHAT?" Tsunami asked in her most persuasive voice. Riptide and Glory together gave her the terrible news, but it didn't diminish the effect at all. In fact, Tsunami was pretty sure it would have been better if only Riptide had been the one to tell her, less sarcastic Glory words.

Glory wasn't fazed by the shouting, and Riptide just sort of sat there, watching as Glory tried to get Tsunami to remember the positives. There were very few positives.

Base one was down. Her home. The island where Tsunami had grown up. Destroyed and taken over by the enemy that she'd been fighting literally her entire life. She'd taken too long to agree. Too long to let them grow the greentop there.

And now any progress they might have made in that time was gone.

Tsunami lashed her tail, wishing she had something to beat down to let all her anger out. She could be calm. She'd practiced being calm. Riptide was here, didn't she usually feel calm when it came to him?

But the reality of the situation was too devastating.

The truth was that Tsunami had no idea what to do next, and that scared her more than anything else. There was only one thing she was sure of though. She swallowed her pride and turned toward Riptide, "send a message to Scarlet. Tell her the news and ask her what to do next. I... I'm not sure what to do about this..."

"What about the greentop?" Glory inquired tentatively, "Are we just going to abandon the base?"

Tsunami felt sick inside, "yes. The last report tells us that there was no new growth. It's a dead end. Spread the news as far as you can, the general public as well. Base one has fallen."

She turned back toward Riptide with a sad expression as Glory withdrew with a sharp salute to spread the word.

"Are you sure?" Riptide asked, flashing his scales silently. "We aren't going to even send a team to check?"

Tsunami sighed and shook her head, "I'm not sure of anything today. I just got away from Scarlet and now disaster strikes."

Riptide nodded and put a wing over her, "I can send a couple of Glory's rainwings to see what exactly happened, will that help?"

Tsunami smiled and nodded, "thank you Riptide."

---

Murderbasket

Deathbringer remembered hearing about the operation to take out the resistance's most vital base, but he hadn't been aware that it was already a success.

He was a bit annoyed that he hadn't been told, but he was well aware of such a deep blow it would have been, the resistance had used their first base to raise their sea princess, and had continued to use it to gather support across the kingdom of the sea. All the while hiding in plain sight due to diligent secrecy.

When the true rulers had finally discovered its location, it had been too late to distinguish the flame and the heir had taken over her wing of the resistance, rising in the ranks with speed only matched by Glory herself.

Deathbringer was sort of disappointed that he hadn't been sent to destroy the heir, it would have been a challenge and he was thirsting for one of those. But somehow Orca didn't seem to care one way or another, the Seawing queen could have destroyed the heir within moments of discovering her existence.

Yet, for reasons that Deathbringer couldn't fathom, the queen seemed to want the resistance operational. He was always careful to shut down this line of thought, it had led him to dark places in the past, but the heir was right here in front of him and he couldn't stop wondering.

The only thing that could deviate his mind was to instead watch General Glory; unlike most rainwings he'd seen, Glory didn't shift her scales with every passing emotion. This meant that she either had specialized training, she didn't feel as strongly as other dragons, or she hated other dragons to know what those feelings were.

Glory was interesting where the lost heir wasn't. There was something about the way she watched the world, quiet enough to almost be forgotten yet strong in that silence. Most of her remarks before the heir had appeared had started to become even sarcastic, but with the grim news of the fall of their most symbolic base, she had come back into that silence.

Deathbringer had an almost irresistible urge to bring back that light sarcasm. Somehow, he could tell that the dragon in front of him wasn't quite the real Glory. But although her mask was strong, Deathbringer had seen the dragon beneath, in those moments he'd watched her before.

After the Heir made her decision, Glory nodded sharply and strode off confidently. Because of that, Deathbringer followed without hesitation and didn't even notice the two seawings flashing their scales in the pervading silence. 

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Deathbringer gets to stare at Glory for five more minutes with every vote!