The Story of Artemis- Wings of Fire

Prologue/ Chapter 1

Deep inside a hidden cave carved into the soaring mountains of the Skywing Kingdom, a dragon had just hatched. But she wasn't a Skywing.

This was it.

The moment she had been waiting for.

The Nightwing that sat in the center of the cave was lithe and quite beautiful, despite the fact many scars laced her scales. All of that thanks to the many assignments her Queen, Battlewinner, had sent the assassin to complete. Her name was Dreamcatcher.

Not many dragons knew of her or her family, and she was fine with that. She grew weak and scrawny like the rest of the dragonets when she was young- but unlike them, she escaped. And now she was here.

The Skywings never came around to the part of the mountain they resided. It was too far out in their territory and too close to the Rainforest for them to give it much mind at all. She lived in almost perfect peace, messengers hardly came by anymore. Not since the first stopped coming back, having decided to stay with the other Nightwing. Despite her history, Dreamcatcher had wanted a family for the longest time. And then finally, in her mate Blacktalon and their daughters, she had one.

Daughters.

The newest addition sat curled in the crook of her tail, looking to the world like a shard of strange stone. The Nightwing lay there, studying her unique features with sharp, pale grey eyes.

Dreamcatcher had never seen a dragonet, certainly not a Nightwing dragonet, the same as the one she now cradled so carefully. Maybe it was the fact her egg had changed, and the fact her dragonet hatched a little late than she should've. Somewhere different from the ugly and horrid volcano she herself had. For months the dragonet's egg was a dark, dappled black. Then, that night...

Dreamcatcher had suddenly felt very strange as she was tending to her oldest, like eyes were on her, and immediately went to go check the egg. A motherly instinct, she guessed.

A breeze slipped through with small beams of moonlight from the moss covered entrance her egg was carefully nestled by. Small silver tipped flowers were growing around the egg, sheltering it. She immediately noticed it was different.

So different that she thought Prophecyteller had gone and replaced it with a black stone. But as she approached the nest, she watched as the curved black shell faintly rocked, a single sliver of silver eggshell bleeding into the black around it as it flashed in her eyes.

Her dragonet looked different, no doubt. Part of her worried that she had done everything wrong. This was her first egg, after all. Prophecyteller was not her daughter by blood. Her mother had died from the volcano- it made her lungs much too weak and she died suffocating. It was a sad death.

But since Blacktalon joined her, she peacefully accepted Prophecyteller, though she could never hold such a vital piece of her as the dragonet that now shook her eggshell away, rubbing her eyes.

She gently lifted one of the dragonet's talons, who just snorted and clumsily pulled her talon away as she squeezed her eyes shut.

Dreamcatcher smiled faintly as she looked down at her, her heart swelling with unimaginable pride at the small thing. She was her parents only offspring, and barely survived herself. But this tiny thing she helped to make gave her such joy.

Her ears perked as she heard familiar footsteps lumbering by, and then the clatter of small talons afterwards. In a flurry of her small wingbeats, Prophecyteller propelled herself forward and nearly into Dreamcatcher's own chest. The dragoness simply reached out with her wing and nudged the year old dragonet upright, who giggled and clung to the black starry membrane of her wing.