Heart of the storm

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

There was nothing Thunder HATED, more than living in a swirling storm of wind and light.

Sure, when his ancestors tried to escape from everyone else, that MUST have looked like the absolute best option.

Even though Thunder didn't like darkness and small spaces, if he were one of the ancestors, he would have preferred living underground over the Storm in a heartbeat. At least there, you wouldn't have to fly to go everywhere, or almost go DEAF BECAUSE OF THE STUPIDLY NOISY WALLS.

There were so many things wrong with the system! For instance, did his ancestors ever think of how they would get food? Probably not, because Thunder's teachers wouldn't stop telling him about the 'days of hunger' when they all nearly starved to death because they were too scared to leave their homes in fear of other dragons.

They would have rather died cuddled up together in the Storm, the only thing to eat being lightning, which didn't even give them nutrients or fill them up, but rather kept them alive.

It was pretty humiliating actually. No other dragon tribe had a weakness, but VoltWings could only survive if they consumed electricity daily. Without it, they would supposedly shrivel up and then die. Though Thunder wondered if the story's only purpose was to prevent disobeying VoltWing children; dragonets, from not following the protocol. Perhaps it was calmer, like one moment you were alive and healthy, and the next moment you were dead? Either way, Thunder wasn't going to be the first to find out.

Still, they couldn't ONLY survive on lightning.

Of course, though, the hunger situation was solved by the legendary Queen Twister, the first VoltWing queen. Her brilliant solution—

Scouts.

Dragons whose job was to leave at sunrise every morning and hunt or scavenge for food for the rest of the day, before coming back at sunset.

There were strict perimeters of course.

Scouts could only go a maximum of one kilometer in every direction away from the Storm. And if they ever saw any dragon besides a VoltWing, they had to not interact and instead report to the Queen immediately, and inform her of what they'd seen. Because, of course, no one could learn about the Storm and the VoltWings' secrets.

It only happened very occasionally, though never in Thunder's life. Just a quick word to the royal guard and the confused imposter was dealt with. Most of the time scouts didn't have to interact, but then there was the case of Charge...

The charge was a scout, and had been missing for three days. Thunder didn't know him too well, but still...

Thunder gulped. He didn't want to imagine what had happened to him. Many people said he had probably just hit his head on a rock or something like that. If he had been hit, why had he been out for so long?, Thunder had thought. No matter what it was, all search attempts came back empty-handed.

Thunder wondered if Charge had been killed by an animal or something like that. But then again, there was hardly anything that could kill a dragon.

Another theory was that Charge had stumbled across another dragon. Thunder shuddered at the thought of being confronted by another tribe. Maybe Charge held them off with the spear that all scouts had.

Overall, scouting was tough, and even with over fifty scouts, they barely had enough food to satisfy everyone's hunger.

Meal sizes had drastically diminished over the years due to the population growth of the VoltWings. Thankfully, after the addition of the vegetable gardens, they could have more on their plate.