|| Wings Of War And Silver || A Wings Of Fire Applyfic

17 | Revenge really IS sweet

Tide:

Tide stepped back to admire his work. He had never been able to sculpt when he had lived with his mother and brothers. Clay wasn’t exactly an option in the Sea Kingdom. The sun crept its way into the Art Cave stealthily, like a mouse in search of seeds, casting its light upon the jars of beads of orange, green, and blue atop the shelves, and upon Tide’s creation.

The blue of the still-wet-with-paint SeaWing dragonet glowed as he set down his paintbrush, and Tide decided that he would give it to Seal when she visited him. Picking at the paint that had accumulated on his own talons, he turned as he heard footsteps in the hallway, and jumped as Grapevine appeared in the doorway. He thought he had been the only one up.

“Hi,” he greeted the green RainWing with a smile as Grapevine sauntered into the room.

“Uh. Hi.” Grapevine stopped, claws scratching against the stone of the floor as he spotted what Tide had been doing. “Er- what’s that?”

“Oh, just a dragon I made,” Tide responded casually, trying to act as though Grapevine wasn’t the reason his talons had started to shake like wind-blown leaves in their trees - or that his heart had suddenly sped up, banging against his ribcage in an attempt to free itself from his chest.

“That’s really good!” the RainWing complimented him, unexpectedly. Grapevine had, in the past few weeks that Tide had been at JMA, appeared to him as rather untrusting. When he spoke, it was never of his family. The blue of RainWing eyes met grey for too-short a moment before Tide looked away, wishing he could run through the halls of Jade Mountain, yelling with the joy that came with one’s crush finally interacting with them. Grapevine was awkward, even more so than usual, shuffling his talons. “Anyway. We have History first-” Grapevine began.

“Right. Um. IhaveHistoryfirsttooandsoIcanwalkwithyouisthatokay?” Tide interrupted excitedly, then stopped, inhaled, and said, “I mean, duh, we both have History first. We’re in the same Winglet. Cool.”

“Cool?” Grapevine looked confused, and Tide wondered if he had imagined that moment of eye contact.

“Cool,” he replied, realizing how stupid he must sound, that Drizzle and Foam, if they were here, would both be laughing their heads off at their brother’s sad attempt at romance. Leaving his creation on a shelf where it could dry in the sunlight, Tide followed Grapevine out of the Art cave.

Tide entered the History cave minutes later, with Grapevine at his side. Grapevine, under the teacher’s glare, had realized that they were late and scurried off to find his seat. Tide wanted to sit beside him and offer him one of the snacks a worried Seal had given him before he departed for Jade Mountain. He started to follow Grapevine, but realized the RainWing would think he was stalking him. His clawmates were looking up from their scrolls and at him, most likely wondering why he hadn’t sat down yet. The SeaWing could feel himself reddening as he speedwalked to his usual desk.

Tide sat down, retrieving his scroll of the War of SandWing Succession from the desk. He liked where he sat, in the second row, with Daybreak on his left and Mahogany on his right. The MudWing made Tide uneasy, but had never spoken to him, meaning that the SeaWing most likely wasn’t involved in whatever he was planning. Today, his chair was empty. Unless they were all asleep in their caves, Firefly, Ghostberry, Kaioa, Mahogany, and Stormcaller were all absent.

Tide tried to listen to the teacher, but he found that it was hard to focus on her talk about Blaze, Blaze, and Burn’s allies when Grapevine was sitting in front of him. The SeaWing found himself thinking less about the advantages of siding with IceWings and SandWings and more about the back of Grapevine’s head.

There was silence; the History teacher had stopped talking, and Tide realized that she was about to call on one of them. He quickly unraveled his scroll and scanned it for the word ‘ally’ as she studied each of her students, her eyes riding them like waves. Tide was relieved when the SilkWing sitting to Mahogany’s right, whose name he had forgotten, raised her talon.

“Vestal?”

“The NightWings and the RainWings,” Vestal answered.

“Correct. Who can tell me who the NightWings-” The teacher’s voice was drowned out by the sound of wings outside the cave. She stopped talking, and Tide and his clawmates leaned forward in their chairs to look out the window-of-sorts.

Tide, who was one of the closer dragons, found himself looking at light, and could see nothing. He instead watched his teacher, blinking away the colorful circles that had appeared in his vision. The wings were now nearing the History cave. “If I had to guess, I would say that that’s Stargazer,” the teacher said to them before continuing, and Tide thought of the friendly NightWing groundskeeper. Why Stargazer would want to be over here puzzled him- wasn’t this the “untamed” side of Jade Mountain, plant-wise? The teacher eased the Silver Winglet back into their one-sided discussion on NightWing allies.

Tide tried his best to look attentive. He couldn’t help but look out the window again, just as something hurtled itself into the room. Tide’s head snapped back. The dragon had evidently been trying to land on their talons, but had instead landed on their side.

The teacher had hurried over to them, helping them to stand. The stranger was a green, female SeaWing who, on all fours, looked to be no older than Tide. Around her neck was a wet pouch; she must have come straight from the Deep Palace. A new student? When she turned to look at them, her eyes were wide and her gills flared. “Are you alr-” the teacher began just as the SeaWing squeaked out,

“Queen Lyonsia is dead!”

Chaos broke loose in the classroom.

Wavepool:

Being a Queen, if only for a day, was tiring. Especially so when every single one of your subjects seemed to hate you. I mean, what had SHE done to deserve that? Sure, she'd only executed THREE dragons in the short time she'd been in power, but they had been three really bad dragons. So what was the loss and fuss about, really?

"Soldiers!" She barked at the semicircular formation of SeaWings on her courtroom. "Listen to me, I'm giving you orders!"

Nonetheless, half of them were playing cards in the corner and of the remaining few, only six looked like they were paying attention.

"LISTEN TO ME!" She yelled, striking her tail against the throne and creating a loud snap. All the SeaWings looked up.

"I am giving you your orders. You three. Go to Jade Mountain Academy, and the other Queens. Tell them the SeaWings officially recall their agreement. They are to send all the SeaWing and SeaWing hybrid students back immediately. And if they don't close the school completely..." She paused, an evil glint in her eyes. "We will stop by ourselves and close it. Manually."

"The rest of you. Go up to the prison in the summer dungeons. Bring me that RainWing, and whoever else follows. We have some torture methods to revive." She cracked her knuckles evilly.

The dragons she'd addressed looked at each other shiftily, and then slowly nodded. Neither of them looked like they were actually going to follow orders, so Queen Wavepool surged forwards and grabbed the closest one, who gave a shriek of protested.

Then her eyes flicked to meet those of the other guards. She bent back the SeaWing's neck she was holding in one fluid movement, and killed him neatly, dropping his body to the floor.

There was a collective shudder, and Wavepool grinned malevolently.

"I trust you all understand my orders. Right. Now go." She whispered softly. Revenge really IS sweet.

Written by Ashenkit (Tide), and StarvioletFury (Wavepool)