Wings of Fire: Nightfall

Part Three: Liberation

Glory never felt comfortable unless one or more of her limbs were in motion. Whenever she stood still for too long her claws would start to tingle, an invasive itch would burrow up from beneath her scales, and a blaring urge would sound from her own head commanding her to move. She would pace, tap her feet, anything to release the nervous energy that seemed to always be blooming from within. It had been an abundant source of friction with her instructors when she still lived in the rainforest village. They would drone on about different subjects such as proper technique for navigating the dense trees, the properties of flowers and herbs specific only to the rainforest, or the dangers of venom wounds, and without fail they would snap at her mid-sentence to "stop fidgeting," or "look at me when I'm talking to you!" Evidently, the joke was on them. When she left the village, it hadn't been their inane lectures that had kept her alive, but rather that hammering compulsion to stay on the move. To always be a newcomer to a place was to be anonymous, unpredictable, and left alone. To be wary of strangers was to be a dragon.

So when Starflight had asked her to stakeout the mountains for an indeterminate length of time, and wait for some mysterious signal, she had half a mind to ignore him and take off for the Sky Kingdom like she originally planned. She held no obligations to the Dragonets of Destiny outside of their previous mutual arrangement. He hadn't even granted her the decency of making the request to her face, and while there was a promise of payment, she had not taken anything upfront, which had gone against every mercantile instinct she had cultivated over the years.

So what am I still doing here? she asked herself, rapidly tapping her claws on the warm stone beneath her. The trees around her swayed in time with her thoughts, whispering pendulums swinging between question after question. Ideas of the things she could procure with gold constantly floated their way into her mind. Exotic herbs from across the continent for the healers to study. Scrolls to help her teach the other RainWings to read. Materials and labor to construct an outpost on the fringe of the rainforest to serve as a gateway for tourism and trade. Depending on how much treasure the dragonets could pull from wherever they were hiding it, she might be the one to finally bring the RainWing tribe into the modern age, and end decades of stagnant isolationism.

She wouldn't go much further in her musings, as the acrid scent of smoke pulled her attention upwind. She lifted her head, scanning the surrounding woodland canopy for a source. The smell was strong, but there were no black plumes rising from the forest that she could see. There was something else to the scent as well, a describable, acidic edge distinct from the usual wood fire. It reminded her of...parchment?

Glory got to her feet. That was about as telling a signal as there was, and she thanked the stars she didn't have to wait long after all. Starflight had come through for her on that front, and possibly more if she continued to play her part. There was only one way to find out. She took to the air, and followed the scent.

-

Starflight fanned his wings towards the pyre assembled out of scrolls in the center of the study cave, the smoldering infant embers maturing into crackling flames. He stepped back from the heat to admire his handiwork. Parchment shriveled and burned, the produced smoke rising out through the sky hole and into the open world. The fire burned bright for now, but it wouldn't sustain long enough to be a danger to the rest of the caves. Likewise, it had been positioned just right so the smoke and smell wouldn't spread far outside this room, at least not right away.

He walked briskly back out into the central cavern, finding Sunny still fiddling with the imperfect replica key to move the boulder blocking the entrance.

"It won't budge," Sunny huffed as he approached. "I can't get it to work. I'm sorry."

"It's alright. Getting out this way would've been convenient, but it was a longshot," he reassured her. He frowned at the boulder, lamenting the fact he was never able to deduce its workings, and perhaps will never have the chance again. Not even the guardians knew how it functioned. A mystery left unsolved.