Eclipse of the Moon

Chapter One

With a sudden jolt, Cielast and Pyra woke up, their backs against each other as they gazed around the cell that they were in. Sun was filtering through the bar windows, as Azure stared down at them with his beady eyes. "You've been terribly boring," he frowned, gesturing his talons to a guard beside him.

The dragon flicked a lever, and the gate slowly rose up above Pyra's head. Then, with a swift lunge, she sprang up to the roof and pounced on Azure, but he was too quick and he threw her to the ground. Cielast watched in horror as her mother tried to tackle Azure.

Pyra shook off some of the rubble, but before she could scramble to her claws, there was a rope around her neck. She snapped at it to no avail as she was dragged off to the battlefield. Pyra howled and stared at Cielast in agony as she was dragged off into a fighting arena, and tossed onto hot sands.

Azure approached Cielast and picked her up with a sudden swipe of his talons, roughly. She scrambled in his grasp and whimpered as he held her close with a quirky grin on both sides of his mouth. "Hush now," he hissed as he carried her out of the cell.

She clawed his back desperately, reaching out towards her mother. "Enough!" he snapped at her again, as he spread his wings and launched himself into the air, towards a huge cage with metal bars above the arena. He unlocked the door and tossed her inside carelessly, then locked it again and glided down towards Waves' throne.

The two watched carefully as Pyra limped out of her side of the arena, brushing off tiny crystals of sand that were lodged in between her scales. She growled deeply and poised her wings in a striking position, similar to a viper.

The gate across the arena started to open slowly as two blood red eyes glared out of the cage. Then, a dragon sprinted out of the bars and snapped its jaws at Pyra, missing her by an inch. She roared and blew a huge plume of flames at his snout, arching her back like a cat.

The dragon rose into the air and swirled in a ball of flames, then shot down towards her like a bullet, plunging into the sands. Pyra hissed and swerved around his talons with a menacing bellow.

He took a swipe at her side, as she dodged right under his talons and knocked his chin up towards the sky. "We don't have to end it this way," she whispered to him and swished her tail, sitting.

He shook sands out of his eyes and swiped straight at her, a scar being slashed across her snout that started to trickle blood down her scales. Her eyes narrowed and glittered, black like obsidian as she sprang up suddenly towards him, slithering up to his back.

The dragon roared and snapped his jaws at her, as they both swiveled into the air and dove down towards the burning sands. She seized his tail with her talons and bit down on his scales, blood dripping down onto the sands.

Pyra gulped and grabbed his shoulders while he was distracted, then she took a deep breath and everything seemed to come into slow motion. Her eyes widened as she took his neck and snapped it cleanly, the sound echoing through the stadium as her wings drooped.

Everything fell silent for moments, and then the roaring cheers of dragons in the bleachers rang throughout her ears as she frowned. The corpse below her sat in an awkward position with his wing behind his back, and it looked cracked, too.

The cage swung back and forth as Cielast huddled close against the cold steel bars, watching her mother down below who had just killed another of her kin.

She was forced, she had no choice, Cielast understood that but it happened so fast. She was sure that if she lived to see another day that would be creeping in her nightmares forever. But that was just life in a nutshell... Death setting as a painful reminder that nothing truly lasts forever.