Fire Wings

Chapter 1

 The sun shone brightly, it's radiant light reflecting off the crystalline pavement of the streets of the Crystal Empire. It was the middle of summer and soon the Empire would renew the spirit of love and unity at the annual Crystal Faire. Ruby Dusk, a female crystal pony, stood beside her booth that she would be staffing for the first day of the fair, her special talent was making beautiful jewellery, and with the surplus of precious stone that sprouted from the ground, it wasn't very difficult to create such jewellery. Ruby had four children, three were her own, the fourth, Fire Wings, was adopted. It wasn't hard to see he wasn't her child, as he bore two wings and a pair of curved horns similar to that of a dragon, he stuck out like a sore thumb amongst his siblings, all crystal ponies, not unlike their mother. The eldest of the siblings was Jade Night, second eldest being Ivory, the second youngest being Fire Wings, and the youngest foal in the family, Lavender Crystal.

"Are you looking forward to the fair this year? I hear Filthy Rich is bringing his family, I'm sure you'd be happy to see your friends again, wouldn't  you?" Ruby Dusk said to Fire Wings as she continued to set up her booth for the fair.

"Absolutely! Do you think Silver Spoon will be coming with them too?" Fire Wings asked, his eyes sparkling with excitement.

"Probably, Diamond never goes anywhere without her." Ruby Dusk replied.

 Fire Wings nodded, although he wasn't completely satisfied with his mother's answer, he hardly saw his Ponyville friends, he wanted to be sure that he'd be seeing them again. He had met the duo of earth ponies a few years back, his mother was in Ponyville visiting Diamond Tiara's father who had agreed to sell Ruby's jewellery in his stores. Whilst the two ponies were talking, Diamond and Silver made up their minds to introduce themselves to the young dragon hybrid. The foals hit it off almost immediately, although they didn't get to see each other much considering they lived so far away from one another. Fire Wings had attended Diamond's cutecenaria and visited her and Silver a few times over the year.

"Hey Fire, we were going to play hide and seek by the house, wanna come?" Lavender Crystal approached him from behind.

"Sure!" Fire Wings fluttered his wings happily as he followed Lavender back to the house.

They approached the large house that sat just outside a much larger outcropping of crystals behind their home, Jade Night leaned against a gigantic crystal that easily doubled her height. She looked over to  the approaching foals and sighed.

"Took you long enough to get here." Jade sighed.

"I got him as fast as I could!" Lavender replied defensively.

Jade rolled her eyes, "Whatever, I'll be the seeker, everypony else go hide."

The other foals darted off almost instantaneously, Fire Wings bounding over and gliding past the ginormous crystals that sprouted from the earth. He stopped when he spotted a large shrub, hearing his older sister counting down in the distance he approached the bush, he stopped when he heard a hissing sound emit from it. He squeaked, startled at the sudden noise and stumbled back, never taking his eyes off the bush. Two luminous blue eyes stared back at him, wide open and unblinking, unsure of what to do he just stood staring back at the creature in the bush. The creature's eyes narrowed with contempt, it opened its mouth to speak, revealing rows upon rows of sharp teeth.

"Go!" The creature leaped from the bush, it's skin was black and smooth and it legs were gnarled and full of holes.

Fire Wings hurriedly flapped his wings to escape the crystal outcropping and the creature, as he barreled out of the crystals he smashed into his eldest sister who had just finished counting and was about to start searching for her younger siblings.

"What's gotten into you?!" She said, raising her slender body from the dirt.

"I saw a monster! I-In there!" Fire Wings pointed to the large body of crystals emerging from the ground.

"You know that there isn't any monsters in the Empire, right? It was probably just a cat or something." She said.

"No it wasn't! It had big teeth and wings like a bug!" Fire Wings insisted.

"Sure it did..." Jade sighed, as she ventured into the crystal outcropping to seek out the two foals still hiding.

Fire Wings didn't feel safe outside so he went back into the house. He flapped his wings, passing the staircase and going up to his room, were he paced uneasily, recounting the event that took place moments before. Perhaps his sister was right, monsters couldn't enter the Empire due to its magical barrier, perhaps he was just tired, after all, he hadn't slept very much the night before. Trying to calm himself he fluttered up to his bed and tried to get some shuteye. He slept until he was awoken by the sound of voices outside his window. Cautiously, he crept over to his window and pushed it opened to hear the sound more clearly. It was pitch black outside, but he could hear an odd, raspy voice off in the distance, this was returned by a more feminine voice.

"The rest of us should arrive by tomorrow morning." The raspy voice spoke.

"Good, good, I do hope that this goes better then the last time..."