Wings of Fire: Owl's Rise

Epilogue

     Raven snuck through the halls of the CloudWing hatchery. It's tonight, she thought.

She slunk through the doors, crouching in the doorway.

     Raven was an illegal black CloudWing. By law of Queen Cirrus, only pure white CloudWings were allowed in Cloud Cities. Or anywhere other CloudWings were, for that matter. She hissed, seeing a Cloudwing guarding the nest her egg was in. She had to protect her dragonet. They would kill her.  It was a mistake to bring her here. She's going to be a horrible mistake, like me, she thought. She crept closer. The guard pricked his ears, narrowing his eyes and looking around. I'll sneak attack him from behind and take the egg, Raven thought.

     She crouched lower, bunching up her leg muscles to pounce, and flew from her hiding place, barreling into the soldier.

He shouted in surprise, and used his tail to grab his spear from the wall behind her. Cloudwing spears were electric. He jabbed with the spear and Raven dodged out of the way, reaching down and grabbing the egg at the same time. She flared open her black-as-night wings and took off into the air, the guard close behind.

Some other guards had heard the commotion and gave chase. Raven looked for an escape route, only seeing one, the door guarded by bristling soldiers. I'm trapped. she thought in a panic. 

      A guard threw a weighted net, tangling in her wings and taking her down. She wrapped her wings around her body to protect the egg and braced for the impact. She crashed to the ground, and the egg rolled out of her talons. It had a crack like a spider web across the top. No! It can't be broken. What if she's hurt?

One of the guards snatched the egg off the ground.

      "By the law of Queen Cirrus, you are under arrest." he said. Raven felt burning tears come into her green eyes. 

      Just then, the egg's shell shattered in the guards talons, revealing a tiny dragonet with one blue eye and one green eye and white feathers edged with black, like a snowy owl's. The guard's eyes widened seeing her "contaminated" feathers.

"No! Please don't hurt her! Please! I'll do anything for you. Just let her live!

The Cloudwing looked at her with pity in his eyes. "Sorry little one," the guard said to the tiny dragonet as he went outside, to the edge of the city, and Raven could only watch helplessly as her dragonet fell out of his talons, and to her death.