Prologue
A lone LightWing struggled across the desert, her talons sinking into the whipping sand. Her shimmering camouflage scales blended into the surrounding dunes, rendering the dragon nearly invisible.
Clarion mounted yet another dune, only to see a multitude of dunes stretching off into the distance. She sat down for a moment amidst the sandstorm and blinked her transparent eyelids for a few moments, clearing the grains of sand that had settled there.
Oh, how she wished she could fly right now. To take off into the wind and soar above the sand. To fly again would mean the world to the LightWing.
She looked behind at her wing stubs. She cursed and shook her head. That HeatWing would pay dearly for what he had done. All over a stupid stone.
Clarion rose back up to her feet to continue her long trek over the desert. She took a few steps forward and suddenly found herself slipping down the slope of the dune. She spun around quickly and scrabbled at the loose grains of sand, but couldn't find any footing. She started slipping faster and faster, gravity winning the battle.
She slid all the way to the base of the huge dune, the wind showering her with the loose sand she dislodged.
Great, she thought. It had taken Clarion an hour or so to climb the huge dune against the wind. Now she was back to stage one.
She scrambled up onto her feet, shaking off the sand that had stuck in between her scales, and smashed the ground with her talons, throwing up a spray of little pebbles.
Clarion glared at the ground as the sand happily shifted back into its normal shape.
Wait. There is something there.
She scratched the ground again, revealing a sliver of wood. The sand covered it up in seconds, though. She tried again, ending up with the same outcome.
She started digging furiously at the ground, uncovering more and more of this strange buried structure. Gradually, Clarion made progress, clearing a few dragon-lengths of wooden roof. The wood was pale and smooth from the constant shifting and movement of the sand that encaged the structure. More and more, steadily and steadily, the building became visible.
In the late evening, as the shadows were drawing curtains upon the landscape, the tired dragon paused for a breath. She had exposed about a quarter or so of the building from the shifting mass of sand. Behind her sat a pile of sand twice as big as the size of the uncovered roof.
Clarion panted, her tongue felt like sandpaper. LightWings were used to going long stretches without water, but after a few weeks without, Clarion was becoming parched. She smelled water inside this hut, though, and who knew how long it would take her to find another source of liquid.
Clarion worked late into the night, pausing only every few hours for a couple minutes of sleep.
Hours passed, and it was late into the next morning when Clarion finally uncovered the entire door. She stepped back and took a look at what she'd done. I can almost taste the water, she thought. So close…
Clarion dragged her talons along the door, searching for a handle of some sort. The wood was smooth, but still contained some ripples in the grain, and the color was an ivory-brown.
The touch points on her palm felt a slight groove in the woodwork. Almost as if there was something hidden. She tried again and felt the same thing. An indented handle.
Clarion sat back and pondered this new event. The gears in her mind were working overtime trying to come up with a solution that would get the wooden door to open.
If only I had a crowbar or a tool to help me, she grumbled in her mind. Then that would make my job so much easier. Alas, she did not have a tool of that sort. Only her mind and her talons.
Clarion once again put her palm on the door and found the groove. She slit her talons into the small opening and twisted in a clockwise motion. The handle remained still.
Great.
She once again put her talons in the groove, this time moving her talons counterclockwise. A few moments passed. Still nothing.
Clarion snarled. All this work and she couldn't even get to the water? She had wasted the day away.
Suddenly, the door rumbled slightly.
Clarion's head snapped to attention, her face a mask of confusion and alarm. What's going on?
The door rumbled again, this time moving a little bit. Then a little bit more. And more and more and more. Soon the door was open fully, granting the LightWing access, and welcoming her into the dwelling.
Clarion cautiously took a step forward toward the door, afraid of what she may find. She paused and waited a moment more before padding a step closer.
Clarion spied a pool of the clearest blue spring water on the other side of the room, and the very sight compelled her to throw all caution and worry to the wind. She rushed inside, heading toward the bright blue liquid.
She saw a goblet lying on the side of the basin and dunked it into the water. She lifted the cup to her mouth, letting the cool water slide down her throat, drinking to her heart's content. She drank about five goblets before her throat was finally cool once again.
Clarion realized she hadn't even looked at her surroundings in this sand-buried hut.
She lifted her head and scanned the room. It was a small hut, big enough for one dragon to live comfortably. It had just recently been visited, by the looks of it. The candles were lit, and there was a half of a sandwich left on the small circular table in the middle of the room.
That's not possible, though, because the house had been completely covered by a sand dune, Clarion thought. Unless…
There was a row of shelves on the left side of the room, filled with tons of scrolls of all shapes and sizes. On the right side was a window that was covered with a scrap of wood, and sitting up on the small bed in front of the window was a dragon.
Clarion jumped back, her tail lashing. Wha… How? She noticed that the dragons eyelids were shut, and its head was tilted slightly down.
Clarion's mind ping-ponged, shooting her multiple different ideas as to how this dragon was here. Maybe this dragon was sleeping, although she couldn't understand how a dragon could survive being buried, with no sense of time.
LightWings had a usually reliable idea of what the time was occurring to an internal clock that ticked along in their brain, so that idea didn't make sense.
As to what kind of dragon it was… It had the same features of a common LightWing, but this dragon didn't look like any ordinary LightWing. Its horns were curved inward at an angle, kind of like Clarion's, and its scales were dark purple with streaks of white. Its talons were twice the size of an average dragon's, and they were tipped with metal.
But the most unusual thing about this dragon was its wings. There was another pair where there shouldn't have been. Almost like the butterflies Clarion had seen flitting around when she lived at the West Spire. No dragon in Pontora history ever had four wings. It was only a legend told to dragonets, when they told of another continent called Pantala. The wings were translucent, and they had the most beautiful patterns Clarion had ever seen: spirals, flowers, and simple streaks of color in the dragon's dark wings.
Around the dragon's neck was a rope necklace that held at the end an amulet of sorts. The amulet was a copper and bronze woven oval that encased a strange rock. The rock (from what Clarion could see all the way across the hut), was black in color and had pulsing purple ribbonlike lines encircling it. It spread an odd presence around the dwelling, almost like another dragon.
"Hello?" Clarion quietly asked the dragon. "Are— are you awake?"
Suddenly the other dragon shot up, almost as if Clarion had woken it up from a startling dream. It spread its four wings wide, splitting the room and instantly dwarfing Clarion. Its eyes were bright green, as green as the forests on the eastern side of the LightWing kingdom.
"Why, hello Clarion. I've been waiting for you to come for a long time."
"You—you know my—my name?" Clarion stammered.
"Of course," the dragon said. "As I said, I've been waiting for quite some time here. I thought it would be useful if I knew your name before we met."
She closed her wings and shimmered some bright yellow in her scales. "Makes the introduction a bit easier, right?"
"But you never told me—" Clarion began.
"Oh, where are my manners," the dragon said, shaking her head. "My name is Aurora. I've lived in this house for quite a long time." She gestured to the building around her with her long talons.
"But you're not here to give me a house tour, right?" Clarion asked.
"No," the purple dragon replied. "I need your help."
She stood up and stretched, her wings fluttering slightly. "I have lived in this hut for hundreds of years, waiting for the right dragon to come and fulfill their purpose." She paused, then continued wryly. "I am not the young, sprightly dragon I once used to be."
"But why me?" asked Clarion. "All I was looking for was a bit of water to help my parched throat."
"Is that the only reason?"
"Um…" she didn't really know how to answer this one. "Yes?"
The truth was, something had pulled her to discover this strange place. She didn't know what it was, though.
"Have you ever heard of the other continents?" the purple dragon said, half to herself.
"The ones in the history books?" Clarion asked.
"Yes," Aurora said. "A long time ago, when I was just a little dragonet, the LightWing kingdom was in a flourishing trade business with another continent called Pantala. These dragons had beautiful double wings, not unlike mine." She displayed her translucent wings to Clarion.
"We were friendly to each other, six different tribes, most of the time all converging in the Spires. We even had alliances with every single one of them, at different times."
"But, alas, it was not meant to be. Just a few hundred years ago, all the tribes decided into a huge battle, neither side gaining anything. But both sides eventually ended up with huge casualties, and the HiveWings, HeatWings, and FrostWings pulled out of the war."
Aurora sat down. "I'm an unusual LightWing, as you have probably already guessed. The truth is, I am descended from a HiveWing, which is where I inherited my double wings and near-black scales."
"But there is something else I inherited from the continent of Pantala. A long time ago, when I was just a young dragonet living on Pantala, a dragon arrived. Her scales were as black as the night sky and aside her eyes were miniature silver teardrops. She called herself Clearsight, and she could see the future. She could wield this talent so well, that she saved the continent from a disastrous hurricane. She carried with her an object from her continent, the core of a meteor, or how she called it, Skyfire. It gave the user power to levitate objects, animus magic, extend the users life, and the ability to read other dragons' minds. It was a very powerful tool. As she neared her death, she wanted to entrust a dragon to keep this powerful stone and to take care of it for as long as they live."
"So she gave it to you?" Clarion asked incredulously. "The stone, I mean."
"She was looking for a dragon that wasn't begging her for the job, preferably a dragonet," Aurora held out the stone. "I guess I was right for the job. So here I am."
She raised her head and gazed at Clarion. "But now it is time for me to step down."
Clarion took a slight step back, shaking her head. "Do you mean me?"
Aurora nodded her head slightly.
"But I'm just a normal LightWing. Why would you choose me?" Clarion asked.
"But you're not just a normal LightWing. I think you know that as well."
Clarion glanced back at her wing stubs and growled.
"But what does that have to do with…?" she trailed off.
Aurora was lifting the amulet off of her shoulders and above her head. She slid it over her snout and held it out toward Clarion, her purple stripes glowing.
"Stand still," she said.
The rock suddenly shuddered, lifting off of her palm slowly. Aurora closed her eyes, focusing on the stone and the stone alone. It picked up the pace, soaring through the dusty air toward Clarion.
She backed up, her talons stumbling as she retreated from the floating amulet, running into the sandy wall of the hut behind her.
The floating object still advanced, steadily moving. It drifted right around—wait—right through her neck. It thumped down softly between her shoulder blades and immediately stopped glowing.
Clarion felt a slight tingling in her wing stubs, almost as if they were buzzing inside. She spun her head around and saw something amazing. A quadruplet of wings was rising out of the once pitiful stubs. The new wings blended right into the current color of her scales, which was a pale yellow. They uncurled, drying as fast as they spread open. After a few moments, they were full and beautiful.
Clarion spread her new wings and gave a cautious flap. The dust on the floor beneath her swirled up into a mini sandstorm and settled onto the mute furniture. She looked up incredulously at Aurora
"How?" She began.
Aurora held up her talon to silence her. Her green eyes sparkled with humor and happiness, making her look fifty years younger.
"Welcome to your new home, Clarion, Keeper of the Moon."