Oasis had never left her troop of MudWings, not until that horrible night when the SkyWings took her. So maybe a SandWing didn't belong with a family of MudWings, but Oasis had always felt she did. She had been hatched with them and they'd always accepted her. She had never wanted anything else.

Then there was that horrible battle. Sludge, Swallow, Gator and Toad had tried to save her from the SkyWings, but it hadn't turned out as planned.

"THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!" Oasis roared. She would've lashed her venomous tail and flared her wings, but both, being her most valuable weapons, had been bound by the guards, so Oasis tossed her head wildly instead. "I'm on your side!"

"Filthy excuse for a dragon," one guard, a flaming orange one, said, smoke coiling around his single horn. Oasis assumed he had lost the other in a battle. The place it should have been was laced with nasty scars. "You can drop the act for the queen. She won't appreciate any theatrics."

"THEATRICS!?" Oasis bellowed, whipping around so fiercely that she nearly pulled one of the guards right off the ground, consequentially almost tripping herself. That was how she was bound, in a manner so that if she tried to move too much, she would become entangled in odd wire. Each of her talons was connected with such wire to a guard, and her tail was tied to one leg so that the only she could stab was her own stomach.

"Yes, theatrics. Now, here we are. Behave for Queen Scarlet," he snapped. Then, he led Oasis and her four guards into a massive throne room.

Queen Scarlet was easy to see. She sat imperiously on a stone throne, looking down her queenly snout at everyone. The only other dragon was a RainWing, which was coiled obliviously on a decorative stone tree, sleeping, whorls of red and gold shimmering on her scales.

"Tell me, what do you think of my art?" Queen Scarlet began conversationally. She gestured carelessly at the RainWing.

"Is that what you brought me here for?" Oasis asked. She could tell she was supposed to have bowed by now, but she wasn't about to give the dragon who had ordered her abduction that sort of pleasure.

Queen Scarlet answered her question with a question. "They tell me your name is Oasis. After the deceased Queen Oasis, I assume?"

"Yes," Oasis growled. She remembered when the MudWings had given her that name. It was the only good SandWing name they could think of.

"So then, you're the one NightTraitor told me about?" the SkyWing queen asked, examining a talon.

"What sort of name is that? Never heard of him. Sounds like a NightWing, though," Oasis said. She didn't like the sound of whoever this dragon was. What kind of dragon had the word "traitor" in their own name?

"He is a NightWing, actually," Scarlet said with a sigh. "But enough of that. Your act is so very convincing, did you know? I almost thought you were actually clueless for a moment."

"I don't get it," Oasis said. "Somebody tell me what's going on here."

Queen Scarlet sighed deeply, looking thoroughly bored with the whole affair. "Why don't you tell her, er, what's your name again?" Scarlet asked, gesturing to the one-horned dragon.

"Falcon, Your Highness," he said with a polite nod.

"Right," Scarlet said. "Would you tell her, if it'll make her happier?"

"Sure," Falcon said. Then, he launched into an enormous speech. "NightTraitor, as his name implies, is a traitor to the NightWings. He brings us all sorts of reports and leaked information that we aren't supposed to have. He brought us a prophecy, and he told us we would find an Oasis in the swamp, and that the Oasis would give us the key to the Wings of Fire. I can't really remember the actual words of the prophecy, but you should know that, shouldn't you? Anyways, we figured we could sell the information to Burn… hence that you're here. But we aren't going to give her information that we don't know. That would just be stupid. So we're going to interrogate you and then sell you to Burn."

Oasis was speechless for several moments, but finally she found words. They weren't kind words, but she found them. "You are all sick blobs of crocodile dung. You plan on selling me? You're going to sell a living dragon? Ruin my life? For information I don't have?"

"Put her in the dungeon and let her think about her situation," Scarlet said haughtily. The guards began to drag Oasis away. "Remember, you're expendable."

Oasis waited until they were out in the hall. "THREE MOONS!" she roared. "EXPENDABLE!? I'm EXPENDABLE?"

"Yes, and you'd better calm down. You might accidentally kill yourself. Those bindings look awfully precarious," Falcon said pointedly.

"What did she mean, I'm expendable? The way you made it sound, I'm pretty important to you," Oasis pointed out.

"Well, no, you're important to Burn. Queen Scarlet could not care less whether Burn becomes Queen of the SandWings or not. She's only in this to prove how good SkyWings are," Falcon said, but the dull tone of his voice told too much. He did not agree with Scarlet in the least. Too many SkyWings had died in this war. Oasis was sympathetic of this feeling. She saw the effects of the horrible war each day as well as anyone else.

However, it was hard to feel sympathy for someone who had just thrown you in a jail cell and probably intended to torcher you in the morning.

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