Author's Note- Hi! I'm Startalons-Allroun. I'm writing this story with the help of my friend Lemon, who even wrote a couple paragraphs here in the prologue and helped me edit. (Thanks Lemon!) Secondly, I apologize for the errors in the first posting of this, I tried to fix them in this version. If you ever see any typos or have any suggestions, feel free to tell me, I would love to hear them! Lastly, but certainly not least, thank you to Blueberrypietree and Dragonsmatter, who commented kindly even before I fixed the errors.
Wings of Fire belongs to the amazing Tui T. Sutherland and Lemon is helping me write/cowriting the story.
High in the sky, the three moons lit the plaza with their pearly radiance.
By that light, a dragon with scales darker than the night sky above could be seen flying low near the black stone ground. She was flying at a normal speed, but seemed rushed, clutching something securely in her talons for fear of dropping it.
The dragoness was holding an egg.
Perfectly smooth, the egg was the dark grey color of storm clouds but light enough to contrast with the jet-black of the dragon's scales. It was dark, but not the ebony black color of usual eggs, which worried its mother who was carrying it. Inside, the dragonet stirred, nearly ready to come out and see the world.
From the very beginning, she knew the dragonet would be smart. She could practically feel its curiosity, its desire to come out of the tight confines of its small egg and experience the world that was currently flying past it in the form of streets and houses. To be honest, she was almost as excited to meet it as it was to discover the world.
Finally, she spread her wings, flapped backwards to slow her momentum, and landed at the steps of a modest-looking house. Without a word, she climbed the steps and knocked at the mahogany door.
l-o-O-o-l
Mastermind had never believed in magic. And as a dragon of science, he never would.
However, standing there at that moment seemed just the tiniest bit magical, even to him
Farsight's tail was twined around his as they watched their egg rock ever-so-slightly from side to side in its nest. The nest was comprised of a shallow indent lined with soft furs. Both the nest and the egg were in the path of moonlight spilling from the open windowsill, moonlight that reflected off the egg's shiny surface and made it seem almost white.
Yes, this moment was perfect.
And then Farsight untwined her tail from his and prodded the egg with one claw, effectively ruining the mood.
"Are you sure it's okay," she asked. "It's all the wrong color. What if there's something wrong with her?
Mastermind let out a long-suffering sigh.
"It will be fine," he assured her. "Another egg looked like this as well, and the dragonet turned out okay. I'm sure that he or she will be just fine."
Before Farsight could reply, the egg began to rock more violently. Mastermind took Farsight's talon in his and squeezed it.
A crack appeared at the top of the shell, and the egg started moving even more. The crack in the egg spiderwebbed across the surface, as the dragonet continued its struggle for freedom. After three seconds, the egg stopped rocking. A few moments later, with a final jolt, part of the egg shattered and fell to the floor, revealing the extremely tiny snout of a NightWing dragonet.
"Ohhhhh," Farsight cooed as she rushed forward to pick it up. It was so tiny in her talons, but Mastermind still felt an overwhelming feeling of pride as he stood next to his dragonet and mate.
The dragonet's big, curious, hazel eyes met his and it squeaked adorably. It seemed overjoyed to discover that it had not just one, but two parents! Farsight allowed him to hold it, and he did so gratefully.
The dragonet was inky black, with the cutest little expression on its tiny face that said Oh, so that's what my dad looks like, I've been wanting to mee him.
It was a male dragonet, with peculiar silver scales by his eyes that looked like tears. It seemed happy and excited, but also seemed to be thinking the world was a bit louder than it expected. Mastermind noted that it's wings had the same inward clusters of stars that his did, proving further that the wing star patterns were likely to be genetic, but he was too excited to think about it then.
I'm a dad! He thought. Technically, he had a stepchild, but now he was a real, honest dad! He felt like flying up, up, up, and declaring the fact to the whole Night Kingdom. But that was not possible, given the area of the Night Kingdom was quite large, and that the sound of a grown dragon's voice could only travel- Nevermind, he'd think of that later.
"What will we call him," he inquired of Farsight, who was by his side with a wing around his shoulders.
"I think we'll call him Starflight."
l-o-O-o-l
Over the next few weeks, Mastermind tried to focus on his experiments, but as a new father of a baby dragonet and another dragonet who loathed it entirely, he found it nearly impossible.
There were so many new responsibilities to attend to. Beforehand he had thought being a father to a dragonet who was constantly bothering him and trying to get his attention was hard, but this put it to shame. He was constantly doing things to keep the two out of trouble.
"Fierceteeth, stop trying to cover your brother in dirt!"
"No, don't touch that, Starflight!"
"Put him down!"
"Wait! You're about to break that! … Nevermind, I'll just have to get a new one."
And he was 99.8 percent sure that Fierceteeth was trying to murder her baby brother. She kept on giving him glares whenever he toddled past her, and discreetly tripping him when he tried to run. Mastermind had also found small objects in Starflight's nest. Luckily, he had just managed to stop Starflight from swallowing them and choking on any of them. It was getting out of hand.
Though he did have an enormously hard time dealing with the chaos and less time to do research, he thoroughly enjoyed being a father. Starflight was growing up so fast and even saying a few words! It was unusual for a dragonet Starflight's age to know so many words and speak so fluently. He was extremely proud of his son.
However, he was also a bit concerned for Starflight's health. He tended to sleep talk, mumbling strange things and creative nonsense that would make a writer jealous. The tiny dragonet was constantly squinting, and seemed to have impaired vision. Mastermind hypothesized that the bad migraines and continual headaches that Starflight got were connected to this.
One day Starflight was watching Mastermind work on a project in his lab, humming his usual little rowdy-sounding tune that sounded like some kind of bar song. Happy that his son was taking an interest in his work, he lifted him on top of the table there. Mastermind realized he had left a spruce stick that he needed on the counter behind him, and he turned to get it.
He felt his tail brush up against something and heard a sickening thunk sound. In panic, he whipped around again.
Starflight was miraculously fine, standing to the side of a large cauldron that had fallen right where he had been standing.
But… I thought he was… How did he move so fast? He has such bad vision… I wouldn't have thought…
Starflight seemed unfazed and completely unaware of his father's confusion. He then proceeded to climb into the cauldron that had nearly killed him and peek out of it, cocking his head at Mastermind's confused face.
Oh well, at least he's safe. He has such fast reflexes. What a lucky step. Mastermind turned back to his work.
The next day, Fierceteeth started coughing, each breath seeming to rattle in her small chest. Farsight became frantic as the night came on, and the coughing began to sound more violent. The coughs started to sound like a dying goose. He could identify the cause as a sickness that infected young dragons and made it extremely hard for them to breathe for its duration. When he told Farsight that the sickness could potentially be lethal and there was no cure, she almost had a panic attack.
Mastermind knew the illness had to run its course. He also knew that fretting about it wouldn't do anything, but Farsight insisted on staying at Fierceteeth's bedside all night.
Several days later, after a couple of scary moments when Fierceteeth couldn't breathe for a few seconds, she finally began to feel better. By the second day of recovery, she could go outside again and was back to playing rowdily with her friends. But he noticed that Farsight was spending a lot more time with her and there hadn't been any attempts on Starflight's life in several days. Maybe all Fierceteeth had wanted was a little more attention.
With so much spare time on his talons due to Fierceteeth's absence, he could finally try and find a cure for his son's condition. He was thinking about trying glasses if the headaches and migraines had something to do with that, but he wasn't sure if it was going to help with the seizures that Starflight had been having. It was worth a try, however. He started to monitor his young son a bit more closely.
Secretly, of course, Mastermind wanted it to be a surprise.
He started writing down many of the things Starflight said, and even the silly things, hoping some of it could give him some insight to his son's problem. Though Starflight was creative, nothing he said seemed to lead to any conclusions.
Not many things happened, except for the growing intensity of Starflight's seizures. It got kind of scary, to be honest.
He would randomly cry out at times, collapsing and curling up in a fetal position. It pained him to see Starflight curled up like that, looking so frail and in pain with his talons clasped to his head over his ears and horns. He would quietly mumble garbled things, sounding panicked as if he had something urgent to say. He shivered and jolted slightly, and did so even as Mastermind picked him up and wrapped his wings around him until the seizure came to an end.
Mastermind vowed he would do anything to make it stop.
l-o-O-o-l
One Year Later…
"Hey Daddy," came a little voice from Mastermind's left.
"Oh, good morning Starflight!" Mastermind turned away from his little project and nuzzled Starflight's side, causing the dragonet to giggle and yelp.
"Do you have a book I could borrow? It's rainy and I don't really wanna play with Fierceteeth anyway…"
Mastermind blinked at the sudden request. Starflight had never asked him for a book before. He swiveled his head to look at the scroll rack at the back of the room across from the door of his lab.
He didn't have any dragonet picture scrolls for Starflight's age group, and even though Starflight was extremely intelligent, he doubted he would understand Formulas for Estimating Geographical Climate (Pocket Edition) or many of his other scrolls just yet.
However…
He looked at his son, who was fiddling uncomfortably with his black metal bracelet due to the long period of silence. His round glasses mastermind bought for him had started slipping down his snout, and he finally noticed his father's staring. Starflight met Mastermind's gaze with his own confused expression.
Mastermind looked at the scroll rack again, remembering again how terrible and helpless he felt when Starflight used to have those terrible seizures. He felt guilty and also felt he owed Starflight something.
And besides… He did have a perfectly good set of scrolls that he could read to Starflight…
