A sudden clap of thunder brought Kyle back to his senses. He jumped a little at the disturbance, and shook his head a little. Without the distraction of thought, he could feel the painful burning in his lungs and legs. He kept onward though, as not to be separated from his travel partner.

"H-how… d-did… you convince m-me to... j-join you?" Kyle huffed, his chest burning from overexertion. Rain was coming down in torrents around him, and in the quickening dusk, it was becoming hard to see. It didn't help that he had slipped in the mud earlier today, and despite the clear plastic poncho he had been given, he was still soaked. His glasses had been fogged up as well, which didn't contribute to the overall experience.

"Because you need this, little man! You just stay inside all day reading your children's books instead of appreciating the outdoors!" Tyler shot back cheerfully, himself having no trouble with the steep, muddy incline they were hiking. Granted, he had come prepared, including his own custom tailored clothing, which included a bright red waterproof coat, Neon green sweatpants meant specifically for hiking in such weather, and a pair of strong boots the color of lemons.

"T-they are not children's books!" Kyle replied with, "They are complex stories with good characters and real stakes!" He nearly shouted, his tiredness momentarily forgotten. His charcoal grey hoodie and blue pants clung on his body, weighing him down, while his mud covered white running shoes made walking a nightmare.

"You say that all the time. They're dragons, for god's sake, dragons! How much more childish could you get?" Tyler was chuckling. This guy would never grow up.

"You haven't even read them! Ever heard of the phrase; 'Don't judge a book by its cover'?" Kyle asked him, his tiredness beginning to catch up with him. He dropped to one knee, which squelched in the mud.

"Whatever, man." Tyler grabbed him by the crook of his arm, and dragged him back up. "How about this? We can stop for the night, and rest up for tomorrow. Hopefully the rain will have stopped by then," he mused, rubbing his chiseled chin with his hand, before walking off the muddy path to find a suitable camping spot.

"Thank god," Kyle muttered to himself. He wearily went off the path with Tyler, and sat down on a rock that, while still wet, wasn't soaked like everything else. He let himself rest while Tyler continued onward. Tyler's footsteps had slowly faded into the rain, and after a minute, they were gone entirely.

Kyle smiled to himself, he could finally have a little peace and quiet. Tyler did have a point about being outdoors, he had to admit. You couldn't get the feeling of being isolated in the forest, surrounded by nothing but the constant drone of rain anywhere else. Cold as hell, but still worth it.

Kyle's sense of calm was abruptly shattered by what sounded like several screams, and… what sounded like roars, along with a few sharp pops, though it was muffled by both the distance and rain, before cutting off suddenly, like it had been switched off. Kyle sprung to his feet, his quiet musings forgotten. The only person he knew with a voice like that had left to find a campsite for them. And that roar, must be a bear, or maybe a mountain lion. Without a second thought, Kyle sprinted in the direction of the screaming.

No, not a scream, a yell. Tyler never screamed.

Kyle continued forward, ignoring his weariness and the constant beating his body was taking from crashing through the undergrowth around him. He couldn't afford Tyler being injured. While he could be a dick, he was the only person he could call an actual friend. Also he would probably be stranded out here if Tyler was hurt. He kept up his run, even as he felt his lungs and legs be engulfed in fire.

His right foot caught in the exposed root of a tree, and he went down into the soggy ground. Screaming curses to himself, Kyle slowly hauled himself back up, his front half covered in mud. He was about to continue, but felt something. Something was off… something was wrong.

Something told him that if he continued, he would be making a grave mistake. He couldn't stop though, Tyler was on the line. But... deciding to follow his gut for once in his life, he looked around his position, carefully and slowly. His eyes swept across the area he was in, but there didn't appear to be anything out of place. This feeling, though… he shook his head a little, probably just him going crazy. He never did feel too connected to reality, either way.

Kyle was about to take off, but when he put weight on the foot he tripped with, he felt a sudden bolt of pain. Hissing to himself, he began to awkwardly hobble, only to feel the… feeling of danger slowly rise to a crescendo within him. He stopped briefly, his sense of forward momentum temporarily forgotten. He may not have been one to listen to his feelings often, but even he knew this was unnatural. He stamped his left foot, trying to warm it up, and looked down in the process.

What appeared to be a sinkhole was right in front of him. He felt his blood slowly turn to ice… if he hadn't tripped… Kyle shivered a little. He did have to admit, it was hard to spot, and he only did because he was right on top of it. The feelings of danger were radiating, and he felt it from the hole. Something about it… it filled him with dread. Could Tyler have fallen down it? Something in his heart told him as much, even though it seemed almost impossible.

He slowly stepped back, his mind racing, when something in his peripheral vision caught his attention. It was a bag… Tyler's bag, nestled comfortably in the crook of a tree branch a couple feet off from the ground, with both straps hooked on the branch itself. He'd recognize its bright orange sheen anywhere. What's more, it looked to have been savagely mauled, by something… a bear, maybe? How did it get up there though?

Kyle shook his head a little in a vain attempt to clear it. He'd figure this whole fiasco out later, when he found Tyler. There was sure to be a reasonable explanation for all of this, he was sure of it. At least he knew Tyler had to be close by.

Figuring he might as well, Kyle went over to Tyler's bag and plucked it from its perch. It was rather lighter than he remembered. He gingerly set it on the ground, and carefully unzipped it, as not to mangle the sorry bag any further. Kyle peered into it, and found there to only be a spool of rope occupying the bottom. What the hell? He knew that Tyler had packed much more. Hell, he had seen Tyler pack fucking 10 pound weights in it, something about challenging oneself. Kyle gently pulled the rope out, then stuffed the bag into his own.

Kyle turned his gaze back to the pit. It certainly did look as if a scuffle had occurred near it. The muddy soil had obviously been disturbed, and there were claw marks intermingled with the many boot prints scattered about the small area. A dull glimmer also caught his eye. Upon his closer inspection, he found it to be some kind of pistol, which had been mangled almost beyond recognition. He knew Tyler had accrued quite the armory at home, but he never expected Tyler to be packing while they were hiking. Guess that explained the weird popping noises.

Tyler's bag, and the gun, only confirmed that something horrible had happened here. But what, though? There was plenty of blood present, and more importantly, why was Tyler's bag clawed up, but stuck in a tree, with both straps intact, no less? Kyle's musings were interrupted by the prickling feel on the back of his neck and spine. He found his eyes drawn back to the sinkhole, and the sense of wrongness he felt only grew within him. Kyle swallowed the rising bile coming up from his stomach, and hesitantly approached it. He had to know, he had to.

Easing himself to the ground, Kyle slowly shimmied to the edge of it, only his head leaning over the abyss. He felt his blood freeze as he slowly looked into the void directly. He couldn't see the bottom, but despite that, what looked to be a dull light was shining from somewhere within.

Kyle withdrew his head a little, and saw at his side a medium-ish sized rock, about the size of his fist, near the edge with him. He grasped it, and tossed it down. It fell silently, not even touching the edge, and even when it left his view, he never heard it hit the bottom. He quickly withdrew his head. He would find Tyler, even if it meant going in there. He shimmied away, and then stood back up.

Pulling his pack off of his shoulders, he began rifling through it. Flashlight… maybe, protein bars (courtesy of Tyler)... rope… yes. He had quite a lot of rope. Tyler had been really insistent of always carrying it. He had never understood why, but by god was he lucky Tyler had always been so insistent on carrying it.

Combined with the rope he had accrued from Tyler's pack, Kyle was confident he had enough to reach the bottom. The rock was probably just a fluke, anyway. He located a sturdy looking tree, and quickly tied the rope to it, and gave it an experimental tug. It held, and he smiled a little. At least Tyler had enough foresight to teach him some knots.

Kyle tied the end of the rope around his waist, and holding the remaining slack of it, he approached the edge of the sinkhole. He was leaning down to try and get into a good position to rappel down the vertical shaft, when a thought struck him. What if he was wrong? What if Tyler wasn't down there? He squatted there, racked with indecision.

A ridiculous thought struck him. While Kyle would never admit to it, he had read a large amount of fanfiction, and this situation felt eerily similar to some of the scenarios described within them. Almost like he was in a shitty fanfiction being written by a psychopath, or some things he had written himself. Despite his situation, he couldn't help but laugh a little. Wouldn't that be a precious… While his thoughts occupied him, below him, the soggy soil ever so slowly began to shift under his weight, before quickly collapsing underneath him.

Screams could be heard echoing from the hole as Kyle plummeted downward, his head spinning with fear and adrenaline. He clawed desperately at the rope, hoping to gain grip and slow down his fall before he hit the bottom or the end of the rope. Either one weren't welcome options to him. He managed to grab two handfuls of the rope, and tried to stretch both of his legs so they would brush along the walls.

As he did so, every nerve in his body was screaming at him that something was wrong, something that was trying to worm its way into him. He felt it crawl along his skin, trying to find a weakness in it that it could exploit, but as quickly as the feeling came, however, it just as quickly left, leaving him with his nerves screaming in fear instead of whatever unnatural feeling had been felt previously.

Despite how much he tried, his legs couldn't quite reach the walls, and in desperation, he pulled on the rope hard, hoping it would do something for him. Instead, a short section of it greeted him, almost comically short. The end was glowing with embers, barely illuminating his surroundings. What the hell… That's not how ropes fucking worked. On top of that, how long was this hole? Was it bottomle...

He then hit the bottom with a sickening splash.

Ever so slowly, Kyle's brain began the process of rebooting. Even when he was in the void between consciousness and unconsciousness, he could feel a dull ache running throughout his body, which he expected, in all honesty. Hiking did tend to leave him sore. It didn't help that he was laying on the hard and rough ground, instead of the small sleeping bag he had brought along. Why was he on the ground then? Actually, did they even set up the tent last night? Last night was definitely hazy in his mind. Didn't Tyler run off? But… his eyes refused to open, and his mind surrendered to the feeling of sleep and sedation running through his system. A sudden shriek, from what sounded to be… he couldn't tell, broke him from his stupor.

He shifted a little in his spot, his senses slowly coming back to him. He felt soaked, but the aches themselves were slowly fading. There was a moderate current of water tugging on the lower half of his body, though enough of him was on land, which kept him from being swept away. His nose registered the smell of the place. Dank, earthy, the smell of smoke… who could coax a fire in this weather? Vaguely, the white noise he was hearing slowly resolved itself into angry voices and screams.

Kyle slowly forced himself up, and took several shaky and soggy steps out of the water. Despite almost everything around him being shrouded in dark, there was enough light streaming in from… somewhere, to see, if barely. Everything seemed blurry, the reason revealing itself when he reached up to wipe his glasses, only to realize they were gone. He cursed himself out viciously: those glasses were expensive as shit. Mumbling angry phrases to himself, he determinately dogged onward toward the light, trying his best not to fall over from the combined strain his tiredness and blindness brought to him.

As Kyle trudged toward the light, his vision began to clear up a he couldn't see anything in too much detail, he noticed the distinct lack of soggy pines around him. Furthermore, where was the soil? The ground under him had only been rock. Maybe the river he was in had swept him downstream, somehow. Why would he have been near a river though? Their hiking route wasn't anywhere close to a stream. His mind still felt very cloudy, almost like the cells firing off in his brain had fallen asleep, and refused to question the situation beyond the obvious.

Ahead of him, he heard something. The closest thing he could describe the sound to was, galloping, except instead of a the sound of clopping one would expect, it sounded similar to… clacking, for lack of a better term. Almost like… claws against rock. A bear, maybe? Kyle, could only blink at the rapidly approaching sound. He stood, dumbfounded and stuck in his place. He had the impression of something large, red, and grey rush past him, only to slow, and turn back. He was very sure bears weren't red, unless this one had been covered in blood, somehow? What about the grey, though?

Quite suddenly, his feet were knocked out from under him, which was immediately followed by a heavy weight over him. It felt… sharp and hard. Very scaly as well. He was quickly grasped by it, and could feel himself hoisted through the air, with the sense of the bottom of his stomach disappearing.

A chuckle emanated from the blob holding him, "Well, what do we have here?"

"Wha…" Kyle mumbled to himself. Last time he checked, bears didn't talk, or scythe the legs from under someone, so it probably was not a bear. His mind refused to think beyond those obvious facts.

After a minute of being treated like a ragdoll, thrown this way and that way, and the voices growing into a painful crescendo, he was thrown onto the ground, followed by him being pinned on the floor. He slowly looked about where he was. It certainly was much lighter wherever he was now, which let him see the many more red and orange blobs present. Sprinkled alongside them, however, were a few other colors. Was that a green one? Blue? Maybe yellow? Hell if he knew.

A collection of angry shouts assaulted his ears, the words behind them drowned in the sea of sound, and he cringed inwardly. All of them sounded extraordinarily angry. Except for one voice, however.

"Holy shit, Kyle, is that you?" It was Tyler. How though…? but… His brain fizzled out for a moment. It had come from his right.

"Tyler, where are you?" Kyle slurred, his mouth unwilling to cooperate with him. He didn't see Tyler anywhere. He sounded close though. Several more shouts filled his ear.

"Kyle, stop fucking with me and say something besides complete gibberish, now is not the time to be an idiot." Kyle strained his neck to look to his right, only to see another red blobby shape. What…?

"Tyler, what the hell is happening?" Kyle's voice had risen with fear and confusion.

Tyler piped up again, sounding annoyed, "Seriously, stop."

A deep voice rang out from above him, "Three moons, what is wrong with you? Now stop talking to the scavenger or Cloud will make you."

Scavenger? Cloud as a name? Red and Orange blobs? Even in his addled state, he could piece together that something had happened. He wasn't on his hike anymore, was he?

As if to confirm his suspicions, a sudden high pitched laugh filled his ears. "Is he really the Skywing of the prophecy? My expectations were low, but by the moons, he's shattered them!" The voice said, filled with mirth, "He's even talking to a scavenger! How thrilling!"

No… no... no… He was not Dorothy, and Tyler was not Toto. What was it then?

….Fuck it. Yes Kyle, you are not in Kansas anymore. Deal with it.

Kyle struggled briefly, trying to escape the grip that ensnared him. It tightened around him, almost to the point where he couldn't even breathe. The laughing began once again, with an order, "Let him go, I want to see this!"

The vicelike grip on him abruptly vanished, as well as the weight above. Kyle got back on his feet, his heart racing. After a moment of deliberation, he took several deep breaths, trying to reign his nerves in. He was not going to appear weak or fearful in front of… whoever he was in front of. He was still clinging to the desperate hope that this was all just some fever dream of his imagination that was brought upon the fall, but that hope was rapidly fading.

He didn't even care to guess why this was happening. He had more pressing matters to attend to. Kyle blinked his eyes rapidly, hoping it would clear his vision further. It worked to an extent, but everything still had a hazy edge to it. What he saw only cemented in his mind that his suspicions were correct. Dragons… motherfucking dragons all around him.

No… he fell to his knees. His eyes slowly began to water, and he could feel some of his tears run down the sides of his cheeks. This was not happening… This was not happening… he buried his face in his hands, trying to retain just a shred of dignity. They could kill him right now for all he cared… well, not really, Kyle quite enjoyed life, but he also did enjoy being melodramatic.

The commanding and authoritative voice piped up again, "Look at how pale it is! How pathetic! How boring!" Quite quickly, Kyle felt the same pair of claws grab him from the back, and force him back to the floor. He grunted in pain from the rough handling, but remained silent. His insides felt numb, and his mind had gone numb. The conversations going on around him were a dull roar in his ear, none of it comprehended. This was too much. This was… he could deny it no longer.

Ever so slowly, his mind latched onto a drifting thought, and repeated it, similar to a mantra. He knew what would happen in this world, he had the knowledge. He could… he could steer everyone down the right path. Hell, he knew where the Eye of Onyx was, he knew the truth about the Nightwings, he even knew he could somehow correct the largest sin within the Wings of Fire Canon: Moonbli…

"Kyle, are you okay?" Tyler's voice interrupted his thought process. Kyle, having forgotten Tyler, looked to where his voice had come from once again, but now with clear-ish face of a Skywing, also pinned down by a Skywing soldier, greeted him. Before he could even hope that this wasn't Tyler by some convoluted way, Tyler spoke again. Out of the dragon's mouth spewed his voice.

"Why are you staring at me like that? Admit it, you've caught me doing shit much worse than this."

A solitary thought crossed his otherwise frazzled mind. This is going to be one hell of ride…

A/N

After a couple revisions, I finally got this into a format that shouldn't burn anyone's eyes out. Don't plan on having many of these Author's notes later on, so I might as well clarify a few things.

First off, this is not going to be the most serious story, or realistic, either. This entire story came from a one-off joke, which ended up into this amalgamation. This probably won't be updated too often, either, due to real life and the large sum of time it takes to edit these. I can't keep writing stuff like this while riding the high of sleep deprivation.

I'd also like to give my sincere thanks to the community of SDMI, and especially Wrongful (WrongfulRanger000), Wonderful (Wonderful05), and Blue (Navy Lotus), who helped me proofread this, gave me some stellar ideas for this story, and encouraged me to write this in the first place. You guys are the best. Also check out their stuff.

Time to see where this goes. Thanks for reading, and I hope your mind is still in one piece. Anything you guys have to say, I would appreciate to know. I'll need all the help and criticism I can get. Lord knows I need it.