My thanks to saacool gregor and percy rocks, coyearth, and Darkrider013 for the reviews! It was ridiculous, I was grinning so widely and bouncing up and down as I read those reviews and saw how many hits I'd gotten. Of course, I get easily excited, so I don't know what you'd make of that. :P

Okay, so perhaps the last few chapters were not quite as entertaining or sense-making. Hopefully this one should be better (look down- it explains what the monsters were!). This takes place about the time of Code of Claw, as implied later in the chapter. Adrian is a few months old now.

Chapter Four: In Which Adrian Saves a Life

"Wake up, Adrian," Silversnap's voice swam into her dreaming head.

Adrian's eyes fluttered open, taking note of the misty light that filtered into the cave. She had shared this cave with Silversnap and her mate, Locklunge, ever since she had been introduced to the colony of gnawers that Locklunge commanded.

Ironically, her dream concerned the night that the monsters- twisters, or snakes, and some of the largest the jungle knew- attacked. It wasn't like she could help these dreams. It was just that that time changed her life.

She had discovered that she had another mother in Silversnap, who had protected her from snakes the moment Cevian let go. And- even better- the gnawers had no problem with Adrian's feeding habits. In fact, she had never realized how starving she was until the gnawers gave her a fresh carcass. The blood was thick, but still warm, and no one screamed or tried to stop her. The gnawers simply lounged in a circle around Adrian, exchanging smiles, which made Adrian smile too.

There was one other important detail. Locklunge had gone back into the jungle (he came back with the carcass for Adrian) and found the knife that Thagor had been carrying. He said it was human-made, and that humans gave it to their allies to kill their enemies. In this case, it was given to Thagor to kill the one person in the group that a human would consider its enemy.

Because, like Locklunge said, the gnawers wouldn't want to kill Adrian, but the humans certainly would.

As Adrian learned to speak, Silversnap tried to squeeze out information about Adrian's past. What was she doing in the jungle? Why did three nibblers have her, and just where were they trying to take her? How had they been feeding her? Because she had been skin and bones when they found her. Did she know what the word "trap" meant? Or how she got a gold stripe on her back?

Adrian had a certain respect for Silversnap, who always fed her and tried to phrase her questions so that Adrian wouldn't be uneasy. But Adrian simply didn't know what to do with questions she couldn't answer. Half the memories she had of Luxa, Cevian and the other nibblers were gibberish; they often hid their feelings behind anger or silence, and Adrian hadn't understood half the words at the time. Only Aurora stood clearly in her memory, with her straightforward warmth and affection, and her stories about Ares and the place called Regalia. And Adrian wasn't sure she could tell Silversnap about Aurora. It was like Aurora was a secret stashed deep in Adrian's heart next to the image she associated with Ares: her mother, the loving flier that would do anything for her daughter to be fed and happy. Besides, Adrian didn't like to reflect on the pain she had caused her mother in just a few days of knowing her. Silversnap- whose cry of "no!" at Adrian's near death sounded so desperate that Adrian mistook her for Aurora- couldn't know that Adrian harmed people she trusted. Without the gnawers or Aurora, how would Adrian survive?

"We have a surprise for you," Silversnap said presently and set Adrian on her feet. Adrian almost looked her in the neck. She had been growing tremendously and painfully over the past months. Most gnawers attributed it to the blood-drinking.

"You're slow today." Silversnap gave Adrian a little nudge towards the mouth of the cave with a smile on her lips. "But if you're lucky, you'll be full for days! We got this body from the borders of the jungle. Still warm, like you like it, Adrian."

Adrian yawned and nodded wearily. Usually that was enough of a response for this time of day when she was still waking up.

Chatter rippled through the crowd of twenty or so gnawers at the sight of Adrian inching along the hillside, but they fell silent as she passed by. All eyes were on her, the bleary, unfocused flier with her fur mussed up. They knew she preferred to rise when they were sleeping, but Locklunge insisted she be up to play with the other gnawer pups and Silversnap, who watched them.

The noise of the jungle was all but deafening when Adrian approached the center of the crowd. Locklunge was standing triumphantly next to a large gold lump on the ground. Adrian stooped over to see the heart-shaped face of a flier, eyes closed in an expression of pain. She had a large gash that tore into her side, and her coat glistened in the light of the jungle with a sheen of sweat and blood.

"Breakfast, Adrian." Locklunge smiled to Adrian.

At that moment, the flier on the ground drew in a breath so slightly that only Adrian could see. She breathed so shakily, and winced halfway through due to a bruise on her chest. She didn't dare show any more pain than that. Just like Aurora.

Adrian sat next to the first flier she'd seen in months. On closer inspection, the flier had a red tint to her coat, and the gold was darker than Aurora's sheen. Still, she breathed with Aurora's determination. That made all the difference.

"She lives," Adrian said in a whisper.

"Adrian, eat. It's not like she'll fight," Silversnap said matter-of-factly. Some of the gnawers began to exchange looks, and more began to murmur.

Adrian stroked the glowing fur of the flier. "I will fight, Silversnap."

"I know." Locklunge set a paw on Adrian's shoulder. "You're better with puddles of blood than drinking from the carcass. Flametooth, would you?" He called to his closest henchman, who lunged forward to cut the gash.

Adrian shook her head furiously. "No, I mean-"

"Hestia!"

A small brown form fell from the sky and through the trees, almost crashing into the gnawers at the edge of the crowd. The form untangled its limbs and limped through the path the gnawers made for it.

"Hestia!" When it saw the golden flier on the ground, it fluttered towards her, using its wings to balance and propel itself. It fell on top of the flier, panting in deep, shuddering sobs.

"Hestia, wake!" It cried. Adrian could now see that it was a flier, but not a flier that she had seen before. Its face was rounder, its jaw squarer, and its fur was a ruddy mix of black, red, and gold that blended to brown. What was stranger, it used the long, thin wings at its side to move, almost like waving away air. The only thing that Adrian could really understand was how desperately it clung to the golden flier.

"She is alive," Adrian said softly to the flier. It paused, and then looked up to Adrian as if just noticing her.

"Behind you!" It cried, and suddenly pulled her by the wing away from Silversnap, who had leaned closer. The flier tried to limp away with Adrian, but Locklunge grasped it by the shoulders and held it still.

"What are you doing, boy?" Locklunge snarled. Adrian studied the flier; she had not seen a boy flier before.

"Hestia is my mother!" The boy formed his first real sentence, struggling out of Locklunge's grip. "And you took her!"

"She was lying by herself outside the jungle," Locklunge said.

"She was attacked by more of your kind when we were flying away from a battle. She fell and told me to hide in the jungle, and then you came out and you took her!" The boy flier pulled away and fell back onto his mother.

"Locklunge, why did you attack the flier?" Adrian asked.

"We didn't. Those were other gnawers," Locklunge said. "Boy, what do you mean about a battle?"

"You and the humans are at war. You're gathering at the walls of Regalia. Hestia wanted to take me to the fliers' lands, but we had to go through the battle and she was attacked."

Locklunge tapped a tooth in thought. "We're at war, are we? And here we've been boiling in the jungle, waiting for a chance to strike. What's the problem this time?"

"You're murdering the nibblers, and the queen won't stand for it. We'll win, though. We've got the warrior."

Adrian felt bad for the flier. No one could one-up Locklunge.

"Oh, do you now? So where was the warrior when your mother was ambushed?" Locklunge sneered. "Flametooth, Thrust, go to the nibbler colony and see if they've fled. Help them along if they haven't, and steal their supplies either way. Silversnap, I want this boy out of my lands. Adrian, eat."

"I won't!" Adrian said. Everyone turned to stare.

"Locklunge, please let her live. The boy too." Adrian gestured to the reddish-gold flier (apparently Hestia) and reverted to her normal mutter, almost ashamed of the stand she was taking. But Hestia was the spitting image of her mother, something Adrian would like to have. And the boy knew about Regalia.

"Why should they live?" Locklunge arched an eyebrow. Almost everyone was daring her to answer. The boy stared at her wide-eyed, his ears pricking up at her objection. Adrian looked down. What could she say? She couldn't discuss Aurora, for then the gnawers would know what pain she'd caused, and then she'd be taken away, just like last time. Her wings twitched across Hestia's bloody body as she thought.

The boy had said he and his mother had been flying (a word that Adrian heard had to do with her useless wings). He'd even crashed through the trees as if he'd fallen from the sky. And here she'd been using her wings for little more than balance.

"I want to learn to fly," Adrian concluded.

Locklunge's tail twitched. He often did that when he was surprised. But it was a good surprise. Adrian kept going.

"If you can heal Hestia and feed her son, she would be in debt to you. So she would teach me to fly because you would obviously need me to fly. I could help our pack if I could use my wings."

"And if I could find a way to keep her…" Locklunge tapped his tooth thoughtfully. "Alright. We'll heal her. But the pup needs to be watched. I don't like his tongue." He glared towards the boy, who had the prudence to be silent.

While a team of gnawers went to scour the jungle for signs of nibblers, and another group hoisted Hestia to a safer spot, Silversnap brought the boy another of the squishy orbs that Adrian gagged on.

"Will he be alright with you?" She asked Adrian, who nodded. She sat next to the boy under a bunch of vertical vines that formed a sort of tree trunk, and watched Silversnap hurry over to revive Hestia.

"What will they do?" The boy asked anxiously once they were out of earshot. "Will they heal Hestia, as you asked?"

Adrian nodded. The boy blinked, looked between Adrian and the gnawers, and then grinned and began to eat the squishy orange orb. He was halfway through it before he noticed that Adrian was there, watching him with a mix of bewilderment and disgust. He was eating the orb, the orb that Adrian gagged on, the orb that had once tried to eat her amidst a snake attack.

"Fruit?" The boy nudged a half of the squishy orb towards Adrian. She shook her head.

"I am Darius," The boy said after a minute of silence.

Adrian nodded in acknowledgement. She was too busy thinking of what to ask first. Should she start with Regalia? Or go straight to which fliers he knew? Could she even trust him with Aurora and Ares?

"Could I know the name of she who saved us?" He asked before she could even reach a conclusion.

"I saved you?" Adrian asked, disregarding her thoughts. She knew what "saved" meant. It was like the opposite of pain. A good thing. She had never thought she could do a good thing.

"Oh, yes. I cannot live out in the jungle. Or anywhere, really, if Hestia is not there. And the gnawers did not look like they would even consider saving her if you had not jumped in. So you saved Hestia from her wounds, and you saved me from being forced away from her and starving or getting hurt."

"Really," Adrian said. She hadn't thought of it that way. Just that she could save fliers with information she wanted.

"Really," He said, taking his last bite of the "fruit". "But I need to know your name so I can thank you properly."

He was now leaning against the tree, tired but happy. Adrian wasn't sure, but there was something about his face that she liked. Something trusting.

"I am Adrian," She said, looking into his eyes and holding onto that trust.

"Well, Adrian," He- Darius- tried the name on for size and smiled. "I thank you for my life and the life of my mother. You have a very pretty gold stripe on your back, and I would be happy to try to teach you to fly as soon as I take a quick rest." Darius sunk against the wall of vines and closed his eyes.

"Thank you, Darius," Adrian said after a pause. He gave a hint of another smile.

Ah, Darius. I really like him. (Of course, I did come up with his fun past and his personality and all, but regardless...) I couldn't think of a better character than him to teach Adrian to fly.

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