Side note, I suggest you read slowly. There may be a couple of important one sentence details, but I wont try to do that too often.
Smoke.
Fire.
It was all around him. Copper opened one of his eyes to take in the destruction around him. He didnt know if he could open the other. Everything looked... warbled. Fire weaved back and forth from burning planks, like a desert mirage. He couldnt see the sky.
His heart stopped a moment when he realized that the reason the sky was missing was because a cracked, half destroyed house was teetering above him. He groaned and pushed himself onto his stomach. a sharp pain shot through his right wing. He must've landed on it. His entire world rocked, his insides seemed to flip. His head ached.
He touched the side of it, then looked back to where he was laying. There was a jagged rock where his head had rested, spattered with dark blood. He looked around.
He was in a crater. Chunks of rock and brick littered the ruins around him. Sand blew in from all sides, but the place was a giant hole that was ripped apart in the ground. The sound of one explosion after another bounced around in his brain.
He heard crying nearby. In the distance, he could hear a dragonet calling out. It wasnt just this street that was blown, Copper realized. It was the whole town.
He took a wobbly step forward when something made a nasty crunch underneath him. He carefully looked down. A Skywing. Maybe. It was too charred to tell. They mustve been right next to a bomb. There were large holes ripped into them. He shuddered as he wobbly walked around the corpse and tried to see anything. Anyone.
More crying.
Copper walked through the lonely alleys back to his home. When the door was in sight, he heard something on the roof. Crying? He went to the roof and spoke to his father. When he flew up the crying stopped. He only remembered one word. 'dead'.
Copper struggled past a burning pile of derbies when the building shook.
He heard a crack above him as he tried to run out of the way. He tripped just before he made it out of the building, cutting his foot, and he looked up in horror as the building collapsed on him.
A cloud of dust sprang into the air, in unison with the cracks coming from his right wing once again. He howled. He tried to remove the pile of bricks that was pinning him. He began panicking when not only would they not budge, but another shoot of pain barreled through him with an accompanying crack. He could barely feel his wing.
"He... help... help me!" He shrieked, his voice strained and hoarse from the smoke and dust. The pain was too much. Too much...
"Never ask for help. If you can't do it yourself when you go out on your own, I'm leaving ya. That's the way it goes Copper."
He straightened himself and tried to pull the bricks off, little by little, fighting through stings of pain from within his own ring and tears.
"No tears! If you cant handle this, how ya gonna do in a real fight!?"
" I won't get hit! " Copper rebutted.
With a strange resolve he finally pushed the bricks off his wing, yelping when his wing came free. He tried in vain to lift it.
He saw a brown shape slumped on the remains of an iron sign. He gritted his teeth and dragged himself and his useless wing over to it. Cougar.
He barely had the strength to turn him over. His left side was covered in serrated, smoking needles. His eye had been split. Penetrated by three different spines.
Copper made sure he was breathing, and he was. Only just.
He heard something and looked off a cliff like ledge down into a deeper pit. Barracuda, one of the Seawings, was shaking wildly and holding her ears so hard blood was running from her own talons.
A rock fell behind him as he heard what was almost a hiss. He dodge-fell to his right as a blindingly fast stream of orange flames scorched the ground he was standing on. Its deadly roars and crackles stopped quickly and only a few wisps of flame were left. He tried to get up but couldnt. He couldnt. He had never felt like this before. He strained his neck as far as it could go to see his attacker.
A Sandwing, wearing some sort of gold medallion and a long, dark robe. She had three black tattoos on her chest.
"Never mess with them. They're dangerous. " his father said, pointing at someone in a crowd Copperhead couldnt quite see.
She snarled in frustration and jumped down into the collapsed street. "If you wont stay still I'll kill you by hand." She said bitterly. She pulled an axe off her back with a sneer and prepared to swing down on him when she was tackled from the side.
Copper used his chance and rolled away, and quickly tried to see what was going on.
Woodpecker had knocked her to the ground and they were now fighting over the axe. She bit into his side and ripped.
Two shapes in the distance gradually grew until they both landed right next to the fighting dragons. They landed to a shrill scream.
Woodpecker whipped around, covered in blood, and leaning on his right legs. The strange Sandwing was angrily cursing him, pinned to the floor by the axe, which had been sliced directly through her wing.
Another, terrifying, huge Sandwing carrying a sack stepped out into the smokey open, a scrawny, light blue Seawing right behind him. The new Sandwing was wearing the same attire as the other one.
Woodpecker growled at them. "You had something to do with this, didn't you? Do you know what you've done!? I suggest you leave now, or the Enclave will hunt you down and kill you for your crimes!"
The Seawing sat and touched a sliver ring hanging from his necklace. They gave the Sandwing a disparaging smile.
"Marl? If you will?"
Marl grunted, and with nearly indragon speed, grabbed Woodpecker by the neck and slammed him into the ground in one swift movement.
The Seawing gave a small chuckle at Woodpeckers unmoving body. Copper could barely keep his eyes open.
"That was easy. Heh. Well thats dealt with. Now lets get these set before..." He trailed off as he stared at something in the sky. Copper followed his gaze and saw an army of Skywings flying in formation towards the town.
The Seawing sneered at the Skywing legion that was coming for them, before he grabbed the silver ring tightly.
Marl saw him grab it, and his eyes widened. He almost looked scared. "No. No, no! Don't make me do this!"
Marl's pleas went unheard by the lean dragon.
He slowly backed up and suddenly took flight. Marl tried to follow, but it seemed like some sort of force held him back. The Sandwing with the axe seemed to panic at the Seawing's quick departure. "Wait! What about me!? Help me!"
"My apologies! I swear you'll live on in my memories!"
The dragon laughed arrogantly as he flew into the horizen, his tail hanging limp behind him.
Marl seemed frozen in time while his accomplice desperately tried to tear herself away from the axe.
As the Skywings arrived, Marl jerkily opened the sack he had carried, and with one last look of terror, dryly coughed up fire and blew into it.
For the second time that day, explosions rocked Copper's world.