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DARKSTALKER
Things didn't go as planned.
Darkstalker knew that he was going to have a difficult time getting through to Fathom. It would be an uphill battle convincing his old friend that he wasn't evil. He flew to the Kingdom of the Sea expecting as much.
What he wasn't expecting was for a patrol of SeaWing guards to stop him before he could even catch sight of the Island Palace.
They intercepted him as he was sinking below the clouds. There were five of them, flying towards him in V-formation. Once they were close enough, the dragon in front made a circular signal with a front talon while flashing all of his glowlights in bursts of three. It meant, "Turn around now, or we will attack."
It was obviously a bluff. Darkstalker didn't turn around.
The SeaWings maneuvered to a hovering position, cutting short the trajectory of Darkstalker's flight path. Their talons were raised, as though they were prepared to absorb a tackle.
It was still obviously a bluff. They wouldn't attack a known animus dragon, let alone a king. Darkstalker avoided the SeaWings by pitching himself upward. But a moment after he soared over their heads, Darkstalker felt a pair of talons grappling against his body, dragging him down from the sky.
Okay, maybe it wasn't a bluff.
Darkstalker squirmed and writhed, trying to rip the SeaWing off of him. He had to admire their courage. Or perhaps it was just stupidity. Did they not realize that he could end all of their lives in a heartbeat?
He wouldn't do that, of course. But it was possible, and they were giving him complete justification to do so. But he wanted to avoid hurting any SeaWings. It wouldn't send a very good impression on Fathom, he figured.
The wind started to pick up. They were falling faster, and the SeaWing was still grappling against Darkstalker's wings.
Enchant the water below me to absorb the impact of my fall when I hit it, he thought as he wrestled against the SeaWing. Even though his scales were impenetrable, hitting the water would hurt. He'd rather not get the wind knocked out of him when he plunged into the ocean.
The SeaWing who'd been pulling him down suddenly let go and flew upwards. Confused, Darkstalker looked up at the hovering SeaWing, then immediately got struck in the side with a mighty blow.
It turned out that in his haste to get the SeaWing off of him as he fell, he didn't realize that he'd been above a beach, not the ocean. A mushroom cloud of sand flew into the air as he hit the ground, and more sand was kicked up when he skidded to an abrupt halt. The impact definitely broke some bones, and his head felt like it was on the verge of splitting open.
Darkstalker moaned in pain. His ears were ringing, and when he tried to open his eyes, he found his vision completely blurred. His consciousness began to fade, but before it completely slipped, he gripped the sand. Heal me completely, he commanded.
At once, the pain began to fade. His bones mended back together, his headache subsided, and he felt a mild tingling run over his body in place of where any bruising was occurring.
The SeaWings landed nearby. Darkstalker heard the sound of their footsteps as he lay there on the ground. When he opened his eyes, he saw the five of them communicating to each other in Aquatic.
Darkstalker rose to his feet, causing the SeaWings to jump. He flexed his wings to get the sand off of them.
"You're okay," said the SeaWing at the head of the patrol.
"I'm here to see Fathom," Darkstalker told them.
"You just fell from—" The SeaWing paused, then sighed and shook his head. "King Darkstalker, you're banned from entry into the Kingdom of the Sea. If you don't turn around now, then we are ordered to remove you by force."
"I'm not leaving until I talk to Fathom. If I'm not allowed in, then have him meet me out here."
"Prince Fathom is not interested in talking to you. Now leave. This is your final warning." The SeaWing patrol collectively took guard.
Darkstalker bared his teeth. "You can't stop me, and you know it. Just step aside. This doesn't need to get violent."
Apparently they disagreed. They started toward him, wings slightly extended. Darkstalker started towards them, readying for a fight.
But before anyone could attack, he spread his wings and tried to fly over them. It was too little too late: he couldn't get enough lift before one of the SeaWings threw themselves into the air and grabbed him. They fell to the ground, and Darkstalker was immediately overwhelmed by the four other dragons.
Darkstalker hissed and thrashed, resisting his adversaries' efforts to restrain him. But without his magic, he wouldn't be a match against them. He gripped the sand once again. Immobilize the SeaWings that are attacking me, he commanded.
A brief silence fell as all of the dragons ceased their movements, broken by the crashing waves against the shore. Darkstalker squirmed free of the five dragons pinning them down. One of them, stuck in her frozen state, toppled over to her side while she was winding up for a claw strike. They still were able to breathe and move their eyes, but their skeletons were rigid, petrified in their half animation.
Darkstalker reached over his shoulder to unfasten his bag in case anything fell out of it. But then, he heard a familiar voice from behind him.
"You're still an animus!"
Darkstalker whirled his head around, beaming at Fathom. The clumsy SeaWing rushed his landing on the beach and nearly fell over, but he managed to keep his balance as he trotted to a halt. He looked livid.
"Fathom!" Darkstalker called. "It's so good to see you again! How are your kids doing?" A little persuasion tactic: if he focused on things that he knew Fathom enjoyed talking about, then that would help establish some much needed goodwill between them.
It wasn't effective. Instead, Fathom grabbed a talonful of sand, put an unpetrifying enchantment on it, and threw it over his SeaWing guards. They all stood up at once and bowed to their prince.
"Just go," Fathom said to them. "I'll deal with him myself. Thank you for holding him back."
"Very well, Prince Fathom," the head of the patrol said. He beckoned his fellow guards to follow, and together they took to the sky, leaving Darkstalker alone with the SeaWing prince.
"So … how are the kids?" Darkstalker asked again.
But again, it wasn't effective. "You're still an animus!" he cried, flapping his wings in frustration. "You said that you put your magic into the scroll again! Argh, I should have known. This explains everything."
"Why does that upset you so much?" Darkstalker asked. "You're still an animus, clearly."
"I'm not pretending not to be," Fathom said.
"But you still are. Why haven't you put your powers in a scroll yet, unless you realize the utility of having powers that you can use on-command?"
Fathom didn't have a response to that. He just glowered harder. "Why are you here?"
Darkstalker smiled. "I'm here because—"
"—Actually, nevermind; I don't want to hear it. Just go home."
Darkstalker deflated. "No. Fathom, please, I just want to talk to you. Don't you miss the time when we used to be friends?"
"I don't care!" he said. "You have no right to just waltz into our kingdom like this. Queen Pearl told you not to come here. She warned you not to come here. I don't want to restart the war over this, Darkstalker. So just go home now and we'll forget that you ever tried to pull this off."
"I'm not going until I've said what I wanted to say," Darkstalker said adamantly. "Listen, if you think that I'm some terrible dragon because of what I did to Anaconda, then we can talk about that. But it isn't fair to me if you just run away without even giving me a chance to explain myself."
Fathom growled. Darkstalker heard him cast a spell in his mind. I enchant my talon to teleport Darkstalker back to his palace when I stomp it on the ground.
"Hey—!" An instant later, Darkstalker was back in the Night Kingdom, standing at the front gates of the palace. Darkstalker huffed, then touched a piece of sand that was still on his forearm. Teleport me back to the exact spot where I was before Fathom teleported me.
When he returned to the beach, Fathom was turning around, preparing to spread his wings. "Very mature of you," he said before the SeaWing could take flight. "You're not getting rid of me that easily. Just sit down, and let's talk, just for a few minutes."
Fathom threw a piercing glower at Darkstalker. I enchant my talon to teleport Darkstalker back to his palace when I stomp it on the ground, and to take away his animus powers.
Darkstalker leapt forward. "Wait, Fathom!" he shouted, but he was already back at the front gates of the palace when he uttered those words. The slight buzz that coursed through his body was suddenly gone.
He clenched his talons, seething. "That slimy little pile of rotten kelp!" he roared. He plucked another grain of sand, this time from the space between the digits on his talon. In the hopes that animus magic wasn't actually powerful enough for that spell to work, he cast the same enchantment: Teleport me back to the island I was just at. As expected, he went nowhere.
There was a pair of palace guards at the gates. They were looking at him strangely. Darkstalker's intense stare shifted from the grain of sand to the two of them, and they promptly straightened up.
"Is there … something wrong, Your Majesty?" asked the one to the left of the gate.
"No — no, there's nothing wrong," Darkstalker muttered. "Just … let me inside."
By the guard's orders, the gates opened, and Darkstalker stepped into the palace.
"Bring me my scroll," Darkstalker said quietly to no one as he walked down the corridor. The scroll magically appeared in its case on the floor, and Darkstalker picked it up and opened the case.
Ah, the case. The other day, when he was amending its enchantment to allow Clearsight to use it, Darkstalker had actually realized that it was sort of pointless. The idea was to make the scroll unusable by others who happened to get their talons on it, but the scroll itself was already enchanted to only work for dragons that Darkstalker trusted. To Clearsight, it probably seemed like all he was trying to do was keep her from using it.
He felt kind of rotten looking at the case now. It was a little ironic, he mused. So much of the scroll's functionality hinged on how much Darkstalker trusted other dragons, but he in turn was not practicing very trustworthy behavior, was he? The rest of the world was partly to blame for that, but Darkstalker couldn't deny that he'd made a couple of mistakes.
He considered using the scroll to get his powers back, so that he could teleport to Fathom again and continue pestering him. But he felt his future sight pulling him away from that idea. He'd tested Fathom's patience too much, and there wasn't enough goodwill between them to push it any further. Fathom was just going to keep rejecting him. Darkstalker really messed this up. He was an idiot for even trying.
He put the scroll back in its case and headed for his chambers. He was exhausted. He needed to find Clearsight and snuggle up with her, and also thank her for being the best, most supportive mate he could have ever dreamed of having.
It was pretty late into the morning, so Darkstalker didn't expect Clearsight to be awake right now. When he crept into their private chambers, there was complete silence, so he was prepared to open the door to their bedroom and slither into his bed before nuzzling Clearsight awake and showering her with affection.
But when he did open the door, their bed was completely empty. Darkstalker frowned, pondering. She must be with Listener, he figured. He put his scroll down and placed it on the desk in their bedroom, then unstrapped his bag and tossed it on the ground.
Before heading out to look for his mate, Darkstalker peeked into Solstice and Remedy's bedroom to make sure they were there. When he looked inside, his soul lit up with warmth. Ah, there she is.
Clearsight was sleeping in the middle of the floor on a nest of pillows, blankets, and cushions. Her two hatchlings were snuggled up beside her.
Maybe I can wait until nightfall before bothering her, he decided.
He turned to shut the door, but something suddenly caught his eye. A small flicker of gold, reflecting the dim candlelight in the room.
Sitting on top of Remedy's toy bin, right beside the door, was Clearsight's watch.
Darkstalker picked the watch up and studied it closely. Yes, this was definitely the same watch that he'd gifted to her way back when they were dragonets. It was the same watch that served as a bitter reminder of the fact that he'd failed her in a different timeline.
But it was also the same watch that he'd hid in the bottom of the deepest, coldest, most desolate cave in the world, where no dragon would ever find it. So why was it here?
Maybe Clearsight summoned it to destroy it? If he recalled correctly, the enchantment on the watch would be erased when the glass on it broke. And the glass could only be broken by her, so if she wanted to prohibit any more time travel, she'd need to destroy the watch herself.
Except, the watch wasn't broken. Darkstalker opened up the hourglass-etched shell and found that the glass was unbroken, and the second hand was still ticking.
"Darkstalker?"
Darkstalker looked up. Clearsight was awake now, though she looked as if it had been days since she last slept. She had this frantic look in her eyes, full of panic.
"Clearsight," Darkstalker said, his voice hardly a whisper.
"I … wasn't expecting you to come back so soon," she said. Gently, she shifted herself away from the dragonets, and rose to her feet. Solstice muttered something unintelligible, but curled up into his own body without waking up.
"What is this watch doing here?" Darkstalker asked.
"Darkstalker, please, just give it to me," Clearsight said as she approached him.
Darkstalker shook his head. He felt his entire body going cold. "You — you can't be—"
"There's no saving this timeline, Darkstalker," she said. "I made up my mind a long time ago."
"This has to be a mistake." Darkstalker was struggling to keep his voice down. "I thought you were finally starting to trust me. I-I thought that you were starting to realize how good things were becoming."
"Things aren't getting better, Darkstalker," Clearsight said, taking another step closer. "That's the problem. You're too far gone to realize that."
Darkstalker was going to say something, but Solstice began to moan as he woke up. "Daddy?" he chirped. As he rubbed his eyes, Remedy started yawning as well. Darkstalker folded his ears downward. Clearsight was going to erase them. She was going to erase everything. If he hadn't been here, this would all be completely gone.
Suddenly, Clearsight lunged, reaching for the watch. Reflexively, Darkstalker swung his arm so that it was out of her reach. She lurched forward again, but Darkstalker pushed her away.
"Clearsight, how could you!" Darkstalker said, gripping the watch tight. "I trusted you with my magic, and you were going to use it to destroy everything we built together?"
"I wouldn't have made up my mind if I wasn't absolutely certain that there would be no way to salvage this timeline," Clearsight said. Her voice was hauntingly cold. "I'm sorry, Darkstalker."
"No you're not," Darkstalker said as Clearsight dove after him again, reaching desperately for the watch. "I don't even matter anymore to you, do I? None of us do!" He shoved her off of him. "You were going to undo everything that happened; what do you care how you treated us? Why are you even bothering to explain yourself?"
Clearsight panted out a couple deep breaths. "I still wanted to be able to say goodbye to you on my own terms. I guess trying to explain myself before I use the watch is the next best option."
"You're not going to—" Clearsight grabbed at Darkstalker's head, and he felt her claws digging into his eyes. Darkstalker screamed, thrashing his arms forward. Clearsight caught his forearm and pulled the watch from his talons.
Clearsight turned around, but Darkstalker threw his body at her, sending both of them into the wall. Above them, a mirror fell, and it shattered into a million pieces on the floor beside them. Darkstalker grabbed the watch himself, but Clearsight refused to let it go.
Darkstalker grabbed Clearsight's head and bashed it against the floor, and Clearasight loosened her grip just enough to let Darkstalker rip the watch from her talons. He threw it across the room.
Out of the corner of his eye, Darkstalker saw Remedy shuffling back, hiding under the pillows. She looked terrified, and so did Solstice. Why do we have to do this here, Clearsight? Darkstalker thought bitterly. If I need to fight you, can't you make me do it somewhere where we can let our kids sleep?
Clearsight started to run for the watch, but Darkstalker grabbed at her tail and pulled her back. She slipped, falling on her stomach, and as Darkstalker yanked her closer to him, her chest dragged over the shards of mirror.
He stepped forward and mounted himself on top of her, and Clearsight reached forward to grab at a drawer against the wall. She pulled out one of the boxes and swung it at Darkstalker's head. The wood shattered against Darkstalker's temple, and wood carvings of various sea creatures that Fathom had made for the dragonets on their first hatching day flew out from the box and rolled under Solstice's bed.
Darkstalker stayed focused, despite the blow to his head, and pressed his talons against Clearsight's neck, pushing her against the floor. It was too bad he didn't have his animus powers with him. If he did, he wouldn't have to hurt her like this. He felt terrible doing this to Clearsight, but what other option did he have? This was self-defense. This was about protecting the entire world.
And yet, the last thing he wanted to do was kill Clearsight. He tried adjusting the position of his talons so that he wasn't choking her, but in that one moment of letting up, Clearsight managed to squirm out from under him.
Darkstalker leaped at her again, and they tumbled over each other until Darkstalker had her pinned once more.
How was he supposed to win this? What was the plan? He couldn't play keep-away like this forever. He'd have to immobilize Clearsight for long enough to let him get the watch, run away, and summon his scroll to hide it again once and for all. But that meant that he either had to beat her up so badly that she couldn't move, or knock her unconscious. The thought of doing either of those put a huge lump in his throat.
Clearsight twisted around and swiped her claws at his neck. But since Darkstalker's scales were impenetrable, they didn't do anything. Darkstalker in turn swiped his claws at her face. Clearsight winced, crying out in pain as blood trickled down her cheek.
Darkstalker swallowed, trying to push away the blooming guilt in his stomach. A few more of those ought to do it. He raised his other talon and clawed at her again. Scales and droplets of blood flew from her cheek and snout, landing in a light splash around Solstice and Remedy.
The two dragonets started crying. This whole time, they'd been watching in silent horror as their parents abused each other, but it was finally too much for them to bear.
"Daddy, stop!" Solstice wailed. "Daddy, stop hurting Mommy, please stop!"
Darkstalker stopped. He didn't know what to do or say. He wanted to explain himself — to tell them that he was trying to save their lives. But it wasn't like they'd understand. And yet, he realized how terrible he must have looked to them right now. How could he keep traumatizing them like this?
With what had to have been the last of her strength, Clearsight broke free, one final time. She bolted for the watch, tucking her tail close to her body. Startled, Darkstalker tried running after her again, but she was already too far away.
She picked up the watch, opened it up, and in this timeline, that was the last thing Darkstalker ever saw.
A/N: Procrastination fun-fact: I wrote like 85% of this chapter on Friday, the day before this got uploaded. Deadlines are a wonderful thing, aren't they? Hope it turned out alright in the end!