AN: I'm sorry about the long wait for this chapter! I had it prewritten, but was dissatisfied with how it turned out, so I held off posting it for a while so I could improve it. I'm still not completely happy with it, though, so I'd especially like constructive criticism on this chapter so that I can tweak it later. Reviews help me see what I'm doing right and doing wrong, so even extremely short feedback (a sentence or two), positive or negative, is highly appreciated.
Thank you so much for your continuous support, especially the people who reviewed the last chapter. You motivate me to keep writing!
For better or for worse, the rain had mostly eased off by the time Ozone returned to the soldiers' base. That would make it easier to get back to Cornice the next day with some healing supplies, but harder to justify his flying off. Ozone knew that he couldn't abandon training—he'd taken Claret's warning of expulsion to heart—but he wasn't sure if she would give him permission to leave after practice.
He had stayed with Cornice for a period of awkward silence while he waited for his wings to dry out. It seemed neither of them was very talkative.
Eventually, Ozone had been the one to break the silence.
"I won't be able to come back for a while," he'd warned. "My commander will be after my tail if I ask to go out again later today. She already thinks I'm rock-headed for wanting to go flying in this weather."
"After what happened to me, I'm inclined to agree with her," Cornice muttered, scowling at his wounded wing.
"You'll be okay until tomorrow, right?" Ozone gave the injury a concerned look. "That's the earliest I'll be able to get out. Your wound doesn't look infected, but you'll have to keep it clean so that it doesn't get that way."
"The rain should have washed it out," the white dragon reasoned. "My tribe will usually use snow to clean our wounds, so rain should serve the same function. Snow and rain are basically the same thing, right?"
"More or less," Ozone agreed. Now that he thought about it, it was probably too cold for rain in the Ice Kingdom, like it was the highest mountain peaks.
Cornice was remarkably adaptable, he thought, for one who had such little prior knowledge about any kingdom but his own. The IceWing had probably never seen rain, or a rock formation like the gorge, or any of the kinds of animals which populated the Sky Kingdom's mountains.
Ozone knew he'd be completely lost in the same situation, which reminded him why he needed to not be expelled from the army.
"I should go now," he told Cornice, glancing out at the overcast sky. It was still the same shade of smoky gray, but he had probably been away from the base longer than it seemed. It was difficult to tell time accurately without being able to see the angle of the sun or the color of its light.
"All right," the ice dragon had responded, seeming completely unbothered about being left alone again in unfamiliar territory. Ozone remembered wondering how the other dragonet could be so calm.
"You survived," Ridge greeted him now, as the red-and-gold SkyWing landed in the entrance cave and shook out his wings to dry them. His expression looked relieved, and Ozone guessed that he was only half joking.
"My wings got drenched quickly," Ozone told the smaller dragonet. "I had to take a break and rest so they would dry, so that kept me out longer than I expected. Sorry if I worried you or any of the others."
"Claret hasn't come by looking for your head," Ridge reported, "so I don't think she's too worried yet. You should let her know you're back, though."
It turned out that Claret wasn't worried because she was still highly engrossed by the letter she had been reading when Ozone had left, even though it didn't look like it was very long. Once she realized how late it was getting, she scolded him for staying out so long in the rain and ordered him to go warm up before he caught pneumonia.
But the real information that Ozone gleaned from the conversation was that the letter must be considerably more important than the boring formalities Claret usually exchanged with her fellow commanders and military superiors. So he couldn't say he was very surprised the next morning when Claret called a troop meeting.
"I received a letter from the head of the queen's guard," she announced, pacing in a slow line in front of the dragonets, who were standing alertly in a row as they listened. "Apparently, the SandWings have recently established a military base near the border which is similar to ours. Queen Ibex has instructed that we go out on a mission to meet up with them, our peacetime acquaintances, so that we can learn from each other." She paused at the end of the line, her yellow eyes unreadable as they scanned the dragonets' faces to make sure they were paying attention.
Satisfied, she turned around and started to slither back the way she had come. "Queen Chaparral of the SandWings is aware of and has agreed to this arrangement. We are to meet her tribe's soldiers-in-training as friends, to share our experience and learn about each others' culture. Any questions?"
"How do we know we can trust them?" Gale asked sharply. "With all due respect, weren't they our enemies in the Great Pyrrhian War?"
"Sounds like someone's been listening a little too closely to Spark's stories," Sard whispered to Ozone, who covered his nose with his wing to conceal his snort.
Gale gave them a suspicious look.
"Perhaps," Claret said wryly, stopping in front of them and lowering her head to look Sard in the eye, "it would behoove you all to listen to Spark's stories a little more. He can explain the Great Pyrrhian War to you. Then you'll understand why this meeting and befriending the other tribes is so crucial."
Sard had the grace to look ashamed, but the expressions on the other dragonets' faces ranged from dismayed (Ridge) through indignant disbelief (Gale) to open hostility (Buzzard). Claret's yellow gaze swept over them with a hint of satisfaction. While she never reprimanded them for the way they talked to each other or about Spark behind the old dragon's back, Ozone had a distinct feeling that she was glad for an underhanded way to punish them for their rudeness.
"I'll tell him to prepare to lecture you this afternoon," she added, before slithering off to Spark's cave, leaving a tangible tension in the air behind her.
"Look what you've done!" Gale burst out as soon as their commander was out of earshot, whirling around to glare daggers at Sard.
"Me?" yelped the smaller dragonet, throwing her wings up in the air in disbelief. "It was your dumb question that started it!"
"No!" Gale argued. "It was your snarky comment!"
"If you didn't have to challenge her—"
"If you didn't have to open your big fat mouth—"
"It's both of your faults," spat Buzzard, stepping between them. His tail thrashed furiously from side to side. "Now we have to listen to this crazy old cougar ramble on about a war that happened years before we were even hatched. If I have to hear another insult from either of you, I'm going to strangle you both with your own tails!"
The threat was so startling that Ozone took an involuntary step backward.
There was a long moment of silence before Gale hissed at Sard and then stomped away. The orange dragonet glared after her for a long moment, smoke trailing from her nostrils, before storming off in the opposite direction.
"Well, that conversation went well," Ridge commented wryly.
Buzzard let out a scoffing sound in agreement. He stood there for a moment, tail twitching irritably, before ducking out of the cave through a third exit.
Ozone rubbed his temples, sighing inwardly. It seemed to him that his fellow soldiers in training fought more and more every day. Gale and had never gotten along well with Sard, and seemed to have extra spite for Ozone as the orange dragonet's best friend among the soldiers, but she had been particularly nasty to all of them recently. Clearly, Buzzard wasn't willing to take it any longer.
The dragonets could be organized into a somewhat efficient force if they managed to assemble without bickering, but Ozone suspected that it wouldn't be long before one part of their conflict or another rendered them fully incapable of working together. He just hoped Claret wouldn't hold that against him in addition to his flying off in the middle of training. He didn't need anything else to worry about.
A few hours later, the dragonets gathered in the cave they used, however rarely, as a lecture hall. About half of the cave was taken up by three ledges of increasing height where the dragonets could sit, two per ledge, so that they could all see the speaker. The other half was evenly level, and Spark tended to use all the room there to the fullest in strutting around proudly as he spoke.
Ozone was fairly sure Spark thought it made him look like an intellectual to walk instead of staying still, but he'd heard Buzzard remark on numerous occasions that the soldier was so old that if he stood still for too long, his joints would get stiff and he would never be able to move again. Either way, Ozone was grateful for the motion, which prevented him from falling asleep as easily.
When he got there, his heart sank as he realized that he was the last dragonet to arrive. Buzzard had stretched out across the highest ledge, clearly indicating that he did not want anyone to sit by him, and Ridge had joined Sard in the second row. When Ozone met his gaze, Ridge shrugged apologetically and waved his talons at Gale by way of explanation. She was sitting in front of them with a fierce scowl, determinedly not looking back at the dragonets behind her.
That was the only explanation Ozone needed. Loyalty between SkyWing soldiers-in-training only went so far.
He hesitated in the cave's entrance. He would rather skip the lecture, despite the anger it would trigger in both Claret and Spark, than sit next to Gale. His wings itched to fly far, far away from here.
But he couldn't. He couldn't be expelled from the army.
He forced his legs to move and bring him to the ledges, where he sat tentatively next to Gale, ready to leap up at a moment's notice. The pinkish-red dragonet gave him an irritable sidelong glance, but didn't voice any objections. Slowly, the fearful tension humming through his muscles faded, and he relaxed.
A moment later, Spark entered the cave, his chest puffed out slightly as he walked to the center in his half-limping gait. "Claret tells me the lot of you are in need of some information about the SandWing tribe, so as a veteran of the Great Pyrrhian War, I've naturally stepped forward to speak to you about it."
Ozone knew that wasn't true; Claret had requested that the old soldier speak to them. He wondered with a kind of detached curiosity whether she had asked Spark in a way that made him think it was his idea or if Spark had practiced that intro in an effort to impress the dragonets. If it was the latter, he knew it wouldn't work. In fact, they would probably ridicule him for it as soon as they were dismissed.
"The Great Pyrrhian War," Spark began, tucking back his wings self-importantly, "was a conflict that began twenty-seven years ago and ended fourteen years ago. While shorter than the greatest war before it, it resulted in much more bloodshed—can anyone tell me what the worst war before it was?"
No one responded for a moment, perhaps already too involved in daydreaming to process the question. With a theatric sigh, Buzzard raised his tail and, without waiting for Spark to call on him, answered in monotone, "The War of SandWing Succession."
"The War of SandWing Succession," Spark repeated emphatically, in a way that made Ozone fairly certain that he was too deaf to have heard Buzzard's answer and was responding in a way that would make sense regardless of what the orange dragonet had actually said. Spark was a bit craftier than the others gave him credit for.
"The War of SandWing Succession occurred in its entirety over one-hundred and fifty years ago," the old SkyWing droned on. "Generally regarded as the worst conflict Pyrrhia had ever seen, it turned the tribes against fighting one another and directed them to a mindset in which peace was the most favorable outcome. For a century, it worked. There were still a few skirmishes, but true war was avoided whenever possible.
"However, by the time the Great Pyrrhian War began, the memory of the horrors of war had faded, and an ambitious young SandWing called Famine rose to power within his tribe. He believed SandWings had the power—and the right—to take over the rest of the continent. In a world where the tribes were weak, favoring peace over power, he could easily intimidate 'em into giving him what he wanted."
Ozone tilted his head to one side, intrigued. Ha had heard this story before, but never told this way, in which the conflict was presented from Famine's point of view. Spark was actually a pretty good storyteller, even if he was convinced that all dragons besides SkyWings were untrustworthy and deceitful. His monotone voice needed a little work, but his normally paltry vocabulary and rambling grammar expanded significantly into fairly respectable speech when he was recited history.
To Sard, that would be comical, but Ozone just found it interesting.
"He marched his troops into the Ice Kingdom, something which had never been done before—something never thought possible. You see, Famine figured out that if he organized a massive number of troops, the warmth they gave off from their scales would help them survive the cold. The desert, though known for its sweltering days, gets very cold at night. Not quite as cold as the Ice Kingdom, but close enough that the tribe was prepared to withstand the harshness when they invaded. They charged the Great Ice Cliff which protected the IceWings and broke it down.
"The SandWings lost many dragons that day to the magic of the Great Ice Cliff, before they had even fought a single IceWing. But Famine was ruthless, even with his own tribe-mates, and he didn't let that stop them. And his tribe admired him for it, even though it was their own dragons that were dying at his command.
"The IceWings were cornered in their own kingdom—which had once been their own invincible sanctuary—and soon conquered. Famine made his way to the queen's palace and offered an ultimatum—join him or die.
"With the IceWings on his side, he turned on the SkyWing tribe next, without provocation, without warning," Spark went on, his eyes darkening. "With the IceWings attacking the Sky Kingdom from the north and the SandWings from the south, we were completely surrounded and soon overwhelmed. Queen Ibex was forced to sign a peace treaty with the SandWings, which gave Famine full command of our army.
"Do you all understand what that means?" the old dragon asked them. "Within a week, Famine had three tribes under his rule. Three tribes had been united into the most immense fighting force history had ever seen before the rest of Pyrrhia knew that anything out of the ordinary had happened at all.
"See, it was essential to Famine's plan that he travel quickly. He didn't want any of the tribes to know what he was doing before it was too late to stop him. So as quickly as he could, he moved on to the MudWings. By then, they had heard he was coming, but there was nothing they could do to assemble an army quickly enough. The combined force of SandWings, IceWings, and SkyWings toppled them easily."
Spark paused to eye the dragonets, who had been impressed into silence. They had all heard the story several times over, but never before had it occurred to them just how quickly the opening stages of the Great Pyrrhian War had happened.
"You all know what happened from there. The SeaWings hurriedly allied with the Rainforest tribes and devised a plan to stop Famine's advance using the geographic resources of the Sea Kingdom to their advantage. Still, it took years to finally defeat him. Years of dishonorable warfare and constant suspicion.
"The War of SandWing Succession was less destructive because its three-sided nature required more cautious strategy—even when each princess attacked, she always withheld some of her resources in preparation for a strike from her other opponent. But in the Great Pyrrhian War, there were only two sides, and both fought with everything they had. Furthermore, all seven tribes were involved, whereas the War of SandWing Succession excluded both of what we now know as the Rainforest Tribes—RainWings and NightWings—which were at the time distinct from each other.
"After the war was over and Famine defeated, the six queens forced Rain Shadow, the SandWing queen who had allowed her soldier to conquer their tribes without lifting a claw against him, to sign away her throne. They negotiated with her successor and wrote an amendment into the legislation of every tribe formally outlawing conquest and limiting the size of each army.
"Their hope was that war would be avoided ever after. So far, it has worked. But war is strange in that it requires violence to remind us why it should be avoided at all cost. The horrors of the War of SandWing Succession were forgotten, and thus the Great Pyrrhian Conflict came to be. We must not forget again."
There was a moment of grudgingly respectful silence. Spark sat down and curled his tail around his claws in a way that indicated the story was finished.
"Wait," Gale spoke up. "What happened to Famine? Did we just skip that part?"
Spark cleared his throat and settled himself with an air of superiority. "That is a story for another class. If you want to hear it, young dragonet, you'll have to come to another of my lectures some time." The old dragon turned and walked out of the cave, leaving the dragonets staring after him with various degrees of disbelief.
The respect in the room turned to sourness.
"That's not fair," Gale protested loudly after him. "I want to know now!"
"It's shameless bribery, that's what it is," Buzzard growled scornfully. "You're not going to get the answer out of the old pigeon-head."
"Suppose not," she said, spitting a contemptuous bolt of fire at the floor, so close to Ozone's talons that he had to leap back to avoid being burned. "This was a complete waste of my time." Her amaranth-colored tail twitched in disgust. "Honestly, what was the point of that story? One SandWing tried to take over all the tribes twenty-seven years ago, and okay, his tribe at the time was apparently psycho because they loved him—but they're automatically all evil, evil, evil even to this day? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard! Generations have passed since then."
"Well, he had a point," Sard said, predictably, because she would never agree with Gale even if that meant denying that her scales were orange. "If they all loved Famine for his power, maybe that's a problem of tribal mindset."
Gale glared at her. "You can't just tell someone how to think!"
"Can too," Sard argued, "if their way is obviously way too radical and violent. It's common sense to anyone who has a brain."
"If dragons with brains think like you, brains are overrated," Gale snapped.
"That's the stupidest comeback I've ever heard!"
Ozone glanced at Buzzard, who was starting to get annoyed again. He gave Ridge a beseeching look, and the red-orange dragonet waved one wing between the fighting females. "Can we not? We just had this conversation five minutes before we walked in here, and it's starting to give me an unpleasant sense of déjà vu."
"Fine," Gale growled, backing off. "Just get her to leave me alone."
And for the second time that day, she turned and stomped away.