AN: Hey, everyone! I totally missed this story's first anniversary back in April (due mostly to real life obligations and then computer issues that are thankfully fixed now), but I'd just like to thank everyone who's been following it since then and everyone who's joined along the way. I hope you're all enjoying reading this fanfiction even half as much as I am writing it! This story has taught me a lot about the writing process, so I'm very glad that I decided to embark on this journey with all of you. Thanks for continuing to support Ozone, Cornice, and all the others!
A lot has changed since I started writing Unexpected Places, including my writing style and even a lot of the overarching plot. Ideally, I'd rewrite the whole thing as a second, smoother draft, but I've been taking too much time to update as is, so I'm going to just do my best with what I've already written and try to keep everything consistent from here on out. I'll be working as hard as I can to wrap up altered character arcs, subplots, etc. in a neat way without wrecking anything I set up in earlier chapters. The stylistic details and internal changes to plot points shouldn't have a big effect on you as the readers, since they've been happening gradually along the way, but I wanted to let you know just in case some parts of the story come across as a little rocky. If I make any mistakes, big or small, please let me know and I'll do what I can to iron them out!
Thanks for reading my author's note. I hope you enjoy this chapter (and the many still to come)!
Claret gazed intently at Ozone, her yellow eyes boring into his own nervous gaze as if she wished she could pry open his skull with her talons and take his memories for herself. "So, you're telling me that according to the dragon you spoke with, the Tribeless have found a descendant of Famine and ex-Queen Rain Shadow of the SandWings. And they've chosen that dragon to be their leader?"
He swallowed nervously and nodded. "That's what she said."
His commander narrowed her eyes. "Is your source trustworthy?"
Ozone was startled by the question. She hadn't asked him that the first time he and Sard had told her about their trip to Possibility. "I-I assume so. She's never given me any reason not to trust her. And she was trying to warn me so I wouldn't get hurt. What would she have to gain by making up?"
"I can think of a lot of things," Claret said, her tone low and ominous. "One being that she wants you, a SkyWing soldier, to stay away from Possibility. Tell me, what did her expression look like when she was telling you this?"
"Concerned," he told her, with as much confidence as he could muster. He did have difficulty interpreting facial expressions, but Puddle's had been clearly worried. "I don't think she was trying to manipulate me."
"You never do." His commander sighed and began pacing the length of her cave. "I'm glad you told me about your concerns, but this new information makes it difficult to identify which parts we should focus on first. There's the matter of the SeaWing jeweler who disguises weapons as harmless pieces; that sounds like the most trivial problem, yet the easiest one to get out of the way.
"But there's also the matter of the rest of your friend Jackal's group, who are most likely lying about their purpose. Lying indicates that it's probably something dangerous, or at the very least illegal in some way. The secrecy makes it a more concerning issue than smuggling, but it requires more observation before we can address it."
She reached the wall and turned around, prowling back towards Ozone with a thoughtful frown on her face. "And then there's the most important issue, the Tribeless, who we know the least about but who are clearly the biggest threat. Anarchists are some of the most dangerous dragons you could ever encounter. Knowing that their leader is likely a SandWing is helpful information, but it also complicates the issue."
"Why?" Ozone asked anxiously.
"Why?" echoed Claret. "Because it suggests that a cult following, like that Famine built up during his own rise to power, has arisen around another charismatic young dragon. History is repeating itself. Given the right opportunity, this new SandWing can use the momentum Famine built up to rapidly gain similar power, and, left unchecked, could become even more dangerous than Famine himself."
She looked up at Ozone, her gaze deadly serious, and he felt his blood run cold.
"Could they really be that dangerous?" he asked.
"It's entirely possible," his commander responded. "This group may be known only in rumors, but I'm sure there were rumors about Famine in the Sand Kingdom, too, before he suddenly took over half of Pyrrhia. Don't underestimate what an abundance of charisma and the right amount of daring can accomplish."
Ozone nodded uneasily. What can we do about the Tribeless? Even if we see it coming, is there any way to stop this from escalating? Or is it already too late?
Claret rubbed her forehead and sighed, appearing very tired for a moment before she steeled her expression. "Buzzard, Ridge, and I should head out now. We have a lot of work cut out for us. I'm not sure how much we can accomplish in a single day of investigation, but I'll keep this new information in mind."
The other male dragonets had already gathered in the entrance cave, waiting for their commander to join them. Ozone guessed that Buzzard was eager to depart, while Ridge would remain more reserved yet equally determined. They were a good team. If anyone could figure this out, it would be them.
"Thank you, Claret," he said gratefully.
He followed her to the entrance cave, wanting to wish the soldiers a safe mission. Sard and Gale were already there, along with grumpy old Spark. Gale's expression had settled into her signature frown, while Sard's looked relatively neutral until she caught sight of Ozone and set her jaw angrily.
Still holding a grudge then, he thought, sighing inwardly.
"Take care," Spark said gruffly, nodding to the departing group in farewell. "I'll make sure everything goes smoothly here while you're gone." He subtly puffed out his chest with pride, which Ozone had no doubt the other dragonets would've mocked him relentlessly for if the mood hadn't been so serious.
"Thank you," Claret said, nodding back. "I know you will."
"Good luck," said a female voice, and Ozone was a little startled to turn and see that the offering had come from Gale. She was still frowning, but her expression seemed more worried than angry and her tone hadn't been bitter at all, even though Ozone knew she would've definitely wanted to go with them if not for her injury.
"Thanks," said Ridge, nodding gratefully.
Buzzard only snorted, seeming impatient to be off.
"We'll be back soon," Claret said firmly, leaving no room for argument. Her vocal confidence would've been more reassuring if she hadn't just expressed her concerns to Ozone. "I expect the three of you to continue your training today, even in my absence."
"Understood," said Gale, while Ozone nodded obediently and Sard mumbled her reluctant assent. Spark proclaimed something about keeping the dragonets in line, but no one took him particularly seriously.
Ozone couldn't help the nervousness settling in his belly as he watched their red and orange wings disappear over the horizon. Like he'd said to Cornice, he doubted he'd be able to take his mind off his fellow soldiers' mission. It was going to be a long day.
I hope everything goes well, he thought. I told Claret everything I remember, so I should just let her and the others handle the rest. It's not like I'd be much help if I was there, but… actually showing them the places I was talking about would be way more efficient than describing them. I hope I did a good enough job with that.
He tried very hard not to worry. Cornice had a point earlier. Claret is the most capable dragon I know. She definitely won't miss any important details.
He paced nervously for a while before deciding to try to do something productive. He managed to distract himself by working out in the training room for what felt like a few hours but turned out to be only forty minutes or so.
On his way out of the training cave, he collided with Gale as she came stalking in. Ozone hurriedly leapt back, stammering apologies, but Gale hadn't started yelling like he'd expected her to. She only stared at him for a moment. Her facial expression looked strangely hesitant for a moment, like she couldn't decide whether she wanted to bite him or stomp away in the opposite direction.
Then she spoke up. "You too?"
"Huh?" Ozone said stupidly. He hadn't expected her to ask a question.
Gale sighed and muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like "moon-smashing idiot". "You're worried too, aren't you?"
Gale was worried? She didn't look it.
Ozone swallowed nervously, deciding to be honest. "Y-yes."
She curled her lip in the beginning of a snarl. "Don't stammer—it's annoying. I'll have you know that I'm only talking to you because my only other options are Sard and Spark. But it's barely been an hour and I'm already going mad waiting around."
Ozone understood her aching restlessness; he felt the same, after all. He shifted indecisively on his talons. He wanted to express his sympathy, maybe even try to shrink the yawning gap between them, but he'd never known how and had always been too timid to try. He wished he wasn't so useless with words.
"I'm sorry," he blurted out.
"What?" Gale asked, impatiently. "What are you sorry about?"
"Stammering," he said, ducking his head. "Getting in your way. Your injury."
She fell silent for a moment, tail-tip twitching. "You really are spineless."
Ozone didn't respond. He couldn't think of anything to say. Nothing would ever satisfy this dragon, would it? All he wanted was to not be hated.
Was that really too much to ask for?
Gale seemed to realize he wasn't going to respond and filled the silence with her own voice instead. "Did you have a fight with Sard? She's been glaring at you nastily all day. Ever since you came back from Possibility, actually."
"Yeah," Ozone admitted. "We did argue."
"What about?"
"She thought my SandWing friends were suspicious."
Gale growled. "Well, she turned out to be right, didn't she?"
Ozone didn't let himself rise to the bait. He didn't want to be mocked relentlessly for being gullible. And he knew that his friends probably were up to something, but he still didn't want to believe it. "I never thought I'd hear you say that about Sard."
Gale grimaced, like she'd gotten pigeon feathers stuck between her teeth. "I don't like saying it, but I will if it's true. I'm not like her. You never seemed to realize that."
They were both silent for a moment. Gale glared aside at the wall.
Ozone opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. If he didn't say this now, then he probably never would. "Can I ask you something?"
Gale grunted her assent.
"Why do you hate me so much?" He faltered for a moment as she turned to stare directly into his eyes, looking startled. "I mean, I know it's partially because I'm friends with Sard, but I think you hate me even more than you hate her."
To his surprise, Gale barked a harsh laugh at that. "It seems you have grown a spine after all," she said, instead of answering.
"Is it because you think I'm weak?" He refused to let her laughter silence him, even though his scales felt thinner than the air at extremely high altitudes. "Is it because I'm an easy target? Is that why you've always liked to pick on me?"
Her expression darkened. "That's an insult, Ozone. Even now, you always insult me, without even trying. Don't be an idiot. That's never been the reason."
He gritted his teeth. "Then tell me what is."
Gale growled deep in her throat, a sound of pure frustration. "You've always been so oblivious, Ozone! You always want dragons to like you. And dragons do like you, even though you don't have an ounce of sense in your pigeon-down head, you don't care about being a soldier, and you don't even try. You're everyone's favorite. I put in twice as much effort, and Claret barely glances my way."
Ozone stared at her. She's jealous. All this time, her hatred has been jealousy?
"And I've never been the bully here, which you would've seen if you didn't believe everything your friends tell you. Sard has always been the one antagonizing me. Sure, I have picked on you, but I've only become what you made me out to be from the start."
Ozone was shocked. "I- I didn't mean to."
"No, you never do!" she snapped. "You think you're so innocent!"
"I-I thought…" He didn't even know what to say. He'd assumed that Sard, who'd been nice to him from the beginning, was the better of the two. But when he stopped to think about it, the only evidence he'd had for that was the way they treated him, not the way they treated each other. Sard always had been the one antagonizing Gale, and he'd never even noticed. Had he really been that self-centered?
"You thought what?" Gale growled.
He swallowed. "I thought wrong. I'm sorry."
She didn't respond right away, but she took a few deep breaths, and the tension seemed to ebb out of her. Her clenched talons loosened their fists. "That's it?" she said, and her tone was calmer now, but still somewhat incredulous. "You're sorry?"
"Yes," he said. "That doesn't make it right, but I am sorry."
"You are," she responded.
It was more of a statement than a question, but he still nodded.
Gale cleared her throat. "Okay. I guess… I am too."
"You are?" he echoed.
Her expression soured. "Don't make me repeat myself."
"Ah, okay. Sorry." He lowered his gaze bashfully.
For a moment, they both stood there in awkward silence.
This was the first time Ozone had felt something other than malice radiating from Gale. He didn't know what it was, didn't think it was something all the way to grudging respect, even. They would still probably never be friendly to each other. He'd probably always be a little afraid of her, and she'd probably always think he was annoying. But he hoped that maybe they'd get along a little better from now on.
Gale stood aside to let him walk past her.
"Thanks," he said, hurrying out of her way.
She grunted in acknowledgement before disappearing into the training cave.
Ozone watched her go, feeling a little more optimistic about today's turn of events than he had just a few minutes before.
Cornice cringed as the sound of his own sneeze came echoing back to him in the narrow crevice in the back wall of his cave. This place was awfully moldy. Coming back here again had been a terrible idea. His brain must have melted in this horrible non-icy place for him to ever think that it had been a good one.
Yet here he was, the empty pouch Ozone had used to bring the berries clutched in one set of ridged talons as he cautiously maneuvered his way back to the cavern with the multicolored stone walls he'd discovered the other day.
He'd been trying to think of a way to repay the SkyWing for his help. And as soon as he'd heard Ozone talking about beautiful things, he'd thought of those stones. To be more specific, he'd decided to go back into this confining, moldy crevice just to collect a few small, particularly shiny ones to give to Ozone as a present.
By all the teeth of the Great Ice Dragon, I'm an idiot, he thought. I'm acting like a two-year-old dragonet with a crush.
Shaking off the thought, he continued down the tunnel until he reached the cave with the banded walls. Thankfully, even though it was overly colorful and there wasn't a lot of light, at least his wings were no longer pinned to his sides. He stretched them to their full extent, relieved to find that any stiffness from his flight to the lake had faded.
Cornice crouched on stone floor, bending his head to search for any chips of rock that might have been knocked loose somehow. As he did so, he could've sworn he heard the sound of wingbeats echoing in from the main cave.
I thought Ozone said he wouldn't come today, Cornice thought, frowning. Don't he and his fellow soldiers have to guard their base while his commander investigates the Tribeless? I must've imagined it.
As he gathered a few glittering rocks and slid them into the pouch, he kept his ears pricked just in case Ozone started calling for him. He didn't want the SkyWing to worry or assume that Cornice had flown off somewhere.
A few moments later, he began to hear voices. I'm definitely not imagining that.
But it wasn't Ozone calling his name. It sounded like multiple dragons speaking to each other. He couldn't make out what they were saying, but there were definitely at least three or four different voices out there.
Cornice's heart leapt into his throat. Had the SkyWings discovered him?
Tying the pouch's string around his upper arm so that he wouldn't stub his talons on the rocks now inside, he hurriedly crept back along the tunnel. As he got closer to the main cave, the voices became louder and easier to make out.
"How many dragons will we be up against?" one of them asked, in a deep, solemn voice. It sounded like a male dragon, someone older than Cornice's father.
"Not many," a soft female voice responded. "Half of them are off on a wild goose chase in Possibility, which makes now the perfect time to strike."
"And I've already pinpointed the location of their base," a gruff male voice said—a different one than the first speaker. "Getting in won't be an issue."
Strike? They were talking about the SkyWings' investigation in the third person, so this must be a different group. Were they going to attack the SkyWings' base? How did they even know where it was? How did they know about the mission to Possibility? And who exactly were they? Cornice had to get some answers.
He edged closer, barely daring to breathe. Through the crevice, he glimpsed pale gold scales and a barbed tail flicking slowly from side to side. SandWing!
He shifted his position to peer out at a different angle, hoping to see who else was out there. There was another SandWing standing across from the gold dragon, this one with mottled brown and gray scales and a confident smile.
They don't know I'm here, Cornice thought, pulling away from the crevice so that the other dragons wouldn't notice him. They're just using this cave for themselves. I have terrible luck, don't I? They could've chosen any cave in the entire valley, and they had to pick the one I've been hiding in.
"Where's the firewood?" grumbled another female voice. "We definitely left some here last time. So we could actually see what's going on in here, remember?"
Firewood? Suddenly, Cornice remembered the first time he'd met Ozone, how there'd already been a piece of wood here that they'd used to start a fire. He'd assumed that someone had stopped there briefly while passing through the area, but he'd been wrong. These dragons must've been using this cave before I ever got here!
He pressed closer to the crevice. He needed to see what was happening.
"Forget the firewood," the mottled SandWing said, looking unconcerned. "I don't plan on staying much longer anyway. I just wanted to make sure everyone's clear on our next course of action. We'll be flying along the valley to minimize our chances of being seen. And then we'll attack the SkyWings, using sheer force of numbers to overwhelm and defeat them. Take out as many dragons as you can. And don't forget to extinguish the torches as soon as we arrive. We don't want anyone to see our faces."
Take out. The phrase made Cornice feel sick. He means kill, doesn't he?
"Of course we won't forget," said the pale gold SandWing, readjusting her wings impatiently. "We've been over this a hundred times, Jack."
"Let's stop talking about it and just go," agreed another voice.
Does that make five voices now, or six? Cornice was quickly losing track of how many dragons were here. Regardless, the cave seemed very crowded. And this group was confident they could not only outnumber but completely overwhelm the SkyWings. Who are Ozone's troops even up against? Are these dragons the Tribeless?
"Alright, fine," the mottled SandWing said, with a jovial grin. "Keep your scales on, Barracuda." He spread his wings and leapt into the air. "Time to go!"
The other dragons followed him in a sudden flurry of wingbeats. Cornice caught glimpses of blue scales besides brown ones, tawny alongside dark red and orange.
That's Rockslide! Cornice thought, heart pounding rapidly in his chest as he saw the familiar colors. He must've been the one who found out where the SkyWings' base is! That must have been what he was looking for when I saw him!
As soon as all the dragons had disappeared, he scrambled out of the crevice and leapt into the air behind them. He flew as close to the river as he dared, as fast as his wings would carry him. He didn't know exactly where he was going or what he would do when he got there, but he had to get to the base before the Tribeless did.
The SkyWings were about to be attacked, at the moment they least expected it.
He had to warn Ozone.