It had been three days since the dragonets had attempted to catch the killer. Swordfish kept thinking back to the strange things that had happened that night. The hooded dragons, Blizzard and Webs, and the Scavenger. Part of Swordfish just wanted to forget about Rainfall, Vine, the scavenger thing and his dreams and go back to being the Swordfish that didn't care about anything.
But something kept nagging at him. The time when Cedar and Delta and the rest of his sibs were together in the prey center and that weird vision appeared. With the small Mudwing apparition with the rest of the group. Swordfish had kept it in mind but it seemed miniscule compared to some of the other things that had been happening. The part of Swordfish that wanted to go back to the way things were told him to just forget about it. That it was probably just a hallucination or something. But when history was ending, Swordfish asked Cedar a question about it.
"Hey Cedar, did you ever have another sibling? Like a small one?" Cedar stared at Swordfish with a look in his eyes. "Yes. I did. His name was Mahogany. He was the smallest of us all. Why do you ask?" Cedar began scratching the floor with one of his claws, like a nervous twitch. Swordfish turned his voice down to a whisper. "Well, I saw this weird… vision or something when you were with the rest of your sibs in the prey center that time. I saw another Mudwing with you guys, but he was… like a ghost. And then I saw a fire and a dragon getting killed." Swordfish left out the part that the dragon that died looked like Cedar.
Cedar immediately went and got Delta. He caught her right before she went out the cave door. He pulled her ear down to his mouth and whispered something into it. She turned around and looked at Swordfish. Cedar went back to Swordfish. "Meet us in the prey center when it's time to eat." He then hurried out the door, not wanting to be late for class. Swordfish stared after him, wondering what that was all about. Then Fatespeaker rang the first gong and he went out the door too.
When it was time to go down to the prey center, Cedar followed Swordfish out the door of the class Tsunami had been teaching. "Follow me." Cedar told him. They walked through the halls in a strange silence. When they reached the prey center, Cedar brought Swordfish over to Delta, who had been waiting. "So, you say you saw another, smaller Mudwing with us in the prey center after Ostrich died?" Delta rumbled. "Yes. And then I saw a fire and a dragon dying." Swordfish responded quietly. Delta sat back and closed her eyes. "Do you think he saw him? Do you think that means he's still alive?" Cedar asked excitedly. "Wait, who are you talking about? Mahogany?" "Yes." Delta replied, oddly quiet. "He and Cedar were best friends."
Delta sat up and began her story. "Cedar found Mahogany when we were still fighting the war of Sandwing Succession." "I found him out on the battlefield after The Battle of The Mud Kingdom Coast against the Seawings." Cedar added. "I found him in a trench, half his body pinned under a part of a house. When we woke him up, he couldn't remember anything other than his name." Delta nodded and started again. "He had no sibs we could find and so we took him in. We felt we had no choice with how less and less sibs are taking in unsibs later into the war. He looked a lot like Cedar anyway." Swordfish thought back to the apparition and just now realized how much it did look like Cedar.
"Anyway, he was very nice, and understood Cedar in a way the rest of us couldn't." Delta chuckled. "The rest of us always thought how strange it was that a complete stranger with amnesia could understand Cedar more than his own sibs." Cedar looked down at his talons. Swordfish didn't understand Cedar's constant fiddling with things and scratching, but he still liked him. He would tidy the things Swordfish was too disorganized to do.
Delta continued. "Mahogany began training with us, and soon enough we felt like he had always been one of us. We never did regain his memories, nor did anyone ever come forward and claim him as one of theirs. We eventually assumed the rest of his sibs had all died one way or another." "It was kind of sad." Cedar added on again. "It's a tragedy when an entire group of sibs gets wiped out." Swordfish couldn't understand sibs as well as Mudwings probably could. It seemed like a family that would stick together no matter what. Something Swordfish couldn't relate to.
"Then, one day." Delta began again. "We got word that Queen Moorhen herself was coming to our area. We lived near the site of the coastal battle, which was one bloody battle. Moorhen was coming to oversee revitalization." Delta closed her eyes and sighed. "But there must have been a local informer. The Sandwings did a fire-rain tactic, like what the Skywings did to the Summer Palace, to our area. We tried to escape, but we lost Cedar and Mahogany in all the dragons fleeing the area."
Cedar began shaking slightly and began to speak. "We even got separated from each other. I tried looking for him but it got too dangerous. I…" He choked. "I left him and got out of there before it became a furnace. I met up with Delta and the others in the shelter full of refugees from the attack.
We never saw Mahogany again." Delta sat back again and sighed. Cedar turned to face Swordfish. "But, if you say you saw a dragon getting killed by another dragon, in a burning village, would that be Mahogany?" Swordfish hesitated, and then spilled the truth. "The dragon looked like you. I didn't tell you that because I was afraid you would get scared, but it might have been Mahogany."
"What do you mean you saw a dragon getting killed?" Delta asked. Swordfish felt he could trust her. He quietly told her about his weird experience in the prey center that time. Delta's eyes widened. "AND DO YOU HAVE AN ANSWER FOR HOW IT ALL HAPPENED?" She asked, back to her loud voice. Excitement shone in her eyes. Her friend might be alive after all. "No." Swordfish replied. "But I think Rainfall knew."
Swordfish gathered Rattlesnake, Darkseer, Vulture and Savanna. They explained that Rainfall apparently had "answers to everything" somewhere in his cave. Delta suddenly marched out of the prey center. "Hey! Where are you going?" Cedar asked her. She turned around and said "To Rainfall's cave." With an expression like "Duh." Swordfish and the others looked at each other and Darkseer shrugged. "Follow her, I guess." They ran after Delta.
When they arrived at the door at which the danger of the other night began, Swordfish, Rattlesnake and Cedar looked at each other with determined expressions. They were going to find out what Rainfall had. Delta opened the door.
No hooded dragons or scavenger monsters popped out. Just some sunlight coming through one of the leaf windows. They went in the room, which now looked oddly normal for a place with such scariness the other night. "Well, let's start looking." Savanna said.
Swordfish went over to Rainfall's hammock, designed after the hammock's Rainwings slept in in the rainforest. On a table nearby it, there sat a candle, which looked like it had already been used many times, which was odd, considering the two new winglets had only gotten to Jade Mountain about a week ago. Next to the candle there was a scroll. Swordfish opened it up to see hand-drawn pictures of odd things. A friendly looking Icewing that looked oddly familiar. Nobody that went to the school, yet Swordfish thought he had seen her before. There was another picture of three Rainwing dragonets, one of them definitely looked like Rainfall, smiling. "Wow, those are pretty good." Swordfish heard Vulture say when he saw them. He remembered that on the first day of school, Vulture had been drawing in class. There was also a map of a city, labeled "Possibility." On the side. There was a red x on one of the streets, and another one on a bridge going over the river that ran through it. Swordfish looked around to make sure nobody saw him, and then took the scroll and put it in his bag of school scrolls he was carrying.
"Hey, look at that!" Savanna had been examining where Frigid slept, when he looked to the far side of the room. "There's a chest." It was the chest one of the hooded dragons had been perched on when Rattlesnake opened the door that night. The chest was wooden, but reinforced with metal all around it. Savanna stepped back. "Swordfish, he told you to open it." Swordfish walked towards it and bent down to open it.
Swordfish then stood up. "It's locked. We need an eight-number code." Cedar sat down in frustration. "Well we can't exactly go ask him!" Savanna said angrily. "Well, who would know the code?" Delta asked. Swordfish thought back to the picture he saw with the Rainwings. "Maybe Frigid would know." Darkseer said quietly. "I can't see the future with the code." But Swordfish was already on something else. He thought back to when he was speaking with Frigid in the library. "Yeah, sometimes late at night he would write in his scroll while talking to his scavenger." Swordfish looked up towards the group. "I think I know who- or what- has the code."
Sorry about not updating. Life happens.