It turned midday as Rusty was getting closer to the last known sighting of the SandWing Beast. The sun was now at its highest point, shining its light across the entire desert. While he was flying underneath its light, Rusty could remember when he got chosen to slay the beast.
Queen Acacia had just finished calming down her subjects after they had just given away most of their valuables to the IceWings. She announced to the kingdom that she was finally going to put an end to the SandWing Beast's reign. The SandWings cheered, thinking that the Beast would be no more. But when Queen Acacia announced that she needed a volunteer to slay the Beast themselves the crowd went silent.
Everyone knew of the stories of what happened to SandWings who dared challenge the SandWing Beast. Missing dragons, body parts found near the battle area, or SandWings who barely escaped with their lives only to collapse dead from their wounds were the usual outcomes of those who challenge the Beast. No one was willing to risk their lives to end up in a painful death.
No one except Rusty.
When Rusty raised his claw up to be chosen everyone stared at him in silence, wondering if he even knew what the SandWing Beast was.
"Any other volunteers?" Queen Acacia asked.
No SandWing spoke up.
"Very well then, this loyal SandWing will be the one to finally slay the SandWing Beast."
Rusty could remember hearing the whispers of the SandWings.
"Is he insane? He'll be killed".
''Another dead dragon no doubt".
"Maybe this time it'll be different?"
"Why waste his life when he has so much to live for?"
"I guess we'll find his body parts soon".
Despite hearing the whispers, Rusty's spirit was not brought down, only pushing him harder to defeat the Beast. He was told by a royal guard to meet Queen Acacia at the SandWing Palace. When he showed up at the palace, he was greeted by a massive amount of guards. When the queen arrived to dismiss her guards, Rusty was surprised at how small the queen really was as he never saw Queen Acacia this close, only seeing her from afar so he assumed that she was like the other queens of Pyrrhia. But in reality she was about a head smaller than Rusty and more surprisingly younger, by 2 years less than himself, being only 10 years old. She began to tell Rusty more about the quest. The quest was not only to slay the SandWing Beast, but to find the treasure that it took from the SandWing palace. Rusty was at first confused, asking how the Beast managed to steal treasure from the palace without anyone knowing, but Queen Acacia shook her head. She showed Rusty an area of the palace where the Beast broke through during its first and only attack on the palace.
The very first SandWing queen had all the treasure of the kingdom stored in the palace. Suddenly the SandWing Beast attacked, taking most of the treasure with it. But before it was able to leave, the palace guards attacked the Beast, causing great wounds onto it. It was said that the queen herself also attacked the Beast which finally caused it to flee. Not wanting the entire tribe to know that the SandWing Beast was a danger to the Royal Family and was able to break into the palace, even after the Scorching, she had everyone who was at the palace to take an oath that they would never speak about that incident outside of the palace walls. Ever since that attack, the Royal SandWing family has started construction on making the palace more into a stronghold to prevent the SandWing Beast from easily breaking into the treasury.
Rusty asked what type of treasure he should look for when he has defeated the SandWing Beast. Queen Acacia said most of the treasure was simply just gold but the one thing he should be on the lookout for is a golden scepter, called the SandWing scepter, owned by the original SandWing Queen and lost during the SandWing Beast's attack.
Queen Acacia then had one of her guards bring in the sword. As she held the sword, she explained that it had an enchantment on it. Rusty asked if Queen Acacia could elaborate more on the enchantment but she said that Princess Harp made the enchantment very cryptic so she does not know much about it but she assured that it would help greatly during the battle. Queen Acacia had another guard bring a long handled axe to Rusty, telling him how he should use the axe. Trusting the queen's word, Rusty promised her that he would slay the Beast.
"And I intend to keep that promise".
In the distance, Rusty could see the ruins of the village that was destroyed by the SandWing Beast which was where it was last seen. He landed near the closest building or at least what was left of it. The SandWings who managed to flee said that the SandWing Beast attacked them at night and most were able to escape. Those who came back to check if the SandWing Beast was still there claimed that the Beast was still there and they decided to abandon the village. As Rusty walked deeper into the village he could see more of the damage. Burn marks from fire, buildings crushed into rubble and he swore he saw a severed wing piece. He checked the whole village to find any other sign of the Beast but he found nothing. He took out his pouch and ate 3 roasted lizards and drank about a quarter of his water bottle.
"Nothing here, perhaps it flew east? After all, it is called the SandWing Beast of the East".
He prepared to take flight but his heart sank as he heard a massive thud behind him. His body instinctively turned around and he found what he had been searching for.
Large black eyes stared at him as he was face to face with the SandWing Beast.
A/N: Hey guys CrystalDynamite here, apologies for the slow update. I said the next chapter would arrive earlier but I was sleepy on Friday when I originally intended to update story, so sorry about that. I don't want to put a date for the next chapter so I don't stress myself too much. Other than that, this chapter is over 1,000 words! Crazy! I'm going to put down some information on the dragons of the story down below and other stuff I want to talk about. If you don't want to read that, skip the very bottom part and wait for the final chapter as the same info will be posted there as well. Thanks for reading!
Ok so here is some info on the dragons of this story.
I'm using dragon years for age, the Dragonets of Destiny are 7 dragon years old for an example.
Rusty is 12 dragons years old. Queen Acacia is 10 years old. Princess Harp is 6 years old.
I think I should add more but I can't come up with anything right now.
Another thing I want to talk about is my story quality. I'm not the best writer, nowhere near that, so sorry for low quality parts.
Other than that, thanks for reading this chapter!
