Clouds had formed over the cities as the two finished crossing the bridge, returning to the SkyWing town. A gentle drizzle had begun over the town, and small droplets of water were scattered around the road. Crystal glanced up at the grey skies overhead.
"We should hurry," she suggested, not wanting to get caught in the middle of a storm.
"Why?" Torrent asked, oblivious. "It's still the afternoon."
Crystal pointed a claw upwards. "It looks like it's going to rain soon." Torrent looked at her with a puzzled expression, wondering why that meant they should hurry. Crystal sighed. SeaWings. "I don't want to get wet, and I doubt Avalanche would be happy if her meal is soaked."
"Ah," Torrent nodded, only somewhat understanding. "What's that?" He pointed a claw at a small furry creature beneath an alcove, watching the two pass by.
"It's a cat," Crystal explained, "they're common around the SandWing-IceWing border. They're sometimes kept as pets. It's not poisonous or anything, it'll just run away if you get too near it."
Torrent decided to try this out, and took a step closer, poking his snout towards the cat. Sure enough, the cat jumped onto a small fencepost nearby, then quickly scrambled to a safe distance away to resume watching Crystal, his blue eyes almost glowing in the overcast weather.
"I think it's looking at you," Torrent pointed out. Crystal frowned a little. Strange. There were a few other SkyWings around, walking past the two, but the cat seemed to only be staring directly at Crystal.
"C'mon, let's go," Crystal told Torrent. With the hybrid's prophecies, she'd had enough creepiness for today. The lumbering SeaWing nodded, and continued after her as she paced down the main road. She glanced back, and sure enough, the cat was following her. A second had joined behind it.
The two turned a corner, and started down a narrow corridor, leading closer to the blue-shingled house where Avalanche, Griffin, and Schist were. Two SkyWings were walking in the opposite direction, laughing and chatting. As they passed Torrent and Crystal, they suddenly went silent, and gave the two quick glares. Torrent ignored the two and continued on, not bothering to care for their stares.
"Look," Crystal suddenly hissed, almost a whisper. In front of them, five more cats lined their path, two on one side of the street, and the other three across from them. All had their large eyes aimed at Crystal and Torrent, patiently sitting down. Crystal turned back, to see the first tabby. He quickly ran past the IceWing and the SeaWing, then turned back, as if beckoning them to go forward.
"Do you think they're enchanted?" Torrent asked Crystal. Realizing he could check for himself, he pulled out his dagger and placed a talon along the purple amethyst. It was cold to the touch. "They're not," he replied, answering the IceWing's unasked question.
Crystal flicked a forked tongue in and out of her teeth warily, and continued walking down the narrow road. As she passed each of the five cats, they stood up and started to walk behind her and Torrent, as if they were leading a procession. Torrent stopped and stuck a claw out to poke one, though it backed away casually from his touch.
Suddenly, Crystal whipped around and opened her mouth, letting forth a burst of frostbreath onto the ground to serve as a warning to the furry mammals. The cats nearest to the blast scrambled backwards, then continued walking behind her, this time at a greater distance, avoiding the disk of frost and ice that now covered part of the pathway. She snarled at them angrily, and continued walking, tiny droplets of water now drizzling down.
The blue-shingled roof was now within sight, and the blue-eyed tabby was almost there. Torrent, his dagger still out, walked behind Crystal, his head towering above hers. More cats, maybe twenty or thirty, Torrent wasn't sure, stood at attention on the sides of the path. Crystal gulped uncertainly as the brown tabby pushed open the door to Avalanche's house just a crack, and trotted inside, its damp coat rubbing against the doorway.
The two slowly walked past the cats lining the walkway, Torrent's dagger out and ready, but they didn't meet any resistance. Crystal reached the door, and pushed it open. It created a creaking sound as Torrent followed.
Avalanche was in the room with an unhappy expression on her snout as she looked up at the two, clawing the ground in irritation. Griffin and Schist were nearby; a tiny feline different from the one they had seen before attempting to pounce at Griffin's furred and feathered tail, as he swished it up and out of the kitten's reach with a hearty grin across his beak. A fourth dragon Torrent had never seen before was in the center of the room, sitting down as five or so cats lay down next to him, nestling on the inside of his curled tail for comfort.
The brown tabby which had walked inside of the door was rubbing up against the dragon's forearms and wings warmly, the dragon's scales a silvery-black with a faint orange tone behind them. The dragon flicked his tongue out and placed a paw on the gently purring cat, tapping the tabby's fur with each of his claws in succession.
"Thank you, my friend," he said looking down to the cat. The NightWing turned his head up to the two dragons who had just entered. "Hello, Crystal," he murmured, attempting poorly to make a smile.
"You!" Crystal hissed with a frown. She hadn't realized it before, but the brown tabby was the same cat that had been with the NightWing when she'd first met him. "You were back in the Sky Kingdom."
The NightWing nodded. "Yes, after Nautilus died. I remember you." The brown tabby looked up at Crystal curiously, his bright blue eyes almost blazing.
"You asked me to give you the Darkstone," she growled, her face contorted between a snarl and a smirk. "Well guess what? It saved Schist's life. So screw you."
Trustbreaker nodded. "He has told me about it. I'm sorry I asked you. As I mentioned, it was Fracture who wanted me to. The next time I see him, I'll tell him he was wrong again."
Crystal gave Trustbreaker a glare. The second NightWing she had seen today, if she included the hybrid. "What, couldn't see the future?"
Trustbreaker snorted a little. "Believe me, if I could see the future, I wouldn't be here with you today. Unfortunately, that's not a power that's granted to all NightWings." He turned over to Torrent, who was thoroughly confused by all this talk. "I'm Trustbreaker."
Torrent gave him a intrigued look, and opened his mouth to say something. Trustbreaker sighed. "My name bears no relation to my personality. Please, feel free to trust me, or not if you so choose."
Torrent looked at the NightWing a little strangely, then turned to Avalanche and back. "So, are you and Avalanche, you know . . . mates?"
The SkyWing sputtered in indignation. "Me and him?" she asked, almost angry that Torrent had suggested the idea, "SkyWings don't even do mates, not that an ignorant SeaWing like you would know."
Torrent squinted a little in shame. He had known, but it hadn't really come to mind.
"Anyways, he's not available, if that's what you're asking," Avalanche smirked, "he's still fawning after a scavenger or something, if I recall."
Trustbreaker immediately stiffened up in embarrassment, and shot Avalanche a look as if to say I told you not to talk about that. Torrent sent him a curious, and slightly concerned expression, and the NightWing sighed. "It's a long story, and not something I care to discuss," he muttered, giving the SeaWing a glare of warning.
Torrent dropped the subject, and turned with a jolt to see a cat pawing at his tail. He shook his tail a little to throw the cat off, but that just made it go at him even more.
"So, if we're doing introductions, what's with all the cats?" Griffin suddenly spoke up. "I mean, they're sort of cute and all, and I don't really mind them, but just . . . why?"
Avalanche laughed in indignation, and interrupted Trustbreaker before he spoke. "They're his slaves or something," she hissed out, "some type of evil mind-control or something."
Trustbreaker sighed and gritted his teeth, evidently frustrated with Avalanche's snarky comments. "I'm a mind-reader," he muttered quietly, tapping a claw to a strangely dull scale behind his left eye.
Torrent immediately froze up, and tried to stop thinking about whatever he wasn't thinking. Don't think about Orca, don't think about my dagger, don't think about Crys —
"So it's true?" Crystal spurted out, her claws scraping against the ground. "NightWings can actually read minds and tell prophecies?" Of course, every dragon in Pyrrhia knew the legends and the powers of the mysterious NightWings, especially the IceWings, but this, along with the hybrid back in the market, confirmed the fact.
Trustbreaker nodded. "Some of us, but not all. Our powers come from the moons, and depending on the weather of the night that we're hatched and how many moons are full, we can get the powers you've described." He looked away uncomfortably, as if he wasn't particularly pleased to be explaining this.
Avalanche tapped her talons on the ground and snapped her teeth at a cat which had gotten too close to her, making it run off. "You've gotten pretty full of yourself, calling yourself a mind-reader," she commented.
The NightWing sighed. Finding Avalanche irritating was something he and Crystal had in common. "I was born under one full moon, but the weather was a bit cloudy that night, so my powers never fully . . . developed."
Crystal gave him a hard stare. "Go on," she growled. She wanted to hear more about this. The NightWings were always so secretive with their powers, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear about them or see them in such detail. If she had still been under Queen Glacier's service, this would have been critical information.
"I'm unable to receive more than the basest of emotions from dragons," he replied. "Extreme pain, fear, and glee, yes, but little else. And most of the time, you don't need a mind-reader to tell that."
"And . . . cats?" Crystal started to guess.
Trustbreaker nodded. "I'm able to read animals much more clearly, much more so than the other readers I grew up with, and can even relay. Cats, lizards — "
"Scavengers," Avalanche interrupted with a sneer.
" — and gryphons, apparently," the NightWing finished.
Griffin's feathers immediately stood on end in concern. "Wait, you can read my mind?" he asked. "So, what am I thinking right now?" How many dragon tribes are there in Pyrrhia?
"Seven," Trustbreaker replied with a slight snap of annoyance. "Believe me, I can hear you loud and clear."
"Oh boy," Griffin muttered, glancing over at Schist quickly. "Can you . . . not read my mind?"
"I can attempt," the NightWing answered, "but trust me, I won't share any of your thoughts."
Trust a dragon named Trustbreaker, Griffin though, that's rich.
The NightWing gave him a sigh of disappointment, and Griffin gulped a little. "Yeah, you know what I'm thinking, right."
Trustbreaker turned to the three dragons looking at him. "Anything else?" he asked in exasperation.
"Relay?" Schist spoke up.
"Yes," Trustbreaker said, with just the faintest hint of pride, "it's something few NightWing mind-readers are able to do. When I reach far enough into one of my companions' thoughts, so much so that it becomes difficult to tell our minds apart, I'm able to communicate directly with them. It's entirely voluntary for them to follow me, of course, but that's something my friend Sapphire helps me with."
He glanced down at the brown tabby in front of him, the tabby's bright blue eyes gleaming like sapphires. Trustbreaker raised his right talons, and Sapphire raised a paw in unison. The NightWing then set down his talons and raised his other forepaw, the cat following his motions. After he was done, Sapphire turned back to Trustbreaker, rubbing his coat against the NightWing's silvery-black scales and purring loudly.
"Three moons, he's creepy," Crystal muttered under her breath to Torrent.
Torrent nodded, and glanced over at Griffin with a hint of concern before turning to Avalanche and throwing down the pig he had bought in front of her. "Happy?" he asked.
Avalanche licked her teeth. "A little wet, but good enough for tonight." She dragged the cooked meat towards herself and gently dug a claw into it.
"So, do you have any idea about an animus nearby?" the SeaWing asked as Avalanche was picking at a small piece of meat.
She thought for a moment. "Nope, never heard of one here. Don't go out too much. Trustbreaker?"
The NightWing tensed up for a moment, as if preparing for Avalanche to say something rude. "What?" he asked, with a growl in his throat.
Avalanche sighed. "Animus dragons. In the cities. Have you seen any?"
Trustbreaker closed his silver-scaled eyes, trying to recall something. "I believe so. One of my cats saw something a few weeks ago, a large SandWing. He had jewelry hanging around his neck, necklaces and amulets, with two fangs of a dragonbite viper on one of his necklaces. Two silver snakes were wrapped around each of his horns. He was seemingly moving pieces of gold with his mind."
"Sure sounds like an animus to me. Far too much jewelry seems pretty suspect," Torrent snorted.
Avalanche frowned a little. "I think I know the dragon you're talking about," she said. "His name's Gila. He's a crime lord in the western city. I've seen him once or twice in the markets; he's a pretty big deal there."
Torrent snorted, and started to turn, ready to leave the house. He glanced back to see that Crystal hadn't followed him as he expected. "Well?" he asked. "Aren't we going to go find him?" Avalanche let out a small snort.
"It's late," Crystal pointed out, "and if he's a crime lord, he's bound to have protection of some sort. You can only turn animus dragons to stone, right?"
Torrent grumbled a little.
"The IceWing is right," Avalanche pointed out with a smirk. "But I think I might know a way to help you."