The flight back to Possibility was tense. Torrent could tell that Nightreader was frightened for her brother, and that she blamed him for what happened. Honestly, she was right. It was completely his fault. He had acted rashly, and if he had only trusted Stonemover, or Jerboa, or had just asked either of them to put down the green diamond, this whole situation could have been avoided, and his wings wouldn't be sore from the flight.

Although Griffin had told him about the mysterious IceWing, Torrent had never met Fracture himself, and had no idea how to find him. He had hoped the two would have just flown into Fracture on the path, like Griffin had met Fracture after he'd left the Sea Kingdom, but there was no such luck. If Fracture really could predict the future and know things he had no way of knowing, he apparently didn't care enough to seek them out. So instead, Torrent and Nightreader were flying to Possibility. Clarity had mentioned she'd be making preparations there for the Brightest Night, so hopefully, she'd still be there. And as Fracture's mate, she of all dragons might know where he was. Unless, of course, he'd decided to suddenly disappear off the face of Pyrrhia.

Torrent suddenly noticed Nightreader glancing over at him, and quickly brushed away his glower, and along with it thoughts of Crystal and their dragonet. "Yes?" he yelled, making sure the NightWing would hear him over the loud wind rushing past the two as they flew to the northeast.

"This IceWing we're going to find —" Nightreader started.

"Clarity?"

Nightreader shook her head, the wind beating past her horns. "The other one."

"Fracture?"

"Yes," she responded. "You said you've never met him. How do you know he can help us? He could by lying about whatever powers he has."

Torrent thought for a moment. "I don't know, for sure. But Griffin trusts him, and he's the leader of the Talons of Peace. That's good enough for me."

"Wait, he's the leader of the Talons of Peace?" Nightreader asked. "But he's an IceWing."

Torrent glanced back with her in confusion. "And?"

"Well," Nightreader stammered awkwardly, "I'm just surprised he's working with the NightWings. Or that we're working with him."

"Because of the Darkstalker thing?" Torrent clarified.

"Yes," Nightreader said with a slight grimace. "The Darkstalker thing."

An awkward moment of quiet ensued after that, the wind noisily pushing past the two flying dragons. Nightreader decided to break it.

"So," Nightreader opened, "you were a prince. What was that like?"

"What do you mean?" Torrent asked. He thought back to his time in the Sea Kingdom. It had been so many years, many parts of it had faded from his memory. He remembered the big things, of course, like his siblings, but the individual details, like the names of the guards around the palace were lost to him. Well, that wasn't quite true, he remembered Seashell a fair amount. Less how she'd constantly slacked off at her job, but what Torrent's mother had done to her after getting fed up with her.

"I dunno, say, what were the meals like?" Nightreader replied, a hint of contempt in her voice.

"Oh, usually very good," Torrent answered obliviously. "We had two chefs at the palace for most of my time there, Jawfish and Gar. Gar was much older than Jawfish, and apparently she'd been serving us for decades, since my great-grandmother I believe, Queen Tidepool. You could certainly taste why she had been around so long, even with the limited ingredients we had, her meals always seemed unique. Unfortunately, she had some gill problems, and was only able to serve us every so often. Jawfish was decent for a chef, though his dishes got somewhat repetitive after a wh . . ."

Torrent stopped his rambling, as he noticed the resentful glare Nightreader was giving him from the side. "Er, would you like to talk about something else?" he asked quickly.

"No, no," Nightreader grumbled. "Just feeling hungry, with all this talk about food."

Torrent thought for a moment. That sounded like a fib. "So, what about you?" he asked. "How was the food in the Night Kingdom?"

Nightreader suddenly let out a vicious laugh, causing Torrent to be taken aback, his wings bursting upwards in an out-of-rhythm flap. "Food? What food?"

Torrent frowned, unsure what she meant.

The NightWing rolled her eyes. "Sorry," she apologized, "you wouldn't have known. Hopefully, you can understand that I'm not too keen to talk about . . . that place. The Night Kingdom. It's a bit of a secret, you see."

Torrent nodded slightly, still confused.

"I can tell you this: the Night Kingdom is not a home, and it's no place for any dragonet to be raised. I might have a bit of an ulterior motive for getting my brother to join you, if you haven't guessed already — to get him and I away from there, permanently. And strength in numbers, if they ever come for us. I never want to go back again, or even think about it."

"If you don't want to think about, we don't have t—"

"No, no," Nightreader interrupted, "I enjoy complaining about it a little, and you should probably know at least part of it. So you can understand why we can't go back. We're dying there. I mean that in both the figurative sense, and the literal. The air is toxic. It's poisoning our lungs, and our minds. And food? Just look at me." She waved a claw to her breast-bones, her dark scales wrapping tight around them. "You saw how Stonemover was. He has muscles on his bones, his wings are strong. That's because he's been out here. I helped convince them to get him off the island; honestly, I wasn't even sure he'd be able to survive back there. He was starving, much worse than me. Coughing constantly, he could barely breath. For their only animus, you'd think Morrowseer would pay much more attention to his health.

"But there's almost nothing there. The forests were all dead or dying, and so was any prey. So no, we didn't have chefs, not even royalty. We ate because we had to, and believe me, rotted meat doesn't taste good, even when you haven't eaten anything else in a month."

Torrent was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry," he apologized. He hadn't ever experienced anything like that. In the Deep Palace, he had never went a night hungry, and even after he'd left, things were never that bad. There was almost always something.

Nightreader sighed. "It's fine," she grumbled. "It's not your fault, and it's not like you can do anything about it." She thought for a moment, as if wondering how true what she'd said was, but then sighed once more, rejecting that idea. "So, what was your family like? There's rumors, you know, about Queen Coral, was she . . . ?"

Torrent snorted, almost laughing. He balanced his wings out as a gust pushed him slightly upwards, away from Nightreader, then flew back towards her. "She was a fine mother, if that's what you're asking, I've heard of much worse. Not particularly caring, especially to her sons, but I suppose that might have been a good thing. She's queen; her duty is to every SeaWing, not just her family. If you're asking about her . . . violent streaks, those have been much exaggerated. She's certainly killed more than a few dragons, but it's rarely undeserved. Well, most of the time. She's harsh, but not cruel, compared to the other queens. And she avoids using executioners if at all possible, almost every dragon put to death is sentenced by her own webbing."

"Is it true?" Nightreader questioned. "What happened with Princes Blister? Were you there?"

"With Blister?" Torrent wondered. There was quite a lot that had happened with Blister. "If you're asking if Coral attacked Blister, that part's true. I wasn't at the Summer Palace when it happened." Torrent grimaced a little, remembering how he'd been told about the incident after returning to the Summer Palace. How he'd been told of Rift's death. The dragon who'd told him was a SeaWing he'd never seen before, maybe around as old he Torrent was now, and whose scale color Torrent couldn't even remember. "You do know . . . why that happened, correct?" he asked with a frown.

Nightreader thought for a moment, then awkwardly remembered. "Oh. Prince Rift — I'm sorry, I didn't mean to —"

"It's fine," Torrent answered quietly. "It's been so long now, and we were never that close." He said this last phrase with a hint of regret in it.

"So," Nightreader opened, "I don't mean to be rude, but I was just curious . . ."

Torrent snorted a little. "If you're talking about the conspiracy theories, as far as I know, there's no sort of curse on my family. As I mentioned, Orca was the only animus, and she's long dead. I have no idea about the dragonets who died after I left, I've never met any of them. Angler too — he's always been the quiet type, just because he hasn't been seen in years doesn't mean he's dead, and with the rest of the dead princesses, it seems silly for Coral to be hiding his passing. As for me, I'm obviously not dead. And Rift, Orca, and River all died of relatively separate causes, there wasn't anything weird happening there."

"Wait, who?" Nightreader asked, confused.

Torrent chuckled, a bit grimly. "River. You wouldn't know her. Just a moment." He pulled out his dagger, and maneuvered closer to Nightreader, passing it to her claws. "River was my sister, the same egg clutch as me. Orca killed her after she used too much magic, and made it so only Griffin and I would remember her to cover up the murder. I've heard rumors of déjà vu about her, but nothing too interesting."

"So you're telling me there's a SeaWing princess, just . . . erased?" Nightreader asked. She felt a small shiver run down her tail, and her talons tensed around the dagger's hilt. The tales she'd heard of the Darkstalker were bad, but as far as she knew, he had only killed dragons in horrific fashions with his magic. What Orca had done, removing someone — it made her much more glad her brother couldn't use his magic anymore. Not that she could imagine him ever doing something like that. Even if he lost his soul, or whatever it was, that couldn't happen.

"Almost completely," Torrent answered. "If it weren't for Griffin or I, it would be like she never existed. Poor Moray. She interacted so much with River, I can't imagine how much of her memory must be missing. I'd be surprised if she, or even Queen Coral, hadn't noticed at least something." Torrent extended his claws out to Nightreader again. "You'll forget her again after I move away with the dagger."

Nightreader bared her teeth in a worried grimace. Knowing what would happen made it worse. An entire portion of her memory, just completely erased? She hesitantly returned the dagger to Torrent, who banked to the left, away from Nightreader. How would it feel? What if she forgot mo—

After flying out of range from Nightreader, Torrent returned to her side. She had a blank expression on her snout, as if she had just woken up. "Sorry, I dozed off," she muttered, "what were we talking about?"

"Nothing," Torrent replied with a sigh. This wasn't the first time that this had happened. Griffin had told both Schist and Crystal about River in the Sky Kingdom years ago. He'd tried multiple times, all fruitlessly. Thinking about them hurt. All of them were gone. Schist had left. At least Torrent had an idea of where he was, unless he had died by now. Crystal had left too, with her and Torrent's dragonet still in the egg. A dragonet he might never meet. And now, Griffin was gone, and the only hope Torrent had to finding him was an IceWing with unreliable powers that Torrent had never seen.

Hopefully, Clarity would still be in Possibility.

It was dawn when the two reached Possibility, and the crowds of dragons on the streets of the cities — no, the singular city, now that the two had merged — were just starting to bloom. Nightreader tensed up as the first rays of sunlight hit her eyes. "We'll be seen," she commented unhappily.

"It's fine," Torrent answered. "There are dragons of all tribes here. A NightWing won't be too out of place."

Nightreader frowned. "Even NightWings?" she asked. She was slightly jealous of any NightWing who was able to live in Possibility, though she was slightly doubtful there were any. She didn't see any NightWings below in the crowds of yellows, oranges, and reds, and doubted that Queen Battlewinner would be willing to let a stray NightWing live here.

"Well, the only NightWing I've seen here was Trustbreaker," Torrent answered, thinking back to his previous stays. "So at least one. Oh, there was a NightWing hybrid here too. SandWing, I think. He told Crystal's and my fortune. Not that either of ours came true, of course."

"Crystal?" Nightreader queried as she watched the dragons below, still searching for any hints of black or dark grey scales.

Torrent tensed up slightly. He wasn't particularly keen on talking about her. "She is . . . was my mate," he explained softly. Had they really been mates? He supposed so. They would've been a family too.

"Oh," Nightreader answered, slightly ashamed for asking. "I'm, er, sorry for your loss."

"She's not dead," Torrent snorted. Though he didn't know that, did he? He doubted it, Crystal wasn't the type of dragon would just go somewhere and die. "She disappeared with our egg a few years ago. The dragon we're going to see now — that's Clarity, Crystal's sister. She's the mate of Fracture, the IceWing I think can help us."

"So, he's your brother-in-law?" she asked. "Or your brother-in-law-in-law? I'm not exactly sure how the IceWing marriage system works."

Torrent shrugged his wings slightly, before tilting them forward and spreading them out, heading downwards. The two were nearing the blue-shingled house where Clarity would hopefully be. "Maybe. I've never really thought about him like that. As I mentioned, I've never met him." An uncomfortable thought came to Torrent's mind. "You don't find it . . . weird or anything that my mate was an IceWing, do you? And that I'm a SeaWing?"

Nightreader snorted; Torrent should've known she wasn't that petty of a dragon. "I can't say I'm a fan of IceWings, or at least the Ice Kingdom, but I've got no problem with relations between tribes. Stonemover mentioned he was with a SandWing, didn't he?"

"Hmph," Torrent stated. He wasn't sure what she meant about IceWings, but it wasn't like he could expect more. "He mentioned that he broke up with her, right?"

Nightreader laughed. "If you're asking if he's available, I think it was a little too recent for him to find another partner. And I thought you said you didn't like animuses."

Torrent swooped down closer to the ground, tucking his tail, slightly embarrassed. "It's not really that I don't like animuses," he grumbled, unsure of his statement, his voice trailing off as the two landed on the paved road. He saw a few stares from nearby dragons. Most likely surprised to see a SeaWing and a NightWing together — SeaWings weren't common here, and NightWings were altogether unheard of.

Nightreader noticed the stares, but ignored them. She didn't care to deal with it; right now, her focus was on finding her brother. "Is that it?" she asked, pointing at the small blue-shingled house.

Torrent nodded, and stepped up to the door, rapping his webbed talons on it. It creaked open slightly, and the white snout of an IceWing looked up at him. The SeaWing breathed a sigh of relief; Clarity was still here.

"Get inside quickly," Clarity hissed in frustration, "you're interrupting us. Did you bring that here?"

"Sorry," Torrent muttered. "And yes, the NightWing is with me."

The door opened a bit wider, and the two dragons walked into the room. In addition to Clarity, who quickly shut the door behind them, a second IceWing was peered curiously at the two. The light greyscale dragon offered a friendly wave with his paws to the newcomers. "Hello!" he stated. "Welcome! Are you here to join the Talons of Peace?"

"You're back soon," Clarity complained to Torrent, ignoring the other IceWing. "Where's Griffin? He didn't turn into the NightWing, did he?"

"He's, er, missing," Torrent stated, "which is why we've come here." He glanced over to the second IceWing. "Fracture?"

The IceWing gave Torrent a look of conclusion, and Clarity burst out in hysterics. "Fracture? You have to be kidding me!"

"I've never met him," Torrent answered, shooting Clarity a glare.

She rolled her eyes, and pointed a sharp talon to the second IceWing. "That's Hvitur. He's a member of the Talons, has been for the last few years. Who's she?"

"I'm Nightreader," Nightreader stated matter-of-factly. "I take it you're Clarity?"

Clarity didn't respond with an answer. "What is a NightWing doing here? Did Morrowseer send you? I thought he refused to send NightWing emissaries to meet with IceWings or some seal dung like that."

"I'm not with Morrowseer," Nightreader hissed, baring her teeth slightly.

"Do you want to join the Talons?" Hvitur suddenly spoke up. "We're always recruiting, you know, if you want to work for a noble cause, as opposed to a war the only benefits the queens while the rest of Pyrrhia suffers."

"You sound too stiff," Clarity analysed Hvitur, turning to him. "Like you're just repeating someone else's speech or something."

Hvitur glanced away, slightly hurt at Clarity's criticism. "It's not like I'm going to be on recruitment duty, you know," he protested.

Clarity ignored him, and turned back to Torrent with a sigh. "I was just giving Hvitur directions for his mission. He's heading to Queen Scarlet's palace after this, to pick up the SkyWing egg before it hatches on the Brightest Night. The prophecized one. Hvitur will be meeting Avalanche there, so she can pass it off to him before he takes to where we're hiding the other Dragonets of Destiny."

"Why not just use Avalanche's dragonet?" Torrent suggested heedlessly. "Griffin mentioned he was due around the Brightest Night, and you've already got his egg safe."

Clarity's scales tensed up in alarm, drawing a gaze of confusion from Torrent. She gave Hvitur a quick side-glance before returning to Torrent. "If you remember," she carefully stated, "these are prophecy dragonets, we can't just pick-and-choose." Seeing Torrent about to bark back a response, she hissed, "We can talk more about this later."

Torrent frowned, but didn't press further. Clarity clearly didn't want to talk more about this, and her fangs were so close it looked like she would bite Torrent's snout off if he tried to force it.

Clarity returned to Hvitur. "So, you know what you're doing? The flight path you're following to the Claws of the Clouds? Where you're meeting Avalanche?"

"Straight south from the rendezvous point, then west before I get close to the MudWing border. And I'm meeting Avalanche by the monastery ruins just south of the palace," Hvitur replied, grinning with confidence and excitement. "Don't worry, I know what I have to do."

Clarity nodded. "You should leave now. You have a long flight ahead of you. May the Great Ice Dragon's wings beat with yours."

Hvitur bowed his head to Clarity, and turned to the side, Nightreader stepping out of the way as his spiked tail trailed past. He reached down to a leather satchel, then headed straight towards the door. "Only seven more years of this war," he grinned back, before pushing the door open. "I'm counting down the days. I'll make sure the dragonets are raised well."

In a swish of his tails, he leapt through the entryway, into the winds of Possibility. Torrent shut the door behind him, the wind slamming it closed, and turned to his ex-sister-in-law.

"He thinks the prophecy is real?" Torrent asked, an disapproving growl behind his voice.

Clarity bristled, her scales standing on edge, and the spines along her back and tail raising up defensively. "You can't say that!" she hissed, glancing over towards Nightreader.

Nightreader snorted. "What do you mean 'he can't say that?' I'm a NightWing. Morrowseer made up that cursed prophecy. I was there when he gave it to Avalanche. I know exactly how real it is. I'm just don't know how you know it's fake."

The IceWing scratched a sharp talon on the floor of the house. "Fine," she muttered, "but it's a secret, and the NightWings of all dragons should be worried about the reaction if the queens all found out that the mystical prophecy turned out to be the manipulative scribblings of some old geezer. What would they say about your powers then?"

Nightreader's tail twitched. "I'm not loyal to Morrowseer anymore, as I mentioned. That's not my concern anymore." Torrent picked up on a slight hesitance in her voice. She might have deserted the NightWings, but Nightreader didn't seem to keen on them being exposed.

"Sure," Clarity answered sarcastically, with the hint of a grin. "But if you ever decide to make it your concern again, your kingdom's secret is in safe claws, or so I had planned. Only the four of us still around were supposed to know about the fake prophecy: Fracture, Avalanche, Trustbreaker, and myself." She turned to Torrent suspiciously. "So what I'm curious to is how you found out."

"Griffin mentioned it, so don't blame me," the SeaWing said.

"Ah," Clarity answered, remembering that Griffin had been there when Avalanche had returned from her meeting with Morrowseer. "You understand why you can't tell anyone about the fake prophecy, correct? We need all dragons, even members of the Talons of Peace, to believe it's true, and to have faith in its truth. Most dragons have problems with the war and the queens — their friends and families have died because of it — but they don't think there's anything they can do to stop it. And maybe they're right. There's no way just one dragon can stop the war by themselves. But that's why we need the prophecy. The dragons of Pyrrhia need to have hope that someone can end the war, and when the dragonets finally make their decision, everyone across the continent will respect it. The queens only have power because they're recognized by their citizens as being leaders, and if one of the three princesses is recognized as being the legitimate rule by everyone, dragons will stop fighting for the others."

Torrent frowned. He wasn't quite sure Clarity's plan would work out that way. What if the princesses and the queens just ignored the dragonets decision, and decided to keep fighting? Could the armies really refuse their orders? "Isn't there another way than fooling everyone?" he questioned. "Dragons will be dying for a lie; for a fake vision."

Clarity shook her head. "No. The more who believe in the prophecy's truth, the more likely it is to become true after all. We'll finally have peace on Pyrrhia."

Nightreader fidgeted a little, drawing the IceWing's gaze. She looked somewhat uncomfortable at this discussion herself.
Clarity frowned, but her expression turned to a smirk. "Don't worry, NightWing. Your kind won't be able to hide your secrets from Fracture."

Nightreader stuck out her forked tongue mockingly, taking Clarity aback for a second.

"You mentioned Avalanche's dragonet," Torrent stated, ignoring the exchange that had just taken place between the IceWing and NightWing. "Flame's what she's naming him, right? Since it's fake, just use him as a prophecy dragonet, don't bother with whatever Hibtur or whatever he's called is doing."

"Already ahead of you," Clarity answered. "He's backup. In case Hvitur fails, or the dragonet he fetches proves too unwieldy, we'll substitute him in. We're not using him as the primary, since he isn't actually born on the Brightest Night, and Fracture has mentioned that if we try to use him, things could get a little . . . troublesome. Apparently, he's even meaner than his mother."

"He will?" Nightreader wondered in confusion.

Clarity smirked. "You'll see soon enough. Speaking of my mate, since we have a NightWing here herself, I just wanted to make sure you got our communications about the dragonet you're supplying. Morrowseer is bringing the male dragonet, not the female? Starlight, or something like that?"

"Starflight," Nightreader corrected, sounding slightly annoyed she was being asked this, "and yes, Fatespeaker will be brought to the coastal meeting point."

"And she's being hatched somewhere dark?" Clarity questioned, a slight hint of nervousness in her voice.

"Yes, your strange request is being followed," Nightreader snorted, "though that's pretty much the entire Night Kingdom."

Clarity breathed a sigh of relief, much to the confusion of Nightreader and Torrent. "Good. Trustbreaker will be happy to hear that. Just make sure that all of this stays between us three."

Nightreader shrugged her wings in agreement, as if she didn't really care, and Torrent nodded. "Whatever the Talons do is little of my business," the SeaWing grumbled. "I'm trying to hunt animuses, not end the war."

"In that case, why are you here to begin with?" Clarity interrogated. "You mentioned that Griffin was missing? Fracture won't be happy to hear that, unless he already knows. He likes Griffin quite a lot, you know."

"There was an accident with an animus," Torrent explained, "and we believe Griffin was teleported somewhere outside of Pyrrhia, along with Nightreader's brother. I need Fracture to find him. He can do that, right?"

Clarity frowned slightly. "That's not really how his powers work. He doesn't remember seeing much outside Pyrrhia before, though he's mentioned meeting some bug dragons or something like that once or twice. Griffin might already be dead this time around, unfortunately."

Torrent gulped. "He can't be," he protested. "You don't know this, right? It's just a guess?"

The IceWing averted her beady black eyes a little. "A lot of time, someone disappearing means they're dead. But I don't know for certain. I was planning on returning to him after this anyways, to spend the Brightest Night with him, so I can take you."

"Great," Torrent grumbled, not relieved much. Nightreader had a similar expression of worry on her snout.

"I hope you're up to flying more," Clarity stated. "He's west from here, maybe a bit north, almost to the coast. We'll meet him in the hills of the Neck."