Deathbringer took a step in front of Glory, making sure his body was between her and the growling hybrid. He spread out his wings to cover her, and arched his claws, preparing for a fight.
"Get back," he ordered to his queen.
"I'm the one with the venom," Glory hissed, pushing Deathbringer to the side. "And she hasn't attacked you. She might be friendly!" She glared at her mate as the pebbles beneath her shook. What was he thinking? They needed to not antagonize Aurora any more, if possible.
"Does she look friendly to you?" Deathbringer asked, gesturing to knives growing from Aurora's claws with a wing.
"Be quiet," Aurora growled back. "I can hear your threats."
Glory winced. Maybe talking about her venom in front of the hybrid wasn't the best diplomatic strategy. She gave Deathbringer a quick glance of caution before looking back to Aurora.
Aurora had already turned away, and was continuing to comb through the rubble for whatever she was searching for, the metal shrinking back into her talons. Just because I'm less likely to decapitate you than any of the other queens doesn't mean you can be rude to me, Glory wanted to say. It was hard enough to get respect with the other queens or even her own subjects as it was, being both young and a RainWing. She shivered. The sudden surge of power she'd felt had gone as quick as it came, but Glory was still on edge. She had to tread carefully here.
"You're technically trespassing on off-limit property of the Rainforest Kingdom," Glory pointed out, "so if you don't want me to take you in for questioning, I at least need an explanation for what you're looking for, and why. You're free to go after that."
"It's none of your business," Aurora muttered, like every word she said to Queen Glory was a waste of her time.
"That wasn't an answer," Glory flatly sighed.
Glory received another cold shoulder from the hybrid, causing the RainWing queen to flare her ruff in annoyance, orange bleeding from the scales on her neck. The hybrid could at least pretend to respect Glory, like a lot of the NightWings did. But flat-out ignoring a queen was either arrogant, or extremely courageous. It was like Glory didn't even.
"Should we capture her and take her back to the village?" Deathbringer asked Glory, making sure his voice was a low whisper this time.
Glory thought for a moment. "Eh. Other than annoying the scales off my neck, and having really creepy knives growing out of her talons, she isn't actually doing anything that bad. It's probably fine!"
"Maybe, but she could be secretly plotting your downfall," Deathbringer suggested.
Glory laughed, rolling her eyes. Aurora was still furiously poking through the rubble. "I doubt it. I'm . . . not even sure she knows who I am, which I believe is a requirement for a coup attempt."
"Fine, but it still bugs me," Deathbringer huffed, concerned. "What if she's looking for one of the Darkstalker's artifacts? I don't want a repeat of Silverhorn."
Glory winced, swirls of green and purple appearing on her wingblades. She didn't really want to remember that. Around a year ago, a rogue NightWing named Silverhorn had discovered an animus-touched earring created by none other than the Darkstalker himself. She'd used it to manipulate Glory into trusting her over a few weeks, and had almost gotten Glory to declare her the new queen of the NightWings. It had so clouded her thoughts that she'd attempted to arrest Deathbringer on Silverhorn's advice, believing that her trusted NightWing was a spy.
Luckily, Silverhorn had made the mistake of attacking Deathbringer when he resisted, and had gotten her ear torn off in the ensuing fight, along with the magic earring. Her hold on Glory was broken, and Silverhorn ended up with venom in the eyes. Afterwards, Glory had destroyed the earring. She'd thought about keeping it just in case she ever needed it, but keeping malicious magic like that around was too risky.
The event served as a reminder of the dangers of animus magic, if it fell into the wrong claws. If just a single item could almost take down a kingdom, it was frightening what an full-fledged animus could do with just a bat of an eye. The drought, if it was in fact magical, was an example of that. Glory was relieved that there weren't any animuses in either of her kingdoms, but that might not last forever. She didn't know how many NightWings in the kingdom were related to Stonemover, and any one of his relatives could have it.
"I doubt she's going for something he created, the Darkstalker never lived here, from what I've been told," Glory replied. Yet, the idea had already taken hold in her head. What if there were other animus-touched items here? Starflight had found one of the dreamvisitors, even though he'd ended up losing it. "But I don't want to take any risks. Just . . . be cautious."
"Hybrid," Deathbringer commanded Aurora, less cautiously than Glory would've liked, "if you won't tell us what you're doing, we're going to have to take you back to the rainforest to interrogate you."
Aurora turned to Deathbringer, cocking her head from left to right as he stepped forward. Glory stiffened up as she saw more metal daggers appear from Aurora's claws. This time, it was more visible — they weren't just hidden somewhere, the metal was actually forming out of thin air.
Deathbringer seemed to notice too. Slowly, Glory saw his paw shake, involuntarily moving to the pouch where he kept his chakrams. Don't! Glory wanted to tell him. She moved forward, about to try and pull Deathbringer back.
The small motion was too much. As Deathbringer's claws brushed against his pouch, Aurora sprung into the air, steel hooks extending from her tail. Her talons stretched out at a moment's notice, aiming towards Deathbringer's neck.
Deathbringer reached into the pouch, grabbing a silver disk only to let out a yelp of pain as two thin metal spikes shot up from the ground. His paw opened up as drops of blood poured from it, the disk clattering to the ground. Glory shoved her mate's wing out of the way, getting between him and Aurora, opening her jaws, prepared to shoot venom into Aurora's eyes, but a moment too late.
Aurora suddenly crashed at Glory and Deathbringer's paws, Deathbringer gritting his teeth as he tore his paw from the spikes, blood dripping onto the hybrid's scales. Glory looked down, surprised that the attack hadn't landed. Aurora's glowstripes suddenly flashed, and the hybrid placed her talons to her own neck, trying to scratch at it. A moment later, her body went limp, her legs and wings splayed out. As her eyes shut, Glory stared at the end of a small dart sticking out from Aurora's neck.
Glory and Deathbringer turned to look at each other, wondering if the other had shot it. Neither had. Suddenly, the shine of scales started to protrude from the smog, and four RainWings appeared, one of them holding a blowgun. Glory laughed as she recognized one of them as the RainWing she had accidentally attacked back in the rainforest. So Deathbringer's 'Ninja Guard' had followed after all.
Glory looked to Deathbringer, seeing a few drops of blood fall from the wounds on his forepaw. He grimaced. "I'm fine," he tried to assure her.
The RainWing queen turned back to Aurora, who was unconscious at Deathbringer's paws. "I hope that was a sleeping dart and not poison," Glory muttered.
"Don't worry," one of the RainWings said, "Deathbringer doesn't let us use anything too deadly yet."
Glory didn't really want to know what Deathbringer's threshold for 'too deadly' was. She turned to her mate. "So, why are they here? I thought you dismissed them."
"I did," Deathbringer replied, glancing over the four RainWings. "Why did you come? I think that might be disobeying orders."
"Yes, but you told us to think for ourselves, right?" the youngest of the four answered, the one that Glory had attacked. Frog, if she remembered correctly. "Well, Gorilla said that we should go anyways, just to make sure you were safe. We saw Toxin sneaking after you."
Glory glanced over to Gorilla, the RainWing holding the blowgun. She waved happily. Glory sighed. "Thinking for yourself doesn't mean disobeying orders. I mean, sometimes it does. But usually it doesn't."
"Wise words, your majesty," Deathbringer quipped.
Glory snorted. "Anyways, we were fine. Aurora here should probably be thanking you, in fact; she would've gotten a snout-full of venom if she'd hurt Deathbringer."
One of the RainWings shuddered at the thought of what venom could have done.
"Personally, I'm impressed they took initiative," Deathbringer commented, proud of his pupils.
"Quiet," Glory ordered him. She glanced behind her, back to Toxin and Mastermind. Fortunately, neither of them had tried to fly off, they were just watching the scene from afar. "Grab the hybrid's body and fly her back to the Rainforest. Please don't drop her. Careful of the spikes."
"Toxin?" Frog asked.
"No," Glory said, exasperated. "Aurora. The one Gorilla just shot. Not Toxin."
Frog nodded, and the four RainWings got to work figuring out how best to carry Aurora without accidentally puncturing themselves on her.
After they got back in the rainforest, Glory, Deathbringer, Toxin, and Mastermind quickly got to work on looking through the scrolls they'd gotten from the island. While they worked on the Royal Pavilion, the Ninja Guard had brought Aurora back to a nearby pavilion, and at Deathbringer's request, were keeping watch over her until she woke up. Glory quickly filled Deathbringer in on the contents of Toxin's vision.
"So, do we really need these scrolls?" Deathbringer asked, glancing at the pile that Mastermind brought back. "I don't see how they'll help us interpret it." He poked one, and turned it over, having a bit of trouble with the cloth bandage on his paw. Documentation of Lodestone Uses.
"Oh, that one doesn't have to do with prophecies," Mastermind said, quickly stripping it from Deathbringer's talons. "But I'm sure some of the ones that we brought back will be useful." In return, Mastermind handed Deathbringer a different scroll.
"Great NightWing Prophecies: Volume Four," Deathbringer read out. "And . . . why is this useful? We already know what the vision was about. Aurora's the hybrid in the vision, right? And Peril sets a RainWing on fire. Seems pretty clear to me. What more do we need to interpret?"
"That still doesn't help with the drought," Glory mused. She took the scroll from Deathbringer's talons, and rolled it open. There was a small collection of prophecies written by a dragon named Vision. "Although I'm not quite sure this will, either. What are we looking for? Prophecies on magical droughts two-thousand years in the future?"
Mastermind shrugged his wings. "That would be quite helpful."
Glory rolled her eyes. It felt more and more like Mastermind had just tricked her into getting him more scrolls.
"There's this one about a hurricane," Deathbringer said, reading over Glory's wing. "Apparently a NightWing named Clearsight wrote it. How long ago was that?"
Mastermind opened his mouth to explain, but Glory interrupted first. "We're looking for droughts, not hurricanes. Keep looking."
"Huh, this is interesting," Toxin suddenly spoke up, looking through a different scroll. Glory and Deathbringer looked over to her, wondering what she'd found.
Toxin held the scroll up. "It's the scroll about creating false visions. It was written after the NightWings lost their powers, but the author is one of the few who still thinks they were real at some point. The author claims that NightWing prophecy actually came from animus magic, but the Great Ice Dragon took the power of prophecy from the NightWings because of what happened with Prince Arctic and the Darkstalker."
"The Great Ice Dragon?" Deathbringer snorted. "Why is a NightWing writing about the IceWing deity?"
"Don't ask me," Toxin replied, "I didn't write it. Whoever did is long gone."
Glory sighed, and glanced back down at the scroll. They weren't going to get anywhere at this rate. "That's fun, but what does it have to do with our drought problem?" she asked.
Toxin gave her a glare. "I don't know. I just thought it was interesting."
Glory dropped the scroll to the ground, and started to pace around the pavilion, the other three watching her intently. The scales on her neck started to turn a bright orange. "This is pointless," she growled. "None of this scroll-reading is going to help with our drought problem. We need to find whatever is causing the drought, get rid of it, and stop Peril from killing that RainWing. What's the point of having visions of the future if we can't do anything about it?"
Deathbringer stood up, and put a wing around his mate. Glory felt useless. She was queen of two tribes. All of them were going to starve to death or die of dehydration, and there wasn't anything she could do about it, except look through moldy scrolls for something a dragon dead for a few thousand years might or might not have said.
Suddenly, two high-pitched screams echoed from across the rainforest, quickly followed by a third. Glory immediately whipped her head around towards the direction of the sounds. They'd come from nearby, in the direction of the pavilion where they'd left Aurora under guard.
"Sloth-dung," Glory whispered, realizing that Aurora had woken up far sooner than expected with an entire dose of tranquilizer. "HURRY!" she shouted to her mate, who was already taking off towards the source of the screams. The rainforest queen leaped off the pavilion, and used her tail to guide herself as she glided downwards. Aurora was their only lead on the prophecy, at the moment. If she got away . . .
It was far too late when the two arrived. Glory's blood ran cold as she saw the grizzly scene. Aurora was gone. Of the four RainWings who had been guarding her, three were laying in pools of their own blood, dripping through the cracks in the pavilion, staining the leaves below. One of these three was moaning in agony, while the other two were motionless. The fourth was nowhere to be seen, but Glory could hear the sounds of sobbing and whimpering nearby.
For a moment, Deathbringer stood on in shock, his talons shaking. "No," he whispered, "no. This wasn't supposed to be dangerous."
Glory walked over to the moaning RainWing. Even though his scales had all turned a deathly pale white, she could recognize him as Frog. Red blood ran down his forepaws as he clutched his underbelly. As Glory looked closer, she could see that there were holes torn through the soft scales there, and a bloody line between Frog was holding his scales. He let out another moan, and looked at Queen Glory almost pleadingly, unable to say anything.
"Don't worry," Glory tried to comfort him, her own talons shaking, "it will be alright." She wasn't quite sure of her own assurance. He was in critical condition. If there was any chance of him surviving, he needed medical care immediately. Frog was younger than Glory, still a dragonet. How could anyone have done this to him?
Glory turned to the sobbing dragon, still invisible. "Grapefruit, please get help. He needs medical attention."
The RainWing slowly lowered her invisibility, revealing pale green scales. Still sobbing, she nodded, her wings and talons shaking back and forth. She slowly walked to the edge of the pavilion, and carefully looked over, as if she was expecting Aurora to be hiding beneath her. Camouflaging her scales against the trees and leaves, she opened her wings, and shakily started to glide towards the center of the village. Glory could see a few more RainWings coming over from nearby pavilions to see what had happened. The screams had to have been heard from miles around.
Deathbringer walked over to the other two RainWings. Gorilla had a similar wound on her underbelly, except far larger than Frog's. He winced as he saw a hint of her entrails coming out from the largest gash. The other RainWing, Tropic, lied down next to her. His scales peeled away from a red line stretching from his throat to the base of his neck. Each of their scales were a light shade of grey, and neither of the two was breathing.
Deathbringer couldn't turn away from the two. He'd seen dragons like this before. Three moons, he'd killed plenty of dragons, although he'd preferred to do it cleaner than this. But this was his fault. He was Gorilla and Tropic's teacher. This never should have happened.
He solemnly stepped towards Glory, who was still by Frog, trying to sooth the moaning RainWing with her presence. The two exchanged a glance.
"This was supposed to be safe," Deathbringer whispered. "The whole 'Ninja Guard' thing — three moons, I was being so stupid."
"It's not your fault," Glory assured him, "you couldn't have known this was going to happen. It was unfortunate, that was all."
Deathbringer shook his head. "No, I knew there was a risk."
Glory turned back to Frog. A few more RainWings had landed on the pavilion, and were whispering to each other. "We need to bring her to justice. She killed two of us. She won't get away with this."
Deathbringer stood still, and looked around the pavilion. There was no trace of where Aurora had been, or where she had gone. The positions of the RainWings indicated that they'd tried to stop her, but Deathbringer couldn't be sure. How had she been able get away? There were four of them, and they still had sleeping darts. And venom, Deathbringer had been teaching them to use their venom in battle. Maybe Grapefruit could tell him what happened. The NightWing felt his heart skip a beat. This was his fault. If they'd tried to fight her or re-capture her, it was Deathbringer who had trained them to do that. Why couldn't he have told them to just let her go?
The flap of wingbeats made Deathbringer turn. Toxin and Mastermind had come to join them, and the two landed on the pavilion, careful not to step in any of the blood.
Toxin examined the three RainWings. If she was sickened by it, she didn't show it in her scales.
"You should go," Glory suggested to her, wincing, "you're still a dragonet. I don't want you to see this."
Toxin glared at her queen. "He was a dragonet, too," she hissed, pointing a talon at Frog. "That didn't stop this."
"Is," Glory stiffly growled. "He's going to be fine."
Toxin looked doubtful. "It was the dragon in my vision who did this, wasn't it."
Glory nodded. "Her name is Aurora."
"Why did you bring her back here?" Toxin snarled.
"Are you blaming this on me?" Glory yelled, the ruff on her neck turning a bright red. "You never told me she was dangerous!"
Toxin stood still for a moment, maintaining her eye-contact with Glory.
Glory winced, looking down at the young dragonet. "I'm sorry," she replied, "I shouldn't have said that. This isn't your fault."
Toxin didn't respond. Glory wasn't sure what she was thinking. Did she blame herself for this now? Glory recalled what she'd told Toxin earlier. What's the point of having visions of the future if we can't do anything about it? She was only a dragonet, she shouldn't be under the same pressure that a queen was. Glory had chosen this role. Toxin had never had a choice.
"Deathbringer," Glory said, "go after Aurora before she gets too far. I'm going to go back to Jade Mountain with Toxin and Mastermind. We'll go find the Black Scrolls that Mastermind mentioned."
Mastermind perked up at the mention of scrolls.
"Are you sure?" Deathbringer asked, slightly alarmed. "You saw what Aurora did here. Will you be safe?"
"I have my venom, and I know how to use it," Glory assured him. "I also won't be alone at Jade Mountain. If Toxin's vision comes true, and Aurora goes there, we'll be ready for her. Just make sure to stay safe yourself. Bring your weapons." She didn't like bringing a dragonet as young as Toxin into this, but it was far too late for that. Anyways, with so many dragons around, Jade Mountain would probably be safer than the rainforest.
Deathbringer bowed his head. "On the three moons, I swear that Gorilla and Tropic will be avenged."