o

DARKSTALKER

It was a gorgeous night. All three moons were out: one a fat crescent hugging against the horizon, one a thin gibbous up against the crown of the sky, and one — the smallest but brightest — cheery and full on the other side of the sky.

The tides were high and angry. Waves crashed into the craggy oceanfront, flooding the tide pools and sending white bursts of mist into the air, shimmering in the moonlight like swarms of silver fireflies. The little sea creatures were all sheltered in the crannies and caves, hiding from the onslaught. Darkstalker and Clearsight had taken shelter as well. It was in the same quiet grotto where they'd found that traumatized SeaWing the other week. The calls and replies of the waves echoed against the walls, but the air was still and cool inside.

Darkstalker stretched his wings and unstrapped the leather scroll holder attached to his shoulder. He lay down on a smooth bed of stone further into the cavity and looked up at Clearsight, who approached with delightful interest. She curled up right next to Darkstalker and tucked herself under his wing. "Did you come up with any new spells today?" she asked.

"A few," he answered. As he pulled out his enchanted scroll, Clearsight rested her head on his forearm and kept her curious eyes on the unfurling parchment. Darkstalker leaned a little closer to her, his heart swelling.

It was the smallest things sometimes that helped him realize how much he already loved Clearsight. It was the way her snout would dip down into her chest when she smiled. It was the way her eyes suddenly lit up with curiosity whenever Darkstalker surprised her with something her visions failed to catch. It was the way she folded her wings in just the right way when she snuggled up against him, making him feel like an important piece of him had just fit into the perfect place.

He wondered sometimes if she felt the same way. Were there tiny things that he didn't even realize that he was doing that helped him win her heart? Darkstalker knew that he had to try especially hard for her. For all he knew, Clearsight had already lived a dozen lifetimes with him in her head. If she wasn't going to get bored of him, he'd have to give her fresh, exciting memories that she hadn't yet lived. But maybe he was already doing that automatically. Maybe he was already giving her those fresh new memories with the small things he did, like showing her his smile, and holding her snugly with his wing.

"Awww," Clearsight crooned. She pointed at one of the enchantments and looked at him as if he'd just given her a bouquet of flowers.

Darkstalker read the words above her talon. 'Enchant this plate to always keep Foeslayer's dinner warm.' "Oh, that," he said with a shrug. "Dinner times aren't always very pleasant with my parents. I figured I ought to make things just a little bit more bearable for my mom. She gets unhappy sometimes when my dad brings home eagles that are freezing cold."

"You're such a sweetheart," she said, almost teasingly.

Darkstalker let out a small, bright smile. "Well, it's easy to do good when you're able to do the sorts of things that I can."

A momentary look of doubtfulness cast its way over Clearsight's features, but they were gone in an instant. She looked back at the scroll and read the next enchantment. " 'Enchant this candle to light up whenever I need light, and to snuff itself out whenever I need darkness.' "

"A stupid enchantment," Darkstalker said offhandedly. "I don't use candles very often anyway. I can see just fine with natural lighting. I was thinking about repurposing it."

"It doesn't get too dark in your room?"

"Not really. My desk is right up against my window."

"Oh, right," Clearsight said, looking down.

Darkstalker remembered that Clearsight lived further down in the ravines, where the sky was less prominent and the moons were blocked from sight by the high cliff sides. It was less desirable housing, where the less wealthy NightWings lived. Clearsight never complained about it, but she let Darkstalker know that she looked forward to the possible future where she got a good job working for Queen Vigilance and helping her family move somewhere higher up.

"Would you like to have it?" Darkstalker asked. "I know that you like to stay up late studying."

"Sure," Clearsight said. "I mean, I probably won't get much use out of it either. It's not like lighting candles is all that hard." She looked down, and read the last enchantment on the scroll.

Her snout twitched, and then she held her breath. Darkstalker blinked, confused at her reaction. He leaned forward and read the enchantment himself. 'Enchant this earring so that when I wear it, it will keep me focused and make me ignore distracting thoughts.' There wasn't anything wrong with that, was there? He just made it so that he could pay attention in class.

"Is something wrong?" Darkstalker asked. "I thought that was a pretty clever enchantment. I should be able to get all A's with it."

Clearsight opened her mouth, but no words came out. Now that Darkstalker looked more closely at her, he noticed that something was off. Her eyes weren't focused on the scroll anymore. Instead, they were staring out beyond it. Her purple irises began to grow pale and milky. Her breathing returned, but her inhales were short and panicked.

She's having another vision attack! he realized. Immediately he rolled up the scroll and slid it back into its case. He repositioned himself so that he was facing her, put his hands to her chin, and gently touched her snout with his. "Clearsight," he said softly. "It's not real. None of it's real."

There was no response. Darkstalker had come to expect that. It seemed that when she got these attacks, there was no cutting them short. They blasted through her mind, and there wasn't anything she, or anyone else, could do to stop them.

Still, Darkstalker felt like he had to try. Maybe he couldn't stop the attack, but he could hopefully at least make things a little more comfortable for her. "Come back to me," he whispered. "Come back to me. Come back to me."

He hated seeing her like this. It was one of the few things that genuinely scared him. Her eyes weren't settling. They were getting worse, sporadically twitching and contracting, ever so faintly beginning to glow. It was making Darkstalker dizzy. Her ears pressed back defensively, and she shuffled into the corner of the cove, trembling like a traumatized puppy.

It ended up being a long attack — the longest one he'd seen her have to deal with so far. For three minutes she'd been cringing, her wings shielding the roof of her head. Darkstalker felt terrible. Her power was supposed to be a gift — a gift for both of them. It was supposed to be reassuring, a guiding light to warn them of potential dangers. It wasn't supposed to be this traumatizing to her. It wasn't supposed to be this frightening to him.

These attacks were getting more frequent too. She'd had a spell of visions yesterday. And the night before that — when he showed Clearsight his scroll for the first time.

At last, the glow faded. Purple irises gazed back at him, quickly filling up with tears. Clearsight threw her arms around him and sobbed into his shoulder. "They're getting worse," she said, her talons curling into the scales on Darkstalker's back. "Why are they getting worse?"

Darkstalker wish he knew. He thought that the future would be brighter now than it had ever been before. He'd made that scroll in order to protect his soul. At the time, it seemed like Clearsight had truly believed that the futures were better because of his sacrifice. The way her eyes lit up like diamonds before she'd tackled him in an affectionate hug after looking ahead … he was sure that he'd done the right thing.

But then Arctic stepped into his room, and Clearsight got her future attack, and at that moment everything changed, almost in an instant. Maybe it was his father's fault. Maybe if he'd been able to keep his animus secret hidden for longer, he could have secured a tighter grip on the futures that Clearsight wanted.

He'd have to find a way to get back at him for that.

"Maybe you're just worrying too much," Darkstalker said. "I keep telling you that the futures are too hard to control. You need to have a bit of faith: let the present take us where it will."

"And sit back as everything gets worse and worse?" Clearsight let go of Darkstalker and shook her head. "I can still see all those wonderful futures, Darkstalker, but that doesn't mean I don't have to fight for them. If I don't do anything … the things you could end up doing …."

"Clearsight, I need you to trust me." Darkstalker pressed a talon to her chin so that she was looking at his eyes. "Be honest," he said, a smile donning his face. "What part of me right now is not downright amazing?"

To his joy, Clearsight let out a tiny chuckle. "Well, your humility has gone unchecked for a bit too long," she answered as she flicked the tears from her eyes. "But it's not the you right now that I'm worried about. It's the you that might exist in another three years, who's too power-hungry and angry to be reasoned with."

"Haven't I already shown you that I'm protecting my soul? How could I possibly become someone so terrible?" Darkstalker emphasized his point with an affectionate nuzzle on her cheek.

"I don't know," Clearsight said. Her wings drooped, and she surrendered her gaze to the floor. "I honestly don't, Darkstalker. I just know that you can."

Darkstalker looked down at his own talons, feeling trapped in his own body. He hated it when Clearsight talked about him like this — like there was an evil demon trapped in his soul, waiting to claw its way out. Sometimes it seemed like Clearsight honestly believed that she knew him better than he knew himself.

"I need to go," Clearsight said, making her way to the grotto's exit.

Darkstalker's heart gripped itself. He didn't want to be alone for the rest of the night, not yet. "Can't you stay a little longer?" he pressed, circling around and blocking her way.

Clearsight stopped and shook her head. "My parents are going to start worrying if I'm not back soon."

"Oh, come on, you don't know that," Darkstalker said, before remembering that she actually did.

She gave him a knowing smirk. She walked around him and looked up at the sky. "I'll see you tomorrow," she said before taking off.

Darkstalker stepped outside and watched Clearsight as the stars swallowed her silhouette, frustrated as ever. How could she leave him alone on that note? Now he'd have to slink back home to his insufferable father with the guilt of terrible hypothetical futures looming over his shoulders. And those futures weren't even going to happen.

Ever since he'd shown her his scroll, she'd gotten better at not badgering him about using his powers recklessly. In fact, she never did it. She was supportive of his enchantments, and she seemed much more confident that his soul was safe. But she was still afraid. That unwavering trust that he so desperately wanted from her was still so out of reach. He worried that he'd never be able to win it.

Last year, before he'd met Clearsight, he found a scroll in the library about seers. Most scrolls about this topic he wouldn't give a second glance, since they catered to those who had weaker future sight abilities than even he had. But the one that he'd found was different. It written by one of the strongest seers the NightWings had ever known: a scholar from three hundred years ago named Nocturne. Her insignificance in the grand scheme of things had left her name forgotten by most dragons, but when he got his talons on one of her treatises on seer behavior, it felt like the scroll had been written exclusively for him.

He was almost convinced that it was. Some sections of it were eerily direct in how they applied to him. There was one part in it that read, "One of the most powerful and harmonious friendships I could imagine between two dragons is that between an IceWing animus and a NightWing clairvoyant. The animus has the power to do incredible things, and the clairvoyant has the power to discover which of those things is the most incredible. The animus is a navigator while the seer is a map. Without the navigator, the map has nobody to offer guidance to. But without the map, the navigator must explore a dangerous jungle on their own.

"In the extremely unlikely event that you are an animus, then congratulations on having such a wonderful power! Just remember that friendships and romances with seers don't come cheaply. You're going to need to fight extra hard to earn their trust. We seers can see the mistakes you're likely to make ahead of time, so you're not going to be able to hide your fallibility from us. We're also going to see the consequences of those mistakes. Given that you're an animus, those consequences could be pretty frightening."

Of course her trust would be hard to earn. He had to compete with all of the terrifying futures that she saw. He had to compete with the fact that she really believed that all of those futures were possible. Darkstalker could see how frightening that was, knowing that if she made one mistake in the present, then a whole array of opportunities would vanish completely. There weren't any do-overs. There weren't multiple pasts like there were multiple futures. Clearsight might have been able to see what lay ahead better than anyone, but she couldn't rewind time …

… or could she?

An idea began to sprout deep in his mind. A good idea. One that might have been even better than his enchanted scroll. Without a moment's hesitation, he took to the sky and returned home, his thoughts rumbling with excitement.

Clearsight was in for a very pleasant surprise. She may not have had the power to change the past, but she did have a boyfriend who could fix that.


A/N: Did you notice how this chapter ended the same way as the prologue? Both Nocturne and Darkstalker realized that there was something that they could do to influence this time frame.

I hope you enjoyed seeing Darkstalker at a time when he was sane and suave. There'll be some more fluffy lovey dovey stuff in the next chapter, so I'll get to have a little bit more fun with him for the time being.

Thank you for the reviews, and please keep 'em coming!