I'm not dead, and neither is the story! Here's a real big piece of the story for you all. I apologize for the wait, but the last third or so took quite a while to get out. For now, we return to the dragonets, and the inevitable passage of time..

Feeling her heart thump a little faster than usual, Marble swiveled her head to take in the large room she'd stepped into. several large, decorative windows were spread along the walls beside the door. She supposed it was supposed to ensure a lot of sunlight was let in, but what light there was left in the day was almost gone. It didn't help the chill running down her spine. This place was very eerie, more so than the other houses, because, unlike them, it seemed to have barely been touched.

Marble swept her gaze along the furniture, chairs and a couch decorated in shades of white and blue. There was a large snowflake-patterened rug in front of a fireplace to her left, and a smaller one behind her beside the door. Shards of transparent crystal hung from the ceiling, glittering at her like multitudinous eyes. Marble took a few steps forward, carefully avoiding a smashed windchime on the floor. It was one of the few things out of place that indicated the SandWings had even been there. The kitchen area to her right, for example, had all it's tools in place.

Walking over to the counter, Marble tried to look through the window in front of it. It was so caked in dust it was like trying to see through a muddy puddle. She turned around to face the fireplace and paused, any doubts about whose house this was vanishing. On the mantle she could see a large painting that appeared to be a family portrait. It had been made with evident skill, and to Marble it seemed almost like looking through a window into another time, or world. Four dragons stood arranged in pairs; above and to the left was an IceWing, snout touched in affection to the NightWing on the above right. On the bottom part of the image were, Marble guessed, their dragonets. The one standing to the left was an obvious hybrid, possessing a startling but elegant mixture of IceWing and NightWing features. On the right was the other dragonet who didn't seem to have a drop of IceWing blood in him. The only clues that Marble could see were his twisted horns and the fact that his wing claws were serrated.

There were two things that were peculiar about the painting. The first was that it was done entirely in shades of blue, from almost white to as dark as an abyss in the ocean. Secondly, all the subjects in the portrait had very kind, happy expressions, that seemed to defy the very nature of most dragons. Still, Marble liked the painting, even if looking at it gave her an ominous feeling, like she was standing on somebody's grave.

'So, this really is the house...' she thought, moving her eyes to the bottom right dragon in the portrait. She exhaled a puff of smoke, shivering.

"Darkstalker." she murmured, decidedly turning away from the painting for now.

After all, that was the only dragon it could be. The others in the portrait would have been Prince Arctic with his mate Foeslayer. Marble didn't know the name of the dragon next to Darkstalker, but knew she must be his sister. It was no wonder the house was left alone; even now, long after he vanished, the shadow of Darkstalker's horrible power loomed over the city. Torque and Adder had told stories from their parents about how spooked some of the SandWings were during the raiding. The mystery surrounding Darkstalker was fresh then, and nobody knew for sure if he was really gone. Even now there was wide speculation that his house was haunted.

'Good thing I don't believe in ghosts,' Marble turned into a short hallway, her mind grimly lingering on the image of Arctic's desiccated corpse.

At the end of the hallway was a new, smaller room. As Marble nudged open the door, she recognized it as some kind of study. At the end of the room, against a small window, was a wooden desk. Atop the desk were two inkwells, both long since dried. One of them had spilled across the top of the desk. The dark blue stain unpleasantly reminded Marble of IceWing blood.

Along the right wall, beside the desk, was a large scroll rack. Most of the spots still held scrolls; Marble decided to have a look at them. There were some purple and white blankets in the left corner that would help make the stone floor more comfortable.

She picked up the blankets and shook out the dust, unable to avoid coughing at the copious cloud that was released. Blinking her eyes to clear them, Marble dropped the blankets and pushed open the small window. She fanned her wings in an attempt to get the dust to blow outside before picking the blankets up again. It didn't take long for her to arrange them in a nest-like fashion beside the desk.

'This should be a good spot to think,' Marble decided, reaching for a scroll, 'Who knows, maybe one of these scrolls has information on NightWing visions..'

While pulling out the scroll, she noticed something glinting on it in the soft moonlight. She took it in both talons and was surprised to find it had some kind of silver band as a binder.

'Not a very good one, though,' Marble thought as she wiggled the scroll, 'It's pretty loose.'

She took it off with ease, noting that it seemed too large for the scroll. It was more like...

Marble's heart seized, and she dropped the scroll. She brought the band up to her eyes, turning it, and carefully slipped it onto one of her wrists. As if anticipating some kind of reaction, she tensed up and squeezed her eyes shut. When several seconds passed in silence she opened them slowly. Nothing had happened.

Eyeing the band for what it was - a bracelet - Marble was not sure whether to be elated or disappointed.

'This is a bracelet, but is it one of the bracelets?' she turned her wrist, watching as the smooth metal reflected the moonlight, 'The NightWings probably had tons of jewelry around once. It looks like what I saw in the book, but it's so plain that it could be any old bracelet.'

"If only I could test it. Find some way to see if it was enchanted that doesn't involve flying to the Ice Kindgom." Marble murmured to herself, sitting down upon the blankets to think.

As frustration gripped her, Marble found her old anger boiling to the surface. There was a life at stake, and she didn't want to be letting everyone down because she couldn't tell if what she held was magic or not. She snorted a puff of smoke, snout twisting into a growl.

"Go on then, bracelet," she said sarcastically, "Prove you're magic. Turn me into an IceWing."

Marble closed her eyes at a chill that swept over her. A gust from the window, no doubt. She stood up and leaned over the desk to close it.

Something pale glistened out of the corner of her eye; Marble paused and blinked. Her gaze turned to her right foreleg, resting on the window's latch. A worried laugh escaped Marble's snout as she blinked again.

"I'm dreaming," she told herself, "I fell asleep in here and I'm dreaming."

She stepped back from the desk and held her foreclaws close, looking down at her body. This wasn't real; it couldn't be.

For it seemed that every scale on her body had changed to a cold, silvery white.

Fighting back a scream building at the back of her throat, Marble felt her snout with shaking talons. Was it her imagination, or had that changed too? She dropped her talons and looked around for something to use as a mirror. To her distress she failed to find anything of the sort; she decided to try and use the reflection of the bracelet instead. Once again she brought it up to her snout and peered at the image that appeared on the shiny metal.

The face she could make out staring back at her was, undoubtedly, that of an IceWing. Her head was sharp-looking and diamond-shaped, the top part of it having darker grey scales than the rest. Her horns and spines were a sharp, clean white, as well as her serrated claws. One thing stood out, unchanged, that told Marble this wasn't some stranger she was looking at. Her widened eyes had remained the same dark blue they'd always been.

In something of a daze, she lowered her foreleg and twisted around to look at the rest of her body. Her scales glistened white where once they were dark; the topmost layer of scales had shots of silver running along them. Marble flared her wings, which were now more compact, noting that the membrane was several shades lighter than it used to be. Her spines were concentrated around her head and tapered off about where her tail began. On the end of her tail were a few more similar spines, looking just as sharp and deadly.

Swallowing another rising tide of fear, Marble raised a foretalon and began pinching one of her sharp-angled cheeks repeatedly. It was a trick she used while dreaming which always managed to wake her up. Only now, after many pinches with her new painful claws, she came to the realization that she was already awake. Again Marble looked at the silver bracelet. Something heavy dropped into her stomach as she considered the possibilities of what had transpired.

'The bracelets didn't have an IceWing disguise enchantment, I'm sure of it. Then...' she looked ruefully at her reflection in the silver, 'Did.. I do this? When I told it to turn me into an IceWing?'

Marble knew the stories about animus dragons. They tended not to end well. She shivered, feeling scared at the idea that she might hold the same dark power. Tentatively, hoping the effect was temporary, she removed the bracelet.

She was pleasantly startled to see the strange glimmering scales vanish to be replaced with her own familiar deep dark bluish ones the moment the bracelet was off. A whoosh of breath escaped her in a great sigh of relief. At least she wouldn't be stuck as an IceWing forever.

But her peace was short-lived as she returned to dwelling on what she may have done. Marble furrowed her brow as she remembered how animus dragons were tested; they issued a command to an object to do something, such as fly across the room. She grabbed one of the inkwells from the desk in order to perform one of her own and prove just what was going on.

Staring hard at the inkwell, and feeling a little silly, Marble commanded in a strong voice, "Inkwell, I order you to fly to the window and back to me!"

A second passed. Two. The inkwell remained inanimate in her talons.

Marble's confusion only increased. If she had any animus magic, surely that should have worked. Somehow the bracelet had obeyed her order, and she hadn't even meant it!

She put the inkwell back and picked up the bracelet, rotating it in her claws. Perhaps... this bracelet was one of the three? If that was the case, it was enchanted. It held magic inside of it. Marble wondered if, somehow, she'd manipulated that magic, rather than injecting her own like an animus would. It'd explain why the inkwell didn't do anything.

'I don't get it,' she thought with exasperation, 'There isn't much information out there about animus powers. Still, I've never heard of being able to change the magic already inside something without being able to create magic.', she decidedly tucked the bracelet into her satchel, feeling a new wave of curiosity.

If she'd found one bracelet here, that meant the other two were probably nearby. Marble's eyes darted to the scroll rack, which she upended in a burst of frantic energy. Five scrolls spilled to the floor, accompanied by the sound of metal striking stone. Scarcely believing her luck, Marble gathered up two of the scrolls. They had silver "binders" identical to the first bracelet. Feeling excitement building in her once more at the find, Marble removed them from the scrolls and placed them upon the desk.

Thinking for a moment, she decided to "test" them and see if they would respond to her like the first. Taking a breath, she picked up the first one, and slipped it onto her wrist.

Marble experimented with the bracelets for an hour. She found that they would obey her commands, unlike the other objects in the room. She could tell the bracelets to fly to the ceiling and back down and they would do so. That was fun at first until one of them almost hit her head on the way back down. The two new bracelets she found didn't have any visible effects when worn, like the first one had. Cautiously, she added the same IceWing spell to them and confirmed it was no fluke. In the end Marble was privately shaken by what had been revealed to her. If these three bracelets were indeed the lost Gift of Diplomacy, and thus enchanted, the fact that they alone responded to her commands proved her theory. Marble could, seemingly, control magic within enchanted objects, but not enchant a regular object with her own animus magic.

In a way this "Power" was even more distressing than her NightWing visions. At least that wasn't some freakish anomaly. Not once in her life had Marble learned anything about the ability to control animus magic without being a true animus. She eventually put the bracelets into her satchel and lay down in her nest of blankets to do some good, long thinking. Somewhere along the line, the haziness of exhaustion swept over her worries and dulled them. As the night passed she fell into a calm, dreamless sleep.

Outside, however, one of the trio was having difficulty resting. Torque lay near his brother, who was snoring softly on his back. His head was resting on his crossed forelegs. It held an expression he rarely let others see, if he could help it. His snout twisted as emotions of fear, doubt, and anger at himself wormed their way through his thoughts. Those who knew Torque would likely be baffled at his current state. He was always optimistic, the rock that everybody could hang on to for support. Yet, he held vulnerability of his own buried deep down inside.

Adder had caught glimpses of it over the years. But Torque did his best to keep it hidden from his brother. In his eyes, Adder needed him, and he couldn't allow himself to show that he, too, could crumble. It had become ingrained in Torque to shoulder the misery of others, ever since he and his brother had learned they were different. He wanted to do his best to make everyone smile, even if it was at a cost.

It was only in private moments that he allowed his shield to slip. The thoughts would typically try to bother him during the day, but among his brother and Marble he could push them away. Alone, late at night, they crept closer, like wolves closing on a kill.

Old taunts from some of the few, meaner SandWings echoed in Torque's ears.

"Geez, what a freak! Are you sure he's not just some mutant SkyWing?"

"Look out, it's the weird brothers."

"At least his brother looks kinda normal. I bet even the SkyWings wouldn't take him."

Fortunately most of the SandWings had somewhat accepted him by now. But those that thought him so out of place, their whispers stung. Out of the trio he had gotten it the worst; Adder, while also a hybrid, could almost pass for a regular SandWing with his appearance. Torque was an even mix of two tribes, something unusual-looking. For a moment the dark clouds hanging over his mind parted, as if for a ray of sunshine. A small smile crept onto Torque's snout as a memory of Marble flashed by.

"Strange? I think you look awesome! Your scales are bright like a blazing fire." she'd looked at him conspiratorially, "I bet Cyrus is jealous; he looks like boring old mud in comparison!"

And she'd laughed, a raucous but wonderful sound. Torque loved that about her; always brave and willing to fight back for those she cared about.

'Wait... loved?'

A familiar heat graced Torque's cheeks. He'd known he'd felt something for Marble for quite some time, but... he hadn't realized it'd gotten that far. He thought of their first meeting in the Wingery, when she'd asked why he had such colorful scales. He'd been nervous to confess his hybrid nature, but when he did, she smiled. She said she didn't care, because as far as she were concerned, he and Adder were the nicest dragonets she'd met.

He thought of how strong he felt alongside her sometimes. The worries that snapped at him became so distant until they faded away altogether. Her brash courage fueled Torque's own until he felt strong as a mountain. Marble brought out the best of him, there was no doubt.

'That's why I can't let her know.' he thought, his melancholy returning to cast a shadow over his mind.

There was the likelihood that she didn't feel the same, for one. He pictured confessing, and watching her regard him with disgust. How could she, furious and beautiful and brave, love an odd-looking coward like him? His outward demeanor was a sturdy facade, but sharing his feelings would also share his fear. It was, unfortunately, deeply entwined with his love. Fear of rejection had stalked Torque his whole life, at first due to his hybrid blood, but now it felt worse than ever. Just thinking about telling Marble how he felt, he could feel it's teeth at his throat...

'Stop it.' he scolded himself, squeezing his eyes shut and clasping his foretalons upon his head.

Torque thought back to Marble, how she defied every challenge she faced whether she won or lost. He couldn't let the fears win. He would have to face them, sooner or later. If he continued to run from them, they'd catch up and tear him apart. Torque lowered his foretalons and relaxed. It was time he stood his ground, and fought back. He had to let them go and move forward.

'Tomorrow...' he thought hazily, at last slipping into the realm of sleep, 'I'll tell her... tomorrow...'

Unbeknownst to Torque, it would have to be another tomorrow, for the coming one would be grave indeed.

Golden light poured across the dark, rocky spires of the Night City. It pervaded every dark crevice, chasing away the shadows that haunted and hid. Somewhere, on one of the highest ledges, the rays of sun fell upon a slumbering form.

His scales were shades of dull tan, not unlike the sand dunes which he had once called home. A thick, ugly scar twisted across his muzzle and down his jaw, marking him with a permanent snarl. If one looked close, they could see his sorry state of malnourishment. There was little fat beneath his skin, and his scales were flaking and drifting about him like dead leaves. Perhaps worn to distract from the wreckage of the dragon's body, he possessed a sparse arrangement of jewelry, all of it golden. A few hoop earrings hung from his ears where they hadn't been torn out. Around his forelegs were wound thick, heavy bracelets inlaid with topaz. Lastly, a small, battered circlet clung to his horns and head. It was dented and missing all it's jewels, except for a shard of onyx that seemed to have been messily welded into the center with dragonfire.

Littered around this dragon were various valuables. They were arranged almost like a nest, holding a smattering of silverware, knick-knacks and ornamental weapons. This measly hoard of scavenged things shifted and clinked as the dragon stirred. With a snort, and a deep rumble, his eyelids flickered open, seeming to narrow in affront at the sunlight pervading them.

He stood, slowly, and shook out his tattered wings. This scattered some of his collection, which he reordered swiftly and neatly. For several moments he stood, regarding his treasure. It was little, but it was his. And he would get more.

The dragon carefully arranged a few large and dusty ceramic pots to hide his treasure from view. When he was satisfied, he turned and walked leisurely to the edge of his precipice. He cast his gaze about the skeletal Night City that he had come to know so well. It was after he had nearly finished surveying, when he tensed. His left ear swiveled and twitched. A sound.

Not just any sound, either, but one he hadn't heard for a long time. It was a dragon - no, dragons - talking, somewhere below. A growl rumbled deep within his throat. Deciding to investigate before he took action, the dragon dove as silently as he could from his perch, pinpointing the location of the noise. It didn't take long to find; they were outside his home. The dragon stopped, circling above, observing, like a vulture spying carrion. These were not the usual interlopers. He'd been expecting other SandWings, perhaps hoping to get a lucky score that the raids had missed. One of them certainly looked like a SandWing, but the other two were strange indeed.

Standing beside the SandWing was... a SkyWing? The bright red-orange scales would have indicated as much. Yet, he was bulky, with rough scales, heavy wings, and a SandWing frill in place of spines. Strangest of all, he had a stinger at the end of his tail. A memory stirred in the murk of the skulking dragon's mind.

'I remember...' he thought, narrowing his eyes down at the strangers, 'Hybrids. Children of the spies.'

His jaw clenched at a flash of outrage. If they had come here, to steal, to kill...

The dragon's anger halted as his gaze met the third dragon. For a single moment, he wondered if he had at long last gone mad.

He shook his head, hard. 'No.. no I'm right. A NightWing, a living one, not a specter.' he paused in the air, hovering, to regard this motley group. 'I think.. yes. It must be her. Scorpion's pet.'

Now that he had a closer look, it seemed as though they were discussing something. The dragon strained his ears to listen.

"-Darkstalker's. The SandWings must've thought it was haunted, after all." it was the NightWing, speaking with a glance back at the door to his house.

The Almost-SandWing replied with a joke, "Maybe it was haunted, but you scared off all the ghosts!"

There was a brief pause, after which the... Split-Dragon said something in concern to the NightWing. She reached into the satchel strapped to her side, pulling out something with a glint all-too-familiar for the watching dragon.

Shiny, shimmering, splendorous silver. The watching dragon's thoughts evaporated before a rolling cloud of pure, almost animalistic rage. Dropping all pretense of stealth, he dove directly towards the dragonets with a scream of fury.

"Thieves! Interlopers! All the treasure in this city is mine, mine alone!"

Marble felt uneasy the moment she stepped outside. Torque and Adder, to her relief, were still about where she'd left them. Both of them were still asleep. Unfortunately, they wouldn't be for long. Marble felt as if she would burst if she waited any longer to tell them all she'd found, and all she'd been keeping hidden.

Some nudging and tired protests later, her friends sat before her bleary-eyed but curious. The sun had risen, gilding the dragonet's scales and bringing some luster to the plateau. The daylight did little to ease Marble's nerves. It brought out a lot of shadows.

With some hesitation, she began her explanation.

"The house... when I went in, it wasn't like the others." she said, one talon fidgeting with her satchel, "The place looked like it's barely been touched since the city was deserted."

"Do you mean..?" Torque asked warily, stealing a glance back at the door Marble had left ajar.

"Yeah." Marble nodded solemnly, "It's Darkstalker's. The SandWings must've thought it was haunted, after all."

Adder, in an effort to break the heavy mood, smiled and gestured at Marble with a wing. "Maybe it was haunted, but you scared off all the ghosts!"

The joke wasn't very effective this time. Marble looked down at her satchel, remembering how eerie Darkstalker's home was, ghosts or not. Torque's eyes crinkled in concern at this change, and he voiced his worry.

"Are you okay, Marble?"

In answer, she closed her eyes, sighed, and opened her satchel. She'd almost pulled out one of the bracelets, when something caught the corner of her eye. Marble froze, her unease crystallizing into sharp fear. It was the shadow of a dragon above them. Diving down.

Rushing forward to shove her friends out of the dragon's path, Marble cried, "Look out!"

In the same second, the unknown dragon roared a threat at them as he careened towards the plateau.

"Thieves! Interlopers! All the treasure in this city is mine, mine alone!"

"Go! Fly!"

Marble's command did not go unheeded, and the three dragonets pushed themselves into the air with a burst of adrenaline. The stranger snarled behind them, screaming with incoherent rage. The dragonets, being younger and in better shape, managed to outpace him somewhat. But the SandWing was fueled by desperate madness, and he would not give up the chase.

The four of them dove down into the city, the dragonets hoping to lose their pursuer amongst the many structures. But he knew every inch of the Night City, and exactly how to use it to his advantage. They were approaching one of the canyons, which frequently produced updrafts from gusts of wind blowing through them. Pumping his wings, the stranger thrust himself into a strong one and propelled himself towards the nearest dragonet, Torque. A pained roar tore through the air as the stranger landed a successful slash across Torque's flank. Biting back the pain, the dragonet swung himself around to whip his attacker in the head with his tail. This momentary stun gave Torque a crucial second more to push himself forward and away.

But the SandWing recovered, only growing in anger and determination. The dragons were heading towards the Diamond Plaza; Adder hoped he could get the stranger to fly into one of the numerous stalls and objects scattered around. If nothing else, it would slow him down.

"Oi, you ugly overgrown buzzard!" Adder jeered at the stranger in an attempt to get his attention.

The SandWing's mind was boiling with rage, and Adder's taunts worked as oil poured on a fire. The stranger, so angry that smoke rose from his snout, pushed himself in the direction of the noisy thorn in his side.

Adder made quick use of his natural agility, swiftly diving down near ground level and narrowly zipping past many long-forgotten booths and their wares. He couldn't help a burst of laughter as he heard several loud crashes and bumps from behind. The SandWing was in no condition for such rapid maneuvering, and it did not help that he was half-blinded by rage.

Even so, it enabled him to ignore these momentary flares of pain, and he quickly decided he'd rather smash his way straight to the infernal dragonet than bother with fancy flying. Adder was warned by a sudden spattering of moldy splinters and pottery shards on his back, but too late. He stifled a cry of pain as the Sandwing sunk his rotten teeth into the back end of his tail.

Fortunately, the three dragonets had all been trained for just such a situation as this. There were ways to make your opponent release a tail, most commonly by going for their eyes. That is what Adder did, more out of intstinctive reaction than thought. Twisting around sharply, wincing as he felt the SandWing's teeth grind deeper into his flesh, Adder made several sharp swipes at the face of his enemy. One of his talons slashed reasonably deep, and the SandWing released Adder's tail in a roar of outrage.

The freed dragonet pushed himself upwards, meeting with Torque and Marble who had come to help him. Their faces reflected both horror and fury, both of them staring at Adder's fresh injury. Though his tail was dripping and felt like it had been swarmed by fire-beetles, he did his best to address them.

"C'mon, don't worry about me. We need to keep going; I got him pretty good in one of his eyes, it should slow him down."

Moving hastily, the trio flew higher where the wind currents were unobstructed to propel themselves out of he plaza. The frail hope that they had lost their pursuer was quickly shattered as scream burst forth from behind, followed by seemingly incoherent cursing and yelling. With a brief glance, Marble could see the crazy old dragon pushing steadily closer. Drawing upon her training, she put together a plan.

"Guys, get into Scorpion Formation!" she yelled towards her friends. Expecting their confusion, she explained. "You're both injured and I'm not, if we do this we can wear him down!"

Scorpion formation was typically carried out in groups of three or four dragons, and involved one or two of the dragons at the rear acting offensively to protect those at the front. As the opponent was gradually exhausted, the defending dragons would close in around the target, akin to a pincer tactic, and attempt to finish them off. It worked best for small strike groups that would pick off enemies one by one in this manner.

Had he been closer, and his brain not so addled by his long isolation and instability, the SandWing may have recognized what the dragonets were about to do and acted to counter it. Instead, he merely rushed towards Marble, who had turned herself around in preparation to meet him in combat.

Her heart pounding with adrenaline, Marble tightened her focus and braced herself. She did her best to push her thoughts into the background, directing her fear and fury at the screaming dragon and letting loose a battle cry.

As she had anticipated, he was aiming to use his weight and slam into her. Folding her wings, she did a brief but sharp drop downward, managing to avoid this initial blow. But this old dragon wasn't as slow as he appeared, and mimicked Marble's move. She met him on his way down, biting into the shoulder of his left wing and slashing at his underside with her talons. Recognizing he would not be able to reach her with his teeth in such a position, he used his closest foreleg to try and bash her off. Though Marble held fast, her grip loosened with each hit. Recognizing their friend's danger, Adder and Torque chose that moment to join the fight from behind, slashing at the SandWing's tattered wing membranes.

With a grunt of effort, the SandWing gave his body a mighty shake, knocking the hybrid brothers with his wings and flinging Marble off. His snout twisted with a triumphant grin, he ripped into Marble's neck with his foreclaws while she was disoriented. As blood was spattered across her snout by the fierce winds, she opened her mouth and let loose a torrent of fire at the SandWing's face. Torque and Adder reciprocated with their own flames, managing to push their enemy away from them somewhat as he fought to block his already-damaged vision from further assault.

A persistent thought nagged at Marble, a fearful uncertainty. The pieces were falling into place; Equinox would be there at any moment, at least, she hoped. If he was, she wanted to stop him from crashing like a meteor as he had done in her vision.

Meanwhile, the SandWing's mind began to crumble upon itself. The pain, the searing fire, those damnable thieves! The madness was eating up his sanity from within. The fire ceased, for the moment... and something silvery glinted back, mocking him.

The dragon's final foundations of sanity gave way, his memories and emotions and delusions pouring together as he threw himself at Marble's satchel with the desperate energy of a cornered animal.

Fortunately, Marble, having seen his changing body language, pushed herself backwards with a pump of her wings. For a brief moment, the mad stranger's talons snagged on the satchel containing his prize. Feeling the tug, accompanied with a hot spike of fear at losing the bracelets, Marble swung herself around and managed to whack the SandWing with her tail.

"Go, get some distance, he's gone crazy!" yelled Adder, recognizing the threat of a mad opponent

It was something the dragonets had all been taught, and together they used what remaining strength they had in a frenzied dash through the upper spires of the Night City. Their hope was that the SandWing would smash into the stone architecture due to his complete fixation on hunting them.

Spittle flew from the SandWing's mouth as he screeched at the thief, the thief who couldn't be real. "Come here, you damn ghost! If there's any loot left in this city it's mine!"

Rubble pelted him... or was it hailstones? The weather in the dead kingdom was cold and wet sometimes, not like-

A flash of yellow and red, up ahead. Those two were odd, but they came from the place that wasn't cold and wet. There'd been a rather important bug there, sitting on her nest of twinkling gold. 'I only wanted a piece. She wouldn't let me.'

Was he a thief? A Jackal in the night, stealing away a heart in his greedy jaws? No, no-

A raw, bellowing sound cut through the fog of the SandWing's delirium, and something like a big black boulder fell upon him. But this wasn't more debris; it had wings and breath. Breath... that would burn...

'Burn!'

Flame, molten and almost driven by fury, it engulfed the SandWing's attacker; another NightWing ghost. His wing began to melt, the sheer heat too much for his brittle old scales. Recognizing the futility of escape, the NightWing gripped his enemy in a crushing embrace, the combined weight enough to send both dragons plummeting groundwards.

There was a great impact; the SandWing felt so many bones break in concert. A final shrill pain, preceding the silence that followed.

Well, this one took me awhile. I struggle somewhat to write battle scenes, and this one came together piece by piece. I rather enjoyed writing this SandWing, who's story you can see if you peer around a bit. There is more to come, and this chapter was a pretty significant one. I hope you readers enjoyed this, even if it was so late.