I do not own Wings of Fire.
Chapter 13
The memory Cerulean had witnessed only a few heartbeats ago was still vivid in her mind. The confidence and cockiness the dragon named Spire had felt was still rushing through her own veins, causing Cerulean to move about much more swiftly and surely than she normally would've. And yet even with this adrenaline coursing throughout her body, her wings were weighed down with dread and confusion.
Things were much more complex than she could ever imagine. And if this vision was a sign, everything would only get more difficult and confusing from here on out.
Still feeling down and lost, Cerulean found herself striding through the palace hallways as she made her way down to the library to meet up with Eddy. A twist in her gut reminded her through the haze that seemed to settle down on her mind that the spell to tell Archipelago and Spindrift and the others had been an utter failure, and that there was no way to send them a message that the meeting was starting.
What happened to my animus powers? she now thought, stumbling a bit as she glanced down at her talons. Chrysocolla walked dutifully a few paces behind, either because it was some rule that royal servants had to walk slower than royalty, or because she sensed that Cerulean wanted a few moments to herself, to think.
Knowing Chrysocolla, it was probably both.
Why did my powers fail me? They've worked before. But now when I tried to perform magic, all I got were those weird memories. Then a new thought dawned on her. If I was originally a SkyWing, then is it possible that I was once the dragonet named Spire? Just how long have I been a SeaWing for? I feel like it was my whole life, but animus magic can rewire your brain and mess with memories. What if Delta and Fen and the rest of my family are only a figment of imagination, created by whoever turned me into a SeaWing?
She realized that there was no time to delve deeper into this terrifying thought, so she left it alone, as a glistening pool whose depth was impossible to gauge just by watching, and whose surface reflected everything but revealed nothing below.
They were at the library now. A queer feeling lit up in Cerulean's stomach as Chrysocolla pulled open the library doors slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible. Most of the castle was asleep by now, but there were always dragons guarding the palace for thieves and possible assassins, and servants were known to wander about the corridors in the silence of night.
Still, despite the maid's best efforts, the doors let out a faint, drawn out creakthat sent eerie chills racing down Cerulean's spine. She swallowed her nervousness down as best she could, but as she and Chrysocolla entered the dark library, she felt it creeping back up her throat, like the ghost of a long dead dragon back to haunt her.
With another eerie creak, the doors shut with a muffled thump. It was even darker, as the candles that lit the outside corridor were cut off. Cerulean's favorite place was probably the library, and she'd never imagined it to look so chilling.
Cast in silver light from the moons that shone through the windows, every scroll shelf was a dragon in hiding, waiting to pounce the moment they let down their guard, and every surface that reflected light was a malevolent eye, watching their every move.
Normally the pearly moons were a comfort to Cerulean. They were untouchable celestial objects that brought a soaring feeling to her wings, chasing away her fears like they chased away the darkness of night. But now they seemed cold and distant, because even though their light spread to all the places they could reach, there were always places in shadow. Their light touched the library, but it was cut off by the harsher darkness of the place. Their saving grace could not reach Cerulean where she was now.
"Eddy?" she whispered. In the silence she heard nothing but her own voice echoed back, an even fainter breath. "Eddy?" she tried again, feeling a prick of confusion and apprehension.
"Something's not right," Chrysocolla said, her voice unusually low. They waited for a breath, but yet again there was no response.
Cerulean approached the nook where, earlier today - or at this point, yesterday - she and Storm, Archipelago, and Chrysocolla had sat and first discovered that Cerulean was a SkyWing. Perhaps Eddy had gone there and was waiting for her to find him. She found nothing there, not even a note that might explain where he'd gone or why he wasn't here to begin with.
"Cerulean," Chrysocolla spoke again, her voice a little louder now, so that it would carry to Cerulean. The maid had forgotten once again about decorative names. Fear was a thing that made everyone forget themselves. It was a faceless, blind dragon that stabbed at the hearts of every being it could reach. "He's not here. I think we should leave."
"But we said now," the princess protested quietly. "And he sent me a note, so he was definitely here. Maybe I should try a spell?"
Chrysocolla glanced around warily, eyeing the glowing windows and the shadowed shelves of scrolls. "I don't think that would help. Let's...let's leave. If you want to talk to anybody, I think we should head up to..." her voice trailed off.
"What?" asked Cerulean.
"Was that other guard Wave coming with Eddy to this meeting?" asked Chrysocolla, her voice sounding hoarse.
"Yes, I think so," Cerulean replied, recalling the note her friend had sent her earlier that night, when everything had made a little more sense and was definitely less creepy then it was now. "Why?"
The maid reached down and picked something up, holding it out to Cerulean.
"I think I found her," she replied. "Only..."
Only Wave was no longer a living, breathing dragon. She was now a beautifully detailed glass figurine, frozen in what seemed to be the last moments of her conscious life. Her wings were spread wide, and her snout was open in a snarl, revealing her sharp teeth. Her claws were outstretched, but it didn't look like she was trying to attack whoever had done this to her. The little glass figure was reaching for something, trying to grab whatever it was back from another, unknown dragon. Her glass eyes were blown wide with surprise and anger.
"Someone turned her to glass," Cerulean stated the obvious.
"Is she dead?" asked the maid, sounding horrified at the prospect.
"I don't think so," the princess replied with a nervous swallow. She took the glass figurine from Chrysocolla's talons and held Wave the figurine up to the pale light of the moons. The glass seemed to capture the silver, and for a moment the glass guard danced with fire. Then the light was cut off as Chrysocolla stepped in front of Cerulean.
"We need to leave," the maid ordered. "Now. We can study this later. I don't see anything else out of place. I don't know where Eddy's gone, but let's go now, before we meet the same fate as she did." She nodded to the figure of Wave.
Cerulean didn't need to be told twice. Clutching the figurine tightly in her talons, but not hard enough to crush it, she set out of the library at a brisk pace. Chrysocolla didn't bother staying behind her this time. She kept right up with the princess, rushing to exit the room of scrolls as quickly as possible.
What had happened to Wave deeply unsettled the heir. Just as she'd predicted, things had quickly gotten stranger and more mysterious. Not only was Wave now glass, but Eddy was also missing without an explanation. The meeting was supposed to clear the air between the two friends, reveal what had happened while they'd been apart. But instead, everything had only gotten more muddled and...
And Eddy was going to tell me something, Cerulean thought. I hope that he's genuinely not missing, and that he only ran away to avoid being glass-ified like Wave or something. This thought lifted her spirit a bit. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic and assuming the worst has happened.
She realized that Chrysocolla was not leading them in the direction of her quarters.
"Where are we going now?"
"Up to the princes' rooms," she replied. "I think we need to inform them of developments in addition to everything else you were going to tell them."
"Good idea," Cerulean replied.
They turned the corner, and ran right into the dragon they'd been looking for all night.
"Eddy!" Cerulean exclaimed, and then realized how loud she'd been and lowered her voice. "S-sorry. Are you alright?"
Her friend blinked at her, but there was something off in his green eyes. They looked like shards of broken ice; sharp and cold.
It took him an unusual amount of time to recognize her. "Cerulean," he finally said. "There you are."
"What happened?"
"I thought we were supposed to meet in the library," her friend said without answering her question.
"We were, but you weren't there, even after you sent me a note saying you were," Cerulean accused.
"Note." Eddy repeated, appearing confused. "What note?" His snout was frowning, but his eyes were still eerily expressionless.
"How come Wave is now a glass figurine?" Chrysocolla asked now.
"What do you mean?" asked the guard.
The maid snorted in annoyance, and then pushed forward. "Come on, keep walking. I don't think it's safe to be discussing this stuff out in the open."
"Where are we going?" asked Eddy, sounding a bit more like his usual self. His eyes seemed to thaw a bit as they continued on their voyage, but there was still something odd about him. It was like he'd become partially glass too, as though he too had been affected by some sort of enchantment.
"To the princes' room. The library was...off," explained Chrysocolla, sounding suspicious. "Here we are."
"Were we expecting guests?" asked Freakwave when he opened the door to his room.
"Hmm? We were waiting for a signal," Azure muttered sleepily.
Cerulean was on another wavelength entirely. "That's odd. Azure, did you, um, did you happen to have your SkyWing net up?"
"No," came the animus's reply. "Why?"
"No, that makes sense then," the princess said. "I was wondering why it didn't catch me."
"But I made sure that it would only catch SkyWings this time," Azure protested. "Right, Spindrift, Freakwave? You saw me for sure!"
"Yeah," Spindrift agreed, seeming distracted.
Eddy, Chrysocolla, and Cerulean stepped into the room. Moonlight slanted on carpet from the many windows along one wall, casting the room in a silver glow much softer than the one in the library. Several candles were also lit, brightening the room further.
"That's the thing, though," Cerulean began. "Azure, you cast the spell correctly the first time."
"Huh?" all three brothers asked, looking confused.
"But it caught you, so it was faulty," Azure protested.
"It wasn't," Chrysocolla now chimed in. She shot a sideways look at the purple dragonet, asking silent permission to continue. When Cerulean assented, she pressed on. "That net detected something before even we did."
"What do you mean?" asked Freakwave. "It's a net."
"An enchanted net," Chrysocolla corrected. "And it did what it was supposed to. It caught a SkyWing."
This sentence seemed to confuse everyone. The brothers and Eddy shared bewildered looks.
"Cerulean's a SkyWing?" Eddy took a stab, sounding disbelieving. He sounded a bit more like his usual self. The glassy look in his eye had vanished, replaced by a fire of confusion as he glanced around the room, avoiding Cerulean's gaze.
"Nah, she's definitely a SeaWing," Freakwave denied, poking one of Cerulean's wings as if it proved his point. "See?"
The princess cleared her throat. "I look like a SeaWing. But I'm not."
"Okay, hold up," Spindrift interrupted, sounding exasperated. "I knew that my life would change when I befriended you, but I never thought it would get this crazy."
"What do you mean? I'm plenty crazy," Freakwave said.
"But I think you're being overdramatic, Cerulean," Spindrift continued, frowning in her direction, his normally cheerful snout etched with doubt. "I mean, I'm overdramatic all the time, because that's my middle name, obviously, but still."
"You don't have a middle name," Azure deadpanned.
"I wish I was," Cerulean replied. "And m-maybe I am. But watch this." She paused, opening her snout to cast a spell, and then abruptly shut it again, remembering that the last time she'd tried to use her powers, she had been unsuccessful. Instead she asked, "Is Archipelago here?"
"Hmm? Someone say my name?"
"Oh right," Freakwave stated matter of factly. He'd been sitting on his bed, and as the sheets underneath him stirred, he hopped up, revealing a sleepy-looking Archipelago. "I forgot about you."
"So did we," Spindrift said. "Anyway, you were showing us?"
Cerulean now exchanged a look with Chrysocolla. What am I going to do now? My animus powers aren't working.
"Something weird's been happening." It was the maid who spoke. "Tonight Cerulean was trying to send you a message. But her magic wasn't working."
"You're an animus dragon?" Eddy asked, his green eyes blown wide. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"We only just found out," Cerulean explained quickly. "But I don't know if I actually am one now. Earlier tonight they weren't working. I just got weird memories that didn't belong to me. Azure, is it possible for animus magic to somehow...I don't know...rub off on other dragons? Like maybe somehow, your powers transferred over to me?"
Azure closed his eyes, appearing thoughtful. Then he opened them and shook his head. "No. I've never heard of such a thing, and even if it were possible, then why haven't Spindrift or Freakwave or any of my other brothers been able to cast enchantments? You must be an animus. But I can't explain why your powers aren't working."
"Maybe your powers only work in certain places," Archipelago suggested.
"But that wouldn't make sense," Eddy added his own opinion. "There's no such thing as specific animus magic or whatever you'd call that. Animus magic relies on its host, not on its surroundings."
"Why don't you try again?" Azure suggested. "Maybe you were just tired."
"Tired? What's the meaning of that words?" Freakwave asked unnecessarily.
"Alright," Cerulean said doubtfully. She looked around. "What can I enchant?"
Azure handed her a scroll. "Just use this scroll again. It's not really that important."
The princess took a breath. "I enchant this scroll to reveal the true identity of any dragon that should hold it."
The words uttered, she closed her eyes and waited to be bombarded by a barrage of images, unfamiliar red faces grinning and hissing at her, landscapes that she'd never seen before racing beneath her feet. But nothing happened.
"Wow, that was an interesting spell," Azure said instead. "I've never tried anything that broad. Has it worked?"
"Well, you certainly haven't changed," Spindrift commented dryly to his brother.
"Give it to me," Cerulean managed. "Um, please and thank you." She stretched out her talons. Azure reached out to transfer the scroll to her. She braced herself, half-expecting her scales to remain the same violet color. But the effect was instantaneous. Immediately her talons went red, as if stained by blood, and this time she could feel a shift in her stature and physique. Her wings grew larger, her shoulders broadened, her body and snout narrowed. She even felt slightly taller than before.
And in case she doubted her transformation, the expressions on Eddy's, Spindrift's, Azure's, and Freakwave's snouts were enough to tell her she was now a SkyWing. Even Chrysocolla and Archipelago, who knew and had seen her in this form before, looked taken aback.
Freakwave was the first to speak. He blinked very rapidly, and then said, "I know what this is. This is my sleep deprivation. I'm hallucinating. I should've listened to Spindrift."
"Flattering," his brother responded. "But unless I'm also sleep deprived than no, you are not hallucinating."
Now Azure spoke up, sounding more triumphant and annoyed than shocked. "I told you I enchanted that net correctly, but you all said no, I was just an incompetent animus."
"You believed it," Freakwave pointed out.
Eddy cocked his head, examining Cerulean's scales. "Actually, if you think about it, this kind of makes sense."
Cerulean took a breath. "So," she spoke, and immediately winced. That voice was back again. "So," she tried once more, "earlier today, Storm, Chrysocolla, Archipelago, and I discovered that I am, in fact, somehow a SkyWing."
"Wow, we let you go for one moment and this happens," Spindrift said with a sigh.
There were a few beats of silence. Either everyone was too shocked to say anything, or the late hour had finally sunk in and everyone was exhausted beyond words.
"I still think I'm hallucinating," Freakwave announced, flopping down on a bed. He promptly fell asleep.
Cerulean set the scroll back down. A cold feeling had come over her. She shivered a bit, wondering for a brief moment why she felt so empty all of a sudden. Then she recalled that animus dragons supposedly lost a bit of their soul every time they enchanted something. This must be a side affect. It was odd, though, that she hadn't experienced this feeling before. This spell hadn't been her first.
"You okay, Cerulean?" Chrysocolla asked gently. She patted the edge of Spindrift's bed, and Cerulean sat down there. "Your eyes are kind of...glassy."
"Yeah, I'm fine," she replied.
"Why don't you tell us a bit about those memories you saw when you tried last time to cast a spell," the maid suggested.
Cerulean set down the enchanted scroll, relieved to see her scales melt back to the violet she was familiar with. She saw the other dragons around her relax a bit too, though they still looked guarded and moved warily around her. Their statures were much more tense than before. But she supposed that this was an appropriate response.
"Speaking of which," she began. "Why did my powers work now, and not in my room?"
There were a few murmurs of suggestion, but these quickly died out. Nobody had any idea.
So Cerulean recounted the strange visions she'd seen when she'd tried to cast an enchantment to send the brothers a message. It was hard. The memories had mostly come in bursts of vividness.
"It was a dragon named Spire," Cerulean concluded, swallowing. "She - I think it was a she - was a SkyWing, and yet...she had plans for the SeaWings, not her own tribe."
These last words were met with silence.
"Are you sure you're not part NightWing?" asked Eddy. "That sounds like prophetic powers if you ask me."
Cerulean shook her head. "I'm pretty sure those were memories. But not mine."
"How do you know?" tried Archipelago. "Because, you know, um, you're actually a SkyWing? Sorry, sorry, that was obvious, you already know. But what I'm trying to say is, how do you know you actually aren't Spire?"
Nobody responded. It was a valid point, but Cerulean didn't have any words to tell the others that somehow, inexplicably, she just knew that she was not Spire.
"Does anyone know what happened to Mother after she was supposedly killed by Queen Coral?" Archipelago asked at last.
"Some say she was somehow reincarnated," Eddy replied. "That's the story that's been circulating among the guards."
"That's ludicrous," Chrysocolla protested. "I'm not an expert on animus magic, but surely nothing can bring a dragon back from the dead."
"But look at it this way," the guard explained. "The queen's a clever dragon. She left behind a stone statue that killed countless female heirs before they were hatched, because she thought that she could win the contest. And she would've. It was only Coral's tail weapon that killed her, something nobody expected. Orca was only seven at the time. You have to look at the situation and think that it's odd that someone so young could almost kill someone with much more experience. So logically speaking, the queen might've made a backup plan, somehow, incase she was killed in battle."
"Even so, I stick by my previous statement," Chrysocolla deadpanned. "Nothing can bring a dragon back from the dead. Even if Her Majesty had made plans, nothing would've changed the fact that she was dead."
A bizarre idea sprung fully formed from Cerulean's mind. She picked up the statue of Wave, which upon entering the room she'd set down on the table. She held it up. "Unless...unless the dragon that challenged Coral wasn't Orca at all."
"What?"
"This is - was - Wave," Cerulean said, displaying the figurine.
Eddy's eyes widened when he saw the glass.
"EVEN MORE CRAZY THINGS!" Spindrift exclaimed. "I'm not sure if I'm loving this or not anymore."
"But if a dragon can be turned to glass, or some other non-living statue," Cerulean explained, "then who's to say the opposite can't be true? The queen was a very good sculpture, right? What if she made a carving of herself, and enchanted it to life, to challenge Coral? Because then, even if the statue died in battle, she'd still be alive to plan out another strategy, and if the statue won, she could ascend to the throne, get rid of it, and nobody would know better."
"That's quite something to accuse the queen of," Eddy said, sounding serious. "But it's not completely impossible."
"But then, if that's true," Spindrift countered, "then why didn't Mother come back after losing the contest? Where did she go?"
"And that's what we need to find out," Azure spoke. "I actually think that Cerulean might be right. Somehow, Mother replaced herself with a statue. But we don't know where she went for the next few years afterwards, or what she did. Hypothetically speaking, she could've somehow enchanted Cerulean the SkyWing into Cerulean the SeaWing during that time. I'm not sure how, or why. But like Eddy said, Mother's a clever dragon, and she has reasons for everything."
"Great," Cerulean said hollowly.
There were a few heartbeats of silence as their minds digested these new possibilities. The princess's mind raced around without actually thinking of anything.
"Well, this was enlightening and dramatic as always," Spindrift said. "I can't wait until I'm an old grumpy dragon like Tetra, so that I can go about the castle saying, 'Now you, young'uns, thinking you've seen so much. Lemme tell you, when I was your age, I found out that the heir to the throne was actually a SkyWing and an animus and stopped an extremely corrupt monarch from taking over the world.'"
"Who says Her Majesty's corrupt?" snapped Chrysocolla, sounding defensive. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. Excuse my tone."
"Wait, are you talking to me? Sorry, it's weird hearing dragons address me so formally. AHEM - It's okay," Spindrift said, assuming a mock dignified expression and voice. "I was just being overdramatic. Because if Cerulean can be overdramatic, then so can I. And I was just kidding!" he added when he saw the purple dragonet flare indignantly. "Fine, I guess I have to be super serious from now on. Well, any other dramatic secrets we have to share? Eddy, are you secretly my brother? Archipelago, have you murdered anyone else in the past few hours?" Chrysocolla, are you actually Turtle in disguise?"
"Of course not, that would be weird," Chrysocolla said, just as sharply as she'd spoken earlier. This time she didn't sound very remorseful.
Archipelago seemed to shrink down at Spindrift's careless words about him murdering others.
"Currents and clams, I was just kidding!" Spindrift defended. "But in all serious, are we done? My brain hurts with everything I've just learned, and my bed has never looked so appetizing."
"You plan on eating your bed," Azure deadpanned. Spindrift and he dissolved into a flurry of arguments. Archipelago had drifted off to sleep again, still tucked into Freakwave's bed, curled up next to his sleeping brother. Eddy appeared to be deep in thought, so by some unspoken agreement, Chrysocolla and Cerulean rose as one and made to exit the room. Dawn was quick to approach, and it was best to get some sleep, even if it was only a few hours' worth.
"Wait," Eddy said before anyone could leave. "I actually do have something to say."
Author's Note: Enjoy! About not updating...we're not going to talk about that. Hope you liked! And thanks for all the reviews! That means a lot and I'm a horrible person so excuse me while I go and cry myself to sleep...
Special thanks to my WONDERFUL betas! I appreciate you guys so much.
MysticFire101: You did review! And I really appreciate it! So don't apologize! You did, you're right! IT'S OKAY! Please breath! Yay, we're all warm and fuzzy on the inside! I'm glad you liked the last chapter, and hopefully this one was also up to standard! Plenty of suspense, hopefully (MWAHAHA) and I'm hoping things are making sense. I get what you're saying. Orca does, doesn't she? Good to know that's coming across. I'm glad I managing to keep her to the brief canon description we have of her. It is cool! Glad you like the name Brisk, but I'll probably stick with Breeze. You'll have to find out who Spire is...that should be coming up, though! If all goes to plan, Chapter 18 will reveal quite a bit as we move into Part Three, whose title I already know. You might be right, though! Sorry about confusion. I'M REALLY GLAD YOU LOVE THE STORY! THAT MAKES ME SO WARM AND FUZZY ON THE INSIDE! Thank you for reading and reviewing.
Celestialskyfire: Cerulean is a SkyWing! Hehe. I can now be open with sharing that fact because it has all been revealed! I'm really glad you find this suspenseful, and thank you for the compliment! That's great to know and really brings a smile to my face. Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Thank you for reading and reviewing.
Nany Ruiz: FOURTH MOONS AND FIREBALLS! I'M SORRY THAT I'VE BEEN M.I.A. A.K.A. IN A WRITING BLOCK COMA FOR SO LONG. (Thanks for your concern, it's appreciated!) Anyway, YOUR WELCOME AND IT'S OKAY IF YOU CAN'T SPELL I DON'T CARE! I'm glad to know you like reading this! And I'm sorry for this update taking ages and ages and ages and...well, you get the idea. I hope to continue posting and I will definitely try to keep up the good work! Thank you for reading and reviewing.
Jaysong: YAY! I am indeed not dead! So don't plan my funeral...yet. I hope that there was lots of cake in the planned one, though. So yeah. But happy (very exceedingly late) birthday! I hope you had lots of fun celebrating. Yay! Of course you can ask really random questions and make the characters answer! That can be a thing. I like random questions. As long as, you know, I can sort of answer them? Randomness is awesome. I love randomness. It is definitely a good thing, unlike predictability, which is also semi-good but only for predicting the future. ANYWAYS! I'm so glad you liked the last chapter, and I'm sorry I took ages to update. But glad you look forward to upcoming posts! I'm thinking that at the end of this story, I might do a sequel from Eddy or Archipelago's point of view but shh it's too early and you heard nothing. Please don't cry! I won't stop writing. I'm definitely going to try to see this through the end, even if it takes a while. Everything shall be explained in the future! (I hope.) Glad you liked the part with Tsunami. Haha, yes! Freakwave would be a lovely spirit animal. (Sleep deprivation is definitely a fact of life. Technically speaking it's a lack of your body producing melatonin but sorry I'm in biology and I've got to do a project on that so now whenever someone mentions sleep I go all super biology on them). I'M GLAD YOU'RE EXCITED FOR THIS CHAPTER!
Hmm, that's interesting that you already had an account, and yes, I do know how to change that! If you log on, go to Account, and press Settings, you should be able to find a box thing with User Name, and then Change in blue. Hope that helped! Glad you like my characterization of Spindrift and it's always a relief/compliment to know that from the person who let me use him! I'M PSYCHIC. IT'S A FACT. Thanks for the compliment. YOU ARE AMAZING! BYE! Thank you for reading and reviewing.
Jadewolf334: Thank you! I'm glad you thought so! Sorry for perplexing you. Hopefully, I will be able to sum everything up nicely. It's one of those things where I know why and how everything is happening and I have everything explained in my head, but I'm not sure if everything that makes sense in my head will make sense in written words, if you know what I mean. I love SkyWings too! This is random, but to be honest I for some reason thought Burn, Blister, and Blaze were SkyWings for like, the first three books. The tribe will likely be a big part of this! *laughs evilly to best of ability* (Glad you like the name Spire, by the way! One of my few decent dragon names) yes, yes, what wonderful ingredients for my evil brew. All shall be revealed...at some point...in the next few chapters...and the ones after those...I'M SO SAD ABOUT YOUR STORY! But it's okay. It's fabulous and I can read your previous chapters over. I hope you update again soon, but take your time! It's about the quality, not about the sheer number of chapters you can publish in a short amount of time! Good luck, and thanks again! I'm glad you love this story so much! That makes me so happy! Haha. XD. Thank you for reading and reviewing!
BrightMind: Yeah, I often tend to fall into the 'sorry' pattern, as well as the 'like,' 'um,' and 'you know,' patterns. Indeed it does. XD.
In a way I think that the pressure is good. For me at the very least, it's very refreshing to see that people enjoy my writing, and knowing that people want me to update soon definitely motivates to start writing up a next chapter. I think that originally I definitely did what you didn't want writer's to do - updating as quickly as possible, even if it came at the expense of the writing. Now I try to only write when I feel the inspiration. I once read a fan fiction by an author who often talked about having a writing Muse who sometimes cooperated with her and sometimes didn't. At the time I didn't understand what she meant and thought that this was dumb, but now I really understand what she meant. I really do enjoy writing, not just this story, but the craft in general. It's great to lose yourself in characters and plot lines and forget about that big LA essay you have due next week or something like that (not that I completely procrastinate XD.) Thank you very much!
I always appreciate your criticism. I'm sorry if the chapters have been lacking the quality that the first chapters did. I'm hoping that these middle chapters will get a bit more exciting after I've cleared out all the speculations. I'm hoping that in the next few chapters there will be more interactions between Orca and Cerulean, as I find that I have lacked those recently, and additionally more with animus. I'm also thinking there will be a lot of flying at some point in the near future. I'll also try to develop side characters a bit more so it will be easier to tell if they are under Orca's influence, if at all. I'll also try to make things more obvious. I'm always slightly worried that I'm being too obvious in my writing, and I definitely struggle with hints. As the author who knows what's going to happen, I always see every hint I place in the writing as a dead giveaway, so I need to figure out the balance between being too subtle and too blatant.
So far it looks like all the really big surprises are going to ease off for the next few chapters. I do have two more things planned that will move into Part Three, but answers will likely/hopefully be coming soon. I'm going to try to not include a triangle relationship between Cerulean, Eddy, and Archipelago. Wouldn't mind writing a romantic pairing, but moons, unless its plot-relevant, I can't stand romantic drama :) Thank you for all the criticism. I will keep it in mind. I hope you'll continue to read! Thank you for your honesty, and for reading and reviewing.
InsertNameHere: OH MY MOONS IT'S AN APOCALYPSE I DID UPDATE EVEN IF IT TOOK FOREVER. IT MEANS A LOT THAT YOU CHECK EVERY DAY. I'M GLAD YOU LIKE THE STORY. YOU'RE WELCOME. XD. It's okay, you are not a murderer. There is actually no way to delete an account that I know of (I looked it up). If you want to make it like you never existed, you've done as much as you could. I shall not sue you! And don't feel bad about disabling your account. You do what feels right! But you will always be the awesomest-est-est, so there! Thank you for the congratulations. Thank you for the compliments. Beluga is a wonderful spirit animal! THANK YOU FOR READING AND REVIEWING.
AJKC Water Molecule: Me too! I'm glad you're liking the story! Thank you for reading and reviewing!
Fatespeaker: Well, I'm glad you gave this a try! And don't worry, I relate. When I can read, I do lots of it! It's always very interesting to see all the fan fictions and books out there! Happy spring break (although you're probably back in school at this point), and I'm super thrilled that you decided to give this story a try. I'm glad you think it's cool! That means a lot, coming from you, because all your stories are amazing and you must be some kind of goddess of literature. Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Thank you for reading and reviewing!
OH MY MOONS, I DID NOT REALIZE HOW MANY REVIEWS THERE WERE. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE SUPPORT!