Seven years ago. That was the exact time of the massacre and thievery, to be exact. Seven years ago, on a clear night, which had been meant to be a celebration. Seven years ago, in the very hatchery of the IceWing palace.

Talons had scraped over the ice, their pale serrated edges digging into the eggshells as the dragon made quick work of the eggs. For his only job was to get only to get one egg, specifically, and kill off most of the others to eliminate any potential threat from dragonets growing up under the parents who were already a big enough threat.

To choose one, though. The IceWing tilted his head, studying the eggs with a sort of cold black detachment lingering in the depths of his eyes. A pile of eggshells lay in the corner, poorly hidden. But, then again, that wasn't his job. He wasn't supposed to hide the shells of the broken eggs, for they would surely be discovered soon, his job was just to find that one egg.

His talons scraped over the last broken egg with a hiss-shh-shh sound, and he tossed it aside, shaking his talons off. His tail dragged along the ice behind him as he studied the rest of the hatchery, pacing back and forth as he recalled his orders.

"Kill those we know will grow up under our enemy's influence." His voice was shallow, harsh, like the winter wind whistling over the sea on a very cold night. "Pick out the egg of a useful dragon, preferably one we can control. Pick out a healthy one, one we can train to be our own little assassin," He recited the well-remembered orders.

He tilted his head, none of the eggs really standing out to him from the pile. There was an extremely pale blue egg in one corner, almost giving off a light of its own, but he didn't look at it. To be frank, that one creeped him out. Instead, his vision swung around to the center of the room, where a medium-sized dull white egg with a few black speckles on top of it sat peacefully.

He stepped toward it, tongue flicking out as he smiled. Oh yes, this should do wonderfully. Lifting the egg carefully into his brown seal-hide satchel, he turned out of the hatchery, knowing full-well that the queen's meeting would be over very soon and that he would have to be long-gone before any of the guards so much as glanced at those eggshells.

Looking down at the little egg, nestled peacefully in his satchel, a smile twitched across his face. "You, little one, are going to be our little assassin. Barrow will make sure of that. Yes… quite a marvelous plan of hers, it truly is. I can't wait."

And the IceWing spread his wings. He glanced back at the palace with a kind of detached loathing, before allowing the wind to carry him up, up, and away from that place, with the stolen egg tucked securely by his side.

…

...

~Present Day~

Wren

Wren ducked around Deimos's blow, crouching and swishing her tail across the blackened ground of the arena. She looked up, frost-breath hissing in her throat, but he was faster. His talons clamped down on her snout, and he flung her to the side. Feeling her side smack into the wall, she slid down, before rolling up onto her feet once again. She tried to remember what her trainer had pounded into her head in endless lesson-after-lesson.

Just repeat this in your head. But her head was swimming from the blow, and she staggered on her feet, slumping sideways. Still, the words swam around in her mind, somehow bubbling their way to the surface. Relentless, but she didn't feel relentless. She felt as if she just wanted to lay her head on her talons and sleep for a few centuries, and never look at any of these dragons again. Quick, but the blow had made her movements sluggish. But… there's also clever… Wren smirked to herself, knowing that even in her injured state she could certainly outsmart Deimos.

Laying there limply, she closed her eyes, as if she had given up, but tensed up as she got ready for his next attack. Deimos let out a triumphant roar, and the trainer clicked her tongue disdainfully at the pile of dull ice-colored scales slumped on the floor that was Wren.

Deimos walked over, raising his talon as if to slash out at her again, but she cracked open her eye and watched as his talons came down. Come on, test me, NightWing. His claws were a spike-length from her muzzle, when she lashed out her own wings, deflected the blow, and leaped up, ignoring the way the sudden movement made her head throb.

Deimos stumbled backward, a split-second of surprise clouding his vision. It wasn't much, and he recovered fast, but it was all she needed. She whisked her whip-thin tail under his front legs, and he fell chin-down onto the ground as she sprung up into the air and brought her jaws down, right on the back of his neck.

She didn't say anything, she couldn't, but she glared at her trainer defiantly, daring her to insult the move. The trainer, however, simply turned to mark a victory for Wren on her scroll. Wren growled low in her throat, twisting her jaws as she felt Deimos squirm. Suddenly, the black and blue dragon lay perfectly still, knowing that her jaws could twist in a second and kill him.

She could feel him swallow, and felt pride swelled in her chest. "Gonna kill me, whale-face?" He asked, though she could feel the small tremor in his voice. She let go, stepping away with a smirk on her face. "Not this time, I'd rather save it for a day when you're being extra annoying."

It wasn't like she would have killed Deimos, anyhow. They had trained together in this place since they were dragonets, and, besides, to kill an ally was as good as a death sentence.

Deimos laughed, rubbing his neck as he looked over at her. There was a strange expression in his eyes, one she hadn't seen very often. Was that… respect? "Well, lucky for both of us, I don't think there'll be much chance for any of that. Especially now."

She tilted her head, wrinkling up her snout in a kind of 'what?' expression. Deimos just looked back at her with an equally confused expression, managing to mutter out. "You don't know? Well, you finally beat me, so you're good enough to be a real assassin now. Your job starts now, Wren. Congratulations."

The trainer looked up from over her scroll, where she was jotting down notes, and glared pointedly at Deimos. "Yes, that is true, but it is certainly not your place to be telling her that." She then turned to Wren, face twisted in a slightly... envious… expression. "You will get your task with Barrow as soon as I get your notes approved. Be ready and at your best tomorrow at sunrise."

Wren dipped her head in the respectful fashion that was commonly shown to dragons of higher ranking, and turned to leave the arena, mind reeling. She was going to meet Barrow, the very dragon who had taken her egg for the great cause of the revenge upon the dragon tribes. Well, the one who had ordered her egg to be taken, at least. A brief image flashed in her mind of what would be now if her egg had not been selected, and she shuddered.

She could hardly imagine growing up like that, back in the Ice Kingdom, with no idea of the evil of any of the dragons around her. She might even have joined the IceWing army, fighting eventually in the war that Barrow was planning, but on the wrong side. She shuddered for a moment, closing her eyes and thinking of the fact that she was rescued from that future with a very grateful feeling in her heart.

Lost in these thoughts, she bumped awkwardly into a heavily scarred, small skywing slipping down the passageway. He snapped his teeth at her and smoke blew out his mouth, but she simply hissed in return and wrinkled up her nose in a snarl. For there were no apologies here, no, they were all working for the same cause, after all.

Revenge, and although Wren really didn't have anyone outside this place that she even knew, she had grown up believing that Barrow was the heroine of this if it were to be written story, if it were to ever be written down in a scroll. She had grown up believing that she was on the right side, and that revenge and justice were one and the same. She was dutifully loyal to these dragons, and, especially, the one in command. The one she would be meeting the very next morning…

She turned into her little cave down the hall, flopping down on the small slab of cool rock in the corner. It was damp, and small. Four gray walls with a somewhat melted-looking opening in the entrance, as if a dragon had decided the door was too small and instead decided to crash their own way through it. She turned around, exhaling frost-breath onto the small puddle of water and watching as it froze over, before laying down on it and letting out an exhausted sigh.

When she lay on the small slab of ice, she felt more at home than she ever had in the hot arena, with other dragons fire heating the place up like the Sand Kingdom, until it was nearly unbearable.

But here, she felt better, more healthy, even. It was as if she was finally home. Now, the cool moist crevices seeping with water bothered almost all of the other dragons, for they were those who loved or at least preferred heat. But not her, which was why she had agreed to take the lowest, coldest cell. Here, she didn't have to listen to the other dragons shivering and whining all night.

She lay her head on her talons, wondering for a moment what it would be like in the ice kingdom, if she did get a job there. She likely would, seeing as she was the only assassin able to withstand the freezing temperatures that lay in the heart of the ice kingdom. She closed her pale brown eyes, slowly drifting into a shallow sleep.

"Wake up, Whaleface."

She blinked the haze out of her eyes, watching as Deimos's black-scaled face came into view. She would have groaned in frustration at being woken up so early, but she bit it back. Today was the day she was supposed to get an assignment and start acting like a real assassin, after all. She nodded to Deimos, and straightened herself up.

Looking into the little puddle that had been her ice last night, she studied her reflection. She looked tired and a bit disheveled, with her scales having been stained a watery brown from the puddle.

"Do I have time to wash off in the river?" She asked, turning back to Deimos expectantly.

"Ah, yes, I believe so." He smiled, folding his dark wings back behind him and shifting his talons on the floor in an odd manner.

Wren had been training with Deimos since she was a dragonet of about one year of age. She had been sitting in one of the large abandoned, echo-y chambers of this old prison, and a few dragons of Barrow's alliance had brought in this little slightly beat-up looking hybrid dragonet. The two had been paired together in the arena for quite a long time, and had generally grown up together.

Wren shook herself out of the memory, briskly striding out of the little underground cell and spreading her wings in the air, taking off. She heard Deimos's wingbeats close behind her, and she couldn't help but turn back and look at him. "And what are you doing following me?" She raised an eyebrow skeptically, before turning and flying off, hoping he would just make up some excuse and leave her alone.

"Need to talk to you. Alone." Deimos was uncharacteristically cold-sounding, though that could just be because he was trying to hide something in his voice.

She let out a puff of annoyance, knowing perfectly well that Deimos was stubborn and wouldn't listen to her if she told him to leave her alone, anyway.

Hissing through her teeth, she ignored him with a scowl and instead swooped down toward the river. As soon as she plunged in, she felt more refreshed and awake. It was crisp and cold, and immediately rinsed all of the muck off her scales.

She allowed herself a few seconds to enjoy the water, before flapping out and whirling around to start heading back to Barrow and where she was supposed to be getting to right now. To her surprise, she felt Deimos's talon resting on her shoulder, and she spun around to face him, ready to tell him off for trying to hold her off any longer.

Before she could open her mouth to speak, though, he put a talon to her snout in a shushing gesture and looked at her straight in the eyes. His were sparkling dark blue, with little flecks of bright scattered through like stars in the night sky.

"I know, frost-breath, I know. You have to go." He seemed to almost hesitate for a moment, but hesitation was never encouraged here, and they had both grown up saying whatever they wanted and not caring about petty feelings. "But… I needed to tell you something before you left."

Wren tilted her head, sun gleaming off her scales as she studied him carefully. Deimos was never this serious, not once. He had her attention, for the moment, at least. He took her chin in one of his talons, looking her in the eye. "You, you and me. We're made for one another, Wren. Whatever happens in the Ice Kingdom, we'll come back to each other… and-"

But he was cut off by a semi-loud roar from a burly guard below, who had tilted his head back to yell that the meeting was starting in about a minute. Wren looked Deimos full in the face, too shocked to say anything. And then she broke his gaze, and, without a word, swooped down toward the guard who had yelled the warning.

Her talons thunked into the stone, and she strode forward into a semicircular area with broken columns lining it on either side. In the middle, there was a crumbling rectangular tunnel sloping down into the ground. Since the dragons apparently weren't in the circle, she slid her way down into the tunnel.

She couldn't help but wrinkle her nose at the stifling heat and burning smell that greeted her once she was under, or the slippery… well, she at least hoped that was algae. Once she reached the bottom of the tunnel, she picked herself up and composed herself as best she could, remembering her lectures on posture and confidence she had when she was little more than a two-year-old dragonet.

She straightened her spine, pushed her wings back flat against her back, and leveled her head. She began to walk down the long, twisty, narrow, utterly creepy and way too uncomfortably warm tunnel. There wasn't enough time to be perfect, though, she had to hurry. She peered both ways, looking for any sign of a chamber that the meeting could be held in.

Nearly walking right by the entrance, she only paused when she heard faint murmurs of other dragons inside. She backed up a few paces, poking her head into a slightly cooler, less damp cave that you would almost certainly miss if you weren't familiar with the odd ways of the ruins that Barrow's allegiance was based in.

She slipped in, making as little noise as possible, and paused a moment to observe the cavern. It was a larger, more open cave, with a jagged and steep rock slanting down to a much lower and darker pedestal in the middle. And on that pedestal, with her back turned and a black cloak clasped across her slight shoulders, was Barrow.

Wren sucked in a breath of trepidation and awe, unable to take her eyes off the outline of that one dragon. The one she had never seen before. The one who was in charge of all of this, and the one who had made sure she was hatched here and trained properly.

Her talons clinked on the damp stone as she sat down about halfway down the slanted rock face, straightening up as much as possible and attempting to drop a mask over her awe-struck and slightly nervous expression.

She peered through the dusky light at the cloaked figure below. She couldn't tell what Barrow was doing, but it looked like the older dragon was simply sitting there with her back turned until all of the others had joined them. Wren looked around, wondering who it was who was late, and wincing as she felt the tremor from a boulder rolling into place at the entrance, sealing off any attempted entrance or exit.

Barrow had turned around by now, and was looking up at all the dragons around her. She was quite the small dragon, actually, only a bit larger than Wren. And Wren was only around 6 years old.

Barrow turned around finally, raising her bright gaze to the dragons watching above. The light shone off of her eyes, causing them to give off a faint glow in the dim light. Her cloak swished around her talons, and she spoke.

Wren wasn't sure what she would have expected, but this wasn't it. The voice that belonged to Barrow was hollow, lifeless. It echoed like an empty cave completely devoid of life, into which a stone was being thrown. It wasn't so much the vocals that were scary, it was the monotony of it. The careful deliberation with which she said each word, as if she had thought them through very carefully. The vocals themselves were a normal pitch, slightly deeper and more gravelly than usual. But there was something about her expression as she talked, the way she moved her mouth. You could just tell that this was a dragon who had metaphorical ice running through her veins, a dragon who had seen the bad side of the world and never truly came back from it.

"Today I have a very important mission, one assigned to a younger dragon in this allegiance against pyrrhia. This dragon, however, has proven herself on multiple occasions, with the little tasks we assigned to her in that pathetic scouting wing just north of here."

Wren shivered slightly as the memories flooded back to her. It felt all wrong, that mission. She had been sent there with Deimos to dispatch immediately of several younger soldiers-in-training, around the same age as they had been at that time. She had remembered that night, almost as if it were yesterday.

(flashback time)

Wren glided slowly over the mountaintop, Deimos slightly in front of her. They knew what they had to do, for their trainer had told them that it was just a little test to see if they were ready to advance in training as an assassin for Barrow.

She turned down, dull pale gray wings standing out in the dusk, while Deimos was hardly more visible than a shadow on a dark night. She had felt a slight twinge of jealousy in her heart, knowing that she had to prove them all wrong and beat Deimos for once, this time. She dove quickly down.

The camp was laid out in a simple manner, the dragon tribe being skywings this time. One of them had noticed something a bit off on a part of their scouting trip, and had dragged their sibling and wing leader along with them to investigate the strange activity. Two of the dragons were siblings, and those were the ones she and Deimos had been assigned to kill. When they were finished with that, the older skywing would be so infuriated he would almost surely follow their trail back right into an ambush of more skilled fighters, capable of killing a dragon as skilled as he was.

She turned her attention back to the task at hand, perking her ears to catch any sounds from below that could sign that the skywings were already alerted to their presence there. Deimos had seemingly vanished, and Wren sighed. But she wasn't going to let him get away with it this time, she wasn't going to just let him beat her in this that easily, even though it wasn't really a competition.

Setting down lightly, she tensed her body, every nerve alert. She felt as if she were ready to spring halfway across Pyrrhia with all the adrenaline bunched up in her muscles. She moved into the shadows, sliding fluidly around a few of the tents. Poking her head into several of the tents, she decided by process of elimination and sense that the two target dragons must be in the little tent there, one glowing with a pale flickering firelight.

She poked her head in, eyes scanning quickly around the room for any immediate danger to her own safety. She could see a line of weapons lining one of the walls of the tent, but none near the sleeping forms of the two dragons in the center of the tent.

Turning her eyes to the sleeping forms, she took in the details of both dragons quickly, while simultaneously sliding a blade out of the short sleeve that was bound around her front leg. It was a short disk of a blade, and she had to hold it carefully so as not to cut her palm with the razor-sharp edge.

She crept closer, the firelight glinting off the golden-red scales of the sleeping dragons before her. They looked so peaceful… so… at ease. She shuddered, wondering for a moment if this is what she should be doing. She glanced at the peaceful face of the smaller skywing, and her blood ran cold.

Who was she to kill these dragons, who was she to decide if a life was worth taking or leaving be? She shuddered at the prospect of that skywing never breathing again, and took a step back. What was wrong with her? This wasn't how the assignment was supposed to go. She was supposed to do it without hesitation, to prove her loyalty. This was the reason she hadn't been able to advance in her training, no matter how good a fighter she was.

Slowly, quietly, she stepped back. She wasn't sure she could do it, if it was right, for her to just end a life like that. It was for Barrow, that she knew, and she would be punished if she failed to complete this assassination. She was about to sheathe her blade and walk away, when she heard a startled cry and the thunk of metal into flesh. Her brown eyes swiveled toward the noise, frostbreath puffing from her mouth in surprise as she let out the breath she had been holding.

One of the skywings was lying dead on the floor, a narrow axe sticking out of his back, right above where his heart would have been beating almost moments before. She looked up, seeing Deimos standing there with a bit of a shocked expression on his face. The other SkyWing had scrambled up by now, and was hissing as fire gathered in her throat to shoot at him.

Deimos hadn't seen her, and he had turned away. Wren made a split-second decision then. One that would change her life forever. One that would make her a murderer, but one that would prove her loyalty to Barrow nonetheless. Perhaps it was just that she knew Deimos, and she did not know the SkyWing. But either way, she sprang forward, the blade sliding back into her clenched talons.

There was no sound as her talons landed down on the back of the SkyWing's neck, unlike the loud thunk the axe had made when the other skywing was hit with it. Her blade slid under the dragon's chin, as she made a quick upward motion with her talons and cut through her throat. Wren toppled to the ground, doing a roll and standing up as Deimos turned to look at her in surprise.

"O-oh" Deimos stammered as the other dragon's body slid onto the ground, her mouth apparently half-opened as if to breathe fire. "Was she about to…"

"You ARE AN IDIOT!" Wren roared, snout wrinkling as she clenched her talons. He had almost gotten himself killed. Almost, but not quite. And she had killed a dragon, a dragon who had done nothing to her, just to save his hide. No, no, she tried to convince herself, it was for loyalty.

As she came back to the present, she realised that Barrow had called her up to the front, and hastily scrambled up to get there. She managed to recover from her slip-up fairly fast, though, and began to stalk forward slowly with her head up and her face expressionless. She reckoned even the never-satisfied trainer would be happy with this.

"Assassin, your first job will be set in the Ice Kingdom." Barrow's eyes bored into her, chilling her to the bone, and it took all of her willpower not to shiver. She raised her head to Barrow's level and nodded slowly, fighting the urge to flinch away.

A slow smile slid across Barrow's face. "Good. Your target will be Aufeis, a royal guard loyal to the throne, who has fought many battles against our spy attempts and needs to be taken down in order for us to infiltrate the ice kingdom." Wren nodded again, almost ready to turn and go sit down, before she remembered what she was supposed to be asking.

"What does this dragon look like, and where might I find him? Are there any potential problems standing in the way of me attempting to get closer to this dragon?" She twitched her tail, still utterly terrified to be talking to Barrow. Those eyes were just… unsettling, to say the least. Not to mention the voice.

Barrow looked thoughtful, though anyone watching could tell it was false and just done for show. The reddish brown dragon had likely never improvised once in her life. "Aufeis is a darker gray icewing, a bit of an oddity for his kind. He has white speckles down the back of his neck and a solid white tail and wings. His eyes, as our spies tell us, are a sickly yellow color." Barrow paused, before continuing. "You will be instructed on how to get into the royal guard apprenticeship soon enough. It should be easy, but then you need to gain his trust or at least remove any trace of suspicion before assassinating him, as another icewing catching you could be a… tricky situation."

To say the least. Wren thought to herself, shifting as her talons scraped uncomfortably across the stone.