Author's Note: I do want to say already from the get-go that apologies if some chapters are potentially more "vanilla" compared to the others (well, maybe, I haven't even written them yet), it is still quite early on the events of Moon Rising, many extra changes are due rather soon though, and yet even more POV changes for variety.

— Chapter 5 —

Winter

Prince Winter, Queen Glacier's nephew, was not having the best of days today.

First he had to leave the beautiful and serene Ice Kingdom and come all this way to the distant mountains, the temperature was not terrible, just cool enough. But it would never compare at all to the Ice Kingdom.

Then he was greeted by a Nightwing at the Great Hall who tried to act all friendly but Winter just knew it was a foolish act for approval.

Then he saw that despite his lineage and superiority he was NOT granted a cave of his own but instead he felt an annoying warmth as a Sandwing had approached him and greeted him by saying "Hey there cool guy, it's Ice to meet you!"

Winter did not come here to be pestered with ice jokes for the rest of his stay at school.

"Now who in the world might you be," the Icewing had snapped "That would ever justify the two of us sharing a room? Are you the son of one of the three sisters? Or of the new queen?"

That would be the only halfway justifiable reason to place such a doofus there with him, two princes sharing a room, maybe the school's founders were hoping this Sandwing could learn how to be a better royal.

"Hm nah, I'm just Qibli. One of Queen Thorn's most trusted Outclaws," He stated with far too much energy and a tone for Winter's taste.

"This is unbelievable," The prince snarled. "So you're telling me you were some low-life criminal? Are the group placements meant to be senseless and contradictory?"

He stared down at the Sandwing, partly expecting him to attack Winter now. If he truly was some random criminal then he might very easily jump into action, the prince honestly slightly hoped for that, he could easily beat the dune dweller and tell the founders that after such a situation he should be given a cave for himself.

Yet all he got for a reaction was his barbed tail moving slightly but still remaining tucked in a spiral.

"Well this is going to be fun I believe," Qibli replied, his expression not faltering "So what's your name?"

"For your information, I am Prince Winter of the Second Circle, nephew of Queen Glacier." he said, gritting his teeth slightly, he can't fall down this low due to a random Sandwing.

"Okay that's cool," Qibli nodded and Winter had to raise an eyebrow from his absolute lack of care for his rank.

Some time later, when Winter thought his "Clawmate" was busy on his own side of the cave, he had brought out one of his finest works yet, a great cage that had everything a Scavenger could possibly need.

And in the cage itself, of course there was an actual living scavenger sitting down on it. And the mere sound of the metallic cage touching the cool smooth spot where Winter can rest was enough to bring the Sandwing to his side.

"Woah. Is that an actual live Scavenger? I didn't know they had these in the Ice Kingdom, wouldn't think they could survive over there."

Winter was about to give another simply snarky comment before recalling as he often did that day, when he saw a Scavenger surviving on the snow, showing pity for that bear.

"Scavengers are a lot more than a simple mind like you could imagine," he decided to reply "Although this one in particular I didn't get in cold mountains."

So far for some hours things had appeared mostly okay, but Winter's mistake came when he decided to check on his sister Icicle for just 5 minutes.

Both of them complained plenty about the school and the clawmates they were given, and after that, when Winter came back to his room he saw Qibli right in front of the cage, a claw poking inside curious.

And in horror, the Icewing saw the Sandwing open the door slightly for a closer look clearly based on how close he had brought his face. Bandit took advantage of that by running close and hitting him on the eye, which made Qibli flinch.

Then Bandit ran out. With a short angry roar Winter had tried to snatch him back with his talons but the Scavenger had gone below his legs and ran past.

Now the prince was staring down at two different Nightwings standing in front of him.

Of course, he thought bitterly, first a group of Nightwings killed him, now a smaller group wants to kill Bandit too.

Winter thought it was his eyes playing him a trick but for a second he swore he saw the larger female Nightwing looking a bit perplexed the exact moment he finished that thought.

"Nightwings, you have 5 seconds to give me back my scavenger," he said with a very loud snarl "Or else I'll freeze your faces and shatter them."

Normally he would have given 10 seconds, but with the threat of two different Nightwings ready to eat Bandit he couldn't take any risks, he had to show them the stakes.

"You are slow to comply, your 5 seconds ran out. I'll give you two more seconds to release him before I get onto shattering your bodies," Winter said with another snarl and a low growl.

The female slowly shook her head at him "No", she managed to say.

"P-P-Prince Winter, this is all just a big misunderstan-" The male black dragon was starting to say but got interrupted.

"Nightwing," this time he said the word as if he was spitting it out of his mouth "Merely knowing my high rank, like many others should know, does not make your words any more important. There is no misunderstanding here, that scavenger is mine and my stupid clawmate let it out, release him now," his words were colder than ice, like icicles that clearly pierced through the small dragon's scales as he tried to cover himself with his wings out of fear.

Huh well, Winter had to congratulate himself for that, the significantly smaller dragon looked so utterly afraid and shivering with his words alone, if he weren't a Nightwing that wanted to kill his pet then Winter would've felt a bit of pity.

"Hey, can we all calm down?" An annoying voice that Winter feels ashamed of even knowing approached as Qibli stepped nearby, both black dragons looking at him, the smaller one peeking his face a bit out of the wings.

"You are not going to freeze and shatter anyone here," he told Winter, which made him huff, as if such a Sandwing could give him orders! "Why are you that way? Did you even ask nicely to begin?"

Qibli then turned to the two black dragonets, seeing how nervous the female looked, and how utterly terrified the male was.

"Hey, sorry about the situation. I'm the stupid clawmate but you can just call me Qibli. From what I heard you already know Winter's name. What are you two's names?" The desert dragon asked in a nice tone to defuse the situation.

"Moon," she had whispered.

"O-Oracle…" He whimpered.

"Moon what?" Winter snapped at her. The smaller one's name sounded just like typical Nightwing naming conventions nonsense, but just "Moon" doesn't make sense, and this "Moon" looked at him confused as if she didn't understand the question!

"Moon what?" Winter nearly shouted. "Come on, NightWing. We know your names are all lies. So what's yours? Moondestroyer? Mooneater? Mooncrusher?"

"Winter, you need to seriously cool down!" Qibli yelled. He shot an annoying grin at Moon. "Get it? Because he's an IceWing? I know, I'm hilarious."

Please shut up with the ice puns, they're the worst… he thought annoyed.

"It's Moonwatcher," a typical colorful Rainwing appeared behind Moon, answering for her.

"Moonwatcher…" The Icewing muttered, that wasn't the sort of name he was expecting, he expected her name to be some sort of empty threat, or to speak up of some supposed grandeur or ability she had. What does Moonwatcher tell about her? Everyone in Pyrrhia can watch the moon, all three of them! How could somebody simply watch better?

"Listen," the pesky Sandwing said. "This is my fault. I wanted a closer look, so I opened the cage, and that thing was halfway down the tunnel before we could even sneeze. But I promise you the scavenger does belong to Winter, so we're asking you nicely: Please don't eat it."

At least he is capable of taking blame and admitting it's all his fault, that was of slight surprise to Winter.

"Get your teeth anywhere near Bandit and you will lose them," Winter snarled.

Oracle's head had suddenly appeared fully as he moved his wings away and looked at Winter baffled.

"Bandit? That's a horrible name! What did the poor guy do to deserve being NAMED, literally a criminal?" he spoke up and then his eyes widened upon realizing what he had just done, how he messed up.

"Ooooooh!" Some other dragons said across the prey center after hearing the Nightwing insult the name that Winter gave to his pet.

"Repeat what you said," Winter grunted and stepped closer, his serrated claws tapping against the ground and just few steps away from the small dragon.

"I-I am sorry! It's just… a n-name is so important! What if you, a prince… were called something like "Peasant" or just "Terrible"? he protested, which made Winter shot an even more dangerous look at him.

"Prince Terrible does have a bit of a ring to it…" Qibli admitted seemingly in thought.

Winter was feeling so tempted to Frostbreath someone, a small black-scaled dragon in particular, then a Sandwing. He still hasn't made up his mind if he wants to Frostbreath Moon third or not.

"This is getting off topic, I don't care about what dumb name you'd use, and you won't be distracting me, Nightwing. You," Winter turned his head at Moon "Give him back to me, you aren't eating Bandit."

"I wasn't going to eat him," she blurted very suddenly "I didn't want anyone to eat him. Nobody can eat him, not ever."

Winter felt his head tilting slightly, not the type of response he was expecting here, and he felt himself calm down ever so slightly.

"That's just how I feel about it too…" the Icewing stated now.

"Great," annoying Sandwing said. "Weird, but great. We're all on the same roll of the scroll, then." He looked expectantly at Moon.

Very carefully, the Nightwing dragonet lifted up Bandit to place him into Winter's talons, and for just a second, the prince felt their claws brushing against each other, and it felt odd.

Why does she care about Bandit? It 's surprising. If she weren't a Nightwing, I would've tried asking if she knows what could be wrong with him.

And just a second after he had that thought, Moon suddenly blurted "He's hungry," then immediately had a bit of an annoyed expression for half a second.

Winter gave her a cold look. "No, he isn't. I offered him a piece of desert rat this morning on the way here, and a bit of wal-"

"Wait, did you just feed him a rat? And I assume it was a raw rat?" Oracle suddenly chimed in, his face looking as if he felt literally sick.

Winter glared at him for such annoying interruption.

"Yes, raw, it's not like I could cook it…" he muttered with gritted teeth "And he didn't even bite it once either."

"Of course he wouldn't, we-HUH-they normally don't eat raw food, let alone RATS! Don't you know that rats can often carry diseases that can be deadly for them?" He spoke up before flinching after seeing his expression.

Winter's eyes opened up bewildered for just a second.

"Huh, wow, I didn't know any of these things." Qibli said with surprise in his voice.

"And what would you recommend instead?" He questioned, although his voice wasn't as cold this time, he did want to know what he could do with Bandit.

"Either get some other dragon to cook meat for him, or at least give him fruit, scavengers are omnivores too." Oracle explained, shakily taking some steps towards the fruity mountain and grabbed a pear, handing it over to Bandit, who grabbed it and began to bite down on the pear hungrily.

And Winter was speechless for a moment, how?

It appeared he wasn't the only one with that question, since other dragons looked at the small Nightwing questioningly, baffled by his knowledge about scavengers, which made him look around nervously.

"W-What? Hm, you know h-huh, Nightwing stuff, a lot of scrolls and reading and… checking and… learning?" He muttered awkwardly before standing up.

"I-If we're all done here then I… gotta, study and read before our first… classes tomorrow, yeah." Oracle whispered, slowly stepping around Winter, his eyes constantly focusing on him as he began to leave the prey center after the prince seemingly let him leave.

Very weird, even weirder than the typical Nightwing, but maybe if I am really desperate I could get some use out of him, never before I saw someone speak about scavengers with such certainty, Winter thought to himself, then his eyes went to Moon, who was starting to walk away too.

And that other Nightwing… it seems like she cares about scavengers as well, but… why is it that just when I finished a specific thought it seems like she'd answer my mind? I thought they said Nightwings couldn't read minds after all.

So why does it seem like she read mine?