Wings of Fire: Revenant

Prologue

None of this was real.

Darkstalker knew his mother was dead. He had known that first time he saw her form on the enchanted map travel into the Ice Kingdom and grow still. She was gone. That was why the IceWings had to pay. That was why Arctic had, had to die. His mother had been taken away from him, and it wasn't fair.

Except now she was here, unchanged, as though his last memory of her had been plucked from his mind and made real. Her eyes shone with all the love she still had for him, and when she put her talons on his he knew she could be no one but his mother. He needed her to hold him, to tell him it was going to be all right, to tell him that he wasn't evil and he hadn't lost his soul.

But she didn't. Not really.

Darkstalker thought back to the soul reader, and the tiny grains of black sand showing just how much goodness he had left. He had taken every precaution, done everything right, and yet it hadn't saved his soul. He thought back to the holes he had sensed inside his father, and wondered now what it must look like inside him. Was there anything left now but a vast, empty chasm where his soul should have been?

But that couldn't be right! It just couldn't be! He wasn't evil! He did all of those things to avenge his mother and protect his tribe. Isn't that what any dragon would do? What any dragon should do?

Besides, he had always known that the future he was heading for would be worth it. When he was king of Pyrrhia there would be no war, no killing, and no one would ever have to feel scared or hungry or in pain ever again. He could fix all of that, and when he did no dragon would care what it took to get there. They would be grateful to him and love him and want him to be around forever to watch after them. That thought had always kept him going, always reminded him that the light at the end of this path would be worth any darkness he had to pass through.

Yet as he looked down at his mother, he was reminded again of the fear and disappointment in her eyes that told him she knew exactly what he had done to his father. She didn't seem to care at all about what Arctic had done to her, and what he might have done to their tribe. She blamed herself for getting captured, and scolded him like a petulant child for offering to avenge the torture she had been put through. She still loved him, but she didn't trust him, and he couldn't yet see a future where she would support him as king. And if he didn't have her, who did he have?

He looked at Moon. His dearest friend, in fact his only friend while he had been trapped in the mountain. It had meant so much to find her, to have another dragon he could communicate with, and have hope that one day he might be free again. But she, like Foeslayer, would never stand by his side as king. She hadn't understood at all when he tried to tell her he'd only cast the spell on the IceWings to protect the tribe, and she'd plotted with her friends to sabotage him. Did she just not need him anymore, now that she had them? Did she even care about him at all?

He needed Clearsight. He missed her so much it hurt, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't bring her back to him. She was gone of her own volition, to live and die without him thousands of years ago. Without her, he had no happy futures. No dragonets. No great love. He was alone.

Darkstalker felt a hole inside of him so great that he began to wonder if his soul truly was gone, and it was at that moment that Moon told him about her vision. She described an ordinary dragonet growing up in the rainforest, with friends and family and a deep love of strawberries. This perplexed Darkstalker; what did any of this have to do with him? It was only when his mother passed him one of the jewel-red fruits that he finally started to put the pieces together.

"Wait," he said. "You think the dragon in your visions is me?"

"You without your powers," said Moon. "You without your memories. A new you, with a chance to start over."