Winged

Chapter 3

Uroda woke in a start, jumping from her bed and whipping her head about the room. Her gaze was like fog, jumbling the light with the shadows, and blurring the grays and blues. She slumped back down, breathing heavily to let her vision clear.

It was dark, damp. Smelled of rotting bird. Trying to move her wings, she winced, noticing that they were wrapped in thick bandage. Tugging on the bandaged did no good at the moment, so she decided to look around the building. The smell of smoke and ash lingered on her nose, and the faintest of creaks scraped at the inside of her skull. Uroda shuddered, thinking back to that... thing. Why had it attacked the castle? Moreover, she remembered something very specific about the way it acted...

It's almost as if it knew what it was going to attack, before it attacked it.

She tossed the thought around in her brain, trying to think back to the moment it usurped the cloudy kingdom and drowned it in smoke. Remembering how it ripped through the storm barrier, ascended into the stars and...

It looked around , it surveyed the area. Why? Why did it do that? What was it looking for?

Uroda bit her cheek, a cold thought suddenly sitting in her throat; too heavy to push through her lips. She might've swallowed it because it felt as if it had sat in her stomach; threatening to pull her to her knees. 

What if it didn't attack the castle because it wanted to; maybe it attacked it because it COULD. Maybe it attacked because what it wanted to destroy was nowhere in sight...

She stood for a while. Honestly, time mattered less and less as the seconds dragged on without Stracony here to say; No, that's ridiculous. Or better yet; You're imagining things again, get your head out of your down feathers. Urdoa knew she'd believe him, she's forget that thing. 

"Hey, new recruit." Piekno sighed, looking over the bandages she'd wrapped and smiling. "Your injuries have already started healing. Good. The other's weren't so lucky." Uroda snapped around, happy to distract herself with chatter, but...

"What do you mean?" Uroda asked, a chill settling across the back of her neck. The wind seemed to push the building as it blew through, unsettling the clouds and tipping the building ever so slightly. She looked away, feeling hopeless. 

"Yeah, you know already. A captain has to do what he has to do. He plunged himself into the Storm barrier, leading the dragon away from the castle. Though, there's nothing left to protect. We've already moved the Sokol and the Royals to the Far above, like Lithilos wanted." The silence brought on from the words pierced Uroda's heart like a dagger. This... this is horrible. I... I didn't come soon enough, I lost Stracony... and Lithilos...

She burst into tears, falling to her knees. Piekno rushed over, dropping down and hugging Uroda. The two sat like that for a while, the murmur of the breeze brushing past her face and messing with her hair. Uroda turned, looking out the window. There it was; the castle. 

Half of it was burned to the ground. Smoke still rose from the ashes, and Uroda swore she could still feel the heat. She remembered the castle fondly, as it was filled with reds and yellows, all brought from the land below. You could fly past and see the windows, rounded with a strange see through substance. The way it stood above the whole kingdom, closest to the stars... and at night, if the moon sat just right, the whole kingdom would glimmer. It was huge once, so full of energy and Sokol flying in and out of it's gaping entrance. Its blue and gray plants sprouting around the feet of those that walked there. I remember what it was like, being in there. So bright, with pictures of the Royals on every wall... it smelled like spices sometimes. Or the storm fountain, the only piece of storm barrier to survive when plucked from its roots, used to create the dazzling waterfall at the back of the castle that shimmered down to the lowest clouds and casting a rainbow overhead...