Wings Of Honor: Heart of Ice

Chapter 3: Green Hell

I wasn't surprised about Winter's reaction to the rainforest. I have served in tropical climates before, and I've been to this rainforest three times, Moon, Grace, and Kinkajou their whole lives. I held in tightly as the three weaved gracefully between the vines and trees. Qibli and Winter found it difficult flying five feet without encountering vines, a thicket, or tree. We decided to march on foot from here on.
Winter tried to shake the mud out of his claws, as if he expected to stay clean and pristine here. My boots always look like they were made of roughly chiseled stones by the end of my expeditions. He kept his head on a swivel, almost like his gaze couldn't penetrate the vines and undergrowth. I chuckled at his inexperience.
Sight isn't the only way of determining enemy positions. Other animals, mostly birds, served as my eyes. Birds of paradise, clothed in many diffrent reds, blues, yellows, and greens, a beautiful combination. I only wished I had Grace's pure soul so that I could wear them and not feel like I was lying. I knew the buzzing of so many various insects bothered Winter, but those same were the most precise method of contact triangulation. As soon as that buzzing stops, everything is put on the knife's razor edge. Everyone holds their breath.
I took a deep breath at that thought. The natural perfume, reminding me of days long past at home, put me ever so slightly at ease. But not until my guard shot back up, so I could not so much watch, rather, listen.
Much to the annoyance to my mother and possibly detrimental to my own health, I always found myself rather tolerant of heat. Not to say I was immune, I most certainly was not. Maybe a mixture of that and self discipline allow me to keep my jacket on. Albeit, without its lining, fully unbuttoned, and with ample sips from my canteens.
Throughout the annoying insects - flies, mosquitoes, bees, and the occasional hornet - nobody likes them, especially Winter. I wished I could light up some coconut husks to try and smoke them out and away. Winter, it seemed, to be painfully itching all over; and, to be honest, I was the same.
Although, judging from his reaction here, and Icicle being more of a 'princesy' type, I doubt she would have a much better reaction then Winter. I'm suprised the Icewings were the way they were and still be a warring tribe, - how Winter depicts them - and not be afraid of a little mud and jungle. Not to say that my country is warring, we were especially isolationist for the past couple centuries I hear, and me - as a product of that county - still doesn't mind a little mud in my boots. It's not the most comfortable thing in the world, it isn't. But... I honestly expected more from a militaristic dragon. Not in any war I've ever seen. And I was not about to bring it here to prove a point.
"You must hate this place." Moon said, appearing beside him.
We stopped to rest near a river. I slid down to refill my canteens, popping a water purification tablet into both mine and Grace's. Winter was crouched on a large boulder, trying to dip his talons in the water without stepping in the oozing, rich silt that lined the banks. That shit was the best thing to plant in. I learned from my mother, who put her skills in gardening to work during the depression. Although, to be honest, we were better off. Daddy secured a job as the tax collector and a few government jobs leading up to it. He made himself valuable, and it would cost the government more to let him go than to have him stay.
I watched Winter while I held the oblong canteens at an angle, covered by a strip of gauze to prevent rocks and other sediment from getting in. He narrowed his eyes at Moon, while reaching for the small skin pouch he tied to one of his ankles. Undoubtedly where he decided to keep his Skyfire rock.
Moon sighed. "No, I didn't get that from your head. I just figured an IceWing would probably hate it here. It must be the polar opposite of the Ice Kingdom. The anti-polar opposite," she added, then scrunched her snout, trying not to laugh at her own joke. Me and Grace tried to hide our smirks. Qibli was dying in the background.
"It is," Winter said finally. "And I do."
He really does hate it.
"This is actualy where I grew up. A few hundred yards that way." Grace said.
That surprised me, I was wondering if I was just crazy or if some of this place looked familiar for some reason. Sure enough, the damned coconut grove was about ten yards to my right. I could barely see the mango grove through the brush.
"I grew up here as well." Moon said, wading a few steps into the river.
The water charted a course around her legs, causing little waves and ripples downstream. Glints of reflected sunlight danced around her, making her scales really shine from what little beams of sunlight made it through. "It's not so bad, actually."
"Winter would beg to differ." Grace snarkily added.
"Hrrmph," Winter snorted.
"Not so bad?!" Kinkajou said indignantly from the other bank. "This is the most beautiful part of Pyrrhia! Other dragons would be lucky to live here!"
Nuh Huh. The Salinas Valley is the most beautiful place in the world. Well... maybe not in Pyrrha. I reminded myself I was in a totally different world.
But I was further cut off when the little RainWing bounded into the water with a humongous splash that drenched Winter, from nose and tail. A large, orange, toad burst out of the river, making a clumsy dash - in bounds - for the reeds, trying to get away from the dragons. Moon tilted her head at it, then she and Grace flared her wings at Qibli as he sat up from the middle of the river.
"Don't eat it!" Moon warned him. "Seriously, one of those gave me hiccups for days. Also some really weird dreams. I thought for a while I was having visions of a possible future where newts and anteaters took over the world."
Kinkajou and Grace giggled. I couldn't help chuckling.
"Here, try these instead." Moon offered. She reached into one of the overhanging trees and pulled a few strange looking fruits from the branches. They were a strange reddish-pink on the outside, with folded-up pedals like how unbloomed orange poppies would; but as she sliced them open with her claws, I saw that they were white on the inside, scattered with small black flecks. Almost like dragonfruit, or passion fruit, or whatever they were called. She handed one of them to Qibli, one to Grace, then glanced sideways at Winter.
"Absolutely not," He spat. "Do not get that vile stickiness anywhere near me. Fruit. Yuck." Winter's stomach growled. He made an admirable attempt to hide it by scraping his claws along the rock. Raising an eyebrow for me, as I unslung my daypack and rummaged through one of the pockets.
"You are so, so weird." Kinkajou said to him. "How can you not love it here? Don't you come from a place with no colors and no life?"
I looked up to see his response. Instead, he seemed to stare off into the distance, at the ground. I realized that serenity, and also recognized why Winter was suffering.
I trained myself to be a marksman. One of the first things you learn is to relax yourself, really be in tune with your surroundings. Analyze every single bush, every tree, every shadow; understand why it was there, and why each object or animal interacted; with the wind, or with each other. Any inconsistency, any disturbance where there wasn't one before? A 30-06 M1 AP round was going straight through that bush, often giving way to a red fountain.
That baseline, that analysis. Winter was used to a land of whites, and maybe a few blues. The animals I remembered from school - polar bears, arctic foxes - they were all a pure white. Imagine your entire world being white, and you only have to look for disturbances in color or shadow to track targets. Now, put yourself where we are now, in a place with more color and shades than anywhere else in the world. A place where sound and other senses are the most at play, not sight. You could only imagine the headache. I really felt bad for Winter.
"White is a color," Winter suddenly snapped me out of it while he snapped at the RainWing. "Blue is a color. That is an eyesore." He pointed to a violently red flower, beautifully red, as big as one of his talons.
"We also have these." Moon said. She lifted a dark green leaf on one of the trees, revealing a bushel of delicate, white-blue flowers, shimmering like snowflakes against the brown trunk of the tree.. "Oh, and look! There's a sloth!" She pointed to a furry gray shape that was clambering slowly along a branch not too far overhead.
"Thank the moons," Winter suddenly said, leaping to his feet. "I knew there had to be something worth eating around here."
Before any of us could protest, he shot into the air, his claws reaching for the sloth's exposed white underbelly.
"Wait!" Moon cried. There was a twin shriek of dismay from Kinkajou and Grace.
The sloth peered over its shoulder and blinked enormous, confused eyes at him.
Suddenly, a blur of red scales hit Winter, sending an audible 'WHAM!' throughout half the jungle. Winter whirled around and lashed out with his tail, while I drew my MKB to face whoever slipped past me. Winter tied to connect, but the shape had barely fell out of his reach. Now that he stopped for just a moment, I realized it was a dragon. A Rainwing! And he was not happy, a bright red. He swooped down to the branch where the sloth was, grabbing him. He gave a death glare to Winter, before vanishing.
Winter was roaring with surprise and fury, snorting clouds of condensate from his nose.
"Calm down!" Qibli shouted in his ear. The SandWing ducked as Winter swiped at him. "Winter! Stop!"
"There was a SkyWing!" Winter snarled. "It attacked me and stole my prey and then disapp - oh, SEAL GUTS!"
"Not a SkyWing," Qibli pointed out, although Winter had obviously figured that out already.
"I know!" Winter roared, beating the air with his wings. "Come out and face me, you cowardly lunch-stealing RainWing!"
The dragon materialized on the branch again, its scales shifting to a furious red with splatters of black and orange. "Toe-Fur is nobody's lunch!" she shouted. "Those nasty black dragons have already eaten one of my sloths! I'm not letting it happen again!" She flexed her claws and bared her fangs at him. Rainwing fangs. Acidic venom. Very dangerous. I looked at Grace, she nodded with understanding. Both of us facing back to meet her, in case someone decides to do anything stupid.
"Don't make her mad." Qibli quickly ordered, grabbing Winter's shoulder. "I mean - don't make her more mad."
I could tell the warmth radiating from the SandWing was more than uncomfortable. Winter promptly shook him off.
"As if a RainWing would ever dare fight me," Winter scoffed. "As if I couldn't claw off her face as easily as breathing."
"What is with you and faces?" Qibli said. "You should try threatening someone's elbows or ankles once in a while, just for a change of pace." Me and Grace buckled down and nearly lost ourselves at that.
Kinkajou landed on the branch beside the angry RainWing, angling herself between the furious dragon and Winter.
"Exquisite, it's me," she said. "I'm sorry about this. I promise we were about to stop him."
"Ha!" Winter barked.
I only racked the bolt on my MKB.
"Winter, do you have a part of your brain that can handle empathy?" Qibli asked. "That sloth is her pet. Just like Bandit was your pet. Can you by any chance remember about a week ago when someone tried to eat your pet?"
Winter hesitated. I could see it on his face and eyes that he obviously remembered. Although, I had a feeling he was more angry about Qibli being right, and on a streak. I knew that face, I've worn it and me and my brother have traded it a few times.
"Bandit is much smarter than a flea-ridden sloth," Winter snapped, landing on one of the thicker branches of a nearby tree. He flinched when a centipede as long as his foot immediately scuttled over his claws. "But FINE, I won't eat any stupid sloths. Is there anything else that's off-limits that I should know about? Beloved armadillos? Hairy giant spiders that someone is terribly attached to?"
"I think the tamarin monkeys are really cute," Moon offered, swooping up beside them. "It'd be great if you could not eat those."
"Ugh." I shivered. Remembering my former interactions with them.
Winter scowled at her. As apparently often happened with Moon, likely because neither of us couldn't tell at face value if she was joking. She wasn't.
"Would you really eat a hairy spider anyway?" Qibli asked with genuine curiosity, nearly causing me to hurt out with a chuckle.
Exquisite clutched her sloth closer, hissed at Kinkajou and Winter, then vanished again. Although I still spotted her through the transparent disturbance in the surounding area. Not a moment later, the branch shook under wingbeats, Exquisite took off, making silhouettes of herself through the leaves and branches.
Moon landed next to Winter and suddenly reached out to brush his wing with hers. I noticed he froze, but did not recoil. I could see the mental argument he was having in his head. Then suddenly, I heard a mind. All three of us perked up to the same direction.
"Someone's coming," Grace whispered, trying to push the others into a group. "Someone with dark thoughts ..."
"What's a dark thought?" Qibli asked with something odd to his voice. Although I cast it aside for the immediate threat coming closer.
"It's Obsidian. He's thinking he hates being on guard duty," Moon said, laying out his mind like a magazine. "Especially with the RainWing he's been assigned as a partner. He hates being told what to do by RainWings. He wishes the NightWings could overthrow Queen Glory and rule the rainforest themselves." She paused.
"All clear, we're safe; they passed us by." Grace said, folding in her wings and shaking them free of dew.
Moon realized her wing was still touching Winter's and pulled away with an apologetic expression. He tried to pretend he hadn't even noticed.
"So we're all on board with avoiding NightWings, then?" Qibli said. "Excellent. Present company excepted, of course."
Grace and I both gave him a sideways nod.
"Maybe not all NightWings, but definitely him." Moon said. She sighed. "I should probably tell the queen what I can do so I can warn her about dragons like this." She flicked the leaves below her with her tail. "But I worry - I mean, should dragons be punished for their thoughts? Even if they never act on them? But what if warning her means they'll never do whatever terrible thing they're thinking of? I don't know. I don't want anyone to use me as a way to spy on the private thoughts of her subjects."
"Really?" Qibli said. "But it would be useful to know if a coup or an assassination is coming. If you could prevent that, wouldn't it be worth spying on a few dragons?"
"No," Winter snapped. "Nothing justifies invading another dragon's mind."
"But that's how she stopped Icicle from killing Starflight," Qibli pointed out. "Aren't you grateful she did that?"
Winter glared down towards Kinkajou, who had gone back to splashing in the river behind us. "I still don't like it," he continued. "In the wrong talons ... I mean, Moon could tell Queen Glory she heard someone planning a murder, and that dragon could be punished, and who could prove her wrong?"
"I wouldn't lie," Moon said, looking outraged.
"And I would back her up." Grace offered.
"How do we know that?" Winter asked. "You hid your powers from us. Why should we trust you? And even if you wouldn't lie, what about other NightWings? They've lied before, haven't they? They lied about having powers for years apparently. The entire tribe is full of liars, going back thousands of years to the Darkstalker and his cursed mother, Foeslayer."
Moon jumped, overbalanced, then fell off the branch with a lot of wild thrashing. Startled, we all looked down at her as she climbed back up.
"Jesus Christ! Are you all right?"
"Three moons, what was that about?" Qibli asked when she was settled again. "Are you all right?" Moon was breathing in quick and sharp, almost panicked.
Uh oh. "Moon?"
"Darkstalker?" She said to Winter. "How do you know about him?"
"Everyone knows about him," Winter plainly said.
"I don't." Qibli commented.
"Everyone," Winter said pointedly, "who's anyone."
"Ah, I see," Qibli said. "You mean IceWings."
"And NightWings," Moon said. "He's our legend. Nightmare. Ghost monster from the beyond. Whatever."
"Ours too," Winter said grimly. "Trust me."
"Why, what did he ever do to the IceWings?" Moon asked. Me and Grace looked to him, as curious for answers as Moon was.
"Killed one of our princes," Winter said. "Stole our royal heritage. Ruined everything forever." That earned a gentle gasp from Grace.
"Oh, my, forever?" Qibli asked. He gave the sunlit rainforest a mock-serious, nodding inspection. "Well, that explains it. I was wondering why everything was so very ruined all the time. Thank goodness there's one ancient dead dragon we can blame for it all."
I couldn't even chuckle at that.
"You wouldn't joke if you knew the whole story," Winter snapped back.
Moon closed her eyes, then shook her head with a frustrated expression. "I want to know the whole -" she began, and then I heard the minds come back. Her eyes popped open in alarm. "They're coming back. Obsidian and the RainWing guard. We should -"
"Hello!" Kinkajou called, waving her wings, scaring the bejesus out of me. "Hi! Over here!"
"- not do that," Qibli finished for Moon as she winced.
It was too late. Winter hissed softly. There was no chance of sneaking through the rainforest undetected now. I press checked my MKB, a green-tipped round seated and ready.
The patrol was heading straight for us.