Master of None: A Wings of Fire fanfiction

9.

Clearsight

As the sun rises, and I wander through the empty streets of a ghost town.

I'm not sure what it's called. There's no one left here to tell me what happened to it. Or tell me the stories of the lives that must have unfolded here, suddenly disrupted. It's not my home, but it's somebody's.

In the centre of the town, there used to be a statue–I think it's Queen Scorpion, but it's so broken, it's hard to tell. This is where I think the worst of the damage occurred–the fault lines disappearing just inside of the town's borders. I don't know much about earthquakes, but it doesn't seem normal for them to stay within a one-mile radius, or to worsen the closer they get to the centre of town.

The flag of Nyx has been planted into the ground, waving in the wind. A constant reminder that eventually, Sharp-eyes's soldiers will come back to this place.

I pick up a plaque from the ground, still more-or-less intact. In honour of Governor Summer, he who weathered many storms.

I try to put it back where I found it, but I always fail.

"Maybe it was a blast," I murmur. "Maybe Sharp-eyes dropped... some kind of bomb, something beyond what we've seen before."

It reminds me of how the palace looked, after Shadowhunter finally killed the queen. Centuries of history, now rubble. I wonder how long ago the earthquake hit, and how long after that everyone decided to leave. (Or died.)

Darkstalker rubs his eyes. "No. That's too... extravagant. Why bother? Why would he need to? Why this one random little town that probably had a couple hundred dragons, maximum?"

"It was magic," I say, trying to hold the facts of the matter close in my mind. "That narrows it down."

"It was Polar. Shadowhunter wouldn't have done this, and there's no way Jerboa still has her power," Darkstalker says firmly.

"Not the Shadowhunter we knew–but how would Polar have ended up here of all places?"

"He must have, because he's the only other reasonable possibility. No one could have got through that bracelet," he reiterates. "That's not how the magic works."

"How do you know that, though?" I ask, trying to be gentle, trying not to start a fight about this. "You've never really gone up against another animus dragon, not for any prolonged period of time. You've never used your power in battle against someone you're equally matched to. Just because it's historically never happened doesn't mean it never will. Maybe something weird happened when Sharp-eyes took your power. Maybe he disabled the bracelet on purpose."

"No. That's not how it works," Darkstalker says stubbornly. "This is something else altogether."

Maybe he's right. I have no way of knowing, no certain ground to stand on, other than biased, faulty logic, and stabs in the dark.

A cold wind sweeps through the square, sending a plume of dust flying in the air.

Maybe we'll never know.

I look up at the sky—stained pink and orange with the beginning of sunrise—and I could swear I feel vultures flying overhead. I imagine the sky is thick with ghosts.

***

We picked one of the abandoned homes to live in, toward the edge of the city. It feels weird and a little wrong to live in someone else's house, but after a while, it became clear that they were definitely not coming back. And that we might be staying here a while.