Wings of fire Book one: Befriending a monster.

The pillars (Gore warning)

Starstorm's head hurt and so did her wings and back, but not as much, she must have been knocked out, but for how long? She opened her eyes and saw the nearly cloudless sky, she was on some kind of platform, no, a tall pillar made of stone, and below was what she assumed is Scarlet's arena with a castle connected to it. Her wings were kept closed with the tight metal bands that were on them, and there were metal wires around each of her legs. The wires were connected to other dragons that were on pillars like hers, and all of the wires were connected to a metal ring that was held in the air above the arena. There were no walls, but if she tried to get off of the pillar she would fall to her death and probably drag the other dragons with her, and there were at least a hundred. She sat up, trying to get a better view. There was an ice-wing on the pillar to her left and a sea-wing on her right, a few pillars away she could see Tsunami pacing in circles, twenty-ish pillars to her right she could see Clay's brown scales, and across the arena she saw Starflight's black silhouette. Starflight and Clay were the only dragons of their tribe on the pillars, so they were pretty easy to see, however, Sunny, Glory, and Kestral were out of sight.

If they were up there she would have seen them, there was only one sky-wing and they didn't look like Kestral, there were more sand-wings but none of them were Sunny's size, plus, she couldn't see any rain-wings. She was only around the other dragons for a few minutes, but she still had a general idea of what they looked like. It seemed like it was only a few hours since she had been knocked unconscious because the sun was in the middle of the sky, meaning that it was about mid-day. Down in the arena, sky-wings were gathering around the sides, finding places to sit where they could see the middle of the arena, which was full of sand. She moved to the edge of her pillar, if a fight was going to happen, she should probably watch to see the winner's skill and fighting style. Queen Scarlet flew down and sat on a small throne that was placed on a wooden platform, attached to the side of the arena, A few guards carried a sliver tree with dragon sleeping on it down to the platform as well. She realized that the dragon sleeping on the tree was Glory, shifting her scales beautifully as she laid there, was she drugged? The rain-wing seemed pretty active before.

"Welcome to today's battle!" The queen said loudly.

A sand-wing was brought into the arena, being lowered down by several guards, the sand-wing started pacing once dropped onto the sand in the center, as the viewing sky-wings shouted various things.

"Well? What do you all think of my new art?" Scarlet continued, gesturing to Glory.

A sky-wing landed next to the queen and started announcing. "After three victories, Eucalyptus the sand-wing, who used to be one of Burn's personal guards, has been challenged to a match with one of the queen's champions. Mistral."

Eucalyptus seemed shocked, the sand-wing was pretty big and she should be trained to fight, being princess Burn's guard and all. So why was she scared?

"Release him." Scarlet said, smiling.

Two guards went down to the tunnel opening that led into the arena and opened the iron gates that blocked it, quickly flying away after they did so. A horribly scarred ice-wing walked out into the arena and it seemed to be limping, the ice-wing was extremely skinny and had metal bands around his wings, tail, chest, neck, and legs. He immediately started watching Eucalyptus, who was slowly backing away, looking horrified. Why was she reacting like this? The ice-wing was limping and looked weak, surely the sand-wing would be able to take him out with ease. Eucalyptus was trying to talk to Mistral, who stopped walking and was staring at her, a guard flew close to the ice-wing and hit him with a leather whip. Mistral suddenly sprinted forwards towards the sand-wing, biting her tail and twisting his head, ripping off the end of Eucalyptus's tail before she even had a chance to react. She roared in pain, getting up to run away, but Mistral was quick. The ice-wing, who still had the end of her barbed tail in his jaws, stabbed her through the eye with it and she instantly fell to sand, dead with blood flowing out of her eye and open mouth.

Starstorm looked away. That was brutal, but at least it was somewhat quick. The watching sky-wings were cheering and laughing even though they just witnessed that poor dragon's death, absolutely horrible, the ice-wing doesn't have a fighting style so it's nearly impossible to predict what he's going to do next. She noticed that a bright yellow sky-wing was flying around Clay, seemingly talking to him, she hoped that he was okay, Tsunami was constantly pacing or looking around for a way to escape, and Starflight was far away but she didn't think he had moved at all. After a few hours, another quick fight happened between Peril, the sky-wing who was flying around Clay earlier and apparently was Scarlet's other champion, and a sand-wing named Horizon. She didn't watch this time but later she looked into the arena and didn't see a body, but instead a dark pile of ash that was slowly blowing away in the wind. She took a nap and woke up sometime in the night, watching the stars for a while before going back to sleep.

Starstorm woke up to the sound of roaring, it was morning and Tsunami was fighting two sky-wing guards that were trying to carry her, in the distance she could see Clay being brought into the palace, and Starflight wasn't on his pillar. She got up to go help Tsunami, then remembered that she couldn't fly because of the irritating metal bands keeping her wings closed. Soon the guards got Tsunami into the sky as they flew towards the palace, she hoped that they would be okay. A sky-wing glided close to her pillar and threw half of a rabbit onto the stone, so she stood up and turned her back to them, starting to eat what was left of the prey. She had been fine for days without food before, so she wasn't that hungry, but it didn't hurt to eat what was given to her. Not too long afterwards, she saw Tsunami and Starflight being returned to their pillars while Clay was brought down into the arena, the ice-wing on her left was being grabbed by guards. Clay was going to fight an ice-wing? At least it wasn't Mistral, but still, Ice-wings are hard to fight because of their frost-breath which is like fire, but it freezes things instead of burning them. She couldn't watch this fight, Clay is strong and he can breathe fire, but his chances of winning are still low.

Scarlet started talking. "After last month's battle with" Starstorm covered her ears with her talons, laying down so she didn't have to hear or see what was going to happen. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Tsunami panicking, trying to get the wires off of her legs, and Starflight was trying to tell Clay something, gesturing to his mouth.

She uncovered her ears and heard Scarlet say. "Well, that wasn't very entertaining."

Sky-wings were booing and shouting, but she could hear a few cheering, she got up and moved to the edge of the pillar. Clay was still alive! He was sitting on the sand in the arena, looking shocked. Well, at least he was okay. In front of Clay was the ice-wing's body, and smoke was coming from it's mouth, Clay must have breathed fire directly into the ice-wing's throat.

"Anyways, if a dragonet of destiny can kill an ordinary ice-wing so quickly, then killing Mistral shouldn't be so hard." The queen continued with a creepy smile.

Three moons, there's no way that Clay would be able to kill that monster, she didn't know him that long, but Clay didn't seem like a ruthless killer. There was no way that he would survive. Two guards opened the tunnel's gate and flew out of the way like the last time. Mistral walked out, immediately rushing forwards towards Clay, Mistral grabbed him by the wing and pulled him down to the ground. One of the wires on her legs started pulling her to the side of the pillar, and Tsunami jumped off of her's, yelling. "DON'T HURT CLAY!" Starstorm was struggling to stay on her pillar, and yelled. "Tsunami! What are you doing?! You're going to kill both of us!" Guards flew up to get Tsunami back onto the stone surface, down in the arena, Mistral was on Clay's back, grabbing his neck while Clay struggled. Suddenly there was a snake-like hissing sound and a black colored liquid on one of Mistral's wings. Tsunami was back on her pillar, so Starstorm looked into the arena. Mistral suddenly roared in pain, accidentally scratching Clay as he jumped off of him. The ice-wing was frantically hissing and biting at his own wing, clearly in pain of some kind. Guards hooked chains up to the metal bands on Mistral and started dragging him back into the tunnel, Tsunami had stopped panicking and Clay was holding his talons over the cut on his bleeding neck.

Clay had been brought back to his pillar and the body in the arena was set on fire, The guards were preparing for a trial, most likely Kestral"s. She didn't watch because she never really liked that sort of thing, but she did feel bad for the dragonets, Kestral seemed to be a parental figure to them. Later on, the sky was dark and she was laying on her pillar, thinking. Starstorm knew that she would have to fight in the arena eventually and might die, maybe coming out here alone really was a bad idea. What would her mother say, finding out that she failed again? Would her father miss her? Would Thorn?