Wings of Fire - Awakening Evil (REDOING!)

CHAPTER 3

Dawn woke up to a murmur. It was hard for her to open her eyes, but she could clearly see the shape of two SandWings, one NightWing, and one odd-looking dragon. After a few moments, she got the ability to hear.

"What happened?!" Dawn heard Cacti's voice, which was all crackily and sad and worried. She could, barely, see Bone hugging onto Cacti and trying to calm her down, but it didn't help.

Dawn lost her hearing after Cacti had asked her question. Good. She didn't want to hear the story and feel the pain in her tail any more than she did before. She tried moving her front paw, and she did. It was just that her fingers were a little limp. She felt absolutely miserable. She loved using her tail to stab the lizards she caught. She also liked to swing it around and play with Cacti, teasing her, saying: "I'm going to hit you with it! Beware!" and Cacti would respond, "Ha! I have one, too! Also, beware!" They would have so much fun just jabbing their tails at each other playfully.

"Cacti?.." Dawn slowly turned her head toward the sobbing Cacti, who was putting a paw over her mouth and trying not to burst in tears of worry.

"DAWN?!" Cacti almost immediately leaped over to Dawn, taking her paw off of her mouth and putting both paws on her. "Oh my moons! OH MY MOONS! YOU'RE OKAY!"

"Yeah...." Dawn mumbled. "I'm okay. Can you stop shouting in my ears?.."

"Yep, sorry, darling," Cacti said happily, hugging onto Dawn tightly to the point where she couldn't breathe.

"Gah," Dawn choked. "Cacti-"

Cacti quickly let go, holding her talons up and smiling nervously.

"Sorry," she said, putting her arms back down to the floor. "How's your tail?"

Great. The last thing Dawn wanted to hear. "How's it doing?" "Does it hurt?" The pain in her tail started to come back. But she pretended like it was nothing, really.

"It's okay," she said quietly, looking down at her tightly bandaged tail. "Hurts a little, but I'll be fine."

"We told you not to go outside," Bone hissed harshly. "And yet, here you are. I'm guessing we need better security on the place. Where did you find the tunnel? Why did you leave?"

Dawn inhaled nervously. She was worried one of her adopted parents was about to ask that.

"Well, I got really curious. Plus, you can't keep me under your roof like the Talons of Peace did with the Dragonets of Destiny during the war," Dawn admitted, and went on. "And I found the tunnel in the scroll room. There was a darker stone, and I put my talon against it. That's how I met those two." She weakily pointed one talon at Allgazer and Cicada. "Because I guess they were also leaving from somewhere."

"We were leaving Pantala," Cicada said.

"Pantala?" Cacti asked. "What in the moons is Pantala?"

"Another continent you Pyrrhia dragons don't know about," Cicada informed her. "We found a secret tunnel, much like the one Dawn found. I opened it up. We spent about four to six hours just walking."

"Yeah, and I starved!" Allgazer turned her head toward Cicada angrily. "We didn't bring food!!"

"My goodness," Cicada huffed. "Calm down. Here." Cicada handed Allgazer a fruit, and Allgazer ate it like it was nothing but a squirrel. She licked her lips afterward, satisfied.

"Anyway," Cicada went on. "Queen Rottnest was being a really bad queen. She was controlling her HiveWings and using them to attack the SilkWing kingdom. Some went off, attacking the LeafWing kingdom, too. So we left."

"Rottnest? SilkWings? HiveWings? LeafWings?!" Cacti yelped, confused. She looked like she needed a break from all of the information.

"It's reaaaallly hard to explain," Cicada said. She put her two talons together and slightly tapped them. "I don't really want to explain it anyway."

She stopped and blinked.

"But I can show you."