Wings of Fire: The Extremely Awesome Amazing Epic Legend Of Kinkajou

Chapter 18

Swimming through the wall is disorienting, the stone swirling around her wings and tail with the consistency of thick honey. Holding her breath she moves deeper into the wall, and just as she feels the tip of her tail disappearing into the grey stone her talons break back into cool air.

"That was so awesome," she breathes as her head breaks through, "epic animus entrance."

"Sure," Turtle grumbles as he stumbles out behind her, the coral still straining against one of his talons, "Though next time can you give a little warning before you pull me face first into a wall of magical stone."

"Depends on how much you annoy me! Now come on, we don't have all night to discover all of Darkstalker super awesome evil secrets."

Sighing, for what has to be the ten thousandth time, Turtle nods and lets the coral guide him down the hall.

There aren't many rooms in this hallway, and the ones that Kinkajou sees are strange and unreadable. One room is a bedroom she recognizes from the nightwing palace, but perfectly preserved as if it wasn't a gagillion years old. Another super weird room is covered in moving images, some from places that she recognizes. A range of mountains towering into the sky, an elegant structure surrounded by forests of kelp.

She gasps slightly as she recognizes a dragon in one of them. An icewing surrounded by rows of icy cells stretching off into the distance.

"Turtle, that's Cintre!" Kinkajou whispers excitedly.

"Who?"

"Cintre, the icewing that helped us in the icekingdom!" She points up to the image. Turtle glances upward.

"What is this place?" Turtle asks, pausing. "I see images from all over Pyrrhia. See, that's the seawing deep palace over there! It's so weird seeing an image of it outside the seawing tribe," Turtle says gesturing to the underwater palace Kinkajou had noticed previously.

"I bet it's Darkstalker's super secret spying cave, to see what his enemies are up to."

"But Darkstalker doesn't have enemies, he's enchanted everyone to be his servant or something," Turtle says.

"Don't know," Kinkajou says, "but let's see what other super awesome secrets these caves hold. Come on."

The next room they pass is one of the last ones in this corridor and is just as totally weird as the previous. Throughout the room thousands of images glitter suspended through the room, the only constant between them being a graceful nightwing with two silver teardrop scales below her eyes, just like Moon.

Clearsight, she realizes. And for a moment, imagining Darkstalker here, surrounded by images of his lost love, she feels a spike of sympathy for him.

But then Kinkajou remembers all the horrible things Darkstalker has done, from making his own father disembowel himself to cursing Moon, his best friend. And the feeling fades.

Only one room remains as they continue down the hallway, and the coral is taking them straight toward it.

Suddenly, Turtle freezes, then crouches, seemingly trying to press himself into the wall.

"What is it? Should I be super worried," she asks.

Gesturing to be quiet, Turtle tilts his head towards the room.

Unable to resist, Kinkajou lets her scales fade to grey and peaks around the corner into the cave. The cave is large enough to fit several dragons comfortably, with pads of moss lined up along one wall.

What Turtle saw is immediately obvious, dominating the vast majority of the room is a hulking dragon, Darkstalker. But the normally smug dragon isn't laughing or gloating, in fact, he seems to be whispering sadly to a limp figure slumped on a pad of moss.

As Kinkajou listens she can make out parts of Darkstlaker's whispering.

"No, that isn't fair!.." Darkstalker says, his voice barely audible. "No... Moon, that's not what is happening..."

He's talking to Moon. Kinkajou realizes. Her awesomest friend is the one lying on the bed of moss and Darkstalker's talking to her with his super mind powers.

"Please Moon..." Darkstlaker whispers, "I'm trying to do the right thing... Fine, that was a mistake, I shouldn't have done that... Moon, don't dragons deserve to be happy..."

Darkstalker's whispers fade into nothingness as he continues to watch Moon, his wings drooping sadly. Finally, after what seems like an eternity he pulls back. Which one final whisper of "Oh Moon, I really am your friend. I wish you would trust me," Darlstalker slowly stands up and Kinkajou is startled to see a tear sliding down from one eye, glimmering as it rolls over his silver teardrops scales and falls to the floor.

As Darkstalker, the totally evil smug face that they are on a mission to destroy,'s tear falls to the ground, Kinkajou remembers something Moon had said while they were flying over the ice kingdom. I just wish there was another way. Maybe Darkstalker wasn't entirely evil. Maybe...

Her thoughts are cut short as Darkstalker rises and turns toward the entrance. Realizing that when Darkstalker leaves he is going to see Turtle, who currently seems to be pretending to be a hunk of nondescript seaweed, she pulls her wings up in front of him like a wall, her stony grey scales veiling him entirely from view.

Just as she manages to settle into position a huge black dragon moves past, his tears gone and his total smugness back in full force. He doesn't even bother to glance around as he passes them, probably totally smug and overconfident about how well his secret cave wall keeps out other dragons.

No one moves until well after Darkstalker has disappeared out through the entrance and into the rest of the school.

"Wow, that was totally weird. Did you even know Darkstalker could cry?" She asks.

"Yes, I followed him once when we were following him to nightiwng kingdom. He saw a painting from Clearsight and pretty much completely broke down." Turtle says.

Kinkajou feels another pang of sympathy for Darkstalker, and this time it doesn't entirely fade, he may have done some totally sinister things, but he was also a dragon grieving for his love.

Suddenly the Coral gives another huge shake, almost pulling Turtle over as it strains toward Moon. Together they move toward the limp figure on the bed.

Moon is curled up on the cot of moss, her wings splayed out beside her. Her best awesomest friend looks peaceful, despite the recent dream argument with Darkstalker. If Kinkajou didn't know better she would have thought Moon was having a peaceful night's sleep, ready to wake up and go on awesome adventures with Kinkajou at any moment.

"So, what do we do now?" Turtle asks, touching the coral to Moon's wing, where it immediately returns to being a nondescript piece of dead coral. "It's not like we can just wake her up."

"We could go throw mangoes at Darkstalker until he gives in and removes his super evil spell," Kinkajou suggests, mostly joking. She doubts mangoes would work, they might need to upgrade to pineapples.

Suddenly a totally awesome idea strikes Kinkajou. Maybe they could wake up Moon Maybe...

Slowly, she reaches toward Moon's flopped-out wing.

The moment her claws brush again the smooth scales the icy sword on her back turns cold, as cold as the deepest parts of the ice kingdom, a blizzard of ice raging through her talon and into Moon's scales. And then, as quickly as it appeared the cold is gone, leaving nothing but freezing numbness in its wake.