"BE QUIET!" Hazel's desperate voice rang through the hall - or what remained of it - silencing all the dragons that were panicking and shifting rubble hurriedly. Sunny's breaths fell in shallow rasps, trying to filter out the dust in the air around them.
Clay. Tsunami. Glory. Starflight. Her mind panicked. Half Hazel's words didn't reach her ears, the other half were shoved aside by her worry. Are they okay? Where are they?!
"What we just experienced." Hazel trembled, "Was an Earthquake."
The hall erupted into shrieks of terror again, and the princess' wings folded in against her sides nervously. Sunny had zoned out again, and her eyes were darting across the hall in search of her practically - family.
"Nightstar!" She heard Glory call amidst the rush. Her scales were sickly green with worry "NIGHTSTAR?!"
"I've got him, he's here!" Came a voice from surprisingly - just behind Sunny. She slid out of the way to make room for an extremely pretty NightWing with marbled wings, holding the RainWing-NightWing prince in her talons, who gave Glory her son as soon as she was within reaching distance.
Hazel was shouting again. Sunny knew she should've listened, but the stress was too much for her to bear. I've got to find the others! Clay, and Tsunami, and - but before she could finish the thought, the three dragons in question appeared in her line of vision - Clay dragging what looked like the limp body of Peril out of a flaming mound.
Someone - it might've been Azalea or another SilkWing - stepped onto the stage and whispered something in Hazel's ear, a pale and grim expression on her once light face. The instant the LeafWing turned back to the crowd of dragons, Sunny knew something was wrong. Really, really wrong.
"SILENCE!!" Hazel hollered, louder than she'd ever heard her before, with a nasty croak in her voice. "STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING!"
Ever so slowly, every dragon in the hall turned to face their host, Sunny included. Glory stopped thanking the marbled dragon profusely. Clay rested Peril gently against the wall and looked up. Anemone's tail wound around Tamarin's tightly, so many times she thought it might break off.
"I have been informed... There has been... A death."
Not one dragon said a thing. A deathly silence fell upon the residents of Pyrrhia and Pantala, as each individual dragon frantically tried to find their close ones, making sure that they were still alive, still there, still breathing. If it was Clay or Glory or any of them, I wouldn't even want to be.
"The dragon... The casualty..." Hazel sighed reluctantly after leaning down so Azalea's mate, Iberis, could whisper a name in her ear.
Somehow, during the time, Sunny's eyes connected with Squid's. For once, he looked just as worried. And then the worry turned to extreme shock.
"Is a SeaWing called Nautilus. Nautilus has perished in this terrible event." She closed her eyes and looked down, as Squid looked up in horror.
"No! What? But father CAN'T die!" He yelled. All eyes turned to him but he didn't seem to care.
"I'm sorry, Squid." Hazel murmured.
"SORRY NEVER HELPED ANYTHING!" He snapped back at her, his eyes starting to appear glassy. "It's not true! He's not been killed by an earthquake!"
Trigger warning: graphic corpse description incoming
Another young SeaWing, trembling with fear and almost white in worry, dragged what looked like a mangled, blood-sodden corpse up from the rubble and laid it at Hazel's feet, before shaking so hard she practically fell off the stage. Upon closer look, it was a corpse... A corpse that you could just make out the pale green barbels and clammy, flaky scales... And the cold, empty sockets where his eyes were supposed to be, and the ghost of his scream still etched upon his face... Blood spread across his chest like a stain, covered from head to toe in dust and his skin ice cold and soft to the touch. Vulnerable. Unmoving.
Skip to here.
Sunny felt sick looking at it. Half the population of dragons turned away, and all the Dragonets had their eyes covered. Squid stood still, swaying in disbelief and refusal, before letting out a roar of anguish and pelting out of the room.
Sunny closed her eyes in silent condolences, even if Nautilus was already dead.
"I'm sorry..." Hazel whispered under her breath, partly to Squid, who couldn't hear her, but partly to them all. "I never - I didn't - I never thought of this. I never planned for this." Her face betrayed her shock and guilt and sadness all in one messy bundle of anxiety.
"Just... Go to your caves... Or...whatever..." She said faintly before walking slowly off the stage into Mandrake, who glanced at Sunny apologetically and took Hazel by the claw, leading her away.
"Glory, Nightstar!" Deathbringer careered past everyone, out of the forest and to his family's side. He wrapped his wings around them instantly, and Sunny didn't ignore the flurry of yellow relief in Glory's scales. Next to them, the marble winged NightWing shuffled awkwardly.
"Thank you." Deathbringer grasped her talons. "Unimaginable kindness."
"You quoted that from a scroll." Glory said quietly, a little of her sarcasm still evident.
Deathbringer smiled at her. "Yes. Yes I did."
"I'm Starlight." The NightWing said just as softly, still rattled from the shock. "Daughter of Quickstrike."
Deathbringer froze. He turned to Glory, who returned his hopefulness. "Quickstrike?" He stammered. "As in - Quickstrike Quickstrike?"
"Well, I never knew her last name was also Quickstrike, but yes." She laughed weakly. "I was a backup. To Deathbringer." She looked up, meaning in her eyes. "To you."
"You're... Then you're my half-sister?" His eyes widened. Sunny couldn't help but watch fixatedly.
"Yeah." Starlight beamed and twirled around him, grinning.
"I can't believe you didn't come to find me earlier! Starlight! Starlight. Starlight and Deathbringer. I like it!" He mused, trying out her name.
Just then, a claw on her back pulled her away. Clay was holding her shoulder awkwardly, his eyes filled with more worry than she'd ever seen. "Sunny. Everyone's panicking. I need to get Peril to a healer, and there's loads of other casualties that need treating too."
"But Clay!" Sunny called after him, before he could get too far. "The healers can't touch Peril! Only you can!"
"Well then..." He paused, looking thoughtful. "I need a healer to tell me what to do."
"You'd do that for her?"
Clay looked extremely affronted at the thought of just leaving her. "Of course! We're friends, aren't we?"
Definitely, Clay. She thought, her heart sinking. Just whatever you do, don't tell her that.
"Sunny? You coming?"
"I'm on my way, Clay!" She called back, her heart trembling from the shock of the damage as she wondered how on earth everything could go so wrong in one day.
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Sorry it's been a while, this chapter took a little bit of working through block to get out .🥲 But I'm back into the flow now, so expect more chapters soon.
Also, Starlight is an OC that belongs to StarlightAura, not me!
good day/night, wherever you are!
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CounterPart
Fanfiction'' Give me 5 chapters to change your mind '' Barely three years after the events of book 15, a large group of dragons including the Destiny Dragonets and the Jade Winglet are invited on a tour to Pantala... Sunny herself can't wait to see her Pantal...
