Wings of Fire: Frost and Fire

The Worshippers

Magmatic's point of view

My head is still racing from last night. Taiga, Primrose, and I explored a cave full of drawings. These drawings told us more about the prophecy, and what we need to do. All we need to know now is where to go...
----------------------------
I awakened in the cave, laying right next to the entrance. I must have moved a lot in my sleep, which makes me a little scared. What if I roll onto Primrose in my sleep, and burn her to cinders? She's the one who understands all of this the best, and if we lost her, we'd be in serious trouble.

Surprisingly, Taiga was still asleep. I typically wake up after he does, since I sleep in later than him. Must be an IceWing thing. I decided to wake him up so that we could prepare to head out.

I placed a talon on Taiga's face. He flinched a little, but remained asleep. I just...stared at him, and I felt butterflies in my stomach. Suddenly, he leaned into me, like the warmth of my scales was attracting him.

I shook my head, snapping out of my trance. I came here to wake him up, not watch him sleep, after all. I shook him gently, and his beautiful eyes opened slowly.

"Morning, sleepy head," I said softly, smiling at Taiga.

Taiga made what was quite possibly the cutest yawn ever, and stared at me with his glittering eyes. "Good morning." I felt my face getting hotter.

"For once, I'm actually awake before you," I mentioned. "Get up. We've got to head out soon."

I took my talon off of Taiga, and he got up shortly after. Maybe I was seeing things, but I could have sworn that in his eyes, there was much more snow falling than usual. I folded my wings and straightened my tail, turning to face Primrose, who had her snout buried in a scroll.

"Primrose! We should leave soon. This dragon won't find herself," I said. For a moment, she didn't budge, but eventually removed herself from the scroll and began stuffing it into a leather pouch over her neck.

After a while, we squeezed through the entrance of the cave and found ourselves back in the desert. The sun was rising above dunes in the distance. I had to admit, it was kind of beautiful. We began to fly towards the Night Kingdom on the map, hoping that we would find this dragon and get some answers.

Several hours later, we saw something beneath us: some kind of camp. I spiraled down to land, and the others followed.

"What is this place?" Taiga looked around curiously, examining the huts that were set up across this area. They all seemed to have a symbol in the cloth, a crescent moon! This place could be connected to the dragon in our dreams.

We navigated around the camp. Primrose shifted her scales to look more like a NightWing. Speaking of which, it seemed like the only dragons here were NightWings. We got quite a few strange looks from them, but nobody said anything. Eventually, we made it to a large tent.

I stepped up to the makeshift counter, looking the NightWing in front of me in the eyes. "Um, excuse me, we're looking for-" I turned my head to Primrose, silently asking her a question.

"Eclipse," she whispered.

"Eclipse! We're looking for Eclipse." I turned back around to face the NightWing again. "Creepy looking dragon, wears a cloak, crescent moon on her face?"

"Oh, her? We locked her up further southwest. We found out she was trying to plot against the cult," said the NightWing. Cult? Was Eclipse part of some kind of cult? Maybe the crescent moon was a sign of her membership, or power. Either way, we knew where to go now.

"And don't you think about trying anything," the NightWing called after us as we walked out. "There's a hundred of us, and three of you!"

Taiga and I stumbled to an alley out of sight. "So, basically, a rescue mission," he said. "That's just great. Task two of the most dangerous dragons on the continent with a rescue mission."

"Well," I said, "It may be our only shot at getting any more information. Even if we risk hurting her, we have to rescue her."

Taiga peeked his head just around the corner. "That NightWing is right. We're way outnumbered. We may be powerful, but we're not that powerful."

"Then maybe we need to...sneak in," I suggested. "That way we don't get overwhelmed with cultists."

"It's kind of hard to do that," Taiga said. "You'd leave a path of fiery destruction, and both of our scales glow."

"I'm sure we could find a way," I replied. "And if that doesn't work, we could always try fighting them off. We may be few in numbers, but we're much stronger than them."

"As much as I'd love to murder a bunch of dragons, I'd like to keep my image intact," Taiga said, frowning. "You think our image is bad now? Just wait until we attack these guys."

A sudden glimmer in the sky caught my eye. I looked up to see five dragons in the sky, beating their wings. They were very shiny, and seemed to be holding something. Were those...IceWings? What were they doing out here?

"Taiga." I pointed to the sky. "Look, there's IceWings flying around here. What do you think they're doing all the way out here?"

"The most likely answer is that they're patrolling, looking for someone or something. I wonder who it is they're looking for," Taiga asked.

"We should keep our heads down until they pass. The two of us would stick out like a sore thumb among all of the NightWings." I crouched down. "The last thing we want is to draw attention."

Taiga nodded his head in agreement. "But who would they be looking for, out here around the desert? IceWings can't stand the heat."

I thought about it for a moment. I wasn't really sure who they could be looking for, but then again, I didn't pay much attention to anything outside of my kingdom. The only thing I could think of was that they could be looking for Taiga, for some reason...

"Maybe they've tracked someone to the desert. Possibly one of these NightWings here. NightWings and IceWings have hated each other for thousands of years, and they could be looking for a reason to start another fight," Taiga explained.

"Taiga, what if they're looking for you?" I tilted my head. "They could be trying to find you for some reason."

Taiga shrugged. "I've been gone for over seven years now, so I'm not exactly sure what they'd want with me." He had a point.

"Maybe they want you for your power. I'd imagine having a powerful dragon like yourself would be invaluable for their military," I suggested.

"But why would they do anything with me? Since I ran away and abandoned my kingdom, they could clearly see that I'm not loyal to my tribe. Plus, when I left, I can almost guarantee that my ranking dropped to the Seventh Circle..."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I acted like I understood. I didn't think that 'dropped' was a good sign, though...

"Well, let's get moving. We need to find Eclipse, don't we?" I asked. We walked out of the alley, to find Primrose standing next to it, waiting on us. We headed southwest towards the presumed location of this camp...