Wings of Fire: The Rising Colors Prophecy: Book 5: The Final Battle

Prologue - Gobi

     Leopard walked through the school lunchroom, carrying her fish on a stone slab with one talon as she went to her usual place to sit beside her friend, Gobi.

      "Hi, Leopard." He turned his sparkling black eyes to look at her.

       "Hi, Gobi." she smiled.

       He blinked in confusion as he looked up at Leopard's horns, "Leopard..." Gobi said in a tone that matched his expression.

      "What?" she asked.

       "Did you die your horns or something?" he tilted his head in interest.

        "Huh?" Leopard looked down at her talons, heart beating like the wings of a butterfly, they were red and pink.

     She swiftly leapt up from the table and walked toward the only room with a mirror as Gobi called out, "It looks good!"

       Leopard turned to see her reflection in the glass, it was true, her scales had changed, ever since she started school, her parents had told her to keep her scales blue and white, for there were bad dragons out there, wanting to kill hybrids like her, Gobi, and half-brother, Taklaman, and her color-changing scales were her only noticeable difference from other IceWings at first glance. It had never been a problem until now.

     Her jaw dropped as she recognized the color that her horns, some scales, and namesake spots on her skin were, they were the color her RainWing father turned when he was around her mother, they were the very shade of red that indicated that a RainWing was in love.

      "Me?" she whispered, "That's not possible!" Leopard began to wonder who had caused her to change to this color, but it was no mystery, Gobi was the only dragon around her.

     "No." she stared into her own magenta eyes in the mirror, "I can't have a crush on anyone, especially not Gobi!"

     Then, Leopard heard a cry of pain from outside the door, and opened it to see Gobi standing next Zirconia, one of his other friends, while she cried on the floor, teachers and students alike bustling to help with Zirconia's gaping tail wound.

      From what Leopard could see, Gobi had accidentally hit her with his three occasionally drippy tail spikes that were filled with SandWing poison.

       She also knew that after today, nothing was ever going to be the same again.