Glorybringer: The Nightmare Within

Lightning Is Mean

Deathbringer hated storms, not only were they extremely dangerous, but they were wet, cold, dangerous, and hard to navigate in... Did I mention dangerous? The rain kept beating down onto Deathbringer as if he had personally insulted it. Also, I should probably mention that this storm was feeling very zappy on this specific day. Lightning was becoming increasingly frequent and was beginning to feel too close for comfort. Did I mention that it was dangerous? 

But if it meant keeping Glory safe... Well, that's all that matters.

"Look at you," he scoffed at himself. "Sounding like a romantic."

It came to Deathbringer quickly (though still not as soon as he'd have liked) that he had no idea where the search party was, or what they were searching for. Where had they even started? Deathbringer wondered, and hopelessness quickly filled him. Maybe his heroic adventure wasn't going to be so heroic after all.

That's when he heard a dragonet scream.

Deathbringer froze in the air and scanned his surroundings, searching for the source of the noise. His eyes finally caught two little flashes of green and he barreled towards it. It was a little girl, no more than a year old. The girl seemed to be a hybrid, a mixture of Nightwing, and Rainwing. Certain scales down her sides and on her joints were bright green but the rest of her stayed black. The dragonet was looking up at something, though Deathbringer couldn't see what due to the rain.

"Hey!" He yelled to be heard over the pounding rain and claps of thunder. The little girl remained motionless, her eyes unfocused, so he went over to her and placed a talon on her shoulder, causing her to jump but not look away.

"I work with the queen," he says. "We need to get you home."

The dragonet raises her arm to point a tree about a meter away, not taking her eyes off of it. Deathbringer looked but the night was too dark to see anything. Until the lightning flashed once more, and he saw what the girl had been looking at. There was a Rainwing tied against the tree by thin metal ropes, blood spilling from the many many MANY MANY cuts all over his body. So much so that it made Deathbringer wonder if the dark puddles around them were really water. They were deep gashes in every place except for the ones where stabbing him there would be lethal, which means whoever murdered this dragon was trying to make his death as long and painful as possible. It made Deathbringer sick to his stomach, and he turned the dragonet's head away from the sight.

How long had this girl been staring? Minutes? Hours? Did she watch the dragon die? A million questions came to his mind but he didn't get any answers.

"Everything ok over there?" a loud booming voice had no problem cutting through the sound of the rain. Deathbringer knew that voice, and the dragon connected to it revealed himself seconds later, along with 3 other companions.

"Whisper," Deathbringer sighed in relief, glad to have his friend near him. Whisper had been one of those names that suited him at hatching but he eventually grew out of. As a hatchling, Whisper was skinny and weak and could barely muster a squeak here-and-there, but as he got older, though his body was still relatively small, his voice was that of a god. They had met during a party Queen Glory had hosted, and had been good friends ever since.

Whisper was accompanied by another and two Rainwings, all of which were bigger than him but seemed to follow his lead. "Deathbringer!" Whisper said with a warm smile, but then his eyes caught the dragon on the tree and his smile disappeared. "Oh my..."

"You guys need to get back to the evacuation center!" Deathbringer warned them.

"There's another search party!" Whisper informed him. "We can't leave them out here!"

Deathbringer groaned, of course, there's a complication. "I'll get them! You guys get this girl to the evac center."

Whisper looked at Deathbringer worriedly before ordering the rest of the group. "Bring this girl to the evacuation center," Whisper ordered. "I'll join you in a minute."

The rest of the group nodded and took the girl from Deathbringer, saying soothing things, though it seemed to not affect her; the girl stared straight forward blankly, probably in shock. 

"I can't leave you out here to fend for yourself," Whisper said matter-of-factly. 

"You can't stay out here," Deathbringer warned him. "It's too dangerous."

"That wasn't a request," Whisper informed him, and Deathbringer smiled despite himself. "I bumped into them a few minutes before it all went down. Hopefully, they're still in the area."

Deathbringer nodded in acknowledgment, and Whisper launched into the air, leading Deathbringer to the spot he spoke of. 

Then, madness erupted.

The lightning, which had grown more and more frequent in the last few minutes, exploded. Millions of bolts of lightning fired off at once, forming a net-like shape in the sky and striking the ground rapidly. Soon, the center of the net began to cave in, creating a portal to a black abyss the size of the Skywing Palace. Deathbringer stared in awe, his minding jumping through hoops to figure out how this was possible, but he knew the answer; it wasn't. From the center of the hole, shot a flash of white that slammed into the forest somewhere before it started to close up. Well that was anticlimactic, Deathbringer thought, but once it had mostly closed, open only about the radius of a dragon stretched head to tail, a flaming black substance shot out last minute.

This one landed directly onto Deathbringer. The fireball was impossibly cold and quickly wrapped around him like the world's worst blanket.

"Deathbringer!" Whisper exclaimed as he saw his friend being enveloped by this black substance. The Nightwing yelled in pain as whatever latched onto him ate away at his scales, seemingly burning them off.

Then, he was struck by lightning and it all went away.

The sounds of the world washed away like a wave crashing onto the beach, and the burning and fatigue and even that annoying itch fell away; it left Deathbringer in a state of pure bliss as he barreled down towards the earth. Maybe Whisper was yelling his name, maybe Deathbringer had already died; he didn't know, and he thought that maybe he didn't need to know.

It's funny, really. Deathbringer might've died there, and he would've been content with it; but as they say, strike me once, I die peacefully, strike me twice, I'm going out swinging...

He was struck a second time. 

All of the peaceful bliss that had existed moments prior vanished in an instant and he was thrown back into his burning, tired, dying body. His ears rang painfully, and he saw Whisper diving towards him. For a moment, Deathbringer had forgotten that he was about to die. Inevitably, he reached the ground and his entire body erupted with pain. He would've screamed if there was an ounce of moisture left in his body. Instead, he just convulsed on the ground like an epileptic.

And because there was nothing else he could do, he laid there, losing blood, and uttering one last word before he fainted. "Glory," he croaked, he wanted to be with her. He wanted to hug her close and wait for this freak storm out. 

"You're going to be ok!" Whisper promised him, but his promise was blatantly empty. "Just try to stay calm... Uhm... err... We'll get some help!"

Was this how he died? Struck by lightning? He managed to chuckle, of all things. It wasn't the death he or his mother expected. They always guessed he would die because he did something stupid on a mission. He never thought he would die in a storm, having saved a child, and on his way to save more dragons. Would Deathbringer, the dragon born to be irredeemable, die a hero, of all things? 

All of these thoughts ran through his head in just a few seconds before the dark blanket of death wrapped around and began to take him away. 

Then there was a voice, deep, dark, and confused. "You...are...Compatible?"