Fourth Wheel ||Qinter||

Chapter 10 - Free Me

??? POV
I coughed, my ancient, raspy voice echoing through the dark space around me. I'm... alive? How could I possibly be alive? I died. I remember dying, I remember the gleam in his eyes as he killed me. Betrayal. I coughed again. Something shifted at the opposite side of the cave. A dragon, I believed, and a massive one at that. "Who are you?" I asked cautiously. I want to see who it is. At that thought, light from an unknown source spread through the cave, lighting up the huge face of a waking NightWing. Could it be...? I leaned forward eagerly, but when I saw the hauntingly familiar face that was not who I hoped it was, I shriveled back with a hiss. "What do you want from me, you monster?" He just laughed, a hollow, mirthless laugh that echoed around me. I hated it. Hated, hated, HATED it.
"We're similar, you and I." He smiled, not an average, happy smile but a cruel smile that made his teeth glint silver like the sharpest daggers under the dim light that filled the cave.
"No!" I cried, mostly trying to convince myself. I was not him. Or... maybe that's what I think. No, I could NEVER be like him.
"We're both monsters. But I still have hope, whereas you can never recover."
"No! N- no..." I trailed off, wondering if what he said was really true.
"From now on, you are my minion. Your powers are mine. You must trade your life to mend mine... a soul for a soul."
I backed up against the furthest wall of the cave as he advanced towards me. "Never!" I growled, my voice trembling. "I'm not you."
"You...? You are a coward. And cowards will ALWAYS obey."

~~~

Tamarin reluctantly ducked under the thick forest canopy. Turtle and Moon had warned them that if they continued to fly, the students and teachers of Jade Mountain Academy might see them. Tamarin expertly swerved around trees and gracefully leapt over logs. She could tell that Turtle was watching her to make sure she didn't get hurt. She knew he was just trying to be nice, but... she had already told them that she didn't need sight to understand her surroundings. That was a fact she was quite proud of. From the start, she could already tell that Qibli and Winter liked each other, and she was pretty sure that all of the present dragonets except for Winter knew that Qibli liked Winter, but it was obvious to only she and Winter that he liked Qibli back. Suddenly, Moon hissed in a loud whisper, "Get down!" Tamarin instantly pressed her underbelly to the ground, and she could hear by the slight crackle of dead leaves around her that the others had done the same. She sniffed the air. It smelled mostly of normal forest scents like leaves and grasses, but she could smell the distant, burnt and rancid tang of smoke. "Peril's here," Tamarin guessed, hate and fear bubbling up inside of her. It wasn't that Tamarin hated Peril's personality, it was just the fact that a single scrape of Peril's firescales could burn down an entire forest. They could burn down the entire RAINFOREST, for that matter. The rainforest that was home to her tribe.

"How'd you know?" Winter asked. "You can't see."
Thank you so much for reminding me, you obnoxious IceWing. I forgot the fact that I was blind.
Tamarin bristled with anger but kept her voice flat as she said, "I can smell smoke. The firescales kind of smoke."
Turtle sniffed the air. "I can't smell anything," he stated, while Qibli nodded in agreement.
"But why would Peril of all dragons be here in the forest?" Moon asked.
Qibli shrugged.
"She's looking for us, of course." Winter said, as if it were obvious. Tamarin could imagine him rolling his eyes. I don't know what Qibli sees in him, she thought to herself.
"I know," Moon whispered. "But she was searching the night we left! Why is she STILL looking for us?"
"She'd do anything for Clay," Tamarin explained. "And by anything, I mean ANYTHING."
"What?" Qibli asked, confused.
Tamarin shook her head. "Never mind. Must be another one of my sixth sense things." She shot Winter an icy glare that she hoped would be at least slightly effective. She wanted to prove that she didn't need vision to know things.

Turtle caught Tamarin glaring daggers at Winter. Her empty, blind eyes had redefined the word 'creepy' as she glared at him. Winter needs to watch his mouth, Turtle thought, unintentionally siding with Tamarin. He knew Tamarin would hate - no, 'highly dislike' was more accurate - him for thinking it, but he pitied the small, sightless RainWing dragonet. How could she live without the most important of the five senses? She has five already, Turtle reminded himself. If she had sight as well, she'd have six.
Qibli's voice brought him back to reality. "So, uh, while we're cowering in fear, shouldn't we come up with a plan?"
"A plan for what?" Turtle asked.
"A plan on, you know, how to free Darkstalker." Qibli replied. Seeing the look of disgust that appeared on Winter's face, he quickly added, "Or maybe not free him."
"I don't think we should free him," Winter objected. "Remember, this is THE DARKSTALKER we're talking about. The most evil, most powerful, mind-reading, future-telling animus who ever lived. We shouldn't just free him like it's nothing. Think about what might happen if we freed him? As the dragonets who were prophesied to save Pyrrhia, we have to remember that every single one of our actions could destroy or save Pyrrhia."
"I agree with Winter," Moon said, breaking the silence that had settled over the group after Winter's little speech. "I don't think we should free Darkstalker."

"But since we were prophesied to save Pyrrhia, then doesn't that mean we don't have to worry about anything? Our destiny is already secured. That's what the prophecy is foretelling, isn't it?" Qibli suggested hopefully.
"That's not how prophecies work," Tamarin explained. "I've never had a vision and even I know that. You can't just sit around waiting for the future to happen, you have to make it happen." After a moment's pause, she added with humour in her voice, "Don't try to escape your responsibility of saving Pyrrhia, you lazy bum."
Qibli made an extremely exaggerated offended face. "Excuse ME?!!"
"This SandWing can't take a joke," Tamarin snorted, picking at her talons.
"Weird since he cracks his own trash-tier ones all the time," Winter agreed with a smirk.
"Hey!"
The dragonets laughed. It was a kind of tense, forced laugh. They all knew that everyone was just trying to lighten the gloomy mood, and distract each other from the reality that Pyrrhia's fate DID rest in their talons.
It's just a matter of time before we have to face the prophecy head on, Qibli thought, his snout still masked with stressed laughter. The next Brightest Night isn't too far away.
I have my friends here with me, and I have to protect them the same way they would protect me. Wherever we are on the Brightest Night, wherever this journey takes us, even if it's somewhere terrible, I have my friends with me.
"Peril's gone," Tamarin commented. "She just flew back into the academy, I'd guess."
"It's not that late, but I'm tired. Goodnight, guys." Moon yawned.
"Goodnight," Turtle echoed.
"See you in the morning," Tamarin murmured, already drifting off.
"Night," Winter said before curling up to sleep. Qibli murmured something inaudible before he slowly dozed off as well.

A/N:

This is kind of a filler chapter but I think it's the longest one in this story so far, with 1438 words.

Also, I want to thank everyone for all the support that I've gotten recently :))

I just want to clarify something: I'm Australian (don't ask anything about kangaroos, they exist but we don't ride them to school okaayyy?) so I use British English and not American English.

E.g. 'favor' becomes 'favour', 'labor' becomes 'labour', 'color' becomes 'colour', etc.

I think I'm going to ditch the voting thing. Should I ditch it? I feel like votes don't come in fast enough and it puts pressure on me because I have to consider all of your votes, but in order to make it fair there has to be enough votes, but that prevents me from updating frequently so I don't know what to do :/ 

Also, I know I've been a bit annoying about this but PLEASE JOIN MY DISCORD SERVER, WE CAN HAVE PARTIES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT >:3 

(Link in bio)

Thank you for reading and see you in the next chapter!

- Victory