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EDIT: The following text contains major spoilers for the current draft of Wings of Fire: Revenant. A lot of this will be changed in the rewrite (most notably a lot of the dialogue will be scrapped and redone) but I felt it was still fair to include a spoiler warning.

You can start reading Revenant here: Wings of Fire: Revenant - PrologueNone of this was real. Darkstalker knew his mother was dead. He had known that first time he saw her form on the enchanted map travel into the Ice Kingdom and grow still. She was gone. That was why the IceWings had to pay. That was why Arctic had, had to die. His mother had been taken away from him, and it wasn't fair. Except now she here, unchanged, as though his last memory of her had been plucked from his mind and made real. Her eyes shone with all the love she still had for him, and when she put her talons on his he knew she could be no one but his mother. He needed her to hold him, to tell him it was going to be all right, to tell him that he wasn't evil and he hadn't lost his soul. But she didn't. Not really. Darkstalker thought back to the soul reader, and the tiny grains of black sand showing just how much goodness he had left. He had taken every precaution, done everything right, and yet it hadn't saved his soul. He thought back to the holes he had sensed inside his father, and wondered now what it must look like inside him. Was there anything left now but a vast, empty chasm where his soul should have been? But that couldn't be right! It just couldn't be! He wasn't evil! He did all of those things to avenge his mother and protect his tribe. Isn't that what any dragon would do? What any dragon should do? Besides, he had always known that the future he was heading for would be worth it. When he was king of Pyrrhia there would be no war, no killing, and no one would ever have to feel scared or hungry or in pain ever again. He could fix all of that, and when he did no dragon would care what it took to get there. They would be grateful to him and love him and want him to be around forever to watch after them. That thought had always kept him going, always reminded him that the light at the end of this path would be worth any darkness he had to pass through. Yet as he looked down at his mother, he was reminded again of the fear and disappointment in her eyes that told him she knew exactly what he had done to his father. She didn't seem to care at all about what Arctic had done to her, and what he might have done to their tribe. She blamed herself for getting captured, and scolded him like a petulant child for offering to avenge the torture she had been put through. She still loved him, but she didn't trust him, and he couldn't yet see a future where she would support him as king. And if he didn't have her, who did he have? He looked at Moon. His dearest friend, in fact his only friend while he had been trapped in the mountain. It had meant so much to find her, to have another dragon he could communicate with, and have hope that one day he might be free again. But she, like Foeslayer, would never stand by his side as king. She hadn't understood at all when he tried to tell her he'd only cast the spell on the IceWings to protect the tribe, and she'd plotted with her friends to sabotage him. Did she just not need him anymore, now that she had them? Did she even care about him at all? He needed Clearsight. He missed her so much it hurt, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't bring her back to him. She was gone of her own volition, to live and die without him thousands of years ago. Without her, he had no happy futures. No dragonets. No great love. He was alone. Darkstalker felt a hole inside of him so great that he began to wonder if his soul truly was gone, and it was at that moment that Moon told him about her vision. She described an ordinary dragonet growing up in the rainforest, with friends and family and a deep love of strawberries. This perplexed Darkstalker; what did any of this have to do with him? It was only when his mother passed him one of the jewel-red fruits that he finally started to put the pieces together. "Wait," he said. "You think the dragon in your visions is me?" "You without your powers," said Moon. "You without your memories. A new you, with a chance to start over." Darkstalker snorted, little puffs of flame shooting out of his nose. "Why would I ever give up my powers?" he said. "I'm the most powerful dragon Pyrrhia has ever seen! Everyone wants to be me!" "I don't," said Qibli. "Me neither!" said Kinkajou. "Evil and smug and fat-headed and evil, no thank you!" "I'm not – " Darkstalker started and then fell silent. His mind went back to the soul reader. Seeming to sense his distress, Foeslayer settled her tail over his and patted one of his free talons gently. "You could be happy," she said to him. "You could be loved." "But you have to choose it," Moon said. "You're the only one who can make it real. Imagine it, Darkstalker. If you turn yourself into a different dragon, you could actually do good things for the world." He shook his head vigorously. "That's ridiculous. Without my powers? What do I do, make pie? You must be joking. Couldn't I do more good things with my powers intact?" he asked. "Like take Pyrrhia into the glorious future I've seen?" "I'd rather have pie," Kinkajou said. Moon shook her head. "The future of Pyrrhia is not your own personal scroll, waiting for you to write it, Darkstalker. The only future you control is yours. And you have not brought happiness to the dragon tribes. We don't want that future you see if we have to travel your dark path to get there." Darkstalker spun the strawberry in his claws for a moment, thinking. Was this truly a chance to start over? He wasn't sure how it could be. His powers were a part of him, as much as his scales or his wings. Without them, what would be left of him? "Do it," Foeslayer said quietly. "Become a dragonet again. I'll take care of you. I want to. We'll be happy this time." "All I see this way is darkness," he said, touching his forehead. He'd been able to look into his future from the moment he hatched, and the idea of traveling a path he couldn't see was terrifying. "Darkness is all the rest of us see if you do become king," Moon said. "But this way – " "No," he said. "I can't. I can't do it. I won't." Moon blinked, looking bewildered. "But my vision – I'm sure this is the path you choose." Darkstalker's tail lashed back and forth, throwing off his mother's. "I don't want to lose all my memories! I'd forget Clearsight ... she'd be even more gone than she is now!" He rose to his feet. "No, I'm going to be king. King of the whole continent. King of all the tribes! That's my future; I've seen it a thousand times!" "Darkstalker, please," Moon pleaded. "I know there's good in you still. If you listen to it, you'll choose this for yourself, I'm sure you will." Darkstalker's heart burned with hurt and anger so great it made his talons shake. His mother and his best friend wanted to erase him from the world! They wanted to take away his memories and his powers and leave him in darkness! "You are a bunch of small-minded little lizards," he said, rising to his full height and spreading his wings. "What, did you think I'd taste a strawberry and decide, mmm, wow, that's worth giving up my magic for?" He looked down at the tiny fruit in his claws and ripped off all the green leaves. They must think he was exceptionally stupid to fall for a trick like this. "Or did you have Turtle enchant this? Or perhaps another secret animus I don't know about? It doesn't matter, you boring, ordinary creatures. I can't be enchanted by anyone! I'm smarter now; I've made myself completely safe. Nobody's animus magic will work on me. Which means nobody will ever be able to stop me." He threw the strawberry in his mouth and swallowed it, casting a dark look at his mother. "Actually," said Kinkajou, "there is one dragon's magic that will still work on you."He glowered down at her. "You're wrong." "I'm right," she snapped back. "Oh, really? Whose?" She glared right back, and her scales were the color of burning strawberries. "Your own." Kinkajous upended her pouch and poured a tiny pile of scraps of paper onto the ground in front of her. My scroll! But there shouldn't have been anything left! "What?" Darkstalker said, choking. "But how – I didn't see – " "I know," Kinkajou said proudly. "Never saw me coming! Taken down by a ball of fluff! Who's insignificant NOW, frogface!" Darkstalker felt a shifting and pulling of his bones, and he realized suddenly that his whole body was shrinking. He turned to look at his Foeslayer, the feeling of betrayal alighting in him like it had the moment Clearsight slipped that bracelet on him. "You knew," he gasped to his mother. "You helped her." "Of course I did," she said. "What else could I do? Send you to your room? Extra chores for a week? Somehow neither of those seemed particularly apt for this situation." She patted his shoulder, and he realized with a jolt that they were now about the same size. "It was this or leave forever and never see you again. I decided we'd both be happier this way." Darkstalker tried desperately to counteract the spell. I enchant myself – Darkstalker – to keep all of my memories! I enchant myself to keep my powers. I enchant the strawberry to have no effect. I enchant myself to never have eaten it. I enchant myself to never have agreed to come here! None of it worked. He'd already lost his magic. "But my powers!" he cried. He nearly choked on the words as his voice came out higher, his lungs shrinking in his chest. "All my magic ... can't I keep any of it? The mind reading? Wait – " Darkstalker held up his front talons, watching the claws get smaller. "Sorry, Darkstalker," Qibli said. "You had more than one chance to use them wisely and well, and you chose not to." Darkstalker realized suddenly that everyone's thoughts had grown quiet and far away, and after a moment he couldn't hear them at all. He tried reaching out to sense the future, but all he could see was what was right in front of him. Without my powers I'm not me. I don't know how to be anyone else. I've never wanted to be. "I really thought he was going to choose this for himself," Moon said, tipping her head at Darkstalker, who was still steadily shrinking. "Oh, I knew he wouldn't," Kinkajou said. "But I couldn't tell you my awesome plan, obviously." "You told her, though. Why didn't he see it in your mind?" Moon asked Foeslayer. "You don't raise a mind-reading son without learning a few tricks about how to hide your thoughts," Foeslayer said calmly. The anger and betrayal in Darkstalker's heart was being rapidly replaced by sadness. They were barely paying any attention to what they were doing! Did they even care? Was he really so undeserving of any compassion? "Didn't I help you?" Darkstalker said in a lost, small voice, looking up at Moon. "Didn't I save dragons, too? I'm not evil ... I'm not ... " Help me, please! Moon. Mother. Prove to me that you still care about me. Prove to me that you can still see my soul. "Not anymore," Kinkajou said. Darkstalker felt his mind growing fuzzy, parts of his memory going suddenly blank. He fixated on Clearsight and realized he couldn't really remember anything that they had done together. He could remember feelings, he could remember how much he loved her, and he could still clearly see her face, but the memories themselves were gone. He held onto that image of her as hard as he could, but even that was slowly being pulled away from him. No! Don't let me forget! Don't let me be lost! Don't let me go into the darkness! His sense of self was now a tiny pinprick, surrounded by feelings and desires he could no longer identify. There were dragons looking down at him that he thought he recognized, but he couldn't remember their names. He saw the face of a dragon in his mind, but he didn't know who she was. He knew he was desperately upset and afraid, but he didn't know why. Then, just like that, Darkstalker was no more....



Part Two:

    “Make your choice, Turtle. Does she live, or does she die?” -
    Turtle was trembling so violently now that Peacemaker wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole mountain began to shake along with him. His gold-flecked eyes darted frantically left and right as he tried to meet Kinkajou’s gaze behind the veil of Peacemaker’s upraised wings.
    Peacemaker felt the chain wound around his wrist jerk violently, and the young hybrid turned to find Kinkajou frantically shaking her head, pleading with Turtle to say no, to let her die if it meant Darkstalker could not return. Respect welled suddenly and unwelcomingly in Peacemaker’s already overcrowded head, but he quickly squashed it, concentrating instead on the steady tempo of rage which had fueled him so far.
    “I’m not going to sit here all night, Turtle!” he snapped. He was fairly confident in Turtle’s lack of brainpower, but he didn’t want to risk allowing the Seawing time to figure out one of the numerous ways he could get around this plan.
    “I…I don’t…I…”
    “Peacemaker!” a voice suddenly cried through the cacophony of distant thunder.
    Peacemaker whirled in the direction of the sound, his heart beating a furious rhythm in his chest. It couldn’t be! How could she know he was here?
    A midnight-black form suddenly emerged from the gloom, eyes burning like emerald flames.
    “Mother?! Wh…what are you doing here?!”
    “I’ve come to bring you home,” Hope replied as she lighted down neatly on the cliff next to Turtle.
    Foeslayer! he silently corrected himself. There is no Hope! It was a lie, just like everything else in my life!
    Peacemaker gritted his teeth. “I am going home, Mother. My real home…in the Night Kingdom.”
    “Peacemaker, stop this foolishness! The Night Kingdom is practically destroyed. There’s nothing for you to go back to.”
    “There will be when I get my powers back! I’ll return our kingdom to its original glory, and our tribe won’t have to grovel to Rainwings ever again.”
    Foeslayer didn’t seem particularly swayed by this declaration, as if somehow she had already known what his plan was.
    “We don’t grovel to anyone, and you know that. Don’t tell me getting back the memories of your first life has suddenly made you forget your second one.”
    “How did you know I’d gotten my memory back? You don’t seem terribly surprised by any of this. It’s almost like someone…told you.”
    Foeslayer narrowed her eyes, but didn’t reply.
    “You’re not alone…are you?”
     Suddenly, a second form, smaller than the first, materialized from the darkness. The silver scales on either side of her eyes flashed like teardrops as she lighted down on the cliff beside him.
    “Moon,” he hissed, “I should have known.” Silently he cursed himself for not anticipating this.
    “Peacemaker…” she started.
    “Don’t call me that!” he snapped. “You know as well as I do that, that dragon doesn’t exist!”
    Rage burned in his chest like a boiling pot threatening to spill over. More than Foeslayer, more than Turtle, more than even Kinkajou, this was the dragon whose betrayal he felt the most. Kinkajou may have masterminded his enchantment, but he had barely even known her at the time. She was nothing to him, so why should she think twice about ripping away his powers? But Moon had been his friend, the only real friend he had, had after emerging from the mountain. He had spared her from his enchantments because he had trusted her, and look where that trust had gotten him!
    She stared back at him for a moment, as if at a loss for words. Unlike Foeslayer, who looked equal parts angry, frustrated, afraid, and distressed, Moon simply looked sad. Maybe in her visions she had seen what he had seen, felt what he had felt. Maybe she knew how much he hated her now.
    “I’m sorry, Peace…I’m sorry. I never wanted you to find out like this.”
    “You never wanted me to find out at all!” he snapped.
    “We gave you the chance to choose for yourself, and you refused. It was the only way to keep Pyrrhia safe from you.” She sighed heavily. “Because you couldn’t be trusted, Darkstalker.”
    “I couldn’t be trusted?! I was always truthful with you, Moon! You above everyone else.”
    “That’s not true, and you know it,” she replied calmly. “You deceived me as much as you deceived everyone else. Maybe even more so.”
    “You have no right to preach to me about deception, Moonwatcher! Before me you were nothing! A miserable, pitiful little dragon afraid of her own shadow that was convinced her visions were nothing but bad dreams. I taught you how to use your powers, and what did you do? You used them against me! ‘He was picking strawberries’, right? A happy new life for everyone. Well, your vision was a lie! Did you see this in my wonderful new future?” he demanded, spreading his wings to indicate the scene around them.
    Moon hung her head. “No, I didn’t. But I do see what happens if you get your powers back.”
    Peacemaker lowered his head so he could look her in the eye, and hissed, “So enlighten me.”
    She looked back at him. “The same thing that was going to happen before Clearsight put you under the mountain. You’ll destroy Pyrrhia.”
    “That’s not the future I saw.”
    “That’s not the future you wanted to see. But it’s the one Clearsight saw.”
    He gritted his teeth. “Clearsight betrayed me.”
    “Only because you left her no other choice. After what you did to your father, there was no going back.”
    “My father deserved it!”
    “No one deserves to die like that.” The icy calm in her voice was infuriating. It made him want to reach out and claw that self righteous look right off of her face.
    “You don’t know what he was like!” Peacemaker snapped.
    She glanced up at him, anger showing for the first time beneath the blanket of eerie calm. “From the sound of it, he was a lot like you.”
    Rage shot through him like a wave of flame, spreading all the way to the tips of his talons. “Shut up!”
    “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but Arctic was a dragon just like you. He made mistakes. He let his power corrupt him.”
    “He wanted to destroy our tribe!”
    “The only one trying to destroy our tribe is you!” Moon replied sharply.
    “I said shut up!” he snapped, and before he realized what he was doing, a blast of flame shot from his jaws and barreled furiously in Moon’s direction. She reeled backwards just as the flame made contact with her right wing, teetering for a brief moment before she toppled over the edge of the cliff. Peacemaker watched in horror as she began to fall, the burn spreading, blackening and shriveling the wing membrane like it was made of paper.
    “Moon!” he gasped, making a move to catch her, but not fast enough.
    For a brief, terrifying moment Moon disappeared from sight over the side of the cliff, her cry of distress swallowed up by the distant thunder. Kinkajou was pulling desperately at her chains, a horrified scream streaming wordlessly from her clenched jaws.
    Three moons, what have I done?!
    Then, before Peacemaker had a chance to realize what was happening, Foeslayer was in the air. She dove with the speed and precision of a hunting falcon, and emerged, struggling under the weight of the younger dragon slung across her back. She deposited Moon gently on the cliff beside Turtle, who was staring at the two of them in frozen, silent horror.
    At first Moon was completely still, her blackened wing flopping uselessly at her side, her eyes closed and her head resting against the stone cliff. For one horrible moment Peacemaker was sure she must be dead, until suddenly her injured wing twitched, and a long, soft groan of pain escaped her.
    “Are you all right, Moon?” Foeslayer demanded.
    Moon raised her head, her eyes glazed with pain. “I…I think so….”
    She looked up and outwards, her eyes meeting Peacemaker’s with a look that should have been angry or frustrated or confused…a look that should not have been as hopeless and heartbroken as it was.
    Peacemaker could feel tears stinging his eyes. “I…I didn’t mean…I didn’t want to…”
    The anger inside of him was now warring with equal parts guilt and sadness, but still he attempted to hold onto it. She had betrayed him! She deserved it!
    “Enough of this!” he snapped, taking the chain in his talons and tossing Kinkajou over the side of the cliff. For a brief moment she fell down, down towards the black abyss below, only to hit the end of the chain and dangle precariously by the lengths of metal attached to her feet, wings, neck, and mouth. All three of the onlookers gasped in unison as their friend hung there, strung up by her feet like nothing more than a roasting pig.
    Peacemaker raised the end of the chain he was holding so all three of them could see it clearly. “Now change me back, or I drop her!”
    “All right, I’ll do it!” Turtle suddenly burst out.
    “Turtle, no!” Moon cried, grimacing as she attempted to stand, only to be hindered by her injured wing. “Kinkajou wouldn’t want that.”
    The frantic shaking of Kinkajou’s head seemed to indicate that Moon was right, but Turtle didn’t seem swayed by this.
    “It won’t matter what she does or doesn’t want if she’s dead!”
    “If Darkstalker comes back, then she’s already dead!” Foeslayer cried.
    A jolt of sadness struck right in the center of Peacemaker’s heart. His own mother thought he was nothing but a monster.
    “I’m sorry, but I can’t let her die,” Turtle cried, tears streaming from his eyes. “I love her.”
    He took a deep breath. “I enchant…”
    “Wait! Stop!” a new voice suddenly rang out, more powerful even than the sound of the storm.
    Peacemaker looked up just in time to see a form illuminated by the lightning dancing between the billowing clouds.
    “Seeker?”
    Clearsight.
    “Truthseeker, what are you doing here?” Foeslayer demanded. “I told you to stay back at Jade Mountain!”
    “I’m sorry, Hope, but I have to be here. I…I have to talk to him…because I’m the only one who can. There’s…there’s something you don’t know about me.”
    The young Nightwing flew across to Peacemaker, as if she intended to light down next to him, then at the last minute seemed to think better of it and instead decided to stay airborne.
    “Have you come to appeal to my better nature too, then?” Peacemaker asked.
    “I just want to talk,” she replied, her wings flapping heavily as she hovered in the air before him.
    “I’ve had enough talk,” he said, “either I get my powers back or this dragon dies.” He held up the chain briefly before winding it around a nearby spire of rock to take the crushing weight off his wrist.
    “I don’t think you want to kill anyone, Peacemaker.”
    “Is that right?” he replied skeptically.
    “No, because I think you’re a good dragon. I think you’ve always been a good dragon.”
    This reply managed to give him pause, and he found himself looking at her more intently than he had been before.
    “But sometimes…sometimes when a dragon is angry or scared or feels helpless, sometimes they…they do bad things. They do bad things and they think it’s okay, because other dragons have done the same things to them. I think everyone’s felt that way before, but most of us don’t have the power to act on it. If we did then…I think it would be a lot easier for a good dragon to do a lot of bad things.”
    Peacemaker narrowed his eyes. “How can you claim to know what kind of dragon I am? Maybe you’d feel differently if you really knew all the things I’ve done.”
    “But I do know. I don’t know how, but when you go your memories back, so did I. Suddenly I remembered when you were Darkstalker…and I was Clearsight.”
    Foeslayer and Moon both looked surprised by her sudden confession, but not particularly astonished by the revelation that the young blacksmith and the ancient seer were one and the same. Somehow Peacemaker was sure that they had known already, though he wasn’t sure exactly how.
    “You were right about who you thought I was,” Truthseeker continued.
    “But how is that possible? Did you put an enchantment on yourself with my old scroll?”
    “No, it wasn’t anything like that. I lived and I died like any normal dragon, and then, somehow, I…I came back. I came back as a new dragon, only I didn’t remember who I used to be. Sometimes the memories would come to me as dreams, dreams of places I had never been and dragons I had never seen…and one dragon in particular, with eyes that looked like yours.”
    Peacemaker stared fixedly at her, remembering his own dreams about a dragon he loved, a dragon that he had feared for so long did not exist.
    “Now I think I finally understand why I came back,” she said.
    “And why is that?”
    “For you.”
    Peacemaker narrowed his eyes. “To stop me.”
    “To help you. To do what I couldn’t do before. To have a chance at those happy futures we missed out on all those years ago.”
    “But that’s exactly what I’m trying to do! In all of my happiest futures I was king of the Nightwings, and you were my queen. We had our dragonets, remember? Eclipse and Shadowhunter? If you let me get my powers back, then we can finally have that. We can be together, Clearsight!”
    Truthseeker sighed and shook her head. “You saw the futures where you were king as nothing but happiness and prosperity because that’s all you ever wanted to see. In my visions you were a tyrant, manipulating dragons’ minds, killing, trying to take over all of Pyrrhia…and you were never happy. Not once. We were never happy.”
    Peacemaker growled. “Is that why you tricked me and stuck me under the ground for two thousand years? Why should I believe anything you say when the last time we met you took everything from me?”
    “You think I wanted to do that?!” Her expression turned suddenly angry. “I suffered every day for the rest of my life because of that decision, but you left me no choice! You chose your future, and in that future there was no room for anyone else. Not me or any other dragon. So I did what I had to do to save the world from you, and I don’t regret that I did it.”
    “Then why are you here in the first place?! If I’m just a selfish monster, why do you want to have anything to do with me?”
    “Because never, not once in all the years I lived after I left you under that mountain, did I stop loving you. And I don’t think you’re a selfish monster. I think you’ve made some pretty selfish, monstrous decisions, but I always knew that at your core was a good dragon, a dragon who was born with more power than anyone should have and didn’t know how to deal with it. But you also got something most dragons never get: a second chance. A chance to start again…to be a better dragon…and you have been, Peacemaker. You have been.”
    Peacemaker had a million things to say, and yet he couldn’t think of any of them.
    Truthseeker raised her left arm, and he saw that she had his beaded red and white necklace wrapped around her wrist. “Do you remember when I made this for you? Remember how excited you were?”
    Peacemaker sighed. “Yes, I remember.”
    “And do you remember when my father died? You were the only one I could count on. On those days when I was sure I didn’t want to live without him, I kept going because of you.”
    Peacemaker’s shoulders threatened to buckle. “I…I didn’t know that.”
    “I think there are a lot of things you don’t know. Did you know Auklet wanted to give up on weaving because she felt she wasn’t good enough? She only changed her mind because you told her how talented she was. Did you know Cliff thought the only reason anyone liked him was because he was a prince? And then he met you, and you never cared at all about his title. He told me that because of that, he felt you were the first real friend he’s ever had. Did you know Orchid still has flashbacks from her time in the Nightwing labs? And she feels like she can’t tell Mangrove, because he worries too much? But she said that on those days where it becomes so overwhelming that she feels like she can’t go on, your silly little songs always cheer her up.”
    “But I…I thought she hated my singing.”
    “She only says that to wind you up, because she knows it’s more fun if you think she doesn’t want you to do it. She told me ‘Strawberries as Big as a Scavenger’s Head’ always makes her smile, even if it is a little morbid.”
  A smile pulled at the corner’s of Peacemaker’s mouth. “I…I would always sing that one when we were picking the strawberries. I thought it drove her crazy.”
  She paused. “You know, for a dragon that doesn’t exist…you sure do have a lot of happy memories.”
  “But it was a lie! All of it was built on lies!”
  “It wasn’t a lie. It was you. You without your powers. And that’s what I think you don’t want to believe. That the you that never had powers was a better dragon. A happier dragon.”
  Peacemaker shook his head stubbornly, reaching back into his memories for something, anything that would indicate that she was wrong. Hadn’t he been happy in his other life? Hadn’t he done good things? He thought about his sister, Whiteout. They had been happy together, hadn’t they? Then he remembered the look of horror on her face when she had seen her father rip himself to pieces in front of her. Had she ever forgotten that, or had she carried that memory around for the rest of her life? Peacemaker grimaced. He had been so busy thinking about getting revenge on his father that he hadn’t stopped to think about how it would affect his sister.
    What about Foeslayer? He thought of his dragonethood as Darkstalker, of the fighting and the yelling and the cold looks exchanged over silent dinners. Then he thought of being Peacemaker, of lazy days in the rainforest making mud pies so that Hope had to rinse him off in the stream, of eating bananas and listening to the tree frogs call as the moon rose high over the thick canopy. He could almost feel the warmth of her scales as he snuggled beneath her wing to sleep, comfortable in the knowledge that his mother could chase away any bad dreams that came in the night.
    One by one he thought of his friends. He thought of Moon’s patience and Kinkajou’s enthusiasm, of Auklet’s kindness and Cliff’s boundless confidence. They had liked him when he had no spells to cast, no superpowers to give out, no positions of authority to promise them. They had wanted to be his friend simply because of the dragon he was, the utterly ordinary, unspectacular dragon with nothing special to offer them.
    “But if I’m not king…if I have no powers…who am I? I’ve never wanted to be anything else.”
    “You’re Peacemaker. That’s all you need to be.”
  Peacemaker felt as if he were being ripped in two, his body tearing and cracking and breaking apart. If he was Peacemaker, he was nothing! An ordinary dragon with no special destiny. He couldn’t live like that. He couldn’t!
    But if he was Darkstalker, then who would he be? A king who everyone hated? A king whose own mother feared him? A king whose lifelong friend would willingly give her life to keep him from returning? A king who had to cast spells to make other dragons like him? Because now even Moon would never trust him again, and for the rest of one long, never-ending life he would know it was all fake. It was all a lie. Darkstalker was a dragon no one could love and no one could trust. Even surrounded by subjects and admirers and enchanted friends, he would be alone. He would be as alone as if he were still trapped under that mountain.
    His legs finally gave out from under him, and he collapsed onto the cold stone. The sound of the thunder in his ears seemed as if it were coming from a million miles away. He felt the long-held tears finally fall from his eyes, and tasted their bitter, salty tang as they met his lips.
  “What do I do?”
  He didn’t realize that Truthseeker had lighted down next to him until he felt her tail fall comfortingly across his shoulders. He looked up to see her violet eyes looking softly down at him.
  “Let’s go home,” she whispered.
  He shook his head, the tears burning in his eyes, and the taste of smoke still in his mouth.
  “I can’t. I can’t go back. Not after everything I’ve done.”
  “Peacemaker…” Her expression was now twisted with worry, as if she feared that all she had done had amounted to nothing.
  Slowly, Peacemaker rose to his feet and unfastened the chain from the spire of rock where he had anchored it. For a moment he held the chain suspended in the air, aware of the weight of this last hope dangling over the abyss. In his talons he held to opportunity to get back everything he ever wanted, to be king of Pyrrhia, to live forever, to have powers no other dragon could dream of. It was all his for the taking.
  So, as a clap of thunder shook the stone beneath his feet, Peacemaker lighted into the air and dragged Kinkajou back onto the cliff. As she lay there, willing to blood to siphon back into her limbs, Peacemaker quietly landed and withdrew the key from where it was hidden.
  Silently, he handed it to Truthseeker.
  She smiled at him as if he’d somehow delivered her one of the moons and said it was all for her. “You’re a good dragon, Peacemaker.”
  He shook his head. “No, I’m not.”
  Her brows knit together into a look of concern.
  “You’re a good dragon, Truthseeker. I’m nothing. I’m no one. And now I’ve ruined everything.”
  “Don’t say that. Look, let’s just go home, and we can forget about all this.”
  He shook his head again. “I can’t. There’s nowhere for me to go.”
  “Peacemaker…”
  “Free Kinkajou. Help Turtle heal Moon. Keep them safe.” He took a few steps back. “I can’t stay here.”
    “Peacemaker, wait…”

    "I'm sorry." And with that he lighted into the air and disappeared into the shadows of the storm.

So I finally made the next segment for my fan fiction, and it only took me two months. Yay me! Sorry, it's just my fandom motivation is always either at 0 or 100. There is no in-between. The follow-up to this scene is here but I haven’t made the written segment for that yet.

No critique desired. Please respect that.

Wings of Fire belongs to Tui T. Sutherland

The art and writing belongs to me, and you are not permitted to steal, trace, copy, reference, or otherwise redistribute it in any way. I also do not want to see this posted on RP sites, Facebook, YouTube, etc. without my permission. That's still art theft.

Description
EDIT: The following text contains major spoilers for the current draft of Wings of Fire: Revenant. A lot of this will be changed in the rewrite (most notably a lot of the dialogue will be scrapped and redone) but I felt it was still fair to include a spoiler warning.

You can start reading Revenant here: Wings of Fire: Revenant - PrologueNone of this was real. Darkstalker knew his mother was dead. He had known that first time he saw her form on the enchanted map travel into the Ice Kingdom and grow still. She was gone. That was why the IceWings had to pay. That was why Arctic had, had to die. His mother had been taken away from him, and it wasn't fair. Except now she here, unchanged, as though his last memory of her had been plucked from his mind and made real. Her eyes shone with all the love she still had for him, and when she put her talons on his he knew she could be no one but his mother. He needed her to hold him, to tell him it was going to be all right, to tell him that he wasn't evil and he hadn't lost his soul. But she didn't. Not really. Darkstalker thought back to the soul reader, and the tiny grains of black sand showing just how much goodness he had left. He had taken every precaution, done everything right, and yet it hadn't saved his soul. He thought back to the holes he had sensed inside his father, and wondered now what it must look like inside him. Was there anything left now but a vast, empty chasm where his soul should have been? But that couldn't be right! It just couldn't be! He wasn't evil! He did all of those things to avenge his mother and protect his tribe. Isn't that what any dragon would do? What any dragon should do? Besides, he had always known that the future he was heading for would be worth it. When he was king of Pyrrhia there would be no war, no killing, and no one would ever have to feel scared or hungry or in pain ever again. He could fix all of that, and when he did no dragon would care what it took to get there. They would be grateful to him and love him and want him to be around forever to watch after them. That thought had always kept him going, always reminded him that the light at the end of this path would be worth any darkness he had to pass through. Yet as he looked down at his mother, he was reminded again of the fear and disappointment in her eyes that told him she knew exactly what he had done to his father. She didn't seem to care at all about what Arctic had done to her, and what he might have done to their tribe. She blamed herself for getting captured, and scolded him like a petulant child for offering to avenge the torture she had been put through. She still loved him, but she didn't trust him, and he couldn't yet see a future where she would support him as king. And if he didn't have her, who did he have? He looked at Moon. His dearest friend, in fact his only friend while he had been trapped in the mountain. It had meant so much to find her, to have another dragon he could communicate with, and have hope that one day he might be free again. But she, like Foeslayer, would never stand by his side as king. She hadn't understood at all when he tried to tell her he'd only cast the spell on the IceWings to protect the tribe, and she'd plotted with her friends to sabotage him. Did she just not need him anymore, now that she had them? Did she even care about him at all? He needed Clearsight. He missed her so much it hurt, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't bring her back to him. She was gone of her own volition, to live and die without him thousands of years ago. Without her, he had no happy futures. No dragonets. No great love. He was alone. Darkstalker felt a hole inside of him so great that he began to wonder if his soul truly was gone, and it was at that moment that Moon told him about her vision. She described an ordinary dragonet growing up in the rainforest, with friends and family and a deep love of strawberries. This perplexed Darkstalker; what did any of this have to do with him? It was only when his mother passed him one of the jewel-red fruits that he finally started to put the pieces together. "Wait," he said. "You think the dragon in your visions is me?" "You without your powers," said Moon. "You without your memories. A new you, with a chance to start over." Darkstalker snorted, little puffs of flame shooting out of his nose. "Why would I ever give up my powers?" he said. "I'm the most powerful dragon Pyrrhia has ever seen! Everyone wants to be me!" "I don't," said Qibli. "Me neither!" said Kinkajou. "Evil and smug and fat-headed and evil, no thank you!" "I'm not – " Darkstalker started and then fell silent. His mind went back to the soul reader. Seeming to sense his distress, Foeslayer settled her tail over his and patted one of his free talons gently. "You could be happy," she said to him. "You could be loved." "But you have to choose it," Moon said. "You're the only one who can make it real. Imagine it, Darkstalker. If you turn yourself into a different dragon, you could actually do good things for the world." He shook his head vigorously. "That's ridiculous. Without my powers? What do I do, make pie? You must be joking. Couldn't I do more good things with my powers intact?" he asked. "Like take Pyrrhia into the glorious future I've seen?" "I'd rather have pie," Kinkajou said. Moon shook her head. "The future of Pyrrhia is not your own personal scroll, waiting for you to write it, Darkstalker. The only future you control is yours. And you have not brought happiness to the dragon tribes. We don't want that future you see if we have to travel your dark path to get there." Darkstalker spun the strawberry in his claws for a moment, thinking. Was this truly a chance to start over? He wasn't sure how it could be. His powers were a part of him, as much as his scales or his wings. Without them, what would be left of him? "Do it," Foeslayer said quietly. "Become a dragonet again. I'll take care of you. I want to. We'll be happy this time." "All I see this way is darkness," he said, touching his forehead. He'd been able to look into his future from the moment he hatched, and the idea of traveling a path he couldn't see was terrifying. "Darkness is all the rest of us see if you do become king," Moon said. "But this way – " "No," he said. "I can't. I can't do it. I won't." Moon blinked, looking bewildered. "But my vision – I'm sure this is the path you choose." Darkstalker's tail lashed back and forth, throwing off his mother's. "I don't want to lose all my memories! I'd forget Clearsight ... she'd be even more gone than she is now!" He rose to his feet. "No, I'm going to be king. King of the whole continent. King of all the tribes! That's my future; I've seen it a thousand times!" "Darkstalker, please," Moon pleaded. "I know there's good in you still. If you listen to it, you'll choose this for yourself, I'm sure you will." Darkstalker's heart burned with hurt and anger so great it made his talons shake. His mother and his best friend wanted to erase him from the world! They wanted to take away his memories and his powers and leave him in darkness! "You are a bunch of small-minded little lizards," he said, rising to his full height and spreading his wings. "What, did you think I'd taste a strawberry and decide, mmm, wow, that's worth giving up my magic for?" He looked down at the tiny fruit in his claws and ripped off all the green leaves. They must think he was exceptionally stupid to fall for a trick like this. "Or did you have Turtle enchant this? Or perhaps another secret animus I don't know about? It doesn't matter, you boring, ordinary creatures. I can't be enchanted by anyone! I'm smarter now; I've made myself completely safe. Nobody's animus magic will work on me. Which means nobody will ever be able to stop me." He threw the strawberry in his mouth and swallowed it, casting a dark look at his mother. "Actually," said Kinkajou, "there is one dragon's magic that will still work on you."He glowered down at her. "You're wrong." "I'm right," she snapped back. "Oh, really? Whose?" She glared right back, and her scales were the color of burning strawberries. "Your own." Kinkajous upended her pouch and poured a tiny pile of scraps of paper onto the ground in front of her. My scroll! But there shouldn't have been anything left! "What?" Darkstalker said, choking. "But how – I didn't see – " "I know," Kinkajou said proudly. "Never saw me coming! Taken down by a ball of fluff! Who's insignificant NOW, frogface!" Darkstalker felt a shifting and pulling of his bones, and he realized suddenly that his whole body was shrinking. He turned to look at his Foeslayer, the feeling of betrayal alighting in him like it had the moment Clearsight slipped that bracelet on him. "You knew," he gasped to his mother. "You helped her." "Of course I did," she said. "What else could I do? Send you to your room? Extra chores for a week? Somehow neither of those seemed particularly apt for this situation." She patted his shoulder, and he realized with a jolt that they were now about the same size. "It was this or leave forever and never see you again. I decided we'd both be happier this way." Darkstalker tried desperately to counteract the spell. I enchant myself – Darkstalker – to keep all of my memories! I enchant myself to keep my powers. I enchant the strawberry to have no effect. I enchant myself to never have eaten it. I enchant myself to never have agreed to come here! None of it worked. He'd already lost his magic. "But my powers!" he cried. He nearly choked on the words as his voice came out higher, his lungs shrinking in his chest. "All my magic ... can't I keep any of it? The mind reading? Wait – " Darkstalker held up his front talons, watching the claws get smaller. "Sorry, Darkstalker," Qibli said. "You had more than one chance to use them wisely and well, and you chose not to." Darkstalker realized suddenly that everyone's thoughts had grown quiet and far away, and after a moment he couldn't hear them at all. He tried reaching out to sense the future, but all he could see was what was right in front of him. Without my powers I'm not me. I don't know how to be anyone else. I've never wanted to be. "I really thought he was going to choose this for himself," Moon said, tipping her head at Darkstalker, who was still steadily shrinking. "Oh, I knew he wouldn't," Kinkajou said. "But I couldn't tell you my awesome plan, obviously." "You told her, though. Why didn't he see it in your mind?" Moon asked Foeslayer. "You don't raise a mind-reading son without learning a few tricks about how to hide your thoughts," Foeslayer said calmly. The anger and betrayal in Darkstalker's heart was being rapidly replaced by sadness. They were barely paying any attention to what they were doing! Did they even care? Was he really so undeserving of any compassion? "Didn't I help you?" Darkstalker said in a lost, small voice, looking up at Moon. "Didn't I save dragons, too? I'm not evil ... I'm not ... " Help me, please! Moon. Mother. Prove to me that you still care about me. Prove to me that you can still see my soul. "Not anymore," Kinkajou said. Darkstalker felt his mind growing fuzzy, parts of his memory going suddenly blank. He fixated on Clearsight and realized he couldn't really remember anything that they had done together. He could remember feelings, he could remember how much he loved her, and he could still clearly see her face, but the memories themselves were gone. He held onto that image of her as hard as he could, but even that was slowly being pulled away from him. No! Don't let me forget! Don't let me be lost! Don't let me go into the darkness! His sense of self was now a tiny pinprick, surrounded by feelings and desires he could no longer identify. There were dragons looking down at him that he thought he recognized, but he couldn't remember their names. He saw the face of a dragon in his mind, but he didn't know who she was. He knew he was desperately upset and afraid, but he didn't know why. Then, just like that, Darkstalker was no more....



Part Two:

    “Make your choice, Turtle. Does she live, or does she die?” -
    Turtle was trembling so violently now that Peacemaker wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole mountain began to shake along with him. His gold-flecked eyes darted frantically left and right as he tried to meet Kinkajou’s gaze behind the veil of Peacemaker’s upraised wings.
    Peacemaker felt the chain wound around his wrist jerk violently, and the young hybrid turned to find Kinkajou frantically shaking her head, pleading with Turtle to say no, to let her die if it meant Darkstalker could not return. Respect welled suddenly and unwelcomingly in Peacemaker’s already overcrowded head, but he quickly squashed it, concentrating instead on the steady tempo of rage which had fueled him so far.
    “I’m not going to sit here all night, Turtle!” he snapped. He was fairly confident in Turtle’s lack of brainpower, but he didn’t want to risk allowing the Seawing time to figure out one of the numerous ways he could get around this plan.
    “I…I don’t…I…”
    “Peacemaker!” a voice suddenly cried through the cacophony of distant thunder.
    Peacemaker whirled in the direction of the sound, his heart beating a furious rhythm in his chest. It couldn’t be! How could she know he was here?
    A midnight-black form suddenly emerged from the gloom, eyes burning like emerald flames.
    “Mother?! Wh…what are you doing here?!”
    “I’ve come to bring you home,” Hope replied as she lighted down neatly on the cliff next to Turtle.
    Foeslayer! he silently corrected himself. There is no Hope! It was a lie, just like everything else in my life!
    Peacemaker gritted his teeth. “I am going home, Mother. My real home…in the Night Kingdom.”
    “Peacemaker, stop this foolishness! The Night Kingdom is practically destroyed. There’s nothing for you to go back to.”
    “There will be when I get my powers back! I’ll return our kingdom to its original glory, and our tribe won’t have to grovel to Rainwings ever again.”
    Foeslayer didn’t seem particularly swayed by this declaration, as if somehow she had already known what his plan was.
    “We don’t grovel to anyone, and you know that. Don’t tell me getting back the memories of your first life has suddenly made you forget your second one.”
    “How did you know I’d gotten my memory back? You don’t seem terribly surprised by any of this. It’s almost like someone…told you.”
    Foeslayer narrowed her eyes, but didn’t reply.
    “You’re not alone…are you?”
     Suddenly, a second form, smaller than the first, materialized from the darkness. The silver scales on either side of her eyes flashed like teardrops as she lighted down on the cliff beside him.
    “Moon,” he hissed, “I should have known.” Silently he cursed himself for not anticipating this.
    “Peacemaker…” she started.
    “Don’t call me that!” he snapped. “You know as well as I do that, that dragon doesn’t exist!”
    Rage burned in his chest like a boiling pot threatening to spill over. More than Foeslayer, more than Turtle, more than even Kinkajou, this was the dragon whose betrayal he felt the most. Kinkajou may have masterminded his enchantment, but he had barely even known her at the time. She was nothing to him, so why should she think twice about ripping away his powers? But Moon had been his friend, the only real friend he had, had after emerging from the mountain. He had spared her from his enchantments because he had trusted her, and look where that trust had gotten him!
    She stared back at him for a moment, as if at a loss for words. Unlike Foeslayer, who looked equal parts angry, frustrated, afraid, and distressed, Moon simply looked sad. Maybe in her visions she had seen what he had seen, felt what he had felt. Maybe she knew how much he hated her now.
    “I’m sorry, Peace…I’m sorry. I never wanted you to find out like this.”
    “You never wanted me to find out at all!” he snapped.
    “We gave you the chance to choose for yourself, and you refused. It was the only way to keep Pyrrhia safe from you.” She sighed heavily. “Because you couldn’t be trusted, Darkstalker.”
    “I couldn’t be trusted?! I was always truthful with you, Moon! You above everyone else.”
    “That’s not true, and you know it,” she replied calmly. “You deceived me as much as you deceived everyone else. Maybe even more so.”
    “You have no right to preach to me about deception, Moonwatcher! Before me you were nothing! A miserable, pitiful little dragon afraid of her own shadow that was convinced her visions were nothing but bad dreams. I taught you how to use your powers, and what did you do? You used them against me! ‘He was picking strawberries’, right? A happy new life for everyone. Well, your vision was a lie! Did you see this in my wonderful new future?” he demanded, spreading his wings to indicate the scene around them.
    Moon hung her head. “No, I didn’t. But I do see what happens if you get your powers back.”
    Peacemaker lowered his head so he could look her in the eye, and hissed, “So enlighten me.”
    She looked back at him. “The same thing that was going to happen before Clearsight put you under the mountain. You’ll destroy Pyrrhia.”
    “That’s not the future I saw.”
    “That’s not the future you wanted to see. But it’s the one Clearsight saw.”
    He gritted his teeth. “Clearsight betrayed me.”
    “Only because you left her no other choice. After what you did to your father, there was no going back.”
    “My father deserved it!”
    “No one deserves to die like that.” The icy calm in her voice was infuriating. It made him want to reach out and claw that self righteous look right off of her face.
    “You don’t know what he was like!” Peacemaker snapped.
    She glanced up at him, anger showing for the first time beneath the blanket of eerie calm. “From the sound of it, he was a lot like you.”
    Rage shot through him like a wave of flame, spreading all the way to the tips of his talons. “Shut up!”
    “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but Arctic was a dragon just like you. He made mistakes. He let his power corrupt him.”
    “He wanted to destroy our tribe!”
    “The only one trying to destroy our tribe is you!” Moon replied sharply.
    “I said shut up!” he snapped, and before he realized what he was doing, a blast of flame shot from his jaws and barreled furiously in Moon’s direction. She reeled backwards just as the flame made contact with her right wing, teetering for a brief moment before she toppled over the edge of the cliff. Peacemaker watched in horror as she began to fall, the burn spreading, blackening and shriveling the wing membrane like it was made of paper.
    “Moon!” he gasped, making a move to catch her, but not fast enough.
    For a brief, terrifying moment Moon disappeared from sight over the side of the cliff, her cry of distress swallowed up by the distant thunder. Kinkajou was pulling desperately at her chains, a horrified scream streaming wordlessly from her clenched jaws.
    Three moons, what have I done?!
    Then, before Peacemaker had a chance to realize what was happening, Foeslayer was in the air. She dove with the speed and precision of a hunting falcon, and emerged, struggling under the weight of the younger dragon slung across her back. She deposited Moon gently on the cliff beside Turtle, who was staring at the two of them in frozen, silent horror.
    At first Moon was completely still, her blackened wing flopping uselessly at her side, her eyes closed and her head resting against the stone cliff. For one horrible moment Peacemaker was sure she must be dead, until suddenly her injured wing twitched, and a long, soft groan of pain escaped her.
    “Are you all right, Moon?” Foeslayer demanded.
    Moon raised her head, her eyes glazed with pain. “I…I think so….”
    She looked up and outwards, her eyes meeting Peacemaker’s with a look that should have been angry or frustrated or confused…a look that should not have been as hopeless and heartbroken as it was.
    Peacemaker could feel tears stinging his eyes. “I…I didn’t mean…I didn’t want to…”
    The anger inside of him was now warring with equal parts guilt and sadness, but still he attempted to hold onto it. She had betrayed him! She deserved it!
    “Enough of this!” he snapped, taking the chain in his talons and tossing Kinkajou over the side of the cliff. For a brief moment she fell down, down towards the black abyss below, only to hit the end of the chain and dangle precariously by the lengths of metal attached to her feet, wings, neck, and mouth. All three of the onlookers gasped in unison as their friend hung there, strung up by her feet like nothing more than a roasting pig.
    Peacemaker raised the end of the chain he was holding so all three of them could see it clearly. “Now change me back, or I drop her!”
    “All right, I’ll do it!” Turtle suddenly burst out.
    “Turtle, no!” Moon cried, grimacing as she attempted to stand, only to be hindered by her injured wing. “Kinkajou wouldn’t want that.”
    The frantic shaking of Kinkajou’s head seemed to indicate that Moon was right, but Turtle didn’t seem swayed by this.
    “It won’t matter what she does or doesn’t want if she’s dead!”
    “If Darkstalker comes back, then she’s already dead!” Foeslayer cried.
    A jolt of sadness struck right in the center of Peacemaker’s heart. His own mother thought he was nothing but a monster.
    “I’m sorry, but I can’t let her die,” Turtle cried, tears streaming from his eyes. “I love her.”
    He took a deep breath. “I enchant…”
    “Wait! Stop!” a new voice suddenly rang out, more powerful even than the sound of the storm.
    Peacemaker looked up just in time to see a form illuminated by the lightning dancing between the billowing clouds.
    “Seeker?”
    Clearsight.
    “Truthseeker, what are you doing here?” Foeslayer demanded. “I told you to stay back at Jade Mountain!”
    “I’m sorry, Hope, but I have to be here. I…I have to talk to him…because I’m the only one who can. There’s…there’s something you don’t know about me.”
    The young Nightwing flew across to Peacemaker, as if she intended to light down next to him, then at the last minute seemed to think better of it and instead decided to stay airborne.
    “Have you come to appeal to my better nature too, then?” Peacemaker asked.
    “I just want to talk,” she replied, her wings flapping heavily as she hovered in the air before him.
    “I’ve had enough talk,” he said, “either I get my powers back or this dragon dies.” He held up the chain briefly before winding it around a nearby spire of rock to take the crushing weight off his wrist.
    “I don’t think you want to kill anyone, Peacemaker.”
    “Is that right?” he replied skeptically.
    “No, because I think you’re a good dragon. I think you’ve always been a good dragon.”
    This reply managed to give him pause, and he found himself looking at her more intently than he had been before.
    “But sometimes…sometimes when a dragon is angry or scared or feels helpless, sometimes they…they do bad things. They do bad things and they think it’s okay, because other dragons have done the same things to them. I think everyone’s felt that way before, but most of us don’t have the power to act on it. If we did then…I think it would be a lot easier for a good dragon to do a lot of bad things.”
    Peacemaker narrowed his eyes. “How can you claim to know what kind of dragon I am? Maybe you’d feel differently if you really knew all the things I’ve done.”
    “But I do know. I don’t know how, but when you go your memories back, so did I. Suddenly I remembered when you were Darkstalker…and I was Clearsight.”
    Foeslayer and Moon both looked surprised by her sudden confession, but not particularly astonished by the revelation that the young blacksmith and the ancient seer were one and the same. Somehow Peacemaker was sure that they had known already, though he wasn’t sure exactly how.
    “You were right about who you thought I was,” Truthseeker continued.
    “But how is that possible? Did you put an enchantment on yourself with my old scroll?”
    “No, it wasn’t anything like that. I lived and I died like any normal dragon, and then, somehow, I…I came back. I came back as a new dragon, only I didn’t remember who I used to be. Sometimes the memories would come to me as dreams, dreams of places I had never been and dragons I had never seen…and one dragon in particular, with eyes that looked like yours.”
    Peacemaker stared fixedly at her, remembering his own dreams about a dragon he loved, a dragon that he had feared for so long did not exist.
    “Now I think I finally understand why I came back,” she said.
    “And why is that?”
    “For you.”
    Peacemaker narrowed his eyes. “To stop me.”
    “To help you. To do what I couldn’t do before. To have a chance at those happy futures we missed out on all those years ago.”
    “But that’s exactly what I’m trying to do! In all of my happiest futures I was king of the Nightwings, and you were my queen. We had our dragonets, remember? Eclipse and Shadowhunter? If you let me get my powers back, then we can finally have that. We can be together, Clearsight!”
    Truthseeker sighed and shook her head. “You saw the futures where you were king as nothing but happiness and prosperity because that’s all you ever wanted to see. In my visions you were a tyrant, manipulating dragons’ minds, killing, trying to take over all of Pyrrhia…and you were never happy. Not once. We were never happy.”
    Peacemaker growled. “Is that why you tricked me and stuck me under the ground for two thousand years? Why should I believe anything you say when the last time we met you took everything from me?”
    “You think I wanted to do that?!” Her expression turned suddenly angry. “I suffered every day for the rest of my life because of that decision, but you left me no choice! You chose your future, and in that future there was no room for anyone else. Not me or any other dragon. So I did what I had to do to save the world from you, and I don’t regret that I did it.”
    “Then why are you here in the first place?! If I’m just a selfish monster, why do you want to have anything to do with me?”
    “Because never, not once in all the years I lived after I left you under that mountain, did I stop loving you. And I don’t think you’re a selfish monster. I think you’ve made some pretty selfish, monstrous decisions, but I always knew that at your core was a good dragon, a dragon who was born with more power than anyone should have and didn’t know how to deal with it. But you also got something most dragons never get: a second chance. A chance to start again…to be a better dragon…and you have been, Peacemaker. You have been.”
    Peacemaker had a million things to say, and yet he couldn’t think of any of them.
    Truthseeker raised her left arm, and he saw that she had his beaded red and white necklace wrapped around her wrist. “Do you remember when I made this for you? Remember how excited you were?”
    Peacemaker sighed. “Yes, I remember.”
    “And do you remember when my father died? You were the only one I could count on. On those days when I was sure I didn’t want to live without him, I kept going because of you.”
    Peacemaker’s shoulders threatened to buckle. “I…I didn’t know that.”
    “I think there are a lot of things you don’t know. Did you know Auklet wanted to give up on weaving because she felt she wasn’t good enough? She only changed her mind because you told her how talented she was. Did you know Cliff thought the only reason anyone liked him was because he was a prince? And then he met you, and you never cared at all about his title. He told me that because of that, he felt you were the first real friend he’s ever had. Did you know Orchid still has flashbacks from her time in the Nightwing labs? And she feels like she can’t tell Mangrove, because he worries too much? But she said that on those days where it becomes so overwhelming that she feels like she can’t go on, your silly little songs always cheer her up.”
    “But I…I thought she hated my singing.”
    “She only says that to wind you up, because she knows it’s more fun if you think she doesn’t want you to do it. She told me ‘Strawberries as Big as a Scavenger’s Head’ always makes her smile, even if it is a little morbid.”
  A smile pulled at the corner’s of Peacemaker’s mouth. “I…I would always sing that one when we were picking the strawberries. I thought it drove her crazy.”
  She paused. “You know, for a dragon that doesn’t exist…you sure do have a lot of happy memories.”
  “But it was a lie! All of it was built on lies!”
  “It wasn’t a lie. It was you. You without your powers. And that’s what I think you don’t want to believe. That the you that never had powers was a better dragon. A happier dragon.”
  Peacemaker shook his head stubbornly, reaching back into his memories for something, anything that would indicate that she was wrong. Hadn’t he been happy in his other life? Hadn’t he done good things? He thought about his sister, Whiteout. They had been happy together, hadn’t they? Then he remembered the look of horror on her face when she had seen her father rip himself to pieces in front of her. Had she ever forgotten that, or had she carried that memory around for the rest of her life? Peacemaker grimaced. He had been so busy thinking about getting revenge on his father that he hadn’t stopped to think about how it would affect his sister.
    What about Foeslayer? He thought of his dragonethood as Darkstalker, of the fighting and the yelling and the cold looks exchanged over silent dinners. Then he thought of being Peacemaker, of lazy days in the rainforest making mud pies so that Hope had to rinse him off in the stream, of eating bananas and listening to the tree frogs call as the moon rose high over the thick canopy. He could almost feel the warmth of her scales as he snuggled beneath her wing to sleep, comfortable in the knowledge that his mother could chase away any bad dreams that came in the night.
    One by one he thought of his friends. He thought of Moon’s patience and Kinkajou’s enthusiasm, of Auklet’s kindness and Cliff’s boundless confidence. They had liked him when he had no spells to cast, no superpowers to give out, no positions of authority to promise them. They had wanted to be his friend simply because of the dragon he was, the utterly ordinary, unspectacular dragon with nothing special to offer them.
    “But if I’m not king…if I have no powers…who am I? I’ve never wanted to be anything else.”
    “You’re Peacemaker. That’s all you need to be.”
  Peacemaker felt as if he were being ripped in two, his body tearing and cracking and breaking apart. If he was Peacemaker, he was nothing! An ordinary dragon with no special destiny. He couldn’t live like that. He couldn’t!
    But if he was Darkstalker, then who would he be? A king who everyone hated? A king whose own mother feared him? A king whose lifelong friend would willingly give her life to keep him from returning? A king who had to cast spells to make other dragons like him? Because now even Moon would never trust him again, and for the rest of one long, never-ending life he would know it was all fake. It was all a lie. Darkstalker was a dragon no one could love and no one could trust. Even surrounded by subjects and admirers and enchanted friends, he would be alone. He would be as alone as if he were still trapped under that mountain.
    His legs finally gave out from under him, and he collapsed onto the cold stone. The sound of the thunder in his ears seemed as if it were coming from a million miles away. He felt the long-held tears finally fall from his eyes, and tasted their bitter, salty tang as they met his lips.
  “What do I do?”
  He didn’t realize that Truthseeker had lighted down next to him until he felt her tail fall comfortingly across his shoulders. He looked up to see her violet eyes looking softly down at him.
  “Let’s go home,” she whispered.
  He shook his head, the tears burning in his eyes, and the taste of smoke still in his mouth.
  “I can’t. I can’t go back. Not after everything I’ve done.”
  “Peacemaker…” Her expression was now twisted with worry, as if she feared that all she had done had amounted to nothing.
  Slowly, Peacemaker rose to his feet and unfastened the chain from the spire of rock where he had anchored it. For a moment he held the chain suspended in the air, aware of the weight of this last hope dangling over the abyss. In his talons he held to opportunity to get back everything he ever wanted, to be king of Pyrrhia, to live forever, to have powers no other dragon could dream of. It was all his for the taking.
  So, as a clap of thunder shook the stone beneath his feet, Peacemaker lighted into the air and dragged Kinkajou back onto the cliff. As she lay there, willing to blood to siphon back into her limbs, Peacemaker quietly landed and withdrew the key from where it was hidden.
  Silently, he handed it to Truthseeker.
  She smiled at him as if he’d somehow delivered her one of the moons and said it was all for her. “You’re a good dragon, Peacemaker.”
  He shook his head. “No, I’m not.”
  Her brows knit together into a look of concern.
  “You’re a good dragon, Truthseeker. I’m nothing. I’m no one. And now I’ve ruined everything.”
  “Don’t say that. Look, let’s just go home, and we can forget about all this.”
  He shook his head again. “I can’t. There’s nowhere for me to go.”
  “Peacemaker…”
  “Free Kinkajou. Help Turtle heal Moon. Keep them safe.” He took a few steps back. “I can’t stay here.”
    “Peacemaker, wait…”

    "I'm sorry." And with that he lighted into the air and disappeared into the shadows of the storm.

So I finally made the next segment for my fan fiction, and it only took me two months. Yay me! Sorry, it's just my fandom motivation is always either at 0 or 100. There is no in-between. The follow-up to this scene is here but I haven’t made the written segment for that yet.

No critique desired. Please respect that.

Wings of Fire belongs to Tui T. Sutherland

The art and writing belongs to me, and you are not permitted to steal, trace, copy, reference, or otherwise redistribute it in any way. I also do not want to see this posted on RP sites, Facebook, YouTube, etc. without my permission. That's still art theft.