Mango's short story for the Inspired story contest!!
Word count: 1000
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Kestrel rolled over on her side, groaning in pain when she felt a burning in her chest, a flame consuming her from inside out. Damn it, she thought, too deep in pain to hiss or cry out. She stilled, cautiously bringing a talon to her heart. Was it… was it stopped? Was she alive anymore? The rusted-metal SkyWing groped the dark space in front of her with burned palms she couldn’t see anymore. Dark?
Was she dead?
It would be better to be not dead. Even blind, a limb cut off, both wings cut off, would be better than dead. She could feel something under her… cold, hard material. Where had she last been before she blacked out and woke up like this? Right. Flying over the ocean, going to meet with Morrowseer. She didn’t know that he had brought one of the SandWing sisters, how could she have known? The most dangerous one, in her opinion, too. One that saw right through you, who was intelligent enough to plant spies all over. There might have been one in the Talons of Peace, Kestrel had argued for that case five moons ago. The SeaWing, Nagisa, had been found guilty and killed.
And Morrowseer let her in on the Talons? Kestrel kept her emotions under control. She mustered as much bravery and contempt in her face as possible under the storm, as she beat her wings rather fast, clenching the slippery rocks under her talons. It wasn’t too hard, Peril turning her back on her, the one dragonet she had surviving flying away, crying by Kestrel’s actions. If only she hadn’t been so harsh. Now she gathered up that knot of guilt and hate in her stomach and thrust it at the two dragons. “No! I will save them, the brat SeaWing – Tsunami, she’s in danger, all of them are!” she’d yelled. Morrowseer’s face remained perfectly stone-set, polished black scales like daggers and obsidian eyes burning fresh from a volcano. Blister advanced forward, and Kestrel’s hawk eyes memorized the SandWing’s movements, though her deadly tail didn’t slink out of the coil it was wrapped in. Sand-worn black diamonds and fresh cream snake scales, that’s what her exterior was, even lashed by rain.
”Little SkyWing, don’t worry… They’ll be perfectly safe once I am Queen.” Kestrel remembered dropping that exterior, remembered thinking Blister couldn’t be queen, that Pyrrhia would be destroyed if she were, and that Peril knew she was part of the Talons of Peace, and she would never forgive her if Kestrel let this all happen, right before her eyes.
“No!” She’d repeated again, struggling to say anything else. “You can’t, you won’t, I’ll – I’ll stop you! They’ll die!” Blister had let out a little chuckle, but didn’t step forward. Didn’t respond to Kestrel’s taunts. Anger, anger and desperation, clouded her system, thought the SkyWing’s brain was telling her to step down, and while she wanted to, this was too important to throw away. Peril, she thought, would hate me if I let Clay die. She had seen the way her daughter looked at the dumb MudWing.
“I took care of those brats like you asked me to, Morrowseer! And now, now you betray me like this?” Kestrel had turned to Morrowseer, nearly slipping backwards into the sea, rocks and gravel crumbling under her talons. But he didn’t respond to her plea, instead flicking his tail almost idly… like his entire home wasn’t at stake here. It probably wasn’t, Kestrel had realized. Blister had made a contract with the devious NightWing, they would be safe.
Suddenly Blister had lunged forward, Kestrel had no time to see her move. Only a SandWing-shaped blur against the air, colors whirling in a bubble protected from the rain, and pain. So much pain, more than she’d known her entire life. When she’d grabbed Peril… this was a hundred, a million times worse than that. Even the pain of being betrayed by Scarlet, a dragon she’d hated but followed. This was an organization she’d joined to stop Scarlet, to get Peril back even though she knew Peril would hate her most likely. And now…
She was dead. Killed by Blister, was it? Kestrel could realize that, if all she saw was darkness, if she couldn’t hear anything. She roared everything she had inside her out to the void, not stopping even when her slashed neck prickled and burned. And nothing responded, she heard nothing – not even her own voice, rough and ragged and scarred. Peril, she thought again. She would never see her daughter again, would she? She would never get a chance to fix things with her, maybe even be friends with her. Peril hated her, Kestrel knew, she’d given up an entire dragonet and killed another with her talons, one of her own blood and scales. The mistreatment she’d suffered just because of her condition would push Peril to hate her even more, when her mother, abandoned her once, left her behind twice over.
Kestrel would save her if she had the chance. Maybe she would have the chance. A thought occurred to her.
It took every last particle of energy Kestrel had to push herself up on her four feet, and another day’s supply to keep on standing. She looked down at her own talons, expecting to see the wicked hook of them, but the dark had spread there, too. There was a SkyWing tradition of returning souls to the sky when dragons died, she’d thought she would be honored by that one day, but this death was far from that. It wasn’t that much of a surprise to her.
“Hello? Is this Hell or Heaven? Or somewhere in between?”
All the black flooded away, licking flames awaited her, a smoldering forest beneath the full moons. Kestrel stepped into the blaze, aware of the danger, what could happen But whatever her fate, there was one thing Kestrel knew.
Peril, I’ll cross the horizon for you, I’ll dance in the flames to find you. Forever and ever.