Chapter Text
Inferno’s Ashes
The New World Prophecy
Future minds will lose the past, because of future laws.
But if you see them hungry, you must swear to give them jaws.
Soon and very soon, they will throw you to imbalance,
But if they are defenseless, you must swear to give them talons.
Magic fades, but you endure. Remember all these things.
But if they long to fly, you must swear to give them wings.
Eternal truth holds power, far beyond what you desire.
But if you see them powerless, you must swear to give them fire.
Prologue
5062 Years Ago…
There was something about the fireplace in Grandfather’s house that always soothed Cottonmouth. The worn-down texture of the once-scratchy rug underneath his bare feet, the wooden carvings of art on the mantle, and the cozy chairs all were excellent additions to the room, but he had known from the instant he’d set foot in it as a toddler that the whole thing would be nothing without the fire. Without the destruction of living material, the comfort everyone loved wouldn’t have any fuel. How ironic.
Everyone looked at him weird whenever he tried to explain this. He knew they would at least try to hear him out if he was an adult, but no, he was eleven years old and no one took anything he said seriously.
He dug his hands into the rug and kneaded it in frustration. Why couldn’t they see that he was right, like he always was? All the people in his life knew how smart he was for his age just as well as he did. Who was the eight-year-old who had beaten a chess player that most experienced grown-ups couldn’t? Who was the nine-year-old that had figured out the strategy during the Battle of the Rivers that had led them to victory? What kind of idiotic society refused to acknowledge intellectual overlords like him? What could he do to make them listen? Whatever it was, he knew one thing: he was doing it alone. No one else was ever going to be able to help him. All he would ever need was himself to solve all his stupid problems.
And yet… there were still those in his life that he had some kind of attachment to. This perplexed him. Why did he , of all people, need to keep feeling like he could rely on anyone but himself?
Old habits die hard, I guess. He cursed his own mind once again for indulging itself in weakness before he became aware of its existence.
“Cottonmouth? What are you doing down here so late?”
That was Grandfather, no doubt about it. Cottonmouth hated that the unmistakable low, gravelly voice made him so nostalgic and calm.
“Nothing. Just looking at the fire.”
Grandfather sighed, the same thing he spent ninety–nine percent of his waking life doing. “You’re never just looking into the fire, boy. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Cottonmouth did not speak. As caring as Grandfather was, he would become all the more concerned about him.
“Or,” Grandfather added, moving a bit closer, “I could go tell your parents that you’re down here after bedtime.”
Cottonmouth scoffed. “Fine.”
Grandfather sat down next to him. He smelled like cobwebs and the musty shed he studied in, even through the smoke of the fireplace.
“You see the logs in the fire, Grandfather?”
“Barely,” the old man chuckled.
“That’s the thing, isn’t it? The fire is destroying the wood and keeping us warm. That wood once belonged to a real, living tree.”
“Oh, Cottonmouth,” Grandfather wheezed. “That’s how the world works. Surely someone with your mind knows that?”
“Of course I know that. But I was thinking that, perhaps, all of us are the wood to someone else’s fire.”
“Come again?”
“Animals eat plants in order to survive. Then we eat the animals. Someone has to be burned for someone else to be warm, within everything that breathes. So, whose firewood are we? Who are we fated to keep warm?”
Grandfather put a wrinkled hand over Cottonmouth’s shoulder. “Humans are what’s known as the Apex Predator. We don’t have anyone or anything that keeps our numbers as low as other living things.”
“Not yet, we don’t. I’m thinking about the future, Grandfather.”
“Young man, if you bring up your wretched dragons again—”
“You’re scared because I’m right!” Cottonmouth exploded as quietly as he could. “Dragons are dangerous and you can’t deny it. They have the potential to be our doom if we don’t keep them in check. We could be their firewood if we’re not careful.”
“You take it too far sometimes,” Grandfather grunted. He stood up, and began to hobble back to his little shed. “As long as we leave the dragons alone, they won’t bother us. They might eat a human or two from time to time but no more than any other aggressive wild animal. Now go to bed, and don’t get any more ideas.”
Behind Cottonmouth’s resentment for this stubborn elder, he could feel something else rising in him: questions.
Why had Grandfather gotten so defensive and brusque once dragons were the subject of things? Cottonmouth guessed he’d had a traumatic experience with one when he was younger that caused him to irrationally avoid the topic in his old age.
But that was alright with Cottonmouth. The opinion of one man mattered nothing to him. What did matter was that dragons were too big of a threat in his peaceful world.
No one knows where they came from. All the old stories say is that they somehow started… appearing, about a thousand years ago.
But at the end of the day, he didn’t care where they came from. They either needed to be controlled or eliminated. An alliance was out of the question, because humans and dragons were nothing alike, and they never had been, and they never would be.
Part 1
A Friend Out Of Time
Chapter 1
Annoying little dots swam all over Quench’s line of vision. The light from an activating Globe really was no joke, and she found the silver flashes to be way more sharp than the gold ones. She hadn’t had time to check or ask where the Globe would take her, but she didn’t really care too much. All that mattered was that it was silver. It would take anyone touched by the liquid inside to a place that wasn’t Nowhere, and she was pretty sure that she could handle things from there.
Her one talon that wasn’t pressed against the chest of the dragon who was probably trying to kill her could feel pine needles, dirt, and tree roots underneath it. Her surroundings smelled like evergreens after a rainstorm, which made her happier. It made her think of when she was younger, when her mother had taken her on “expeditions” into the woods of the northern Sky Kingdom. The dangers of Peril’s firescales were dulled down when it was pouring rain, so that had always been when they went out. Quench smiled briefly at the memory. She loved everything about the new environment that she had been thrown into!
Okay, maybe not everything. The Obsidian Killer that she’d needed to drag along with her spoiled a bit of the fun. But as long as he didn’t actually try to murder her on the spot, she’d be fine.
Nope. He was already batting away the talon that she’d placed over his chest, giving her a bit of a bruise. Maybe he was irritated because she had insulted him a minute ago.
She thought it would be helpful to say sorry for that. No need to make him angrier than he already was, and who in the world could get mad at a good apology? “Hey now, I know I called you ugly back there, but I really didn’t mean it. I panicked and I’m sorry I called you ugly, you’re not; you were kind of about to kill my new best friend’s mom—”
“Shut up!” the Killer snapped. “I don’t care about your friend! Tell me where you’ve brought me!”
“I dunno. Somewhere in Pyrrhia, more than likely. Here’s the deal: I wanna fly around until I find some form of civilized life who can give me directions, and you’re free to go back to whatever evil lair you came from. Do you think that’ll be fun? I do.”
The Killer did not like that. He lunged at Quench and clasped a powerful talon around her neck, going from irritation to pure hate. “You were so stupid, that not only did you put yourself totally at my mercy, but also purposefully left behind your other transportation devices. As far as the will of the master is concerned, you are my prisoner now.”
“This master of yours— really sounds like a cool dragon—” Quench gasped as she snatched whatever air she could from the Killer’s death grip.
He threw her to the ground with the one arm that nearly suffocated her. Quench could hear the hiss of fire brewing deep in his throat. She didn’t plan on stopping her talk once she was free, either. “But let’s be real here. Who is this master? What’s up with the whole cult thing he’s started?”
The Killer narrowed his blood-red, pupil-lacking eyes. “There is one thing that is stopping me from leaving you here or killing you, and it’s the fact that you have information which could be very valuable to us.”
Something came to Quench’s mind, something the Killer had told her before she took him out on her terms because she was being that awesome. “And you really can’t escape these eyes of mine, can you? Whose eyes did you say I have, that you would be distracted from the great Shearwater himself?”
Every comment Quench made drove the Killer into another phase of fury. “You aren’t worthy of knowing the kinds of secrets we hold, nor of questioning our rationale.”
“Yeah, well, Shearwater told us it was your job to be hospitable and not abuse your power. Where’s that side of you? You don’t exactly need a thesis to at least answer me this, I assume.”
The Killer scoffed. “What? You mean the ridiculous idealism that Malevolence tried to poison us all with? Did you actually believe that we were going to act like you’re better than us? Shearwater was spoiled in that underwater prison. He got a house, for crying out loud. A magician doesn’t even deserve a place on the streets.”
“That’s so mean! What did the magicians ever do to you?!”
She had pushed the Killer one notch too far. “ENOUGH with your questions! I will take you to the master, and HE will decide what to do with you, and until I tell you, YOU WILL NOT SPEAK! And if you refuse to follow me? Allow me to demonstrate something your beloved Shearwater wasn’t able to experience in the deep water.”
The fire that had been building up in his throat now exploded in a terrifying crimson jet out of his mouth and hit a nearby tree. The tree’s limbs twisted themselves into knots, collapsing into each other and soon, the trunk itself completely imploded in and all that remained was a few charred leaves.
Quench stared at the mini-massacre that had just taken place. Why had he done that to an innocent tree? And why was the fire red? She had no idea what she had been expecting when she dragged herself into the same place as an Obsidian Killer, but whatever it was, this was nothing like it.
“You will follow me,” growled the Killer. “And we will be with my master.”
Still too terrified to speak, Quench followed him. The forest they walked through was getting much colder, very fast. We must be somewhere far north, then. He was moving at a quicker pace than Quench would have liked, and at no point did he pause for breath or break his stride.
She hated to admit it, but things seemed so much more uncomfortably real now than they had a couple hours ago when Shearwater had described the Killers from the comfort of the Dome in Nowhere. Her legs were getting sore as they trotted through the woods relentlessly, the cold air bit at her lungs and made her claws freeze. She didn’t dare heat up her scales, or do anything that would even remotely risk a forest fire. She hated the smell of smoke, which she understood was a bit problematic, being the daughter of a SkyWing firescales and a MudWing. But whenever she or her mother started to cry, their scales would heat up and the wet tears would react with the fire and anyone near them could smell it. The idea of her mother crying— her fearless, loving, passionately caring mother— made her want to cry, and she certainly didn’t want that. For now, everything around her place smelled like nature in all its perfection.
But she couldn’t possibly appreciate it with the shadow of this dragon looming over her constantly.
When Quench thought she had reached her limit, she and the Killer finally reached a clearing in the woods. She didn’t want to ask what they were going to do from there, even though she would have done almost anything for a moment’s rest.
The Killer was looking around in all directions, as if the clearing in the woods would tell him everything about where he needed to go. But if she looked closer…
He was almost twice her size, so it was quite difficult to see the top of his head, but she was almost positive that he had something on his head, two somethings in fact, that were moving around in waves like sensors.
Were those antennae?
Did Obsidian Killers have the same abilities as SilkWings? Or was this feature made to help him sense the location of his master? This Killer definitely didn’t have the wings of a SilkWing, but now that Quench really looked at him, the shape of his body was almost identical to the shape of other SilkWings she knew. Now hang on. What are these things? Do they always look like this? Are they their own tribe?
The Killer let out a deep breath, and it was now so cold that Quench could see the vapor from his mouth. The sun was beginning to get low, and in the last of the good light, the Killer spread his wings and jerked his head upwards, signaling Quench to follow him. Flying! Now here was something Quench could do for days. She thanked the moons for the massive wings she had inherited from her mother and took off after the Killer. Soon, the sun really was setting, and the pink-orange light reflected off the Killer’s armor-like, obsidian scales. It was a majestic sight— too bad it was probably planning to kill her.
Or was he? What does he really want from me? Was he going to do the same thing to her that Shearwater said he’d done to Starfish? Well, that wasn’t this particular Killer, that had been his leader.
Maybe he was taking her to his leader so he could do that… what was it called again? Dedraconifying. Quench thought about that word for a minute. She knew that the “fying” part meant an action of making something, or putting something in motion, and that the “de-” prefix meant taking something away, which left “draconi” in the middle. To her, that sounded a lot like “dragon.” So did this mean that the leader of the Obsidian Killers was going to take away everything from Sea’s prophecy that they needed to give: wings, jaws, fire, and talons? Quench couldn’t imagine considering herself a dragon if she didn’t have any of those. And the more time she and her friends spent not finding this Dedraconifier, the more time he had to perfect this process.
If she really was being taken to the Dedraconifier himself, then maybe she would be able to find the other dragons that he was doing those terrible experiments Shearwater had mentioned. Maybe she’d even find Sky and Fatespeaker… if, through some miracle, they were still unharmed. That was one of the few things no one knew; no one in Nowhere or in Pyrrhia had a clue about the location of either.
Thinking of anyone back in Pyrrhia or Nowhere made her sad, because there was no way for her to be with them now. She’d met Puzzle about two weeks ago, but she already absolutely loved him. He was a genius in his own way, thoughtful and funny when he wanted to be. Shearwater hadn’t gotten to see nearly as much of him as Quench had. She would go to him constantly while he was still looking for Shearwater, and they could talk for as long as she wanted about his amazing tribe and life. She had found him to have a very composed and cool exterior, but on the inside he was one big hilarious bundle of wit and joy. What wasn’t to love?
Quench was already missing many dragons other than Puzzle. Shearwater had just gotten back from the bottom of the ocean, and, being the wonderful dragon he was, forgiven her for not telling anyone about the fact that she’d disbelieved him when he’d Dreamvisited her. Anyone who could do that was the best as far as Quench was concerned.
She thought pretty much everything else about Shearwater was the best, too. How naturally regal he was and the way he acted so humorously shy about it, the way he got all fidgety and comedic whenever Firefly was around… sometimes Quench wondered if he noticed, at any point, how great of a match he was for Firefly. Anyone in the world would be able to tell that he respected and was absolutely head over heels for the Starflight in her, the scrollworm. But he hadn’t known Firefly before he got admitted into Jade Mountain Academy. She had been so quiet, it was hard to believe that Sunny was any relative of hers at all, let alone her mother. And yet, in the first few days Quench had seen her and Shearwater go to school and to Nowhere together, Firefly had changed. Not in any way that Shearwater could have figured out, as smart as she knew he was, but this was something only a dragon who’d shared a room with her for the last five years would know. She held her own head and body in a way that showed Quench, ever so slightly, she had more confidence now, more good will, more… Sunny. Who knew? Maybe she was imagining things, as she often did.
Imagination. It always did get Quench into some wild places, like this one. Couldn’t anyone else see how much her insane ideas helped? No Obsidian Killer was going to report back to their master, telling him that they’d found Nowhere, all thanks to her. Still, she had to face the fact that it was nothing but a temporary solution for them. The Dedraconifier was still refining his evil technique, and once he accomplished his goal, he and his army would attack. That much felt almost inevitable to Quench, now that she was looking directly at one of the super-strong soldiers of this cause. And while it was true she didn’t want to fight them— or anyone else— There’s a good chance it comes to that. But by all the moons, I hope it doesn’t. She didn’t know anyone who could stand a chance against someone like this Killer.
But she did know someone who definitely would want to.
If anyone was going to try to fight an attacking, invulnerable lunatic, it would be Aye Aye. There was not a shadow of doubt in Quench’s mind about this, and part of her couldn’t help but utterly adore him for it. His mother was a queen who’d gone to war at the age of six, and his father had been trained as an assassin. How could he not be a born fighter? It wasn't necessarily about the fact that he wanted to fight all the time that made Quench want to give him a hug every now and then, more so that he kept such a low profile about it. He wasn’t like those IceWings and SkyWings in the halls of Jade Mountain who bullied the little dragons and started fights just for the heck of it. Aye Aye would never dream of such a thing, and Quench had always been confused about (but admiring of) how he could keep himself so controlled all the time… until about a year ago. It had been a mistake, but she remembered it all too clearly.
That particular day had been exclusively designed to hold an event in which all the parents of every dragonet visited, which Quench found to be unbelievably stupid, courtesy of a certain dragonet in her Winglet.
It wasn’t Celesta’s fault that she’d never known her parents. Too many dragons had asked Celesta where her parents were, why she wasn’t with them, things like that. It made Quench furious, and it made Celesta miserable. She’d been an absolute soldier, making it through both class periods without bursting into tears; Quench knew that she never would have been able to do that. Aye Aye had seen Celesta’s misfortune, too, and been much more passively enraged about it: doing things like stealing all the pens and ink of anyone who laughed at her behind her back, and then making them apologize before he gave them back. But he hadn’t been all bad: during lunch, he’d caught Celesta a few chickens and left them in her sleeping cave so she could eat alone. She hadn’t seen it, but Quench had.
Now, Quench was walking aimlessly through the stone hallways of the Academy. No one else was with her, all that she had to accompany her was a scroll she had for required reading, bleh. She was wondering who she could eat dinner with tonight— Firefly? Her parents? Her mind drifted to Celesta and Pompona, but quickly vetoed the idea. Celesta would surely want to be left alone, and Quench had a feeling that Pompona was the only one who knew Celesta well enough to comfort her— if that was possible.
That left Aye Aye, but where was he? Normally he didn’t leave without telling anyone… but it hadn’t been a great day for anyone in the Sapphire Winglet either way.
Still walking down the hallways and getting increasingly far from anything familiar, Quench heard a sudden weird noise. It sounded a bit like somebody banging against a door, trying to get into a room. She had nothing else to do, so she followed the sound until she saw a very bright torch light coming from a nearby cave. As she got closer, she could hear a series of grunts in about the same place. Was someone in there, just… punching things?
Her curiosity was too strong. She walked up to the cave entrance and poked her head in— and was met with Aye Aye beating the ever-loving daylights out of a life-sized dragon dummy that was stuffed with straw.
He was punching it with both his arms and his tail, biting it by the neck and throwing it, then spitting venom at button eyes on its head. As soon as it was entirely ripped to shreds, Aye Aye threw its remains onto a pile of other dummies that had met the same fate. He turned around to leave the cave, still visibly ticked off, and in doing so, nearly bumped right into Quench.
For a second, no one said anything at all, and Aye Aye simply stared at Quench wide-eyed as if he didn’t really believe he was seeing her.
Quench moved to slowly back away and pretend like she hadn’t seen anything, but Aye Aye spoke before she could do this. “Okay. So… this isn’t what it looks like.”
He sat down. “Listen, Quench, I get how this may be scary out of context, but—”
Quench felt a wave of pity wash through her. Aye Aye looked like he was genuinely struggling. Who was she to make it harder on him? She sat down next to him. “Don’t worry. I think I get it. It’s been a rough day, and you just need a place to be mad.”
“Is that so wrong? Didn’t you see all those scumbags making Celesta nearly cry all day?” He shot a look at the dismembered dummies. “Makes me wanna help them join that pile. But you can’t just go around ripping dragons’ heads off, now can you? If it makes sense, I don’t want to want to do that. Like, I know that kind of violence does more harm than help, but jeez… sometimes I wish it was the other way around.”
Quench was silent. This made a lot of sense, but she didn’t quite know how to respond to it, if she was honest with herself.
Aye Aye was, again, the next to speak. “Sorry you had to see me like this. You should go get some dinner, I know I will. Food always helps with stuff like this; it’s not smart to think on an empty stomach.”
Yup, that was Aye Aye. Spontaneously willing to both fight to the death and care for his friends. There was no one better, in Quench’s opinion, for taking down an Obsidian Killer. If only we knew how…
Now the sun really was low in the sky. The cold air was biting at Quench’s lungs even with her firescales as hot as she could make them. The Killer, still flying ahead of her, looked over his shoulder at her. All she could do was look back, short of breath, into his deadly eyes.
In a flash, the Killer dove towards the ground. Another clearing in the woods had appeared, and Quench eagerly followed him. Could this mean…?
Once she’d landed, the Killer glared at her. “You rest here for the night. As much as I would love to fly ahead, I can’t risk you being groggy and idiotic. When you’ve woken up, we fly again.”
Shivering and still too scared to speak and ask the Killer about whether or not there would be food, Quench miserably laid down on the ground, enveloping as much of her body as she could in her own wings.
She had no idea when sleep found her, or how it even happened, but there wouldn’t be any complaining about it from her.
But when she drifted off into dreams, she was met with a very familiar sight.
There still was one friend she had, who didn’t even know her. One friend who, through some twist of fate, she felt that she could never be separated from, because the dreams about him just. Kept. Coming.
She was sitting in the backyard of a house that she knew was, in reality, quite small— yet from her perspective somehow it didn’t look like that at all— the focus of her dream was a human, to be fair.
Just like she did almost every night, she found herself face to face with Ember.