Peak flew back to the smattering of leaf-made huts at the edge of the river, carrying me in his talons, with Bright leading him.

"Stay here", she told him as they approached a hunt that was larger than the rest. She flew down and entered the hut as he still hovered in the air, holding me in his talons.

After a moment, Bright emerged from the hut with a brown-and-green TreeWing following her. She gestured with one of her wings for Peak to land, and he did.

He shoved me out of his talons towards the brown-and-green dragon, who caught me with their talons.

"Tend to them", Bright snorted at, "and make sure they don't escape".

The brown-and-green dragon, who was male based on their features, led me into the leaf-made hut, where the green dragon from earlier was sprawled out on a patch of leaves collected from the surrounding trees on one side of it. Based on their features, I could tell that this was a male. His wound was covered with a mess of vines and leaves and one of his wings was shredded beyond repair.

He led me to a spot next to the battered TreeWing where I lay down and extended his forearms.

"May I take your bag? It'll only be a bit."

Reluctantly, I gave him the bag, which he took with him to the other side of the hut and set on the ground gently before gathering something in his claws.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Alder", he replied without even looking at me, "a Healer of the Community of Woods before..." He trailed off.

"Before the VolcanoWings?" I finished, and he nodded solemnly.

He turned around and padded over to me, with what looked like to be small berries of different colors still on their vines and crushed green leaves of varying sizes and textures in his claws. He placed them on the ground in front of me.

"These are berries herbs with painkillers in them", he explained. "Give them to Oak."

He gestured to the dragon next to me, and I gave him a look.

"Issa fine", Oak slurred. "I'll take 'em."

Alder snorted and nudged the bundle with his claws to him. Oak ate them as fast as he could, possibly trying to get the taste of leaves out of his mouth.

Behind me, the shadows had lengthened as the sun began disappearing beyond the horizon. Orange light streaked into the hut and on us dragons.

"It'll be a bit before they take effect", Alder explained to Oak, referring to the concoction he just gave him. "Once they've kicked in, I'll begin working on that wound of yours."

"Issa fine", Oak slurred again, and his brown eyes were beginning to droop, as if heavy stones were starting to weigh them down.

I was also tired from my long journey (and also getting up before dawn), but I didn't want to sleep. Not after getting a glimpse of what was happening across Eukarya.

I could fall asleep right now and never wake up if the VolcanoWings descended on this camp during the night.

I shuddered.

Did the VolcanoWings also target the capitals of the world like they did with mishmashed camps like this one?

Did they suffer the same fate as the Undercurrent's base while I was gone?

"You thinking about something?" Alder asked. He apparently noticed me shaking as he watched Oak fall into a deep, drugged sleep. The moons were coming out, beginning to wash the forest in an ethereal silver light.

"Just a memory", I muttered, but that was far from the truth.

I didn't know what had happened or how long it had been since I was taken, but the appearance of Moons I, II, and IV and the VolcanoWings raiding everything and everyone told me that it was some time since then.

Precisely how long, I didn't know.

As Oak fell asleep, Alder went through my bag, his back turned from his patients.

The first thing he fished out from it was the map I had found.

He unrolled in his talons and studied it before putting it on the ground.

The next thing he pulled out was the pearls I wore on my neck and horns in the StormWing palace. He gave them a curious look before setting them on top of the map.

The last thing he pulled out was the DesertWing egg I had found last night.

He peered at it. "Where did you find this?"

"Why do you want to know?" I asked.

"Just tell me."

I sighed. "A dragon threw a bag at me last night as I hid from VolcanoWings during a raid. Inside was this egg, which thankfully wasn't-"

He cut me off. "This was thrown at you?"

"Yes. Is there anything significant about that egg?"

Alder turned around, holding the pale yellow egg in his front claws. His green eyes were wide with hope and pain.

"You don't know what this means, OceanWing. It means that there is a chance we can survive this hellish nightmare."

I arched an eye ridge at him.

He continued. "Since the VolcanoWings declared war on Eukarya, they've smashed every single non-VolcanoWing egg they come across. The FeatherWings have been rendered extinct because of this."

Horror shot through me. "The FeatherWings are extinct?"

Impossible! The last time I saw them...

The last time I saw them was in Mistral's palace.

Alder solemnly nodded. "The last time anyone has heard from them, was when Vulcan's forces were advancing their way onto the Clawed Isle, supposedly to murder Eagle and her descendants."

"Vulcan's forces were advancing their way ... to murder Eagle and her descendants". If Eagle and her descendants were truly murdered by the VolcanoWings' forces, then it could happen to anyone, including my own family.

"OceanWing, are you okay?"

Rage boiled inside of me like churning water.

I was not okay.

"Do you have any information on Wave and the OceanWings?" I growled at him, baring teeth.

He looked befuddled and terrified. "What?"

"You heard me. Has there been anything circulating about Wave and the OceanWing in this camp?"

"I... I...", he stammered.

"I'll take it from here, Alder", a voice from outside suddenly piped.

I turned my head and saw that Peak had landed outside the hut.

He extended a wing to the trees beyond. "OceanWing, come with me."

He walked away from the hut, and I followed him. He walked towards the banks of the River of Beaks, steering clear of the water.

We walked for a bit as silver-white light from the three moons bathed the trees and the foliage like light streaming into the ocean.

Once we were far from the camp, at a grove of trees with thick trunks, he turned around and grabbed my shoulders with his forearms.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he hissed.

I gave him a look. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, why are you in the Rachis Jungle in the first place? Only desperate dragons come here."

"I'm not desperate", I retorted. "I'm trying to get home after being held hostage for... moons know how long."

He raised an eye ridge at me. "Where were you held hostage?"

"In... in..." I couldn't get the words out initially. But I still told him. "In an old reef deep within a trench by other OceanWings."

Peak's grip loosened, and his grey eyes widened. "You were held...?"

I nodded.

"Four moons", he breathed. "They're either turning on each other or you're the only one that survived Mistral's palace."

I gave him a look. "What do you mean the OceanWings are turned on each other? Are they rebelling against Mother?"

"Moons, no! It means they're rebelling against Riptide."

I let out a rumbly chuckle. "Riptide's not the monarch. Mother is."

Peak didn't laugh with me, and I stopped after realizing his tone was serious.

"You don't know what happened after they kidnapped you, Tide?"

A sickening feeling suddenly lurched in my stomach.

"You don't mean..."

He solemnly nodded. "Long live Queen Wave. All hail King Riptide." 

_____________

Peak had placed me into the small grove of trees as he went out and caught some prey for me.

It didn't take long for him to come back with a fat, dead brown bird in his claws.

"I brought this for you", he said as he handed it to me.

I took it from him and sniffed it.

"It's not poisonous", he assured me, "unlike most things around here."

I looked at him, giving a look that said, "you sure?"

He returned the expression with a face that said, "trust me, I know".

With that in mind, I sniffed the dead bird again before eating it ravenously. I hadn't eaten anything this morning, since I failed to find myself a crab to eat several sunrises ago.

I didn't even pluck the feathers from my meal as I ate it. Eating was the only thing on my mind.

That and the fact that Mother was dead, and my brother had ascended to take her place as leader.

After I ate, I asked Peak what happened after I was kidnapped.

"Lots", he sighed. "Moraine did survive the attempt on her life, thankfully, but we left after Rise was assassinated."

"Was she intentionally targeted?" I inquired, and he shook his head.

"No, I think it was accidental."

I frowned. How could an assassin accidentally assassinate the wrong target?

He explained further.

"Several sunrises after Moraine was admitted into Mistral's infirmary, another assassination had taken place. The target was Wave, your mother. Unlike Moraine, she succumbed to the bite at the..."

He gestured to the back of his neck.

Mother had succumbed to the same injury as Moraine.

A death blow.

"Soon after that, one of the OceanWings left the palace for the ocean. I don't know their name, but they had blue scales and had no wave patterns on their wings."

"You saw Current, one of our messengers, head into the ocean", I told him. "I think he did exactly what Uncle wanted him to do in case anything like that happened. I'm also betting that you saw others like him as well."

He nodded. "Two others. One with dark green scales and a horrendous amount of gold rings on his body, and a dull blue-grey one covered in scars."

"Whirlpool and General Seaquake." I arched an eye ridge at him. "You never bothered to learn their names?"

"Everyone was so preoccupied with the assassinations, that no one wanted to learn their names. They were all worried about being the next target."

"Do you know if those dragons and a small blue dragonet left the palace after..." I trailed off, thinking about if Swell and the others survived.

Peak nodded.

"Those three left after Current came back and told them something. I couldn't tell from a distance, but I think it was that Riptide was chosen to be the new monarch."

"Do you know why Riptide was chosen?"

"No, but I assume it's because of the unspoken rule that when a monarch passes unexpectedly, their eldest heir automatically becomes leader."

I mentally kicked myself.

Of course! That rule!

"Speaking of monarchs passing unexpectedly", Peak said, "what you heard from Alder is true. Queen Eagle of the FeatherWings has been killed alongside the rest of her kin and the FeatherWings species by VolcanoWings. I know that the TreeWings are on the verge of succumbing to the same fate. The others... I don't know."

"But Alder said that I had given him hope with that DesertWing egg."

Peak's grey eyes went wide. "You found what?"

"I found a DesertWing egg, here in the jungle. It was in a lonesome bag, untouched by VolcanoWings."

He grabbed my front talons in his, gripping them hard.

"Nothing has come out of the Flat Desert since the VolcanoWings invaded the Island of Talons a season ago. It's impossible that any DesertWing or StormWing would come this far."

"Wait", I said, "you said that occurred a season ago."

He nodded.

"But that would mean that the VolcanoWings invaded the Island of Talons at the beginning of the Turn."

He shook his head. "No, they didn't invade the Island at the beginning of the Turn. They invaded it while you were gone."

A chill went down the back of my spine.

"Tide, you've been gone for one-and-a-half-seasons. The world has changed since those OceanWings nabbed you, and it's about time you adapted to it."

"And that time to adapt is now", a slick voice behind me said softly.

Claws lightly touched the back of neck and Peak let go of me as I jumped.

Two orange eyes were staring back at us from the tree and a silver ring on a small, claw-shaped piece of obsidian flashed in the moonlight.

It was Ashes, the VolcanoWing with the sky-creature I had met at Mistral's palace.

She didn't blink as me and Peak both gutturally growled at her simultaneously.

"Come with me", she whispered. "I can take you to the swamps where the Undercurrents are hiding."

I raised an eye ridge at her. "How can we trust you?"

"Hm", she replied, "let's just say I have friends, dear friends who told me about them."

"And you know where they are?" I couldn't wait to get my claws on them, after what they did to me, my baby sister, and my family.

She didn't say anything, only nodding her head as if a shadow had agreed to a contract I had given it.

"But we have to go now", she hissed. "The VolcanoWings are coming here to find any TreeWings that slipped through their claws today."

"...to find any TreeWings that slipped through their claws today."

Oak.

Alder.

The egg.

I darted away, running down the riverbank like Kestrel avoiding those hunting her towards the camp and skidded into Alder's hut.

The brown-and-green dragon was nearly done patching up Oak's neck wound, and a white ArcticWing was assisting. Blood was spattered over the ground from the operation, and it looked like the wound was being sewed up with plant fibers and the spine of a creature I had never seen before.

"Hey!" he snapped at me. "Watch it! I'm doing surgery here!"

I darted over to the side opposite of where the dragons were, and harridly shoved my pearls, the map of Eukarya, and the DesertWing egg into the seagrass-bag before putting it over my neck.

"Woah woah woah", Alder snipped. "You're not going anywhere."

"Says who?" I snipped back as I started heading out of the hut.

"Bright."

"Bright can go to suck a tail."

"She ordered that I keep you from escaping, and here you are escaping."

"I'm not escaping", I retorted, "I'm fleeing danger."

Alder gave a look at his assistant, before giving them the needle and the thread to them. "Finish for me while I deal with this", he ordered in a low voice.

I continued out the hut as Alder slinked after me and clamped his jaws onto one of my back legs.

I kept in my roar, as he dragged me backward into the hut.

Instinctively, I whacked my tail into my snout, and I heard a crack behind me.

The pain in my leg suddenly stopped, as Alder had let go of it and he was now the one in pain.

Using it as an opportunity, I ran out of the hut and leapt into the air.

I flared my wings out and oriented myself back to the shores of the River of Beaks, where Peak and Ashes were presumably waiting for me.

The MountainWing was still there. But the VolcanoWing and her sky-creature...

Tilting my wings, I descended and landed on the ground.

He turned around the moment I landed and ogled my bag.

"Did you get everything?"

I nodded.

"Then why is one of your legs bleeding?" Ashes hissed from the trees.

I nearly jumped. Moons, I forgot she was there!"

"You're bleeding?" Peak asked. "Where?"

I showed him my back leg, which now had blood trickling down it like raindrops trailing down my body.

He studied it before heading over to a nearby tree and stripping the leaves off one of its branches.

Deftly, he wound the leaves together before walking back over to me and wrapping it around my ankle.

"It won't do much", he explained, "but it should stop the bleeding and prevent anyone from following a potential blood trail."

"Clever dragon", Ashes oozed from the tree. "It's a shame that Vul- anyone didn't have you as their personal 'antennae'."

"Well, in this world", Peak said after tightening the leaf-band around my ankle, "you've gotta be your own 'antennae', since no one's going to be your 'antennae' throughout life."

He sat up and looked at me before his grey eyes suddenly shot up at the trees.

"Moons, you were right, Ashes. The VolcanoWings are coming to exterminate the remaining TreeWings."

"Then you need to follow me if you don't want to be a prisoner or a fresh corpse."

Slowly, Ashes emerged from the darkness of the tree into the moonlit jungle, Firehead clutching onto one of her horns for stability.

She opened her wings and took off into the sky before hovering over the river.

"Come on, lizards", she saidwithout even looking at us. "Let's get out of here."

Originally published: 05/12/2023 (typed up final manuscript of chapter 14, book 1 to page); edited: (WIP)