The world around Opal seemed unfocused and blurry as she was pulled from her dreams. Her mind was foggy as the room around her came into focus. There were grey walls with no windows, sharp little crystals embedded into them, to stop dragons from climbing out. On the walls were little baskets with strong illuminated crystals in them, for light. Opal slowly sat up and looked around. The crystal walls circled around her, trapping her in whatever room she was in. The only way in or out was through a metal trapdoor in the ceiling. For the first time since she woke up, Opal looked down. Her talons were chained to a metal tray that was bolted to the floor. And not just her front talons, her back talons as well. She tried to open her wings, only to find they were clamped shut. Two metal bands were clamped around her wings, keeping them folded. One was at the top near her claw tip, and the other was a little further down to assist the first one. Who went into all this work just to keep me here? Opal wondered.
"Oh wow! What have you done?" Said a voice off to her right. Opal turned her head and found three GemWings each clamped like she was. The one closest to her was a light cyan colour with dark blue lines throughout his wings, like veins. His scales were mostly a light blue colour with white and light cyan scales. He had dark blue eyes and dark grey horns, that twisted inward then outward. The one to the left of him was a dark grey colour with red, orange and yellow scales. He had a long scar down the side of his face, from his ear to his neck. His wings were black, the underside a gradient of red to yellow, and his spine was a deep red colour. His eyes were as black as the night sky, like looking into an abyss. His horns twisted like a VoidWings did and inward. The one next to the blue dragon was a burnt orange colour, like rust. She had a variety of different oranges and a few white scales here and there. Each scale looked like it had little bits of shattered crystals in them, so they glittered a bit in the crystal light. Opal noticed that none of them had metal trays like she did, so they could walk around.
"Well, what did you do?" The blue one asked. Opal could tell from his voice that he was the one that had spoken before.
"Um," Opal started. "I'm Opal and those are my friends."
"We could tell that." Said the grey one.
"I don't know why I'm—" It suddenly hit her. This was the GemWings' prison. She had a sinking feeling why Diamond had put her here.
"I think we're here because we were caught with Shulker." Opal nodded her head at her VoidWing friend.
"Ah, I see." Said the blue one, "I'm Turquoise, the grey, grumpy one there is Obsidian and the glittering one there is Sunstone."
"I'm Opal," Opal said. She realised for the first time that her friends were with her. "That SlitherWing is Seasnake and the white GemWing there is Quartz."
"Hmmm, you seem to have been conked out hard." Turquoise said, "you lot were asleep for a long while."
"Though that one has been awake for a while." Said Sunstone as she flicked her tail at Shulker. Opal turned and found him looking at her with soft, pink eyes. She blinked in horror when she saw the metal band around his snout. His claws were chained to the ground and his wings were bound, like hers. His tail was bolted to the floor, to keep him from rifting away. He did not look terrified at all. In fact, he lifted his long claw and wrote on the ground; 'I'm all right, don't worry.' Opal looked over at Sea. Her snout had a metal band around it, like Shulker's. It's probably because of her fangs, she thought, though that did not make it any better. Her wings had clamps as well and she had several bands holding her body to the floor. Quartz was no different than Opal, the same metal trays and the same wing bindings.
"It's because you're both Quartzs." Obsidian said, making Opal jump, "you both have the power of crystals."
Opal finally understood. With the tray separating her claws from the ground, Opal couldn't use her crystals to get out. Of course that would make sense! She thought, this is a GemWing prison.
She did not like that thought at all. She turned to the other three GemWings in the room.
"So what did you do to get here?" She asked Turquoise. He lowered his head as though trying to remember what. Or reliving a bad memory.
"I—I was caught with the wrong dragon." He said after a while, "Queen Amethyst has some . . . . . uh . . . . strong opinions about hybrids of GemWings."
Opal opened her mouth in shock. She had never heard of hybrids before.
"Can you tell me more?" She asked, genuinely curious. Turquoise dipped his head again, then lifted it to speak.
"I—," He began hesitantly, "I fell in love with a dragon. She was perfect in every scale, the gentlest purple eyes."
Turquoise blinked dreamily. Opal could imagine him picturing her in his head.
"What tribe was she from?" She asked.
"She was from . . .," He paused for a moment. Then he spoke again. "She was from the VoidWing tribe."
Opal's mouth fell open. Of all tribes, she did not expect the VoidWings.
"Her name was Shadow. She had beautiful dark purple scales and bright magenta stripes on her wings. Her twisted horns we perfect in every way and her tail was perfectly thin and—"
"Alright we get it!" Sunstone said, rolling her eyes with a smile, "he moons over her like this almost every day." She added to Opal.
"He just won't shut up about her." Obsidian said a little more harshly, "I get it, she's attractive to you, but we don't need to hear about it every single day!"
Turquoise lowered his snout in a way that Opal felt sorry for him.
"What happened to you Obsidian?" She asked, trying to change the subject.
He made a "hmph," noise but didn't respond. He turned away from her and curled his tail in closer.
"We don't know," Sunstone replied for him, "he was here when we got here. We have reason to believe he was locked up here since Queen Carnelian."
Opal remembered that name. The Queen before Amethyst. Amethyst's mother. She had heard stories about her from her lesson mates. They said she was crueler than any Queen the GemWings ever had. Opal guessed that Obsidian didn't do much to get in here.
"Sunstone, what—" She began before Sunstone cut her off.
"I was experimenting on Aythem," She said, answering Opal's unfinished question, "I was trying to see if different chemicals gave it a different colour and taste. Queen Amethyst didn't like that very much and said that it was very wasteful of food."
Opal nodded. All of those reasons didn't sound as bad as she thought. Opal didn't think it was right to have them here.
"Listen," Opal said to the three of them, "we are going to find a way out of here. We will figure out a way to get you out too."
Obsidian grunted again as if he did not believe so.
"That would be very thoughtful," Sunstone said, "though where would we go after that?"
Opal thought for a moment before Turquoise cut through her train of thought.
"I'll run away to the mountains," he said, "I will be able to reunite with Shadow."
"Wait," Opal began then hesitated. She did not want to hurt Turquoise any more. But how else is he going to know the truth.
"Going to the VoidWings is not a good idea at the moment," Opal explained. Turquoise turned to her with dismay written all over his face, "something has angered the Queen enough that she has ordered her VoidWings to kill every dragon they see alone."
This time it was Turquoise and Sunstone's turn to show shock. Opal didn't blame them. It must be quite a shock to them to get put in prison before the VoidWing's massacre then hear about it after they were locked up for a while. Obsidian's expression was unreadable.
"Is this true?" Sunstone asked Shulker. He nodded grimly. Suddenly there was a clanking and hissing sound and Opal turned to see what it was. Seasnake had finally woken up to find herself chained and bound. She was thrashing about, trying to get the metal bands off of her body. Opal knew this would only hurt her.
"Sea stop!" Opal said. Sea stopped thrashing around and turned to stare at her in disbelief. Her expression said all to well, 'what is going to happen?'
"So does Queen Amethyst not like VoidWings?" Turquoise asked. Opal admired that Turquoise still saw Amethyst as his Queen, after what she did to him.
"It wasn't Amethyst that put us here." Opal said, "It was Princess Diamond. Queen Amethyst went to the Radiant Forest to meet with Queen Shimmer of the BrightWings. They are going to discuss what to do about the VoidWing problem."
"We were going to go and find out for ourselves what was going on," she continued, "but then Diamond put us here because we were friends with Shulker."
Opal looked back at Shulker, but his expression told her everything. He still wanted to be friends with her.
"Maybe it was a good thing she did that," Obsidian said suddenly, "you lot would have died otherwise."
"That's not necessarily true," Sunstone interjected, "they do have a VoidWing with them after all."
Shulker's expression changed from that of comfort to pain. Opal knew exactly why. Shulker beckoned Sunstone over as he wrote, 'I'm actually in exile. I saved Opal.'
He cleared it when Sunstone had finished reading it then wrote in its place, 'had to choose between her and tribe. Chose her.'
Sunstone nodded in understanding and went to sit back down in her place. Opal gave Shulker a warm smile. He gave her one back. If only I wasn't chained up and bolted to the floor. Her mind said, I would be in his wings.
Shulker's smile widened as if he'd read her thoughts.
"Wait, did you say Princess Diamond put you here?" Asked Turquoise in surprise, "She's Queen for the day?"
"Yes." Opal said, "to be completely honest with you, I don't particularly like her. She doesn't seem as nice as Amethyst."
"Has some traits of her grandmother does she now?" Obsidian said, "she'll be no better than her if that's true."
"What did you do that made Carnelian put you here?" Opal tried again.
"Nothing that's your business." He said, then added, "I don't like talking about it."
Opal gave up trying after that and rested her head on the floor. There was movement in the corner of her eye that caught her attention. It was Quartz waking up.
"Opal I feel a little—" She stopped when she tried to open her wings. Her green eyes went wide when she saw everyone chained and bound.
"What is going on here?" She asked, "where are we? Who are they?"
"Quartz let me explain!" Opal said sternly. Quartz stopped chatting and turned to Opal to listen. Opal explained everything. That the room they were in was a prison, why Diamond put them there, why Sea and Shulker were more tied up than they were, and who the other GemWings were.
"That's Turquoise, Sunstone and Obsidian." Opal said, introducing them. She flicked her tail at each when she said their name. She told Quartz why each of them were there in the first place.
"We have no idea why Obsidian is here." Opal finished, "he doesn't like talking about it."
They spent the rest of the day talking to the GemWings (they thought). At one point a large blue GemWing opened the trapdoor and threw down some Aythem. The trapdoor was locked after that. Turquoise distributed the crystals between the five GemWings.
All too soon Opal slipped into sleep where she found a dragon waiting for her.
"Opal! Your finally asleep! I've been trying to get to you all day!" She cried. Opal felt joyous when she heard that voice. It was Stardust at last.