The Moon's Wrath

by Dolphy Blue Drake

Rating: everyone
Tags: Princess Celestia, Alternate Universe, Main 6, Nightmare Moon, Thriller, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Spike, Comedy, Adventure
Length: 29894

Nightfall Sheen, prized student of Lord Lumin Draconis, has been assigned to the Longest Day festival in Dragontown, but he has more important things on his mind. Namely the threat of Lumin's corrupted brother returning from the moon.

Small Dragons, Big Hearts: Unity is Power: S1E01—In a world where every pony is a dragon, every dragon is a pony, and all genders are reversed, even the most well-known stories of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic can turn out far differently. Join Nightfall Sheen and Wishful Legend—the counterparts to Twilight Sparkle and Spike—to find out just how much of a difference swapping genders and race really makes, even in the story that started it all.

Cover art by: Sakura (Note: Though this is the final product, there are a few things slightly off about the image (namely the headfins, the Royal Brothers' Skill Emblems being on their hips instead of on the tip of the tail, and Prism Slash missing his indigo stripes), but it's still really good, and was well worth the wait. I may ask for an improved version some time down the road, but I think I'll give the artist a break for now. She deserves one after all that hard work.)
Edited by: Brasta Septim, Darksonickiller
Proofreader and supporting author: Brasta Septim
Music composed by: Brasta Septim

Published 2016-01-21 22:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2016-04-19 15:11:36 UTC

Chapter 1: From El Dragado to Dragontown

Chapter 1: From El Dragado to Dragontown

“Nightfall?” a female voice called out, cutting into the restless dreams of a light purple Dragoon, who grumbled and turned over in his sleep.

When the Dragoon didn’t respond, the stamp of a hoof could be heard, followed by, “Nightfall Sheen! Get up! Today’s very important!”

“Just five more minutes, Wishy,” the Dragoon mumbled before trying to get back to sleep.

The female voice’s owner would have none of that, though. With a huff and a snort, a sparkling sound could be heard, and suddenly the room was flooded with morning sunlight, making it impossible for the Dragoon to stay asleep.

“Gah!” the Dragoon gasped as his eyes snapped open, revealing catlike pupils, purple irises, and lighter purple sclerae. He immediately tumbled out of bed in shock, landing on his back. He tried to use his crystalline wings to get back off the ground, but the position of his body made that impossible. “Wishful Legend, why can’t you just let me sleep?”

The female voice belonged to an eleven-year old purple Unicorn filly with green irises, round pupils, white sclerae, much unlike a dragon's eyes, a flowing mane and tail comprised of light and dark green hairs, and a “Cutie Mark” (she insisted on not using the dragon term of “Skill Emblem”) of a quill pen and a scroll adorning her flanks.

Said Unicorn stamped a hoof angrily and snapped: “You told me to wake you up today if you overslept, Nightfall Sheen!”

“Whatever, Wishy,” Nightfall grumbled before causing his two crystal horns to become encased in energy matching his eye color, then used his magic to grab the curtains and pull them partway shut, dimming the light in the room to a more comfortable level. He was a Mystic Dragoon (as evidenced by his pair of crystal horns and crystalline wings) with violet, purple and pink striped fins with notches in them, with the seven lines of head fins running from front to back clipped a bit short. He had magenta ventral scales, and a Skill Emblem on the triangular end of his tail resembling a large starburst surrounded by multiple smaller ones.

“Don’t call me Wishy!” the Unicorn huffed. “It’s Wishful Legend, Wishful for short, or just Wish for an even shorter name. Never Wishy!”

“Fine, Wishful.” Nightfall grunted, managing to use his four legs and his tail to finally right himself. “Besides, I was up late researching this.”

He levitated a thick book from a high shelf down to where he could hold it in his front claws, opening it to the story he’d been studying the night before. He showed it to Wishful, who took it in her own green magic aura and started reading to herself before bursting out laughing.

“Nightfall! This is a story usually told to babies and children!” she forced out between laughs. “The legend of the Dragoon in the Moon is just that: a legend! This so-called ‘brother’ of Lord Lumin never existed. The King and Queen—praise their bravery for leaving their kingdom in the claws of their offspring to fight Havoc—only had one son!”

“Well, I’ve been watching the stars for the past few nights, and I’ve noticed that three of them keep drawing closer to the moon every night, moving at a speed faster than stars normally move,” Nightfall shot back. “At least humor me by letting me send a letter to Lord Lumin, okay?”

“Fine,” Wishful sighed, tapping a hoof while she waited for Nightfall to finish writing his letter to his mentor, Lord Lumin.

Nightfall gave the letter to Wishful and said, “Okay, read it back to me.”

Wishful rolled her eyes, then cleared her throat to read the letter:

Dear Lord Lumin,

While I appreciate you appointing me to oversee the Longest Day Festival in your chosen location of Dragontown this year, I have much more pressing matters to bring to your attention: I know the legend of Midnight Darkscales, the Dragoon in the Moon, is real, and I have been tracking the skies the past few nights. What I have found is quite unsettling: the signs of his return are beginning to manifest in the night sky. I believe immediate action must be taken to prevent his return.

Your devoted student,

Nightfall Sheen

“Well, it looks serious enough,” Wishful sighed, before using her magic to seal the scroll. “Doesn’t change the fact that it’s all baloney, though.”

“Just send it,” Nightfall groaned.

Rolling her eyes again, Wishful teleported the letter away to Lord Lumin.

“Anyway,” Nightfall said, “I’ve got to get ready. “He’ll still probably send me to the festival, and I need to trim my talons and get breakfast.”

Before he could do either, a scroll appeared out of thin air and dropped in front of Wishful, who caught it in her magic. After breaking the seal and unrolling the scroll, she cleared her throat and read:

To my devoted student, Nightfall Sheen,

Your concern is unnecessary. Please just focus on preparing for your departure around eleven o’clock in the morning. I have prepared a better means of transportation for you than your own wings, for I am quite aware that your own wings would only get you a little more than halfway to Dragontown before you would pass out from exhaustion and crash. After all, you’re no Fairy Dragon. Your ride will be ready by eleven AM at the latest. Please make sure that all preparations go smoothly, and please, for the love of Gwynnia, mother of all dragons, make some friends for once. You have to reach out to more than just Wishful Legend. And don’t try pulling that bullhonkey about books being all the friends you need. Make friends with other dragons, please.

Your caring mentor,

Lord Lumin
Regent and Prince of Draconia
Caretaker of the sun

“See?” Wishful said, smacking Nightfall on the forehead with the scroll. “Everything’s fine! Now let’s get ready to go!”

“I think he may be hiding something,” Nightfall mumbled as he grabbed a talon file with his magic and started working on filing the talons on his right front claw down to a more manageable length.

Wishful just shook her head and said, “Whatever. You keep focusing on your talons, and I’ll get us some breakfast.”

Nightfall just grunted in annoyance and kept working on his talons until Wishful returned with a tray of food on a cart and pushed it towards the Dragoon, who had finished working on his talons and was now inspecting his crystalline wings to check for any damage they might’ve taken when he fell on his back.

“Okay, breakfast is here, Nightfall,” she announced while placing the food from the tray on the table in the center of the room, pulling up a small chair for herself and a chair sized for an adult dragon—be they Dragoon or Dragoness—for Nightfall.

Helping herself to a bowl of oatmeal after taking her seat, Wishful noticed that Nightfall was now buffing his scales until they shone and sighed. “Really, Nightfall? Only Dragonelles and Dragonesses take that much time to deal with their scales. Do you really want to look as self-absorbed as Lady Noble Scale? What’s next? Whining about chipping a talon or getting a single head fin out of position when it can easily be pushed back into place?”

That got Nightfall’s attention, and he quickly took a seat and dug in, using his fork to shove three sausages into his mouth at once, chewing fast and forcing them down with a glass of orange juice before snarling at his assistant.

“Don’t ever compare me to that self-centered, prissy, whiny excuse for a ‘Lady’!” Nightfall snapped. “She keeps calling Lord Lumin ‘Uncle’, but I highly doubt she has even a drop of the Royal Family’s blood in her. But what bothers me even more is that even though she’s most likely adopted in some way, she acts like a spoiled brat! Shouldn’t she be… y’know, more grateful to him?”

“Okay, sorry,” Wishful said while waving her hooves in front of her face. “I just really needed to get you to eat. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

“Long is right,” Nightfall groaned before skewering a pair of fried eggs with his fork and clamping down on them, chewing more slowly this time, then swallowing. “The trip to Dragontown’s gonna be a boring flight, and then I’m going to have to check everything when I arrive. I love making checklists to organize things, but it’s nice that Lumin prepared one for me.”

Picking up the checklist from his nightstand, Nightfall looked it over and groaned at the last box on the list. Lumin had written in bold blocky letters: MAKE FRIENDS. All Nightfall wanted to do was get checking things over with quickly so he could get to more important things: such as figuring out some way to stop the return of Midnight Darkscales, which he knew was coming! No matter how many dragons laughed at him for it, he knew the Dragoon in the Moon was more than just a bunch of craters in the shape of an Ultima Dragoon’s face. Midnight Darkscales was real, and if Lord Lumin wouldn’t stop the wicked Dragoon’s return, he’d find a way to do it himself.

A few hours later, Nightfall Sheen was standing on a balcony of El Dragado Castle. On either side of him were Wishful Legend and Lord Lumin, a white Ultima Dragon who was, fittingly, impressive almost beyond description.

The balcony was overlooking the metropolis in the massive crater. Some dragons walked the streets, others flew around, and it looked pretty much like any other day in the late spring for the bustling dragon capital: dragons getting ready for summer to officially start, Dragonlings and Dragonettes who were already out of school until autumn were running or flying around, still easily capable of walking on two legs due to their young age, Dragonocks and Dragonelles flirting with each other, as was normal for adolescent dragons to do, and even the occasional Dragoon or Dragoness carrying their Hatchling or Hatchlette around the city with them as they took care of some errand.

The capital itself was incredibly grand: jewel-encrusted buildings, shimmering structures of precious metals in alloys of all sorts of colors, glittering obsidian structures in the old districts, newer buildings made from marble, granite buildings buffed and polished to shine, streets paved with diamond and peridot tiles that glittered in the late morning sun, shops of all kinds, several grand academies, and in the very center, a pair of statues of incredibly majestic dragons: an artist’s depiction of what the absent King and Queen supposedly looked like: a regal gold dragon statue with a myriad of wings and horns of all sorts depicting King Bahamut, and an equally regal silver dragon statue with the same wings and horns, but visibly feminine, of Queen Tiamat. Both statues were standing in the center of a pool of water, with the water itself coming from their open mouths.

But Nightfall was taking in none of it. He was counting down the seconds until eleven AM, still seeing no means of transportation arriving.

But as he reached thirty seconds remaining, he turned his head to see a massive golden flying machine covered in gears and pistons with canvas wings and small directional wings in the back on its way, gliding over the lip of the crater and belching steam from its smokestacks. This must’ve been the mode of transportation Lumin had mentioned. And by Gwynnia, was it impressive! It moved rather quickly for something of its size, and almost made no sound except for the whirr of propellers and the clicking of gears.

“Lumin, it’s incredible!” Nightfall gasped as the machine quickly pulled up to the balcony and opened a hatch that doubled as a ramp.

“State of the art,” Lumin replied. “We—I mean I—was working on the concept for such a creation about eleven hundred years ago, but things happened, and I completely forgot about the idea for such a thing until five years ago, and I put engineers to work on bringing this old dream of ours—I mean mine—to life. It was finished two years ago, and in those two years, dragons have learned to pilot this machine perfectly. It really is a dream come true.” Then, in a very tiny whisper that Nightfall just barely caught, Lumin added, “If only we had finished it back then. It would’ve made Umbra so happy, and maybe the whole debacle could’ve been avoided…”

Filing away that information to ponder later, Nightfall and Wishful thanked Lumin and boarded the machine, which they quickly learned was simply called an “airship”. Taking facing seats next to a window, Nightfall and Wishful waited until the airship started moving before Nightfall broke the silence.

“He slipped up multiple times while talking about the plans for the airship,” Nightfall noted. “I also heard him whisper something about somegon named ‘Umbra’. That has to be connected to Midnight Darkscales. I’m certain he was talking about his brother.”

“Everygon misspeaks at least once in their life,” Wishful replied, waving her hoof as if to dismiss the idea.

“Not Lord Lumin,” Nightfall countered. “I’ve never once heard him have to correct himself mid-sentence. Especially not multiple times so close together. And that whisper about somegon named ‘Umbra’ has me concerned, too.”

“Eh, there’s a first time for everything,” Wishful said with a shrug. “Besides, he was speaking so softly, I couldn’t make out anything at all at the end. You probably misheard him because he was whispering so softly.”

“I still think something’s up,” Nightfall huffed, his expression still suspicious. “But let’s just enjoy the ride for now.”

“Finally!” Wishful exclaimed, stamping her hooves in delight. “It’s about time!”

The pair stopped conversing and looked out the window to watch the land below zoom by. The ship was flying faster than Nightfall could, so by his estimation based on the distance between El Dragado and Dragontown, they would arrive around noon. It was a good thing his checklist included making sure the refreshments for the festival were going well. Maybe he could get some free samples so he wouldn’t have to spend so much on food to keep himself well-fed. His wallet only contained a few Treasure coins and half a clawful of Hoard bills, which wouldn’t buy much, and he wasn’t about to spend his special coin on food. Lumin told him that coin was only for dire circumstances.

The two continued looking out the window, watching the land below pass by, until a dense forest passed by, followed by a town that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, with everything around it so undeveloped. From what they could tell from above, it was a pretty unremarkable town, the green backdrop of the forest the only thing that really drew the eye to it.

The airship started to descend, and the two passengers got up and started moving towards the exit hatch, which opened with a soft “thump”.

“Thanks for flying with us!” one of the furnace workers said with a wave of her claw. “It’s nice to actually fly with somegon other than Lady Noble Scale for once!”

”The ride was great!” Nightfall replied, returning the wave. “I wish I could do that again!”

Wishful waved too, and added, “You’ve gotta make more of these things! They’re super-cool!”

“Later, you two!” the pilot chuckled as they stepped off the stairs attached to the hatch.

The two waved back again, and watched as the incredible machine took to the air again and flew back in the direction of El Dragado.

Looking the town over from ground level this time, the one odd thing Nightfall could think of that made the town different from other dragon settlements was there was nothing significant.

Most dragon settlements began in places where something caught somegon’s eye and they decided to settle there, eventually drawing more to the area. This place was just an open field, really. Usually, the location would be based on ancient ruins, a crater, a lake, a mountain, or some other eye-catching concept. The only significant thing was the huge tree with windows, but Nightfall highly doubted that a single tree could be what caused dragons to settle in such an area. Even the Town Spire, which was supposed to be the tall building holding the administrative offices, was rather plain-looking. Some buildings looked incredibly odd, as if to make up for the simplicity of the town, but most houses were of the same brick-and-mortar style preferred by most dragons.

After observing the town, Nightfall pulled out his checklist. Normally, he would've simply selected the closest objective to his current position—as Balance, the most important principle of both their society and the Universe itself, required. Do things in perfect order, too much Harmony. Do things utterly randomly, too much Chaos—but the first thing on his list happened to be closest to him regardless of where he was in the town: Check on weather control. Looking around, he saw way too many clouds in the sky. That simply wouldn’t do. Normally, the weather could do what it wanted as long as it didn't get out of claw, but they would obviously ruin the special sunrise Lord Lumin only did once a year, for that exact festival, so full control was needed.

The air shifted slightly, and Nightfall only had a chance to turn his head a few degrees before something slammed him to the ground. Hard.

Author's Note

And here's my first chapter! This chapter has taken a very long time to produce (and a lot of editing, too. Thanks, guys!), but I've been hanging onto it for quite a while. This fic was originally going to be a companion fic to another fic, but I've changed my mind and decided to get this one up first. To those reading my other current fics, don't worry! This won't delay chapters for other fics at all! This fic is actually mostly done already!

Anyway, since I couldn't think of another way to go about it, every character tag on this fic is for the canon counterpart to the AU character showing up in the fic. I've seen the Twilight Sparkle tag be used for Dusk Shine in the past, for example, so I hope this passes as close enough.

If you liked what you read, please leave an upvote! And if you leave a fave, please still leave an upvote to go with it. Also, if there was something you really liked, tell me about it! If there was anything you didn't like, let me know about that, too. Just make sure you're constructive about it. I really hope you enjoyed the fic so far, and I hope you had a great time reading! Later, all!

EDIT: A huge thanks to Brasta Septim for the music he provided! It was composed specifically for this fic! Thanks, man! You rock!

EDIT 2: Just to clear some things up, some slight alterations have been made to some of the text in the chapters to reinforce that the "Dragonverse" doesn't revolve around Harmony or Chaos. Their culture and the flow of their Universe is a perfect Balance of the two. In addition, for those who may find the constant capitalization of tribes and dragon gender-age terms awkward, it's just the dragon way of doing things. It's just cultural, but I had absolutely no idea how to explain it in the story without breaking the atmosphere.

Chapter 2: Inspections

Chapter 2: Inspections

Currently half-buried in mud, Nightfall could somehow hear somegon laughing at him; obviously a Dragoon by the pitch and raspy timbre. Nightfall was indignant; he wouldn’t stand for being laughed at, especially not by some stranger who’d knocked him into the mud. He was going to give his assailant a piece of his mind! Once he wasn’t on the ground anymore, anyway. Wishful was snickering, too, but he’d deal with her later.

“What in Gwynnia’s name was that for?” he snapped as he stood back up, turning to glare at the dragon who had slammed into him. The Dragoon was clearly a Fairy Dragon, if his bolt-shaped horns and feathered wings were anything to go by. He had a Skill Emblem of a cloud and a tri-colored lightning bolt on the end of his tail, cyan scales, rose eyes, and unkempt fins in all seven colors of the rainbow, indigo included. His head fins were especially messy, sticking out at odd angles, and his ventral scales carried the same pattern as his fins. Oddly enough, his feathers didn’t match the colors of his scales, but were also multi-colored.

“Hey, it’s you who got in my way,” the brash prismatic Dragoon chuckled. “Watch where you’re going! I tend to fly fast.”

“I was just standing here!” Nightfall growled. “You were clearly the one who caused the crash by not watching where you were going!”

“Fine, fine,” the rainbow dragon sighed. “I’ll help you get cleaned up.”

“Wait, no, that won’t be necessary!” Nightfall protested as the Fairy Dragoon ignored what he said, “I know a spell for—”

Ignoring Nightfall’s protests, the other Dragoon flew up, raked his talons through a puffy white cloud right above him, turning it gray, then punched it to test if it would produce rain. Instead of a few drops, though, he ended up creating a localized downpour right where Nightfall was standing. The water washed off all the mud, but also soaked his wallet, the bills within it, and even partially soaked the checklist, which were all being stored in a now-soggy backpack.

Nightfall glared at the other Dragoon and held up a talon while saying, “Wait. Don’t even think of trying to dry me off. I have a spell for that, too.”

Nightfall’s twin horns started to glow, and a water-repelling field emanated from the surface of his scales, forcing all the water off, then passed through his backpack and forced out all the water that had soaked into anything.

“Now that that’s done with,” Nightfall said, suddenly a little happier, “seeing as you’re a Fairy Dragon, can you direct me to the head of the Weather Department of this town? I’m Nightfall Sheen, the Unicorn with me is my assistant, Wishful Legend, and we’ve been sent here by the order of Lord Lumin himself to make sure this town will be ready for his arrival to begin the festivities.”

“You’re looking right at ‘im!” the Fairy Dragoon replied, holding out a claw for a shake. “My name’s Prism Slash, and not only do I head the Weather Department, I’m its only member, for I’m all we need!”

Nightfall narrowed his eyes. “If you’re all they need, why are there hundreds of clouds over the town?”

“Hey, I just got up from a nap, okay?” Slash said with a barely-apologetic shrug, withdrawing his claw when the shake wasn’t accepted. “I can still assure you that I’m the best at controlling weather there is! I’ll have these gone in ten seconds, tops!”

“I once saw a single Fairy Dragon stop an entire T11 level tornado in ten seconds,” Nightfall said flatly, clearly unimpressed. “If you’re better than that, you should be able to clear these in five.”

“You’re on!” Slash replied eagerly. “I’ll show you why they call me Slash!”

Picking up a stopwatch off the ground, Prism Slash threw the stopwatch to Wishful, who caught it in her magic before giving him a confused look.

“Girl, you keep track of time and tell me when to start, okay?” Prism Slash asked with a wink. Wishful sighed and rolled her eyes, but held up the stopwatch anyway.

“Ready…” she said, and Prism Slash spread his wings and stretched. “Set…” Prism Slash got on his hind legs, crouched to spring into the air, and held his front claws over his head, talons outstretched and barring his teeth. “Go!”

The instant the stopwatch started, Prism Slash was nearly impossible to see, save for the seven-colored blur he left in his wake, zipping through the sky at supersonic speeds, creating a sonic boom that assisted him in destroying over half the clouds. The remaining ones were torn to shreds by his teeth and talons, and he screeched to a halt in front of Nightfall and Wishful with a simple “Done!”

Wishful stopped the clock and just stared at it bug-eyed, moving her mouth, but no words came out. She showed it to Nightfall, whose catlike pupils widened to be almost circular, also at a loss for words.

“Lemme see!” Prism Slash chuckled before taking the stopwatch from the stunned Unicorn, whose magical grip offered no resistance. Taking one look at it, he let out a whoop and shouted, “Five on the dot, baby! Now tell me, who’s the greatest Weather Dragoon alive?”

“That’s impossible…” Nightfall breathed after being silent for several seconds. “Was that your full speed?”

“Not even close to it,” Prism Slash said casually while inspecting his talons. “I can go way faster than that, but it would’ve taken more than five seconds to reach that speed. I’m pretty much the fastest flier alive. I’ll finally get to prove it to everygon in the world when I get into the Shatterbursts, who are the best aerial stunt team in the world, consisting of just Fairy Dragons!”

“Well, Prism Slash,” Nightfall said, this time reaching out his own claw for a shake, “That simply was incredible. You cleared the whole sky in five seconds! There’s not a cloud anywhere!”

Prism Slash accepted the shake and squeezed firmly. “Eh, it was nothing, really. A new record, sure, but I set a new record in something about three times a year.”

With a few exchanges of “Goodbyes” and “Seeyas!”, Nightfall and Wishful headed away.

“Well, that’s one part of the list complete,” Nightfall said as he levitated the scroll and a pen out of his backpack, giving them to Wishful.

The Unicorn checked off the box next to “Check on weather control,” and nodded to Nightfall.

“Now, let’s figure out which segment of the list would be in the next closest location…” Nightfall trailed off when he noticed a slightly pudgy, bubblegum pink Dragoon with blue eyes, just staring at him. He was clearly a Nature Dragon, as his plain ribbed wings and horns with grooves resembling tree bark plainly indicated. He had springy fins that were a deeper pink; well, his head fins were more than just springy, but poofy, in a way. He had pale blue ventral scales, and a Skill Emblem of three balloons. “Um, my name is Nightfall Sheen,” Nightfall began awkwardly, “could you—”

He was cut off by the the pink Dragoon letting out a huge gasp, leaping into the air, hovering for a short period, (oddly without the use of his wings) before dropping to the ground. Suddenly, he sprang back into the air, and zipped away while flying only a few inches off the ground at flight speeds that Nightfall was certain Nature Dragons were incapable of, leaving behind a cloud of dust, even though the street was paved with cobblestone and looked perfectly free of dust.

“That’s twice now that my concepts of what counts as possible have been shattered today,” Nightfall observed nervously. “We should get going, Wishful.”

Wishful nodded, and the two moved on to the Town Spire in the center of town. Like most Town Spires, it had a large ground floor for things such as festivities and the like, but after the base floor, It tapered thinner and thinner as it went up, until it ended in a single point about ten floors above.

“So, does the checklist require anything here?” Nightfall asked.

Wishful looked at the list and nodded. “Yep. We have to check on how the decorations are going along; and the festivities are always at the Town Spire.” She turned to him with a slightly bewildered look, “You should know that.”

Nightfall blinked, then faceclawed in embarrassment, and the two walked inside. The main hall was well-decorated with bright damask banners and tapestries depicting the sun, as well as fine pieces of metalwork decorations that looked freshly polished and reflected the sunlight very well, catching the sun’s rays from the windows and reflecting them all over the hall, bathing the chamber in golden light.

“Wow! This is simply amazing!” Nightfall breathed. “Isn’t it, Wishful?”

“Yeah…” she said dreamily, her gaze locked in one direction, not taking in any of the decorations, “simply amazing…”

Nightfall followed her gaze and his claw met his face again when he saw what she was looking at. It, or rather, he, was a white Mystic Dragon with purple fins, the head fins styled as if to imitate curls, but clipped somewhat short; just not as short as Nightfall’s were. He had pale silver ventral scales, a trio of diamonds serving as his Skill Emblem, and a physique that looked slightly above average in strength for a Mystic Dragoon.

“Oh, hello there!” the white Dragoon said when he noticed Nightfall and Wishful. “I take it you’re the inspector, right?”

“That I am,” Nightfall replied with a nod. “I’m Nightfall Sheen, and this is my assistant, Wishful Legend.”

“My name is Extraordinaire,” the other Dragoon replied cheerfully, standing up on his hind legs to give a flourish and a bow. “I run the Dragontown Boutique, but I also craft metalwork and have a forge right next to my shop. It’s a shame that most dragons only care about buying my metalwork, though.” The Mystic Dragoon dropped back down onto four legs, looking a little wistful. “I’m sure that a good suit or dress wouldn’t hurt anygon to just try at least once…” He shook his head and quickly regained his composure, settling back into his usual cheerful expression. “Anyway, the decorations here are all my own designs: The banners, the tapestries, and all the various pieces of decorative metalwork, such as the shields, crests and masks, are all my doing!”

Nightfall whistled to express how impressed he was, glancing around at the decorations again, but looked back to find Extraordinaire suddenly right in his face. Just a tad uncomfortably so, too.

“Wait, you said your name is Nightfall Sheen, right?” the white Dragoon inquired intensely, looking suddenly very, very curious.

“Um, yes?” Nightfall answered, confused and wondering if Extraordinaire wasn’t good with personal space issues.

“There’s only one Nightfall Sheen I’ve ever heard of, and since you were sent from El Dragado by Lord Lumin, you must be him!” Extraordinaire exclaimed, getting even more uncomfortably close. “You’re the protegé of the Prince himself! Somegon as high-ranking as yourself shouldn’t be wearing nothing but a simple backpack! You need something to wear that implies your importance!”

“Um, I’m not really high-ranking,” Nightfall tried to reply, attempting to back up a bit, but Extraordinaire would have none of it.

“Come now! There’s no need for that!” The other Dragoon exclaimed, whipping out a tape measure from his own bag. But after thinking for a moment, the white Dragoon noticed Nightfall’s expression, which screamed, For the love of Gwynnia, please no! He stopped, obviously in thought, then shrugged and put his tape measure away, frowning, “Oh. Nevermind, since you seem... satisfied with your current ensemble.” He looked more than a little disappointed, but continued, “Well, if you really are okay with looking like some wandering hermit, suit yourself.” He broke into a smile again, “But, if you ever realize that I was right the whole time, stop by my shop!

“Umm, I will? Anyways, good job with the decorations,” Nightfall commented. “Keep up the good work!”

“Farewell for now!” Extraordinaire called after Nightfall as he turned around to leave for the next location.

About halfway out of the Town Spire, Nightfall noticed that the clip-clop of hooves wasn’t following him, and turned to see that Wishful hadn’t budged an inch. She was still staring dreamily at the tailor/metalworker, and Nightfall could almost swear he could see hearts in her eyes.

“Wishful, it’s time to go,” Nightfall said levelly. When the filly still didn’t move, Nightfall sighed, grabbed her tail in his claw and started to walk backwards on three legs, trying to drag her out. Somehow, she still wouldn’t budge.

“Uh…” Nightfall said, scratching his head in thought, trying to devise a way to get her to snap out of it or move her himself. Maybe he could levitate her out the door? Or perhaps he could use some kind of oil to get her unstuck?

While Nightfall was still pondering, Extraordinaire turned his head away from the helmet he was hanging up and noticed the pair were still there. “Oh? I thought you were leaving!”

“I was,” Nightfall huffed. “But ‘lover girl’ here won’t move!”

Extraordinaire looked over at the filly, and only just then noticed her dreamy, slack-jawed gaze aimed at him. “Oh my, she seems smitten with me!” Extraordinaire chuckled good-naturedly. “Okay, I’ll humor her for now, just to see if we can get her back to her senses.” The white Mystic Dragoon cleared his throat and got down to the filly’s eye level and said, “Wishy, dear, I’m a bit busy right now. Perhaps you could stop by my shop some other time so we can chat?”

That broke her out of her trance, resulting in her blinking a few times before saying, “did you just call me ‘Wishy’?”

“Yes?” Extraordinaire asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Normally, nogon can call me that,” Wishful began levelly before squealing like, well, a little filly, “but you can call me ‘Wishy’ all you want!”

“Well, on that note, we’ve gotta get going,” Nightfall said, placing a claw gently on her shoulder and helping the lovestruck filly to turn around. “Still have a few remaining things to check off, right, Wishful?”

Wishful blinked again, then flushed hotly as she got ahold of herself, and nodded before checking off “Check on decorations”.

“Okay, we have only two things left besides you making friends,” Wishful remarked with a smirk, provoking a groan from Nightfall. “These two are ‘Check on refreshments’ and ‘Check on opening performance’. The Dragontown Farmer’s Association’s lead family’s property is off to the west, while the dragon in charge of the opening performance lives off to the east. Which one should we go to first?”

Nightfall’s stomach decided for him with a growl, and he announced, with a hint of desperation, “To the west. Hopefully, they’ll let me taste-test a few dishes so I can actually get some food in me.” His stomach concurred, loudly. “I should’ve had a snack before we left…”

Nightfall levitated the filly onto his back, told her to hold on tight, then took to the air, his empty belly serving as more than enough motivation to fly at his top speed, which was about a moderate fifty miles per hour.

Following the dirt path along the outskirts of the town below, they passed multiple small farms, then Nightfall spied a large number of Nature Dragons congregating at the large farm near the end of the road. Swooping down, he landed at the gate to the farm and craned his neck up to read what the sign above it said: “Apple Clan Main Farm and Dragontown Farmers’ Association Headquarters.”

Panting for breath and trying to quell the protests of his empty stomach, Nightfall staggered through the gate and promptly collapsed onto the dirt, immediately drawing the attention of everygon in the crowd.

After practically crawling towards them for several yards, Nightfall shakily got to four legs again and gasped, “Sorry… about that. Nightfall… Sheen… and Wishful… Legend… here to inspect… tomorrow’s refreshments!”

He gasped and wheezed after that, and his stomach gave a very painful growl, protesting yet again.

“Wait one gosh dern minute, pardner,” said an orange Nature Dragoon standing before him, an evident drawl to his voice. He had golden yellow fins (the head fins were barely managed at all, just clipped barely enough so they weren’t long enough for him to be mistaken for a Dragoness), a brown stetson on his head, red vental scales and a trio of apples serving as his Skill Emblem. “Did ya just fly all the way here from town on an empty stomach?”

Nightfall nodded, cringing in pain when his stomach growled again. “I skipped lunch,” he admitted in an embarrassed undertone.

“Everygon, move aside!” the orange Dragoon barked, causing the dense crowd of dragons to part to reveal a heavily-laden table set up with a bench. It had so many platters of food on it, it looked almost ready to buckle under the weight. The smells from it were no less appetizing, wafting tantalisingly to Nightfall’s nose.

“We were just gonna have ya’ll just take a gander at our food, maybe smell it a bit.” he nodded towards Wishful to indicate that she was also being referred to. “Y’know, just ta make sure it’s up ta snuff and all, but since yer so hungry, we’ll let ya actually eat ‘em, too.” Pushing a steak smoked on apple wood and slathered in a thin glaze that smelled mostly of apples (but also of some other fruits) in front of Nightfall, who had eagerly just taken a seat, he urged, “C’mon, dig in!”

Nightfall needed no further encouragement. He ripped the steak in two and stuffed half of it into his mouth, chewing quickly just to get something in his stomach before savoring the second half, which was absolutely perfect.

“Ah, that hit the spot,” Nightfall said with a satisfied nod. But, before he could get up, he found himself presented with a carrot-and-meat pie, courtesy of a golden yellow Dragoon with orange fins and no other traits he could make out because the crowd obscured most of the dragon from sight.

Nightfall’s stomach growled for more food, so he obliged it by biting into the meat pie. The combination of flavors was incredible, but as soon as he finished eating that, he found even more food on his plate. Obliging his stomach yet again, he found that every time he finished a piece of food, another dragon wanted him to try their dish next. His hosts seemed to have decided to make use of their unexpected taste-tester as much as possible. His stomach soon stopped protesting for food, and eventually he started to feel pain from overeating instead of emptiness, but the endless train of food just wouldn’t stop, and he was too polite to refuse a meal thanks to his lessons from Lord Lumin. After all, they were civilized dragons—refusing a meal was tantamount to spitting in your host’s face, then dropping a stone block on their foot and poking them in the eye. By the time a Dragoness placed the final piece of food on his plate, he was full to bursting, and he had to force himself to eat her dish.

“So, how were they?” the orange Dragoon asked with an impossibly-wide, hopeful smile.

“Good, and very filling,” Nightfall said, trying his best to not audibly groan from the new pain in his stomach from it being so stuffed.

“Perfect!” the orange Dragoon exclaimed, clapping enthusiastically with his front claws, prompting the other farmers to do the same half-heartedly in comparison, before they all departed thereafter to return to their own farms.

“Now, sorry fer not introducin’ mahself sooner, Mr. Sheen,” the orange Dragoon said, sweeping his hat off and fumbling with it awkwardly with his front claws. “Mah name’s Apple Slice. We raise some animals here, sure, but we deal mostly in apples.”

Apple Slice pointed to the left, indicating a Nature Dragoness with unclipped orange fins, the head fins growing so long that they had to be bound together by a bow to keep them orderly, red scales, a big green apple for a Skill Emblem, and yellow ventral scales.

“That there’s mah big sister, Ambrosia,” Apple Slice explained. “She carries a lot of this farm on her back.” He grimaced, and added in an undertone, “Or, she has ever since Mammy and Pappy died.”

Quickly looking around again, Apple Slice pointed a talon at a small yellow Nature Dragonling who looked to be about six or seven years old and still perfectly capable of standing on two legs. The Dragonling had red fins, with the head fins trimmed pretty short, so they just barely poked out under his baseball cap, which he wore backwards. His ventral scales were orange, and he had no Skill Emblem at the end of his tail, meaning he had yet to discover his Greatest Skill.

“That’s mah little brother, Apple Blast,” Apple Slice said, his expression neutral again. “He hatched shortly before Mammy and Pappy passed away, so he has no memories of them. He tries to help out, but he’s just too small, y’know?” He briefly broke into a fond smile, before resuming his usual composure “He spends a lotta time with his friends, anyway, and the slew of ‘em get into a lot of trouble tryin’ ta get their Skill Emblems.” He gave an amused chuckle at the thought of their antics, before glancing about again.

“Now, there’s one more member of our family, but where could he be?” Apple Slice looked around until he spied something rocking back and forth in the shade of a tree, then guided Nightfall to a better position so he could see the sleeping elderly Dragoon in the rocking chair.

“And this is Grampa Crispin,” Apple Slice whispered, so as not to wake him.

Nightfall looked over the old dragon. His fins had faded to white, and he wore a straw hat on the back of his head, almost falling off. He was so old that he had grown long bony whiskers and a beard, which he had chosen to not shave. His scales were a pale green, he wore an orange scarf, his scales were a pale red, and on the end of his tail there was a Skill Emblem of an apple pie.

“Grampa was Pappy’s father,” Apple Slice said as he led Nightfall away from the snoozing dragon and back to the table, where Wishful was patiently waiting. “Grampa helped settle this town, but that was almost a hundred years ago. He’s over a hundred now, and he ain’t kicked the bucket yet.” His tone became slightly quieter, more reverent. “ Ah... Ah just hope he’s proud of what Ah’ve done ta unite the farmers of this here town ta work together.” His neutral expression broke into a nervous smile for a second, before he shook his head again, looking slightly embarrassed to be revealing this much to a stranger.

“Now, sorry Ah kept ya fer so long,” Apple Slice apologized, once again removing his hat. “Ah’m sure ya’ll have work ta do still. The festival’s tomorrow, after all! See ya’ll there!”

Nightfall nodded, Wishful got on his back again, and with a few flaps of his wings, he managed to get off the ground, but struggled to gain altitude because his stomach was so full. He eventually got them high enough into the air to fly all the way back to town, then over it and over the path leading to the east. The east road, though also made of dirt like the path to the farms, looked much less developed and more unused. The dirt wasn’t packed or worn at all, as if only used either infrequently or by one or two dragons at the most.

As he flew over the path, Nightfall suddenly heard birds singing. Not in the usual disorganized chatter he heard from birds, but organized and harmonized, almost like an avian choir. Spying a cottage nearby in the middle of pretty much nowhere, Nightfall also just noticed a yellow dragon right below him, and swooped down behind a tree to peer around it and see what in Gwynnia’s name was going on.

The dragon in question was clearly a Fairy Dragoon, with pink fins that had a flowing yet slightly clipped formation on his head. His ventral scales were a pale green, and his Skill Emblem was of a trio of butterflies. All in all, he looked as entirely unthreatening as dragonly possible.

“Okay, everyone, one more time, from the top,” the Dragoon said, his mellow tenor voice incredibly soft and gentle. “Miss Blue Jay, you were a little off-key last time. Try a major second higher this time.”

“Okay, one, two, three,” he said briskly before using a conductor’s baton, and to the surprise of both Nightfall and Wishful, the birds burst into song, singing the Anthem of Draconia in perfect six-part polyphony. Well, just the tune, but Nightfall and Wishful stared at each other in absolute shock until the birds stopped singing.

The Dragoon opened his mouth to say something, but Nightfall dashed around the tree and said, “that was amazing! How did you do that?”

Instead of answering, the yellow Dragoon squeaked and dashed to hide behind the exact same tree Nightfall was just behind a few seconds before, and started trembling while the birds flew away in a panic.

“W-Who are you?” the Dragoon asked quietly. Really quietly. Nightfall had to tilt his head slightly to even hear him.

“Um, I’m Nightfall Sheen, from El Dragado,” Nightfall replied, awkwardly waving a claw in the general direction of the suddenly very shy and timid Dragoon. That was a little strange to Nightfall; the other Dragoon had only moments before been right at home teaching birds to sing a song composed by dragons, and was now cowering behind a tree as if faced with a mountain-sized Scorpio and not a bookish Mystic Dragoon as threatening as library dust. “And this is my assistant, Wishful Legend.”

The Unicorn filly trotted up to the timid Dragoon with a concerned frown and asked, “Mister? Are you okay?”

The timid Dragoon peered around the tree just enough to see who was talking to him, and suddenly broke into a huge smile before he walked up to her and started ruffling Wishful’s mane.

“Aww, she’s a Unicorn filly!” he gushed, suddenly much more sociable, looking and sounding like he wanted to hug the stuffing out of her, if given half a chance. “I’ve heard of Unicorns before, but I’ve never actually seen one until today! So, she works with you?”

“Yes,” Nightfall replied, glad for the ice to be utterly shattered. “We were on our way to find the dragon in charge of the opening performance for the festivities tomorrow, and then we heard what you were doing and had to stop and check. By the lovely way those birds were singing, I’d guess you’re him, aren’t you?”

The yellow Dragoon blushed and turned to try and hide his face. “Yes, that’d be me,” he replied softly. “My name’s Timidwings.”

“How were you able to do that?” Nightfall asked, eager to learn something new.

“I don’t know exactly how I can understand animals and get them to understand me,” Timidwings replied with a shake of his head, looking like he wished he could say more. “I just can. It’s a part of my Greatest Skill: working with animals.”

“Ah,” Nightfall replied, disappointed that he didn’t learn that much. He sighed and looked back at the filly, “Well, Wishful, you can check off that box, too. Now we have nothing left on the list to do, so—”

Wishful cut him off, smirking mischievously. “You’re forgetting one more box, Nighty!”

“First of all, I’ve told you not to call me ‘Nighty’ in company.” He grumbled, flushing slightly. “Second, I’m not doing that one,” Nightfall stated firmly, standing up on his hind legs and folding his forelegs in defiance. “That one won’t make a difference on how the festival plays out, and there's no need to fully complete a checklist every time. That would make me a slave to Order, and I'm a normal, balanced Dragoon.” Settling back down to four legs, he turned to Timidwings and said, with a bit of reluctance, “well, we’ll see you at the festival tomorrow morning! We’re going to the place Lord Lumin set aside for us to stay for the night.”

“Well, goodbye, then,” Timidwings said as he took to the air to gather up the birds. “If you visit again, please bring her with you!”

Nightfall nodded, shooting him a quick smile, and Wishful got on his back before they took to the air again.

Author's Note

Chapter 2! It's only been two days since the last chapter went up, but I decided to upload now, anyway! So, I hope you enjoyed this early posted chapter! Chapter 3 won't be up until next Thursday, though.

Anyway, If you liked what you read, please leave a like! If you loved it, how about a fave to go with that like? And, if you have something to say, feel free to leave a comment! Just make sure all criticism is constructive though, okay?

Thanks for reading, and I hope you had a great time doing so!

Chapter 3: The Return

Chapter 3: The Return

As the sun went down, and the pair of them returned to the main part of town, Nightfall glanced back at his Unicorn assistant. “Wishful? Does the list say where we’re staying tonight?” he asked a bit impatiently, feeling all those calories from having to eat every single refreshment the farmers had put in front of him burn away while he flew, to the point where he was actually starting to get a little hungry again. After they got settled in for the night, maybe he could hit up a restaurant or two and pick up a sandwich for himself and a salad for his assistant. That shouldn’t prove too expensive for even the meager funds he had, even though Lumin didn’t give him money except for emergencies, and his parents only sent him money once a month, on the last Monday of each month. He usually spent it at bookstores, but he had enough for food.

“Yeah,” the filly replied. “He wrote that we’re going to be staying in that huge tree. Apparently, it’s the town library, but the old librarian moved out a year ago and they haven’t been able to replace her, yet.”

The first thought that entered Nightfall’s head was, Library = books, and he grinned widely. He knew what he was going to be doing until he hit the sack; reading! So many new, old, and possibly ancient tomes ripe for his perusal. I could just find myself a stack or two, and find a nice, comfy chair— Oh wait... Then he remembered that Midnight Darkscales was going to return soon, and hoped that the library actually had a book that would help.

Nightfall swooped down in front of the massive tree and fumbled with the doorknob. It wasn’t locked, so he wouldn’t have to ask the mayor for the keys or anything annoying like that. Not even stopping to ponder why the door to a closed library would be unlocked, Nightfall turned the knob, then pushed the door open, revealing almost complete darkness inside.

“N-nightfall, it’s dark in there,” Wishful whispered, a slight trembling in her voice. “What if there’s… bugs in there?” Her eyes were wide at the thought of any lurking creepy-crawlies, “We won’t see them in the dark!”

“Eh, it’s dark in there because the sun has set out here,” Nightfall replied with a shrug, not particularly fazed. Sometimes, Wishful’s fear of bugs was adorable—this was not one of those times. “Besides, light your horn up, Wish. I think I see something on the ceiling of the front room.”

“Why don’t you just use your own magic?” Wishful huffed, glancing around nervously.

“My horns are on the left and right, yours is in the middle,” Nightfall explained matter-of-factly. “What I think I see is in the middle, and with two light sources from the sides, I won’t be able to get as good of a look at it as you will, Wish.”

“Okay, you win,” Wishful sighed in resignation before her horn took on a green glow, shining a beam of green light at the ceiling to illuminate a hanging gas lamp.

“A lamp!” Nightfall exclaimed, snapping his fingers on both front claws and breaking into a grin. “Perfect! You keep it illuminated while we get inside, then I’ll light it with my magic!”

Wishful nodded and kept her spotlight spell focused on the lamp hanging from the ceiling as the two entered further into the library and Nightfall closed the door behind him, blocking out the last rays of dying sunlight from outside.

“Now, I just have to light the lamp,” Nightfall said as his twin horns started to glow, encasing the lamp in a dark purple aura. With a squeaking sound, the lamp’s knob turned, and a slight hissing sound indicated that the gas was now running. Switching spells, Nightfall used a small spark spell to produce a flame in the lamp, quickly illuminating the room.

“SURPRISE!” came the shout of dozens of dragons at once, suddenly popping up from behind furniture and bookshelves while more lights turned on, confetti fell from the ceiling and an eye-wateringly gaudy banner drifted down onto the wall. It proclaimed, in large, sparkly lettering: “WELCOME TO DRAGONTOWN, NIGHTFALL SHEEN!”

Nightfall blinked. “Nope,” He said flatly, turning to head back out the door. “I’m not doing this.”

He didn’t get to move more than three steps before he walked right into a bright pink blur that was suddenly in his face. He instinctively backed up a foot to see it was the pink Nature Dragoon from before, grinning from ear fin to ear fin, his blue eyes practically shining with excitement. “Oh, it’s… you again…”

“Sorry I didn’t introduce myself before,” the Dragoon said brightly, placing a claw on Nightfall’s shoulder and turning him back around, dragging him to the center of the room, where a table was spread with lots of sugary treats and drinks. “My name’s Goody Gumdrops!” The Dragoon proclaimed, with a voice so fast and enthusiastic, he’d probably been raised eating gumdrops for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. “But you can call me Goody! When I saw you earlier today, I realized I’ve never seen you around before, which means you must be new to Dragontown! And new dragons don’t have any friends here when they first get here, so I thought to myself, ‘Goody, that dragon must be so lonely and sad! You have to do something about that!’ So I decided to throw you one of my famous ‘Welcome to Dragontown’ parties! I had to wait until you gave your name, but once I got it, I headed right to the bakery I work at to prepare this party just for you! I contacted the mayor and found out you’d be staying here, and I got him to lend me the key to this place, so long as I give it to you after!” He gently pushed Nightfall towards the food, “Anyway, it’s a party! Stuff your face with treats! Play games! Have fun! This is for you, after all!” Before Nightfall could even reply, the pink Dragoon literally bounced to another part of the room, chatting loudly with a group of party-goers.

Nightfall sighed to himself. He was planning on getting some reading in, but with all the chatter and music, there was no way that was happening tonight!

Resigning himself to his fate, Nightfall picked up a cupcake and shoved it into his mouth, only getting halfway through chewing it before realising his tongue felt like it was on fire. He grabbed the nearest bottle right off the table without reading it first and started to pour the contents into his mouth, only to find the burning got even worse, his eyes watering. It was a bottle of tabasco sauce!

Growing desperate to soothe his scorching tongue, Nightfall dashed to the kitchen, lit the room, and grabbed a cup from a cupboard. It was a little dusty, so he quickly washed it off with water from the tap, then filled the glass with cold water and washed the infernal cupcake down his throat before sifting through the cupboards, trying to find a salt canister.

In the very last cupboard, he thankfully found one, flipped the tab up to open it, then poured the salt straight from the container onto his tongue, finally getting soothing relief.

After waiting for a few seconds for his tongue to cool down, he put the salt canister away and used the water from the sink to wash the excess salt from his mouth, then sighed in relief right before Goody burst into the kitchen.

“Sorry about that!” the pink Dragoon said apologetically, his fins losing their poofy and springy appearance, falling flat. “I forgot to label which cupcakes were hot!” Suddenly, his fins sprang back to their previous appearance and he sounded chipper again. “Well, I’ve separated them, now. The hot ones are on a separate table with the tabasco sauce, so you can avoid them if you don’t want them.”

Nodding in gratitude, Nightfall followed Goody out of the kitchen and took a slice of cake and shoved it into his mouth. To his delight, instead of some spicy concoction that even ice from the depths of Echidna’s frozen prison of Cocytus couldn’t counter, it was devils’ food, one of his favorite kinds of chocolate. Humming happily, he washed it down with a glass of fruit punch, then noticed a book with the same title as the one he’d been reading at the castle, but with an extra line added to the title: “Unabridged Edition”.

Ignoring the party, his eyes lit up, as did his horns for the purpose of grabbing the book. Unfortunately, the feminine clearing of a throat behind him forced him to delay his plans for a bit.

Turning around, he found himself snout-to-snout with a tan Nature Dragoness wearing a blue pinstriped blazer over a white blouse and a large red bow at the neck, with an hourglass Skill Emblem. Her fins were a dark brown, and her ventral scales were a more neutral brown.

Her conversation partner from a few seconds prior was also looking at Nightfall: A light gray Fairy Dragoon with golden yellow head fins, ventral scales in an even lighter gray, a collection of bubbles serving as his Skill Emblem, and amber eyes. He was dressed as well, though a blue postmaster's uniform was far from what Nightfall would've expected from anygon to choose to wear to a party.

"Oh, sorry about that, Mr. Sheen!" the Dragoness said after Nightfall let out a yelp and backed up. "I'm the Professor, though most prefer to call me either Professor Enigma, or even just Enigma." She giggled and shook her head a little at the silly nickname, then returned to being all-business. "My companion—or, my current one, at least—needs to speak to you about your temporary lodging here, as he has orders from El Dragado concerning your mail being redirected for a day." Motioning for the Dragoon to step forward, she added, "Well, go on, Mr. Claws! We've got the chap's attention!"

The postmaster stepped forward, and Nightfall found it impossible to make proper eye contact, as the other dragon's eyes were skewed.

"Uh… Sir?" Nightfall said slowly, "Are you okay? Did you hit your head? I might have a healing spell for—"

The other Dragoon chuckled and shook his head. "Don't bother. They're always like that. Nothing new." Nightfall opened his mouth to apologize, but the postmaster cut him off. "Don't bother apologizing, either. It's happened so many times, I've lost count and stopped caring. Now, uh…" he scratched his head for a few seconds before lifting a clipboard out of his bag and clawing it to Nightfall. "I'll need you to fill this out, please. By the way, my name's Dopey Claws. Silly name, but everygon respects it because I'm the postmaster! Somegon once suggested I change my name to 'Daffy Doo', but, respect more than balances out a silly name." He looked down sheepishly for a second before adding, "Though, it's a small town, so there's really just me. Well, my younger son, Tiny, helps when he's not at school." He let out a hollow laugh. "It's tough being a widower, ya know? But still having family in spite of it makes it all better. Makes me feel like their mother's still with me without having to visit the house's family shrine. Although the Professor here has offered to be their mother, and while I'd love to agree, I just can't shackle a traveling Dragoness like her to myself on good conscience."

Nightfall quickly filled out the form, clawed it back to the postmaster while nodding politely as he spilled his life story for seemingly no good reason (the dragons of this town seemed to have a very bad habit of just telling strangers everything about themselves), then as the odd pair left with the Dragoness saying, "Come along, Mr. Claws! We're at a party, and I forgot to bring a banana! This must be rectified! I always bring one to a party!" Nightfall left to accomplish what he'd intended to do earlier, trying to forget about the odd pair. If he couldn't stop Darkscales, tomorrow's mail would be the least of anygon's worries.

He grinned as he finally grabbed the book with his magic, quickly floating it over to himself. He then hastily flew upstairs and over the banister into an almost-empty bedroom, which happened to have a telescope pointing at the window.

Looking through the telescope, Nightfall gazed up at the moon, and noticed the three stars mentioned in the book were getting very close to the moon. It wouldn’t be long now…

Moving over to the bed, Nightfall opened the book to the same tale from the abridged book from back at the castle, and began to read the complete version of it, attempting to use pillows to muffle the noise from downstairs. At this rate, he was going to get a headache.

An hour later, Nightfall was tired, frustrated, and his head was throbbing. He was growing tired of trying to study the complete version of the tale, because the noise from downstairs made it nearly impossible to concentrate, even with the pillows pressed on either side of his head.

Wishful trotted into the room with an overturned cup dangling on her horn and said, “Hey, Nightfall! We’re having a great time downstairs! Come and join us! Goody has something awesome in store for everygon!”

“No!” Nightfall snapped crankily, trying to bury himself in the covers so he could block out the noise and get some sleep. “Disaster is coming, and all everygon wants to do is have fun! Am I the only one here who actually cares?”

“I think so,” Wishful replied with a shrug before shaking her head in disappointment. “Well, you can try to sleep if you want, but I’m going to enjoy the party! I’ll have them gone by ten, I promise.”

Nightfall groaned and rolled over, resorting to using a noise-cancellation spell to finally get some sleep.

Nightfall woke at around five in the morning with his headache thankfully gone, about an hour and a half before the festival. He climbed out of bed and used that time to inspect the library, which was amazingly spotless after the party from the night before. Wishful must’ve either cleaned it up herself or got the partygoers to do so, being the sweet, if mischievous filly she was.

There was a scroll on the center table, so Nightfall picked it up, broke the seal with a talon, and unrolled it, resulting in something falling out, clattering when it hit the table. The scroll read in an untidy scrawl:

Dear Nightfall,

Sorry you couldn’t enjoy the whole party. At least your Unicorn friend enjoyed it until it ended.

Anyway, I promised the mayor to give you the key to the library when we finished up, so after we cleaned up for you, I decided to write this letter for you to give it to you.

Your new friend,

Goody Gumdrops

Nightfall looked down at the table to see a worn key had fallen out of the scroll. He picked it up, and immediately used it to lock the door to the library so he could finally finish studying that book.

He prepared a small breakfast of oatmeal, eggs and bacon, first. Apparently, Goody had also stocked the fridge for him so so he could eat that morning, since it had been entirely empty the night before.

“That was rather thoughtful of him. He’s trying so hard to be a pal to me… Hmm, maybe I should give him a chance,” Nightfall mused as he munched on his food.

After finishing, he cast a spell on the remainder of the oatmeal to heat it up a bit, so Wishful could have a warm breakfast of her own after she woke up.

Moving to the front room, Nightfall sat in a lounge chair, lit a candle, and resumed studying.

An hour later, he closed the book, still a bit puzzled. Apparently, the ‘Components of Balance’, as they were called, were used to banish Midnight Darkscales to the moon, but despite what the book said, he knew the ones on display in El Dragado weren’t the real ones. Lord Lumin helped Nightfall realize this, as a couple years ago, he had him test a secret spell Lumin taught him for detecting magic of all kinds, including magic that could be used to fool other magic detection spells. Such magic was in place on the “Components” on display, but other than that spell, they were just hunks of colored rocks with no magic whatsoever. There just had to be some clue as to where the real ones were, but where in the jumble of words that made up that tale was the answer?

However, he didn’t have time to ponder this, as a clock chimed six AM, which meant the festival would start in half an hour. Nightfall heard the sound of hooves, and turned to see Wishful Legend trotting groggily down the stairs, looking haggard from staying up for too long the previous night. Her mane and tail were a mess, too.

“Morning, sunshine,” Nightfall said with a bright smile as he set the book down and waved to the filly.

“Morning,” she grunted in response.

“I left you some oatmeal for your breakfast,” Nightfall told her, levitating a bowl onto the table for her with his magic. “I cast a spell on it to keep the heat in.”

“Thanks,” Wishful muttered as she poured the rest of the oatmeal into the bowl, grabbed a spoon with her magic, and started eating.

“The festival’s in half an hour, and you look like a wreck,” Nightfall observed, giving her a small smile. “Would you like me to brush your mane and tail for you?”

“I’m eleven now,” Wishful snapped, crossing her forehooves, though her eyes said something different than her stance. “Lumin had you start caring for me almost right after he started giving you private lessons, but that doesn’t make you my daddy, and you know it. I’m a big filly. I can do it myself.”

“We only have half an hour until we have to be there, though,” Nightfall told the filly gently. He knew, despite her protests, she did want him to brush her mane and tail. He’d always done that for her whenever she’d do something crazy and get them tangled up. “It’s not a matter of me wanting to treat you like my little girl or anything. It’s so we can get there in time.” Even though half of that was bullhonkey and they both knew it.

“Fiiiine Da- um, Nightfall,” Wishful sighed, stifling a giggle that Nightfall just barely heard. and he shook his head before removing a brush from his backpack and moving to the kitchen so he could help Wishful get groomed while she ate.

He had, of course, groomed her many times before, all the way back to when she was a little foal and actually thought he was her daddy. Applying the brush to Wishful’s mane first, Nightfall carefully worked out the knots that had formed in her sleep, stifling a giggle of his own when the filly leaned into the feel of the brush and hummed happily while chewing her oatmeal. No matter how much she fussed before, she couldn’t help doing that. Nightfall eventually worked out all the kinks in her mane, and it returned to its usual pretty, flowing state. “There,” He said, floating a small claw-held mirror out of his backpack and holding it in front of her. “Pretty as ever.”

She gave a poor attempt at an indifferent shrug, though her eyes were grateful. Moving on to her tail, he performed the same process again. This time, she didn’t lean into the brush, but continued to hum as she ate.

With the tail done as well, Nightfall moved on to brushing the filly’s coat, gently getting the hairs back into place. She once again leaned into the brush, letting out the occasional barely-audible giggle and instinctively pressed herself closer to him, almost practically snuggling into his side.

With fifteen minutes to spare, Wishful finished eating at the same time Nightfall finished brushing her, and they raced to the bathroom to brush their teeth. Nightfall arrived first, but he didn’t stop the filly from entering, and just gave her a toothbrush with toothpaste on it, which she took in her magic. Finally, the pair started the last part of their morning routine, which lasted for about three minutes before they finished, cleaned up, and left the library with the door unlocked, but Nightfall still took the key with him.

The two swooped down from the air with Wishful riding on Nightfall’s back, landing right outside the Town Spire before entering the main hall. It looked absolutely incredible with all of Extraordinaire’s decorations up, but would be even more fantastic once Lumin began raising the sun with the extra flair he only gave it once a year.

“Ladies and Gentledragoons!” a beige Nature Dragoon with gray fins called from a balcony overlooking the hall with a curtain behind him, “It’s almost time for the festival to begin! At six-thirty, Lord Lumin himself will grace us with his presence!”

Applause could be heard coming from dragons all over the hall, but Nightfall looked at the setting moon and tapped Wishful on the shoulder. She turned her head, and Nightfall simply pointed towards the setting moon on the horizon, as seen through the east window. Before their eyes, the stars from the prophecy began to shimmer and converge in front of the image of the Dragoon in the Moon. In a single dim flash of light, the image suddenly vanished, along with the three stars, leaving a nearly blank moon behind.

Wishful just stared in disbelief, but Nightfall set his jaw in determination. As soon as Lord Lumin stepped onto the stage, he’d confront him about what was going on and demand they take immediate action.

Backstage, Lumin Draconis stood ready to show himself to the dragons of this town.

His three pairs of wings, one for each major dragon tribe, were all prepared: the feathered Fairy wings preened, the crystalline Mystic wings polished to sparkle dazzlingly, and the bat-like Nature wings properly loosened up to prevent cramps.

His golden helmet and crown combination was perfectly polished, especially the front spike, which had an image of the sun carved into it, and his three pairs of horns, one for each major tribe, had been filed and polished recently.

The rest of his armor was polished as well, his white main scales and gold ventral scales properly buffed and cared for, his three-tone orange head fins, like a sunrise, appearing to merge together on his head and wave in a non-existent breeze. Even the scales where his Skill Emblem of an eight-armed sun was had been polished to shine brightly. All in all, he looked regal and powerful, as an Ultima Dragon and regent should.

As he prepared himself to meet his subjects, Lumin felt something snap. Glancing up, he saw the moon sinking below the horizon. The empty moon. The seal on the moon had just broken. Whether Nightfall knew it or not, Lumin had been preparing him for this very day for years. The Dragoon was the only one who could do what he could not, if Nightfall would just open his heart to others.

Lumin sensed a dark presence behind him, radiating a sense of tyrannical extreme Order, and without even turning around, he said, “Hello, Umbra.”

“I am not Umbra anymore,” a menacing voice snarled, the air growing heavy and noxious around Lumin. “I am Midnight Darkscales, and I will get all dragons to appreciate my night for what it is, and become the sole leader of Draconia! Not just a regent, but a King!”

Lumin then whirled around to face his corrupted brother. The wicked Ultima Dragoon’s scales were pitch black, as were his three pairs of wings and his three pairs of horns. His head fins were merged into a blue and red nebulous structure that grew or shrank in size whenever he wanted, while his ear and back fins were midnight blue, as were his ventral scales. He was arrayed in dark red armor, and his teal eyes were the same as they were before he had turned evil, except the sclerae were a dark red instead of a lighter shade of teal.

Finally, his Skill Emblem was similar to Umbra’s, but it depicted a blood red crescent moon held in a black dragon’s claw on a midnight blue background.

“Brother, I know this isn’t you,” Lumin said firmly, narrowing his purple eyes. “The real you would never want to usurp Mother and Father! The real you always said the night truly belonged to Mother! I suspect Havoc made you turn into what you are now, for the Umbra I knew was balanced, like me. You're over-saturated with Order, brother.” His eyes turned hopeful, almost pleading. “I’m sorry I didn’t pay attention to you more, but if you let go of the hatred in you, I promise to make it up to you.”

“Make it up to me? Bah!” Midnight Darkscales spat. “I’ll consider your proposal… After you’ve spent one thousand years confined inside the sun, just like how you trapped me inside the moon for that amount of time! Farewell, brother!”

The wicked Dragoon enveloped his brother in his fin nebula and converted him into an energy form, before casting him towards the sun’s current position, just below the horizon.

Back in the main hall, nogon had realized what had just happened, and were talking in excited whispers as the mayor announced, “it’s time for the grand appearance of our leader and regent! I present to you, the Prince of the Day, caretaker of the sun, shepherd of the moon, regent of all of Draconia in the stead of King Bahamut and Queen Tiamat, Lord Lumin Draconis!

As the curtain started to rise, Timidwings’ bird choir began to sing the national anthem. But once the curtain was fully up, there was dead silence as everygon just stared at an empty stage.

“There’s got to be a reasonable explanation for this,” the mayor said, motioning for everygon to remain calm as the excited whispers changed to nervous mutters. “Maybe he’s still backstage?”

“Is he hiding?” Goody Gumdrops asked. “I’m good at guessing things! Just let me think for a second…”

“He’s disappeared!” Extraordinaire gasped.

“Aw, shucks, I was gonna guess that!” Goody whined, snapping his fingers.

Suddenly, there was a sound of rushing wind, and a black nebulous cloud spread across the stage, clearing away to reveal a black Ultima Dragoon in red armor.

“It’s him!” Nightfall gasped while Wishful just kept moving her mouth with no sound coming out.

“My dear, precious subjects,” the black Dragoon began warmly, looking around at the amassed dragons before him. “I’ve missed your day-obsessed faces so much for the past millennium.”

“Where’s Lord Lumin?” Prism Slash demanded, baring his teeth and preparing to lunge before Apple Slice grabbed his hind legs.

“Whoa there, pardner!” Slice exclaimed, “We don’t know what he can do!”

“I don’t care!” Slash snapped. “If you won’t let me get my claws on him, then I’ll just have to do something else!”

Slash closed his jaws, tilting his head down as seven-colored light started emanating from between his teeth.

“Slash! Don’t!” Slice shouted right before Slash opened his jaw and released seven different colored sonic projectiles, which were simply caught and crushed by the menacing Dragoon’s nebulous fin structure flowing out under the back of his helmet.

“If you must know, your precious Lord Lumin has been imprisoned in the sun for one thousand years,” the Dragoon stated calmly, as if he hadn’t just had sonic projectiles shot at him. “But, I am royalty as well, you know! Don’t you know who I am?”

“Ooh! Another guessing game!” Goody squealed with delight. “Um… Black Smog! Wait, how about King Jerkface? Wait! I’ve got it! Snobby Darkness! It’s gotta be—”

Apple Slice shoved a cupcake in Goody’s mouth to shut him up, but the damage had already been done.

“Is my crown rendered meaningless by my spending one thousand years in solitude?” the Ultima Dragoon roared, all three sets of wings spreading out to their full length. “Does nogon remember the legend? Did nogon notice the signs preceding my return?”

“I noticed,” Nightfall said firmly, stepping forward. “And I know exactly who you are. You’re the Dragoon in the Moon. You’re Lord Lumin’s corrupted brother. You’re Midnight Darkscales.”

Everygon else gasped in shock, but Midnight Darkscales just clapped slowly.

“Finally, somegon who actually remembers me,” the wicked Dragoon said with a slightly mocking smile. “You know who I am. Do you know why I’m here?”

“Isn’t your goal night eternal?” Wishful asked, confused.

“Do you take me for some kind of buffoon?” Midnight Darkscales snapped, looking more than a little affronted at the very suggestion. “No, I want to rule Draconia, not as its regent, but as its King. I want to make you appreciate my nights, but I’m not going to kill you to do it!” He moved towards the edge of the stage, shattering the east window with a blast of his magic. “Hear me well, my subjects! I will set a new system in motion! For fourteen days, there will be no sun in the sky anywhere. Not even on the other side of the world. Just my wonderful moon and my stars. But to go like this forever would be insane, for a world with no day, even if all life on it could be adapted to flourish in moonlight, would grow colder and colder until it froze and everything died anyway. So, after those fourteen days with no sun, the sun will return, and for seven days, the moon and the sun shall rise and set as they have for millennia. After those seven days to keep the world from freezing, those two segments shall repeat endlessly.

“So, remember yesterday’s sunrise well, dragons, for you won’t see the sun again for fourteen days! You will appreciate my night, like it or not!”

Author's Note

And here he is! Darkscales! Our main threat has reared his scaly head at last! So, what do you guys think of our antagonist? And how about the rest of the chapter? I hope you liked it, for a lot of work went into this one. Oh, and for those of you who know that only mammals can be affected by capsacin (the stuff that makes your tongue burn from spicy food), I'm fully aware of that. These dragons have both reptilian and mammalian traits, so in exchange for not having certain reptilian weaknesses—such as having cold blood and needing to hibernate—they're vulnerable to certain weaknesses that only mammals have—such as the pain factor of spicy food.

However, Chapter 4 may get delayed due to technical problems from earlier. It may not, but we'll have to wait and see. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, for I had a blast writing it! Please leave a like if you like what you've read so far, and if you loved it. how about a fave to go with that like? Feel free to leave comments, too. I swear that I read every single one! I don't respond to all of them, but I do respond to a good portion of them. So, if you have anything (non-destructive) to say, go ahead and say it!

Later all! Until next time!

Chapter 4: Into the Woods

Chapter 4: Into the Woods

As the moon moved back to its rising position, Midnight Darkscales threw back his head and laughed like a maniac.

The mayor had flown down to the main level of the main hall by this point, and was hurriedly gathering the members of Lord Lumin’s Guard that had come with him to the festival.

“Seize him!” he shouted, pointing a talon at the black Ultima Dragon. “Only he knows how to get Lord Lumin back!”

The squad of heavily armed and armored soldiers, almost chiefly composed of Dragonesses, started charging their breath weapons, flying swiftly towards Darkscales.

“Give it up, dust motes!” Darkscales cackled madly as he quickly charged and fired his own breath weapon. A cloud of nightmare dust that triggered hallucinations, fear and confusion hit his would-be assailants, sending them flying about helplessly, screaming in panic. A smug, self-satisfied grin spread across Midnight’s face as he observed the ensuing havoc.

Apple Slice watched the “battle” for a little bit before turning away and groaning in frustration, the sight of Lumin's personal guards, the most elite military unit in the world, so easily defeated being too much for him. Draconia's finest, beaten by a blast of purple dust.

Not missing a beat, Nightfall spread his wings, and Wishful climbed on his back before the two took to the air and flew quickly towards the library, the wind whipping past him as he hastened.

Prism Slash turned his head just in time to notice Nightfall zip away, narrowed his eyes angrily and shouted, “Hey! come back here! Don’t run away!”

Nightfall either ignored or didn’t hear Prism’s call as he sped towards the library, just barely visible against the backdrop of the night sky.

“Um, Nightfall?” Wishful asked, glancing around nervously as buildings zipped past. “We need to stop Darkscales, and he’s the other way.”

“You were up most of the night, Wish,” Nightfall replied, focusing more on not colliding into obstacles than talking, his steely gaze trained on the building ahead. “And you’re still called a filly for a reason.”

Stopping only long enough to open the library door, Nightfall rushed inside, completely forgetting about shutting it in his haste to figure out some way to stop Darkscales. Wishful climbed off his back, and shot him a worried glance as he paced back and forth across the library floor, the gears almost visibly turning in his head.

Nightfall stared across the room at a reading table loaded with half-open books, which were, for once, annoyingly useless in this case. “Ugh! The Components of Balance were used to defeat Darkscales before, but I don’t know where they really are!” Nightfall growled in frustration, pulling at his head fins. “How can I stop Midnight Darkscales without the Components of Balance?”

As he turned around to consult his assistant, Nightfall instead found himself snout-to-snout with a very angry Prism Slash.

“And just what are these Components of Balance supposed to be?” Prism Slash seethed, baring his fangs, almost causing Nightfall to instinctively recoil. “How did you even know about Midnight Darkscales when none of us did? Are you working for him? Huh?”

“Hold yer horses, Slash, he ain’t workin’ fer the enemy,” a familiar voice suddenly cut in, Apple Slice appearing from behind the Fairy Dragoon and pulling Slash back to the ground. “But he does know quite a bit more about this than we do.” Turning to Nightfall, he narrowed his eyes and said, “Care to enlighten us, Nightfall?”

Another familiar white Dragoon stepped out from behind Apple Slice. “I’ve seen the Components of Balance before, if that’ll help,” Extraordinaire interjected, raising a claw. “I saw them on display at El Dragado Castle!” The tailor smiled smugly, as if he’d easily solved their problem.

“Those ones are fakes,” Nightfall said with a shake of his head, Extraordinaire’s smile fading into a frown of disappointment. “Lord Lumin showed me a secret spell that can detect any kind of magic, and when I used the spell on the ones in the display, the only magic I detected was a magic decoy spell.”

“By the way,” Nightfall asked, suddenly noticing that in addition to those three Dragoons, two more were present off to the side: Timidwings and Goody Gumdrops, “how did you all get in here?”

“You left the door open,” Goody replied, Nightfall faceclawing in embarrassment. “You were having a panic attack, so those of us who weren’t mad at you decided to come help you out!” After pausing for a second, the pink Dragoon added, “Oh, and Slash tagged along, too.” Prism Slash grumbled something incoherent in response.

“Okay, I’ll give a summary of what I know,” Nightfall sighed, motioning for the other five Dragoons to sit down while Wishful finally closed the door. “I’m Lord Lumin’s personal student, and after studying a book, I ran across the legend of Midnight Darkscales. The book was an abridged version, though, so I didn’t have all the information I needed until I found the unabridged version here yesterday. It gave me more information, including that the Components of Balance were used by Lord Lumin to seal his brother in the moon one thousand years ago, but it didn’t give the location of the real ones anywhere in the book—”

Nightfall was cut off by a sudden, loud squeal, followed by a pink blur dashing back and forth across the room.

“Ta-daa! ’The Components of Balance: a Complete Guide to the Artifacts of Legend’,” Goody exclaimed while waving a book with that exact title in Nightfall’s field of vision, who just stared at it in disbelief.

“Where was this book?” Nightfall asked, still stunned.

“Where else but under ‘C’, silly goose?” Goody replied with a smile and a shrug. “I mean, this is a library, right?”

He blinked, then faceclawed yet again. “Okay, you’ve made your point,” Nightfall sighed while cracking the book open and skimming through it. “Okay, there are six Components, but only five of them have actually been located,” Nightfall said, summarizing the book’s text to speed things up. “The first five are Empathy, Joy, Sacrifice, Integrity, and Fidelity. The actual name of the sixth is a mystery, but with the five assembled, applying a spark should summon the sixth. The five known Components were last found in the Ancient Palace of the Royal Dragon Family.” Nightfall blinked, looked over the page again, and even skimmed the index before muttering, “That’s odd. The book doesn’t give an actual location for the Ancient Palace.” He groaned, shutting the book. “Now how exactly are we supposed to find the palace if nogon in Draconia knows where it—”

“Um, I know where it is,” Timidwings piped up. Everygon turned round to stare at him, and he mumbled, “Well, what’s left of it, anyway.”

“Where is it?” everygon asked at once, their voices overlapping.

“I saw it once in the Wild Woods,” Timidwings replied quietly.

“You actually went into that dreadful place?” Extraordinaire gasped in shock. “Alone?”

“I was trying to get a rare flower for some medicine, but at the first fork in the path through the woods, I turned left when I was supposed to turn right, and I eventually came to the ruins of a massive city with a rundown castle in the center,” Timidwings explained quietly. “There’s many things in that city that I didn’t stay around to take a look at, possibly including monsters.”

“An entire ruined city is in the middle of that creepy forest?” Prism Slash gasped. “Who knew?” He grinned, “I bet nogon’s explored it yet! Think of all the cool old stuff in the city, especially in the castle itself!”

‘Woohoo! Let’s go!” Goody exclaimed, already starting to head for the door.

“No,” Nightfall said with a shake of his head. He couldn’t put these dragons he’d only just met in danger like that. “I feel I have to do this alone. Sorry.”

“Nuttin’ doin’, pardner,” Apple Slice said with a shake of his head. “We sure ain’t lettin’ a friend of ours go in there and get himself killed.” Placing a claw on Nightfall’s shoulder, he added, “We’re stickin’ with ya ta the bitter end!”

The others nodded in agreement, and Goody appended, “or if the end is sweet, too! Hmm, sticky and sweet makes me think of marshmallows! Wait, now I’m getting hungry,” he added after, prompting an eye-roll from half the room.

Nightfall sighed and nodded. Even if he barely knew them, they apparently wouldn’t let him go alone, so he might as well take the five grown dragons along. But he drew the line at the next one who he knew would ask to come along.

“Nightfall, I’m going, too!” Wishful Legend said firmly, moving back into a sitting position and crossing her forehooves in front of her in a stubborn gesture.

“No, you’re staying here to hold down the fort,” Nightfall ordered. “I may not be your father, but I’m still your caretaker, and I won’t allow you to get hurt.” She was a little filly, not a fully grown dragon like the other five. Gwynnia only knew what would happen if he let Wishful get in harm’s way.

“We were only going to stay here until the festival was over, remember?” Wishful shot back. “And Darkscales has disappeared! He’s not going to attack the library! What would he want with it, anyway? To look for ‘Tyranny 101: A Ruler’s Guidebook’, or something like that? I don’t think he’s going to be trying to get in a bit of light reading in between sending guards screaming for their lives. And if I did have to ‘hold down the fort’ against him, what do you really think a Unicorn filly like me could do against him, anyway? Ironically, the safest place for me right now is with you, Nightfall, and the others, for as you said yourself, you won’t allow me to get hurt.”

Nightfall’s head was spinning from the barrage of intelligent quips from the Unicorn filly, and he finally slumped to the ground, dumbfounded.

“You’re not supposed to be able to out-logic me!” he whispered in disbelief.

“You raised me, you know,” she said with a wink. “I just learned from the best.”

“Fine, you can tag along,” Nightfall said with a sigh and a nod. “But you have to stay close by me, alright? Don’t stray from the group. If I tell you to hide, you hide, nevermind me. If I tell you to run, please, keep running and don’t look back.”

“Sure thing,” the Unicorn replied solemnly while climbing onto Nightfall’s back. “Let’s go!”

Right outside the window, a blue and red nebula swirled about before zooming away to the woods itself.

Once concealed behind a cluster of trees, the nebula reformed into Midnight Darkscales, who muttered to himself, “So, he did have a champion ready to stop me! I didn’t think I’d have to get rid of the Components this soon, but I knew they’d never been moved.” Chuckling wickedly to himself, Darkscales continued his monologue. “My brother thinks he’s so smart, but he overthinks things. He thought that I would think that he would have them moved for safekeeping, so he left them in the last place he thought I’d ever think to look.” The wicked Dragoon sneered before finishing with, “Sorry, Lumin, but I’m going to have to make you watch your own champion fall.”

Vanishing into nothing, Darkscales warped to the heart of the sun, where his brother was bound by heavy chains of darkness in the midst of the fiery core.

Lumin looked up, clearly not expecting his captor to be back any time soon. “So, have you come to your senses and decided to set me free, Umbra?” Lumin asked with a hint of hopefulness.

“Quite the opposite, in fact,” Darkscales snickered with a shake of his head. “I know you left the Components in Mother and Father’s old castle. You overthink things, Lumin.”

His brother’s eyes went wide. “So, what are you going to do?” Lumin asked, worried. He had been certain that leaving the Components in the place where the two of them battled would have kept Darkscales from finding them.

A magical screen appeared in front of the two brothers, showing six Dragoons and one Unicorn filly on their way to a forest.

“I overheard them talking, Lumin,” Darkscales whispered excitedly. “I thought you might have prepared a champion to fight for you, and you did!” Thinking for a second, he added, “But, I thought either the champion would fight for you the moment I showed myself or take a long time to get the Components because they’d be amassing an army. I figured I’d either be defeated on the spot, or I could take my sweet time establishing myself as King before destroying the Components.” Pointing to the screen, he suddenly switched to a flat tone and stated, “But this way, it looks like we both have a chance to win,” suddenly, he cackled madly as he continued, “But you and I both know that a snowball has a better chance of surviving an active volcano than they do of defeating me. Farewell, Lumin! Enjoy the show! I’ll come back from time to time to check up on you until I win.”

“Nightfall, please don’t fail me,” Lumin whispered as his brother warped away once more.

At the entrance to the Wild Woods, a tall, seemingly natural arch of two twisted and gnarled trees, the seven of them stood gazing towards the beginning of their path. “So, besides Timidwings, nogon here has ever gone inside this place?” Nightfall asked, breaking the silence.

“Why, of course not!” Extraordinaire huffed in exasperation. “Just look at the place. It’s unsettling, and nogon would go in there without a very good reason.”

There was a strange sort of power radiating from the forest, ancient and unsettling, Chaos and Order seeming to refuse to stay equal, cycling back and forth between which one held dominance. Even from outside, it felt like an enormous trap waiting to be sprung on them. There could be anything waiting for them, between the tall trees so twisted and misshapen they looked like they’d been bent by some unnatural force. It was even darker beneath the forest canopy, almost solid blackness in between scant patches of moon and starlight.

Despite this, Nightfall looked the Woods over and said, his voice slightly shaky, “It does look kinda creepy, but I bet that’s just because it’s dark.” Motioning for the others to follow him, Nightfall said, “Let’s go. Lights on, Wish.”

“Roger!” the Unicorn said with a salute before shining a green spotlight from her horn forward, lighting up some of the area ahead, but not by much.

Nightfall lit up his own horns, and two purple beams of light shot forward from them.

Extraordinaire sighed and added his own blue beams to the mix, and they soon had five beams of light illuminating the path ahead.

“Now, everygon stay on the ground for now,” Nightfall suggested, glancing up at the trees. “It’ll be easier to keep a good field of vision if we stay in a group.”

With that, the seven of them passed under the archway and into the forest, leaving the openness of Dragontown’s outskirts behind them.

They made their way along the rough, winding path, always keeping close to each other, out of caution as much as common sense. Beyond the area ahead of them illuminated by the magical light, they could practically see nothing, shadows flickering at the edges of their spotlights like an inky outline as they proceeded. It was almost unnaturally quiet for a forest at night, the only sounds audible being the creaking of the trees, their footsteps against the packed dirt of the path, and their own, slightly fast breathing. There was little wind beyond a light breeze, but it still was starting to feel colder and colder, their breath misting in front of them as they walked deeper and deeper into the woods.

The near-silence was soon broken by Nightfall. “So, it was the left fork instead of the right one, right, Timidwings?” He asked as they came upon a fork in the path.

“Yes,” Timidwings replied softly, trembling a little and glancing back over his shoulder. “I-It’s to the left.”

“To the left we go, then,” Nightfall announced, and they continued down the path, only to soon find themselves on a thin overhang spanning the edge of a chasm. He stared down, unable to tell how far down the bottom was in the darkness, but not especially willing to find out, either.

“Well, good thing we can fly if we really have to,” Prism Slash remarked, dismissing the chasm below as nothing more than a minor obstacle. As Nightfall stepped back away from the edge, a cloud of purplish dust blew in Nightfall’s face, and the overhang started to crumble beneath him.

His vision took on a deep violet tinge, and the very air seemed to waver and oscillate around him, as if it were liquid and he was the center of a ripple. A wave of crushing fear spread through his mind, his wings locking in place of their own accord. Nightfall’s eyes went wide with panic, and he started to skid down the slope to his doom, just barely noticing the sound of his fellow dragons shouting in alarm and one filly shrieking in terror. He tried to simply use his wings to fly back up, but his wings wouldn’t respond. “My wings won’t work!” he screamed, panic quickly overtaking him. “Help!”

Back in Lumin’s prison, Darkscales suddenly reappeared, giggling insanely.

“That was easy!” he chuckled. “I just used some of my nightmare breath on your prized student, and now his brain thinks his wings won’t respond to him, so they won’t! I just had to break the overhang after that, and now your student and his Unicorn friend are going to fall to their deaths!”

“You monster!” Lumin snapped, straining against his bonds.

“Now now, let’s see how this turns out,” Darkscales said before turning his eyes back to the screen, watching in anticipation with baited breath.

“Ah’ve gotcha!” Apple Slice shouted as he dove for Nightfall, grabbing him with one claw. To both their dismays, however, Slice slammed into the cliff face, spraining his own wing and rendering it unusable for the time being. Grabbing a root with his other front claw and holding on for dear life, Slice watched as Prism Slash saved Wish from her demise and flew back up to check on Goody and Extraordinaire, who were both nursing minor injuries. Looking around, he noticed something else and smiled to himself as the root started to pull out of the cliff.

“This root ain’t gonna hold us both fer much longer,” Slice told Nightfall, turning his head to look Nightfall in the eyes. “Yah’ve gotta let go, or we’ll both fall.”

“But if I let go, I’ll still fall!” Nightfall screamed, his eyes wide and locked on the Dragoon above him, as he tried his best to cling onto the other dragon, swaying dangerously. “Are you crazy?”

“Ah’m plum serious, here,” Slice replied firmly with a shake of his head, his reassuring gaze meeting Nightfall’s fearful one. “Yah’ll be fine, Ah promise. Ah ain’t ‘bout ta lie ta yah just ta save mah own scales. Ah’m speakin’ Gwynnia’s own truth.”

“Okay,” Nightfall breathed and closed his eyes before he responded with a nod, still a little nervous. “I trust you on this...” And he sincerely hoped he wouldn’t regret it.

Nightfall let go, and he opened his eyes just as something yellow swooped down to him and caught him. A few seconds later, Slice also dropped, causing the yellow thing to grunt as it caught him, too.

The yellow thing turned out to be Timidwings, who had a very strained look on his face. “Sorry, guys. I usually don’t carry anything as big as another Dragoon. Especially not two at once.”

“Then let’s get back up there,” Nightfall said, gasping as he tried to calm his racing heart and looked back up at the cliff.

Timidwings set the two Dragoons down and lay down to rest his wings and catch his breath. “See, Ah ain’t ‘bout ta let hogwash come outta mah mouth,” Slice said with a smile once they had reached safety again.

Nightfall nodded, before his mind turned back to the next most pressing problem; the reason he had fell in the first place. “My wings still won’t work at all,” he remarked, feeling them with his claws. “I have no idea why.” Everything in his vision, including his friends, was still tinged violet and slightly distorted, seeming to waver between blurry and incredibly sharp before settling somewhere in between.

“Let me check, Nighty!” Wishful exclaimed as she galloped over to him, visibly unharmed besides a couple scratches. Lighting up her horn with magic, she first scanned his wings and said thoughtfully, “Well, everything seems normal, but I think I have an idea.” Touching her horn to his forehead, Wish paused for a moment, then nodded and said, “Your wings actually work just fine. You’re being affected by some kind of confusion-based breath weapon. Somegon did this to you, and I think I know who. If it were anygon else, I could purge it, but all I can do is lessen it a tiny bit. You’ll have to wait for the rest to wear off on its own. Sorry, Nighty.”

Wishful channeled more magic into her horn, then forced it into her caretaker’s skull. Her magic had a partially calming effect, slightly loosening up his wings, but not enough for them to be of any use, as well as removing some of the violet tint from his vision and making it a little more stable. After that, she gave Nightfall an apologetic smile and moved on to check on Slice’s sprained wing.

As Wish worked on Slice’s sprained wing, she used a bit of her Unicorn magic to relax the muscles in the wing and get them back in working order.

The others only had minor cuts and bruises, so the group continued on after Nightfall got his wings working again.

Back inside the sun, Lumin breathed a sigh of relief while Darkscales ground his teeth in frustration.

“They got lucky,” Darkscales spat. “That’s all that happened, Lumin: dumb luck. And luck eventually runs out. You’ll see!”

With that, Darkscales disappeared again, still fuming.

Further along the path, the group continued their walk in silence once more. But this time, they were considerably more wary, keeping their eyes trained ahead, but glancing off to the sides in case danger appeared. But none were as wary as Nightfall, the effects of the nightmare dust still lingering stubbornly. Shadows seemed to move amongst the trees, strange shapes moved across the corner of his eyes, colors were washed out to various shades of muted violet, and the outlines of the trees were as sharp as the lines of a pencil sketch. But worst of all, he felt the previous sense of terrified confusion weighing on the back of his mind, waiting to reappear if he didn’t force it down.

Every sound, no matter how small, nearly startled him. He kept glancing over his shoulder, expecting something to be right behind him, only to peer into the darkness. But, frankly, nothing there was more frightening to him than actually finding something, as the images his mind conjured up about what might have been there... well, they weren’t pleasant. His breath, and that of his friends, sounded unnaturally loud in his ears, and his heart beat like a bass drum inside his chest. The cold air felt heavy and oppressive to Nightfall, as if the atmosphere was slowly preparing to crush him in its icy grip, just biding it’s time.

To put it simply, Nightfall was having the worst trip of his life.

As the path was starting to become smoother and less winding, the sound of trees cracking and bending reached their ears. The group froze, as a loud thudding could be heard coming closer and closer, like the sound of a great weight being lifted and dropped on the forest floor again and again. Nightfall raised his head to see a massive shape stepping into his field of vision, right in the middle of the path. A chill went through him as he slowly looked further up, the shape becoming clearer and clearer in the light from his horns until it stood out in sharp, horrifying relief against the shadows of the forest. A great, hulking creature looked down at them with large, almost phosphorescent green eyes and let out a bloodcurdling roar. It had multiple serpentine heads, and when one roared, they all did, the trees quaking and groaning in cacophonous unison. It had to be seventy-five feet tall at the least!

“A hydra!” Nightfall exclaimed, trying to force down the terror trying to take hold of him, “we’ve gotta get past it somehow!”

Taking a moment to recover from the shock, Extraordinaire charged his own breath weapon before launching a stream of tiny, razor-sharp diamond particles at the hydra.

“Take that, you brute!” the white Mystic Dragoon shouted, before the hydra merely shrugged off the attack and responded with multiple streams of fire aimed straight at him. Extraordinaire tried his best to dodge the attack, but one of them still managed to singe his head fins a little. “Ah! My fins!” he exclaimed, feeling them with a claw. “Well, at least this’ll grow back in a day or two, so I won’t have to hide it with a combover for very long. Better my head fins get burnt than anything else, anyway.”

“Stop,” Timidwings said quietly, but nogon heard him.

“Don’t worry folks! Ah got this!” Apple Slice said while readying a lasso and charging up his own breath weapon, slight waves of air flowing between his teeth before launching a concussive shockwave at the creature, stunning it long enough to throw his lasso around all of its necks at once, which had all bunched together from the shock.

“Gotcha!” Slice said proudly. “Ah just knew Ah could use that fer somethin’ ‘sides just shakin’ apples outta trees! Sorry ‘bout this, but Ah’m gonna have ta hogtie ya, so—”

Slice cut off when the hydra snapped the lasso with ease and roared again, spittle flying in Apple Slice’s face.

“Stop,” Timidwings said again, speaking a little louder.

“I’ll take it from here, Slice!” Slash said before zipping into the air and zooming around the hydra’s heads.

Slash taunted the creature as he flew around it. “Can you keep your eyes on me? Let’s see how long you can last! I dunno, but your necks are gonna get twisted real—”

Slash cut off when a head suddenly lunged for him, smacking him out of the air.

“Gah!” he exclaimed, slamming into the ground with a dull thud.

“Stop!” Timidwings spoke up, but in the commotion, he still was unheard.

Nightfall watched his friends confront the hydra, one by one, wanting to intervene. But the malignant influence of the nightmare dust once again kept him rooted to the spot, fear poisoning his mind and spreading through his veins. The sounds of his companions were muffled in his ears, the roars of the hydra extremely loud in contrast. They seemed to be shrinking, and it, growing, everything zooming in and out of focus. He wouldn’t be helpful here, in this state. It would be so easy to run...

A raspy groan reached his ears, and Nightfall quickly shook his head, his vision clearing somewhat again. He turned to see Slash lying on the ground beside him, struggling to get back on his feet and swaying slightly.

“Slash, you okay?” Nightfall asked, concerned. Fear or no fear, he didn’t want to see one of his friends injured on his account.

“Eh, I’ve had worse,” the Fairy Dragoon chuckled before clutching his side and grunting in pain. “Ow.”

Nightfall felt a twinge of shame go through him; he’d stood there, and done nothing. It was his turn to face the hydra, dust or no dust. He gulped before stepping up to confront the multi-headed creature while Wish started to prepare her magic as backup.

Snarling to hide his unnatural fear, forcing it back into the very back of his mind, Nightfall lowered his head to charge up his own breath weapon, magenta light slowly building in his mouth while his horns lit up, adding crackling purple energy to the light building in his mouth.

Before he could fire, though, Timidwings shouted “STOP!” finally catching the attention of everygon and the one Unicorn.

Nightfall jumped, startled and immediately cancelled his attack, smoke rising from his nostrils as he was forced to cough. The immense backlash of cutting off his breath weapon’s charge hit him like a heavy slap to the face, his thoughts clearing. Colors returned to normal, sounds became clear again, his unnatural fear abated, and his vision snapped into natural focus. After sighing in relief, Nightfall turned around and asked, “Timmy? What is it?”

“She’s hurt!” Timidwings exclaimed, pointing a talon at the hulking creature, which looked somewhat less intimidating when it didn’t look three times larger than it was. “I can tell! She’s still an animal, and I understand them!”

Nightfall raised a claw to protest that this wasn’t some harmless little bunny hopping by, but the retort died in his throat. “Okay, you can give it a shot,” Nightfall sighed after a pause, motioning for Timidwings to approach the beast.

Timidwings nodded, and slowly flew towards the hydra, who roared again.

Surprisingly not flinching, Timidwings said, “Shhh… I’m here to help. Can you show me where it hurts?”

The hydra’s many heads blinked in surprise, but all the heads then nodded in unison and moved apart, revealing its main head, the one that controlled the entire body, as well as controlling the rest of the heads.

Lowering the center head, the hydra revealed that the head it had actually been protecting the whole time had multiple dark spines puncturing it, resembling those of a porcupine. However, a porcupine’s quills couldn’t penetrate the hide of a hydra, so it had to be something different.

“Oh, you poor dear!” Timidwings cooed, gently rubbing the underside of the main head’s jaw, the creature whimpering in pain. “Now, this’ll probably hurt, okay?” The hydra nodded. “But after they’re all out, you’ll feel much better, understand?” The hydra nodded again.

“Okay, I’m going to get rid of them, now,” Timidwings told the hydra. “Stay calm. The pain will only mean you’re getting closer to feeling better.” The hydra squeezed all of its eyes shut tight in anticipation of the pain, and Timidwings grabbed the first black quill and started to pull. The hydra cringed and whimpered, but it didn’t attack. When the first quill was removed, the Hydra sighed a little, then tensed up again as the yellow Fairy Dragoon pulled out another quill, then another, and another, repeating until ten quills were on the ground and the hydra’s head was free of puncturing quills.

The hydra nodded in thanks, licked Timidwings’ cheek, then walked away, almost sounding like it was humming in happiness. Each head produced a different pitch, making it sound like the humming of a choir fading into the distance.

As soon as the Fairy Dragoon turned away from them, the quills suddenly turned into smoke before vanishing entirely, as the other Dragoons—and one Unicorn filly—surrounded Timidwings and congratulated him.

“That was awesome, Timmy!” Prism Slash said, giving his fellow Fairy Dragoon a hearty slap on the back. “We all thought it was trying to kill us, but you saw it was in pain the whole time!”

“I didn’t know what was causing the pain, to be honest,” Timidwings admitted modestly. “I just noticed that she was in pain and could use some kindness. That’s all.”

“Even I didn’t notice the signs, and I’ve read all about such creatures in books!” Nightfall said. Granted, I was too scared at the time to do much thinking at all, he thought to himself.

“Well, you can’t learn everything from books, you know,” Wishful giggled. “Lord Lumin told you that many times, but you just wouldn’t listen to him.”

Nightfall tried to respond, but the words died in his throat, being replaced with a cry of, “Oh, books, how could you betray me like this?” Everygon responded to that with chuckles.

“Okay, let’s get going again,” Nightfall said, blushing in embarrassment. The others agreed, and they continued on, once again using magic to light the way.

The seven of them wandered deeper into the forest once more, the atmosphere feeling less oppressive without the taint of the nightmare dust in Nightfall’s mind, but still unsettling. It wasn’t getting brighter, as the scarce patches of moonlight that had been visible earlier on the path were nearly gone here. It was more akin to light shining through a keyhole into a dark room than actual illumination now. As they walked along, the light mist that had followed them for a good several minutes began to grow thicker. Soon, the separate clouds of rolling white mist formed into a nearly impenetrable fog, so thick that the light could barely cut through any of it.

“Ugh, I can’t see a thing in this fog!” Extraordinaire grumbled from somewhere on Nightfall’s right. “Does anygon have a way to produce more light?”

“I do,” Nightfall replied. My Greatest Skill is magic itself, so I still have the breath weapon an Emblemless Mystic Dragon has; with some modifications, of course. “I can alter my breath weapon with my magic to give it different effects. I’ll produce a few flares with it. Just a minute.”

Nightfall lowered his head just like he had against the hydra before Timidwings stopped him, magenta light once again forming in his mouth. This time, though, when his horns lit up, instead of crackling energy building up with it, the light turned a brilliant purple, almost white, and after opening his mouth, he launched a ball of magic energy from his mouth forwards, which landed, producing a white and purple flame that cleared the fog around it for several feet in every direction, but didn’t burn anything. After he repeated the process three times, resulting in four areas of light that the fog couldn’t penetrate, they found they were in a clearing.

“Okay, I can see the path ahead,” Nightfall told the others, “I’ll produce more flares if needed, but be aware that unlike a normal breath weapon, customizing mine actually does consume some of my magic reserves. Now, let’s—”

“Get out…” Multiple voices cried at once, echoing unnaturally. “This is our domain… Leave us alone!”

“What was that?” Prism Slash asked nervously, glancing around as if something was about to jump out of the fog. “Was it just the wind?”

“Ah don’t think so, pardner…” Apple Slice muttered. “We’re in trouble. Ah can feel it.”

“LEAVE THIS PLACE!” multiple ghostly voices cried at once as a group of skeletal dragons appeared from the midst of the fog. They had bone-shaped horns and ethereal matter replacing everything that would be flesh on a normal dragon, everything else hidden beneath cloaks of varying dark colors. Their ghostly eyes were incredibly wide and unseeing as they lashed out at the air in front of them, slowly approaching the group of six Dragoons and one Unicorn.

“Dracoliches!” Nightfall exclaimed, for once more confused than intimidated. “But why are they acting this way? They rarely act territorial except when protecting the grave of a fellow Dracolich!” And I don’t see any graves around here, he thought.

Timidwings stopped cowering for a moment, peeking out from behind his wings. “Wait, they aren’t actually ghosts?”

“No, they’re quite alive. They’re a minor dragon tribe, like the more well-known Drakes. But Dracoliches have an ethereal and skeletal nature, and dwell in dark places like forests and caves; unlike the Drakes, who are aquatic in nature and live mostly underwater,” Nightfall explained, as the rest of the group slowly backed away from the advancing cloaked dragons.

“Leave at once!” a single Dracolich cried out with a vaguely feminine voice, seeming to be the leader from her position at the front of the group “We’ll destroy you if you don’t leave us alone!”

Suddenly, Goody bounced towards the leader, looked her straight in the eyes for a few seconds, and turned back to his friends with a small smile, “They’re not angry with us, guys! They’re scared of something! And you know what I do when I get scared?”

“For the love of Gwynnia, please don’t sing,” Prism Slash grumbled.

“Who said I was going to sing?” Goody asked, tilting his head in confusion. “A song might make it fun, but they’re terrified and there’s no time for a musical number! And I couldn’t find a lyricist on such short notice anyway… No, what I do when something tries to scare me… is do this!”

Goody burst out laughing, the bright, cheery sound seeming to lift the frightening atmosphere just a tad. The Nature Dragoon wiped a tear from his eye. “You see? Think of how to make what’s scaring you funny instead, and it becomes not scary anymore!”

“Who said that?” the Dragoness leading the group of Dracoliches demanded. “Are you the force terrifying us? Even our Hatchlings and Hatchlettes are crying out in terror back at our village, and almost nothing scares us! Not even this twisted forest!”

“Nope!” Goody said, grinning impossibly wide. “I’m gonna help you get over your fear!”

“We haven’t been afraid in so long, we have forgotten how to overcome it,” the Dracolich Dragoness said, her eyes still unable to detect anything but what was apparently scaring her and her fellow Dracoliches, “Please sir, whoever and wherever you are, teach us how to deal with fear!”

“First, what’s scaring you?” Goody asked.

“Something… not normal,” she replied. “A black Ultima Dragoon who threatens to disrupt the flow of night and day and oppress us, saying we have no power to stop him and that he’ll grind us to dust if we refuse to serve him.”

“Okay,” Goody said, pulling a thinking cap out of nowhere and putting it on his head. “I’ve got it! Imagine him in a clown suit trying to give you that same threat!” Goody started to giggle at the mere thought of it, and the rest of the group couldn’t help but snicker as well.

The Dracolich looked puzzled, but closed her eyes in thought before her face broke into a grin and she started snickering, too.

“You’re right!” she giggled, “As long as I keep that thought in my head, he’s no longer scary! Nogon could take him seriously like that!”

Turning around, the Dracolich leader announced to those following her: “Everygon! Try to imagine the one who has filled us with fear in a ridiculous way where there’s no way anygon could take him seriously!”

After a few seconds, a few giggles could be heard here and there from among the crowd, until the entire group of Dracoliches burst into laughter, some even slapping the ground in their unbridled mirth.

As the crowd’s terrified moans were replaced by cheerful laughter, the fog lifted, and the whole group was revealed. There were many of them, some as small as Dragonlings and Dragonettes, and every single one now had a smile on his or her face.

Turning back to look at Goody, the leader noticed his appearance for the first time, finally free from the panic that clouded her vision before.

“I and my clan thank you, sir,” she said with a bow. “My name is Rattlebones. May I have your name?”

“I’m Goody Gumdrops!” Goody replied cheerfully. “I’m happy to be your friend, Rattlebones. If you ever stop by Dragontown, I’ll give you a party!”

“Thank you for the kind offer,” Rattlebones replied. “I shall consider it, Goody Gumdrops. You have taught us a great lesson this day: humor truly is the solution to many problems.”

“Well, we’ve got to get going,” Goody said cheerfully. “We’ve got a really mean bully to stop. Bye!”

“Farewell,” Rattlebones replied with a smile before turning to her clan and motioning for them to turn around and return to wherever they came from.

“Great job, Goody,” Nightfall said as the group resumed moving forward. “I’m sure we’re almost there.”

With that, the group resumed following the path.

Author's Note

And now the quest begins! Hope you guys like what you've read so far! Getting this chapter ready to publish was no easy task! Anyway, feel free to leave comments about what you think of the story so far, as well as any (constructive) criticism you may have. Thank you for continuing to read this fic! Hope you enjoyed! Later all!

EDIT: Music has been added to this chapter! Give it a listen! It really sets the mood for the accompanying scenes!

Chapter 5: Dragalon, the Ancient Capital

Chapter 5: Dragalon, the Ancient Capital

Inside the sun, Midnight Darkscales was snarling in frustration.

“Something the matter, Darkscales?” Lumin asked simply, easily hiding his smile from what he saw on the viewing screen before his tainted brother decided to return.

“”You may think you’ve won, Lumin, but it’s not over until it’s over!” Darkscales spat angrily, pacing back and forth in front of the chained Lumin. “The descendants of the old Night Guard may have failed, but I’ll stop your precious heroes yet! And I know just how to do it! They’re about to enter the ancient capital, and we both know what’s inside there.”

Darkscales warped away again, and Lumin bowed his head, closed his eyes and began to pray, “Gwynnia, Mother of all dragons, and thy husband, the Father of all dragons, whose name has been lost to history, please, watch over them and allow them to prevail.”

After travelling for a few more minutes without anything happening, the group of six Dragoons and one Unicorn filly stopped, gazing in slight awe.

They stood at the edge of an impossibly high wall, ancient but sturdy, that ringed what they assumed was a city. They couldn’t see much above the wall beyond the crumbling turrets of some distant towers. Before them was an imposing gate built into the wall, a bipedal machine made out of some kind of ancient metal standing to the right of the gates. Its blue eyes dimly glowed, slumped over with a hole in its chest that looked as if it was supposed to hold something.

“That’s weird,” Timidwings muttered. “When I was here before, the gates were open.”

“Let’s push ‘em back open, then!” Apple Slice suggested.

All seven nodded, and they all slammed their full body weights against the gate, but it didn’t budge, no matter how hard they pushed. After trying for a few minutes, the Dragoons and filly slumped to the ground, panting for breath and nursing bruises.

“Wait,” Prism Slash said, holding up a claw from his position on the ground. “This may be a city with a wall, but no wall is tall enough to keep me out! I’ll fly over it and open the gate from the inside!”

“Wait, I don’t think that’s going to—” Nightfall began before Prism flew into the air and tried to swoop into the ancient city, only to slam into an invisible barrier and slide down the bubble of magic all the way to the ground. “—work.”

“So, how do we get inside, then?” Wishful asked, confused, while Prism lay groaning at the base of the wall.

Everygon else shrugged except for Extraordinaire, who held up a talon and exclaimed, “Inspiration! I‘ve got an idea! Why don’t we just ask him?”

The white Dragoon pointed at the slumped over machine, and the other six all responded with, “What?”

“I’d love to make a friend out of him,” Goody said, “But he looks… broken.”

“Oh, come on!” the metalworker and tailor said, stomping a foot in impatience. “We won’t know until we try! Maybe he just needs to be charged up!”

Streams of blue magic energy flowed from Extraordinaire’s horns into the machine. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, before their eyes, the machine began to come to life, slowly beginning to stand up. It wobbled slightly, before drawing itself up to a slightly hunched position, about ten feet high as it stood, about two feet taller than an average fully-grown Dragoon standing upright on his hind legs.

“W-WELCOME TO-TO DRA-DRAGALON,” the machine said, its eyes still dim. “I AM THE-THE GATEKEEPER-ER, ADA-ADA-ADAMANT.”

“Could you please open the gate for us, Adamant?” Extraordinaire requested calmly, his companions standing behind him, looking rather dumbstruck. Except Prism, but he was too busy wincing in pain to be surprised.

“NEG-NEG-NEGATIVE,” Adamant said with a shake of its head that rather resembled a twitch. “INTER-INTER-INTERNAL MAGIC SUP-SUPPLY LACKS REQUI-REQUIRED CHANNELING GEM. I AM UNA-UNABLE TO COMPLY.”

“Hmm…” the clothes designer murmured, deep in thought, tapping a talon to his chin. “Is it because there’s nothing in the compartment in your chest?”

“AFFIRM-AFFIRMATIVE,” Adamant replied with a jerky nod. “FUN-FUNCT-FUNCTIONALITY IS LI-LIMITED WITHOUT A DIA-DIA-DIAMOND CORE. PRE-PREVIOUS CORE WAS STO-STOLEN BY A BLA-BLACK ULTI-ULTIMA DRA-DRAGON.”

Extraordinaire thought for a bit longer, then without hesitation reached into his own bag, pulling out a sparkling diamond cut into a shape with so many facets, it was very close to a sphere.

“But, you were going to use that in your next design!” Timidwings squeaked in surprise. “You’ve been hyping up that diamond for months!”

Ignoring his companions, the white Dragoon took a breath, held the diamond in his claw and stepped close enough to Adamant so the mechanical gatekeeper’s dim eyes could get a better look at what he was holding.

“Will this do?” he asked, a small hint of reluctance in his voice.

“AFFIRM-AFFIRMATIVE,” the machine replied with a nod. “PLEASE PLACE THE N-NEW CORE IN THE CHAM-CHAMBER IN MY CHE-CHEST.”

Nodding in response, Extraordinaire placed the diamond in the open compartment in Adamant’s chest. The compartment closed after he withdrew his claw, and a whirring sound could be heard coming from inside the gatekeeper. Suddenly, the blue eyes lit up brightly, darkened grooves all over the machine glowed blue, and it drew itself up to its full height of fourteen feet, towering over the entire group.

“MY FUNCTIONALITY HAS BEEN RESTORED,” Adamant announced, its voice stronger and no longer stuttering, “THANK YOU FOR YOUR SELFLESS ACT, SIR. I SHALL NOW OPEN THE GATES TO DRAGALON. WELCOME.”

Adamant’s eyes turned green for a couple seconds, and a whirring and clanking of gears could be heard from inside the wall. The gates slowly swung open with a rusty creak, followed by the lifting of a portcullis, and the group of seven all nodded in gratitude to Adamant before approaching the gates.

“But you were hyping that diamond for so long!” Timidwings whispered as they walked through the gateway. “You only had that one, and it could take a long time to get another one!”

“I’m well aware of that, my good friend,” the tailor said, shrugging his shoulders. “But I can always get another one, even if it takes years.”

“Yes!” Slash cheered, pumping a fist into the air as he walked through the gates. “We’re in!”

With that, the seven of them entered the city, the broken cobblestone streets brightly lit by moonlight once they were out of the shadow of the trees. The city was massive, from what they could tell. It was a massive ruin, though.

Crumbling buildings stood everywhere, a shadow of their former selves. Once-proud, towering houses were but a shell of their ancient grandeur, riddled with cracks and holes in the limestone walls, and choked by creeping ivy and morning glory vines. From the other side of the wall, they could tell the parapets, though imposing from the other side, were still crumbling and weathered. Even the streets, the most lasting part of any dragon city, were clearly marred and damaged by the passing of time, their cobbles worn smooth—and not by trodding feet.

The city was built sloping upwards, as the seven of them could tell by their breath getting more labored as they explored. Accordingly, buildings became taller as they got closer towards the heart of the city, giving them the impression of being trapped inside an enormous, decrepit maze. But finally, they emerged into the midst of a great plaza, the center of it a tall hill, looming over the surrounding city.

“That’s the Ancient Palace, isn’t it?” Nightfall asked Timidwings, pointing to the tall and wide structure on the central hill. It stood on the very top, the parapets and towers outlined against the night sky. A wide chasm ringed the base of the hill, fenced off on the opposite side by a high wall, and spanned by a drawbridge directly across from the center of the plaza, where the seven of them stood.

“I’m positive,” Timidwings replied with a nod. “That has to be it.”

“See any other giant, imposing buildings on hills that look like palaces?” Prism snarked.

“I can sense another force field over the castle,” Nightfall replied, closing his eyes for a moment, “But the drawbridge is down and should allow us entrance.”

As soon as he finished saying that, a clinking sound came from the castle, and all seven gasped when the drawbridge started to rise.

“We’ve come so far, but we’re too late!” Extraordinaire wailed. “So close!”

“Don’t count us out yet,” Slash said, rolling his eyes at the white Dragoon’s histrionics. “I’m the fastest flier there is, and I’ll prove it! Watch!”

With that, he took to the air and zoomed towards the closing entrance, making it inside right before the drawbridge finished rising.

Prism found himself in what looked like a guardroom above the gate, small arrow slits the only view out into the city. While looking around for the crank to operate the drawbridge, Slash could hear his friends calling out to him from the other side of the chasm, though they were barely visible through the arrow slits.

“Slash?” Nightfall’s voice called out. “Did you make it inside?”

“Of course I did!” The multi-colored Dragoon replied. “Did you really expect anything less?” Spying the crank to operate the drawbridge, he added, “I found what lowers the drawbridge! Give me a minute, and I’ll get it down for you guys!”

Cheering could be heard from outside, but right as Slash started to turn the crank, a voice called out to him from inside the guardroom.

“Prism Slash,” the voice called out, low but recognizably female.

“Wait! Who’s there?” Prism exclaimed, turning around and quickly moving into a defensive posture. “Show yourself!”

“Gladly,” the voice replied, and three Fairy Dragons in midnight blue aerodynamic flight outfits emerged from the shadows: two Dragoons and one Dragoness, who happened to be the one who spoke before. “We’ve been watching you for a long time, Prism Slash,” the Dragoness said, her tone both impressed and just a tad creepy.

“Um, Slash?” Wishful’s voice called from outside, sounding impatient. “Could you hurry up and get the drawbridge down?”

“I’m on it!” Slash replied, slowly turning back to work the crank as he conversed with the Dragoness. “So, you’ve been watching me. Lots of dragons do that. I’m hard to ignore. What about it?”

“We’ve noticed how your many attempts to join the Shatterbursts have ended in rejection,” one of the Dragoons said, sounding almost unnaturally disappointed. “They seem to have no appreciation for your incredible speed and skill.”

“But we appreciate it,” the other Dragoon added with a hint of pride. “We’re a stunt team who will be even greater than the Shatterbursts. We are… the Shadowbursts.”

“Huh. Funny; I know every stunt team, and I’ve never heard of you guys,” Prism said, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “Why have I never heard of you before, if you’re supposed to rival the Shatterbursts?”

“Because we’ve only been practicing for a short while, though we’ve been around for a long time,” the Dragoness said, cutting off any response from the other two. “We’ve been missing one vital element for our success: you. Without you, we won’t impress anygon. But with you as our captain, we’ll become the greatest stunt team in history.”

“Hey, sign me up then!” Slash grinned. “Just let me finish lowering this drawbridge first, and you’ve got a deal!”

Nightfall flew up to an arrow slit to see what was taking so long, and gasped when he saw who Slash was talking to.

“Prism Slash! Don’t listen to them!” he shouted, hovering eye-level with the arrow slit.

“We’ve no time for that,” the Dragoness said with a shake of her head, moving towards the arrow slit to block Nightfall from view. “We have our debut performance in two days. We need you to become our captain right now so we can begin rehearsing immediately.”

Prism Slash looked between the Dragoness and the crank, looking thoughtful for a moment before glancing over at the Dragoness again, his eyes determined. “In that case…” He shrugged and shook his head before returning to the crank, turning it much faster than before, “I’ll have to turn you down. Sorry, but my friends are counting on me to do this, and I can’t just abandon them. No dice.”

Cheers came from outside again, but they were cut short as Prism felt the Dragoness and the two Dragoons grab him in their claws and started trying to pull him away from the crank.

“We need you,” the Dragoness said sternly, tugging harshly at his tail. “And if you won’t join us willingly… well, we have other ways to get you to see things our way.”

“Hey, I said no!” Slash growled, holding tightly to the crank by his front legs while still managing to turn it to keep lowering the drawbridge. “Can’t you guys take a hint?”

“You no longer have any say in the matter,” the Dragoness said harshly as Slash started to lose his grip on the crank due to the two Dragoons pulling so hard on his hind legs. “You’re coming with us.”

“No. Means. NO!” Slash roared before charging his breath weapon, turning his head back towards them, and firing the seven sonic projectiles again. The projectiles impacted each of his would-be kidnappers with at least two sonic booms right against their scales, knocking them back a few feet and releasing him in the process. Charging up again, Slash fired seven more projectiles, exploding in a burst of prismatic light and driving the Shadowbursts back.

Slash started to get into a rhythm of alternating between turning the crank and repelling his assailants with his sonic breath weapon, until the drawbridge was all the way down and the Shadowbursts fled, nursing injuries from his onslaught of attacks.

“Told ya I’d get it done,” Prism called out, flying down from the guardroom to the middle of the drawbridge as his friends crowded around him. “Now, let’s find the Components!”

After flying far enough away, the three Shadowbursts merged together and reformed into Midnight Darkscales, who was absolutely seething with rage. No, he was not happy about getting beaten by one Fairy Dragoon with too much attitude and an inability to just follow the commands of strange, suspicious dragons.

“Fine, you’ve made it this far, puny dragons,” he snarled, “but this is where I draw the line. I’m done playing with you. This ends now!”

With that, he teleported away. He found himself in a chamber with five orbs on pedestals. He stared at them for a moment, before he broke into a wicked, toothy grin. “The Components. Intact as they were so long ago... but not for long.” But when he tried to touch one, he felt a shock run through his body, and was forced back by a protective barrier that he immediately realized would repel his magic, too.

Trying a different approach, Darkscales growled and punched the pedestal beneath the orb with enough force to shatter steel, but he was only rewarded with a solid thunk and a throbbing claw, snarling in pain as he realized he could do nothing to destroy the Components yet.

Once he had managed to curb his growing frustration, Darkscales turned into his blue and red nebulous form again and hid in a dark corner, waiting.

After searching the remains of the castle for long enough, the group of seven stumbled into a massive chamber, strewn with bits of rubble. The walls were crumbling, the floor was cracked but still holding, and the roof in that area was completely gone, exposing the room to the night sky. By the moonlight, they could see five stone orbs on pedestals in the center of the room, looking as if they’d been untouched for centuries.

“This must be where they fought, isn’t it?” Prism Slash breathed in amazement, looking up at the destroyed ceiling and noting the scorch marks on the walls. Noticing the pedestals, he yelled, “Hey! Five orbs! I bet that’s them!”

Spurred on by excitement, the seven of them formed a circle around the center of the room, gazing at the pedestals and the orbs they held with wonder. Wishful, Nightfall and Extraordinaire tried to levitate them down, but the magic was absorbed.

“I guess we have to actually carry them down, then?” Timidwings suggested.

In response, everygon but Nightfall took to the air and grabbed one of the orbs, setting them down in front of Nightfall.

“Let’s see,” the bookish Dragoon muttered, studying the orbs in front of him as if they were a puzzle to decipher. “The book said that when the five are assembled and a spark is applied, the sixth will appear. I can sense the energy in them, so I’ll try magic! That’s gotta be what the term ‘spark’ refers to.”

The others waited as Nightfall charged up his magic breath, his horns glowing a deep purple as a magic amplification spell was applied to the energy in his mouth. Instead of firing just a ball of the energy, though, he breathed a continuous stream of violet energy on the orbs, which started to shimmer and hover a few inches above the ground.

“Something’s happening to them!” Prism Slash whispered reverently.

“But why isn’t the sixth showing up?” Wishful asked in confusion, her brow furrowed.

“I’ll tell you why,” a voice chuckled from the shadows, deep and reverberating, as Midnight Darkscales emerged from a shadowy corner, staring down at the seven with a haughty smirk. “He lacks true power! Without it, he’ll never awaken the sixth! And, just to make sure you can’t try getting enough power to accomplish that…

“I’ll take those!” Darkscales shouted as the Components were warped into the grip of his claws. “I was going to destroy them before, but apparently my brother left a protective field on them that repelled all magic, and even my own touch as long as they remained on those pedestals. So you have my eternal gratitude, Lumin’s little warriors. You’ve come so far, only to be beaten in the end. Now, I bid you farewell.”

Darkscales changed into a blue and red nebula and sped through the castle until the dragons lost track of him. The six dragons stood by the pedestals still, in various degrees of shock. Timidwings was practically frozen, hidden under his wings. Prism was just gaping up at the night sky, silent and incredulous. Goody had taken the corner as his own, hunched over and muttering to himself, “This has to be a bad dream… when I open my eyes, they’ll be right here.” He blinked, then his face broke into a frown. “Darn it. They’re still not here…”

Apple Slice was just shaking his head, his mind already having registered what just happened but not wanting to accept it, while Extraordinaire paced back and forth across the chamber, ignoring the rest of them and looking to be somewhere between an over-the-top breakdown and quiet despair. Nightfall himself was just practically catatonic, unblinking and unmoving. His brain had apparently decided to shut down halfway through processing “Assignment Failed”, “Midnight Darkscales has the Components,” and “I’m never going to see Lord Lumin again.”

However, Wishful Legend stared at a certain tower, her gaze steely, and announced, “I can go after him.” The others started to snap out of their state of shock, with all of them, especially Nightfall, looking at her as if she’d just suggested she go cliff diving onto sharp rocks. “No, before you say anything, listen, please, I can teleport anything to anywhere or anygon, so long as I know what that being or place feels like. This includes teleporting myself. Nightfall, use the tracing spell you’ve used to find me when we’ve been separated in the past to follow me. I’ll teleport to him, and you follow my signal.”

“No,” Nightfall said immediately, shaking his head firmly. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

Wishful Legend blinked tears from her eyes and said in an undertone to herself, “I guess you really still are my daddy after all. But this is the only way.” Fighting down a lump in her throat, she walked over to Nightfall and pulled him into a tight hug, clinging to him as if it was the last time she could, “Ni—I mean, Daddy… if I don’t survive this, remember that I still love you as if you were my real father,” she whispered.

Nightfall attempted to choke out a response, but nothing came out. He remained silent for a minute or so, returning the hug as hard as he could without hurting her, blinking back tears of his own. His little girl was going to probably sacrifice herself, just to get the Components back. He… he didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want to imagine the little filly he had raised getting herself hurt or worse because he couldn’t figure out the Components in time. But… it seemed she was their only hope. He felt so helpless admitting it, but Wishful… well, she didn’t know what she was getting into, he thought. But she was still so devoted, so brave, if foolish, that he couldn’t help but feel proud of her. “Very well,” Nightfall whispered back with a firm nod as she released him, “I can’t keep you a little filly forever. I love you as if you were my real daughter.” He looked at her with a proud, if slightly sad smile. “Go get him, Daddy’s little girl.”

Wishful nodded, and with a brilliant flash of green light, she vanished. Nightfall took a breath, then activated his tracing spell and found that she was above them, in the highest tower. “Let’s follow her, guys!” Nightfall ordered, his resolve renewed once more. “I’ll lead!”

Author's Note

Here we go! The home stretch! Sorry I delayed it by a week, but I really needed some cover art for this fic. I know, the current cover art's a bit hard to see, but it's not the finished product. It's just the line art for the actual cover art.

Anyway, I hope you've all enjoyed what you've read so far! Feel free to leave any comments about what you liked/didn't like, and maybe even on how I can improve! Only a little more to go!

See you next chapter! Later all!

Chapter 6: The Sixth Component

Chapter 6: The Sixth Component

Wishful found herself in a tower, and through the window, she could see that the rest of the castle was below her. She felt a distinct sense of unease; it could’ve been vertigo since she was so high up, but she had a sinking feeling it wasn’t.

Her suspicions were entirely correct.

Turning around, she saw Midnight Darkscales himself in all his evil glory, sneering as he took the first Component in his grip, as if he could crush it by sheer will alone.

“Now, to destroy them,” Darkscales snickered. “This shouldn’t take long.” Somehow, he didn’t seem to have noticed her yet.

Wishful narrowed her eyes, quickly coming up with a way to get his attention on her; and away from the Component. Levitating a small piece of rubble into the air, Wishful threw it at Darkscales, smacking him in the snout.

“Huh?” he exclaimed in surprise, whirling around to glare at the Unicorn filly. “You! How did you follow me?”

Though she was fairly intimidated by the corrupted Ultima Dragoon with the power to blast her through a window glaring daggers at her, she didn’t let it show. “Trade secret,” Wishful said with a wink and a smirk. “Let’s dance, big guy!”

“You asked for it!” Darkscales snarled, launching bolts of red lightning from his crystal horns.

Wishful rolled out of the way, the bolts smashing into the walls of the tower and sending bits of rubble showering onto the floor. Somehow, she managed to get around him before turning around and bucking him in the side with her hind legs.

“You insolent little—” Darkscales was cut off by a ball of green flame being fired from the filly’s horn, singeing his Mystic and Nature wings slightly while actually setting his Fairy wings ablaze for a few seconds. The corrupted dragon snarled in pain, turning his head to glare at her as if she would disintegrate by him simply willing her out of existence.

“You meddlesome insect!” the wicked Dragoon snapped. “I am an Ultima Dragon! I know more about magic than you do! Especially how to use the powers of all three major dragon tribes!”

Wishful simply rolled her eyes defiantly, “And yet you’re getting hurt by a Unicorn filly about the size of one of your legs. Clearly, your powers don’t match your ego, buddy.” Darkscales snarled as his Nature Dragon horns glowed red, and creeping vines that were wrapped around the tower suddenly burst through the windows, thick as oak trees and covered in thorns that were large enough to split her in two.

“Take this, brat!” Darkscales spat. Wishful shrieked and tried to dodge the vines as they swung to slam into her, firing shots of hard magic from her horn at Darkscales in between his attacks. They didn’t have a whole lot of effect beyond the force of a normal punch, but they did manage to rile him up more. Hopefully, she thought, she could make him mad enough to make a serious mistake.

“You’re really starting to grate on my nerves!” Darkscales snarled as his Fairy Dragon horns also glowed red, and the air in the room started to churn as a localized tornado began to form.

But though Wishful took a couple hits here and there, she continued to barrage Darkscales with her own magic, growing more confident as she heard the flapping of wings and the clicking of talons coming up the long staircase to the tower.

“I’ve had enough of your silly games, filly!” Darkscales roared, finally tired of this mismatched duel. He charged his breath weapon and fired a cloud of nightmare dust right at her. But instead of causing the usual hallucinations, fear or confusion she expected, a searing pain went through her nerves, as if invisible claws were raking at her flesh. She shrieked in pain, trying to fight it off, but the pain was rapidly weakening her. She finally collapsed to the ground, spasming in unbearable agony as her mind blacked out to the sound of Darkscales’ wicked laughter.

On the stairs leading up to the top of the tower, the six Dragoons heard a piercing scream from above, and immediately stopped to look up. Nightfall’s eyes went wide; that was a filly’s scream. It could only be… “Oh Gwynnia, no…” he whispered, his mind processing what had happened. He couldn’t stay here and wait for backup; he had to get to her. Now. He looked up at the inside of the tower and screamed, “Wishful! No!” and suddenly teleported away.

“Wut in Gwynnia’s name was that fer?” Apple Slice asked, confused at his leaving so abruptly. “Weren’t we supposed ta stick together? It’s not like he can help the poor filly all on his own.”

Prism Slash responded with a shrug, but everygon redoubled their pace and continued following the stairs.

Nightfall appeared at the top of the stairs, and what he saw tore at his heart: Wishful Legend, his brave little filly, was lying on the ground, covered in cuts and lacerations, out cold. At least, he hoped she was only out cold. He felt a lump in his throat as he tried to speak, a cold feeling going down his spine. Wishful… I didn’t get here in time to protect you.

He looked up as the faint sound of chuckling reached his ears, and he narrowed his eyes. But I am now, he thought, his jaw set as Midnight Darkscales cackled, observing Wishful’s heavily injured form with macabre delight. And by Gwynnia, he’s going to pay for it…

“You did this to my little filly!” Nightfall roared, sparks flying from his mouth, as Darkscales turned his head to face him. “I’ll tear you to pieces!”

“Oh, are you her father figure?” Darkscales said in mock sympathy, eyeing the injured filly on the floor as if she were a particularly irritating fly he’d swatted. “I’m so sorry for what I did to her, but she tried to stop me from destroying the Components of Balance.” He grinned in smug self-satisfaction, as if hurting her were a triumph. “And I couldn’t have that, now could I?”

Oh, now you’ve done it… “Shut up!” Nightfall screamed in rage, springing into the air and lunging for Darkscales, his horns glowing a brilliant purple as purple energy blades sprouted from his talons and his breath weapon immediately formed in his mouth, binding to his teeth and crackling with intense magical energy. “You’ll be lucky if there’s enough pieces to put in your tomb when I’m done! Nogon. Hurts. My. Little. FILLY!”

Before Darkscales could react, Nightfall was upon him, the thick fog of rage thoroughly clouding his mind. He bit and slashed over and over with a fury nogon had ever seen from him before, a madness burning in his eyes. Though it was impossible to tell in the blur of battle, he was crying slightly, as if all the anger, frustration and sorrow he felt was being unleashed in this sole fight. This wasn’t just about the Components, not anymore. This was for the imprisoned Lumin, for his friends who’d barely gotten past Darkscales’ traps alive, for the brave souls of Draconia who stood up to the corrupted dragon and had gotten crushed for their efforts. But most of all, it was for Wishful, the brave, kind, precious little filly who was the closest thing he had to a child of his own, who meant the whole world to him.

And the love of a father for his daughter was never to be underestimated.

Darkscales struggled to gain an advantage, but Nightfall’s rage was powerful enough to nearly overpower him, the two of them locked in a standstill that leaned heavily in the purple Dragoon’s favor.

“Get off!” Darkscales roared, as he vainly attempted to fire his breath weapon. But Nightfall’s jaws clamped down on the wicked Dragoon’s snout, forcing him to cancel his charge, coughing as the backblast of the stopped attack sent smoke rising from his nostrils. Nightfall’s breath weapon-charged teeth bit down deep before he released his jaws, leaving behind teeth marks and burns that slowly healed.

“She’s dying and it’s your fault!” Nightfall roared as soon as he released Darkscales from his jaws, before swiping with the energy claws he’d generated, leaving deep gashes in Darkscales’ armor and hide, eliciting an actual yelp from the other Dragoon. The wounds slowly regenerated, but left behind searing pain as the injured flesh and muscle knit back together. “You don’t care, so I’m going to rip your uncaring heart right out of your chest!” And if the swipes he was making at Darkscales’ chest were any indication, he could actually do it.

After taking several more hits from the enraged, grief-stricken Dragoon, Darkscales finally managed to retaliate effectively and punched Nightfall in the jaw with immense force. Nightfall was sent spinning through the air and crashed into a wall. As rubble showered down around him from the crater he’d created, Nightfall felt his reason start to return, the impact bringing him back to his senses.

Darkscales simply watched the other Dragoon from the center of the room, the wounds from their fight still visible on his hide through the multiple holes Nightfall had torn in his armor. “Wow, you really do care for her,” he observed thoughtfully while gingerly clutching his chest, which was still healing itself after Nightfall’s final onslaught. The black Dragoon winced slightly, before regaining his composure and grinning smugly. “But your power isn’t enough to stand even a sliver of a chance against me. Compared to me, you’re just a Hatchling! And to prove it…” Darkscales looked at the Component orbs scattered around the room, then with a nasty grin, lit his horns and sent the orbs zooming into his clutches, before crushing them to bits between his claws.

Nightfall stared as the Components were destroyed before his eyes, their last hope turned to stone dust. Did we… did we do all this for nothing? Was Wishful hurt so badly… just for it to come to this? Did I let her go and get herself injured like that in vain? I’m… I couldn’t even honor the sacrifice she made right… “No! We need those!” He cried out in despair. I can’t believe it. I’ve let her down. I’ve let Lord Lumin down. And now? All of Draconia as well…

“There. Your one chance of defeating me is gone,” Darkscales said before throwing his head back and laughing to the sky in triumph.

But, as tends to happen in moments of darkest despair, a light shone in the sea of sorrow. Or in this case, five.

At that moment, Nightfall’s friends burst through the door, taking in the scene before them. “Nightfall!” the other five Dragoons gasped in unison when they saw his battered form on the ground.

Nightfall looked back towards the door, a weak smile on his face. Well… at least they’re still here. Even if I let them down… I know they won’t leave me here to die alone.

“You’re too late, puny Hatchlings,” Darkscales laughed, as if intentionally twisting the knife deeper in Nightfall’s sense of defeat. “But, I’ll be merciful and put you out of your misery. Now, hold still and kindly DIE!”

Darkscales charged up his breath weapon to incredible levels, intent on annihilating them on the spot. But when the deadly version of his nightmare breath was mere inches from reaching the five assembled Dragoons, he encountered a most unwelcome unpleasant surprise. The shards and broken powder of the shattered Components glowed softly, and flew up to form a solid, circular wall around Nightfall’s friends, shielding the five Dragoons from harm as Darkscales’ breath weapon slammed into it harmlessly.

“What is the meaning of this?” Darkscales shouted in confusion. “You’re all supposed to be dead! And the Components were destroyed!”

Something clicked in Nightfall’s head, and he struggled to all fours and slowly walked towards the other five, a smile slowly spreading across his face. There seemed to be hope after all, if his suspicions were correct.

“I get it now,” Nightfall said, his smile growing wider with every step he took, becoming a look of pure triumph. “Though you destroyed the Components’ physical forms, the spirits of them live on! And each one has chosen a Dragoon to represent it! I’ll explain them to you, one by one!”

The wall around the five Dragoons fell, only for the pulverized shards to slowly circle each of them. The ones circling Apple Slice turned a fiery orange, and started to engulf him in their light.

“Apple Slice, who assured me with his truthful words in my moment of doubt, represents Integrity!”

The light enveloping Apple Slice formed itself into a golden chestplate, with a bright citrine gem in the center depicting the three apples that made up his Skill Emblem.

The shards around Timidwings turned a vibrant green, and he, too was engulfed in light.

“Timidwings, who showed compassion on the tormented hydra, who we all mistook for an enemy, represents Empathy!”

The light enveloping Timidwings also formed into a golden chestplate, but with an emerald in the center depicting his Skill Emblem of a trio of butterflies.

Next, the shards around Goody Gumdrops turned a brilliant blue, and he was enveloped in light, as well.

“Goody Gumdrops, who taught the Dracoliches how to laugh in the face of fear, represents Joy!”

The light engulfing Goody transformed into another golden chestplate, this one with a sapphire in the center depicting his Skill Emblem of three balloons.

The shards around Extraordinaire turned bright yellow, and he was also engulfed in their light.

“Extraordinaire, who gave up one of his most prized possessions to restore the gatekeeper, who wasn’t capable of expressing much beyond its gratitude, represents Sacrifice!”

The light engulfing Extraordinaire transformed into another golden chestplate, this one with a topaz depicting the three diamonds that comprised his Skill Emblem.

The shards around Prism Slash turned a bold red next, enveloping him in light.

“And Prism Slash, who wouldn’t abandon his friends for his own desires, and even fought fang and talon to continue to aid us when force was applied to stop him, represents Fidelity!”

The light around Prism Slash transformed into yet another chestplate, this one with a ruby in the center depicting the cloud and lightning bolt of his Skill Emblem.

After explaining all of that to Darkscales, Nightfall turned smugly towards Darkscales and expected the evil Ultima Dragoon to realize his defeat was at claw. But instead, the wicked Dragoon counted how many Dragoons were in chestplates, then he threw back his head again and laughed.

“Oh, you came so close, champion of Lumin, but you still fell short!” Darkscales sneered, pointing towards each of them with a talon. “You’re still missing one Component! The most important one! Without it, the other five can’t function very well, if at all! So what if I can’t harm them! I can still destroy you, and without a sixth bearer, you’ll still lose!”

“But it said we needed a spark!” Nightfall said, the look of triumph quickly fading as he realized something was wrong. “I applied as much magic as I could muster, but it wasn’t enough!”

“You poor, poor, ignorant fool,” Darkscales chuckled, shaking his head. “Before I kill you, I’ll tell you the name of the one you were missing this whole time: the Component of Power! You need magic on par with an Ultima Dragon to summon it and wield it! Which, sadly, you most certainly lack.” He raised a claw in a mocking salute. “Now, farewell, my brother’s champion. You’ll never see your precious Lord Lumin again. This is the end of the line for you.”

“Wait! Power!” Nightfall gasped, his eyes lighting up in realization. “I felt stronger when we banded together, when we put our new friendships to the test! That’s the ‘spark’ it meant! And I feel it now, too! That same spark! Unity! That’s it! The spark is our unity, it’s us acting as one!”

“How desperate,” Darkscales chuckled with a shake of his head as he got ready to kill. “And how pitiful. Trying to use a workaround like that to convince the sixth to aid you is pointless! There’s no way that—”

Darkscales cut off as a sixth orb appeared in the air. It shattered into purple shards, which started to descend towards Nightfall.

“Im-impossible!” Darkscales screamed in disbelief before panicking, lunging for Nightfall to keep him away from the shards that would inevitably protect him. With a wicked glint in his eye, Darkscales opened his mouth and prepared to fire the nightmare breath to end Nightfall’s life. But before he could launch his attack, something purple and green slammed into the twisted Dragoon, knocking him on his back and releasing the deadly stream into the ceiling, breaking through it and dropping rubble on Darkscales and Nightfall’s savior, who was his brave little filly, Wishful Legend. She turned to smile at Nightfall, then immediately passed out onto the rubble-strewn floor.

The shards of the Component of Power encircled Nightfall, enveloping him in deep purple light, and then morphed into a helmet and crown combination with an amethyst depicting the starbursts making up Nightfall’s own Skill Emblem on the forehead of the helmet.

“You’re wrong,” Nightfall said as Darkscales got back to his feet and gasped in horror, backpedalling quickly as the six Dragoons stepped towards him, Nightfall leading the other five. “Magic isn’t power, nor is strength or one’s own personal abilities. Unity is Power!”

The six Dragoons began floating into the air, their eyes glowing pure white as five streams of energy flew from the five chestplates’ gemstones and into the one on Nightfall’s helmet, before all six became linked by a shimmering, intricate web of multicolored energy. A swirling prismatic beam of combined Chaos and Order magic rose from the center of the web and lunged for Darkscales, who promptly screamed in terror, and flew up through the hole in the ceiling, desperate to escape.

“No! No! NO!” the wicked Dragoon screamed as all of the attacks he threw at the pursuing light were absorbed, not even slowing it down.

Darkscales headed for the city gates, only to hear the ancient gatekeeper say, “CRIMINAL ATTEMPTING TO ESCAPE. CLOSING GATES. MY APOLOGIES, OLD FRIEND.”

Applying Fairy Dragon magic to swiftly pick up more speed, Midnight Darkscales sped towards the rapidly closing gates, seeing the gatekeeper on the other side, its eyes red as the gates continued to close. “No… No, I have to get out of he—” Darkscales slammed into the gate right as it closed, trapping him inside the city walls.

Trying to escape the stream of magic again, Darkscales changed direction after a few seconds of confusion, and flew faster and faster along the perimeter of the walls, desperate to avoid being affected by the Components again.

But the prismatic magic chasing him sped up as well. To Darkscales’ horror, he looked over his shoulder and found the beam of magic morphing and shifting as he watched, taking on the appearance of the jaws of a massive beast. Darkscales screamed even louder as it approached.

“No! Please! Not again! Don’t send me back there! PLEASE!” he screeched right before he reentered the castle through a shattered window and into his parents’ old throne room. He only had a few more seconds of respite, before he looked back and saw his fate right in front of his face before the jaws snapped down on him. He screamed in agony as the magic enveloped him, feeling like he was being suddenly and painfully ripped in two as the perfect balance of Chaos and Order sent waves of painful energy through his Order-saturated form, part of his very being separated from the overly-orderly darker part like cloth ripped at the seams, with one half staying behind, and the other getting shredded to pieces, and scattered. Before unconsciousness took him, he felt a wave of regret wash over him, and his first thought since the corrupting force took hold was, “Lumin… I’m so sorry…”

Back in the tower, the magic faded, and the six Dragoons sighed as they were slowly dropped back to the floor, feeling completely rejuvenated after what they had accomplished.

“Did we beat him?” Prism Slash asked hopefully.

Apple Slice pointed up at the sky, where the moon was rapidly setting to make way for the sun to return to its proper position. “Does that answer yer question, pardner?” Then the two of them noticed where Nightfall was, as he approached the unconscious Wishful on two legs. He stopped in front of her, tears prickling at his eyes, as he reached down and picked her up in his front claws.

“Wishful, please wake up,” Nightfall sobbed as he cradled the filly in his foreclaws, shaking her gently. “Please, I don’t want to lose you!”

On the sun, if one squinted hard enough, one could see the image of an Ultima Dragoon’s head vanish from it, and brilliant rays of white light streaked down from the heavenly body, streaming through the broken window of the tower. The light soon faded, and in its place was Lord Lumin, smiling down at what he thought was going to be just a happy reunion with his student.

“Thank you, my—” Lumin cut off, his smile falling when he saw his personal student desperately trying to wake up the filly he’d spent years raising. Nightfall didn’t even look up to notice, still holding the injured Wishful.

“I’ll be just a moment,” Lumin said to the five confused Dragoons who had been about to bow to him.

Walking over to his prized student, Lumin placed a claw on Nightfall’s shoulder. Nightfall’s head snapped up, but he didn’t look to see who was behind him. He just knew Lumin’s presence anywhere.

“I’m sorry,” Lumin said softly. “I know it must hurt. It hurt when I banished my brother to the moon all those years ago. It felt like I had been forced to kill my own kin. The loss of a loved one isn’t easy—”

“She’s like a daughter to me!” Nightfall snapped, finally turning to glare at his mentor, revealing his face, tears flowing freely down from his bloodshot eyes. “The last thing she said to me was she still thinks of me as a father to her! I can’t lose her!”

“You won’t,” Lumin replied gently, and looked down at the dying filly with a determined look. The horns on his head glowed white, all three pairs for each of the major tribes, and a glowing aura of the same color encompassed the dying filly, before fading away. “She’ll live. I just know.”

“Wait, did you just—” Nightfall asked before his mentor cut him off.

“Save her? Possibly,” Lumin replied. “She might’ve lived on her own, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I gave her body a nudge in the right direction so she’ll live long enough for the reversing effects of the Components of Balance to do the rest, which will take a few minutes.”

“Thank you,” Nightfall breathed, bowing his head.

“Enough of that, though,” Lumin said. “Why don’t you get her on your back and join your friends?”

Nightfall nodded and dropped to all fours before gently levitating the filly onto his back and walking over to join his new friends and fellow Bearers.

Once all together, the group started to incline their heads and kneel to the Regent, but Lumin held up a claw to stop them. The group gasped when Lumin himself inclined his head and knelt to them!

“You have my eternal gratitude, brave warriors,” Lumin said with a small smile after standing back up. “All of Draconia is in your debt. But, there’s one more thing I need to take care of, and I’d like you all to be with me while I do this.”

The six Dragoons nodded, and in a flash of light, they were in a decrepit throne room, where a panting, sobbing voice could be heard from behind a throne.

“I know you’re there,” Lumin said gently. “Stop hiding from me.”

Trembling, a Dragoon stepped out from behind the throne on the right. He was a navy blue Ultima Dragoon with dark blue fins, silver vental scales, and a Skill Emblem of a white crescent moon on a black field. While his eyes were teal like Midnight Darkscales’, their sclerae were a lighter teal instead of dark red.

The Ultima Dragon was smaller than Lord Lumin was, making him only a little larger than Apple Slice was. Perhaps he wasn’t actually a Dragoon, but a Dragonock, or adolescent.

“I am sorry!” the smaller Ultima Dragon cried, looking up at his brother as if feeling unworthy to meet his gaze. “Please don’t send me back to the moon, brother! Please, forgive me!”

“Umbra, it’s in the past now,” Lumin replied, stepping forward to hug the other Ultima Dragoon gently and comfort him. “We can go to the relocated capital in El Dragado, and you and I can lead together until Mother and Father return. Just like we did before.”

“You must still be angry towards me, though!” Umbra blubbered into his brother’s shoulder. “Why else would my powers be weakened and my body reduced to the size of a Dragonock? This is my punishment, is it not?”

“That wasn’t the intended result,” Lumin replied with a shake of his head. “The power corrupting you must have taken some of your strength with it when it was removed from you. Your strength will return in time.”

Turning to look at the six Dragoons for the first time, Umbra inclined his head. “We are grateful for all of thine efforts, brave warriors. We apologize for all the trouble we caused.”

The Dragoons nodded, but looked confused. At that moment, Wishful sat up and weakly asked, “Why is he talking weird?” before slipping back into unconsciousness.

“Weird?” Umbra repeated, “As in, ‘strange’?” Turning to Lumin, he gave his own confused look.

“I apologize on behalf of my brother, Lord Umbra,” Lumin said awkwardly, tapping his neck with a claw. “The way dragons speak has changed in the last thousand years.”

“Wait, they have?” Umbra gasped, his archaic speech now quite obvious. “Lumin! Prithee, aid me to get up to date!”

“Of course, Umbra,” Lumin replied. “Now, let’s get out of this dreary forest, shall we?”

Lumin teleported the group to the entrance, asked Adamant to open the gate, and after the gate was open, the group left through the gate. But before Lumin could teleport them again, the gatekeeper spoke up.

“GREETINGS, LORD UMBRA,” the machine said. “I AM PLEASED TO SEE YOU AS YOUR PROPER SELF AGAIN.”

“Thou hast our thanks, Adamant,” Umbra replied, smiling widely at the sight of the old gatekeeper. As most of the group stared at him, Umbra saw their confused faces, and frowned before asking, “What is wrong?”

Lumin quickly intervened and spoke on his brother’s behalf so he wouldn’t botch his speech again. “Umbra built him to replace the old one Mother and Father had put in place because my brother wanted a friend, and the bucket of bolts before Adamant never said anything to anygon except for maintenance purposes.”

“Well, he still don’t have much personality,” Apple Slice said before Extraordinaire and Umbra both glared at him. “Wut?” he said stupidly, not understanding what he’d done wrong.

“Adamant has feelings, but can’t express himself very well,” the tailor quipped. “You saw how he expressed gratitude to me for giving up my prized diamond to restore him and how he expressed joy to see Umbra back to normal. Just because something can’t express itself very well doesn’t mean it can’t feel.”

Umbra nodded in gratitude, and Lumin teleported the group back to Dragontown, where the airship was waiting. As the rest of the group approached the hatch of the airship, they heard a shout. They turned to see Umbra staring slack-jawed at the airship, his eyes looking over it several times as if to make sure it was, in fact, real. He slowly walked up to it as if he thought he was asleep, ran a claw along its side with quiet awe, before taking a deep breath. Then he giggled like a Dragonling getting the perfect present for his Hatching Day before running back towards the group to embrace his brother joyfully, saying one thing: “You made one!”

As Lumin smiled down at his brother, tears of joy instead of pain on his face, he became aware of the sound of cheering. Umbra’s eyes went wide as he spotted the townsdragons that had come out of their homes to see that Lumin had returned, and he quickly attempted to hide in the shadow of his brother’s wings, however difficult it was. “I see your subjects are happy to see you back...” He said quietly enough for only Lumin to hear, looking at the crowd as if he expected them to start pelting him with stones the moment they noticed him.

Lumin shook his head, answering at the same volume, “They are. But you’re still their Prince, as well. I won’t let you be overshadowed by me again. I promise.” He gave his brother a reassuring smile, before he raised his claw for silence.

“Attention our beloved subjects!” be began, nudging the trembling Umbra out from behind his wings and into the full view of the crowd. “Allow me to introduce my brother, Lord Umbra! He is deeply sorry for the trouble he has caused, but he was not himself while he was Midnight Darkscales. He had been corrupted by darkness. But he has been cleansed by the power of the Components of Balance, which were wielded by these six brave Dragoons!” Lumin waved a claw towards the six armored Dragoons, and the crowd cheered for a bit before Lumin held up a claw again. “From now on, when the moon rises, and when it sets, as well as when the stars appear in the night sky, it will be Umbra’s doing, not mine, for the caretaker of the moon has returned to us at last!”

The crowd stared in shock before applauding.

Lumin turned to Nightfall and said, “Nightfall Sheen, my devoted and prized student. You have done well. Come, let’s return to El Dragado and keep the Components of Balance there, where they will be safe, and you can continue studying magic to your heart’s content.”

To Lumin’s surprise, Nightfall shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lord Lumin, but I’d rather remain here in Dragontown. I’ve made five very dear friends in such a short time, and I don’t want to lose them. Besides, if the Components of Balance are needed to be wielded again, wouldn’t it make sense for all six Bearers to live in the same town so we can assemble quickly?”

“You have made a very wise decision, my prized student,” Lumin said, once he’d recovered from the surprise. “But we will still be taking the Components back to El Dragado for safekeeping. But from now on, you can live here in Dragontown for as long as you want, just so long as you send me reports on your new assignment: studying friendship and unity.”

“I will,” Nightfall replied, breaking into a grateful smile. “Thank you for letting me stay here.”

The dragons watching cheered, but Nightfall was just barely aware of them; he was more focused on a certain filly who had spoken earlier, but was still lying limply on his back, her breathing ragged.

Giving Wish a couple shakes, Nightfall muttered, “Hey, you feeling better, now?”

Wishful sat up, threw her hooves around her father figure’s neck and said, “Yep. And I still love you.”

“I still love you, too,” Nightfall replied, his eyes lighting up with happiness and pride. “You were really brave to take on Darkscales all by yourself.”

“I knew I couldn’t beat him,” Wishful admitted. “I just needed to buy all of you enough time to get there. Sorry I couldn’t hold out just a bit longer.”

“You were incredible,” Nightfall said as Wishful nuzzled him. “I’m very proud of you.”

“I’m very sorry to interrupt your family bonding time, my dear student,” Lumin said, tapping a talon on Nightfall’s shoulder, “But Umbra really wants to ride the airship, so we must be going. I’ll need the Components from all of you first, though.”

Nightfall nodded, and Lumin teleported a large case from somewhere and had each Bearer place his piece of armor in the case, and then he and Umbra climbed aboard the airship and departed.

As the airship disappeared into the distance, the dragons of the town surrounded their new heroes and started cheering again.

“Everygon’s so happy! And we got our happy ending!” Goody Gumdrops remarked. “Now the only way this could get even better is with a par—”

“Not now,” Nightfall said, wrapping a claw around Goody’s snout, clamping it shut. “Just enjoy the moment. As for me, I need to have some quality time with the filly I’ve been raising for nine of her eleven years. I’ll see you guys later.”

With that, Nightfall took to the sky, heading towards the town library to spend some time with Wishful, the filly on his back sighing happily as she used a quill to finally check off “MAKE FRIENDS” from the list.

Author's Note

And there we have it! Chapter 6! This episode is now complete, but there will be more down the road! Episode 2 is already in the works!

Now, sorry for the wait, but I've been waiting for the final version of the cover art for a while now, and I just finally gave up on waiting for it today and decided to post now. The artist's on hiatus for the time being.

Anyway, thank you for reading this all the way from beginning to end! I really hope you enjoyed the ride! Be on the lookout for Episode 2, coming soon! When Episode 2 is completely uploaded, the universe of these fics will be expanded and placed into a group, open for all to contribute to.

See you in Episode 2!