Chapter Text
You ever heard of Wings of Fire?
It's alright if you don't. Most people when they think of books revolving around dragons, they think about Aragon, or Dragonlance if you're nerdy, and Dragonriders of Pern if you're a super-nerd. Wings of Fire isn't some big name novel series about a reimagined War of the Roses like Game of Thrones is. No, it's a series of young adult novels about kid dragons going on adventures and growing up, and like any young adult novel series, they have obscene amounts of violence in order for the readers to take things seriously. Why do I ask?
Because I'm in them.
Imagine walking home from a bad day at work, getting chicken nuggets and a frosty from Wendy's, and then suffering the absolute worst shit all day, some gaping purple- mouth- yanks you from the bathroom into some weird hell-tunnel that's a cross between the teleport from Doom 3 and the Stargate sequence from… Stargate. It was cold and hot, bright then dark, feeling like you were free-falling from a skyscraper and sinking through molasses. At first, I was terrified and confused. Then tired and bored as it dragged on and on. Then itchy. Then achy. Then it felt like every bone in my body was breaking then resetting, like I was being run over by a steam roller, folded over like dough, then shaped into something horrible, something dark and twisted, something monstrous…
A NightWing.
There's seven- Wait, no. Ten- ten dragon tribes. That I know of until they release the next book. Anyway, NightWings are black dragons that have sparkly scales on the underside of their wings, good night vision, fire-breath, and if they're born at a certain cycle of the moons (There's three. Seriously.) they get mind reading and/or the ability to see into the future- which I'm not. Also, they're kind of hated by every other tribe since they helped start the big, inter-tribal war that killed thousands of dragons and made up a fake prophecy in order to manipulate them. So yeah, life's just great. Well, at least I still got my dick.
Yeah, I said 'dick'. I can say a whole bunch of swear words! I was so relieved that I could still swear like a sailor. As countless misspent hours of reading My Little Pony fanfiction has taught me, just because you end up in a series meant for kids doesn't mean life is a cartoon; it's a real world full of smelly bathrooms that haven't been cleaned in years, bars full of miserable and psychotic drunkards, and brothels stuffed with whores with God knows what kind of sexual diseases dragons get. I admit I freaked out when I looked at my crotch, seeing a hole under my tail. But then I remembered that since dragons are supposed to be reptiles, I was actually looking at my cloaca- which meant my dick was stuffed into my own asshole. Then I was just mildly disturbed.
I mean, I didn't care about my dick that much to ignore the fact that I became a freaking dragon. A dragon from a children's novel series who could still scream obscenities and think dirty thoughts about God. I sat on that dusty little crater for nearly two hours, crying and moaning. Not the most dignified response, but I'm not afraid to admit- okay I'm afraid to admit it, but I'm just a wimpy nerd. I mean, I like going on hikes and camping, but backwoods wilderness, miles away from civilization? Fuck that. And Pyrrhia's practically Iron Age- there was literally a medieval castle not a hundred feet (or the draconic equivalent) away from where I was dumped.
I wasn't looking forward to eking out an existence as a peasant. Then I remembered I was a dragon. I could fly, I don't have to cook my food, I could breathe fire; they say the sky is the limit when you're like, well, rich, but now it true! Because I. Was. A. Dragon! Who would be immediately arrested if some strange vulgar NightWing just showed up in the in the Rainforest Kingdom; then I'd get tangled up with the Dragonets of Destiny and feel incredibly awkward around eight-year-old dragons who acted like teenagers. I can't remember how the aging works; I think they're like full grown at ten… whatever. I'm not that big a fan to go hang out with the main characters, and I had the social skills of a brain-damaged opossum, so I wasn't looking forward to embarrassing myself in front of dragons who done more in a couple of years then I did in all my twenty.
I looked around myself, trying to get my bearings. I was in some kind of crater, surrounded by sand and rocks. Black, sparkly rocks. Skyfire was a type of stone in the series, capable of blocking out telepathy some NightWings possessed, like Moonwatcher and Darkstalker. I shivered when I thought about him, the main antagonist of the second arc. A giant, thousand-year-old omnipotent NightWing with a messiah complex was not somebody I wanted to meet. If Darkstalker knew I existed, then I'm fucked. But that castle I had huge piles of sand on top the walls and on the sides. There were SandWings flying all around it, apparently trying to dig it out. If I was correct, then I probably deposited sometime after Qibli buried Queen Thorn's fortress; you can't unearth a castle built for dragons in a couple of days; it'd probably take weeks. So Darkstalker is probably a baby hybrid now. But there was always the possibility he could come back, so… fuck it. I'll just have to face that knowledge the same way people back home know that their way of life could end in an instant because of nuclear war, or another stock market crash, or ecological disaster- focus on what's something more immediate, no matter how petty and meaningless.
I think it was early in the evening; the sun was beginning to set, and I could see two moons high in the sky. I should have been moving, doing something, but I was still overwhelmed, numb. The strange, horrible portal; feeling the cool desert breeze compared to the chilly Northwest bluster; seeing real dragons fly around a medieval castle, and seeing enormous moons drift across an alien sky full of stars in a body barely knew how to walk with… I was stuck staring at everything. Eventually, I calmed down and tried walking. It was strange, no doubt about it; my talons looked a little like the claws of an eagle, but flexible; I could still manipulate objects, but I had to walk on all fours. And, I now had a tail, a pair of sparkly wings, and a long, gawky neck. Learning to walk was an exhausting chore; my body felt like it should move quadrupedally, but it was hard not to try and stand upright as my brain told me to. I tried moving like a lizard or snake, turning my body side to side to walk forward, but that tired my back. I tried moving like a mammal, relying on my legs for movement, but it strained my arms. I found that moving in a mixture of the two, twisting my back and moving my legs I could walk more comfortably.
But my wings and tail were a different problem. They dragged uselessly on the ground; I could feel them, but I couldn't move them at all. It was like the reverse of phantom limb syndrome- instead of trying to move extremities that aren't there anymore, I'm trying to move something I've never had before. Eventually, they began to obey my wishes, but I was clumsy and awkward. When I tried to climb out of the crater, my wings pulled me onto my back. I flapped my wings involuntarily to stop my self from falling but ended up wrapping myself up like a NightWing taco. I seethed like a trapped garter, tired and alone in a world indifferent to my suffering.
I lay there like a slug, concerned only with myself. This is a dream that lasting far too long. Then I heard a heavy snapping sound, and the wind twisted around me. Huge shadows circled my crater, like that of vast, predatory birds hoping for an easy meal. I peeked out from my wing-burrito; three SandWings were flying above my tangled form. They were high in the sky, but I could tell that these dragons were huge; they could easily tear me apart if they'd like. SandWings didn't just have fire-breath like some other tribes; they also had a very poisonous, very painful stinger on their tail.
I tried to struggle out of my prison, instead probably giving the SandWings above an amusing show as I wriggled like a worm. I suddenly became aware just how tired I was, how badly my body ached from the transformation and thirsted from the evening sun. I gave whiny groan; I didn't want to die just when I got here! I whimpered as I rolled side-to-side more frantically a sort of animal panic coming over me in the midst of a possible threat. Finally, I tried moving my wings, freeing my right wing and then flopping onto my back, exposing my belly to the airborne investigators, who swooping onto the ground.
Getting to my drained whatever energy I had left; they landed heavily onto the ground, the impact and the wind from their big wings forced my wings to drag me back in a sort of hop-step. I stopped myself from falling on my back, only to instead crash down onto my forelegs, spasming in pain. My head drooped so low to the ground that my chin brushed the scorched sand. My eyes burned as I looked up at the lead dragon as best I could; tears and the fading sunlight distorted and hid their large, frowning face. The other two landed on either side, preparing no doubt to flank me if I tried to fight.
Not that I could if I wanted to; I felt like I was about to drop dead where I stood. I coughed, and turned my head to the subordinate dragons, trying to see their faces, but then I heard the leader say something. I jerked my up, the movement causing nausea to travel from the pit of my stomach to my long throat. He was saying something, but I couldn't hear or understand it; suddenly, my left arm shook, then gave away. I keeled over like a felled tree, my bouncing on the sand. I didn't fall from a long height, but my head felt like a cow-bell smashed by a sledgehammer. The world became an agonizing, buzzing blur; I realized I was screaming. Eventually, the pain overwhelmed me, and the last thing I saw was a claw with six talons moving towards me.