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Thunder rumbles through the sky, following the stark flashes of lightning racing between the clouds above. The wagons of the circus caravan trundle along slowly on the muddy mountain road, wheels carving deep ruts that fill instantly with the pounding rain.
Terrorwing cowers in her caged wagon, her limbs, wings, and tail all wrapped into a tight ball of iridescent blue-green in the very center to try and preserve what heat she can with the windblown rain battering her in sheets.
She’s always hated the journeys between camps. At least when the circus is on, the tents give her a proper reprieve from the elements, and there’s space enough to stretch out - even if her handlers are crueler then with their whips and batons.
She has no idea how ironic the name she performs under is, having only a passing familiarity with the human language. And the handlers only call her that while she’s on stage, anyhow. When the audience is absent she is called simply ‘dragon’ or sometimes ‘beast.’
They've traveled this road many times before, and it always makes her nervous. On previous trips, she has occasionally seen a creature not unlike herself swooping through the valley below, but her wings are too weak for that even if she wasn't chained down anytime she was let out of her cage. If the wagon slipped off the narrow road, she would be doomed to plummet along with it, and this fact makes her anxious. Even moreso today, with the weather making it even more treacherous than usual.
This cage, the roads between circus tents, the performances - it's all Terrorwing has ever known. Most of the circus animals were raised from birth by their handlers, just like her. Of those currently with them, only Old Scareye the displacer cat has ever truly been a wild beast.
Terrorwing hears shouting from farther ahead in the caravan, and shifts enough to try and get a look through her bars. Some of the handlers are running around and yelling, but the sound of their voices is quickly overtaken by a roaring from above.
In an instant, everything Terrorwing has ever known is turned over. A wall of mud, a slurry carrying whole trees as well as broken branches and a few rocks, slams into the caravan and the wagon she's in hurtles over the cliff.
She feels a brief moment of weightlessness, a glimpse of the thrill of flight that has always been denied to her, then a couple of sharp impacts, and finally darkness closes in on her.
When Terrorwing's eyes slowly blink open again, she finds herself still in her cage, uncertain of how much time has passed.
Dirt and mud have half-filled the wagon, which rests on the corner of its roof, and the bars are mangled to the point they leave more than one opening plenty wide for her to slip through, if she wanted. As she tests her joints, she recoils at a sharp pain in one wing which hangs at an unnatural angle - one of the thin bones that gives it structure snapped clean through, though not breaking out of her scaly hide. And her right rear leg struggles to bear her weight, the ankle having been twisted by the chain that tethered her before it snapped.
She slowly inches toward one of the gaps in the cage bars. The air is quiet and still, the rain reduced to a gentle patter on the tangle of wood and metal that used to be her home. She doesn't see any movement, any handlers, so she squirms free, dragging a few links of chain along with her injured ankle, and whining softly when her broken wing grazes against a bar on her way through.
Terrorwing limps along the wreckage of the caravan, attempting to be gentle on her back leg. Moving forward, nearer to the head wagon, she sees a flicker of fire barely beating out the rain to survive and burn one of the carriages. There's a few muffled moans and pained whimpers from among the debris - and not all of them are the sort of cries she would recognize, those of the other beasts.
Farther ahead, a spray of bloodied dark feathers is all she sees of Beaky, the owlbear. He was still a hatchling, as she saw it, and if they'd been allowed to truly interact she might've treated him like her own child. Terrorwing pushes against the wagon that must have crushed him, but there's no movement from the paw she can see, and she hasn't the strength to push the wagon clear off.
She sits back on her haunches (carefully, with most of her weight resting on her left side), and mourns her fellow performer. Beaky still had such enthusiasm and joy to him - but he wasn't yet large enough that the handlers needed to employ much force to keep him controlled.
While Terrorwing considers her own hatchling days, when performing meant treats and fun instead of beatings and blood, she catches a brief glimpse of something moving up ahead. Terrorwing starts to curl up and retreat, in case it's a handler. The last thing she would need right now is a whipping for attempting to escape...
A single yellow eye stares at her, reflecting the flickering light of the small fire.
Old Scareye. The displacer cat.
He strides calmly up to her, violet fur splattered in mud and grime, but still shimmering in places. He looks to the wreckage, and back to Terrorwing. Dried blood runs over his blinded eye, which he hasn't bothered to brush off.
Terrorwing has always found him a little intimidating. The scariest thing in the circus - other than the handlers, of course - because he wasn't born a captive, and he knew how to fight. He has the experience and the scars to prove it.
Terrorwing stares past him into the vast forest they've landed on the edge of.
Old Scareye rumbles and nods toward the woods, shoulder tentacles hovering and ready to strike, as always. She'd seen him flay the skin off more than one handler with the tiny barbs that cover the ends of each one - though she had always wished he hadn't... Inevitably the handlers always took their revenge, and they didn't limit it to the actual cause of their suffering.
Terrorwing looks between the old feline and the woods. If this is what she's going to do, if she's going to really escape, into a world she knows nothing about... well, having someone like Old Scareye around would be good. Even just staring at the trees, once so far away from the life she knew and now so close she could touch them, she feels almost overwhelmed by the strange new scents and sights and sounds.
Blood and mud are familiar, and pine, but there's a damp and decay to the forest that is foreign to her nose.
Just as she's about to take a step to follow Old Scareye, a voice makes her freeze mid stride.
"H-help... Terror...wing..."
She turns to see one of the handlers straining under a hunk of wagon buried by mud and half of a tree. His hand reaches ineffectually out, his eyes pleading.
Old Scareye hisses and growls, turning with a huff to walk into the trees.
If she doesn't go soon, she's going to be left behind.
Terrorwing turns and limps after the old feline, drawing a glare from him every time she clumsily snaps a twig under her paws. She can't understand how he isn't breaking them himself, as they are very similar sizes and, presumably, weights, and she's following exactly behind him - though perhaps less gracefully due to her weak leg.
The few links of chain still dangling from that ankle jingle softly with each awkward step. That could be part of his frustration too.
But he's also always been a grumpy sort.
As they walk together away from the ruined caravan, away from the only life Terrorwing has ever known, a confusing swirl of thoughts plagues her mind.
On the one paw, the handlers were cruel. They beat her and others for any little slight, and sometimes just because.
But on the other, they gave them food and shelter. It wasn't good food, or comfortable shelter, and the chains often dug into her flesh and cracked her scales along the edges of the metal...
Even so, she isn't sure if she should have just left that man to suffocate or starve, his body being slowly crushed.
It's what they would have done if it was you, says the impatient look on Old Scareye's face.
But the screams, the pleading... Though Terrorwing doesn't know the words, she could feel the pitiful tone. The same begging and whimpering sounds she once made under the snap of their whips.
They've been wandering for a long time, quite possibly in circles, but it'd be hard for Terrorwing to tell. She's far too busy taking in all the bizarre new sights and smells and everything to pay much attention other than making sure she doesn't wander too far from Old Scareye.
There's a chill breeze that tousles the trees and shrubs now and again, sending a sprinkling of leaves and water droplets down upon them.
Old Scareye stops to shake the water from his fur whenever it happens, using his tentacles to brush away the leaves when they stubbornly cling to him. He always takes the opportunity during these pauses to claw at the runic collar on his neck, hissing in frustration when he can't get it loose.
He glares at Terrorwing a few times when this happens, but she doesn't understand why. She's stuck with part of her chains too, after all.
She shifts her paws gently at each reprieve - the pads ache from the sharp and rough textures of the ground cover, all full of sticks and twigs and dying leaves and old pine needles and pointy stones. She isn't used to such things, and especially hates the pine needles as they keep poking at her and the older ones only seem to grow pricklier as they dry out. In the circus the ground was always hard packed dirt, worn smooth by hundreds of footfalls, a light dusting of hay, the occasional rock, or perhaps soft and silky grass at some of the nicer campsites. Not nice, but familiar and predictable.
Old Scareye eventually leads them to a small cavern in one of the cliff faces. As the rain has died down the air has gotten even colder, and as nice as having the space to stretch out is, Terrorwing finds herself looking forward to a bit of shelter from the wind. When the gusts hit just the wrong way, they catch the membrane of her broken wing and she has to fight to keep it from pulling on the fracture.
A curious chorus of insects and birds, both standard crickets and cicadas and stranger things unknown to her, fills the air as evening looms. Had their journey not been interrupted, the handlers would have circled the wagons by now and set to raising the critical tents and outbuildings before nightfall. Dinner would be thrown to the animals only after this work was done.
They would have been camped outside of what Terrorwing called The Tall Place - where a bunch of thin mountains made by men could be seen. The crowds would come from there, so she assumed it was their nest. A large river ran near the circus area there, which made sense to her, it would have been a good place to put a nest.
But instead they're here.
With her thoughts swimming through trying to both process everything new today and think back on what should have been, Terrorwing is far slower to react than Old Scareye.
A screeching roar echoes from within the cave, the sound only amplified into ever more piercing forms as it bounces off the rock walls.
Old Scareye hisses, arching his back and splaying his tentacles.
His tone changes just as quickly when a lumbering feathered creature charges out of the gloom. It rises up on its back legs as it nears the strange pair, squawking its fury at the intrusion.
Beaky?
Terrorwing stares at the creature. It's obviously much larger than Beaky, but definitely the same species. She attempts a friendly gesture, rumbling a non-threatening sound. Her interactions with Beaky, though rare, had always been pleasant. Perhaps she could make another ally to help her in this strange place.
Wild eyes fixate on her injured wing. Razor claws twice the length of what the handlers would have allowed lash out.
Old Scareye turns on his heels and darts back into the undergrowth.
When the blow lands, suddenly Terrorwing isn't in the woods anymore. She's back at the circus.
She curls up tightly, making herself into a tiny scaled ball to protect herself as the handlers rain blows upon her. The whips shriek instead of cracking, and the batons feel sharper, like they might tear right through her scales.
She whimpers and whines. She never should have fled, why did she do that? She should have stayed in her cage, should have...
Should have... Should have...
Something catches on the chain around her wounded leg. It wrenches to the side and pain screams up her leg.
But the metal also snaps.
And in that instant, Terrorwing feels a spark inside her chest, a jolt that courses through her whole body, energizing her. She can feel it building deep inside, begging to be unleashed.
She opens her eyes, once again seeing the forest and the owlbear - its claws having just torn the chains from her leg.
She gathers the energy inside her throat. She isn't sure how or why she knows to do this.
She faces the owlbear, and she roars.
And along with the sound long practiced to delight the crowds of the circus, a bolt of pale blue not unlike the lightning that courses between the clouds leaps out of her jaws to strike the owlbear.
The beast shakes in place, trembling and convulsing as the shock overwhelms its muscles. The stink of burnt feathers carries on the breeze. The flutter of dozens of bird's wings can be heard as they scatter, fleeing the area.
Finally, the owlbear seizes and collapses with a heavy thud, eyes glassy and unseeing.
Terrorwing stands there staring at the owlbear for several minutes afterward. Her heart is pounding harder than it ever has, and she can feel strength such as she's never had in every muscle.
Not enough to fly still, but even the pain of her injuries seems dulled - she stands powerfully with her body low and weight held evenly.
Her breaths are heavy but swift, and her eyes dart around as she turns a slow circle in search of other threats.
Nothing comes.
Another handful of minutes pass, and the surge of power begins to fade. The adrenaline that has been pumping through her body slows and the pain returns in its place - now worse and more widespread thanks to the owlbear's talons.
She finally shifts her stance and almost immediately stumbles when she accidentally puts too much weight on her back leg. She lets out a yelp and carefully picks herself back up.
The light is fading from the sky now, and the chill of the air is only growing. But that's not the only problem she's now facing.
Her stomach grumbles.
Normally the food would be coming soon, the handlers making their rounds after setting up the most important structures. Sometimes it would be after dark, but it would always come.
Today is the first time she doesn't have that certainty, and it makes the emptiness in her gut feel that much deeper.
Terrorwing looks between the shelter of the cave and the fallen owlbear. She limps her way to the body and paws at it, confirming the creature is dead.
Underneath the acrid smell of the charred feathers and fur, there's just the barest hint of meat. Her mouth waters at the thought - but the meat she's used to at the circus is always a wet pile of ground up chunks, or occasionally small bits of scrap that the handlers didn't want.
Claws that have been filed down to dull nubs press into the dead owlbear's flank. With some effort, the feathers come loose, but she can't break the skin.
She tries with her fangs next, but they too have been dulled to keep her from injuring the handlers - either intentionally or accidentally. Straining with all the strength she has left, she does manage to poke a few holes in the flesh.
From there it takes a lot of pulling and thrashing and tearing, but a hunk of meat eventually comes loose.
Even then, with her teeth unable to properly cut the chunk, it's nearly impossible for her to actually eat it. Being so close to relief causes her empty stomach to ache ever more insistently though, so she continues struggling.
After what seems an age of further pulling and prying and gnashing, she does get a couple pieces small and tender enough to swallow.
It isn't a pleasant experience. The taste is so different to what she's used to, and the effort nearly removes all joy from it as the struggle has only aggravated the pain from her wounds.
Then, to top off her misery, she can feel her stomach twisting at the unfamiliarity of the owlbear meat.
Defeated, exhausted, freezing, and in pain, Terrorwing gives up and enters the cave to rest.
Hopefully tomorrow will be easier - but so far freedom leaves much to be desired.
She collapses heavily on a reasonably soft pile of dry foliage that the owlbear must have scrounged up. It's not quite like the straw bedding at the circus, but it's not too dissimilar either.
Though Terrorwing does sleep that night, it's more fitful and fragmented than she's experienced in a long time. Images of the handlers finding and beating her already weak body, breaking her wings or even chopping them off entirely wrack her mind.
And in the moments between while she lies awake, staring into the tiny bit of star speckled sky she can see out the opening of the cave before the dark silhouettes of trees black out the horizon, she wonders about Old Scareye, too.
Is he happy now? This would seem to be the life he was always so desperate to return to.
Terrorwing certainly can't see the appeal. At least in the circus, if she behaved, there was food and shelter and the beatings were rare. Out here, she attempted to be kind and make a friend, only to be attacked and forced to kill.
That part shakes her the most. She's never actually killed before - at least not personally. Insects, perhaps, but nothing more.
Even then, the food was meager and took so much effort.
And by the time the first rays of morning pierce the darkness, she's already feeling sick from hunger again.
With the light of day bleeding in, she notices something else in the cave that she hadn't the night before.
An egg. Small and round and soft.
She presses her paw against it, and the shell flexes slightly. She remembers seeing Beaky's egg way back when the handlers had first acquired him. She doesn't think the shell seemed as squishy as this one, when she saw the handlers carting it around.
When she pulls her paw back, she sees a thin break from one of her claws. It oozes a thick liquid slowly down the side.
Terrorwing panics at first, realizing she's probably killed the hatchling inside with her careless touch. It won't survive with the nutrients meant to sustain it now leaking out through the crack.
But the longer she stares at the goo slowly rolling down the shell, the more something else pulls at her.
Hunger.
The hatchling will die anyway.
Swallowing her guilt, she leans in and licks up the juices as they flow, eventually tearing the hole wider to get at more of it.
Even though the sorrow, the taste and relative ease sits better with her weakened body than the tougher flesh of the owlbear, and before long the egg is but a shredded damp pile of shards.
She can't feel proud of this, but at least she isn't starving anymore.
Is this really what the outside is like...?
Terrorwing spends the next several days simply hiding in the dead owlbear's nest. She makes a few more attempts to tear off edible chunks of it, but it remains a struggle for her. She doubts she will stumble upon anything easier with her leg still healing, though. And if she found another fight, it might be her death.
After a couple of days, Old Scareye finds her again. He has a fresh cut across his back, but seems to still be moving reasonably normally, and the blood is drying.
He looks from the owlbear to Terrorwing and back. She isn't sure, but he almost appears... impressed?
Regardless, he makes himself at home in the cave with her, though he leaves a respectful bit of space between them. He doesn't even complain about laying on the bare stone floor.
A few hours after his arrival, he gets up and goes out front, dragging the owlbear carcass into the cave.
Terrorwing watches him quizzically, tilting her head. But as she stares, she understands why the handlers had so much trouble with him. The barbs on his tentacles, so tiny but so vicious and apparently not able to be removed, or the handlers most assuredly would have done so, make quick work of flaying the owlbear, removing feathers and fur and hunks of flesh in edible chunks. He even exposes some of the softer tissues by digging past the thick muscle.
He devours a good bit of the meat almost as fast as he tears it up, but eventually pauses to toss a few pieces at Terrorwing. He even waits while she slowly struggles to eat them, single yellow eye watching her.
After that, the pieces he leaves for her are smaller, but more numerous. A vague effort to replicate the ground meat they used to be given.
It helps, and Terrorwing bows her head in gratitude to the old feline.
He huffs in reply. But something about his demeanor around her is different now, not nearly so frustrated and dismissive as he once was. He often stares at the rough spot in her scales where the leg chain had once wrapped her ankle.
Of course, he continues to claw at his own collar.
And as the days continue, Terrorwing can feel her strength returning. Her ankle can almost bear her weight properly, and her wing is hurting less - though the bone hasn’t healed in the correct position.
It hardly matters, anyway. She will never have the muscle to fly even if it had healed correctly. Some of the tendons had been cut when she was still small. She may be able to move and flare them to look intimidating, as she did in her performances, but they couldn't carry her.
She's noticed something else now too. Her claws, once dull and smooth, are scratching marks into the stone of the cavern wherever she walks. The next time Old Scareye drags a kill into the cave, she can nearly tear it open on her own.
His claws are growing sharp again too - but it still isn't enough to snap the runic collar that so irritates him.
In the quiet moments, as Terrorwing taps her tail against the floor and considers this new life, she is starting to see improvement. The fears and challenges are different, but they don't feel as insurmountable as they did that first night.
It's still not what she would describe as comfortable, but with Old Scareye's help, she's adapting.
It's a few days after this that Terrorwing, emboldened by her fresh new claws, finally feels comfortable with exploring a bit again. Old Scareye had gone out on his own in the morning, but it's late afternoon when she decides to go out and have a look around.
The newness of the place has only partly faded, but walking around Terrorwing is slowly starting to get a sense for how to move as quietly as he does. She still breaks a few twigs here and there when her eyes are distracted by a passing bird or a loud insect, but it's far less frequent than on their initial walk.
She doesn't have any particular direction in mind as she wanders, smelling the wet soil and moss and listening to the playful chirp of dozens of unseen birds in the canopy above. She does wonder what's left of the caravan at this point, but she could never hope to retrace the path Old Scareye had led her down on that night.
Just as she's thinking about returning to the cave to see what Old Scareye found today, a terrible cacophony interrupts her thoughts.
A hiss, a low growl, the rumbling of the earth, snapping tree limbs, a pained yowl, more growling, and more wood breaking as somewhere, a tree collapses.
Keeping herself low and trying to hide in the foliage that best matches the color of her blue-green scales, Terrorwing follows the sounds.
The sight she comes upon is a fresh clearing created by the fallen pine. A sleek and silvery creature with a build not unlike the owlbear but with stubbier legs pushes itself back off the tree where its weight had pushed the thing over, freeing roots from the ground below.
As it lumbers around, Terrorwing spots Old Scareye pinned under the pine, the trunk squarely across his spine. His limbs are splayed out, and blood flows in a river from where one tentacle has been nearly entirely ripped from his shoulder.
Though he can barely manage the motion, he claws again and again at the collar still on his neck, even nicking his own flesh in his desperation. More blood seeps from these shallow cuts.
He's going to die.
He's going to die, whether from the pine crushing his back, or from the strange beast pressing ever closer.
Terrorwing evaluates the beast from her hiding spot. The hide looks thick and armored like a shell, but comes in plates that allow it to still flex. Those would be weak points, but they'll be hard to reach. Plus, at a guess, the thing looks to double her weight. It would probably easily toss her aside even if its movements seem quite slow.
But she would likely be dead if not for Old Scareye.
Steeling her nerves, she leaps out and gives the performance of her life - just as the circus trained her. She roars, full throated and powerful, while spreading her wings as wide as they'll go. She may not be able to fly, but this thing doesn't know that.
It hesitates. Its thick jaws look almost metallic, and are structured like a snapping turtle's. It tests her, taking a step forward and growling - the same sound she'd heard before.
Terrorwing roars again, and this time her body crackles with energy just as it had when the owlbear nearly killed her. Prepared for it this time, she can see the electric blue sparks dancing across her scales.
At that, the creature takes a quicker back step than she imagined it capable of, and it dives into the earth as easily as a fish sinking into water. The rumble of its passing getting farther and farther away.
With her territory asserted, the dragon turns back to Old Scareye.
He stares at her from where he lay in a growing pool of his own blood. He's long since lost the strength to continue thrashing at the collar.
Terrorwing carefully approaches, unsure why he's still so desperate to destroy the thing even as his death comes.
But there's no darkness in his eye, even as his consciousness must be fading, he glares with hardened conviction - almost daring her to do it.
Terrorwing takes a breath.
It's not what she would have wanted, but it is what Old Scareye wanted.
A chance to die free.
She pulls at the collar, initially trying to be cautious not to injure him more, but having to give up and be more forceful after seeing the state of his neck.
The collar snaps, and Old Scareye's form turns... fuzzy? He disappears from under the pine, and reappears a few feet to the side. Terrorwing recoils from the strange sight, until she notes that he's still bleeding, still dying.
He manages a little approving nod, but continues to stare at her.
Do it. I'm dead anyway. Do it. It's how life is.
The idea screams from the look of cold determination in the old feline's eye.
Do it!
And so, with as much regret as she tore open that egg days before, she does what must be done, sinking fangs first into Old Scareye's neck.
This, at least, she will insist on. Her ally, however short, reluctant, and tense their partnership had been, will not suffer as she devours his remains.
The harsh reality of the wilds, yes. But Terrorwing is still, in her heart, a civilized beast.