“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.