• Published 10th Oct 2016
  • 3,289 Views, 1,000 Comments

A New Dragon in the Crystal Empire - Vedues



Ponies and dragons are living together in peace now. You know, other than the army of dragons trying to conquer the Crystal Empire.

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Chapter 1

Author's Note:

I really wouldn't blame you for skipping the first story, but you should at least read this summary of it.

That being said, I hope you enjoy this new story, and feel free to be brutally honest with your feedback. I can take it.

Talon Wind would always remember how quiet things were during that final day at the Aerie. Ever since she had been a hatchling, things had always been so loud—training officers shouting at their troops, cluster leaders explaining the strategy for their next battle, and mourners calling out lists of casualties from the last one. Now everything was quiet, filled only with the sound of wind and the occasional flapping of wings.

The Aerie, the last bastion of the wyverns, would be abandoned in the morning. This was the last night her kind would ever spend in their ancestral home, and they were all so busy preparing for their departure that nodragon could properly mourn.

Glancing out the window, Talon realized that the sun was beginning to set, casting the Aerie’s many peaks in dark silhouettes. Beyond them, the clouds took on vibrant shades of orange, red, and purple.

She forced herself to look away and finished packing the meager rations they had been able to find. If they were lucky, Squadron Five would have enough for their upcoming journey. If not, well, it wouldn’t be the first time they had gone hungry. That had been happening more and more since the lions of Panthera started razing their farm lands.

Talon passed another flight pack filled with rations out to Crystal Sky, her battle partner, who was distributing them to the rest of the squadron.

She paused to look around the now empty storage room. This wasn’t just some horrible dream. They really were leaving. Talon stood there for a moment, like she could somehow halt the passage of time if she held still enough.

Of course, it didn’t work like that. The sun continued to set, making the once-brilliant colors fade and then disappear entirely. The final day at the Aerie had ended.

Talon shook her head slowly and went back outside, where she discovered that Crystal was still waiting for her. Like Talon, Crystal was a venom wyvern, which meant dark green scales and a patch of brown hair on top of her head. They also shared curved horns, which wrapped just around the outside edge of their delicate ear frills, but that was because they were both female. Male horns went straight back.

Outside of the similarities from their gender and types, however, the two of them were nearly opposites. Talon kept her hair long, where Crystal’s was cut short. Talon’s shoulders were broad and her wings were large. Crystal’s were slender on both counts. Two long, well-toned legs made Talon taller than average, while her friend sometimes had trouble jumping into the air properly because of how short she was. At least they both had a long tail, ending in the scorpion-like venomous barb that all wyverns shared.

“Talon?” Crystal asked softly as the other wyvern approached.

“Yeah?”

“Here.” She extended the wing that had been hidden by her body. The four digits running through the membrane had curled it into a cup shape. Resting there, held in place by Crystal’s thumb, was a toy thunder wyvern that Talon hadn’t seen in years. His fabric hide was wearing thin in places, and his wings needed to be restitched, but his polished stone eyes still seemed to twinkle with an inner warmth.

“Refy?” Talon stared at her friend in confusion. “Crystal, how did you get him?”

“I found a bit of time to fly past your old house.” She stepped a bit closer. “I know you always wanted to give him to your first child, and he doesn’t weigh very much. I’m sure it would be fine if you brought him.”

Talon reverently accepted her childhood toy. “Thank you, Crystal, this,” she blinked away her tears before they could form, “this means a lot to me.” She switched Refy to her mouth, picked up her flight pack with one wing, and opened it with the thumb of the other. Once Refy was safely inside, she pulled it closed once more and slipped it into place around her neck, just above her shoulders.

Crystal donned her own pack then turned to look over the edge of the Aerie. “Talon, do you think we’ll … be alright out there? What if these new allies betray us?”

Walking up beside her friend, Talon extended a wing across the shorter wyvern’s back, covering her clan tattoo there. “The scouts said they’re dragons, like us, and that they think honor is more important than anything. I’m sure they’ll hold true to their word.”

Inwardly, Talon was cursing the local nations for refusing to take them in. Sure, risking the lions’ wrath was a bad idea, but at least one of them should have been willing to take that chance. Instead they were forcing her kind to travel thousands of miles away and ally themselves with a race that they had never even seen before their scouts stumbled across them.

“Come on, Crystal,” Talon stepped to the side and spread her wings, “the others must be waiting for us.”

Crystal nodded and spread her wings as well.

The two wyverns took off, gliding over the edge of the platform and spiraling gently down to the barracks below. Frills extended from the base of their tails as they flew, stabilizing their flight and granting them extra maneuverability, not that it was really needed. The air currents around the Aerie had always been gentle. They landed on the large platform outside the barracks and pushed through the hanging curtain that served as a door.

It was dark inside, with only a few torches and the fading light from the windows to provide illumination. There wasn’t much to see anyway. It was a round room with ten nests, each meant to hold about ten wyverns. Normally there would be a dozen or so wyverns talking in the common area at the center of the room, but understandably, nodragon was in the mood tonight. Instead, they were huddled into their nests, trying to pretend that their entire world hadn’t just come crashing down around them.

After countless centuries of battle, the Endless War was finally over, and they had lost.

Talon and Crystal made their way to one of the nests and settled down among the others.

The silence around them was oppressive, filled with all the things everydragon wanted to say, but didn’t know how.

“So this is it,” a wyvern named Thunderfang muttered. It wasn’t very loud, but his voice echoed in the quiet of the circular room. His eyes were deep and sad beneath the bony plate on his forehead. It, along with his bright yellow scales, identified him as a thunder wyvern. “Tomorrow we leave, and what’s the grand strategy from the Hurricanes?” He spat out a small bolt of electricity, which crackled across the stone floor, illuminating the nests around him. “Get involved in a new war; because the last one turned out so well for us.”

Crystal whimpered softly at Talon’s side.

Thank you for making us all even more depressed, Talon thought as she looked around. Nearly every head in the barracks was bowed as the weight of their situation began to sink in. I thought squadron leaders were supposed to help the morale of their warriors, not destroy it. She took a deep breath to steady herself and then rose and walked toward Thunderfang’s nest.

The scraping of her claws against the stone floor seemed to echo in the dark room, drawing the eyes of the rest of the cluster. Some of them watched her with morbid curiosity, others with what could only be described as hopeless hope. They knew that nothing would change what was happening, but still they yearned for some kind of reassurance.

It was that second kind of look, especially the one she was getting from Crystal, that drove Talon forward, even though she had no idea what she was going to say.

When she reached the edge of Thunderfang’s nest, Talon waited a few moments to be sure that she had everydragon’s attention, and then she said the first thing that came to mind, “Look at the mark on your back.” She gestured with a wing at his tribal tattoo.

It depicted a female wind wyvern, hovering in front of the full moon, with a walled city beneath her talons, just above the maneuvering frills that extended from the base of Thunderfang’s tail.

“Do you really need me to tell you the story behind your own clan’s emblem? How Sudden Storm’s tactical genius captured dozens of Panthera’s cities?” Talon looked away and swept her gaze across the other wyverns in the barracks. “Each of you, think of your own emblem. They all show a great hero whose bloodline lives on through you. How long have we fought against overwhelming odds, as the ground beneath us withered and died? We made the lions pay in blood for every inch of land they’ve taken from us. Do you really think the Ancestors are going to betray us now?” She gestured to Crystal Sky. “Are we somehow insulting Shimmering Horizon by surrendering a land that has become impossible to defend?”

Crystal twisted her head around to look at the tattoo on her back, a female fire wyvern, surrounded by an aura of flames. Silently, Crystal looked back at Talon and shook her head, the barest hint of a smile on her face.

Talon smiled back. “That’s right. We all know she’d be proud of our decision. The Ancestors and the Storm have watched over us this long. What makes you think they won’t continue to do so? One final campaign, for the sake of our new alliance, and then we can rebuild our dwindling race.”

She turned her back to Thunderfang and spread her wings so that he could see her own marking. Five wyverns faced each other in a circle. The wings of two, a venom and a wind wyvern, extended out, and the ink of their wings faded right as they connected with Talon’s real wings. Similarly, the maneuvering frills of two more, a fire and an ice wyvern, were connected to her own. Only the thunder wyvern at the top of the circle remained completely on her back. Behind the five swirled a hurricane, the ultimate symbol of teamwork between the five types. “Wouldn’t Refraction be proud of us for deciding to fight alongside our new allies? After all, they might not be wyverns, but they are dragons, just like us.”

Thunderfang sighed and gave her a resigned smile. “ ‘All things grow old and eventually die. When this new way of life does as well, we must have courage to leave it behind and embrace the future,’ ” he quoted one of Refraction’s most famous speeches.

Talon smiled gratefully and brushed the tip of her wing across his cheek before turning back to face the rest of the barracks. “I don’t care if we only have seven swarms of able fighters, or if we are the youngest and least experienced cluster among them.” She ran the thumb of her wing across the large ‘X’ shaped scar on her chest, marking her as a Junior Wing, fresh out of training. “The future of our species depends on us, and by the Ancestors and the Storm, we will not fail!” She stomped her foot in emphasis.

Around her, looks of hopelessness slowly lifted. Talon noticed a few more weak smiles.

She smiled back, projecting far more confidence than she actually felt. “So offer a prayer to your honorable dead and then rest well, because tomorrow is a new beginning for us all.” She swept her gaze across the room one last time before walking back to her nest.

“Thank you,” Crystal Sky whispered. “I think we all needed to hear that.”

Talon Wind shrugged. In truth, she was no more confident than Thunderfang, but if they really were flying out to their deaths, they may as well do it with their heads held high.