Morrowseer allowed them to rest for a short while. He didn’t speak. His dark eyes glowered at all of them, and occasionally he glanced back in the direction of the volcano.
All too soon, he gathered himself and said, “Let’s go,” and then they were all flying once again.
Rain. Thunder. Aching wings. Raindrops filled Starflight’s eyes. Lightning blazed too close to his tail.
Off to his left, Squid was complaining loudly, but no one could hear him over the storm, or else no one had any energy to respond.
Starflight was starting to think that drowning wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, after all, when he saw Morrowseer tilt his wings and begin sailing downward.
Land had appeared in front of them quite suddenly; Starflight hadn’t been able to see it through the clouds and rain. Now he saw a coast lined with jagged cliffs, steep and rocky and plunging straight into the sea. Behind them jutted sharp peaks like dragons’ teeth, some of them tipped with snow, extending in a relentless line across the horizon.
The Claws of the Clouds Mountains.
His heart sank. He’d hoped they were near the southern coast and the rainforest, but this had to be Pyrrhia’s northern edge, where the SkyWings ruled. Too close to Queen Scarlet’s palace. Too far for him to fly back to his friends … It would take days, and he’d have to travel alone through the Sky Kingdom and the Mud Kingdom.
I’m sorry, Sunny. I can’t do it. I can’t find my way back to you.
His wings felt like glaciers, slow and heavy and dragging him down, as he followed Morrowseer and the others to the cliff top in the driving rain. Bare rocks scraped beneath his claws when he landed, and he bent forward, gasping for breath.
Squid sprawled out flat on his back, groaning with pain, and Ochre immediately began sniffing the rocks as if he were hoping to startle out some prey. Flame was the only dragonet who wasn’t breathing heavily.
Starflight looked up and caught Morrowseer studying the sea behind them again. He had a weird flash of intuition that made no sense.
“Is someone … following us?” he asked Morrowseer.
“That’s none of your concern,” Morrowseer answered. He spread his wings and pointed down the coast. Through the storm, Starflight could barely see the glow of firelight coming from a cave in the cliffside.
“What is it?” Fatespeaker asked.
“The most remote outpost of the SkyWing army,” said Morrowseer. “Their assignment is to guard against attacks from the north, in case Queen Glacier ever decides to try this approach to the palace. There are no other dragons for miles. This is your test.”
They all stared at him, uncomprehending.
“What is?” Starflight finally asked. The wind ripped his voice away.
“You want us to kill them,” Viper guessed. She arched her poisonous tail and flexed her claws. “All of them?”
“I don’t want to,” Squid whined. “What if someone bites me?”
“Shut up or I’ll bite you,” Flame said. He looked deeply rattled, as if he’d never expected to be asked to kill members of his own tribe. Starflight wondered suddenly where all their parents were, and whether these dragonets dreamed of home and family the way his friends had.
“No, you’re not here to kill them,” Morrowseer snapped. “You’re the dragonets of the great prophecy, remember? Your test is to act like it.” He pointed to the outpost. “Go in there, tell the guards that you are the real prophesized dragonets, and convince them to switch their alliance from Burn to Blister.”
In the shocked silence that followed, a hurricane-force wind came howling up and tried to throw them all off the cliff. Starflight dug in his talons and made himself as small as he could.
“Just — convince them,” Viper shouted at Morrowseer, raindrops flying as she shook her head. “A bunch of strange SkyWings. So instead of killing them, we’re going to ask them to kill us.”
“I foresee that this is going to go really, really badly,” Fatespeaker yelled over the wind.
“Me too,” cried Ochre. “Maybe I have special NightWing powers, too.”
“They’re going to kill me!” Squid shouted. “SeaWings and SkyWings are enemies! If you send me in there, I’m dead!”
Morrowseer’s expression suggested that he wouldn’t be terribly devastated by that.
“If you can’t survive this,” he rumbled, “then you’re useless for the prophecy anyway.” He pointed at Fatespeaker. “You, stay here. We’ll see how well that one does, this time.” He flicked a claw at Starflight.
Starflight wanted to melt into the rocks. He wanted to leap off the cliff into the sea. He wondered how far he would get if he bolted for the mountains right now. Would the journey to the rainforest be any worse than walking into a SkyWing guardhouse and announcing himself as one of the dragonets Queen Scarlet had lost not long ago?
“Won’t they just take us prisoner?” he asked Morrowseer. “And take us back to the Sky Palace?”