Queen Moorhen was never this anxious when delivering edicts. Many of which in the past held just as much weight.

  But this was different; it had to be given out personally.

  Scrolls were way more efficient, but there couldn’t be any confusion or interpretations this time.

  She barely even had a night to plan what to say, and even that short time passed by too quickly.

  As soon as morning came she had as many dragons present that could fit in the clearing before the lake, all grumpy from being awoken or angry after losing a battle.

  “MudWings! As of today you are forbidden from attacking the IllusionWings!” This was straightforward enough, but the problem was what came after.

  Some of them already knew what that meant. After muttering about the name of the new tribe they already started complaining. It was almost certain they were thinking this was a script given by them after winning so decisively.

  Moorhen had to silence the guards getting riled up by their daring.

  Everything had to be addressed here to prevent them from trying anything stupid.

  “That’s crazy! We just need to block their strange attacks and get rid of their pets!” One of the younger MudWings shouts angrily.

  Everything had much more time to set in now. Moorhen could feel her chest tightening at the mention of ‘pets’.

  “That’s why I’m delivering this edict myself! A group of MudWings provoked this attack!” She answered with a convenient excuse, knowing this would have happened eventually regardless of if they started it or not.

  Moorhen was starting to see why queens didn’t like giving edicts this way. It was hard not to disdain their own subjects while having to picture their foolish thoughts on the spot, for their own good.

  If she mentioned which dragons caused this exactly, their lives would basically be ruined even if they got off that island; she also knew at the same time that any of these dragons would have done the same thing themselves.

  “And, most importantly, absolutely, NO EATING scavengers. Just imagine yourselves eating tiny dragons. They are intelligent!” Moorhen announces clearly and concisely to make sure they hear it right..

  “Those of you that took part in the recent battle saw them working with the IllusionWings, and I’m confident the brightest among you can put together what those MudWings did to provoke this. So don’t do it again!”

  …

  That should have been the end of it, but no sooner than the crowd dispersing was the entire community divided like fire and ice.

  Moorhen was left aghast after hearing just how much of a problem it turned into.

  “What in the moons is so hard to accept about scavengers?! It takes more energy to catch the damn things than they provide!” She paced and ranted to her siblings who were unqualified to provide an answer.

  One side is trying to completely deny everything, while the other extreme had dragons that couldn’t handle the weight of the revelation and chose the easy way out—of everything.

  But it thankfully mellowed over the course of the day.

  She thought things might finally return to some semblance of normal, before one of her aides came in to destroy it once again.

  “My queen! The border scouts have caught glimpses of IceWings and SandWings flying this way!” They shouted in a rush. “They’ll arrive in a couple days at their current speed!”

  ‘IceWings and SandWings… It has to be Blaze.’ Moorhen thought.

  She couldn’t think of anything they could possibly gain from doing this right now.

  “That runt just had to choose now to send her dragons to their deaths.” She sighed.

  It wasn’t a matter of whether those IllusionWings were going to fight them or not. There’s no way they would let them get close to the scavengers. Even if not…

  Moorhen was aware all it would take was to say they were here to burn down the scavenger dens looking for treasure.

  Emperor Stormlight looked over the camp on the beach with busy thoughts.

  Everything was going smoothly.

  One of the scouts lost to the rainforest returned, followed by the rest shortly after.

  Not only were they rescued, but Lightweaver somehow took over the forest dragons’ leadership and sent the prisoners back with samples of a dart weapon they employed.

  Stormlight needed him for something else, though. And since the ‘RainWings’ really were vegetarians they aren’t a problem in the first place.

  Even Gale, the dragon that was mainly only here to be a translator, was rolling around on the sand out of boredom after his human companion visited one of the native cities.

  Field was a package deal, but he had to acknowledge that no one else would have faced a dragon head-on alone with just a bow. Stormlight knew they could be fast, but that was borderline unbelievable; even the ones that sparred dragons using just a sword only did so because the dragons had to hold back.

  Subcommander Eno was closer to what Stormlight expected the most useful human would have been.

  He focused on his four dragons instead of taking reckless actions. Though his group didn’t appear all in favor of this.

  “I want to go home. This wasn’t what I wanted..” One of the four whines on the ground, sounding ill.

  Stormlight could only sigh because it was inevitable for morale to drop when so many of them signed up expecting to only face bandits.

  He couldn’t keep trying to brush it aside by repeating justice over and over.

  Eno didn’t waste time to show that he indeed deserved the title of Subcommander.

  He noticed the slumping dragon and rubbed the top of their head.

  “I’ll make sure you get home. Just a little bit more.”

  The dragon seemed to stop moping after that, but Stormlight noted that it would be best to send the reluctant back soon.

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  Liberating an entire continent will take a while and be inefficient without a motivated force.

  Still, he was flashing back to the meeting he just left. These foreign dragons weren’t completely different from them.

  He could vividly remember when a dragon tried lying to him, and this didn’t feel the same. They really did seem not to know about humans, as dumb as that sounded, it felt true.

  So he made the decision to send some of the more open-minded northward, presumably where more of these MudWings resided. It would be a good opportunity to have them accept that things were more complicated.

  Then, he sent the first scout saved from the rainforest back to retrieve Lightweaver for something else he had planned. He could definitely find a way to slip out for a day at least.

  …

  Gale was unhappy being told to venture even further into this swamp and ‘learn’ about the new dragons.

  So what Field thinks they can be good? There was nothing to learn that wouldn’t be infuriating.

  But Commander Ashwind led him along with a few other dragons and humans into the heart of this swamp, until they were eventually walking down a dried path of dirt surrounded by mucked up water on each side.

  There were ‘houses’ made of mud strewn across the place too.

  The dragons themselves mostly had the sense to hide, but some that didn’t were just on the ground casually eating animals.

  Commander Ashwind openly displayed the revulsion and contempt others managed to keep hidden.

  They ate like beasts. Gale and the group knew that any dragon back home publicly eating like that would be shamed, but they had to quickly look elsewhere as it started turning to anger when they began imagining a human victim.

  But he knew what they were supposed to be doing, and he seems to be the only one that wants to even try.

  He didn’t know how to get anywhere, so Gale breathed and then shouted “I SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE! IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, ASK ME!”

  Nothing changed at first, but then a few of the MudWings slowly crept out, clearly wanting answers more than the urge to hide.

  “What do you want from us!” One demands in a cracking voice.

  “For you to treat scavengers with the respect they deserve. If you can do that much then we don’t care what else you do.” Gale answered, still navigating their unpleasantly demeaning word for humans.

  “Can they really think? What are scavengers to you?” The same one follows immediately with another barrage of questions.

  “Equals, obviously! We can only get this far together.” Gale declares pridefully.

  “What about the MudWings that went to your island! I know Sepia! Sepia wouldn’t do something that bad!” A different, younger MudWing interjects.

  “Maybe not to dragons…” Gale muttered under his breath, but it was almost drowned out by the chorus of commotion that erupted right after.

  “So THEY’RE the ones that caused this?! Who cares about them?!” Some start clamoring louder and louder.

  Gale was getting the feeling that somehow blame was shifting hypocritically.

  Some of them looked more than gluttonous enough to take their place if they were the ones to reach the island first.

  Sepia has been in a cell for a couple days now. It was a terrible two days.

  She knew exactly what was coming and that she deserved it; the nightmares agreed.

  The wait was grating, and she thought another day was going to pass like this.

  But something was different this time. The little piece of metal holding the prison door shut was all rusted and slightly bent, as if she could push it right open.

  It didn’t look that way before.

  Not only that, but all the dragons were gone, leaving just a scavenger to watch over.

  Upon pushing on the door even a little bit, the metal bends and the door opens almost too easily. It would feel uncanny to anyone not overtaken by a rush of emotions preceding a chance of escape.

  She could just get rid of the scavenger and have plenty of time to plan and escape, but– but it would only be escaping justice by repeating the same crime.

  It would be terrible for them to punish other MudWings if they can’t punish her.

  She soon started regretting it when not long after, the door opened with purpose.

  …

  Emperor Stormlight had the prisoner that set this whole thing in motion set in front of a crowd. It was no mystery what they expected. But he had to somehow convey that the rest of the MudWings were ‘reasonable’. It was too much to ask given the Founding tales.

  “Before we begin, I would like to ask witnesses present not to project what these dragons did onto the rest of their kind. There will be an explanation given out later as to why.” He addressed broadly, as ineffective as it might be. Perhaps it only agitated the crowd that were only here to witness ‘justice’.

  “What else can they be?! What kind of monster does that!” One of the dragons ignites.

  “Yeah! I found one of the survivors of Frontier wandering around in the wilderness! Do you know what they did when I saved them?!” Another on the opposite side of the crowd snarls, “They screamed at me not to eat them!”

  Stormlight was slightly amazed that the humans were the only ones left that weren’t chanting “Kill the monsters”, but didn’t get surprised by something he more than expected.

  …

  Sepia couldn’t understand a word of the collective yelling, but it wasn’t something she felt needed translation to understand.

  Each dragon had their own distinct pattern to recognize them by and a look of hate which even the scavengers showed less of. The exceptions didn’t matter much to the bigger picture.

  She didn’t know how it was going to happen, and remained anxiously oblivious until a glint caught her gaze, reflecting off a shiny metal blade being swung down by a bulkier dragon.

  The edge sliced through like butter and that was– should have been the end of it.

  Sepia didn’t feel pain from a botched attempt, but she was looking down at what was definitely her head on the ground. Even the cheering was fading into background noise now.

  She didn’t think dying would be that painless, but now she was imagining ghost stories turning out to be real.

  “I didn’t think it would work this well. Look at you thinking you’re dead.” One of the dragons behind her chortles.

  “What? How can I not be dead?!” She frantically pointed down at her obvious body.

  “That’s an illusion to appease the masses. I don’t think I need to tell you that if you ever return, the next time won’t be.” The dragon continues sternly.

  “Then my siblings?!” Sepia was jittery with relief and excitement, brushing aside the matter of what kind of magic they had to pull this off.

  “I’ll just say you’re lucky you had a chance at all. All of you had an easy test, hard to fail, and one of you still managed to fail.” He snorts. “They didn’t learn and tried to repeat their mistake again.”

  “Ah. Okay…” Sepia whined while being directed away. She noticed the dragon looking somewhere at the back of the crowd, at a patternless dragon that looked much closer to a NightWing, but she was swiftly moved too far away to see any more detail.

  One sibling was—gone forever. But at least her next encounter confirmed that she could still bring one back home, it was one more than she could ask for after getting them into a mess herself.

  She hoped Newt wouldn’t be devastated by it, or maybe blame her, as he should—like every other MudWing should.

  “Sister! You’re alive!”

  “Yes.. But it’s just us now.” She replied blankly.

  “Maybe we should just be happy there’s an ‘us’ remaining. I thought they were trying to starve me to death.” He complains, “Let’s go home and find a nice cow or something. I don’t think I like scavengers anymore…”

  Sepia retches on the spot.

  ‘Did he pass the ‘test’ by luck?’

  “I-I-I don’t think I can handle meat anymore.” She says while shuddering. It was ruined for good, now meat will remind her of the feeling of murdering tiny beings with feelings.

  It was so horrible that it was comforting to think of it as murdering.

  “Did they turn you into a RainWing?” He cluelessly makes a joke at the expense of non-present RainWings.

  “You really still don’t know the scavengers were intelligent?!” Sepia didn’t like springing it on his blissful ignorance right away, but dragons have already exhausted their supply of ignorance now. Or maybe it was selfish? Maybe she didn’t want to atone alone.

  But at least he shut up about being hungry… And now he stopped responding at all.

  Sepia started to lament not waiting until they left the island before breaking him like this.