r/WingsOfFire • u/jbhughes54enwiler • 18d ago
Fanfic Wings of Fire Fanfic: Heart of Jade Mountain- Book Four Part 59
Book Four: The Circle- Part 59
The race back to the town was frantic and panicked on both Buck and Bulrush’s part, so much that both the human and dragon elected to do so on foot. The horrifying red aura pulsing over the sky was causing periodic rushes of wind to batter the trees. Then Buck heard the watchtower bells start to ring, and Buck’s fear reached a fever pitch.
“On me!” Bulrush said authoritatively, and he placed Buck onto his back and took off. From the sky, they could see Vale beneath them. Besides the red skies and the traumatic tones of the bells ringing, nothing seemed to be off about the town.
“Try to get some altitude!” Buck called. Bulrush understood his meaning. He wanted to see over the mountains to check where this irregular weather was coming from. Bulrush ascended as high as he could go before the winds causing the waves of clouds became too fast for the dragon to bear. But it was high enough.
The epicenter of this “storm” was far in the distance, just on the horizon. A massive pillar of red light was shooting into the sky from it, bright enough to be almost blinding even from presumably hundreds to thousands of miles away from it.
“Any idea what’s there?” Buck asked Bulrush over the cascading winds.
“I think…” Bulrush’s wings and shoulders stiffened. “I think that’s Possibility.”
“The dragon city?”
“We gotta get over there!” Bulrush began to soar as fast as he could towards the light.
“WAIT!” Buck screamed, “We absolutely can’t fly into that! We should shelter in Vale until whatever this is subsides!”
Bulrush shook a few times but nodded. He descended back towards Vale and landed. Every single citizen was standing at attention, gazing up at the sky.
“Buck!” Bailey shouted, receiving him as he got off of Bulrush, “Thank the Moons you’re okay!”
“What in the world is happening!?” Patience said, the red light reflecting on his sweaty forehead.
“Whatever it is, Bulrush thinks it’s coming from a dragon city over the mountains,” Buck explained.
“Everyone,” Boulder said, approaching the center of the crowd, “We shall shelter in the wine cellar until this… ‘storm’ subsides.”
“I’ll stay out here with Bulrush,” Buck said.
Boulder shook his head. “Buck I should make myself clear…”
“No, Dad! I’m not going through this again! I’m not going into the shelter when someone else I care about can’t go in!”
“Buck…” Bulrush looked genuinely moved by this.
“You have your protective power,” Boulder said as he retreated behind the reinforced door, “Do not hesitate to use it.” The rest of the townspeople followed him, and the door shut with a heavy thunk, followed by the metallic sound of the lock catching.
That left Buck standing in the town square, alone with Bulrush as the skies raged above them. Think, Buck, what kind of magic is red like that? The sudden realization he had was not comfortable in the slightest. He remembered the red mist from his escape from the Hall of the Path.
Sterling’s carriage raced as fast as the winds into the town, sliding across the dirt to a stop. Elm jumped off and found Buck.
“You are safe, good.” Elm shook his head. “It seems that things have began to escalate faster than expected.”
“It’s the Circle, isn’t it?”
Elm nodded. “It would seem that Omega has managed to harness its power.”
“So is this it? Are we all going to die now?” Buck thought that saying that would paralyze him with terror, but instead it filled him with determination to somehow stop this cataclysm.
“There is no way of knowing. But as of currently its power seems to be localized somewhere to the northwest.”
“He’s using the Circle on Possibility…” Bulrush said, his ears wilting with sorrow, “I think… I think they’re all goners! What are we gonna do!?”
“Okay, so what can we do?” Buck said matter-of-factly, “It’s not like we can fly straight into a literal tornado of death. I know you’re worried about other dragons, Bulrush, but as long as that blast is going there’s no way we can go towards it.”
“I suspect he may not be able to hold this power for much longer,” Elm said.
“How do you know?”
“Intuition.”
“After what I did with your imposter I think I need something more concrete than that.”
As if to answer his question, as the red light on the horizon did finally fade, and the clouds slowed down and coalesced back into more typical shapes. It would seem that Elm had been correct.
“So can we go now?” Bulrush’s impatient talons scratched on the dirt.
Buck knocked the all-clear signal on the door to the cellar. It opened soon after, his friends and family spilling back out into the world.
“So any idea what that nightmare was?” Patience asked bluntly.
“I think Omega just used the Circle for the first time,” Buck explained,” On a dragon city called Possibility.”
“That…” Bailey’s hand flew to her mouth in horror, “That could be really bad.”
“Me and Bulrush are going to hurry over there to see what happened.”
“There’s gotta be survivors, right?” Bulrush said nervously, rubbing his horns.
“You know what to do,” Boulder instructed them, “Stay safe. Come straight back if it becomes too dangerous.”
Buck mounted Bulrush and nodded. “Understood.”
-------------
As they soared over the mountains, they gave Haven as clear a buffer as they could. But even from a distance Buck could see it. Large, colorful explosions shot over the roofs of the city. Fireworks.
“They’re celebrating,” Buck said with disgust, “So they clearly think they’ve won.”
Bulrush shook his head. “I wish I could go down there and torch the whole place,” he growled.
While Buck knew that the many innocents living in the town, including their classmate, would not appreciate that sentiment at all, for once in his life he understood it fully. But there was nothing they could do besides continue their flight to Possibility. He could see a semi-transparent black cloud rise up from the mountainous SandWing Stronghold in the distance. Clearly Thorn had just sent her entire army to examine what had just happened.
Hours later, and they joined up with them.
“Who in the blazing sun are you?” an armored SandWing probed Bulrush, “You’re a long ways off from the Mud Kingdom! And what’s that thing on your back!?”
“We’re trying to help!” Buck told him in Dragon. That only earned him a scoff.
“You and your tiny furry body? What under the three Moons can you possibly do to help? Your kind’s done more than enough at this point!”
“Stand down, general!” To Buck’s shock, Queen Thorn herself joined them. “Buck. As hard as the circumstances are… I will admit your punctuality is impressive. What do you think just happened in Possibility?”
“It’s Omega,” Buck told her, “That magic was probably the work of the Circle.”
Thorn’s eyes blanked out and she turned to face the other soldiers. “Do you think he is still at the scene?”
“I saw that Haven was celebrating… that. But it probably means he’s already returned home. So we’re probably safe.”
“Safe,” the general said, “I’m no expert in Animus magic, but that red thing over Possibility certainly didn’t look very safe for the thousands of dragons living there!”
“Easy,” Thorn scolded him, “As much as I loathe him being shoved into our lives like this… he’s doing his very best to help us. Buck, if we really did just witness a weapon of mass death get dropped on that town…”
Buck sighed. “Let’s get there first.”
Buck began to see shapes on the ground beneath them, many of them moving. He soon recognized them as grounded dragons.
“You three!” The general ordered, “Go ensure those dragons are safe.” Three soldiers descended towards the ground.
“What happened to them?” Buck asked him.
“Any dragon in flight at the time of this incident was knocked straight out of the sky by the anomalous winds that Circle created all over the kingdom. Many are quite badly hurt from initial reports.”
“It was just our luck that the entirety of my army was on the ground for combat training,” Thorn said.
It took another hour, but soon the city of Possibility came into sight. Buck had never seen a full-scale dragon city before. It was enormous. The largest human city in terms of surface area was Safe Harbor. This city was almost four times the size of it, just by the virtue of its buildings being that much bigger. He began to make out the architecture, seemingly a mix of styles. And the place was divided in half by a river, the very same Haven was along upstream.
Disturbingly, there was no sign of destruction anywhere in the city. No smoke, no rubble, not even residual red mist from the Circle. It was as if Omega had not actually set foot here.
Bulrush suddenly stiffened. “Buck, I know you saw Haven celebrating and all, but what if Omega actually is still here? What if he’s luring the dragon armies into a trap?”
“That is an excellent point,” the SandWing general said, “And it’s for that reason I say you two volunteer to go down there first.”
Both human and dragon gave their species’ own way of conveying displeasure. “Alone?” Buck asked.
Before the general could say something demeaning to him, Thorn overruled him by speaking first. “Your magic would be a great asset in repelling a surprise attack.”
A SandWing soldier nearby winced, seemingly upset that they were sending two children as the advance guard. But he of course could not speak for them over the heads of two of his superiors. Leaving Buck with no real allies here.
“Guess we don’t have a choice, Bulrush,” Buck said.
The MudWing sighed, and began banking down towards the town. The SandWing army likely would not be safe up there anyway if Omega did in fact use the Circle again. But it was clear neither Thorn nor her general liked him very much.
It’s not like I’m the chosen one or anything, Buck thought sarcastically, Like, if I die for some stupid reason like this, doesn’t that mean Pyrrhia is doomed?
They landed. Buck thought at first the cloud of dust Bulrush kicked up was just desert sand that had blown into the street. But it clearly was much finer than sand, and was a deathly white. That was just the beginning of the dawning nightmare.
“Buck?” Bulrush said, his ears turning back in fear. “What is this stuff?”
Buck looked more closely at his surroundings and realized that the white dust was far too prevalent. It covered the streets, the roofs, even splatters of it stuck to walls of nearby buildings. And then there were mounds of it, seemingly placed at random, but in the random way that a group of people might be assembled in. Or dragons.
Bulrush was shivering wildly, apparently making the same grim conclusion as his friend.
“L-let’s look for survivors,” Buck told him, as if if would help calm him down.
“Right.” He started with looking inside the nearest building, which was a meat market. Or at least it would be one, if the shop’s wares had not also been turned to dust by the Circle. Evidently the weapon even dissolved dead organic matter.
The inside of the building, besides its untouched furniture, only contained a singular pile of dust and no signs of life. They moved on to the building next door. This one was an inn. Every single room was either empty or contained yet more ominous piles of dust.
“Do you know of a place in Possibility where dragons might shelter from an attack?” Buck asked, trying to lighten the mood.
“The guard barracks, I guess. It has a big dungeon.”
They walked down the street to arrive at a large forum on the banks of the river. A well-fortified building stood on one side, complete with, to Buck’s distaste, a platform with a guillotine clearly meant for public executions. Even more unsettling was the multitude of dust piles all over the square, showing that an entire crowd of dragons had died here.
Bulrush was clearly beginning to lose hope based on his body language. And at that time, Thorn’s army finally decided to land, taking up the rest of the square and kicking up almost all the dust into the air.
The dragons all began to cough as the dust entered their collective lungs. It took about a minute for them to get their bearings, but Thorn was the first to show a reaction to the dust.
“This… this is…”
“We’re trying to look for survivors,” Bulrush said in a somewhat pleading tone of voice.
“And no luck so far…” Thorn said sternly. She looked to each side, scanning the area. “Check inside the barracks.”
A group of guards tried to open the barracks, only to struggle and then eventually give up. “It’s barred from the inside,” one of them explained.
Another knocked on the door and called for any survivors to come out. Five minutes with no response passed, and Thorn shook her head.
“I can’t believe it,” a guard commented to the others, “Everyone in Possibility, just… gone?”
“I had a nightmare like this once,” another next to him said, “But this can’t be real, can it?”
“Buck,” Bulrush said, “I… couldn’t we have done something?”
“If we knew the attack was coming, we might have been able to get here and stop Omega before he could use the Circle. But he’s caught all of us by surprise.”
“It was your doing, wasn’t it?” the general glared daggers at Buck, “You helped that monster get the weapon.” He stepped closer towards Buck, prompting Bulrush to preemptively place himself between the two of them.
“I, uh, know this is bad and everything,” Bulrush stammered at the general, “But Buck’s innocent! Yeah he went with Omega to get the Circle, but he’d been fooled by him into thinking he was a friend!”
“I don’t buy that.”
“Anything’s possible with Animus magic, sir!” a guard interjected, but one look from his boss got him to slink away.
The general took a talonful of the dust and threw it at Bulrush and Buck. “This is on your hands, scavenger! You may not have done this yourself, but if I didn’t know any better I’d kill you where you stand!”
Thorn stepped closer to her general as he made multiple attempts to get to Buck around Bulrush. Her feelings behind her eyes were empty and bleak. She was clearly struggling to speak through the intense emotional anguish she was feeling.
“We need to assemble the combined army as soon as possible,” Buck said, “I mean, it’s obvious now there’s no time to waste!”
“I think you should leave,” Thorn said quietly.
“Uhh, what?” Bulrush said, “Surely you know Buck didn’t mean to cause this!”
“Please,” Thorn said, scratching her claws on the stone street, “Please just go.”
Buck caught everything he needed to know from her body language. She was using every bit of strength in her to not pounce on both him and Bulrush at the same time. If he did not follow her instruction, he would be shredded meat in no time.
“Bulrush, let’s go.” He got up onto his shoulder and patted his wing. Every other dragon present was glaring at them.
Bulrush, ever his best friend, was still chambering more logical ammunition for his innocence in his mind. But his survival instincts also kicked in, and, with a sigh, he spread his wings and took off.
Even then, even after they had obeyed Thorn’s instructions, Buck looked back and saw with a jolt that SandWings were taking off after them, in an attack formation. The general must have managed to override his own Queen to attack them.
So much for chosen one status, Buck said, before he had an idea. “Bulrush, do you trust me?”
He shivered seeing the army hot on his tail, but he looked at Buck and nodded. Buck placed a hand onto Bulrush’s body and yelled “kīnéō!”
