Chapter Text
The clear night sky of the Sandwing Kingdom was beautiful, yet the sandwing wasn’t able to enjoy it as he rushed through the palace of the Sandwings halls to the main courtyard where the blood bath was taking place. As he finally made it to the courtyard, the sandwing was horrified to see how many Sandwing Soldiers were lying on the ground, standing in the center of it all was his older sister. If anyone had told the sandwing that his sister would kill anyone, he would’ve laughed and called them crazy, yet one looked into his sister's obsidian eyes and the sandwing prince knew she had lost it. “Jasmine! What are you doing?!” the prince yelled, trying to take a step towards his sister. “These lizards were in my way..” Jasmine spat angrily before giving her brother a deadly smile, “Though I see the very dragon I was looking for has come straight to me..” the sandwing prince was confused at Jasmine's words, “What do you mean-” the prince’s words were cut off as Jasmine tried stabbing him with the poisonous bard at the end of her tail.
Starfruit gasped as she woke up from the strange dream she was having. Sitting up, she looked around her room.
It was the same as it had been every other night, the dressers filled with books, scrolls and bottles of ink, maps lined her walls and so did constellation charts. Taking a few deep breaths Starfruit looked out her window, night had just fallen.
“Looks like I’ll have to wait for later to ponder on that dream.” Starfruit thought grimly as she got out of her bed and walked over to the desk near her bed and grabbed a leather pouch and put it around her neck.
The pouch held a few of her scrolls she had for homework.
As Starfruit walked through the halls of the Nightwing University her mind went to the strange dream she had. “It could be a vision, but can nightwings be in the mind of the dragon they are having visions of?” Starfruit's thoughts were interrupted by a loud voice in her head “STARFRUIT!” Starfruit turned around to see a Nightwing running directly at her. “Wait! Constellation stop!” StarFruits warning went nowhere as Constellation toppled onto Starfruit before wrapping her wings around her in a makeshift hug. “I’m guessing Snowleopard sent you a letter?” Starfruit asked her friend who nodded happily. “Yeah! How’d you guess?”
“Well for starters the happy thoughts in your mind, and you always topple me into a hug when they write a letter to you.” Starfruit said with an amused smile. “Alright, that’s fair.” Constellation said, still grinning happily. “Did you get the history essay done yet?”
Starfruit nodded before taking out a thick scroll from the leather pouch around her neck and handed it to Constellation.
“It took me ages to find a scroll on the history of the royal nightwing lineage, but I finally found it.” Starfruit said, thinking back to the hours she spent in the library looking for the history scrolls. Constellation laughed a bit, “I can imagine, most of the nightwing in this section of the school takes history class.”
Starfruit nodded in agreement.
After a few years of exploration of the old nightwing kingdom, the nightwings that lived in the rain forest decided to rebuild their old kingdom.
Thankfully their queen at the time Queen Glory agreed to let them rebuild their kingdom and become one tribe again. The only issue with that was, who would be queen?
It took the nightwings a few months to find a dragon who could fill the role of queen, and as luck would have it they found her.
As Starfruit walked through the halls of the university, she passed a portrait of queen Wisdomseeker, the new Nightwing queen. Starfruit liked Queen Wisdomseeker, she was fair and kind. She allowed all nightwings, even nightwing hybrids, to come live in the nightwing kingdom.
Starfruit was thankful for that, since many of the older nightwings didn’t want hybrids into their tribe. While hybrids were still rare to see in the tribe, nightwings like Starfruit who were the off springs of a nightwing and rainwing were considered tampered blood to the older nightwings.
“I wonder if father is doing okay?” Starfruit thought. While hybrids were allowed in the nightwing kingdom, both Queen Glory and Queen Wisdom Seeker agreed that it wouldn’t be ideal for rainwings to live in the nightwing kingdom. Starfruit thought back to the day she said goodbye to her father to live in the nightwing kingdom temporarily to study in their university.
“If I’m honest, I hate advanced writing.” Constellation said, snapping Starfruit out of her thoughts. “Really? I thought you enjoyed writing?” Starfruit said, mentally shaking away the sad memories. “I do..it’s just the teacher has such awful thoughts.” Constellation replied grimly.
Starfruit could agree on that, the advanced writing teacher Blackout was a bitter old dragon.
He hated everything, any writing that wasn’t perfect he’d fail and make the dragon redo it.
Starfruit didn’t like Blackout, and it was clear the feeling was mutual with him.
Every student on the university's campus knew Blackout hated hybrids and any non-nightwing.
It was clear he was one of those dragons who thought their tribe was superior and believed everyone should bow to them, “Or is it that he wants everyone to bow only to him?” Starfruit thought as they walked. “Most likely, I bet he thinks he would be a better queen than Wisdomseeker.” Constellation agreed with Starfruit's thought.
“Okay you don’t have to reply to every single thought I have..” Starfruit said with a frown.
“I don’t, I try to tune out your sad, homesick thoughts.”
The color changing scales the lines her face and neck turned a rose color which made Constellation bust into giggles. “There’s no need to be embarrassed, it’s okay to have those thoughts.”
“I know, it’s just weird when someone else knows about them.” Starfruit explained, still embarrassed.
“You could ask for one of those sky fire necklaces.” Constellation replied with a smile that Starfruit returned while thinking back to when they first brought in the Sky fire necklaces.
She remembered how the Headmaster explained that the necklaces will help keep cheating from happening, and that anyone who wants to keep their thoughts private should come to her.
Starfruit then thought about how all the teachers had the skyfire necklace except Blackout.
Once they were in Advanced English Starfruit and Constellation sat beside another nightwing who was invested in the scroll they were reading.
“Hi Astropos, what are you reading?” Starfruit asked the nightwing who looked up at them.
“I’m reading about an ancient legend of three Sandwing siblings,” Astropos explained.
“Really? What’s the legend about?” Starfruit asked, thinking about the dream she had.
“Well the legend goes that about a thousand years after the scorching, the first Sandwing Queen had three dragonets. I think their names were Sandstorm, Jasmine, and Adenium” Astropos explained, “Both Jasmine and Sandstorm were animus’s, and one day before the Adenium was going to challenge their mother Jasmine killed almost half the royal guard before her brother casted a huge spell that sealed her away.”
Both Starfruit and Constellation had horrified looks on their faces, “Why would Jasmine do that?” Constellation asked Astropos, who shrugged his wings.
“I don’t know, maybe her magic caused her to lose her soul and she went mad. The legend isn’t really clear about it.”
“What did Sandstorm seal her in?” Starfruit asked, she thought back to her dream where the sandwing that was surrounded by dead sandwing guards, her name was Jasmine too.
“No clue, the legend doesn’t say what he sealed her into, but it does say that after he sealed her away Sandstorm just disappeared and was never seen again.” Astropos answered back, his answer making Starfruit even more nervous.
She started to worry that her dream was really a vision, and that Jasmine and Sandstorm were going to do something.
“I don’t think you should worry about two dragons that are most likely dead.” Constellation thought, giving Starfruit and reassuring smile.
Starfruit smiled back, deciding that she would definitely get herself a skyfire necklace.
“Sorry, but I prefer my thoughts to be in secret.” Starfruit thought to Constellation who gave her a piqued look before sighing while thinking, “No need to apologize, and I shouldn’t have given you that face since I did give you the idea about the necklace.”
Before they could continue their conversation the other students walked into the classroom, followed by Blackout walking in with his signature scowl on his face.
“Greetings everyone, I hope everyone studied for today's test.” Blackout said, his tone apathetic.
“Does he even care if any of us fail or not?” Starfruit wondered as Blackout grabbed a box from his desk that had enough skyfire necklaces for all the nightwings in the class.
“If I catch any of the mind readers in this class not wearing a necklace I will make sure you fail this test alongside this class.” Blackout said, before a nasty sneer grew on his face, “Though I doubt I’d have to worry about that since this class has so many hybrids in it.”
Starfruit frowned when looking around, noticing how there were a few hybrids in the class, mainly nightwing/rainwing hybrids.
Frowning Starfruit knew that Blackout was implying the fact that Nightwing hybrids had weakened mind reading and prophecy powers.
As Blackout handed both Starfruit and Constellation their necklaces, he continued his nasty comments, “It’s such a shame that our new queen allowed these nasty blood traitors to even exist in the Nightwing Kingdom.”
Starfruit took a few quiet deep breaths, she knew it would be a bad idea for her to get angry and yell at Blackout when he said these things.
“Don’t get mad, you’d just be giving him what he wants.” Starfruit thought while calming herself down, she knew Blackout wanted her or any of the other hybrid students to lash out so he could kick them out of his class.
After Blackout handed out the necklaces he then grabbed a dozen scrolls that Starfruit could guess were the tests and started passing them around.
“Once everyone has a scroll, you may begin your test.” Blackout said, a scowl on his face most likely at the fact that no one gave him a reaction to his words.
As Starfruit worked on her test, she felt her mind start to hurt a bit with images of the same dragon that was called Jasmine flashing through her kind before images of a sandwing she hadn’t met yet started to flash through her mind.
“Who was that?” Starfruit thought frantically as the images stopped flashing through her head.
Giving her head a little shake Starfruit went back to her test, she needed to focus so she could pass and get the satisfaction of seeing Blackout mad.
After she finished Starfruit rolled up her scroll and gave it to Blackout who still had his scowl from earlier on his face.
Starfruit then gave him the skyfire necklace, tensing up as the minds of the other students that had finished like her came rushing in.
“Looks like someone can’t handle a few dragon's thoughts, maybe you should go see the campus healer.” Blackout thought to Starfruit, a nasty sneer replacing his scowl.
Starfruit felt her anger rise, but she simply nodded and left the room and started walking to the healers temple.
Starfruit took a few deep breaths, she was used to Blackout’s nasty comments so she didn’t understand why they upset her so much.
“It’s because you believe what he says about hybrids being inferior to normal nightwings.” A dark part of her mind whispered.
Starfruit tried to shove that thought back down, she hated thinking that Blackout was right.
“We aren’t inferior, our abilities are just a bit weaker.” Starfruit thought while taking a deep breath, calming herself down.
When she got to the healers tower, Starfruit opened the door to see an older dragon counting a pile of roots.
“Hey Hearthealer.” Starfruit said to the older dragon who looked up and gave Starfruit a warm smile.
“Hello Starfruit, is something wrong?” Hearthealer asked while walking over to Starfruit.
“I just need something to deal with my headache.”
Hearthealer nodded before walking back over to her desk and grabbing a jaw that held swordleaf roots in it before giving one to Starfruit.
“Are you not sleeping enough?” Hearthealer asked as Starfruit ate the swordleaf root.
“Yeah, I’ve had a strange dream but other than that nothing. Why do you ask?”
Starfruit asked, giving Hearthealer a curious look.
“Well I’ve had many students come in with headaches due to lack of sleep from studying for tests.” Hearthealer explained, a disapproving look on her face.
“I’m going to start throwing scrolls at those professors, especially Blackout!” Hearthealer exclaimed with a scowl when she mentioned Blackout's name.
“He keeps giving the other professors the idea to give out extra homework, telling them it helps make the students pass the test.” Hearthealer snorted while rolling her eyes before she turned back to Starfruit who was happy as her headache soon disappeared.
“What was your strange dream about?” Hearthealer asked.
“Well in the dream I was a sandwing prince, I was rushing through the halls of the Sandwing palace until I came across a dragon that had dead soldiers surrounding her.” Starfruit explained, her brows furrowing as she recalled the dream, “I asked her what she was doing before she tried to kill with her scorpion tip, then I woke up.”
As Starfruit explained her dream, she decided to leave out the part where she knew that the dragon who killed the soldiers was her sister in the dream.
“That is an interesting dream, you must have eaten something weird.” Hearthealer said, a concerned look on her face.
“Maybe, I did try Stonemakers cooking yesterday.” Starfruit said while thinking back to the fried fish that Stonemaker gave her and how strange it tasted.
“Well that could be what caused your strange dream.” Hearthealer said the concern on her face was being replaced by a kind smile.
“Yeah that was probably it, I should head back to class.” Starfruit said, not wanting to worry Hearthealer about Starfruit's theory that her dream was instead a vision or about the legend Astropos told her.
“Alright then, enjoy the rest of your night.” Hearthealer said before going back to her work.
Starfruit nodded before leaving the tower and heading back to her class.
Later that night Starfruit headed into the campus library to find anything she could about the three sandwing siblings.
“I know they are most likely dead, but I still need to know.” Starfruit said as she started reading all she could about the history of the Sandwing Kingdom.