#castled-writes

Nevertheless, she was clever and persistent, she was going to figure out how to take him with her and start their lives back in the Night Kingdom in peace. And do it all with as little magic as possible... she wanted to keep as much of Arctic’s soul as intact as possible, didn’t want to depend on his magic. She hadn’t needed to depend on Nightwing powers, and she’d still made it far despite her mother constantly attempting to control her every step in life.

“What are you thinking so hard about now? More enchanted item ideas?” She turned to the source of the voice; Even if the unique icy timbre of his voice was instantly recognizable to her, she didn’t mind looking at him and confirming what she already knew. The Icewing prince walked up and sat next to her, lips upturned in a playful smile.

She snorted, “I don’t need more ideas, but no. I’m thinking about how to sneak you out of here without using too much of your magic.”

“Magic isn’t an issue.” Foeslayer turned to Arctic sharply, eyes narrowed in irritation at how casually he spoke about his soul-destroying magic. The ice prince flinched back slightly, startled by her quick and sudden movement.

“Yes it is! It’s an issue to me because it eats away at your soul and I don’t want that, I don’t want to lose you or for you to lose your soul. So listen, I think I have a good plan...” she pulled out from under her wing a large bundle of soft, purple fabric, “we unfortunately just need one last enchantment and then you’ll never have to use your magic ever again. I promise.”

Arctic looked curiously at what he could identify as a Nightwing-made blanket dyed purple that was very large, large enough to swaddle an adult dragon, and seemed insulating. He guessed Foe had brought it with her and used it before he gave her the diamond earring. But he was confused now. “Foe, how will this help us? What kind of enchantment would I even put on it?”

He moved his gaze back to her and stared her back in her dark green eyes that lit up with determination. The nightwing smiled confidently, “This blanket can completely cover you, even while you’re flying, it’s that large, and if you can enchant it to behave like Rainwing scales and create a perfect camouflage to blend your form into the landscape... you’ll be free. You can fly back with me and the other Nightwings and nobody will notice.”

Arctic stared for a long time at Foeslayer, starstruck for a moment at how creative she could get; Never in a thousand years would this have crossed his mind to do. He had no doubt that if she were the animus here instead of unimaginative him, she’d be able to create unimaginably powerful items.

But while he was busy internally marveling at his partner, it became clear he took a little too long to respond because after blazes knew how long. Foeslayer spoke out again, meeker in tone now. “I mean, we can always find other ways to go about this, the blanket just seemed like the best to me but-”

“No no! The blanket plan is amazing! I can do it-” Arctic, took the expansive wad of purple fabric out of the Nightwing female’s talons and mentally recited his magical command to it. While in his claws, the blanket shifted from a flat purple to an iridescent purple. A part of him wanted to command the blanket to turn green but he felt that Foeslayer wouldn’t appreciate the action despite the sentiment behind it.

Arctic then got an idea, and this time it was Foeslayer who watched curiously as the Icewing unfurled the blanket over and around her, over them both, and all she heard from him was a soft chuckle. The confused Nightwing finally asked, “what’s so funny?”

Arctic’s piercing blue eyes glowed faintly in the dark cocoon of fabric, like a feline’s, as he delivered her his answer. “It’s big enough for us both.” Foeslayer just became more puzzled.

“I know, what about it?”

The Icewing hummed, “Just a fun fact for me- with this, I can sneak you into my room-” The Nightwing immediately interrupted him, “Wait- no, Arctic, I will not-”

“Not for that!” The ice dragon’s face flushed blue at the implication, that wasn’t what this was about. “It’s just... we can spend the night together, asleep together like proper mates.” Foeslayer’s expression softened, “Arctic...”

“I know! You could just sleep in your place like usual and I can do that too and sneak out under the blanket, and that after all of this we’ll be able to do that all we want but with less risk...” Foeslayer tilted her head questioningly, prompting him with a soft ‘but?’, he picked back up. “But I don’t want to wait another night when we can sleep together now.”

Both dragons were silent, motionless as they processed what they were saying. Foeslayer acted first, bumping her snout to Arctic’s and gently unwound the blanket from around both of them. Taking the enchanted blanket into her claws, she sighed and looked at him determinedly. “Alright, but I’ll go to you, not the other way around. Diamond will definitely notice if you aren’t in your room, meanwhile my mother, Starclaws, and Discretion won’t bat an eye. See you tonight.”

The nightwing stood up and unfolded her wings, taking off with the shiny blanket in her hands. Arctic watched as the green-tinted female left, sitting a while longer at the cliff. Tonight... Tonight and after, they could begin to be more of a couple beyond stolen moments. For once, the ice prince was eager to return to his room in the palace. Eager knowing it was his last, the Night Kingdom had to be an improvement over this place and Foeslayer would be there.

He’d gladly go wherever she went.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Foeslayer was glad that Icewings didn’t have night vision like Seawings or the Icewing guards would definitely have seen a floating, dark green eye roaming the halls silently. She had done her best to fold up the large blanket, to make it not drag on too long over the icy floors.

She couldn’t risk being careless now and having a patrolling Icewing that was expecting to step on cold, solid ice to step on a soft, ice-colored section of fabric. Or even potentially tear it, she didn’t know how the enchantment worked.

She finally reached what she could assume was Arctic’s room, the doors tall and carved in exquisite symbols. And the pair of armed guards at the door was a pretty good indicator. She mentally thanked Arctic for his moment of foresight to give her his freezing dagger, the Nightwing raised the blade and poked it’s tip outside the confines of the blanket.

Before either armed guard could notice the glinting metal of the item, she whispered ‘freeze’ twice, pointing the dagger’s end at a different guard with every repeated activation word. Both the Icewings were as still as statues, leaving Foeslayer ample time to walk past them and open the frozen doors to her lover’s room.

Arctic raised his head from his forelegs excitedly when he saw the door creak open, and smiled when nothing came through and yet the door closed on its own. He stood up and held out a talon, not surprised when a warm black talon materialized from thin air. “Oh? An invisible thief?”

Foeslayer let the blanket fade back to it’s iridescent sheen as she let it drop to the floor, “Perhaps, but all I’ll be stealing tonight is an innocent place beside you.”

Arctic used his spiked tail to lift the discarded fabric to his open claw, “Sneaky, will you be stealing me when the sun rises?” He playfully smiled, enjoying their game.

“Oh definitely, but I can’t steal you away right now. I’ve definitely spoiled you enough for one night, my cold prince.” Foeslayer smiled mischievously as Arctic mock-pouted at her and bumped his nose against hers in a playful attempt to make her ‘reconsider’.

The couple happily teased and flirted some more, illuminated by moonlight and an orb from the Gift of Light. Unworried about being caught, since the guards outside were still frozen.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Foeslayer woke up like clockwork the moment the first beams of sunrise hit her face, the sky fading from an inky blued blackness to the warm shades of dawn; orange, gold, and bloodied red. The sun cast the white landscape outside the window a brilliant white, which only made the forms of blackness and dots of white within these shapeless blobs of black more obvious. It was time.

She, none too gently, pushed out her wing and knocked her sleeping lover’s head to the side. “Arctic, we have to leave now.”

She stood up, not waiting for the soon ex-prince’s response. Foeslayer stretched and reached for the animused blanket. Meanwhile, Arctic was nursing a bruised cheek with a cold talon. “Could’ve been gentler, y’know.”

“I do know, but you also were sleeping like a rock and we can’t miss the others, I need to be with them for this to work, remember?”

Foeslayer had the blanket wrapped around herself, black scales already coated and turned to icy shades of pale blue and white, and leaving her seemingly disembodied head floating.

“You’re lucky I like you.” Arctic stood up and pushed the ice doors open, Foeslayer quipping back “Trust me, you’re the lucky one here” before covering her head in the veiling fabric and slipping out of the room into the hallways.

Arctic only became aware of her departure by the soft tapping of her claws on the ice. Sounds he knew to look for to follow her, imperceptible if you weren’t listening for the tapping to begin with.

As he was leaving, Arctic took his freezing dagger (that he’d gotten back from Foeslayer last night) and whispered “unfreeze” twice, not wanting to just leave the dragons frozen indefinitely. He tucked the blade under his wing and kept walking, moving quicker to lead the duo.

All the while, alert for any sign of his mother or... uhh, whatever his soon-to-be-ex-fiancé’s name was. Even now, he felt a bit guilty to forget her name but it wasn’t his fault that the quiet, noblewoman was so boring and forgettable!

The Icewing opened the doors to a balcony and flew off it, listening for the flapping of the hidden Nightwing female. “Arctic, we have to switch now-”

The disembodied voice almost startled him out of the air, it didn’t help that he came from beside him. He heard an invisible Foeslayer huff, “Astounding flight skills, prince. Now let’s land, I can say I overslept and are running late if anyone stops me to ask. You have to fly ahead if that happens though, Arctic.”

Both dragons lighted down, and Foeslayer quickly threw off the disguise. Arctic needed no prompting to be quicker as he slipped under the blanket quickly. The less time they spent grounded, the quicker they’d be gone.

The sooner they’d be able to be together in peace. As soon as the ice dragon was completely unseeable, Foeslayer flapped her wings and took off from the slushy ground, hearing the muffled wing flaps of her Arctic behind her.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Snowflake crushed a chunk of ice in her claws, the dragoness quickly ridding her talon of the slushed ice and paying no mind to the balcony railing with a missing ice section. She narrowed her eyes at the shrinking figures of black on the horizon, internally baring her teeth at the distinct lack of an additional white figure flying away with them.

“Don’t worry, one way or another, he’ll be gone. You won’t have to end up marrying him, not as long as I breathe. Wherever he is, wherever he hides within this frozen tundra that’ll be mine soon... I will personally find him and kill him.”

The moon-silver Icewing closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Exhaling a puff of coldness, her eyes open and apathetic again but in their cores, fragments of a soothed rage resided still. She replied quietly, though it sounded loud in the stillness of the morning.

“Thank you, Fox. I know you will, and I know you will be queen. There is no doubt from me about that.”

Snowflake focused her deep blue - nearly black - eyes on the horizon where the Nightwings were long gone. Her soothed wrath flaring up again, though her face didn’t twitch a muscle.

“Horrid though,” a slight tint of anger she only allowed herself to show with Snowfox seeping in, “He’d have left his mistress to die. What a selfish prick.”

The grey-blue Icewing beside Snowflake let out a huff, “What else should we have expected, he’s dimwitted and a spoiled prince. We’ll snuff him out some other way, besides... Diamond will bring him out of whatever hole he’s hidden in.” Snowfox turned to look at her partner in crime.

“Come on, Diamond should be waking up by now if you did your part right.” Snowflake shot an angry glare but soon schooled her face back into a quiet, indifferent mask of respectfulness.

“Of course.”

Neither scheming Icewing the wiser to the fact Arctic was, indeed, long gone.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Arctic learned this morning that dealing with any Queen was an unpleasant ordeal, it wasn’t just his mother that seemed intent on breathing down his neck but also Queen Vigilance. The Queen’s obsidian eyes felt like they were trying to see into his soul (or what was left of it by now) and see if he would be a threat.

It made his skin prickle with discomfort to be so examined; it was more uncomfortable than his mother’s gaze, at least she had been family. This was a stranger.

Nonetheless, he kept himself still as a statue beside Foeslayer and the other Nightwings whose names eluded him right now. He almost felt like reaching under Foe’s wing and grabbing the blanket to hide away from the vigilant queen.

It was Foeslayer’s tail brushing against his own in a light hold that kept him from doing so (a comfort and a warning).

“Allknowing”, the bejeweled dragoness spoke levelly, “you have not steered us wrong yet, good job. Arctic, I personally welcome you to the Nightwing Tribe and by extent, the Night Kingdom. We hope you’ll like it.”

Arctic more or less tuned out the rest of the meeting with the Queen until she finally dismissed him and Foeslayer. He breathed out cool mist into his forearm, letting out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. He lightly joked to Foeslayer, “She’s judgy, huh?”

Foeslayer blew out a smoke plume, “Oh absolutely. But that also makes her intimidating,” she shook her head and looked at the ice dragon, eyes lighting up again, “now, let’s go! We need to get you used to my house. It’s not much, not close to the sky, but something and enough.”

“As long as we are together, anything is enough, Foeslayer.”

The dragoness looked away, “Flattery will get you anywhere but none of that, we should go before the Queen of Shrewdness decides she wants us back in there.”

“Yeah.”

So, into the Night Kingdom flew a dragon of dark viridian shades followed by a glittering dragon of ice blue and white.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

And it had been just their luck how this mirror allowed them their isolationist lifestyle, the glass showing them whatever they desired to see. From past events like that of the Royal Seawing Massacre to even what some random Rainwing was up to in the nearby village. Overseer could oversee those around them and with enough time owning the mirror, realized another thing it could do…

Removing the small gem at the bottom and holding it… it would allow the dragon holding the gem to cast a spell as if they were an animus themselves. But only one enchantment; It could be specific and long-winded or short as a sentence but all as long as it was one.

Overseer would admit, they hadn’t realized this caveat at first. They had squandered their first spell rather vindictively, under the impression it wouldn’t be limited spells and the roses lining the mirror were merely decor. No… these roses were the enchantment timer.

And right now? Finally, fifty long years later the roses were budding and on the cusp of blooming once more. Overseer knew just what to do this time, how to use their spell. This time, there would be no wasting it on cursing anyone but themselves. The them of fifty years ago was a moron, but now Overseer was wiser.

Before the nightwing’s eyes, the mirror’s rose buds opened into full bloom. The thorn-vines weaving between them and along the rim a mere afterthought as Overseer grabbed the small gemstone at the bottom of the mirror’s handle and twisted it out of its confines. The quartz crystal growths holding the enchanted stone snapping and breaking off easily against the force of their claws.

It all would’ve gone perfectly, they would’ve wished for their own lack of mortality and thus be able to get as many enchantments as they should please.

But Overseer didn’t account for her to still linger and re-find them.

The nightwing held still, as elongated rainwing-like claws rested threateningly on their throat. The dark claws tapping along a beat on their windpipe but still too close to their arteries.

They held still as a clawed talon snaked its way to their own and plucked the mirror’s small gemstone from it, a wing’s starry underside covering their other talon that still clutched the enchanted mirror.

The hybrid atop them hummed as she examined the gem in her claws, steadily gripping Overseer’s throat tighter as she used their body as her perch… the dragoness notably younger than them but much stronger. She looked like she hadn’t aged a day since they cursed her, but that wasn’t right. They had seen her through that glass at the edge of death, and had been so sure she died. Yet here she was, digging her claws into their throat and easily having the upperhand.

Luster spoke in her ever soothing voice, though her voice now only made Overseer’s scales prickle with unease. “My, what a precious stone you have here. A really special little thing, such a powerful little thing. Too bad you couldn’t use it right though, Over-dear. You nightwings, always needing to be poetic. Never watching your words.”

The hybrid watched their ex-partner’s reactions closely, watched how the old and powerless nightwing tried to threaten her. She tightened her grip on their throat and constricted her tail around their torso, firmly latched to them.

“What? Do you not enjoy this monologue? You seemed very fond of making your own the first time fifty years ago. Such a bore, but I caught your mistake in your curse. Poor Overseer, not used to animus magic nor its capriciousness. Should’ve been clear what you asked for, Over-dear. Now watch me as I do this cursing business right.”

The rainwing-nightwing leveraged herself to stand straighter and clutched the gemstone in her talon. “I enchant myself, Luster, to not just need to feed off the affections of other dragons but also be able to sustain myself off their blood and flesh indefinitely and from that blood and flesh to change into any dragon or form that I please.”

The hybrid looked at the gemstone, took her wing off Overseer’s arm and watched the mirror’s roses wilt and die in an instant. She looked at the horrified nightwing below her. And they spoke as if they were speaking to death (which in a sense, now they were). “Why… you could’ve undone your own curse, why did you build off it.”

Luster rolled her eyes, “Why ever would I have undone it? You gave me eternal life, your curse’s only specification was that to survive, someone else would have to love me. You didn’t consider that ‘the love has to be mutual’ or that love can be more than just romantic. But that is your oversight, however I am now more interested in seeing how my new modified curse works.”

The dragoness bared her new fangs, the canines visibly larger and sturdier than just ordinary rainwing fangs. “Thank you for everything.”

Overseer’s last moments were feeling those elongated rainwing-like claws finally rip into and pull apart the flesh and scales of their throat, as Luster’s maw opened wide and tore the rest apart.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Luster licked the last streaks of red off her claws, checking over and over for any sign of blood lingering on her still. She could see none.

The dragoness reached out with her newly cleaned talons and picked up the mirror, pressing the gemstone she’d used back into its handle and watched it reattach.

It had been—in her eyes—Overseer’s mistake to have done this clearly before her. It was like they were giving her a tutorial really on how to use it and what it could be used for.

The hybrid looked at her reflection in the glass, seeing herself. And then seeing her rainwing attributes melt away to show her her new form. A lovely nightwing looking back at her.