Young Writers Society

@Horisun

Scarlet woke to a sharp pain in her side. Blinking rapidly, she turned to see what it was. That was a mistake.

She was wrapped from snout to tail in chains. When she turned, the opposite side of chains scraped against her scales, sending her in more pain than before. Painfully, foggily, she turned back towards the side that was in pain, making her whole body almost cry in agony.

She writhed in pain, which thus made the chains scrape and rake against her scales. It was so painful that she just conked out completely.

. . .

Again, Scarlet woke to a sharp pain in her side. She wondered whether this is what that “Morrowscroll” dragon meant, whatever his name was. She stayed completely still for a moment, and didn’t move at all.

“Seems like you got smarter,” said an unrecognizable voice. It was strangely soft and docile.

Scarlet wanted to say a snappy comment, but it came out as mumbling under the extensive amount of chains.

Plus, it was also pretty painful just to mumble.

The soft voice chuckled and dribbled some water onto Scarlet’s crusty mouth, and she somehow sipped it even though chains were wrapped around her snout.

“Let’s just leave the talking to me, alright?”

Scarlet nodded very slowly so that she wouldn’t feel any of the pain from the chains, but she failed and the chains scraped her neck.

“Okay, so you’re probably wondering where you are.” In fact, Scarlet was not wondering this; She was wondering how she could escape and rip all the SandWings in the world into shreds.

But she nodded painfully just for the sake of her guard.

“You’re in the dark recesses of SandWing prison. I have to admit, I think I’m the only one of my family that doesn’t want to kill you on sight, so I’m assigned to you. I mean, Pinacate was pretty annoying, but I didn’t know that you hated her that much. I’m Locust, by the way.”

Scarlet shivered a bit and risked a turn so that she could give Locust a questioning look.

“Are you wondering where your sister is?” asked Locust, “I’m pretty sure they’re deciding whether or not they should kill her.”

Scarlet looked down meaningfully at the chains covering her snout.

“You want me to release the chains around your snout? Ha. I won’t buy that. You probably want to burn me to cinders right now,” laughed Locust, “Oh come on, stop making me feel guilty.”

After a few minutes of arguing with himself, Locust undid the chains around Scarlet’s snout.

He then jumped back behind a wall, “Hey, I hope you won’t attack me on sight.” His voice had a mock hopefulness to it.

Scarlet laughed and replied, “Only if your face is worth scorching.”

Locust took this as a friendly joke and returned to his past position.

Locust smiled, “So, how are you liking the hospitality of my family?”

“Couldn’t like it better.”

The SandWing laughed.

“Hey, can you free me?” asked Scarlet.

Locust stared at Scarlet, “Did you really think I’m that stupid? I mean, okay, It was awful lonely down here, so I freed the chains on your snout, but I would never ever in my life free all of your chains! Besides, it would take a long time to free them all!”

Scarlet gave him a pleading look, “Please? I won’t bring any harm to your family members. Or anyone in the palace! Well, I might kill Ocotillo, but that’s a different story.”

Locust made an enigmatic look, “I am bold and unmoving.”

Scarlet snickered, “How many bold and unmoving people say that they are bold and unmoving?”

Locust gave a mock scowl and laughed along with her.

Scarlet heard some voices in the distance.

“Come on. Locust should be asleep right now.”

Locust frantically wrapped the chains around Scarlet’s snout.

“I heard something. Maybe he’s snoring?”

“No. That sounded like chains.”

There were some rapid noises of claws scraping against stone and two SandWings appeared.

“Why hello there,” said Locust, “You two are . . . Scorpion and Cactus, are you?”

“Yeah,” said the big one, lumbering towards Locust, “Cactus over here was worried you were freeing the prisoner.”

The other dragon nodded, “We heard some chains.”

“Oh,” said Locust, “That was because our prisoner here was writhing and moving around.” Technically, that was true.

“Okay then, just checking,” grumbled Scorpion, an obvious scowl scrawled all over his face. The lumbering SandWing obviously wanted to get Locust in trouble.

Locust turned and sat back down on the floor. Right at that moment, Cactus leaped on top of Locust and bit down on his neck. Crying in pain, Locust threw off Cactus and was met by the brute force of Scorpion’s charge. Almost knocked unconscious, Locust breathed a weak plume of fire at Scorpion.

Scorpion laughed and extended his wings in a threatening manner, as if to dare Locust to try to shoot another plume of fire.

Scarlet hated how she felt like an audience in this fight. Locust was obviously going to lose, and Scarlet felt bad for him. He was nice to her, and he even freed the chains around her snout so that she could talk.

Or it may have just been that he was lonely.

Either way, Scarlet felt the badly-wrapped chains looping around her snout beginning to loosen. Locust stumbled against a wall, and Scorpion laughed.

As if some impulse told her to do so, Scarled inhaled, feeling the burning fire within her trying to free itself out. She felt the spark inside of her inflame into a raging inferno. With one horrendous, monstrous blast of flame, she unleashed a blaze unlike any other, scorching Scorpion and Cactus until their screams echoed throughout the hallways. When she looked back, there was no sign of the SandWing bullies.

The two cowards had run.

“Th-thank you,” croaked Locust weakly.

“Why did they do that? And don’t thank me,” replied Scarlet modestly.

“It was probably for revenge. It’s no secret that me and Pinacate are the most beloved of Scarab’s family. Scorpion and Cactus are one of my distant cousins, so they barely get any praise,” said Locust.

“What? You got attacked by your own family?” cried Scarlet.

“Yes. They think I’m like Pinacate,” said Locust. “I couldn’t be more different from Pinacate. I never try to do anything right. She strives too hard. I just want to live a modest life and be happy. Of course, my relatives don’t feel the same. They think I’m a pompous jerk,” he added darkly.

Scarlet fell silent. She always thought the life of royalty was something beautiful. Something . . . good. Something privileged. The way Locust put it, Scarlet almost thought that he wanted to be a commoner.

“Will you free me now?” asked Scarlet innocently. Laughing, Locust undid the chains.

“You saved my scales back there,” said Locust, “Thank you.”

“No,” said Scarlet, putting a talon on Locust’s, “Thank you.”

“For what?” Locust looked at Scarlet inquisitively.

“For helping me,” said Scarlet vaguely; she didn’t want to say what she really wanted to thank him for.

She was ready.

She had processed what Locust said and realized something. No matter who she was, no matter how perfect she was, as long as she was in the royal family, she would either be hated or hate others.

There was only one position she could be if she were to not have these problems.

She would have to be Queen.