Rez opened her eyes just as the Celestial Fire flared up from the edge of the dawn sky. It spread like a purple, blue, silver, and white rainbow of flames from the edge of the horizon, rising up, just over top of the honey-colored sun, before fading into nothingness for the last time that night. Like all dragons, Rez marveled at the show it put on every night, starting when the moon was highest in the sky and arching in a set of similar colors before disappearing, only to arch again and again until the sun rises.

Rez paused for a moment to take in the rising sun and the rapidly fading Celestial Fire, before uncurling her scaly body and stretching her shaggy grey wings. As a Bat Dragon, Rez had similar features to the animal counterpart: dark-colored shaggy, leather-like wings, the ability to use echolocation because of her oversized cupped ears, claws at the ends of her wings, and the climbing and clinging flexibility of bats as well. And just like bats, Bat Dragons lived in groups.

Rez twitched her large ears. She used to live in a flock. They lived peacefully, with Prince Talon looking over them, hardly engaged in the royal family’s activities, blissfully excluded from the other dragons’ troubles. Every day, Rez flew out with her brothers and caught between birds or rodents for the flock’s fledglings, and though still a fledgling herself, Rez always felt happy when her young cousin, sister, brother or not-even-related-to-her fledgling yelped contentedly in thanks for the free food. That was the schedule every day; wake up, hunt, help out or play games, hunt again in the evening sky, sleep, then wake up again in time for the last arch of Celestial Fire.

Not anymore. She could still remember that night, a mere two moonrises ago—the evening of the attack.

She had just left the cavern full of bustling dragons, and had started on the trail of some bird that she could sense because of its buffeting backdraft. Bat dragons didn't have particularly good night vision. Nobody else was coming with her, because of a celebration of Prince Talon’s return from the recent coronation of his eldest sibling Prince Ray, now King Ray of the Bat dragons. It was just her and the mystery bird and the slight, very, very slight, smell of smoke. I should have been suspicious. Bat dragons don't breathe fire. Birds don't smell like smoke. Rez didn't want to think about that night at all, but here she was, reflecting on it…

Rez shook her head, resulting in her ears flapping wildly again the sides of it, and stopped stretching. That night is why she was sleeping restlessly under a tree, instead of surrounded by the flock. That night is why she was on a journey. The first Bat dragon to leave flock territory because there was no longer a flock there.
A journey to find out why.