~Already?~ she asked wearily, and the slim scientist looked up, nodding.

"Does it hurt you?" he asked. The room was empty, and no one would interrupt them tonight, but he still kept his tone level.

The aging queen shook her head. ~Of course it doesn't~ she retorted. ~Not really, at any rate... take, what you need Shy.~

Green eyes blinked in formal response. "Thank you." He said, solemn.

~But...~

The tone in her voice had the man turn. Five shadows slipped from the corners, reaching for the sands and a hum filled the sands. Someone had said once that the humming of Pernese dragons activated the egg breaking, who knew? Only, that on these sands it could speed things up.

Five eggs rose from the surface, pale and gleaming underneath the soft moonlight from the ceiling-less sands, and tiny spider like cracks appeared in the surface.

"Yes?" already, shadows were slipping out of the corners of the rooms to cart the eggs away.

~I hope... that in the end, it doesn't come down to this. I hope that all this is for nothing.~

Shy smiled, and it was so terribly sad, so terribly uncharacteristic, that it was a good thing the room was empty. No one would have recognized it. "We all wish for things we cannot have." He said simply.

~They're here~ came a voice. Thick, dark and bronze, Sallaketh looked up to see the Light Court bronze looked into the hatching bay, relaying the image of five dragons that had arrived from the darkness. Their markings were obvious, their grace and some deadly ooze spreading from them like a dominant aura. Sallaketh hissed.

The dark court dragons have arrived at Star City.

~It's not their turn~ she was agitated, irritated and she turned back to their own eggs. ~They have no right--~ she began.

The bronze almost smiled. ~We are not enemies,~ he reminded the queen.

~No, but the riders are,~ she said just as calmly, gaining what control she had over her reactions.

Until one night.

The flight deck may as well have been a stadium of sorts, the little twists added to exhert the dragons and to give something for the viewers to watch (we're all voyeurs, in the end) was enough for the dark court dragons. The green and the blue watched from below, the red and the purple from the viewing ledge above, the bronze, brown and gold dark court dragons danced.

It was a vicious flight.

The queen blooded her kill, she poisoned them in the end and left their half twitching carcasses. She caused more loss of life than should be normal. Her ancestors had been pernese once, which might explain why she had blooded the kill in the first place.

But not the massacre.

She left behind half bloodied bodies, and the bronze dragon did not do any less. The stink of meat and death slowly filled what air remained, and from the grounds the others watched, patient. They would let no one interrupt the flight of the dark court today.

~It is disgusting.~ Every moral fiber of Sallaketh's being seemed to tremble with annoyance, because while she was not there, she knew.

The light court dragons disliked the dark court with some instinct, and the dark court dragons must have felt the same, for both avoided the other like they were thread. Or ants. Or whatever disaster waited in your world.

~It is done,~ Thisevith sent the words back soberly to the waiting dam, and the queen snorted her derision.

~I hope we are gone by the time they take the sands,~ she said bitterly, with more human emotions than should be acceptable. She was to a point, too much like the rider of her dam, filled with angst and bitterness against an imagined force.

The bronze blinked, careful, and so wary. ~We will be,~ he assured the dragoness.

In the lowest-most ring of the station, a bronze and a gold dragon twined together, horns and curved points of ebon piercing flesh, and two poison tipped tails just barely missing the soft hide.

~It is too early, for anything else.~