It was the sixth day onwards when Maximon said they had reached their destination.

  The snake had been pushing them to travel longer each day, until they were walking in the night as well. Kira assumed that Maximon felt guilty of the time that they had lost, and wanted to make up for it.

  They stopped on top a cliff, where they could see where the Nexus converged and the Fox Lands, Bird Lands, and Cat Lands met. The treetops were woven incredibly close together, making it impossible to see through them. The perfect place to hide a prison.

  “There it is,” Laila said, narrowing her eyes. “Or, at least, we’re pretty sure. But how do we know?”

  Every bone in Kira’s body wanted to charge into the forest with her magic blasting every tree to smithereens, but she knew that wouldn’t work. “I…don’t know.”

  “We’ll have to spy on it,” Maximon said. “See where the entrance is, and who or what is guarding it.”

  Kira growled. “Ugh. I hate waiting.”

  “It’s our only chance,” Rogue said, not sounding too patient himself. “Eventually, one of the guards has to go out to get food or water. That’s when we strike.”

  It took approximately one whole day before their plan worked. Four hawks soared out from beneath the trees at dawn one morning, wearing armor on their bodies.

  Kira jumped for joy. “Yes! Yes! I can’t believe it! It’s here! It worked!”

  “Let’s get ‘em,” Laila said.

  “They headed to the Nexus,” Kira said. “Rogue, you and Maximon meet us there.”

  Both Rogue and Maximon nodded. Kira took off, energy pulsing through her body in a torrent of adrenaline. It was happening. They were busting Deya out.

  The wind whistled behind Kira, cheering her on to her mission. The fox could just imagine the happiness on Deya’s face when she was rescued. She smiled to herself, and sped up towards the large, feathered figures in the distance.

  The hawks descended, and Kira and Laila dove into the treetops before they were seen. They silently glided to where the hawks had landed, both of them perching on the same branch to spy on their enemies.

  “Finally,” one of the hawks grunted. Water was running down his belly feathers, indicating that he just drank from the river. “I thought I was going to die of thirst in there.”

  “Oh, stop complaining, Blair,” another hawk snapped. “You get more food and water than any of the rest of us.”

  Blair smirked and inspected his claws. “It’s just my natural charm. I’m more important than any of you.”

  The other hawks all shot him glares and grumbled under their breaths, but didn’t say anything outright.

  Kira and Laila shared a glance.

  “Distraction?” Kira mouthed.

  Laila nodded, then grabbed a rock with her claw and threw it as hard as she could into a tree opposite them.

  “What was that?” one of the hawks said sharply, looking around wildly. All of the birds tromped in the direction of the noise, and Kira and Laila shared another glance. In the distance, Kira could pick up the quite noises of Rogue and Maximon approaching. Kira nodded to Laila.

  “ATTACK!” Laila shrieked as they both launched off of the branched and soared towards the hawks, talons and claws outstretched and at the ready.

  The hawks never saw it coming. Kira landed on one with her full weight, knocking it unconscious before she used its weight to propel herself onto another hawk, slicing his chest and kicking him into a tree. Rogue then pounced on him and smashed a rock on top of his head. The last hawk was being strangled by Maximon while Laila grabbed vines to tie each of them up.

  “Their talons have to be bound really tight,” Maximon directed. “Otherwise they’ll cut through them.”

  Soon, four unresponsive hawks were lying concealed and bound on the jungle floor while Kira, Maximon, Rogue, and Laila removed their armor.

  “Hey!” Liraz came flapping from behind, wheezing. “You guys left me behind!”

  Kira and the others exchanged glances, having a mental conversation that went something like this:

  Rogue: What should we tell him?

  Laila: Give him the truth. He can be a baby about it for all I care.

  Kira: We can’t be that mean!

  Laila: I can.

  Maximon: Or we could make up an elaborate half-truth that explains why we left him behind while not exactly telling him the whole thing.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Rogue: What if we gave him a new type of fruit instead of talking?

  Laila: Yeah right. Like that will work.

  Kira: Guys, I got this.

  Kira took a deep breath, then walked up to Liraz. “Liraz, I’m so sorry that we left you behind on accident. We were really excited about this and didn’t realize that you can’t travel as fast as we can. But guess what?”

  “What?” Liraz asked excitedly, all grudges instantly forgiven.

  “You get to ride in a piece of armor, right into the prison!” Kira said, grinning.

  “Oh yeah!” Liraz cried triumphantly. “So cool!”

  Rogue snorted and gave Kira an impressed look. “I guess that’s settled then…”

  “We need to stop dilly-dallying,” Laila said. “Let’s get a move on. These hawks won’t stay unconscious forever.”

  “How are we going to fit on the armor?” Rogue said. “Did we even think that far ahead?”

  “Yes,” Kira said. “My fire can warm them up enough that they bend easier, which will allow us to form them around our bodies. It will look weird, but hopefully it will be enough to disguise us from prying eyes.”

  They got to work, gathering all of the armor off of the hawks and organizing the pieces in a row, setting aside pieces that would fit their bodies without any tampering. Then Kira gathered a ball of white fire in her paw and held it over each piece of armor individually, watching as they grew red hot and her friends carefully shaped them using branches and leaves to protect them, then dunked the armor in the river.

  “Alright. We’re good.” Maximon tapped the armor with his tail, listening as it made a satisfying clang. “You can put out the fire now, Kira.”

  Kira concentrated and tried to shrink the flame with her mind, but after several moments, she realized it wasn’t doing anything.

  “What’s happening?” she asked, panicking. “Why can’t I put it out?”

  “Calm down,” Maximon said. “Just concentrate.”

  “Put your paw underwater,” Laila suggested.

  Kira ran to the edge of the river and practically dunked her entire body in, watching as the fire in her paw sizzled and disappeared. Her heartbeat pumped in her ringing ears, widened eyes fixated on her appendage.

  “Hey.” Rogue put a paw on her shoulder. “It’s probably nothing. We have a prison to break into, remember?”

  Kira nodded numbly, then walked out of the river and back to the armor, determined to put the incident out of her mind.

  “Everyone grab their assigned armor pieces,” she instructed. “Liraz, you’ll be with Rogue.”

  “Ok!” The bat flapped over to where the leopard was putting on his disguise and slipped between one of the plates, perfectly hidden.

  “It’s roomy in here!” he squeaked. Rogue looked down at his breastplate with an amused expression on his face.

  “We’d better hurry,” Maximon said after they’d all suited up. “The other creatures in the prison may have noticed the hawks’ absence.”

  “Then let’s get going,” Kira said. “We have a prison to break into.”

  It took them a long while to find the prison, longer than Kira would have liked. Luckily, Maximon had a general idea of where the hawks had emerged from the forest canopy, otherwise they would have been looking all day. As it was, the day was more than halfway over when they stumbled upon the entryway—a metal door cleverly concealed behind a waterfall of vines that blended in perfectly with the rest of the jungle.

  “Remember,” Kira said, “we’re a new patrol with orders from the Black Dragon to interrogate one of the prisoners.”

  “And if they ask where the hawks went, we say that we saw them circling above us,” Maximon added. “In case they get suspicious.”

  They all nodded to one another, then knocked on the door.

  It swung open with barely a sound to reveal a small Dragon behind it, with an anxious look on his face from under the armor.

  “Who are you?” he asked, his snout wrinkled in confusion.

  “We’re a new patrol,” Kira supplied, hoping that she looked casual when she said it. “We have orders from the Black Dragon to interrogate one of the prisoners.”

  “The Black Dragon?” the Dragon said, cocking his head. For a moment, Kira and her friends froze, wondering if this was what would give them away.

  “Don’t you mean the Leader?” he said.

  Kira let out a silent sigh. “Yes, yes, my mistake. The Leader. So sorry.”

  The Dragon laughed good-naturedly and let them in. “No, it’s okay. It happened sometimes.”

  Kira was surprised at how friendly he was. He was nothing like the stiff, icy-hearted guards in the arena. Now that she got a good look at him, she thought that he might be a Cloud Dragon, with his grey-white scales occasionally lined with bright purple and his wide wings tucked on his back. His eyes were a cheerful blue, glowing with a mixture of curiosity and fear. It made Kira’s heart ache that Dragons like this—who were just following orders—got mixed up in the terrible things that were going on.

  “So which prisoner do you need to interrogate?” the Dragon asked. “We have quite a few, I’m afraid.” A flash of guilt emerged in his expression, then disappeared as he regarded them.

  “A high-security one,” Maximon answered. Kira was glad for his quick thinking. She’d assumed that this was just for Deya, but apparently it wasn’t.

  The guard’s fidgeting grew more intense. “A-a high security, you say?” he asked shakily. “Are-are you sure?”

  “Completely,” Maximon said.

  “O-okay.” The Dragon grabbed a torch off of the wall and then began walking down the hallway. “Follow me.”

  They did, their armor clanking in the silence. Their torch was the only source of light in the darkness, which made the air of the prison much more ominous than it already was.

  It didn’t help that Rogue’s eyes glowed in the dark.

  Kira had first seen the effect a night after they had toppled the arena, when they had been chatting with one another and watching the moon. She had asked him what his favorite color was, and he had turned to face her in order to answer. The ghostly light that had reflected from the sky onto his eyes with surprising brightness, casting a glowing beam wherever he turned his head. Kira found it unsettling and strange, and seeing it now in this place (though it didn’t penetrate the air very far) made the feeling ten times worse.

  They continued for a long time, the hallway sloping down deeper into the earth. Kira wondered how deep it went, and how many prisoners were here. She felt the temptation to rescue each of them, but this wasn’t the arena. They were only here for Deya, no matter how much it pained Kira to leave these poor creatures here.

  The torch occasionally lit up the outline of a door as they passed, though the spaces between doors grew as they continued on. They met no one along the way, which Kira found slightly odd, but it was a disguised prison, so maybe they didn’t need that many guards.

  Finally, after a what seemed like moons of time, they arrived at a huge, heavy-looking metal door. The ceiling rose to fit it, turning the cramped dark space into a cold, breezy hallway.

  “We’re here,” the Dragon said. “Follow me, and don’t touch or interact with anything. The prisoners here aren’t all…right.”

  Everyone glanced at each other, faces riddled with worry. Kira tried to reassure them all, but fear gripped her gut as well. What if Deya wasn’t right either? How would the prison affect her mind?

  But before she could travel down that train of thought, the Dragon was opening the door, and they were forced to follow behind.