Story Of The Long-Lost Tribe

• Yahya Malik, Grade 4, Al-Faisal College - Liverpool
• Short Story
• 2022

Excellence Award in the 'National Treasures 2022' competition

The blazing fire spread everywhere. Dragons were fleeing. Nightmaker watched the destruction he had caused. He didn’t mean it. Suddenly, part of the dreadful fire reached the rock he was standing on. The rock burst into flames. Nightmaker could do nothing but wait for his doom. The fire neared closer and-
Nightmaker woke up with a jolt. It was still pitch dark outside. Nightmaker just needed some time to recover from his terrible nightmare. He went out of his small bedroom and into his tiny kitchen. There are a few things you need to know about Nightmaker. He is a DarkWing. DarkWings were dragons from a long-lost tribe. Nightmaker was the only DarkWing left. There are no more DarkWings save Nightmaker on earth left because the SecretWings killed all of them during the War of Secrets. The only reason Nightmaker survived was because he evacuated the old DarkWing home and decided to live in a treehouse. And also DarkWing was an animus (meaning a dragon with magic powers). Back to the story:
Nightmaker walked out of his house and flew to the ChameleonWing village. The ChameleonWings were a tribe of weaker dragons and most of the time spent their free time sleeping. Since it was night-time, Nightmaker knew that most of the tribe was probably sleeping. If Nightmaker woke up in the middle of the night, he usually spent the time before sunrise spying on ChameleonWings. But today he was going to take it one step further. Today, he was going to spy on the Queen of the ChameleonWings! Nightmaker knew that Queen Crocodile the 17th of the ChameleonWings had a lot of guards patrolling her palace, so he decided to turn invisible. Turning invisible was one of the many powers of DarkWings.
When Nightmaker reached the palace, it was dawn. Nightmaker knew he had to be swift otherwise Queen Crocodile would wake up before he reached her room. Nightmaker reached the guards and in a heartbeat, he knocked them out. Knocking out the guards would break his element of surprise, but that was step one of Nightmaker’s plan. He then flew above the palace walls and soared into the ChameleonWing Queen’s open window. There he found the Queen… Awake? Nightmaker was confused. The Queen grinned.
“Nightmaker, I knew you were coming because one of my spies told me that you were coming,” Queen Crocodile said, with a smug expression on her face. “The little spy that told me was a SecretWing.”
Nightmaker suddenly realised. The ChameleonWings knew all along that Nightmaker was hidden in the rainforest. So the tribe had allied with the SecretWings and were planning to kill the DarkWings once and for all! Suddenly, a red dragon burst into the room.
“A FlameWing!” Nightmaker gasped. The FlameWing’s scales burst into flames. In a few seconds, the room was engulfed in fire. Nightmaker managed to escape, but Crocodile wasn’t so lucky. As Nightmaker flew out of the ChameleonWing village, he heard the Queen’s voice over the chaos: “I’ll get you next time, Nightmaker!”