My apologies if you opened this expecting another chapter, or if you enjoyed the fic up to here. 

This fic, is, as you probably grasped from the title of this chapter, discontinued (as are, for the record, all my fics here on Wattpad). 

I'll explain a bit of why, and also discuss the original plot, ideas and ending.

This fic is discontinued because I'm no longer in the DSMP fandom. I still follow the content of some of the creators (a little bit of qsmp, the sorry boys, etc.), but am no longer interested in the dream team for a variety of reasons. The main reason I watched and fell into DSMP was Techno, as I had been watching him before he joined the server, and, well. He's Techno.

The news of his passing is heartbreaking and it's been really hard revisiting anything related to him - fics, art, videos, all of it. On top of that, this fic does involve major character death (and rebirth!), which is only really fun when it doesn't happen in real life.

For these reasons, this fic (and all others on this account) are discontinued. My account is inactive, though I do occasionally pop in and read comments because some of you guys are really funny.

I totally forgot about this fic, to be honest, and I should have definitely added this chapter earlier to avoid confusion. It's actually been marked as incomplete for so long Wattpad sent me an automated DM about updating fics or marking them as complete...

Now for the original plans for the rest of the fic, which I'm leaving in bullet points for easier reading. Hopefully I don't miss anything important because truth be told I barely remember anything about this fic and I'm just revisiting the planning documents.

- the wing-hunters (the circle of vultures) trade, kill and imprison those with mutated wings, aka super cool fantasy wings for basically just money purposes. 

- the gold and silver crowns of the head of the circle are born from chaos, and can bend minds to their will. Super handy if you want to brainwash a bunch of kids (wink wink nudge nudge). The power imbalance in the world, in a magical sense, after the creation of these crowns, due to their immense arcane energy caused also mutations to occur in wingfolk such that fantasy mutations began to appear. Thus, the destruction of these crowns will also magically return these mutated wings to 'normal'

- Techno's running away from the guys that he knows must be tailing him. Eventually, they catch up (it's the dream team, no surprises there), and they almost get him. Corner him, they trade blows, and Techno, vastly outnumbered and still wounded, actually manages to cast fire. It's not enough though and they're about to end the fight and capture him, but suddenly there's a lot of fire, and turns out, it's Grian, who yoinks Techno and they run away into the night. 

- Grian is also a phoenix. He's the one that Dream 'killed'. Normally, a phoenix dies, and rebirths, a process which consumes the fire within them and their wings fade to normal. However, in his case, he technically lost his wings before dying, and weird logic in the way that the magic flows dictates that he rebirths, and does not lose his fire powers, though he is wingless and can no longer fly. After the encounter, Dream is badly shaken, recognizing Grian. To combat his previous mistake of leaving this phoenix apparently alive (he doesn't know they can get reborn), he just resolves to kill Grian also and not mention anything to the Circle.

- Grian takes Techno back to the hermit camp, where they're a bunch of weird people hanging out in the forest, all hiding from the Circle because of their weird wings.

- Stress is based off a caladrius, a bird of roman mythology which heals kings by taking away sickness in itself. If it faces the patient, they will recover, and if it doesn't, there will be a tragic end. Thus, Stress essentially has magic healing (beyond that of sickness), and cannot look people in the eye if they die in the near future. For some spicy foreshadowing, she avoids Techno's gaze the entire time he's speaking.

- Tango has red scaly dragon wings and Impulse is based off an alicanto, a bird of Chilean mythology, which has a glow of metallic gold, lives in the desert, and eats gold and silver. Impulse does not eat metals but he is all glowy.

- Xisuma is a thunderbird and he will smite things. No more needs to be said.

- Mumbo is a dragonfly (not mythological but also not a bird) but he's captured this whole time and is therefore irrelevant.

- At the same time, Phil has visions of a False Sunrise, and discusses this with a close friend and local detective, Skeppy.

- Dream team, having no leads on where their targets could have gone but recognizing Techno to be part of the royal family, decide to pretend to be detectives searching for the missing prince and... go up and request an audience with the King. This goes alright, in that the King also has no idea where Techno could be. Tommy who's also there gets really bad vibes from them and decide that they're probably bounty hunters. He goes to inform Wilbur, then Tubbo and Niki.

- Tommy, Tubbo and Wilbur (Niki stays behind in case Phil notices all his children missing and panics) tail the Dream team to the inn where they're staying for the night. Phil confronts Niki who reluctantly explains it all to him, telling him he can't come because he's the King and far too important, but he doesn't care. They grab their weapons and Niki leads the way.

- While at the inn, the Dream team receives instructions via pigeon mail that Techno has been spotted in the location where the Hermits' hideout is. They head off in the morning, still tailed by The Kids, who send a letter back to Niki so she's updated on their location.

- This entire time the Dream Team is having one moral crisis after the other. The further they stay from the twin crowns the less of an effect they take.

- Skeppy figures out the location of the Circle's base of operations. He sends Phil a letter.

- Eventually, all three parties end up in the same place: the hermit hideout. As luck would have it, it's actually pretty close to Vulture HQ. It's dark, it's nighttime. 

- They actually convince the Dream team to switch sides (but Dream specifically is extremely hesitant). At this point Tapl jumps out of a bush, Dream realizes the Talons never really trusted him, and they're attacked by Vultures on all sides.

- Dream does a bit of betraying during the battle and almost gets Techno killed, but regrets it immediately. He offers to lead the way to the location of Gold and Silver, which would be near impossible and deadly to find without his knowledge of the layout. Techno gives him one last chance to prove what side he's on.

- Fighting happens. Mumbo gets freed. There's a few close calls.

- Dream and Techno make it to the innermost layers of the Vulture's defenses. The original plan was just to commit murder, arson, and melt down the twin crowns with the very mutant phoenix-fire they created, but oops, Tapl shows up, Dream almost dies, and it's not looking great.

- Techno, in a moment of self sacrifice, literally turns into a fireball. Dream is within the vicinity, but Techno protects him with his own wings, and just barely saves him from getting incriminated. Everything else in the vicinity is less lucky.

- It's midnight. Phil and everyone else looks in the direction of the vulture HQ center, and see a massive ball of fire glow on the horizon. A false sunrise.

- The fire from a phoenix is enough to burn the gold and silver circlets to ashes, and all mutated wings revert into regular bird wings. 

- Techno is still a phoenix though, and rebirths! Everyone we care about is alive (except Tapl I guess but he was evil anyway), and it's great.

And that's a wrap! Applause for anyone who made it this far, because I've definitely lost a fair chunk of sanity writing this.

A final reminder that my account is no longer active here on Wattpad -- you can find me on Ao3 @/BlueQuills, where you can find hermitcraft (maybe empires), some past fics involving dsmp members, and genshin! 

(Also twitter @/BlueQuills_ for art perhaps although that site is on fire and not in the good way, so...)

I'm not writing anything new to put on this account but I do scroll through the notifs for fun like, once a month so feel free to reach out :3

Thank you all again for the ride, it was a wild one ~