It was a warbly sound, raised by a SkyWing guard perched on a ledge on the edge of the arena.

Saguaro's body fell into her next movements without thinking. Legs and wing stumps buckled, and shifted to bury her in the sand. Her scales flush to the arena floor like this made her harder to see. She kept the SkyWing in her sights. He wasn't more than ten feet away. How hadn't she seen him before?

He's young. She thought. Barely twelve. No scars, no wounds. It's his first day on the job. If I lay still and hope no one else saw me, it might as well be a false alarm.

The SkyWing stopped squawking and opened his eyes. How stupid of him to ever close them. He blinked and looked around, straining to see where Saguaro had gone.

In that moment of confusion, she leapt out of the sand and grappled with the dragon on the ledge. Her claws latched closed around his snout before he could chirp again.

The two of them went tumbling over the edge of the arena wall, out into the open air, only for a moment before Saguaro's wing stumps flew out from her sides. She may not be able to fly, but they were still useful in their own right. The claws at the ends of her stalks grabbed the lip of the stone wall, and held fast.

With a swift, sharp strike of her tail, the young SkyWing in her claws jolted in pain as Saguaro thrust her barb into and out of his chest. She waited for a moment, right when the life was draining from his eyes, before she let him go.

That was always the hardest part. The young ones, the death. She risked it all for these plans. For her job. But sometimes it weighed on her. Saguaro averted her eyes as the guard fell, and waited a moment to steel her nerves.

She hung there, by the claws on the stalks of her deformed wings, waiting for the crash of bones on rock. It never came, and she let out a breath of relief she didn't know she was holding.

He either got away to die somewhere else, or she was spared the sound, just this once.

Saguaro peeked over the edge of the stone wall, making absolute three-moons sure she was undetected, before vaulting over the wall and dropping back into the arena sands.

Across the arena, crawling on her belly half-buried, Saguaro pulled herself against the palace wall. Off to the side of the entrance tunnel, a small path that lead to more, smaller entrance tunnels. Convenient. But not suspiciously so. Perhaps they're for servants? Perhaps they're for spies.

Saguaro slipped down one of the small tunnels, creeping along on padded talons. She was careful to keep her claws from clicking on the stone. No spy worth their salt would risk lighting a small flame to see. No no. Instead Saguaro focused her eyes to strain in the dark. The tunnel was empty, and opened up into the entrance hall, quiet in the just-after-sunset low light. SkyWings were lighting torches and lamps along the walls, casting glints of warmth in the gold talon-prints in the floor.

Saguaro pressed herself against the wall to watch.

Several platforms jutted inwards from the wall. Reachable by wings, or not at all. The only other way up is the ramp, spiral, in the center of the hall. Impossible unless I find a way to paint myself orange.

Saguaro ruled out the silent little voice in the back of her head that said just kill a guard and wear his skin. Bob's your uncle.

That was, always a voice she didn't like hearing.

Instead Saguaro opted for her own subtle, unique approach. No one expects a spy to crawl up the wall, do they? No one expects a monster with four arms?

Her claws struggled for purchase in the grooves between stones set in the wall, and as silently as she could, Saguaro climbed her way to the first inward wall ledge, and pressed herself against the floor.

It was then that the realization hit her.

Blister forgot to tell me which floor the moon-blasted fucking plans are.

Saguaro groaned under her breath, and let her head bump the floor. What level? Where was the war room? She'd glanced over a map before being dropped off by the SkuWing moles, sure. But, that incident with the kid in the arena.. it must have TOTALLY wiped it from her mind.

Her closed talon pounded the floor. Oh well, fuck it. She'd have to find her way to the right room herself. Saguaro stood up and turned to slink into the tunnel... When she smacked head-first into a very, angry SkyWing.

His lips pulled back from his teeth, dry and cracked and bleeding.

"Gotcha, little skink."