This is a Christmas request for Phoenixembers. These characters will resemble a little of Kenneth Oppel’s characters but not so much in a sense that it will be like his style. This story is a creation out of my own imagination (like always) but the whole initial idea of what to write exactly came from my best and most trusted friend Phoenixembers. And thanks to her, this story is for Phoenixembers and I hope she enjoys it!

http://pencil-chan.deviantart.com/

I’m not sure which page she prefers you visit but all her deviant home pages are excellent. She’s a great friend and her talents are like an ocean. Endless and deep.

Without her, I don’t think my own skills would have grown.

This story and many to come will be for her;


Orin was a nightwing. Nightwings were vampire bats. They were a small species when it came to other varieties of bats, but did not mean they were ineffective hunters and protectors. They were far from it.
Orin and his colony lived in South America where the flow of food had always been adequate and there was never any need for fighting or greed. You could say Orin and his nightwing colony lived in balanced harmony. Their enemies the birds had barely troubled them and often when the need came, some of the breeding mothers would hunt in the daylight, unhindered by threat or foe.
Orin was a young one year old bat. He was old enough to know how cool the winter was and how vivid the summer played upon his homeland.
His colony lived in a cave called the Canopy. It was a sheltered aegis from most weather and provided warmth and succour to the young. The colony was a rather small one, despite the comforts of living here in South America. This was because, long ago, a war was waged. Two elders, Samatra and Dawn (females were highly sought as leaders in the nightwing legacies) hated one another and they forged two separate colonies out of one large nest. Both wanted power and having not being able to rule so close together, decided it best to separate the colony and rage a vicious war. Dawn was quickly assassinated by a large nightwing who went by the name of Predessor. Their ledrene dead, the adjacent colony wanted no more bloodshed, and left to seek peace further out into America where a repeat of the same episode could not happen again. Samatra thought of them as cowards. The colony left behind from the fight had its numbers vastly reduced, but after the years that had been and gone, they were slowly building up again.
Samatra was still the elder, and proud ledrene of the colony. Some liked her discipline and pride. These were good qualities in a leader. But there were always others who did not like her means of justice and her cruel temper.
Of course, this war had all happened before Orin was born. When he was brought into the world, there was peace, and that was all he had ever come to know. The talk of war always existed him and the elders told him stories about the past and how Samatra won their victory. He loved listening to the echoes that blotted out pictures for him. It helped him to think that he was actually there, and seeing it all take place. The detail was a harmonious link to what he hadn’t been a apart of. But after listening to their stories after a dozen times over, though he knew war seemed a thrill in itself, it also proved rather pointless. The war of the elders sounded like nothing but the possession of power. It wasn’t for the good of the colony at all. The elders had undermined the greater good and had gone for their own causes. This made him start to dislike Samatra quite a bit. And to set his values towards his elder even more, Samatra called a council high up in the chambers of the cave and declared that their colony should now be named the Dark colony. And those who left, never to return, were to be called the Half. Many foresaw her as mad.
Orin had never seen a bat out of his own colony. He had heard tales of silverwings and greywings, but he had never actually seen one. Silverwings, as he had heard, were a rather brazen species who had similar social groups to the nightwings and vice versa. For now however, Orin marvelled at the other creatures below them. These consisted of wild boars, rats and birds. Living life as a vampire bat was easy. As soon as dusk spread out her fingers, the main body of the colony would depart from their roasts and fly down in groups before departing to find food. The most common and most favourite food was a young calf. Its blood was richer than its parents and by nightfall, the young were less prone to move about and make sucking more difficult. Orin’s sharp claws gave him a ride where he would not detach, least the creature panic and swing its haunches to try and throw him off. That was another thing he had heard about other bats. They ate insects. The very thought of devoting one’s appetite to those grisly things made him nauseous.
Jet and Ferries were two of his close friends. Ever since he was young they skimmed the waterside together, talking and laughing. They often hunted together too until winter separated them. The summer slowly bonded them again after many months spent sleeping and feasting upon what they could, and now autumn found them skirting among the cow herd together like three irritating flies.
“I’m going to take a ball this time,” Jet was boasting, “I’m sick of calf flesh, it’s too sticky and sweet.”
“Like a bull’s fluid is going to be much better.” Ferris was a sardonic nightwing who never saw the lighter side of things. His serious foreplay often never made him notice the stars nor the gears of his environment. His attitude made Orin wonder if he had been an owl in his past life. Owls were equally serious creatures with a stinging velocity to match.
“Why, have you tasted it?” Jet did a short spiral in the air. The membrane of his wing almost clipped Ferris in the face.
“I wouldn’t like to.” He replied, “I watched Spark try the other night and she chose a fine tempered bull.” He pulled his sharp tongue out at Jet. “She was lucky she didn’t get all her claws pulled off.”
“Liar.” Jet seethed.
Orin chuckled despite himself. “Why don’t we hunt something else?” He asked. They flew past a cluster of old redwoods whose bodies towered into the principles of the heavens. “I’ve had cow and livestock all my life.”
“Well, what else do you suggest?” Asked Ferris. His dark furred face held the sceptical look his mother often adorned him with.
Below them, a wild cat slunk beneath the watery grey undergrowth. The feral bushes glittered under the moon from all of the thousands of raindrops that fell during the afternoon earlier. Orin bounded his echolocation in the cat’s direction and produced a hazy image before him.
“An ocelot.” He whispered. Ocelots were almost a rare sight as seeing the unicorn. What it was doing near their colony made him hesitate a little in his flight. Jet nipped him in the tail and told him to speed up.
Their brood stopped at the livestock pen to feed. Instead of following them like the three bats had done every single night since they had left the nest, they continued on. It was a little foolish to do this, Orin knew. They had seldom navigated this far south before. Sometimes there were wild horses up in the woodland and these, like the calves, were a vampire bat’s favourite. But it was always better to feed off a creature who were asleep in the darkness. The more docile the animal, the more suitable it is to feed from without being disturbed. The trick was to feed without the animal knowing at all. Being as small as a sparrow and light and dainty, this made it a little easier to go undected out in the wilderness.
“Let’s head back before we get lost.” Ferris spread his wings wider to slow his acceleration. Jet revealed his twin incisor teeth.
“I’ve been out here before and it’s perfectly safe you big pup!”
“There! Below us!” Orin pointed with his wing at a small rabbit below them. It looked injured by the way it lay in a gorse bush on its side. Ferris looked less keen on dining on an animal in the middle of nowhere, but relented. Together, they swooped low and circled for a few seconds before landing beside the jackrabbit. But before they could properly assess whether this creature was alive or dead, a grey fox popped her head out of the darkness and pounced on them. Her dark fur almost seemed to blend into the forlorn night as if she were capable of going semi-invisible. The three startled bats took off before she could hurt them.
“Back off you lowly scavengers!” The grey vixen howled, “just because you can fly does not make you cowards safe!”
Ferris swooped low above her in a taunting arc. He bombarded her with sound waves but she stood, unaffected over the rabbit.
“We don’t like cold blood anyway you silly dog,” chirped Jet. The vixen eyed them modestly.
“A dog am I?” Her brisk little laugh sent shivers down the backs of the three nightwings. “I hope I will be seeing you three again. You make some fine jokes.” With a flick of her bushy tail, her head bent low and her stout jaws took the rabbit into her maw. Then, like a demon from the darkness, she frolicked into the night and vanished, so that Orin could not even pick out her form using his sound waves.
“I’ve never liked the locals round here.” Ferris said uneasily.
“Neither have I.” Orin lightly agreed. The grey fox was a marvellous thing but they were a tricky bunch.
Jet angrily beat his wings in the warm breeze. “I say we head back and find something easier to pick at. We vampire bats should have no competition with other creatures of the night.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t go down with you, Ferris. Change your attitude or I’ll change it for you!”
Orin had never quite seen his friends so ratty. Then again, they hadn’t had a meal since last night. They had feasted on two calves. The first one tasted of disease, so they wounded another to try something a little better. Not soon later, they first calf they had tasted keeled over and died in the field like some giant invisible bat had pushed the dumb calve onto its side.