Solas

Solas is a one-eyed Orange Daggertail.

He is a full-grown orange dragon with one remaining golden eye, large enough that his back scrapes the ceiling while he moves through a dragon-sized tunnel.

Solas is bonded to Major Varrish. Tairn treats the bond as a dangerous misuse of power, saying Solas should never have empowered someone so barbaric.

Tairn is openly hostile to Solas after Varrish threatens Violet over Andarna’s absence, overpowering Solas on the flight field and nearly tearing out his throat before forcing Varrish to surrender.

During Violet’s imprisonment or rescue window, Tairn hunts Solas through a cave network but loses him there. Tairn tells Violet that he intends to make Solas suffer before killing him when he finds him.

Solas can use dragonfire with enough control to angle a blast low through a rider formation rather than simply strike from above.

His dragonfire is strong enough to trap the cave group under Andarna’s fireproof wings and ignite the exposed tips of Kiralair’s feathers.

After Violet blinds his remaining eye, Solas still fights through rage, sound, sweeping claw strikes, and fire, though he can no longer aim accurately by sight.

After Parapet, Solas deliberately delays before burning three runners, then sends fire low through formation. The attack kills Ciaran and at least half of Third Squad, and Violet is burned across the back while protecting Sloane.

Kaori uses Solas’s burning of bonded riders to challenge Varrish’s claim that some riders influence their dragons rather than obey them. The question leaves Varrish without an answer and helps end the confrontation.

Solas attacks Violet’s group in the cave network, first swatting Visia into the wall and then breathing fire at the others. Violet blinds him by throwing a knife into his remaining eye, wounds him through a scale joint with the broken conduit, and Cat drives arrows into the same bloodied shoulder wound. Andarna bites him and finishes him with the poisoned barb on her tail.