No corrupted things, Wilder had requested. Spread word to the Gembound to see the sky. No Valkhound. No corrupted things.
Well, it didn't take very long for word to reach Aethril's ears. Someone had opened the way to the surface. For all of the Valkhand's bemoanings about being stuck in the caves, she was hesitant to venture out. Let was not her homeworld: if she were going to see anything, she'd have rathered it were the skies outside Eothea. Five thousand years had her being much less picky about which fresh air she breathed, however.
She'd be weak up there. She wouldn't have much control over her magic. No one would, she thought-- but at least she was much less like to die up there if she ventured too far from the Nest. She wouldn't be able to take anyone with her if they were Oilstone. She could take Pollen, but...
... well, she didn't. Already she found herself crossing the Valkhound barrier with gritted teeth. It disagreed with her, and she disagreed with it-- but nontheless, Aethril managed to push through it, and she ventured into the Cathedral and through the portal.
The light of the sun stung her eyes but it was swiftly setting. Twilight shone across trees plumed with cherry blossoms and daffodils stretched up to them at the base of tree trunks. The air was crisp and fresh-- so much so that she thought her lungs would burn. Eron orbited above, blotting out the growing number of stars dotting the sky.
Was it the view, or was it the weakness flowing through her veins that left her breathless? Aethril found herself not caring as she sat in the grass staring at the sky on the horizon. In that moment, she realized that finally-- finally --she'd found somewhere... safe.
No Order. No rebels. No Valkhounds chattering their teeth in her ears.
Finally, it was quiet.
Dread was exultant. He was circling Noctua's sky, periodically roaring, a sound that would echo over the treeline. Freedom. An open sky. The sun had been warm on his scales; now that it was setting, he was barely a dark shadow against the stars. His wings needed a rest, but he was filled with a joy so pure he knew little more.
Except terror.
The dragon was not... incredibly smart; he never had been. The problem was that he didn't know how skies worked. Some part of him was afraid, genuinely afraid, that the land might at some point tip upside down (the sun WAS moving through the sky) and he might fall.
Upward.
Hmm. That was a problem for later-Dread. Now-Dread was excited, a powerful beat of his wings taking him even higher. He glided, closing his eyes as the forests wheeled beneath him. Below, the temple shot past, the grove, the-
-person?
Gembounds had, of course, been coming and going. He'd seen some threading into the trees or the meadows, exploring, as he was, this new world. But this one was in the grass, and he flapped to slow himself, then settled into a downward glide. He needed a rest, and he was curious, too. Was this a Gembound-? He'd never seen one like her. Well-... he had. But not EXACTLY--right? Maybe he'd forgotten.
He landed with a thud and a little puff of dirt a few moments later, maybe twenty yards off to Aethril's right--not that he'd have been hard to see, or at least hear, coming. Glowing ember eyes peered at her in the darkness, magma tattoos reflecting the same light, and then Dread blinked, licked his chops, and twisted a serpentine neck to see what she was looking at. The sky-? Maybe him! Maybe she'd been watching him. His fins rose a little, proud, and he looked back, but-...
@Aethril
Somehow, she hadn't noticed.
Well, not somehow. When it's your first time seeing something in thousands of years, it's difficult for your attention to depart from it. The stars were against a backdrop of a painted, darkening sky as the sun dunked below the mountains with a thump and-- hold on, suns aren't suppose to make noise, or shake the earth. At least, not that she could remember.
It wasn't until Dread bellowed at her that she even realized he was there. Her eyes darted to him, away, and then back to him, considerably more startled this time.
No. No, this wasn't Raheerah-- this one only had two legs. And it was much larger. There was a shine of fiery markings, but up his sides as opposed to his entire belly. Perhaps she should have been disappointed, but she was not. The Masters weren't friends, just workers.
A beat, then-- realization. She couldn't use magic here, and if this creature turned out to be particularly temperamental, she wouldn't stand much chance against it. She should at least answer it.
@Dread
Dread flinched, his nostrils briefly flaring (with thin threads of smoke rising at the gesture), at the gentle admonishment. Sometimes, he forgot that he was too loud.
Had he been home, near his nest, he might've been a little more dismissive--but this wasn't his territory. And he was in a very, very good mood. It was so pretty out here.
He looked out, considering the trees and stars, then back to Aethril.
He settled, a little--lowering his belly to the ground and spreading his wings some on the earth, letting them rest. It was soft, here. Like the sands in Leo, not like the rock in some other caves. He looked out again, then at Aethril, then out. He was considering her response. 'Just sitting;' did that mean she was looking at the stars, like he had-? It didn't occur to him that she could be deadly, or at least could have been within the caves. He had no idea. He did know that others were often smarter than he was. So he tipped his head back to eye the sky, and asked what had been bothering him.
He'd tried to picture what that might entail. He was pretty sure that if things flipped upside-down, he could fly back to the surface--but could he hang onto it?
@Aethril
Dread flinched and for a beat, Aethril thought it was over. Instead of teeth or claws appearing from the veil of smoke to kill her, there was a quiet apology instead. Her shoulders slackened with a weight she hadn't realized had been thrust upon there.
Her eyebrow raised. Were people-- gembound --calling Fornax an ocean? Granted, she'd never seen that much of it, but she was fairly certain all the water in the Nest was fresh. She spared Dread from the pedantics, though; at least for now. He can have his ocean place.
He could have been spawned by Natural Order, but the last time she'd checked, dragons didn't exist on Earth.
... she thought. A lot could happen in several thousand years.
The Valkhand watched Dread settle, and she let herself settle, too. She slid back to lean on her elbows to look up, eyes half-lidded. She didn't quite get to enjoy extended quiet, however. Dread was asking questions again and--
She nodded up to the planet in the sky.
@Dread
The news that he'd been created silenced Dread for a moment. That was... well, it was enough to throw a smarter creature into something of an identity crisis. And it did bother him, for reasons he couldn't articulate, or even fathom. But Aethril went on, and he tucked that information away: a sort of "...I'll deal with that later" thought.
It was a problem for later-Dread. A problem for a Dread not gazing upon his very first stars.
In the meantime, he also tried to wrap his mind around astronomy. They were on a rock-? The caves were in rock, so that tracked. But the rest of it sort of blew in one ear-hole and out the other. It was hard to fathom, and his urge to correct her--that he'd not been afraid a rock was falling, but THEY would fall--was soothed by her assurance that they wouldn't fall off. That was... enough. Even if he didn't understand literally any of the rest of it.
He turned, then, regarding this (relatively) small(ish) blue person with a new thought in his mind.
He eyed the stars.
@Aethril