How many times had Aethril been in this situation? How many times had her fingers caught around a rebel's throat, and she waited for them to spew their pleas, their tears, their whimpers for their lives? Some had been a little more dignified-- but none of them, that Aethril could remember, had a worse case than 'I know about plants.'

"What makes you think you're the only one that harbours this information?" The Hand asked, and there was impatience lining the very edge of her tone. "What makes you think you are the only one capable of... discovery?"

Her foot twisted with a scrape of the heel against smooth rock and bent the pale feathers underneath. "Your duty, both of you--" and she passed a glance to Chaos-Two at this, too. "Was to shut up, and listen. You were given simple, fair rules: do not attack your allies, and do not piss me off. While I very much appreciate your valiant defense of my honour, Chaos-Two, you were given an explicit boundary by your Master."

Pale eyes flicked to the Overseer-- Cain, who came quite high on her 'most trusted' list. Cain, who had shown her nothing but politeness, respect, and the makings of a hard worker. Her hand trembled-- not with fear, or guilt, or even sympathy for the owl underneath her, but blatant restraint. Every fiber of her being told her to get it over with.

And yet. "I trust you to try, Overseer," she said, and that shaking hand stabilized and beckoned Cain closer. "In fact, I trust you to have better reason than-- whatever you call this one. Go on. Please."

Could it? With Kethri's life in Cain's paws, she flashes the Overseer a strained smile as she waited.

A slow breath.

There was something calming about the Overseer's words as they rang in Aethrtil's ears-- or perhaps it was just their appearance alone? --that put that little hunger for blood to a standstill, for now. She listened. She listened to everything Cain had to say without interruption, eyes flashing with gentle, attentative attention.

It would be a waste. This Nest wasn't what it used to be: a death would impact Vargas's forge until a replacement was found, or created. Aethril didn't like the idea of that waste: hadn't she tried to minimize such before? The pointed stone of that creature rang through her mind and she thought of what it had been created into, and how it would be trained and beaten into obedience.

Her eyes slid across to the Master, briefly. He needed to rest. She couldn't keep making demands of him.

The Valkhand's gaze returned to Cain in silence, and she wondered-- did it care? Did it truly care, or was this a show? This good faith was new to her, Cain hadn't displayed it when it last spoke of gembound. In fact, it only had ill to speak of them-- it showed her one, a puffin, who distinctly had something wrong with its brain.

The standard had been set. As far as Aethril knew, this was no isolated incident. That passion that could be turned into a weapon could be turned into a weapon against them. Between its arrogance, its hiding of information (as useless as that information might be), had the makings of something that brought an all-too-familiar taste to the Hand's tongue.

Rebel.

If there were words that could have saved Kethri, the owl hadn't found them. It didn't take an expert to pick apart Kethri's tone and see it for what it was: utter bullshit. Between an image to uphold and a Nest to protect, prioritize and make efficent again, it just wasn't enough. "Thank you, Overseer," said the Hand, her voice considerably softer.

There was no outburst of anger. There was no ugly rage, tears, screaming. She dismissed Cain back to its spot with an incline of her head and her gaze was lifting to the rest of the Chaos Forge, chin held high. "Listen well," the Valkhand began. "Master Vargas and Overseer Cain are good people. They are fair. While they have the Nest's interests at heart, they also have your interests at heart. Despite what you might think, neither of them put these little rules in place because they wish to restrict you, embarrass you, or find reasons to punish you."

"These rules are in place to protect you. These punishments are put in place to observe what will happen when you step out of line. Any of you." Her eyes were hard, cold, and she drank in the presence of every single creature in the room: from the gold-and-white whelpling to the laughing monster bathed in oil. "You are all cut from the same cloth. You all serve a purpose."

"And oh," her head dipped to look at the owl beneath her shoe, "do you serve a purpose."

His magic was all too eager, this time, to answer her call. It came to her freely, flowing like water as it opened a vacuum-- a small black hole, inside of Kethri's chest cavity. The very air around her shuddered, and Aethril released her foot from Kethri's tail-feathers.

"Your purpose, Kethri, is to be an example."

All at once, the pressure collapsed. There was a horrific rrrriiip of live skin tearing apart, thunderous in ears. Bones cracked and split. Entrails, organs, fleshy, pale lungs unraveled like ribbon where the owl once stood. It seemed as though it were all happening in slow motion, blood and feathers and wet bits of gore hovering in the air before the vacuum was shut and it all fell into a mound on the ground with a hollow squelch.

Delicately, Aethril bent and picked up the blue-white stone with two fingers and a thumb. She gave it a firm shake to rinse the blood from it. There was no feathers visible of Kethri anymore: the vacuum had turned her entirely inside-out, everything that should have been kept safely in was on display for all of the Forge to see, and for those who could not see it, the Hand make sure to delicately kick the wet remains into the center of the meeting. She wanted them to see it.

"Master Vargas is protecting you from me. I do not want to hear of this happening again. Is that understood?"