"NO! You will not tell Mother of the war!", he shouted, "If you tell her, then you guarantee that they will be fighting! They're not even certain if they can find her! If you tell Mother, then she could retaliate and it would be guaranteed that lives would be lost."

James snorted and stamped a foot, "We would have gone anyway. But yes! Let's turn down joining with the most powerful gembounds in the caves against a force that could be incredibly powerful! That is incredibly powerful. No one is allying with Vargas except Tahi, everyone is following him, not the Master."

He paced now, nervous and flustered, looking towards the chrysali on the other side of the clearing. He thought of Comet and Pegasus, his children...

"Let's go talk to Pride," he said, "You will not tell any of this to Mother. Vargas would kill me and then kill me again. I shouldn't have told you, now we're all at risk."

James walked towards Cepheus, head down and tail dragging, exhausted.

@Aethereal

Aethereal tensed as James raised his voice. This was just getting better and better, wasn't it? She worried for them, all of them: Mother and those who were going to fight her. There was no turning aside the course of this war, it seemed. She couldn't think of any scenario where this turned out well.

But it's not your responsibility to care about them all, whispered a little voice in her mind. It's not your job to save everyone. Life happens, and at least these people made the choice for themselves. Even if following someone who obeyed Vargas sounded a lot like following Vargas himself, at least these were adults who knew what they were getting into.

"I hope you all know what you're doing," she said flatly. "But I will not speak of it to Mother." And that hurt. Here she was, giving up her connection to the one who had raised her, for better or worse. But it would keep James and her safe, at least for the time being. She would consider this repayment for showing her the Black Spire, and now they were even. "Let's go talk to Pride."

@James exit

James sighed softly and looked down. 'I don't. I really, really don't. We can hope Tahi does,' he thought.

He tensed his shoulders and continued forward, feeling like he'd aged a hundred years from this one encounter. He clenched his eyes shut for a moment, ears pinned, before flapping his wings and taking to the air to get his weight off his leg.

And then they were off.

@Aethereal for vis
Exit