Clarity stretched and settled herself on her favorite sunning rock. She knew she had precisely seventeen minutes and thirty-six seconds before her brothers arrived. Just enough for the warm summer sun to warm her but not so long she would become overheated.
It was second nature for Clarity to arrange people and events; guarding the future was her special gift. It had been a simple matter for her to arrange for her brothers to visit. A reminder to a friend of a task to be completed and a whispered rumor to another had set off a chain of events which she knew would draw her brothers to her.
Clarity closed her eyes, smiling slightly as she dozed, dreaming of the future she would create. She regretted nothing.
She knew the moment that her brothers arrived, their simultaneous entry to her little grove from opposite directions a tribute to her skill.
"Good morning sister," Brilliance called as stretched himself beside her. She smirked inwardly as he sprawled in the center of the largest patch of sun. At only ten feet long, her diminutive brother could easily have fit in one of the smaller patches of sun, but the clever little dragon could not resist teasing their brother. Honor, arriving from the opposite direction, ignored his brother's rudeness and settled in a patch on sun that left his tail in shade.
Honor greeted Clarity, using his most formal language of respect for her position. Beside her, Brilliance fell asleep as the long-winded greeting stretched into its second hour. Even Clarity was beginning to feel a touch drowsy by the time Honor enquired, politely, what she needed of her brothers. That she had a task for them was obvious; while both had come to visit on what they thought was a whim, they both knew Clarity well enough to realize that both of them arriving at once meant their presence was no whim.
Clarity gently nudged Brilliance to wakefulness. He yawned and stretched, shamelessly basking in the warmth of the sunny patch. Clarity smiled despite herself. Her clever brother had no patience for manners, his quick mind never able to settle unless absorbed in studying the connections between worlds. In her mind's eye she saw a child with Brilliance's restless mind building portals of metal and magic.
Now with the attention of both her brothers, Clarity did something she rarely did: share the future. She described the evil brewing in one world, an evil that would spill out first onto its neighbors, then beyond, until the day they went too far. Faced with a world they could not conquer, the evil ones would unleash a weapon more powerful than they realized and worlds would die, one by one, each pulled inexorably into the interdimensional black hole that was once a thriving civilization by the bonds each world shared with its neighbors.
Many dragons considered the string of dimensions to be unending, each representing a the results of a different path taken, but Clarity knew better. For all that their number was so great even Brilliance would fail to count them all, they were finite. And while every world could and did create mirror planets of their own on the juncture of history, the splits did not happen often and would not be enough to keep the multiverse from falling to cataclysm. Riuu would cease to exist, their people chased across worlds, keeping on step ahead of catastrophe only to blink out of existence as the last of the worlds ended around them. It was the bleakest future she had ever foreseen, and the one that was likely to come if she did not take decisive action. If They did not take action with her.
She told her brothers of the world where all this began, where even now the people had fallen into the hands of evil and were suffering from slavery at the hands of cruel masters. She spoke of those masters, or their greed for more power and their unwillingness to experiment on themselves. How this could be exploited, turning the slaves into beings with the cleverness of Brilliance, the steadfastness of Honor, and the foresight of Clarity. Evil could not stand against their children, though the fight would be long and encompass three worlds, their children would guard the future. All that was required was their lives.
Honor did not hesitate. His sense of justice would have led him to sacrifice himself for the sake of one world, much less all of them. Neither did Brilliance hesitate, though he asked many questions about the children that would be his heirs. His research was his driving passion, and knowing that his children would share in his joy soothed him. She did not tell him how small they would be.
Once resolved they did not hesitate. Three dragons lifted from the rock, separating to make their own way to their doom, and to their greatest hope.
Clarity gasped in pain as she felt Brilliance die, then Honor. Her own time was short, even now she felt the spells gathering around her for the final blow that would tear her soul into pieces. In her last moment of consciousness, she looked one last time into the blindfolded eyes of the granddaughter she would never meet, the Radiant child who would deftly weave the peoples of three worlds into a living tapestry of stunning beauty, and was at peace.