"Firelily, come on, wake up!" Umbra said as she shook Firelily awake.
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?" Firelily asked as she got up to look at her friend.
"You've slept 'til noon," Umbra explained as she gestured for Firelily to follow her out of the cave. "So Shadowlurker's mad, per usual. And she left Silencekeeper in charge while she—probably—went to burn some trees. So Silencekeeper is holding a meeting about the you-know-what."
'Escaping?' Firelily asked in her thoughts, and Umbra nodded. 'I've told Starseer and Vulture about it last night. They're around the area so they'll help us later.'
"Oh, it's really that time again?" Umbra asked. Basically everyone but Shadowlurker knew that Firelily was frequently Dreamvisited by two dragons who were sent by her parents. Firelily nodded. "Well that explains why it's noon and you're just now up. Although I knew it wasn't what Shadowlurker said and it's because you're part RainWing. 'Coz so am I, I just don't have parents who care as much as yours, apparently."
"I'm sure they do," Firelily said. If it was anyone besides Umbra—or Dimglow—she probably would've tried to drop the subject of parents. As much as she dreamed to meet them and liked to know more about them, she could never really forget the part why she was in these caves: because her parents hadn't been careful enough. Umbra always thought of the better sides to it all, like if her parents had been tricked into giving up her egg, while Dimglow was just stupidly hopeful. When, in reality, Firelily wouldn't doubt it if someone told her that both of their parents didn't want them. "But maybe they couldn't find anyone to help them. Or they didn't have enough money to pay for it. My dad was an Outclaw, so who knows what he had."
"I didn't think that's how Outclaws worked," Umbra said, doing her deep-in-thought voice. "But thanks, anyways."
They walked across the hard stone floor in silence for a bit longer, until Umbra opened up the curtains to some room Firelily had never been in before. Then she realized, this must be Silencekeeper's room.
As they stepped in, it was no doubt the NightWing-SandWing's room. Scrolls with pictures instead of words on them were stuck to the wall somehow, a nice set of blankets and pillows lay in a far corner, along with shelves lining the walls full of scrolls. She recognized a few of the titles as she sat down between Umbra and Dimglow on one side of the room, with Silencekeeper facing them.
"Is she gone?" Silencekeeper asked Dimglow, who nodded.
"Yes! Shadowlurker left a while ago, and grumbled about not being back until sunset!" Dimglow said. Firelily knew that, since Silencekeeper could see into the future, she already knew that Shadowlurker wasn't there, but she always tried to make all three of them feel equal. Firelily was going to miss that, when and if Silencekeeper left them that night.
"Good, that's all the time we'll need." Silencekeeper said. There was a moment of silence before she started talking again, and even though they all knew no one was here to overhear them, her voice was almost a whisper. "You three are all going to be going home tonight. I promise that there will be dragons who will help you, and I promise that there will not be a Shadowlurker anymore. But then again…I may not be there with you…" For a moment Firelily wondered if she was the only one who got the idea that Silencekeeper was going to die tonight, when Dimglow gasped and Umbra looked a little shocked.
"What?" Dimglow squeaked. She shrunk down and almost looked half her size. "Are you gonna die..?"
Silencekeeper sighed and nodded. "I very well might. I'm the only one who can kill her, so then the rest of you can live. There's very few futures were all four of us live, but most of them involve all four of us dying, because Shadowlurker isn't dead." A few whimpers came out of even Firelily's mouth in the pause. "But I wrote a few things for you to know. When I'm gone, and I won't be able to protect you. These'll keep you safe. Firelily, would you grab it? It's the third scroll on the left in the shelf closest to my bed."
Firelily nodded and took the one that matched her descriptions. She assumed it was the right one as she handed it to Silencekeeper when she saw it had the title "For Firelily, Umbra, and Dimglow" on it. Silencekeeper nodded her thanks as Firelily sat back down.
"This, is something I want you to each read after before we make our strike at midnight. But whatever you do, don't read it out loud or else Shadowlurker would hear you." Silencekeeper said with the scroll in her talons, carefully turning it and looking at it as she spoke. "I used my future-seeing powers to try to do the best I could to look after you when I'm gone. It, like I said, will give you information so then you're safe, but not so much information that you depend on it too much. Just simple things like 'never drink from the tiny oasis outside of the Scorpion Den', because I saw futures where it was poisoned."
They spent a little bit more time discussing what the plan was, like how Firelily, Umbra, and Dimglow were going to wait until Silencekeeper gave the OK for them to leave. And how Silencekeeper was going to kill her mother. And then how the three friends would find Starseer and Vulture and travel across Pyrrhia find their parents.