For Luxa, the peace plan had worked out better than they could have expected, at least in the early stages.
While Gregor left very early in the day, Luxa's summons for the council did not take nearly as long as she expected. Indeed, the departure of the king and a flight of guards had hastened the process. Even the Minister of War had agreed easily to her orders to send a group to the Maw. Whether or not they believed that a treaty could be made, they could understand how leaving their king unsupported would 'be a bad look', as Gregor himself would say.
The army had to rest briefly at Tantalus, but they were not too far behind. Even so, their arrival at the Maw did not come before Gregor had already jumped to the bottom by himself.
Aurora had suggested they follow directly, but after Gregor had descended, the cutters had begun to strike unpredictably against the crawlers. Luxa had to lead the army to save the digging crew, at the cost of valuable time.
Seeing the battle turn so poorly, the crawler commander had ordered the incomplete trough to be flooded, considering Gregor to be dead already. At that point, the army had to once again divide its efforts. Some would continue protecting the crawlers, while the best fliers would dive into the Maw, looking for the king.
She and Aurora dove to his rescue, ensuring that he was still alive, although lightly injured and without energy. But Luxa had to ensure the battle was secure before returning to his side.
When she did, she realized how dire the situation had actually become. Gregor was coated in slime like some kind of twisted newborn. His armor was gone, his feet bare, and his clothes were tattered. None of that was so worrying, and indeed it could have seemed normal after some of their past escapades.
But he was weeping, crying like she had never seen before from him, except perhaps when Ares had died or when Twitchtip was found to have perished. He was even tucked into himself like a child, silent except for the huffs of breath that escaped him while sheets of tears coated his face.
"Gregor, what is the matter?" Luxa asked, squatting beside him to examine the wound on his back. "Are you injured?"
He could not speak, but his grip felt weak as he tried to grab her arm. His face was marred by the tortured expression held therein, but he did not appear to be totally mad. He needed time to recover, and that would be costly so close to the battle. However, there was a nibbler colony nearby, re-established very recently. It was a place she could have recognized anywhere.
Aurora found the way easily, tracing the quickly-draining river up and then using landmarks to find the nibbler colony.
Luxa patted Aurora. They had spent much time here after her dislocated wing. It seemed like it would again be a place of shelter and recovery for the scores of injured from the battle. Bitten fliers and humans lay groaning in pain on the beach while helpful nibblers offered what they could in terms of aid.
The injured crawlers ate some and drank some, but there was no greater treatment than the passage of time for them.
Gregor was let down at the shore of the clear pond. In what seemed to be ages ago, he had once shown Luxa something entirely new when he had groomed Lapblood in her darkest moment. Here, he would experience something similar.
She unbuckled her greaves and dragged Gregor up to his waist in the water with her. His crying had slowed and he had lapsed into silence, nearly catatonic. When he did not stir for several moments, she began to clean him without comment.
She lifted handfuls of water to his head, soaking his now-stiffened hair. Sitting alongside him in the pond, she wiped the mess from his skin, letting the dark streamers drift away into the depths. Once the filth was cleaned off of him, she took him back to the shallows, where his head could lie on her thighs as she sat, his body soaking as he looked directly upward, not seeing her.
The survivors on the beach watched them with a polite amount of disinterest. Although his state was quite visible, the injured and their caretakers were not occupied in discussion, nor were they stunned into silence. Their king and queen were just like them there, hurt and waiting for time and Nature to take their course.
Eventually, they did.
"Luxa?" Gregor asked, eyes finally clear-seeing. "Where am I?"
"The new nibbler colony," she answered, noting the new sharpness in his eyes. He had returned. "You were... indisposed."
Gregor shut his eyes and tried to search his memories. He couldn't remember much after Hyperion had taken him out of the Maw. Then he realized the craziness hadn't been a dream. He had really been crying like a baby for hours. He opened his eyes against the shame, and found that Luxa wasn't looking at him with disgust, but with kindness.
Her hair was as short as she had first cut it for battle, so long ago. He touched its fringes, still fresh from the shears.
"It looks good," he said.
"Thank you, dearest," Luxa said. "But think you that this is the time for such talk?"
She meant it teasingly, as a reminder of older discussions. But he had taken the words deeply.
"There's nothing else to talk about," Gregor said. "Unless you really want me to go over the details of that disaster with the cutters."
"If you cannot, do not fret," Luxa said. "But I can think of few things more useful to hear at the moment."
Gregor struggled for a moment with his feelings, but knew that holding it in would do no good. He felt secure again at the lake, laying his head against her as the water cooled them.
"I really ought to tell the story," Gregor said. "I guess the problems started with the parachute."
Luxa was naturally pretty worried when she heard about the parachute, and things didn't really get better from there. He had found the room where the cutter queens stayed, but was unable to get them all to agree on a surrender.
The part where a fight broke out and Gregor accidentally shot an innocent queen still made him choke up with bitterness.
"The last of them wasn't going to make it, but she laid an egg," Gregor said. "But I couldn't even keep that safe."
He pointed to the egg, which was bobbing along the surface of the water, its surface marred with holes and dark splotches from caustic burns. Luxa took it in her hands, and instantly noticed something about it. But before she could mention it, Gregor had more to say.
"I've been feeling pretty down," he said. "Ripred's vanished, Hazard's granddad is dying, and I'm next to useless as a king."
She stroked his cheek. He hadn't shared any of those worries with her. But likewise, she had shared little of her worries with him.
"The absence of our greatest remaining teacher and friend worried me briefly," Luxa said soothingly. "But this is not the first time he has departed without notice in recent memory. I am sure he has not truly deserted us."
Gregor squinted as if he doubted her words, but his body did seem to relax a very small amount.
"I am aggrieved to hear that Hazard might lose his grand-father so soon after meeting him. But surely it is better that they met, even if their time was so short."
A heartbeat passed and he was more at ease.
"And what is this about you failing as a king?" She asked. "Only your reputation spurred the army into quick action. The cutters may not have survived, but our intervention saved many of the others."
Luxa picked up the egg and seated it softly on Gregor's chest.
"Whatever horrors happened in their nest, you persevered valiantly and did not fail in carrying this last egg out of danger. Only the surface is damaged. It will live."
That was the revelation that freed him from the weight of failure and frustration. All was not lost. Luxa decided to use this moment to surprise him with the most affecting news.
"As far as kingly duties are concerned, you were also successful in another," she said.
When his eyes looked into hers with confusion, she answered only by lightly pressing his head into her belly. His eyes opened wide in realization, and she nodded, feeling a bright smile break out from within her. It had been a hard day, but the moment was nearly enough to make it all better.
The army slowly started to pull in from the battleground. The danger had passed. With the humans holding torches on their fliers, they resembled dancing stars high above the Jungle clearing. And although the new arrivals were very much interested in the Queen and King of Regalia and their business in the lake, neither Gregor nor Luxa moved a muscle, enjoying the comfort of each other in the water.
The vigil was eventually interrupted by a horde of nibbler pups rushing to swim, and the splashing of bathing soldiers, but the feeling of peace and security remained. The colony had once been deserted, its residents driven to a place of no return, but life had returned.
They knew that peace would not be forever, and it would not be easy to maintain. But for as long as they could fight for it, they would. It wouldn't be as perfect as this moment, but it could probably come close.
The time for life anew had begun.