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FATHOM

After the war with the IceWings ended, Fathom and Indigo got married.

This was a publicity stunt, and Darkstalker informed them as such prior to the planning. "Romance is pretty deeply entwined in NightWing culture," he'd said. "If we highlight how much you two love each other, we'll appear a lot more noble if we end up fighting the SeaWings."

Fathom and Indigo didn't mind this too much. In fact, it seemed like a pretty smart move. They wanted to get married in the first place anyway. The only thing keeping them from doing so was Queen Pearl, but at this point, it didn't really matter if she knew that they were together.

So they wed, and King Darkstalker and Queen Clearsight milked out all of the good public relations from it that they could have. Which actually made the wedding really awesome. It was a grand ceremony. The entire Kingdom was invited, and thousands of dragons showed up. The wedding took place on the beach, near Fathom and Indigo's favorite spot, where the moonlight always sparkled against the ocean, and the waves always seemed just a little bit calmer than they were everywhere else. They wanted to get married at sunset, but that was too early for a wedding in the Night Kingdom, so instead they got married at midnight, on a night when one of the moons was almost full, and hung brightly overhead.

"These two dragons have been in our company for many years now," Darkstalker said in his speech. "Before they took shelter beneath our palace, Prince Fathom was held in isolation by his family. Because of his animus gift, they treated him like a monster, worthy of ridicule and neglect. They never would have let Fathom follow his heart, so that he could be with the dragon he loved. By denying Fathom this right, the Sea Kingdom rejected his dragonhood. They no longer saw him as a dragon, but instead as a caged animal that would eventually be put down.

"I am proud of my citizens for treating him better than his own tribe ever did, or ever will. When he came to the Night Kingdom, we accepted him with open wings, and he has since found a home here with us. We made him happy again, and we gave back to him the rights that any dragon of any scale color ought to have.

"And it goes without saying, I cannot be more grateful — or more proud — of Indigo, for being there for him. She fought and trained, harder than any other dragon in the Sea Kingdom, for the privilege to love and protect him. And it is my honor to allow her to continue loving and protecting him into her marriage.

"Queen Pearl may wish to separate these two. She may wish to take Fathom back to the Sea Kingdom, where he will be isolated, and treated with the same level of scorn and ruthless ostracism that he was subject to before. Let it be known that I will never let her do this. As long as Fathom is under our roof and in the confines of our kingdom, he will always have the right to be happy, and he will be treated and protected as any other member of our tribe would be."

He faced Fathom and beamed. "Let us rejoice! Soon, these two dragons will make their vows to each other — newer vows that will take the place of older vows, and better vows that will now be made to better dragons."

Once Darkstalker's speech was over, Clearsight went through all of the official ceremonial items. She had Fathom and Indigo join talons. Clearsight took a black length of silk that looked a bit like a scarf, and tied it around their intertwined arms. Then they exchanged their vows, and Clearsight pronounced them married, and it was all very beautiful and Fathom was in tears by the end of it. Clearsight soon said, "May the light of the moons rain peace, strength, and joy upon you — and may it stay with you now and forevermore. Fathom, Indigo, you may seal your marriage with a kiss."

But Indigo was already kissing him, and Fathom could feel his heart thumping madly in his chest. Lustfully, he let go of Indigo's talons, shook the stupid scarf thing off of him, and placed his talons on her face, pulling her in closer.

And the audience cheered. Darkstalker wasn't kidding when he said the NightWings liked themselves a good romance. He and Indigo got a standing ovation that lasted longer than their kiss had. (He didn't know how long the kiss lasted, though. Was it only a few seconds? Was it ten minutes? Was it a whole lifetime, and he was just living a moment of delusional bliss while slowly slipping away into the afterlife?)

And the continuous stream of congratulations that they received from NightWings during the reception only validated Darkstalker further. It was truly incredible. He was amazed by how many complete strangers there were who were actually happy that he was here with them, and that he had gotten the opportunity to be with Indigo.

The days followed, and he soul-soared and honeymooned with his new wife. Life was getting better and better, and the world was getting brighter and brighter.

And then the night of the meeting with Pearl came.

He knew that it wasn't going to be a very good day, but he couldn't have imagined that it would turn out as awful as it did. Nor could he have imagined that it could have turned out much, much worse.

Both facts became clearer when they all approached the door to their meeting room. It was about four weeks after the wedding. NightWing morale was high, and the citizenry were starting to feel proud to have Clearsight as their queen and Darkstalker as their king. Clearsight knew that this conference with Pearl was not going to be successful, but in her eyes, the fact that she managed to convince the SeaWing queen to meet with her in the first place was a success. It gave them all the more time to prepare for the inevitable fallout.

They decided on meeting with her in a small emissary building on an island in the Talon Peninsula. It was more remote than the palace and further away from the heart of the kingdom, which helped keep potentially hostile foreigners away from vulnerable inland hotspots. It was the same building where Clearsight and Darkstalker had gone to when discussing the peace treaty with Queen Diamond.

Clearsight landed on the island first, and she stayed perfectly still as the others joined her on the beach. As she was queen, it would have been customary for her to lead the way into the building, which looked like a homely stone cabin surrounded by hearty evergreens. It wasn't the only building on the island, but it was the only inhabited one at the moment: smoke from a chimney fluffed overhead, passing over the whippoorwills and slumbering owls and into the sky like a long, polluted cloud.

SeaWing decorations were placed here and there, as Clearsight had requested. Ceramic starfish, tiki torches, and empurpled wooden carvings of powerful SeaWings helped welcome the newcomers from the other side of the world.

Fathom looked over at Clearsight when he realized that she'd been still for an unusually long time. She was staring at the entranceway to the building, where Queen Pearl was supposedly waiting. And she looked … livid. Her snout was making these weird twitches, as if she'd just sniffed something really spicy, and her pupils were needle thin. He'd never seen Clearsight look this way before.

"Um … Clearsight?" Fathom said timidly.

Clearsight closed her eyes. "Fathom," she started, her voice eerily calm. "Your sister is the most aggravating, paranoid, and reckless dragon on the entire continent."

Fathom was too startled to form a coherent reply to that. His best efforts resulted in him sputtering, "I … uh … are you just realizing that now?"

"You had a vision, didn't you?" Darkstalker asked, craning his head towards Clearsight and frowning.

"Yes, I had a vision," Clearsight said through grit teeth. "It ended with Darkstalker and me getting murdered by two SeaWings hiding on the ceiling, Pearl dragging Fathom back to the Sea Kingdom, a long and hazardous war that the NightWings will probably end up losing, and no negotiations at all between Pearl and us before any of that happens." Her talons gripped at the sand, and tiny rivulets of grains poured out from between them. "There isn't a meeting table behind those doors. There's just a trap."

Darkstalker glowered at Clearsight, then marched forward.

Clearsight's eyes raised in alarm, then she cantered after him. "Darkstalker, wait! Did you not hear a word I said? They'll kill you the moment you step through those doors."

"I'm not going to step through those doors," Darkstalker said. When Fathom inched closer to the building, he noticed that Darkstalker's eyes were locked on an armorclad NightWing guarding the front entrance. Darkstalker promptly whistled her over.

Looking a little bit nervous, she marched forth to meet them. "Your Majesty?" she said, bowing low. "Queen Pearl is awaiting your audience."

"Why are there two assassins with her?" Darkstalker asked, looking like he was trying to suppress a growl.

The guard blinked. "You mean her two bodyguards? Uh — Your Majesty, it's customary for any foreign royalty to come with a small entourage for personal protection. We allow them the privilege so that they may feel safer when stepping foot into our kingdom."

"I didn't ask about bodyguards, I asked about assassins," Darkstalker said, his eyes growing colder by the second. "Queen Clearsight told me that there are two SeaWings armed and ready to kill whoever steps foot into that building. Why are they there? Are we not supposed to be afforded the same protections?"

The guard gave him a confused look. "King Darkstalker, of course you are given the same protections. That's why I'm here. That's why there are two more NightWing guards in the building awaiting your arrival."

"They've both been killed," Clearsight said, sounding like she'd made a horrifying realization.

The guard's eyes went wide. "What?" she said. "No they haven't." Swiftly, she turned around and trotted back to the building.

"Wait, stop!" Clearsight said, running up and blocking her path.

"My brother is one of those guards; he can't have been killed." She looked as if she were about to simply walk around Clearsight, but she stopped herself. "Please allow me to pass, Your Majesty," she said desperately.

Clearsight shook her head and spread her wings. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not making this up. They're dead, and they'll kill you too if you walk in. We need to go back. All of us. Right now."

An oddly obvious realization came to him when Clearsight told them that: Queen Pearl was inside that building. His sister, whom he hadn't seen in over three years. It was weird, finally being this close to her and suddenly turning away. He couldn't help but feel that there was an opportunity he was missing — like if he left right now, then he might never get the chance to actually see her again.

Fathom ran his talons through the sand, hesitantly. Do it, his conscience told him. Whether she'll listen or not, she needs to hear you.

"Wait," he finally said to them. "You guys go on ahead. I want to talk to her."

Clearsight looked at Fathom like he'd just pointed a crossbow at himself. "Absolutely not!" she said.

"I'll be safe," he argued. "She'd never kill me."

"You're the one she wants, Fathom," she argued back. "She may not kill you, but she'll take you away."

"We won't let her do that," Fathom said. "I promise you we won't."

"Why do you even want to talk to her?" Darkstalker asked, his head craned back and his eyebrow raised. "She just proved to everyone here that she's not interested in negotiating."

"She's my sister," Fathom said. "I just want to actually see her again. I want her to see my face when I tell her that I'm happier here. Check the futures if you want to make sure, but I swear, I won't go back to the Sea Kingdom with her. The moment she tries to take us by force, we'll fight back. Right, Indigo?"

"With pleasure," Indigo said, smiling confidently. "I could take two SeaWing lackeys with my arms tied together. I think Fathom and I owe Queen Pearl a visit anyway."

Darkstalker looked at Clearsight, who appeared to be checking the futures. Her eyes were closed and her head was lowered. When she finally lifted her eyelids again, she gave him a fearful look that he hadn't seen on her since she'd become queen. "Be careful, Fathom," she said. "Please don't let them take you."

"If they do, we will send a fully armed battalion their way to take you back," Darkstalker said. "Now go and tell her who's boss."

Fathom smiled at him, and he smiled back. Then Clearsight took to the sky and the other two NightWings followed her back to the Night Kingdom.

Fathom brought his eyes back to Indigo, who was proudly standing beside him, looking as if she were prouder in that moment than she ever had been to be his wife. He gave a half-smile at her, and she raised her chin triumphantly. Their gestures were part of a whole language of unspoken words that the two of them had unconsciously developed with each other, but had come to understand just as well as they would understand Dragon. His half-smile meant something like, "I knew that you'd be okay with this crazy plan of mine." And her chin-raise in reply meant something like, "Of course I'd be okay with it. What, did you think I was going to agree with those knuckleheads who didn't want you seeing her?"

"I wish I'd brought more weapons," Indigo said, using actual words this time. "I'd feel a lot safer with a whale tooth spear in my talons."

Fathom took a deep breath and walked up to the door. He was only a dozen or so steps, but getting closer took eerily long.

"Queen Pearl, it's Fathom," he said loudly, once he was in front of the door. "Tell your guards to not kill me when I walk in."

He counted about ten heartbeats before he heard the sound of shuffling and footsteps from within. The door swung open, and on the other side was a bright cyan dragon who looked like she'd just seen a ghost. She was definitely Pearl. She looked a lot older now (way more than three years older; being queen must have aged her quite a bit), and was decorated with the same necklaces and bracelets that she always used to wear.

Immediately, she grabbed Fathom by the shoulders and pulled him inside.

"Wait!" Fathom yelped, trying to pull himself from her grasp. He could feel Indigo's scales brushing up against his, following him as if they were magnetized to his body.

"Pearl, let him —" Indigo started, before being interrupted by the sharp slam of the door behind them. Fathom looked behind him and saw two heavily armored sea-foam green SeaWings, each armed with a spear in one talon, and at least two other blades sheathed to their bodies. Fathom noticed a freshly bleeding wound on one guard's neck, and he immediately brought his eyes forward, not wanting to remember that there were two dead NightWings somewhere in here.

Pearl let him go. She darted to one of the windows and looked outside, then looked back at Fathom. "Where is he?" she asked anxiously.

Fathom blinked. "Who, Darkstalker?"

"Yes! He was supposed to be here," she said. "With Queen Clearsight too. It's not like they'd just send you here alone. That wouldn't make any sense."

"They're not here," Fathom said.

Pearl blinked, looking like she was cautiously letting some of her fear turn into confusion.

"They figured out what you were planning to do to them," he told her. "Clearsight had a vision. She saw everything."

Indigo growled at the ground. "Just my luck. Of course she'd have a vision about the one thing I needed her to not find out about. What are you doing here, then? Are they actually giving in to my demands?"

"No," he said. "I asked them if I could stay and talk to you."

"And they agreed? Fathom, they can't be that stupid." She peered out the window again, her eyes darting from one spot to another. "Maybe they just told you that."

"They're not stupid. They just trust me." He took a step closer to her and brushed his wing against hers to get her attention. "Pearl, you do realize I want to stay here, right?"

Pearl gave Fathom a look of wounded surprise. "What? Why?" she asked.

The look of surprise Fathom gave her had to have eclipsed her own. "How did you not know that? I thought you sent me here because you were expecting me to be happier here."

"That was before Darkstalker turned tyrannical and murdered his queen!" Pearl shrieked, flailing her talons in the air. "And no, I sent you here because you needed to keep something like this from happening."

"He's not tyrannical, Pearl; he's actually a really good king. You might have actually realized that if you decided to talk to him."

"Talk to him? Fathom, I don't even want to be near him. I'm risking everything trying to rescue you already." She paced further into the building, and Fathom noticed that she really looked terrified. Her eyes were stressed and tired, and her tail flicked to and fro. "I don't know what they could possibly want with you, but I know it can't be good. You might be an animus, but you're still my brother. What kind of a sister would I be if I didn't try to protect you from them?"

Fathom cocked his head, feeling offended, touched, and confused all at once. "Pearl, I just told you —"

"I know what you just told me, Fathom," Pearl interrupted, snapping her eyes back at him. "It doesn't make sense, though. Look at what Darkstalker did to his queen! And don't forget about Wharf and Lionfish either. There's no doubt in my mind that they used his magic on …" Pearl's eyes suddenly went wide. "Have you been using your magic again?"

Fathom felt like he just got hit in the head with a log of driftwood. Too dazed to give a reply, he ended up letting Indigo answer for him. "No, he has not," she said. "Fathom hasn't cast a single spell since he saved —" She caught herself suddenly, then corrected herself, saying, "since I saved him from Albatross."

"Don't lie to me," Pearl said intensely. "I know Fathom. He'd never be okay with any of this happening — unless something happened to his soul."

"Pearl, I want to stay here because —" Fathom started.

"What did you do, Fathom?" Pearl asked, ignoring Fathom's words. "You can tell me: I'll forgive you. I just need to know how bad it is."

"I never used my magic!" Fathom said impatiently.

"Yes you did, don't deny it," Pearl said, equally impatiently. "Or maybe you've been brainwashed. Did he tamper with your thoughts?"

"No he didn't! And I didn't use my powers, Indigo!"

"Then why in Pyrrhia would you want to stay here with Darkstalker?"

"Because I'm wanted here!" he shouted back, ignoring the lump forming in his throat. He also ignored how the guards suddenly took their stances and pointed their spears at him. "Because here, I'm not caged up and locked away like some sort of deranged viper. Because maybe I don't want to go back to waking up every morning feeling guilty and terrified and unwanted and alone."

Pearl paused, and looked sadly at her brother. "Oh, Fathom," she said, reaching a talon forward. She looked like she was about to hug him, and Fathom was secretly hoping she would. He already felt the sting of tears in his eyes, and he needed a gesture from her to let him know that she was on his side.

But she didn't hug him. She brought her talon back to the ground, and said, "I needed everyone to feel safe," she said. "Safe from you."

"I was miserable," Fathom said to her. "And you knew I was miserable. I had no friends, Pearl. Not until I came here, and Darkstalker helped me feel happy again."

"I'll be better this time," Pearl said. "I'll find you some friends. I'll let them know you're probably not dangerous yet."

Fathom shook his head. "It's too late, Pearl. I'm staying here."

"But you can't," Pearl said. "You're the SeaWing prince, and you've been gone for three years now. It's time to come home."

She placed a talon on his shoulder — too little too late. Fathom swatted it off and turned away from her. "This is my home now, Pearl," he said. "The NightWings have treated me better than my own tribe ever will." He blinked, noticing that he was parroting Darkstalker's speech at his wedding. Which reminded him that he had a confession he needed to make.

He faced his sister, who was having a tough time looking back at him now. "Pearl," he said, "Indigo and I are married now."

Pearl actually scoffed at that, and a smile crept to her face. "Figures," she said. "You two were smitten for each other. Indigo, I hope you know about the oath Fathom made to me."

"I do," Indigo said. She gave Fathom a subtle glance with a slight smile — another complex sentence in their unspoken language. This one meant something like, "I dare you to break it."

"It was mostly for your sake that I had him make it," Pearl said. "I think you'd make a good mother."

"I would much rather be with Fathom for the rest of my life than take another dragon's eggs," Indigo said nobly.

"Even if that means never taking his eggs?"

"Of course."

Pearl frowned. She appeared to be looking at something between the two of them, and Fathom noticed that Indigo had twined her tail around his.

"No," the SeaWing queen said. "Fathom, I'm sorry, but none of this is okay. You can't stay here. You can't be with Indigo like this. We're going back to the Sea Kingdom, and we're going back now."

"No!" Fathom said, digging his talons into the floorboards as if a giant eagle were about to try picking him up and flying him to its nest. "You can't make me."

"I'm your queen, and that was an order," Pearl said definitively. "You're not thinking straight, Fathom. Darkstalker manipulated you into thinking what he did was okay. Once you've spent some time back in the Sea Kingdom, you'll realize how reckless and delusional you're being right now."

"You're the one who's being reckless and delusional," Indigo retorted. "The NightWings have been nothing but cooperative, and you tried to stab them in the back the first opportunity you got."

"I did what I needed to do to save my brother, Indigo," Pearl said. "And that's not changing." With a louder voice, she commanded the guards, "Arrest them."

An instant later, both guards were double-teaming Indigo, who had just tried to reach for her knife. One grabbed her arm and started twisting it, and the other gripped at her horn and locked his jaws into her neck.

"Get your dirty talons off of me!" Indigo shrieked as she began flailing about.

"Wait, don't hurt her!" Fathom cried. He wedged himself between Indigo and the guard grabbing her arm, pressing his talons to the guard's neck and pushing him away. The guard let go for a moment to whack him across the snout with the backside of his gauntlet, and Fathom stumbled to the ground, disoriented.

Indigo used her free talon to strike the other guard in the throat with the heel of her palm. He loosened his bite, and Indigo whirled her head around to get him to let go of her horn.

For an instant, she was free, and bolted for the door. But the door was closed, and by the time Indigo was reaching to open it, her tail had been grabbed and she was being dragged back in the direction of the guards.

Fathom got up and ran after the struggling dragons again, but got pinned to the ground by Pearl. "This is for your own good, Fathom," she said through grit teeth as Fathom tried to wrestle himself free from her.

"Please, just let us go!" Fathom begged. He watched as the two guards got back to work at attempting to detain Indigo again. Indigo twisted around so her back was on the floor, and scratched at the dragon who was pulling her tail. The second guard spun around and bludgeoned her head with his tail, and immediately afterwards the first guard let go of her tail and threw all of his weight on her shoulders. "Get the rope," he said to the second guard, before biting into Indigo's neck again to pin her down.

"No, stop!" Fathom wailed.

Beneath the second guard's wing was a circle of rope, tied in a lasso. He unhooked it from his armor and wrapped it around Indigo's neck before tightening it. Indigo let out a choking sound that made Fathom's stomach twist.

"Let her go!"

The guards didn't let her go. Indigo flailed with her arms and used her head to try to break free from the hold against her. The dragon on top of her bit harder into her neck, and Indigo yelped in pain. A second later, he saw blood in the dragon's mouth.

"Let her go!" Fathom wailed again.

"Stop struggling, Indigo!" Pearl demanded. "You're going to get yourself killed!"

This wasn't how things were supposed to go. They were supposed to be able to avoid this situation. Clearsight saw that, right? She checked the futures: she saw them avoiding capture, right? Did he do something wrong? Was there something he could do to get out of this?

He tried struggling again, but to no avail. Pearl was bigger and stronger than him, and kept him pressed against the floorboards with ease.

He couldn't let this happen. He couldn't. He wasn't going back to the Sea Kingdom, and he wasn't being separated from Indigo. But he didn't know what to do. There had to be something he could do.

"Let her go!" he said desperately, a third time.

The guard holding the lasso pulled the rope, forcing Indigo's neck to extend. He turned around and lifted his tail, preparing for a strike to her head that would certainly knock her unconscious.

"I enchant you to let her go!"

The words escaped his mouth before he completely registered them. At once, the guard holding the rope dropped it, and the guard on top of Indigo was propelled back, as if an invisible dragon shoved him away. He landed lopsidedly on the ground. Indigo twisted around and stood up, loosening the lasso around her neck and sucking in a breath of air.

There was a moment — right after when Pearl became so startled that she scrambled off of Fathom — where everyone went still and silent. The look his sister gave him in that moment, and the feeling that was starting to well up in his chest — that was exactly why he never wanted to go back to the Sea Kingdom.

They think you're a monster, he thought.

Maybe because you really are becoming one.

The moment of stillness was brief, though. Soon, Indigo ran for the door and swung it open. "Fathom, let's go!" she shouted. And Fathom followed her outside.

Neither Pearl nor her guards tried stopping them as they fled. Within less than a minute, he was high in the sky, flying back to the Talon Peninsula as quickly as his wings could take him. And all the while, his mind was rushing a million miles a second.

He'd just broken his vow. The important vow, the one that he knew he would have to make after what had happened to Albatross. The oath he sealed with an X in his palm. He used his magic again, just like he'd always feared he would.

Was he supposed to feel more monstrous? Was there supposed to be an aura of corruption and anger pulsating through his veins? Because he didn't feel that. He felt nervous and anxious, wondering if that was the spell that brought him over the edge. But other than that, everything was the same.

And for the first time, something pushed back against the anxiety and guilt. For the first time, he started to wonder if he was being paranoid about animus magic. He knew, rationally, that Darkstalker would be willing to use his magic to protect him, or to make something for him that would make his life better. And while he always considered it his mission to get Darkstalker to ease up on his use of that magic, there was a part of him that was deeply comforted by that fact.

The oath that he'd made had been broken, but that didn't matter. He renounced his ties to the Sea Kingdom, and to his sister, and in doing so he renounced the vows that he made to her. The question he found himself asking now was whether that vow was worth renewing. If Darkstalker could use his magic to improve the lives of those around him ... maybe he could do the same.