Confusion, danger, and lethal enemies stalked Lily and Beryl, cornering and ambushing in every possible way. Beryl was hyperventilating on his side for some unknown reason, clawing at the ground and gasping loudly. Five nightmare-dragons had come upon them – two behind, one in front, one up on a ledge above, and one right next to her – and she had no ideas, no plans. Nothing but an urgent desire to lash out, an even more urgent desire to figure out what was wrong with Beryl, and a horrible, creeping sense of hopelessness.
She couldn't move; they would leap on Beryl the moment she was no longer guarding him. She couldn't fight; it was five to one and they wielded both fire and venom. It wasn't likely to become five to two in the next few moments, either; Beryl was only breathing faster and louder with every heartbeat. She had to defend him, to stand over him and do something.
At that, she was standing over him, her wings outstretched to make herself look and feel larger, more intimidating. He lay sprawled behind her, with her tailfins splayed possessively over his head. Maybe she even looked intimidating, enough that they were wary of closing the distance and falling victim to some vicious, clever attack.
Or maybe they were expecting their confusing words to calm her.
The nightmare dragon closest to her, the one with strikingly white eyes, tilted its head, wicked fangs drawing her eyes. The movement was slow and measured, like a predator waiting for the right moment to strike.
"I said," it repeated in the same feminine, gravelly voice, "that you do not need to be afraid."
Lily found her voice after a moment of absolutely nothing changing. No attack, no indication that an attack was coming… She didn't trust it, but she saw no other way to respond. To talk was to postpone open hostilities, and she would lose once it came to that. "Fear is what your kind do best," she said.
"Usually, yes, but not us," the female explained. "We are peaceful. Do not judge us by our looks."
"Or do, we care very little," the nightmare dragon lurking above them said casually, leering down at her with an unsettlingly predatory expression. "But you know nothing about how to fix him."
"How would she know, Aggress?" the female asked shortly, before turning back to Lily. "Look, your companion is in trouble."
"I know that!" Lily snarled. He was heaving as if unable to breathe at all now, and while she hadn't been given the chance to look him over, she didn't think there was any obvious cause to be found. Nothing simple or easy to fix.
"He has been bitten by one of our kind," the female continued, sounding certain of what she was saying. "What he is doing now has never happened to him before. He is not one for panic attacks. That is because this is what our venom does, long-term. Let us help, we know how."
Lily struggled with herself for a brief second, but the sounds of Beryl gasping desperately were more than enough to make up her mind. "Kill him and I kill you," she snarled, impatiently stepping aside to let the nightmare dragon at Beryl. It was an action stemming from her complete lack of options, something she had to do because there was no other path that led to even the slightest chance of escape.
The female blinked in surprise. "You are very practical," she remarked, sidling over to Beryl's side. "Most cannot put aside their very understandable distrust at all, and few do it quickly, let alone immediately."
Lily watched closely as the ominous-looking female nosed at Beryl's side, turning him over. She wanted to interfere, to demand speed, or help somehow, but there was absolutely nothing she could do, and she knew it all too well. She felt like she was watching a new nightmare play out while she was awake. Those fangs were so close to Beryl's quivering body, though the nightmare dragon was making no move to actually open her mouth...
"Quiet," the female hissed at Beryl, placing a paw on his stomach. "Breathe. Do nothing more. Do not move, and do not speak." Then she shoved her paw down.
Beryl wheezed out one final gasping breath, before going scarily silent. His eyes were wide and unseeing, and Lily feared for a split second that he was dead.
Then his chest slowly filled in under the fear dragon's paw and talons, and his eyes slid closed. He inhaled deeply, paused, and exhaled deeply. His breathing began to speed up again almost immediately-
The paw went down again, forcing much of the air out of him in a startled wheeze. "Calm," the fear dragon hissed, repeating Lily's command from earlier. "Believe it or not, I mean no harm, but I know what you believe is not the issue here. Take heart. I have helped others through this, and it will pass eventually." As she spoke, her paw went up and down, though now it was on his chest as much as his stomach. "I know it hurts, I know, but you will nearly suffocate yourself through fear if I do not control your breathing until it passes."
Lily winced as the nightmare dragon pushed down on Beryl's ribs. Now that her attention had been drawn to that, she could see that what was being done had to hurt, quite a bit.
Hurting… she was watching a nightmare dragon hurt Beryl, and she wasn't doing anything. Because she understood what hurting to help looked like, what it felt like. No matter how much she distrusted this kind of dragon, the words and tone were that of a healer. She knew that, the same way she knew she herself had sounded when she taught Honey and Copper. When she had learned from Pyre. It made her a little more willing to trust.
For the moment, anyway. Lily could see the green-tinted fangs, the reflective wing covering, the wicked talons. She was not going to let her guard down completely. But she also wasn't going to do anything to antagonize this dragon, or any of her friends. Beryl needed their help, for some reason.
"Light wing," the female fear dragon called out. "Come watch me."
Lily walked around to Beryl's other side. "Is he unconscious?" she asked. The way he was lying still…
"Actually, he is totally awake, but he is heeding my command to not move or speak or do anything but relax and breathe," the nightmare dragon explained. "Watch me pushing down. Get the timing into your head. Once you have it, put your paw next to mine. You need to know how to do this."
"I'm here, Beryl, just relax," Lily hummed, knowing now that he would appreciate reassurance, being able to hear it. She watched the black, taloned paw go up and down. It seemed unbelievable that Beryl was just lying there, helpless… But he might not have much of a choice in the matter. It was hard to do anything when one couldn't breathe.
"How much force do I put into this?" Lily asked carefully as she watched. She had the timing down, but she didn't want to break Beryl's ribs. The nightmare dragon was obviously on the verge of that as it was.
"As much as needed to ensure he cannot inhale when you push down, and no more." The nightmare dragon nodded to her paw, her fangs catching Lily's gaze with every new movement, a constant worry. "When you are ready, beside me. Interrupting the pattern is not fatal or even extremely dangerous, but it will hurt him, and this hurts enough as it is."
Lily almost immediately stuck her paw out, resting it beside the much narrower, sharper arrangement of talons and black scale that belonged to her current instructor. After a single push, the nightmare dragon lifted off and away, leaving Lily to continue the rhythm.
She did so with ease, having internalized the timing already. It took a surprising amount of force to keep Beryl from inhaling too early or too fast, but she managed.
After a few dozen repetitions of that, Lily felt herself relaxing further. Doing something to help him was far more calming than being told something was being done, or even seeing it being done; she remained alert for any signs of aggression from the other dragons, but the distraction kept her from focusing on them. "How long does this last?" she asked, unnerved by how much pain she was clearly causing him. She had a new appreciation of what he had done for her, and he wasn't even screeching.
"It depends on his mental state, how worked up he is, and a number of other things, so I cannot say. Not too much longer." The female fear dragon had stepped back a safe distance, giving Lily some much-appreciated space. "You know he was bitten by one of our kind at some point." It was not a question; Lily supposed it was obvious she was not completely oblivious to what was going on.
"Yes, I was there. Why did this happen now?" She kept the suspicion out of her voice, though she definitely felt it. If they had intentionally triggered this in a ploy to force her to drop her guard, she would not let them know she suspected. Not until she was in a position to do something about it.
"Our venom is surprisingly complex and affects the mind," the nightmare dragon explained guiltily, staring at Beryl with a look of remorse that was entirely out of place on her fearsome visage of a face. "It clouds the mind, breaks down memories, new and old, and causes panic attacks. Always at the sight of one of our kind, for one thing, or upon encountering more of our venom in either form–"
"Rendering the victim immobile and in a heightened state of terror," the male apparently called Aggress continued in a much less guilty tone from his perch. "He would not die, but he would hyperventilate until his body eventually gave up and shut down. Then, when he woke, it would be over… until the next trigger."
"You do not have to sound so proud," the female complained. "It is a horrible thing not even necessary for our survival."
"It is a fascinating thing on its own," Aggress retorted lazily. "What our kind do with it, and who we use it on, is what makes it horrible," he added, sounding as if he was quoting someone… or attempting to, but not trying very hard to remember what they had said. "Have I got that right?"
"No, it is horrible in and of itself." One of the nightmare dragons who had come up behind Lily and Beryl called out, walking closer. Close enough to bark in his gravelly voice and enter the conversation, at least, though far enough that she didn't feel threatened. "Aggress, you know that. Do not argue otherwise, even if you believe so yourself. Or do you want to be put out of our group?"
"Never," Aggress declared defiantly. "I will never leave here. Not until I have what I want."
"I see you are sensible," the new male said condescendingly.
Lily, still helping Beryl, had the distinct feeling she had stumbled into a power struggle, or perhaps just an internal disagreement. She was thankful her skills in manipulation and seeing the undercurrents of power in a pack structure had not atrophied from disuse; it was looking like she might need them now, to avoid stepping into a fatal power play.
"And speaking of leaving here…" the female who had helped Beryl looked over at Lily. "It will be helpful if you tell us where this male dark wing was attacked, and how long ago."
"A cavern a while downstream of that big river, around a hundred cycles back," Lily improvised. She measured the time in moon-cycles, assuming she and Beryl slept at night and regularly, and a hundred cycles was about three moon-cycles, which was how long she estimated it had been. It was a very rough guess, but good enough for her purposes.
"A hundred cycles…" the female growled. "It would be just past the point of obviously causing problems, then. Memory loss. Short-term, or long-term?"
"Definitely short term, maybe long term to a lesser degree," she said succinctly, recognizing the act of diagnosing an illness. Regardless of how she felt about these dragons in general, she was beginning to respect the female, who clearly knew what she was talking about, and wanted to help. Respect did not mean trust or like, but it was something more than dislike.
"Then so long as you continue to do that, he needs only to lie still and wait, and it will be over soon enough," the female said. "For now. But he needs those memories fixed sooner or later; they will eat away at his mind."
Lily felt a brief resurgence of panic, before squashing it down again. "How do we fix them?"
"Any guardian can." The female bowed her head as if overcome by guilt… Which Lily could understand, if what she was being told was true. "You must understand, you are not the first I have helped. When he has recovered, I will give you directions to the guardian most accustomed to treating this."
"Why not now?" she asked.
"Because you both must remember, just in case, and he is not in any state to remember important details," the female nightmare dragon explained.
Lily looked down at Beryl, who was still physically still, and still very much in need of what she was doing. She could feel his body fighting her slow, deep regimine, trying to reinstate the lightning-fast and shallow panting that did absolutely nothing for him… Or maybe too much. She didn't know the exact specifics, only that it was bad for him but he couldn't stop of his own accord.
The more she thought about it, the more what he was going through seemed far too familiar. To be so utterly betrayed by one's own body, and mind... She didn't want to ask him what it was like, partially because she didn't think he would want to remember once he was past it, and partially because she had enough material for her own nightmares as things stood without seeking out more.
"Light wing, I have to not be here when he recovers," the female said carefully. "I am going to stay until right before, because you both must hear and remember my directions, but if you have anything else you wish to ask of us all, you may want to ask now."
"I don't feel comfortable making small talk," Lily said bluntly, looking down at Beryl. "Not while–"
"Don't…" Beryl wheezed out. Lily almost stopped pushing down on his chest, but the nightmare dragon set her talon down on top of her paws and kept her going without even a pause.
"Don't stop… on my account…" Beryl continued.
"Distraction can be useful in calming those afflicted," the female said. "Even if it is something simple and irrelevant."
Lily shook her head and tried to cast off the guilt at chatting with someone while Beryl endured a panic attack under her paws. They were giving her a chance to ask questions. She could use that… though she didn't intend to stick to light topics, if she was going to speak at all. "Do your kind really eat dragons?" she huffed.
"We can," the female growled, looking her in the eye. "Some of us do. Most of us, truthfully. But those you see here are those who reject that. We have struck a deal with sea dragons, and are provided with fish from the underground sea that is the source of the river."
Lily thought back to the only conversation she had ever had with a sea dragon, one whose people fed many packs, including a pack of peaceful dragons known as Fear-mongers. This sea. They were on the same sea, bordering the same body of water, what they called a sea but she considered to be a lake.
One that the sea dragon had already told her did not connect to the other part of the sea unless one could breathe water. This was not a way back. But it was close. She had to ask, to satisfy her own curiosity. "You do not happen to know of a cavern with blooming white flowers, do you?"
"Part of the sea those sea dragons tend, yes, I have been there," the female Fear-monger, for that was what these dragons were called, replied happily. "Do you want directions?"
Lily began to say yes, then stopped herself. It was not so simple a question. She wasn't sure if she should want directions, or if she should ask for them even if she did. Knowledge was good… but she didn't want to have to make Beryl choose between seeing his family and having his memories fixed, let alone the conflict having the option might breed in her own heart. She was past that...
But sentimentality aside, there was value in obtaining information while she could. "Can you maybe give me directions from the guardian you are sending us to?"
"You wish for a route that takes you into that guardian's domain, and then to the white flower cavern?" The female scrunched her now somewhat less terrifying face up, tapping her fangs with a talon. "Yes, I can give you that. How do you know of that cavern?"
"Those same sea dragons supply our pack." Or former pack, really, but she was not about to bring that up for these dragons to discuss. She trusted them to be peaceful, now, knowing from a third party that they really were, but she didn't feel like airing her issues to them.
"Oh," her unlikely companion of the moment exclaimed, "you are of the light wing pack. Or the new one, word gets around. What is your name?"
Lily cringed. "How much word gets around?" she asked.
"Enough that we can guess who you are," the male named Aggress volunteered sarcastically. "Dark and light travelling alone together… Rumors are a pointless distraction most of the time, but they speak of you."
"But we do not care, most of us are proof that the worst people can change," the female finished decisively. "Some of us used to eat people, that must be worse than anything rumors speak of."
"You?" Lily asked, not really caring about any of the other Fear-mongers. She was only dealing with this one. She suspected Aggress had, but this female seemed less… raw. Less restrained, more genuinely peaceful.
"No, I am the only second-generation member of our group so far," the female announced proudly. "I have never eaten anything smarter than a fish."
Several of the Fear-mongers who had held back growled uneasily at that claim. Lily glanced at them nervously; she now suspected they held back out of shaky self-control, which made her feel far less safe.
"They have been clean of that for many thousand cycles," the female remarked, seeing Lily's worried expression. "Do not fear them. They just do not trust themselves quite enough to get close. Not when he is still in the throes that used to mean it was time for them to feed."
Lily winced, feeling her paws still almost unconsciously helping Beryl. He was going to have the sorest chest any dragon had ever suffered, by the end of this. But either his breathing was settling down a little, or she was imagining things. Not nearly enough for her to stop yet, in any case.
"So… anything else?" the female asked. "We will be here for a while yet."
"Do you have a name? I am Lily, which you apparently may have heard before now, and he is Beryl." Lily nodded down to Beryl. She felt more than a little guilty about having a polite conversation while he suffered, but he had all but told her to.
"I am Considera," the female said calmly, enunciating the name with a sibilant exhale at the end.
That was too much of a coincidence; Lily had to follow up on it. "Is your name short for 'consideration' or something like that? And Aggress short for aggression?" One was just coincidence, but two was a pattern, and a very forward one, at that.
"Yes, they are. Considerate and Aggressive," Considera explained. "We are named after our hatching reactions."
"What?" At the very least, Lily was not running out of things to ask. She had nothing better to do while helping Beryl, who was definitely beginning to calm down now, though he had a ways to go. This was a similar thing to what she had done after the Fear-monger's initial attack, holding him down and waiting for the effects to wear off. It was just more intense, and even more paws-on.
"You know our fog?" Considera asked, still speaking for her entire group, probably because she was the only one totally comfortable with them. The only innocent one. "It does not affect us, but we are not entirely immune to each others' fog at first, so when new eggs hatch, the hatchlings go through a short period of facing whatever little fears they may have. We are named after our reactions in those cycles."
"Not you, though," the male who had spoken a few times before interjected quietly from his place further back in the tunnel. "We named you after our pack. We consider the lives of others, and you were raised to be considerate."
"Probably a good thing," Considera quipped, "as otherwise I would have been Cowar or Terrif, or some other such thing. I was not a brave hatchling."
"It is an interesting thing, to be named after one's reactions to something," Lily said politely, declining to comment on Considera's musings on her other possible names. "My kind is named after our colors, usually."
"Lucky. We are all black with a hint of green," Considera complained, twisting herself to look at her own side. "And it is not even a pure black like your friend there."
"Yes, some is reflective," Lily agreed, eyeing the strange wing coverings. She could see hints of a green-tinted wing beneath the reflective covering, but that only made her more curious. "What is with that?"
"I have no clue why we have them," Considera replied honestly. "Nobody does. Our wings just have strong ribs over them." She flexed the two metallic half-ovals, spreading them to reveal that they weren't coverings at all. Black with iridescent green spread between pieces of the strange material, merging at the edges in a way that made Lily's own wings itch sympathetically.
Lily looked at her own wings, considering the similarities. If one took some of the reflective stone used to make No-scaled-not-prey false claws, turned her wing joints and leading edges into that substance, and reshaped it a little, her wings would have the same properties. Said someone would have to possess impossible control over life, and an insanity that made them think doing so was a good idea, but she could imagine going from what she had to what Considera had under such circumstances. "We are not so very different in shape."
"What we have in angles and size, you make up for in curves and speed," Considera agreed admiringly. "Your kind is beautiful, even scarred. Not like ours. We have a different kind of beauty. Slender and lean is our preferred look."
"We should go now," Aggress interrupted, casting Considera an annoyed look from his perch. "The dark wing is settling down."
With that announcement, the other three Fear-mongers made to go back the way they came, disappearing in seconds, leaving Considera alone. Aggress slunk back into his tunnel, and a boulder shifted a moment later with a low grinding noise, blocking it off behind him.
"They are not so good at the whole 'watch out for the rest of the pack' thing," Considera said softly, watching them go. "Only my Sire and Dam would really care if you turned on me and tried to hurt me now. But they are working on it."
"Would Aggress care?" Lily asked curiously, taking a shot in the dark.
"Hardly," Considera scoffed, leaning in to speak softly. "I see what you are implying, and he does want that, but he is too wild for my liking. I am waiting for the other mated pair to come up with an egg. But do not tell him that. He is our most recent convert, and out in the wild, we do not really do courtship so much as fighting to exhaustion, and then if the male wins, trying to make an egg. I am going to go for something less violent, but if I outright reject him, he will very likely turn back to what he knows."
Lily shuddered unhappily, remembering just how terrible being taken against one's will felt. "Good luck," she offered fervently.
"Thank you. And you." Considera nodded to Beryl, and after a moment narrowed her eyes a little. "Is his body still fighting the rhythm you are enforcing?"
"Not all that much, but somewhat," Lily reported. She had gotten so used to the activity of pushing down and then pulling up that she had almost forgotten she was doing it.
"We are short on time, but not totally out, then," Considera reasoned. "Dark wing, when you are totally calm, I want you to slap your tail on the ground. But do not open your eyes even then. If you see me you may very well be triggered again."
No obvious response came from Beryl. Lily wondered what he thought of all of this.
"Okay, so we only have a little time," Considera mused. "Lily, you are going to need to remember this. Nobody knows what his other triggers might be, but if he breaks down again, you will need to do this again."
"Will he be able to resist it next time? It took a few moments for it to hit," Lily reasoned.
"No, in fact it will be worse, and hit harder," Considera corrected, sounding distinctly unhappy about that fact. "Our venom affects the mind, not just the body, and while the body is already rid of it, the mind needs to be helped, or it will just get worse. This started with his mind and must be purged from there."
"But once we get to the guardian, he or she can fix this entirely," Lily asked. That felt almost too easy, but she could find no fault with the logic. It might just have been her dislike of those with immense power, like the guardian she had met who wielded it so hypocritically.
"Yes. Especially the one I am sending you to, she has done this before." Considera cast around, seemingly looking for something. "Of course, this would happen in a section of the tunnel with no close hiding places. Dark wing, seriously, do not open your eyes. It would really be terrible for the sight of me to scare you again right now."
"Got it…" Beryl rasped, slapping his tail against the stone. "Lily, please–"
Lily pulled her paw up and stopped pressing on his chest, watching with immense relief as he did not start hyperventilating again. "Okay, let's get these directions."
"This is going to be a long route," Considera warned. "You will continue forward until you reach a cavern with many different paths away. From there, take the path that is dug out of a red crystal. That will lead you up into the next layer. After that, just head forward, always taking the path that feels colder."
"Colder?" Lily asked.
"Yes, colder," Considera confirmed. "The guardian is very attentive, so you only need to go to the edge of her inner range to be noticed and helped, but her entire domain is icy and frozen, so if you ever get confused or turned around, make for the coldest tunnel available."
"Seek out the cold." That seemed like a fairly foolproof way to find… somewhere cold. Not necessarily the right place. "How will we know when we have arrived?"
"The guardian will speak to you," was Considera's reply. "She examines all who come into her inner range, because if she did not many travellers would die of cold, not knowing that her range is quite huge. From there…"
Considera paused, tapping a talon on her fangs as she thought. It seemed like a nervous habit for her. "Once you have done that, the fastest route to the other place you asked for would be to just come back here, to the first cavern you will find up ahead. The tunnel there that passes between five blue crystals leads to a long range of massive caverns, and at the far end, you will be able to smell the flowers. The first few caverns past there have all sorts of flowers, but if you look around you will find the one with all white flowers, and that is your destination."
"Not that far," Beryl remarked, his voice hoarse and a little suspicious.
"I have simplified my directions," Considera admitted, "and with no mention of distances. it would take me several dozen cycles to travel the paths I have suggested. Seeking cold will take you through one of the longest continuous caves I have ever seen, for instance, and when I say a long range of caverns on the way to the flowers I am not exaggerating."
"A tunnel through a red crystal, seek the coldest path until we are noticed, then come back, take a tunnel between five blue crystals, and head forward until we smell flowers," Lily summarized, ensuring she knew where they were going. From there, it should be easy to find."
"Yes, exactly." Considera nodded. "I would offer to go with you, but I know the dark wing would not be able to stand that."
"Got that right," Beryl barked, his eyes still closed.
"I do not expect to be thanked by you," Considera said to Beryl. "I know you cannot thank me. You fear me, and since you are strong, that just makes you mad. But when you come back this way, after you have been helped, I hope to see you, and to have you see me."
"Not happening," Beryl growled. Lily resisted the urge to apologize for his rudeness; however quickly Considera had earned some measure of her trust, Beryl had no reason to feel the same.
"Maybe not." Considera bowed her head. "If we never meet again, I wish you luck." She cast Lily a significant glance. "Luck with love, maybe, or just life in general."
Lily assumed Considera was making an educated guess, or perhaps just assuming something because she didn't know any better, but either way it wasn't worth bringing up… Especially as she was right, if perhaps not for the right reasons. "Thank you for your help."
"Thank you for cooperating," Considera said vehemently. "Usually, those who have been bitten and somehow escape are much further along, skittish and confused, but travelling alone. This is the first time I have had to deal with a healthy travelling companion, and your quick decision to let me help saved him a lot of agony."
"How many have you treated?" Lily asked.
"Too many," Considera admitted. "Far too many. And some of them never made it to the guardian to be helped. I would go with them all, but I cannot because I would just set them off over and over again. You give me confidence he will not number among those who did not make it."
Considera rose, spread her oddly defensive wings, and flew off, towards the gorge. Lily watched intently, seeing the way the Fear-Monger flapped laboriously to get lift, how she almost immediately set into a glide. Her wings were not an asset when it came to flying, not compared to those of a light wing. It was a strange thing, and one that she would probably puzzle over later, when she was bored. Right now, though, they were alone.
"It is safe to open your eyes," Lily announced, thinking quickly. "And we need to leave this area–"
"To be safe," Beryl coughed, rolling to his paws. "Walk. I can't fly, not like this. But walk fast."
True to his stilted words, Beryl began walking, speeding up to the point where he was almost running.
Lily walked alongside him, not feeling the slightest inclination to argue with his desire to get away from dragons that could cause him so much pain simply by letting him see them. Especially when many of said dragons were apparently tempted by the agony that would follow.
The tunnel narrowed back down to a size that forced Lily and Beryl into a single-file line, and began to curve away to the left. Lily let Beryl walk for a short while, doing her best to ignore his labored breathing, but eventually she was sure they were safely away.
"Beryl, stop," she requested.
"We need more distance," he replied, not slowing down at all.
"In a moment." When he still didn't respond, she sped up and pounced on his tail, dragging him to a sudden halt as he was forced to fight an equivalent weight hanging from his backside.
"Stop," Lily repeated as he tried to turn around and stare at her. "We are safe enough here." She suspected the very unnatural fear that had taken him over earlier was still driving him to some extent, and if so, she was not going to let it drive him to exhaustion. Not when he was probably already tired.
"Safe… not safe enough." Beryl finally stopped trying to pull forward, despite his words of denial, and faced her in the tight tunnel. "Lily, that was horrible. I don't want it to happen again."
"I know. We can keep going in a moment." Lily let go of his tail and embraced him from the front, resting her chin on his unscarred shoulder. "I know it was terrible for you. It was not exactly fun for me, either."
Beryl huffed irritably, his breathing ragged and pained. "Does your chest feel like it was stepped on a thousand times over?"
"No, and yours actually was," she conceded with a grimace. "Sorry."
"It worked, even if I would not have done it," Beryl replied, leaning into her embrace. "How could you trust them?" he asked with an uneasy growl.
"I didn't, but I also didn't have a choice," she said tersely. "You were incapacitated and I could not fight them off. I would have killed the first one to prove they were not helping."
"That, I understand," Beryl sighed. "But you… Never mind, I am still not feeling right."
"Probably," Lily agreed. "But now we know where to go to fix that."
"Yes." Beryl did not seem to want to pull away, and she was happy to let him lean against her as long as he wanted. "That is good. I want my mind back to normal." He shuddered, pressing into Lily a little more firmly. "Are we really safe here?"
"Yes, I think so," she rumbled uncertainly. They were close to where they had been ambushed, but not that close, and the Fear-mongers had left. "Why?"
"I want to get further away, but I can barely inhale without hurting. Resting here would be helpful." Despite his carefully calm words, his voice and body suggested he was anything but composed.
"Lay down, then," Lily offered, pulling away a bit. "I will watch behind us, and you can rest." She did not expect him to sleep, but if his chest hurt, it would be better if he didn't push himself immediately afterward.
"I will watch in front of us," he decided, turning around. His tail was right in front of her again, so when she sat down with her back to him, she wound hers around it.
He did not complain, which made her happy. Maybe he was hurt and vulnerable right now, and it was an innocent gesture of comfort, but she took any sign of him not wanting to push her away as a good sign.
O-O-O-O-O
Beryl rested for a while. During that time, Lily saw a Fear-monger in the distance twice, but both times it was just Considera, who carefully crept away once she noticed them. Considera was probably keeping the other Fear-mongers away, something Lily was grateful for. Beryl never even knew they had company.
Not to say he was relaxed. He never slept or even dozed, and on occasion his tail would squeeze hers, and his breathing would speed up for a short time or devolve into pained, weak coughing. His chest probably hurt more than he let on.
There was nothing she could do about that but offer comfort, which she was already doing, both by watching behind them and by holding his tail with her own. It still made her feel bad; she had helped make his chest this sore.
She wanted to offer more than comfort, or at least more than the sort she currently felt safe to give, but she shoved that urge down before it could blossom into something harder to ignore. It was morally and strategically wrong to make moves on someone who had just suffered a traumatic experience. No matter what they might have done together in the past, right now he had set boundaries and she wasn't going to push them.
She wouldn't be able to make any moves until after he was healed by the guardian. That was… less than ideal. Even if it would give her plenty of time to plan how she intended to broach the subject.
A dark shadow moved in the distance, another Fear-monger. They lingered, so far away she couldn't make anything out except their presence.
After a few moments, she knew they weren't going away. "Beryl," she said softly.
"What?" he demanded, rising quickly to his paws.
"I think it's time we move on," she said calmly. She hoped that was Considera in the distance, but whoever it was, they were sending a message. Time to leave. "Let's go find that cave Considera told us about."
O-O-O-O-O
The cavern with many exits, as it turned out, was a big one. A single, massive column of dark grey stone stood in the center, seeming to hold up the massive ceiling on its own, and the entire floor of the cave was covered in mushrooms so tall they went up past Lily's head, free-standing stalks of green that were all height with disproportionately small caps on top. The ground was wet and muddy, like a very shallow swamp, and tiny minnows darted around in small streams. Many of said streams could be visually traced back to cracks in the walls all around the cavern, which were weeping small, constant amounts of water.
"I think this place is right next to the river," Beryl theorized. Their paws squished in mud with every step, the sound an audible hint toward such a conclusion. The water had to come from somewhere.
"Those cracks worry me," Lily agreed, looking at a particularly large one. "No fire in here. I don't want to know what an errant bolt might do if it hit a weak point." She could imagine the wall breaking open and flooding this whole cavern with water, redirecting part or even all of the river through here, and given the location of some of the tunnels, out into the unknown. Something like that might dramatically change the layout of this part of the underground world.
A small part of her, upon realizing how widespread the effects of doing that could be, wanted to intentionally break it open, just to be able to see what happened. She wouldn't, of course, it would probably scare, hurt, or even kill any other dragons who lived along the new paths the river would take. The Fear-mongers, for one, would undoubtedly be affected. Their gorge would probably flood.
"No problem; we'll be out of here soon," Beryl replied. "Look, there's the path to the ice territories."
Sure enough, Lily saw a red crystal that had obviously been bored through at some point in the past. It was just low enough that they could get to it without flight, which was good, because she didn't want Beryl to strain himself.
But the red crystal with a hole in it wasn't the only landmark she saw. Off to the side, partially hidden behind clusters of mushrooms, she could see five blue crystals. Just like the crystals Considera had said would mark the path to the cave with the white flowers, and by extension, the pack.
This was the first time since being cast out that she had known for sure she could return if she chose to. It was not some uncertain search; she knew the place she sought was down that way.
Lily stopped walking, letting herself sink down a little into the mud as she stared at the blue crystals, not really seeing them. Here she was, about to pass her people by. About to choose Beryl over them.
It was the right choice, and barely even a choice at all. Just because she could see the alternate path didn't make it any more worth taking. She had only asked about a way back for Beryl's sake, so they could check whether his family had left yet. Not for her.
There was nothing for her there. She was no longer obligated to do what was best for them at her own expense. They had a leader, a good one, and they could survive without her. She had sacrificed for them, and now she was done doing that.
Nothing but regrets and apologies she would never be allowed to give.
Sometime in her journey, she had cut ties. Not fully, not cleanly, but they were gone. She could look away. She could contemplate a path that did not end with her reclaiming anything at all. Her life was hers to lead, and she was beginning to like not being responsible for anyone else. It wasn't normal for her, and maybe she was just trying to convince herself, but at the moment she found it surprisingly easy to turn away and keep moving, to catch up to and walk alongside Beryl.
She was not done with the people of her pack, not all of them, but she was beginning to really believe that she was done with the pack itself.
Maybe she would go back some day. Later. Not now. She had other things to do, other things that made her happy and might even give her purpose. Exploring, travelling, despite the hardships, was something she liked. So was flight. And Beryl.
All to say nothing of the immediate worry that made her deliberation irrelevant. Beryl needed her to take him to one who could heal him, now.
Maybe they would return, but for now, her path led her elsewhere, and she was surprisingly okay with that.