03.08.98; 22:05; Somewhere by the Eyrie Tower:
The group that consisted of two grown-up gargresses, a beautiful teenage gargress, two hatchlings and an excited gargbeast approached the highest tower of the world.
Demona led the group with Shade in her arms, her two oldest grandchildren were in the middle and Darlene, who was holding Gem, formed the end. Jarred nearly trembled, as the coldness between his mother and his grandmother was somewhere below absolute zero, something he didn't know why, but didn't like.
When his grandmother had come down and told them to get their tails to the roof, he had felt and heard it from the iciness in her voice that something was wrong, but he and Lana hadn't asked since they knew better than to bait her grandmother further, hoping that they would hear from their mother about what had happened.
Their hopes had been proved wrong though since their mother, waiting on the roof, hadn't been in a much better mood than their grandmother. Darlene, after taking Gem, had just told them that they were going now and even Lana, who had no desire to visit the clan that Darlene had told them, was their family, and also kept silent.
Yet, Lana didn't feel this as they neared the large building and her mother finally noticed something.
"There!" Darlene said, looking to the battlements of Wyvern where some figures were standing.
It turned out that one of the figures was indeed Angela, standing aside a large lavender gargoyle which Darlene recognized as Goliath, through the fact that he had the same coloring as her sister and the description her mother had given her so many times when she had been young. Beside Goliath stood a gargoyle around Lana's age with red skin, a beak and white hair, looking in interest on them while they landed.
"Hello." Goliath greeted them as they landed. He looked at Demona, who refused him a look. "I am Goliath and greet you in the name of my clan."
Darlene nodded thankfully with a smile.
"And I greet you in the name of my family." she replied. "These are my children Lana, Jarred and this," she cuddled Gem a bit, who gulped by this and looked on the strange gargoyles, especially the one with the large beak, "is Gem."
Jarred waved his claw as a greeting while Lana just stared at Brooklyn. She had heard from her grandmother that not all gargoyles looked so much like humans like they did; something which had made Lana shiver, but seeing the gargoyle with a beak was still a slight shock.
Unfortunately, Brooklyn only saw the most beautiful gargoyle that he had ever seen in front of him, so beautiful that he even forgot his mistrust against Demona and mistook her look as a sign that Lana liked what she saw and so he extended his claw with a broad smile on his beak.
"Hello, I am Brooklyn, the second in command of this clan." Brooklyn told them, even though he only had eyes just for Lana. "Nice to meet you."
Lana just stared at the claw in front of her, until Darlene hissed her name and brought her back to life.
"Yes..." she began, carefully touching his claw and shaking it even more carefully, "...nice..."
Darlene made a mental note to go over the poor diplomatic skills of her eldest daughter. She then continued speaking with their guests.
"Aside from the fact that you're alive again," Darlene looked shortly to Demona, who returned this view icily, "Mother has told me a lot about you, so I'm eager to meet the rest of you."
Goliath looked shortly to his sister. ~ Why should she say any good things about us? ~
"As do they." he replied.
While he did so, Darlene noticed something. There were indeed more gargoyles out here than she had seen in the first place. Two males were watching her from the highest tower and now she noticed two gargbeasts, one with a light green skin, a small beak and unlike Shade, a long tail, while the other seemed the same type as Shade, but with a skin tone of light blue with large parts of grey in it. They were both playing happily in the courtyard.
This was when Darlene noticed the hole in the courtyard. She tried to hide her surprise in order to ask the clan later, but her sister saw her expression.
"That happened yesterday," Angela explained. "It was a structural weakness, which was overseen when Xanatos rebuilt the castle here."
Darlene looked shocked on her sister.
"I hope nobody has been hurt." Darlene asked, but Angela shook her head.
"Luckily, no," Angela said with a slight smile, "but the repairs will take some time. I can show you more of the castle inside."
Darlene smiled, but only half-heartedly as the argument with her mother laid still too hard on her.
"I would like this." she said.
Looking around, she saw Jarred's eyes glittering with excitement, since he loved to explore old buildings while Lana looked around less enthusiastically, seemingly wanting to be back home more than anything, while Brooklyn continued looking at her as if she was the only person in the world.
Her mother... Darlene noticed that her mother was indeed with her mind anywhere but there, since her eyes stared simply ahead, surely not even noticing Shade at her feet-claws.
~ Odd for her, ~ she thought and decided to bring her mother back to the present.
"Mother?" Darlene asked her.
She seemingly awoke, looking to Darlene and nodded slightly.
Darlene sighed and looked to Goliath, who offered her with his claw a way into the castle, followed by her family.
Demona followed the others half-heartedly, as she worked hard to control herself, but despite these efforts, the clear air seemed somehow full of thunder clouds turning around the highest tower. She remembered the pain when the lightening had hit her, the fall from the air and hitting the lower battlement with her shoulder, she even still felt the pain when...
Demona shook it off, but one image stayed in her mind, the image of her daughter's lifeless body on the ground, of the feeling she had had...
~ It is too early, ~ she knew. ~ Why have I come to this place so soon after this? ~
But she had had no other choice since Darlene wouldn't have accepted a 'no' without asking her too many questions. Her eyes wandered to the hole again.
~ If anybody hadn't survived this night, ~ Demona thought, ~ they would have blamed the structural damage... maybe even Xanatos? ~
"Mother?" Angela's voice brought her back and showed her that she had fallen back behind the group, with Shade by her side looking somewhat worriedly on her master and friend.
"Nothing much has happened lately." her chronologically oldest daughter said and for one moment, Demona thought that she would indeed speak of what had truly happened... and somehow, this took a bit of the weight from Demona's shoulders, but then she continued. "I mean okay, the collapse seems rather dramatic, but as I said, nobody was hurt."
Demona looked on her daughter for just a moment too long and finally nodded.
"Luckily." she replied and placed a claw on Angela's shoulder which made her smile "But now we should follow the others."
Angela nodded and while they went further, Demona thought that her daughter had indeed no idea how much luck they had had.
Meanwhile, Darlene and her children, who were led by Goliath, entered the great hall where other gargoyles waited, but since there were too many to get to know at once, Goliath just introduced them to the two gargoyles in front of her. They were a couple with one old male gargoyle with a scar across his left eye, long white hair and a white beard, wearing a sword as a sign that he was still a warrior. The second one was younger than he, with green skin, long fair hair parted by some dump horns and wearing a suit of armor like the first one did.
"Darlene, this is my mentor Hudson," he pointed to the male, "and this is my former teacher, Deborah."
The last one gave them a short nod until she took one look at Gem and stopped, seemingly shocked.
Darlene nodded politely.
"I am..." Darlene began, but was stopped by the one called Hudson.
"No need for introductions, lass," the old warrior explained looking at the hatchling with five fingers on her claws in the gargess's arm shortly. "Angela already told us who you are and your story."
This was when Demona entered the hall, together with Angela, and her eyes met the ones of Deborah. There was a tension between them, which Darlene felt at once and looking beside both warriors, Darlene believed that there was an untold story inside Xanatos's envoy's visit to Berlin, which her mother had hidden so well.... like there were so many untold stories.
"Well, old teacher," Demona began. "There is no need for me to introduce them to you is there?"
Deborah tensed her muscles and clenched her claws into fists.
"There wouldn't be if you would have introduced me to them, two weeks ago." Deborah noted, suppressing a snarl.
"I don't know what you mean." Demona asked, shrugging her shoulders. "Gem was in the room the whole time. You could have just asked me and I would have told you of them."
Deborah stared at her former pupil, then on Gem in Darlene's arms, then back on Demona.
~ I knew it! ~ She thought. ~ By the dragon, I knew it! ~
"Oh, you didn't see her?" Demona taunted, despite the warning looks of Angela, Goliath and Hudson. "Yes, you are getting old!"
Luckily, before Deborah's anger could rise or before she could even reply to this insult, a voice raised.
"Aunt Demona!" a young female voice exclaimed, echoed by some happy laughter of other voices and when the group looked around they saw a group of six hatchlings, mostly of Moray, entering the hall. They had before been seemingly busy in playing with a large yellow-skinned gargbeast with a long tail, who became instantly unimportant when they discovered who had arrived.
Demona gave them one of her rare smiles and when the first hatchling arrived, one of the hatchlings of Moray who was a female with pale green skin, white hair and mild blue eyes, she took her under the ankles and flew her around, something she had never done before to any of them, but she seemed to like this one very much since she giggled happily.
This ended Demona's good mood since somehow, just in her mind, this hatchling seemed to transform before her eyes. Her hair became black like the darkest night instead of white and her skin changed into dark blue...
Demona had to force herself to bring her mind back under her control, but managed it finally.
When she had placed the hatchling down on earth again, Demona kneeled down and looked around the group, which included a special hatchling called Connor, giving them all a short smile.
"Hello." she greeted her rookery children. "I'm happy to see you again."
"Where have you been, aunt?" one of them, a male, white-skinned one with long blond hair and a beak, asked.
"I was in Berlin like your elders have surely told you." Demona explained.
"Will you stay now?" Connor asked and his voice was more than a hidden plea for that she would do so. "I mean, stay with us?"
"I will stay..." Demona answered, after looking shortly to Darlene who had just eyes for Connor, "at least for a little while."
This brought Darlene's attention back to her mother.
~ At least for a while? ~ She thought surprised since she had assumed that they would stay forever. ~ You speak for yourself, mother! ~
But Demona didn't notice her daughter's look, or better yet chose to ignore it, and instead looked back to the hatchlings surrounding her.
"An elder said they banned you." a male hatchling with grey skin, short spikes instead of hair that covered his head and a mace on the ending of his tail, said. "Is this true?"
Demona first looked on him, then on Goliath who took the initiative.
"No, we haven't." he told the hatchling. "She has just chosen to live without the clan, this is all. There is no banishment."
The ex-mates held a second of eye contact and Demona had to suppress a look of surprise for the gentle words of her ex.
"Well, I have heard that you all chose names." Demona noted and lead the hatchlings at the same time away from a terrain she didn't want to speak about, something which Darlene didn't miss. "I would like to know them."
The interest that their rookery mother showed for them, made the hatchlings happy and one by one they told her their names.
"Eve." the one who had greeted Demona first, said and she gave a nod to show that she liked her rookery daughter's choice.
"I've named myself Connor." Connor explained and Demona gave him a nod too.
"My name is Mike." the gray skinned hatchling said.
"Duncan." the white skinned hatchling told her.
Meanwhile, Darlene, along with her children and half-sister looked on this in wonder.
~ Okay, seemingly mother is their rookery mother ~ Darlene thought and looked to Deborah who was eyeing her former pupil angrily, she noticed. ~Apparently we all don't like this, do we? ~
This was when the large yellow gargbeast came nearer to Demona after having greeted Shade and tried to lick her, something she was able to avoid by stroking him.
"His name is Argus." Connor explained smiling, striking the gargbeast himself.
This was when Eve turned her face to the strangers.
"Who are they?" she asked.
Demona threw a short look to Darlene.
"This is my daughter Darlene and her children Lana, Jarred and Gem." she explained.
The hatchlings' eyes turned wide.
"You are her daughter...." Connor asked his older sister, Darlene, "like Angela?"
Darlene gave Angela a short look and then nodded.
"Yes." she admitted, not knowing what else to say.
Meanwhile, Argus had even so discovered the new gargoyles and smelled them, one by one, on Darlene with Gem in her arms, then on Lana and finally on Jarred who smiled until the beast decided to give the hatchling a special greeting and so placed one of his claws on the hatchling's chest, caused him to fall, climbed on Jarred's chest and started to lick his face.
"Hey!" Jarred cried out. "Help!"
This made most of the grown up gargoyles smile, until Goliath decided to end it, but Connor having understood the problems of a hatchling in the same age and having been in the same situation, too often, was faster.
"Get off him, Argus." he ordered the gargbeast, placing all his weight against his. "Now!"
Whining, the gargbeast followed the order, giving Jarred a final lick and then stepping off from him.
"Arghh," Jarred moaned, trying desperately to wipe the gargbeast's saliva from his face. "I hate this!!!"
Connor smiled, understanding all too well and held a claw to the fallen hatchling to help him up. Jarred took the claw and so stood up.
"Thank you." he said.
"No need." Connor replied grinning, but then he noticed something. "Your claws!?"
"What is...?" Jarred asked surprised, until he noticed that the other hatchlings had just four talons on his claw.
"Oh yeah." he realized, rubbing his brown hair. "My father was human."
Connor looked at him strangely for a few seconds and then grinned. "Cool!" he said, showing that he had seemingly completely adapted to this time.
Darlene did not need to be an expert to see that her son had found a friend.
~ What would he say if I told him that Connor is indeed his uncle? ~ Darlene asked herself.
"Well, I might as well show you the castle," Goliath offered Darlene, "If you want?"
"I would be happy to see more of your home." Darlene explained. "Especially since my mother has told me many stories about it."
Demona raised her head, looking to her biological eldest child.
"Why not?" she agreed, even when she doubted that she would see anything new here, especially since she had once helped to reconstruct the castle.
Goliath went ahead and the visitors followed, Demona was the last, leaving the hatchlings behind to play with Argus, but promising them to see after them later and maybe even to tell them a story.
Demona gave her old teacher one last meaningful look and then followed the group.
"I can't believe it." Deborah said unbelieving to her mate after the group was out of sight and the hatchlings had run out in the courtyard. "Has she not a bit of respect or any sense of shame?"
Hudson shook his head.
"I have seen none by her since we awoke." he answered. "But you shouldn't let yourself irritated by her."
"Irritate?!" Deborah asked her mate. "No, it makes me angry because she knows that she comes through with it... and have you seen how the hatchlings have reacted on her?"
She emphasized with a gesture to the door where the hatchlings had vanished out.
"She might corrupt them!" Deborah said, looking her mate in the eyes. "We should have warned them about her."
"You go too far." Hudson replied, shaking his bearded head. "The hatchlings of Moray aren't like the ones of Wyvern, for they simple adore her for what they see in her."
Deborah shook her head, wanting to say that this was the problem, but then she let it go, reminding herself that he wasn't the leader anymore and that she was complained to the wrong one.
"On any case, it is time for the training hour." Deborah noticed "Will you help me to gather them?"
Hudson nodded smiling.
03.08.98; 22:47; one of the floors of Castle Wyvern:
Goliath had already shown his guests the information centre, the room for the hatchlings and his office, which was probably his most hated place in the castle. Finally, he came to a room with large wooden doors, at the centre of the castle.
"And this is the heart of our clan." Goliath explained with pride, opening the massive doors as if they were nothing. "This is the rookery."
Darlene looked surprised on the seven eggs lying in the centre of the room, never having seen a gargoyle egg before.
Lana meanwhile couldn't banish a feeling of hunger on fried eggs by this view, but she was clever enough not to mention it, she doubted that anyone would find this funny, especially not her grandmother.
"Wow!" Jarred noted and knelt before the bunch of eggs "And out of every one of them will hatch a gargoyle?"
Goliath nodded.
"Out of every one." he confessed. "Dr. Moore has checked them."
This got Demona's attention, who had knelt beside the eggs, touching one's shell to feel the temperature of it, which seemed optimal... Shortly, she even believed to feel a movement beneath the shell.
"Dr. Moore?" she asked, not believing what she had heard, even Goliath couldn't do this, wouldn't allow to...
"Our doctor." Goliath explained. "Xanatos employed him roughly a year ago for us; he even so checked the eggs by ultrasound to see if they are healthy."
"You let the eggs be touched by a human?" Demona asked him angrily, by standing up and facing him eye to eye, near of snarling. "Have you lost the last of your brains?"
Angela and Darlene winced, while Brooklyn didn't seem to notice it since he just stared on Lana, but for Goliath this didn't come surprising, indeed it was the same that most of the clan elders had said to him when he first came up with the idea. This was the only thing, which helped him to answer as calm as he did.
"Remember the eggs, which never hatched for reasons we didn't know? That from Brooklyn's rookery or the one after?" Goliath asked. "If there is any hope to prevent this for the future, I will take it."
Demona did not take her eyes from her ex-mate's.
"Has at least someone of the clan been present at the check-up?" she asked icily, but they both knew that Goliath had won for now and Demona just didn't want to loose her face.
Goliath nodded.
"Three." he replied simply and then turned his eyes away from his ex-mate, back to Darlene. "We assume they will hatch in one month."
"This is wonderful." Darlene noted simply. Normally, she would have been more enthusiastic about the chance of seeing a gargoyle-egg hatching, but her mind was occupied otherwise.
She looked at her mother, who was studying every single egg as to search for any sign that the eggs were damaged when it hit her.
~ Eggs don't wander through the world ~ Darlene realized, looking to her mother. ~ Mother, you wouldn't.... ~
But indeed her mother would, so maybe one of these eggs was one more of her siblings.
Darlene swore she would find out, even if it was the last thing she would do.
"Grandma told me you are a mighty warrior." Jarred said eager, finding that the eggs weren't so interesting after all. "Have you had many fights?"
Goliath looked surprised to his rookery sister, who had seemingly discovered something interesting by the eggs again.
"Well, I don't think a warrior should define himself through the fights he has survived." Goliath replied. "But I have had some, even though there haven't been so many recently, thankfully. For this, it is a fortunate time for my clan."
"We could tell them of this back in the Great Hall." Angela suggested "I haven't told them of this yet."
Goliath nodded on this proposal of his daughter.
"If you would like to do so." he asked Darlene who agreed, while Demona simply neglected it.
So the group went back through the floors into the great hall where already some other gargoyles waited, who had heard of the arrival of the group.
"Hello." a gargress with caramel skin and golden hair greeted, while the gargoyle beside her, a male with white hair and dusky green skin, simply nodded.
"Ah, our new guests!" a large and corpulent gargoyle greeted, he had a slightly lighter color than Hudson and his hair was brown instead of white, but he seemed to be of the same generation, Darlene thought... Well, as far as someone could say by a clan, which had members from different times and places. "A pleasure to meet you," he greeted her warmly stopping shortly by noticing Jarred's five talons on his claws. "The lass had told us already a lot about you!"
"This is my brother Othello, his mate Desdemona and this is Agamemnon." Goliath explained.
Darlene looked surprised to her mother by the similarities of the name.
"From the play." Demona explained calmly.
"It is a pleasure to meet you." Darlene greeted them.
"For me too." Desdemona explained with a smile and directed to her sister. "Even though I would have liked to have met you earlier."
Demona just shrugged her shoulders and let this be the answer.
"Well," Darlene said, knowing her mother's wonderful sense for conversations. "We can catch up later. I'm anxious to hear stories of my mother's youth..." she suggested while looking on her mother, "since she has always been very silent about it."
"Why not," Desdemona noticed, ignoring the nearly pleading look of her sister. "There are many stories to be told, haven't they sister?"
"Maybe." Demona said in small voice, knowing very well that Darlene would love the stories of when she and her rookery siblings had been hatchlings. She hadn't been what someone would call the perfect child.
"Ohhh, this is a sweet one." Agamemnon noticed, leaning forth and tickling Gem on her belly, on which the hatchling gulped happily and tried in return to get a part of the elder gargoyle's beard between her tiny claws.
"Ours will hatch in some weeks." he explained to Darlene. "So this little one will have some playmates soon... No gargoyle should grow up without anyone of his or her age to play with."
"Goliath told me of this already." Darlene replied, thinking about that she would have been happy if she would have had someone to play with back than. "But I think they might be too young for her."
Agamemnon, Desdemona and Othello looked confused on her, until Demona spoke to her daughter.
"Darlene, you have forgotten that hatchlings develop a bit faster than human babies." she explained. "The night after they have hatched out of the egg, they lie on their stomach and turn around and after a month... sometimes a bit more, they start to crawl."
"Cool." Jarred said, fascinated by the fact and looked at his little sister. "You see sis, you might soon make races with others."
"Great." Lana noted sarcastically. "Then it will become even more difficult to watch her."
"Gem is a little troublemaker." Darlene explained to the surprised crowd of gargoyles. "Even before her transformation, she liked to crawl to places where she had nothing to search, but since she has claws she is faster and there has always got to be someone to keep an eye on her so that she doesn't go 'exploring'."
Agamemnon gave a loud laughter, which made Darlene and her family look in surprise at him.
"Then she has much of your mother, lass. The lass had always had a hunger for adventure-trips." he explained, forgetting for one moment the strangeness of kinship through blood for his kind.
"Oh really?" Darlene asked with pleasure, she didn't need to turn around to know that her mother's eyes had become wide with fear, but this didn't interest her, as like her mother she had a sense for revenge.
"Aye," Agamemnon assured her and began.
He hadn't seen the pleading looks of his rookery daughter and even if he had, he wouldn't have been able to stop since the opportunity to tell a story was too good.
So he began to tell that she had always been a curious one, beginning with that she had been the first one of her rookery to hatch and the first to begin to explore what was outside. Then the 'tiny lass' had been the first one of her rookery who had begun to crawl and this, much to the fear of the rookery mothers, very intensively.
Once she had somehow managed to escape from the rookery and crawled to investigate the castle until she had climbed up onto a parapet and had fallen from it down the cliffs. Luckily, her absence had been discovered in time so that one clan member, who had searched this site of the castle, had been able to catch her in the air.
The next shock the lass had given her clan was when she had been roughly 8 years, around 4 in human terms, when she had somehow managed to not just escape the rookery where she and her siblings would play, but even went out of the castle 'just to explore the forest' how she had said later. The lass had been missed even during the day and some of the clan had already feared the worst, especially since they had discovered the marks of a large bear in this area the next night.
Luckily, a gargbeast had discovered her scent and lead the second of the clan, who had lead the group to a little cave in which the little hatchling, scared but healthy, had crept into the corner, sitting there with her legs close to her body and her wings covering her.
No need to say that she had got into much trouble because of this, but at least the shock seemed to have helped since after this, her thirst for new things had been subdued... a bit.
At the end of Agamemnon's story, to which he had added many other mischievous things of the red haired lass's youth, the redness of Demona's head rivaled Brooklyn's skin tone and Darlene thought that she absolutely loved the clan by now, especially after Agamemnon assured that there were even more stories to tell about her mother.
Lana had meanwhile looked on her grandmother with large eyes since she hadn't believed that her grandmother had ever been young at any time in her life, while Jarred under greatest efforts stopped himself from giggling.
Brooklyn had followed the elder's story with a grin spreading all over his beak until he thought his lips were splitting.
Luckily for Demona, who would have died by embarrassment if he had continued, Agamemnon's mate came to ask him to come with her, who he followed, unwilling.
"Well." Darlene, whose anger on her mother had somehow vanished, said. "That was interesting."
Her sister nodded.
"Yes, I should have asked the elders about my mother earlier." Angela explained.
Demona wanted to say something, but was still unable to say anything.
"Father, why don't we tell them about what the clan has achieved in the last six months?" Angela asked. "I didn't come to it when I was with them."
Goliath nodded.
"Indeed." he agreed. "You might sit down meanwhile."
The group took this offer happily and sat down by the tables, which were normally used for the clan to take their meals. And while Shade took place by her master's side, Gem grew restless in her mother's arms, finding it impudent to not be allowed to go in this interesting place by her own.
Finally, Darlene gave in to her daughter's pleading and placed her on the floor, placing a foot-claw at the same time on her daughter's tail to restrict the infant's radius of action.
"You know that Demona has brought back the part of the clan we believed dead by the hands of the Vikings in 994 and the part, which formed her clan by 1057 and what she thought were dead by the hands of Duncan." Goliath explained. "After we melded the clans into one, the Manhattan clan, we decided to help other clans in the same way. The first we helped was a clan in the forest of Guatemala, where we restored a clan which had been extinguished except for the eggs and four adult members. We then helped the clan of Lothian and the ones of Wales, but I think my second can tell you more of this since he is the one who usually goes on such missions."
Brooklyn, surprised by this, nodded.
"Yeah," he began as he looked around, especially on Lana. "I'm kind of a 'Time cop' around here. Some of my brothers even call me the 'Time dancer'." he explained and spread his beak into a smile. "On every case, my job is anywhere and to anytime when a destroyed clan is located. I have to grab me the Phoenix Gate and jump there with a partner, usually Deborah, to locate the exact point when the clan has been killed, preferable without being seen and normally we use even illusions cast on us by Puck. Once we have done so, we grab the camera and take images of them to replace them with ordinary statues."
The little group had attracted some more gargoyles, mostly of Lana's age that were all attracted by curiosity and, mostly on the male side, by the look of this new pretty gargress who had come to them.
"But isn't this difficult?" Darlene asked and forgot for one moment her daughter's tail under her feet-claw, which gave the hatchling the chance to finally get free of it. "I mean, all the different languages all over the world and the different cultures, surely it is hard to learn such."
"We don't need such." Brooklyn explained, who was a bit disappointed that Lana didn't show any interest in his work like her mother was, sure Darlene was beautiful too and without a mate but she wasn't his age. "The Phoenix Gate somehow inhabits a spell, which allows the travelers to understand and speak every language spoken in the area."
Goliath nodded.
"Indeed, we have faced such magic already." the leader explained. "We traveled with the help of Avalon's magic around the world and could understand the different countries' languages as if it was our own, except special words for which we had no meanings in our language."
"And how many clans have you brought back?" Darlene asked this with growing interest, from all that her mother had told her, the gargoyle race had practically been extinguished except for a few clans all over the world.
"Sixteen." Goliath explained. "Mostly, they are the Welsh-clans since we knew of their fate, but with the help of the London clan who has many exact notes about such, we have been able to locate and save three more clans in England."
"No more?" Demona asked surprised and Goliath shook his head.
"No, even when we know that there were once clans all around the world, we don't know when and where they lived or even if any of them didn't die in stone-sleep, but simply became fewer during the years and died out on the natural way so there is nothing we can do there. But," Goliath stopped shortly, looking directly to his sister. "Maybe you know any..."
Demona shook her head.
"In my letters were written all the clans I had been able to help." Demona explained. "I knew of no more clans to be rescued this way."
While Goliath looked on her, thinking that this didn't mean that she knew of no other clan, which didn't need to be rescued because they still existed, Desdemona noticed something.
"Sister, you're wrong." she explained to Demona, surprised. "I mean, we knew of the clan in Lothian, the survivors told us of them."
Demona looked first surprised on her sister, but then she shrugged her shoulders.
"I forgot it." she replied simply. "It has been a long time since then."
Desdemona wanted to point out that she hadn't forgotten the three Scottish clans of whose survivors she had formed her clan from, but then let it be as it probably meant nothing.
"On every case, you should research it in the files of the Vatican." Demona explained, seemingly even so to distract them from this topic. "When I returned to Europe, I heard that many clans had been slaughtered during our time because of men from the church."
~ When you returned to Europe, sister? ~ Goliath thought. ~ Where have you been before and for how long? ~
But since he knew very well that he could wait until hell froze to get answers from his sister, Goliath kept silent.
Suddenly, Darlene noticed that someone was missing, who should be sitting at her feet-claws.
"WHERE IS GEM?!" she shrieked and stood up, looking around wildly.
In her mind, Darlene saw Gem climbing on the battlement of the highest tower already, imitating her grandmother and one step from the fall.
This was when she felt something at her leg and looking down she saw a complaining Gem, who was hanging securely from Shade's mouth. The gargbeast held the infant by her tiny wings, seemingly not intending to let her down as much as the hatchling wished it.
Relieved, Darlene took her youngest daughter from the beast's mouth and stroked Shade's head.
"Good girl." she praised the beast, recognizing that maybe the problem of finding a baby-sitter for Gem was no more and sat her daughter back in her belt.
Jarred meanwhile looked around, a bit confused.
"Where are Connor and the others?" he asked Goliath, disturbing his thoughts.
"They have their training lessons with Deborah." the clan leader explained to the hatchling.
"Training lessons?" Jarred asked.
Desdemona nodded.
"Yes," she explained to, technically, her great-nephew. "The teacher teaches the clan's children the art to fight. Such it has been since the dawn of time in our clan."
Jarred's eyes grew wide.
"They learn how to become warriors?" he asked unbelieving.
Desdemona and Goliath exchanged some meaningful views and Darlene knew already to what this was leading to.
"Ultimately, yes." Desdemona explained. "But at the moment, they are practicing for their ascendance in about two years when they become adults in the eyes of the clan."
"Wow!" Jarred replied, looking to his mother. "Can I do this too? Please, please, please, please..."
Darlene could hardly suppress a grin at her son's begging. At least this would keep her son occupied.
"Well, if Goliath has nothing against this." she looked to the clan leader.
"I will talk with the teacher about this." Goliath assured her. "But you have to know, such training is not easy, but true work. You will have to come here practically every night for one or more hours."
"Yippee!" Jarred exclaimed and now Darlene showed a complete grin, as her son had never been so enthusiastic when someone said there was work to do for him, but not just she, the whole group surrounding them seemed to smile about Jarred's eagerness... Except Demona, who hadn't even lifted her mouth and whose eyes just stared ahead, sunken in her own thoughts.
