Two scrolls sprawled out in front of Griffin on the ground. At the moment, his eyes were focused on the one closest to him, a documentation of recent events in the war. Even if neither he nor Torrent were actively involved in it, it was good to stay informed. To know what places were safe for Torrent, and what places weren't. It had been almost two years since the MudWings had left the alliance with Blister and joined Burn, after Torrent's aunt Tempest died, but that was old news by now. Blister had tried to persuade Queen Moorhen back to her side once again, but had been unsuccessful. So much for the 'master manipulator.' A large battle had taken place between a SkyWing and an IceWing army, with the SkyWings winning, a surprise considering the number of forces on each side. This set back the string of gains the IceWings had made into SkyWing territory in the previous year. The rebellion in the northern Mud Kingdom had continued, Moorhen's forces too occupied with holding their southern coastland from SeaWing onslaught to quench it.

Griffin scanned the scroll for any mention of the Talons of Peace. He felt like he had a bit of a duty to see if they had any news, since he was technically a member of the group. Well, that and he was borrowing their house in Possibility. Hopefully they wouldn't mind about that. He knew Trustbreaker wouldn't care, but if Avalanche came back from her post suddenly, there might be a little trouble. There was little news on the Talons. Apparently Queen Scarlet had put out a bounty for some SkyWing in her army that had defected to join them, and a SeaWing and MudWing had unsuccessfully tried to stage an anti-war protest together.

Griffin glanced up at the second scroll, the map of Pyrrhia that Orca had enchanted to show the location of all animuses. The small beige blotch in Possibility had disappeared. That was a good sign. Hopefully that meant Torrent had succeeded. The pewter blotch had moved again, this time from the rainforest to the desert.

Suddenly, the door to the house cracked open, and Griffin glanced over. Torrent stepped into the room, folding his wings inwards to fit through the doorway. His snout crumpled up as water dripped from his scales onto the floor. "It still smells like cat here," he muttered.

Griffin nodded in conformation. "How did things go?" he asked. "Good?"

Torrent shook his body back and forth, causing droplets of water to fly from the spines on his back. Griffin unfurled a feathered wing, placing it over the scrolls to make sure they didn't get water on them. "No," Torrent grumbled, "same as the past two. She used another one of the green thingies to escape. It's as if they're being handed out like Blister's propaganda posters."

Griffin grimaced slightly. "Sorry," he apologized.

"Don't be," Torrent sighed, "not much you could've done about it. I should've gone for her faster. Apparently she was Gila's daughter. Goanna or something."

A slightly surprised expression crossed over Griffin's beak. "Really?" he squawked. "Maybe she got the diamond from him?"

"It's possible," Torrent replied. He recalled Gila having something similar. "She also knew who I was, at least that's what she claimed."

Griffin thought for a moment, tapping a talon. "Maybe one of the SandWings there that night told her about you."

"Maybe," Torrent frowned, "or maybe there's some secret animus network we don't know about. You have to admit it can't be coincidental that all these dragons have the same enchanted green diamond with makes them disappear. That's three now, four if you include Gila's. Three again if it's actually just the same one. Is she still on the map?"

"Nope," Griffin sighed. "Could it have just killed her?"

"Far too convenient," Torrent muttered. "Maybe someone else is also trying to pick off animuses. But maybe not, it could be whoever enchanted them has the power to teleport them somewhere not on my map. Like the Lost Continent, or the Really Deep Palace, or somewhere like that. How many blotches are there left?"

"Three," Griffin stated, glancing down at the map. "Two if we don't include Darkie." Torrent felt a pang of loss at the name. Darkstalker, at Agate Mountain. Where Crystal had abandoned him and their unhatched dragonet. Griffin glanced up at Torrent, seeing the effect the name had caused.

"That's not many," Torrent acknowledged, pushing away those thoughts and trying to hide his expression from Griffin. It had been four years, with still no sign of Crystal, and not for lack of searching. It was as if she just disappeared off the face of Pyrrhia. He wondered sometimes, what if someone had taken her and their egg? An animus, magically moving her from afar? He had come up with a number of theories where she had been taken, but it didn't explain the missing pearl in his dagger. An animus acting from far away couldn't touch it. The rest of the dagger had returned to him a few weeks after Crystal had disappeared, with no trace of where it had been.

"Yeah," Griffin answered, "there's the pale yellow one on the west coast, and the greyish one that keeps moving around. I've been tracking that one's movements, and there's a pretty clear pattern going on. The blotch will sometimes fly between places, but the only places I've seen it instantly jump or disappear from are in the rainforest and in the desert, slightly north of Burn's stronghold.

"The old palace?" Torrent confirmed. "So the animus might not be able to teleport freely? Just between the two places?"

Griffin nodded. "That's where I suggest we go next. It's closer than the rainforest and on the way to the coast. We'd have to fly through the desert, but that's unavoidable."

Torrent frowned. He was not a particular fan of the desert. He had mainly been trying to avoid it on his travels. The desert was no place for a SeaWing; even ignoring hostile SandWings, it was dry and waterless. Not his favorite environment. "Do you think this animus has something to do with the diamonds?"

"Possibly," Griffin spoke. "The teleportation seems like it could be a lead."

Torrent nodded, as if it would somehow confirm the two's theory. "So, we fly out tomorrow?"

Torrent woke to the sound of claws on wood, as the handle of the door was turned from outside. He jolted awake. Had one of the Talons returned already? Or was it an unwelcome visitor?

Torrent didn't have time to make a decision before the door was pushed open, revealing an IceWing behind it. Torrent blinked for a moment, shocked by who was standing in front of him. "Crystal?" he asked. How had she known where to find him?

The IceWing shook her head, and gave Torrent a glance of confusion. "No, but close."

Griffin stood up behind Torrent and gave out a short yawn. He glanced at the IceWing in the doorframe. "She's Clarity, Crystal's sister," he reminded Torrent. "You met her a couple years ago when I visited Trustbreaker, remember?"

Torrent nodded, and sighed. It was too good to be true. Clarity had the same light-blue scales and shortened horns that Crystal did, but her snout was slightly too long, and her wings too muscular.

Clarity gave Torrent and Griffin a disapproving frown, looking back and forth between the two. "I wasn't expecting company," she stated. "I was told no one was using the Possibility house."

"Sorry," Griffin quickly apologized. He glanced around at the floor. It was in good condition fortunately, the two had packed up what little stuff they carried the previous night. "We needed a place to stay, and were going to ask Trustbreaker or Avalanche, but neither of them were here." Griffin glanced worriedly to the still open door. It was still dark out, the moons lighting the early morning, but he still was concerned. "Can you close that, please? I don't want anyone to peer inside and see me."

Clarity looked backwards, then stepped forward, shutting the door behind her. She looked towards Torrent again, this time more judgmentally. "Since you're here already, I might as well tell you there's no certain news of my sister's whereabouts anywhere. Definitely not in the Ice Kingdom."

"Thank you," Torrent grumbled politely. At least from what Griffin had told him, Clarity didn't think particularly well of Torrent, and still blamed him for her sister's disappearance.

"I'm not doing this for you," Clarity stated outright, confirming Griffin's suspicions. "But if you do want to know, there have been rumors of a SeaWing-IceWing hybrid in Possibility. He might be yours. I believe his name is Typhoon?" It was evident that there was a bit of scorn behind the word 'hybrid' when Clarity spoke it, as if the very idea of her having a hybrid relative dishonored her family.

Torrent shook his head. "I visited him a few days ago. He's as old as I am, he's not Crystal's and my dragonet. Unless there's magical time-travel involved. Which thinking about it, is slightly less far-fetched than it sounds. Did you know that Crystal and I apparently spent a month beneath Agate Mountain? It was just a night for us." He paused, attempting to avoid reflecting on that time. "Er, anything else?"

Clarity rolled her eyes, uninterested. "A few high-ranking IceWing officials relating to my father's work were assassinated in the past couple of months."

Her father's work. The Darkstone Project, returning animus magic to the Ice Kingdom, Torrent recalled.

"Apparently they were turned to stone when it happened," Clarity continued.

Torrent's eyes opened wide, and he exchanged a glance with Griffin, who evidently had the same theory. Crystal had presumably taken the black pearl on Torrent's dagger before she had left, the one that turned animus dragons to stone. The connections with the Darkstone experiments, to give ordinary dragons animus magic, hardly seemed like they could be coincidental.

"That seems promising," Torrent calmly answered, hiding his excitement. It was too soon to know for sure.

Clarity stepped forward on her paws and looked over the small one-room house. She carried a small satchel with her, and seemed to be wondering where to put it down.

"We're planning on leaving," Griffin suddenly stated, "so you don't need to be worried about sharing the house with us."

Clarity bobbed her head, as if she was satisfied by this. "That's good," she declared, "things might get a bit busy here. I came down here to do some recruiting and preparations."

"Preparations?" Torrent asked, confused.

Clarity gave him a look of surprise, and a slight scoff. "Have you been living under a rock?" she asked. "The Brightest Night. When the dragonets hatch. We've only got a few weeks left."

"Ah, that," Torrent stated. He hadn't been keeping track of astronomical events, and a false prophecy that didn't really concern him nor Griffin wasn't really something he cared too much about. "A quick word of warning, not all the dragons here are partial to the prophecy and the Talons. I know I've heard word on the street that most of the dragons don't buy it."

Clarity rolled her eyes, and gave Torrent an exasperated glare. "Yes, I realize that. Hence, why I'm recruiting. Things will get better after Moorhen tries her crackdown."

"Crackdown?" Griffin asked, concerned. He hadn't heard about this.

"Nothing that concerns either of you," Clarity explained, waving a claw aside, "but up until now, Queen Moorhen has been pretty lax on allowing her troops to hold and share pro-peace opinions, as long as they don't desert, turn traitor, or support the northern guerrilla. Everyone knows even Moorhen herself doesn't want to be part of the war. But Burn and Scarlet are forcing her to stop this practice, and start punishing those who are against the war. In one day's time, she will be releasing a statement to her underlings, telling them that the Talons of Peace and pro-peace MudWings are enemies of Burn's alliance and the crown."

"And how does this help you?" Torrent wondered. It seemed to him that suppressing anti-war opinions would be pretty harmful to the Talons of Peace.

"Because it gives us notoriety," Clarity grinned. "There are plenty of pro-peace groups around, but Queen Moorhen has decided to place the blame on the Talons in particular for this anti-war sentiment. Every MudWing in the swamps will soon know that the Talons of Peace are the ones who are fighting to end this war, and that we're the ones who are going to be supporting the Dragonets of Destiny in ending the war. She's legitimized us as a force among the public, and there's no way this will just be kept to the Mud Kingdom."

"So by claiming that you're the enemy, she's made all her enemies effectively part of the Talons," Griffin continued.

Clarity nodded. "Exactly. Tomorrow, the Talons of Peace will no longer just be a random group of dragons fighting for the end of the war, we'll be an entire movement."

"That's good," Torrent yawned. "I think."

Clarity clenched her teeth and flashed him a glare, irritated that it seemed he had ignored her. "Yes. It is."

Griffin picked up his satchel, and looked through it quickly. Everything he needed was still there. Food and water, supplies, the map Orca enchanted, and the wax statue of Schist that Fracture had gifted him. Over the years, it had been somewhat demolished. It was difficult to make out a few of the limbs as they had melted into the rest of the body, and dirt had stained the surface. Still, Griffin kept it. "We should probably get going," he suggested to Torrent and Clarity. "We've got a flight through the desert ahead of us, and it'll be difficult to get me out of the city after the sun rises."

Clarity nodded, and watched as Torrent picked up his own satchel and hung it on the leather band in which his dagger's sheath hung from. "Good luck," the IceWing said.

Griffin gave her a wave of his talons in response, and peeked through a crack in the door. No one seemed to be out there at the moment, and it was still dark, at least as dark as it could be with two moons out. A good time to leave. Griffin grabbed the end of Torrent's wing and pulled him towards the door, the SeaWing scrunching up to get through it.