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CLEARSIGHT

The new plan was to fight, and to fight like they meant it.

All things considered, Clearsight felt good about their odds. With the day of the siege closing in, more and more details gradually started to emerge.

There were a couple of new concerns. Perhaps the most troubling was the size of the IceWing levy they would be facing. Shooting Star Valley itself was undermanned, but there was a second battalion of IceWings on the other side of the mountains that was ready to provide battle aid if need be, or perhaps flank the NightWings while they commenced the breach.

But even with the second battalion, the NightWings had superior numbers. They could outmaneuver the IceWings and nullify those reinforcements, provided they made sure to keep the fighting in the air rather than on the ground, and only fought during the night.

The other troubling detail that emerged was that the IceWings had dragonflame cacti. Queen Diamond must have struck a deal with the Sand Kingdom a few weeks ago. They'd been building a supply of the cacti in the fortress, and now had enough to set an entire town ablaze.

They could easily use those cacti to destroy the onager, which meant that they had to breach the gate quickly. But after the gate was open, the fight would devolve into close-quarters combat. At that point, there wouldn't be any way of making use of the explosive cacti without causing an equal amount of collateral damage.

But everything else spelled favorable winds for the NightWings. The onager itself was going to work beautifully, and there was a perfect spot in the cave for them to mount it. If the IceWing reinforcements from the north did attack, they would have inferior weapons and armor. If they successfully forced the NightWings to retreat, Clearsight didn't foresee any major damage along the way.

And while she could never be sure, her odds of survival felt pretty good. She found fewer futures in which she got badly hurt or frostbitten, though they were still there.

When she'd first told Darkstalker about the plan, he became frantic with worry, and begged her to call it off. Clearsight obviously couldn't turn back now, but his inexorable fear for her life was so immiserating that Clearsight had to grant him permission to fight in the battle alongside her, just to ease his mind a bit.

If General Blackhorn's warning on how their success or failure would hinge on how well Clearsight could rouse the troops, then she was pretty sure they were in good shape. The soldiers had high expectations for Clearsight, and she tried her absolute hardest to keep it that way.

That wasn't easy, though. It was one thing to see the future and analyze how strong their chances of success were, but it was another thing entirely to act confidently in front of everyone else. Clearsight was bad at acting confidently. In spite of the favorable odds, she was still terrified. She was constantly doubting her decision, wondering if she was actually capable of keeping things from ending in disaster. It didn't help that the dragons under her command were thrice her age and stood on average a head taller than her.

Yet somehow, she seemed to pull it off. Whenever she ran through the battle plan with the rest of the NightWings, she zoned in on the details, giving instructions to each subdivision. She told them what to expect, and how to respond in different situations. When she stayed focused on this, she was able to put her best foot forward. She was able to give everyone reason to believe that she really did know what she was talking about. When she spoke to them, they listened. When they asked questions, she was able to answer them. That gave her enough confidence in the moment to look like she wasn't completely freaking out on the inside.

Darkstalker had been talking with the soldiers during the past several days, and he confirmed that they really did have high hopes. Their minds were abuzz with fighting spirit: they were ready to kick the last IceWings out of the Talon Peninsula once and for all. Their eagerness, Darkstalker admitted, was a little contagious: he was starting to look forward to winning this fight.

The onager arrived at midnight before the siege was scheduled to take place. As their campsite was in a dense forest, there was nowhere convenient to place the large weapon. Rather than felling some trees to make space for it, Clearsight simply ordered it to be placed on the northern edge of the forest and guarded for the night by the soldiers that would be handling it during the attack. Stormrunner, the first soldier Clearsight had met upon entering the camp, was among them.

"You will need at least two pairs of eyes facing the mountains at all times," Clearsight told him while they stood at the edge of the clearing, where the onager had been placed. "From now until the battle, you'll serve as the primary sentry. If the IceWings decide to attack us first, you'll be the first to know, and you'll need to alert the rest of us as soon as possible."

She thrust a cornu into his talons, made from the horn of a massive ram. "Do not try to carry the onager away if you see them. You'll be too slow, and you'll risk dropping it if you're attacked. Stay where you are and wait for the rest of us. We'll meet them on the way and push them back instead."

Stormrunner saluted. "Understood, Captain Clearsight."

And with that, everything was in place. It was only a matter of hours before it began.

When dawn began to break, Clearsight flew north with Morningstar and two other lieutenants at her flank, and the rest of the NightWing levy trailing behind them. It was on the foothills that flanked the Shooting Star Valley where they met with the IceWing captain of the fortification, a thick-necked dragoness of silver scales named Caribou. She came with her own coterie of officers directly behind her, as well as a small body of IceWing soldiers. She and Clearsight landed across from one another at the top of a hill. Their officers landed behind her, but the main bodies of both of their armies stayed hovering in the air.

Caribou scrunched her snout, as though disgusted. "So, you're here to try and take our fortress," she said plainly.

Clearsight took a deep breath. Show no fear, she thought to herself. This is your last chance to make this end without any bloodshed. "That's right," she said. "And we're going to do it. If you want to minimize your losses, then surrender now. Let us reclaim the fortress and seize your weapons, and we can have an orderly surrender without need for a fight. If you don't do this, then we'll take the fortress by force. It's up to you."

Caribou grinned. "Wow, I'm so intimidated," she said mockingly. "I guess we're out of options, aren't we? Except … there's just one thing: our gate is impenetrable. Do you really think a flimsy stone-thrower and that oversized cloud of bats you have behind you will be enough to break through it?"

Ah, so they knew about the onager. Clearsight had her suspicions, given the patterns in the countermeasures that she saw, but she couldn't be sure. That wasn't good: it likely meant that they already had defensive measures in place against it. One dragonflame cactus would be enough to put it out of commission.

Clearsight tried hiding her surprise, but she felt her eyebrows raise on their own. Promptly, she folded them back down. Caribou wasn't going to win this.

"As a matter of fact, I do," she said. "And if that doesn't worry you, then let me fill you in on who you're dealing with. I'm not just another officer throwing soldiers this way and that in the hopes that something will work out. I'm Clearsight. I am the greatest seer you will ever know, and I know what is going to happen if we fight, because I've seen it. If we weren't going to crush you, we wouldn't be here."

Caribou let out a cocksure scoff.

"And why are you still smiling?" Clearsight pressed, tilting her head quizzically. "Surely it's not because you think you'll surprise us with that harebrained ambush you're planning, right?"

Caribou's smile instantly vanished.

"Oh, you think I didn't know about that?" Clearsight asked. "No, I had visions of those four IceWings trying to blow up our supplies probably before you even came up with that plan. It might have been a good idea if we didn't see it coming. But — well, if you really want to give us some free dragonflame cacti, be my guest."

Caribou glowered. "Seer or not, we both know you're not equipped to breach our gate—"

"—We are," Clearsight interrupted. "We have enough dragons to fend off anything you try throwing at our onager. We'll get it to the foot of your gate, and your IceWings will blow themselves up trying to stop us. All it's going to take is three rocks, and your gate'll be busted. If you want to throw away the lives of your IceWings because you think I'm bluffing, then that's fine. But if you don't, make sure you're gone by sundown."

Knowing that she wasn't going to put herself in a better position if she kept talking, Clearsight turned around and took to the sky. Once she was a few wingbeats away, she let out a shaken breath and clutched her chest.

She'd been planning her words for that conversation all night, but it still felt like a miracle that she managed to pull it off as well as she did.

"You know, that was … a little unorthodox," Morningstar said, winging up to Clearsight's side. "Usually those talks are meant to be a sort of last attempt at courting goodwill. But you hardly even let her speak."

Clearsight felt a little sick hearing that. "Do you think I should have been less aggressive?" she asked.

Morningstar gave a tiny shrug. "You're the seer. Did it work?"

Clearsight sighed. "No," she admitted. "They're going to attack us in a few hours. When we get back, we need to gear up and get ready to fight."

"Well, I suppose that's a success in some sense," said Morningstar. "You've baited them into coming out of their hiding place. They'll be vulnerable now."

Clearsight nodded, but didn't say anything. In truth, this was a huge blunder. A preemptive attack by the IceWings was probably their smartest move. It was late for the NightWings: they were tired, and the soldiers were supposed to be going to sleep soon. Instead they'd have to stay awake and fight during mid-day, when they had no tactical advantage in the sky. This was exactly what she was trying to avoid.

Clearsight landed on the forest floor, and paced back and forth as she waited for the remaining NightWings to touch down. They all did so — it seemed they were aware that she'd have immediate orders for them upon their return.

"Listen closely, everyone," she started, speaking loudly so that her voice carried over the trees and reached every dragon in their party. "The IceWings will be bringing the fight to us. We have about three hours before they come over the horizon and try to attack. Everyone here needs to gear up and group together with your aerial formations. When the fighting starts, you are to clear the way north. Keep the IceWings occupied in the sky while we transport the onager to the cave. I'll give more orders once we're in the sky, but until then, put on your armor, sheath your weapons, and get ready to kill some IceWings!"

An enthusiastic roar came from the dragons in front, and they scattered, each one going off to their tents to do as they were told.

Clearsight made her way to her tent as well. She passed through the entryway and found the bag containing most of her belongings. She'd already had some armor on as a precaution for when she spoke with Caribou, like her helm and her shoulderpads, but more than half of her armor had remained at the camp.

Darkstalker had been among the soldiers during the discussion. He'd been trailing Clearsight the entire time, and followed her into the tent not long after she'd entered. He probably read her mind and noticed that she was thinking about her armor, because he picked up her chestplate and promptly started strapping it on to her. He didn't say anything immediately, but given the look on his face, it was obvious there was something he wanted to say.

Clearsight wanted to beckon him to say whatever that something was, but the words stuck in her throat. So she bit her tongue and let him continue putting on her armor.

Finally, though, he said something. "Please don't fight. Just … stay back, keep your distance, don't let them get near you."

Clearsight took a deep breath. "I'll be okay," she said quietly. "I know what I'm doing."

"Are you sure about that?" he asked, reaching for the curtain of chainmail that clipped to her helmet and draping it around her neck. "Clearsight … I'm starting to see some of the futures. The ones where you don't make it. The ones that you can't see."

When he finished connecting the chainmail to her armor, he reached for her vambraces, and Clearsight noticed how much he was shaking. "Let me go and do the fighting instead," he said. "You can stay far away from the battle, and I'll be out there with the IceWings. If you're worried about the troops, tell me how to command them and—"

"—No," Clearsight interrupted. "Darkstalker, I'm not letting you go out there without me. Even if you could lead the troops just as well as I could, I'm just as worried about you as you're worried about me. If you're going out there to protect me, then I'm going out there to protect you."

Darkstalker looked a little emasculated by that — like he wanted to say that he didn't need her to protect him. But he kept his words to himself, and Clearsight let him know through her thoughts that she was glad that he decided not to say anything. Which only frustrated him further, and Clearsight looked away from him, ashamed.

"Look, if you die, I'm using the watch, so for the sake of the universe, I don't want you doing anything reckless," she said in an effort to fix his ego. "And besides, I need to be the one commanding the troops. I'm the captain here, not you. If you give orders on my behalf, they're less likely to listen."

Darkstalker nodded. "You're right," he said quietly as he finished tying on her vambraces. "But still — try and keep your distance. The world needs you alive."

"I'll do my best," Clearsight said. "Now stand aside and let me armor you up too."

Once Darkstalker was all clad up, Clearsight walked over to her bag of belongings. She grabbed the leather flask of enchanted water and took a drink from it before handing it to Darkstalker. He drank from it too, before giving it back to her. Already noticing the effects it was having, she took a second drink, then put it back into the bag. Then she grabbed her watch, put it in a pocket-sized pouch fastened to her body, and made her way outside.

She flew to the edge of the forest to the site of the onager, and landed near the crew. These dragons hadn't joined them on the flight, so they needed to be given instructions as well. Stormrunner gave her a salute. "Captain Clearsight, what are your orders?" he asked, a small smile attached to his face.

"Stay on sentry, as before," she told them. "But make sure you're ready to fight soon. The IceWings will be coming in less than three hours."

Stormrunner gave a nod. "Understood, Captain."

"You and your crew will likely be flying the onager to the cave while the battle is going on. I will let you know when the opportunity is right to start carrying it. Until then, defend it with your lives. They'll still be trying to sabotage it, and you cannot let that happen under any circumstances."

"You can count on us. Good luck out there, Captain."

She spent the next two hours ironing out a plan for the battle. Or rather, she tried to. She examined at least a dozen different moments where she could order the onager to be carried in. In every one of those moments, the transport was successful. They got the onager mounted against the fortress wall without fail every time. But the trouble was, once she was in the cave, she couldn't see further. It was like her future sight ability was blocked.

At first, she feared that Queen Diamond might have been using magic to stop her from seeing the future, just as she had done on the previous timeline. But there was a much more sensible explanation: Clearsight couldn't stay in the cave without getting herself killed.

The moments of breaching the gate were by far the most dangerous. They'd be vulnerable, with IceWings attacking them both from both directions. There'd be fire and dragonflame explosions. There'd be desperate attempts to stop the siege, suicidal efforts by the IceWings to destroy the onager. In some of the timelines, Clearsight caught a white flash before the thread stopped and she couldn't look any further.

But she needed to be in there if they were to have any chance at breaching the gate. Her presence was the whole reason the onager was so powerful, because she could use her future sight to verify that the throws all landed.

She was scrutinizing the possibility of holding off the IceWings during the attack and waiting to start the siege until nightfall when the horn sounded. Clearsight straightened up and immediately went outside. Darkstalker followed behind her.

All of the NightWings took to the sky, hovering over the trees as they waited for commands to be given to them. Clearsight flew above them, before settling somewhere in the middle of the swarm.

"Listen up, everyone!" she called. "The IceWings are on their way. Our job is to keep them busy and to push them back. Remember: above all else, you must hold together. If your formation scatters, you will get picked apart. Target the IceWings with the dragonflame cacti. If there aren't any, then target the IceWings in front."

Clearsight grabbed a small whistle attached to her neck. "Keep your ears out for the blow of my whistle." She blew it to remind them of the sound. "One blow means 'Listen: I'll be giving a verbal command.' Two blows means 'The onager is in the air: make way for it and keep the IceWings away.' Three blows means 'Retreat: fall back to the camp and await further instructions there.' Are we clear?"

"Yes, Captain Clearsight!" the soldiers boomed.

"Then let's go bite some IceWing tail! Everyone, charge!"

A final hurrah came from the soldiers, and they flew north, following their lieutenant commanders. They flew in three clusters, and Clearsight followed behind them with Darkstalker by her side.

Flying in armor was usually exhausting, but the adrenaline and the enchanted water was giving her better endurance. She kept pace with the rest of the NightWings with ease, and even had to slow herself down to keep herself from going ahead. Then she spotted the IceWings — they were tiny dots in the horizon, but she saw them flapping their wings, approaching.

The two armies began to close in on each other over the foothills. Clearsight began to slow down, making sure she was able to see everything that was going on. The IceWings were fewer in number, but sparser and more spread out.

It was difficult to tell when exactly the fighting started. The IceWings in front flew around the clusters of NightWings rather than faced them head-on. Clearsight saw a blast of ice breath, followed by four blasts of fire breath, followed by a duo of roars. After the fires went out, an IceWing fell from the sky and landed on the ground.

Then the air filled with roars and growls. More ice and fire breath lit up the air, and more dragons started to fall from the sky. There was an IceWing, its face half-singed off. There was a NightWing, its left wing stiff with frost. There was an IceWing and a NightWing, falling together as they struggled against one another in mid-air before landing at the same time.

"Clearsight!"

The call came from Darkstalker. She looked at him, and saw that he was pointing down at a pair of IceWings who'd gotten past the NightWing cluster and were making for the camp. A quick flash in her vision confirmed that they were holding dragonflame cacti, and that they were making for the onager.

Thinking quickly, Clearsight flew towards them. "Wait, Clearsight!" called Darkstalker from behind her.

She had just enough time to check the futures and find out how close she needed to be to safely set one off. She figured out that she would have to be beneath them if she was going to use her fire breath, so she dove down and tailed the IceWing that was in back.

It took her a moment to get close enough without catching their attention. Soon, though, she was just behind and below them, giving her just enough time to twist her head and eject a plume of fire.

They flew several more feet before the twin explosions hit, but they were still close enough for Clearsight to feel the impact of the blast. It threw her off of her flight path, forcing her to spread her wings wide to right herself again. When she did, she hardly saw anything left of the two IceWings — just a single disembodied wing spinning towards the earth.

Clearsight swallowed a lump in her throat. Those dragons, she realized, were the first ones that she had ever killed.

Darkstalker circled around in front of her. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said, though she was admittedly breathless.

"Let me stop them instead," Darkstalker said. "They could have—"

There wasn't time for talk: there was a battle going on. Before Darkstalker finished, Clearsight flew back to the NightWings and IceWings and pulled out her whistle. She was ready to issue a new command to one of the rear clusters, commanding them to focus on stopping any of the IceWings slipping through. But they were already on the task. Led by their lieutenant commander, the right rear cluster fell back and began charging for another IceWing heading for the onager.

Except, they were getting too close. Before long, the lieutenant was nearly at the IceWing's tail, with the cluster of IceWings following close behind.

"Wait!" Clearsight shouted, trying to fly towards them. "Don't! You'll get—"

The lieutenant exhaled a plume of fire onto the IceWing. The IceWing spun out, falling into the cluster of NightWings, and then the cactus burst. The explosion killed the IceWing, but it took the lieutenant and six other NightWings with it. Their bodies fell lifelessly to the ground.

The rest of the NightWings in the cluster became spread apart by the blast, and they began to scatter about in a panic.

Clearsight felt her stomach lurch as she watched the chaos unfold around her. Many of the scattered dragons at least had the sense to cluster up into groups of two or more, as they'd been trained to do in situations like these, but most flew alone now.

Then another explosion sounded, this time within another cluster. Clearsight couldn't tell if the lieutenant commanding them had gone out with that blast, but it had the same effect: a half-dozen NightWings fell to the ground, and the rest began to scatter.

The IceWings immediately started to take advantage of the disorder. Clearsight watched as they hunted down NightWings one at a time, using their serrated claws and ice breath to take them out.

As each second passed, a fact of the future was slowly growing more and more crystalized, more and more irreversible: they were going to lose.

Losing wasn't supposed to be an option. There were too many NightWings in the battle, too many that would be killed or taken prisoner or driven to desertion. They would lose all their momentum, and IceWings would win the war, which meant Foeslayer would be turned in and killed, and Clearsight already knew how bad things would get when that happened.

She couldn't order a retreat either. All of the nearby NightWing fortresses were undermanned, and the IceWings would catch them before they could reach any further ones. They would surrender, and Clearsight and Darkstalker would be taken prisoner, and there wouldn't be any hope of getting out of that situation alive.

And it was becoming more and more apparent that she couldn't fight. How was she supposed to win this? The longer they fought out here in the sky, the more NightWings were going to get killed. She wanted to carry the onager into the cave now, while they still had fighting power. But nothing had changed: making it into the cave with the onager still seemed to spell her doom.

She felt her very soul locking up. Did she really only have one choice left?

Clearsight lowered her whistle as the black and white wings began to blur around her. Then she opened the pouch and pulled out her watch.

She'd made some mistakes, she couldn't deny it. She got demoted from her position as the queen's lead seer, and missed a couple of important things that she really should have noticed sooner. She let her soul get tainted with ambition, and maybe she ended up letting her authority get to her head sometimes.

But everything was still going so well! Darkstalker was still good, and Fathom and Indigo were still happy and together, and nobody important was dead. Why did she have to let it end so soon and so suddenly? Why couldn't she have listened to Keen Eye like she was planning on doing from the start?

She flipped the watch around to open the cover. But before any latch could be loosened, an explosion cracked, mightier than the blast of any dragonflame cactus and loud enough to shake her entire body. As her ears rang and her vision blurred, the watch slipped from her talons and fell to the ground.

A/N: I decided ultimately that the prudent thing for me to do was to focus most of my attention in January on studying for my oral qualifying exam (which I passed, yay!), so even the simple act of editing this chapter and getting it pushed out in a timely manner ended up taking a backseat. I might've been able to get this out sooner, but I had to make some changes to the end of the chapter that took a bit of time to square away, and I just wasn't able to do that when my brain was set to full-time study mode every single day. Apologies!

I have embarrassed myself one too many times with expectations for when I'll be uploading the next chapter, so I'll stop crying wolf and simply go back to uploading new chapters when I think they're ready to be uploaded. But I will give you my word that I intend on writing regularly during this semester. I have some chunks of writing time carved out of my schedule every day, and I've been pretty good at adhering to my writing schedules once I've set them.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter! And if any of you happen to be going to Boskone this year, I'll be there, so maybe you can say hi to me! I'll be the tall, lanky, nerdy-looking guy with glasses and long brown curly hair, likely flocking around Tui with my friends from PPAU whenever I get the chance. If you see someone that looks vaguely like Weird Al Yankovic, you may have spotted me.