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CLEARSIGHT
"We should expand more," Darkstalker said.
The suggestion sent shivers down Clearsight's spine and awful visions through her head. In an instant, she was met with a continent blanketed by a sky of endless night, in a war room with a map of Pyrrhia covered with conquered territory. She saw the cold, calculating eyes of Darkstalker as he planned his next invasion, pushing for a continental takeover.
It wasn't a vision attack — she didn't get struck with a flurry of different possible futures without any way of stopping them. But her powers gripped her for a moment, warning her of what might soon follow from this.
There was a quiet that befell the advising room. Listener, Thoughtful, and Whiteout all kept their eyes on Darkstalker, looking curious.
"Elaborate, please," Clearsight said.
"Look at our current borders," he said, flattening the large map of Pyrrhia on the table and pointing at the border lines along the Talon Peninsula. "Directly north of our borders is SandWing territory, but the area over here is unoccupied." He pointed at the southern foothills of the Claws of the Clouds Mountains.
"That's the Agate Mountain Range," Clearsight said. "It's under the control of the SkyWings."
"Yes, but it's unoccupied SkyWing territory. There's valuable resources here that we could use for building. Instead of having to trade with the SkyWings, we could set up our own mines and quarries and get all of those resources for free."
"But it's still owned by the Sky Kingdom," Clearsight said, shaking her head. "We can't just go in and do that."
"Exactly, which is why we should expand more," Darkstalker said. "We'll take the Agate Mountain Range for ourselves, widen our borders, and set up the mines and quarries once the new borders have been drawn."
Thoughtful tilted his head. "With all due respect, Your Majesty, you can't seriously be considering war with the SkyWings when we've only been at peace for a few months."
"No, no, no, of course not!" Darkstalker said. "We just need to ask the Sky Kingdom for that land and they'll give it to us. They would never say no."
Thoughtful looked as though his brain flipped upside-down for a couple of seconds. "What? Of course they will! Why wouldn't they?"
"Because they'd be afraid of what might happen if they do say no."
"But … but … if we're not planning on going to war with them, what do they have to be afraid of?"
"They don't know that we're not planning on going to war with them." Darkstalker adjusted his crown. "Look, think about this from Queen Carmine's perspective. The last time she interacted with me and Clearsight was when we were in her palace, where I overpowered her and rendered her unable to speak until I got my way and left. She is terrified of me, and she's perfectly aware that the Night Kingdom is infinitely more powerful than her kingdom. If we send her a letter politely encouraging her to give us Agate Mountain and the surrounding lands, do you really think she would actually say no and risk starting a conflict with us? Maybe if the land actually mattered to her, but they've hardly touched Agate Mountain; they're not going to think that hill is worth dying over."
Clearsight winced. "This really sounds like bullying," she said.
"How is it bullying?" Darkstalker asked, raising his voice. "We wouldn't even be threatening her. She'd just be thinking that we're threatening her, when in actuality, if she says no, we're not going to do anything. It would be a completely voluntary transfer of land. We send her a passive-aggressively worded letter asking for the mountains, and they say, 'yes, you can have them, please don't hurt us.'"
"So you are suggesting we threaten her?" Clearsight said.
"No, Clearsight, you don't understand. There would be no threat at all; just an implication of a threat. Our letter would be worded very kindly, and not aggressively at all. But in between the lines would be some implicit suggestions that should make Queen Carmine think that something bad will happen to her if she refuses our request."
"Okay, okay," Thoughtful said with an uncomfortable nod. "Uh, but that sounds kind of manipulative."
"Well, so does everything that's actually persuasive," Darkstalker rebutted. "It's called diplomacy: peaceful negotiations between rational leaders that help us get what we want."
"You know, we don't really need any extra stone for anything right now anyway," Clearsight said. "As queen, I'm going to officially table this for now. Perhaps we can bring it back up when we're actually in need of more resources from the Sky Kingdom."
"But we could always use more resources!" Darkstalker let out a huff. "You know what? Fine, we'll drop it. But there are other viable places we can extend to. Like the peninsula on the east coast, just to the east of our colony in the Bay of a Thousand Scales. The SeaWings don't even claim to own that territory. And it's heavily forested, which makes it a perfect option for new settlements."
"It's notoriously dense with scavengers, though," Listener said. "And the scavengers there are really aggressive. They've driven off the SeaWings around half-a-dozen times in the past."
"SeaWings don't have fire," Darkstalker remarked. "We shouldn't have a problem with the scavengers after a few of them get fried. They'll learn to respect the sparkly black dragons more — hey, stop thinking those angry thoughts at me, Listener! It's not like we're going to order anyone to go out and burn the scavengers alive. I'm just saying that the new settlers will defend themselves and eventually the scavengers will learn to avoid them. Whiteout, are there any more NightWings who signed the colonization draft?"
"More than a few," Whiteout said. "There are many sheaves fully grown in our home, eager to bundle more starlight into the fibers of Pyrrhia."
"And who would we be to deny them?" Darkstalker interrupted. "What say you, Clearsight? Should we give the other eager settlers an opportunity to scope out the eastern peninsula?"
"I suppose that'd be okay," Clearsight said. "But can we wait until tomorrow before we start thinking about how to organize it? I'm starting to grow a little weary."
"Tomorrow, then," Darkstalker said with a nod. "Whiteout, you can let the volunteers know that they'll be speaking with us soon. In the meantime, let's call this meeting adjourned."
Upon dismissal, they all rose to their feet and headed for the door. Clearsight made her way out into the courtyard while Darkstalker stayed behind to speak a bit more with Whiteout and Thoughtful.
She closed her eyes and examined the futures more thoroughly. It didn't take long before what she was seeing started to make her feel ill. These propositions that Darkstalker was making with the advising committee were only going to get more and more aggressive, unless she could somehow find a way to stop it. She wished that she had the authority to shut down all of his ideas as queen, but her authority was slipping. Ever since Darkstalker had branded the moon, the tribe started to see him as the true ruler of the Night Kingdom, not her.
Even now, Darkstalker was starting to take control where he didn't have authority before. It was a small thing, but the fact that he was the one who adjourned the meeting while that was technically Clearsight's duty was a harrowing sign.
She was losing control. Not just of this timeline, but of this reality.
"Ah, there she is," Darkstalker said, creeping up behind her and nudging her haunches with his snout. "Someone's got their head in the clouds without taking flight. What's on your mind?"
Clearsight turned around and sat on the grass. She considered keeping her worries to herself, but her instincts told her that the way to save the future was to be direct with him. "Darkstalker, I don't like the direction you're taking our tribe," she said.
"Then I guess I haven't done my job of convincing you yet," he said. "I think we do have a shortage of stone; we just don't realize that we do because we're not thinking about all of the things we could be doing with it. I had a conversation with some engineers the other day, and asked them—"
"—No, Darkstalker, listen to me," Clearsight interrupted. "You're pushing to take over other tribes right now, don't you realize that? You've already taken parts of the Sea Kingdom, and you're already pushing our borders there further than we'd intended them to be."
"To land that neither the MudWings nor the SeaWings want; there's nothing wrong with us taking it. You agreed to that just a few minutes ago."
"But it's not going to stop there, Darkstalker," Clearsight said. "Listen to me. These ideas of yours aren't just leading to bad futures. They are the bad futures. I don't want the NightWings to be imposing their will on all of the other tribes. I don't want the other six kingdoms to slowly crumble away until you rule them all. But if you don't hold back now and listen to me, I don't know how I'm going to keep that from happening."
"I'm not—" Darkstalker huffed out a puff of smoke through his nostrils and looked away from her with a glare. "Why do you have to be so dramatic all the time, Clearsight? It's always the end of the world with you."
"I'm not being dramatic; this is what the future's telling me." Clearsight blinked, and she swore she could feel a pair of tears fall from her eyes. She was starting to panic; she could feel it. This wasn't the way Darkstalker needed to be reacting to her. He couldn't be angry with her; he couldn't be dismissive. He had to be listening, and he wasn't.
"Well I don't want to hear your future," he said with a growl. "That's your problem; you've always got too much 'future' on your mind. Maybe you should stop listening to your powers and look around you, for once."
"Oh yeah, because that's been going great for us, hasn't it?"
"Yes, it has! We've got crowns on our heads and an entire kingdom at our clawtips. We're the most powerful dragons in the world right now, Clearsight."
"Have you never realized that none of that really mattered to me? I never wanted to be queen, Darkstalker. I took this crown to save Fathom and Indigo. That's it."
Darkstalker looked back at Clearsight, and Clearsight looked away from him, taking a deep breath to steady the shake forming in her voice. She heard him let out a huff. "You know, if you want me to know how you're feeling, you could always take that bracelet off," he said.
Clearsight clutched the bracelet Darkstalker had made for her all those years ago. Moonstones, woven in copper wire, enchanted to keep any mindreader from hearing her thoughts. It was the only enchantment Clearsight had ever asked Darkstalker for.
"Is it really too much to ask?" he pressed. "I can read the minds of every dragon I meet except my beloved wife. How ridiculous is that?"
Clearsight felt her face fall. "But you promised me that you'd never read my mind, even before you gave me that bracelet."
"Well if I did, it was a promise I never should have made," he said. "I was hoping that at some point you would have had a change of heart. That you would have wanted me to be able to look into your mind again. But this whole time you've kept your thoughts locked away."
That actually made Clearsight feel guilty. It was pretty selfish of her to keep her thoughts from Darkstalker, wasn't it? She knew that they would always struggle with each other when it came to maintaining trust in their relationship, but tying up all her thoughts and keeping Darkstalker from seeing them certainly wasn't helping.
Perhaps this was what she needed to do in order to save the future from despair. Perhaps this was her last chance at redeeming this timeline.
She remembered a moment all those years ago, right when she'd slipped off her bracelet in the last timeline and placed it on Darkstalker's wrist. There was a look in his eyes right before he fell asleep — a painful clarity that lasted no longer than a heartbeat. Clearsight wondered if he'd seen all of those terrible futures that she was protecting Pyrrhia from, and if that had changed him.
It might have been too late back then, but perhaps it wasn't too late now. Maybe if she gave him the chance to see those terrible futures for himself — to see how close she was to pushing the button on that watch and turning back time — he'd start to change for the better.
She slipped the bracelet off of her wrist, and held her breath.
For a few heartbeats, Darkstalker just stared at her, listening. She could feel him probing her mind for the first time in nearly a decade, making her feel so vulnerable.
Then he gave her an angry scowl that broke her heart. "You can't seriously be considering using that watch again, Clearsight."
Clearsight was stunned, and stuttered for a few moments while she tried to find the words to respond with. "M-maybe I am," she eventually said. "You see the futures that I'm seeing too, right?"
"Have you even thought about what turning back time would do?" he asked. "Think about everything that's happened. Our marriage, the war, the kingdom — all of that's going to get erased. And what about our kids? Are you okay with killing Solstice and Remedy? If you turn back time, they'll never even get the chance to exist."
Clearsight's mind went numb. She was prepared to redo her marriage with Darkstalker. She was prepared to redo ending the war with the IceWings. But Solstice and Remedy were different, because she couldn't redo them. Even if she went back in time and they had dragonets again, the new dragonets wouldn't be Solstice and Remedy. They'd be different. They always were. If she turned back time, she'd have to say goodbye to the kids she had right now. Forever.
"It's too late to redo this, Clearsight," Darkstalker said. "This is our timeline, whether you like it or not."
At that, he started walking off into the palace.
"Where are you going?" Clearsight asked.
"To find that watch of yours," he said, not turning back. "I'm going to hide it, in case you ever decide to change your mind."
Clearsight didn't try to stop him. In that moment, she too feared the possibility that she'd change her mind in the future. Doomed or not, she was trapped in this timeline. She couldn't let the temptation of starting everything over convince her otherwise.
A/N: Ayy, got it submitted a day early! Hope you enjoyed it.
Anyway, I've got the next six chapters roadmapped right now, and I'm not anticipating any of them to be terribly long. So let's see how long we can continue this one-chapter-a-week schedule for.