A/N: Welcome, all, to another one.

Not much I want to say for this one, so we'll get right into it...right after my reminder to favorite/follow the story if you like it thus far, and to leave a review if you'd be so kind to. And, as always, enjoy.

Chapter 11: Armistice

Following the little incident where Darkstalker almost lost his mother to what would likely have been a gruesome and horrible fate, Indigo didn't see the Nightwing for several days. She wasn't completely sure why he had chosen to neglect his routine flights with Fathom, but she had an idea; if it was her mother who had somehow been dragged away and almost killed by a spell, she certainly would have stayed closed to keep an eye on her. If she had to guess, she thought it likely that Darkstalker was doing something similar.

Clearsight also seemed to think that was the case. Indigo had only seen her a couple of times since that night, the future-seeing dragoness being constantly engrossed in her work for the queen. The only time they really had a chance to talk was actually the night after the incident. Indigo had remembered that it had been her hatching day—any thought or celebration of it forgotten among the events of the prior night—and had visited her room to give her the necklace she'd gotten. The conversation was brief, but Clearsight had mentioned that Darkstalker had requested a few days off school and palace duties in the wake of everything. Apparently, he was going to take time make sure that what had happened would not happen again, and Indigo really couldn't blame him.

His lack of presence was a little disappointing, though. In a weird way. While her feelings about the Nightwing animus had only grown more and more mixed the more time she spent around him, he had still never been a dragon she particularly wanted to be around. But after that night, she felt like something had to have changed. Maybe with her? Maybe with him? She wasn't quite sure, but she knew that the Darkstalker from the first night she'd arrived would never had just given her an enchanted object like Darkstalker had. As seemingly small of a spell it had been, it was still more than unexpected when he'd told her to keep it. And the hug he'd given her before…she wasn't expecting it.

And that wasn't even mentioning how he'd been using a scroll to cast his spells. Everything had seemed to go by so fast—so unusually—that she hadn't really stopped to ask anything about it. There was that, the rescue itself, and everything afterwards which even now, days later, still swam about in her head with questions that needed answers. She'd thought that the night after would bring opportunities for answers, but Darkstalker's absence had left her with nothing.

Perhaps that was why, when a knock on Fathom's door came four days after the incident and at the time when Darkstalker usually showed up for a sunset flight, she immediately went to answer it with more eagerness than she normally displayed, not even stopping to ask who it was before opening. And perhaps that was also why she felt such immense disappointment when she found a Nightwing she'd never seen before standing outside Fathom's room.

Realizing that she was uncharacteristically not in her normal guard-mode, she immediately wiped all expression from her face and fixed her stance as the Nightwing gave her an odd look.

"Well," she hissed, more so out of frustration and embarrassment at herself than anger at the unexpected dragon, "What do you want?"

"I have a message," the Nightwing answered simply, holding out a small scroll, "I was instructed to deliver it to this room."

"Is that all?" she asked, taking it from him. Such exchanges were commonplace; Queen Vigilance sent messages and requests for information from Fathom on various topics on a regular basis.

"It is, thank you," the messenger said before turning and heading away down the hallway. Indigo rolled her eyes, half at the bluntness of the Nightwing and half at herself for allowing herself to get so excited at such a small thing.

"Fathom, there's a message for you," she called out to the Seawing Prince as she carried the small scroll towards him. He was across the room reading a scroll, having just woken up not long ago. He looked tired, which was unsurprising; he'd finally decided it was time to try to adjust into the Nightwing schedule, which meant that for the past couple of days his own sleep schedule and body process had been completely thrown off. She herself had actually already adjusted fairly easily, but then again, her life in the Queen's Honor Guard had made her used to sleeping at odd hours and doing patrols when others were sleeping.

"Thanks, Indigo," he said with a small sigh as she gave it to him. He rubbed his eyes and unrolled it as she turned to go back to her post near the door. She'd just reached it and sat down when Fathom called her back. "This isn't for me," he told her as she reapproached him.

"Then who's it for?" she asked, a bit annoyed. Leave it up to the Nightwings to choose our room to make a mistake with, she thought.

"You, actually," Fathom replied, holding it out to her. She gazed at it with uncertainty for a moment before accepting; she'd never once received any message since she began her mission here. Why would that change now?

Hesitantly, she opened it and found a small message of just a couple sentences scrawled on it.

Indigo,

Meet me in the palace library after the midnight meal. Don't bring Fathom.

-DS

She read it over a few times, not quite sure what to think. There was only one dragon she could think of that might initial themselves as DS—Darkstalker—but why he'd felt the need to contact her like this was something she couldn't tell. He almost never sent a message to Fathom when he could avoid it, choosing always to speak to him in person. Why the Nightwing would decide to break that trend with her was actually a little disconcerting.

"Should I be concerned?" Fathom asked her, pulling her out of her thoughts.

"Pardon?" she said, not quite sure what he meant. Had she been frowning? Or doing something else that would make her seem worried?

"A note asking to meet you alone, privately," Fathom explained, a sly look in his eye, "You wouldn't happen to be spending quality time with any of the Nightwings when you're off duty, are you?"

She narrowed her eyes in confusion. Did Fathom not realize that this had come from Darkstalker? Perhaps his tired eyes and mind hadn't made the connection, and he was making a poorly timed joke. The look in his eyes said that he was being funny, but in the moment she'd not quite gotten it.

"Heh, just kidding," Fathom seemed to clarify, deflating a bit as he realized that whatever comedy he'd tried to pull hadn't gone over, "Anyway, if you need to go, I'll have Lionfish fill in. You always say that he and Warf should pull more weight, anyway."

She glanced down at the message once more, then nodded. "Yeah, I'd like that." If Darkstalker wanted to meet with her privately, then she'd meet with him. She was reasonably confident that the two of them were now beyond the point where she had to worry about him killing her, especially considering what she'd done with him to save his mother. Whatever he wanted to discuss would be done civilly, and if she was honest with herself there were more than a few things that she really wanted to discuss with him.

But that still didn't explain why he wanted to talk privately.

Very seldom had she had one-on-one encounters with the Nightwing animus, and in each of those neither had really gone in with an intention to talk. Aside from those, all interactions took place with Fathom there, able to watch and intervene and keep them from going at each other (at least, in the first few weeks). She wasn't ashamed at all to admit that she felt safer around Darkstalker with Fathom around, but now she was going to be willingly leave him behind.

Perhaps it's for the best, she thought, returning back to her post. After what had happened, she was hopeful that there would be a shift in their dynamic. If they'd already reached a point where they could talk without any hostility, then they were definitely moving in the right direction.

She spent most of the early night near motionless by the door, alone with her thoughts as she did her job. A few times Fathom requested her help or advice on some things he was doing, but for the most part he just worked on writing in a scroll as part of a project the Nightwing queen had given him. He actually nodded off a couple of times and she had to wake him; he'd requested that she ensure that he stay up through the night and not revert back to his "normal" sleeping schedule.

When the midnight meal finally came, she couldn't help but give a large sigh of relief, knowing that the waiting was, for the most part, over. In the palace, everything ran smoothly and timely throughout, meaning that her meal would be at the same time as whatever Darkstalker's was. Telling time in the middle of the night was difficult for non-Nightwings like she was, but as the midnight meal was always at midnight, it was one thing that she could gauge the rest of her time against.

Like usual, the meal was delivered by a member of the palace kitchen staff. And, like usual, the platter for them contained a variety of fish, crabs and other seafood. Technically, there was supposed to be a large tray for Fathom and a smaller tray for each of the guards, but since Indigo was always the one with Fathom at mealtime the staff had learned to simply combine the dishes for her and Fathom. Warf and Lionfish had their own meals delivered to the adjacent guard room, where they normally ate separate from her and Fathom.

Not feeling very hungry—probably from some nerves—she only ate a few small fish before politely asking to be dismissed from her duties. Fathom rolled his eyes as he granted her request (he always seemed to be amused at the formalities she made herself do) and after a brief stop at the other room to grab Lionfish and have him go on active duty, she began to make her way to the palace library.

Having taken steps to ensure that she memorized the palace layout so she wouldn't get lost like she had in the first few days, she made good time to library without difficulty. The room itself was a very large one, two stories tall with rows and rows of shelves packed with scrolls. On two sides of the library were a grand double staircase leading to the second floor, no doubt so that dragons in flight wouldn't blow the scrolls off her shelves. A few desks sat here and there for dragons to sit and read, although only one was currently in use. She was a bit surprised to see her fellow guard, Wharf, studying a document intently in a corner. He looked up at her in notice before giving a dismissive snort and returning to his reading.

"Indigo!"

The sound of her name turned her attention away from the other Seawing and up towards the second story, where she saw Darkstalker leaning on a railing and looking down on her. He made a motion for her to come up, and she climbed the staircase up to meet him. Before she could say a word, though, he made another motion for her to follow him and led her through a small maze of shelves to a lone table behind several shelves of scrolls and far from prying eyes.

She wasn't sure how worried she should be at that little detail as he took a seat and she sat across from him. They just sat and regarded each other for a moment before she decided to speak first.

"Sooo…you wanted to see me?" she asked more than stated, cautiously opting to be more open than normal and not holding her usual guarded demeanor she normally used around him. "That's…new."

The Nightwing gave a small sigh. "Yes, I guess it is. I'm honestly a bit surprised you even came."

"How couldn't I, with how cryptic you were?" she dared to joke, "But, seriously, I doubt you summoned me without a specific reason. Why?"

Darkstalker tapped his tail lightly against the ground, a bit of confliction on his face. Giving another small sigh, he apparently decided to go for whatever was on his mind.

"I'm not sure we exactly started off on the right claw, you and I," he began, "I won't assign blame—although you trying to convince Fathom to let you kill me didn't help things—but I think it's clear that our hostility was mutual. I know we disagree over animus magic. I know we disagree about how Fathom should use animus magic. But I don't see why there has to be a war between us over it." He gave a small growl to himself and shook his head. "I don't want to hate you, Indigo. After what you did for me—for my mother—I'm willing to put all of my previous feelings behind me. But I can't unless you're willing to do the same."

Indigo gave a small nod to show she was following. She couldn't deny that this was kind of what she was hoping to hear, even if she didn't think that the animus would actually be humble enough to do it.

"I asked you here to make a proposal, of sorts," Darkstalker continued, "Call it an armistice, if you will. Clearsight wants us to get along. Fathom wants us to get along. I'm not saying we have to agree with each other's views, but can we agree to stop whatever we were doing before."

"So, I won't keep thinking of ways to eliminate you if you go evil and you won't threaten me with your animus magic?" she asked, "I think I can get behind that."

"Yes, exactly," Darkstalker said, "We don't need to be friends, but we don't have to be enemies, either."

These were some of the same thoughts that Indigo had been having herself for quite some time now, even before the incident with Foeslayer. She'd seen this change happening both in Darkstalker, but also within herself the more she interacted with the black dragon. She didn't want to hate him either, not anymore.

"I agree to your…armistice, then," she told him, allowing herself to give a small smile. "I hope that we can put our rough start behind us."

"I'm glad to hear it," Darkstalker responded, looking relieved himself.

It dawned on Indigo that not long ago she would have been more than a little suspicious that his words were just a trick, some sort of ruse to get her to drop her guard so he could strike at her in some way. She probably would have refused his offer, or at the very least searched his words as hard as she could to find some hidden meaning. But now, after everything, she didn't. She believed that Darkstalker was sincere in what he was saying, and so was she.

With that realization came another sort of feeling. Something felt like it had changed somehow, something bigger than just their agreement to stop fighting. She couldn't quite put a talon on it, but it felt…good.

Taking a deep breath, she began to rise from the table she was seated at. "Is that all?" she asked Darkstalker.

"Actually, no." He told her, causing her to sit back down and give him a look of confusion. "There was another thing I wanted to talk with you about. Why I asked you not to bring Fathom."

"Oh," she said, a little more confused. She'd assumed that he'd requested she'd come alone so Fathom wouldn't influence her decision to agree to his truce. "What is it?"

"Tell me," he leaned in, more intensity in his eyes than before, "How much did you tell Fathom about what we did saving my mother?"

She was a little taken aback at that. "Pretty much everything," she answered, "I didn't think there was any reason not to. He was quite insistent to know what happened."

"Did you tell him about my scroll?" Darkstalker's face was deathly serious.

She almost asked 'what scroll' before the realization hit. He must be talking about the scroll he'd written his spells in.

"I…no." Indigo told him. It was the truth, too. She wasn't quite sure why she'd decided to leave out that one detail when recounting the story to Fathom—maybe because she didn't understand it fully herself—but she'd instead just told him that Darkstalker had enchanted the map and the rock, not mentioning how.

"Good…good," Darkstalker gave a sigh of relief.

"…If it's not too much to ask," Indigo ventured, remembering some of the questions she had been wanting to ask the dragon in front of her, "What's up with that scroll anyway? Do you have to use it to cast a spell, or do you just write to make sure the spell is what you want?"

Darkstalker looked a bit reluctant to answer. She noticed him glancing down with a small frown.

"My other theory is—and forgive me if it's wrong—is that you aren't even an animus, and somehow the power has been in the spell this whole time and you've just been faking," she continued, "At any rate, it was more than clear to me that there's something very significant about it, and your asking me about it just confirms those thoughts."

The black dragon gave a small growl to himself and lashed his tail. He was quiet for a moment or two before he shook his head and opened his mouth. "I guess it's just as well you know, especially in light of our new truce," he finally began to answer, "…but you'll have to give me your word that what I say stays between us."

Indigo gave a quick nod to affirm that it would, becoming a little excited at whatever secret she was apparently about to learn.

"Your theory isn't right, but it actually isn't too far off," Darkstalker told her, shifting a bit uncomfortably where he sat, "You see, the scroll contains the entirety of my magic. I put all my power into it, and I can't cast a single spell without it."

Narrowing her eyes in confusion, Indigo cocked her head. It didn't make sense. "Why would you do something like that?" she asked, "What if it was lost? Or stolen? What possible advantage could you gain from it?"

"I can make sure I keep my soul intact," came his answer. "As you know, animus dragons lose a bit of their soul every time we cast magic. At least that's what the legends say. I don't want to be another Albatross, and I know you don't want that either, so I came up with a way to protect my soul. By putting my power into the scroll, the magic comes out of the scroll instead of me when I cast a spell. This way, I can cast spells without worrying about my soul being destroyed."

This was…interesting information, Indigo thought. It actually kind of explained a lot, at least about why Darkstalker was so carefree with his magic. And it definitely made her feel a bit better about everything—it turns out that he actually was concerned about his soul and was trying to protect it, something that she'd assumed that he completely unworried about. Yet something still felt off.

Darkstalker apparently saw it in her face or read it in her mind. "What?" he asked as she shook her head.

"I don't know…" she tried to find what words to say, "It…it feels like cheating."

"Cheating?" Darkstalker looked half confused and half amused, "How so?"

"It just…it seems too easy," Indigo tried to explain, "Like, if avoiding soul damage was so easy, wouldn't another animus have thought of it? It seems to me that something so powerful as animus magic itself can't just be out thought like that, you know?"

Darkstalker looked unconvinced.

"Think of it this way," she tried again, "It appears to me that each animus has a certain amount of magic that they can use before their soul goes. Small spells hurt a little, large ones hurt a lot. Now, if using your magic does destroy your soul, then if you just took all of your magic and used it up, taking it all out of you and putting it in a scroll, wouldn't that destroy your soul just like that?"

Darkstalker shrugged his wings. "It was just a small spell to do it."

"But it was all your magic," she said, "So either it should have damaged your soul then, or it's still connected to it now."

He shook his head. "If it was then I would know. My soul reader would have told me."

"I don't know," she took a moment to shake her own head, "Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe animus magic doesn't hurt a soul. Maybe good dragons do good and bad dragons do bad. It just seems to me that trying to circumvent its effects like that is an easy way out…and in my experience easy way outs seldom prove to be as easy as they seem."

"Well, it's worked fine for me so far," Darkstalker insisted, "I've been trying to find the right time to tell Fathom about it. I feel like something similar could help him, but I'm waiting until he gets a little more comfortable to bring it up. That's why I wanted to make sure you hadn't told him much—I should be the one to tell him about it all."

It suddenly dawned on Indigo that she had given her word that she wouldn't tell anyone about his scroll, and that included Fathom. And this was something that could possibly have a big effect on him, or better or for worse. She kept herself from growling at the thought; it was going to be difficult not to bring it up to him. Hopefully Darkstalker would raise the issue soon. Not that she agreed with the idea, but so she wouldn't have to worry about accidently mentioning it to her friend.

Deciding to avoid the topic of whether or not Fathom should copy Darkstalker's idea (she knew it would likely lead to a fight, and she didn't want that now that things between her and Darkstalker were finally looking up), she instead turned her thoughts and question towards a different person.

"Does Clearsight know about your scroll?" she asked. She would assume so, with how close the two of them were, but if it was so secret then it was plausible that he'd hidden it from her.

"Of course she does," came his immediate answer, "Really, I made it for her. So that she wouldn't worry about me losing my soul. That it satisfied her and she didn't immediately see tons of horrible futures of death and destruction is really the ultimate proof that it works."

That was true. Of all the Nightwings, Clearsight was probably the one that Indigo trusted the most, and she was a future seer. Indigo was reasonably confident that Clearsight would know if Darkstalker's decisions were leading him down a path of unbelievable darkness.

But then again…

"Speaking of Clearsight," Indigo began, "I wanted to ask something but haven't had the chance."

"Go ahead," Darkstalker told her.

"Well, you're a future seer and Clearsight is a future seer." Darkstalker nodded in affirmation, waiting for her to get to the point. "So, why didn't either of you see that Foeslayer was going to fly away the other day?"

Darkstalker's wings slumped to his sides and he gave a bit of a grimace. "It's…complicated."

"How so?"

"Seeing the future is not as simple as it seems," he explained, "It's not a linear path. It's more of a collection of probabilities, so to say. When I see a future, there really isn't any guarantee that whatever I see will come to pass. Some things are extremely likely, but nothing is completely certain."

"There are really two aspects to being a seer, and it all depends on how you get the visions" he continued, "When I purposefully look into the future, I always go in with a certain set of assumptions—sometime intentional and sometimes not—which affect what I see. For instance, I can choose to look for futures where my father turns evil and that's what I'll see. That doesn't mean that it's likely to happen, though. Mostly, I look into the future searching for the most probable futures, the ones that have the highest chance of occurring. But, again, that doesn't mean that they will occur. Extremely unlikely things happen all the time. Most of them don't have a large effect on the future as a whole, but some do. And if we don't know that the unexpected thing happened, typically we keep seeing the future as though it didn't until we're aware of it. Neither Clearsight or I foresaw Foeslayer taking off her earing and flying away because the chances of it happening were so small. It slipped between all the visions we had because we weren't looking for it and it wasn't likely."

"But Clearsight did eventually had a vision about it," Indigo pointed out.

"Yes, and that's the second kind of future seeing," Darkstalker went on, "Sometimes something prompts a vision. It can be anything, really, but it most often is related to the subject of the vision. Like you mentioning Foeslayer. Anyway, those kinds of visions tend to be more likely to occur. No one knows why." He fell silent for a while, in a kind of concerned thought as Indigo digested the information.

So, future seers are not all-knowing, she thought to herself. It wasn't completely surprising, but it did give her a bit more respect for what Clearsight had to do.

"It's part of the reason that I was so cold to you," Darkstalker suddenly spoke again, pulling her from her thoughts.

"Oh?"

"I knew who Fathom was long before he came. I saw him in visions almost since I was hatched. His arrival was almost a complete certainty," Darkstalker informed her, "You, though…you weren't supposed to be here."

"I'm sorry, what?" Indigo asked, not sure if she should feel offended by that.

"There were very, very, few visions where you ever came to the Night Kingdom," Darkstalker elaborated, "I knew vaguely who you were from a few visions here and there where you showed up, but I never foresaw that you'd play a major part. You see…well…in almost every single probably future I'd seen prior to Fathom's arrival you…you…" He paused and seemed a bit hesitant to continue.

"I what?" she snapped harsher than she meant to.

"You died," he finally said. "You were killed in Albatross's massacre, giving your life to protect Fathom."

She blinked once, then twice. "I…died?" she asked.

"Yes. It was far more likely than not." Darkstalker said a bit too bluntly for her liking.

"How…how likely was it?"

He thought for a moment or two. "At least ninety-five percent of futures saw you killed in the massacre. About four percent saw you either die some other way or just wind up not accompanying Fathom here."

Ninety-five percent, she thought, glad she was already sitting down. She'd known that it was more than a little lucky that she'd survived that horrible night (and it was all mostly due to Fathom), but hearing it said that, for all intents and purposes, she should have died…it was difficult to think about.

"So you see," she vaguely heard Darkstalker say, "When you showed up, I didn't know what to do. You were an unexpected variable, a dragon that I had no idea how to approach. So I thought it best to just remove you from the equation, to make things the way they were supposed to be." He shook his head. "All the futures I saw and that I focused on you weren't in. I just wanted things to be like I always saw them being."

Indigo didn't respond. Her mind was still trying to wrap itself around what he'd said before. Ninety-five percent, she thought again. What could have happened in those other futures? Would everything have been better? Worse? That a dragon such as Darkstalker would just dismiss her existence as nothing because of it…it left her with a sinking feeling.

"Anyway," Darkstalker went on after a minute or two had passed in silence, standing up from the table, "I'm afraid that I have to go for now. There's a war strategy meeting coming up that Vigilance would prefer I not miss. Thank you for meeting with me. I'm glad we could resolve some of these things, Indigo. Honestly, I am."

"Yeah, I am too," she said as he left, but her thoughts were still elsewhere. That they'd made an agreement not to hate each other anymore was what she'd wanted to hear, and she'd finally gotten answers about to some of her questions, but his last bit of information was something she just didn't know how to take. All in all, she certainly had a lot to think about but, with Darkstalker's armistice, at least she now had one less thing to worry about.

A/N: Yeah, I know this one took awhile. But at least I didn't disappear for four months. I always tell myself to try to update on the schedule that I'd prefer my favorite authors to operate on. So, while I'm not perfect, it could be worse.