CAUTION: Spoils aspects of Innocent Hopes, Twisted Realities, When Nothing Remains, and Usurpation of the Darkness.
Seriously, major spoilers here.
Assuming you wish to continue, read on…
Background: I wrote the one-shot that would later become this mini-series literal years ago, back before I had finished the first draft of UotD. More recently, I went to dust it off and finally post it, found it sorely lacking, and tore it apart to remake the remaining nuggets of good ideas into something more fitting the potential they had. From a 30k word one-shot, to this 14-part series, it changed a lot, but the core is the same.
A special thanks to Deadly-Bagel, by the way. His work beta-reading this was invaluable, and without him it would never have reached its full potential.
"...Seek out a waterfall flowing deep into the ground on an island off the coast West of here, a long way West. Down at the bottom, seek out our kind, and say… Say that you are Blaze's daughter. That was my name there. They will take you in."
Pyre, to Lily, immediately before his POV scene and subsequent death in the first draft of Usurpation of the Darkness
O-O-O-O-O
Life in the valley went on.
The sun began to set on a place that was all Lily had ever known, a scattered field of stones with a pond at one end, shrouded in premature dusk by the mountains that wrapped around it. Light wings flew back and forth in the air above the stones, living, laughing, and leaving each other to rot if it suited them.
Lily had mourned for most of a day, whined until her throat was raw, and clawed saplings into shreds of their former selves, out in the forest beyond the mountain. Because on one side of said mountain, far above the ground, hidden from view in a crevice underneath a very familiar ledge, the person she loved most in the world lay dead. His back had been broken and his body dropped off the ledge he had called his home for as long as Lily had known him.
But nobody beyond her, his killer, and his killer's accomplice knew, and as such nobody cared. Life went on.
Lily's life could not go on, not like it had. She was partly to blame for Pyre's death. Her inability to handle her own life, her terror, her humiliation and devastation…
The real culprit was Claw. Always Claw. He was the reason she fled to Pyre. He was the one who had taken her against her will, with the acceptance of the same light wings who flew obliviously in the skies even now. He was the one who had killed Pyre. The one who ruled the pack, the same one who had hurt her and so many others, the one who had forced himself upon her. Her Sire, larger than life and unassailable, alpha through popular opinion and brutality.
It burned, in her chest and in her head. But the fire was not a righteous one, it was a sickly, sapping flicker of powerless hatred.
The sun finished its slow journey, dipping below the horizon, and Lily knew clarity. Painful, empty clarity. Maybe it was cowardice. Maybe she was honoring Pyre's last wish. Maybe both. She would heed his last request of her, either way. This was not a decision she could make with her head, and her heart was too sick with grief to choose otherwise.
Pyre wanted her to leave. He'd told her where to go, and how to find safety there. So she would go.
Perhaps if she had told him everything sooner, or kept him more up to date, or done something better, he would still be alive. She wouldn't question his judgment now. He could no longer explain himself, and part of her felt she didn't deserve an explanation anyway.
There was only one real complication involved in her abandoning everything she had ever known, and it was not difficult to resolve. Claw had told her to be back in the cavern system by sundown. If she was not, danger would come for Crystal's family.
They would never come with her. This valley was all they knew, and only Crystal had actually experienced their reason for leaving. It would take more time and cunning than Lily possessed to convince them to go before it was too late. Too late for them, and almost certainly too late for her as well if she stuck around long enough to attempt it.
But there was another way to ease her conscience before she went.
Her mind set, she took to the sky, flamed herself, and flew into the valley, not to comply with Claw's demand, but to warn Crystal's parents, both of whom were asleep on their rock. A near-invisible distortion in the air, she landed by their rock, walked around to the place their tails dangled together in a light twist of fins, and leaped up, purposefully brushing against their sensitive tailfins to wake them. Her own tailfins ached, reminding her that Cressa had put holes in them with her claws in an 'accident' not that long ago, but the holes weren't as bad as she had thought, and weren't showing any signs of getting worse even though she had flown on them, so she ignored them.
Moss woke much more quickly than her mate. "Who is it?" she asked sleepily.
Lily only needed one of them to pass on a warning. "The alpha will try to hurt the both of you, and Crystal. I suggest you leave the valley. Tonight."
Moss squinted at the distortion that hid Lily as if she was crazy. "This is our home," Moss huffed in disbelief. "Why would the alpha want to hurt us?"
"He threatened to if I did not return, and I will not," Lily explained. "I am leaving, so you should too."
"We will be fine, and so will Crystal," Moss said tiredly. "Thank you for the warning, but I do not think it is necessary for us, or for you, to leave. Sleep on it."
Lily huffed tiredly, not willing to argue any further, and left. She knew, deep down, that giving the warning was pointless. If she could not argue them into going, she certainly could not accomplish the same end with a simple warning, however direct. They would stay.
But this way, they would be forewarned. What they would not escape entirely, they could try and mitigate or turn aside onto a different target. Crystal would be better off without her, if she could weather Claw's short-term ire. Lily would be the new scapegoat, safely beyond his reach.
Something inside her protested as she winged away from the valley for what would be the last time, but she ignored it. Pyre had wanted this, and she would not disregard his last wish for her. He knew better than she did, especially when she wanted to believe otherwise; that had been proven time and time again, and the consequences were too dire to test it again. If he had wanted her to go, then she would go.
O-O-O-O-O
The trip along the coast away from the valley introduced Lily to a new way of living. Her existence was austere, tiring, and lonely. She knew little of fishing for herself, and even less of doing it efficiently while flying all day every day, and as such subsisted on whatever she could clumsily blast out of the water. Her wings and chest hurt, and she was ruefully aware that she should have spent more time practicing her flight back when she had the chance. There was nobody around to speak to, or ask for help. If she failed, or did something stupid, nobody would ever know what had happened to her.
Though it was not pleasant, she survived. Her stomach growled, her body ached, and she was more lonely than ever before, while simultaneously afraid of being caught, of being found. But it was still more pleasant than remaining in the valley quite literally under Claw. That truth drove her forward, though she sometimes felt like she was going to fall out of the sky and had to resort to walking on sore paws. Even when she gnawed at plants that tasted bitter and only minorly soothed the aching in her stomach while she waited for her fire to return after utter failures at fishing, she still knew that this was better than the alternative.
Long toil through interminable days and nights took her far from everything and everyone she knew, out into the vast wilderness. The forests, the ocean, the sky… All were empty, save for the fish, the birds, and the small ground creatures that fled the moment they got a whiff of her scent. She had heard no voice but her own since she left the valley.
The absence matched her grief well. Pyre was gone, and there was no one to even try to take his place. She would much rather grieve alone than around people who did not even know Pyre had ever existed.
Perhaps if she were wandering aimlessly the solitude would bother her more. But she had a place to go, somewhere she was seeking out with every beat of her wings. Thoughts of giving up, of going back, rolled off her like the rain from the intermittent storms that chased her up the coastline.
She had only the vaguest of directions to follow. Pyre's last few words to her lacked detail. She knew not what she might find as she traveled. Only that there was a promise of something beyond the endless empty wilderness.
As it turned out, she was not destined to find the place she sought purely on her own. Someone found her, first.
The end to her solitude came one morning on the edge of a desolate stretch of dirt atop a set of rocky cliffs that rose out of the shore. The cliffs leaned out over the sea at an unbelievably precarious angle, like a massive dragon had shoved its paw into the sea bed and attempted to build a mound of solid stone atop it, before growing bored and withdrawing their paw to leave the dented stone only barely standing under its own weight. The trees beyond the rocky edge were scorched, and Lily recognized the signs of a not-so-old wildfire tearing through the area. She chose to walk along the outskirts of the burned forest out of curiosity.
It was then that a voice startled her so badly that she nearly wet the ashes.
"It has been a long time since I have seen a light wing like you."
Lily jerked and half-twisted around to face the sound, for at first she hadn't been entirely sure it was a voice. "Who is there?" she demanded, squinting as she looked for any telltale distortions that would mark the presence of a camouflaged light wing.
A resonant voice hissed from the empty air behind her, and when she spun she caught sight of something that set her teeth grinding together. Not the shimmer she had expected, but a wavering curl of disturbed ash as someone crept around her, a good six tail-lengths away. They left thin, angular marks. Nothing like her own pawprints.
Nothing like her.
"Where are you going?" they asked, invisible but clearly audible. "Surely not here. It will be seasons before this place is fit for anything but making shapes in the ash."
"A waterfall flowing into a cave," Lily answered. She had never met another dragon outside the valley, but Pyre had told her of them, and she did not mind talking to someone for the first time in far too long. Though she did hope they were friendly. Creeping around her was not friendly, but neither was it unfriendly when this dragon knew as little about her as she knew about them. "I don't know exactly where it is, but I do know it can be found if I follow the coast long enough."
"Why?" they asked.
"I am… fleeing a bad place," she admitted. "I was told there are light wings who will take me in where I am going." She might not have told the truth, if she had been able to think of any way that lying would help her.
"There very well might be," the voice replied. A red shape shimmered into view in front of her, thin and lanky, with strange frills in the wrong places, but not unfathomably different from herself. "I would not interfere, but you are going to overshoot if you keep following the coast," they said. "Especially as the place you seek once had a waterfall, but does not now, so you may not recognize it if you see it. I can take you there, if you will follow."
"How do I know you'll lead me to the right place?" she asked carefully.
"I give my word, and you are more than capable of making your anger known if I lead you astray," they answered. "Light wings are not kin to my kind, but we are more similar than most, and I bear your kind no ill will. Besides which, I live rather close to the guardians of that place, and they would not appreciate me misleading a young one seeking sanctuary within their domain. It is in my best interest to help you."
"Lead on, then," she said warily.
O-O-O-O-O
Lily didn't know why her muscles ached when she set down by the massive steaming hole in the ground, but she knew she was where she needed to be. Mostly. "Where do I go from here?"
"I will let the guardian guide you," the other dragon said lightly. "My best wishes to you, Lily. May you find what you are looking for."
"And you too," Lily said absently, looking down into the chasm as the other dragon flew away. Who was this guardian, and where was she supposed to go?
She waited, looked around the edge of the sinkhole, and eventually ventured down by paw.
"Listen closely. I will not be able to remind you of the way once you move beyond my reach."
Lily yelped. "Who is there!?" she roared. Twice now, she had been startled. Other dragons were very good at evading her notice until it suited them. She didn't like it, especially as she still could not see any sign of the one who had spoken!
"When you go down, hold to your right. Upon the first opportunity to go up, take it, and be ready to fly a short distance."
Their voice came from nowhere, and it was loud in her head. She pawed at her ears.
"Listen," she was reminded.
Bereft of anything else to do, she put her mind to remembering the instructions she was being given. If this was going to get her where she wanted to go… So be it. She did not know what was strange and what was normal beyond the valley. Perhaps sourceless voices were commonplace.
"I will have questions," she said loudly. "After you are done telling me where to go."
"And you will have some answers, if not all," she was told.
O-O-O-O-O
"There are many of us, but at such vast distances… you would be hard pressed to find us all in one of your lifetimes, if you did nothing else."
Lily descended into the sinkhole, and followed the tunnel down, down, down. So far down. It would be dark, if not for the huge glowing rocks. Crystals.
"We live longer than you. Slower bodies, faster minds. In one of our lifetimes… We could not see all of our kind in person. You could, with one of our lifetimes."
From there she took the first branching path away from that tunnel, and then followed a dense series of turns and switchbacks, hugging the walls as she had been instructed, even when the caves opened up to places so bright and verdant that she ached to step among the greenery and explore.
"No, we do not fly. Some of us still have wings, but they serve no purpose now. When we were young. But our minds still soar."
There were no other dragons to be seen. She smelled them, sometimes. Or perhaps those smells were other things altogether; she could only guess about many of them, but the scent of scale and sulfur seemed a strong hint. Not many things smelled of fire that were not at least something like her kind.
"We do not control the deepest depths. We do not control the underground. We only guard the places in between, and those only for true dangers to the below."
She busied herself with asking her questions of the guardian whenever she was not trying to remember the way, but all too soon the voice in her head faded away, with one last cryptic comment as it went.
"You will find what you want at the end of this path. But to find what you need… Do not forget."
The voice, the guardian, was gone. But the instructions Lily had been required to remember continued, leading her down through various tunnels and passages. She had long since lost her sense of direction relative to the sun, though she retained enough awareness to know that she was not going in complete circles. Perhaps she circled at times – one of the tunnels she ventured through was a spiral of the worst kind – but never did her path truly turn into a loop. She was going somewhere.
The third to last step of her instructions led her through an insect-infested underground ravine, which she hurried through. From there, she ventured across a grassy, empty cave.
Next, she found the one small tunnel in the left wall of that cave, and entered it.
There had been a cave in, as a single boulder blocked the way almost entirely, and she was thankful the last thing she had been told to do was 'wait by the false boulder.' Otherwise, she might have worried that her path was untenable. The Guardian could not see down here; she had long since left their range.
She was on her own again. She shivered as the long moments stretched on. It was very, very quiet. After a time, the stone wall in front of her shifted, slowly rolling aside. On the other side of the stone was a light wing just like her, one who stared curiously.
"There is not meant to be… I do not know you," the other light wing remarked with an air of suspicious confusion. "Who are you?"
Lily looked down, feigning – or perhaps truly feeling – shyness. "I am Lily. Blaze's daughter. My Sire told me to come here. He told me your pack would take me in." Pyre had told her to claim him as her Sire, so she would do so.
"Why did he not come himself?" the light wing asked, ushering her in with an urgent wave of his tail, before somehow pushing the boulder back into place. Someone clever had set up some form of leverage, but Lily wasn't able to get a good look. "Blaze and the others left so long ago… You came from the surface."
"He died trying to protect me," Lily choked out, truly sad and intentionally showing it to enhance her odds of being taken in. She had come too far to be turned away.
The other light wing hesitated, but after a moment he put his right wing over her. "I see," he said soothingly. "Come with me, Lily. We will go see the alpha, and we will find a place for you. We do not turn away our own kind."
O-O-O-O-O
The other light wing, who introduced himself as Sandstone once the surprise of her appearance wore off, took her deeper into the tunnel and then left her, asking her to wait. He was going to bring the alpha to see her.
Lily did not object, but she did worry. As she waited, pacing the small confines of the tunnel, she did plenty of worrying. What if this alpha was just as bad as Claw? What if there were customs here she didn't expect, customs she wouldn't like? What if they turned her away?
"She is waiting over here," Sandstone's voice loudly announced, echoing from down the tunnel. "I feel she is no threat."
"Of course she is not," another said. "They would never tolerate one of our kind long enough to hatch a ploy like this, and her story proves itself by being told. Why do you think I am comfortable coming alone?"
"Overconfidence, alpha?" Sandstone said lightly. "Sulfa could have come instead. You know she was not pleased with me bypassing her."
Lily felt some of her apprehension lift when the unnamed alpha light wing just laughed at that. Claw would never have tolerated something like that, even in jest. This alpha was not going to be anything like Claw.
Two light wings turned the corner and stopped in front of her. The leader, a male with a green tint and red eyes, nodded politely. "I am Rose, alpha of the Twisted Corridors pack."
"I am Lily, daughter of Blaze." It was going to be difficult, remembering to call Pyre that when talking about him with others… but if that was the most difficult part about this, she would accept the challenge and be thankful there was nothing more to worry about.
"Sandstone told me. Who was Blaze's mate?" Rose asked carefully.
"Risa." She knew that. He had no way of knowing if it was the truth, as they had gotten together after leaving… But something about it must have been plausible, because he acted as though it was the right answer.
"I remember Risa," Rose said thoughtfully. "What brings you here?"
"I seek sanctuary." She had thought this over during the journey, and had decided to only tell some of the truth. If she was going to make a new life here, she would make one with a past that, while sad, was not as humiliating or horrible as the full story would be. Nobody needed to know that her real Sire had forced himself on her. She might even be able to forget it herself, someday.
"From..?" he prompted. She was answering with as few words as possible. She probably needed to stop doing that.
"The pack I come from is ruled by a horrible alpha, Claw," Lily began, holding her voice firm. "He took females like me as mates against our will, and Blaze died when he tried to defend me. Claw is fully in control. I had to leave."
"This 'Claw' sounds like a brute," Sandstone growled angrily.
"He forced himself upon a fledgling, as well as taking many females as mates, some simply because they did not have any other choices," she elaborated, feeling peculiarly distant from the situation. "He kills most of the males as soon as they are adults."
"Far worse than a mere brute, Sandstone," Rose snarled. Then his voice softened. "Lily, you were sent here by Blaze. What of Risa?"
"Dead long ago. I was barely a hatchling when she was killed. Claw is not the only danger out there." Along with being true, that was also the perfect excuse as to why Lily did not know all that much about her supposed Dam.
"And now you are here." Rose nodded to himself. "You were not wrong to come to us, we would never turn someone like you away. Sandstone, can you and your mate take her in until we find out if any of Blaze or Risa's closer relatives would be willing?"
"I have the honor of a new hatchling to help my mate tend to, and scouting duties," Sandstone said slowly, looking at Lily, "and my mate may not take all that kindly to an unmated young female living with us. But I would do it anyway if you asked it of me."
"One cycle is all I require," Rose said firmly. "I will set someone else to gathering the relatives of Risa and Blaze to meet her. After that… We shall see. I expect someone will be able to take her in."
"I cannot just live on my own in your nest?" Lily asked tentatively, picking up that there were undercurrents and politics of some kind here, too, just like in the valley. She would have expected to be told to pick out an empty rock, or whatever the equivalent was, not sent to live with vaguely related light wings.
"We do not have an abundance of unclaimed space, and none of what we do have is suitable for living in," Rose said, attempting to explain while in truth telling her none of what she really wanted to know. "My Sire sent your Sire and Dam and others out into the world above precisely because there was not enough space for all to live comfortably. Do not worry, it will work out in one way or another." He was oddly sure of that. "Welcome to the Twisted Corridors pack, Lily."
O-O-O-O-O
Lily followed Sandstone as he led her through the strange, vertical cave that made up this pack's home. It was nothing like her valley, and she could clearly see now what they meant by not having as much space as they would like. There were light wings everywhere, and the airspace in the middle of the cavern was crowded.
None of the many light wings within eyeshot of her gave her more than a second glance. They didn't recognize her purple glint as new or out of the ordinary, and to be fair, all light wings were similar from a distance. It still felt weird to be at once a stranger and uninteresting; any new arrivals to her old pack would have been mobbed by curious light wings.
Sandstone led her into the side of one of the small caverns open to the air, and after a short walk through twisted stone passages, Lily could hear the unmistakable cry of a wailing hatchling.
"Is that yours?" she asked politely.
Sandstone nodded, purring proudly even as he sped up, moving toward the cries. "My mate and I are blessed. I won us the honor of having an egg, but it was more luck than anything."
The idea of being honored to have eggs, or needing to seek permission in the first place, was a totally foreign one to Lily, but she could see the logic behind it in such a confined territory. "How did you win that honor?"
"I was scouting, which I do not often do, and found an advance party of Noxious Fumes dragons," Sandstone explained, his terminology going over her head. "They were dangerously close to our territory. I drove them off on my own. That was what got me into the running for an egg, and when it came time to choose who was granted the privilege, our alpha chose me and my mate."
Just as he finished speaking, Sandstone slipped into a surprisingly narrow alcove in the wall of the tunnel they were passing through. Lily followed, only to emerge into a tight, narrow space, more like a second tunnel than anything, one that ran only a few dozen paces in either direction before stopping short.
"Wait here, I must tell my mate what the alpha has requested of us," Sandstone said urgently, before rushing off into another small gap, his scales scraping on the sides of the tunnel. The restless cries of Sandstone's hatchling tapered off, and were replaced with surprisingly close and very audible voices.
Lily didn't even try to avoid eavesdropping. She would deny hearing anything if asked, but she needed all the knowledge she could get.
"What do you mean she is staying here? We have nowhere for her to go!" That had to be Sandstone's mate, as he had not mentioned any other female who would be in this tiny space.
"For a cycle only, dear, and the alpha requested it," Sandstone hummed. "Besides, we do have some space, or where will our own young one live until she finds a mate?"
"I do not like the idea. You are not getting wandering eyes, are you?" His mate growled possessively.
"Never," he said. "She is not available anyway. Spend any amount of time with her and you will understand."
"What? Is she taken?"
"No, she was taken, against her will, in a pack that let it happen," he hissed, though Lily still managed to make out his words. "She is not in any state to pry me away from you. It is an impossible task anyway."
Lily huffed unhappily, aware that Sandstone was not wrong. She had only gone to Pyre after that horrible day in which Claw had claimed her, and memories of that night still lurked in her nightmares. She was not looking for a mate, and would not be for a long time, if ever. Safety and a place to belong came first. The latter would be much harder to find if it was this obvious Claw had… done what he did. At least they did not know what he was to her, beyond the alpha of her pack.
"I am still unhappy with this," Sandstone's mate said. "I do not want you alone with her."
"I will tend to the hatchling for this cycle, then, and you can help her adjust to our pack." Sandstone sounded worried. "Please, do not treat her harshly. She has lost everything, and we will not be hosting her long. I would rather she not have a bad impression of us, and we are not making a good start."
"I make no promises." A somewhat small, plain female came out from the narrow dead end passage, and stared directly at Lily. "If you are from elsewhere, you will need to learn some things quickly. Conversations that do not take place in front of your eyes are meant to be private. You must learn to not hear them."
"I will try, but that seems difficult," Lily admitted. She really needed to control herself better; first Sandstone had guessed some of her past based on how she acted, and now his mate didn't even consider that she had not overheard the entire conversation.
"It is, but you get used to it." Sandstone's mate glared at her. "Make advances on my mate, and I will do my best to see you so ostracized that you regret ever coming here."
Lily met the female's stern gaze. "I want nothing of the sort." She attempted to convey, with her stance and voice, that she was sincere.
"As long as you mean that, we will get along well enough," the female said quietly, her voice growing less tense and suspicious. "My mate is right, I am not making a good impression. I am sorry, it is just…"
"I am a threat in your eyes, and I am guessing just recently having a hatchling is not helping. You will do whatever is necessary to be sure you are not in danger of losing your mate." Lily knew she was taking a shot in the dark as to the female's motivations, but she was also pretty sure it was the right answer.
"Yes, exactly. Come with me, I will show you around." Sandstone's mate walked right past Lily, brushing up against her due to the extremely cramped corridor.
Lily flinched, involuntarily reminded of what Claw had done in a similar situation.
"I think my mate was right," Sandstone's mate remarked softly, looking back at Lily, having obviously noticed the flinch. "You are not a threat. Come along."
Lily grit her teeth and followed.
O-O-O-O-O
That night, Lily slept up on a hidden ledge in the corridor outside the chamber Sandstone's family shared, directly above the corridor she had been told to wait in. The next 'morning', or what passed for morning, she spent in the same place, listening to Sandstone, his mate, and the light wings who walked by her perch. Her mind was whirling with new information. Much was different down here.
For starters, claiming sleeping territory. Back in the valley, they claimed rocks. Here, dead-end passageways, small caves, and other little spaces were claimed. Sandstone's small family held this corridor and the chamber jutting off of it, and nothing more. Families lived in tightly-packed conditions, and really only spent as much time as absolutely necessary in their cramped sleeping corridors. All of the big, open spaces were for public use, but Lily now knew she was going to have to be careful where she landed; the open ledges that had direct access to the central shaft of the cavern proper were often highly-prized private places.
On another, much more familiar note, the light wings held to something similar to a day and night pattern, even lacking day and night, and had fish to eat. Mating was much more structured in the when and how. Unlike back home, there was a strict limit on eggs. Only a certain number were allowed each season-cycle, or the equivalent as she had not actually been told what measure they used. As such, there were surprisingly few young ones around, and mated pairs apparently had to be careful.
Nothing was said of eggs had by accident. Lily didn't know what to make of that, but the cynical side of her guessed that since it had not been explained, she would not like what she found were she to look into it. She highly doubted anything bad happened to those eggs by official decree, but it probably carried a lot of shame, and she suspected the accidental parents might take matters into their own paws.
But that was enough musing about the dark side of things down here. There was more than enough of the bright side to fill her heart with relief. For instance, nobody could force her into mating with someone, and if anyone tried to force themselves upon her, they would be harshly punished. That was the rule, according to Sandstone's mate.
The alpha also did not take multiple mates as a rule; he would take one and no more, like everyone else. The current alpha, Rose, had no mate, oddly enough. Sandstone's mate, who had never volunteered her name, had mentioned that in passing. Rose had no mate, no offspring, and no siblings. His Sire and Dam had both passed away. He lived in a spacious set of caverns up at the very top of the vertical cavern, alone. That was actually a large comfort to Lily, because if there was ever an opposite to Claw, Rose was it.
"Lily," Sandstone called out, interrupting her musing. She looked down, seeing both him and his mate. "One of the alpha's advisors is here for you."
How did he know that? She had not heard Sandstone speaking to anyone. She leaped down, into the narrow passageway below, and made a show of confusedly looking around. "Where?" she asked.
"He is waiting in the main cavern," Sandstone's mate offered from down the passage. "He stopped me on my way back with the fish. You should not keep him waiting."
Ah. Lily really should have figured that out. She wished she wasn't so terribly unused to everything; all of these new situations, people, and things to figure out were distracting her from the obvious. The simplest explanation was usually the best, barring additional information, but what was simple down here might not be the same as what was simple above the ground.
In any case, she had been summoned and she knew where to go. "Thank you for your hospitality," she said loudly, addressing both Sandstone and his mate. Grudging though it might have been on his mate's part, Lily was grateful. But she would be happier sharing space with someone who actually wanted her there. Hopefully, that was what this was about.
She left their little dead end passage with their goodbyes at her tail, perhaps a little more quickly than was absolutely necessary, and did her best not to shoulder any light wings out of the way. It was difficult; everyone she encountered was going the same way, most for fish or just to begin their day, but many of them walked frustratingly slowly. Perhaps it was a good thing that the passage was so narrow she couldn't get by without getting blocked by light wings going the other direction; she was trying to not make waves until she knew the existing currents, and annoying other people by acting on her impatience would be counterproductive.
Still, she eventually made it out, and resisted the urge to immediately stretch her wings in the airspace of the vertical cavern. Even for someone who didn't care much about flying, the tight spaces were making her wings itch to be used.
Sandstone had not said who this advisor was, or what they looked like, but there was only one light wing waiting around at the egress, a scrawny adult male with a silver glint. He had a peculiar look to him as she approached, as he gazed out at the open air of the central cavern. He was looking up, she noticed. His eyes didn't follow any of the light wings flying around above them, so if he was staring at anything in particular, it would be the striking red crystal ceiling.
She had to get his attention by chirping inquiringly as she approached, as he was so distracted by whatever he was thinking or looking at that he hadn't taken any notice of her. "Hello?" she ventured.
"Hmm, oh, yes," he looked away and noticed her with a languid slowness that verged on insulting. "You would be Lily. I cannot see much of either Risa or Blaze in you, but then again, it is not as if glints pass down with any regularity. I am Peat."
"Lily," she confirmed, holding in her annoyance. He wasn't actually questioning her minorly falsified heritage. "I was told you are one of the alpha's advisors," she ventured, hoping to get him on whatever mental flight path had led to him coming here in the first place.
"Of customs and roots, yes," Peat said. Finally, he seemed to be interested in her, and by extension the conversation. His gaze focused much more directly on her face. "I have been helping the alpha with your problem, needing a place to stay, all of that, and preparing to add you to the roots. You should come see, unless you are very good at holding many names and relationships in your head all at once? Most cannot manage more than six generations. I only went back four for sake of speed and direct relation."
Those were words, and Lily might be able to deduce what they meant if she understood more of them in this context, but once again she found herself lacking far too much necessary background to do anything but admit her ignorance. "What?" she grumbled, inelegantly.
"My apologies, I will be more clear," Peat said condescendingly. "You know of roots, correct?"
"If you mean the spindly bits of plants that keep them in the ground," she answered. Also, a light wing in her former pack, though unless he was the most well-traveled and secretive fledgling in the world, he was of no relevance to this conversation.
"I see why you left your pack," Peat blurted out, his eyes wide. "To have degraded that far! Come with me."
Lily watched his scrawny silver behind leap off the ledge and into the air, and for a brief moment seriously considered turning around and going anywhere else. Then she mastered her anger and followed, beating furiously at the air as a substitute for his ridiculously thoughtless face. Advisor of custom, indeed; he certainly was not the advisor of anything approaching understanding, subtlety, social ability, or common sense!
Unless, she realized halfway through circling down the vertical cavern after him, he didn't know. He knew where she came from, but perhaps not why. Maybe Rose had been vague, to keep her problems obscured.
That possible mitigating factor calmed her down, though between her own ability to control what emotions she showed, and Peat's oblivious nature, she doubted Peat would have noticed a difference either way. He led her down to almost, but not quite, ground level, and into a tiny crack in the wall that had an unlikely circular tunnel piercing it. She placed her paws to either side of the crack's continuation below, while glancing up at the other half of the crack above.
A thought that had been growing quietly in the back of her mind came to fruition then. These tunnels, this one especially but really most of the ones she had seen, could not possibly be natural. They were too convenient and regularly shaped.
Some distance down the crack pierced by unknown flame, claw, or brute force, the rock opened up even more, much more vertically than horizontally. Peat stopped and turned to face one of the two major walls of the widened vertical crack. His tail bent at an extremely awkward angle to make room for him to stand back. "These are our roots," he said proudly.
Lily reluctantly copied him, because she saw something on the vertical wall, something that she obviously couldn't see correctly at such an oblique angle. Seeing it from the intended perspective, and craning her neck to look up… didn't help much. "What is this?" It looked like a spider web of epic proportions, carved into stone with claws, and dotted at each intersection with coppery brown patches. The entire cave smelled off, like the whole pack had tramped through it some time in the distant past, and their smells had not entirely gone away yet. Behind her, though she had only seen it briefly, the other wall, within tail-touching distance of this one, was peculiarly grooved with light-wing-width slopes that turned into tunnels every half turn. But those, she understood, were for accessibility in a cave far too narrow to fly in. The real feature was the flat wall.
"Our roots." Peat paused, looked over at her, and then continued. "Us. Every light wing in the pack who reaches their hundredth cycle puts a bit of their blood on the wall, and the connections between them and their Sire and Dam are scratched in. The blood smells of them, somewhat. It does not last forever, and when the scent fades I have to find them and get them to add more if they still live, so in that sense it also tracks who lives, though with a very large delay so it is not so useful for that. At the very bottom are our founders, whose origin we no longer know, and as you go up you see more recent light wings. I try to keep track of names with scratches that look like the name, for when they die and there is no longer any blood to identify them. Sometimes it works, sometimes I cannot think of scratches that will make sense… I will need to find a lily to remind myself what one looks like, or have a scout find it."
Lily was thankful that was the end of his explanation, because she needed more than a few moments to fully comprehend the thing in front of her, given that information. There were so many patches of blood, each slightly larger than her pawprint, spanning a huge vertical slab and going so high up that she couldn't see the top. So many lines connecting them, going in all directions, though mostly up at various angles to make connections. Tracing just one path was… daunting. It made sense, but it was so large, so unwieldy! And yet, to have all of this in her mind without failing would be impossible. So something like this was the only solution.
"Why not put it on the ground," she asked, voicing one of her many, many questions. "How do you get up there? If new fledglings have to go all the way up…"
"Claws on stone will wear down any marking," Peat answered. "It cannot go on the ground, and we do not have any suitable ground for it anyway. Fledglings are carried by their Sire and Dam, who walk the spiral. When blood needs to be added again, I take it up myself. I maintain our pack's roots."
He maintained this, on his own. Lily looked at him again, and found that she could understand his lack of social skills. He must not have time for that, if this was not even his only duty to the pack!
"At some point, you should go up to add your own blood," Peat said. "But not this cycle, there is no real rush. Aside from needing to see a lily flower, I need to figure out where it should go first, since I did not expect either Risa or Blaze to ever need a place for offspring. Especially not offspring with each other. This will be a challenge."
Lily rose up on her hind legs to get a better look at the higher reaches of the intricate patchwork of dried blood and scrapes without trekking all the way up. Near the top of the markings – about two thirds of the total height of the cave – she could see scratches next to each blood patch, but they only encompassed the top tenth, or perhaps even the top twentieth, of the marked distance. It was hard to tell, since they did not all start at the same elevation. The smells of more recent blood and light wings had to be coming from up there.
"But I did have something else to tell you," Peat added. "Now that you know what roots are… your last pack did not have this?"
"Definitely not." It would look nothing like this one even if they had. Claw would be at the center of a huge net, and everyone not mated to or descended from him would be trapped on the outskirts. Not this giant web of connections.
"So short-sighted… Though that is in line with them leaving in the first place. The pack needed to send some out, but those who volunteered would be the ones who least value what we have here." He chuffed. "So. Your roots."
Lily took that mild, obviously unintended insult to Risa and Pyre without comment. It was hard for her to get riled up by someone who she knew wouldn't recognize tact if it bit his nose and clung on like a limpet. "My roots," she said. "My Sire is Blaze, and my Dam is Risa. The alpha said–"
"The alpha says a lot of things, but it falls to us to fly from the idea to an acceptable result," Peat interjected. "He wants you to have a place here. A noble goal. He promised. So it will happen. Nobody here wants to reject you."
"Yes. Well… Good." Presumably he was getting to a point, beyond unintentionally showing off a much more assertive side of himself at the most unexpected possible time.
"That being said, there are other things to consider," Peat continued. "I went up, and then from there, down," he lifted a wing, "to check your roots. Then I had to remember the names of the ones I did not mark when they hatched, which was most of them as many are older than me, and go through the pack tracking down the ones whose scents were all I had to rely on. You have a very disparate set of relatives here. Many of them are dead."
Was it wrong to not feel the loss of hypothetical relatives she had never met? Lily was thankful she didn't have to bother answering that question right now. Peat obviously wouldn't notice whether she was appropriately distraught. He wasn't even looking at her, choosing instead to gaze up at the wall with narrowed eyes.
"I went four generations back in all, looking for those who might take you in," he recounted. "Past that there are only a scattered few remaining, because of the last war, so going back further still would not be of any use. Of the oldest generation I checked, most are gone for one reason or another. Linara, your Sire's Dam's Dam, is still here, but she is being cared for herself. Your Sire's Sire and Dam – Jet and Opal – still live. That is all from his side, unless you want to hear the names of the dead."
The names made this litany feel a little more real… but only a little. "On my Dam's side?" she asked.
"More living light wings, but still not very many," Peat said bluntly. "Her Sire and Dam's parents are all alive, all four of them. Her Sire and Dam themselves are gone, casualties of the last war. Risa's Sire had siblings, but the war was hard on them too. Howl and Galen are the names of the two who still live of that group."
"Then, of course, there is Risa's younger sister," Peat continued, causing Lily to let out a small huff of surprise. "Though she never met Risa, her egg came many cycles after Risa left for the surface with the others. Sola. She has no mate or offspring."
Lily would have wondered how big a set of 'roots' Peat considered normal, for that list of more than a half-dozen close relatives to be considered small, but the huge tree of blood prints in front of her answered that question on its own. She felt good about her chances; any one of the individuals Peat had listed could probably be convinced to take her in. "Where do I start?" she asked.
"Start?" Peat looked over at her. "I already checked. None of them can take you in."
That was a kick to the gut. "How do you know that?" she demanded. And, she did not add, did he ask with any actual tact or explanation? A no to this light wing was not the same as a no to her.
"I looked into them all," he said. "First, I checked which of them had space for another light wing. That ruled Sola and Galen out."
They could not be convinced to give up what they did not have, Lily supposed.
"Howl has space, but is still mourning his mate, who died recently enough that her blood is still fresh here," Peat continued. "He was cross with me because I barred him from this chamber, and I do not think it would be good to put you with him. The alpha agrees."
Lily held in a shudder. Perhaps Howl was a perfectly nice light wing, and she sympathized with him, but between the similarity to Pyre, and the worries she would have about taking the physical place of his dead mate, and thus perhaps in his mind more than just that sleeping spot…. No, Peat had not messed up yet.
"Jet and Opal are busy caring for Linara," Peat concluded. "And none of your grand-Sires or grand-Dams on Risa's side cared much when I spoke to them. As I understand it, she flamed the ground between them before she left, and it is still charred now."
Lily tilted her head. Was that–?
"Metaphorically," Peat belatedly added.
Ah. That was something she could probably overcome with some effort, though her closer relatives also did not sound hopeless.
"There is no need," Peat said casually. "By that time, I had come up with an alternate solution that would not put undue strain on anyone."
"Did you?" She had to admit that she was surprised. "What is it?"
"Our alpha has rather spacious and empty chambers to himself," Peat said. "I suggested that he offer to let you live there, since he has none of the family who would take that space and seems intent on never giving that a real opportunity to change." He purred smugly. "He agreed, because he promised you would have a place. Our alpha keeps his promises."
Lily shook her head. "I–"
"It has been decided," Peat continued, turning to leap up onto the first half-spiral of the carved out back wall. "The alpha was quite happy with this solution. Perhaps I will put your place in the roots close to his."
That shut Lily up long enough for him to turn the corner and disappear from sight. She could hear his claws clicking as he ascended.
She wasn't sure how she felt about a lot of what she had just learned, but she knew three things for sure.
First, that she had had her fill of Peat and his intermittent obliviousness. She was done with him for now. Let him think this was over. If he had any real say in where she lived, they would meet again soon enough. If not, then she wouldn't have to deal with him at all.
Second, that there was no way she was going to leave one alpha behind only to fall into exactly the same situation with another. She had thought Claw a fine, upstanding Alpha too. Rose was probably not like him, she wouldn't be staying here at all if she truly thought he was, but she was not willing to test her faith in that by using herself as bait.
And third, the thing that helped lift her spirits as she left… She knew the names of her relatives and prospective solutions to this problem. Sola, Galen, Jet and Opal. Two had no space – or did they? Two had other responsibilities – that she could possibly help with in exchange for a place to stay. And if she could find her grand-Sires and Dams on Risa's side without names, Risa's burned ground did not necessarily have to be hers. Given a choice between going back to a second Claw and mildly disrespecting a female she never knew, Lily would do the latter. Pyre would have understood.
Forget Peat's 'search' and subsequent 'solution'. She would do it herself.