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…
When Quartz, or anyone in the Twisted Corridor pack, said that the conflict with the Noxious Fumes pack was a war, Lily had taken that very specific word to heart. War, to her, was a long, drawn-out fight of attrition. One person could not wage a war against another on their own; both needed allies, numbers. Because a war was not, by default, without casualties.
But she knew it conceptually, not viscerally. The valley pack had not gone to war in her lifetime. They might not even be capable of it, if the need arose. They barely even fought amongst themselves, and most of that was within the bounds of the customs that worked in Claw's favor. They fought with words more than claws or fire, and the occasions that did involve physical force were small. One against one, at a set time and in a set place.
The ambush that she and the others had ambushed in turn was none of those things, and Lily did not sleep easily afterward, but that was not war either. That was a single battle. A small one, theoretically closer in scope to something she could understand, though it was unlike anything she had ever imagined.
The cycle that Quartz and the others returned from their long walk home, Lily got a much more comprehensive view of what war meant here and now, and it too was unlike what she had expected.
She wasn't expecting to be dragged back into the thick of things; the atmosphere among the Twisted Corridor pack had grown decidedly tense, but 'war' so far had only meant that the danger beyond the guards was more present. Lily knew better than to think herself safe anywhere, but only a few cycles had passed and while her resolution to better herself had not faded in intensity, she needed time. Time she could have, if she avoided getting drawn back out into the clear and present danger.
It had seemed entirely possible to get by without doing more than a few uneventful guard shifts. Until, that was, Quartz staggered in through the inlet tunnel and slumped to the side against the wall while the other injured limped in. Lily was there in the vertical cavern, of course; most of the pack was, by her estimation. Everyone knew, by word of mouth, when their fellow light wings would be back. Their progress was slow and entirely predictable. Thus, most of the pack was there to cheer for the returning light wings.
She was there with Sola on a small ledge, high above most of the vertical cavern, for the same reason. In theory. In reality… Her motivations were murkier. She'd been in the same fight as those returning. She had survived, too. It was good to see Quartz was still alive, that the Noxious Fumes pack had not attacked him on the way back.
Was it war, if cycles could pass without a single hint as to what the enemy was doing? Yes, in the same way that someone intent on killing might not immediately lash out. In a way, it would have been more comforting for something to have happened. The claws right in front of her face would not have any chance of slitting her throat without her noticing.
Rose was there, not with her or Sola. There was only room for two on the miserable little shelf they'd landed on and had to cling to in order to not fall off, and as the alpha he was much more involved anyway. He walked up to Quartz and spoke to him, a few careful words inaudible over the murmuring of the crowd above and below. Their individually low voices echoed and bounced, both coming from all directions and reflecting from them all.
Quartz coughed, his body shaking, and waved a wing tiredly. He said something. Rose's ears flattened, and he shook his head. Quartz coughed again, rolled his wing shoulders irritably, and turned away. Looking out at the cavern.
Lily was watching his eyes as he looked; trying to trace his line of sight in the moment would never work, but noting the angle and then placing it in her mind afterward was much simpler. So she was looking directly at him when his gaze passed over her, narrowed slightly on Sola, and then snapped back to her.
He held her eyes with his own, then deliberately nodded downward before leaping down to glide on extremely shaky wings, descending rapidly.
"Now that he is back, things will heat up," Sola said to her. "Some of that will be his doing, not the Noxious Fumes pack." She growled quietly. "And what was that with him looking at you?"
"He probably wants to tell me he will not have time for teaching me anymore," Lily said. That was what she would have assumed if it were another light wing in Quartz's position. If Quartz only wanted to say that, he wouldn't say it in the first place, he would just ignore her if she ever came for another lesson until she got the point. He was not one to use more words when fewer would get the point across more abrasively.
Sola accepted her incorrect guess as the truth, and Lily left her to fly down after Quartz. He had limped into the tunnel that led down to the warm pools, and so she followed. She felt many eyes on her back as she went, but that…
That was unimportant. It also had the potential to be very important, should it grow to be more than empty speculation. She was wary of where talk of her existence, her unknown past and her current living situation, would lead. But that was a future problem not yet grown enough to get a sense of.
She was accosted at the entrance to the steamy lower chamber by a very harried female light wing. "You are not one of the wounded, get out!"
"Quartz wanted me to see him," Lily said confidently.
"Then get in, but you had better stay out of our way, we will be very busy when the rest arrive," the female said. "They have been walking for cycles! Without real rest, with untended injuries! And that utter fool just flew despite having injuries that forced him to walk in the first place!"
She had a point, but that was so quintessentially Quartz that seeing him do it a moment ago had not even registered as strange to Lily. The others would be descending on paw, like sane injured light wings.
The harried female squeezed past her, apparently on her way out just as Lily was coming in, and Lily beheld the preparatory chaos within. The old, battle-scarred light wings who usually frequented the place were gathered to one side, those that were present. Some weren't there. Linara was, and that could also be something Lily attended to while she was here, but off to the other side, being fretted over by three different light wings, was Quartz. He was sprawled out on his left side, his right flank exposed to the steamy air, and while it was only an illusion that steam was coming from his ears and nose too, it was an apt one given how annoyed he looked.
"You must not breathe too deeply," one of the two males prodding at his chest said as Lily approached. "It is cracked… Or broken but beginning to mend in place. Do not test it."
"Definitely do not fly!" the other male cried out. "You might have broken it further, or broken others if you stressed deep bone bruises you did not know about!"
"I know about them," Quartz growled.
"Why did you fly then?" the lone female of the trio huffed.
"The Noxious Fumes pack has had multiple cycles to plan their retaliation," Quartz growled. "Time is of the essence. Lily."
"Here," Lily said, stepping up to him. The light wings tending him were busy prodding at his chest and lower, leaving the area around his head clear. He had to look up at her, but otherwise this was as good a position for talking as they were likely to get.
"You did adequately," he told her.
"I could have been much more useful," she told him in return. If that was his idea of praise, she didn't want to accept it. Faint praise implied low standards. Or that he was miserly with anything approaching positive feedback, but it amounted to much the same thing in her eyes. She did not feel that she had done well.
"You did well for a fledgling with a willingness to learn and good instincts," Quartz said roughly. "That is not what you are, though. Until you know a lot more, are stronger and faster and can fight harder, you are a liability going claw to claw with anyone."
This was much more accurate to how she had performed, and how she felt about it. He was not even criticizing her; his dry tone was much more suited to one pointing out the obvious.
"None of you should be going claw to claw with anyone, we have our fire for a reason," the female healer interjected. "Crawlers can snap your bones like emeralds!"
Emeralds? Lily didn't know those broke easily. She didn't know what they were, come to think of it, beyond 'gems found underground'. And she only knew that much thanks to Pyre.
"So do theirs if you hit them with a blast from close enough," Quartz said, drawing Lily's attention once again. "She lived. I lived. It did not. That is all that matters. Do you still have the stomach for fighting, fledgling?"
"Not until I can fight," Lily growled. "When I can..." If there was something worth fighting for? If she was attacked? If someone else was attacked, and she could defend them? If she saw an enemy flying about one day? If she saw a vulnerability that might stop enemies from attacking in the future? This was not a yes or no question, it was an uncountably large set of them bundled together.
"If I must," she concluded. Which was also not an answer, not really.
"Good." Quartz shifted as one of the two males prodded his stomach, hard. "If I was hit there I would have told you."
"We do not assume you will be smart about your health," the male snapped back.
"You are not hopeless." Quartz looked up at Lily. "Close to it right now, though. I can use you for things you will not be terrible at in the meantime."
Or she could tell him she wasn't interested, and walk away. This was an offer of… "What?" she asked.
"I do not travel well, or quickly." He didn't have to do anything to draw attention to his infirmity; their setting and the other three light wings within pawing distance did that for him. "Knowledge needs to fly fast. Messengers for simple orders. For the rest… An intermediate. Fly, look, listen, relay information, modify orders. Only along safe routes. Rest of the time, with me, hearing reports."
What she was doing before, but without the lessons and with the expectation that she could take that bigger picture, carry it to light wings outside the pack's territory and interpret the situation there while telling them what they needed to know. He wanted her to be his eyes, ears, and voice.
If she wanted influence and nothing more, she would accept without question. This was… ridiculous. The voice of the light wing in charge of directing a war, without him looking over her shoulder as she traveled to places he could not. The things she could do with even a little bit of discretion! It was not official, acknowledged power, but that made it even better to her. The ability to obfuscate and hide the extent of her will in how things played out. To influence who lived and died! "You do not even like me."
"You cannot fight or scout and I know for myself that you are not stupid," Quartz retorted. "If you are ever ambushed, you will not hesitate to do what needs to be done. Good instincts are not taught. You will be most useful doing this. Everyone who could do it better I already rely on to do other things… And half of those light wings are dead so I do not even have them now. It is you or a barely-adult fool who I will have to bring up from scratch. You at least are not a fool."
She also had already proven that she could tolerate him, which many light wings probably could not. He and Sola did not like each other, for instance. Liking him was not a requirement for the position, but friction between him and the one he relied on to make up for his shortcomings would not be good. She had no such problem. "I know everything you know, you tell me what you need someone to do, I go to them, see what's going on, and adapt your orders to take that into account?" she asked.
"The light wings you will be speaking to will be the most competent ones," Quartz said. "You will not have to do much adapting… most times. But you will know everything I do about what is happening elsewhere. Messengers do not, cannot do this."
"It would be better if you had five of me, then," Lily remarked. Multiple places at once, backup, or even sending two to the same place to provide several informed opinions for a consensus and checks on potential bad judgment. Fewer points of failure, more reliability.
"Last time, I did," Quartz growled. "One of them is in this cave right now. Your family has always been deeply involved in the wars."
Linara? Lily glanced over at her with new eyes.
"Deeply involved, and deeply harmed," one of the males attending Quartz scoffed. "Both sides, too. No one should want that for their offspring."
Lucky she did not have a Sire or Dam to care about that, then. Knowing that Linara had once held the position she was being offered put the true danger of it into focus. Linara was not a healthy, happy light wing.
But that itself made something else clear. She was not thinking of Linara's wounds as an excuse, but rather as something to argue her way around. Meaning she considered them something a detractor would use to oppose her decision… meaning she had already made a decision, whether or not she had acknowledged it.
"You will be deeply harmed if I and those who help me cannot stop the Noxious Fumes pack," Quartz growled. "Now get to poking my bones back into place so I can use them."
"We do not do it that way, usually," the female groaned. "You should be more appreciative. Your body has been helped to heal far more often than it could withstand on its own."
"And I am a wreck for it, so you have not done that much," Quartz retorted. "This does not involve you. I appreciate the use of what you do. I do not like the limitations. Or the pain."
"Could have fooled me," the other male muttered.
"I'll do it," Lily told Quartz. She had a lot of reasons, but if nothing else it would make it much more difficult for the alpha to lay claim to her time or anything else of hers. "Under a few conditions."
Quartz closed his eyes. "Let me hear them. I do not absolutely need you. Do not overreach."
"I need time to work on my fire, my wings, my fighting ability." Quartz was busy all cycle, every cycle when the pack was at peace. It would only get worse now that they were at war. She couldn't and wouldn't match that. "And someone to work with me on that. Someone who knows how to get me up to speed as effectively as possible."
"You have a good choice already close in your roots." Quartz blinked up at her. "Galen can work with three as well as he can two. Shell is a chronic waste of space who still needs to be knocked into shape, and Agate is little better. Galen would welcome someone who actually listens to him."
"I have yet to meet him," Lily remarked. "So I would not know that."
"His long scouting trips are a luxury we can no longer afford. He will be around much more often. Use him." Quartz gasped and kicked at one of the light wings. "Nothing down there! Look at my tail if you have to, but not there."
"We will be careful of old wounds, but that is exactly the reason we must look more closely." The males held Quartz's tail and hind paws still. The female began prodding at the space around his base fins.
"I will be in their clutches for a few cycles," Quartz told her, glancing back at the trio of light wings still looking him over. "Go see Galen. Get started. Come back in two cycles. It will take me that long to catch up with the situation. Do not let the alpha or anyone else lay claim to your time."
"Isn't two cycles a long time?" she asked.
"You will learn…" Quartz let out a long sigh. "War is slow until everything happens at once, and then it is slow again. Never predictable when it switches. Two cycles."
The female light wing attending him caught Lily's gaze as she looked up, and gestured with her wing for Lily to move aside. "We need to check for head injuries," she announced.
"My head is the only part of me that is still healthy," Quartz said gravely. "I hope that has not changed."
Lily stepped away from Quartz, giving the others room to work. She was going to need time to think about this entire situation, and she would get it… later. Linara was still there on the other side of the cave, Jet and Opal were not, and she had let that situation sit a little too long for her liking.
How should she approach Linara now? Knowing what she did, and knowing that she was stepping into her older relative's pawprints in a sense? That depended on how Linara saw her own time working with Quartz, and how she perceived whatever sequence of events led to her injury. Until Lily had more context for that, she would keep some of her situation to herself.
The injured light wings were close together, but there was space between them on the edge of the warm waters for Lily to slip in between two and get in front of Linara, who was on her stomach and breathing deeply, watching the movement around the cavern entrance. "Hello. You remember me? I came to see you a few cycles ago, but… You remember, I am sure." Linara's gaze was sharp, unlike last time, and immediately focused on Lily. "How have you been?"
She didn't expect an answer, so she was doubly surprised when Linara's jaw moved just enough for her to enunciate one word. "Crawler." Her voice was terribly dry and raspy.
Lily was surprised, but not so much that she didn't understand. "Yes. I did fight one. Killed it, with help."
Linara snorted.
"Fire," Lily supplied, offering detail in a way that would hopefully help her narrow down why Linara had spoken to bring that up, and what she cared about. Did she care that Lily had been in danger, or that she killed an enemy, or that there had been a fight with a crawler more generally and not about Lily specifically? "It leaped at me – actually, there were two, they both leaped at me. I flew around them, but then Quartz got involved. Tackled one. They were fighting close up, and I landed to get a good shot."
Linara leaned forward, rising up slightly on her paws.
Lily didn't feel very good about reliving those moments, but that was what Linara wanted, so she continued. "I didn't know how much of an effect my first shot had, so I fired again and again. That… did it." What else was there to say? "Somebody else took care of the other one."
Linara tilted her head, huffed, and slumped back down. Her eyes closed slowly.
"You were lucky." One of the other old injured remarked. "She will not say so, speaking hurts. But she approves of anyone who can kill a crawler. Luck or not." He had a warped, horribly damaged pair of back legs, but the rest of him looked fine and his voice was clear. "That is all she wanted. To hear about it."
"Thank you, I was not sure whether I had guessed correctly." Lily backed away, to better turn and face the other light wing. "You know her?"
"You get to know a light wing well if you are stuck sitting around them for long enough," he grumbled. "Her son does not like you. Get going before he returns. None of us want to hear his ranting. Least of all Linara."
Lily thanked him and left, her thoughts flying ahead of her. She still did not like thinking about the crawler. Not because she had killed him. He tried to kill her first, and in the moment it only made sense. But being praised for luck was wrong, and she had not done anything else she felt praiseworthy, either.
The solution to that was simple in concept, but difficult in execution. She needed to do something right, of her own will. No luck or incompetence involved, only skill.
O-O-O-O-O
Left with nothing to do but twiddle her paws, fly, or search Galen out, Lily's decision was obvious. She knew where to look, too. It was a shame nobody was home. She poked her head into the small cave, but it was small enough that if she listened closely, she could be sure there was no one breathing within. Where were Galen, Agate, Shell, and Galen's mate whose name Lily still didn't know?
Finding them would be an arduous task, and thankfully one that she didn't have to perform. She knew where they would be, so she put that aside and spent the rest of the cycle doing other things. Mostly wandering and shamelessly eavesdropping on conversations. She had not done nearly enough of that since arriving, because there was so much else to get a grip on, but it was vital.
When a group of people was too large to quickly meet each individual, the next best thing was listening to them at random. She had observed, in the valley, that most people were similar to each other in the ways that mattered. When one dug deep, learned their names and likes and dislikes, they appeared to be more and more unique… But the illusion of similarity was a useful one for her purposes. Sometimes.
Light wings would go with the crowd. With what they thought was expected. Any one individual could not tell her what that was; it was subconscious. More obvious when there was someone like Claw enforcing his own rules…
But here? She could learn a lot just catching short snippets of anonymous lives. The worries, the gossip, the mundane. For every two pointless statements, one told her something interesting, though often only because it didn't make sense in isolation. She only lingered to listen to things that really caught her attention. The rest was a sporadic background flow of mundanity and confusion.
"I refuse to eat fish without eyes, I do not care where you say you got it. The eyes are the best part."
"What about Glida? She is built like a marble boulder, and she is a very good scout. Now that we are at war again, you could have an egg before your Sire and Dam start nagging."
I do not want to see any of my children fighting two-heads. Their gas… Never again. If they must go fight, I will not go with them. I cannot see it happen. Does that make me a horrible Dam?"
People were the same, in a valley or under the ground. Disgust, attraction, fear. The subjects changed, but the reactions did not. Lily had only to match unfamiliar terms with very familiar emotions.
"He told me that my cycles were numbered, and that any could be my last. Who says that?"
"Ask to guard the warm pools. Nobody ever dies doing that. Boredom cannot actually kill you."
"But nobody ever gets any glory guarding the old and weak… Behind all of the other guards, anyway."
Stress over the war made up a good part of what she overheard. A lot of it was second-paw, induced by the effects of a war being declared, and a lot of it involved glory or performing great deeds.
"He will leave me if she does something impressive enough. This is the worst thing that could have happened to me!"
"It is worse for me. My mate is telling me I need to go on more scouting trips and look for trouble! I might not survive trying to make her happy. All you risk is breaking your heart, they might rip mine out and eat it."
Skewed priorities were not new to Lily. Talk like that, coming from light wings of all ages, put her in mind of the young fledgling males in the season-cycle leading up to them challenging Claw. The foolish talk; none of them were like Granite, and that was just too bad. They wanted to fight for what they could personally gain or lose. Little consideration was given to the overall outcome, whether their pack, and they by extension, survived to see the next season-cycle or whatever passed for it beneath the ground.
But, just like challenging Claw, the war and exploiting its opportunities for personal gain did not take up everyone's mind. The next most popular target for idle talk… was Lily herself.
Lily flew more carefully whenever she caught her name in the air, but she knew she didn't need to. There was a difference between knowing someone's name and perhaps what they looked like, and realizing that same someone was gliding along in one's peripheral vision.
"I hear that she still sleeps in his cave. They both do. You owe me two fish and a distraction the next time my mate asks about what we talk about on guard duty."
"Not fair. How was I to know they would both be such slow movers? Or maybe it is the alpha who cannot make up his mind. It is romantic."
"Oh, if only my mate thought that way. He says he does not care where the alpha puts his tail, so long as he provides an egg before it is too late. I think he is still sore about us being passed up."
"He has no mind for intrigue. A rock would make a better plotting light wing than he does. That is why you love him."
"Perhaps, but it makes him no fun sometimes."
Some, like that duo, knew next to nothing about what was going on, and did not seem to care to dig deeper than the bare facts readily apparent to everyone. Others were more discerning, and often much more critical of what they thought was happening. And then there were the rest, the loudest and smallest group of those Lily overheard on the subject. The ones who imagined they had claws to sharpen when it came to Lily and what they thought she had done.
"It is no fair at all, some foreign trough coming in to snatch up the alpha after so long. And then bringing in that other one who has no chance, what does she think she is doing?"
"I hear that she was out in the fight. Maybe we will get lucky if she keeps going out."
"That one-eyed washup will not do the same, so the way will not be clear even if she does die."
"But you yourself said she stands no chance, so it will."
Too bad for them, anyone stupid and petty enough to talk like that never had a chance with Rose anyway. Even those light wings did not include where she came from beyond 'another pack' in their complaining, though, so she could assume that her origin was mostly obscured to the pack at large, which would go some way toward explaining why she was not being approached and asked about distant relatives.
On the whole, Lily decided that she currently had nothing to worry about. Perhaps in the future, if the malcontents decided that they were not willing to wait and hope for ill fortune…
That evening, after the underground lake had been cleared by the guards, Lily passed by Rose's chamber guards on her way into his cave. She purred lightly at the guards, and the one she had been working on purred back. The other was stonily silent, which was annoying. She was not cultivating a silent implied friendship with one only to have him be stymied by the other if anything ever were to happen. Perhaps she needed to have the unreceptive one replaced. She did not have that power, but Rose did. Something to think about.
Inside, she saw neither Sola nor Rose. This was not a surprise, since she had not seen them from below on her way up the vertical cavern. But she could hear them. "What did bulky alphas do?" Sola asked.
There was only one place they could be, and Lily quickly crossed the crystal floor to poke her head into Rose's little side-chamber. She didn't know what she expected to see – Sola sounded calm, so nothing terrible – but Sola and Rose staring at a blank corner was not it. "What am I interrupting?" she asked.
"Lily, good, come see this." Rose stepped to the side, revealing a dark crack at the bottom of the corner. It was, to Lily, ominously large. Not big enough to fit through comfortably, but in a pinch she could possibly squeeze through with some scrapes and bruises. As to the question of why such a hole would be here, unmentioned until now–
"This is the last, secret way out of pack territory isn't it?" she asked, sidling up beside Sola to look down into the hole. She was reluctant to enter the only place Rose had wholly to himself, but being invited in to see a possibly vital escape route was a very good reason to make an exception to her own rule.
She did, however, choose to put Sola between her and Rose. Just in case.
"Yes, exactly that," Rose confirmed. "Do not fear for anyone coming back up, this route is uncomfortably long and leads very, very far away, with no ways into or out of the caverns around our territory. It is so long that actually making the trek is… stressful. Hard on the head and stomach. And we do not have overly bulky alphas," he nodded to Sola. "Not for long, for this exact reason."
The only safeties on the passage were length and distance? "Where does it exit, exactly?" Lily asked.
"Down and beyond," Rose answered. "I have been to the end. You may never have been there, but far from here there are many caves where other kinds live… not peacefully, but not in packs. Individual families of different kinds roam truly massive verdant caverns. This drops out in a very obscure, hard to enter place in the roof of one of those caves. So long as it is not used, nobody will ever find it."
Once it was used, there would be a chance of sight or scent betraying the opening… but only a truly determined dragon would follow such a long, long path to its end. The Noxious Fumes pack counted as determined, but if this was far beyond their sphere of interest? She could see how this might be considered safe, and if not safe then tolerably low-risk. No guards could be placed on it without further weakening the secret. Though the ones outside right now, if they strained to listen, could maybe hear this very discussion. "Do your guards know?" she asked, quietly.
"Yes, and that is why there are only a few who take this position," Rose explained. "The two there now, and two who switch out with them in the middle of the cycle and while we sleep. I do not think you have met those two yet."
She had not known. Not about that. She should have, but she had not. The day was for doing things, not sitting around in Rose's cavern. She did not feel less safe, with this revelation, but it did set her plans back quite a bit. Instead of one friendly guard and one neutral, possibly unfriendly counterpart, she had those plus two complete unknowns.
There would be no point in getting the unfriendly guard replaced until she got a look at the other two and gauged their attitudes toward her. If they needed to go too, she would want to do all of them in one fell swoop. It would be easier to convince Rose once, a second time would only raise his suspicions depending on what arguments she used.
"I take it you are showing us this because the war has begun again?" Lily asked.
Rose shrugged his wings awkwardly. "Yes," he said. "For that reason."
"Also, I asked to look inside here," Sola said casually. "I wanted to know what I could not see."
Lily glanced around, confirming for herself that yes, Rose's little side-cavern was as bare, dark, and unadorned as she had always assumed from the bit she could see from outside. The crack in the corner was its only outstanding feature. "You didn't believe him when he said nothing," she guessed.
"No, he just let me look." Sola huffed and backed away. "And now I have looked. I hope we never need to use this escape route."
"It has not been needed… Ever, I think." Rose led the way back out into the main cavern. Lily followed Sola, and they spread out across the crystal floor. Sola took her usual spot in the middle, Lily settled down closer to a wall, and Rose wandered about, stopping near the exit. "I might have to ask Peat. Our territory has been invaded before, but never successfully. I do not know if the fighting ever got so bad within our territory that an alpha had to flee."
There was nothing more to be said on that topic; they lapsed into silence for a bit. Short of going to get Peat, something Lily would be vehemently against if either of them suggested it, they just didn't know.
"So, Lily." Rose coughed, clearing his throat, and looked at her. "I hear that Quartz has asked you to assist him."
"Word travels fast," Lily remarked. "Yes, he did."
"I do not know how you got the approval of that stick in the mud," Sola snorted. "But you are welcome to it."
"You do not have to accept," Rose told her. "I can tell him off if he says otherwise. This position is not entirely safe, and you just got back safely from risking your life with him once. You do not have to do it."
He was genuinely concerned for her, and not trying to hide it. If she said she didn't want to do it he would make sure she did not have to, even though telling Quartz off would probably be a difficult endeavor. Such concern could be entirely selfless… Or it could be the concern of a predator who feared that his intended prey would be snatched up by another.
Probably not the latter. Rose was not like that. He was not Claw.
But still. "I want to do it," she said. "It is something I can do, and it is something I think I will be good at."
"I know Quartz can be aggressive when he wants something," Rose said. "From personal experience. If he is pressuring you–"
"He is not," she cut in. If Rose kept it up, it would be him pressuring her, not Quartz.
"Good, I had hoped he would not do that," Rose said. "Of all the terrible things this war will bring… At least he will be turning that ever-present irritation outwards."
"He has what he always wants," Sola scoffed. "Targets. Ones nobody will defend."
Something about that poked the back of Lily's mind, a connection she hadn't yet made but could if she could only think more about what it meant. Why that observation, jaded as it was by unknown conflict, rang true.
"Obsidian will try," Rose said. "And he will have to weather Quartz's disdain. I myself do not think we need someone advocating for the Noxious Fumes pack at all, especially as it is so hard to get them talking to any of us, but I think he would still do it even if he was told he was no longer my advisor of Peace."
"Is that really what he does?" Sola asked incredulously, a low growl in the back of her throat. "Because it must be very hard to speak well of a bunch of vicious murderers."
"He does not manage to speak well of them, he is still bound by the bare facts and the desire not to be torn apart by their victims," Rose said dryly. "But he is always there to make sure we all consider their point of view… Or what he imagines to be their point of view. He is much more effective with the water-gliders, since he can actually speak to them."
"Sola," Lily said once Rose was done. "Could you tell me what is between you and Quartz?" She was chasing that incomplete thought, the nagging feeling that would disappear if she did not seize it and force it into the light.
"Between us?" Sola looked up at the ceiling. "Nothing, really. Only that he approved of me until the moment he thought I was useless. I have no desire to be on good terms with a light wing who only sees my worth as long as I can kill for him." She looked down, and her gaze settled on a blank patch of stone wall. "He did apologize. Eventually. Once he realized that I was not totally useless. I told him to bite his own tail. Our mutual dislike stems from that."
"Oh." That did not help, but it did give more insight into Sola. Not enough; there was still a big hole in her past that Lily had avoided digging into, which this new information skimmed around the edge of. That one closed eye, the fact that she thought rumors would be less than kind to her…
Rumors. "Rose, you should probably know that there is talk of getting me 'out of the way' so that other females can have a chance with you," Lily announced. Rose's jaw dropped a little bit as she continued. "Right now they are hoping I die in the fighting, but when I do not, they might start getting more proactive about things, and I thought you should know. Do you have an advisor whose role it is to keep track of these things?" Sulfa took care of safety within pack territory, but did she counter internal pack intrigue? Quartz was conflict, but purely external. Peat would only make things worse. Whose role was it to keep the pack from tearing itself apart?
"What?" Rose yelped. "That is– ridiculous. Utterly reprehensible. Mind-numbingly stupid!" He shook his head and growled. "Do you have names?"
"No, and it is just idle talk right now," Lily reminded him. "It is only rumor that I am in their way, so to speak. Me and Sola." But not really Sola.
"I will need to tell Sulfa," Rose growled. "Make some sort of announcement. I will not have you in actual danger from my own people because of an incorrect assumption!" His indignation was so strong she wondered if it was an act. Why would he care so much? And if he did care, what were his motives?
"There are other solutions," Sola reminded them both. "Lily, how goes trying to find somewhere else to sleep?"
How was it going? Not, was the most truthful answer. Jet still actively disliked her, and she had yet to meet Galen who had no room for her anyway. As for Howl? "Can I not just… take Howl's cave? Since he will not be using it?" She should have thought of this days ago!
Sola, though, shook her head violently. "No, not yet!"
"I do not know what customs your former pack may have held, but here it is not spoken of until the deceased has been sent off," Rose explained. "That will happen soon, but it is not a foregone conclusion and you would do well not to put all of your hopes in the same place." How convenient for him.
"I meant besides Howl, sorry," Sola added.
"It is not a problem, I did not know," Lily said. She was at a bit of a loss as to what they thought she should be doing, though. "I am going to see Galen about building myself up and learning to fight," she told them. "But… That will take time." And all she had to look forward to if she succeeded there was maybe sharing a cave with Galen and his family, which was sounding like a less pleasant outcome every time he opened his mouth.
"I do not mind sleeping here for a while longer, it is the possible danger to you that worries me." Sola turned her attention to Rose, who had begun to pace. "You know that an announcement will only fan the flames," she said. "Remember?"
"Remember what?" Rose grunted.
"My eye. Your Sire gave an announcement then, too." Sola snorted, some genuine disgust entering her voice. "Take it from one who sat through that. It did not help. Those who thought differently thought I had gone to him to cover up my lies. The ones who believed me still believed. Those who did not know what to think were swayed, but that did not affect my life at all."
"I had forgotten," Rose admitted. "Sire did not really talk about whether it had worked. Did you?"
"Did I go to him for help?" Sola asked. "Not on that, but what he did was all he could offer me after telling me he could not do anything meaningful. I do not resent him for that. I was asking for things he could not or should not give." She stood and shook herself. "But let us not talk of that. Sulfa will keep both ears open."
"I will pin them to her forehead myself," Rose said darkly. "I will not tolerate light wings scheming to kill other light wings. Especially not over me. Lily, I would say do not worry… But keep your ears open, too."
"That was what I was doing." She was not worried; those stupid enough to think she posed a threat to their fantasies were also generally stupid. She would catch wind of any real plot long before it threatened her, so long as she continued to randomly eavesdrop. Stupid could not do secret in a confined space.
"And definitely go see Galen," Sola added. "That serves many different purposes. But, as a word of advice…" she laughed. "Stuff some moss in your ears."
"What?"
O-O-O-O-O
"Who is ready to ache?!"
Lily had assumed that Galen flew the longest of the long scouting routes because he was good at it. Because his wings were strong and his willpower stronger, to take on such long intervals away from home. It was, she reflected, a reasonable assumption with what she knew.
Now, knowing how loud and painfully piercing Galen's voice was, she believed it equally reasonable to assume that he had been chosen for the longest scouting routes to keep him out of earshot of the rest of the pack as much as possible. She also thought it reasonable to assume his mate was partially deaf.
It was not even like he was shrieking at them in some out-of-the-way place! No, she had almost crashed into the stone above his family's cave entrance instead of landing because of his first shriek, and he was only getting started then. Light wings all over the vertical cavern were groaning, shaking their heads, and flying away as fast as their wings could carry them.
If Galen did this all the time, he would have been murdered in his sleep.
He could speak normally; she had introduced herself after her near-miss, and his volume had dropped while he introduced himself, his mate – Emera, who had flown off after saying hello – and his sons in absentia. Specifically, their absence from the ledge because they knew he was going to work them until their wings fell off. His words, not hers, and the hyperbole had not dissuaded her from asking to join.
"Get out here! Unless you want Lily here to show you up even worse than she already will!" Galen's voice was high. Higher than his mate's, and her voice was completely normal for a female. When he roared it was not truly a roar, but a deep screech.
"Okay, Sire, okay!" Agate was the first to succumb to the torment, sulkily coming out onto the ledge. "Lily? What are you doing here?"
"I–" she was interrupted by another wordless screech from Galen. "Does your Sire care that half the pack has fled from him?"
"No," Agate said shortly. "No he does not. But Shell is just as stubborn. This could take a while."
Nope. Not happening. Her hearing could not take an extended shrieking session. "Dragging him out does not work?" she asked.
"He goes limp," Agate groaned.
"Okay then." She marched into the cave, her ears flat against her head, and walked under the lip at the back, looking up to see Shell crouched with his paws over his head on the ledge above. He probably could not hear her at all, if his defense against his Sire's shrieks was any good, so she did not bother with words. Instead, she leaped up and pressed her claws against his tailfins. Lightly; she had not forgotten the injury Cressa did to her, and how long it had taken to heal even if it did not ground her. But enough that he could not miss the threat to a very vulnerable part of himself. His paws shifted, partly unpinning his ears.
"Move or I will make you move," she snarled. "I cannot stand this noise." She would not actually do him real harm, but the point where such sharp pressure would hurt was much closer than that which would do actual damage.
"Come on, Shell, I can do this all cycle!" Galen added. His voice echoed inside the cave.
"Not gonna," Shell grumbled.
Lily pressed her claws in. Just a little.
"Ow!" He whipped his tail away from her and bared his teeth, raising his head to glare at her.
"I can do that all cycle, too." She glared at him in return. "You know your Sire. Is he ever going to give up?"
Shell sighed and stiffly stood up. "No," he admitted. "He will not. But if he thinks this works, he will do it more!"
"That's not actually how it works," Lily told him. "Not always. With some light wings that is true, but with people like your Sire…" She let the discordant shrieks speak for her. No light wing would do this unless they enjoyed it, and that meant all Shell was providing was an excuse. Or so she suspected.
She tailed Shell out of the cavern, and Galen finally closed his mouth.
Even if she was totally wrong, that was Shell's problem to deal with later. Here and now she had gotten Galen to shut up. Momentarily.
"Good," Galen said at a saner volume. "Thank you, Lily. Now, let us go!"
"Where are we going?" Lily asked. She was imagining some out-of-the-way place, perhaps beyond the guards but not too far away, where they could fly or do… whatever he had in mind. If she knew what sorts of activities would best increase her endurance, she would not need him in the first place.
"Right here!" Galen exclaimed. "We will start with one hundred circles of the vertical cavern, as fast as you can."
A hundred? That would take forever!
"And if you bump into any other light wing, or are touched by me, add two circles," Galen added. "Get ready, get set-!"
Agate dove off the ledge, and Shell reluctantly followed suit.
Lily regretted everything that had led her to this point, but she jumped too.
O-O-O-O-O
"That is two more!"
"Another two for you, Lily!"
"I saw you clip that male, Lily. No points for apologizing, two more!"
"Do not flag now, you only have thirty more to go!"
O-O-O-O-O
"I hate you for recommending Galen." Lily limped toward Quartz on the third cycle, as she had promised. "The light wing guarding this place did not even ask me why I was here! He took one look at me and assumed I needed treatment for my injuries!"
Quartz looked much the same as he had the last time she saw him, though he was standing up and was obviously well-rested. His cycles convalescing had done him some good. Lily, on the other paw, was sore literally from head to tail, with her wings having taken the brunt of the assault over the last few cycles. She wasn't bleeding but she was bruised, she was limping, and her wings were one good shake away from falling to the ground and staying there. It took conscious effort to keep her tail off the floor when she walked.
Worst of all, she felt that way, not just after limping away from Galen, but also after waking up the next cycle. Her mind was active, but her body rebelled at even the most basic tasks. It was irritating. Not irritating enough to make her quit – if Galen himself could not dissuade her with his voice or unsympathetic cajoling, her own soreness could not do it either – but enough that she didn't care if she voiced her displeasure.
Quartz coughed out a laugh. "That means it is working," he told her. "You are very unfit," which she was, "and not used to putting effort into things," which she was not, she had plenty of experience with that, "so it will be difficult at first. But your soreness is not why you are here."
"Will you be conducting the war from here?" It might, she thought, give the wrong impression to the rest of the pack if Quartz decided who lived and died while relaxing in the steam by the warm pools.
"No." He left, passing the guards, and spoke as he walked, another sign of his improved health. There was only a little wheezing between words. "We worked from outside guarded territory when it was relatively safe. Not entirely, but close enough. Now that there is nothing to lose, that specific cave is extremely dangerous. We cannot assume that exit will ever go without several hidden watchers, and it will only be used when absolutely necessary. You know of the other way out of protected territory?"
Lily knew of three now, if they were talking exits she had seen herself, but it was obvious which Quartz meant as he led her out through the passage Sulfa had shown her not that long ago. They took to the air then.
"Get any thought of proximity meaning safety or danger out of your mind," Quartz said as they flew. "What matters are paths and choke points. The cave we used prior is close to us, but has a direct path to their territory too. This cavern leads one place, a sinkhole that drops into a large interconnected network that cannot be effectively guarded or patrolled in its entirety. No choke point, not a manageable size. Safe. And the sinkhole?"
He paused there, and it took Lily a few moments to realize she had been asked an oblique question. Usually when Quartz stopped talking it was to catch his breath. "We hold the top and it is a choke point," she reasoned. "It is wide, yes, but not unmanageably so and wider at the bottom than the top." Meaning thay anyone coming up would be funneled toward the middle, lessening their ability to avoid fire from above. Not insurmountable, but a considerable advantage to anyone defending from above. If it were the other way around, the Noxious Fumes pack holding the top, it would be even worse. Heavy gas, spit, and other flammable fluids would all flow downward.
"It is as you say," Quartz admitted. "So we wait… where?"
"For scouts and messengers?" She thought about the cave around the top of the sinkhole. Large and open. "It depends. We could wait at the top, or we could find somewhere hidden below, close enough that if there were any danger we could retreat upward."
"Good." Quartz pumped his wings harder as they neared the hole, gaining height. "That is exactly what I do." He dove down, dropping at a steep angle. Lily followed, her heart beating hard both at the exertion on her already tired body, and the rush of performing a dangerously close-quarters dive. The sinkhole ended where it intersected an already sloping, wide cave, quite a ways down. This shallow and abrupt end gave her little time to pull out of her dive, especially as the top of the new path was not very high. Quartz made the transition with ease, and whipped to the left and out of sight without slowing down much at all.
As she took the same turn, seeing the faint green glow of crystals in the distance in several directions, Lily remembered something that had, at the time, been done to make a point. "Quartz," she called out, beating her pained wings against the unforgiving air to catch up to him. "Sulfa has a way of going from down here to up above the sinkhole without passing through it." She had used it to scare Lily.
"She does," Quartz agreed, taking another left as yet another opening came up on that side. The tunnels they were flying through were only barely sparse enough to be called that; adding a few more would turn the entire area into one large cave crossed in a thousand places by oddly-shaped stone pillars, stalactites, and stalagmites. It would be exceptionally easy to get lost with just one wrong turn. If her own weight did not constantly pull her down, she could imagine losing track of even that direction. The only true differentiating landmarks were different crystals, and they were very sparsely distributed.
Quartz was not so fast though, even now after being forced to rest, and they were not going far. One more left turn took them directly over a bright pink crystal, and then they angled up to enter a large alcove shrouded in darkness.
"I would rather not stay somewhere so obvious," Quartz grumbled as he alighted on the steeply-sloped back floor of the alcove. "But if we stay somewhere too hard to remember and find, we will never get any reports."
Because the scouts and messengers would all be lost until they gave up and tried to go home instead. Having feared losing her way mere moments ago, Lily was inclined to sympathize with their position more than Quartz's need for utmost secrecy. "Why do we wait somewhere with only one exit, though?" she asked as she landed beside him. The alcove they were in was staggeringly large – tall enough for her to do a proper dive from top to bottom and pick up plenty of speed before being forced to pull up, and with a gently sloping contour that reminded her of the shape a wing made when draped over someone. It was also dark. What it was not, was escapable if the ten-light-wing-wide and ten tall entrance was blocked… Which would take enough dragons that they could not possibly approach or assemble in the way without being seen. So perhaps it was not that dangerous of a dead end.
"High ground that cannot be turned into low ground, with a draining lower section," Quartz said, answering her question with a completely different chain of reasoning to what she had come up with. "No suspicious cracks in the walls. No corners or stalactites to hide behind. Take your pick."
"You wait here all cycle?" Lily asked. "How different is this to what you were doing before?" Because she had seen that, and given how much time she spent sitting around while Quartz attended to those duties and ignored her, she didn't need a refresher on any of what he did normally.
"The same, but instead of scouting I coordinate attacks, defenses, and scouting too." Quartz chuffed tiredly. "It will take all cycle to bring you up to speed on what has been happening. Do you know how many fights our pack has had since the first ambush?"
"There have been fights since that one?" was her answer. She truly had not heard of anything, and she lived with Rose! Though he was always busy and didn't talk much with them about the war.
"Three," Quartz informed her. "Three fights that were not lone scouts spotting each other. Three fights where both sides stood and tried to hold their ground. Two of our scouts have also gone missing. Not every ambush is randomly stumbled upon by ten light wings. I need," he inhaled, "more reach. More time. Faster messengers. Smarter scouts. Fiercer warriors. What I have is you, and you are useless until I bring you up to speed."
"And," he grumbled, speaking like it was an unpleasant afterthought that had suddenly become important "you do not know the cave layout either. So we will have to start there."
A well-informed proxy would need to be able to get where she was going, and to know enough to interpret the situation. "Maybe you could mark out the caves for me, to speed up learning?" she suggested. "There is a big, mostly flat floor here you could scratch the outlines of the caves into." She swept her tail over the ground to illustrate her point; there weren't even any annoying little shards of stone like in Claw's caves.
These caves were nothing like those. Claw's cave was a tiny little set of cubbyholes that would have seemed luxurious if they were attached to the Twisted Corridor pack's territory, but above the ground were just stupid. She did not understand anyone who would sleep in those caves by choice instead of sleeping outside, three fourths of the season-cycle.
Quartz tilted his head and looked at her like she was crazy. "Like the roots?" he asked roughly. "And I suppose I can just scratch deeper for deeper caves. And scratch the air for caves above the first one I mark. And this, even if…" He trailed off, breathing heavily, and deliberately dragged his claws on the stone. They left no traces behind. "This is hard stone, fledgling. I would blunt my claws before I finished marking where we stand."
Again with calling her a fledgling; she was an adult. One who did not know everything he did, but that was the point of this! She couldn't let that little bit of casual condescension go unchallenged; it was tolerable when he was saddled with her against his will. Not now, when he had asked for her help! "If you are to the point of trusting fledglings to do this work for you, then I am sure you can easily go choose another to replace me. My idea will not work. I see that."
"Fools need their noses rubbed in the consequences of dangerous ideas," Quartz growled. "If it did work, and we were attacked and forced to flee? If the Noxious Fumes pack saw? They would know what we know. Where we go. What we do not know."
"They could drag it out of you or me just as easily if they came here."
"No," Quartz coughed. "They cannot. I would die too soon. You…" He shook his head. "Would do what needed to be done, if they even bothered with you. So listen. Place what I am going to describe in your mind, connect it to what you already know. You know our guarded territory. You know a small part of the underground sea. Can you feel them?" He paused, shuffling his wings around to hold them more closely to his back. "The air under you, the strain in your wing shoulders? The time it takes to get from one place to another if you hurry, if you fly normally, if you go slowly? The turns, the places where you must land and walk? The spots that feel safe, and the ones where your back itches if you stop to think about how exposed you are?"
Lily closed her eyes to better envision what he was telling her to. This sounded like it was leading somewhere. "I can," she said once she had fixed those feelings in her head. Not like she would scratch the caves out on the ground; Quartz was not asking for shapes and sizes, he wanted times and connections. She would humor this alternate way of thinking about it until it either made sense, or proved to not work for her.
Some fledglings could catch the air the first time they tried. Most learned by watching, and then a little bit of doing, three or four tries before they got the hang of it. Some could watch all day but would still be bad at it until they fell over and over again. There were different ways of learning.
"The cave with the lake goes on and on, for cycles of flight," Quartz said slowly. "In some places you could turn to either side and fly for a cycle before you reached a wall. In others, you can see both walls even in the total darkness, they are so close. Underneath you, as you fly, is water-glider territory. Their territory extends very, very far, under the walls that stop you and I, because those walls do not connect to the bottom in all places. Those connections lead to the grassy cave, the Noxious Fumes pack, to distant shores and other places. If you could fly the whole way, it would take hundreds of cycles to fly around the lake."
She could not envision it exactly, but the information fit in with what she already knew. It had felt like she, Agate, and the others were going out very far when she flew with their group into the darkness, but they must still have been flying over the relative shallows, close to the edge.
"We cannot swim. The Noxious Fumes pack cannot swim well enough. The water-gliders would not allow either of us passage if we could." Quartz huffed. "So the lake is not one lake. It is several smaller pieces that do not connect. Above it, there are few caves. Directly below… Deep below… Only the water-gliders know. We do not go there. We cannot go there."
His rough voice was not soothing, but the things he was saying… Lily knew the feeling his words were evoking, but she didn't have a word to adequately describe it. The same feeling she had on her best days flying along the coast in the world above, seeing the endless forests and knowing deep down that she knew nothing of what lay before her, save for that there was something there and that surely there had to be someone else, somewhere, who did know. But also that she would never meet that person, and that she would never see even a tiny piece of all there was to see, never go everywhere there was to go.
'Wanderlust' implied she wanted to fly that endless flight. Not really. Potential, perhaps, fit the feeling best though it too fell short. Knowing that there was always more if she ever grew bored of what she knew.
Somewhere else to run away to, if she again failed to keep herself or anyone else safe and happy.
"What you must know is that our portion of the lake, the part we can fly, ends far out over the water, short of the opposite shore," Quartz continued. "At the far end, where the walls meet, there are small holes, cracks, hundreds of them. We cannot pass through. Others can. There is nowhere to land within a long flight of those holes, and the stone is as unbreakable as it is broken, sharp edges and straight lines pierced through with holes long ago."
Which explained why the underground lake was dangerous, but not so dangerous. "Not a place we can watch."
"Any guard posted would wear his wings out and be easy prey," Quartz agreed. "But I am not telling you about that yet. First, you need to remember the territory. All of it."
"How much of it is there?" Lily asked. "The scope…" If she could fly through stone, how high would she have to fly to be able to see everything the Twisted Corridor pack knew of? If she could fly that high at all.
"We will be at this all cycle, with precious few interruptions." Quartz growled, and stiffly stretched himself, leaning forward until his legs were almost horizontal. Then he leaned back, overbalanced, and stumbled a step to the side. "Pay attention. I need you ready to go… last cycle, but I will settle for as soon as possible."