» DARKHEARTED.

@terraforged​ said: Wrathion takes her closeness as invite it is likely not, though surely Nalice must have seen it coming astute thing that she was. "What will you do once we find a balance for you?" Where would she go? What would she do in a world which would, in the end, hate her in the very ways it hated him too? "What do you want for yourself?" Without whispers dictating to her, telling her what she wanted, who she was. What sort of person would she be then?

“What indeed.” Hums in reply, and if there is hint of introspective in her initial reply, it isn’t one feigned, merely poorly guarded. Greater offense would have been taken before, that he pried so in matters not his own; not now, truly. Hardly surprising that he judges it an opening and takes advantage of it; merely expected, and fault lays on her that she has no prepared answer in truth. Some solace is found that in allowing him his inquiries, she can in the least study his intentions. It may well be trick of mind of one so used to see the worst in everything, but Nalice cannot avoid seeing in it far more than mere curiosity; it is testing, probing, attempting to find in her malice all her own instead of that tied to manipulation. It is hope too, perhaps; hope that she may yet prove their kin redeemable by redeeming herself.

In that she is certain to disappoint. Viciousness is still there, she knows; cleansing her corruption would make her neither good nor amenable, and Nalice is quite certain he would see it also. She is no altruistic sort, and she has no desire to aid mortals, still as much a nuisance to her as they had always been. Yet there is less a desire to destroy and more a frustration at lacking defined purpose he inquires for. Wrathion may have taken upon himself past duties of their flight, but to Nalice that was yet too bitter a path; for so long they had been grateful of chains to such duties broken, and to chain herself to it once more seemed offense to those few she had held utmost regard for.

Their minds had not been their own either, not entirely, not for as long as she had known them; yet there had been no other version of them for her to know. What to do with that, now that she begins to experience clarity she never had before? Cannot disregard all past as falsehood, for it would be disregarding herself also; and if marks left by corruption were not pretty, they were nevertheless hers. Clear mind did not change she had sought to deceive other flights, did not change that even now Nalice would not shy away of bloodshed. She was the same, and she was not; what she would have been if untainted matters not when all of it has long since shaped who she is.

For once, though, reply she finds in looking to own heart is not to deceive or lie or manipulate, naught to do with death and destruction and conquest. Find others, who may yet live; find her brother, inseparable once and now missing for years. She cared naught for mortals, and loathed still idea of assuming roles obsidian dragons had been burdened with, yet there was a single one of Wrathion’s doings Nalice found she had sincere desire to follow — restore those of them that could be reached, cleanse them enough they too would be able to face choices she now did.

They were most clever sort, after all; surely she had not been sole one wrongly believed dead.