#aered

“Clan Mother, I have… unfortunate news.” Aered looked up to see the tiny fae on her desk and carefully set down her scroll. “Marlais? What is it?” “It’s about the Games. Sussuri’s interest has waned,” the spy reported. The guardian frowned. “Surely this is a good thing,” she said. “Less death on our hands?” Marlais let out a long breath. “I wish I could be as certain as you are, Clan Mother, but with Sussuri, nothing is certain. Where one interest fades, another rises…” Aered’s eyes narrowed as she realized what Marlais was saying. Sussuri was most destructive in his boredom. “Keep an eye on him for me, Marlais. Make sure whatever he does will not come back on our heads.” “Yes, Clan Mother.” Marlais shifted as if to fly off, but hesitated, his frills flicking in an uncharacteristic display of uncertainty. He wouldn’t speak of what worried him, Aered knew. Her spy never spoke of his own troubles. But she could guess well enough. “You fear for your son, Marlais?” she asked. He went very still. “I pray for him, Clan Mother. Jheras has passed the point where I can only be afraid.”

He smiled, the gentlest expression she had ever seen on his normally unreadable face. ‘I know. She has already said as much.’ “Then I will add my support to hers. You are a member of this clan, Iah. You are one of us.” Aered tried not to cringe inside as she saw the surprise in his glance. Had no one ever told him that before? The guardian shook her head, then offered him an encouraging smile. “I have kept you long enough. Go on, then. Make all of us proud.”

“Have you found him?” The council hall was in uproar, quiet uproar, of the sort that said its participants knew better than to let it get out. Marlais crouched, panting, in front of Aered, trying to gather the breath to speak. “No, Clan Mother,” he said at last. “I have searched everywhere in the lair. Ran is looking outside still. We have seen no sign of him. Even his cats are gone.” Aered exhaled slowly, trying not to let her emotions show. “I see. Farran. Do your visions tell you anything?” The seer shook his head. “I see only flickering shadow and butterflies. They linger even when I redirect my gaze. Nothing has ever been able to interfere like this before.” “He has grown powerful,” Laellar said softly. The Clan Mother nodded. She could not let the others see her fear. Fear for herself, perhaps, as the one who had punished him, but even more so fear for her clan. “What of his family?” “Greldort has been with Lyra today. They claim to know nothing, and I could see no falsehood,” Silver said. His voice was still hoarse and his plumage dull, though he was far better off than he had been just a few days ago. “Winter has detained Iah, but he does not have any answers for us, and trying to read him is like reading the whole clan at once...” The boy had shown all the signs of overload and, more concerning still, of a deeper sort of illness than the one Silver himself was still recovering from, but the older skydancer knew better than to voice his concerns now. There would be no sympathetic ears in this council. Aered dug her claws into the rock. “Do the other clans know?” Elestin shook her head. “As far as I can tell, no one has realized it yet. The delay in the start of the Games may have raised suspicions… but—” The rest of her words were drowned out by a huge rumbling. Dragons scrambled to their feet, only to be knocked off them as the earth shook beneath them. As soon as her claws found purchase on the tilting ground, Aered shouted, “Elestin! Find Sombra and Aya, and head to the arena! Farran, get Basah. Go!” -- Sussuri curled happily in a tree as he watched vast rifts open in the arena. His cats curled beside him, the orange one swatting at a butterfly as it returned with news. It was unfortunate, on one hand, because such a violent event meant the guards would no doubt be coming to investigate, but such a surprising and spectacular sight… The spiral’s grin widened. He had missed this.

Hm. This assumes we have any sort of coherent decoration in the first place… Aered would be most likely to organize such efforts, if she deemed organization necessary. Otherwise, Iris and Calypso, with occasional input from Rhodas on the rare occasion they pry her away from her research. Noel is also surprisingly adept at interior design. Sorin tries, but it doesn’t always work.

Iah helped his surrogate father untangle himself (thankfully he’d only gotten as far as half hitch this time) as Lyra went to collect her soul-shard jars and a few pots of salve. She’d learned well that Sussuri’s ideas often led to trouble. True, it was interesting trouble… And she’d gotten so much better at finding and gathering the soul fragments since she met him. But it never hurt to be prepared.

Aered shook the dust from her wings as she climbed out of the crater and surveyed the damage. Meteorites had gouged massive holes in the ground. Wild magic still crackled and arced from stone to stone. Strange carcasses, like nothing she’d ever seen on Sornieth, lay scattered here and there among the smoldering wreckage. She could see Basah trying to disenchant the statue that had been Rhiangar, Aya tending Sombra’s wounds, Lyra crouched beside the all-too-still form of Iah. Vija flitted from tribute to fallen tribute while Rhodas worked her healing magic on the victorious Tameka and tried to repair the barriers overhead. Meteors still roared past them, crashing down with bone-shaking explosions all across the Starfall Isles. The guardian knew she should be horrified, frightened, but all she could think was It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.

“Sussuri.” Aered sat in the chamber of the Cornerstones, her magenta eyes staring fixedly at the four great crystals instead of the fidgeting spiral in front of her. Laellar curled beside her; it still hurt him to fly, but he had insisted on being present. Several dragons stood behind them: Eyvindr, his new scars stark white against his hide, the seer Farran sitting between his massive foreclaws. Farran’s sightless eyes were staring past the spiral in the center; Aered didn’t need to ask what he saw. Iris sat a little ways to their left, with her mate Silver and his serthis familiar. Vija curled beside Ves; a strange understanding had formed between those four ever since Silver brought Iris home after Thundercrack Carnivale. Seneiti curled around a column a decent distance away, acting as scribe and avoiding Vija’s eyes. Somewhere above them, Marlais was probably watching the whole thing. Emerantha was still trying to find Sunil after he disappeared last week. Kaissetha stood alone on Aered’s right. He had commanded Rhiangar to stay behind and look after Kriyei and her new mate. Aered didn’t like superstition and distrust based on heritage alone, but it would only hurt the proceedings if a child of the cunning and infamous Treesnek was openly on her side. Dara had understood without complaint. Aered was grateful for that. Across from her was the whispering spiral himself, Sussuri, whose very name invoked secrets. Beside him, standing stiffly as if he didn’t know what do with his limbs, was a grey skydancer Aered barely recognized as the guardian Iah that Sussuri had brought home weeks before. It hurt her heart to see his eyes now, dead and empty. What happened to him? Perched on Iah’s back was an unfamiliar female fae; tiny blue lights flickered under her tattered robe. She had not spoken a word since the gathering began. It was wrong to call it a trial. Trials only happened when there was doubt that the accused was guilty. The matriarch stood up. “I had thought,” she said, “that when I declared an end to the Games, that would be the end of it. I suppose it was a foolish thing. I saw the evidence of that in my General’s anger, anger that you took advantage of, but still, I had hoped… You know why you are here,” she declared, her strong voice utterly devoid of any anger, any disappointment. “By all rights, I should cast you out now for your treachery, Sussuri. We took you in and gave you a home, tried to help you feel that this was home, and you betrayed us. You turned your own clan against itself. I know that scolding you is of no use. Even now, your only regret is that you got caught.” “Not completely true, Matriarch,” Sussuri replied. “I do regret trusting the necromantress. She has proved a very fickle friend.” Vija hissed with fury. “You got my mother killed, you—” Ves reached up and touched her snout. “Hush. Let Clan Mother speak.” Aered shut her eyes, deep in thought. “And yet… Casting you out will only free you to cause more harm. Sussuri, you loathe boredom, do you not? So I will reward you. I will put you to work here, strengthening and repairing the lair, so that you won’t have time to be bored. You will not leave for any reason. You will not even pass within sight of the sky. If you behave, your time will be comparatively short. Disobey, and you will never see the night again. Do you understand, Whisperer?” Sussuri wilted. “I… understand, Matriarch,” he murmured. Laellar leaned against his massive companion. “So that settles it, then?” he asked. “I’m sorry, love. My idea turned out to be the wrong one.” Aered gently nuzzled him. “Don’t apologize. You meant well. And it did unify the clans around us in the end… even if they unified against us. So you were half right. But it is not yet settled. We need to decide what to do about these Games.”