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Arsinde & Nycht

• A Hand upon The Wheel

Arsinde was seething by the time she barged in through the door to her chambers. She'd elected to walk back there from the meeting rather than fly on Nycht's back as he took the aerial path - hoping that the exercise would help calm her down. It had backfired spectacularly - she'd spent the whole walk grousing and grumbling under her breath, cursing through clenched teeth and generally just working herself up as she chewed over the recent events. She should've flown instead, she now realized - perhaps the fresh air and the wind in her hair would've worked better.

Too late now, though, and judging from the way her three black-coated servants jumped up at her entrance, standing rigidly at attention as their faced betrayed a mixture of terror and masochistic hunger for punishment, she must have looked like a human-shaped thundercloud as she all but kicked open the door. She knew what they were thinking, and honestly, it was tempting to take her current temper out on them - she'd certainly done so before, and it could be quite cathartic! But, as Nycht - who'd gotten there before her, and no surprise - raised his head from the nest where he'd settled down, and let some of his stoic coolheadedness flow into her over the link they shared, she was forced to admit that catharsis wasn't what she needed right now. She needed to calm down so that she could_think._

"Fill up my bathtub. Now!" She thus barked at the trio, instead of reaching for the whips and the hot irons, letting the door slam shut behind her. With perfectly-synchronized and tri-tonal "Yes, Mistress!", they all leaped into action, galloping towards the tub and pulling off the neat maid's uniforms they wore when company was expected, or at least possible. She'd left them orders to remain so attired until her return, just in case she wound up bringing one of her sisters along for a post-meeting chat - and the reason _that_hadn't happened was the same reason she was seething and so badly in need of a nice, hot bath right now.

(...)

Closing her eyes, surrounded by warmth, she finally felt able to run through the afternoon's events in a dispassionate manner. She could feel Nycht's mind, adjacent to her own - not speaking, merely listening, as he often did. Making sure that he knew what she was thinking, that they were on the same page, so that they would act as one. His own ambitions were ultimately quite simple - survival. That had always been the case for him, and their meeting and joining had only served to expand that singular goal to include her survival as well. This worked out well, of course, since she also rather wanted to survive, and for him to do the same - both because he was ultimately the source of her new power, and because he was the love of her life.

But, even so, she did want more than mere survival, and Nycht was generally happy to align himself with her in this - having, in accepting the Utopia's invitation, silently acknowledged that a life lived purely for survival was a rather hollow one... he still hadn't fully acclimated to life in the Utopia, granted, but the thought was there. And thus, it was time to gather her thoughts and lay some plans! The meeting had been... quite the revelation, after all. The Black Dragons - and by extension, the DragonRiders - had been created by the same god who made mankind, as weapons to be used in a grand war against the rest of the gods. He'd ultimately failed in this campaign, however, and in his defeat, the world had been made to forget about both him and his war... though, evidently this effect had not been perfect, which was an important thing to keep in mind when considering that they were now staring down a conflict with those very same gods.

The very existence of the Utopia, as a gathering-place and refuge for Black Dragons, represented a threat to the gods themselves. Not a_great_ one, but enough of one to warrant a response of some kind. She could appreciate that. If you saw someone gathering up the fallen weapons of the greatest foe you'd ever faced, you'd be foolish to just shrug it off and carry on like nothing had happened! But, despite the immense power concentrated there, by any earthly standard, the Utopia couldn't possibly withstand the directly-applied wrath of the gods. Something was needed to tip the balance back in their favor - that much was obvious.

Not so obvious that her 'sisters' couldn't close their eyes to it, though! The thought made her earlier anger flare up again, but she tamped it down and forced herself to look at their reactions as logically as she could. Anger was understandable in a situation like that, and she wasn't going to apologize to anyone for feeling it - but she had to acknowledge that simply letting it flow freely during the meeting probably hadn't helped anything. No, she had to contain it, and let its fire drive her to take logical,effective actions to rectify the situation.

They'd_all_ been caught off-guard by all of this information, and angered at having been kept in the dark about it for so long - she was no exception to that, even! But, she understood the meaning and value of 'need-to-know' when it came to distributing information, especially information that the gods themselves had gone to such pains to conceal. Was she annoyed as having been made to play a role in all this without knowing what it was, even retrieving a key part in Blake's plan from that dusty old tomb in Qinxiang? Absolutely. Had she needed to know before this point in time? Probably not. So, she could rise above that automatic aversion, and accept that the plan Blake had put forth was likely the best option they had. Was it risky? Of course. But having 'safe' options available was always a luxury, and one should never count on it. Instead, you could only balance risk and reward as best you could.

In this case, the potential reward far outweighed the risks. If this forgotten deity indeed could be called back, in some form or another, he could be of inestimable aid - and he clearly had plenty of reasons to want to protect the Utopia, seeing as he'd gone so far as to sacrifice his physical form in order to shore up its defenses in the first place. If he proved cooperative... or better yet, if he could be controlled... that would be a power, and a reservoir of knowledge and insight, that no mortal had ever before possessed. It would have been worth the risk regardless, but with the threat of the other gods looming over their home, and no_other_ deities liable to stand in its defense, it was absolutely necessary.

And yet, the others had rejected it. Blake and Anitra would almost certainly carry on with the plan no matter what - they understood the necessity of it - but doing so over the objections of three of the five resident Black Dragons would cause a devastating split, just when they needed unity more than ever. Some might even respond by abandoning the Utopia altogether, robbing them of forces that could prove decisive going forwards. Blake clearly recognized this, which was why he'd called an end to the meeting when he did - hoping that, with a bit of time, cooler heads might prevail. He'd probably spend most of tomorrow trying to persuade his recalcitrant brothers to back his plan. And to give him full credit, he could be fairly persuasive when he put his mind to it, especially since everybody who'd seen him in action had to acknowledge his sheer strength and power.

What's your record like against Blake on the sparring-field? She casually threw the thought at Nycht, who responded promptly and without any trace of resentment or shame. In one-on-one matches? I manage to win maybe two times out of ten. There was, however, a slight tinge of pride to his mental voice as he followed up, combining the words with a memory of some recent match - one culminating with Blake pinned to the ground with Nycht's talons on his neck. However, in larger fights - general melee and two-versus-two - my success-rate against him is significantly higher. Higher than any of the others', in fact. Arsinde grinned at this. They didn't need to talk about why that was - they both understood the concept just fine. The power of a_distraction_.

If your opponent can focus squarely on you, your ability to make moves - particularly covert ones - will be severely limited. Force him to_divide_ his attention, and the equation shifts enormously. This time, Blake would be the distraction - while he flew around making overt attempts to convince the Black Dragons, she would take more subtle steps to convince the Riders. That was the ticket, yes... which was not to say that it would be easy, by any length of imagination. Tiriana, Evereldis and Lazhug... those would be her targets. Her 'sisters'. Well, half-sisters in two of the cases, and sister-in-arms in the last case.

One by one, she turned them over in her mind, considering the way they'd acted during the meeting, their relationships with their dragons, the nature of their objections, and everything she knew about them. Starting with Lazhug, who seemed likely to be the easiest one to deal with. The half-orc was as hard-headed as her green-skinned kin, but she was also honest with herself, and had no trouble acknowledging, to herself or others, that she could be wrong about things. Came from being a consummate warrior, probably - being prideful and overly certain of yourself was a quick way to lose your head in a fight. On the other hand, that 'warrior spirit' was probably also the reason she'd made such a foolish objection - the whole idea of 'not relying on gods' was downright silly, considering that most of her_own_ power came from her link with Brute, who'd gotten it from the very same god they were now planning to resurrect! So unless she was planning to sever that link, she'd be relying on him whether she wanted to or not.

Still, that probably wasn't the right tack to take with her. But the point was, it seemed possible to simply talk Lazhug into shifting her stance, if she picked the right arguments and chose her words carefully. And Brute would probably go along with such a shift without any issues. The same could not be said - on either count - when it came to Tiriana! Whatever objections Slate had made out loud, it was abundantly clear that his issue with the plan was just the latest incarnation of his long-time, one-sided rivalry with Blake. It had seemed like he was getting a bit better about that, for a while now, but apparently the sting of learning about a secret plan he'd been kept in the dark about had brought it back to the fore. Looking at the way Tiriana had been acting back then... she knew it too, and wasn't happy about it. She was probably somewhat in two minds about the plan herself, but at least didn't seem likely to reject it out of hand - however, she'd always been a rather demure and submissive sort, and very disinclined to argue with her partner.

Even so, though... all of the DragonRiders held significant sway over their steeds. That was the whole point of the arrangement, after all - the chains of love went both ways, and tied the mighty dragons to the ground as surely as they elevated their once-mortal Riders. Assuming she could actually be convinced to pit her will against Slate's, Tiriana seemed likely to be the one person capable of forcing the contrary creature into putting aside his rivalry with Blake for the moment. Mind, an emotional appeal would probably work better on her than sweet logic. Lay it on thick with the 'sisterhood', maybe? She knew all about Tiriana's background, after all - isolated from her community, growing up with only a distant mother for family. Yes, there were definitely strings to be pulled in that department...

Which just left what seemed likely to be the biggest hurdle. Evereldis and Swarten. Rather than it just being one making a decision and the other going along with it, they'd seemed remarkably in sync, speaking in unison and standing as one. Which made it an order of magnitude harder to shift them - even if their objection was perhaps the most ridiculous of them all. Although she disagreed with the other two's stances, she could at least understand them. Lazhug's desire for self-reliance would have been admirable under other circumstances, and while the same couldn't be said for Slate's rivalry with Blake, she did know what it felt like to carry a grudge. But those two... they were rejecting the plan because the god in question might be evil?

If you were dying in the desert, and a man offered you a glass of water, would you question his morality? Would you worry that it might be_evil_ water? The sheer idea of it was like something out of a children's fable. They had to deal with the reality of the situation - and the reality was that, under the circumstances, a violent god of conquest who'd once spread vast devastation across the entire world, was exactly what they needed in their corner. It didn't seem likely that this was what they'd get, considering that he'd apparently spent centuries seeking redemption for his past sins while living as a mortal man in the guise of 'Lutan the Explorer' - but if they got that earlier version anyway, she'd welcome him! In such dire straits, only a pure fool would reject a potential ally based on some nebulous concept of 'good' or 'evil'.

Feeling her frustration begin to rise again, Arsinde quickly pushed it back down, forcing herself to look at things from Evereldis' perspective, as best she was able. No doubt, she felt that 'evil' was a very real, very present thing. She'd seen it in both the unfeeling, mindless devastation of the plague that had taken her husband and two of her children from her, and the hungry opportunism of the bandits who then preyed on the weakened village, murdering her last remaining son and viciously raping her for hours before leaving her behind in the ruins of her past life. When she'd accepted the role of a DragonRider and taken Swarten as her steed, it had been with the thought of becoming an avenging Hero, like something out of the bedtime stories she'd once read to her children. Certainly, those shining, _fictional_paragons would never stoop to summoning an evil god in order to overcome their enemies! They'd do it through the sheer power of righteousness and the love in their hearts! Or some drivel along those lines...

And apparently, Swarten had eaten that whole thing up. From what she'd seen of him on the practice-field, it honestly looked like he mostly just loved a good fight - had more in common with Lazhug than anyone else, really. Well, it wasn't as if he was the first to ever try and cloak his thirst for combat and glory in the veneer of a Righteous Cause. Regardless, with the two of them standing together in such a way, it seemed depressingly likely that both logical arguments and emotional appeals would fall on deaf ears - after all, a true Hero could never be swayed or tempted so easily! And to make matters worse, Evereldis had that maddening 'motherly' attitude towards the rest of them - which could be rather endearing at times, but also carried with it that parental tendency to just go "Because I said so, now go to your room!" rather than admit to being wrong...

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PREVIEW ENDS - if you want to see how Arsinde manages to sway her sisters, check out my free Discord for the full story. Link is on my profile.