Chapter Text
Clearsight felt as if she was plummeting to the ground, falling through layers of shadow. She tried to scream or cry out, but her throat seemed to be clawed out, and the darkness was descending upon her. Darkstalker's voice echoed all around her, some from the current timeline, some from the web of possible futures that had all dropped away that night on the mountain. "It's like I'm not an animus at all, so my soul is safe." "You'll be Queen Clearsight, doesn't that sound alright?" "I can choose my own future, and I like the one I see, and you're going to learn to like it too. Where is my scroll?" "Kill them. Kill them now!" "All I can see around me, as far as the future unrolls, are slaves and soldiers." "Clearsight, stay in the present with me, please?"
"Stay
in
the
present
with
me."
Clearsight screamed. Her eyes, her mind were overflowing with dark eyes set starkly against silver teardrop scales. Broken promises, torn apart dreams, betrayal woven into copper wires... She sped up, falling faster and faster, plummeting through the darkness, until she couldn't breathe, her lungs were being torn apart, everything was blurring together into waves of darkness...
And then, suddenly, it stopped.
She landed.
There was a moment or two of dizzying stillness. She looked up. Dark eyes glinted in the shadow. She squinted, and she thought she could make out three shapes-- three sets of eyes, side by side in the dark.
And suddenly, there was a thrumming whisper in the background. "Clearsight. Clearsight. Clearsight."
The figures began inching forward, pressing around Clearsight, and she felt drowned by the voices, more so than she was by the chaos and cacophony of the fall through the dark. This was more terrifying, more overwhelming, more... real.
"Clearsight. Clearsight. Clearsight."
She looked up, and her eyes caught the figure in the center. She could see dark evergreen eyes, like chips of emerald, looking straight at her.
One voice rose above the whispers, and Clearsight swore the sound of it wrenched her heart out.
"Clearsight."
And then the stars began to fall.
Clearsight woke with a start, looking around wildly. Where is she? Where'd she go? In a flash, she remembered those dark green eyes, and a panic struck her, grabbing her heart. She was jut here. Looking right at me.
But she's not real. Clearsight took a few deep breaths to calm her hammering heart. They're not real, none of them.
Darkstalker's long gone.
Taking another breath, Clearsight strode out into the main living area at the center of the camp. It was early morning, a little before dawn, and none of the Pantalan dragons were out and about yet. Clearsight basked in the familiarity of the scene. Remember, you aren't on Pyrrhia any longer. You're here, and you're helping these dragons out. You're helping the LeafWings and SilkWings. You're helping Sunstreak.
She walked out to the edge of camp, giving a glance backwards. Many new huts had already been constructed around the makeshift camp to replace the ones destroyed by the hurricane, joining the throng of existing huts that had been far inland enough to make it through. Clean-up crews had already started to clear the splintered trees and broken hut debris littered out on the beach, making room for new huts. Thanks to Clearsight's warning, Pantala was recovering quickly, and soon, all dragons would be moved from their makeshift nests to the new huts.
Construction process was still underway, and Clearsight was one of the few dragons left who had not moved into a hut. It was partially out of her own volition (she didn't want to seem like she was just wasting their resources) and partially just because no one had asked her to. She was no mind reader, but she suspected that many of the Pantalan dragons still felt a little uneasy around her, even if they were grateful she saved them from the storm. Some of them still didn't really understand her future-seeing powers. Time would have to be taken before they would fully trust her, the same way they trusted one another, and until that point Clearsight thought it would be better to take as little as she possibly could from them. She had gathered her own materials to build a nest, she contributed as much as she could to the rebuilding effort without ever actually taking a hut, and she hunted her own food instead of taking from their supplies.
Not that she had been needing much food recently. Clearsight's appetite had vanished ever since she arrived on Pantala, and it was an effort to choke down even the scrawniest rabbit. Clearsight was trying to tell herself it was just because she was nervous and her stomach was unsettled.
It couldn't be anything else.
Whenever she thought about that particular something else that it most certainly wasn't, she felt like her stomach was in knots and her mind was overloaded with visions of those startlingly dark green eyes, and she was absolutely not on board with that, no thank you, time to think about something else now, please?
It was early enough in the morning that no one else was out and about, which was lucky-- Clearsight was really just not in the mood to have to answer anyone's probing questions. She just wanted to be alone. She made her way down to the beach, not to hunt, not to do any cleanup, just to think. Something about the clear, salty ocean air reminder her of the Night Kingdom in a kind of nice, nostalgic way, not in a terrible missing-Darkstalker kind of way like most everything else in the world did.
She swept her tail through the sand, a mindless gesture to help calm her down after the terror of her nightmare. I have to remember that everything's okay now, she reminded herself. Darkstalker's not here any more, and I don't have to worry about what might happen or what he might do. I can live in the present now. I'm finally safe, with the Pantalan dragons. With Sunstreak.
But there was always, always, always that creeping feeling in the background of her mind. There was one future remaining that she worried about, a terrible awful future that she didn't want to happen, but that she thought was inevitable. Probably. No matter how many times Clearsight told herself she could just ignore it to make it go away, she knew that those paths only led to her starving, dying, and leaving the Pantalan dragons behind forever. In the end, no matter how terrible that future was, it was no choice at all.
The thing was, she didn't want things to change. She wanted everything to happy and predictable and absolutely free of all things Darkstalker, until she was safely over him and happy with her life Pantala. And if that future came to pass, things would inevitably change in all sorts of ways, and it would be back to the chaos, of the timelines with darkstalker, instead of the predictable, linear, here-are-the-things-you-have-the-power-to-change timelines of Pantala. There would just be too many variables.
Clearsight needed a distraction. She rooted through her bag and pulled out an empty scroll and a bottle of blue ink. Her was something was guranteed to relax her: maps! She had been wanting to map out the continent ever since she arrived there, because even if the Pantalan dragons had good maps, she probably wouldn't be able to read them.
She still knew very little about the layout of Pantala, other than the fact that it was very forested. But after so much time spent helping the clean-up crews clear the beach, she thought she had a pretty good grasp of the coastline, at least. She dipped her talons in the navy blue ink and began to sketch out the rough shape of the shore. Following the beach as she drew, she kept on going until her talons were too cramped to continue and her tired eyes were straining to focus. Then she decided she might as well stop and hunt.
The taste of seagull made Clearsight want to vomit after having to eat so many on the journey to Pantala, so Clearsight decided to head further inland and maybe try something else. She didn't want to catch any large prey for fear of not being hungry and not being able to finish it (which was starting to be a recurring problem for her), so she decided to start small. Just eating a pheasant or something would be good for her. Yes, Clearsight decided, if she could get herself to eat enough to sustain herself without going too overboard, this "unpreventable" future could actually be prevented, without having to starve.
After a while, Clearsight managed to find a rather lean rabbit. She began to strip the fur off with her claws. This was to get to the tender meat below without having to get hair in her teeth while she ate. She was also secretly hoping that the sight of meat, just meat with none of that scratchy fur, would invoke her appetite again, but no such luck. Clearsight's mouth didn't water at the sight of the rabbit flesh, and her claws didn't shake from hunger as she worked, even though she hadn't eaten in at least a day. She just still felt full. By the times she was done and the rabbit fur was in a neat pile beside her, she still didn't find the meat appetizing in the slightest.
Why is this happening? Clearsight's talons trembled, and she blinked, hard and fast, willing herself not to cry. A terrible lonelily seemed to crash down on her. Why had she ever wanted to leave? She missed Darkstalker, terribly, despite all that he had done to hurt her in the end. His absence was like a void in her chest. He would know what to do. He would know how to help me.
Think of the earrings, Clearsight reminded herself harshly. By taking away your ability to see all possible futures, the thing that's the most important in the world to you, he betrayed you.
Clearsight shut her eyes tight, feeling tears leak down her cheeks despite how hard she was trying to stop them. She felt very small all of the sudden, like e she was not quite big enough or strong enough for this huge, terrible world. Why had this happened to her? Where had it all went wrong? Perhaps Darkstalker was right, and Clearsight had spent too much time in the future and not enough in the present. Perhaps if she'd truly trusted Darkstalker, instead of worrying he might go down those dark paths, then he wouldn't have gotten so bad, and she could have her beloved back.
There was no way for her to know. All Clearsight knew for sure was that she wanted Darkstalker beside her, reassuring her, telling her that she'd get through this awful unpreventable future.
But if Darkstalker were here, none of this would be happening. Clearsight wouldn't have left the Night Kingdom and wouldn't have become an explorer. Darkstalker had been holding her back from what she truly wanted.
If she just kept that thought as her anchor, everything would be okay.
Everything had to be.
Though she tried to ignore the rabbit fur that remained littered out on the beach, some instinct buried deep with Clearsight propelled her to gather it all up and use it to line the edges of her nest. She was satisfied to see the task to completion, and when she was done, the nest actually looked like something a dragon could live in. There was comfortable space for her and at least two others, if she invited them, but it didn't seem too spacious or empty, either: it was the perfect balance.
That night, she slept content in her newly-made nest, at least for the most part. No dark eyes with silver teardrop scales in their corners haunted her nightmares. The only eyes she saw were those of three small dark figures, tucked in the curve of her wings, looking up at her, murmuring her name. "Clearsight. Clearsight. Clearsight." Unsettling, but she felt somewhat safer about it this time. Like she had things in control. Like she had a plan to face this new terrible future.
It was only when she woke up that she realized what this might mean.
She looked at the neatly made nest, lined with the fresh rabbit fur, and her head began to swim with new visions. No. No, no, no, this can't be what this means-- visions were cascading down upon her all of the sudden, filling her mind-- she saw what might be, what was going to be, the future she wouldn't be able to stop-- three figures in the shadows-- drowning in flamesilk-- the stars were falling--
"Are you okay?"
Clearsight blinked slowly, trying to steady herself. She recognized that voice. She knew the dragon it belonged to.
Sunstreak.
"Yes, yes," she said quickly, breaking the tense silence that had fallen over them. "Everything's in tip top shape, no problems at all, why are you asking?"
Okay, that sounded terrible even to her.
Sunstreak frowned and took a step closer. "You... are worried," he said. His Dragon was certainly improving fast, although it still often took him time to search for the right words. "What wrong?"
"Nothing," Clearsight said, wringing her talons together. She knew Sunstreak didn't buy it. "Oh... alright. It's something. I'm just... Sunstreak, if I ever really really needed help with something, would you help me?"
Sunstreak gave her a warm smile. "Of course! You save us from hurricane. We owe you our lives."
Clearsight smiled and looked down at her talons, unable to bring herself to meet Sunstreak's eyes. "It's just... I wasn't going to tell you this, but I used to have a... a friend. On the old continent. At my home. And his name was Darkstalker, and he was... really, really bad. He hurt a lot of dragons, including me."
Sunstreak frowned and grabbed one of Clearsight's talons. "You... you fine now?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Clearsight said quickly. "He's gone now. I trapped him underground. But... he had so much power, Sunstreak. He was an animus dragon, so he could enchant anything in the world to do anything he wanted it to do. His power ended up driving him mad. And the deal is..."
Clearsight sighed. Her heart was pounding, and she didn't want to say it, because maybe if she didn't say it, it wasn't going to come true, right? If she didn't believe it, it couldn't happen. She'd just put it off and off and off and she wouldn't have to worry about that terrible future, because it wouldn't have to happen, right?
But no.
She was done being afraid.
Clearsight took a deep breath and straightened up, looking Sunstreak in the eye.
"I'm going to have his eggs."
The air leaked out of her lungs in one big whoosh. It was real, it was happening, and there was nothing she could do about it, because she'd said it.
"I'm going to have Darkstalker's eggs, and I can't deny it any longer. So I was just... I need some help from you. From all the dragons here. Because they're going to be powerful, just like Darkstalker was, just like I am. Only I don't know how well they'll be able to control it."
Sunstreak gave her such a warm look, Clearsight thought her heart might melt. "We will help. Of course we will. You... you help us with storm. So we help you."
Relief filled Clearsight. "You still trust me? Even though these dragonets might be... like Darkstalker was?"
"We make sure they aren't."
Clearsight smiled, a real, true, honest-to-goodness smile. She wrapped her wings around Sunstreak's, pulling him into a hug.
Things were going to be okay. Eventually. Maybe.
She'd have it figured out. She'd protect her little dragonets, and make sure they never turned out to be anything like Darkstalker was. She'd teach them how bad it was to have that much power, and the punishment Darkstalker got for abusing it.
Clearsight could make this work.