Fandom The Dragon Prince: Deep Trouble [Closed]

[cleopat]

Don’t fail.

That was all too easy to demand, but in actuality?

He failed to protect his daughter, and he still lived with the anguish and guilt millenia later. If someone else he deemed under his protection were to get hurt, or worse, he didn’t know if he could ever recover.

Eyes narrowed. “I will not fail,” he said with finality and conviction. “Once I get to him, Sol Regem will no longer breathe.” That he could vow. And if he had to use Lethe to help him succeed…then failure was most certainly not an option for him.

The only ones that deserved death were the archdragons.

~~~

Willow sighed. There was one who stayed in her life, one whom she often felt tremendous guilt for bringing him into her messes, and that was why she was trying to leave him out of her current shit as much as possible.

“There is one. His name is Drake, and he has stuck by my side for ten years now.” She could hear Deadwood returning and preparing the deer, but she didn’t spare him a look. “Do I trust that he’s never going to leave?” She shrugged. “Of course I hope that will never happen, but we can’t predict the future.”

If anything, she may leave him to protect him.

“So yes, people will leave, but there will be those who stay as well. I just know you’ll meet others who will stick by you.” Claudia was still so young. She had a long life ahead of her, and with her personality, she shouldn’t have issues finding people to call friends.

 

[Lucyfer]

Aaravos was easy to goad when it came to his confidence in his abilities. Lethe could count on that, and plan on that preventing him from using the others. At least, she hoped so, as he vowed to slay Sol Regem, and seemed to accept the role she’d play.

“All right,” she nodded, no less afraid of the situation, but condemned to it anyways, “Then how do we begin?” Sol Regem would need to be found, but Lethe didn’t think that would be hard.

He’d be in Xadia, and it sounded like he’d be with other sunfire elves, which meant his end goal was going to be the sunfire elf encampment, to gather the others to his cause, and destroy those who stood against him. They had to save those elves before it was too late, though Lethe knew better than to press that urgency.

Aaravos wouldn’t care about them, unless he could see a way to use them.

And he might see using their death as advantageous instead.

~***~

Finnegrin remembered Drake. Another tidebound elf who left Willow to her fate. Oh sure, he put up a protesting front, but in the end, he’d walked away, and never tried to do anything to help her. Finnegrin scoffed at the mention of him.

Claudia glared at him for the sound, demanding information in the look.

He rolled his eyes, “Drake was pathetic. He wasn’t willing to help Willow at all, and now she’ll never see him again. He may as well have abandoned her,” Finnegrin stated, which caused Claudia to wrinkle her nose.

No doubt, she couldn’t be sure anymore what was and wasn’t right. She didn’t know the story with Drake – but she knew she would never let anyone leave her. She wouldn’t have let her father leave her, if she had a choice. “I don’t want to talk about this,” Claudia said, anger grasping at every word.

Her mind couldn't focus on any hope, and no one could guarantee it. Everything just felt frustrating. Unsatisfying.

These people were going to leave her, too, anyways.

 

[cleopat]

Aaravos smiled at Lethe as she continued on and asked him about his plans. “First, Sol Regem needs to be found, but that won’t be difficult at all.” Not when Aaravos already knew and had a plan in motion right that second.

Lethe didn’t need to know every detail. Just those that pertained to her and her safety.

“And I know this may be difficult for you,” Aaravos took a few steps closer to Lethe, close enough that he could reach a hand out to touch her, “but when we approach Sol Regem, I will need you to trust me.”

He knew that trust they once held for one another was long broken. He hardly trusted her, since she was the reason he was tricked into imprisonment, and he knew she felt the same way of him, for his anger at being imprisoned, and for the reasons that led her into betraying him. “Is that something you can do?”

~~~

Willow frowned and furrowed her brows at Finnegrin’s lies concerning Drake. It wasn’t true! She told him to leave, to not get himself mixed up in her problems or to get himself involved with Finnegrin in any way. She had deserved the punishment for being the ringleader of their business, not him.

“You’re wrong. I told him not to get involved. I told him to not worry about me and to not cause a scene.” He didn’t know of any of the incidents that happened to Willow since they last saw each other, the same day Finnegrin deemed her under his debt.

Oh, if Drake could see her now. He would be disappointed.

She wouldn’t let Finnegrin’s words get to her. He was wrong about Drake. She knew him far more than the pirate did. He was wrong! She frowned and looked at Pucca a few feet away, searching and sniffing through the grass and foliage for any insects crawling around.

 

[Lucyfer]

No, Lethe didn't believe Sol Regem would be difficult to find at all. He wasn't known for subtlety. As soon as he held power, he'd start to make noise and cause destruction. People may already be dying at his claws.

She did her best not to flinch away when Aaravos drew closer, and demanded trust. As if he could even trust her agreement, given the collar she was made to wear. She couldn't overtly betray him, but she'd found ways to undermine him already.

The collar wasn't a commanding tool. It didn't bind her to orders.

“Yes,” she answered, eyes not meeting his, because she was certain so long as it involved just them, so long as So Regem was the only target, she could trust him. She was willing to listen to the plan. She had to.

She trusted him to win.

~***~

“Oh yes, and the mark of a good friend is someone who listens to their friends when they go off with dangerous people, and they don't try to save them at all. Claudia, is that what you'd do? If your dear dad, back when he mattered to you, told you to let him go with someone who meant him ill will, would you?”

“No!” Claudia shook her head. “I mean I don't know,” she recanted, “I trust him, but….” But he could make wrong decisions. He did just now in letting himself die.

But she'd let him, hadn't she? She hadn't tried harder.

“No,” she solidified, regret and guilt rising to answer. “I'd do something…somehow….” If only she could now.

“See?” Finnegrin smirked, “friends don't leave friends to danger. You wouldn't have left Drake, would you, Willow?”

 

[cleopat]

Aaravos didn’t enjoy how Lethe looked away from him when answering his request. Wasn’t there a time when she would have said yes so easily, and without hesitation for what she was getting herself into with him?

But that was so, so long ago, and much has transpired between them since.

He reached a hand out, and with a finger and thumb, Aaravos gently grasped Lethe’s chin to turn her eyes toward him. His yellow eyes stared into hers for a moment, as if seeking an answer that was hidden deep beneath her gaze.

He had long felt the tension amidst the other three in the group, but he couldn’t care less about that right then. It was so trivial in comparison to the grand scheme. To his thoughts. His desires. His need for revenge.

Oh, how Leola would have loved you, Lethe.

Aaravos frowned at the intrusive thought, a small stab of pain in his chest accompanying it. “Good.” He straightened up and let go of her. “I suppose it’s time to gather the others for our exciting day.” How it would be exciting to see Sol Regem dead! “And then off to see the old fool.”

~~~

Willow scowled at Finnegrin’s continued taunts. “We’ve been at sea for most of the time. It’s a little hard to save someone in that situation.” Yes, that was why she hadn’t seen Drake. Because they hadn’t exactly been in Scumport.

Who was she trying to convince, herself or Finnegrin?

“I would do anything I could to save Drake,” that she could say without hesitation. He saved her life once, and she would save his if necessary. And she knew, deep down, that he still had her back.

She couldn’t let Finnegrin’s words get to her.

“Do you not have anyone in your life you would trust to save you, or vice versa?” She hardly counted Deadwood in that. She couldn’t see Finnegrin saving him, unless it was just to keep his minion alive and by his side.

 

[Lucyfer]

Lethe didn’t fight the touch. She lifted her chin as pressure demanded and met Aaravos’s gaze, even if she didn’t want to. She held it steady enough, until he was satisfied and let her go. Only then did she step back and turn her head away, however briefly, before taking in a deeper breath.

Back to the others, then.

She nodded, “I don’t think they’ve gone far,” none certainly came their way, and Claudia likely wasn’t in any state. Of course, none of them should need to be anywhere near the actual fighting, so she hoped the plan wasn’t too…well, demanding of any of them, as she turned to lead the way back to where they’d been left.

~***~

Willow argued still that Drake would do anything to help her – despite him not rising to the occasion back at port, “Aye. You think Drake didn’t know it’d be harder to get to you at sea? Still, he did nothing,” and he never would. Finnegrin didn’t foresee a shining savior coming for Willow.

Maybe someone she seduced and conned into it, but they’d meet an untimely end.

“No,” Finnegrin laughed at the mere idea of it, “that’s foolishness, to give anyone that much power over you. I know better. I trust people to look out for themselves, and if that means helping me – they’ll do it.”

The deer was prepared in that time, “Speaking of – you should get on that fire, if you want to eat any of the deer,” otherwise, Finnegrin could find other ways to prepare it. And Willow could starve.

Of course, as he said it, he heard the steps of others approaching – no doubt the return of Aaravos and Lethe. If there was ever an example of how love could ruin people, it was certainly in those two.

 

[cleopat]

Willow felt the anger rising when Finnegrin didn’t back off on his claims. He just didn’t know Drake like she did. He was trying to get under her skin, she had to remind herself.

But when he answered her question of whom he trusted, Willow gave him an almost pitying look. No one, at all? Did someone in his life cause him to have such issues? She knew she shouldn’t care, given his treatment of her, but she couldn’t help but feel some sadness for him.

Willow sighed at the mention of the fire. She wasn’t hungry anymore, and while she wanted to resist the fire out of spite, the others would be hungry, and they needn’t suffer because she was feeling petty. But as she started through the motions of creating a fire, the mysterious starry elf and Lethe made their appearance.


Aaravos led Lethe to where he knew where the others were in his all-encompassing knowledge.

Rather, he could hear them with his keen sense of hearing.

“My apologies, I have yet to formally address everyone since we came here. First, thank you to each of you for helping to free me from my prison.” Aaravos gave Lethe a look. Next, he noticed the sliced up deer meat and the pile of twigs and sticks that was meant to be a fire for cooking. “And I can only imagine that everyone is hungry.” With a wave of his hand, a fire started.

“It’s a shame we had to lose one of our own, as he stubbornly refused the means to save himself.” He still did not know the truth. “Today we seek out to end the miserable life of Sol Regem, which I am confident we can do with one less person here.”