"What is your thoughts, regarding this war?" Karyu asked Sapphira, suddenly. The red scales of his visage attempted to form an inquiring expression, but what actually happened was that his tail curled up at his side in a manner that had the same effect. His face, while more mobile than that of a lizard, did not take comfortably to doing a lot of scrunching about.
Sapphira greeted the question with a confused blink, as if the concept of an opinion had been forgotten to her for awhile. "I was never asked for an opinion," she answered carefully. "I am not sure that we ought to be talking about it, actually." She lifted one gleaming white talon to her cheek in an anxious expression, and the silvery tip of her long tail, an odd contrast on her otherwise pale white body, flicked several times, betraying sudden worry.
Her answer confused Karyu as much as his question had confused her, and he blinked several times with his external set of eyelids and once with the internal ones. "I think that we are talking about different sorts of thoughts," he said impassively, the tip of his own tail flicking as he realized his social error. "I am sorry that I brought forbidden ones to mind. I hope that you will not be punished for them too badly, when you confess them." Dragons knew their thoughts belonged to their riders, and their riders deserved to know them. This was true in even the most freethinking sorts of places, being a part of the bonding that starts when dragons are first hatched. Their thoughts are confessed at the first opportunity, even if it results in their deaths.
"Adam lets me talk about those things," Sapphira replied quickly, showing that Adam was at least as kind toward his dragon as Luke was toward Karyu. "I just had no idea how strict your rider was." She lowered her head unhappily. "I got a friend gelded for making him think the wrong things. I asked him not to confess, but he was bonded too deeply."
Karyu bowed his head apologetically. "I am sorry," he said softly, pausing to let her clear her mind first before continuing. "I meant to ask you more how long you feel it is going to be before there is an end to it. It is unclear to me what the current situation is. It looks optimistic for our side, but if it were that easy, then how is it possible that the war continues?"
Sapphira rolled her eyes. "The problem with heretics is how quickly they multiply their numbers. Not through reproduction, through conversion. The more heretic tribes we burn out, the more previously loyal ones turn to the old ways. Every time we burn one group of heretics out, we find that a previously steady alliance has weakened, and one that has already been weakened for a while begins to defect."
"It sounds like we are on our way to just killing everybody, then," Karyu observed, "yet the only alternative seems to be to allow the cultists to murder anyone that refuses to convert to their own mad cult. That is quite a dilemma."
"I am afraid that this might be Armageddon," Sapphira said softly.