Karyu lowered his head like a beaten dog, knowing that nothing could ever bring back those shattered lives. It was done, and he could not take it back.
Luka approached him and tried to take Karyu’s demonic paws in her hands, but Karyu pulled them just out of reach.
“I am contaminated,” Karyu said.
“But it is my job to bear it,” Luka pleaded. “You are my mount. I am responsible for what you do. Let these be my sins to bear.”
“It is also your job to punish me,” Karyu reminded her, “or if you must, to destroy me. I was a bad dragon. I went off after the crystal alone, and...”
“None of us could have known it could be this dangerous,” Luka pointed out.
“Any of them would have been foolish for us to face alone,” Karyu said. “Any one of us could have been consumed. Anija could have lit herself on fire in self-sacrifice, to create a mass miracle. It would not have stopped the cultists for long, just delayed the death of everything we know for a while. Vrackie might have grown roots and turned herself into a tree, keeping a spell of isolation on the island until her bark rotted, and just maybe the descendants of the islanders would have emerged, in time, to repopulate a post-apocalyptic world. I might have succeeded in purging the cultists with fire, but then, what kind of broken and disillusioned world would have been left? I did something alone that should never have been done alone, Luka.”
Luka clutched her fists desperately, wanting so much to fix this for her dragon. She felt very much that this was her own responsibility. Karyu had done what he was supposed to, as her mount: he had asked her for permission. She had given it.
At this point, the other dragons in the Crew and their riders gathered around. Vaestro was the first to speak. “I have just dispatched letters to several key people. One is a wine merchant that happens to be the secret confidant and adviser of an important senator, and once the merchant knows the situation, he will start leaning on his friend to demand a diplomatic mission to try to sooth over tensions. Another is the...” from here, he explained to the Crew how he had used his network to start smoothing things over. Besides himself, the Crew were the only ears that ever heard the details of Vaestro’s secrets.
Avelia added, “I am going to have Vrackie disguise us humans and transform all three of you to look like ordinary horses,” Avelia said, “and that includes Anija. Her offspring will be protected. There will be people seeking revenge, thousands of them, and we will have to spend a while living incognito. To the public, we must be declared dead.”
Anija looked very tired. “So many broken minds, now. I have been out healing as many as I can, but there are many more. In spite of the fact that these people will be hunting us for the rest of our lives, it is our duty to use our powers to restore hope to this broken land. For every life that has been destroyed, it is our duty to spend a lifetime protecting and healing.”
Vrackie added, “just note, my friends, that whenever we are in our disguised state, we will only have a fraction of our potential power. To transform back into our true forms, we will need to invoke a minor spell to lift the disguise, which will be necessary anytime that we must fight for our lives.”
Luka finally managed to take Karyu’s trembling forepaws in her hands. “So you are not alone, Karyu,” Luka assured her dragon. “We will face the future, together, as heroes in disguise. We have a lot more left to do.”
The dragons are all horses now.