"You wanted to see why you were hidden..." Arimathras had lost her wings, deliberately so, as they approached the shore. She had always tried to avoid these places based on the tales she had been told be Destati. The ferocity of those that he faced was something she didn't want to be acknowledge, and yet it seemed that with this set of cubs she had been forced to confront it. There had been growing resentment for their isolation and the longer they had been on their own, the more they expressed their discontent. Thus in a testament to her own maturing nature she had finally told them the truth and the results had not been what she had expected. No sooner had she finished her tale than they had opened their mouths and requested to see it with their own eyes.
They had wanted to see the horrors of war, they had wanted to observe it and come to terms with it on their own and while a fragment of her suspected this was because they didn't believe her it might also have been the fact that it was so outlandish.
Consequently the lioness had led them from the desert and across the savannah until they had reached the now abandoned shores of the Maestros. Her son and his 'army' had worked tirelessly to rid this region of the Scourge and yet they had done nothing to clean it up after. They hadn't laid anything to rest as they simply hadn't had the time. This location was therefore the perfect place to take her children so that they could be exposed to the very thing she had protected them from in a safer environment. They could examine it at their own pace and finally come to terms with it.
These were all baby steps of course, even she knew that now it was time to bring them home. It was time for them to be reunited with their family and she with her mate, but before she let that reunion happen, she needed to make sure they were prepared for everything. This was the beginning of the tale and as they progressed across the sands she would tell them more, right up to and including the moment their own older brother had chosen to betray them.
...It was Epimetheus who had set the scourge upon them after all.
They were to be the sacrifice, a message in regards to freedom and while this was still hard for her to digest she had slowly come to terms with it. The world of the Al Siq was particularly nuanced and complex and it had been this society that had pushed her son to extremes. She couldn't fault him entirely for it, but she did need to find a way to fix it. Well, this was on the assumption that Destati hadn't executed him; suffice to say that her mate had never been one for familial bonds when they were that dangerous but after she had fled with the cubs she hadn't had an eye upon the land or the current state of its politics.
Hell, she didn't even know if the Scourge she'd struck down had survived his fall!
"Ok," she came to a halt as she motioned to the cove and smiled. This was where the pirates had once lived, so full of life and anarchy that they'd been both loved and hated depending on who was asked. To this day it seemed that no one was sure of what had happened to them, but they had left most (if not all) of their things behind. "You wished to see what it is your homeland faces, a war that has been fought for generations," she lifted her paw to motion towards the pristine sands before turning to Ymir and Thymr. "This is where you will find your answers - hidden in the depths of the cove and the twisting caverns that once made this place a home," she pursed her lips.
"It has not been cleansed, not truly. These spirits have yet to be truly laid to rest and as such you will be able to see everything that was done to them," she tilted her head to the side and sighed. "And smell it," she warned before taking a seat. She had no desire to see it herself, the descriptions had been enough for her, but she would encourage her children to do as they desired on this occasion.
It was with this final remark that both Ymir and Thrymr took their leave and moved off towards the inner regions of the cove. Unsurprisingly, neither brother or sister seemed inclined to split apart at this particular point in time. They might have been opinionated but the blue lion and hte pink lioness weren't completely foolish. Their mother had hidden them for a reason and as ridiculous as the story had seemed to both, the fact that her story hadn't changed hadn't been lost on either of them.
"Where first?" Ymir asked hesitantly and took a deep breath as she regarded the various caves.
"I'm not sure," Thrymr admitted and closed his eyes briefly before raising his paw to point blindly towards one of the entrances. "We might as well search them all," he added as he began to move towards one. Unsurprisingly as they entered the shadowy complex the heat from outside dissipated to be replaced by a much cooler air. It would have been refreshing if it hadn't been for the peculiar, stagnant smell that seemed to be seeping from beyond their line of sight.
"What in the..." Ymir murmured as she wrinkled her nose and squinted into the depths.
"I think this may be what we were meant to see," Thrymr mused as he pressed on down the corridor, scrunching his own nose up a touch as he drew nearer. Fortunately for them, the fresh smells had long gone, and only the remnants lingered, there was every chance that both lions would have wretched if they had been forced to face reality while it had been fresh.
"Oh... my gods," Ymir had been the first see it, well something and Thrymr had soon caught sight of it after.
"It's real..." Thrymr pressed his lips into a thin line as his gaze hardened. A ritual site, now out of use for some time, but the evidence remained. As his mother had said, no one had made an effort to lay these spirits to rest and the process in which they had been killed was still clear on the now hardened carcasses on the floor.
"So this is what we were meant to become..."
"It would seem so," Thrymr took a step back to glance in to another room, his lips still pursed into a thin line. Ymir remained for now, if only to process what lay before her.
Neither was ready to take the next step that Arimathras had hoped they would make, but perhaps when they were, they would do what all others hadn't had the time to...
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