Wings of Evolution (WoF AU)

Chapter 4

Wings of earth and dragon blood

Clay was oh, so tired of fighting. The endless battles against everyone, the broken souls that repeatedly picked up their weapons just to fight once more. For most of his life, he'd been on the opposite side, siblings beside him filled with times that were almost good against the bloodshed. In that place, he could protect them.

But that was nothing compared to fighting for the right side. He watched his aunt speculatively as she in turn watched the battlefield. Her demeanor was as worn as his own, all of her siblings were dead, a tragedy that Clay had never had to deal with but had struggled not to imagine. He wasn't sure what to do now that he was free. Especially since everyone else was still stuck beneath the eye of Orca as Soulseer commanded them to fight.

Asha looked back at Clay finally, "so, what do you think the enemy will do next?"

He looked back over the tired battlefield and shook his head, "retreat. Tell the troops they won because they gained a few feet of land. Rotate the troops so the less tired ones are patrolling with the front lines on reserves." he looked back at Asha, "they'll be vulnerable for a few hours, but they trust that the enemy is just as tired."

She nodded. "I'm surprised you're still up here, not trying to get them out of there already."

Clay watched the retreat with a pained expression. "I want to. But it would take a while to find them... and..."

"And you're not ready." Asha finished.

Clay nodded. He still couldn't fly right after the last battle, his left wing was still bound up at his side by doctors' orders. Plus he wasn't sure if he was mentally ready. What if they'd lost one while he'd been unconscious? What if it was because Clay hadn't been there. He shivered at that and forced himself to turn around. Asha read the tension in his gait and gently led him away.

"It's alright, there'll be more chances. Just rest up for them and we'll get them out."

It was a mess to get anyone out of the control of Orca's eye. Realistically, Clay knew this, but he still wanted to run down there and pull everyone out of the retreating battle lines. Sora, Reed, Marsh... Pheasant, Umber, Crane...

"Yeah..." Clay said eventually, leaving the cliff above the battle with his aunt. He wasn't sure what he thought of Asha, just that she was the one who'd freed him. She'd tried getting everyone, but the eye was stronger than Asha had expected and it had taken all of the antidote she'd brought just to free himself from its influences. But it was still sort of there, at the back of his mind at all times, a constant buzzing trying to tell him what to do. It wasn't nearly as bad as what everyone else must be going through.

Asha probably would have flown back to base 4 on a normal day, but today, Clay was with her, so together they walked through the border of rainforest and swampland, carefully avoiding Soulseer's scouts and rounding the hills toward the hidden base where most of the secret operations in the area took place.

Including the development of a particular plant found mostly on the islands of the kingdom of the sea. Considered a weed by most, the greentop was Queen Orca's least favorite plant, and so everyone said that subconsciously, it became the weakness of her spells. The truth was that Orca was cursed, but that was a secret the resistance tried not to spread, in case Orca herself learned it.

Clay wasn't the first to be freed from the eye, and he refused to be the last.