Keshon stood before his father's make-shift desk, Keung at his right shoulder, Kenzou hulking and sulking at his left. The night sweltered in Keigat's tent, the torches adding a particular scent to the air, redolent also with incense. It was nothing compared to their home in Kaarden Desius, but barring peace restored to the city, it was good.

Keigat was more alone in his tent than usual: their uncle Zapal with his dour, pinched face was nowhere to be seen, nor were any servants present. The only face here was unfamiliar: Aigard enough, and wearing Zwarden blacks and reds to boot, but he was the son of some incredibly minor noble that Keshon had not bothered to butter up; moreover, the stranger wore the heavy cape and cap of a dragon-rider. A defector to the Vierken camp, then.

Keshon gave him a cool look, wondering what he and his father had been discussing that required absolute confidence. The rider stared back, level and expressionless, and Keshon wondered again if he had been understimating the dragon keepers. He made a note to change that.

Then his father spoke.

"It is time for Garandezwarden to evolve." Keigat was an older Aigard, his ears heavily pierced with black chains of office, his hair braided and coiled atop his head behind his crown. His face was lined and just about as sour as their uncle's, but he looked hard, unmoveable, impossible to deny. Keshon found that kind of rigid strength admirable, but also brittle in a certain kind of way, and so it was that Keigat's next words provided a crack in Keshon's devotion.

Keigat said, "The Balefire threat is advancing. Year after grueling year, we have fought back, but the city is lost. We are being forced to pick at the edges of our old territory like crows, while Garandevierken breeds and raises dragons to throw at our foes, and Garandeharken makes allies with the Vrejnu to bolster our forces."

Keshon could hear Kenzou shift behind him, saw his father's gaze flicker at his malformed son. He stood a little straighter, guessing at what was coming.

Keigat said, "We are being overtaken, laid low by our inability to show greater strength than even the bleeding hearts of Harken. It is time to draw a stronger hand." He said also, "we have received aid. Tordeg."

The rider stepped forward, giving a deep bow to the brothers. "We have been approached, in secret, by an emissary of a man who calls himself the Shadow Lord. His emissary is a Project from the homelands of the Vella Crean, who has great capabilities with the magic to shape dragons inside the shell."

Keshon said, "how nice for you." He got a warning look from Keigat, but he was his father's favourite, so it was only a look.

"The Shadow Lord is offering us aid. To the house of Zwarden in particular."

"It is time for Garandezwarden to evolve," Keigat repeated. "You will be going with Tordeg, who has been given instructions to take you to an offworld location where many dragon eggs can be procured."

Keung gave a noise of distress, and Keshon couldn't contain himself. "Excuse me?"

Keigat slammed his hand on the table before him, demanding silence. "You will go, and you will procure each an egg, and you will join your mind to that of its contents. You will do this, and you will submit to the Shadow Lord for further collaboration. Do you understand?"

Kenzou was already bowing his horned head. Keung snarled, and Keshon found himself refusing to bow. "You gamble on sullying our minds! Father!"

"My sons are the hope for the House, to end the Balefire threat! Do you understand?"

Keung took to one knee. Keshon, stiff lipped, trembling with rage, dipped his head in a barely appropriate bow.

"You will leave tomorrow night. Speak of this to no one," Keigat proclaimed.

It was over. They knew when they were dismissed.

The trek to the top of the Nidus was difficult, without a dragon to carry them, but the sons of Keigat were too proud to ask, and moreover they had agreed that they needed the privacy.

Kenzou had made it to the ridge first, finding it far easier to traverse the thin trail with his heavily clawed toes. Keung, stumping along on his bad leg, drew up the rear. They didn't speak as they made the ascent. As was so often the case, they didn't need to.

The view of Ryslen from up here, with the rising sun cresting over the ridge they were now sitting at, provided a beautiful, fiery, surreal tableau, and after so many days of drudgery, it was... pleasant.

Sitting together, not so pleasant; but they were working together still, and nobody had sworn a blood feud with the other yet. That counted for something, given their childhoods had been distinctly less friendly.

Kenzou waited until Keung had settled himself before he said, voice gruff. "I think I have an idea of who the Shadow Lord is."

Keshon surprised him with, "I, too, have my suspicions." Kenzou shot him an eerie, ghost-eyed look, and Keshon, annoyed, gave his brother the floor.

Kenzou let the silence linger, a judgement in its own right. Then he relayed what he had heard from the others he'd worked with in the lower caverns about the cloud castle and an Aigard with terrible powers.

Keshon, ever ready to one-up his brothers, said, "whoever he is, he has bonded a beast with four heads and another besides. He sounds like an Arx Lord."

"What is an Arx Lord?" Keung asked. This was all news to him; he had kept himself low in the intervening days, sneaking out when he was alone to practice strikes with his staff where he couldn't be embarrassed for his false leg, doing the lightest chores of the three due to his impairment, and generally keeping to himself. Now he wished he'd been playing the game his brothers had. He instantly felt a stab of terror, being left behind. Instantly felt a wave of disorientation, that they were openly sharing. Was this their lives, now?

"An Arx Lord is the leader of a place like this," Keshon said, airy, like he was discussing the colours of the rising sun on the far wall of the Nidus. "Someone who commands the power of terrible, powerful, dangerous beasts, one who stops at nothing to despoil the lands around him, take everything for himself, and who razes the rest."

The other two thought on that a moment, as Keshon found a rock to gently roll down the slope below them, to watch it pick up speed as it descended.

Keung, recovering first, said, "If he's that, then he sounds like he would be quite valuable in the Balefire fight."

"How do we know he isn't planning on co-opting the House of Zwarden?" Kenzou asked. His tone was begrudging, unsure. Would it be a terrible fate if Garandezwarden was overturned? His father was already up-ending their traditions, and their traditions had never benefitted Kenzou... but a power-hungry Lord was not likely to be much better.

"How do we know he isn't planning to co-opt us?" Keshon asked, more to-the-point. He looked from Keung to Kenzou, for once feeling a solidarity with them that he had... maybe never felt before. He didn't trust them to feel the same way. They might use this bonding to overthrow his position as heir in some way. He would have to be on guard for that... yet everything now was unprecedented, ever since they'd teleported into the cold night air over Ryslen.

"The question," Keung deliberated aloud, "is not whether we procure an egg." He and Kenzou had discussed something like this a few nights ago, but the idea had not been fully formed in his mind until now. "The question is whether we allow whatever is inside them to fall to this Lord. Will it be enough that the brothers of Garandezwarden have changed everything about how we rule?"

"Will we be able to pay Garandezwarden's debts to the Shadow Lord for whatever he plans to do?" Keshon retorted. The other two nodded in agreement that this might be the most important question they needed to ask-- of themselves, of one another. Were they willing to crack and kneel before a foreign influence, even if it could change the tide of the Balefire threat? Was it their only choice?

And who was this Shadow Lord, that he had once hailed from Ford Aigan?

They bent their heads together, prepared to argue for a time over what to do next before they were forced to return to their days. Whether for good or ill, their time spent at Ryslen was already forcing them to work together in ways they'd never imagined.