Legend of Ransera

With Asallon seated calmly nearby, Gui-Mao nestled in her lap, and her brother and other bondmates relatively calm in her mind and heart, she was able to focus on the dragonborn's reading.

The kinetics added a flourish of showmanship that she appreciated with a quiet smile, contemplating her words about time. Neither woman truly understood the depth of that, she thought. If she survived, she might, watching years turn into decades, centuries, even millennia. She imagined that Naori saw the plight of the Kathar as a personal affront given what She had done for the Synnekar, but did She understand time as mortals did? Could She truly empathize with such finite beings?

Sacrifice, she thought. She nodded, eyes rising to meet Freya's. "Theirs, and likely mine." But she would not sacrifice Kaus, nor her Silver Wings. The quest was hers, and the Kathar needed to see their chains for what they were. She needed to show them, not tell them.

Kala smiled at the Dragon. So much time was passing and her mastery of the draconic language was so slow, but Freya's words carried greater weight for her study. Draconic was to language much as she imagined archmagic was to what sorcerers cast in these younger days. Truth. Meaning. There was so much to meditate upon.

"I suppose," she mused softly, taking this starry-eyed dragonborn into her confidence, "I must show them Truth, and offer them an alternative paradigm to that which they know. Surely there are some who are already disaffected. They can be rescued. Others will remain blissfully ignorant of a better way, and those I must reach in a better way. Still others may be aware of their chains and choose to remain that way... and I... must respect their free will, while never taking back my hand, always offering them that other path.

"Thank you, Freya, for your wisdom. And the cards' wisdom." She smiled again; some, it was said, came directly from Aileor, but it still required the cartomancer to translate.

Kala watched Freya sort her cards and put them away, pearlescent nails scratching Gui-Mao like a cat. Like a cat, the spirit purred. In the brief lull, she let her awareness reach out to entangle with Kaus' and, to a lesser extent, with Ceran's and Indric's. Their minds were electrified, on high alert, but there was no fear or rage. Kaus was the calmest of the three, and she knew his soul the most intimately. All the same, she wished she could be out there with them.

Then again, she would not have had the opportunity to meet Freya, nor the celestial spirits that felt such a kinship with her. Freya was dragonborn, it seemed, a blending of species. So too was Kala, between bird and human, or Avialae and human--perhaps when she unlocked the secrets of the grimoire she would have a more nuanced understanding of herself. But then, she was also a blend of mortal and immortal, becoming something new.

"With great power comes great responsibility," she said, quoting some philosopher or another. Her smile was wry, but not unhappy. It was an honor to be elevated, to be deemed worthy, and she had grown up with the understanding that her privileges came with duties.

"I don't suppose you speak the draconic idiom?" she asked. It was worth a shot.