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Sionnach (closed)

If Dani made any sound when she was caught, Fiona couldn't hear it over the wind. Above, Vostan was the one to dive down and check on Dani's fallen partner, Amistad, but he soon rose back up into the sky and followed Fiona, leaving Amistad drifting, still and lifeless. There would be no recovering his body til the battle was done, and only if they were victorious. As one of the longest-aligned Riders who had personally been responsible for helping Sam overcome his crippling fear of heights, it would be a hard blow for everyone to see Danica lose her partner. Amistad himself was instrumental in training the younger dragons how to interpret signals and how to cover their Riders properly.
 
As soon as they made it over land again, close to the camps where they were stationed, Fiona signaled to Invah to set them all down. If Dani needed medical attention, she would get it quickly. Seeing Vostan following them signaled to Fiona that there was nothing to do for the great dragon that had been with them all since the beginning.
 
Invah touched down carefully and let Fiona down, still holding Dani carefully as the woman seemed to be coming to. Vostan landed close by, and it seemed he'd recovered Amistad's saddle bags as he offloaded them from his own dragon's back.

Dani slowly sat up in Invah's arms, clutching at her scales as the world spun and blood trickled from a cut above her left brow from when she'd struck her head falling from Amistad's back and trying to unhook her harness. There was a broken arrow shaft in her hip, rendering her unable to stand even as she tried to pull away from Invah. Invah caught her as she fell, holding her still. "Ami," Dani murmured, gazing around in a haze for her partner. "Amistad!" She called, once more clutching at Invah's scales as if she couldn't see properly.
 
“Dani, it’s alright.” Fiona said, reaching her fellow rider. “You’re alright.”

Taking the other woman by the shoulders, she looked her in the eyes and told her the news that she never thought she would have to. “Amistad is gone. You’re done in this fight.”
 
Dani finally seemed to focus on Fiona for a moment before her knees gave out and she collapsed against Invah. "He... he can't... He's five-hundred years old... He's survived centuries of war... He was my mother's partner..." All of those thoughts raced through her hazy mind. Guilt, sorrow, panic, and a feeling of being untethered and lost hit her all at once. "Where is he?" She looked to Fiona, then to Vostan in panic. "He'll be okay, we just have to bring him to shore. He's made it through worse-" She then saw one of Amistad's scales in Vostan's hands. It was common among Riders to take one final scale if their partner fell, similar to how warriors might bring a fallen brother's shield or weapon to remember them by.

"I am sorry," Vostan murmured in his heavy Russian accent, offering the scale out, partly wrapped in a shred of cloth. Dani's shaking hands reached out slowly to take the scale, and she hugged it tightly to her chest, crumbling entirely as silent sobs painfully wracked her body. Being that Amistad was larger than most of the other dragons, recovering his body would be difficult even if they did secure the channel, so the scale was all Dani could count on having of him.
 
Fiona bowed her head towards Dani and then turned towards Incan, looking up at her dragon with a cold realization in her head. “Call the riders in. We need to regroup.” Fiona said, giving the signal for retreat.
 
Invah nodded and let Fiona and Vostan look after Dani while she returned to the cliff ledge and, with a practiced signal they'd developed in training, gathered green branches up in a pile to light and send a smoke signal alongside three skyward bursts of blue flame. Those who saw it would pass the message along.

Dani was completely inconsolable, though her tears and sobs were mostly silent as she sat on her knees, head bowed as she clutched Amistad's last scale. Vostan quietly secured her gear to his saddle. He'd take her back to the camp. If she still insisted on helping, she could be of use there. With her husband among the Riders, she most likely wouldn't leave willingly.

Slowly but surely, Riders who weren't locked into battle or supporting an ally came to Invah's signal and landed, bringing reports of the fallen. It was mostly the younger, more green Riders and dragons that had died or been grounded. Among the more experienced, it was reported that Khunbish, Shana's brother-in-law, had been killed along with his dragon when they were forced into the water and fired upon by cannons. There was hardly anything left of them to recover from the gruesome scene, but Khulan, Khunbish's twin, returned with a scale, and with Khunbish's helmet still stained with blood. She silently stood aside with her remaining sisters, all of them looking like they'd seen the very face of Hell recovering remains of their brother and his partner.
 
“We will honor the lost when we have the chance. Now, however, isn’t that time.” Fiona said to the families that had gathered. “As cold and heartless as that sounds, we have work to do. Reports to make. Gear and dragons to tend t.”
 
"You are right," Khulan was the first to speak up despite the loss of her brother. "Grief is for the defeated. We will celebrate their lives and sacrifices and feast in their honor soon. But not now. There are still some fighting who couldn't get away, and we must reinforce them and our brethren on the ground."

All of the Riders silently nodded, looking to Fiona for her command.
 
Fiona was quiet for a long moment, her head bowed as she thought over her next words. “I am instituting a bounty for any Imperial rider flipped to our side. We will pay you handsomely for those that you bring to our side. They...have two callers and have put a price upon my head. We simply won’t let that happen.”
 
"I think I speak for most of us who have been with you a while, when I say that you don't need to pay us beyond what the King has already allotted. This is the job we chose," Ezra spoke up, many of the longer-aligned Riders nodding in agreement. "I can't speak for everyone- we all have our own goals. But you have given us all the freedom to leave if we choose, that alone deserves repayment, where normal soldiers would be charged with desertion."
 
Fiona gave a nod to the riders as they declined the offer of more money. It was honorable, but she knew as a former thief that sometimes the only thing that spoke to people was the offer and allure of riches. She dismissed the riders back to their duties before she returned to the war tent to work on her own things.

At the board where Sam planned, she had added the name of their riders and their dragons. Sitting down in Sam's chair, she started the task of removing those that were injured in their service or those that were dead. The list was short, mercifully, but it was still painful to take off those that she had trained or trained with for the past few months.
 
Also in the tent were a few scribes compiling reports and casualty lists, and they left Fiona alone for the most part. Eventually, however, she overheard a name she recognized among the count.

"... Add Gabriel Ghis to a separate list," one scribe murmured in disappointment. "The king will want to know what happened."
 
Fiona felt her heart squeeze painfully at the news that Gabriel had been added to a list of the wounded or dead. Glancing to the others that were working, she worked up the courage to ask about Sam's cousin.

"Dead or wounded?" She murmured, knowing Sam would take the news especially hard.
 
The two scribes looked up, brows stitched with sympathy, and one answered softly, "Dead, lost with one of the ships." He brought the report over to her, a torn piece of parchment that was still damp, scrawled with the ship name Kjalgar and a list of its entire crew and soldiers, all of the dead and lost marked with an X. The bodies couldn't be recovered thanks to the warzone, and would likely be long sunk or fed on by marine life before anyone could get to them. Only a few seemed to have survived, including whoever brought the list.

"I'm sorry for your family's loss, Your Majesty," the scribe murmured. "We're keeping an eye out for names related to the leaders of the allied factions... I'm afraid Gabriel isn't the only one."
 
She knew Durban and Marri would be rocked by the news that their eldest son had been killed. She wondered if Seamus knew yet that his brother was gone, but she didn't have time to dwell on that as he mention that Gabriel wasn't the only one.

"Who else?" Fiona asked, steeling herself for the news.
 
The scribe picked up the list to show her. There were a few names she didn't know, but were related to Monomakh or the Triad or other clans. But three names stood out as those she knew. Cole Danforth, Valentina's adopted brother and one of Inverness' finest generals, was marked as having been killed by black powder. "General Cole was on an Axeman task force," the scribe murmured. "They were to scuttle an Imperial flagship. They succeeded and most of the unit returned... but the General died igniting the flagship's powder magazine when he couldn't escape in time."

The next name, she came across just as the scribe finished speaking, was Naiya Corel, killed in action when her ship was boarded by Imperials. "Lady Naiya's body has been secured. It will be burned and the ashes sent home, as per her own will," the scribe explained.
 
The news that Naiya had been killed had Fiona springing into action. She pushed past the two men, hurrying to find Sam before someone else told him the news that his sister in law was gone.
 
It was drawing to dusk as Fiona went searching and eventually spotted Gaiann from afar just as he landed near the main camp. She reached them as Sam dismounted, already taking and delivering reports and shelling out new orders based on what he heard. Seeing Fiona rushing toward him, Sam pushed the scouts and scribes aside to clear the way. "Fiona?" He called, and caught her as she came up. "What's wrong? What happened?" He felt a hint of panic at seeing her come running to find him, thinking something had fallen apart.
 
Fiona slowed as she got near Sam, his hands holding her by the shoulders as she caught her breath. He look absolutely terrified and she suddenly lost her nerve, but she knew that the words needed to come from her.

"Cole and Gabriel are gone." She said softly, taking in a deep breath to tell him the rest. "And Naiya...Sam, I'm so sorry."
 
Sam's breath caught in his throat, and even though he was staring down at Fiona, it was as if he could no longer see her as his mind tried to grasp the very concept that he'd lost his cousin, his uncle, and his twin's mate all at once.

"Sir...?" A scout asked quietly as the entire group went silent for a long moment.

"I... I need a few minutes," Sam muttered. "Stay on course fer now... I'll be back soon " He took Fiona's hand, slowly stepping away with her toward their personal camping area.
 
Fiona let Sam pull her away, towards their personal tent. Once they were safely inside, she let out a long sigh and tried to process the fact that Naiya was now gone.

"I think the family needs to hear this news from you, not some nameless messenger." Fiona said softly, knowing it was a big task for Sam to undertake. "And we need to remember the promise that we made Naiya. Loren is our responsibility as much as he is Rho's now."
 
"We're going t' lose Dover," Sam murmured softly after a long silence, sitting on the edge of the cot staring at the mat beneath his feet. "We've lost a quarter of our ships in jus' one day. Half o' the Imperial warships have been stopped or sunk by the dragons, but they couldn't stop all the fire ships an' cannons, and there's some elite Rider task force on Barbarossa's side that's been hitting some of our western camps and killing the reserves meant for night watch." He looked up to Fiona then, the stress clear in his gaze. "I already knew about Cole... his mission took out the Imperial Grand Admiral, sitting close to Calais where he thought he was safe. We've got maybe a day that the Imperial navy'll be in disarray with no frontrunning commander, before a new one's placed. We have t'make tonight an' tomorrow count... but we don' have th' force necessary t'get rid of all those cannons."
 
“You don’t know that, Sam. You don’t know what the future holds for any of this.” Fiona said as he lamented on the loss of Dover. “The tide might turn tomorrow.”

She was quiet for a long moment, looking down at the rug beneath their tent. “When we’re you going to tell me that Barbarossa has a bounty on my head?”
 
"It wasn't anything new. We're monarchs, Fiona. Everyone south of Normandy has a bounty on our heads... But Barbarossa wants you alive." He sighed, reaching out to pull her closer. "I didn't want to weigh anythin' else on you... It's nothin' we can protect against anymore than we've already got in place, short o' makin' you take a guardian with you when you fly."
 
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