R’gatMine, you know that what Jarak does is wrong. My children cry.

There was a great feeling of regret that washed over R’gat as he kept the diseased weyrlings in line. This had to be done. It had to be done to Failenth, and it had to be done to the weyrlings. The dragonets could never reach the skies or else the plague would only spread. He worried like any father would about his son, J’ega, as he watched the boy begin to cry, but he would not address his son. He couldn’t bring himself to tell J’ega that he had approved the newly appointed Master Clippers idea seemed efficient, that he had volunteered his own Failenth to be the first taken from the sky though the old gradient bronze was thirteen turns, only two years younger than J’ega himself. If Failenth needed to be denied the skies, R’gat would not let Failenth’s children have to miss the sky like his dragon did.

And oh how Failenth was mourning the loss of flight, seeming for the second time ever too busy mourning. He’d keened for the loss of his golden mate years ago, and now he keened for the debasement of his children he’d been proud of no matter their colors. However, Failenth was loyal to His, and knew the suffering R’gat had endured from the plague as if it were his own. R’gat had lost his only daughter and wife to the disease that made his children look so strange. R’gat was scared of the disease taking J’ega away and for so many of the other human children that he did not think for a moment what would happen to Failenth’s, until he watched with his own eyes the keening gold weyrling.

This was far more vicious than what had happened with Failenth, and surely Jarak, the former journeyman dragonhealer, would know that he was causing Failenth’s offspring so much pain. Why did he act so cold? Jarak had not lost anyone to the disease, had no reason for the coldness in his eyes as far as R’gat was concerned or knew aside from that fact that Jarak could never become a full dragonhealer, was too old now and never Impressed.

R’gat could not watch the man dressed in green sheering away at the new weyrlings, even though something in him told him that every dragonet was feeling pain, and someone had to stop Jarak from treating them like they were horrid. The dragonets were not terrible – they were not bad, and they did not deserve being treated as if they were criminals. They were merely a little infected, a little sick, but R’gat shook his head and reminded himself: a few sick dragonets could mean very sick humans if any of them became carriers for the disease.

The bronzerider couldn’t just let the disease-infected dragonets hit the skies and spread the plague further than it needed to be. Failenth had agreed to be removed from the sky, and Jarak hadn’t hurt him. He’d hurt Failenth emotionally, perhaps, but Failenth had not cried out like his golden daughter was, the blues, and greens, and bronzes of Failenth’s clutch were keening as well, a pitiful sound that echoed in his mind after every time he heard it. He couldn’t stand it!

Finally, he glanced up to watch his son reach the stands. One wing clipped, and his son hit the Master Clipper! R’gat couldn’t believe what he’d seen despite the fact that he knew full well he’d taught his son to respect leadership. It solidified in his brain that something was wrong here. Disease or not, something was wrong with what was happening, and as soon as his son blinked between for the first time ever.

R’gat cried out instantly to the Master Clipper to stop! He couldn’t let any other dragonet’s be harmed. His son was just lost, lost to the cold black of between and probably never to return! R’gat would not lose another child, even if they were not his own. He couldn’t wait any longer, and he ran off in the direction where J’ega had gone between, feeling the air as if he could find his son, J’ega would reappear and R’gat could apologize for the mistake he’d made in letting Jarak dismember, torture innocent dragonets without a word!

The blonde man cried, wiping at his eyes and biting back a scream of rage as his own clipped Failenth came bounding on foot to His, great head instantly sweeping from side to side and wings staying curled back, tied with green cloth so as to hold the green ichor that still stained it. As if the sight wasn’t heart retching enough, the bronze only had worry in his eyes for R’gat.

R’gatMine! What has happened?

R’gat clasped onto the bronze with open arms. The great gradient bronze tried to flare his wings in surprise but only to be met by pain. Wailing suddenly as the sound of another keening dragonet met the dragon’s ears, he waved his great head towards R’gat who suddenly made a plea. Failenth, what is going on is terrible! I must repay this debt I feel towards you, and once I do, let’s go save your children and not speak of the sad past anymore. I know what it’s like to have children die. I didn’t realize the pain they were going to feel, Failenth, I’m so sorry. Your beautiful children surely do not need to feel so much pain. Failing to keep himself stable under the mental constraints of his dragon’s despair and his own, R’gat’s mind began to toy with him, and the image of a knife severing his own flesh was split between the two lifemates as well as a searing flame against green.

Yes, Mine. Do as you must. I will forgive you and do anything for my children! was Failenth’s proud croon, an almost amazing sound of apology to R’gat that seemed to lift him in the air again for just one moment before the bronzerider swiftly began to run for the supplies he ticked off in his head as needing.

Sheer regret tore through R’gat like blades, and Failenth calmed himself and ran suddenly back towards the inner weyr. There were two items on his list of necessity, firestone and a knife if he could manage it in enough time.

Feeling as if the air was disappearing beneath his feet once again, the bronzerider ran with a speed like never before, heart beating in his chest. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He couldn’t see straight, and the ground seemed as if to move beneath him. He felt trapped for a moment, as if mentally he had disappeared between without his Failenth’s aid, choking and cold and lost.

He didn’t seem to comprehend the world around him, but it didn’t take long for a bag of firestone to manifest itself in his hand. He did not grab a knife, but his brain kept producing the thought of the shears, the wretched shears. The shears needed to be destroyed, as well as the symbol of pain that they stood for!

And then it seemed, as if in the same strange misty blank state of his mind that he’d reappeared mystically to be at the side of his gradient bronze again, near golden tail moving back and forth in a calm state of ease unlike his own quickly beating heart.

Failenth nudged at His, knowing full well what the firestone was meant for, the shears, shears, shears, the single word that seemed to be running through both rider and dragon’s minds, cutting at them and taunting them as another dragonet began to cry out.

Mounting Failenth and tossing firestone to the great bronze, Failenth chewed as he barreled forward, sending the assembly line of weyrlings running this way and that to avoid being trampled.

At the front of the line was a green dragonet seeming full grown in size having her wings torn at by the shears, and the rider thrust forward and slammed into the Master Clipper. Failenth dropped his head while Jarak was distracted by the weyrling’s fight, and R’gat dismounted from his bronze’s back to rush forward and grab the green girl only a moment too late to prevent Jarak’s blade from swiping down across the greenrider’s eye.

With a spurt of red blood to match the green ichor, R’gat threw the fighting weyrling girl to the ground, and Jarak seemed to be mistaken for a moment, going to smugly congratulate his former ally on coming to defend him, until the air around him began to wrinkle it seemed and an unnatural wave of warmth slammed into the Master Clipper’s back.

Failenth was attacking him, openly breathing fire without remorse onto the picture of the shears, removing the symbol for the bronzerider. Jarak dropped his shears in surprise, and R’gat instinctively grabbed them. Knife, he’d needed one of those. He swung at the screaming Master’s feet with the open shears once before pulling on the greenrider, saying a simple, “Run, we need to run!”

She struggled against him before she realized that yes, this man was there to save her and the green with slightly long teeth bounded away with Hers, as R’gat moved back for Failenth, mounting him again and urging the dragon to run fast after the grounded green that was not of his clutch, but another born a turn ago.

He followed the full grown green protectively, turning his head only to watch the human burning on the stands and screaming, tearing off his coat. “Between! Now!” Failenth shared an image with the green and waited for her to between before he too followed, landing safely next to her and rearing as R’gat dismounted.

He hadn’t even seemed to notice to strange cold of between, locked too much in the cold he was already feeling, and giving a brief look up at Failenth, held the shears of Jarak in the air. “And now, my debt is to be repaid for what I did to you and them.” It seemed crazy, the thoughts that R’gat suddenly had through his head, but he took the shears in one hand and placed them around his thumb, staring up at the dragon, pleading with Failenth to maim him as R’gat had maimed him. Failenth slammed his great forepaw down upon the handle of the sheer and severed R’gat’s left thumb, feeling his rider’s pain and joy at the same time. Failenth would no longer complain of never having the sky. Rider and dragon were even…

But then there was the girl holding her face which was pouring blood down and staining the back of the green dragon she sat upon seemed stunned a moment by the sudden action of R’gat, an action that in R’gat’s mind made perfect sense. Jarak would be scarred for disfiguring Failenth, and R’gat needed to be scarred as well. His dragon understood his perfectly, but there suddenly was a great pain in the back of his head and he looked up at the girl with his gray-blue eyes.

The greenrider still had one hand over her eye, and he could see the blood spilling between her fingers. There was pain reflected in her eyes, but just as much so there was anger and fear. “We have enough problems without you cutting off your sharding thumb!”

Smiling slightly, R’gat couldn’t feel the pain of his wound, as if it had numbed all on its own as soon as he had severed it. With a simple laugh, he tossed the shears down the cliff face before turning back to the girl who had run with him. “It had to go.” That was all he would say on the issue.

With a slight huff, the greenrider rolled her eyes at him, instantly learning the pain of what she’d just done but only seeming to take the pain she felt and use it in her words to lace them. “Sure, let’s go cutting off all the limbs we need!” She waved her free hand about wildly as if she was striking limbs down with every slash, and R’gat couldn’t help but smile as she chastised him. “Why don’t I just go and cut out my other eye to make myself feel better!?”

She seemed to be taking the fact that she was maimed just as well as he was regardless, and R’gat simply turned his head towards his dragon and ignored her for a moment, staring down the Cliffside and wondering if perhaps anyone else would find those horrid shears. He could only hope that someone would see the chaos of the day and refuse to allow the Master Clipper to further his supposed duties to High Reaches. What Jarak was doing was wrong, surely someone would know it, and if not, R’gat vowed that he needed to do something about it.

He returned to his feet and looked back to the greenrider, finding that she’d torn off a piece of cloth from her shirt and when the turned, she grabbed his hand, wrapping the cloth around it tightly. “You’re so going to feel that in the morning,” the young girl said with an obviously irritated quality to her voice. She seemed as if straining herself, and R’gat wondered why. He deserved to be yelled at if she felt the need, though he thought that he needed to cover her wound as he did hers, and he pulled back his hand before she could tie the cloth tight enough, tore a piece of his own shirt slightly, and moved her hand to press it up against her eye.

He tried to smile at her, but he couldn’t. “We can’t be us anymore, what do old limbs matter then?” he said before realizing that they would both need new identities even though he did not know her name. “We can’t be who we used to be anymore. We’ll need new names and histories, new lives. Change our own pasts. Word travels too fast otherwise, especially on something like what I just did…”

And the greenrider, scowling as she was, was quick to snap at the man who seemed irrational and organized at the same time, “And what would you suggest, then?”

R’gat tried to calm the girl by offering her a shadow of a smile as he held the rag gently to her face, a cataract infected eye echoing her bleeding one in a way as if to solidify that they two were also sharing a fate almost as strong as the dragons bonded to them. But R’gat was off in another world, thinking of the past he’d left behind. He’d have to go back to High Reaches to get things, he’d want some of his son’s items, some clothes, and he mentally made a note that he’d want to keep things from the past. Some of his past was all he had of people, who had gotten close to him, and all those deceased scrolled through his mind as he began to speak again, gently rubbing the only thumb he had left to sooth her cheek. “Our new names should be something simple. My grandfather’s name was Beles. I suppose I could take his name and be B’les from now on. I’d at least recognize the name. Perhaps we should all pick names we could recognize as having some sort of affiliation with us to remember what we are called?”

This earned a fierce looking grin from the greenrider who seemed to understand completely what he’d meant. “B’les for you, then, and perhaps our dragons as well should claim a new name. Waramunth shall become … Wrath, and I shall become Syn. I would not mind them knowing our names as that…” She went to look at her dragon, now Wrath, who seemed deeply worried for Hers. Failenth, while they were speaking, had been half listening to His, and half crying to comfort the frightened green.

Failenth puffed out his chest to her, proud of the fact that there was a renaming going on, a new chance a happiness for him and His as well as the green and rider who knew he would be spending many turns with instinctively now. Then if you shall be Wrath, I shall shorten my name as well. How does Faith sound?

Green Wrath matched the big bronze’s prideful stance as she stood next to Hers and His. Wrath and Faith! We shall strike fear in the hearts of them all, you and I together with Ours! The green began to hiss and growl as if she were scaring away a second Master Clipper, and Faith instantly became endeared to the green who despite not being his daughter, he had saved just as if she were.

Rumbling, happy suddenly as if renaming itself had removed the disability of his wings, the bronze crooned to the hissing Wrath. I only wish to strike fear into the hearts of cruelty, dearest Wrath, but let them fear our very names for daring to take dragonkind from the sky!

Reborn B’les and Syn took the same pride their dragon’s felt. Yes, cruelty would feel the heat of revenge through Wrath and Faith alike.