While Haku and Rhaegal were busy talking to each other, Teramon and Tikka stayed at the top of the tower with everyone else. Teramon was recovering much better than his sister, even if she was still quite dazed; Tikka however seemed to have completely forgotten that she was still alive. Teramon couldn't blame her: the amount of information they had received had been… quite a lot… and shocking too. The dragon also glanced at all the other people present; the arachnes were shocked, but from the look in their eyes it was clear they were shocked not at what Akenohustar had said, but at the fact that he had appeared before them; since they revered him as a superior being, it must have been quite a shocking moment. But they didn't seem surprised by what he said, and after all it made no sense that they were: since they had painted frescoes depicting what Akenothustar had told, it was likely that they already knew everything. Isaac, Zamor, Atelas, Efren and Misune on the other hand… well, they were definitely just as shocked as the dragons.
However, Teramon didn't care about them right now: family first, as they used to say. So he went to Tikka and tried to awaken her from her torpor. She had told Rhaegal that she would take care of it, but the truth was that she was a little confused about what to do: she wasn't sure if she could fix herself, let alone someone else! But she had thought it was best to let the boys talk to each other and the girls to talk to girls. So she shook Tikka hard in an attempt to get some reaction. "Sister, are you there?"
Tikka took a moment to answer. When she finally seemed to recover her ability to think, her eyes widened like never before and her body began to shake slightly. "I... I can't... I can't accept... this..."
Teramon looked at her with some empathy. She understood very well how her sister must be feeling at that moment. Knowing that they had been pawns in a game bigger than themselves was… bad, very bad. Teramon was starting to reconsider what they had just heard, reflecting that perhaps there were possibilities of free will in Akenothustar's plan, but even she found it hard to believe. "Now calm down... we just have to..."
"I can't accept it!" Tikka exclaimed standing up breathing deeply as if she was on the edge of hyperventilation. "Sorry, sister, I... I have to go!" and having said that she rushed down the stairs without looking back.
Teramon let out a resentful snort. Despite the situation, she still would have preferred that her sister managed to stay calm and not run away, or at least to walk away with a calm step like Haku had done. That stampede could be problematic as he could run over someone while running without realizing it, and if someone were run over by a dragon weighing over ten tons they would almost certainly die. So she ran after her hoping to stop her, and hoping above all that she hadn't already put too much distance between them. Luckily when she got halfway up the stairs she smelled a familiar scent and checking in a crack she found a dead mouse lying next to Tikka's dimensional bag: apparently, she had changed her avatar to one small enough to hide, she had put the other avatar in the dimensional bag, she had concealed everything and then returned to her real body. Teramon hurried to do the same, also making sure that their avatars were well hidden (much better than his sister who, probably in her haste and upheaval, had done a rather sloppy job), and she returned to her real body as well.
When she opened her eyes again, she was in the cave where she and her siblings lived; next to her were the bodies of Kotaru, Sisna, Malchia and Maldor, and also those of Keita, Corgorin, Serengal and some others that she didn't have time to check who they were. She rushed out of the cave, following Tikka's scent; slightly in the distance she thought she glimpsed Darbi, but she paid no attention. She ran as fast as she could, until she reached the outside of the Thul Oasis, and it was finally there that she found her sister, lying on a sand dune, and to top it off she was lying on her side, not on her stomach as dragons used to lie down, as if while she was running she suddenly let go and fell. She was breathing very hard and her heart was pounding. "Sister, damn it, now calm down!" Teramon exclaimed as she reached her, and to make sure she didn't try to escape again she wrapped her tail around one of her hind legs. "Running isn't going to solve problems! I know, it's a shocking situation, but we have to..."
"I can not do that!" Tikka almost screamed. "I can't accept that... I can't accept this!"
Teramon bit her lip. "Listen, I know it's bad to be told that our lives have been planned by someone. I hate it too. But that doesn't mean we don't have the power to decide! We can still choose what to do with our lives! Akenothustar is reduced to bones and dust for twenty millennia and that coward God of Knowledge has been missing for a long time, they can't decide for us! All the decisions we've made since we were born we made for ourselves! They don't..."
"I don't care about this! I don't give a damn!" Tikka exclaimed, silencing Teramon who hadn't expected that reaction. "Well, I mean... I kinda care, and I really wish that idiotic dragon and that manipulative god were in front of me so I could beat them up... but ultimately, I don't care if our future is written or whatever like that! What scares me... is that so far we have done exactly what Akenothustar wanted! Regardless of whether or not we have free will, we are here now! So it is probable that also in the future we will move on the path that he has plotted, which means that we will really have to fight against the gods and rebuild the civilization of our people... and I can't do that! I don't want to die!"
Teramon raised an eyebrow. Would she understand if her sister was furious, angry, disappointed, or frightened by the revelation that their lives had been manipulated by someone… but instead she was afraid of dying? Why? Akenothustar had never spoken of such a thing... "You can't be sure that you will die. Yes, facing the gods will certainly not be an easy thing, but even if we decide to do it (which is absolutely not guaranteed), we all could very well survive..."
"No, we can't! Don't you understand what Akenothustar meant?" Tikka responded by gnashing her teeth furiously. "He said that each of us will have a role, but strangely he only revealed that of Haku, which is to become the king of all dragons! Why didn't he do the same with us? Why didn't he tell us that we will become generals, strategists, grand chamberlains, maybe ladies in waiting or some other nonsense like that? Why did she only tell Haku what she will become? Isn't that obvious? It's because we won't have a future! Our role will be to die for Akenothustar's cause! Haku... he's important, he'll become king, but we're all expendable! It's obvious!"
Teramon felt a little oppressed by those words. In fact, Tikka didn't seem to be entirely wrong. However, she didn't have to let herself be controlled by despondency and remain lucid. "It's true, it could be like this, but it doesn't mean that it is! We don't know what path Akenothustar had planned for us! And above all, we mustn't follow this path! We protect each other, have you forgotten? Nobody has to die, YOU don't have to die!"
Tikka raised a paw in front of her face. By now he was shaking so badly that some sand was kicking off the ground from the friction. "Even if they were true... even if we don't follow Akenothustar's plan... sooner or later we will have to fight against the gods. For now they have ignored us because they cannot see us thanks to Akenothustar's spell, but sooner or later they will find out our existence. Seventeen dragons living together do not go unnoticed. And who do you think will be the first to die when we fight?"
"What are you...?"
"We are weak, Teramon! Me, you, Kotaru…we are the weakest of the family! We are worthless! In a direct fight against the gods, we will die! And I am the weakest of all… I'll die first..."
"Okay, Tikka, now you're delusional"
"I'm not delusional! It's simple reality!" Tikka screamed putting her head between her paws. "Who was the first to be excluded from meals? Who is the one that is always left behind to guard the prisoners? Who is the one that is chosen for the simpler missions? Who is the one that Darbi wanted to leave behind during the sandstorm, or that he proposed that she participate in this mission because he knew we would be inside avatars and would take no chances? I... I'm weak, Teramon! I can't fight physically like others do, or even just like you do, what you are weak just a little less than me!I could accept it before... I could accept it when our opponents were just newcomers and it was enough to keep a low profile to avoid them... I could accept being the most useless... but now I can't accept it anymore! I can no longer delude myself that the gods will leave us alone forever, because apparently they want our kind to disappear from this world! We'll have to face them... and I won't be able to survive that! And I don't want to die!"
Teramon sighed. She didn't know what to answer. In fact, she wasn't even sure she would be able to answer. After all, now that Tikka had brought the matter to light, she too was starting to think about it.
Teramon knew she was physically weak. She didn't have the powerful muscles of her siblings, or the sharpest claws, or the sharpest teeth, or the fastest tail. She was only a frail dragon not very suitable for hand-to-hand combat; the only reason she could call herself a large predator was because of her size, which far exceeded that of other living creatures. But compared to other dragons she was weak; there was a reason why, when they still lived with their mother, she had been so easily excluded from meals. Teramon couldn't face opponents that instead her siblings could fight on equal terms, at least not with her real body. The only reason she was still alive in that unforgiving world was because her family had stayed with her and supported her. But if a big battle arose in which all her siblings were engaged, chances were she wouldn't be able to survive. Many times in her life she had felt like a burden, something totally useless. And Tikka… she was even weaker and more fragile than her. It was likely that what she felt was similar to what her sister felt, but much worse.
Not knowing what else to do, Teramon put a paw on her sister's shoulder; Tikka gave a slight jump at the touch, and she seemed almost willing to recoil, but then she relaxed a little. "I don't know what the future holds" she admitted. "I don't know if we will follow Akenothustar's plan or if we will go in a completely different direction. I don't know if we will win or lose. I don't know if we will be able to build a utopia for us and all those we care about, or if we will all be brutally slain by the gods. But one thing I know for sure: you won't be the first to die. We'll all survive, or we'll all die: that's our family philosophy. We don't abandon anyone. If you're about to be killed, someone else will grab you and he'll get you to safety, and if he can't then someone else will grab him and he'll grab you, and so on. And even if we all fail together... then we'll all die together. None of us will ever die alone, That's a thing I'm totally sure of. I don't need to predict the future to know that"
Tikka shivered even harder at those words, but she didn't reply. She just kept silent and continued to lie still on the sandy ground, her sister shading her with her body.