“Did you kill her?” Aquilan asked. His voice was ragged with emotion. “And my father? Did you kill him, too?”
Vex’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “You never did like small talk.”
“Did they go against you? Did they not want to honor the bargain they made?” Aquilan asked. “Is that why you killed them when they came to you?”
That would make sense. His parents could have gone to try and convince Vex to give up his rights to Aquilan. To let the bargain go. And if Vex had not agreed, his parents might have… acted. And lost…
Vex tilted his head to the side. “So you admit that I would have been in my rights to kill them for doing that?”
“I admit nothing! Tell me! Did you… did you kill them?” Aquilan demanded.
He was trembling. His hand tightened on Glorandal. It glowed brighter.
Vex glanced down at it and pursed his lips. But he made no move to protect himself or attack Aquilan. “Would it make you feel better to believe that I killed them?”
“Would it… no! I want the truth!”
Vex put up a hand much like he had with Aquilan’s mother. “Do not be so hasty. You do not know the alternative to it being me.”
“What… what alternative?” Aquilan stared. “They were coming to find you. To negotiate a peace or… something. Probably to save me and you… you would not negotiate so they must have… must have…”
“Your memory, my old friend, is not something to be trusted,” Vex said almost sadly. He rubbed the fingers of his right hand together and magic ignited there. A virulent green. “I’m afraid that’s partially my doing.”
Aquilan’s eyes flickered between the green flames and Vex’s red eyes. “You took my memories of my time as Ailduin not as–”
“Sometimes they bleed together,” Vex grimaced. “Sometimes one cannot be taken without the other.”
“You’re saying that I… I don’t remember things correctly from my past? Or at all?” Aquilan was rapidly blinking.
“What I know is that memories are not all they're cracked up to be,” Vex laughed softly. Sadly. “It’s strange, you know, I came here to find out the truth too. And now I’m beginning to realize that the old adage applies to me as well.”
Vex extinguished the green flames. He crossed his arms behind his back at the wrists and walked a little around the plinth. He grimaced as the webbing, looking very displeased as if the webbing was a personal affront.
“They’ve killed some of my lichen,” Vex tutted. “That is so hard to replace!”
Aquilan thought of the Sunstone that he had considered using down here not so long ago. That would have fried the lichen.
“Your lichen is the least of what the Leviathan have killed,” Aquilan answered tightly. “They decimated humanity. But I think you must know that though you did nothing to stop it.”
“Ah, yes, but you were their great savior, were you not?” Vex flashed him a toothy smile. “Arriving on a white horse. Using the power of the Sun to obliterate the Leviathan by the tens of thousands. Who needed me when they had you?”
“I had no choice,” Aquilan answered, feeling suddenly uneasy by having his war against the Leviathan be described that way. As if it was a slaughter and not something he had reluctantly done. “They would not leave. They insisted on continuing their butchery of humanity. So I… ended them instead.”
Vex paused in his perusal of the web and lifted an eyebrow. “So bloodthirsty! You almost sound like–”
“Ailduin?”
“No, no, like… me.” Vex flashed him another smile.
Aquilan blinked. “I was protecting the innocent.”
“And growing your Empire!” He wagged a finger at Ailduin. “And perhaps… assuaging your conscience.”
Aquilan swallowed. Vex must know of the Kindreth he killed. Had Vex sent them? That seemed unlikely. “Is there nothing you do not know?”
To his surprise, Vex’s teasing aspect fell away for a moment and he looked a little lost. “I thought I knew it all. But Rahven… he is quite cross with me.”
“Rahven?” Aquilan frowned in confusion, but then he realized who that was, “Declan. You mean Declan.”
