Chapter 834: Duty vs. Freedom
"Duty goes both ways, Aleksas."
Berlal didn’t call him ’Old Man’ as she usually did, as she pushed herself up from the ground, actively resisting his Race Command while she spoke.
"We carried that burden longer than anyone else, longer than any dragon ever has. You speak of responsibility like we abandoned it, but you seem to forget that we were the ones who kept the race alive through the darkest ages, when every other Ancient Breed was either too young or too weak to be useful.
And stop pretending the entire race fell apart without us. We may be pillars, but we’re not the only ones. The Dragon Race can endure without us. It’s just a shame their Progenitor doesn’t see it that way."
Aleksas was about to snap back when Barda cut in, his hands moving to block the gap quickly closing between Aleksas and Berlal.
"Did I not say we are NOT playing this blame game right now?!"
Aleksas didn’t even turn to look at him. "This isn’t a blame game, Barda. It’s me pointing out the sheer foolishness of your actions.
Willingly removing yourselves from the Cosmic Stage despite the pivotal roles you play and leaving the future of our race to chance... that is a level of irresponsibility I never expected from you."
Berlal fired back immediately. "How can you call our actions foolish when you know the preparations we made? Foolishness would’ve been leaving without any preparations at all, but that’s not what we did.
We spent decades preparing for our absence, making sure we covered every probable angle, even the possibility of you catching on to what we were doing."
Gervod nodded in agreement, adding, "We’re aware you repeatedly gave up trying to find our location, and wasn’t that only possible because you knew of the contingencies we prepared?"
The tension rose with every word spoken, and watching from a distance was Arthur, quietly taking mental notes as Celestia reappeared beside him.
"Where did you go?"
He asked without looking away from the dragons still arguing, their voices circling around Aleksas’ view of responsibility turning into dependency and his insistence that the Levites’ absence over the past billion years created cracks no safeguards could fill.
Celestia cast a glance at the dragons momentarily before turning back to Arthur in silence.
[I think I went to meet someone.]
"You think?"
Arthur turned to her with a raised eyebrow, his eyes narrowing as he caught sight of something on her neck.
"What’s this? Paint?"
He reached out and touched her skin, but rubbing it only smeared away what was there.
"It’s like some kind of writing. An F? Or maybe an E?"
[!]
Celestia’s eyes widened at his words, and though she had no memory of who she met or what was said, she quickly pieced together who it must have been.
[The person I went to meet did this, I think.]
"You think?"
Arthur picked up on her phrasing, and Celestia silently nodded in confirmation but offered no further explanation.
[It’s a friend I went to see.]
That was all she said.
Before Arthur could press Celestia for more answers, a sudden burst of cosmic energy erupted from the dragons’ direction.
"!"
Arthur instinctively activated his Aspect of Destruction, enveloping himself in its power to block the wave of destructive cosmic energy that swept across the area, turning everything on the beach, from the chair he sat on to several layers of the planet’s crust, into dust.
He snapped his gaze toward the dragons, just in time to see Gervod holding back an enraged Raikis, who was shouting at Aleksas.
"You expect us to stay glued to this cosmic stage and handle every goddamn matter? We’re not fucking slaves, old man!"
As Raikis shouted, Barda immediately reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder.
"Go cool off, Raikis!"
Without waiting for a response, he forcefully expelled Raikis from the Draco Sirus universe, casting Gindry a glance and telepathically telling her to go after him.
Berlal opened her mouth to speak, but Barda, now completely furious, snapped at her instantly.
"Not another word from you either, Berlal.
Aleksas isn’t entirely wrong, and you know it.
We’re deterrents, and our absence, no matter how carefully planned, creates a vacuum. We’ve seen it happen with other races and empires in the past.
Our role isn’t just handling threats, but preventing them from ever arising. However, the ’contingencies’ we set were for damage control, assuming the seeds of threats had already been planted."
Then Barda spun to face Aleksas directly, eyes narrowed as he declared, "But that doesn’t mean I agree with you either!
You talk about responsibility as if it’s a one-way street or some endless prison sentence. We’ve been the Dragon Race’s pillars for over a trillion years! At what point do we get to stop?
We earned the right to step away, to rest, to do something besides constantly worrying about the next catastrophe. We’re not machines with no other purpose.
You act as if the race is useless without us, which is not only far from the case but also undermines everything we’ve done and everyone we’ve mentored to make sure that does NOT happen. If you still think the race can’t stand on its own after all this time, then that’s your failure, not ours."
Somehow, it was Barda, arguably the laziest of the six Levites, who silenced everyone with his words, bluntly stating that neither side was entirely right or wrong.
The Levites had planned, prepared, and ensured things could function without them, even if imperfectly. Aleksas, on the other hand, focused only on the damage caused by their absence, ignoring the work they did to prevent collapse.
Both sides had their truths and their blind spots, making neither perspective completely correct.
Barda wasn’t picking a side but rather laying bare the contradictory truths of the situation: the Levites’ actions had undeniable negative consequences, but Aleksas’s expectation of their unending service was an equally flawed view of duty and freedom.
"Everyone take five! We’ll reconvene tomorrow and go over why the old man finally decided not to give up on searching this time, when we’re all CALMER and can have a CIVIL conversation."
With that, Barda slammed his palms and, ignoring all resistance, teleported everyone to completely different locations, clicking his tongue.
"Tsk...this nonsense is exactly what I was trying to avoid."
Barda’s earlier warning about not playing the ’blame game’ wasn’t him joking around. He was dead serious.
Turning to Arthur, the dragon sighed, running a hand through his hair as he said, "Sorry you had to see that mess, Arthur."
"No biggie. Can’t say that was entirely unexpected," Arthur replied, wiping the dust off his legs with a rag. Seeing it, Barda snapped his fingers and instantly restored the beach to its previous state.
"I say we’ll reconvene tomorrow, but this probably isn’t going to end easily."
"Not unexpected either," Arthur responded, tossing his reformed chair into his subspace before posing a question.
"Can you lift the seal on my Authorities? I want to check out the area for Wyndella’s Trials, and I’d rather NOT be limited."
"Hmm? Oh, right."
Barda reached out, tapped Arthur’s shoulder, and infused a bit of cosmic energy into him.
"It’s only temporary, though. Berlal’s the one with the Master Key."
"I know. I’m just going to scout. Shouldn’t take long."
With that, Arthur activated the Cosmic Teleporter to create a gate, while Barda snapped his fingers and stepped through his own, heading to talk to Aleksas.
Arthur, on the other hand, entered his Cosmic Gate, which led to another region of the Mekiria Galaxy.
