Chapter 189: 187: The Revolutionaries

\[Lyra\]

She glowed like a thousand falling stars when she lept after her mate, wrapping him in her arms.

Our sister. Stella.

It is a shame we may need to kill her.

Because she doesn't remember who she is, or who she can be, she is more of a danger to us than a savior. And there is no way that she can truly remember herself if she's mated to that Terran. She doesn't know what it means to be a sun dragon under Terran rule if she can love one of them.

"Tis not her fault, Sister," Cosima advises. "Remember how Vega was when we found her, wandering the streets, believing she was human? She also had no idea what it meant to burn like the sun while trapped, chained to the Earth. Her mind had blocked the pain."

"But she is his mate," I gasp in disgust. "She chose the Terran Prince over her own lineage. She may not be salvageable."

"Hate the sin, not the sinner," Vega speaks up. "She knows not what she does."

We didn't know our sisters had survived until our mother visited us in dreams. Cosima and I grew up together. Our eggs had been stolen from the colonizers who had harvested them from our mother's nest. That desperate soldier sold them to some pirates, who in turn planned to sell them back to the empire for a hefty fee.

But something happened. Something amazing.

We hatched before making it to the Northern Continent. Our time must have been close when they took us away. The sailors wandered into the southern boundaries of the Moon Kingdom, Elfholm.

When the Elf King saw us, he knew exactly who we were and where we came from. "You look so much like your father," he cried when he saw us for the first time. "I'm your uncle, Thalan. I will keep you safe."

He raised us on the surface with other moon dragon children. Our blood isn't pure enough to live below the surface, but we grew up knowing who we are. Our uncle made sure of it.

And also our mother.

Thalan made sure we learned to dream walk as soon as we could shift. He needed us to help find our mother and father, he had told us "Your connection to them is what we need" and so he trained us like he would any of his Scientist-Priests.

We never could connect to our father. Whenever we tried, we came against a wall of purest night. "He's trapped in a nightmare," our uncle surmised from our description. "He may be lost forever."

I cried for days after he told us that. Our father, who we had heard so many wonderful things about, may never know me or my sister. He may die thinking that like his mate we were also lost.

Finding our mother was easier. As soon as we tried to reach her mind, she came to us, eager and glad for the connection. From our mother, Jana,  we learned about the horrors of the facilities.

And vowed to destroy them all.

So we joined the Stellar Rebellion.

But they never went far enough. They only wanted to find the facilities and rescue our people. They didn't want us to destroy anything and "draw attention to ourselves." They also didn't want us taking down the empire from within.

It was a start, but it didn't go far enough.

After Skyfell, our rebellion was compromised by Tritus the Traitor. The organization fell to pieces.

But from the ashes, the Solar Rebellion was formed. As newly freed dragons and terrified humans fled their miserable existence, our numbers blossomed.

That's how we found our sister Vega. She stumbled into our path with a bunch of humans escaping Terran cruelty. She had been used in the worst possible ways by both humans and dragons alike who loved that she never spoke and always survived the torture, no matter how great.

Soon after we found her, she gained her voice and found her claws. She got her revenge on the slaver who sold her off like warm meat at a market.

But our eldest sister, Stella, remained a mystery.

Until we saw her at the All Kingdom Faire. When we saw her arrive, I knew exactly who she was, even before our uncle confirmed our guesses. She was so alike us in her appearance and the way she moves through the world, it was like looking in a mirror.

But she is also so different in so many very important ways. Powerful ways. She is no ordinary sun dragon, she is something far more powerful and unique.

These differences, this power, are the reasons why our uncle wanted us to meet her and to see her in person.

"You'll need her for the rebellion," the Elf King insisted, despite my protests that her relation to the Terran Prince and her mixed-race babies make her too much of a risk.

"She'll never leave them," we insisted. "She might as well be a Terran."

"And yet, she is not ruling by his side," he points out. "She is in the celestial kingdom. We may still have a chance to bring her in," he observed that she was amenable to his desire for an alliance and that she seemed loyal to protecting the Celestial court.

"If you want to set things right and destroy Terran's rule, you will need her, not just because she is your queen, but because she is his."

That night we devised a plan. Incapacitate the prince, snatch our sister, and burn it all down.

But Stella interfered. We underestimated her devotion to the father of her hatchlings.

When we slit his throat, she risked everything to save him. It didn't matter to her that he had lost his mind and was seen cavorting with the Terran Queen, Stella wouldn't let him go.

By the time Thalan was brought to her by the Celestial Queen Ona, Stella was already trapped in a dreamscape.

"Breaking them apart could damage her mind," he warned us. "We need to wait for the dream to run its course."

"I'll let you know when the time is right. I will call you to Elfholm and you can fetch her yourselves," Uncle Thalan promised. "Until then, stay the path. Reestablish the Solar Kingdom. Soon you will have your Queen and the Terran Rule will end."

So we went back to our work. Now that the starstone is showing its ill effects across the continent, Queen Eleanor is plagued with complaints. If she doesn't do something soon, she'll have another rebellion on her hands.

Not to mention the daily work of the Solar Rebellion.

We continued to gather our people, the ones liberated when the facilities fell during the rage of Prince Primus and the chaos that followed. But when he freed them in his fury, he didn't do many of them any real favor. They were all so lost. The ones who had been confined as adults were mostly well, if scared and a bit mentally unstable, but the ones captured as children lacked many skills and often the ability to shift.  The worst, however, were the children bred in the facilities. They didn't know how to be dragons at all. They didn't know how to live at all without assistance. Many of them died taking their first real breaths.

In just two seasons we have managed to rehabilitate about 40% of them.

Our rebellion rose from those survivors. As we traveled from west to east and east to west, our numbers grew. The Luxandran nation has many sins to atone for across several continents. Combined with what remained of the Stellar Rebellion, we are a force numbering in the thousands that spans our entire world.

One can now say that the sun never sets on the Solar Rebellion.

My tablet is ringing. I answer. Everything is finally in place. The signal is clear.

"Vega, Cosima," call my sisters to me. "Ready yourself. It's time we reclaim our sister."