"I know," he told her, once the embrace was done and Vaela spoke her words, "I went to Krona to see for myself that Aroesus was dead. The palace is crumbling and his servants are fading away." Sileon was not one to soften the blow or the imagery, nor did he quite understand why the next bit of news would be upsetting, "Krona will be gone soon. It's already cracking asunder."

"If Mysia seeks to rule, she has a strange way of saying so," Sileon replied -- others would be wry, he was calm as he commented. Vaela was taken to fits of emotion, but Sileon was much like Ventu in that he was more elemental, simple and straightforward. Aroesus was the one that wrought man, not Sileon, though it was he that inadvertently made the gift of fire without realizing what he bestowed upon mortals. It was a fable the children heard from their priests, how the fire god was a good brother, and so should they all be good siblings to their children. The priests, of course, never saw the pantheons at play -- there was a different dimension of sibling rivalry here, with the stakes so high, but the ideal and the reality clashed in Hevas as it did on Lymaeus, though with far greater stakes than one might realize. It didn't occur to Sileon that he was being sounded out here.

"She said that she would not wish to sit on that throne, for fear that it would make her like Aroesus." He told her, "But she did mention that her children had the right of rule." He seemed to shrug that part off, especially as he pondered the request, to prolong the pantheon, to present it already built to some heir, to be anointed without striving, to have without making, to inherit rather than earn. It was the same choice Ventu gave to him and he gave his answer then as now.

"Pantheons have come and gone before us, between the rule of Father and our brother," Sileon told her, for he had been part of those eras of strife, when new kings rose and were crowned, until the rule of Krona stood, "and there will be another Pantheon. But this one is ended. There is a natural cycle, you know. Things to be born, to flourish..." 

It was the sort of talk that came out of Svanus before he died-- he killed himself to give birth to a daughter, rather than make his brothers come and kill him for his rebellions. Svanus and Sileon were utterly different in that one was a creator and the other a destroyer, with Aroesus as the balancer, and yet it seemed the two brothers least like each other found common ground; both were cryptic, neither thought in the same straight lines as the other. It was the talk that drove Ventu to rage, for he'd never appreciated the creations or their disruption of his perfect order.

"And to die. It must burn to be born anew." It was something Ventu always said, and if Sileon was less of a burner than the First King, taught a semblance of balance in his associations with his siblings, he still understood that sooner or later, things must burn. 

Vaela had her answer, though it was probably not one to her liking. And Sileon turned to watch the battle below.