Accompanying Voldon and Yerbol to Saresh’s office, Aria remained silent for a very large part of the exchange, her dark gaze simply moving between the speaking parties as they exchanged their own concerns. Her shoulders were stiff as she let Saresh run over the plan Voldon had put forward to her, occasionally offering a nod or a quiet murmur of acknowledgement to some of the statements. The plan relied an awful lot on the Xiis being careless enough to take the bait they would set up for them, Aria had to admit that made her very nervous. She tried to keep those feelings to herself but naturally yerbol picked up on them and enquired what was bothering her.
She paused for a moment, chewing her lip as Saresh’s cabinet members filtered past them to gather further back in the war room, behind the main line of turrets which Junoco was busy programming to target hostiles.
Aria faced Yerbol again and forced her lips to form a smile.
I don't think it's safe for you to be fighting while you're hurt. I don't want you to. I'd rather you stayed here with Junoco and the others. But she couldn't tell him that, she knew she couldn't. It wouldn't go down well, she was reasonably certain; would he be upset that she was trying to coddle him? Did he think she hadn't noticed he was struggling for every breath? Instead she fumbled for an excuse, pushing the thought to the back of her mind with a brief twinge of guilt. She hated lying to him.
“I'm just….concerned, is all. There's a lot more of them than us and if this ‘Illesia’ is really that strong....” swallowing the lump in her throat, her hands clenched into fists briefly as she mumbled, a bit quieter. “I don't know how we're going to do it….I wish my dad was here.” he'd know what to do. He ALWAYS knew what to do. At least that wasn't a complete lie either, that made her feel a bit better.
“But we don't have much of a choice, I understand that.” Half heartedly, she took his hand and squeezed it gently. “We have to find a way to do this, between the three of us.” with Voldon to help them, maybe the odds would be better. Looking towards the Battlemaster, she voiced a few more of her concerns regarding their plan as Saresh slipped away to return to her office as discussed.
“I just think we're relying an awful lot on luck. We know Illesia will come for Saresh, but what if she has other Xiis with her, if they don't all stay here trying to get into this war room? If we have to fight a group of them we'll lose any advantage from having surprise on our side, and we're going to need that to beat her. And how will we overpower somebody who can drain other people's power just by touching them?”
Member
Birdboy
Fetzen
mickilennial
Oso
Lurking Krog
swannie
Kaithe Dame
Dion
Dark Cloud
PrinceAlexus