The Price of Feathers

stallmate

Angelica looked at her sister. Her eyes were wide and bright purple with her mouth slightly ajar as she starred at Raven. The blonde twin didn't look much dissimilar because she'd never heard Raven speak like that. It wasn't like the sweet, sad girl she knew. The Raven she knew was soft and wounded and lit up when ever you paid attention to her. This one was cold, guarded and looked at them like they were monsters. This was not going to work. For a second, she contemplated going to her father and having him reset everything just so that she could try again with a more pliable Raven.

Amara caught the thought as it entered her sister's mind and she spun towards her sister and stiffened her posture.

"Don't even think of it," she growled.

This caused the rest of the room to look at them more intently. Even Raven's face warped from one of sheer disgust to one of confusion and curiosity. She was not going to stand by while her sister restarted this hell scape. They needed to end this now!

"I think all of us here are pissed of to some degree, right?" Angelica said while running her hand through her waist length silver blonde hair. She looked at the various faces of her teammates and former teammates. She didn't want to have this be an issue but if she could convince them that they will just a blip for long enough to restart this, then that would just be dandy.

"Let's all agree that we want to go home and see those we love. I know you're scared right now but everything that Raven said is true," she said. She turned to smile at the woman she loved.

Amara clenched her jaw and glared at her sister. She was mucking all of this up and she actually seemed to enjoy it. This was not the strategy she had in mind. She wanted to ease them in to it and get them on her side with the idea of escaping the game for once and for all.

"everything she said is true. You've been here for a literal century and you're going to be here for a few centuries to come but that's the boring part. Let's focus on the fun side. This is a playground... albeit one that stands outside of the real of normal reality but alas it's a playground all the same. That means that we can redesign it in any which way we want to make it the best fucking experience of our many lifetimes," She was almost evangelical as she spoke, her arms swinging slightly as she danced about the room, taking the time to speak to each of the people in the compact room one at a time.

Raven snarled her mouth, but she didn't speak a single word. She was in disbelief because she couldn't comprehend that a single person in that room would want to stay here.

Angelica finally stood in front of her and stared directly into her eyes as she spoke. The taller girl had to look slightly down at Raven due to their height difference. She smiled down at Raven like she was the most precious thing in the universe but that was precisely the problem. To Angelica, and her equally narcistic sister, she was just a thing. They might value her, but she'd always be an object for them to covert and admire but not a person for them to respect.

"Why would we want to stay here, stupid girl?" Dagne spat at the leader of the light.

Angelica smirked at turned away from her love and towards the blonde Russian dragoness beside Raven. She took a few steps towards her and lifted her hand to place with her thick blonde locks while starring at her.

"Why are you so eager to go home, little firecracker? Eager to see the sister that you burnt alive?" she asked with a cold and menacing twinkle in her cold purple eyes. Dagne shifted under her star and fought be the tears at the back of her eyes. She didn't want to think about her oldest sister and how much it broke her to leave that cabin. She didn't want to be back in that forest, but Angelica was right. Her deal with Artemis would bring her back to her sister and the rest of her family. She'd be back and was never going to enter that forsaken cabin. Then her sister wouldn't have gone looking for her and entered the ablaze cabin trying to rescue her. Her family would be whole. That's what she wanted more than anything in this world so having Angelica taunt her with it was especially triggering and she had to work extra hard to fight back the flame eager to pour out of her.

"Well, sorry to break it to you but if you break the game in order to go back. You won't wake up anywhere close to your family. You might just make it back to the cabin in the woods, but you'll be about... I don't know... a hundred years too late to reunite with your family," Angelica chuckled. Raven lost and pushed the blonde-haired angel away from her friend. She turned Dagne's head towards her.

"Don't listen to her... Dags. She's just lying to break us," she said to her best friend, but she didn't believe her own words as she spoke them.

Her heart was cracking at the thought that she missed her chance to reunite with her won long lost love. The mind link she made with Amara flooded her mind with memories that she didn't recognise at first that meant that finally tapped into the part of Amara's mind that contained the reels from her own past lives. She did hate the memories but slowly the devastation seeped in because she felt betrayed. She didn't want to hate them, but they used her. She felt dirty and sick about how they ping ponged her around like a toy they were decided to share.

She couldn't see the full picture of how they got to become so close, but she could see snippets of how their relationship progressed over the years. She saw flickers of time she spent with Amara and Lydia. Never together but each other them made her laugh, cry and scream in variations moments across time. But none of that mattered because in none of her snippets of memories could she see a second of honesty from either of them.

"Dagne please don't listen to her. We're going to get back to our people okay. You're going to see your family!" Raven said.

The South African orphan felt a fire in her belly that made her feel like she could do anything. After all she didn't have much to lose. She turned to Leech, and she said, "You're going to see your brother! He's going to be so proud of you!" Then she turned on her heels and spoke to Silver, "You're so strong and your brothers are going to recognise how much value you can bring to your pack!"

The last person she turned to was Aphrodite. She recalled what the Zimbabwean beauty told her about her past and the atrocities she endured at the hands of people that should have protected her most fiercely. Raven grabbed her hands and looked directly into her eyes before she spoke, "Please don't give up. You're the strongest of all of us and you finally got your freedom to show the world what you have to offer. I know what it's like to feel worthless and alone in the world. Well you're not alone anymore. You're going to go back home whether in your time or not and you're going to live. You're going to live and smile and enjoy life in a way you were never allowed to as a girl but," she turned back to the rest of the room before finishing, "If we want to get out of here we need to stand together and stop them from keeping us trapped in this fucking game." She glared at Amara and Angelica, who was clenching her jaw.

"You still don't get it, Ray," Amara sighed and walked towards her roommate. Her usual stoic resolve was gone. She wasn't the larger-than-life authoritative figure that the team was usual. She just looked sad and small and like she was ready to get on her knees and plea for her life. "You are all. We are all trapped here. I want us to leave. My sister is right, but I made a deal with my father and he will let all of us our of this if we play the game one last time. If we do that, we get to leave. We all get to go home," she finished her words while staring the woman loved while a single tear dripped from her eye and down her cheek.