YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
There is an ominous warning sparkling in Aela's blue eyes.
She doesn't need further reminding about the years she spent trapped in Taiga. Aela would push herself as far as she could from that place and what Reave touches upon is a tender subject with the empath. Her brother shows her an image of a felled tree where the roots burrow themselves into the ground and then the tree itself arises again like a phoenix. The trees might always come back but his golden sister doesn't mind filling his mind with images of her own: trees fallen by storms that rot and decompose into the ground until they are nothing. Trees that suffer from diseases that leave their branches bare until they finally fall. A painful, agonizing existence as they continue to die off - limb by limb.
"Loess has been rather easy," Aela confides to Reave after the memories fade between them. "A new ruler in one territory. Notorious rumors about the other." Those are all angles that are easily manipulated and for the palomino - who has the emotions of others so close in her reach - it is not a hard feat; it is not a challenge like Aela truly wants.
Tephra could be the one she seeks and as her mind blazes with Skandar, she thinks that targeting the Western kingdom could be a fitting one.
The coy smile returns, even though this is Reave. "I want chaos," she tells her bone-armored brother. She takes another step towards the Nerinian leader and Aela attempts to share with him all the ways that they could accomplish that. If he wants to go after Hyaline, she wouldn't stop him. But the pack that resides there was well-guarded by entities as well as her half-brother, Gale. A strike there would have to be strategically planned, despite the way that she assumed they both wished for pandemonioum.
"Give me time and we might be able to achieve an army," and Aela believes that this might be something for the Pampas. She had whispered to Obscene about stealing the best and brightest from several of the kingdoms; an indentured period in their fighting force was another angle that she hadn't even considered. The golden-striped mare hadn't wanted alliances - not the ones other than between herself and Obscene and Reave and Skandar - but there was an opportunity if they could convince Hyaline to align them.
Or at the very least, look the other way.
"My half-brother has odd tastes," Aela murmurs, and wonders what the brindled stallion might think of what she is entertaining. Her blue eyes sparkle menacingly, "what if we were to help expand his palate?"
It's a rather delightful thought, the realization that those who don't fall in line with their plans might be fed to Gale.
@Reave