The Aegis Awakens//Xenoblade Chronicles 2

XIV. Lie

The Aegis Awakens

//Chapter Fourteen: Lie//

Watching as both Ethan and Malos walked away from her, Winter felt a strong urge to call her brother back. She stopped herself at the last moment, as she felt an overwhelming amount of guilt flooding her. Malos appeared to not suspect her of anything, and she felt horrible about that. The ice Aegis was not usually one to lie; however, she had made an exception during the final fight with Mythra.

All those years ago, Malos had made a near-fatal error. He had assumed that Mythra would be defeated easily; however, he had not considered the possibility that the blonde Aegis had another Artifice. To be fair to both Winter and him, Mythra had never actually used the particular Artifice against them until the final fight. He had managed to take down Artifice Ophion and sink it into the depths of the Cloud Sea, through the use of his Gargoyles.

Despite that victory, he was overwhelmed by Mythra's Siren. Truthfully, Winter had been frozen as the two other Aegises fought each other in their Sirens. In the end, Malos' core was broken and his Siren had been destroyed. Mythra was supposed to have been destroyed; however, her appearance now clearly proved that was not the case.

Both of them being Aegises, they were technically siblings. Of course, that also meant that Mythra/Pyra were their siblings too. Winter was unsure of just how she felt about that, but she wondered if Malos ever thought about the fact that were siblings. Being Blades, they were not related in the human sense. Rather, they simply shared the Architect as their father.

After all, they had been through together, you would think that Winter could bring herself to actually tell him the whole truth. In actuality, she was too much of a coward to do so. Even Regan did not know the truth and had been told the same lie that Winter had told everyone after the Tornan Titan had perished. She had promised Jin, who had figured out the truth, that she would tell the dark Aegis what really happened.

She had even promised to do as her fellow ice Blade asked. However, she had no plans of keeping that promise. Malos would hate her if he found out, and Regan would definitely have a similar reaction. Malos truly believed that he had caused all that destruction, and his lack of memory for that particular event just made him more inclined to believe whatever she told him.

He would never forgive her.

•°•°•°•°•°•°•

While Rex usually had a tendency to get up fairly early due to his job of salvaging, this was the second morning in a row that he had woken up after everyone else. Nia was standing up and stretching her arms, while Dromarch was hovering close by her side and was doing the same as his Driver.

Azurda, Malos, and Kaevan were talking with each other quietly. Poppi was currently hovering close to Malos, while her Driver was currently joining the conversation between the two Blades and Titan. Both Eva and Regan were nowhere in sight, which made him curious as to what they could possibly be doing.

"Hey, Nia?" The fifteen-year-old asked after he let out a yawn while stretching his arms above his head. Momentarily stopping her stretching, Nia turned towards him. Noting that her ears were pinned back a little on her head, Rex wondered if that was an indicator that she was upset.

"Yeah, wha' is it?"

Rex noticed that the five other present members of their camp had stopped talking, but he ignored them for the moment. "Did you see where Regan and Eva headed off to?" The Gormotti nodded, and her posture relaxed a little.

"Yeah, they headed off tha' way." Looking in the direction Nia was pointing in, Rex gave her a quick thank you before he headed off. It did not take very long for him to locate both Regan and Eva since they had not walked very far away from camp.