Peace and its Shadow

Chapter 21: Queens' Discourse

"I believe the first issue we should all debate on is the Jade Mountain Academy casualties as a whole," Moorhen suggested. "One of my subjects had recently died and this wasn't the first death that had occurred during the five years so far Jade Mountain had dealt with."

"Three before this current one in total," Ruby added. "One being another of my subjects." Moonwatcher and Qibli seemed to have more negative looks when this Skywing was mentioned. Peacemaker then remembered back when he and Mink visited Winter, in the weaving there was a Skywing Peacemaker never met or heard about before. It wasn't Peril so Peacemaker guessed that the same Skywing that died was part of the Graduating Jade Winglet.

"But wasn't one of them counted as a self-termination?" Coral wondered.

"They were, but just recently seeing Sludgesnout's death, it might've not been a self-termination, and the killer could've been the same for both," Moonwatcher explained.

"First of all Queen Coral, that still counts as a death happening in Jade Mountain," Thorn called out. "Second of all, does this mean the killer is out there still?" More like around here, Peacemaker commented to himself.

"Could be," Qibli admitted.

"We're assuming that this killer either has something against the academy or..." Starflight informed, trailing off in the end. Peacemaker could see why.

"Or the killer is still in the academy?" Snowfall finished.

"How is this place even allowed to run?" Darkstalker commented. If this was a regular school then probably not but a lot of dragons do believe that this could be an opportunity for peace among tribes. Peacemaker realized despite Darkstalker seemingly being unable to read minds or see the future he had a habit of responding to Darkstalker through his thoughts. But Peacemaker shrugged it off, Darkstalker already knew what he felt and they often thought of the same thing so it didn't matter.

"Is there anything besides it being one of my subjects?" Ruby asked with a reasonable response of a few questionable glares right at her.

"No, unfortunately not," Sunny admitted.

"I'm pretty sure we all should agree that we're going to have to do something about this if these deaths continue at this academy," Moorhen stated.

"Technically the last incident didn't happen at the academy," Qibli commented.

"Thank you for your input Qibli," Thorn sighed.

"Ah, yes, it didn't happen at the academy but last time I checked weren't you one of the dragons tasked with watching the same said Winglet?" Snowfall called out. "What happened to that during the festival?" Qibli hushed up after the comment.

"It's a full-fledged festival with other tribes included, it would be impossible to have constant eye contact with all of them," Thorn defended.

"Speaking about the festival didn't it happen at Possibility in your kingdom which you allowed to invite other tribes?" Coral mentioned.

"Yes, in a way to maintain peace, which is the whole point of the academy too," Thorn explained.

"I don't think getting rid of the academy would be entirely good," Ruby added, visibly glancing at Cliff who was next to Peacemaker. "Even with these deaths there still are a lot of students, even more than what the academy started with. All of them are learning about each other thus dragons could understand each other. In other places allowing all tribes, there had been reports of more connected dragons of different tribes. With more understanding of each other, there is less want for war among tribes. To put it in simple words, fewer dragons die and I'm pretty sure we would all want that regardless of certain grudges."