Burnt gunpowder and Petrichor sweet

4. Project Eternal, part 1

The funniest part is that Nico actually gets incredibly close to what actually happened, and is derailed for the same reason the 'plan' didn't work.

To be read side-by-side BRnSG, Chapter 14: "Non/Paladins"

4. Project Eternal, part 1

The first news about the new force in the battlefield finds Esevrian in the midst of mourning.

It's their own damned fault, Nico knows, for sending unprepared soldiers and even civilians on nothing but the words of the Oracle.

Nico's long since become disenchanted with the promise of heroism, because it had cost him a sister.

It had also gained him another, but his love for Hazel cannot undo his grief over Bianca.

He's not alone in his resentment, countless others stand at Mourner's Hollow and lament what was taken from them. most, if not all of them, would agree with him.

A figure breaks through the sacred space, runs over graves and memorials, crazed and desperate.

They collapse on the earth before the two slabs Nico has planted in lieu of tombs. And looks up at him with haunted eyes.

"Ghost riders, on feral drakes" is all they say.

It's enough to make Nico sick.

Because it was one thing to believe it, to consider it as the only explanation for the resurfacing of his other bond.

But it's another to know it as truth.

And it'd be one thing if it'd been just that one instance.

But it isn't.

And when it happens, Nico is pulled away from the front-lines.

Because they don't want Nico to kill Festus' thief.

Don't want a war to break.

Without the advance on the Galra to distract him, Nico uses his time to research.

Digging in the darkness.

Sneaking through shadows.

Nico learns.

More and more.

The picture forms.

Terrible, and unavoidable, and ruined.

Voltron.

Nico has never been one for prophecies, despite and because of what they mean in Esevrian.

But he reads on the paladin of fire and knows Leo didn't meet his end by accident.

It was orchestrated.

Fate is not something to be trifled with.

But either the Alteans didn't know.

Or they didn't care.

Pidge doesn't know which would be worse.

They'd known, even before Admiral Valdez had invited them into the spiral library, about Voltron.

And the connection it had to the Galra.

Dragon corpses left to rot without care.

Festering and turning vile.

And slowly consuming everything within their reach.

That much the people know.

What they ignore is that those corpses were left there for a reason.

That they were drained of their quintessence to create something.

A weapon.

But what became of the rest soon started spreading.

Reaching out and seeking to be whole once more.

The prophecy said that Voltron would end the Galra, and that much was true.

It was also true that as long as Voltron existed, so would the Galra.

And the Alteans would never let Voltron go willingly.

Fate, however, does not bend on will alone.

It called for the end of Voltron just as it called for the end of the Galra.

And prophecies couldn't be changed, not really.

One could alter everything that leads to their completion, and in doing so would only be setting them up for fulfillment.

A universal law, recited by every single Esevrian in the room.

Then proven further by seeing the paladin of water.

Lance looks so different under Voltron's influence, both him and his drake.

At the same time, he looks disarmingly the same as the last time Pidge saw him.

They've been kept apart, time and time again.

They're only now realizing it wasn't just coincidence.

Not the three of them being taken by three different wing groups.

Not the lack of intertwining of their schedules.

All of it part of the plan to keep a tight grip on Voltron.

To try and use it without losing it.