CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of genocide, emetophobia trigger, mention of gruesome medical details

“She’s getting worse. Actively. Today she couldn’t stand or even lift her head, much less eat.”

The setting sun shone on lavender scales splotched with white, talons tapping an uneasy, fretful rhythm against the balcony’s edge – engineered without a rail for easy landing and takeoff. Angel Trumpet had come outside after a busy day of work to listen to Moth, the Queen’s most loyal servant, give him a status update on their ruler’s rapidly failing health. The SilkWing was about as stressed as he was, though she showed it much more obviously, unable to hide behind a clinical facade like he’d learned to.

“Was there any blood expelled at all today?” he asked, dipping his stark white talon into void-black ink and preparing to note down Moth’s response on a piece of paper he’d been writing on. He could still vividly remember the blood on his floor from the day of the emergency meeting, despite having long since cleaned it up.

“N-no, but she did throw up this morning,” Moth replied, voice shaky “It was black. Just… pitch black.”

Shit.

Quickly scribbling down what he’d just been told, Angel Trumpet ran through all the clinical knowledge in his mind, brushing through the pages of the extensive medical encyclopedia that was his brain. “That’s bad,” he said, and didn’t elaborate until he realized Moth was looking at him funny. Sighing, he lifted his talon and paused to glance over at the nervous servant, trying to think of a simple way to explain this that wouldn’t immediately send her into further panic. “Black vomit is a sign of severe stomach issues.”

Moth’s antennae twitched – a clear sign that she wasn’t going to let him leave it at that when she obviously knew there was more to it than just that simple explanation. “Severe… how? Like, severe but medicatable? Severe but it’s just another part of her existing problems? Severe but it’ll go away on its own?”

The cautious, broken hope in Moth’s voice made Angel Trumpet’s heart ache, despite his typically apathetic and detached nature. Moth was the kind of dragon who would never wish suffering on anyone, no matter how horrible they were, and he was acutely aware that he had to handle the explanation of what black vomit entailed very, very carefully. She was one of the most sensitive, squeamish dragons he’d ever met, next to Marmoset and Sturgeon.

“It’s… a sign that there’s digested blood in her system,” the LeafWing doctor began, picking his words slowly and gently. “Black vomit happens when there’s internal bleeding in the stomach or intestines, which can happen for a variety of reasons.”

He could see Moth’s eyes widen, her face going a little paler, and did his best not to look at her directly. “But why? Why would her stomach be bleeding?”

“She’s deeply genetically unstable. If I had to guess, something in the way the tribes combined when she was made has weakened her stomach lining, making her more susceptible to bleeding.”

He deliberately neglected to mention that it might be connected to Queen Zero’s recent drop in food intake over the past few weeks. Moth didn’t need to know that the Queen’s own body digesting itself from the inside out was a possibility, and Angel Trumpet sincerely wished he didn’t either. It made his scales crawl.

Moth fell silent, and he wished he hadn’t said anything at all.

“… So she’s dying.”

“She’s been dying for a while, Moth. Since she was born. What she has is chronic, and it’s killing her slowly.”

A sniffle. “And… And we can’t do anything?”

Angel Trumpet felt a flash of anger – not at Moth, but at himself – before tamping it down. I’m not a failure, I’m not a bad doctor, I’m trying my best. I’m just trying my best.

It did nothing to be actually convincing to him, and he knew that the second the Queen was within shouting range of him and well enough to speak, she’d tell him the exact thoughts on his mind. He was supposed to be a genius, the palace doctor, a gifted dragon who had excelled in his study since the day he hatched, an outlier amongst his peers. She’d hired him for a fucking reason, after all. He was one of the best in his field, in the same way that Mercy was an extremely vivid seer, and Karma was an exceptionally creative Animus, and Lightningbug was an unmatched inventor. He was here for the same reason all the others were: talent. Talented performers, chefs, fighters, organizers, speakers. Dragons who the Queen thought had skill.

He was not currently showing that skill, and sometimes he found himself wondering if she wasn’t actually looking for skill, but rather an easy puppet.

Both. Probably both.

“… Do you think she’s going to get more tyrannical now that she’s getting worse?”

The pallid LeafWing sighed, wings sagging as he tilted his head gracefully to the sky. “Oh, absolutely,” he said without hesitation, heaving a tired sigh. The sun was almost completely down now, the stars emerging to freckle the night sky. “Remember when she started censoring the media for a full year because the pain in her bones was flaring up and she was mad?”

“I do, yeah. Tomten spent that whole year trying to convince her otherwise. I just watched.”

“Well, considering her own body is literally rejecting itself, she’s probably going to do something like that, but worse.”

“Like the genocide?”

“Like the genocide and any other awful, unreasonable law she can think of.”

Moth sighed. “I think she’s been considering getting Karma to make the next AllWing egg in the near future. The last queen died at 60, and she’s 30. If she’s supposed to have an heir ready by the time she dies…”

Angel Trumpet didn’t think she even had that long, if he was being completely honest with himself, but he kept his mouth shut so he didn’t worry Moth more. The SilkWing was one of the courtiers who was a little more touchy about the subject of the Queen dying – something about knowing that she’d bear the brunt of it when the situation snowballed towards the end. Conflicted dread, Angel Trumpet assumed. A weird balance between empathy, terror, and the same underlying hatred the rest of the court also held subdued within their chests.

Hatred that ran deep and black inside of Angel Trumpet, but hatred he kept hidden, just like everyone else did.

“Do you think she’s scared, Angel Trumpet?” Moth asked very, very quietly, as though she thought the words might get her smited by a higher power. He’d heard this question before, asked by Vesi in the quiet moments when they comforted one another. It was a frequent inquiry, but one to which his answer always remained the same.

“I don’t think I want to know. The other two were bad, and she’s worse, and that’s all I need to know.”

The SilkWing servant frowned, but Angel Trumpet paid it no mind. He had no doubt the Queen was scared, but he didn’t care to dwell on it. He was a physician, not a therapist, and he didn’t need to guilt himself any further. When Moth didn’t say anything else, he pushed himself to his feet and turned to leave.

I should go note this all down, then go to bed.

On the way off the balcony, the pale dragon had to fold his wings in close to make way for the black shape that slipped past him onto the balcony. From behind him, he could hear the soft exchange of voices.

“Hey sweetheart,” Saturn – the palace librarian – called to Moth. Angel Trumpet could hear talons shuffling as the NightWing settled down in the spot he’d just been in to greet her girlfriend. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Is everything okay?”

For the sake of being polite, he didn’t stick around long to eavesdrop, but Angel Trumpet still found himself listening in as he walked away. Moth was quietly summarizing her conversation with him; black bile, rumored plan for a new egg, fear of even more unreasonable laws… Saturn said a few things, but he really only caught pitying noises. He knew the librarian to be a very sweet dragon, and often spent time in the library himself whenever he needed a textbook he didn’t already own, but they didn’t really talk. Other than their lives being very oriented around books, they had very little in common, and Saturn wasn’t in a position where she would have information on the Queen’s status or get injured often enough to need his frequent attention. In his life, Angel Trumpet found that he had very few dragons he called anything more than a friendly acquaintance, and all of them were either colleagues he spoke to frequently or (in very rare cases) actual friends. In fact, he could count the amount of dragons he considered a definitive friend on one hand. With one finger.

The doctor took a deep breath as he stepped into the familiar space of the infirmary. It was empty tonight, devoid of anyone but himself. Lightningbug had stopped being sick to her stomach sometime in the middle of the previous night, and Marmoset had been cleared to return to their work with instructions to come back if they noticed any signs of infection. Immediately, he yawned, politely covering his mouth with his palm as he did before turning to slip behind the curtain that led to his personal quarters. Compared to the large room of the infirmary, with its numerous beds and shelves and cabinets for containing both dragons and items, his little home was unimpressive, but it was his. 

He brushed past his bookshelf, which stood tall and proud by the doorway, with the books organized by topic – medical at eye level for easy access, other nonfiction on the higher shelves, and his very small collection of fiction and classical literature closer to the floor. The lighting in here was low, designed to be easy on his sensitive eyes with a few controls as a gift from Lightningbug, which she’d given him after he offhandedly mentioned how his albinism affected his sight. She was yet another dragon he rarely ever talked to, but he remembered her fondly for it and had memorized a few of her traits in return. Immediately, he climbed into bed and switched the remote by his bedside off, plunging the room into darkness save for the moonlight that filtered through the window on the other side of the room. Stained glass, depicting the flower for which he’d been named.

As he curled up, he made sure to rest his neck in a comfortable position, then pulled the fur blanket he owned up over himself. Out of all his simple items – nearly all of which were gifts, because he saw no point in buying anything for himself – it was by far his favorite. An item from Vesi, one of way too many blankets she owned and had been giving away all the way back when they’d only just met. Angel Trumpet couldn’t have possibly explained why it was so special to him, simply that it was. She was special to him, too. His closest confidant. His singular explicitly stated friend.

It sounded silly, but he insisted he slept better with it over him, even on warm nights when he shouldn’t need it.

It made the strange, nameless little pang he felt in his chest whenever he looked at her feel more like a soothing glow.

It made him think of her… and on nights like these, that was all he ever wanted to think of. Her. Just her.

… So much for notes.