Daydreams And Nightshade (DaN #1)

Chapter 65: Together

It was a sibling staring contest, but Luna wouldn't budge. Just because Noah seemingly had the upper hand with his argument that yes, sacrificing their father's mental health and possibly life to get the mara down was too cruel, it didn't mean Luna's argument of it being the only option was wrong.

Did it?

"For how long are we gonna try out other methods then?" She gestured up at the hole in the ceiling. "We're just, what? Gonna let it send down mini-mara after mini-mara until we're scared enough for it to come down? We'll all be too scared to do anything by then and—And Father's not gonna be any safer."

"As if he doesn't have enough to deal with," Noah insisted, pointing at Lucius. "You realize he'll have to live with all this, or—Rather, relive all of it and have to process it again?"

"He said he was fine with most of the things! And I keep saying, he's gonna have to deal with it regardless if that mara comes down!"

Noah looked at her with a dead expression.

"And what if the mara gets us then? What if we can't stop it anyway? At least he'd die peacefully."

"You—" Luna gawked. "You can't possibly think like that! The mara's not gonna just chomp us to death for nothing. Even if—Even if we die he's gonna wake up and have yet another traumatic experience to deal with and then the mara will get him as well!"

"I don't know..." Livia joined in, a bit awkwardly as if feeling like she didn't have much authority when it came to the twins' father. "I mean... With Noah's abilities we could fight the smaller maras off for a bit longer, right? Maybe we can learn more about them and figure out something else? Something that doesn't involve human sacrifices?"

"But we're not going to sacrifice him!" Luna's eyes pointed skywards as Noah held up a hand towards Livia in agreement. "We're going to get out of here alive! All of us!"

"I say we sacrifice him," Zamora then joined in, followed by Gabriel.

"Death is not the worst thing one could experience."

"And you would know?" Luna shook her head but turned to Noah. "See? The majority—"

"They're not part of the group," Noah said and Luna arched her eyebrows at the cold interruption.

"I—" Alexei grimaced. "I do want Lucius to be safe, but... Luna's right. It's our best option."

Noah sucked in a breath as if he wanted to scold all of them, and Luna sort of wished he would because it'd be a sight to see, but perhaps not at the moment.

"Hy—Hypothetically," he then said, closing his eyes in brief resignation. "Say we'd go along with your plan... How do you suggest we pull it off? By the time it's close enough for me to touch it'll be a matter of seconds before it gets to Father. It could split the entire building apart and still be inches from his face. Luna, it's huge."

"So—" Luna looked around and up at the broken ceiling again. "So, uh... You'll just have to climb. Up on the roof, and—And as soon as you've pulled it through to our plane we'll bombard it with everything we got to, I don't know, kill it? Hopefully forcing it to go away?"

Noah blinked, and then drew yet another deep breath.

"Perhaps you didn't notice my limp just now, and you clearly have higher expectations of my agility than you should in the first place. I don't know what the place looks like, so I don't know where any stairs would be located aside from the ones in this room, and it would take a long time to reach the roof even if I was lucky."

"But—"

"And what if it doesn't work?" Noah paused, eyebrows knitted above worried eyes. "What if I pull it in here and—And it won't go away, even if we hurt it? Like Livia says as long as I'm around we can... You know, somewhat deal with the mini-maras, at least for a bit longer, but as soon as the large mara is in our plane it can actually physically hurt us."