It's not suicide, or not meant to be. He tries, really tries to fly. There is enough space down the ravine, down the unfathomable aether-filled abyss, for him to open his wings and flap them and hope to catch a current, a magical current even, to take flight.

He might have succeeded, even, were it not for a single dragoon jumping down like an arrow, lance pointing directly at him and through his wings. A well-aimed rip of the fleshy membrane is all the Azure Dragoon needs to make sure this particular dragon will never see light of day anymore, and another jump from him up towards the ravine walls and then further back up to where the battle had been happening only moments prior is what ensures she'll stay alive. She does not need flight to stay alive; the dragon does, and she robs him of it, and so he does not live for much longer.

There is an absence of sound. Maybe they expected something, maybe the mortals and the dragons were holding their breaths for a final thud as the gigantic body hit the ground. But the sound never comes; that same abyss that stretches down far enough for the ground to be invisible through the aether-infused mist swallows all that comes to it, even sound itself, and leaves naught to tell its story.

But the Dravanians know, anyway. They can feel when one more of their siblings has left the Song forever, and if there is no final thud there is still the cry of retreat and the noises of hundreds of pairs of wings hastening away from the city.

And while some people still try to launch a few last hopeful shots, take down one or two more foes, the overwhelming rest has only one emotion: overjoyed relief. They cheer, they clap, they bang their swords against their shields and their lances against the ground, and soon the sound of the retreating dragons is more than drowned out by the hurrahs of victory from the Ishgardians.

The most intense and potentially catastrophic siege of the city-state by the dragons in centuries has been survived, and with much fewer casualties than there could have been. They even managed to substantially thin out the numbers of the Horde.

There is substantial cause for celebration.

See, lancer, that's how a proper dragoon does things. Get in when there's an opening, hit hard, and then get out before you get hurt. This is a dumb thing to be thinking about at a time like this, she's going to stop, everyone was young and dumb and inexperienced once.

Any cheers or sounds she makes are muffled by her silencing charm. So if she whispers a soft prayer to the fallen dragon, a regretful end to a long song that could have maybe gone on if it things had been different, well. No one will know, will they? She looks over the edge towards where the dragon fell, cleaning the gore off her (too small) blade. To everyone in the world she can just be another dragonslayer, verifying a kill, or maybe awed by the Azure Dragoon's competence.

("May your voice be fondly remembered in the Chorus forevermore by those that loved you. May your brothers and sisters choose something more meaningful than another pointless refrain for vengeance in your name. May this be the beginning of the end, so we can all be free, and your end not be in vain.")

And then it's on to the living. She sheathes her sword and immediately gets to triage. Healing has never been her strong suit, and there are more competent healers than she, but she can find and stabilize anyone that needs it. Cheering and celebration is for when there isn't anymore work to do, and in her experience, that is 'never.' It's a mercy that Dravanians don't tend to leave their wounded behind. Knowing each other's minds, they are quicker to support each other, and quicker still to cover each other's retreat. It's one of the many things that makes fighting them so damned annoying. And it also means that she doesn't have to be confronted with the wounded of the other side and get the chance to maybe choose something heretical.

Amongst the more competent healers than she is the Warrior of Light himself, multitasking with his fairy-shaped aether construct. Magical healing mostly involves enhancing the body's own regeneration and, in the case of Otohiko's specialisation, creating temporary aetherial barriers so that the wounds can have the chance to regenerate in peace without being assaulted during battle. The latter skill is less useful when the battle is over, but still not no useful; there are pathogens that cause infection that he can also keep out. The nature of magical healing does mean that there are things beyond it; lost limbs cannot grow back, scars will still exist, more severe wounds and trauma will still need rest and time for a full recovery.

But now that the dragons are gone, there is time for this one Ishgardian knight to point at Cynric and cry, "HERETIC!"

He doesn't realize it's for him, at first. His first thought is Oh Halone what the fuck did she do, because obviously Vethrione did something, she is in the habit of doing things, it's kind of what makes her famous. He looks around in confusion, because he thought she wasn't anywhere near him. Then realization hits. Wait, he's the one that did something? What did he even do??

"... I'm sorry, what?" he says, dumbly.

Of course a cry of 'heretic' is one of the most likely things to draw the attention of Ishgardians, so several others are now looking in their direction.

"He sabotaged the cannons to make them explode!" the knight continues.

        "—he did it on purpose?" asks another knight. "I saw him but—"

    "It's true!" cries a third knight. "It happened more than once, it cannot be a coincidence!"

Wait, that is what gets him in trouble? That? That was probably the most useful thing he did in this entire fight!

"After using them as long as I could. The cannons were about to be overrun," he says, and for some reason he's more offended than terrified. "So yes, I detonated the last of their charge rather than letting it be wasted? Did you not see the damage it did, by the Fury, I even made the big one stagger!"

"What a convenient excuse," says the first one, and, wait, that armour, is that the same one that nearly got caught in the blast? "And if the blast happened to catch some of us unawares and send us flying down the ravine it would be just fine for your Dravanian masters, would it not?"

"... And no one was caught in the blast? I stuck away from everyone so if I blew myself up, it'd just be me? Admittedly I was a bit clumsy with it the first time, and it only occurred to me as something to do before it was taken. I think you almost got caught in it? And, mate, for that I am well and truly sorry, I owe you a beer, I can be a bit of a dumbass, but. Not a heretic."

Not for that reason, anyway.

Vanya has, by this point, noticed the commotion. She heard the cries of 'Heretic,' but was studiously pretending to have no idea what was going on in favor of doing things that are definitely not heretical. It didn't seem to be aimed at her, so it wasn't really her problem, was it? If the fanatics want to pointlessly rip each other apart calling each other heretics after having risked their lives to fight dragons, well. That's on them.

Except now she has noticed who it is aimed at.

She... doesn't know what to do, actually. With her heart in her throat, she watches and tries to figure out how to help. The problem is, she's less well known and trustworthy than Cynric. Maybe she could write a clever argument, but who's going to bother to wait for her to write a long essay on why they're being stupid? And can she actually make an argument without coming off with her usual aggressively heretical rhetoric? A bad defense would be worse than none at all, and if anyone demands she take her helmet off, they are well and truly fucked.

But the Warrior of Light notices her noticing it and blinks when he realises what's going on. He walks over there and while he's not as attention-grabbing (to an Ishgardian at least) as cries of heretics, he's still a six-something tall lizard man.

"What's going on?" he asks in a barely-not-authoritative voice.

    "This man tried to blow us all up with the cannons!" says Knight #3.

"...did he."

"Did you not hear what I just said! It was either use the rest of the cannons' charge before it fell, or let it fall and be wasted. If we had more cannoneers, I could see your argument if we managed to retake the embankment, but our major problem was that we had too many cannons and not enough people to fire them. So I'd rather blow one up to stagger the big one than let it go unused while good men die to preserve fancy equipment."

"Oh! I saw you doing that. That was very good, stopped the beastie for a good almost ten seconds there, it was very useful."

    "Of course you'd say that," spits Knight #1 shrilly. "Just another heretic!"

...okaaaaay now Knights #2 and #3 are starting to look rather uncertain. Otohiko himself is just staring, though, looking entirely dumbfounded.

    Knight #1 presses on. "These outsiders will let anyone in, and none of you are godly Halone-fearing knights! And, and who would be wearing so little in this cold but someone who befriends dragons! You've even the scales and tail!"

"... Mate," says Cynric, feeling deeply uncomfortable with this blatant racism and much more inclined to defend someone else over himself. "He's the Warrior of Light. Scion of the Seventh Dawn, helped make the last Umbral Age a minor hiccup instead of hundreds of years of doom and gloom and whatnot. If you want to drag me off to the Inquisitors, fine," well, not fine, distinctly not fine, that would be quite a bad time, "but. Pointing fingers at a guy who helped organize a defense for a country that isn't even his just for his clothes is, uh." Racist? It's racist. "... Daft."

(Of course he'd defend someone else with more competence than he defends himself. That is a very Cynric thing to do. Ugh. She wants to smack him.

It's probably fine, though, the Warrior of Light seems to be handling things. She's even more glad she didn't kill him while she was high on aether and dead saints, along with all of those other reasons like 'it would have been wrong' and 'her goal had only been to stall for time anyway.')

"Haven't you heard of glamours?" is the first thing Otohiko manages to sigh resignedly to that, because he's been around Ishgardians and he knows that they mostly haven't and it took him forever to understand why they were always so uncomfortable around him. He's even glamoured more clothes than the last time he was around Coerthas!

Knight #1 clearly... did not realise that man was the Warrior of Light, and is taking a few seconds to recover his stride.

A few seconds that give the Azure Dragoon time to arrive and say, with no preamble, "What is the excuse you are going to use to accuse me of being a heretic?"

    "...m-ma'am?" Clearly he does recognise her, what Ishgardian doesn't?

"You see, if we're just throwing accusations wildly left and right at anyone who might defend the guy who slightly spooked you I just found it expedient to get my turn out of the way." After a couple of seconds of no further reply, she continues: "Because you see, this adventurer here with his crazy little stunt with the cannons has probably done twenty times more for today's defence than you did. I would know, I was watching."

She turns to glance at Cynric again before adding, "And of course he's absolutely right about the Warrior of Light, and I'll vouch for both of them. So, if you want to add the Azure Dragoon to your little tantrum, get on with it. And if you don't, stop wasting our time with pointless infighting when we've just scored the biggest military victory of the century."

Cynric is the one to break the silence after that declaration. He does it with a cough.

"Thank you, ma'am," he says, to his shoes.

Knight #1 has nothing to say other than a mumble and a hasty retreat, and the other onlookers decide the secondhand embarrassment right now is a great reason for them to leave, too.

She pulls her visor open to look at Cynric properly. "Credit where credit is due. You and your mute friend have earned much much more than whatever we're paying you. You should be proud."

"Seriously, why has no one in this country heard of a glamour? I never managed to ask."

Clearly the Warrior of Light is still on a processing loop, here. Being accused of being a heretic—well, it happened the once, a while ago, right, but then he helped clear the dragons out of a couple of castles and exposed a conspiracy around a traitor who killed lots of innocents and, you know, after that, he got a lot more goodwill, so he sort of got used to it.

"Never caught on here. Anyone could be a heretic hiding behind a glamour after all."

...he pulses a flash of targeted aether to reveal what he's actually wearing—a thick woollen coat, snow mask, and sturdy snow boots—before switching back to the glamoured version. "It just feels very itchy against my scales."

"That sounds uncomfortable, mate, I'm sorry. I don't think a lot of our clothes are really made with au ra sensibilities in mind..." says Cynric, and then he's been sniped because now he wants to solve a problem. "Any materials that itch less than the others, or maybe are outright comfortable?"

He is totally going to thank the Warrior of Light by finding him new clothes. This is how he says thank you. He... will need to figure out how to be helpful to the Azure Dragoon, too, but that prospect is a lot scarier.

Of course.

She silently snorts to herself, and goes back to what she'd been doing. Though it's... mostly done. She's kind of extraneous at this point. Most everyone that can be stabilized has been, or has more competent healers handling things. Now all of the wounded are being taken to various medical stations with chirurgeons to heal them with actual knowledge and skill instead of 'Throw healing aether at it and hope for the best.' Which is approximately what she'd been doing. If they were short staffed or overwhelmed, she might step in and help more, but with the way this battle has gone, actually.... they're okay. She'd just be getting in the way with her incompetence.