She returns the bow, and then flees to go attempt to figure out... where... one gets payment. Cynric! Cynric help!!

Cynric is busy making friends! Honestly if they're going to make a habit of blowing up cannons before they're taken, they should probably find one of the designers of the cannons to talk to, so that what's left over is as salvageable as possible...

Yeah, no, she's not waiting, and this was never for money anyway. She'll just take the opportunity to walk off without any payment at all. She's lingered quite long enough. Besides, mysteriously leaving without payment will make the tale of Vanya all the more theatric, and she's a sucker for a good story.

Getting out is, fortunately for her, easier than getting in.

But after enough turns have been taken that she is entirely and safely out of sight of any meddling Ishgardians...

...there's one meddling Ishgardian waiting for her there, leaning against a rock, lance stuck to the ground, arms folded. She lifts her visor up as soon as she sees Vanya.

"So. 'Vanya', huh?"

...

This was, in retrospect, predictable.

She replies with another of her cool nods. It's so nice to not have to emote or worry about her facial expressions.

"No one else can see or hear us, here, my dear Vethrione Laivane, also known as Lady Iceheart. I checked."

Ugh.

Fine, she'll take the damn helmet off, just so she can give the Azure Dragoon a properly sardonic look. The silencing charm is attached to the helmet, so as soon as it's off she's free to speak.

"So is this a business meeting, or...?"

She laughs and shakes her head. "I recall you telling me I should get back to you when you were less 'recently spat out by a primal'."

"I suppose the best way to find me is to wait until I do something stupid and dramatic," she snorts, crossing her arms. "All right, well. Here I am. Less recently spat out by a primal."

She grins and unfolds her arms. "I think I just really want to get a better picture of this whole thing. You did not sabotage the wards—obviously, that rumour was absurd but it's not like I can explain to people how I know it's absurd. There's only so far being the Azure Dragoon can get you. What's the game, here, why are heretics helping the Dravanians like that even at the cost of the lives of their erstwhile friends? What does that accomplish?"

"So, there's a lot of variance, because the heretics are not a unified polity. A lot of recently made heretics feel some mix of anger and resentment, for obvious reasons, but I think more fundamentally, they don't have... anywhere to go. You go from," she motions with a hand in the direction of the city, "a systematically organized society, with everyone knowing their place and their purpose and feeling part of something larger and important, to. A person. In the wilderness. Everyone they know has to pretend they hate them, or risk getting made a pariah with them. There is no one, really, that you can talk to about your newfound crisis of faith, because Ishgardians will cry heretic and no one else will understand. Except, of course."

She holds up an index finger, and the name that comes out next is said with no small amount of hatred. "Nidhogg and his brood. Who, it turns out, have legitimate grievances. And a lot of built up, well worded anger towards Ishgard, including but not limited to feeling betrayed, and Ishgard's habit of not recognizing that dragons are not a unified polity either. Certainly not under Nidhogg."

"...huh. Are there any non-Nidhogg-allied Dravanians that still inhabit the areas in reach of Ishgard? I would have expected anyone who is not interested in the war to just go up Abalathia's Spine and never interact with an Ishgardian at all. I am going to be feeling very guilty if my early scouting missions included going after the dragon equivalent of villages of innocents."

"Yes. The non-Nidhogg allied Dravanians generally do try to avoid Ishgard as much as possible, mind, they'd be stupid not to. But dragons like having a lot of space to themselves, especially when they mature. They need space away from each other to sort out their thoughts. All dragons bundled up in Abalathia's Spine is suffocating. So... proportionally speaking it is the young dragons that accidentally find themselves in the line of fire."

"Oh."

"Quite. Thus why I have been absolutely merciless to anyone that wants to go dragon hunting for prestige. Nidhogg's brood stays away until they swoop in for an attack. Uninvolved young dragons, seeing no real mark of Ishgardian authority in the open Hinterlands, on the other hand..."

"...okay. And what's the plan to end this stupid war, then?"

"Unfortunately wars that have been waged for this long are rather hard to just... end. A good first step would be for Ishgard to acknowledge that not all dragons serve Nidhogg, and stop coming off as extremely racist and unreasonable. Because that's how Ishgardians come off to uninvolved Dravanians, they actually just think all Ishgardians are insane. Second, I'd like for the reasonable dragons to publicly acknowledge how insane Nidhogg is, to them. His brood, too, you don't understand the gravity of it, but his brood are all... Bundled up together in Song. It's unhealthy. There is no space for any of them to really think, because they know, really know, that getting away from their family is a death sentence. So they don't. And they just keep getting swept up in his madness. Because it's not actually safe for them to go be by themselves to figure things out."

"Is the Dravanian part of that plan as impossible as the Ishgardian part of that plan, because the Ishgardian part of that plan sounds very very impossible."

"Approximately! You see my problem!"

"I think... if there were dragons around being openly against Nidhogg it might be more politically feasible? Aymeric, that noble fool, I am sure he would want to help with that."

"Right, yes. Openly opposing Nidhogg where Ishgard can see, instead of all of the inter-dragon politics happening far away from them. That was why the whole plan to summon Shiva, because I have argued with Hraesvelgr to get involved in the interests of ending the violence, and it hasn't worked. So obviously my thought was, 'Well, Hraesvelgr loved a mortal that famously loved peace, maybe she could talk him around,' except we all see how well that went."

"...well maybe it was the situation. She did not seem very peaceloving there, though."

"For the record, I think that her anger issues were entirely mine," clarifies Vethrione. "It was... very confusing. To share a body with her. And unlike her, I like solving my problems by hitting things."

"Say, why did you decide to share a body with her rather than just... summon her... like other people do?"

"I did not think a half assed summon with a handful of aether crystals would buy my people enough time to escape. The Scions, the Lord Commander, and the Azure Dragoon, all against a brand new primal whose major known character traits are liking dragons and liking peace? Yeah, no. I thought I would be giving up my aether to summon her, maybe giving her some sword skills and knowledge of the situation very efficiently, not literally sharing a body. Certainly not living through the experience."