Ash closed her eyes, contemplating her thoughts, "I was foolish, traveling without guards," she admitted at length.
Sidus stayed silent for a few breaths, as if mulling it over, "I think…If you had guardians with you, that you would have tried to stand and fight those that hunted you. You would have made yourself an easy target to protect their lives."
She wanted to argue but his words were the truth, she would have fought the moment someone attacked anyone other than herself and she would have died fighting. After all, at that very moment she'd thought the others were safely on their way home. Their attackers had all been waiting at the first jump each of them made away from their last cleansing destination. They'd known exactly where each of them would be and when, they'd known exactly how many guards each of them had.
She should have been the easiest target considering she traveled with no guardians. That estimation had allowed for her escape, they hadn't sent enough people to exhaust her.
Eventually she spoke, "I'm going to spend a few days working on my alchemy and magic control," he already knew, but she still just wanted to talk to him, wanted to stave off the exhaustion that was pulling at her to spend more time with him, "I'm also going to look at things to plant in the garden I'm going to make in my grove. Considering where I found them, Healer's Heart should tolerate the area quite well. Perhaps the other things used in alchemy will do so as well."
His hand ran along her mane, soothing her as she rambled until she fell asleep. Only after she'd been asleep for a while did he speak once more, "Lunarilia, you too should be asleep at this hour."
The priestess approached, looking to Ash and sighing lightly, "I'm worried about her. The way that thing threatened her in the dungeon…could it have really done that?"
Sidus let out a heavy sigh at that, his hand continuing to soothe Ashterra so she would stay asleep, "I fear so. Monsters with sentience are dangerous and an unfortunate side effect of this binding of two worlds is that it is far easier for them to crop up. All it takes is a particularly stubborn Godsborn dying one too many times to a dungeon and the process can begin."
As if she heard them talking Ash moved restlessly in her sleep, her form shifting back to the elven shape she normally used. He gathered her entirely into his lap, as one might a child and stroked her back and hair to settle her.
"What should we do about the person forcing dungeon morphs to happen?" Luna inquired.
He shook his head slightly, "Leave the investigation to the Earthborn, Lunarilia. I would much prefer you spend the time you have here with Ashterra. She has not said as much to me, but I know she misses your company. Once the Earthborn have figured out what exactly is going on and why, the pantheon will step in to act."
Quietly, she spoke, her tone a little sullen, "The pantheon could step in now."
He smiled, "We could, of course. A simple look at Ashterra's memories, at what she saw of the dungeon's creation, would tell me who the culprit was and it would take little effort from there to find them and find their reasons. It would be overstepping our bounds, though. We watch over this world, we do not rule over it, Lunarilia. Gods do not make good rulers for mortal creatures. We do not always value the same things nor do we have the same sense of the scale of time."
They also didn't put the same value on life, Luna knew. To her, each life lost to inaction felt like a physical blow while to the god that sat before her it was much less potent. It wasn't that he didn't cherish their lives, that he didn't want them to continue living, but that he felt he would devalue their lives by interfering too much.
His was an existence that would continue long past any other and the Starborn had been made in part out of a longing to have something tangible that could stay at his side. There had been nearly fifty of them and now only one remained. She had been the only guardian priestess to keep her companion Starborn and she hadn't even known Ash had been in danger.
As if sensing the mood was growing too somber, Sidus spoke once more, "Are you enjoying your own time in this world?"
She nodded slightly, though her eyes moved to Ash, "She's so much happier here," she shook her head, then corrected herself as she looked back up at Sidus, "No. She's happy to be awake, to be moving and doing things. I was growing afraid that she was far too close to letting go of her own life in order to keep going…to keep our world alive by her own sacrifice."
Sidus turned a contemplative gaze towards Ash where she lay comfortably in his lap, "She would give her life without complaint if it meant your world could be safeguarded…It is how I raised her and yet I find myself frustrated at the very idea of it. It is not her burden to assure your world's safety but my own. If only I could act, I would gift your world the Star Ash so that they would no longer be in danger. No matter how I reach, though, my own magic woven into a terrible spell stills my hand before I can touch it. For the longest time the pantheon worried that we were doomed to lose your world. That we would be able to do nothing save listen to our oracles as it all fell apart."
Luna took a deep breath at that revelation, knowing how rare it was for a god to show any form of weakness to a mortal creature such as herself, "We'll find an answer. The people of two worlds and the pantheon of gods. Between us all, we'll find something," her eyes strayed once more to Ash, "She has more time now to find the person she needs to fix her magic and I truly believe that the members of the pantheon would have felt if someone came here with ill intent."
He nodded again then asked a gentle question, "So, what mischief have you been up to?"
She smiled softly, "Just finding ways to keep Ash occupied while I'm busy with the upcoming festival preparations."