There was no single system spell that could be used here, and nothing the system provided was reliable at the moment, anyway. Karix for the first time had to rely entirely on what his son was telling him — had to guide his mana according to Vex's wishes, rather than play by his own rules. As much as he'd tried, he had no idea how these glyphs worked, and didn't understand how Vex could grasp them so intuitively.

And yet grasp them intuitively he did. His son painted a glyph in a circle around the portal that the armored man made, though the edges of that portal flickered indistinctly in the air. Derivan was clearly struggling to keep it open, and his eyes flickered back and forth within his helmet, like he was splitting his attention with something unseen.

There had never been a time when Karix had felt quite so comparatively useless. He'd promised his help to his son, and he intended on following through, but all his accumulated spells and knowledge and skills here were useless — all Vex needed access to were his vast stores of mana.

So Karix sat back, waited, and thought about everything he'd done.

He wasn't usually the type of lizardkin to dwell on the past. Whenever he made a mistake, he moved forward and corrected it — he didn't dwell on how things could have been, didn't let himself get emotional over things that he'd done wrong. It made him seem cold and aloof, he knew, but dwelling on his mistakes seemed like a waste of time to him.

Now seemed like it was the time for change. There wasn't any 'moving forward and correcting this' without understanding what he'd done. He still didn't see eye to eye with his son — he didn't see anything wrong with the Ashion way of mana enhancement — but maybe he needed to try.

Karix ignored the disapproving look Derivan gave him, leaned against a nearby wall, and thought.

A long time ago, he'd been the one to undergo those exact same mana treatments. His attitude towards them had been vastly different from any of his children — his mother had drilled into his head for a long time that there was a duty that came with being a noble, and though he was young at the time, he took the duty as seriously as anything else. The pain was just something he had to endure.

Not all of his siblings felt the same way, of course. There was a reason he'd ended up as the head of the Ashion house and not one of his brothers or sisters; each of them ended up in their own branch families, and they didn't speak to one another very often. Karix tried to remember a time when he was as close to a sibling as Vex was to Riss or Helix.

And he couldn't.

For the first time, he considered the question of what duty meant to him. He'd always considered it important — it had been drilled into him that his duty was important. But he'd never questioned it, not really; he'd never considered the why of his duty. For all that he was the head of a House, he might as well have been subservient to Wisfield.

Duty, for him, meant acting in Elyra's interests. Was Elyra that important to him?

Karix couldn't say.

He didn't love his kingdom. Not exactly. It was the kingdom he'd been born in, and he was loyal to it, but that loyalty was rooted in his birth, not in anything Elyra had specifically done for him. Everything his father had given him had been something his father had earned, not a gift from the kingdom, and he didn't spend enough time out among the people of Elyra to really care about them.

Even when it came to his duties, he thought of it as keeping order in Elyra. He didn't know the people of Elyra — not the way Vex did, or even the way Helix did, in recent years.

He didn't love his wife, either. The marriage had been an arranged one with a smaller noble house that had dissolved and merged their two houses together under the Ashion name. Prissa was beautiful, and she did love their children, but she could also be spoiled and stuck in her ways.

"You look like you're lost in thought, dad," Helix said. Karix nearly jumped — he hadn't seen Vex's older brother appear at all.

"Aren't you supposed to be helping with the evacuation?" Karix asked.

"Not much I can do at this point." Helix shrugged. "It's all going to be down to your spell. I don't have the best idea of what's happening, but I can tell Elyra's a lot smaller than it should be. Wisfield should be panicking right around now."

Curious, Karix checked his system logs — the chat, specifically. There were a half-dozen panicked messages from the Wisfield Speaker demanding he return and meet up with them to re-evaluate their plans.

"They are," Karix said dryly. He felt glad he wasn't on their side, for once; a small smile curled up along his snout.

"Is that a real smile from you, dad?" Helix asked in faux surprise. "Damn, I don't think I've seen one from you for years. Penny for your thoughts?"

"Just thinking I wouldn't like to be in Wisfield's position," Karix said dryly.

"Can't believe Vex managed to get you to change your mind, honestly," Helix told him. "Considering you helped me get arrested and all."

Karix winced. "I was hoping you'd have forgotten about that. Would you believe me if I said it was mostly your mother's idea?"

"Yes," Helix said. "But you don't get to absolve yourself of blame just because mom came up with it."

Karix didn't have a reply to that. He glanced towards Derivan and Vex again — his son was nearly done painting the glyph. The paint almost hurt to look at, with how much raw mana was contained in its subtance, and Karix could feel the magic growing slowly around the symbol. Even without it being active, space was already beginning to warp around the glyph.

"What was on your mind, anyway?" Helix asked. "Never seen you so deep in thought."

"I was just thinking," Karix said. "About my place in this kingdom, and what duty means to me."

Helix raised an eyebrow. "Can't say I was expecting that."

"Neither was I." Karix let out a low chuckle. "Times are changing, I suppose."

"No kidding." Helix was silent for a moment. "You got an answer?"

"No," Karix said. It stung him to admit.

"Then let me ask you something." Helix paused, trying to find the words. "Do you actually know what makes you happy?"

Karix didn't answer.

Happiness had never been something he'd actively pursued. He'd never considered it important. All those hobbies that other people took up, the various forms of entertainment they pursued — whether it was watching a play, reading a book, or finding a tavern to drink and flirt in — he'd always thought about it as beneath him. It struck him as laziness, for someone to have spare time and not to spend all of that spare time in singular pursuit towards a goal.

Now that he actually questioned himself, he realized he had no idea what his goal meant to him. He'd considered it important, certainly, and the train of thought made perfect sense; Elyra was a powerful kingdom, and he was proud to be able to contribute to its success.

And yet.

What did his pride mean to him? What did Elyra mean to him, besides being the place in which he was born? If it was merely serving a powerful kingdom that brought him satisfaction, then he would have been just as satisfied serving Anderstahl — but that thought rankled at him. He didn't want to serve Anderstahl.

"Dad?" Helix raised an eyebrow at him.

Karix huffed. "I'm thinking."

"Careful you don't overheat," Helix said dryly, and Karix restrained himself from the urge to snap back at his son.

He hated to admit it, but Helix wasn't wrong. He hadn't spent much time thinking about his motivations.

"If I say that I didn't think happiness was a particularly important pursuit," Karix said. "What would you tell me?"

"I'd call you an idiot," Helix said promptly. "Vex would, too, but he'd be nicer about it than me. I mean, I'm not saying happiness is the end-all-be-all, but you've gotta have something. Satisfaction?"

He certainly felt satisfied with his job. But he didn't know if that satisfaction was something that he wanted, exactly.

"Hard to make a choice when you haven't felt it all," Karix finally said.

Helix — to his surprise — laughed. "That's the first smart thing you've said."

"I should ground you for that."

"I'm an adult, and grounding me never worked anyway." Helix mimicked tracing a hole with his finger, letting a flicker of fire-aspect mana rise to the tip of his claws; Karix recognized the ward-destruction embedded in the magic. He smirked at the expression on Karix's face. "You missed a lot, believe me."

"So it seems." Karix wanted to say more, but he didn't know what to say. Instead, his gaze slid over to Vex, who was talking with Derivan in silent murmurs, encouring him as he finished the final touches on his glyph. "You think Vex will forgive me?"

Helix's face dropped slightly, the casual amusement fading into something more serious. "That's up to him," he said. "If you ask me, I think he was a lot more hurt than the rest of us. I had to learn to care. Vex cared from the beginning, probably a little too much. Riss does, too."

"And he knew that," Karix murmured. It wasn't a question.

"Yup." Helix lounged back against the same wall, then bounced off of it with a foot. "Better get back to work. And by work, I mean flinging fireballs at the Speaker. See ya!"

"What—" Karix began to protest, but Helix vanished nearly as quickly as he'd appeared. The older lizardkin groaned. The Speaker had defenses, and while he trusted his children...

"Dad," Vex said. Karix looked up at him; Vex wasn't quite looking him in the eyes, and he hadn't for a while. "We're ready."

"Okay." Karix didn't argue. He set himself up on the glyph, opposite to Vex. "Just channel mana into the glyph?"

"Yes. You first."

Karix supposed he deserved the lack of trust. He sighed, knelt opposite to Vex, and began to channel his mana. He'd have to moderate the amount of mana he put into the glyph — he and Vex had to channel roughly equal amounts, so he'd have to—

The flood of mana from Vex interrupted his thoughts. Karix's eyes went wide, and he slammed his inner gates open, flooding as much mana into the glyph as he could — barely enough to match the sheer flow of his son's power.

When had Vex grown so strong? How had he missed it all?

For the first time, Karix thought he felt an inkling of what it was he wanted out of life.