His face stilled at her question, before he took a deep breath, eyes closed. And when he opened them...<br/><br/>She knew Draiss, the Archdragon, God of Choice, her mate, Beyonder Bane, and nearly a dozen and a half other titles. The eyes on facing her were not those eyes. It was Draiss still, but he had set aside all the masks. "The catch? The catch is knowledge. The catch is power. You won't be on Barid's level, you won't even be on mine, but it will be just within your senses. And with it...<br/><br/>The catch? The real catch is Fear."<br/><br/>He gave her a small, mirthless smile, before gesturing with his wings. "The catch is that you will understand Fear. The Fear that every being with power has, whether they know it or not. That the reason you use power, because something is chasing you. You can't see it over your shoulder, you can't hear it coming up behind you, it has no smell or taste that you can find, and even with your sharp senses, it slides between them like a sharp knife into the chinks of plate armor.<br/><br/>And with that understanding of that Fear, you realize why you hoard power. Because if something fears you, their fear overwhelms your fear of your Fear."<br/><br/>A slightly larger smile, but this one had even less mirth than the previous one. "That understanding drove me and Barid... into a different sanity. I won't say we are insane, though to a normal being, it certainly seems so. But with that understanding, everything became about dealing with it. Barid kept running, trying to find allies to find and fight it. I turned and charged it, gathering what I could build and what had been left behind to fight it. Verdelet also gained it, but it drove her quite mad, by everyone's standards, so she tried to become the Fear. Fairly obvious what the result of that attempt was.<br/><br/>I wonder, if you accept, how will you change?"