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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


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    this is your kingdom, this is your crown; ruan, soldat
    #1

    with her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean
    she's the angel of small death and the codeine scene

     


    She is drained when they reappear again, stumbling to a heaving halt while she focuses all her effort on making sure the boy lands gently by her side. Her boy. Her boy? It is still unfathomable to her how a thing like this could happen, how just yesterday he didn’t exist, meant less than nothing in his lack of being. Yet now he is hers, wholly hers, and she would willingly end worlds for him. She reaches down to touch her lips to his ears, breathe in the sweet scent on his mane - her scent, and Ruan’s, theirs together as though he had come from them.

    He had -
    And he hadn’t.

    But it was all the world would ever know of his being, draped in the mask of Ruan’s colors and with her milk beaded on his delicate whiskers. He was theirs. 

    She is less careful with the block of ice when it thuds down inside the cave behind them. Flicks an ear back with a look of sour irritation spreading across the white and amethyst of her face. A block of ice, really? But then she turns to look at it again - and though it’s thick and completely fogged through, she can still picture the pair hidden inside. Ruan, quiet and stoic as ever, curled defensively around his delicate glass daughter in a moment of frozen instinct. Always a guardian, that man.

    With the block safely tucked away inside the cave, hidden from prying eyes and the elements and scorned gods alike, she turns her attention back on the small spotted boy standing at her legs. He seems okay, maybe a little dazed by the magic that had teleported them here, but there is no sign of injury on him that she can find or sense, no reason for her to be ending any worlds on his behalf quite yet.

    Her lips touch the crest of his neck, huff soft breath against the smooth smokey black and travel further down the length of his spine to the spattering of purple across his ribs and rump. There is an unfamiliar sense of pleasure that he looks like her, that she can claim him as her blood by those markings. “My Rian.” She reminds him with a nuzzle, shifting to nudge him back towards the heavy bag at her belly. There was no way for her to know how much her magic had taken out of him, if it had tried to take from him as she came up empty. He should nurse, take his fill, and then they can find a spot to curl up together.

    bright

    Reply
    #2
    Soldat
    soldier


    He tumbled just a little. It was alright though. Momma caught him against her pretty purple leg. It didn't quite make the world stop tilting, but it helped.

    Ohhh, and then her lips play in his black crested hair, her breath in his ear sending shivers down his little white shoulders and pulling a helpless grin to his mouth. His brown eyes dazzled up at her, and then he eagerly followed her nudging guidance with soft, impatient grunts. His teeny black nose tapped his way almost blindly along her until he found it, took hold and suckled, little tail waving happily at the end of a pale white rump, tell-tale purple spots. 

    His coat told more stories than he would probably ever know.

    He hadn't even realized his tummy was so empty! And he remained working at his milk for a good while. Sometimes it would grow hard to focus on it, and his curious gaze would slide to the big blue rock. His lips would drag off her skin, until he realized there was nothing to suckle and he'd dive back in again, peering around at the blue rock as best he could. He didn't want her to think he was done yet and walk off!

    But soon enough his tummy got nice and full, and he got so very sleepy. Sleeping didn't sound fun at all though, not where there were so many new things to see. This didn't smell like where they'd been, actually... and he lifted his nose to double check, then searched for her face in silent question. He had learned this language of not speaking from her already, and from the wolf, and the man that the wolf turned into. And on that note, from the purple wolf that turned into Momma.

    Oh. And suddenly he was sad and looking around them, aching. Where had he gone?? His mouth opened with a teeny squawk, braying and searching for him as he circled Momma, staying at her side so he didn't lose her too.

    Reply
    #3
    the taigan
     
    Had they thought he'd just roll over and take it? 
    Like some others had.

    Hadn't they known him at all. Their faithful wolf.


    Betrayal was beginning to become a habit from those that sung love for him. His wife. His good friend. And now this. The worst betrayal of all.

    His whole life had been in their service, guardian of their Taiga. Not a king, never a king. They wouldn't dare call him a king to his face. Caretaker of the forest, only. Nothing more. Home to shifters and outcasts alike. But the fairies. They didn't like magic? So he didn't use it. Those in his care, hadn't even known he'd had any. It was reserved for the comfort of weary travelers, for training his daughter to harness and control her dangerous magic. For defense. The one thing he'd never thought he'd need it for became reality, a living burning nightmare. And who had that enemy been?

    The fairies.

    The rage burned hotter than his blood had any right to feel being surrounded by solid ice, and his magic hardened the block further with a crick. A magic's roar. A wild man's wrath.

    His life had been dedicated to that forest, devoted to those within. To the fairies. Self-less, they'd called him. And he had been. He never remarried, never even considered it. Hadn't the time to think of himself when his family and friends still breathed under that dark canopy. And the one time he left for a hunt, finally doing one thing for himself, he returned to find a traitor and an enemy. More bitter betrayal. Their only law was loyalty to each other. Apparently that had been too much to ask. Had they come with good intentions, he wouldn't have needed to protect the forest. But instead, they had chained innocents, captured them.

    Oh, HELL no. 
    Not in his backyard.

    For once his magic came out, letting it free, holding the tap to control it. The ground shook as he froze the earth two layers down. Unfreeze, refreeze. Unfreeze, refreeze. A flare of ice shot into the sky to call The People, a call to action, a battle cry. Their only warning. They would know he was coming. They would know their end was near. But the fairies didn't like magic, did they. They allowed the enemy to construct a violent wall around the land, tearing up the borders, scarring their precious Beqanna. Chaining up the innocent. And when he comes to set it right? To protect the fairies' forest. Suddenly, he is the threat?

    Very well.
    He can be a threat.
    He can once again be what they created him for.

    He roared again, needles of ice pushing out of his every pore, reinforcing the glacier surrounding him further. He wanted out, but the rage kept him, kept him curled protectively around his youngest daughter. Always the Guardian, it seemed. Even while under attack, while flinging attacks right back at the beasts of fire and stone, of water and smoke, he still put everyone before himself. Still spent all his reserves of magic on making certain as many of The People escaped. And with that last tap of power in him, he dove for his daughter and shielded them. 

    Permanently. 
     

    I'm still alive



    Reply
    #4

    with her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean
    she's the angel of small death and the codeine scene

     


    She feels it every time his dark little nose traces a soft trail along the underside of her amethyst belly, that sudden flare of wild, of possessiveness. Of wanting him, and wanting to keep him safe. Wanting to keep him always by her side where she can make sure this world will never again have the chance to be cruel to him. But she can feel something else, too, a weight he lays with such careful little fingers in the once-hollow cavern of her chest. It is such a heavy weight, so consuming, and though she recognizes it for what it is, she does not lean into it. Not yet.

    It is too soon to love this boy, isn’t it?

    But she knows that truth, too. Knows that she does and that she will, knows that she is his just as much as he is hers. What she does not know, cannot begin to understand, is how it could happen to someone like her.

    Woolf would be so appalled.

    There is a wry chuckle on her lips when she buries them against his neck and in the silk strands of a dark, unruly mane. A chuckle that fades into a flatness across her mouth when the thought of her twin blossoms into something more, unfolding like a flower in full bloom to reveal something rotted and ruined inside. How long had it been since she had last seen him? How long since she had last felt anything for the mulberry magician - had she ever? But yes, of course she had. He had been there with her since the beginning, the only one who had ever been able to understand the workings of her mind. Still, it was not like what she felt for this boy suckling at her belly.

    And how.
    How.

    She cleans him while he nurses, runs her tongue over his back and his shoulders, nuzzles at the strands of his mane all awry down either side of that sweet, delicate neck. Even finds her lips lifting at the corners each time he grows too distracted by the small glacier behind them to remember to nurse. “Maybe we should have named you Fidget, hmm?” She murmurs, and there is a new warmth in her voice when she nuzzles the side of his little hiney with a mischievous grin.

    That sleepy little face blinks up at her and she softens, reaches out to brush his forelock smooth. But he’s not focused on her, not even focused on the sleepy weight she is sure has begun to reach for him, set into motion by the fullness of his round little belly. He’s testing the air, testing these new scents, she realizes with a flash of pride. Such a clever little baby bear. She shifts and comes around behind him, moves so he can see more of this new world they’ve suddenly inhabited. More of the so-vast blue sky and the thick, dense pines that climb down the jagged mountainside around them.

    But he isn’t focused on that anymore, she can feel that shift like a physical blow, feel the sudden sad and worry that emanates from her boy with as much ferocity as the cold that seeps from Ruan’s ice. “Rian.” She murmurs again, captures him from his worried circles with a neck slung over his withers, a kiss (so strange, so foreign) pressed to the dark of his perfect cheek. “He’s still here, darling.” Then she’s herding him closer to the hunk of ice, knowing there is no good way to explain to the boy that his father is safely inside. But she tries anyway, draws him close against her chest as they watch new ice spill and harden in a fresh new layer over that wild blue gem of a stone. “He’s there, Rian. Right there.”

    To the boy she is only quiet and gentle, so calm with her lips playing in the soft hair of his forelock. Focusing on radiating a calm to conceal the roiling impatience blossoming in her veins. The only sign that something is amiss is when a second spot of skin slices open as if under a blade, spilling red and ruby and wet down her hind leg. She’s reaching for the ice-mage now, pulling hard on what little magic is still left in her already so empty reserves.

    If you don’t get out here right now so your son knows you’re okay, so help me GOD I will take you out myself. A relatively empty threat from an exhausted magician, but he doesn't need to know that.

    bright

    Reply
    #5

    bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
    if you must drink of me, take of me what you please

    He can feel it, the way she pulls on him or rather them.

    He can feel it building slowly over time, starting as small withdrawals and then larger ones. He can feel her starting to pull from more than just her own reserves, tapping into their connection and then his own source of power. At first, he chooses to ignore it. He chooses to let her have it; after all, their magic was a shared thing, a permanent connection between the two no matter how far they should roam.

    But soon, today, it becomes more, her exhaustion beginning to creep up the vine and into his heart.

    It strikes a rare anger in him and he lifts his heavy head toward the mountain, a scowl darkening the edges of his otherwise handsome face. He has no desire to traipse up the mountainside, has no desire to find out whatever is occupying his dear sister’s time, has no desire to open himself up more to her greedy fingers—putting the well right beneath her nose for her to drain as she wishes. Yet, yet, he can feel the ache in her bones and the need with which she pulls from their magic and he cannot deny he is concerned.

    Curious?

    Either way, it is enough to rouse him. Enough to get him to his feet, powerful shoulder stained crimson, his emerald eyes glittering and sharp. He takes his time getting to them, using his magic only in small bursts where the path becomes too dangerous to walk. It gives him the time to get better control of his anger, to sort through his emotions, to try and reach out for her mind. He wants to flip through it, to try and understand where she has been, but his path there is just as blocked as his path upward.

    Whatever she is dabbling in, she doesn’t want to share.

    So perhaps he needed longer because by the time he is by her side, his temper is flaring. His face is wide open and terrible, lips pulled wide into a fierce scowl. “Are you trying to get the both of us killed?” he snarls, barely registering the small child at her side. He turns his gaze toward the block of ice before her, feeling her magic reaching for and through it. Growling low and deep he sidles next to her, splitting his shoulder open and letting his blood join hers on the floor, the streams of them sliding closer to merge.

    “Don’t answer that. Just shut up and focus.”

    He closes his eyes, his injured shoulder pressed into her own, the blood smearing across the brilliant purple of her coat. With another wild growl, he pushes his magic forward to join her own, striking through to the heart of the ice block where he can feel something with the semblance of life stuck inside.

    But not for much longer.

    woolf

    I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste

    Reply
    #6
    Soldat
    soldier

    Oops. He'd gotten distracted again, staring at the blue rock and forgetting to nurse. She nudged his little rump, though, and he swiveled his head to her with an impish grin, eyes dazzling. And then promptly resumed nursing quite noisily before she got any crazy ideas that he was done so soon.

    But then he was full, and tired, and she murmured his name. The smile he turned to her then was wistful, a dreamy one, eyelids heavy. Only until he remembered the wolf man, and his expression fell, contorted itself into fretful worry as he circled her and brayed for their other family member.

    She spoke his name again, paused his frantic pacing with her neck curled over him and guided him closer to the cold boulder. He looked at it, then peered up at her with an indulgent little flip of his tail and small smile. He didn't understand, but it seemed important to her. So he'd be happy for her. It really was a pretty rock, you know.

    It made a noise as she watched it so intently and he startled, teeny hooves dancing him in an arch to her hip and peeking around the side of her with a gaping mouth. Was it alive?? Was it gonna blow up?? Mom seemed rather calm about it though. So, okay. He was calm too. Everything must be fine.

    He turned his little face to her leg when he caught a new scent, fresh and tangy in a bad way that scrunched his nose up. Oh, no! Mom got hurt! She hadn't seemed to notice, so he tried to nurse her himself with a tiny, clumsy tongue like a good boy.

    He startled again as a man suddenly showed up, and it wasn't the same one. Still kind of shared their colors though, their family color. He hadn't learned that expression yet, and he did his best to mirror it as he had before when the other man was here, snarling up at him from under Mom's belly. Then his handsome little face split with a huge grin, because he was so sure he'd done a marvelous job!

    With a small yelp, he ducked back underneath her when the man started bleeding too and smashed himself against Mom's side, ruining all that hard work he'd just done to take care of her. Hmph.

    Then both their pairs of eyes were on Mom's favorite decoration, and the air around them felt suddenly thicker, tingly and like tiny fingers were crawling all over him even though he could find where they were coming from, no matter how he glanced and spun around. All he could do instead was settle and watch too, and wait to see what would happen.

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    #7
    the taigan
     
    She dared to reach for him!

    He exploded more magic, pushed it outwards and thickened the walls in firm retaliation. A solid message. He would not be forced to do anything. Even to listen to her. He'd had plenty of time to sit here and rest, replenish his reserves. And he'd damn well use it. It was what they wanted from him now, and he would give it.

    She wanted to manipulate him, snake her way into his mind and alter it. Change it again, impress on it again.
    No, that had been his wife.

    Still.
    He'd come out when he was damn well ready to.

    And he was ready to. But any time a magic reached for him, he thrust his walls up hard. He defended again. Like their lives depended on it. A reflex he couldn't seem to turn off, not with the bottomless well of fury, the endless wrath roiling within him. Every thought angered him, boiled his icy blood to burning hot. Perhaps he'd finally had enough betrayal, enough manipulation, enough loss. He'd stood his ground as they pushed him around, tried to force their way, push him down.

    They could try to cut him down, but he'd still stand tall. It wasn't HIS transgressions they'd despised so deeply. He was only who they chose to blame, twist it in their minds enough times until it made sense to them. Twisted and false.

    The ice hardened again, but he halted it this time. Cut it off with a deliberate pinch between two fingers. The glacier was just big enough for the two of them and a dense barrier keeping them protected from the rest of the world. Not even his fire-wielding daughter could melt this tomb in her hottest temper.

    He created pores in the ice, the outside sweating as he melted the interior enough for their gravity-defying bodies to fall gently and stand on a platform. Everything he did had a purpose though, and he positioned himself between his daughter and the others outside, held her close and prepared to refreeze them in their safety. Always the Guardian.

    He hadn't expected the shot of magic doubled up and straight to the heart of their fortress. It was an unseen force that hit his back, arching him back with an outcry. Again, his magic responded in kind, in defense. Armor solidified along his spine, gritting his teeth as it plunged spikes outward and thrust their magic to the edge of the glacier. Like iridescent fractals, it reached out, connecting with the barrier and expounding on itself until they were frozen solid within again, reinforced again in three more passes of magic.

    It would take more than that to force him.
    They wouldn't make him do anything.

    Even if he wanted the same thing they did.
     

    I'm still alive



    Reply
    #8

    with her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean
    she's the angel of small death and the codeine scene

     


    She is not as keen as she once was - has been dulled by exhaustion, distracted with a magic she pours into the boy at her side and the small girl within the glacial rock. Ruan kept the child safe from the world outside, the beasts carved from fire and sent to kill them, but it is Bright who allows her to sleep in the frozen tomb like a hibernating reptile. Bright who keeps the blood in her veins from narrowing into shards aimed at her heart. She does it for him, though she does not know why.

    Doesn’t she, though?

    But it means she does not feel Woolf until he is there beside her with his temper lit and burning like a match. She is ill-prepared for the rush of emotion that tries to thread through her veins and tie her nerves in wicked, useless tangles. “No,” she tells him, and her voice is a snarl, wicked and ruined only by the smile that creeps across her lips, “just you would be fine.” But they both know that isn’t how this works, that her life is tethered to his, and his to hers. There cannot be just one of them. Nor should there be. Ever.

    God, and how he just moves to her side in acceptance of whatever it is she spends their magic on. There’s a beat where she wants to reach out and brush her nose against his neck, a moment where she wants to rediscover how much of him is still hers. But he is so focused - busy trying to stay alive, she thinks with a flash of sharp amusement - so she lets him be. Just silently accepts the heat of his shoulder, the damp warmth of the blood he darkens her skin with.

    Her Woolf.

    She can feel the moment the magic changes, like a river of strength redirected into her - magic she had taken forcefully, now given freely. It swells inside her, a high she does not try to resist, a tide she is readily swept away by. She pulls it inside her, lets it tangle in her veins as their blood now does on the ground beneath their feet. He is power, so much power, but she is the shape it needs in this, the one who gives them direction. She is so consumed by it that she does not even notice the tiny tongue struggling to stem the blood that now flows so freely from her. There is nothing her boy can do, though, no way to make it stop until they have finished and her - no, not hers - until the wolf king is out is his self-imprisonment.

    Ohh, but he fights them, thrashes hard against the magic they direct into him and there is some part of her that balks, hesitates. She does not want to force him against his will, does not want to make him do anything he has not chosen for himself. But he has chosen this, she can feel it. Can see the way the water sweats from the glacier when he stops storming at them. Can feel, too, the way he curls around his daughter, now collapsed and safely unconscious at his feet when he melts the heart for them. She isn’t like him, does not have this winter in her veins like he does, cannot sustain in such a place. Not without Bright, not with out the magic he is suddenly forcing back at her. At them, because she is trying to force him.

    She curses, pins her ears and snakes her head low in frustration. It won’t matter that they are stronger than he is if he emerges a fractured man, ruined by a will so forcefully broken.

    But he wants this, she can feel it.

    Her magic reshapes, digging even deeper than before, and she can feel the toll it takes on her, feel the way she sways into her brothers side. Ruan, she tries, packing all of her strange, new emotion into that single thought, that single word, into him, I need you here. And it is a command, it is still all their magic forced past his barriers, forced into him in the shape of the ache in Soldat’s heart, in the need of hers (though she tries to hide that from Woolf, tries not to let him see that the man in there matters to her now, in some strange small way she cannot ignore). It is all the ability she has left to reason with him, the last thing she can offer him before they rip him from the tomb he hides in.

    bright

    Reply
    #9

    bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
    if you must drink of me, take of me what you please

    He doesn’t stop to think to ask what she’s doing.

    He doesn’t stop to think to ask why she’s here.

    Everything melts away until it is, as it should always be, just the two of them and their strange magic pooled between them. He can feel his blood dripping down his broad shoulder and onto her. He can feel the way their magic pools together, roping and twining around one another. It gives him a thrill to feel the way his own magic doubles when combined with her own, the power that they can leverage in this moment. He wants to tip his head back and breathe it in, bathe in the experience. He wants to forget this mission and catapult them back into the stars, in the heavens; let them once again float through cosmos.

    But whatever this is, means too much to her for her to abandon it now.

    He knows at least that much.

    So he doesn’t try to pry her away, pressing harsh fingers under her jaw and peeling her from this moment. Instead he just continues to focus, handsome face contorted with concentration. He doesn’t even see the boy now pressed to her side. Everything condenses, his vision zeroing in on the problem before them.

    Whatever curls inside of the magical block of ice refuses the help and doubles down on its own power and Woolf, unused to be tried, snarls, lips pulled back to reveal predator teeth, tongue pressed against the wicked curve of them. He draws the edge of his power against his flesh again, this time across his hip, the skirt here so unused to splitting open. It splits now though, the edges of it nearly charred with his fury, the blood welling instantly and then dripping down the unstained flesh. It bites but he’s used to the pain, and it gives him—gives them—more of a reservoir from which to draw their power.

    He feels the added depth, and he pushes it toward Bright, letting her redirect it as she wishes.

    Her command rings through his deaf ears and he discards it, setting it down for another time.

    Instead, he lets his own ring out:

    “Stop being a coward,” a vicious, biting growl. “Stop hiding.”

    woolf

    I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste

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    #10
    the taigan
     
    Ruan.

    His name slipped through his barrier, pushed his cold lips into a silent snarl over pale teeth. He didn't like the effect her voice had on him, even softened by his firm magic holding her at arm's length. He didn't like the sting, the pang in his chest that used to care so deeply for all, the urge to answer and give everything he could no matter who it was. Give all of himself as he always had. Didn't she know it was better this way?

    I need you here.

    The words themselves when placed that way would have been pleading, passive and needing. They would've nearly disgusted him now, or once upon a time they would have called to him, would have appealed to his unconditional heart. He craved to care for those who chose it of him, chose to accept and trust him to protect and love them. He'd once been the Heart of the Taiga for most of its entire existence. Its second, and last, monarch.

    In some way, he did need to be needed. He wasn't born a leader, had been so content to serve under Romek and Maribel as they led, but his wife had created him to be one. She had risen him up from his humble, subservient loyalty to their king and queen and created a Dominant Alpha, caretaker of their forest, steady and faithful to a damn fault. (More faithful than she turned out to be.)

    So many damn faults.

    But these words by the purple mage outside his ice, formed and shaped into a command, was exactly that. A command, not a plea. It was blatant fact laid solidly in his expert hands to consider, a command that he pay attention to his peoples' needs. What was left of them. And she was his people. The boy who had taken on Ruan's natural-born color as his own to disguise him, protect him, whose emotions she pressed into his mind, his heart, was his people. His dwindling pack. His son in some profound way. His only son. But not in the way Jinju was his daughter. There was no other like Jinju to him. His second in command, his whole being. His entire trust. The only one that had proven to deserve it.

    He deliberated.
    He would protect them.

    I need you here. He let it repeat in his mind, echo in his soul. Not a plea, only fact. She physically, magically, couldn't do this alone. Without him. It was him she chose to assist her. She would fall, and she needed him.

    He was quiet as he contemplated it, scrutinized every angle, every fault he'd bear in ignoring her, every advantage she had without his aid. And then he measured everything he could give her to help, had he been a whole man still. Had he not been so ripped apart from so many unseen enemies and trusted loved ones alike. He could've helped her so much.

    But he was nameless now.
    "Stop being a coward."
    So not entirely nameless, then.
    "Stop hiding."

    He would rise to the challenge. Not for the insult, but for the distinct fact that a stranger now stood amongst his pack as if he belonged. As if he could demand things of the Alpha that had survived so much in their treasured forest that had known his paws, his howls, his heart. His life. His blood.

    But the winter wolf was feral now, losing sudden hold of that careful thread of humane sanity as it slipped hopelessly through his deft fingers. He squared up, let their magic build until it would shatter then abruptly added his own, exploded his small fortress outward with them with a packed gunshot that rang out through the mountains. Bladed shards of ice flew out, pelting and lodging into nearby trees with solid thunks before melting instantly, the strength of his magic focused elsewhere.

    He emerged as a wild threat, a blur of wolven fur and his roar lost in the pounding echo between the trees. His magic was set loose as it gripped the mulberry man's legs from his hooves to his knees, locking him to the ground where he stood. Ruan lunged forward in the very same moment, teeth bared and a growl deep in his throat, snarling viciously and aiming for the only one he didn't recognize, driven on by the man's intimate nearness to his dear friend, his pack. He aimed for the man's throat with lethal intent, his armor manifesting in a zip of magic, leaving his precious daughter of glass behind in the safety of a half-built, frozen shelter to guard her against seeing him this way. He was at least conscious enough to wish for that.

    He would protect her even now. Even as he lost his mind.
    Always the Guardian.
    The Taigan.
     

    Bet you didn't think that I'd come back to life



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