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    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


    lost to the hunt as I was to you; any
    #1
    At the border, the maned wolf limps forward. Patches of ruddy fur hang from bony prominences; once-bright eyes blink dully as the aching body sinks to the ground in exhaustion. Long ears hang listlessly on either side of a badly-healed wound, its wicked scar etched and puckered across the once-sleek skull. A hind paw protrudes uselessly (crushed bone, brittle claw) beneath a hollow belly that has been empty for far too long. Still, there is something expectant in the crooked set of the canine’s injured jaw – and with a shallow huff of breath, she waits.

    Daemron’s reaction is immediate. A growl rips through him as he becomes aware of Red’s consciousness, panic rising in his chest at the feel of it – wasted and faded, like it was barely there. Without explanation he turns and flies from his wife and newborn daughter, covering ground with great speed, his limbs eating up the earth as rage and terror pump wildly through his blood. And when he comes upon the wolf (she that has been with him from the start – from his very own birth) and beholds her brokenness, his heart blackens.

    “Who did this to you?” he nearly screams, quickly understanding that this had been no accident. A feral light enters the grey of his eyes as he moves to stand over her possessively, though his shielding comes far too late. The small sound that issues from the heap at his feet draws his attention – the wolf glances up at the chestnut with a kind of weary fulfillment, and the finality of that look horrifies him. Hatred and self-loathing wells up from a dark place within him even as he blindly vows revenge. Frantically he casts his gaze about and cries, “We need some help over here!”

    daemron
    lost to the hunt as I was to you

    #2

    oh, this my weapon, this my loam. this my blood, this my bone.

    His father’s rage is nearly a palpable thing—nearly tangible in the way it floods from him in waves.

    Brigade lifts his head at the keen edge of his father’s voice, the frown clouding his features as he looks into the distance, barely making out the shape of his father and the red maned wolf he stands over her. When he hears his father call for help—such a strange request coming from his normally fiercely independent father—his body responds before he can even think about, before he can react.

    His wings flare out, white feathers gleaming and he launches into the air, covering the ground quicker from the air than if he had tried to race to his fathers side. When he lands, quickly and deftly, he cuts his gaze to Daemron and Red, studying them with an intensity that he could have only learned from his father. He angles his head toward the wolf, youthful antlers already taking on a proud arch, and then back to his father, studying the depths of his expression, discerning the black emotions that wash over him.

    “What happened?” he finally asks, and his voice is huskier than before, a growl of rage that he doesn’t even understand beginning to make its way through him. “Should I get mom?”

    But Pyxis couldn’t help—not really—and a muscle jumps in his jaw.

    “Or a healer? Anyone?”

    He had no idea of what he should do, but he know that he had to do something.

    He couldn’t just sit here and watch his father come apart at the seams.

    “Just tell me what you want me to do.”



    @[Daemron]
    #3
    Sudden movement catches at the corner of his gaze. Faintly glowing grey eyes (wild with fright) flick to the sky. It is his windborne son, he realizes, flying straight as an arrow toward them. Daemron doesn’t watch as Brigade alights by his side. His attentions are fixated upon his heart-wolf, she who was once sleek and swift and beautiful – a far cry from the broken, bruised, and battered creature that now lies crumpled at his feet.

    His rage and his terror consume him. He hardly notices the way his muscled body begins to vibrate with it, though his eyes snap upward at the sound of his son’s voice when he asks what happened. Grim-faced behind a willowed forelock, the chestnut barks out a clipped response. “I don’t know yet.” All he knows is that there would be hell to pay when he found out. Brigade then asks if he should get Pyxis, to which Daemron makes an abrupt sound in his throat –

    A low keening cut forcibly short.

    “Not your mother,” he chokes then, his eyes glued to the maned wolf’s sunken form. (Death’s breath rattling past wolf-ribs). The very thought of how long she’d been like this nearly unravels him. Now more than ever, he aches for Pyxis – but in the pit of his knotted stomach he senses that Brigade would only have time for one flight. If that. “She’s with May. It wouldn’t be fast enough.” The antlered youth suggests a healer, anyone – ‘just tell me what you want me to do.’

    “I don’t know!”

    He looks up to see his own image reflected back at him in his son’s stormy gaze. Vaguely, Daemron grasps that he appears as wild and desperate as he feels. “It’s Red, Brigade,” says a wretched voice that surely isn’t his own, “It’s Red.” Internally, the wolfson is left to fight tooth and nail against waves of helplessness as they threaten to overwhelm him – and in his desolation he manages to growl, “Get anyone who can keep her from dying.” He feels the keening sound rise to his throat again, but this time it never leaves his lips.

    “Hurry, son.”
    daemron
    lost to the hunt as I was to you

    @[brigade]
    #4

    oh, this my weapon, this my loam. this my blood, this my bone.

    He’s never seen his father like this—never seen the way he comes undone in this moment, unravelling before him as fear and fury merge and meld together. It frightens him, reminds him that he is still but a boy trying to learn his way, but it also solidifies something in him. It brings a steely calm that he clings to, a curious stability that serves as a counterweight to his father’s forcible emotions around him.

    Brigade doesn’t respond to the way that his father snaps, doesn’t pay any mind to the way that he can feel the pieces of him snapping and coming apart. He just watches with his winter storm eyes, the grey of them shifting and fluid beneath the battering of his father. There is so much he wants to ask. He wants to ask more of who Red is, what she means to his father. He wants to ask what could have happened to make her look like this; what she could have done to bring on the kind of fury that now rends her apart.

    Instead, he just nods.

    “Okay,” is all he says.

    He has no idea where he can find a healer—none live on the volcanic island—but he has heard rumors of some within Loess and although he doesn’t know about he darkness shadowing them,  he has to at least try. Looking at his father, nearly wild with his grief and panic, Brigade knows he can’t let him down.

    So he says nothing else, he simply turns his head toward the border and begins to run. His youthful, coltish legs fling outward as he pushes himself faster and faster so that when he finally does unfurl his brilliantly white whites, overlarge now, he catapults into the sky, swallowed by the clouds as he flies.



    @[Daemron]




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