Something stirs in his chest. A dull sound echoes in his silver ears and there is no need to chase away the bleariness from his blue-eyed gaze. In all his years, in all the places he's been, Tarian still remembers an early lesson. Always be alert. Always be listening. Always be ready. A roar stirs to life all those great Guardians of the past, all the warriors of Old that blow in his blood.
His proud head had picked up and then his hooves had carried him towards the rumble that shook Loess instead of away. Horses ran past him, taking blurred shapes that raced past him. The pegasus tucked his wings tightly against his sides and once he found a space wide enough (without rushing horses or prickly cacti), the silver stallion leaped into the air and spread his wings. He pumped them furiously, gaining altitude as quickly as he could.
What he could see lasted only moments. The land caught flame but Tarian - who had seen battles and fights before - had never seen anything like this. How quickly the fires spread, how fast the flames climbed, and clamored over everything. For the unfortunate few below, he did what he could to find alternate paths to safety. But even that was futile because he became a gray shadow and his noble white coat became marred with soot and the stallion slowly reclaimed the color he had been born with. With each wingstroke, with each way he would turn or try to change his course, the almost-white stallion became a duller, dirty gray.
His eyes are burning with the smoke and he knows that he can't keep this up for much longer. For as much as he wanted to help the few still behind him, the wind altered its direction and blew ash into his eyes. With each inhale, it coated his throat and threatened to turn his lungs to char. As the wildfires claimed Loess, Tarian turned his eyes to the epicenter of it all. He'd known that Lepis would be there. The Monarch who defended her own borders with such determination wouldn't be anywhere else, he thinks.
And he's right because amidst all the horses that he can see through the haze of smoke is Lepis. She is most distinguishable with her navy stripes and cream-colored wings. He doesn't think that she would need defending but he had once belonged to an Order and there will always be the call in his veins to protect. This is not that time or that place but Tarian transplants it to Loess like it could have been.
He catches a name when he lands on the ground, hard with his wings splaying out. The brute - the threat? - lays on the ground but he spits out a name that catches Tarian's ears. (He doesn't wonder about it long; that name is common and the gray stallion has long assumed that she would have found her golden cousin. There was never one without the other and he used to think that the pair of them would have led themselves off the edge of a map somewhere.)
Tarian makes no preamble to add to the conversation. He has nothing to say; this might not be his fight but there are flames dancing across a wasteland where there had been a thriving kingdom hours before. There are innocents rushing and bleeding on the dusty ground. The dappled mare isn't worth his time, he quickly decides and the other - the Dragon - makes his lip curl in open disgust. A fire-breather.
The towering beast flares his wings at the striped pegasus doubled in the dirt, where Tarian's blue-eyed gaze flickers for only a moment, and then the sky falls down on them.
He didn't think. What he did next, he would have done in the lifetime before or the one that might come after. In the chaos that ensued, Tarian did what the knights of old had done: he moved to defend the Queen.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.