The thick hid of his back twitched as Diego’s talons rake through his flesh— though it is but a small drop in the King’s sea of misery. The freely bleeding slashes are welcome punishment, a just retribution for the sins he has committed this night. Haunted, navy eyes watch the white form of Irma fall to the needled floor. Blankly, they watch her blind searchings, ears twitch at her raw shrieks.

So that’s what it looks like.

That’s what it looks like when everything you hold dear is ripped from you and burned— and you are left searching and screaming until your voice leaves you and the blindness doesn’t. Mindlessly, he continues to gently stroke the unburned, silken ear of his friend— a strange sense of numbness pervading him. Not numbness to the pain and fear, for that he felt acutely; but numbness to action. He could not gather his legs to rise, he could not call out into the night for help. He could do nothing.

He had never felt this before.

But it was short-lived, for suddenly an orange mare (whom he might have recognized from the Rift battles, had he been in a different mindset) appeared from the trees. And beside her was a fox of many tails. And suddenly there were embers, more fire blooming from the fox’s tail, all coming towards him and his fallen friend.

A hoarse, guttural stallion’s scream ripped from his throat, ears pinning flush with his skull as teeth gaped and bared while his head snaked out. His neck covered what it could of the immobile Mauja, protecting it from further insult from the woman’s fires. He didn’t know— couldn’t know— that she was healing his friend. He saw only further harm descending upon him. And he tried to buffer, to use his body, as shield.

Hide ripples and teeth snap towards the feathers that suddenly brush his skin— he is too raw, too savage, to immediately recognize Alysanne, his friend. Even the appearance of Evangeline, his friend and second Moon Doctor does not register to his mind. Ears twitch at the sound of his name on their voices, demanding tones and pushing wings. Confusion clouds his haunted face— only clearing when the sight of a young face and teary teal eyes. “Please. Please tell me that you didn’t do this.”

His eyes fall back down to the charred body he protected and cradled. Yes, he had done this.

And suddenly he is lurching, surging to his great height and back away to give the healers room to work. To heal. To save. “Please,” the plea escapes his lips, low and hoarse, please save him..

Eva tells the young filly to talk to him, to make Mauja focus on her voice. The man, the broken Elephant, watches with wide eyes— gripping onto the newly formed, cold fear into his chest as a lifeline. It would save them from him, it would save him from himself. And they would save Mauja.

They must.

An ear swivels backwards, towards the crackling roar of fire behind him. How easily he had become accustomed to that noise, a soundtrack for destruction. Eyes then fall on the fallen Irma. And, for unknown reasons, he moves towards the white owl— perhaps to be close to his friend in anyway that he can. Perhaps to comfort, to seek comfort… Heavy hooves stop beside her in the needles, great head dropping down beside her, “I’m sorry.” The futile apology is whispered, not knowing if she will even stay to hear him. Not knowing if she will understand him.

His eyes do not leave the healers and burnt man before him.

Tembovu

the Elephant King