Strong Colt has learned to face the cold quickly. His coat has curled and thickened, his mind has steeled, and his body has absorbed the warmth of the sun. He cuts through the snow on the floor of the Thistle Meadow and the roof of the earth with ease and grace before halting to stand tall and still, like an ebony tower amidst a field of fallen bodies. He seeks out company and finds none, seeks solitude and finds himself accosted by everything. Here in the meadow there is a haunting silence and a chilling sense of being surrounded all at once. He cannot stand any longer; he lets himself fall to his knees and lay in the cold. He lets his body go numb and the sense of being lost fade away.

Manhattan has begun to howl at night and see visions of what once haunted her master. The ability to terrorize is more than a blessing, it taunts her like a curse. It is untamed and dangerous, with the potential to drive a soul mad. She barely holds on- in the cold of the snow she feels death approaching and sees it all around her. She sees her master's blood where he steps when it is not there, she watches him be murdered over and over again, on repeat in her mind, an image that haunts, an image that haunts. She cries at night.

In the snow she curls beside her master and shudders. She feels close to death, she cannot remind herself that when she is with Knox, she is always safe. She hears the high pitched bark of her sister and jolts upwards- she expects horrors to dance before her, and sees joy. Beside her the Strong Colt stirs from his hibernation and lifts a tired head, then an aching form, from the snow. In the distance, drawing closer, are the marked forms of his brother and Loretta. He should go to greet them, he wants to love them, yet he cannot bring himself to care.

It is his pup that stumbles from her snow bed and runs after her sister, as if to warn Loretta of the danger always on Manhattan's own heels. But images leave the black dog's mind and dance across the surface of the snow.

For less than a minute the images of Mandrake, Casimir, Vincent, Wilders, Emerson, and Kipp are scattered across the surface of the snow. Everything is stained red with blood that is not there, the air is filled with a stench of death that is not truly present. Knox wants to look away, but he cannot look away. He wants to blind himself and never see such a picture again. He feels disgust and hatred but he does not feel fear, certainly not the fear that has haunted his bonded, the fear that she has learned to pass off onto others.

He looks to his brother only just before it is too late and sends silver darting into Archibald's eyes. The stallion is to be blinded- but not before he saw what he feared the most. Manhattan has fallen back into the snow; she has begun to cry. Strong Colt wants to say something and does not know what to say- he saw his family lying dead before him and he did not feel fear.

"Brother..." His voice breaks the air and he understands faintly that he is trying to offer comfort. He sounds insincere- he is insincere.


[[Permission both to terrorize and blind]]