Where Astraeus is there to direct and encourage his bonded, Ilaria is not there to reel in the flames and smother the coals of Cera’s fire. She can’t remind him of the good things, the beauty and friendship that his anger clouds over like smoke. And it must be smoke, it has to be, why else are his eyes so wet? Why, why is he crying as his name falls from her lips in shock, as her blood explodes across his tongue like an iron brand of sin and mistake, when she deserves every bit of pain he offers her? Yet as he stumbles from her retreat, his own anger smudging and erasing logic from the thrust of his body towards her own, he can’t deny the hot trail of tears on his cheeks. Even her plea for him to stop cannot reach him now, as every structure of patience and forgiveness he’d created around himself crumbles inward and he lashes out at everyone and everything around him. A wounded animal, a violent thing of fury and grief born in the wake of the last lash of Gaucho’s death. Snapping like a taut string, fraying at last. There is no more patience to offer, no more forgiveness left, and he screams at her in his fury.
 
“NO! You left us! You left all of us! You never even apologized you just came back like you had any right to return here! You left, you left us, YOU LEFT ME!” And the reminder has him baring his bloodied muzzle at her, trying to display his rage but betrayed by the hot tears blurring his vision, turning her into a vague sunlit shape of white as he goes to pursue her once more. The Prince is so used to Ilaria accompanying him on the battlefield, a sentinel he never allowed near the fighting bodies but still an ever-present warning system, that Astraeus slips his mind. He’d been with Ilaria so long, ever since he could walk, that he can’t imagine that particular defense being rendered nonexistent. The storm that gathers doesn’t matter, not behind the cloud of his tears, and the attack comes to him wholly unexpected. Cera doesn’t care about Astraeus, after all – Sohalia is his target, the reason behind his grief, his anger.
 
Pain explodes across his skin and he shrieks like a wild thing beneath the electric current that burns across his skin as surely as a fire would. The skin all across his hindquarters singes and burns, the hair melting to his skin as he kicks and bucks mindlessly, sickly hoping that the talons remain imbedded in the fire-pockets where they’d landed so that the bird is thrashed about like a bronc rider. 

Even in his haze of agony, Cera is as fierce a defender of companions as Ampere, and cannot bring himself to attack the bird in return. He had not been the one to abandon the Prince, and so the Golden retreats from the reach of the hateful defender, swaying drunkenly towards Sohalia once more. Even as every step and shift of his body brings a fresh wave of pain, it’s all he has to rely on now. He’s faster than her, he has to use it before her superior agility kicks in, before she fights back and evades him. Before his own guilt-laden conscious reminds him of better things, the friend she had been for him. The mother she could have been, and isn’t that why he’s so devastated now? That he’d been one of the ones she’d left behind?
 
His throat is tight with pain, any words he reserves for her strangled by the acrid smell of burnt hair as he charges, regaining his wits from the grasp of pain to pursue her. Cera tries to approach at an angle, hoping her attempts to speak to him have left her facing him, keeping his focus on her left side. Tries to use his superior height to leap high, teeth snapping for her ears and forelegs aiming for the thick meat of her shoulder rather than the delicate bones of her legs. Even now he can’t bear to cripple her, to attack her in any truly devastating way. He loves her, even now he still loves her, but he can’t bottle this pain any longer. “I LOVED YOU!” Cera screamed at her as his hooves touched earth once more, teeth snapping as if to herd her away from him, protect himself from the pain of the memories of her retreating form – a physical contradiction against the battle he has caused. “I loved you and you left me, just like Aleta!” Perhaps he can fool himself into thinking he’s doing this for Aleta, not for the motherless boy he still remains inside.

- - -

Attack: {2/4}
Words: {796/800}