Her voice reaches out to him like a hook in his belly, and the warble of emotion is like she's yanking the rope and dragging his pierced heart out through his chest. He hates her and he loves her, and he can't get over the fact that she'd never even bothered to ask for his forgiveness. Sohalia hadn't even explained, and until she shouts that she hadn't left willingly, Cera hadn't even known. This is all her fault. That he had forgiven her so quietly, so easily and without question when she had just appeared on the clay beside him. That she didn't even respect him enough to explain her absence to him.

Yet again, he was not a son to her. Just as he had never truly been a son to Gaucho. So close, but never where he yearned to truly be. It was just proof that she would never love him the way he loved her, and that hurt worse than any burn Astraeus could inflict upon him. Even as he scrapes his voice raw with the scream of pain that tears across his vocals, his heart screams ever louder. Any reply or denial that may have crossed his lips is cut to ribbons by this new agony. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. He has lost her anyways by doing this, by hurting her in a way a son should never hurt his mother. Who cares if she'll hate him anymore? Who cares? Not him.

He has lost everything, now.

The yank of talons from his skin clears his head, a new sharp pain different from the burning of his own flesh. It doesn't stop him, not even Sohalia's screaming and whimpering can stop him. Even as tears collect in instinctive reaction to her pain, the part of him that cannot bear to harm his family jerking wildly like a Pavlovian response even as Cera overrides it willfully. Even as her blood laces his tongue for the second time, feeling like a dead weight in his mouth, like fire as it slides down his throat.

Even her tears could not quench that fire. Even her forgiveness would not be enough to divest him of this particular sin.

Her apologies further blur his tearful vision, and he spins to meet her, sand kicking against his birdlike limbs as he goes to hurl further accusations against her. Hindquarters cramping with the motion, stilted and far slower than his faster frame would normally be able to manage. And in this impeded speed his words are killed in his throat as she tears after him, vengeful fire finally blazing up to meet his own, and all he sees is the white of her teeth before instinct takes over. Head rears back, eyes clenching shut against the impact as pain tears across his face.

Sensitive tissue sends its cry up into his nerves and his forelegs kick out wildly at the shorter mare's chest, hindquarters nearly toppling him as he rears up to try and escape the onslaught of pain. Trying to get her away, away, away. Catches himself with a hard painful twist of his body, forelegs stinging as they slam forward to keep him from falling sideways as his burned muscles refuse to cooperate. When he goes to tentatively open his eyes, still backpedaling jerkily away from Sohalia, his right eyes is nothing but a haze of red. His gut clenches fearfully, terror at the thought gripping him and twist hard. A choked, warbling cry of disbelief echoes across his tongue as his right eye and cheek bleed heavily, dripping hit across his chest and splashing the sand macabre red. In a panic of preservation and horror he charges blindly to where she had been, no horn to aid him as he goes to shove into her bodily with his knees and chest and right shoulder. Terrified of blindness, of betrayal, of the blood he can feel cascading down his crest from his wildly thrown head. This is too much. She can't take this from him too. He won't let her, even if he started this, even if it kills him.

Attack 3/4