He remembered them flying out of reach, cowards lingering among the circling bald-necked buzzards that waited to feed on death and decay. And they had.
Déodat stood alone now, the wind in his hair and sand scraping the back of his throat.
But it hadn’t always been that way. There had once been his clan—a mighty, noble clan. His home, his life, his light. But there was no light, here. Only darkness. It wreathed his blood red shoulders in a mocking cloak of a king (wasn’t this what you always wanted, Déodat?), holding him in a close embrace, smelling of decay and death, and there was no light.
One could have all of the armor in the world, fine-crafted and custom-fit, but that made the heart no less of a vulnerable organ. It was not his scars or old battle wounds that ached, but his heart. He felt the pain there most, an agonizing pain he had never felt before. He was hollow now, but it was a terrible, aching, gaping hollowness, and his heart was fashioned of broken shards of glass and bone, ever-colliding. And now he did not go a moment without feeling, and he wished it were he that had died that day.
It should have been me.
He hated them. Or was it war, that he hated so?
It didn't matter.
He hated himself even more.
And even to this day, as a new buzzard with wild blonde hair circled above the small company and swept to an abrupt landing opposite Lena, the rage scorched his heart hotter than even the desert sun, the fire in his stomach rising like terrible, writhing serpents, snapping sparks and heat. His gaze flickered swiftly between the two pegasus, his dark gaze never lingering on one for too long. She spoke to him, the proud mare with the blue eyes. But Déodat disregarded her entirely, her words glancing off him like a blow gone awry, and he did little more than sweep his cold gaze over her sturdy, compact figure, noting possible strengths and weaknesses.
One word, however, slipped past his carefully constructed barriers, looming before him like a gaping chasm.
Home.
He remembered standing on the cliff that black day, alone and hating everything, overlooking the aftermath of the slaughter, staring at the feathered beasts prancing through the carnage as the dry wind rattled his hair and the foul stench of death overwhelmed his senses. His ruby red skin was still stained with the blood of his brothers, his sisters, his kin, and the sky-born beasts that had slaughtered everything he had ever known. That day, fire fell in place of the northern snow, and where clan children had once caught snowflakes on their tongues, ash coated his mouth, his throat, burned his eyes. He remembered bleeding raw and red, and the acid tears that would not fall blinded him.
Now, everything was a pale, listless gray, washed and faded.
Lena's gentle voice stroked his consciousness, as it had that day in the hot spring when he'd lain dizzy and weak with infection. Her words were smooth and flowing, cool and sweet as mountain stream water. If anybody could convince the feathered-beasts to return what was theirs, it would be Lena. With the silent Larkspur and the red-haired Faelene at his sides, Déodat found himself strangely comfortable in their presence. The mare he assumed they were here to rescue eyed him with an openly venomous gaze, and he replied with a cruel, twisted smirk. Unicorn kin or not, he couldn't care less if she was left to rot and die in this spit of desert land among the feathered bastards, for it was her own fault she'd landed herself in this mess. Besides, he was not here for her, and nor was it out of his sense of honor that he joined this mission.
Whatever honorable Déodat that once existed had died alongside his clan in the mountains long ago.
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Be great in act, as you have been in thought. [rescue]
![[Image: QV8O7HU.gif]](http://i.imgur.com/QV8O7HU.gif)
