It was empty. His mind brushed over the spot where her soul used to be, like a tongue feeling out the raw, tender flesh where a tooth used to be, unable to stop even despite the discomfort. Again and again, continuously with a stubborn persistence he kept nudging, prodding and caressing the black void where her thoughts and feelings should, had to be. The golden eyes looked glazed and unseeing at the forest as he limped onwards, desperately searching for someone, anyone that could help him. The stench of blood and burned flesh, singed hair and sweat, fear, rage, stood like a miasma around him; even the trees themselves seemed to lean away from the grulla as he passed, as if they could sense the instability of his mind and magic that so recently had erupted. His mouth burned with tastes and scents, hairs raked off the Dauntless' coat pricking and sticking to the tongue - he wished it was his blood that stained the velvet nose, would have done anything to make the big brute and his beloved angel change place... oh, if only wishes could come true if you wanted it enough.
It wasn't the blood of Archibald that trickled down his chest and painted crimson smears across the front of sooted forelegs. It wasn't his own either, despite the many scrapes and bruises he had received while defending his home. No, the reason why he raged with ears folded flat against the neck as he cantered through the underbrush in search for the Moon Doctor was because the one bleeding her life out over his skin was the only innocent creature he knew, the one he would do anything for, give up everything to save. Her heartbeats was growing weaker by the minute, and as Lace cradled the little dragon to his chest and ran, ran for her life and for his own, he could feel her slip away.
A sudden, familiar call upon the wind brought the racing steed to a jerky halt from a speed that sent the knees buckling beneath him and moss flying from the ground. Flaring nostrils vibrated as he attempted a neigh back to announce his presence and was frustrated to hear how weak it came out, unable as he was to stretch the neck out because of the precious burden he carried. Again he called and began to head in the direction of the caller, the one mare who always seemed to be there when he needed it the most.
Finally he gave up on trying to call and run at the same time and came to a halt in a small opening between the trees, a tiny glade centered by a clear spring that bubbled and murmured as it sprung into the freedom of the night. Softly, gently the silver knelt and placed his closest friend on the mossy surface of a flat rock and got up again, only sparing her a quick, heart-sinking moment before he was up again - and this time his voice carried, high and shrill and filled with all the dire need that haunted him.
Lace had never before felt so helpless in his life as the moment when he returned to wait by the side of the dragon, unable to do anything but watch her limp figure with the glittering scales sullied by blood, wings broken and shredded by canine fangs and oozing the liquid of life from every torn vessel.
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