Old loyalties die hard.

Who did he care for, up in that northern bastion? If he asked himself honestly, and answered honestly, it was a short, grim list. Lena, Kou, Faelene... and the soldiers; Tolio, Deimos, Descaro. A few others. Names he knew he cared for but if he honestly answered himself.. did he care for anyone at all? Or for too many? Darkness snapped at his heels as he danced along the shadowy edge of the steppe, its pristine beauty swallowed by the thick cloud of black. It smelled of despair and terror, and the pounding of his heart was enough to tell him that this is right; you have to make sure they're aware. Prepared. Leaving? No; where would they go? Was there any place that was safe from the tidal wave of darkness rushing in across their lands? It had come from the sea, to him, yet it lay here like a midwinter's blanket, except when he truly looked at it, it wasn't all black and star-strewn.. it was all black and empty.

But if they didn't leave... would they be able to get out? Or would the darkness close in around them, like hands around a throat, until it finally started to spill down the mountain slopes of the Basin? Filling it up to the rim with putrid terror, and nightmares come alive? Even the air tasted stale and dead, void and null, but nothing stirred as he crossed the vast place, heart in the back of his mouth all the time. He hadn't planned on returning here, not this way, maybe not ever. He wasn't strong enough but desperation drove him, knowing that at least one of his children ought to reside there—innocent little Sielu with her soft, feather-light mind-voice, and her mother, the red-maned Faelene. Even if his frantic mind could not decide whether or not it cared for all the rest, he couldn't abandon his own flesh and blood. He couldn't abandon the friend he'd wronged with that night-time play, and the promises he'd broken all over again.

The Basin walls loomed ahead, impenetrable, tall, majestic and resolute. But against a darkness that covered land and sea.. could they hold fast?

In through the pass. The snow he ran upon was edged with black, melted; the narrow walls covered in sickly green and black sludge. Was he too late? Had whatever wicked power which haunted them come here before him? The trail he followed smelled foul, of all things gone wrong and all things which should never have been in the first place; his prey's mind rebelled, screamed for his feet to turn back the way they had come, but he pressed on, heedless and relentless. Exhaustion had begun to burn in his limbs, each breath a hot grunt slipping through an aching throat.

The vista of the Basin spread out before his eyes, unsullied but for that hellish trail leading into it. Where were the guards? Surely here somewhere, just about to run him through for barging in—unless they knew who he were, of course, recognized him, but why would he then come in announced?

There was no time for politics. A sickly, ghastly light was cast across the Basin, throwing it all into a stark relief. It was pale, like a diseased imitation of the pristine moon; frosted hooves skidded on the blackened, half-melted slope leading down to where two shapes stood, directly at the end of the trail. He was going too fast to stop in time, slid down the embankment, stumbled to a halt and confronted with the most horrifying, disgusting things he'd ever seen. The air around them was darkened with something he didn't even want to come close to, but he couldn't stop breathing—his tired body demanded oxygen and with it came little particles of that horrible, horrible cloud. Even as he backpedaled, trying to increase the yards between them, he was gagging on it, eyes locked on them in disbelief. They were both young, the bodies of yearlings or younger; but so broken, tattered, vile and rotten. Intestines hung from the silhouette of his abdomen, horns broken, flesh sagging off—he could see bone, ribs so white and pale in the ghost-light, the swell of lungs against their confines.

Heart racing, he kept backing away from them.