still a credit to your ruse, what a beautiful excuse
to never open up your eyes and see the things you lose

[ Writing this to wrap things up.. if anyone wants me to change any specific detail, just let me know! <3 ]

From one disaster to another; he escaped the slavering jaws of death, drew breath again for a moment. Sweet, blessed air, like spring water and nectar running down a parched throat—hopeless hope blossomed in the starlit night, pace slowing to look over his shoulder. The wolf was coming, bounding in with long, lithe steps, moving far faster than it should've been able to. It's face was whole again, the intent obvious.

So for what did he fight? Why did he not lay down his arms, and die? He'd come to the end of the world, chased to the last place of solace, where the stars glittered in an otherwise empty sky: he had nowhere left to run, barely the heart to keep fighting, his energy somewhere far below his feet. Muscles burning. All he wanted was to lay down and rest—why give them the fight? Why pretend he could survive this? He ground his teeth together, Irma's stream of sensible emotions cradling his mind and breathing on the embers of his heart, urging the flame back to life.

The fires of this world will go out without you.
They already have.
Please.
I can't.
Hush, don't think. Just do.
What is the point?
What is the point of anything? Just do. For me. For us.

The adrenaline of pain was fading fast, and his bleary eyes watched the wolf approach. His feet had stopped moving, just waiting for death and destruction to rain down upon him. He didn't even know if he was breathing or not.

And the sky broke open with vehement cries of denial, as forceful as the pleading voice of Irma in his head. His head swung around, wondering whatever creature could scream so loudly for his survival, and in whatever pit it had survived: and out of the starry night came nothing but its own daughter, Circuta, blazing anger and radiating life.

There is nothing but the promise of salvation that can breathe hope and life into dying men.

From where did she come? How was she still alive? Why had the darkness not taken her soul and body along with everyone else's? She was hot and alive, pressing against his side, too real to be a mirage invented by a desperate mind. "Circuta," he whispered through a dying throat, harkening to her directions: heart? Labyrinth? Why did she speak in riddles now, when what he needed was clarity? He stumbled backwards as the wolf came on swift paws, flattened his ears. He wouldn't leave her here, even as his heart pounded dark red blood through strangled veins.. even if Ktulu choked the life out of him, he'd fight until the darkness to save this ray of light in the black world, the only chance for salvation he and Irma had.

If he figured out where to go.
But first, the wolf.
Wolves were climbing fast on his list of things he didn't like.

Would his trick work again? It came too fast, aimed for Circuta, and still in silence—conserving what oxygen that hellish bitch allowed him to have—he tried to knock the thing off course, hoping the fleet-footed nightingale would dodge in time.

Where are we going? he cried out to her.
The caves!

Good that at least one of them had their minds with them.

"Go!" he snarled, and turned his heart and mind onto the tree.
Go, she echoed, talons gripping the branch firmly.
Irma? The world slowed to nothing but the slowest, most painful beat of a heart; darkness crowded in on his eyes. He could feel the ache in her left wing, where he'd gripped her as he tore her from the shadows' hungry grasp.
I'll come. Don't worry. Go!
What are you..?
Despair. Desolation. Fury, hopelessness. It washed through him, a unholy flood, denial pounding through his veins with every beat of his heart.
GO! I'll manage, and somewhere in the wildness of her voice there was his despair, mirrored, the keening of the wounded wolf and all the fury of a mother separated from her child—and in the torrent of darkness and love and hopelessness, there was logic in her choice. He needed to be able to buck and run his way to the damn caves, and she'd be in the way.
She needed more rest. To heal her wing.
"Don't wait too long," he whispered with tears in his eyes, turned, and ran. The nightingale flew with him.

The scent of blood and shadow was acrid in his mouth and nose, burned into his brain; exhaustion whispered at the back of his mind, told him to just give in, and the fleet-footed wolf and the choking witch ran with them. From the stars into the shadows, through the shadows towards Hell: flames twined themselves along his muscles, hot, harsh breaths pounding out from a raw throat. And sometimes, not at all. Towers of ice were left in their wake as terror embodied chased them across the face of Helovia, snapping at flanks and strangling lungs; his knees were scabbed from all the times he'd fallen, vision blackening and muscles unable to move, until it had cleared and he'd struggled to his feet to keep going. Blood covered his back, nearly black in the night; the wolf's sharp teeth had lacerated him each time he was too slow to dodge, or too slow to send the ice flying into his face. A time or two he'd even tried to freeze the beast's jaws into numbness, to buy temporary respite.

The black sky watched them as they fled. The darkness reveled in the taste of fear and blood, and shunned their resolution to live. For what is life compared to the glorious undeath?

Everything.
Irma's talons gripped the tree's branch, blue eyes staring at the lonely stars. She would come.

Head over heels Mauja tumbled into the dark hole beside the heart, soaked in blood and sweat. Circuta came crashing in with him. How he made it from safety's threshold to fall asleep somewhere else he didn't know, but somehow he did.

But he would not dare trust in hope until Irma was safe by his side again.