"NO! BROTHER!" His world tumbles down around him, and his wings falter from where he speeds towards the island. His heart seems to sear itself into his ribcage, all the good in the world melting and extinguished before his very eyes to see his brother's life faltering and fading with him as a broken witness. He falls from the sky like a shot bird, and his heart bleeds with the puncture. The landing is harsh, a comet brought to earth, burning with the force of his anguish. All those years of trying to find Hototo, of suffering with loneliness and faded memories. Why had he ever wished to find him? If he hadn't, would such a fate had befallen his beloved brother?

Knees crumple beneath the pain of his own landing, and he stumbles, flails and jolts towards his brother's fallen form. "Hototo!" he screams in anguish, and this time he really does fall, to the ashes of the world that lay in his brother's fallen form. He singes his knees upon those burning memories, a loss his heart cannot handle. A burden that breaks and shatters his shoulders. "Please," he pleads, voice choked and strangled, thin and high. His faith falters beneath the ripping of his platonic soulmate from the energies of his body. A part of him is withering, dying before the vapid eyes of his brother. Tears course down his face, hot and scarring, until his vision swims. Perhaps he can erase the appearance of this with the force of his own agony.

Ktulu is beside him, but he cannot care for her personal space. He leaves her be in his grief, and hopes she will do the same. They both love - loved - Hototo. Perhaps in different ways, but it did not matter, not to Cera. As she moves towards Archibald, he presses the flat of his forehead to the still warm side of his brother. The clouds gathered round him at the Earth's request, and Cera screamed and writhed against it in agony. "NO!" he wailed, but he was helpless in his fight against a being eternally aged, and stronger than his mind could imagine. "I TRUSTED YOU!" he screamed at the blurred figure of the Earth God. Why hadn't he helped Hototo? Why had he taken Hototo away, when Cera had already lost Midas to him?

"I HATE YOU!" And his faith failed beneath the weight of his loss, dropped softly to an earth he didn't want to belong on any longer. He had nothing to live for in that moment, his broken relationship with Ranjiri the only thing he had left to face. And the reminder that Gaucho...that his father, his brother in arms...had killed Hototo. Under the influence of that bitch.

Once upon a time, the earth turtle had told Cera that forgiveness was the only answer. Onni had sworn by the same. Cera had believed them, but not any longer. Hatred festered dark and insidious in his heart, and with a sudden burst of his wings he was airborne, flying recklessly towards the presence of the Gods he could still feel on their plane.

His landing was just as terrible as it had been, but he strode firm and furious across the earth to where Gaucho lay knelt before the Gods. One wing flared open, its expanse shielding the sensitive parts of the warrior. A stone cold face stared down at the gods, disrespectful, hateful. "No." Soft feathers clung to Gaucho's outward wing. Cera had lost too much. They could not take Gaucho, too. And though a part of him wanted to hate Gaucho, he knew the warrior never would have killed Hototo. Killed any of those people. It would be an obstacle they'd have to overcome together, when the blackness of Cera's anger faded. He would not lose anybody else, not to the Earth God's stupidity. Cera would tear their shrines down rock by rock, he would destroy all of Helovia until they would have to ask the citizens to quest to kill him, such a danger he would pose.

And with Ktulu, he agreed.

"Kill the bitch," he spat, uncaring of the fact that he knew it was impossible. "You have taken too much. You took my father, killed my brother. Do something right for once in your fucking immortal life," he hissed, tail a whip against his hocks. The Earth God had so much power. Yet Cera thought of him only as weak.