The aftermath of the murderer reveal left Archibald in tatters. He was fully overwhelmed in rage, mixed into his mind from watching the Moon Bitch walk into his herdland, as well as the murderer Gaucho. He needed to go to the Throat, to see and collect his Macaria. She was not safe there, no, not with Gaucho inhabiting the same space. Would Ampere be able to protect the youngling? Would Gaucho attempt to hurt her, to spite Archibald and his demand for the dun's head? The thoughts flew like a whirlwind in Archibald's mind, and the stallion wanted to vomit. He wanted to scream and kick and bite and demolish something.

Equally, however, he wanted Circe at his side, to tuck her head into the muscle of his neck that she found so much comfort in. He wanted her here, knowing she would feel his pain and give him validity...but if Circe were here, Archibald would not be feeling the pain...would not be feeling the rage...for she would be alive and her blood would not be on Gaucho's hooves.

The feeling of wanted to ralph washed over the Dauntless once more.

Instead, the titan threw his head back and screamed. It was a loud, bellowing, guttural sound that was savagely raw with his pain and his anger. It seemed to shake the world around him--but no, that was caused by the stamp of a single, steel embellished hoof that struck the terra into movement. Birds, scared by the sudden barbaric shout, flew from their coops and squawked their disagreement. The water rippled, unable to hold onto the shoreline through Archibald's earth-shaking display of emotion.

Loretta, below him, tipped her head back and sang her own howl. It was full of sorrow and rage, intermingling with Archibald's scream.

"

@[Resplendence]

The earth began to stop its trembling, slowly and surely, and the Dauntless lowered his head. It hung limp, his eyes pressed closed to veil molten golden optics from the daylight. Loretta pressed into his knee, her forehead resting against the massive, hard joint. I know. She attempted to soothe, but tears stung her amber eyes and spilled over her lids, drenching Archibald's white knee with her sadness. He moved his head to rest it on his companion's back, sighing into her thick, red fur. The girl is the salvation for our sins. Archibald choked with those words spoken from his bonded, a sob stuck from surfacing to the world. The pain was too deep, deeper than anything he had ever felt. Years ago, when the titan held his stillborn daughter in his embrace and lamented over their loss he thought he had felt the true depths of sorrow. But he had lost Circe. The Shadowmere held par of his heart. She was bedded deeper within him than a sickness, and she soothed him and read him and understood him when the world crashed against him like a hurricane.

The sound of his name pulled him from his thoughts, and Archibald lifted his head roughly, ears pressed forward as his muscles hardened ,ready to strike should it come blow to blow. However, when his eyes cleared after he blinked several times--pushing away the clouds from tears he had not been aware he was crying--he noticed it was the soft, pale mare from his herd. the king cleared his throat and relaxed his body. His ears dipped down to the sides, golden eyes finding her own. Loretta turned to face Resplendence, eyes narrowing some. Does she not understand privacy?

Hush, beast. It was us who made the call.

I still don't want her here.

I know.

Archibald merely watched the fearful mare for some time, his lips pulled tightly together in his silence. Finally, he cleared his throat. "I am sorry to upset you." He apologized, voice raw and deep and honest. He did not know what else to do. He had wronged this mare in the past, from invading her home to taking her safety item during the wraith attack. He wanted her to look at him now with his sins of the past aside, though, to him, they were not sins. The actions that had affected Resplendence were actions written by the hand of his overarching sense of duty.

Archibald simply watched her, eyes glazing over in their typical stoic way, the statuesque warrior forming once more in the wake of his heartbreak. Loretta turned and walked around Archibald, finally resting beneath him, leaning against his cannon with her shoulder and her cheek on his knee. Her amber eyes still stayed pinned on the soft golden eyes--so much like Archibald's own eyes and still so different altogether--of the girl, though her tail curled calmly over her white paws. In Archibald called her to be civil, she would obey, for in his state, disobedience would surely lace a new scar on her thick pelt. Resplendence spoke and Archibald lowered his head some, shaking it, as he scoffed. He did not scoff at her, but at himself, at the sorrow and rage that clawed away at his blackened heart. "My injuries cannot be mended by herb or by magic. Only time." He closed his eyes for a moment, and he doubted his own words. No time would heal the void within his soul. Circe was gone, and there was no repairs that could ever be made.

He lifted his head once more, however, to look the dun in the eye when she continued to speak. He set his jaw, listening, and his eyes watched the dragon drop from the trees and land on her bonded. Archibald nodded, a respectful but stoney nod, and introduced himself in turn. "Archibald the Dauntless, Loretta. Newly crowned King, as you've been made aware." Archibald recalled their previous meeting, and the young winged boy she had brought into the Edge with her. Her reaction to his title change had been predictable, the slight way her jaw and hardened and her eyes had widened, it was something Archibald did not fault her for. She probably thought Kaj's head was laying somewhere, his body thrown off the cliffs over the edge of the world. This was untrue, of course, but his history played otherwise. He had not touched a dark hair on the head of their delicate queen, either. Archibald had earned his title, as he had in the past, and he would keep it with honor and steadfast dedication.

@[Resplendence]

Archibald did not have to reply to her words about loss. He let them roll over his back and sink into his bones. He was not alone in loss and pain, but he was truly alone, with none but Loretta to bear his burden, in his transgressions and history that stormed with sin and love and loss and glory. His history was a storm, a hurricane of deceit and truth mixing into one contradictory, blackened heart that he harbored in his chest with little regret. His tail continued to flick flies off of his hide, and he averted his eyes from the pale healer for a moment, looking out onto the surface of the still waters. The birds had returned to their nests, their chirping songs slowly starting to register in his inky ears once more. Archibald sighed, and Loretta let her tongue roll over his knee in a comforting, careful caress.

Molten gold eyes looked back upon Resplendence. She looked so confused and confident and hurt and cautious, rolled into one being and Archibald wondered how one creature could exist with such a dangerous concoction of emotions and not implode. "No." He said simply, his voice a quiet tone, meant only for his claybank healer. The King shifted his weight, steadying himself on the loamy soil beneath him. "I was promoted because I deserve it, not because I stole it. You think I have little dignity, woman, when in fact I hold great honor within my wartorn chest. Give me some credit. Do you not follow the orders of those above you? Do not imprison me for the sins of duty." His voice hardened some, eyes along with it. He was talking about everything he had done that crossed his path with her's in their slight history. His jaw set, and he waited for her to lash out at him, to unleash her puny wrath on him this day, tail continuing to flick away pesky flies.

The king gritted his teeth together, setting his jaw in his familiar stone-like fashion. The mare angered him in her ignorance and her frustration, and his tail lashed against his hind legs, displaying the emotion so fully and openly. Loretta's ears pinned down against her head and the bitch stood stepping out from beneath the solace of Archibald's tower of strength. The red and white malamute lowered her head and snarled at the claybank woman, tail curling over her back as the hair along her spine prickled some. Archibald's bright, golden eyes narrowed as he spoke fervently, "I invaded to follow contract and obligation, not on my own accord. I did not want to take anyone's home from them." He did not let his gaze falter, instead, he stared straight on towards the one-eared mare as if to burn holes through her own golden colored eyes.

The Dauntless King took a step forward, raising his head and looking down on her with all of his disdain and anger. "When I took your pinecone, it was not a personal gain to gain dominance and cast fear over you. You got it from an ancient power in Helovia, and it was laced with some magic that kept the holder safe from the infection that was turning the inhabitants of this world into wraiths. I took it upon my shoulders, alongside other selfless horses, to use those items to protect myself as I fought the wraiths to protect everyone in this world. It. Was. Not. For. Me."

He took another step forward, lowering his head some, and his voice in tandem. "It was for you, and everyone else not strong enough to fight back." The Dauntless was once more standing over his bitch, but his tail had stopped lashing and his muscles hardened beneath his midnight pelt. He looked like a statue, his war-hardened body solid and unmoved just a few steps before the puny morgan mare. Silence, beast. Archibald commanded his amber eyed companion, before he asked Resplendence a simple question.

"Do you understand, now, why our paths crossed in such ways?"

The beast is used to fear. His gargantuan form and his immense power in battle strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest of mares and stallions alike. He recognizes the smell of fear as it radiates off of his opponents, knows the twist in the ears and the tightness in the muzzle. Archibald, the warlord, knows the twinkle if fear behind hardened, narrowed eyes. He knows it. He wields it. Archibald is a domineering beast, with his fierce and faithful canine, and he makes knees tremble and fear break those beneath him into submission.

Archibald has no desire for this mare to fear him.

Her words roll down his spine and cause a chilling, tight hand to grasp him firmly. Archibald lifts his head and backs up, three steps, Loretta scuttling along with him. The king watched, still with stoic eyes, as the mare before him dissolved into tears and stuttering, aching breaths. Even beyond her words, her questions, the Dauntless stayed quiet for quite some time. Birds chirped in the background, crickets rubbed their legs together and emitted their songs across the water, and fish made ripples appear on the grove's glass-like water ever so often. Loretta let her eyes dance up to the dragon, knowing how the lick of flame felt over hide, mostly but Archibald's memories, but not completely. Enough. He commands, knowing her thoughts before she even does, and quickly the bitch lowers herself down onto her belly, tail curling under her in submission to the massive warrior who commanded her heart.

His voice softened, but the king did not break his stoney facade. He felt sympathy for this mare, but he regretted nothing of his past actions. At least, now she understood his side of their shared history, tangled in the depths of each of their hearts and minds in foggy disarray. "Pick yourself up. You can only trust others when you trust yourself. Lean on yourself. You have to know you can survive alone, with nothing left but your own strength, before you can give parts of your heart and soul to others." Archibald turned his shoulder some, moving to no longer stand head-on towards the claybank mare. It was an attempt to send comfort, to invite her into his space, to apologize for invading hers. "Have confidence in my words, Resplendence. I am here to protect you and your family, as well as mine."

Loretta, suddenly, springs back to life as Resplendence sputters and staggers. Archi, she breathes, turning amber eyes to her bonded as she steps in front of him, she needs you. The King turned his eyes up from the malamute to the tiny, faltering woman, and waits just a moment. Her emotions have overcome her, taking all of the control she had left over her mind and her body. Archibald grunted, the wind moving through his mane and tail and feathers with ease and pulling tendrils to dance in its movements. The red dragon, a ball of feathers and scales and worry, rockets towards the titan and pulls on his mane. The creature begs Archibald to move forward, to act, but until Resplendence spoke--or, truly, struggled to speak--what Archibald needed to do was unknown in his mind.

He was a warlord, not a nurse for the weak and their emotionally overrun panic attacks.

However, he was her king. Her protector. Her leader. A beacon of guidance in the dark and dangerous world.

Quickly, Archibald closes the distance between himself and Resplendence. His mind races, and Loretta sends him an image of when she had pinned her sister, Manhattan to the ground when the black dog had attacked Archibald with her magic. Knowing, finally, what he had to do, Archibald pressed his chest against the claybank's shoulder and wrapped his head over her withers, pulling her in tight and curling his neck around her. He held her like a vice, pressing her tiny body into his chest. She needed a heartbeat, she had confessed, and Archibald's was beating in a steady, hammering rhythm in his inky breast.

Archibald closed his eyes, gold veiled by darkness, and sighed deeply into Resplendence's skin. While he was here, holding this mare in a calming, or, rather, attempting to be so, embrace, all he wanted was his family to do the same for him. He wanted Ktulu and Lakota and Apollo and even Ophelia to wrap him, his daughter, and his sons in their embrace.

The king held the healer tightly for some time, eyes still pressed closed as he listened to her breathing. She calmed and he could feel the tension roll off of her muscles and, finally, she released him. Archibald took a step back, turning his head to look at the red dragon as he embraced his massive frame in a quiet but quite audible thank you. Archibald nodded to the dragon and Loretta moved in, pressing her shoulder against Archibald's right foreleg. Very odd. It wasn't a hold of submission that calmed her, but of some sort of...protection. Loretta spoke her mind clearly over their bond, but Archibald stayed silent. Whatever had transpired just now was new to the beast, but he was confident in the fact that he had to do it. He was her king now, and she was his to protect and to serve, and the Dauntless would do whatever was necessary to protect his herd.

Her question ran through his ears and Archibald stood with his lips pursed, silent, for quite some time. His past...his history...everything that created him as the being he was today was a dark dance with just glimpses of sunlight through the stormclouds. How could he tell such a damned tale and expect this mare to still find trust and confidence in him afterwards? Evangeline, a woman who had hated his mother always but held Archibald in a place of esteem, poisoned her hatred on him, too, when he spoke of his past to her, gave her the truth. Archibald's face hardened back to his normal, stoic state, as his mind mulled over ways to make his story something that would not break the delicate beginnings of a bond of trust that was beginning to form between him and the claybank mare.

Stepping forward and to the side, Archibald walked past Resplendence and into a dryer area, Loretta following in his hoof steps, until, finally, the titan lowered his impressively towering frame to lay at the base of a tree. He rested his shoulder against one large, protruding root, and Loretta sat at his hip. Keep an eye and ear out. I need to be alerted of any danger. Loretta nodded at the command, her amber eyes resting on his golden eyes for just a moment, warm and trusting. He looked to Resplendence, but did not wait for her to some to lay or stand near him before he began weaving his tale of darkness, triumph, heartbreak, healing, light, and truth.

"I have lived in Helovia for many years. I came from a land called Isilme where I served as a warrior as far back as I can remember. Isilme was destroyed and run rampant by shades, not unlike the wraiths that plagued us not long ago, and I fought to protect my herd and my family as they fled. Finally, I ended in the Threshold of Helovia with my brother, Evers. We went to the Windtossed foothills and I served as a warrior for many, many seasons. After my time of warrior service I rose to the rank of General. Ricochet, a evil, racist stallion was leading the Windtossed Foothills as the equine member of the three species Triumvirate leadership that Paladin the Valiant had established. Ricochet tried to hurt my dear friend Ophelia and I ran him out of Helovia. I came back to the Foothills and was placed as Chief in Ricochet's demise." What would she think of his first usurp? In truth it had been to rid the herd he cared for and would die for of evil, but would she see that? "I was a man dedicated to duty and my loyalty did not falter from my mother. When she commanded, I acted, even when that meant death upon someone's door. I was challenged for my leadership and I was defeated. I found The Grey, led my Ktulu and Ophelia, as you know, and I joined them as their second in military command. We stormed the Foothills after their leader--the one who had challenged me--disappeared in his cowardice and fools gold. He was but a boy, and his dragon was the true victor in his challenge against me. We overtook the Foothills, but did not force anyone to leave their home. The Grey kept the ranks open to those that fought to protect where they lived. Many stayed with us. After we aligned with the Basin and invaded the World's Edge, however, I left The Grey with my mate, Circe, and spent several long seasons in the wilds with her at my side. We birthed two sons, twins, which were finally the light. We lost our first child, a filly, but a year before...as an atonement for my sin. When I was still in the Grey, when Circe was pregnant with my daughter my brothers and I banded together to squelch my mother's raging, evil hand on us. We gave her her death. There is ancient blood in my feathers, on my hooves, and I can never repent for that. But I am no longer driven by an evil hand. I am my own master."

"But now Circe is dead. She is gone and it was the Moon Bitch that killed her." Archibald's voice turned to ice and he turned his eyes to look out on the water's surface. "And my daughter, too young and too weak, stays in the Dragon's Throat with her brothers as protectors. Soon, however, she will be at my side." And I will never fail her.

@[Resplendence]

Archibald stared out over the water's surface, watching as the still lake was disturbed by the occasional bird that swooped down to gather a beak full of water or a fish the snatched an insect off the surface. This place was so serene, and Archibald had spewed the darkness of his history and his life from his darkened heart into this place. It was vile and he felt dirty. His face was hard, his features cut from marble, his eyes two solid chunks of gold within the ebon fur. Loretta pressed her body into his, her own heart weighing heavy with the storm within his chiseled breast. Her eyes cast down and to the side as she looked at her bondmate, ears lowering in her lowered state of emotion. Her tail thumped against the loamy soil, and a small whine lifted from the depths of her throat. The bitch moved so that she was a in a half-laying position, resting her chin on the thick stallion's rump. Macaria is safe with her brothers. Do not forget that. Archibald heaved a breath, and cast his eyes up to the dun.

She spoke of her history, and Archibald gave a nod. He understood the hole that the loss of children left in one's heart. It was a cold, empty, endless void that threatened to devour the whole of the soul. The stallion blinked at her comment of him becoming a stone. It was true. He was a rock. Hard, cold, apathetic, emotionless...

Archibald shifted his weight and Loretta sprang up in time for the behemoth to gather his weight once more on his solid, tan hooves that were covered by his thick feathers. Archibald moved his massive head towards Resplendence and breathed heavily through his nostrils, trying to send more comfort her way to diminish her trembling. Cloudy, stormy, guarded eyes grew with a slight glisten, and a lump rose in the Dauntless' throat at the mention of his daughter. "Thank you," Archibald said to the mare. It was but a mere whisper compared to the normal baritone of his voice. His confidence was not lost, but the moment needed only silence, and even his whisper was a mar to the compassion that the tiny claybank showered him in.

@[Resplendence]