Everything roared around her, like the beast before her, the one putting her off from her family and her Goddess. It lunged, but she and Alice rose to meet it, perfect chords of resonance that sang with the chorus of battle and blood. Her horn stabbed deep into the wolf's body, an odd sort of pulling sensation when a piece of one's body was stuck in another's figure. The wolf shrieked and howled like the damned and the disfigured, writhing upon her forehead as Alice gripped the beast's flank tight in her jaws. The acid did no good, but her teeth were still weapons.

One moment Hotaru was sucked into the heat of the battle, the thrum of life and terror in her ears as if embedded permanently in her pulse. She and Alice working as a pair, uninterrupted, seamless and beautiful. Brutality and refinement, the perfect sides to a singular precious coin. Then all at once, jaws snapping with turpentine acidity in her face as she went to retreat, everything turned into hell.

It felt like her soul was being ripped apart, like something vital had been gripped tight and RIPPED away from her being. All at once she felt suffocated with her solitude, breath refusing to rush into her lungs as she slammed immediately to her knees beneath the weight of it all, horn sliding bloody and free from the wolf's body. Didn't even feel as its teeth pierced along the crest of her neck as she fell, entangled in her sudden prison of nothingness.

Alone, alone, alone. A flashback sensation to her grief and her loneliness, to the winding paths of her past that had killed the hope inside her. Watching her twin and mother turn away from her carelessly, too afraid to pursue them. Waiting endless nights for Tingal to return, her tears coming fewer every eve that the Goddess she tried so valiantly to trust did not return him to her. Watching as he came back only to hate her, spit upon her, and turn away again. Leaving a herd that belittled her as she walked away, not even old enough to be considered an adolescent and already braving the long shadows of reality. Wandering the snows, trying to find SOMEBODY to be near, to steal and hoard the warmth of their life spirit if only for a few scarce moments. Hollowed chest and burning tears, wondering why she bothered living when nobody would notice her dying. She was dying inside anyways.

So horribly, crushingly alone.

Alice was howling in similar agony, a screeching noise in the buzzing of her ears, senseless to the dangers as she lay suddenly sobbing and wheezing on her knees in the earth. "ALICE!" she was screaming, over and over again, like a knife being stabbed into her soul. But she couldn't even tell that the noise was coming from her. It was so feral, so brutal, it couldn't possibly be coming from her. Don't let her be dead, her spirit cried in agony and despair, in utter denial of the possibility. Don't let her leave me, please Goddess give her back to me! "ALICE! ALICE! ALICE!" And she was there, she was there and pressing her warm fur against Hotaru as she writhed and kicked helplessly to try and regain her footing, needing to see, needing to KNOW. Never leaving her, never left in the first place. But everything was so hollow, and she couldn't FEEL HER. Black bottomless eyes seemed just as scared as Hotaru felt as their eyes finally locked, familiar characteristics blurred by her overwhelming tears. Why couldn't she feel her? Why couldn't she FEEL HER? What monstrous effect was this, to have been ripped so carelessly from her sister's side and reminded of the horrors of her past?

It was agony, her loneliness crashing over her in acidic waves that burned her to the core, and she didn't care if the beast they'd been fighting together descended and ended her right then. She would bless the sweet release, if only to end this suffering.

And then like light cresting over the horizon, Alice had returned to her. And she was left in the wake of the devastation, openly sobbing, uncaring of those who gazed upon her. They were unimportant in the face of the possibility that her life could ever be like that, could ever be degraded to such horrible suffering. Bleeding neck reached around to draw Alice to her, shaken and torn as she sank into the lull of their bond. Here, she whined both aloud and in Hotaru's mind, no other words necessary even if she'd had the ability to speak them. I here.

Hotaru lay curled around her for many long moments, shuddering and broken like a lost child. She could not bear that loneliness, not again. Not after all her years of suffering through it, more dead than alive. To lose Alice...to lose Alice would be a fate worse than death, and she shook with the memory of the glance into that world that she'd been given. It was pure luck that Ampere had not been spotted, that her magic lay unknown, for it would have destroyed any attempt at an alliance that the Basin and Throat were building. The future lay uncertain as to whether it would ever be revealed, but as Alice helped prop up Hotaru and they both stood, neither seemed to care. They had each other once more, that was all that mattered.

Her Goddess let power wash over the battlefield, and Hotaru shook beneath the similarly comforting presence, torn though her spirit still was. They moved slowly off the field, as if in a daze, leaning heavily upon one another like neither could remain vertical without the other. Everything else could perish, they simply needed to be together.