The attack comes out of nowhere. One moment, the prince is staring dejectedly at the choppy waters of the sea; the next, his ear is swiveling to catch the slightest shift of sand from behind him.

A great many things happen then in quick succession.

A burst of pain explodes in the prince's right hind leg. His wings fly open suddenly in reaction, an angry, frightened scream bursting from his lips. A shadow blurs beside him, its horns drilling into feathers instead of femur. If the prince is lucky, his involuntary movement will have buffeted his attacker in the face. From above, a gold flash plucks a screeching Zarina from the stallion's back; a white flare precedes a sudden rush of flame. The prince shies away, to his left, trying to escape both the unicorn attacker and its dragon. He is too slow, and fire blisters the right side of his face from poll to nose.

Zarina! he shouts inside his mind (or did he yell it out loud?), desperation turning to panic as he catches a glimpse of her clutched within the dragon's talons with his left eye. His right has been rendered useless by the dragon's flame. His thoughts are muddled, confused - who is it that attacks, and why? What has he done to elicit such a reaction from someone? His right hind hovers uselessly above the sand, unable to bear his weight; his right wing is bleeding heavily, a horn torn into the flesh. Feathers fall, floating and spiraling gently downward to land hopelessly upon the sand. He will not escape to the skies. A part of him realizes already that he will not escape, but self-preservation refuses to allow him to give in so easily. His face is on fire - if not literally, then figuratively, for already the second-degree burns have exposed the muscles of his cranium and destroyed his eye.

All of this - the initial attack, his reaction, his comprehension of his injuries - takes mere seconds. Excruciating pain is all that he knows, but somehow he tries to turn away, as though maybe he can limp away to safety. There is no thought, no coherent plan - there is nothing but pain. Zarina is screaming in his mind, but he can't make out the words, can't quite understand her meaning. Everything they have been through, everything they have weathered, it has all been for nothing -

His blood boils in his veins, and a tortured shriek climbs into the dark sky above. He barely feels the shove from his left. Suddenly he collapses, writhing in the sand, his entire body burning from the inside out, as though acid had taken over his circulatory system and become intent on eating away at him until there is nothing left. The torment seems to go on for hours, days, weeks, until he can no longer tell where he is. Perhaps he is back in Th'orqui, perhaps this is the end that the Anarchists had envisioned for him all those years ago. Perhaps Helovia had been a dream, a manifestation of his will to survive. Perhaps none of it had ever been real.

He doesn't care anymore.

His voice has long since gone silent, his throat hoarse from his screams of pain. Everything hurts, and even Zarina has gone silent. If she is dead - if her half of his soul has been ripped away - that pain has been overshadowed by his own. He can't find her. He can't find anything.

"End it," he rasps, his voice betraying the cancer of depression that has swallowed him. "Please," he begs.

Perhaps the next life would be kinder.

Better yet, perhaps there was nothing after this.

Perhaps he could pass into blissful oblivion.

Nothingness would be better than this.

"more words."

Quilyan

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