The flames danced across navy glass set in uneven cement; their tongues licked the thorns and mirthless crackling was the sound of their laughter at the sharp points. Thorns, like so much of life, yielded to fire.

But the navy glass was not left long to linger on the thicket’s last, desperately spiteful words. No, words whipped by fury and the cusp of hysteria hit the Elephant King’s great flaps of flared, gray ears. His head swung towards the Icebound, eyes ablaze with the inferno lighting before all gathered. His heated stare seared at Elsa, body hot with his magic; an opposite to her ice. She tore at him with her words; attacking his honor and nobility.

However, to the King, there was not honor to be had at the expense of protection. Tembovu was not motivated by such things as nobility in this moment—or in any moment. There was no honor in the bodies bloated by death. There was no nobility in the mangled carcasses of foals, first pecked by vultures for their thin skin and sweet, rotting flesh. The King had walked through aftermaths such as these, and he had found no honor there.

He was the Elephant General, a man driven by vengeance and saved by love.

His central driving force was justice. Justice was not noble. It was emotionless; it served as a simple delineation between ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ Nobility and honor were far more emotional things; they could dabble in defining the grey areas of ‘right’ and the ‘wrong.’ But not the Elephant. “Nothing is safe, but a King that does not use everything he can to protect his herd is not ’noble.’ He is naive and brainless,” his deep thunder rang between her words.

Were it a different day, a different time or place, the King may have been receptive to some of what Elsa screeched at him; he might have been swayed by her words, were they said differently. But, as it was, the Elephant King’s eyes blazed at the winged, icy woman; a rage (that had already begin to simmer) catching ablaze beneath the surface of his thick, gnarled, grey skin.

Her words of death—of a ’metaphorical’ death meaning as much as the literal— they were the ultimate accelerant to his anger. His trunk raised in warning as his body swung to face her. He did not need to watch the flames when a conflagration burned inside him. He could not even put a voice to the rage that glazed his eyes and heated his chest—though the magma-elephant had just left it and so his magic needed moments to recover.

The King was not ignorant that all carried their own burdens (though in this moment, he had no understanding for them). Neither was he comparing his loss to Elsa’s. But he was enraged that this woman—a woman who had at one point called him “good for all” to console him in his moments of dark weakness— would dishonor and demean the death of his own child by lumping Faxr with those that still lived.

So it was fury-blinded eyes that landed on Edgar’s pleading gaze. Thus, this warning (for if Edgar was warning the Elephant, then Elsa’s violence was sure to be terrible) was lost on the King. An angry, deafening trumpet drowned out her wild cry and final promise to ‘end him’. She had ranted enough, with too large of an audience for her infuriated and blasphemous words. His livid trumpet also served as a warning to all: move away from the blows that were about to be traded.

But his trumpet was cut short, as suddenly his large, round feet were cold. A rapid, downward glance showed him a sheet of ice lifting recklessly out of the earth, already growing slippery in the face of the inferno’s heat. His elephantine feet had no purchase on the uneven, melting surface and so his heavy body began to slip.

He bellowed in anger, taking a sliding and haphazard lunge towards Elsa— though his heavy body was unbalanced and so he landed on his left knee. A sharp pain shot up through his slabbed, massive shoulder—though it was short-lived and ignored as his glare remained trained on his Queen. His trunk reached out with his momentum, aiming to wrap around the nearest of Elsa’s wings at the juncture of withers and wing. His head was lowered, long and curved tusks outstretched—he hoped to pull her onto their sharp points.

Even as he attacked, he could feel his body begin to immobilize as he began to lose grasp on his elephantine form. Mbwene, the small matriarch, had begun to sprint towards the battle the moment she felt such rage through their bond.

---

WC: 797
PC: 1/4
Damage tracker: tired from holding onto Elephant form/sending magmaphant @ thicket; lightly wrenched left knee
Summary/notes: Tembo lunges off ice-platform (falling on his left knee) and he tries to grab Elsa by her nearest wing/shoulder joint onto his tusks. Mbwene is MIA atm, but on her way. (I wasn't sure if Edgar actually pecked for his eyes? :[ )

Tembovu

the elephant king