With the cold came darkness, deathly dark and hungry for the power of life. It left only destruction in its wake, and Erthë found herself herded south, away from her homeland and everything she had ever known or loved. Others joined in as the bottleneck tightened around them, their white-rimmed eyes and sweat-laced bodies mirroring her own fear. On they went, faster and faster. The young mare struggled to keep up, weighed down by her pregnancy and the constant attempts to find familiar faces in the milling throng.

And she found them. Many, many lives had crossed paths with hers in these scant three years she had spent upon this fair earth. Erthë recognized so many of them, knew their names and faces, knew their dreams and hopes and fears. With some she had shared a lifetime, others were only faces in the crowd, but all were they her kin, her friends, her beloved family.

And Kaos was taking it all away before her eyes.

Erthë wanted to fight back. She would have too, if she had been free to follow her nature. Others depended on her now however. Precious new life rested beneath her heart and it was not her place to risk it by being reckless. The little mare had done her last act of thoughtlessness the day she bedded Volterra, and her life was no longer just her own.

But it was hard, so very hard to stay back and watch others do battle in her place.

If it could even be called a battle. Massacre. Slaughter. Those were better words for what Kaos wrought upon her beloved. Numb with horror, she watched as he snuffed out the lives of the brave with no apparent effort. One by one they dissolved into darkness, claimed by the tainted magic the Deceiver. There was no mercy, no compassion. Women and children, old and young, brave warriors all fell before her eyes, and helpless to do anything Erthë cried, her pale cheeks lined with tears.

"FATHER! NOOO!"  

When Vadim's pale form vanished, the girl screamed out her pain and grief and found her voice drowned by the wails of the masses, their collective wails extending to the uncaring sky above. She threw herself forward, heedless of the danger in the all consuming desire to avenge her father - so kind, so gentle, so utterly unsuited to this field of carnage - but before she managed another step someone else shoved themselves past, and she was knocked aside, interrupted before she could draw the deadly attention of Kisamoa, the Deceiver, slayer of innocents.  

Gasping, Erthë struggled for breath and felt the life within her stir and thrash in protest. A sharp kick to the inside of her belly focused her thoughts again. An anguished moan of despair tore past her tightly closed lips and her will wavered, flickered, began to cave to what seemed so inevitable...

And then the Gods arrived.

Hope flared like a bonfire within her as her eyes fell upon their majestic figures. The sturdy, unshakable form of Earth, the no-nonsense weaver of Time, her own beloved Moon - so fair, so strong, so weary that her mind boggled at the thought of the powers that were set in motion here - but... Just as soon as it kindled, the hope faltered again. There were only three of them. Where was the Sun? The bright, blindingly handsome god of light and flame, whose arrogance had robbed her of her mother but whom Erthë still could not bring herself to hate?

He was not there, and without him it seemed the battle could not be won.

Unable to comprehend the vast scale of what was taking place before her eyes, the young hybrid girl witnessed the last battle of the gods that created her world. Hope and worry, fear and horror tore at her sanity as the fight surged back and forth, but as time wore on, only despair rose to prominence within her heart.

Again she screamed out in grief when the Goddess of the Moon was slain - if that even was the right word for what happened - and in a way, this loss was even more profound than the death of Vadim. Parents were supposed to pass away eventually. It was sad, horrible, too tragic to think of, but it was in the nature of mortals to perish. A God though, was immortal. Infinite beings, powerful beyond measure - they should not be so easily slain. All at once, her whole understanding of gods and mortals was thrown on its head. Nothing made sense anymore, no one was safe, nothing would ever be certain and true again.

And all choice had been stolen from her, leaving her with no options but to bow and bend to this primal force that had been unleashed upon them all.

Weeping inconsolably, the young daughter of light and shadow, born from winter's last breath, threw one long, wistful glance back at her home as she was herded into the portal. Once green lands, bountiful with magic and life, fertile and fair beyond measure... It was how she wished to remember it. Not this wasteland of shadow and death, this battlefield ruled by madness and grief... Up until the very last moment she struggled to see it, craning her neck and straining to look over the fearful horses that surrounded her.

Then it was gone. The portal consumed her, and all she perceived as the world fell away behind her.... was darkness.

Big girls cry when their hearts are breaking