At the sun's first ray, fingers of pale green and blue slid across the sky, glowing orange in their roots. The sun was rising playing a game of time with the stallion, finding it hard to time his caw with the delivery of sunlight over the mountaintops. He had succeeded, red raven eye shrinking small in the presence of such saving light. A ray of hope shined down on him.

    Daltoff felt a sharp, icy voice freeze his brain, but not his transformation. The one small bird eye looked out against inky feathers, finding the Frostheart's clear gaze, all hope and plea going into the speed of his change. Before the old General could utter a word, the sun's light exploded over the valley, grabbing away at the feathers of his coat. Gold warmth forced the feathers back where they'd come from, the saving militia of his day. Glinting on the blackness of his beak, cracking it with unseen hands, ripping away at the night's awful creation. Like a boiled shell it cracked and flaked into the frost of morning revealing a compressed maw. Fleshy nostrils twisted their way to the surface, dark hairs grew like spring grass, and the wings of his shoulders were broken. The sun tore them down, pulling away at each painful bone, one by one cracking the joints like the cold on bark. It was a removal of death, a resurrection he'd referred to it as. Saved by the sun that once terrorized him, haunted by the night that once served as a loyal companion to him.

    It was gone now. The sun ate away the remains, leaving the feather fibers to stain the ground. The last to transform was the solitary eye, a flash of sun twisting the contents of the glassy thing, swirling the mixture until it returned to normal. The pain flew away at that moment, and all that was left was the stillness and the never-forgetting shadow that glared in the protection of his legs. The eye, a newly formed window to the soul, rolled to the most-likely horrified eyes of the beholder.

    Daltoff dipped his head in respect for his King, underbelly of his dual toned horn pressing into the frost laden ground. "Mauja the Frostheart," the old General says, more quietly than the transformation's climax, but loud enough so he could place things where needed be by familiarity in his brain. "Dearest King, I must say that this," he motions to the fibers of destroyed raven curse in the pallid ground. "this is no momentary phase."