He had never felt anything like this before, the feeling was crippling and suffocating. His body felt heavy for the first time and his blood pounded heavy in his ears. Loretta's dark cry fell upon deaf ears, but they snapped down to flesh with his dark nape. Archibald stared hard at the ground, his eyes cloudy and sullen.

Before this day, had Archibald even felt a slight hint of sadness? Or was he only a vessel of war?

Loretta's howl dissipated into the wind and she crawled closer to her bonded, head low. Her whining was low and mumbling, but she touched her nose to his shoulder nonetheless. She is beautiful. Loretta told him, face twisting with a new form of concern that she had never felt before. Her pink tongue moved forth from the pearly cage of her jaws and lapped over Archibald's burn-scarred shoulder, her amber eyes glancing up towards his golden ones. Archibald continued to shake, despite her comforting efforts, and he closed his eyes, the dark veils of his lids covering the last but of the liquid metallic of his molten gold eyes. Simultaneously, the Dauntless sighed deeply and pressed his chin into his daughter's cold, damp body.

The silence was long and eerie between the weeping mother and the statuesque father, with the dog pressed now against the giant's back. The snow continued to fall over them, hindering the pitch black of the draft mutt's coat. Archibald seemed to have stopped shaking--from the cold or the sorrow, none could decipher--but his muscles were tight beneath his dark skin. Inside the depths of Archibald's mind he wondered what they looked like from the bird's eye. Did they look like fallen angels, weeping into the snow? Or did they look like battered warriors, grieving the loss of a fallen comrade? Either option was true--Callisto had been a fighter, Archibald would not guess any less than that. He, after all, shared his blood--and Circe's, and Circe was a scrapper down to her very core.

Remembering that, the Dauntless opened his eyes again. "Loretta," His voice was gentle and low, the sound foreign and a tinge bitter on his lips. Loretta perked from behind him and stood, walking to stand near his massive head. What do you want me to do? She asked. "Go find my brothers, the first one to cross your path, bring them. Call for the others. Now." In an instant, the bitch was galloping towards the heart of the herdland again.