[ Writing Mauja's exit. ]

He wondered when he had gone from rock-hard, ice-cold, to infinitely sorrowful – but there it was, the blue oceans opening up to swallow his soul, tinging his smile as it curved his dark lips. Duty was a cursed, bitter thing, a hollow substitute for life, poison rushing through your veins. What would it be like, to forsake duty and simply follow your heart? To live with every fiber of your being, to truly breathe the air you drew in? The slight confession, the hints of regret, and some dim part of him stirred, wishing he could spare Midas this turmoil: how hard would it be, to simply go, and tell the truth? To let them know of the crimson blood slowly sliding down an icy thorn, of the fire flash and the panic?

But the bitterness returned; who would ever believe him?
Who would ever believe Mauja capable of blinding fear?
Of accidents?

He'd been fighting for a year to once again become the wolf they wanted him to be, the hunter of the sheep flocking together, but every step of the way had been littered with flaws and mistakes. What should've been glorious murder, the opportunistic predator leaping out to take the heart of his enemy, had been nothing but an accident. Mauja wanted to close his eyes, to pause the world and think things through – didn't he know the Edge well enough to find an escape? The future was bleak, and his heart as heavy as his feet, but still he raised that first hoof, knowing that it was a road leading to nowhere.

“The sorrow is mine, for we are at a cross roads…I had hoped…” Hoped what? Mauja had the time to think, before the inevitable happened.

The world, it exploded into fragments of motion.

Irma was already moving away, wings straining against the night air, a white arrow soaring north with a plan of her own. And Mauja, he found his tongue; "SARAZH-" he bellowed, an echo of Midas' cry, but the ground and Gaucho tore the rest of his brother's name from his mouth, silencing it. The sand shook, water gurgling and rushing in, and he moved with it: desperation and instinct caused him to reach for what he thought wasn't there, only to find that it was, and the world slipped deeper into darkness.

Antlers crashed against white skin, blood studding his shoulder – the pain was all the trigger he needed, and his slippery grasp upon magic grew firmer. The restless ground erupted as he kept dancing sideways, but there was no control, no smooth precision: there were no monuments rising in a cold salute. Only hunger, an outpour of power, something twisted and broken. Shattered ice spikes studded the ground, thrusting up from the turmoil, splintering and falling only to be replaced with new ones at a rapid rate, rising just above their knees, splitting the skin of its master and maybe that of foes, too. Red gashes covered Mauja's legs, a matching picture to his bleeding shoulder, but he barely felt it; his pale eyes were wide open, a gurgle drawing itself out of his throat, feet striving sideways on the uneven ground but there was no purchase to find. Gaucho's shoulder slammed against his, bone piercing flesh and drawing more red, and one hoof clipped against the shattered stump of a spike; he crashed down on one knee, shoulder smashing against another spike and splintering it.

And still, they kept coming, flooding out of him like a tidal wave. Cold; he was cold, ice rushing through his veins, and he couldn't breathe, because the ice and the magic was everywhere, filling every sense and every cavity in his body. Something still functioned and he hauled himself up, and Irma cried out.

The night answered.

As Mauja stumbled deeper into the surf, crashing through the roiling ground and death-trap of spikes, the wind picked up. It rushed in from the cold winter ocean, it rushed in from the desert sands, it keened, rising to a howl, a brewing storm whipping through his bones, blowing through his soul. His white mane was everywhere, tangled in his horn and around his ears, whipping before his eyes, and suddenly the air formed a wedge thundering through the chaotic scene. Water greeted his fall from seventeen hands, hard sand beneath slapping against his right shoulder, and for a moment Mauja simply lay there. A few lonely ice spikes still stood, but the magic had bled itself dry; he wasn't sure if it was the trembling earth or his body quivering anymore, he didn't even know where he ended and the salty, stinging water began.

But suddenly he was there, those split blue-green eyes staring down at him, soft muzzle brushing across a bloodstained shoulder; the wind still roared, whipping his white-and-black mane into a frenzied halo around his head, and his voice was just another facet of the gale. "Reis þig!" And Irma was there, sitting on those black withers, her soul nudging his, and straining to remember who he was – to forget the feeling of his own ice flaying the inside of his skin and grinding through his veins – he rolled over on his belly. The cold water stung his open wounds, but the sand offered enough purchase. Rising into the storm Mauja followed his dark brother out to sea, and the further they thrust through the waves, the quieter the wind became, until finally all was silent and calm again.