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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    they all go into the dark; ALL
    #31

    rhonen

    molten eyes and a smile made for war

    He’s come to the place, sick and gloomy as it feels, because Noah had insisted. Something in his daughter’s delirium was about this Kingdom that had been sunken under the sea, and he doesn’t know how else to help her – he won’t use his power to fix her (he can’t bear to risk it) and it brings her at least some sort of joy to bring new life to Pangea. The coppery stallion is worried that the growing will sap her strength, leaving her none to fight the sickness, but he can’t deny her this little happiness as she coughs and heaves and shivers.


    Unknowing, they stand speaking to the other sick mare, this Yidhra, because it seems to peak the strawberry filly’s interest and draw her out of her shell. But he shifts uneasily when a clammy wind blows, and the mare starts speaking even more confusing nonsense, moving to put himself between his young daughter and the mare he’s starting to believe is just mad.


    A movement in the grass that has sprouted green around them, a testament to Noah’s presence, distracts him and he turns with a scowl as the tiger erupts from the ground, a snarl on her lips and her claws finding their mark on his hide – Sochi has drawn the first blood. As he is scrambling to place himself between the threat of the cat and Noah, Yidhra shoves her way into his space and tells Noah to run, before attacking Rhonen herself.


    What. The. Hell.


    The stallion snarls, near silently, and lashes out at the tiger, believing her the greater threat, even as the ground turns to mud beneath his hooves and the air begins to heat around them. More bodies press against him, and he falters in desperate confusion, even as a dense fog reduces the heat, and some of the largest cuts left by the tigress begin to knit back together. He’s lifting his eyes, looking for the healer, glimpsing Leliana through the fog, searching desperately for signs of Noah, when the teeth sink into his unprotected shoulder, making him bellow in pain.


    Over his own yell, there is the sound of his elder daughter’s voice. He’s only heard it a couple of times, but he recognizes it. He doesn’t have the ability to seek Kolera; he’s too busy fighting for his life. But he can hear enough to know she’s not attacking him, and that is heartening. But now another feline as joined the fray, narrowly missing tearing out his throat, and he’s come to a desperate realization.


    This isn’t an accident. Rhonen hasn’t been caught in some sort of war he didn’t know about.


    They’re here to kill him.


    And that is when he is afraid. Not only for himself, but for Noah. And Kolera, and Leliana – and the world. If they succeed in killing him, he believes the seal will be released, and conquest and all of his evils will be released upon this world that holds everyone he has ever loved.


    They are going to succeed. He can feel himself laboring to breathe, feel his own blood dripping from his skin. The only reason he is still strong enough to fight is because they are in each other’s way, tripping over each other and handicapping each other with their various powers. Hooves and claws and teeth and antlers strike him again and again, and he grows panicked, frenzied, lashing out with his own blunt hooves and teeth and looking for an opening to flee. His fight is subconscious, his brain disconnected, and horrified; some of his attackers are mere children, hardly older than Noah. Then there are ghosts – flashes of his mother, his father, his twin. He starts to wonder if it’s worth fighting.


    When enough of them are there, they forget to take any sort of turns, and Rhonen is borne to the ground by their bodies, their raised voices now a constant hum in his broken ears. Someone steps on his body, and he can hear ribs snap. A leg. Flesh is torn. Through the haze of pain and legs, he catches sight of Noah, screaming, on the outskirts of the mob. He can’t hear her, but he can see her lips moving and the tears streaming down her face. ’No,’ he wants to say, ‘I don’t want you to see this.’ Why hadn’t she run, when Yidhra had separated them? He has had nightmares since the seal was implanted in his chest, many years ago, and he wanted his children to never know that lingering fear.


    A pair of familiar, uniquely-marked legs appear beside his daughter, and he cranes his head until their eyes meet. Nihlus, the boy who couldn’t love him. The boy who broke his heart can’t save him – but he collects Noah, and they vanish.


    Maybe he’s imagining that. Maybe Nihlus isn’t real. Something else is happening, and whatever it is, he can feel the strength that others have been lending him sputter and die, and the injuries that should have already killed him make his vision go dark. He’s not even half conscious, for the last press. They aren’t satisfied when he breathes his last, stuttering, confused breath. They keep pressing, tearing, biting, until his form in the dirt is barely recognizable as a horse. From his body, the seal of conquest is released, a sickly green fog forming around the hooves and paws of those pressed closest to him first, and then spreading outward from there. Perhaps they can see it, perhaps they can’t.


    Rhonen is beyond protecting them from it now.





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