Breckin, Heartfire, Leilan, Anyone;

[Castile]

and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was

Sabra is awakening.
She isn’t dead after all. Does that make his crime better or worse?

His thoughts and emotions are turbulent, whirling feverishly in the confines of his mind as he soars from the lonely outcropping of rock in the ocean to the mainland. It would only be a moment, he thought, as he glanced over his shoulder at Sabra’s resting body before taking flight. Amid the clouds, hidden from view, his entire body shifts back into a horse. His elongated tail and snout retract, his claws receding into dull, cracked hooves. The only draconic semblance that remains are his wings as they powerfully carry him forward until he is at a point in which he can swiftly descend, spiraling down. In the sky, he is graceful and seeming aloof, but upon touching down, his expression reads something far darker.

”I killed him,” he scathes, ”I fucking killed him.” His lungs are screaming for more air, but Castile is pacing, his seething anger and distress beginning to ripple his appearance. There are scales, slit eyes, spines climbing down his back, and then there is suddenly nothing. He looks at those nearby as though expecting reactions to generate opinions of what transpired. Will he be cast out of Nerine, or still accepted? Will this provoke a war or inter-kingdom tensions?

(It doesn’t matter)
It does.
(We are what we are…)
We… We...

Castile’s eyes are ablaze, still furious and everything still seeming so fresh. Sabra’s limp body flashes across the back of his eyelids when he blinks. ”And I would do it again,” his voice is frigid as he resumes pacing, his tail whipping back and forth agitatedly. ”What he did to Sabra… my Sabra…” his heart crumbled when he witnessed the travesty, his mind losing itself. It was an attack on his own family, indirectly to him – his mind races with this idea, running away from him for a split moment before he snorts and stares at them all, his expression hooded and dangerous.

”He deserved a worse death… he deserved so much worse.”

castile

[Leilan]

Leilan

a dragon who couldn't be hurt on the outside
could have so many ragged holes inside

He's never dealt the killing blow and yet he knows he would have. He, however, didn't fly away into the distance where no-one could follow, in the shape of a friggin' dragon. Instead, he had had to deal with an upset Breckin, which had concluded into doing what she wanted, which was to deliver the... remains, to Tephra.

Honestly he was glad they were rid of it, but they still had to deal with the fact that one of their kingdom members had been attacked and murdered without their ability to intervene. Or with the dragon sitting a ways off the coast, in mourning no doubt, but still, it was a dragon, and in that shape there would be no reasoning with the painted man (added to the fact that Leilan had little means to cover the distance; at least, he'd never tried freezing the ocean to walk on but he was pretty sure that on that kind of distance, even if it did work, he would be floating around aimlessly).

It's funny, but while he had not a single grain of remorse in killing the wrongdoer (because even the littlest seed of doubt had been crumbled to dust by now; he'd only have to think of the meaningless maiming and killing that came with Sabra's rape, he'd only have to think of Klaudius' obvious choice of not visiting his children he supposedly loved so much) - he worried about the dragon-man.

If he was anything like himself, he'd need to find a way to deal with Sabra's death, and would be chastising himself over and over again for being too late.

Because being too late was the one thing he couldn't quite forgive himself for, either. But for Castile... well, had it been Breckin... better not go there. He might have done more than just kill the man. Not because he wanted to, but... honestly, he lost track of his own thoughts here.

There. It's Castile again. How long had he been here? Narrowing his icy blue eyes (dark blue settling in), he wonders a moment. The painted stallion is pacing, and muttering to himself. Doesn't look good. Not good at all.

He nears openly, not wanting to upset the winged guard with too much noise, but also not wanting to hide and possibly surprise him. "Castile." He speaks the other man's name, almost sternly so - he means to pull him out of the vicious cycle to talk to him.

He's had his own part in this, and seeing that the dragon-shifter doesn't seem to deal so well with it, the ice drake wonders what he must be thinking of him. After all, they're not that different. Not when there was a family or a love to stand up for... but he doesn't have to deal with the killing blow. But really, he had not needed to really shred the lavender men to the bits that he had, by the time the dragon had swooped down, and he was no less to blame. "He had it coming." It's as true as Cas will get. In the end, it hadn't mattered if it was Castile roasting him, or Leilan tearing him apart, or any other random guy running in to safe another mare, on any other moment in time. "It's nothing compared to the loss of Sabra... but I'm glad he won't be able to do it again."

HTML by Vanilla Custard, picture by x-celebri-x on deviantart

@[Castile]