I can see for miles, miles, miles
The Gates had burned and instead of defending it as he should have done (as Magnus would have done) he was kept in a cell below the earth and tortured at the hands of a dark cruel master. The wounds on his body were beginning to heal, the brand on his flank scabbing and hairless. The claw marks on his neck blistered and raw but stitching itself closed. It was the socket of his missing eye that was having the most trouble, it didn’t seem to get better. The wound oozed with infection and he found himself in a state of heated fever. Keeping away from the others, ashamed after what had happened with Ilka and Kronk, he found himself spending more and more time with the burned and blackened remains of the Mother Tree. It’s poisoned body mirrored his own and the only comfort he found was in his own guilt, that he was responsible for everything that had happened. He’s a danger to everyone here now and he knows he should leave but where else can he go? So he stands next to the tree, refusing to sleep, the pain making him angry and in his fever induced state he shifts from bear to horse over and over again. Unable to control the magic Carnage had left in his blood.
A call rings though the kingdom and he visibly tenses. It’s a voice he recognizes but fills him with horror and shame. With guilt and sorrow. And unhappily, a little anger. Slowly he turns his mangled face in the direction from where it came and it doesn’t surprise him to see the buckskin stallion with his one good eye in the distance. What holds him back is the fear. Was this real or was this another nightmare? He can’t be sure if the life he has been living since he fled the cave is one that Carnage has designed or if this is now his reality. If that is really Magnus and he didn’t kill him after all like he had in the nightmare.
Reluctant step after reluctant step brings the broken man closer to his father. His skin is stretched over bones that jut out like jagged rocks on the beach. He doesn’t eat anymore, the pain gives him little appetite. He doesn’t sleep but that wasn’t unusual, he had rarely slept before. He knows he is sick and he knows he is dying but he can’t find a reason within himself to try and fight what is coming. What good is he now? A one eyed stallion who shifts into a living predator, the creature that shares space with Chernobyl in his worst dreams. ”Have you come to punish me? The words are hoarse and scratchy, his throat still raw from screaming and the ever lingering smoke in the Gates that fills their lungs. The one gold flecked eye filled with confusion and little hope that this wasn’t another one of the Dark God’s tricks.
Ledger