He could hear someone approaching before the first shout reaches him, though by the second he has turned to watch the large black mare barrel through the trees. “Stop,” he warned, backing away even as she approached. “I mean it. Don’t come any closer.” While she was built more intimidatingly than he was, Leander raised his wings to splay wide at his sides even as he craned his neck to keep from coughing on her as his lungs spasmed suddenly.
“I’m sick,” he said after recovering from the spell, though there wasn’t any need – if the cough hadn’t given him away, it would be made clear by the breath that still came with too much effort and by the unseasonal sweat that beaded upon his brow. Though he found he had to look up at her so as to actually meet her gaze, the brown of his eyes was insistent. He didn’t yet know how serious the sickness would become, but he knew how quickly it had come over him. What was to keep it from infecting everyone in its vicinity?
“You should leave – go somewhere safe, while you still have the chance.” His chance had come and gone, as it had for all of those who were present at Rhonen’s murder. His thoughts began to turn to those relatives he knew of that still lived – his cousin, Kagerus, and his uncles; perhaps even his sisters, Rhy and Kora, if they yet roamed elsewhere in these godforsaken lands. He could only hope they were all protected, safe from the plague that he carried like a dark pit in his stomach.
A plague he was sure others were carrying, too.
Continuing to back away, his palomino overo frame brushing against the bark of shadowy trees, feathers snaring in the thickets as he beat his outstretched wings once, weakly. “Seriously, get out of here,” he coughed again, the sound more frightening than one would expect after such a short time between exposure and inoculation. It was a sound that could only speak of the magic at work – one that would ravage the lands so much more quickly than anyone could begin to imagine.
