[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]Leroy’s moving, which means the plan is in motion. For a brief moment, Red stands his ground, a distraction to attract the nearest fighter and let the proxy cover more ground, unnoticed. If all went well, Leroy would slip into the camp in the midst of chaos, and return Beck and Sam to their medic’s care. At least, that was what they had all hoped. He’d tear apart the nearest slaver that so much as glanced in Leroy’s direction, if only to ensure that their hostages were saved.
He thinks of Beck again. The child had only wished to be recognized - he was hardly given the opportunity to speak his mind, nor was he allowed to roam free without the cautious watch of their leader. The last time he had gotten loose, he had severed Goldie’s head and claimed it was not his doing. As soon as he was tethered down to his home, Arrow had died before the child could say goodbye. In that resulting guilt, Beck was freed, and now he was here. Perhaps Beck was something of a balance that kept their fates in check, one life for another, suffering for suffering. Perhaps he was just immature. They would never truly know.
Red surveys the field and picks out the few Pittians that had come to defend their home - Jervis emerges first, with his roguish followers close behind. He moves forward, rearing up on his hind legs to take a few, lengthy strides in an instinctive display of dominance before dropping back down. He’d wring the ardent’s neck. And he almost does, stone hand clawing at the dirt so that he might charge fast enough to take Jervis by surprise, but a shadow cast over their pitifully small bodies draws his attention upward. And then he sees them.
From the open mouth of a den crawls a massive creature, its golden scales first catching Red’s attention before he is pulled to the face of the dragon. He’s never seen anything quite like it before, not to this magnitude, and the last of his rationale tells him that Good Sam won’t do him much good at all. There's movement in front of him, and Red jerks away in surprise to see another Pittian take his place. Not five feet away Draekon makes quick prey of his own leader, and Wormwood is shouting something but it doesn’t make sense when it hits his ears - and suddenly everything is moving too fast. Pain hits him first, then a surge of something like fury that pulses in his head. Long, curling horns burst forth from his skull and he sinks down with a shout, eyes wide as Draekon’s fire glances over his body and he, too, goes aflame.
There's something distant on his face. Absolution. There is nothing there, as much as there is everything - the whole world condenses itself into two pupils dilating in the sudden explosion of light. He sees fire. He sees blood, yet to be spilled. Skull-splitting pain rips through him and he roars, raw-throated like an animal, and grips the curling horns that don his head. Rising to both feet, a wild look crosses him; something primal buzzes in his chest as another finger on the monkey's paw he'd come to call his fate curled inward. Agony pulls his hand toward the skies, the stone harbinger of doom, as though begging for rain to douse the fire that makes it glow white-hot. He cannot stand the foreign object that stretches its fingers towards the sun and he wants to rip it off, to sever it away like Beck's bloodied organs under Jervis’ claws, but the only thought that thrums between his ears is to kill. He reaches to grip his blade, flexes his fingers around leather-wrapped metal. Narrowed eyes dart after that massive creature he locked eyes with only moments before. He would get his wish.
Red swings his fist to clear the way, uncaring of who or what he'd strike as he passed. Bai Shi is tending a child, and in the back of his head, he thinks himself cruel for putting the much smaller Pittian in danger. But the closer he gets, the farther those thoughts drift away. Aine is but another body in his way. With a guttural snarl, the demon reaches forward to try and grab Aine by the back of the neck, like an mother might take their child by the scruff. Again, like a hollow voice, something tells him that this child is innocent. She is in danger, here. She ought to be taken back to Tanglewood, shown that the world is not so cruel as the Pitt - no, too soon. He is no mother, no nurturer, but with these whispers in his head he aims to throw the pup aside nonetheless. Hopefully she'd make it back to her camp and find somewhere to hide. He wasn't sure he cared, not now.
With the distraction out of his way, Red looks up at the dragon and offers nothing but a bitter, seething grin. He's outmatched, he knows it, but the desire to sink his teeth into something and call it a victory in the name of his broken-bodied family pushes more and more adrenaline into his veins. Red rears back and throws himself at Bai Shi, reckless and vicious, and aims to cleave into the dragon's torso with his serrated blade as he moves to ram his horns into their body. He doesn't care if he fails. The warmth of spilt blood, his or another's, is as good an embrace as death itself.
He thinks of Beck again. The child had only wished to be recognized - he was hardly given the opportunity to speak his mind, nor was he allowed to roam free without the cautious watch of their leader. The last time he had gotten loose, he had severed Goldie’s head and claimed it was not his doing. As soon as he was tethered down to his home, Arrow had died before the child could say goodbye. In that resulting guilt, Beck was freed, and now he was here. Perhaps Beck was something of a balance that kept their fates in check, one life for another, suffering for suffering. Perhaps he was just immature. They would never truly know.
Red surveys the field and picks out the few Pittians that had come to defend their home - Jervis emerges first, with his roguish followers close behind. He moves forward, rearing up on his hind legs to take a few, lengthy strides in an instinctive display of dominance before dropping back down. He’d wring the ardent’s neck. And he almost does, stone hand clawing at the dirt so that he might charge fast enough to take Jervis by surprise, but a shadow cast over their pitifully small bodies draws his attention upward. And then he sees them.
From the open mouth of a den crawls a massive creature, its golden scales first catching Red’s attention before he is pulled to the face of the dragon. He’s never seen anything quite like it before, not to this magnitude, and the last of his rationale tells him that Good Sam won’t do him much good at all. There's movement in front of him, and Red jerks away in surprise to see another Pittian take his place. Not five feet away Draekon makes quick prey of his own leader, and Wormwood is shouting something but it doesn’t make sense when it hits his ears - and suddenly everything is moving too fast. Pain hits him first, then a surge of something like fury that pulses in his head. Long, curling horns burst forth from his skull and he sinks down with a shout, eyes wide as Draekon’s fire glances over his body and he, too, goes aflame.
There's something distant on his face. Absolution. There is nothing there, as much as there is everything - the whole world condenses itself into two pupils dilating in the sudden explosion of light. He sees fire. He sees blood, yet to be spilled. Skull-splitting pain rips through him and he roars, raw-throated like an animal, and grips the curling horns that don his head. Rising to both feet, a wild look crosses him; something primal buzzes in his chest as another finger on the monkey's paw he'd come to call his fate curled inward. Agony pulls his hand toward the skies, the stone harbinger of doom, as though begging for rain to douse the fire that makes it glow white-hot. He cannot stand the foreign object that stretches its fingers towards the sun and he wants to rip it off, to sever it away like Beck's bloodied organs under Jervis’ claws, but the only thought that thrums between his ears is to kill. He reaches to grip his blade, flexes his fingers around leather-wrapped metal. Narrowed eyes dart after that massive creature he locked eyes with only moments before. He would get his wish.
Red swings his fist to clear the way, uncaring of who or what he'd strike as he passed. Bai Shi is tending a child, and in the back of his head, he thinks himself cruel for putting the much smaller Pittian in danger. But the closer he gets, the farther those thoughts drift away. Aine is but another body in his way. With a guttural snarl, the demon reaches forward to try and grab Aine by the back of the neck, like an mother might take their child by the scruff. Again, like a hollow voice, something tells him that this child is innocent. She is in danger, here. She ought to be taken back to Tanglewood, shown that the world is not so cruel as the Pitt - no, too soon. He is no mother, no nurturer, but with these whispers in his head he aims to throw the pup aside nonetheless. Hopefully she'd make it back to her camp and find somewhere to hide. He wasn't sure he cared, not now.
With the distraction out of his way, Red looks up at the dragon and offers nothing but a bitter, seething grin. He's outmatched, he knows it, but the desire to sink his teeth into something and call it a victory in the name of his broken-bodied family pushes more and more adrenaline into his veins. Red rears back and throws himself at Bai Shi, reckless and vicious, and aims to cleave into the dragon's torso with his serrated blade as he moves to ram his horns into their body. He doesn't care if he fails. The warmth of spilt blood, his or another's, is as good an embrace as death itself.
[div style="text-align:center;font-size:10pt;line-height:9pt;color:black;font-weight:bold;font-family:verdana;"]IF YOUR FORTRESS IS UNDER SIEGE,
YOU CAN ALWAYS RUN TO ME
YOU CAN ALWAYS RUN TO ME