She had never known loss to be so painful.
At the convent, she had known loss - they all had. It wasn't uncommon for a fellow trainee to perish during a dangerous evaluation, or for an elderly mentor or tutor to pass of natural causes, but for her King? Her comrade and Commandant? His absence was felt like a blade to her heart with every breath and every blink. What was she to do? What would Solis' children do without their beloved Maxence? Who would direct them to their righteous victories? There was not one that could fill the place of the stallion who had fought the Elder Teryr, not one that could hope to yoke the wild and battle hardened peoples of Solterra to their will, to act with single mind and purpose.
There was no one.
And so in her fear and her directionless terror, Eden fled to the only place that she associated with safety - to Leviathan's side.
With so many months spent alongside the behemoth in training and laughter, in labor and adoration, she had become as accustomed to his scent as she was to her own. So it was a simple thing to track him from the smithy that he had adopted as his haunt to the Oasis that she had shared so many memories with those that she had come to consider family. Gasping with the strike of pain that blossomed within her chest as she recalled her and Maxence's moments held beneath the moonlight of the Oasis, the paladin blinked back tears and forced one gilded hoof in front of the other. "Levi?" She called weakly, her voice made tremulous and thin from fear and sorrow, "Leviathan, where are you?"
In the middle distance, she could see a silhouette, though it was not one that she could entirely attribute to her behemoth. No, it wasn't bulky enough, and the mane and tail... they reflected palely in the cool night air, no ebony or charcoal to be seen - but the horns and the height screamed of her gentle giant. Brow furrowing against her confusion, the aurelian maiden moved closer to the half-known stranger, "Sir? Hello? I'm looking for someone, a stallion named Leviathan.. He has a red eye and one clouded over and his coloring is black and white. He is covered in scars. You wouldn't have forgotten him if you had seen him, and could never dismiss him from memory if you had talked to him. He is great and big... he..." She swallowed against a sudden rush of emotion, "He is my dearest companion."
As she came closer, her confusion could only deepen as the scent of Leviathan became stronger, and the notches in the stranger's horns were the same as her comrade's. "Sir?"
Something was wrong.
@Leviathan OH NO
