[SWP] brontide

[Raymond]

Raymond glanced back toward Calliope, pacing and coiled like a beast caged, and Shrike standing resolutely beside her. They were what passed for family in wild places, and his ache to join them in combat bowed only to his desire not to see them endangered again.

He should have been at their side and not Isra's.

All the same, he did not move to join them.

"Isra," the red stallion murmured coolly, deferring in this moment to the horse that seemed most capable of averting another bloodbath, "we don't have a lot of time." Whether the birds before them or the lioness at their backs posed a greater threat to the uneasy truce, he did not know. He knew whose side he was on and had no patience for the reckless pageantry unfolding before him, but their magnanimous deity had prepared this perilous test for them all and committed them to it at the cost of their own mortal lives.

And now those lives balanced on the knife-edge of a bard queen's tale-telling.

If Calliope's restraint didn't fail first, his just might - but he wasn't sure he'd be aiming for the birds.

Raymond.
and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around