to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
There is no time to think, once he makes that first lunge forward with his heart beating in his ears, and that’s a blessing.
Otherwise he might wonder what the hell he’s doing there, with no taste of war but what he watched as a boy - and that less war than slaughter. He has no magic, no weapon, and anyway what good would either of them be, against skin of sand and bones of root? If he were alone, he would have run the other way.
But he is not alone, and his lips are peeled back in a cry unheard over the crush of noise, and the writhing body of the snake is getting closer. He can see the glint of scales, the sloughing of sand in fine grains like old skin, and then -
The beast opens. At first (at first, but this is all happening at once, and there is no time for thought and hardly for action) he thinks someone’s magic or might must have bested it, and it is yawning apart, bursting like overripe fruit. Almost he sits back on his haunches, cuts short his charges, parts to the side like a bit of wave when it meets rock; but it is too late for all that. There are too many horses at his heels, and a doorway with those gods-damned berries growing thick and fat and fast, and his blood is roaring in his ears in a way that sounds like yes instead of run.
Into the blood-red berry-rain he goes.
It smells thick and cloying and strange. He is walking now, blowing hard through his nostrils, unsure of when his drumming hooves became cautious. The only gold in this semi-light is the flickering of the relic, the glimpses of its reflection in the black of - what? August thinks that the Denoctian queen would be useful, then (and likely always). She could build a bridge, or a wall, or anything they might need. But Isra is not here.
That is the first time he wonders about the rest of them - the horses that attacked the snake, or slipped around. There are fewer of them, here, though it is hard to tell in the darkness just how many; his heart skips a beat when the thought crosses his mind that they might all be dead. That he might be dead, too, or dreaming.
There is a figure ahead of him, so black as to be invisible except for the outline of her, the glint of green eyes. She steps out onto the bridge and he watches, eyes narrowed, every heartbeat felt full in his throat.
August doesn’t hesitate long before he follows, only glancing once at the gleaming black floor. Even that makes a yawning chasm open up in him, a wave of nausea.
There is glory ahead, and maybe they’re all dreaming or dead already. There seems little enough to lose.
He steps onto the moat.
August chooses option 1
