Oh, Let's Go Back To The Start...

The way Fel looked at him, the way the name of their brother fell from her lips as though it were agony, rendered him motionless, expressionless. He didn't really understand what she was saying, because she was saying so much of nothing, and then Deus threw himself at him and he was left reeling - emotionally, not physically... he stood there sturdily, his paw falling on Deus' shoulders in an automatic gesture of comfort - as the bottom fell out of his world. Aureus was hurt - injured, caught in the landslide or he'd have already been limping up, and Fel had been ... escorting Deus home, rather than saving their brother? His toes and ears, even his lips tingled as feeling seemed to leave them to lodge somewhere in the vicinity of his chest in a painful knot. He drew a hot, pained breath in, the first he'd taken since Fel had spoken Aureus' name, marveling in the depths of his mind how calm it sounded, as though there wasn't this fearful, urgent need to race to his brother's aid. He couldn't do everything that he knew he needed to, couldn't save Aureus and comfort his nephew.

Children needed to grow up, some sooner than others and, he told himself as ice burned through him, now was that time for Asmodeus Abraxas. "Kida. Cypher. Go find Riva and Pyrrhic and direct them here, then wait at Riva's den until I come for you. Deus, I want you to go straight home and wait there until they come to watch you. Do not go anywhere else. I will send your mother to you to make sure you're ok when I can." His voice came out... odd, like it was echoing somehow. Distant, a little clipped, and he carefully disentangled himself from his nephew, trying desperately not to grip too hard in his desperate urgency, as he gripped Asmodeus' shoulders to hold his attention. "Asmodeus, I need you to be strong right now and do what I ask. I know it's hard. I know it's scary. But I need you to do this for me. Go on, now." With that he gently turned the boy towards home and gave him a gentle push, then met Fel's bleak gaze with a heat that disguised blind panic beneath. "Fel. Do whatever you need to pull yourself together. Bring Pyrrhic and Riva to me."

And the dam holding back that urgent need broke and he whirled, racing to the body of the stranger, to where he could pick up the trail. Raced along it, every second that ticked past building the fires of that desperation until his brother's scent and the tang of blood filled his nose and he froze motionless a second to stare helplessly.

No -

A wordless sound escaped him, fury and pain intermingled and Eligos threw himself at the motionless form of his brother, clawed at the rocks in desperation and panted through a throat torn raw by the agonized keening. Rock after rock he threw from him, threw himself forcefully at the boulder trapping Aureus. He needed to get the rocks off him. Riva could heal him. She was a master healer. She could fix broken bones, could nurse him back to health, if Eligos could free him from the rockslide that had buried him. He refused to see that Aureus was every inch as motionless and lifeless as the stranger on the border, and closed his ears to the fact that the only sound was his own harsh breathing and the clatter of rocks as he threw himself desperately at the boulders. His own blood speckled the rocks alongside Aureus' as the rocks tore open pawpads and gauged at his legs, but he didn't - couldn't - stop.