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

Pyrrhic came at a run. Loose stones underfoot were kicked back numbly without thought to the damage being done to the pads of his feet. He felt nothing except fear. All he knew about the scene he was coming up on was that it was bad. He followed the trail with little thought for his surroundings. If Riva ran with him he was blind to her presence. It was a solitary run, a lonely venture towards what felt like wave looming overhead. On this cold and perilous ocean, a seascape that one was ultimately forced to swim alone, he could do nothing but wait for the strike. Because that's what was happening, wasn't it? In his heart he knew somehow. This was the volcano all over again. The water below began to curl forward, the wave looming closer. Any second now.

Numbly he skirted around the body of the stranger; blowing by with little more than the understanding that it wasn't Aureus. Vaguely he was aware of Eli's scent on the trail and perhaps that was what guided him to the scene, but in truth, if asked to recount his run in detail Pyrrhic would have been unable to do so. He knew he ran. He remembered the body. Nothing else in between mattered.

There, before Eli, was Aureus. Pyrrhic slid to a halt, his eyes on his twin's hollow gaze. There was no life there. He knew that immediately. "Aur-" He couldn't say it. His brother's name got caught in his throat and was overtaken by a strangled sob. It was too much; he couldn't take it. He couldn't do this again. He needed to leave. The wave came crashing down, plunging him into the deep. His fear was smashed away in an instant. So too was his grief. But he couldn't will himself away. His feet were planted and unresponsive. They felt alien and distant as though they belonged to someone else. The whole scene was unreal. It was like he was viewing someone else's nightmare.

He couldn't move, he couldn't feel. Pyrrhic stood there empty, his gaze not quite as hollow as Aureus' but saved from such an emptiness by only a steady heartbeat. There were no tears in his eyes, no cries in his throat. He was an outside observer detached from the scene. This was not real. They were not his family. That was not his brother. This was not his problem.