Hands hurriedly grope for wounds half-remembered as he struggles into a half-sitting position. Fingers pressing against skin beneath fur that was whole instead of broken. But the agony within him spoke of wounds, of pain, of having died. I've been shot, he thought in panic. Hadn't I? Was it all a dream? One was truth, one a nightmare -- Amarouk doesn't know which one is real.
Tattered remnants of winter gear cling to him as he sweats profusely in the jungle heat. Clawing apart the pieces, he sheds the outer-wear as a night sky looks on with billions of beady eyes.
Shivering despite his undersuit, he stands only to drag himself to the water. An empty gaze casts its net upon the sea before he falls to his knees in the foam. A shuddering breath escapes from his mouth. His mind is in turmoil, trying to understand what was happening, what had happened.
"I remember-," he begins. "I remember being shot. Dying. But it wasn't here."
"Amarouk!"
The shriek splits the air.
His head snaps to a side to see her -- Kristav. He calls her name, yells it, screaming until lungs feel ready to burst. But her eyes are dead, fur falling out in patches as rot sets in. She stands not of her own will -- mouth moving again and again, forming his name in a desparate plea for help --but held in place by the restraining hand of another Vadasian.
Watering eyes weep into an ocean without need. He can't breath. Each a gasp to cling to his own life selfishly, faster and faster. His mind screams as his body shakes. Move! But he cannot. Amarouk! she shrieks a last time as a hooked blade is torn from her back. Blood, gore and spine follow explosively.
A raw throat wails as finally, Amarouk comes to life as his world turns black. Cold, empty, feet pound against the sand as his listless form takes flight. He viciously throws himself at her murderer while her crumpled frame falls into an ebbing tide.
He can't see. Black, red -- there is nothing but the hollow, the anger burning about it, within it, dying amid the pool of his own emptiness. There is nothing but her and this Vadasian with the blade. Nothing but the subsuming rage that follows. He feels her, a brush of the incorporeal. Her soul flies off, a wistful phantasm and takes his with her's, leaving a dead husk to fight on. He sees himself. He sees her. But she is dead, and he follows. The anger is rising, erupting in furious blows that fail again and again against the coldness of his foe.
Eyes bulge and he coughs up blood. The hooked blade is exiting from his abdomen taking with it the binding cords of his internals. The world begins to shrink, black eating the edges of color. He looks for the first time into the face of his own murderer.
"I'm sorry," he gasps. He isn't sure at that moment if he says it his wife, Kristav, or his assailant. "Forgive me, Son."
Everything fades...
He awakes to his own screams of pain and the roar of waves crashing on a shoreline.
Confused, his eyes look about as a solitary eye burns bright in the sky above. A sea before him, a jungle behind. Slowly, he gains his feet and with trepidation, enters the jungle...
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