ORIGIN

This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening.

This was all just a nightmare and he'd wake up under the falls or in Canis and everything would be okay and he'd just feel silly for being so terrified.

This couldn't possibly be real.

When the voting had ended, he'd lingered behind the falls to watch Leon stride out first, and he'd stepped out just enough to hear the results. Leon had won, obviously, which he smiled about- it was good that he wouldn't have that responsibility on his shoulders again. He could focus entirely on his family...

...his family, which so suddenly, was being attacked. He remembered grimly how he'd been frozen in place at the sight of Bevy launching an attack at her own daughter, at his daughter, and poor Remmy. He remembered how Kerberos had launched in to protect her, and in only a sinful second, he remembered with a frozen shiver, how his beloved Bevy had been torn so suddenly apart. He remembered wretching, dry heaving, nothing came up, and Amaria had taken the kids, and he'd used his magic to disappear against the shadows of the back walls, and he'd run. He'd run so fast away the horrid scene that he hadn't had time to think.

He didn't want to think about it now. He didn't want to believe it. He couldn't believe it. It couldn't be true. His Bevy bird couldn't be dead. She couldn't be.

His Enna. His best friend. His heart felt as if it'd been torn apart as brutally as the tiny bird had been. When that beam of light had burst through her, his soul had felt it tenfold. Maybe this was why he ran. Maybe it was why he stumbled in a blind daze towards Canis, through Orion's backmost roads to home.

Home. It couldn't be home now. No place could be. He felt empty, broken inside. His Bevy. Gone. No. NO!

His rage ignited as he reached Canis...

...and with a savage roar that echoed through the cave like thunder, he slammed his paw against the stone, and with a bright burst of light, jagged spikes of dark red quartz shot out from the ground ahead of him, sharp and broken, a visual representation of his fury, his agony. He stared at it a moment, teeth bared into a savage snarl, then with a wretched sob, he collapsed against the new growth of crystal, sinking to the floor in a heap of shivers and tears. He curled in on himself, the picture of grief, of loss. His Bevy was gone...

...and he felt as if, by making the object of that aggression, it had been entirely his fault.

He was so stricken, he hadn't heard Azazel landing above him. When the bird pried his attention upwards, the cat didn't even flinch from the surprise. He looked up at his old friend with a shell-shocked expression, and for a moment, something didn't seem to register in his head. The reality behind the distant expression was simple; he was trying to rationalize what had happened. He sat up with a weak smile, tears still spilling freely down his cheeks. His fur was sodden with them.

"She's okay!" He suddenly chimed, voice broken and quivering, the fluttering in his chest as audible as his labored, too-quick breathing. "She's f-fine! N-nothing happened! Leon's leader n-now, i-i-isn't that g-great?" He wore a smile, but it was twisted, grim. False. Delusional. "I just a-ate some b-bad meat, that's all! Saw th-things that w-wer-weren't actually h-happening!" He wasn't looking at Azazel. He wasn't seeing with his eyes. As easily as he stood, he suddenly started to crumple in on himself, shivering as if he'd been in ice water. For a moment, he seemed to freeze, a sharp inhale of breath and then, with clenched teeth, he slumped back to the cave floor, claws unsheathed and digging deep as he scoured his paws across his face. Blood seeped from the scratches in turn, fur snagging where there was already scar tissue formed, from that now ancient wound by Makyna.

That's about the moment that, by some unseen force, the traumatizing even sinked in on him. He began to mutter, at first under his breath to himself, rapid speech slurred and senseless. He suddenly shot upright, perfectly still, and turned his head almost mechanically to look at Azazel. The red glow was almost a delayed after-image as he stared across at the bird.

"Kerberos did this." It was a sentence more growled than spoken, his jaw hanging open, teeth revealed. The expression on his face was feral, savage- but his eyes were dark, hollow as he bore into the Bone King from where he sat. "That dog did this." The glowing red suddenly brightened...

...and for the briefest moment, Azazel might feel a tingling through his skin, from head to toe. It would pass as soon as it came, though, counterpointed by a dreadful screech as Carcino's bloodied face suddenly engulfed in a horrid black-red light. That light than burst into a dreadfully bloody mess, and when the cat fell back to his paws, his hanging head bled freely from the right side of his face. He was still screaming, stumbling backwards as if to escape the agony, one paw still furiously swiping between steps as if to wrench himself free of some offensive attack. He didn't stop until his back end slammed against the wall and he pressed himself upright against it, holding his face in his paws and sliding down and sideways. The screaming choked into a horrid sob, and then into pained wailing.

@Azazel

He wasn't there anymore. He wasn't Carcino anymore. In that moment, he was only the pain, the sheer burning agony, skin and muscle torn, eye completely removed, the remains shed a bloodied mess across the floor, the avian, himself. He is a sunken wreck and for a moment, his wailing continues uselessly. When Azazel's magic tightens the air around him, it does nothing to sooth him. Fact is, it only makes matters worse. The cat panics, reacts instinctively and with one eye gone, the other a blinding red- almost white in the center- he let loose a horrible sound, not a roar or a scream, but something in between. The cat's magic never ceased it's constant, red and black sheen...

...an eerie light that suddenly spread to cover the bird, and as if it were sinking into his feathers, Carcino's magic found purchase and he sputtered a snarl as he forced his focus inwards. His aim; to physically crush the bird, from the inside. His magic wasn't quite that focused, though, and with weakened body, the effects would not, could not, kill the bird. That's not to say the experience would be any less unpleasant. He'd keep the hold for now, to force Azazel's magic to die away, or else worse.

"HE KILLED MY ENNA! HE DESTROYED HER!" He suddenly shrieked, voice unrecognizable in its agonized pitch. "HE TOOK HER FROM ME! MY ENNA! MY BEVY!" If there were any tears left to be spilled, they ran red with blood now. "HE DARES! HE DARES!" The hold would finally end- should Azazel's own spell fail at least- and he'd stagger sideways blindly, tail lashing, claws unsheathed. The left side of his face, torn and bloodied, drooped as if it had become numb. He wasn't sure if it had. His whole existence was pain right now. He continued to screech.

"SHE WAS SICK AND HE DESTROYED HER!"

The red glow grew ever darker the longer it sustained around his horns and eye- and eye socket, blaring bright candy red like fire now, static crackling across his fur with the force of it. He didn't stop moving. He swerved side to side, pacing like a caged tiger, leaving a trail of blood and as Azazel spoke, it only served to boil his blood hotter.

What had she done before the fight? What had she done before Kerberos had so brutally murdered her? She'd made a horrible sound. That wasn't her, though. The voice hadn't been any of the Bevy birds he'd met. This had been a new voice, a new personality. A new Bevy.

But they were dead now, and that didn't matter, did it? The only thing that mattered now was the pain. The pain, oh, how it charred his bones and twisted his skin, marring muscle and clenching teeth, like acid through his veins. He'd not realize its true source, the strain of his constant casting, that ever present glaring gleam across his pelt.

A new shape moved in the murky vision of the feral cat, and this set off an unfortunate chain reaction. Fury blind, Carcino panicked. That glow flared up again, but this time, black static danced wildly through its blinding light...

...and a split second later, deep crimson shards of quartz shot from the ground in random locations, like spikes that cracked the stone ground apart with their eruption. As the spikes launched up as high as three or four feet in places, the red and black effects spread through the floor like veins, ebbing and flaring in places where the shards shot up. He screamed as he cast, the pain hot like white fire in his chest, his skull.

"MY BEVY IS DEAD BECAUSE OF THAT THING! SHE DID NOTHING TO DESERVE THAT! SHE WAS INNOCENT! SHE WAS PERFECT!" He was bleeding from the mouth, nose and good eye now. A trickle even seeped from inside of his intact ear, staining the gray fur there. Atop his skull, his horns gleaming brighter in splintered lines- he was quite literally about to fall apart at the seams. It would appear as if nothing could end the fury, though with the rage mounting, his body covered in an increasingly darker red glow, he hardly even looked like he'd ever been that happy cat who'd left that morning with his family in tow, for what should've been a fabulously happy occasion.

Now he was desolate, fury embodied in the form of a cat, heart as shattered as his vision, as his precious Bevy's stone. Where was the point in calming down? He hurt too much for that.