Dark's talons struck something, though it wasn't the soft, puffy thing he'd expected. It wasn't Bevy. It was something hard, muscular, bony, something large; he quickly retracted his talons, confused.

An instant later there was a series of sharp and stabbing pains in his chest. The owl cried out, pained, jerking a little and then going still, motionless beneath her harsh touch.

Bevy was speaking, then. Her voice was sickly sweet in his tufted ears, and though he couldn't see, he could hear. He listened intently to her words--the last he might ever hear.

She was telling him that he was a hindrance to those he'd clung to.

But... I don't cling to anybody. I don't even know anybody.

The thought was faint, fleeting, and forlorn; the owl had never had any friends outside his mother. He'd stayed away from the rest; he'd be a burden, but really, he'd never held any interest in any others. They had their fast-paced, sighted world, and he had only darkness, and the memories of stone. His mind flitted back: he remembered walking the pathways and corridors of Origin Cave, catching glimpses into the past of many of the things he'd touched.

This Bevy didn't know him at all, he decided. Perhaps the white bird was one of her personalities, then. She had many. Was the black horse another...? She had been mad, hadn't she, near the end. The owl screeched again, far more weakly, thrashing a little under Dianysma. It wasn't out of pain, exactly, but the madness brought on by it--a madness that thus far, the strangers had not touched.

Bevy knew him. At least, Enna did. These Bevys did not know him. He didn't cling to others. He wasn't pathetic; he had taken care of himself, alone, his entire life.

"Whichever Bevy you are... you are one of the ones who doesn't even know me. You're a Bad-Bevy," Dark rasped, but the clarity did not last. "One went away and the others didn't stay and I'm in the cold and the light hurt. It hurt me," he wailed, voice suddenly breaking, loud again.

He had been mad when the two arrived here. His mind-state hadn't changed much. They may as well have never come here--but for the sickness Dianysma had polluted him with.

It didn't seem it would, either; the blind owl simply closed his eyes again, once more slipping back into himself, motionless and oblivious to the visitors, his mind taken by the pain of the radiation that wracked his body. He was aching now, too... something he hadn't before. It was the plague at work, but of course, Dark didn't know this.

Time would tell if he survived it.

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Dark lay silent for some time after the two departed. His eyes remained closed.

He forgot about them, actually; the resounding agony in his foot had sent him unconscious, for awhile, and when he woke, only confused thoughts of Bevy and a beam of light raced through his head.

He ached. He shivered. The pain of Kerberos's magic had destroyed his body, and he might have recovered, but now the plague that infected him set about weakening what remained. He was physically incapable of rallying from this damage. The strange sensation of lethargy that began to overcome him was almost welcoming. The burning pain, the chills, the aches that had now set in... it was too much. His head throbbed, and the crushed bones in one foot lanced him with new, sharp pain every time he tried to stand.

He could feel his heartbeat growing weaker, faster, fainter.

Logically, he didn't know what this meant--but he had the vaguest memory of Bevy beckoning him to follow, to come with her into the darkness.

It would be a relief, he thought. Bevy had always shown him the right way--taken him to safety. To peace.

But listening, he could hear no sign that she remained. No breathing, no scratching of talon or hoof or whatever it had been, on the rock or ice.

With a croaking, cawing cough, the owl stumbled up, teetering as he laid weight on his broken leg.

She left me.

A brief howling grief filled him, but immediately it spun down and away, leaving him empty. He did not have the capability to handle that right now, to even sustain it.

Home. Go home.

With a sudden flurry of motion the owl took flight, crooked and broken, slamming off the tunnel wall and careening down it gracelessly. He flopped and fluttered, sometimes tumbling down onto the cave floors, but he made his way away.

Dark was dying.

He was going home.

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