Cow Angst

They were long since gone from the Hollyhead Coupe, but Iredane could still feel the heat from the explosion at her back. The ground still shook beneath her hooves. She blundered forward, pushing on into the wilderness with an empty gaze. She could hear her companions all around her, the sound of the horses and their carts, but all of it was background noise, none even competing with the pounding of her head, the imagined, anguished wails of countless innocent souls.

Unhindered survival instincts carried her through the woods, cleaving through the paths - or forging new ones - without thought of whether her bulk sprang branches behind her, or whether her hooves trampled flowers or fungus beneath them. Shock still shook her to her core, clouding her thoughts, but her heart was already heavy, laden with the guilt of what she’d done. The dryad’s praise rang in her ears, but it was hollow - she didn’t deserve adjulations. Her hands were not free of blood.

Rage tainted her vision, threatening to stain her sight red, but sorrow choked it out. Guilt tugged at her, shame chased her. She wasn’t the one who set the bombs, but she didn’t stop them. She helped. If she’d only known… but she had trusted the crafty gnome. She’d considered him her friend - maybe even her herd. Of course, she was furious with Johnny - he’d known! he’d known and he didn’t care! - she was furious with the demon whispering in his head, furious with Berin for putting it there, but the fury she felt at herself overshadowed all of it. She would not ignore her part in this tragedy, unwitting or no.

The stoic minotaur was eerily silent as the party moved forward; while it was true that she had always been a cow of few words, this was a different kind of quiet. There was normally a soft rhythm to her breathing, a pattern to her hoofbeats, the occasional sigh or snort; now, her hooves droned against the ground in a militant march, her breaths almost silent, her eyes blank as they stared ever forward.

When the weary group finally settled into a clearing, she sat away from the others, facing the dark forest that spread out ahead of them. Her shoulders heaved as she breathed out a sigh that shook her bodily, head sunk low. Her thoughts, buzzing like flies, were chased from her head as her companions spoke once more, one ear flicking outward to catch their words.

Johnny’s voice cleared her thoughts like a shockwave. “Before I give Bafta back, there’s one more thing I’d like to do, if I may.”

A chill went through Iredane’s body, and she went completely still, rigid with an unhealthy mixture of terror and contempt. But she didn’t move, didn’t argue. Whatever he hoped to do would happen despite her anyway. It was pointless to involve herself now.

The ground beneath her still seemed to be wobbling; she touched one hand to the earth to try to ground herself, but even her connection to nature felt distant and unsteady. She closed her eyes in a fruitless attempt to stop the heaving of her chest, and settled for her half-successful efforts to mask her heavy breaths.

Her head shot around as a sharp sound erupted from behind her - screams echoed from the summoning circle, now obscured from her vision by some magical fog. Though her body tensed, her instincts urging her to help her friends, she stayed rooted to her spot. Even if she still had friends within that devil’s circle, there wasn’t a thing she could do to help them anyway. By the time the screams finally died down, Iredane had numbed herself to them.

Johnny was tenacious, Iredane would give him that - and unflinching; not many would approach an angry minotaur, let alone one that was angry at them - but tenacity and tact were not hand in hand. His words fell hollow upon her ears, and a part of her wondered if she was being toyed with - if she was being mocked - but somehow, his confusion seemed earnest. That conclusion, consequently, only shook her even further. Unable to deal with his voice in her ears, she stood again, shaking her head as if to shake him off of her, and stormed to the other side of camp. She thanked the gods that he didn’t follow her.

Iredane settled herself numbly on the ground at the outskirts of the clearing, her gaze fixing on a seedling that had just pushed itself up from the dirt, struggling to grow in a world without the sun. Her thoughts finally settled on the one place she wanted to think about least right now - home. She had been fighting homesickness for weeks, aching to see the people she left behind, the only place she had ever known - but she kept herself steady on her quest, telling herself that it was for the greater good. She was going to return to her herd one day, but first she was going to fix the sky, or at least she was going to give it her best go.

But now, she wished she’d never left the hills and forests - she had a life there where she knew she was doing the right thing. The thought of hundreds of dead innocents sat heavy on her soul, and words she thought that she’d forgotten echoed through her mind.

“Your kind is born to kill. Whether you spare me or kill me doesn’t matter. We both know you’ll kill again. You’re a monster, and it’s all you’ll ever be.”

Though she dared not break her silence with sobs, tears trailed down her cheeks, dampening the fur. She left home to make a difference for her village, not prove the rest of the world right about them! All she wanted now was to see her family again, to hear the whistle of the wind through the grasses, hear the bellows of the mundane herd, smell the cheese freshly made and ready to ship - but how could she ever face them now? Mighty Iredane, once loyal and true, no better now than a common beast with a trail of victims in her wake.

Despite the guilt placed so heavily on herself, she couldn’t ignore the anger she felt towards the others. She didn’t know much about spirits and their magic, but she knew enough that Johnny never should’ve been left with a wisp in his head. Berin should have seen it, too. And then there was Johnny. She couldn’t begin to fathom how he rationalized this as a success - hundreds died. How many children? How many elders? How much history in that town completely destroyed, gone in a blink over something they didn’t even know about? As a mistake, it was unforgivable, but as intent - unfathomable didn’t even begin to cover it. She would never have expected such a stark betrayal of trust, such indifference, from the jolly gnome she’d grown to call a friend.

Instinct told her to leave. Whether it be back to the village, tail between her legs, or further into nothingness in the vain hopes of redeeming herself, her gut said staying with the others would only lead to danger. But - and it was a shock to even herself - she didn’t want to. The best chance she had of figuring out the darkened sky wasn’t alone, tracing game paths through the woods. And, despite the shame and anger that was welling up in her throat, she didn’t hate them. Not even after this. They, for better or for worse, were her herd, at least for now. At the very least until they rescued Aes.

She had long known Berin had more secrets than she cared to discover - and while she still felt it was a mistake for him to entrust Bafta to the artificer, she had seen his shock. She had felt, if only a flicker of it, sincerity when he’d given the seedling to the dryads. She could only hold so much contempt for his part in this.

Johnny, on the other hand, still had a lot to answer for - a lot of trust to win back - but no one could change without help. And maybe, just maybe, she could be that for him. If not, well, that would be decided later. Whatever that meant.

Her indecision laid to rest, she pressed her palm into the dirt again, and this time she could feel it push back. She could feel the earth stirring beneath her, faint but firm. She wasn’t at peace, but she was a bit closer to it.

A chill wind whipped through the forest, cutting through Iredane’s thick coat of fur and chilling her to the bone. She remained, rooted to her seat in the dirt, letting the cold sink into her skin. She knew it would be warmer towards the center of the clearing, that Kahlil might even have started a fire, but she couldn’t bring herself to bear it. For now, she took solace in the fact that karma might still find her, slicing through her thick skin with a knife-sharp chill.