A Mountain of Pain

Things had been going well - and it was feeling all too good to be true.

Joss was smiling and feeling quite proud of himself until he felt a cool breeze on his back, and turned to see a mass of grey clouds drifting towards them.

It absolutely had been too good to be true, damn it.

He could feel his face fall and all the pride and hope in his heart die instantly as though he had thrown it right into the demonic realm's territory.

"But...but why...?" Joss uttered out in deep disappointment as he saw the storm roll towards him with doom spelled in each curve of the clouds as they stared him down with malice.

There was no way the goo could dry in time, now. Even if it did dry at this point, it would be far too late for it to keep shape. Now his plan was useless.

Thunder rumbled in coldly behind him and he dropped his 'brush' to sit down in defeat. Anger was all he could feel at the moment. For the past three - nearly four days he had done nothing but eat knowledge off the page and fill his brain with the most amazing concepts....he hadn't slept, or celebrated...he hadn't watched Silas' death...all of his time and hope went right into this plan that was in this case, literally going to be washed away.

The silver haired male sat down and buried his head into his hands and sobbed- but not from sorrow. It was one of those guttural, rage-filled sobs that one could only muster from the deepest pits of despair in the soul.

His lungs burned. His throat scratched. His eyes squeezed shut so tightly they felt like receding into his skull. His tears couldn't even bypass his eyelids and when he finally opened his eyes - a pocket of tears unleashed with force.

His body drooped down and then fell forward as his agony continued through the dotted, freezing rainfall.

Joss debated on throwing himself off of the mountain right then and there, but the thought of Jyriah's sobs and despair erased that idea. Instead, he wanted to be invisible, or to bury himself into the mountainside until he somehow felt safe.

What would they do now? How could they possibly even fathom stopping a human-made weapon that had unbelievable power to destroy a great deal, if not all of what was left. There were still parts of the earth not entirely healed - like in the realms where the dead roamed, and necromancers lived.

He felt like he had failed. He felt like he had let everyone down on a level that he could have never imagined. He was just a stupid tailor. He wasn't a mage, or a magician - he wasn't smart or special.

He was just Joss...and as just Joss, he wanted to fade into oblivion as though he had never even existed in the first place.

To add insult to injury, the rain began to pick up and spit shards of sleet onto him. It made his shame that much more 'festive' as the confetti of ice danced over him in triumph.

As he sat in a stunned depression, the others were busy trying to avoid being seen as the 'paint' that had been used on Vincent's long dragon form was starting to slip off and wear away off of his polished, beautiful scales. As one of the runes completely severed from its pattern, he became completely visible in the sky to all of the soldiers in the crater who were cleaning up the mess from a few days ago.

It wasn't long until the sounds of howls echoed into the sky in warning, and more wolves spilled out into the open courtyard  with weapons strapped to their backs as they ran into the large green space.

"Shit..." the Prince hissed and tried to descend into the mountain's side to hide his body. He had yet to even collect the party he had come with before some sharp-eyed lycan spotted him. Now he had to somehow pick all of them up without being spotted again - or at least going fast enough for them not to hit him with those abominable human weapons. He hadn't spotted them for long, but his vision was good enough to know that they weren't harmless.

If he could just hug the mountain close enough to pick up Jyriah, Joss, Veltar, and Ajax, they would be home-free. It wasn't as easy as it sounded, though- as the jagged, uneven sides of rock stretched out so awkwardly that he would have to slink like a snake rather than maneuver like a dragon, and that wasn't as simple as it sounded.

There was no way that he was going to leave Metas' loved ones behind, so he had to think fast if he wanted to get them out of there before the foot soldiers flooded out from the hidden entrances around them.

He was going to have to lose some scales. It would be painful, but worse - if the wrong soul got a hold of his shining shards, they could use them to make many powerful things.

The loss of the four wolves he had brought up here was far greater of a problem than his scales being on his best friend's turf.

It would be a problem for another day after they won this war.