Ankyra Sound oh wow, you look like the fourth of july

Though he was physically stronger than he had been in the days past, Artaax still felt pathetically weak as he strode alongside Furi — no, Mallaidh. He did not feel ready for what was to come, but he didn’t exactly anticipate that he ever would. As desperate as he was to be home, he knew he could not go there without facing the questions, and with the questions would come the answers, and with the answers would come the final judgment. He was not ready for that part.

He stopped when Mallaidh bid him do so and set his stoic stare on the trees ahead of him. He was oddly subservient in his trepidation, which only served to make him feel all the more pathetic and lost. If there was a silver lining to be found, it was that at least by doing something he might start moving forward again. Little as he wanted to hear heda make the declaration he most feared was coming, he was more miserable in this state of limbo than he would be knowing his fate and that of his wayward family.

Or so he hoped.

Artaax straightened as Mallaidh made the call, but only enough to look less like a weak, broken thing, and more like the strong, dutiful soldier he had been raised to be. Whatever would be, the commander was coming. He would not face her looking like a child who had lost his mommy, but as feisripa coming home to report what he had learned of their natrona.