Iktome Plains dead souls and a really big globe.

The world should've ended that day. It should've been done. It should've let him go and everything just have been over.

It didn't.

Artaax woke the next day acutely aware of how terribly cruel life had been in forcing him into his continued existence. There had been maybe ten or perhaps twenty incredible, blissful seconds before reality had caught back up to him and that terrible truth had made itself known to him again and he'd felt every ounce of contentment crumble into ashes.

Nomi was dead. It was inconceivable, and yet he found himself unable to deny it as he managed to do so to so many other truths he didn't want to believe. She had been the very center of his universe - his mentor, his motivation, his purpose. He had been her soldier, and it had defined him completely. Without her now... what was he? What did he have? Nothing. He had nothing. He was nothing. He was just a single, solitary planet, spinning wildly out of control across the stars with nothing to pull him back into orbit.

And worst of all, she had chosen to remove herself from him. Artaax was a good son of the kru. He knew the commanders could not be denied, and yet, and yet. It gave him no comfort. If anything it just rocked him all the more off kilter as it challenged the faith he'd always had in the culture he'd been raised in. What madness would possess his ancestors to demand this of their chosen heda? Something so unforgiveable? Something so devastating? And how could she have obeyed? He was a soldier - he lived to be commanded and to serve without question, but this... How could she.

Two mothers. Both parted from him by their own choosing and tearing away from him the few he had allowed close to him. Artaax was rent now apart from his siblings, all of his family. She had taken away from him everything by taking herself away. And now he had what?

N o t h i n g.

Artaax stood, unaware that his face was twisted in anger and heartbreak and once more wet with tears. He had worked all his life to emulate nomi and to hold himself calm, stoic, unreadable. But now the story was painted in violent red all across him and he had no will or care to reconstruct himself into what he had been. What was the point? Heda was gone. He had nothing to mold himself after, no purpose to serve. He was gone, dropped from the cliffs to crash away into oblivion with the one who had made him, shaped him, and given him all that he was.

He breathed heavily, raggedly as he lifted his head to stare across the snow-covered plains. Surprisingly, his bearings came to him and he found himself turning. There was a howling fury inside of Artaax that roared his pain and aimed it like a knifepoint to the South, towards the only thing that made any semblence of sense for him to turn towards in that moment.

He began to walk.