Moonspear There will be no more stories after this one.

For @Praimfaya and @Opalia - making a few assumptions that they are already there with him. All other tags for reference.

Beyond his hollow, snow fell. It came heavily, whirled by icy winds that swept through the mountains, and Dacio watched it with an empty stare. Despite his stubbornness and pride, the infection had taken hold of him. He'd withered rapidly in the recent week, faded until he became a shell if who he'd been: once strong muscles had been wasted away and his entire body shivered with fever that spiked often.

@Lyra's efforts to curb any spread had been fruitless. It was rot, they all knew, one that embedded deep in his damaged joint and seeped into his bloodstream. For a while after the fight to save @Osiris there was hope to free him of its grip, to reverse the affects and bring him to his feet once more - but it was not meant to be. If anything, the healer's potions had given him a few more days to spend with those he held most dear, and for that he was grateful.

It was alright, however. Dacio had never wished that death would come for him, but he did not fear it. Exhaustion gripped him, encouraged him gently to close his eyes and let go, but he wasn't quite ready. He blinked up at his gilded sister, at his pallid young ward, and mustered a tired smile for them. "You better name your firstborn after me," he teased, naturally, even in the face of his inevitable end. Dacio tried to laugh at his own poor jest, but the effort was too much. Instead, he settled with simply looking up at the two she-wolves, his most constant and beloved companions, and considered all the things he wished to tell them.

He had died before, he recalled. On the day that news reached him of his mother's demise, the day her body was washed ashore on Drageda's beach. Dacio remembered vividly how he felt his soul disintegrate, how he pleaded with some higher force to take his instead of @Portia's. No, he had not perished that day in the same manner as others might expect, but some invisible part of him did - and he'd never recovered.

"I learned the hard way," he said softly, weakly, "to not be afraid of death. Because a life without loss is one without love." And oh, how he loved them. Fiercely, with every fibre if his being, and he closed his eyes briefly in attempt to reign himself. His heart wasn't ready to release its hold of them, and it fluttered desperately in his chest. He'd made a promise to Opalia the year prior that he hoped he'd fulfilled, and hoped she might carry on in his memory - Praimfaya would need her to guide her where he no longer could.

He inhled deeply, painfully, and blinked up at his companions. I'm sorry, his hollow eyes seemed to communicate.

dacio's condition worsens day by day and try as hard as she may to convince herself that he will turn around, will get better he doesn't. helpless, praimfaya knows what she watches. she is watching him die ...and this, this is so much worse than watching blodreina die or finding ingram's corpse. i didn't give you permission to die, praimfaya says in a weak attempt at a jest, voice trembling with the raw emotion that she cannot fight off. and i am the commander of death. as if that had been able to save anyone else she loved from dying.

it hadn't then ...and it doesn't now.

praimfaya presses her nose into dacio's neck; wishing feverishly that she could give him her life force. don't go, she wants to plead as she feels her heart breaking once more in her chest. she had hoped that the pain of death might lessen ...but it does not. with each new death she witnesses it only seems to hurt worse than the last.

she withdraws then, taking a deep breath. she knows what must be done now. she knows the words that must be uttered. yu gonplei ste odon, dacio kom roankru. she says, voice stronger than she feels at the moment; trying very hard to disassociate herself even as her heart feels like it, too, is withering and dying.

As Dacio's condition declined, she stayed closer to his den--as if any amount of her watching over him may change what course nature has viciously set him upon. If not immediately in reach (studying the rise and fall of his sides, glaring at the festering elbow, waiting as fever ran through him, or just being company) she lingered near, feeling utterly aimless and fetching a few needs but largely, running on a single-minded focus of seeing him through this.

But days were blurring together, and the young warrior was tired. Day after day, no headway. His wits were well about him, but she saw how the fatigue weighed at him. Her brother was not improving. He was...

Opalia leaned against side, vaguely opposite Praimfaya, her ears folded back and eyes burning--knowing if she moved, it may be over for all the careful containment of everything that hurt her. She listened with a little grunt, and stubbornly didn't want to think about firstborns she had no nearby plans for, let alone how to honor Dacio's name from beyond his own end. And, even if she did have such designs, he was meant to be there with her, with Praimfaya, and whatever else could come after too. He might not fear his death, but that did not mean she was ready to see him off yet. She couldn't stop thinking of everything there had been, and there was yet to be between the three of them.

Distantly, she heard the wanheda's voice. Yu gonplei ste odon, Dacio kom Roankru. Yu gonplei ste odon...

No. Everything went cold, numb, she couldn't move. Her vision swam, edges blurring. No. Dacio... she whined, voice small, loss looming but fight not yet gone from her.

Not without her! she wanted to protest, and the tension coiling in her muscles screamed this. She choked on the sob she could not quiet as it felt like her grasp on so very much just couldn't be enough, again, and this time with a finality unseen. She shook, and sunk into him, her tear-streaked muzzle against his neck, blending her golds against his silver as she'd done so many times in the lifetime they spent together--determined not to focus on how withered he was already and desperate to hold onto him. There was one absence that she had never needed to feel before. No number of days of watching it slowly come for him would ever have her ready.

He breathed in deep, exhaled in a shaky sigh. Part of him wished for it to be over soon and another fought to hold on, to prolong the suffering so he could deliver a more meaningful farewell. Dacio looked up at the two she-wolves, his most beloved sister and his young charge - they'd seen enough death of those who mattered in their lifetimes. It wasn't fair that they had to experience it all again.

A whine rasped through gritted teeth and as Praimfaya managed to speak the words of their kin - your fight is over.

He didn't fear it, but it didn't mean he wanted to go. It wasn't how Dacio had envisioned his own demise, having been born and raised to die with honour on the battlefield. As a boy he fancied that war would've robbed him of life long before age ever did, so to die of a rotted wound was a whole new insult. He'd spent days damning the bitch who'd inflicted him but as those final ones swept by in his decline, the fallen Gona grew too tired to care. His focus instead turned to the here and now, to the wolves who held his heart.

He thought fondly of @Hydra and @Dirge, who'd welcomed Dacio and his kin into their home with arms wide open. He considered the sharp @Lyra who tried her best by him, and hoped she would not blame herself for the grim outcome. His mind turned to @Osiris, the boy he'd saved in the glen who thrived and improved as time went on. He recalled the Drageda wolves of his past: his mentor Blixen, his dear father, his beautiful mother, the cousins he'd grown up alongside, Tirgatao, Artaax, Furi, Helix, everyone who'd been dear to him - even Heda, who he hoped would have him to join her geda on the other side.

He wondered what became of the natrona: Sequoia, Dalia and her litter, the brother Sirio he'd never known, Kiwi, Aure, Eastwood. So many who'd wronged and disappointed him, and in the grand scheme of things it all didn't seem to matter now. Dacio would not carry those resentments into the afterlife, he hoped, so that he might begin anew.

He thought of @Solaris, who he was certain he could've loved; @Huā who likely carried his young, someone he doubted he'd ever have seen again; @Raleska... fearful, innocent Raleska, daughter of his greatest enemy, and the likely mother of cubs he wouldn't have hesitated to claim. They would serve as his legacy, and as his tired eyes found the tearful gaze of his sister, he hoped she might find them.

"You were meant to be my grounding to this world," he crooned to his companions, the love he felt for them clear in the thickness of his voice, "and even death cannot keep us apart. Remember me. Never forget what you'll always mean to me." That was how he'd survived, after all: by reminding himself that there was always a reason to carry on, as long as he was loved.

His heart skipped an uncomfortable beat and, as Opalia buried her gilded muzzle among the platinum of his furs, Dacio squeezed his eyes shut. Her touch pained him, sent flames licking through every pore, but he wouldn't deny her closeness. He needed it too, regardless of the ache deep in his bones. "I love you both," the broken warrior managed, and slackened as exhaustion crept up on him once more, "don't lose each other."

There was glory to be found in Hydra's war, he felt, more than enough for each of them. More than he ever deserved.

With his words, Opalia may as well have turned to stone. So heavy, and so painful, what was she supposed to do when it felt like every last thing threatened to slip through her grasp and sadness rose to claim her like a great tide. I am not ready to be without you, she whispered, the desperation threatening to leak into her every word, sneaking in on the miserable sadness she had time to work on all until now. Death may never fully separate them, true, but this loss was still great. Too great, perhaps.

Barely, she lifted her muzzle from his fur. She felt so defeated. But.. but I only wish I could help you now. with her teeth grit tight, wishing for any answers besides the ones her every sense told her--her heart did not want to listen. I do not want to see you suffering, she quivered, physically, not wanting to let him go despite everything showing her, telling her, that he must soon be on his way. His fight was over. It had, in this long drawn out way, claimed him far too soon. Brother, I love you. Know that forever and for good. I could never forget someone who has always fought beside me, and what means so much to me.. she barely could get the words out, let alone make them as steady and solid as they deserved to be but believed he would know the magnitudes she carried.

It just didn't feel like enough, and likely never would.

She would stay with him until life slipped from his grasp, and perhaps beyond. Just as she had been beside him when they had arrived here in this existence. Nothing was going to change that so soon, and with this loss, went a part of her, too.