He’d been so focus - or rather, unfocused - on the ground he didn’t look to the sky and the threat that reigned above.

He didn’t even have a chance.

It was chaos, there was no other word to describe the state that the camp was in. As metal clashed and clanked, the feverish grunts of his comrades and his enemies. The fires as they began to roar with life and vigor. The toppling of their wooden tables, pots and pans, lanterns, all of it. The bodies as they drove like a creek feeding a river. Screams, cries, wailing deafened his ears. He could feel his heart pounding, that ringing, that whooshing of it in the background noise. He trembled, out of both fear and adrenaline as it coursed - plunged through him.

He didn’t even have a chance to use it.

Sword ready and at attention, he settled to follow Era, her barks and growls pulling him for his cluttered, over stimulated mind.

One step, two..pushing his momentum with the balls of his feet.

He went sailing as something collided into him, with such force, like a battering ram from hell. He flew forward, his body paralyzed by the pain that exploded, unable to shield himself from the ground that was closing in. But he tried he desperately he tried but to no avail, the ground found his face. Like an emergency plane landing it also found his shoulder and his side and he skid across the ground until he could go no further.

Darkness, a familiar friend of his, began consuming him. Threading across that line of consciousness and out cold. The noise didn’t stop, it amplified until it was so loud all he could hear were the high pitched chimes of a bell. He vision waxed and waned as it became spotty and the nausea threaten to rid him till he rid the contents of his stomach out and onto the ground. But he held onto it, somehow.

His hands fumbled, struggling to find the ground that was beneath him, a horses shrill peaked above him. But he couldn’t cover his ears. His hands could find his face, nor the ground, everything seemed disconnected and intangible.

He hurt so bad he almost felt numb.

Until he was hoisted into the air, then it became real again. Grayson groaned, rolling his head and his eyes.

Era… He pleaded pushing her name down their connection with all the strength he could muster. If she responded, he couldn’t - didn’t hear her. Era… He tried again, and somewhere he heard her bark, or at least he thought he did.

Like a raft on a stormy night in the open sea with no land in sight, Grayson was helpless. Too helpless to fight, to helpless to do anything, he let himself be carried out and into the woods.

He thought he was going to die, this wouldn’t be the first time he’d experienced pain like this with the threat of death lingering in the background waiting for her moment to take him away. But he knew something was wrong, something was off.

If he was going to die, what was the point of taking him away from the battle.

He didn’t know what was more terrifying, death or becoming a prisoner of the murderer to his childhood hero and his best friends father.

Era…., he tried one last time.

She’d never get to him in time.

They slipped passed the trees and Grayson squirmed, another round of explosions and nausea ripped through him, right before it lead him back into that familiar darkness and leaving him at his captures mercy.