Where could he possibly go from here?
Zahhāk could never get far enough away from himself to forget, or forgive. The weight of his failures filled his chest like murky, tepid water that slammed and splashed against the rocky edges of his smoky black, scarred skin stretched over his skeletal frame. He was assembled all wrong, fashioned from misplaced parts and old pieces that were never meant to fit together in this way—scrap metal and glue, easily dissolved and broken.
He went looking for a distraction, that if nothing else, might temporarily pull his mind away from his transgressions, even though such attempts were futile. Still, the red and white girl with her blatant display of youthful tomfoolery was bait enough to draw him in—ripe for confrontation. Sure enough, another stallion caught notice too. Zahhāk snorted, lashing his sparse, dark tail at his haunches as he drew closer in time to hear his savory quip about danger.
“It should,” he growled before her, his golden brown eyes flicking from the stallion to her quickly. She knew nothing of the world to come tumbling toward it so haughtily, and here this stallion came under the guise of kindness in an attempt to warn her about things that go bump in the night—ugly truths like he wore as scars upon his coat.
“You see these?” Zahhāk beckoned to his pock-marked side, decorated with hairless patches from battles past. “These are what happen when danger finds you.”
He flicked his ears backwards, keen to push the girl further, to test the stallions meddle just because he could.
Zahhāk
There was madness in any direction, at any hour.
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