The war cry came not far from where Zahhāk had left the indignant grey mare with her empty words and emptier head, standing over the bodies of the two Akhal-Tekes, his father and his distraught lover. He barely acknowledged the sound—with nothing more than a flick of an ear as his deep brown eye rolled toward the source—a sturdy brown desert mare. She flew at him with unhinged rage, swearing and threatening death; he almost laughed for the sheer obviousness. It would have been more shocking had she come at him with jubilance. How many would shun him for what he had done? How many would celebrate? How many would even come to learn of his homicidal nature?
But all told, it wasn’t about him.
Their encounter of hooves and teeth was brief, and Zahhāk retaliated thoughtlessly despite his ragged and weary state. He endured, and would continue to endure, every cruelty that could possibly befall him. He hoped that with each test, he might be bested, that he would fail—but he had accidentally grown into something of a serious fighter. A stone carved with many scars that decorated his barrel, each a tale of something sinister, a failure, and unending shame.
When the brown mare twisted away from him, snarling with the very same shame in her being that he felt in what was left of his heart—if he had ever had one—Zahhāk cannot help but see himself in her. She writhed like burning brush, hoping to swallow the sky itself in a flame that will never grow beyond its bounds. Her apology, flat and insincere, fell on deaf ears.
“I am no one,” Zahhāk responded equally flatly, smoldering in his own pile of smoky black ash. "Nothing," he whispered, under his breath.
Zahhāk
There was madness in any direction, at any hour.
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