Something was… wrong with the Lagoon boss.
Psychedelic had not been himself since the fight with the Inlet lead, Parvati, and the subsequent loss of one of Vadim’s trinkets. He had anticipated retaliation from the brash boy, but received nothing of the sort. In fact, within just days of the loss, Vadim himself had been whisked away by some mare. Unfortunately the boss was not even able to breathe a sigh of relief at having Vadim finally gone, because the pain in his left front knee persisted, and if he walked too long on it, it grew hot and began to swell. He remembered hearing a pop when he’d landed from a rear in the scuffle, and the wretched pain that’d shot up his limb and sent shivers down his spine. It’d been that moment the Inlet lead had been able to capitalize on, and the moment he knew there was no way he could continue to fight.
Time could heal all wounds and it was true of the injury he’d sustained to his knee, but despite that initial worry subsiding, there was still something wrong. Despite spring bringing a flush of vegetation to eat, and summer too, Psychedelic could not keep any weight on. He was older now and maybe that’s all this was - old age had finally come to catch up to him.
Among the blue-green waters that gave the Lagoon its name were small banks of sand, and one of them was just high enough that even the swell of the nighttime tides could not grow high enough to wash him away. Rather than hide away in the dense forestry further inland, Psychedelic took to spending most of his time among that long stretch of sand. He no longer wandered back inland to eat… what was the point, if it was doing nothing for him? But chose to spend his days laying quietly on the sand, among the few patches of wispy beach grass that grew there, looking out at the horizon.
When he had spent a time or two on Atlantis a year back, he had caught Talya’s scent, and it had been that which kept him away from the island he loved. That and Tyr, his apparent mortal enemy, taking up residence there. It had been years since he had finally managed to get the girl to leave his side, but now that he was ill and losing his strength, his mind kept pulling to her. He mentally looked over the times he had beaten her or threatened her, or even the time he’d taken that little girl from her. Instead, Psychedelic found himself remembering when he’d been stuck on Salem - his most hated island - and that little, thin pale filly had found him and refused to leave his side. He’d tried everything to get her to go away, but she’d just giggled and stuck to him like she was meant to stick to her dam. One of his most heinous treatments of her dam had brought her into this world and, for that, he had been cursed to raise her and look after her.
Of everyone in his life, Psychedelic knew the only thing he had ever loved had been Talya, and that is why he had hated her so much. Love made him weak; caring for her well-being made him sloppy.
But maybe, just maybe, if he could find it in himself to rise and swim the shallows, he could find her… hear her laugh one more time before death finally came to snatch him away.
Not that he deserved it.
The boss let his eyelids drift closed, head slowly lowering down to the sand and back to the small groove that his chin had already made as he rested and slept there before. He let a light sleep claim him again, paying little attention to any sounds of life moving around him, choosing instead to remember when Talya was little and she’d amused him with her antics. Before he’d ruined it all, as he was apt to do.
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