You will come.

Peyote stayed, the distance still the same between them. He knew he could not deny the request and that he had to do as the red dun said, but almost childishly, he remained firmly planted. Nahawi nodded toward the ocean, and Peyote thought briefly of the peaceful bit of heaven he’d held onto with a vice grip, then took one heavy step forward and further from it. His gut wrenched tighter.

Angrier.

His dark-lined lids narrowed as his gaze pinched tightly on Nahawi. He took another step, and then another, and his dark tail lashed with a few argumentative snaps, as if his own body was rebelling against having to walk away from the swamplands. Peyote lowered his head as he neared Nahawi, though he did not lurch and strike out as much as it might briefly satisfy him to do so. He only glowered, looking far more cruel and deranged than he had when Nahawi had last seen him.

It was not Garmr’s effect; it was not the Lagoon’s effect. Peyote was self-fulfilling his own destiny.

He blew another snort at Nahawi as he walked past him, then splashed his hooves into the rolling shallows of the ocean that stretched with invitation ahead. His blue gaze reached briefly back toward the inviting shadows of the Lagoon, begging him to come back to them, and felt some strange ache spread in his chest and turn bitter on his tongue. He did not know he could be so attached… but what he had found and now lost… it had changed him.

Peyote turned himself around and charged at the water, almost attacking it with the ferocity he met the waves, throwing himself from his home and onward toward the prison he was now forced to reside in.