---

Saga rocked on the back of... someone. Sometimes it was black fur, sometimes white, sometimes silver and red. Sometimes Saga was coherent enough to pay attention and.... most times, she was not. Her wounds were great, and only between luck and the scraps of moss she told the others to shove in the gaping lacerations did she make it home at all. Had it been an option, she would've asked them to find a chunk of bark big enough to drag her, but that would not have sufficed up the mountain. As it was, she was lucky she only had to walk sparcely, when carrying her was impossible. Even then, she needed someone on each side. She shook and panted with fever before the end of the first day, halfway home, and longed for Eldritch's wisdom, too weak to go looking for herbs herself. It took two to carry her, the wounds on her undercarriage so great she could not just drape like a pelt over one.

But the smell of Jakten woke her.

The scent of Jaxxon heavy against her senses.

She shifted, tried to lift her head, but the crackle of half-scabbed, half infected wounds stopped her; a whine keening from her bruised throat, jagged with wounds and patched with moss and spiderwebs. The sound reverberated deeper, and the flex of her stomach muscles made her flinch even harder -- the even deeper wounds crossing over and over again there stretching, pulling, cracking and oozing with the same half-infected and half scabbed dilemma; wounds desperately trying to heal but dirty and foul. Her eye fluttered open, and she was reminded that there was now only one -- and, go figure, the one her Mother had already mauled. Couldn't erase that memory at least, oh no. A ragged, gaping hole was all that remained of her right eye, tattered above and below and beside and -

Saga sucked a slow breath through her teeth, dizzy with the wave of pain that followed the panic. She wanted to tell someone to call for him, for her mate, the love of her life -- but she knew it would hurt. Her gaze flickered elsewhere, around her, that single crimson orb desperate for someone who understood.

Idly, she wondered if Ezra and Amunet had made it back without fuss, and how they were. She wondered how Frigi and Calixte had been in her absence. If Nyra missed their lessons every day -- how long it would be until they could start them again, considering she would now have to compensate for her new situation.

Saga shuddered a sigh and closed the singular eye once more, trembling, silent.

Magnolia was fast, her newly sprouting limbs swifter than ever, but she hadn't been able to fetch help quick enough to lend her Mother assistance she'd really needed. Seeing Saga so... bloody, and small, and hurt, it was perhaps the most terrible thing she had ever witnessed; The hole in her skull, gaping, crying red as bright as the orb that'd once been there. Her stomach, her neck, torn to ribbons, her soft silver pelt matted in blood.

And, in a remote part of the back of her mind, she knew it was her fault for not running sooner. For not fighting harder.

She followed after the solemn party as they finally returned home, hearing the tales of travel and reunions she'd missed out on. Ottilie had wandered the plains outside the Howff, Zacharie had seen a great fire just like she and Laurel had but in GOLD, and her Mother hadn't just found her children... she'd found her own littermates, too. Snuh and Rurik, she had introduced later through a hoarse, broken voice choked with more blood.
Fox's.
The woman who had warned her all her life about meeting other Fox's from Snow Peak had called two into her service, to her side, to the pack! Magnolia would pass her own judgement. Make sure, especially now, that these family members did not mean to pull the wool over her Mum's eyes and drag them back to the hell Saga had once described.

When they drew close to the borders, her Mother seemed to know, rousing. She looked... so fucking pitiful. Panicked, perhaps, but also... not quite. Desperate, Magnolia thought, and it took her a moment to understand -- Father.
But he didn't need called. Pawsteps thundered closer, and his scent was suddenly overwhelming as it closed in.
His eyes were all for her. It was... cute, in a way. Magnolia wanted to fuel the jab of jealousy that threatened, but also felt as if Saga deserved it. Sure, she and Laurel had gotten beat up a good bit since they'd last been seen: not just the bites from Joxer, but the scars and the limp leftover from injuries the wraiths had left her!
But Saga... Saga was so much worse.
Saga was not so strong as her daughters.

Magnolia averted her gaze to the ground as Jaxxon barreled forward to join his mates side, especially when his gaze flashed over her too. Saga had been beside him for so much, had let herself fall to such a state in order to save their children, and now she was paying the price.
Jaxx didn't even say anything to them, just murmured to Saga and called for the healer.

It was Ezra that stormed in like a cloud full of lightning, commanding first that someone run to Eldritch to help her, to give her a heads up. Magnolia shifted like she thought to go, but looked around -- anyone else would be faster than her hobbling gait, but if nobody else would bother, then she would!
His voice cracked like a storm, too.

'Explain to your Einvald exactly what the fuck happened here. Who did this?!'

Magnolia's ears flicked back.

Joxer, she rumbled, voice uncharacteristically soft; whether in simmering wrath or stewing guilt, it was not clear. Joxer had Laurel and me. She gulped, but lifted her chin proudly, yet refused to meet his red eyes - so much like her Mother's. She fought like a dozen warriors to help free us on the night we ran. She... was just too far from the others. Jaws gritted together, and though she looked as if she might've said something else, she just shook her head and started walking.

She'd find the Völva herself.

---

As suddenly and comforting as a cool breeze on a hot summer day, he was there. If anyone called, she didn't hear it; but Jaxxon was suddenly there, rushing for her side with a broken gasp of her name. Saga's eye fluttered open again and a smile cracked her lips, if only briefly. When the movement stretched at her cheek she let her lips fall flat again, but her eyes crinkled with the joy at seeing her mate again.

'I'm here,' he said, kissing some unbloodied patch of fur upon her face and tipping back his jaws to call for her mentor.

Saga hoped Eldritch would be proud. The dirty moss was undoubtedly what had infected the wounds, but the way they were all caked with blood, she wouldn't have made it back otherwise. If buying time for a healer to tend to the wounds she could not was all Saga had been able to do, she'd done as much as she could've.

But her eye was gone, and the skin around it flayed and ripped and torn away in a naked hole that looked.... terribly like Joxer's himself. Her throat, beneath all the moss shoved into gaps where teeth had torn, was unmercifully shredded and bruised purple where some mix of biting, shaking, and choking had only just missed taking her life. Pus leaked from the edges of the green-brown-red mess of moss and flesh. Her stomach was similarly wounded, but where the throat was honed in on the kill, the rips and bites along her stomach just seemed wanton.
All of them, however stuffed with moss, were bloody, and puss-filled, and inflamed.

If she died now, Saga thought, at least she'd gotten back home. Collected and ferried back their children, got to see Jaxx and keep her promise to return.

A croaking little wheeze left her, close to a cough, and it might've been unclear she was trying to speak because for now, she failed.

Ezra was the next to come blotting into what was left of her vision, and hells fury came with him as he demanded first that someone find the Völva to assist.... and then demanded the answers Jaxxon seemed to shocked to ask for. Saga felt guilt well in her throat - so much fuss, for her! This should've been a victory! It was Magnolia herself that answered him, and not even her Mother could tell if the girl was angry or not. The dark, rapidly sprouting girl put a name to what had happened to Saga, and she winced upon hearing it -- heart fluttering as her fear intensified.
Joxer, that monster, he'd had her babies. He could've killed them! She'd done only what needed to be done to get them away from his teeth, and would again even knowing it put her at his wrath.

Magnolia swept off without much hurry, and Abaddon shot off with more purpose.

For a while, things seemed quiet. Saga... might've passed out again, she wasn't sure. The next she seemed to stir, it was because her mentors sagely scent tickled her senses. Ah -- blessed relief was on the way, she thought.

My fault, she croaked hoarsely, her very voice sounding bruised, Too far... From group. Too far to be saved. Too far to find help. Too far to be able to kill the monster and put an end to their worries.

Eldritch commanded room to start working right here. She wondered if the ebony woman would have them place her on the ground or simply tend the Fox there upon the backs of her siblings.

She reached her muzzle towards Jaxxon, silently requesting that he stay there with her with a mumbled, groggy: Missed you.

Saga didn't notice, but Magnolia did not return with the healer.