There was a brief moment where he didn't know what Ren would do-...perhaps he had been having many of those moments as of late. Their connection...however strained was beginning to succumb to the fraying. Much as he tried to keep a frantic grip on the splitting that singed his hand. Painted the white stain of his pigments a bloody red. He saw the tadpole offered to his brother and felt little concern compared to anything Vesz gave him. He wasn't sure why... perhaps the tadpoles he'd consumed had calmed him into thinking it was a perfectly acceptable gift-
[This will make you stronger... this will help.] The sentiment wasn't spoken, but he felt it in his head from the mind flayer before them. He believed it. Believed it like he wanted to believe that his services still mattered to the Cragdew-... still had the capability of keeping him safe. Even though deep down he knew that for all the recent battles they'd been thrown into, he had done the least damage. He had been the most work for the rest of them to watch over. He'd encumbered them. Like the tadpoles weighing them all down now. He felt...heavy.
When Ren flung the offered tadpole away into the craggy recesses of the astronaut they all stood upon in the Astral plain, he felt a knife sink into his chest. Something trying its best to protect what it had burrowed into-... screaming out like he did in his rages, and thrashing when held down with nothing but a word. He waited until the rest of the party had begun to trot off without him- ... yet again. His eyes firmly squeezed shut could not detangle the worm's screeches for help below his feet.
He stooped...collected it in his glove. And in his open palm where it thrashed he saw- the last remnants of Ren's smile when he'd last earned it as a child. He wanted it so badly-...to the point where, with a tilt of his hand, he popped the tadpole inside his mouth and swallowed heavily, eyes burning with a prick of something warm and wet. If he'd been a better brother-...a better friend, then maybe it wouldn't have come to this.
