Watching Frey rock himself back onto his feet, fully cognizant of the tears pricking the younger prince's eyes, Asbel's first instinct -- first by far beyond the rest -- was to put his arms around the young man and pull him away from Augustine and Cassius. Frey wasn't going to break down, not in front of them, and if he needed to get away, then Asbel would go with him and let him cry as he had before, let him weep until everything washed out of the prince's mind and the young man could be at peace.

So as the prince turned and fled into the trees, Asbel surged forward to follow--

"Asbel -- stop."

And stopped. At the order, the phoenix froze, panic a blade in his chest. But Augustine, behind him, though trembling still with indignation on his dragon's behalf, spoke with self-control and more anguish than anger:

"He can't keep doing this. He can't keep running away as if that's going to fix everything. He can't [i]lash out[/i] like that without dealing with the consequences. He can't--" The general broke off, and Asbel realized he was gritting his teeth and blinking back tears in the same way his brother was. Cassius, who had let him go, touched the prince's arm again, this time in reassurance, but Augustine shook him off all the same.

"If I can't keep track of him, I can at least keep track of you two." The prince fixed Asbel, then, with a gaze that still caught him through the chest like an arrow. "I'll take Cassius into the air, Asbel. He might be able to sense Frey from the air, and you may search by foot. We should be able to see your light from above, but if anything threatens you -- especially if it's Frey -- I want you to fly straight up and we'll come to you. No arguing."

"No, sir," the phoenix agreed, brimming with relief that they would be searching for Frey after all. But of course they would: even if they fought, Augustine wasn't going to let Frey get himself killed out in the woods somewhere.

So the young man plunged into the woods as fast as his exhausted legs would allow, following by the light of his own aura what glimpses of a trail Frey had left behind. "Prince Frey!" he shouted. "Frey!" He could hear the rush of dragon wings above, and rustling in the trees, but there was no screaming as there had been before, no crying, no audible clue at all to reveal the prince's location.

He pressed on as darkness fell, and eventually he glowed like a fallen star in woods otherwise devoid of light. "Frey," he continued to call, though the occasional howl of hunting animals could not tempt him to shout as he had before. "Frey, where are you?"