The darkness was burned away in a brilliant blaze of flame as lightning split the heavens. What had started a drizzle had unleashed itself into a mighty storm, the very sky shaking under the tumultuous raging blows. Thunder grabbed the air with a thousand claws and rent it to pieces with a scream that seemed to break the earth and scatter the pieces into dark clouds of nothingness. Through this tempest rode Grake, his daemon pounding through the muddy trenches of the road. Her breath broke in huge panting gasps upon the storm, seeming to bellow from her lungs like the wind that beat her sides. Mud slicked her legs and barrel, and rain blinded her to the storm. Grake held on with all his strength, but his tired, wet fingers were slipping.
"Kanling!" He screamed, both voice and mind desperate to break through the howling that raged around them. "I can't hold on! I'm going to fall!" Panic broke his voice into a little boy's screech.
Kanling heard, but could not answer, the wind whipping the words from her mouth before she could speak them. She tried to slow the frantic rush of their flight, but the road slipped downward into a gully, and the mud sucked her legs onward. To try and stop was to slide, and trip, and fall, down, down, down into the river that frothed below.
Lightning ripped the sky again, illuminating the rain-beaten world. Grake clung to Kanling with all his might, but they had galloped for hours, and his muscles were frozen. His legs cramped as he tried to squeeze tighter against his daemon's sides. With a sense of dread, he felt himself sliding, slowly, oh so slowly, over the back of her rump. Fingers scrabbled wildly to clasp tighter to the black mane, but the strands flew out of his grasp like inky snakes.
"Kanling!" He screamed piteously, as he slipped side ways off her back. He landed with a thud, a crack, and a moan. His right arm was snapped, the bone sticking out jaggedly from the bloody skin. But the pain in his chest was worse, the twisting, jerking, hot knives that dug and tore at his heart like a rabid beast. He clutched his good arm to his chest, screaming and screaming loud enough to wake the dead.
The black horse tripped, stumbled, almost fell. The same pain wrenched her foreleg; the same pain ripped her heart. With out a moments thought she was a griffin, beating her way back to her boy. Giant auburn wings whipped the already crazed wind into a frenzy, which rushed away her cries of pain as if they offended this tortured night. Finally Kanling was there, next to Grake, and the horrible, indescribable agony of the hearts was over. But blood still pulsed out of the boy's broken arm, staining the rock where he had landed as he wept weakly.
Kanling was a panther, licking and licking the wound, cleaning away the blood despite Grake's moans of protest. Then she was a monkey, clever paws ripping his shirt, binding up the wound, though she winced as much as he did. Finally, Kanling made one last change, becoming a griffin again. She huddled down beside him, warming his still figure, and folded a wing over him, protecting him from the raging elements.