"Damn it, no!"

"Icarus!"

Before Icarus's hooves could gain any air from the stone floor, launching himself after the piece of parchment as it sputtered out from the leather pack strewn about, a sharp pain starting at the mane then lanced through his entire body in a jolt. All momentum lost upon being yanked back forcefully by that grip - which turned out to be Dio's teeth sunk firm into the hairs - and Icarus went stumbling back the other way towards safety. Not of his own accord. He could only watch in absolute misery as the parchment fluttered on the updraft of hot air and their struggle-

"Icarus! Focus!"

The skeletal hounds they'd run into slinked in, quick and nimble, to nip at Dio's heels. The pack had separated them from Archie; one between them and him, and then one between Dio and Icarus as well. Yet despite the very immediate danger surrounding him, Icarus could only catch sight of the paper finally falling from its updraft until it floated feather-light towards the lava. It lit at the first corner to touch. The rest of the page followed suit rapidly, consumed in the spit of hot-orange flames before it could even become one melty liquid below.

One of his back legs kicked out behind him as reflex only, hearing the screeching hiss that should not be possible from a monstrous beast with no flesh to produce voice as they did. Still, the bite and resounding crack! stung less in the heat of the moment of loss.

That had been the autograph of his favorite adventurer. One of his most prized possessions next to the precious piece of reflective-pool he'd always carried. It was something he would never be able to get back, or recreate.

His eldest brother, long gone in the Dungeon depths, would not be capable of giving him another.

"I... I.."

"We need to leave, now!" Diomedes shoved his shoulder into Icarus's to get him to start moving, "Get gone or get dead, Icky!"

"But that was my..."

However, not in any mindset to fend off more of the hounds as their bony claws clicked upon the stone ground, Icarus could only duck to grab what was left of his pack and take stumbling hooves with him, pushed along by Dio and Archie at his back lest he go back to try to dive into the lava himself for that imposible chance of saving what was already gone.