The whole scenario was one she knew all too well. It was achingly familiar, in a blood-curdling, heart-pounding kind of way that left a metallic taste of blood and fear on the tongue. A rain-drenched forest, the pursuit of murderous predators, the sound of her own ragged breaths as she stumbled and wobbled onwards with pain burning her legs, her wing, her throat, her chest... The knowledge that she had injured both of them didn't soothe her, did nothing to lessen the fear that raged through the mind or hovered around her in a stinking cloud letting everyone know that she was out of her depths, with water way over the head.

As the hooves of the mahogany stallion made contact with her rump and knocked her out of balance the girl almost wanted to laugh. The whole situation was just so bizarre, so incomprehensible... Since when had horses started to hunt other horses like wolves do their pray? When had things gone so wrong that she had to be hated to the point of murder just for eavesdropping on a conversation?

Squealing in terrified pain the little mare was flung to the side by the blow. In itself it wasn't that powerful, it would bruise the dock and had managed to scrape open the skin just enough for small droplets of blood to trickle through. Any other day she would have snorted and kicked back, then followed up on it with a scolding that would set the stallions ears glowing in embarrassment. On another day, she wouldn't be sent crashing to the ground by it as too much weight was put on her aching knee, so that it buckled and caved beneath her. She wouldn't have plowed into the ground with her good wing under her, wincing as it too was twisted in an awkward angle, not so much that it broke but thoroughly enough to make flight impossible (had her left appendage not already been crushed by merciless hooves and rendered useless).

But this was a bad day for the shadowmare, and so she found herself rendered completely helpless where she skidded across the ground, air knocked out of the lungs and head rattled and confused. Right away she began the struggle to get up, but in her heart she knew it would be futile. She was too heavy to move quickly, weighed down by a swollen stomach full of foal with legs that made her gasp in pain for every move, the bones in the wing grinding against one another and pricking the skin from the inside was enough to make black dots explode before her eyes.

It was over. She would die here. There was nothing more she could do, nothing at all.

Then, without warning, an angel descended.

Midas she thought at first through the haze of pain and fear and water that clouded her vision, the shimmer of gold around the thrashing wings stabbing her with a spear of hope that was as painful as it was unexpected. But no, it wasn't her Sultan. It was another, dyed in earthy hues rather than the stark black and white and much taller - though their fury was the same she thought.

Shadow could hear the thunderous roar of the angel as it challenged Dragomir, and realized as she stumbled up on her feet, barely able to stand yet stubbornly starting to drag herself away from the battlefield and into the surrounding forest, that it was a mare. And what a mare! Had she not been so busy trying to save her own life the raven would have been jealous, of the bold bravery, the raging fury and the magnificence of her apparition. This lady was everything the blackbird had wanted to be as a child, everything she couldn't become. Once she had accepted it and tried to pave her own path - now it seemed all her wild filly dreams was coming back to haunt her.

Wishing, hoping that the appearance of another pegasus would distract the stallions, the ebony girl dragged herself off into the underbrush until she couldn't see them anymore, only hear the sound of hooves thundering across the ground in pace with the lighting and the rain. There she sunk down in a heap on the forest floor and panted, trying to keep her breaths quiet as she dragged the chameleon cloak over herself again - maybe, just maybe it would keep her hidden long enough to make them loose track, give up, and leave.


ooc: using her rank magic to hide herself and cannot be seen.