Any scrap of humanity left in the demon would have been appauled by what was happening, but there wasn't enough of Nyx left for her to care. Her nares continued to dilate, trying to detect the other mare hiding in the shadows, and she stole her attention from Nato for the tiniest of moments. The scent moved, and Nyx's attention was lost, however as she turned to redouble her efforts to poison the black stallion, she felt his weight crash into her rotting shoulder. A chunk of meat fell from her and hit the ground with a sickening thud, and her lips peeled back to expose her sharpened, stained fangs. Her hooves scrabbled on the ground but her balance was compromised and she felt herself falling, Nato's teeth rasping against her face as she did so. They tore at the skin beneath her left eye and a great flap of flesh peeled free, exposing the bloodied muscle and skull beneath. The eye clung to the socket by the merest straggle of sinew, but the black iris of it still pivoted to focus on Nato, a sick, giggling gurgle spewing from her jaws.

She staggered, lurching drunkenly as her forelegs buckled and she crashed to her knees, grazing them and feeling the wet sensation as a fountain of blood poured down to her hooves. She hissed up at Nato, drawing her neck back like a snake in preparation to spit infection at him, feeling scarlet phlegm gather at the back of her throat. But before she could release it, before she could poison him and watch as he was devoured by the infection, his hooves appeared from nowhere and collided with her head. The sound was a muffled thud, like steel striking flesh, accompanied with a resounding crack as the creature's neck bones snapped with the force of the impact. Like a sack of meat the beast slumped sideways to the floor, her head bent at a disgustingly wrong angle. A cackle died in her throat as she fell, and her black eyes never left Nato's even as she felt unconsciousness grip her. Her skull slammed into the soil below and her breathing slowed, blood pouring from between her teeth as she lay prone and broken. The impact would have killed the none-infected Nyx, but the infection was not so easily killed; she was comatose, but for how long was anybody's guess.

Her loose eye snapped fully from its socket, and rolled a few feet away on a string of muscle and flesh. It came to a halt, a gruesome blot on the blackened landscape.