Ivories fasten down vivaciously on her opponent’s charcoal pastern- victory, she thinks to herself, but it is not so much a thought as a feeling in her oiled chest and the pounding in her conceited head. Maybe it is an infinitely puny achievement compared to her future desires, but nonetheless her triumph, a tiny step towards the greatness that she demanded of life; yet even as the brief moment comes, buoying her spirits (I am talented; see, I have snatched her from behind, certainly she did not expect that) it literally slips free from her grasp. The toxic slime of the wolf’s maw butters from the ergot to the coronet, and despite her increasing desperate clutching, the Saddlebred pulls free. Seele’s glass hoof, on its way to independence, clouts her around the sensitive flesh of her muzzle; the charcoal mare’s head jerks skyward, eyelids shuttering close as she winces at the unexpected pain.

Ashen keratin dig at the floor, hunting for reassuring friction, and it takes too long for her to halt, to sink her weight back on her charcoal haunches, precious time trickling through her figurative fingertips.

The harlot is dismayed; how she had hoped to see the bay’s fortress walls crumble beneath the onslaught of Confutatis the Great, the Feral, the Daughter of Demons, but she is denied the satisfaction of a quick ending to the art of bruises and serrations. No, she reminds herself- I am a fucker, a bitch, a wolf, I will not waste such petty emotions as trivial sadness on this slut- her jaw stands rigid, muscles playing out hard against her obsidian skin, molars clenched tight, ears locked to her neck in her silent fury. She skitters towards the unicorn, slithering over crystalline flooring, lupine in the aggression of the amber eye and the narrowness of her nostrils, aquiline in the proud curl of her crest; and then her horrid soul, shriveled and withered by acts of horror and evil, is ripped from bone and sinew.
    If she could scream, she would have; shout in rage and, for all that she would deny it, fear of the unknown. She had thought herself the only mare capable of magic as powerful as hers, as malignant and vile, but she thought WRONG.

Confutatis is returned to her body, with a jerk and shuddering side-step; disoriented, body numb with pain, senses dulled, the world is a whirlwind of shadows and nonsensical shapes dancing on her eyelids. Caught at a loss and dumb-founded (since when had this stupid bitch gotten magic?), Seele is able to cut cleanly through the succubus’ defenses, charging forwards wielding crystal horn as an untrained farmer does scythe; it is only by sheer luck, as the Skullface would put it down to, that the translucent crown catches her at the point of shoulder and peels open the uppermost layer of skin for another six inches, before Confutatis swings her hindquarters away from the mare, preventing a continuation. After this pivot around her forelegs, she halts, lifting her injured pillar off the ground to relieve the insistent ache in her shoulder. Blood begins to well free of the skin- but the sinner does not repent, does not mourn taking on an enemy with such nefarious magic. Even with her mind clouded, she has a compatriot in her crimes, a Yako who watches for main part seemingly unnoticed, whose oceanic mind laps against her mountains.

The sea is crimson, bruised undercurrents of violent violet, enveloping the turmoil of the spiny crags; and it does nothing to rid of the succubus of her wildness, but it coaxes her, enrages her, and unleashes from her magic.

Sorcery burns and boils over, seething waves of sadistic intent, swarming and crawling from her skin- DEATH AND DECAY TO ENEMIES OF THE CROWN. She does not direct it, but lets it wreak its havoc, allows it to scream silently, unbridled, towards the mare, towards her own Yako, where it blooms like a disease on his fur before he cowers away from her necromancer’s touch. Yet she DOES NOT CARE, she wants Seele to repent, to scream, to find her skin sloughing from bone, to die before the day is done.

The bitch would not allow a peasant to defeat her, not allow HER victim to get the better of her; she would eat Seele alive, feast on her bleeding heart and flay her before she died, wait until she screamed for mercy and only then give it.

The scholars would omit her name- Confutatis, the reaper, the devourer of hearts, the queen of skulls- from their books in fear of her, they would not whisper her titles, because she was DEATH, she was DARKNESS, she was DECAY, and YOU RUN AWAY FROM DEMONS.

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799/800 words
3/4 + 0/1

*Modified as word count was off