It is so numbing. Diamonds and crystals glow with elegant, gently shifting colours that dull as my yellow orbs focus on the hulking monstrosity's form. There is the ever present thudding of my pastern - throbbing with each pulse of blood reaching the slick, puss-covered, exposed flesh and tissue. Whatever is the source of this numbing, and this creation of my own world to escape into, it is welcome.

I watch as she heads toward me. Panic is evident, swirling in the mare's eyes as her soul is ripped from her ghastly host of a vessel. Unheil's laugh clouds my cranium as I lurch forward, the taste of blood is enough to snap the majority of my senses into line again and off the thundering heart in my hooves. However, the inner part of her leg is no longer where I am aiming - the Hündin staggered to her left with the return of her sickening soul, and Schwere can only scream profanities at my mindlessness. Alas, my spearing had not been in vain. BLOOD! a harsh voice bellows - a tone I had only heard but a few seconds earlier. Precarious placement of hooves has my frame still shooting forward and my sword digging into hot flesh, ripping it a good six inches before the mare has enough sensibility to attempt to move away from my attack.

In my head, I laugh at her. Victory! Now - kill, devour, DESTROY! A new voice is slowly pulling my body, refocusing me. My eyes are locked on my surroundings as I twirl back to face the mare and stop my frame from crashing into the impending wall of sharp crystals. I rock my weight across my right hind leg as I press up against the wall, and shove myself back into the metaphorical ring. She will die today. Then I won't have to deal with her idiocy again.

Pain, Searing pain. That is all I can feel. The numbing embrace of adrenaline has vanished from the corroding, torn flesh of my left hind leg. My pelt! Suddenly, it is bubbling and puss begins to spread across it - the stench of rot filling my nostrils. CONCENTRATE! Innerste screams and my head jerks up, limbs hauling me backwards a few steps, almost prepared to pull my own soul to deaden the new pain - for a few moments at least.

That voice. It's more than a voice though, isn't it? It almost seems to control me and push me into darkness. I am almost unfeeling, and it is as if this voice is used to the feeling of flesh slowly rotting. What could it possibly have gone through to allow me this release? The dead vocals seem to guide the coherent portion of my mind into a different place - my physical body still ever present in reality. Crystal, glowing walls turning into barriers of trees. The slick floor flooded with mud that doesn't cling to my glass, and then Confutatis. It's as if I'm separated - delusions of a schizophrenic can be one of the strongest poisons. And, as I give into the power of this voice of my own creation the searing of my flesh seems to fade into a dull hum with each determined movement. Tense muscles are relaxing, and though they are weaker, my dream world isn't necessarily even registering the fact that they are decaying. Give. Her. Death. MAKE HER PAY! the voice screeches and I am locking my sights on her injured shoulder, wanting to rip it even more. I want to feel the blood coat me, spray me. I want to paint myself in her life substance. And then, I will kick her skull in - maul the marking and break the bones beneath it.

Am I Seele anymore? Or am I this creation of hallucinations and paranoid tendencies? If you don't kill her, she will kill YOU! The voice reminds me, and with a snort of pain I take in her right side, perpendicular to my frame since I slid a little (startled by the fact that I was dying from the Hündin's new magic). Twenty different images flash across my brain as I catapult forward again - my forelimbs bearing enough weight to ease the injured limb behind. Head lowered until the last second when I snap it back up, hoping to tear a hole from the lower end of her right side to the middle of her barrel. And, I continue to move allowing the movement to try and shove her off balance with my right shoulder - head now ducking carefully to the left. The pain that is still surging through me is a dull thought in the back of my head - for in my world I can feel only the heat of the sun and the promise of a new day.