Caneo recalls the sharp prickling of regret the moment he crashes into the girl. His damp, grey and yellow body stalls beside her, momentum fading as his narrow skeleton groans into hers and against the mud. She lurches awkwardly away; he tastes flesh between his teeth and he hopes it hurts, or else he’s had her in his mouth for no reason, at all. Why doesn’t she scream?

        Has her voice given up?

        As the girl staggers to his left, Caneo fidgets awkwardly in the opposite direction. He watches her though, his blue eyes nearly glowing in the hazy light of the wet morning. She wrenches herself up out of the mud, and he wonders if she intends to fly, or leap at him. So intent on the girl, Caneo forgets her reason for charging at him before. He forgets that something must have made her scream earlier. He is still dazed from the collision, his brain spinning rapidly and gaining no traction as he struggles to think of what next? His momentary lapse in concentration costs him.

        A foreign shape erupts from the muck at his feet. Long jaws part and many teeth gleam briefly at him, jagged and hungry, gaping. Instinct alone throws his body back, hooves sliding through the mud, haunches quivering tense as they struggle to support his weight. He staggers back, his forelimbs lifted in a brief, haphazard rear. Luckily the girl is rearing at the same time, forelimbs aiming down as his head jerks up and only just out of her reach. A moment later Caneo finds he has been too slow, anyway.

        The crocodile’s teeth close around a slender foreleg, teeth raking down through thin flesh and drawing long, ugly lines of red. Suddenly his left limb burns; he stabs with with the muddied toes of the right as a high, desperate squeal erupts from his chest. Die! He snorts, head craning around the awful prow of his costume in desperate effort even to see the ugly thing. It thrashes somewhere below him, its jaws empty, clamped shut half a breath after he jerked his leg away. Still the wound cries out and the beast lives; Caneo moves forward haphazardly, his hind legs shoving him into a shallow leap over the monster’s back and onto the small portion of dry land beyond.

        He lands on the healthy limb first, but nearly falls anyway when his right toes find the ground and shudder. Caneo isn’t made of muscle or fat enough to cushion any such blow; he manages to remain upright though and with a grunt he turns, tracking the crocodile’s movement and the girl’s with frightened eyes.

        She wanted him to charge.

        He sees now she is clever, and more familiar with battle than he. She has tricked him; his ears slick back to display a mixture of pain and irritation as it flares like acid through his mind. She is no better than the crocodile, even if she hurts less. She might be stuck in the mud now, though, and he might catch her if he tries – and hurt her, too. He has never felt an urge to harm like he does now. His struggling against the dragon-man had been urgent and haphazard. His battle with the swordsman had been nearly painless. Now, though, Caneo feels only a strange desire to stop the girl’s breathing, and make her food for these beasts. His body is aching and tired; he might feel the chill of morning if his muscles didn’t quiver so with rough exertion. It is all her fault.

        He moves back toward her.

        Injured, bleeding, and beginning to tire with fear slick in his veins and mud struggling to devour his feet, Caneo hopes to come up on girl's side. She may well manage to turn and face him before he reaches her; he cannot account for that, but he aims for that bleeding stifle, anyway. His neck curls down as he does so, bringing forward the short, sharp curve of his horn. He plans to rake the point up through her injury, to further cripple her. His own limb aches with every limping step he demands from it; water climbs dirty against the wound and the silver boy’s entire body is a taut string, a bow waiting to be released. He is tense with pain and nearly blind with it, and he throws the sharp edges of his pale bones at her almost carelessly, wanting only to hurt, forgetting perhaps his own mortality – that he was always better served by flight.

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attack: 2/2
word count: 761 words
notes: He was distracted by the crocodile and moved back and reared at the same time she attempted to strike his head, dodging that attack. The crocodile bit his foreleg pretty badly, though, and in an effort to escape Caneo jumped over its back and landed on drier ground. He then tried to turn around and charge at Elsa again, and rake at her injured stifle with his horn.
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@[Elsa]