Confutatis

You are a brick tied to me that's dragging me down / Strike a match and I'll burn you to the ground / We are the jack-o-lanterns in July / Setting fire to the sky

The Reaper spins away, fleeing from the embrace of crushing pain and she wants to laugh, let free the bubbling fury which burns and coils in her breast. Coward! Did he not love the scream of agonized nerves, the burn of aching sinew and the heady aroma of war-making? How could he wear a raiment of death and not recognize what he stood for—war, carnage, slaughter?

Questions, juxtapositions, she poses, but they are simply to cover up her frustration, the grit of her teeth, the feathering of her jaw. How could she have missed? And why, why did she have to start this way? Whatever she did—whatever she tried, it wasn’t enough. It’s an insecurity which undermines her authority, an uncertainty which tugs at her heartstrings and rises, snake-like and insidious, to weave about her skull.

Black shadows on pale light.
Deimos is painted gaudily in the colors of the Rotunda, gleaming on his iron hide and glittering off his charcoal skull inlaid with sapphires. Her breathing deepens, rasps in and out painfully; her lips slaver, foam, with acid. Eyes narrow, sharp with calculating light.

How can she claim greatness, supremacy, when she could not defeat anyone?
She could rival him. Death he might wield, embroidered on his mantle and crown, but she breathed rot and waste. Desecration and ruin dripped from her pores, crept towards heathenish skin, a kiss she had used gleefully on her victims and children both, freely and wantonly, a prostitute out to stake her claim. It did not have to be where she lost – it did not have to another strike to her long list of failures! Hold your magic. The wolf tucks it close to her skin, where it lurks, waiting for a chance to snap out and latch onto Deimos’ dark skin.

I can be strong.

If not for herself, then for her children she sees watching in her peripheral vision, their faces pale and their eyes so bright. It is the first time in her life she fights for someone other than herself; and she marvels at it, this determination which burns hard and strong and fast in her smoky skin. They expect her to be a war-goddess, a monster with bloody teeth and pinned ears—how could she let them face the reality? I cannot. Their… their opinion of her mattered, more than she would care to admit.
For they were hers, and she was theirs, and she would defend them (and her ego) to her last.

Despite Deimos’ sweep away, she kept her forward momentum, slowing only slightly. The World Eater’s head dips downwards, neck curling, and she shifts her weight, bracing herself. As the dark unicorn brings his horn, aiming to rip and tear into her nape, she throws herself forth, attempting to ram her right shoulder firmly behind his right shoulder—into the barrel area—and check him off-balance. Due to this movement, his cutlass, a glittering crown so vulnerable to ambition, instead cuts cleanly through the air above her withers.

From his vantage point, hidden in the grass beyond the Rotunda, her Mongrel watches, his energy fueling hers, a volatile thing of warped shadows which croons to her, empowering, in the back of her mind: a single chant beseeching VICTORY for them. While his mother fights, he withdraws his illusion, allowing it melt from Confutatis’ body and leave her and her trademark skull in it’s appropriate place. Little, snake-like lips curl in careful thought as he examines the World Eater; what to do? Her side of the bond is consumed in thought of carnage and desecration—from her, in the throes of her concentration, he will get no advice.

Doppelgangers. They appear all around Deimos, dozens of them, packed in tightly against the Rotunda edge, overflowing the fields, walls and walls of Confutatis, repeating and never-ending. In his illusion he weaves as much detail as he can, as much realism; let the Reaper falter in his confusion, perplexion, and give the World Eater a chance at the upper hand!

Flame bestows itself upon the equine’s spine, a flash and gout of red searing the upper layers of Confutatis’ shoulders (due to her movement forward, injury joyously relocated itself.) Skin blisters, scorches beneath her bony armor and the harlot croaks in surprised pain, ears lashing back to her skull. Flesh bubbles, melts, waxes beneath the cruel blow—that, and shock. How is it he managed to land touch upon her when he was so elusive to her touch?

It rips through her: agony and promiscuous rage.
No. He will not get away with this.
And then it bursts from her, a wave of destruction and rot, her necromancy, attempting to desecrate and ruin his cinereal flesh all along his right side, to corrode his ashen skin.

2/4 for Confutatis' armor.
Word Counter: 800
OOC: Used Microsoft Office for my word counter this time around!