Her agony is like a balm to his pride, wounded to the point was it was inflamed and throbbing, engorged on assumptions of righteousness and arrogance. The blood which dripped from his horns and onto his head, freckling him with murder and mayhem, was his medicine. He hadn't even known how sick he had been until he took it, instantly soothed and coddled with the milk of the heart. Yet she doesn't die, Öde thinks, the red wash of his gaze snapping to the side as she twists just out of his reach, wounded, but alive.

Öde hasn't the self control to grip rationality and sense through this haze of war he's plunged himself into. Given more practice and time he'll have the refinement to step back and recognize that her demise does not necessitate his victory, that her pelt is better suited on the flesh of her body as a Baisiner fighting alongside him, then the decorative rug in his bachelor pad-cave. In this moment though, Öde only sees her as denying him what he wants, and like the spoiled child his mommy raised him to be, he was enraged by it.

Hooves hit the soil, supple with traction this time of year, as he sunk on his ass following the completion of his assault and its subsequent partial victory. Saffron was hot on his heels, literally, their matched agility and nearly comparable speed revealing themselves in this moment. Her teeth flashed, as ivory as the white walls that Öde's vision lost themselves too. Still high on his adrenaline-braced tantrum, his own speed was swift to rescue him.

Reacting rather than thinking, as only a fool would do, Öde shot straight up into the air, his body bowed against the curvature of his spine, all hooves free of the dirt as he crow hopped. It was enough to rip his leg from her aim and low stature, but she still nicked him on the way up, black flesh peeling away on his right front cannon. It was a long, but shallow gash that bled little, being mostly ligament and bone. As for her magic, well his magic trumped her on that, efficiently nulling her sorcery as it did all others. It was a double-edged sword which served him as a shield in this moment.

Öde's airborne venture was shirt lived though, and down he came, but not with any aim for the cat, nor with any focus on the battle at hoof. He had gone into a complete rage, resulting in a quick succession of two more crow hops, and ending with a powerful buck which he dealt blindly. Perhaps Saffron was still close by, the rodeo he serviced quick enough to linger by her if she stayed, but certainly prolonged enough she could scuttle off.

When his energy finally faded into a dull thud, Öde landed back on all fours and released a thunderous snort. "Kill her," came the deadly calm of his mother's voice in the back of his mind, waiting out the tempestuous storm of his youth. "Reclaim your nobility in her sacrifice. Reap your vengeance from her innards." Öde's stare was hard as he directed it towards the cat, black lashes blinking against the backdrop of crimson vibrancy which claimed his skull. Beneath dark lips, the boy smiled, and it belonged to a crocodile.

This was the part of himself he hadn't yet learned to recognize - this black hole of desecration. It was why he bathed it in the name of his mother, though her corpse had since rotted, and her voice was naught more than his own consciousness pounding on the corridors of his being. This was the remnants of his wraith illness, the worms which had fed on his rotting cadaver, the testament to the DemonKing he was born worshiping. This was the emptiness he carried.
"Go," his mother bode, and with all the grace of a dog of war that thought himself the master, Öde obeyed.

He moved forward at a swift trot, horns hung low and head shaking them, like a trainer with a whip and a chair trying to stave off the beast. Öde moved towards the tigress, but did not resort to his dash and stab as he did before. Instead he tried to use the threat of it to drive her towards the hot springs nearby. He wanted her to fall into them, and there he'd try to hold her down until her breath exhausted itself. If not, well he always his hooves to strike her with, wet or not. If she bit, he'd bite back. If she clawed, he'd thrust his blades into her for the third, and probably last, time today.

Mostly he wanted to see her run.

---

A: 3/3
D: 0/1
W: 797/800

:: [Magic: DarkxLight | the magical abilities of characters fail to work within his vicinity.]
:: [Restrictions | Limited to a maximum radius of 30 ft; Ode cannot bond to a companion while in the possession of this magic]

@[Saffron] SORRY FOR THE WAIT ;-;