My eyes land, at first, on my sire. With an equally manly emotional movement, I bid my enthusiastic hooves to remain in place instead of bouncily bounding over to him like the colt inside me wants to. I’ve already fought a God and walked a good chunk of Loorien, and it simply won’t do for a warrior such as myself to be seen prancing like a little boy – even if I don’t quite manage to keep the joyful writhing my tail steady and I do cast him a meaningful stare and smile.

He’s standing with Ophelia, who is covered also in the disease, and with the number of those who wear the marks only seeming to grow (almost as we sit here, even), I feel a stirring of worry that maybe I shouldn’t have been so eager to meet those of the Rift, that I should not have stayed in the Blood Falls any longer than necessary; my gaze carries onward, marking each figure in memory for when things break bad.

I can only expect them too. Even if no other God is showing up to fight her, the Goddess is earning enough snarls and hot looks (I even hear the murmurs of murder rise up among some) to illicit threat enough.

A pegasus woman, ivory and colored so much like my mother her appearance makes my stomach turn and my heart ache all at once, instantly banishes any semblance to my dam by charging the Goddess, her teeth seemingly outstretched towards the tail of the Moon; along her golden marked pelt are the same sores that are on everyone else, and I can’t help but feel that her ridiculous launch at the hind end of a divine being was some uncouth behavior that, she thought anyway, would heal her.

I guess I would be pretty insanely set on curing myself too, if I was in her hooves.

With a magical “pops” the crazy tail grabber (who is also, with a moderate chuckle resounding from me at the irony, loses her tail) and another who vocalized her wish to see the Goddess dead are banished from the clearing.

My muscles tremble in awe of that particular talent.

The beautiful woman of the Night paused in her words, long enough for me to tear my eyes away from her (it was very hard to not look at her, she was so beautiful, and her hair was like molten silver trailing along the curves of her perfect body) and get a good look around me.

Then I saw her. My heart ruptures, my head flies upwards and my insides do this insane backwards flip and twist with fire. It’s Aithniel, and she is there alongside the winged thing that had doused her flames in the last fight. She is there and she, too, is covered in the marks of the disease, and my heart aches and my pride rages against the boundaries of my soul that I have been replaced by such a charlatan, that she has wings and can go places with my sister that I will never go. That she is there and not here alongside me is the most painful of all.

Have I really hurt her so?

And then the aching embers of that guilty agony fall into the pitching, woozy sensation of utter darkness, of disorientation. Grunting in dislike of the situation I pinch my golden eyes shut for the briefest of moments, swallowing hard to dislodge the haze that floods my thoughts as a voice growls like the pull of the belly too long without grazing.

Images of predators flood my thoughts; massive, snarling cats and wild hounds braying for blood.

Even the Goddess turns an ear, but mine are back, even after I pull my eyes open and find myself moving slowly, anxiously, eyes roaming all about the group for the source of the beast.

From the ground it comes, from the Shadow, its body rising upwards from a pool that had been the delightful play of light upon matter until it was a warg, a massive black wolf with golden eyes that burned into my heart and stirred the most primitive of fears. The Bear never hunted our kind, my soul did not tremble in the face of the blue encrusted God so heavily, like rattling change in the bottom of a brass jar.

I suddenly, deeply, regret choosing to stand alone rather than with some of the faces I sort of know, or that I had maybe been more apologetic towards Aithniel already.

Fuck it, rumbles some voice deep within my body, as the first to move against the wolf (its snarling, snapping, reaching for the Queen of the Night) leap forward, some directly into the path of the massive hound.

I move with them, though I’m not even sure who I’m fighting for. I just know I have to go into the fight or somehow I’ll find my way directly out of it – mostly because I’m still magnanimously afraid of the wolf, afraid of him in ways I am not of the Goddess, though she is a murderess (I’ve heard it only moments before, as I heard tales of her wanton mistreatment of her people often from my dam), even though she tricks, and she lies.

And who can trust the Darkness?

My focus is drawn to the wolf’s right forepaw, a memory upon another upon another stirring me to test the spell that had won me second place in a race up a mountain as a goat, a spell that had earned me victory and which, once, had spared me a lot of pain. Its only the vaguest of notions, the belief that I can do it crackling and moving through me.

With a mental shove of my will, I bid that leg to stop.



[ OOC: Rikyn hesitates for a moment before moving forward; he then pauses and tries to use his magic on the wolf’s right paw, hoping to make it stop moving and stumble/still the appendage. The magic takes a good bit of his focus so he’s not doing much but standing there staring. xD
Mentions: Ulrik, Ophelia, Aithniel, Isopia ]