EREBOS

He wanted to accomplish something, anything. He wanted to feel the surge of victory. He wanted to scale great heights. He wanted to tear the world apart in his fury and defiance. The hands of fate proffered him only snippets; a conversation with a God, divine, colossal battles with foreign deities, and it made him think everything was possible if he tried hard enough, if he gave everything over to determination and will.
 
Then he’d battled Ashamin, and learned the taste of defeat was disturbing and bitter, that no matter how much one craved, one desired, it might not be enough.
 
No one would remember an underachiever. No one would shudder at a failure. No one would fear a flop.
 
So as Rexanna came at him, as she accepted their mere terms, as she flickered in gold and brutality, he tried to dodge to the right. He yearned to be swift, to be rapid, to be fleet afoot, but she was lithe where he was gangly, and her teeth quickly found their mark upon his left shoulder. Grazing and slight, nothing like the way hooves had ground and blades had struck within the Labyrinth, it was almost an afterthought to the oncoming bludgeon.
 
Like a freight train, she pummeled into the left side of his chest, shoving shoulder into muscle, pounding power into flesh. The spark of pain was almost unreal, blinding him to naught more than bright, shining beacons flashing across his eyes, causing his lungs to heave in vehemence, and wheeze in ferocity. He stumbled to the right, floundering and fumbling, peeling away until he hit the side of the rotunda’s wall, clawing at resolve all over again.
 
Because…was this how it was always going to be? Was he always going to be weak and fragile? Was he always going to be trampled, stomped upon, and brutalized? Was he destined only for crushing blows and subsequent defeat?
 
Orsino bristled in his head, loud and clear, a demon in the brush. Stop it, he chanted, a wild sibilance, a chaotic cacophony rambling through his mind, spinning snares and tales and vivid, belligerent hostility.  Why so weak?
 
Erebos didn’t know. He couldn’t answer.
 
So the fox took it upon himself again to save the boy from his own flaws and ineffectiveness, bolstering and conjuring the tangible forces of his illusions. He immersed them in a sudden, oncoming fog despite the eager winds, surrounding the villa, the gardens, and the kaleidoscope scales in absolute abyss: a building, brimming swill of mist and eerie, otherworldly strokes.
 
The boy rasped again, coughed, hacked, and took the necessary moments to rest against the stone frame, peering through the unearthly murk to see gold, to encounter his opponent, to somehow become something other than a fool.
 
While his chest throbbed, while his left shoulder ached, he moved, slow and steady, meticulous and sure, threading his way through haze and brume. When he thought he witnessed the movement of a gilded frame, he lowered his blade and increased his pace as best he could with his ailing, throbbing limbs, aimed, hoped, and prayed to hit what he believed was her left hind.
 
Would anything come of it? Or was he destined to fail all over again?

[1/3.  540 words.
Despite his attempts to dodge to the right, Rexanna is faster and lands a bite on his left shoulder. She also rams him towards the left side of his chest, causing him to become quite ineffectual for a few moments, stumbling off to the right and wheezing, attempting to catch his breath.
 
As he does so, Orsino concocts an illusion of mist, blanketing the landscape with its fog. Erebos recovers his breath, and attempts to maneuver through the fog, hoping the gold he saw was Rexanna. He lowers his head and attempts to ram his horn into her right hind.]