Calor, rumbles skull face through a grin, and I find myself smiling with a most amiable air in return, though not entirely at not being shirked – I’d forgotten I’d given him a false name, and hearing it used as if that’s truly who I am makes a thrill of delight race through me as it always does. I try my best to limit it to the vibrancy of my handsome smile, a bright chuckle that resounds through the wintery hush that is always here in these peaks as my jibe produces a snort. The sound of it isn’t diminished by his return remark… mostly because he’s right. There certainly are no squirrels about, only this big black brute and his flying snakes.

That thought adds, perhaps, a darker curl to my smile, as does the movement of his two devils along his spine. The last we’d met, he’d allowed the red one to shower me in bits of dead thing, the smaller pet a new addition and surely just as poorly mannered. More so than I watch their hornless master, I am wary of their filth, knowing well enough by now that Volterra did little to make his companions much more than untamed beasts. Thinking of another with two dragons called Abraham, a crown twisted and long upon his brow, I wonder if he, too, lets his pets run about so wildly, and doubt his unicorn blood would permit his pets such barbarism.

I remember, as memory of Abraham fades, that the last we’d met, my alleged “squirrel torture” had made him flatten himself down onto his haunches to avoid my manipulations. He’d also, if I recall correctly, seemed quite shaken.

My tail curls behind me, white snow trailing between us as he offers the only thing I like more than getting under a hornless’ skin. The smile that had been devious now becomes serious, the dancing gold of my eyes hardening, meeting his bright amber ones with the same light they meet every challenge. He’s got more scars than me, he’s bigger, he’s got two dragons…

Fuck it.

It seems he’s noticed as much about my body language, because the next words out of his mouth invite me through the deep snow, into the last dance, one which is ingrained in a warrior’s heart the moment he is born, and never forgotten.

Twin trails break in the snow behind me, the smile lingering on my face full of a savage delight and a freedom that I find only in these moments of approach; some of my speed is lost for momentum and height of each bound, knowing the battle against the snow will only last as long as the blanket beneath us does. Holding my attention on the dragons as best as I can, disliking the notion of fighting two, and hoping that the little one is too small to be much use, I pull wide in the last steps and angle for a semi-leap at his right shoulder, using my haunches to propel me up and towards his elevated flesh, chin tucked fast to my chest. I’d used the move on Furen once or twice to some effect, the big red unicorn being of similar height to Volterra, perhaps taller…

More sluggish than I’d like, the blanket below clings to my legs, the active snowfall immediately moving visibility next to naught as my horn point moves in for the strike; mentally cursing my slowness in the snow, one of my pinned ears lifts to catch the sound of wings should the dragons alight, or to listen for the whisper of claw or breath through the air should they not (I swear, if one of them takes off an ear, I’ll have their tail, Volterra’s feelings on that matter be damned).

Angled down, the blade is meant to pierce and enter at such a degree if my blow is fated, forcing the flesh free and dangling if he pulls away while punctured. Even if it misses, I swing my head for a bite, hoping to strike with the flat of my sword as my haunches pull to a stop beneath me, my chest rising from the dense snow in a wave of white, the falling flurries like tiny needles against my narrowed eyes. I’m not eager to remain within striking range of his hooves, and lunge hard to the right in an attempt to put the meaty bits of my ass in his way, rather than my ribs or back, leaning on my swiftness and practice on snowy footing to spare me his strength.

1/3 | 765 words
@Volterra