It hurts, I think, grasping for breath through the pain of glass fragments punching into my side, through muscle, skin, bone, only now noticing that the heat of the colossus has caused welted heat ridges to rise on either side of where his thick, knobby fingers had struck. That the hair will fall off in the next few days is a guarantee, and for once, my vanity cannot breach the savage agony sweeping through me as my mind collides back into my beat-to-hell-and-back body. The wind howls about me, sort of numbing the exterior of the break (which drowns out the pain of even my hurt leg), but making the inside aches that much more ferociously.

Coming back to myself also shows me the remnants of his stupid magic, the mere bloodying of a hoof against the stone he has summoned from the earth all my efforts have achieved, and I can’t help but snarl – a good cover for the grimace that steals across my face, the eagerness to end this melee, so I can go wallow somewhere and moan over how bad I hurt. The usual glee that erupts from me at having split a foe’s essence is absent, perhaps because there is an impending sense that something abso-fucking-lutely terrible is about to happen to me, or maybe its simply because it feels like he’s repeatedly kicking me in the side (even though he’s quite obviously in front of me).

The dragons, I think, the thought a bullet crashing into my temple almost too late to be helpful, hearing the whistling arrival of the despicable red one which had thrown squirrel bits all over me at our last meeting. His angle is for my hindquarter, the already wounded tissues of my stifle – my leg gives out almost comically at the realization, as if to tell the dragon to go fuck himself, the snapping jaws of the monster rending into my fleshy hip, severing tissues inches deep, the blood profuse and immediate. As soon as his teeth light their little cold fires in my skin, instinct drives me upright; the leg kicks, a tender little buck in comparison to the power that usually hides in this particular muscular manipulation, a blessed thing, for the golden whisks past me as my haunches swing me around to the left, out of her pummeling range. Eat snow, bitch! my thoughts quip hysterically, trying to comfort the agony of my body with the image of her ploughing into a nearby drift (in the most undignified manner possible, all wings, and tail, and squealing); it does not erase the sensation of my body’s subtle scream, a hot brand which races up my entire left side, from hoof tip to the base of my brain, burning.

Its all I can do to stand and pant, feeling the hot red blood wash down my leg from the dragon’s touch, peering through the bluster of snow (that bites into the rendered flesh with a strikingly painful embrace of temporary relief, the tissues slowly numbing, unused to the cold’s touch). I’m almost glad to see him standing there, smirking, like he knows he’s just solidly handing me my backside, mostly because it means I can just stand here, too.

"Holy shit," is all I manage through my breathy huffs, the small pinpricks of black in my vision suggesting that, were I to glance back at my hind hooves, I’d see a pool of red, ebbing away at the deep snow, steaming. After a few seconds, I even laugh – its short, it barks, it reveals all the pains that are slowly seeping into my reality now that the adrenaline that had done its best to keep them from my notice fades.

"The gold lizard," I huff, a smile doing its best to cover the apoplectic pain dancing through me, "she’s fast."

[ Closing Defense | 642 words
OCC: Yay it was fun! Thank you for the delightfully challenging spar Snow. <3 ]