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It works, barely, and I know why; as I my Spark makes contact with the bird I feel two other presences immediately combat me, one of them so very full of the brute violence that has been unleashed upon me so far that it can only be Gaucho himself. The struggle that ensues feels like eternity, where I press hard against he and his two companions, and he presses back. The pain outside of my mind surges in, a fourth counterpart I must fight, and I’m just about to give in when, suddenly, I am in control.
The resistance of their bonded minds against mine suddenly lets go, and with a slingshot like sensation my being is a blazing bird screaming in terror at some really scary, bone bedazzled pegasus. He looks so calm, barely marked, while my body is already done. I let that fear, the provincial proof that I am unworthy of this battle, hurl my Spark back to me as the phoenix crashes into her protector.
I try to brace for the return to my injured body, to not let the pain get to me, but I don’t think all the time in the world would be enough. I only have a split second, the backwards belly feeling suddenly roaring into a painful maelstrom of sensations one cannot imagine as my mind melds with my atoms. It is more painful than salt water on an open wound, shattered bones forced to move, and it is thought numbing. I had intended to run immediately.
I shake for moment instead, overwhelmed. I think I’m screaming, but my blood is pulsing too loud in my ears to even hear him, and the thunder of his hooves demanding the earth’s submission. I think I’m still screaming when I finally do move, but its slow, the rush of adrenaline that had kept me moving so far lost as I’d been one with the bird, painless, and powerful. I’m only cantering, but laughably slow, the speed of an easy trot; a leisurely afternoon stroll, Death at my heels.
His fire roars over my head; it singes my ears and haunches, and the acrid stench of me burning deepens its presence in the air. Its starting to make me feel sick, and its making my eyes leak (I swear I’m not crying), his shadow approaching like a wall of fire, an angel of the Sun come to punish my arrogance, and my thoughtless leaps into the unknown.
I tilt my head back to yell at him, to tell him that I will “leave Throat alone” if he just stops lighting me on fire, but it’s too late.
For the first time, he actually hits me. The realization hits me with shame almost as forceful as his bulk as he slams his shoulder into my left side.
He hasn’t even touched me until now…
A mountain hits me, tosses my entire body aside like it is a cloth rag. My breath leaves me with the sound very similar to the one my whole figure had made when I’d fallen into the snow, that long ago day on the mountain, with Aithniel, and Jorogumo. I gasp, unable to take another in, and there is the overwhelming sensation of blackness clamoring across my vision. I rattle some grotesque noise as the world pitches about me, right shoulder falling nearer and nearer the ground the further out his body slam propels me.
Everything hurts, even the wind crossing my skin. I really don’t want to know how the ground feels.
Can’t I just fly like this forever? Can’t I just wake up above the sea, with Aelin, like I’d dreamed as I slept alongside her?
I close my eyes, and instead of Aelin, Aithniel’s there, her darkly faded features worried, her black horns catching the sunlight above while I lay embarrassed, buried in white. For some reason, Xynia is behind her, not Jorogumo, a tilted smile that mocks me on her face. Like then, I’m invisible as I lay beneath the snow, as they search for someone they can’t see. I’m nobody.
“I told you that you weren’t a warrior,” Xynia laughs.
It’s the last thing I think before the black curtain comes down, as if the dark ground had swallowed my mind whole as I slide roughly across its face, pebbles skittering outwards from the path of my unconscious body.
3/4 | 733
[ OOC: ...and then Rikyn was sleeping, quite against his will... ]
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Oh I'll get some | Rikyn Challenge
