EREBOS

The prince was used to the unknown. He savored it, he relished it, and he stalked it with an impatient air – always intending to savor it before he swallowed and consumed the next tender enigma. He thrived on danger and mysteries, when the knives plunged and rattled, when shields were thrown and primordial assaults became the most menacing of blows. The little beast had survived on pieces of treachery and deceit, on analyzing and pretenses, and believed this moment, this excursion, would just be one more blink into the other unfamiliar threads of Helovia.
 
He didn’t have long to wait. The bloody shadows offered him a gift with a response – an unrelenting, vicious wave of a battle cry – and he had to wonder if he’d made a mistake, if he’d summoned one more monster from the hellish region and it’d be too much this time (again, his mind warped and whispered). Perhaps it was a God who would not fall. Perhaps it was a cretin far too large, far too powerful, far too much more than himself, and he’d be forced to realize his weaknesses, his frailties, once more.
 
But it didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.
 
He shuddered and shivered in the autumn air, part apprehension, part ferocity. The notions and sentiments mingled through his veins until they were a scorching contortion of flesh and heartlessness, determined not to care about who or what answered his call. They were both here for a purpose: to grow stronger, mightier, better than anyone else. He’d share his munitions just as they proffered theirs.
 
The warrior’s eyes narrowed, speculating, trying to examine what was coming for him through the murky darkness. The scenery and surroundings made it too difficult to tell, but he presumed, rather dimly, that it would be a feral thing riding across the fields and pools, barbaric and bestial, ready to cut him open and flay his insides. He hadn’t expected it to arrive on the wind or through the skies.
 
Thankfully, Orsino, curled amidst fronds and ferns, had spotted the plummeting creature before it torpedoed into Erebos. Pegasus! Pegasus! Move, fool! he uttered and hissed through their bond, trying to cause the youth to act, to maneuver away from the incoming assailment.
 
The soldier had fought them before – down in the labyrinth’s regions, where they’d been lost and soulless, asking for fights in a continuing, ridiculous pattern of might and brutality. Erebos had always admired the species for their ability to fly into the heavens, to escape the earth, to wander and wander from cliff to cliff, from sea to sea. One, a mare, had been too kind, too compassionate, but brave. He expected no less from this infidel, even if he intended to unleash savagery and strikes upon their entity.
 
But their assaults came first.
 
He lifted his eyes to the false stars and fabricated evening, and attempted to grind into the earth, fast, swift, and agile, to avoid the keen force careening his way. The scion twisted to the right, scraping against loam and soil, but it wasn’t enough. Moments later, the beast hurtled into the left side of his crest, and in between the flashes of pain and the mutinous, unrelenting aches driving into his bones, all he saw were wings and feathers.
 
The boy nearly groaned aloud, and struggled to hold in the reeling torment, grasping, gasping for air and sanctity. But there was no sanctuary, no balms, no remedies to be found for a poorly timed defense, and so carefully, hastily, he tried to overcome the gnawing, biting misery toiling along his neck. He twisted back to the left (and it felt like forever), and as the remaining portion of her wingspan appeared to glide over, he drew his skull upwards, attempting to rip apart plumes or flesh from the flier’s right side. No advantages, his skull boomed with sinister, seditious thoughts.
 
Orsino didn’t say anything at all. 

[1/3. 654 words.
* As Ru comes careening towards him, Orsino gives Erebos a warning. He tries to swerve around to the right, but she still manages to knock a massive bruise into his the left side of his crest.
* Despite his pain, Erebos tries to twist back to the left, drawing his skull upwards in hopes of catching some of her wings or flesh with his horn as the right side of her glides over.]