Blood poured down Virgil's neck in what looked like a ruby tributary, gently bubbling away from some unseen spring deep within his body. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Isopia couldn't help but marvel at the ease with which her horns had sliced into his neck. Her Father was a relatively passive creature and Kahlua had no horns to speak of at all. That their offspring would be born with tools so adeptly honed for violence seemed important in some hard to specify way. Virgil's blood smeared against her neck as his teeth clamped against her own skin. But his teeth, unlike her horns, did not have the ability to slice. A dull clamping sensation extended outwards from the place where his saliva had marked a circle of growing pain. She did not cry out, but she did stiffen and try to pull away from his grasp.

Something about being latched onto by a man who was seconds away from death made her skin crawl.

As she backed up a step or two, she suddenly remembered Virgil's ghostly accomplice. Only moments ago she'd been smart enough to keep it in her sights, but now somehow she'd forgotten entirely. She felt the dull blade of the sword and its hilt come down on her spine - just above the dock of her tail. A scream of surprise left her lips, and Isopia had to hastily clamp her teeth together to stop the sound. Normally she would have done this simply because she wanted to control all of the non-voluntary reactions she had to things. Today however, it was because part of her wanted to spare Virgil any sort of grief at having caused her pain in the last seconds of his life, given the importance of the thing that she was doing for him.

Rather than ramming her body forward as her instincts told her to to escape the ghost and his sword, Isopia darted to the side. Virgil seemed close to death now, and she did not want the blow that ultimately killed him to simply be a knee-jerk reaction. There would be something lacking and ugly if what ultimately sent him on is way towards heaven or hell, was simply Isopia knocking into him.

>>Is this it?<< Hubris trilled into Isopia's mind, concern coating his mental words. The demigoddess did not look towards the dragon. She didn't need to after all, but even if she did, she likely wouldn't be able to make him out in the expanding darkness. I don't know. she replied, her mental voice uncharacteristically shaky and uncertain.

Surprisingly, Hubris lifted himself from the rock upon which he had been perched. He glided like a silent shadow over the battlefield, his leathery wings making little sound in the midnight air. Then, like an owl or a falcon, he dropped from the skies aiming himself directly at Virgil. His jaws opened wide and a stream of electricity blasted from his exposed lips. The beam was directed right at Virgil's heart. He hoped both that the electricity would briefly paralyze the stallion so that his last moments would not be filled with pain, but also that the upset to Virgil's cardiac systems might cause his heart to stop beating entirely. 

There had been enough blood already. Perhaps death could be more peacefully offered.

Just as silently as he came, and leaving Isopia with her mouth slightly agape for she had not anticipated the dragon's assistance in this task, she looked hurriedly back to Virgil, to see if her bonded's attack had been successful. 

>>You have killed enough.<< Hubris said mysteriously from the silent midnight shadows that he had slipped back into. She had, that was true, but she no longer remembered the life that she had murdered - the life of her child - that Hubris was ultimately referring to. And so his words seemed prophetic in some misguided way.