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She was not surprised to see Wilder emerge from the shadows, looking stupidly fearful and devoted all at once, as always. Too weak to hide his fear, too driven by desire to keep it inside. She understood the importance of this to him, but had yet to explain to him how little it meant to her.
She did not need Wilder. He had become obsolete for some time now. He may have been her companion all of these years, but he had grown old and tired. She saw him a mere shadow of himself, now blubbering at her side, looking upon the new child with adoration. But new children drank of their father's blood. The fire child would drink of his father's blood.
Emerson had been different. Different for her, different for everyone. He had not been meant to happen; he had been a crime of passion. She loved him. She loved him and then he left, taking with him the warmth she, once an old mare, revelled in. He had revived her in a way, so without him she took revenge. Wilder and this child of hers were not love; they were regret and hate led to death and brought to life together, a cyclical sort of action taken in a time of pain.
Evers, too, had arrived. Earlier than Wilder, but less obtrusive in his manner. She supposed that was not so strange, he had remained loyal in his own way. Though the blue scholar had never been her greatest achievement, she saw him as an asset she wasn't willing to give up. He would live for some time yet, she thought.
Wilder spoke, out of turn and suddenly, and her thick-furred neck snapped to align her dark gaze with his own. Did he dare speak for her? How could he have dared to think he would have the honor of naming this child, this living being of fire and light borne from her body and wrenched from her soul? Around the quartet, Kipp and Casimir appeared, skulking in silence; young Darwin flitted around in his own way, seemingly taking in his own power. Mandrake was tired, too tired to call them closer, too tired to strike Wilder down. He should have been thankful for her age, it was all that leaves his impudence unpunished. Still, she was not one to stay silent if a reprimand be needed.
But just as her hackles rose and body tilted upwards to bear threateningly towards Wilder, Knox arrived. The old cat sighed in relief, as at last a warrior son, a murderer son, approached. She could tell by the thundering of his hooves it was he. She was hungry, and knew Knox would provide for her upon request. "Knox, my son. Hunt." she commanded, her tones dark and powerful, her body expectant and awaiting. Thick and foamed saliva formed slowly at the thought of a fresh meal; it had been so long since she had eaten, properly served by her loyal sons.
But Knox did not obey. She turned to face him, to see the face of he who dared to defy her even in silence, and saw instead a ghost. Roanne the Sentinel, the stallion she'd ordered her eldest to kill, stood tall and full of life. Then a flicker of blue, a faint glimmer she recognized as her son, before he was taken over again by the body of an unfamiliar draft coated in steel grey. As she opened her mouth to speak, his voice rose above hers. Knox was giving orders, as if he had the right. And worse, she saw from her decaying throne as Evers obeyed without hesitation. Wilder, ever the fool, rose before her and spread his wings, as if to demonstrate a threat. "Leave mother and our son alone!" she watched him cry, his voice quavering with the emotion she had hoped so dearly to have beaten out of him this late in his life. Still he resisted, he always resisted.
But didn't they all resist? She saw Kipp and Casimir in a new way now where they stood: they were poised to kill, biting at the bit and pawing at the earth, awaiting the greatest race of their lives. She tried to remember the last hunt her sons had performed for her, the last vicious sacrifice they'd made in her name. She saw Casimir's blinded eye, remembered his defiance. She saw the shadow of Tajheri rising behind them, venomous words dripping from his lips and scars to mark his rejection of her ways. Even his cursed name, Tajheri, stood a symbol against her.
When Archibald arrived she hoped for salvation. He was her greatest achievement, he would stop his foolish brothers in their tracks, force them to bow in her name and punish them each accordingly—especially Knox, the mutinous leader of their pack. Or... was there a leader? Each and every one seemed equally prepared to strike her down, even... even... no.
Archibald spoke in his deep cimmerian tones only of the child. There was no resistance in his golden eyes, no power other than that prepared to kill fueling his body. She watched, helpless, as like a machine her remaining sons lunged forward, dogs at their heels and murder on their minds. She watched as long as she could, until silver overtook her vision and she was left a blinded cat sprawled helplessly beside the heart.
Never before had she been so helpless, so close to death. Even in her earliest days, back when her father still breathed, passing his wretched grey genes on in every mare foolish enough to wander his way, beating them senseless, teaching Mandrake to slay and devour, she had felt protected. As vile as her father had been to so many others, as many boys as he had had before her, when he at last broke his mind and aimed for her back, she was strong enough to turn and strike him dead.
And then she had found every child of his. Tracked down every brother she'd never known, stretched across the land for miles and scattered in every different life she could imagine. The first by chance, the arabian pirate whose mother had fallen easily at her father's will, whose flesh had tasted bitter between her teeth. And then the blue boy, born years after she. She had remembered him as a child, horns barely buds along his neck. Then the powerful, black hulking monster of a stallion; too lively to be tamed, but just lustful enough to be bedded. From him she had taken his seed, and from his memory had been born two beautiful sons. And then the brother with the bare neck and the blanketed back, whose memory she reached for in earnest still.
And then, when the trail ran dry, when her brothers and nephews became her sons, she found herself hungry for more. It became impossible to keep the family as it was, became an insane thought to let so many suffer outside of her care. It became a quest for any faint reminder of those she'd known and any faint image of herself—the white child with the devil's horn a symbol of her failures, the bay dipped in white the fire that had fueled her strike against her father. The spotted child became what was left of her love; The sentinel's son was born to carry on his image and his own regret, to remind her of the shadow in her heart. This child of fire, to show her always a reflection of her past.
Through it all, she had been safe in her own way.
Now, she fell. Fell in blinded darkness, poison numbing her senses and slowing her motion. She heard Wilder cry as Tajheri's teeth formed a hold and threw him to the ground, felt his body land beside hers as his legs were crushed beneath his brother's force. The wing that fell, twisted and broken from his body, landed across her back—she felt it leaden as Archibald turned every hollow bone in his body to stone. She pulled herself closer to him, wedged herself beneath him, narrowly and by chance avoiding death at Archibald's hooves. As Archibald rammed her shoulder, he pushed her further beneath her eldest son and first brother, who cried in pain to the only mother he had ever known. The blow to her stomach came out of nowhere—blinded, she could only tell it was her youngest when he leaned down to tear at her and she felt the faint brush of his horn by chance. She felt herself seem to combust as her flesh was torn violently, as her once most docile child, her body of love, ripped her to ribbons.
Wilder was almost gone. She could tell by the heat leaving his body, by the ragged pattern of his breath. He drew closer to her, and she felt blindly for him until at last they rested together, faces nestled side by side.
"I love you, Mandrake. I have always loved you."
She was in too much pain to feign surprise. She wasn't aware what death was like, wasn't able to understand even that which she had impressed upon so many others. She shook with every motion, felt her breath forced out of her by ever kick and strike, felt Wilder's weight upon her heavier with every moment. It was all she could do to reach out with a killer's paw in a moment between the barrage; it was all she could to to place it gently upon Wilder's neck in a seemingly tender touch.
Perhaps he would have survived. Her eldest brother, her first-found son. Perhaps, as Casimir declared his loyalty and sped the world around them, his strike against Wilder would have not been fatal. Still, he did not live. In the split second before Kipp's hooves met her spine and Casimir's forced in her skull, ending her life, she tore open the thin flesh guarding Wilder's jugular and ceased his foolishly beating heart for the final time.
They lay together—black white and red, lit by the fire of the land. Sister and brother, mother and son, trickster and lover: silent at last.
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