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With winter biting at her heels, the relentless blight on the land moved to the north, welcoming the frost that wreathed her dark coat with silver light as she rested under the dark of night, circling the realm of the Foothills with a skeptic, detached look in her single black eye, unknowing of the mercenaries within its rolling hills. Her dark, long legs fastidiously clambered over hill and valley, slogging through miles of mud and her hooves dancing through the frigid water of the iron ocean lapping miserably at the sheets of ice rising higher and higher, thicker and thicker, as winter began its progression of cold climate and freezing blizzards. Out she stood on the plains of snow, a wolf among the deer, a raven beside the songbirds, a hawk in a rabbit warren. There was no hiding the strong curve of her scarred neck, the layers of stories told numerous times among the scabbed flesh that shone obnoxiously through the wooliness of her charcoal winter hide. It seemed she was the very manifestation of malice and bitterness, vindication and ambition, from the paleness of her blinded eye to the deadened look in the other, from her weathered ears to her weathered hooves.
The virago did not tend to herself with dreams and precious whimsical thoughts, nor even the lusty musing of a voluptuous, flirtatious woman. Instead she stood, a silent machine on the horizon of pale gray, where the sky melted seamlessly into the snow, and everything lay in shades of ivory and silver, dull and unearthly. A hush had fallen over the northern land, the Frostbreath steppe, one that simply promised to bring a great many terribly things. It was the calm before the storm, the villein's dramatic pause before he reveals his plan with melodramatic flare, heinous and terrifying and utterly exciting, all at the same time.
This was the mare who had skinned her own child with her mouth of acid, her tongue sloughing the very pelt of her newborn from sinew and weak muscle, and watched him scream; merciless, heartless, relentless, all with a deadened look in her eye. And at this moment, the faintest of emotions rang within her; fear, an innate terror of the hell the heavens would unleash with their divine power. Even as this rang within her, her shriveled black heart and her loveless mind, the wind began to caress the snow, at first smoothing the landscape of creamy white glass, and then beginning to whip it into a mountainous fury, a swirling landscape of crystals that stung viciously at the eyes and lashed at the flanks. But Confutatis did not wait that long. Her breathing coming rasping and growling, she dropped her head, pinning scuffed dark gray ears and forwards she began to plough, carving a deep scar in the landscape as the snow brazenly picked up, the wind a howling wolf. Crystal flakes gathered in growing heaps upon her back, and every few steps she paused and shook herself vigorously, dislodging the vast amount, but still it grew heavy on her, and her pelt more sodden.
Out here, being wet meant death.
Urging herself swifter, the beldame searched for shelter, lashes wet with dripping snow. The cold was settling deeper inside her, hard on her lungs and hard on her head, but she ignored the chill. Wind blotted out all sounds, a sinister howl that continued, rising and falling without melody, the lurking monster waiting to pounce, to draw the life out of any sorry wanderer who might be caught unawares. Relentless, fearless, bestial and feral, it continued on, a chaotic storm reminiscent of the devil herself; the devil being wrapped up in Confutatis' blackened form. It was a matter of luck that she found shelter in the blizzard that would kill many that night; a great cavern.
Shadows sprung out at her blind eye, leaving the merciless vagabond springing sideways, bewildered and furious, teeth snapping at empty space. Whirling around, she sought out the vague glimpses with an irritableness that would've scared off a wolf, she halted, hooves shifting and clinking on the stone. And just like that, the bitch realized her err. It was an optical illusion- she was seeing her own self, just in the same way as looking in a pool of water, but multiplied and vertical. Cautiously the mare neared a single pocked, twisting wall, reaching out to brush it with her muzzle, only to jerk back at its' freezing temperature. Confutatis was no idiot- no, a clever and sly vixen she was- but naturally this was new to her and her bad-tempered ways. How often did a horse see it's own reflection? Not often at all.
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CONFUTATIS
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[O] Magic in death and beauty in blood
