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After Déodat, the frozen land of white dust and silver stones seemed dull in comparison to the blood stallion and his eccentric manner of cold charm. It would be a lie, and a rather poor one, to say she had not been near-blissful in his dark company and the way his eyes were so dark. The svelteness of his sculpted muscles, the vermillion of his shining coat, the white that draped gracefully over his shoulders and withers, the sparkling indigo eyes. Beside him, the damned did not feel as damned; and her stone-dead heart did not feel as hard. His velvet voice, rich and dark, sweet on her charcoal ears. Oh she was no fool; he detested her, hated her, for she bore no crown like his ruby jewel on her forehead. Still, there was an inexplicable something between them, a black fire burning darkly, corrupted and a crude parody of love, but nevertheless, it was there, glowing, between them.
Knowing Déodat had returned to his home unknown in the perilous world that was the north, made ever more bitter by the frost and snow of winter, the hellion had begun venturing downwards, down through the narrow bridge connecting the steppe to the larger body of land, past the mountains tall and dark, foreboding in their silence, interrupted only by the occasional rumble of avalanches chasing down their wide flanks. Mountains; she had traveled through them a few times in her chase of ambitions and terrible thoughts, down their winding, impossibly long passes filled with haunches-high snow, sometimes so deep she literally swam through the softer powder, praying she did not sink. Confutatis had wandered through many places, after departing Isilme. Exploring the world, learning what she could do; well, it was an experience that could not be matched by others.
Unfamiliar as she is with Helovia, she did not know where she stopped, only that the scent of horses were ever stronger in the air, a plethora of intermingling stenches that twisted together, impossible to decipher. Pine and frost, like Déodat; the heat of a stallion, the fragile perfume of a mare; and four more, four so strong it overpowered everything else, the burning smoke of flame, electricity that she tasted on her tongue, the death and decay of darkness, and humid earth.
Her one amber eye sought out the sources, finding a mare of pearl and a stallion of ivory, with black petals scattered over his rich silver bodice; a mare of ebony, mane of scarlet; but those were not who drew her eye. It was, who she was certain, were the gods. From a stout pony, robust and strong, shaggy black with faint cream patterns, to the tallest of them all, a massive stallion with a rack of curling horns and eyes of emerald, they emanated power and strength. It very nearly hurt, the power that radiated outwards from them, and Confutatis recoiled, a surge of surprise bursting through her. Four of them? Why, how? Were they what had drawn her idyllic path here of all places, near to a roaring river?
Darkness gathered overhead, and something primitive warned her; something terrible was coming.
It was then her eye found the vertical disk, just like the strange walls of the Arch, lying suspended in the air.
Fear arced through her. It grew stronger, more abhorrent, as one by one the gods disappeared only to return, and as the first leaped into the hole. Then the second, the third, the fourth.
And then the world was plunged into utter darkness, and Confutatis screamed. A horse's scream is a rare thing, just like a human's, horrendously high and loud-pitched, terrible and ghastly, ferocious. Could one truly blame the mare? For she thought her eyesight was gone in her left her, too, disappeared, and fury roared in her veins. How dare they take her vision? The mare half-reared, forelegs lifting off the ground, a mixture of fear and rage burning her inside, scalding water, and she was panicking. What had happened? Horses are prey. Susceptible as they are to fear, near everything and anything scares them; should one be surprised the dark mare flees for her life, running from predators that are not there, crashing through the river and to the trees, soaking wet and wading through the snow, desperate in her attempt to run?
Fly Confutatis does.
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