The black pegasus shouts out, a ear-shattering cry of anger, an unfair accusation. She is stout and athletic, of a muscular, attractive build; electric blue tattoos sparkle on her ebony cheeks, dusting her muzzle and bodice in radiant azure. Shaken from her composure, shocked by the mare's unreasonable shriek of a challenge, Hespera recoils, ears pinning to snarled silver mane, pale eyes hardening in astonishment and immediate defense of herself. How dare the mare throw accusations in a verbal vomit completely unasked for? Foolish mare; the stormchild only hoped she could follow through on her bold words. "Bitch!" The lightning maiden snarls, jerking back from the mare's aggressive attempt on her face, gravel skittering as she makes a hasty move back. Otienu gives a screech of anger at her shoulder, where he leaps into the star-streaked night, wings beating a furious drum in the air, picking up speed in a flurry of feathers.

The unicorn twists zealously, muscles tight, sooty lips curling back to expose pearl teeth, sparkling eyes bright and hard. "Back up your words with force!" Above her, Otienu screams, voice rising in pitch to an ear-splitting pitch, and drops from the sky like a silver bullet, wings unfurling from his furred flanks, striped tail twisting beneath his body to balance himself as he drops onto the ground with a thud of defiance, facing the blue and charcoal damsel with haughty amber eyes. "It is Otienu who subjects me to what he wills, not the other way around, fool. I would not think to force him into anything- he chooses his own path, and I simply accompany him." The stormchild growls, a thunderous rumble in her chest, the sound of a lightning storm gathering above.

"Revoke your challenge, and forfeit, or fight me like the obnoxious winger you are."

For a moment, Daermaethor's lessons played in her strange mind, blending into Otienu's curiosity of the companion rights' activist mare pulsing within Hespera. Thoughts of cordality and kindness, of remaining aloft while always listening, never becoming attached. Yet she shoved it from her mind, ignoring the advice taught over a year or so carefully. As long as she did not turn into Ionwë, the petty fool- even the thought of him made her gag and retch, feeling ill at the memory of her half-brother telling her what had happened to... never mind, never mind, never mind- she was fine and well. Still, even as she inhaled and exhaled, lungs quivering as she expelled the tension from her- tension that might slow her reflexes and overflow her mind with worries- a twinge of unease settled in her stomach.

You see, she had offered the mare a chance to forfeit, but she was about to attack the pegasus before she had a chance to.

Faeron would have lectured her for many days over the wrongness of this.

But Faeron, the silver warrior, was dead now, as was Berian, and Dingane, the god of war- well, Dingane was imprisoned and trapped somewhere far away for breaking the laws set into place by the oldest gods- as were the many others that Hespera had met and loved. Even Gëda, the battle prince in the bloody fighting pits of wolves' gambling dens, had been slaughtered by a new unicorn rising to the top of the vicious fighting circles.

Bugling her clarion challenge, the banished goddess leapt forward, dropping her head, tucking her head over her vulnerable throatlatch and plunging into a swift canter, careful to keep her feet over the treacherous footing. She aimed to crack her hooked, branching horn into Ampere's throat- not to puncture, but rather in the same way someone would smash their flat hand into the throat and send them choking and flying.

From there, Hespera rears up briefly, snapping at the other mare's left ear.

It's glorious, forgetting the painful memories that haunt in the moment, when thoughts fall away and one focuses on herself, and nothing else. Hespera hopes to push Ampere to the edge of the volcano, near to the gaping rim where beneath lurks blue magma that burns and sizzles. She would like to have the flying creature closer to the perilous edge rather than her- if she were to be pushed off the ledge, she would not clamber out of the molten lava. One of the advantages of being a pegasus- always being able to fly.

It would be nice to be able to fly.

Having leapt from her withers sometime past, Otienu soars downwards from the sky, beating his wings what is, hopefully, only a few feet away from Ampere's face, in order to distract her from the task at hand. He feels he has been wronged, in a slightly conceited way- he cannot be thought as a defenseless beast under a unicorn's control!