There was not thought as he walked, just the movement of his muscles rippling underneath his buttermilk pelt.

The rain fell lightly on his pelt, the gods foaming at the mouth again. Ricochet didn't mind the coolness after days of heat, and he almost liked the rain smoothing out his skin, turning him wet as a colt just delivered from between a mother's legs. Some might take the chilly drizzle as a day of misery- not Ricochet. It had him almost smiling, taking him back to images of the crazy bitch. She had been a lunatic, all savage smiles and eerie sayings, the color of blood, but she was also strong. Last time he had entered Helovia, she had been waiting for him, greeting him on the door of the Threshold. Not this year.

Maybe somebody had killed her. Chances are she deserved it...

Guns whined, a whimpering sob that snatched the equine's attention. "By the name of Nieque, what is wrong with you?" He growled, eyeing the damp dog unhappily. When he had gone to the Tome Guardian, he had never even realized what trouble dogs could be. Damn things, eating anything they came across, even the corpse of a unicorn he once found venturing outside of the Land of the Sun. Not that he minded that. All unicorns deserved to die, and meat- however rotted- was food for the hungry dog.

The dog cried out again, keening piteously as he cringed close to Ricochet's legs. In return, the stallion grunted, leaned down, and nipped at the air beside the dog's ears, teeth clicking together sharply. Guns' ears twisted back unhappily, and he shot off, disappearing into the mist.

"Fuck it," he mutters, thoroughly pissed, and he picks up a lumbering trot, entering the grove of secrets and the oasis of romance.

Guns came back, naturally. No matter the rage of his master, he would not dare stray for too far or too long.

Brother.

His head shot up, the lines of his neck carved rigid, teal eyes seeking out the one who dared to lay such a name to him, born of pure blood and law. Upon setting eyes on the perpetrator, his hardness softens to a certain gruffness. “Brother,” Ricochet greets the stranger, not offering a smile but not scowling either.

The stallion carefully sizes him up, like a butcher does the meat he is to cut. At his side, Guns wags his tail cheerfully, red tongue lolling out from his sharp-toothed jaws. Unlike so many of the beasts that had come to harry him and bother him before, this stallion was built pure, rough-boned warmblood standing several hands taller than him. Rain had turned his color near-black, patched haphazardly with a steel gray, but color mattered not. The fact of it was that this was a stallion of potential, unaffiliated by horns and wings, and he knew the name of Nieque.

“If you mean Nieque, the first of our kind, then yes.” Ricochet rumbles, his steely words tempered with curiosity. “I was raised in Isilme.” Not only raised in Isilme as a common boy, but one taught and trained by his sire, Gunslinger, the Unbroken who had died at a shade’s hooves.

“And now the question is, do you believe in the strength of our race?” He didn’t waste words on the unnecessary. This Isilme boy should know that he was speaking of Nieque, their forefather, their untainted blood, and the purging of the diseased and changed.

It wasn't often that Ricochet was happy in the presence of strangers, or even those familiar to him. He wore anger like a familiar jacket, one that he preferred over any facade of dishonest joy or ecstasy- and in most cases, he had due reason to rage and rant with spittle dripping from his lips. It was difficult to remember any sort of meeting where he had enjoyed himself... even with Kimber and Smoke's presence, it seemed they only brought black news in tow. Ricochet didn't recognize that he was more often the cause of his volatile own anger than external causes, that he was little better than gunpowder waiting for explode. Yet for all his unpredictable and hot-headed flaws, no one could say he wasn't fiercely loyal to his cause with a passion hard to match.

Today was taking a turn for the better unlike all the other days he had spent in Helovia, the land overrun by skyrats and hornheads. With each moment that passed between them, Ricochet's barricades came inching down. At long last, here was another, whose belief was as rich and resolute as his own.

Dragomir grinned at him, and Ricochet's spirit lightened. The tension escaped from the taut lines of his scarred neck and haunches, and his tail flicked, slapping against his wet flanks.

Guns drifts closer beneath Ricochet's stout legs, sitting his hauches down on the soaked grass, better sheltered from the stinging rain. His eyes glint deep brown and amber in the shadows beneath his master.

“Finally!” The Incendiary laughs, teal eyes bright with mirth. How long had it taken to come to this moment, to just find someone who he could call brother or sister without flickering uncertainties of their loyalty to their race? Too long. Maybe there was still hope for his Empire, still a chance, however small, that there were others that he could convert to his faith. It was past time to teach the equines how to believe in their own strength and superiority again. This was his first step to domination; recruit and become the leader that was needed desperately by the equines, even if many of the horses didn't know that they wanted him.

“I've been looking for many months for those like you.” Ricochet tells his newfound ally, a smile quirking at his dark lips, one that fades almost as quickly as it came. Thoughts flicker in his steadfast eyes, memories of lessons and times in the past where he had learned from the rough and sure hand of his father. Once again his eyes flick cautiously over the stallion, sizing him up. Ricochet has never been one to have "frenemies" and half-hearted allies. As far as he's concerned, they either deserve his loyalty or do not. And this stallion... that grin on his face, the way he refered to Nieque, it was clear that he was devoted. “I have been seeking those of similar minds of you and I for the purpose of gathering us behind a single banner, to unite us and take what is rightfully ours and scrub clean this country of the stains.” His hideously burned head tips thoughtfully as he tells Dragomir of his plans, voice loud and fearless. There is no-one here to hear, and if there were, he could either hunt them down later or fetch them to his Empire, depending on their species.

For a split second, his thoughts are drawn to his daughter, Colt. How does she fare here, in this world filled with halfbreeds and the unpure? Has she managed to find any clean of impurities? She may be of his seed, but she is still only daughter, not a stallion hard of heart and strong of mind.

He shakes the questions away as Dragomir introduces himself. Adalwulf. The name rings a bell, but he can't quite place it. An equine, he knew for certain, and an important one... but how and when? Ricochet clears his throat, an almost taunting smile appearing on his face as he offers his hand in friendship to the dark and tall stallion. “I am Ricochet the Incendiary, son of Gunslinger the Unbroken and Colt. Are you with me, son of Adalwulf the Steadfast?”

Ricochet was not overly observant; it was one of those things that his father had taught him, but had faded into his memories, slipping away month by month. It was his confidence that led to this foolish belief that he could deal- meaning fighting- with anything that could otherwise be avoided, which let his guard down. But that did not mean he was entirely the fool, either. The buttermilk boy relied on Guns, with his sharp nose and pricked ears, to act as a warning system.

Utterly absorbed into this companionship, the distant blood tying them together, reveling in the sensation of camaraderie, it was easy to stop paying attention to the drenched scenery around them. Catastrophically easy.

Their unseen and unknown ‘friend’ was clever, slipping through the trees, staying downwind like a good little spy. Maybe it was that she was so engrossed in her eavesdropping that she forgot to watch out for the dog, with had drifted away from the Incendiary’s flank, snotty black nose pressed to the ground, occasionally stopping to tilt his head this way and that way. Guns was by no means dumb, for all his companion’s claims. In truth, he was clever- his cleverness perhaps exceeding Ricochet’s in some cases. As he wandered, dripping dismally with rainwater, chilled and soaked to the bone, something warned him of difference. Some might call it that sixth sense them dogs have.

Guns watched the pigeon in sore temper, the feathered bird out of reach. It was just taunting him, plump and juicy, cooing in a sopping tree. Every time it hopped from foot-to-foot, fluffing up its mottled gray feathers, a shower of droplets rained down on the collie’s head.

A low growl rumbled in Guns’ throat, a reverberation not unlike the crash of thunder from the sky. He shook his head, dislodging a cascade of freezing water.

Beyond the pigeon, something cracked.

Ricochet’s ears twitched cautiously, lifting his head. “Did you hear that?” The boy asked Dragomir, teal eyes narrowing into daggers once more. A bolt of lightning cracked down, splitting the sky in a thousand tiny shards of gloomy gray and dismal, drab silvers.

Something wasn’t right, Guns could feel it. Slaver dripped from his black jaws. He crept forwards, nostrils twitching, inhaling the musky scent of mud and leaf mold and green. There! A mare… no, pieces of a mare, flickering like a wraith, coming together and vanishing for a few moments, no, not vanishing, camouflaging. And in his primitive dog brain, he thought something like ‘what the fuck is that?’ And so he gave a short staccato of barks that were louder than the hiss of the rain, barks that made his whole body shake and the air quiver.

Ricochet’s muscle tensed, almost automatically jerking into preparation for battle, ears pinning to pale skull, eyes stark with suspicion as he moved away from Dragomir, soggy earth squelching beneath his hooves.

“GUNS!” He roars, quickening to a trot towards the edge of the trees, and through the sheets of rain there is a glimpse of black and- feathers?

Unseen by the Incendiary, Guns lunges at the mare, leaping upwards in attempts to close his jaws on Shadow’s left wing, just in case she got ideas about leaving.

“NIEQUE!” The Incendiary screams, lunging forward, hooves sinking into the ground, eyes glistening with a wild fervor, and he braces himself for the interlocking green of the young willow trees, letting them claw at his buttermilk skin as he tears through, scraping his face and shoulder, water splattering behind him as he charges through, teeth bared and ears pinned. Why did he use Nieque's name? In hopes of goading Dragomir into the fight as well. He couldn't be so selfish as to spill all the blood.

Guns barks again, dropping back to await orders from Ricochet.

How dare she eavesdrop? She would pay for this. He wouldn't let her go, no, he wouldn't, he would beat her down into a pulp and tear at her until she broke beneath his hooves.

“FUCK YOU!” Ricochet shouts, and he shoots forward in attempts to past her, twisting his head down and bucking at Shadow’s delicate leg joints in hopes of shattering one.

He slipped into anger with a well-worn shrug, and wore it proudly as a man with a new hat. Without anger, he was only a stallion, gruff and young, half his scars from the beatings of his father, the sire of a mare named Colt; but with anger he was the Incendiary, all hard teal eyes and pinned ears, brawn and muscle, and it was his home, fury, no matter if he lives in the hot desert or lingers beneath the shade of trees.

The brittle crunch of bones is loud in the air, an audible snap. Through his rain-drenched vision, he catches a glimpse of his sleek border collie, drenched by the storm, teeth shut around the abhorrent eavesdroppers’ wings. In a second the dog is thrown, the mare’s teeth shutting on his scruff to send him twisting through the air unnaturally, yipping in terror. There is a thud as Guns lands on his flank, head thrown back by the force, and he yelps, a sound full of heart-felt pain. Ricochet does not wait to see if his dog gets up. He spins, drops his head, and motivated by the whimpers of his dog, kicks out with all the strength in his tank-like body.

Nobody touches his damn dog.

His hooves make contact, hitting the flimsy joint of her precarious right foreleg.

There is blood in his mouth from where he had bitten his own tongue, and his maw tastes of salt and sweat and iron; but also of victory and success. Injuries like that don’t just hurt, they cripple. Her running quickly was as unlikely as fire in the rain… fire in the rain. “Fucking rain,” he curses, attention momentarily diverted as he flicks his eyes up to the sky. Ponderous gray clouds, all over and through and through. Damn. After hours of downpour, there was not a way in hell that he could get his magic working.

Ricochet didn’t need his magic anyways. This freak was good as dead. He was worth two fighters, and Dragomir was in the clearing, even as Shadow was struggling through the icy branches.
Together, they could crush her between them.

For a moment, Ricochet pauses, but then the second has passed. Guns will get up. He always does. And worry, emotion, had no place on the battlefield. With a single glance back at his dog, huddled in a heap of damp fur, licking at his wounds, he pushes out through the bushes, which bite at him, faintly reminiscent of his father’s teeth crunching down on him, the hooves battering him… the Incendiary shakes away the thoughts, sets his jaw and grins. The raven is trapped now; a corpse still walking.

Anger is replaced by satisfaction as he moves forward, muscles rippling beneath buttermilk coat, charging forwards in hopes to reach her, to deliver the final blow; and like Dragomir did with Ricochet (perhaps unintentionally), remaining outside of the barricade of willow trees, he moves ahead of the two dancers, a second line of defense in case she breaks free.

“Finish her Dragomir! Don’t let her go!” He shouts, voice full of testerone-buoyed excitement, teal eyes sparkling with a mad fervor.

And something does happen, for she screams like she’ll never stop, a scream that is defeat and horror and panic, and she wrenches by the brown tobiano, a flurry of black feathers and wide violet eyes and sweat, her scent ripe with fear and pain and rage. Her hooves kick out at him as he passes her, to stand beyond them, and they catch him on the tip of his left shoulder. With a startled grunt, the stallion quickens by her, and in doing so wrenches his shoulder further. Cursing, he quickens, careful to avoid over-using that leg again.

Confident, bold, and austere in his belief she will not pass, he lightens on his feet, brow furrowed, haunches tense, prepared to move in any which way she might try to slip by him.

She flies by him like a smear of dark shadow, and he twists around. “Guns, HERE!” The stallion snaps, and the collie comes, tail wagging slowly.

Then he plunges after Shadow, intent on stopping her, the branches of trees clawing at him and whipping at his eyes, stubborn and resolute on halting him, rain-water running in rivulets down from his spine, his hooves thudding softly on the damp leaves, teal eyes focused, ears locked to his tangled mane. A chase, tiresome and wearying, the outcome already determined.

He hoped Dragomir would follow.

He had never chased like he had today.
And it made him alive.

There was the pounding of his hooves alongside Dragomir’s, the low rumble of his friend’s voice, and for a moment he sees his vision lying before him. This would be life, every day, when he and the son of Adalwulf completed their life’s mission, their duty to the name of Nieque and the equine race. It would be euphoric freedom and weeding out the last of the ugly flowers, grazing on a hot summer day, foals playing at the flanks of overfed mares. It was not his intention to create a world of warfare and blood, even though he lusted for battle like many stallions did a beautiful mare; he wanted a world of peace for his race, a place where there was safety and all were part of the norm. You couldn’t say he was selfish- there was no selfishness in his dream, only a heartfelt belief worn into him day after day, night after night, until he lived for the hope to see the equines restored to their rightful place at the apex of Helovia.

Branches clawed at his eyes and slap at his face, dousing him in frigid water, sending chills crawling down his dark spine. They follow her like wolves would a wounded fawn, caught up in the boil of their blood and companionship. Ricochet finds newfound energy in his step, carrying him along like a tidal wave, teal eyes vivid with shock and elation; Dragomir was worth far more than he had ever imagined. The tall stallion was more than a friend- in the Incendiary’s eyes, he had transformed today, from ordinary to something special, a trophy find, an equivalent of an elusive fourteen-point stag. Who would have imagined they would have ended their meeting hunting black mares and sharing in the joy of the chase?

Guns is a dark shadow at their feet, close to the ground, tongue lolling, silent. The wet has washed away most of the immediate scents, and his leathery wet nose is filled with the musk of Dragomir and Ricochet, the pungent stench of their sweat and the salt of crimson blood.

Detaching from his side, the paint is sprinting ahead of him, pulling ahead. Ducking his head, neck stretched out, the buttermilk boy puts on a burst of speed to catch up, but he is too late; Dragomir has made his audacious move, leaping forward with all the strength in his hindquarters, and for an awe-inspiring moment the stallion is flying. Ricochet’s eyes widen in surprise. Even he would never think of such a bold move, and so suspect to misaiming. As it was, the stallion only catches her but slightly, but still hard enough to send her flying.

How does she like flying now, when she hits only dirt and damp ferns?
Ricochet bugles his triumph, heart soaring with indescribable triumph, nares flaring in drink in the red-stained mare’s fear.

He tenses, preparing-
And a meddler drops before them, a dark mare with gold lining, earth and aureate eyes, cold flesh. With a move worthy of a cowhorse, Ricochet sits on his haunches, sliding to a halt before her, head drawing away from hers, snorting and heaving with the pursuit. As soon as he stops his joints whimper in protest, even as he forces himself to stand, ignoring the sudden pain. Shadow forgotten, he seizes up the newcomer, teal eyes burning with a fire that casts deep shadows across his face. She is a monster, tall and disfigured by massive unfurled wings.

The Incendiary, who only managed to stop perhaps a half-stride away from her, is rigid, each muscle carved deep into his buttermilk skin.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Ricochet snarls, nostrils flaring to drink in her sky-tossed scent. “This is none of your business.” He steps towards her, ears locked firmly to skull, tangled tail whipping across his hocks. Emboldened by the sense of victory, whatever logic he may have normally retained in his thick head seems to have been knocked out of him, and his teal eyes lock with the stranger's, lips curling into a sneer. “Well, skyrat? Get out of the fucking way.”

He is going to be sick. Her loathing, her flagrant contempt, her auspicious foul arrogance- who is she but a fucking overgrown bitch, so haughty and foully aloof, a birdbrain with wings that can be so easily destroyed. Doesn’t this stupid, washed-up whore realize the precariousness of her position? Oh how she stares at them with such bloody fucking repugnance- her!

Ricochet’s stomach heaves, a knotted, thrashing mass, and foam bubbles at his dark lips, white spittle which drips and splatters against his chest, anger boiling, and he tamps down on his growing frustration. There is a waspish slap as his wet tail flicks across his buttermilk flank, and his ears pin back to his skull, disappearing in the tangles of his dark mane. At his hooves, Guns growl, white ruff spiking and teeth baring in warning as he sinks down low to the ground, snapping his yellowed fangs together in a loud clack, mud clotting between his paws.

Every muscle among his body tenses for one split second as he prepares to throw himself at the imperious asshole with her golden eyes, before Dragomir announces the escape of the spy.

Disbelief splinters the fury in his eyes, and yet the teal hardens again into pointed daggers filled with a new vigor, and he straightens his stance, drawing himself to his full height, undaunted by this foreigner. His face writhes into a grotesque expression, full of pretentious hatred and vicious ire, a delirious longing to inflict pain, to not just kill her, but hurt her, to mark her with bruises and watch this interloper of which let the shadow escape fall beneath the growing might of their comradeship. “YOU FUCKING IDIOT!” The Incendiary screams, his vocal cords hoarse, splintered from overuse, spittle flying from his lips, and he glares at the featherbrained skyrat, centering all of his outrageous temper on her. “YOU – FUCKING – ASSHOLE!”

And he is rigid with his righteous anger, every muscle locked and trembling in anticipation, his eyes gleaming lustily with the taste of a new battle soon approaching.

Then- and then!- the trespasser has the audacity, the foolish and questionable bravery, to make mockery of Ricochet, the Incendiary, the war machine, relentless and aggressive and reckless in his pursuit, with her cool little tones and angry little eyes, to act as if she, a FUCKING SKYRAT, is better than him. He inhales raggedly, drinking in the bitterly cold air, the actions of Shadow forgotten, her disappearance accepted, and he turns on his new target of frustration and blatant resentment. “I am the Incendiary, you overgrown fat whore, and you do not deserve the gift of death.”

There are teeth snapping at his face, and he drops his head hastily to avoid Brighid’s lunge, and his own teeth reach out, in aims of snapping tight around her throatlatch and clamping down, even as she spins out to buck at Dragomir. Too bad fucking bad for her that she engaged in this battle, because the only outcome was for her to die or take to the skies in defeat with her tail between her legs. As she shuffles her hindquarters, and she guffaws, Ricochet gathers himself, rearing up in hopes to bring his hooves down on her shoulders and spine should his attempt at her throat go awry.

He drops back, the thud of the ground meeting him jarring up his forelegs, and then the ground ignites in a blaze beneath his hooves- the dry dust had been exposed beneath layers of rain-sodden soil by Guns during their talk, and now everything was on fire (hopefully not Dragomir.) Ricochet shoves himself far from the flames, the hot familiar lick searing his forelegs momentarily before the rain washes away whatever heat may have been absorbed into his forelegs.

He hopes Brighid burns.