The woods rose around her like posts in a living gate, separating her past from her future, all she needed to do was push it open and enter.
She hesitated for that very reason, uncertain if she wanted to leave her past behind at all. Her present was certainly no good, but before then, long before when her muzzle was still milk stained, that had been enjoyable. Could she return to that time? Was there a gate for that life?

No, she already knew.

A sigh spun from her nose as her head slowly swung back around, eyelashes blinking away the last of the light that lay behind her in the wilds. Helovia, she thought with a careless apathy as she passed through the gap between some tall pines and let the forest fully swallow her. She could not know what this war-torn world would hold in store for her, but she had a guess it wouldn't be anything good - nothing had been since he'd yanked her to his side.

He had told her some of this place and she had listened halfheartedly, as most children are apt to do with stories of their parent's lives, but she had always been attentive to the parts about his failures here. He had left once and fucked her mom, and left again to steal her away in the night.
Now he returned here, with her.

He had gone ahead days ago, leaving her to travel alone as yet another test of survival in which he likely hoped she would finally fail and die. Every once in a while the dog would come scouting back, its amber eyes seeming to pierce her soul.
She fucking hated that dog.

"I'm here," she announced to no one in particular as she flopped against a tree trunk, weary from her travels in mind and body. A long trek had been made only longer when it felt constantly uphill, fighting against her will and her heart to take each and every step. She had simply wanted to run away, but even when she got the opportunities she always stood paralyzed like some idiotic deer. The idea of being deemed a coward shook her to the core more than threat of death itself could, and for that reason she stayed, biding her time.

It was Guns who took to the scent first, black nose twitching wetly, the ears pricking forward uncertainly, amber eyes gleaming as the last of the sun was drained from the world like blood from a wound. Pale gold and crimson light filtered through the full, murmuring canopies of green leaves, silhouetting the collie in golden thread. Ricochet watched the hound silently, legs stirring impatiently beneath him as he waited, the brawny muscles of his haunches flexing.

And then, a black-and-white bullet shot from a gun, the hound takes off, the equine counterpart hot on his heels.

They move forward, overtaking the wind with each pounding step, Ricochet's heart thundering in his ears, lungs rattling in his chest, nostrils flaring wide. As he runs, time slows, until the only feeling is the pounding of his hooves on the earth, tremors crawling up his legs, the grass tearing and shredding beneath his hooves, Guns ripping ahead of him, amber eyes glinting. Soon enough the dog draws away from him, and slows from wild gallop to stiff-legged lope, Ricochet falling into step with the Tome Guardian's former pet, his for many seasons now. The run has invigorated the stallion, and at his forelegs the dog pants raggedly, tongue lolling lazily over yellowed canines.

Moving somewhat languidly, the stallion moves with more swagger in his step than he has in actual confidence, teal eyes narrowing to hard points as he takes in his daughter, named for his mother and the boy he had wanted her to be. Colt, the girl of the first mare he had ever put himself inside. What was the name of that mare, the woman he had fucked? Arya, a name vaguely reminiscent of Aërwen, the half-sister traitor.

He wouldn't let his daughter be traitor to his breed, not ever.

The hard light in his teal eyes did not soften as he near-glared at her, the muscles of his neck tensing unhappily. Ricochet was not close to Colt in any parental way, teaching her with the same hardness Gunslinger had dealt with him. So weak. She had been a fragile wisp of a girl, one he had attacked with all the ferocity and reckless fury of a stallion driving off a wolf.

He had fought her, beaten her, until she began to bite back.

"Colt," he says, a smirk curling at his arrogant lips. "Took you long enough. And needing to rest already?" Ricochet's eyes cut towards her shoulder leaning against the gnarled tree. "Hope you don't intend on taking breathers in a war."

At his feet Guns sits, amber eyes not leaving Colt's face, head cocking.

They come with all the fury of the first winter storm, so ready to rip apart the world that had rebuilt itself in the absence of the hollowing season. Colt has to remind herself not to flinch as the dog hurtles through the brush like a maniac, his master not far behind.

Ricochet moves with a much more controlled pace, striding into view like the desolation of the land after the howling black and white wind has already terrorized it. He is the snow, cold and suffocating, and it is all she can do not to shudder at the sudden thought of enduring another winter.
She knows better though. Ricochet is anything but controlled, and his frost is nothing so bad as his heat; her burns attest the truth of that.

His eyes turn to her like a switchblade flicking open under a black cloak in a dark alley. He holds her with an inescapable contempt and she feels a scream trying to claw through her throat to blast in his face. No good, she thinks as she pushes off the tree instead, legs locking to hold herself firm and steady. She consciously puffs up her chest, her neck bowing slightly so the muscle might better reveal itself. It's nothing compared to his, which is why screaming in his face isn't in her best options. "I knew you would be nearby, I thought it best to wait for Guns so I could find you sooner," she offers as a way of explanation, hoping she doesn't seem as tired as she feels. Endurance has never been her forte, luckily it isn't his either.

Colt ignores his insult; giving it any extra attention would be an invitation for more, as most any choice of action is. Instead she proffers a small smile, as if her weakness is a joke they can both share.
"What now?" Colt asks to change the subject, and because she is genuinely curious. Despite all the training he has not beaten all of her youth out of her yet and at times the excitement and the naivety overtakes her. She does not want to be here, but now that she is here regardless, she feels a creeping curiosity.

As always, she'll make the best of what she's given.

They are awkward, despite their shared blood, chafing against each other unpleasantly. Colt was a mistake, one of his many, and despite his efforts to fix her and shape her malleable young body into a war machine, he couldn't make her grow balls.

Ricochet hated her for that, but she was from his testicles and his burning blood.

Up she draws herself, neck flexing slightly, the muscle strong but not quite approaching the strength compared to a stallion's. Once again he is reminded bitterly of her marehood, but what can he do of it? Nothing. At least she had the wits which could make up for her physical flaws, as she had proved soon after she had begun to react to his abuse, his endless taunts, the fire exploding beneath her hooves as dust turned to gunpowder.

The taste in his mouth sours as the silence thickens between them, the sunlight crushing the weight out of him as she inflates her chest, the hard lines of her muscle becoming apparent. Over time she had learned better than replying to his little jokes, tempering her fire a way Ricochet had never learnt himself nor cared to. She was less volatile, more calculating... more Gunslinger in some ways, not that the Incendiary cared to admit it or even let the thought appear in his thick skull. In response to her excuse, he dips his cranium abruptly. There is no swarthy grace in his movements, no elegance, only the brutal strength of a man who used his fists and not his wits so much.

Guns barks at his hooves, tail wagging slowly over the ground.

"Shut up and listen to begin with," Ricochet grumbles, but the order is half-hearted. How can he begin to explain his plans when his mind jumps from place to place?

Let's simplify it.

"Unlike the ashes of Isilme, this is a place overflowing with skyrats and hornheads. They wander without fear and with great idiotic grins on their faces. We will strike terror into their hearts, and remind them of the strength of the equine race, and how they are little more than animals waiting to be culled. Secondly, recruit to our cause as you will. I trust even you can't screw that up. Take any equine as a friend, but not as ally." A wicked festers on his face, turning his 'handsomely' burned face into a hideous thing. "Strengthen your skills of battle."

The gundog at his hooves stands, eyes turning upwards to his master, sensing the electricity crackling off the buttermilk pelt. "Most of all, be quick and strong, and uphold the pure blood of our race."

His words shove themselves out of his mouth with the same barking intensity of his dog. Colt's ears sway back in displeasure, but she twists them around to the side as she catches herself, feigning a listen to the woods rather than an attempt to pin.
It is quiet.

The dunskin stud standing before her continues on to explain their goals. A certain excitement tempers his voice and writes that horrible grin onto his hideously disfigured face. The smile does little to improve his features, but it does not abhor her any more - she's grown accustomed to his ugliness, both in personality and physical features.

Though Colt sides with the stud before her in view of the other species - being raised with only your kind at that one sole thought drilled into your skull above all others tends to do that - she cannot feel the way he does about it. There is no heat that rises like a fire to lick her heart whenever she sees or hears one of the monstrosities called pegasus and unicorn. She takes no glee in their demise, just satisfaction at a job well done. There is not even sadness or pity for their unfortunate blood.

Colt only feels a cold and hollow detachment whenever she views them or lingers to watch the life dim out of their eyes. Their ruin is only a task to complete, like so many others Ricochet has given her.

Colt has but only one goal that is her own.
Kill Ricochet.

So it is that her head dips in a stiff and harsh movement, as mechanical as ever. Her eyes, like balls of steel, flick across the scarred face across from her one last time as she prepares to leave and do his bidding. He lets loose a lasting statement, one that reads deeper than it may sound. "Of course," she murmurs, knowing well the wrath that echoed in his voice whenever he spoke of Aerwen and Evangeline, the ones who had not upheld their blood.
It would be fine, the only blood Colt ever intended to involve herself with was that which spilled from her enemies. She would never will a child of her doing to be faced with living in this world.

On that note Colt turned to stride into the woods, hoping to find an equine or two while in the area.

What a pretty war machine the Incendiary built.