He forgets her taunts, her jibes and verbal banter.

The stallion’s heart drummed inside his chest, fired with excitement at the prospect of a fight, his sadistic joy soaring higher as he landed blow on leg and chest. A lock of hair is caught between his yellowed teeth, greasy and acrid, tasting unnatural as Histe’s carnivorous tendencies, but Ricochet ignores the foul taste in his mouth. I hope it hurts. Even if it didn’t hurt her, she would fall eventually. It was not a question of if, but when. Here on the battlefield, they were blood waiting to be spilled, bruises about to happen, pretty pelts ready to scar. For all her simpering and smiles, her wicked eyes and the redness of the blood on her mouth, however strong and healthy she may be- she was not him. Histe was not Ricochet, who lived for pain, for battle, for war; she was not beaten by her father till she was bleeding crimson and battered almost beyond repair. She was not the Incendiary, once a colt, now made into a man- by the workings of his father, the loss of his virginity, and the battles he fought.

Unlike novices in battle, the buttermilk boy made fighting into an art, and he had flourished from soldier to veteran in the last few years (at least in his haughty mind.)

Histe slips beneath him, and a smile briefly lightens the shadows of his scarred face. The more he pressed on her, or the more she might back away, the better for his cause- forcing her back was a form of dominance, one she would do well to realize. Just as quick as it appeared, the smile vanishes from his calloused lips, and he presses forward, not letting her get farther away than a few strides. “Giving up so easy Histe?” He calls, his light-hearted tones goading as the vindictive glitter in his teal eyes. “All talk, no action!”

It is then he hears it, not her silent scream, but the rumble of thunder-clouds. Ricochet stops his playful bounding. Fuck. Fuck her, and her acid magic, because sure enough, the first drop that land on him sizzles a warning.

Ricochet is no coward, no craven boy pretending to be a man. The bravery has been carved into him, hiding behind the scars in his coat, the fire in his eyes, the audacity of his reckless words. He does not shy, and he does not quell, no matter how cold the gaze is that meets him. But today, with the thunder whispering its sinister warnings, he is petrified with a fear that cuts to his bones and strokes the warmth of his beating heart with glacial fingers. He is afraid.

The wail of her cougar is a widow’s shriek, a cry that curdles milk and makes the steadfast shiver. “No,” he growls. He is cold steel, prepared to strike. One day, he would die. Chances are he would die covered in blood on the battlefield, but today would not be that day. “I won’t.” He would not give. He would not shy. He would brace himself for the agony sure to come. And it did come. It came in the form of rain, first lovingly light, giving him kisses with a poison mouth, and then like a hungry mare it came harder, hungry to devour him.

Guns is howling, an eerie cacophony that drowns out Merikh’s paralyzing cry. There is rain that lashes at his ears with whips made of flame, the sound of which overrides whatever curses he mutters under his breath. And what he sees is her, through a haze of pain that has him feeling as if he is melting, an agony that makes him afraid to look at his own body, in case he has been reduced to stripped white bones.

Ricochet would make her pay tenfold.
He jerks around, rain rippling in sheets down his spine, dripping off his flanks, and he twists his head beneath his blood-stained hooves, popping his weight on his forehand as he lashes out in a buck at the dark smear that was Histe. There is no power he leaves behind- he puts it all in his two hind hooves, and he asks Nieque to allow him to smash her skull in, to batter her knees until she fell crippled to the ground.

Unseen, Guns is running at the brindled mare, pawprints red with blood.

There is no breath to waste on words, no taunts that form on his tongue. Pain is destroying him. It has set him on fire and there is nothing to do but wait it out.
If he kills her, will the rain, will the torment of each and every nerve on his body, end?

There was thunder roaring in his ears- or maybe it was the rush of his hot blood- and the taste of salt in his mouth. Acid kept sizzling down from the skies torrentially, never-ending, unforgiving. His skin felt as if it were bubbling, as if it were melting, and maybe it was, maybe even at this very moment it began to peel away from muscle, and the muscle would strip away from bone. It was a pain that he had felt only a few times before, a blistering, burning sensation that scalded the entirety of his upper body, and it felt everlasting. Thoughts of his ambitions, his arrogant dedication to victory, were washed away by the fire engulfing him, until he focused on one thought, one hope, one prayer: kill Histe, and rid himself of the she-lion bitch.

And then he could fall into his stupor, and sleep away time until the burns on his back scabbed over.

His hooves caught her in the shoulder, and despite his rapidly deteriorating state he gave a grunt of satisfaction, dropping back to all fours. Having caught her shoulder on the right, he guess she would adjust her course to the left, thus avoiding his brawny quarters further. As he thought, there is a streak of rust and black and brown as she moves by him, slowed by the blow he dealt her, hooves splashing in the mud, globs of shit-brown kicked up from her hooves sizzling on his buttermilk skin, made noticeable as the rain lightens above, offering him brief respite.

Yet despite the thunderclouds rolling away, he feels little relief, only a rapidly growing frustration which makes his teeth grit together and jaw clench so tightly it aches. Ricochet had not been defeated, not yet, but he had been humiliated, by the fear in his eyes and the paralyzing affect the forewarning growl of thunder had on him. Humiliated by Histe, once again, the fucking bitch who was the cause of his continuous pain and embarrassment. Who did she think she was, with her snickers and svelte words, her condescending attitude and damnably short-sighted demeanor? She was NOT going to get away with it, not this time.

Ricochet would teach her better than that.
There is a twist along his body as he shifts, coming up and towards her, forelegs bent and teal eyes electric, the muscles in his hindquarters flexing as he forces the power out of them, coming towards the slippery devil, teeth bared. The Incendiary lifts up as Histe moves by him, the mare’s hindlegs launching up to assail him with mud. Clots of it splatter along his lower chest and forelegs, sizzling specks of acid that pale in comparison to the rainstorm she had summoned just moments before. Still, it stings like biting horseflies.

He reaches out, tipping his weight forward, snapping at her hindquarters with his flat yellowed teeth, aiming to take a solid chunk out of her fat ass.

Unknown to Ricochet, just a few steps behind him is Guns, loping towards Histe confidently with his plume of a tail wagging, thick coat having shed most of the rain, leaving only his paws damaged. Unheard by either of them is the mare’s silent command to her companion.

And Guns yelps in surprise as the cougar comes racing out of the shadows, flinching away.

Like the day so many months ago in the Threshold, Ricochet’s attention is drawn immediately to his dog. He might swear daily at the collie, bark orders and snap commands, act like he don’t give a single flipping fuck- but that dog is his, and nobody touches his Guns.

The Incendiary stops short on his attack, pivoting on his hindquarters and lunging forward, tripping over himself in his haste, knees coming down momentarily into the sucking red-black mud, before he surges up. There is more burning around his joints, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care about Histe. He doesn't care about the protests from every nerve in his body as he flies over the treacherous footing. All he cares about his stupid, stupid dog.

Ears locked to skull, eyes savage, Ricochet bellows his rage outloud, flying forward at the cougar as Guns scrambles to the safety at the Incendiary’s side. The mud slips and skids beneath his hooves as he charges.
And keeps charging. For Ricochet has no intention of stopping- he intends to run that stupid fucking cougar right over.