Head pounding to the beat of my working heart, I find myself grinding my molars together with the concentration of simply keeping my balance. Getting bashed over the eye and having one's ear gnawed on didn't exactly make for an ideal start to a brawl, though I would give Rostislav points for landing a hit.

My wing thwaps against his crown as I spin about, the hard edge of it aching from the impact. I was fortunate that it smacked against something that was able to bend away, for had it struck anything harder and I belatedly think of how a simple fracture could have formed and grounded me - my worst nightmare. Through the fog of pain that clouds my head, I try to remember to keep my wings away from the fight, and I lift them high now, still open, but held almost vertically up from their joints at my shoulders. My muzzle dips lows as my hinds strike out, the mud not far from the blood-drenched curves of my façade, and I groan as the blood stings my left eye. I blink, rapidly, even as my solid hooves shudder against the pectoral region of Rostislav. The motion tipped me even further forward, and given my compromised, aching crown, I scrambled to regain my balance afterwards. A small part of me felt grim satisfaction at my successful attempt, but mostly I am simply trying not to fall down in the aftermath.

I continue to push my hips around to the left, lifting my cranium back to a level just above my withers, tilting it so that my right eye, currently the only one unhindered by blood and sticky forelock, obtains insight into the position of Rostislav. I am unnerved slightly by what I see, for when he stands up on his back legs like that, a fear, swift like a flash of lightning, cuts through me - what if he means to take me, to force me? My resolve soon floods me once more, and even as the steed comes down at me with his broad, flat hooves, I feel my determination rise within me once more - I will not be beaten.

I dart forward, hoping to miss the flailing of his hooves altogether, but I am held back by the terrain that my own magic helped create. My own hooves argue with the slick mud, even as the sun glints through the sheets of rain - my magic lost its grip on the rainfall minutes ago, now it was slowly being burnt off by the scorching TallSun heat, leaving in its wake thick, gluggy mud underfoot, and rain that had changed from a downpour to a mere, sprinkling, sunshower. Patches of my own coat that weren't darkened by mud and wet reflected the scene, which was probably quite picturesque - if one ignored the two souls attempting to tear each other apart in the middle of it. I try again, and again, to drag myself forward, grunting in pain as he crashes down upon me. It mostly smashes against my right hip, and I am fortunate that my right hock was cocked at the time, allowing the impact to shudder more easily down the entire limb, instead of the much more devastating situation of having my pelvis take all of the impact, and likely fracture as a result. A sharp stinging follows the trail of his hoof as it cuts through my flesh, reaching from the point of my hip down about the width of a hoof. It is not deep, but I wince as a small flap of skin forms and fills with rain and muck, making it feel a lot worse than it actually is.

Reluctance to further compromise my right hind leg prevents me from utilising the small gap between our bodies and filling it with another assault from my hind hooves. Instead, I continue to push myself forward and around to my right, hoping to swing myself enough around so that I am lined up perpendicularly to Rostislav's right side. I do not rear, for I have no desire to expose my stomach to his horned head, but instead snake out my teeth, aiming for the fleshy, cresty area of his nape. As this happens, my right foreleg makes to strike out, hoping to entangle his foreleg in with my own, perhaps forcing him into a bow, or even bang a fracture into the cannon bone of his nearest (right) foreleg. With my vision the way it is, however, I think I would be lucky to be able to discern the dark roaned brute from the surrounding mud and grime - I know I am at a disadvantage, but I just pray that he is as restricted by injury as I am.

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[ Tag: @[Rostislav]
WordCount: 800 (MS Word)
Attack: 2/3 ]