The crash of his hooves on her back is satisfaction incarnate. He feels the snap of her wingjoint and the twist of her fall, and the hunter smiles.

How rare it is, to see a killer grin. And rarer, still, to see a good brute fall to such wicked whims. But he has fallen and he falls still, deeper into a pit of unsearchable blackness. From here, he will not be rescued. From this ancestral commandment, this order, he can hear nothing but a need to create beneath his hooves a soul residing with the dead.

Thou shalt kill.

The white mare's fate is sealed when she falls. Knox's body, sharpened with the skills of Dovev's many murders, falls with her and his hooves aim for her tender nose. It is gravity's task to land the blow, now, for as the mare jerks and sputters, her wing askew and hanging crookedly from her flesh, he sees her head resting perfectly beneath him. And how much weight is in the body of a 10 year old stallion, bulked and bloodstained, bearing down with the memory of his own death?

But one blow means nothing. Should her features be crushed beneath his hooves--should the skull snap and the teeth shatter as they force themselves into the frost--and the beauty be wiped from her image, he will only have hurt her once. The murderer has more to do, more places to hurt.

There are always more places to hurt.

And through it all Knox sees a purple body at his feet, majestic and wicked. Where Dovev aims with accuracy for the face, Knox seeks out the horn of a God that does not truly reside against the ice. And when the mare lifts her body to fight back, Knox sees a Goddess rising and lifting in size. How starving he is, to be seeing such madness. How wicked his thoughts, to strike out at the one he so long loved.

Dovev's mind is present enough and Knox's vision clear enough to match the motions of the imagined Goddess with that of the innocent. Knox feigns forth like a viper, neighing to intimidate and clashing his teeth towards her neck. She is nothing compared to his size, nothing in the face of his power. When she bites she grabs the base of Dovev's scars, but the pain there is too known, too remembered, to cease the stallion's strike. How many days has Knox lain still, unable to move for all the pain of his ancestor's death and injuries?

This bite, this pathetic attempt at protection, is just one more scratch to keep him up at night.

She deserves this comes the thought of the wicked as he starts to turn his back from the mare in a practiced turn.
She has abandoned me, mourns the hunter in his rage.
Her blood will be your patience rewarded, commands Dovev as his back legs kick with force, striking out towards the chest of the mare and aiming to knock her back to the earth.

And Knox is too maddened now to know what is real and what is not--to separate the mind from reality. His words, a cry in his mind, ring out into the night. His voice is deep, his sentiment clear to him alone--surely madness to the mare at his back. "Tonight, we drink the blood of the Gods!"

Tonight is a night of murder, beneath the Blood Moon Dare.

—

[[@[Muriel]]]