Gull

Failure was not sitting well with Gull.

 
In the days since his oil-colored enemy had slipped from his grasp on the battlefield, his wicked face had haunted the stallion day and night. He had been so close…and yet, his quarry had evaded him at the last moment. The moment when Öde had disappeared into the smoky fray repeated on an endless loop though Gull’s mind, and by now the grullo and cream stallion hated him with a frenzy that nearly rivaled his obsession. The dark beast was the missing piece, he had convinced himself, the one loose end that he couldn’t leave untied. Too much else had already unraveled: Bellona’s disappearance, Muriel’s murder, whatever disease was turning his own body against him…. even if no other horror could be resolved, Öde was the only source of misery that Gull could seek to right. While everything else was masked in confusion, the horned beast was the only certainty, and the wheezing pegasus clung to this twisted logic fiercely, loathing him as deeply as his tangled emotions would allow. If his time had come, his last wish was for revenge on the black unicorn.
 
And he was sure that his time was near. As the seasons shifted, his symptoms had only grown worse: hacking cough had given away to shallow breaths and chronic hoarseness. Now he could barely speak, much less roar his desperation. He no longer possessed the strength to fly, and his collapsing lungs did not allow him to move at a pace faster than a walk unless absolutely necessary. Then the headache set in. It had begun just a few hours ago, but already the suffering stallion was in obvious pain. His ears lay flat against his head as he stood in the numbing sea, trying to forget the throbbing hum that was threating to split his skull in two.
 
Eyes closed in pain, he paid little heed to the gathering of the crowd and the way that the islands in the distance seemed to magnetically pull them out to sea. It was only when the slightest hint of a familiar scent reached his nostrils on the ocean breeze that the dark lids flew open to reveal bloodshot sclera:
 
He was here.
 
Sensing the shadow of a second chance, Gull threw himself into the waves after the crowd and struck out for the island. It would be a rough swim, but there would not need to be a return journey. Tonight, he and his foe would both lie dead on the rocky sands.
 
OOC: Questing, part IV!

trouble just grew wings