You have to be smarter Nym.

I'm trying!

Out of the corner of her eye in a whirl of ghost and shadow she catches sight of the stallion's gilded horn striking down and away from her face; a faint sense of thrill and fear coils through her brain. Almost intuitively she shifts to her left, subtly slanting away from Rikyn. Brace yourself, she commands, and then he strikes like a coiled snake, his shining horn teeth to pierce the point of her right hip. Pain reverberates through flesh and bone as the stallion carves yet another future scar—the wound is a deep, immediately bloody thing. The pain is undercut by a flash of annoyance; she breathes slowly, an old and familiar ritual, forcing herself to ignore the dull aches in her chest and the new pains lancing through her body. She commands herself to focus: and then she thrusts her magic at him in unspoken command, demanding his submission.

You will bow.

The mare's emotions (pain, anger, frustration) were submerged in the rigid fist of her self-control, but take a shift towards open and unlocked pleasure as the stallion surges away from her. (There—drops of blood trail his passing.) His shadow flickers across the rippling water; for a moment her gaze is lost in his reflection's darkness, which is broken by waves and clouded in scarlet shed from her own veins. It is in this murkiness that she spies his shift forwards, his hooves bucking up and lancing towards her face. Reality converges on her. She rears her head up, skittering away a step or two to her left, tail whipping across her flank—the sun glares in her eyes from off the water. She senses more than sees the hooves that lash in the empty air her body had occupied only moments before.

I'm here if you need me. Lilómiel was little more than a distant shadow on the water, but she could feel their bond strengthen as he cut down on the distance between them. Stay back, she told him, firmly, frankly. I don't want to rely on you.

Besides, she thought that she was doing a rather good job on her own.

In the time that was the here and now moments became minutes, minutes become hours—everything was too fast and too slow all at once. (Is this always how fights feel?) It dawns on Nymeria that Rikyn is not retreating, that he continues to pivot, no doubt aiming to slam his weight against Nym's left side. Her brows shift and slant into an expression of hunger and eagerness alike. There is an exhilarating feel to the sensation of body against body, fresh blood and new pain—it creates a burning yearning that rushes through her every cell, flooding her with a need for the heat of his body and—more than that—for his submission.

She does not try to evade him. Instead she thrusts her weight towards him, attempting to hit him leading with her left shoulder. Ideally she would hit him when he was off-balance and force him to fall (that was a certain sign of her victory) but she doubted that would happen. Despite her decidedly more buxom figure, she does not weigh that much more than him, and horses rarely (if ever) fall (even in battle.)

As she leans in to embrace him, she grasps at the water beneath him. Expression knitted in concentration, she ushers the water upwards in liquid spears; then, with a sharp exhale, she lets her second magic roll over them. The result are frosted blades which she slings towards Rikyn's hindlegs—his belly was a tantalizing target, but she didn't want to hurt him too badly.

She needed this fight. It would be a shame to end it early.