So close was she to her goal, yet the wild thicket of tail and the stallion's jerky movements foiled her plans for castration.

She barely had time to spit out the chunk of the behemoth's tail before the dove watched what may very well have been her fate speeding toward her in the shape diamond-decked hooves. In any other creature, panic may have ensued, seized their mind and held them still in bonds of fear and defeat. Yet, the Massacre-ess of Uumalah had been the beneficiary of far worse wounds than that of broken ribs and bruised flesh. In days forward, the mare may think back upon the Colossus and the fury he stoked within his heart, how he had shared it with her through traded blows and a lust for victory.

In days forward, the mare may not think at all, she may lay dead upon the earth, finally broken at the behest of a towering, unnamed demon who had demanded the price of her treachery be paid in blood.

Yet, it was not in days forward as the pale maiden reacted, it was in moments present, in the tiny crannies between heartbeats and the pain-laced exhalations through parted lips. In her final moments of decision, the last few milliseconds before hoof met flesh, Orithia chose one last act of defiance. She could care less if the action left her defeated, she only cared that the action was hers, that the Goliath did not hold enough power over her injured form to decide where next he could inflict his wrath.

So she reared back, wings aching to flare, to lift her from harm and to cradle her within the star-speckled sky. Yet a grounded dove she remained, trees leaning in to trap her within a cage of crooked and spined foliage. The moment seemed to slow, the perception of the maiden lengthening into an endless experience. Distantly, she felt the skin along the front of her forelegs and fetlock joints smart and sting as it was shorn away beneath the behemoth's strike. It was as if she had tucked her reality away, watching from the observation deck of her mind as the punishing blow fell upon the ribs about her girth, felt the ribs crack and groan beneath the onslaught.

Breath fled from her lungs, shoved out and away under the force of a goliath's hooves. Orithia couldn't summon her voice, could barely summon control over her body as gravity pushed her front half back toward the grassy, misted earth. As pink-tinged hooves met the soft ground, sensation rushed back into reality, crashed over the mare in a flood of agony and white-hot disdain. If she could speak, if she could have moved, she would. She would have spat her rebellion at the stallion, would have let him writhe beneath the starlight, wallow in his victory.

She couldn't, though. The pain was too much, it held her hostage, pressed against her at all angles as she gulped down air the best she could. Through a black haze of pain, Orithia turned her gaze upon the stallion, too fearful of her condition's severity to move her rump from it's place against the rough bark of the tree, too fearful of the stallion's intent now that she was wounded beyond fleeing.

A hiss cut through the air toward his onyx form, rage and opposition palpable in each line of the dove's tensed frame. Venom coated her tongue and the mare wished beyond all measure that she could find enough oxygen to speak, to press her verbal blade against the stallion's throat and slice away at that self-assured sense of arrogance, at that provocative sense of hate. Gasps slid through trembling nostrils, small sprays of blood coating her delicate maw in a fine film of scarlet.

You have not mastered me, She screamed from within, eyes ablaze and drilling through the skull of her opponent, You hold no sway here. No matter who you are, no matter what you think, I am mine.