A sickening crack! rings through the air. Your strike the beast, the monster, your friend, your hoof splitting into his mandible, but when you look up to see the damage done there is nothing to see. By the time you're standing the monster is gone, and you spin, dizzy and disheveled and afraid, trying to figure out where it could be. Your ears dance frantically upon your head, and for a moment you think you hear him- but by the time you turn around there's nothing but threatening woods, long shadows in the morning light that threaten to divulge their terrible secrets. A shiver racks your body; you are drenched in sweat; blood pools on your flank; the smell of it is copper and draining life, danger in the darkness, and you want to run away. But where? And how? Between your broken rib and cut cannon your mobility is limited, and besides, you don't even know which way away is.

You should have run sooner, little lightning. You should have known that this world is cruel: the good only die young because they have so far to fall. What to you have to show for all your bravery, your loyalty, your love? Nothing but blood and broken bones.

“Zeeeeeerrrooo”

You scream and spin around; and the movement makes your ribs grind with stabbing pain, so you scream louder, a choked and terrible noise. Your mind is not prepared for the sight of Mesec- your eyes fill with terror as his face fills your eyes, contorted and destroyed by the force of your blow. It is the face of a demon, of something that ought to be dead- it is horrible. The canine grin, the bloodied jaw, the tongue that lolls and waves and reaches out to consume you, red on black on silver on death. Fear clouds your eyes, and your heartbeat surges.

The face will haunt your nightmares until the day you die.

You're still screaming, the whites of your eyes bright in the dim light, your ears pulled back and your body struggling to turn without looking away, terror making you stiff and pain making you clumsy. Instinct rules you at this point; you have lost yourself to a primal instinct, an ancient fear, just as surely as Mesec is lost to the beast. Because you are not rational, you think, if I see it I can react. You think, if I look at it, it will not strike me.

And who knows- perhaps you're right. It doesn't matter, because before you can so much as blink, the beast is just..... gone.

You turn and run.

You're limping. Your right hind aches from the flank down; your left fore has been pushed past any reasonable limit since this fight began. There was never a real shot at escape, and you know this, but you run anyway- and as you run, even in the moment the beast appears, you see something out of the corner of your eye, and your mind makes a connection. The wolf materializes behind you, and as it reaches out its terrible claws you screech into the woods at your right, crying out for your saving grace even as the greatest blow yet lands upon your left hind.

“SQUISHY! STOP HIM!"

The woods brighten painfully as electricity arcs from the golem who, up to this point, has waited patiently among the trees- but you don't see it, because your mind is exploding in agony, your eyes are full of tears, and you are blind with pain. The beast strikes you with unfathomable force, and as claws tear a trifecta of deep furrows into your left gaskin, your nerves scream in protest as your femur fractures: a death blow to a normal horse.

You are aware of your left shoulder striking the ground, and little else, as you fall.

(Thank goodness you're a magical pony with an uncanny ability to avoid fatal damage, huh?)


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[5/??? | 659 words]
Injury list
- cut on left front cannon
- gashes on right flank
- sprained rotator cuff
- bruising on humerus, ulna & radius on wing
- mild concussion
- broken rib on right side
- deep cuts on left gaskin
- fractured left hind femur
- emotionally scarred fo lyfe