But the unicorn and the little deer were not the only ones hugging the moonlit shore that evening. Well, perhaps it would be more apt to say hugging the moonlit coast, for the two who were about to enter the scene were airborne, and so not properly affixed to the shore ... ehhh, you get the idea: Rikyn was not alone.

Two sets of draconian wings beat against the cooling air. They flapped harder than they might have during Tallsun, for the thermals upon which flighted-creatures took advantage, were beginning to thin and wane because of this new season. Even so, the expertise of both flyers was obvious, and they had no trouble gliding over the blackened waters without the help of the missing warm air currents.

If Isopia still had her equine ears, rather than the flat scales of her draconian skull, she might have pinned them backwards bitterly upon seeing Rikyn. The emotional void left by Volterra had been filled in with a black bitterness, a sticky as tar and (seemingly) as permanent as concrete. Any semblance of happiness or love that she witnessed around her conjured bottomless feelings of disapproval and jealousy. Why should they be happy? her heart seemed to spit as her golden eyes watched the pair below.

>>Leave alone.<< Hubris whispered into her mind, flying off to the side somewhat, implicitly trying to make the much larger Isopia-dragon change direction. But this hadn't worked, for the vastness of Isopia's mind had already figured out how to justify what it was she was about to do.

She would attack, but it would be alright because ...

Well. Because she was doing him a favour, wasn't she? Did all creatures in Helovia not want to continue living? There were things far worse than she, many of which dwelt in the hidden depths of the ocean near which Rikyn walked, or lived in the caves lining the beach. They might attack him and end his life, whereas Isopia would merely attack,  and then perhaps forever more he would be on his guard when he walked these shores at night. Besides, hadn't she been encouraged to attack without warning, when she was given her seasonal duties in the Falls? Why should that mandate apply there, but not here? If the advice was sound, then it should be applicable in all avenues of her life, not just ones that revolved around the Falls.

Right? Isopia certainly thought so - or at least, was happy to accept the justifications her mind had spat out. It was easy to get away with murder with a mind as sharp as hers. She would know after all, she had done it before.

Folding her large leathery wings against her sides, Isopia banked towards Rikyn. Had she been seen yet? Her back was to the moon, and so likely her outline was clearly visible. But what of that? She was a dragon for gods sake, and despite the fact that she retained her equine-mass even in this form, it wasn't as though a giant flying lizard-beast was going to stay hidden for very long.

"The night is dark and full of terrors." Isopia called ominously, as she glided towards Rikyn, flying over the ocean and towards him. As she did, a creature stepped out of the waves. It was composed entirely of water, and looked like some bastard child of a bear and an octopus. With a silent roar, the watery thing ran towards the stallion and lunged, its body breaking into thousands of tiny droplets as it did so, aiming for his eyes and nose.

While this was happening, Isopia tried to glide towards the boy, and then dart to the side. She wanted to use the length of her draconian tail to assault whatever part of him ended up being pointed in her direction.

As this arcing attack came to an end, Isopia angled her body towards the sands, beginning the change back into her regular body. Large clawed feet fused together to create hooves which sunk into the moiste and frigid sand, and the wings on her back shrunk and became heavily feathered. The markings remained from body to body, as did the four horns that she sported on her head. Everything else however, was now decidedly equine. Isopia was taller than the stallion by a few inches, she could see that now that they were on equal footing. The demigoddess kept her wings splayed, as moving quickly on the sands was not something she was accustomed too, and while it would make her a larger target, it would also significantly help with her balance.

Grumpily, Hubris whistled at her and perched himself on a rock. He folded his arms across his scaled chest in a clear pantomime of I do not approve.

That Hubris had opted out of this little exercise in releasing steam is not unexpected, though it did encourage the rising feeling of anxious frustration that had exploded within Isopia. It only underscored her feeling of being utterly alone in what she was dealing with.

Her frustration increased as she received not the scream of terror she had thought her water-creature would encourage, and not even an oooof as her tail struck against the unicorn's chest and neck. Instead, she got some smarmy, smart-ass reply that made her want to childishly grab a handful of sand and shove it down the throat of the one who was speaking. It was a petty response, one that Isopia normally would have thought herself so far above, but hadn't this buffoon just been assaulted by a dragon? By a creature that literally formed itself from the frothing waves, and then left the ocean to attack him? She wanted to use this pair as a way to displace her anger at Volterra, and to dress it up as a life lesson for the stallion, so that she wouldn't have to feel guilty about it. She had wanted to hear him scream the way Volterra never would, and she had been robbed of that.

And so, still with the mental image of shoving his nose into the sand prominent in her mind, Isopia blundered on, completely forgetting the meager amount of battle-training she had learned up until this point as well as her familiarity with unicorns and just what a spear-like horn could do. She was blinded by her lack of emotional intelligence, and was unable to cope with the rising bile of hatred she could feel in the back of her throat any other way. 

Though Hubris could likely have warned her that Rikyn's current trajectory suggested he was going to try and use his horn against her, he refrained. If she had forgotten so much of what she always professed to stand for that she would willingly attack someone just so she could feel better, then she deserved to reap the outcome all on her own. 

Because she hadn't folded her wings in to her sides, it was through her right that Rikyn's horn pierced. A few of her secondary feathers fluttered to the ground as the thin skin there was skewered neatly through, and then torn unceremoniously as Rikyn's horn followed the trajectory of his head. Pain tore through Isopia's frustration with a shocking white-hot slap to her senses. She hadn't been expecting that at all, and as blood, tinted black by the night sky, trickled onto the cold sands, Isopia's mouth unconsciously formed an O of surprise. 

However that O quickly became a scream of pain as Rikyn's hooves connected flatly against her shoulder and wing joint. He was nimble, she could give him that, but it had been her stupefied mind that had truly allowed the attack to happen. How could she have been so stupid? So riled by emotions? So thoughtless and senseless?

In a word? Volterra.

The contrast of needle-sharp pain in her wing combined with the aching muscle-deep pain in her shoulder and joint made the demi-goddess's eyes water as a warble of pain left her lips. Quickly she tried to stifle the sound, but found that allowing the pain to exit her body as a scream actually helped, and so she gave into the sensation, bellowing her disapproval at her own stupidity and lamenting the wounds that now blazed across her right side. 

Her golden gaze could only see Rikyn's leonine tail and retreating haunches as his legs retracted against his body. She didn't know enough about sparring or if/how the sand would play into his decisions, and so Isopia couldn't even hazard a guess which way the unicorn might go. She was out of her depth, and the feeling of ignorance that came with that realization only further stoked the frustration still neatly kindled in her belly. With the same childish impatience she had felt when the stallion had first taunted her, Isopia reached out for the ground beneath his hooves. She wanted to create a dragon out of the earth upon which he was currently standing, hoping to simultaneously upset his balance , but also to force that earth to rise, and try to strike him in the stomach. However her aim was admittedly poor, for while her reaction time was quick, her strategic consideration was just as fast, and was therefore uninformed. 

"Baddie isn't even a word." She breathed, wincing as she tried to fold her wounded wing against her wounded shoulder. Defensively, she tried to position her left side towards him, to try and give her right a temporary respite.

Clearly she wouldn't be flying away from this battle.

Hubris tried to reach out a comforting clawed hand towards the cerndyr, whistling a low note of empathy as Rikyn bounded unceremoniously upon the sands. The dragon released a tensed breath he had been holding, his face a grimace. He was very nearly ready to intervene and stop this madness that both unicorn and tribrid seemed happy to keep perpetuating, but the constant flailing of horns and bodies kept him in place. At least for the moment.

The only indication that Rikyn was actually more wounded by her attack than he had been previously, was the lack of sarcastic retort that the demi-goddess was coming to associate with him. She had fully expected to hear some relativistic linguistic prattle about how if it came out of his mouth it was a word, or that words were a convention, or why should we think the sounds that came out of our mouths were proper words at all. Probably not that well formed, but something along those lines was what she had anticipated. The way that he gasped for air, moaning and stumbling across the sands broke through the fog of Volterra-fueled coldness that she had been carrying with her, and she began to agree with Hubris that it was about time to stop.

As he turned towards her, Isopia opened her mouth to voice precisely that. Oh sure, maybe she'd reiterate her early warning about walking alone in the dark, but she hadn't meant her initial attack to turn into this. She'd ... she'd ... she couldn't even really remember. It was as though the emotion that drove her to attack Rikyn in the first place, the jealous, bitter, anger that had directed her movements, had left a wake of selective amnesia now that it was beginning to dissipate. Isopia couldn't remember what it was to want to attack the unicorn for no apparent reason, and now that the facade was breaking, she similarly couldn't believe just how readily she believed her own faulty reasons for having done so.

"S-" Stop, was abruptly cut off, as her lips tightened. Isopia felt both frozen in place, as if she was a prisoner in her own body, but also wildly disconnected from her own flesh. Perhaps those were really the same sort of sensation, she didn't know. It was the first time she'd ever experienced this sort of inability to control her own body. As her balance began to shift, she felt her legs jut out beneath her, clearly guided by some sort of automatic stabilization response. Her eyes always blinked away the dryness that was setting over them, and she could feel her lungs inhaling steadily. 

It was as if her body was running autonomously, responding to basic sensory inputs without any reference to her mind's wishes. Rikyn was coming closer now, and through her eyes (which felt more like windows that she was looking out of now, rather than organs she could control), she wondered what her body would do when it was attacked. Probably nothing, she thought almost with pride. Isopia had focused her training precisely on ridding her body of its basic fight or flight responses, to be able to endure pain without flinching, to disregard the chemicals that comprised the feeling of fear. If he attacked her now, there would be no instinctive retaliation from her limbs. She was more than confident of that. 

And so, locked in a mountain of flesh that was no longer hers to control, Isopia merely watched as Rikyn moved to attack. She felt nothing other than mild academic interest about what was going to happen next, mingled with slight disappointment that she hadn't called out her suggestion that they halt sooner.

And then ... her body betrayed her.

Rikyn's magic began to wear off roughly about the time his hoof began to scrape down her cannon bone. Perhaps it was the sudden introduction of pain that reassembled the connection between her mind and her body, but slowly Isopia began to feel her body around her, rather than merely being inside of it. The pain wasn't as treacherous as that caused by his last attack however, and so whatever speed it might have lent to her regaining her body, was slowed. 

Without realizing she was doing it (she considered it mutiny), her quad-horned skull lowered as she shifted her weight onto her right leg to move closer to the unicorn without further damaging the leg he'd just attacked. Her horns meant to graze whatever part of him was closest - his neck or shoulder - as retaliation for the bruising and small graze that had appeared just under her knee. The lunge was stiff, as her right shoulder was still tender, but her body's movements were decisive, regardless of her mind's wishes.

It was hard to say what part of Isopia won: her mind, or her body. Her mind wanted her body to remain still, to accept Rikyn's attack and allow the pain to wash over her. How else was she supposed to learn to dull her senses so that her mind could focus on things that really mattered? This sort of Buddhist-mindset was one she worked towards often, and given that magical hold Rikyn had just had on her body, it was the perfect time to exercise her control. Her body however had other plans. It (because rather than feeling as thought her limbs were an extension of her mind, it now felt like some meat-suit doing what it wanted, hence the pronoun it), lunged, and Isopia could feel her skull lowering as her body instinctively tried to retaliate by striking out at the retreating unicorn.

It, however - her body - failed spectacularly. Perhaps it was because the connections between her brain and her limbs were still re-connecting after Rikyn's blast, or perhaps her body had underestimated just how far it could go on its own, without her mind to guide it, but pain suddenly gripped her neck and shoulders, as a painful tensing knot of nerves balled up near her wither. The muscles she had just pulled sent flares of liquid fire up her neck and down each shoulder. The demi-goddess felt as though knives were digging into her flesh, and as if that flesh were turning to stone. Once again she felt as though she couldn't move, only this time it had nothing to do with Rikyn.

So who was the real victor here? Iso's mind? Or or her body? You'll have to stay tuned, for both were in too much pain to decide.

A shining thought began to radiate through the wall of pain (amplified by the fact that Iso's head was still turned downwards, and so blood was quickly rushing to it): this was a mistake. All of the anger had left her body, and she was left with a sinking feeling that she should have known better. She should have known better than to let her emotional outrage at Volterra dictate her actions. Look where it had gotten her: her companion was publicly distancing himself from her actions, and here she was feeling paralyzed for the second time in a matter of only seconds, and all because she couldn't manage her feelings thanks to some boy.

Distantly she thought she heard Rikyn speaking, but it was muffled by the bwub bwub bwub sound made by the blood pounding in her ears. Isopia tried to raise just her eyes, but of course her skull followed the motion slightly. Immediately pain gripped her, escalating and radiating in painful and powerful vice grips of fire. Despite wanting to scream, Isopia instead held her breath (and even this small motion caused spiderwebs of tension to descend down her shoulders). Just as she was about to try and mentally ask Hubris what the unicorn had said, she felt her leg and shoulder muscles begin to twitch. It felt as though her legs were being dragged out from under her body, despite any cues from her brain. 

She knew this must be Rikyn, and despite her body's inclination to drop out from under her, the demigoddess could only imagine what that would do to the growing knot in her back. Surely a drop like that would only further aggravate the wound, and cause it to tighten up more of the surrounding muscles? Time to make a decision (to try and fight Rikyn's grip or allow herself to fall) was growing short. Her hooves had begun to slide on the sands, and in that moment, the decision to fight against the control, given the pain in her neck and shoulders seemed impossible.

Isopia tucked her nose to her chest as her legs were pulled from beneath her body. Surprisingly that position took most of the pressure off of her shoulders, and the tension released. For the few seconds until she hit the ground anyways. As she assumed, the jarring motion of her body hitting the sand beneath her caused pain to flare anew throughout her shoulders, wither, and neck.

Unable to see where Rikyn was (and because Hubris was apparently still not helping her), Isopia was forced to scramble to a standing position despite the chorus of pain pounding drums of blood in her ears. Roses and stars flashed and bloomed before her eyes as she spied Rikyn retreating down the beach.

The Mountain groaned, and let her head hang low again so that it would release some of the tension on her neck.

"That was dumb." She muttered to her hooves.