Her vision eventually begins to clear, and she relinquishes her hold on Ker's eyes. Her buck doesn't meet with quite the success that she'd hoped, but she is already counting herself lucky that she managed to land even one blow upon their esteemed General. Oizys does not admire many people, but she admires Erebos. He is the embodiment of the cold, calculated killer; she wonders if he's taken a life, or if his stoic demeanour is all an act to cover the squishy mess of feels inside.

She knows exactly what that's like.

Suddenly there's a screech from overhead. In the chaos of having her eyes stolen by her gargoyle bonded, Ker has allowed her defences to lapse. The first she knows about the kitsune's attack is when the savage teeth rake into her skin, carving through feathers and into flesh, into muscle. Alas, that is the perils of their bond; whilst Oizys can utilise her companion's assets at will, it also means she can feel all of the raptor's pain, too. The eruption of agony through her body makes her grit her teeth and hiss, landing from her buck and standing still for a moment as she imagines cuts erupting on her own flesh as they do on Ker's. The unfortunate eagle finds her chest and underbelly badly gored by Orsino's teeth, loosening several feathers and sending her flight path into an ungainly zig-zag as she fights to escape the fox's clutches. Ker desperately tries to right herself and regain control of her wings, but her vision is growing blurry with the blood loss and her strength saps with worrying speed. A stalactite looms ahead of her, like a dagger of black rock in her path.

In the darkness, Oizys hears a scream, a thud, then silence.

Panic grips her and she swings to her right, staring into the gloom in an attempt to see what fate has befallen her bonded. There's an eerie quiet in her mind where the raptor's consciousness usually lies, and for the first time in months, the gargoyle is....scared. It is an odd feeling, easily mistaken with the tiredness she feels from the long and arduous fight - weak limbs, sweating skin, frothing mouth. She cannot convince herself that these symptoms are purely down to tiredness, though....she's a sweating, shaking wreck because her Ker is hurt, unconscious, maybe dead. Surely not dead...she can feel some thread from the eagle even if it's faint and pitifully weak.

From fear comes anger. How dare that bastard fox cause such wicked injury to the queen of the skies? Oizys whirls around, ready to strike....then, without warning, there's pain. It's abject, ungodly torture that harks back to Toulouse's magic, although this time she didn't need to look Erebos in the eye to incite his ire....she throws back her head and screams, shaking the cave around them, making her throat raw with the volume of the sound, yet nothing brings any relief from the unbearable agony that the General has inflicted upon her.

Weakly, the mare staggers forwards to where she hopes Erebos will be, and lunges blindly forwards with her horns to try and stab any part of him she can reach. Her eyes are screwed shut with the pain, yet deep beneath the abject torment he's inflicted on her, she can still feel the bubblings of rage born from his savage attack upon Ker. Her scream turns to a guttural snarl as she summons her magic, and the air next to her suddenly crackles with static....from nothingness, a bear made of sizzling blue-black electricity bursts into existence, its jaws open in a silent roar and its bulk so formidable that it matches Oizys for size. Exhaustion overwhelms the young mare, a combination of Ker's grievous wounds, her own lack of stamina and the body-destroying agony that Erebos is inflicting on her, yet there's enough about her to command the bear to move. Her limbs are shaky, her vision blurry, but dammit, she will impress her General!

The creature lumbers forwards, hunting for Erebos's front - it lifts its great bulk, aiming to wrap its sizzling forelegs around the stallion's shoulders in a torturous hug, whilst its jaws snap towards his face in an attempt to inflict vicious shock-burns there, too. Oizys knows that one touch from her spark-beasts is enough to give a nasty shock, and even if this fight ends in defeat for her, she's determined that Erebos will feel her wrath at least once.

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@Erebos !

3/3 - 747 words