Chaos was alive and well, prizing apart the very walls of reality with his wickedness. Before my eyes he wreaked asunder the world I had been borne to. Helovia. Fleeting images of an icy steppe, a young two-toned filly lie hidden amongst the rocks, nestled away from the raging cold. Then there is a mare, sturdy and beautiful in her seal-grey silks, splashes of red bleeding up her chest and thighs as she meanders through the tide. ‘Syrena…‘ Oh Syrena and her precious soul, my knight in shining armor if you will. I can remember every detail of her face, the way her lips would always twitch with that smile that never quite was. How great was the misdeed I dealt her in the last several months. Disappearing without a trace after leaving her with a promise, truly, was Kaos the villain here?

Yes, I believe so, even with my guilty conscious. Here the creature seemed to become more smoke than anything, grey and sickly, billowing out to encompass anything and everything. The entire world was enshrouded in a film of sticky darkness, as far as the eye could see, maybe even beyond it. I have seen Kaos once, although at the time he went by a different name, and his appearance was far more pleasing. Then I was nothing more than a slip of a girl, dashing off from my appointed guide in an effort to prove herself as more than just the cripple. Now that cripple meant nothing as horse after horse fell on the smoky blade of Kaos’ wrath. Like a needle and thread, he rendered through flesh and bone, spearing, quartering, tearing. Countless legends, horses I have only ever heard of, fell into pieces with hardly a swipe of his incorporeal wrist.

For a moment I was brought to remember Sialia, my mother, my dirtiest secret.  I wondered, standing there, legs atremble, ‘what would she think of me now?‘. And with a distinct stirring of the air, I exhaled deeply, and decided I no longer cared. What mattered now would decide my fate. Kaos spoke of home, what home? What home could he possibly offer those he so effortlessly slew? If I had taken the time I might have noticed my own Gods waging war above my head. I would have seen their valiant efforts to stop the unstoppable force of Kaos, one last time. Instead I focused my attention between those dying and those escaping into the pitch mirror that seemed to swallow everything it touched. Several horses had already thrown themselves into its depths while others milled about, uncertain of the bottomless void. Pale eyes danced back to Kaos and his acid malevolence, and back to the hole. Life? Or death.

With shaking hooves, I willed my crooked legs forward. Through sweat-slicked bodies I went, pushing through the ones that would not move of their own accord, throwing my head up and over the spines of many. I have grown much in my absence, for most it would be impossible to recognize the spindly thing they once knew. At least those that bothered to know me. No longer was I the short, damaged little thing to be pitied. No, I was Bathsheba, daughter of Sialia and some rapscallion bastard I never met. I was not weak, I was not spineless, I was not to be underestimated. I close my eyes, swallowing thickly, and step into the unknown.



"Talk."
(ooc - I had this written up like, a half hour after this posted, but work? I'm too tired to change the little details so here it is *waves flag*)