Even with my rich, haughty voice, it held little effect on the stallion I had come to refer to within my mind as 'Death'. He, I felt, was an embodiment of evil, a cloak of choking evil following him like a plague. The sense of darkness seemed to seep through his pores, intoxicate the wild air around him. Brittle death, turning the grass yellow beneath him, the waves of nefarious powers glittering around him, nearly visible. And coming with the invisible wings of darkness came the pitiless stallion's voice, a voice bland yet somehow coloured with cold malice, even more cold than the air in the steppe. An unwelcome shudder runs down my back, down my bloodied wings and stiff legs. Who was this stallion, dragging me along as if he had all the rights in the world? As my thoughts were setting like a sunset, a sudden feeling hit me. Darkness infested my body, a thing too tangible for any sense of safety. I wanted to panic, to thrash around, to writhe and cry out for help and scream for someone, anyone, to come return the joy to my body filled with black. Black as night, black as the reaper himself come to cut me loose from this world. It wasn’t pain, no, it was much worse, it was as if every urge to live was being extracted from my body, replaced with an injection of cold death within my pores, coming to suck the soul from my body itself. I could feel it, feel this necromancer’s magic on my ethereal body, greedily draining me. My life was dripping through my skin, like a water slipping through slender fingers, quickly yet smoothly and flowing down.

Yet Death's embodiment withdrew his hungry hands from my mind, leaving me choking for air, gasping, filled with dread at his next movement. Uncertainty and terror is flooding me- my brain told me it had only been a few seconds, yet my heart was screaming lifetimes. I do not dare speak, for fear of that all-consuming black, stripping me of life. In fact, as I think this, my legs weaken. "Leave me free, sorcerer." I manage to chock, before I drop to my knees, glistening white powder chilling my skin, soaking through to the tender warmth within. Weak. Weak as a young filly, weak as my Nayati when I had first found her. Hot shame fills me, a simmering pot of anger and fury, and I struggle back up to my swollen legs. Pain and terror seems to be eating away at me, pulling me away already. No, Svetlana, no! I screech at myself, mentally reconnecting each brainwave.

I hardly notice the black unicorn, but one of my ears is distracted by the crunch of snow underhoof. My head whips around to the feathered and toothed mane, takes in the terrifyingly dark look of the mare. Yet I fear her less than Deimos, the stallion who can take your very soul, let you suffer... I shake away the dark thoughts, fluff up my wings against my silver back. Despite my fear, despite the mare's jaunts at me, her crooning voice speaking of a thousand horrors she was ready to commit, I taunt her. "Is that a unicorn I see? Too afraid to take on a mare who actually has her strength in place? Sweetheart, you should be able to see I will not give in to your fucking torture, asshole." My words turn into a snarl, a snap. I'm the cornered deer, surrounded by the wolves, tossing my antlers, and lunging forward, but I'm pinned down. I grin while I send secretive parts of my mind into lockdown, and hobble a few steps closer to her, each step sending a fresh dagger of agony through my legs, shooting red-hot through my wings and broken body. "You fucked up, honey." I spit at her black feet, eyes dark with hate.