It seemed her herdmate would be starting the fight immediately.

The swoosh of his wings and a faint whiff of his scent were the only warnings she got. Whirling around, she was greeted with the sight of the enormous bay bearing down on her, leaving her seconds to react. The sight sent her heartbeat into overdrive, forcing adrenaline through her body and driving her to action. She pushed herself to left, hooves digging into the rock below as she scrabbled away, instinctively bracing her muscles for 17 hands of horseflesh to collide with her body. It never came, though, as Gaucho landed heavily on her right, immediately drawing his head in, then charging forward, antlers lowered to her shoulder level and dully gleaming in the sunlight.

She had anticipated getting hurt in this fight, especially with a sparmate such as Gaucho, but she needed to avoid those antlers like the plague, not to mention the snake slung between them. All the better practice for going against a unicorn, she would reflect later. Right now, though, there was nothing but action on her mind, animal instinct pushing some of the sentience to the side for a moment.

She used her front hooves to push her front half away from the charging stallion, making a sharp turn to the left. While she was able to avoid taking any injury to her jugular (no telling if those antlers would've simply jabbed her or punctured her skin) she did feel Gaucho's antler's dig into the right side of her shoulder and briefly scratch her neck, as she had been a fraction of a second too late moving away. They raked painfully across her skin, opening several horizontal slashes that, while not deep, were very painful. So much for relying on agility.

It wasn't as easy as she had anticipated, ignoring the desire to simply throw herself into a fight and hang the consequences. A mixture of emotions rose within her, anger at the pain of her wounds that had risen up immediately and unintended, the excitement of the fight, and at the very bottom of her mind, a slight worry that if she couldn't hold up in this fight, she couldn't hold up to Crowley. The idea of loosing to that smug-mouthed ass caused her panic to grow, while becoming something akin to fury at the same time. Even if she lost to Gaucho, she would not loose to Crowley.

She made to charge after the bay, only managing a few steps before his hooves went up, thrashing the air in front of her face, causing the mare to rapidly jerk her head back and skitter to a stop. Her nose was now aching horribly where Gaucho's hoof had clipped it. A trickle of blood began from her right nostril.

Trying to calm her rapidly-pulsating heart, she gathered herself again, paused to size up the stallion, then made a diagonal charge to the right, this time making sure to sidestep his flailing hooves. Trusting, perhaps groundlessly, that approaching him from the rear would require him to turn to bring his antlers into play, she leapt forward and opened her jaws to land a bite where his wing met his shoulder, trying to bite the muscle and not merely the feathers. While it was unlikely to be as dangerous as an antler jab, she had bitten as hard she could, hoping it would play to her advantage. For as she completed her bite and released, her wings unfurled like twin indigo banners. She downstroked as much as she could without her long wings hitting the ground and bending her feathers, pulling herself away from the bay, then turned tail and galloped toward the edge of the plateau. With a few powerful flaps, she had jumped into the sky to circle over the plateau. She had turned it into an aerial battle, as Kri had done to her during the roan's first spar in the Throat. They would test eachother in the air now. Let them be the hawk and the sparrow.

Words: 671
Summary: Aryel tries to avoid his antlers but takes a jab to the right shoulder, gets clipped on the nose by his hooves, then makes a diagonal charge at his right side and bites sharply at his wing muscles before turning away from him and taking flight.

Walk walk walk walk.
"Talk talk talk talk."