[open quest] you'll shake and shudder in surprise; round II

[Fret]

i'm torn from the truth that holds my soul
i'm down in the grave where I belong --

The longer he is held captive in his own body, the more a strange emotion begins to take hold.
It is fear, though he does not recognize it right away.

Fear is not something he really felt, but he had seen it plenty of times on the faces of others. They did not like the way he appeared as more monster than horse, or perhaps they were of the rare few that managed to escape when being hunted by the others like him.

He knows that if he could look at his own face that he would see, for perhaps the first time, a ring of white around his black eyes, when he sees the others being guided towards portals, and his legs once again refuse to move. When that same invisible force compels him forward he tries once more to fight against it, his wings jerking awkwardly, but before he can comprehend it he is falling into nothingness, and landing Elsewhere.

The tether between himself and his tormentor snaps in a way that is nearly tangible, but the relief that rushes through him is short lived.
This place is far too beautiful — the green is too lush, the flowers too vibrant, and the floral scent that hangs heavy in the humid air is too strong.

Nothing so idyllic had ever existed without consequences, but there is no going back.

He walks, and while he is not sure for how long, it is long enough for him to realize what he had thought was nightfall was simply the sun being unable to penetrate the canopy of the trees. The world is plunged into an impossible darkness as real night comes, and the shapes of the creatures that rustle and creep come to him in blurred shapes of reds, yellows, and greens with the aid of his thermal vision. Some of them he can recognize — a slinking jaguar, a roosting bird, the hum of insect wings. Others are strange and unknown, but he avoids them all the best he can, tripping over the web of vines and brush that make up the pathless ground.

He hears only the hush of their wings at first, and then they are flashes of red streaking through the trees. They swarm him before he has a chance to grasp what they are, hundreds of them latching to what pieces of his skin they can find once they discover they cannot penetrate his armor. They are larger than the bats he is accustomed to back home, and far more vicious. It is not just his blood they are after, ripping and devouring his flesh. His tail, barbed and poisonous, is no match for the sheer swarm of them, and soon the ground around him is torn and bloodied as he twists and turns in effort to dislodge them.

His undoing is his own blood; acidic and corrosive, it eats away at his armor, a weakness the mutant bats gleefully take advantage of.

When they are done he is left as only blood and bone, as he stumbles from the thick canopy of trees and into a small clearing. The moon hangs in the sky, casting a silver glow across the wide, rushing currents of the river. In the moonlight his bones glint, black just as his armor had once been, and beneath the slick of remaining blood there is the faintest galaxy tint.

-- f r e t