eat sh*t and die } LUPEI

[Ribcage]

It's the eye of the tiger
It's the thrill of the fight
Rising up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor
Stalks his prey in the night
And he's watching us all with the eye of the tiger

He snarls, turning his sinewy body this way and that – his hazel eyes catching hers, their throaty rumbles meeting each other behind the crack and hiss of fire and the gyration of everything around them. Pure chaos. When she erupts with clones he turns to each and tips back further on his haunches, spitting and lunging towards them. When she squares off with him and launches herself from the circle of her creations he takes her weight unevenly and unprepared. Her claws dig, notching holes in his tough, striped skin.

He hisses.

They thunder. They come together in a grapple, fixed and soldered by the steady and sharp lick of unsheathed claws. She lands a deep blow in his shoulder, he only hope he can gift her the same, pulling her close to him and shoving his weight into his assault. They go up in fur and gnashing teeth, until she goes for his eye. He jerks his head back just in time. Bitch. It could have been anything but that. It could have been his ear or his lips, or the softer parts of his armpits and groin. But not the eyes. Be bites at her, aiming ever for the throat but manages only, maybe, to glance her sandy coat. And then she sidles away and he pushes off, disentangled from each other. 

He heaves for a second but his respite is jarred. One of her lionesses makes for him, rearing up and he meets her, their claws both making for each other’s faces. But she is smaller, and she is weaker. She leaves a sting under his eyes, blood spilling over the edge of the unclean cut. He throws himself at her, incensed, taking her to the ground. He grabs her throat and holds, tighter and tighter like the grasp of a vice. He does not wait until she suffocates, he knows he cannot leave himself vulnerable for that long. So she shakes and bites down and he punctures the windpipe between his teeth – crushes it and leaves her fighting for the air that escapes and never makes it through.

Ribcage turns to the bay, just as she screams and then she bursts like an imploding star, and he turns from the brightness, some panic allayed by the fact that she has likely blinded not just him, but everyone else – friend and beastly foe. He reels back, blinking and cursing.

He knows what it is like to not see.
He knows his other senses so keenly.

But he can hear everything and nothing. Screaming and hissing, he clears his eyesight and orients himself just in time to see her becomes fat boe. But before he can think to pounce and taste snakemeat, she falls away and becomes nothing but water. He flinches back from it, stepping away from its encroachment towards his paws. Lightning strikes, and it lifts his fur on end and rattles his brain, his body tensing under the immensity of the air pressure and then springing away from the sound.

(What the fuck is this shit.)

Then, from the corner of his eyes he sees (seemingly) self-assembling great, red works of stone – horse in every way, but for their hard and ruddy surface, the way their stone skin and bones makes their features eerily lifeless. He coils back, this time he lacks the confidence and the piss and vinegar rushing his veins. When one comes to him, he thinks only to dodging its crushing hoof and jump. He makes to clamp on to its haunches, to hold until it tires itself out and falls. Falls, so that he can clamp its throat shut it from outside until its tongue lolls out. But his claws send up sparks when he tries to grab on, he would break a tooth on its hide. His hind legs engage, fighting to keep on but it throws him. He slips from its hind and rolls, receiving only a glancing blow (a glancing blow from stone, and it will bruise his ribs, indeed).

He is smart enough to know when a fight is not – could never be – his.
He rights himself, sucking air into his lungs and moves away, runs and dodges the thrashing of bodies. He finds a place, a cradle of ash and burnt ground, where he can breath. Cress comes, somewhere where he cannot see her, and he does not notice the sting in his ribs fade away between loud heartbeats. Nor the way the exposed skin under his eye gathered with scar tissue impossibly fast, stitching together. he is too flush with adrenaline. He suddenly wonders if bother and sister are still where he left them, safe and sound.

He remains on sidelines, his wide eyes darting to and fro, as overhead storm clouds gather and rain threatens to fall and bog them down with more sucking mud and damp ash.

TIGERCAGE
Atrox x Crone

mentioned are @[prague] and sort of @[Vanquish] but not really. He's just chilling on the sidelines because I don't know who wants to fight a tiger? Feel free to pick a fight with him.