11-27-2017, 06:07 PM
<center><table bgcolor=000000 width="490" height="0%" cellpadding="15" cellspacing=”15" style="border-color:#000000; border-width:1px; border-style: solid;"><tr><td align="left" valign="top" width="490"><DIV STYLE=p align="justify"><font style="font-family:times;color:#778899;font-size:10pt;letter-spacing:px; line-height:13pt"<p align=justify>The nightmare is only beginning.
Their shrieks and moans deafen him; they spit and slice into him with their blunt hooves and flashing teeth, laughter rising up from their throats as his blood and clumps of hair is tasted on their devilish tongues. At one point their bodies seem to intertwine like they had before, as if they were not each separate beings but one entity - slithering together in ecstasy whenever he screams in pain, releasing him from their grasp for a moment, and then hurling forward together once more in a wave, only to elicit more brutal beatings. He cannot even see their faces anymore - they are only blurs of gnashing teeth stained with blood, sweat, and darkness.
Balto is not sure the exact moment he fell to his knees, but suddenly they are above him and he is looking up at their grim expressions, their cackling and open mouths pulling at his skin and muscle, slicing into the thickness of his shoulders and haunches easily with him beneath them. Blood is warm and metallic in his mouth as his ribs crack beneath their weight, crunching sickeningly as they snap. The mob is no longer interested in watching him scream - they want to watch him die.
How he has not already passed out, the blue roan stallion is unsure. With weary eyes he watches them yip giddily as he falls to his side with defeat, Aravis’ grandeur smile staring down at him. <i>‘Pity,’</i> she hisses at him and he is certain his soul shatters, but the pain he feels is one of his family digging into the side of his barrel, just beneath where his shoulder meets his leg, almost as if searching for his heart that lays encased beneath the muscle and bone of his chest. Balto groans, eyes rolling upwards as the loss of blood begins to wane on him, but their cheers bring him out of delirium for just a moment as Corin’s bloated and dead body somewhat bursts - fresh, red blood spills on the crowd and onto Balto, seeping into his eyes and nose and wounds, filling up the large cavity in his chest. He gasps and sputters, blinded by the sticky liquid and choking on the thick, metallic blood of the deceased.
Darkness comes.
<I>Finally, I’m dead.</i>
From the darkness, however, comes a guttural snarl.
Balto does not move, for he can’t. Through slow blinking eyes he catches the scene that unfolds above him - a massive beast, with dripping white fangs and paws as big as a horse’s face, rips the horde of equines from his body, slamming them with ease against the stone walls that surround him. Balto wheezes as he attempts to breathe and tries to stand the second their bodies weren’t on him, stained red with Corin’s drying blood. Some attempt to crawl back and finish the job, adding swift kicks and bites to Balto’s battered body when the tiger was turned. This only angered the giant feline more and with one quick and terrifying crunch, the jaw of Rilian flies away from the rest of his face, clattering to the floor and falling still before Balto’s eyes. The stallion scrambles upwards, standing feebly as blood pours from the wound in his side, both a mixture of his own and Corin’s.
His breath comes in quick spurts, as if his lungs were ready to give up and collapse.
Aravis stands unharmed, and though Balto thought she would be staring down the beast that has just annihilated her family, her venomous eyes are poised on him instead. His blood (<i>how very little was left</i>) runs cold beneath her ominous, ravenous stare. He has forgotten all about the ferocious behemoth of a tiger that stands to the back of him now, stained with the fresh blood of the corpses that lay haphazardly across the cave’s floor, growling incessantly.
Silence engulfs the cave, and for a while the only sound is the tiger’s threatening rumble and Balto’s terrible wheezing breath, eyes wide and rolling white.
An ear-splitting scream breaks the silence from above as Corin’s once dead body now writhes within the vines that hold him - and then, they all begin to move. Aravis is unphased by their moans and attempts to climb to her, her red stare looking at Balto expectantly. Finally, Corin’s body breaks free from the vines and clatters to the ground, snapping sickeningly against the stone. Head sprouting stalactites and completely bent in an unnatural way, Corin positions himself beside Aravis.
Balto watches in pure fear as some of them rise (<i>the ones who still had legs</i>) - Rilian (<i>jawless</i>), Caspian (<i>throat sliced open and still profusely spilling</i>), Ambrose (<i>shattered skull, with bulging eyes</i>) - to join Aravis. Some of them still attempt to get to her - Jadis (<i>separated spine, dragging herself with her two front legs</i>), Shasta (<i>right foreleg completely missing from the shoulder, torn from its socket</i>), Bree (<i>the spirited yearling with all four legs snapped, hobbling on sickening crunches as she still attempts to use them</i>), and then lastly his sweet Eridi (<i>opened up from the belly, innards tangled within her mangled legs</i>). Even the body of Hwin finds its way into the horde, the smell of burnt and decaying flesh filling the cave as the headless chestnut arrives.
The stallion lets out a cry of despair, which is met with blank stares of the undead and Aravis’ deadly splintering voice.
<I>‘I gave you a choice,’</i> says Aravis, her voice acidic and eerily monotone. <i>‘You betrayed us—now suffer the consequences.’</i>
She is no longer Aravis (<i>was she ever?</i>) but instead becomes the intense red glow that he had seen earlier. It vibrates with power and sends a chill throughout the cave.
But then -
<b><i>“NO!”</b></i> The tiger roars. <i><b>“This soul is mine!”</b></i>
The light from the tiger is golden in color, brilliant and bold within the darkness and the bright red of Aravis. Without much thought (<i>or much choice</i>), Balto had begun to try to move away from the group of undead and from Aravis’ bold red light, stumbling upon the cave floor in attempts to flee into the darkness - but the tiger’s light is in the way, blinding and white-hot, and strikes the stallion right in the gaping hole in his chest. <BR><BR><center> -- <font color=777777><BR><i>once the king of beasts but now they feast<BR>on thoughts beneath his vacant crown.</center></font></i></a></center></font></table></center>
Their shrieks and moans deafen him; they spit and slice into him with their blunt hooves and flashing teeth, laughter rising up from their throats as his blood and clumps of hair is tasted on their devilish tongues. At one point their bodies seem to intertwine like they had before, as if they were not each separate beings but one entity - slithering together in ecstasy whenever he screams in pain, releasing him from their grasp for a moment, and then hurling forward together once more in a wave, only to elicit more brutal beatings. He cannot even see their faces anymore - they are only blurs of gnashing teeth stained with blood, sweat, and darkness.
Balto is not sure the exact moment he fell to his knees, but suddenly they are above him and he is looking up at their grim expressions, their cackling and open mouths pulling at his skin and muscle, slicing into the thickness of his shoulders and haunches easily with him beneath them. Blood is warm and metallic in his mouth as his ribs crack beneath their weight, crunching sickeningly as they snap. The mob is no longer interested in watching him scream - they want to watch him die.
How he has not already passed out, the blue roan stallion is unsure. With weary eyes he watches them yip giddily as he falls to his side with defeat, Aravis’ grandeur smile staring down at him. <i>‘Pity,’</i> she hisses at him and he is certain his soul shatters, but the pain he feels is one of his family digging into the side of his barrel, just beneath where his shoulder meets his leg, almost as if searching for his heart that lays encased beneath the muscle and bone of his chest. Balto groans, eyes rolling upwards as the loss of blood begins to wane on him, but their cheers bring him out of delirium for just a moment as Corin’s bloated and dead body somewhat bursts - fresh, red blood spills on the crowd and onto Balto, seeping into his eyes and nose and wounds, filling up the large cavity in his chest. He gasps and sputters, blinded by the sticky liquid and choking on the thick, metallic blood of the deceased.
Darkness comes.
<I>Finally, I’m dead.</i>
From the darkness, however, comes a guttural snarl.
Balto does not move, for he can’t. Through slow blinking eyes he catches the scene that unfolds above him - a massive beast, with dripping white fangs and paws as big as a horse’s face, rips the horde of equines from his body, slamming them with ease against the stone walls that surround him. Balto wheezes as he attempts to breathe and tries to stand the second their bodies weren’t on him, stained red with Corin’s drying blood. Some attempt to crawl back and finish the job, adding swift kicks and bites to Balto’s battered body when the tiger was turned. This only angered the giant feline more and with one quick and terrifying crunch, the jaw of Rilian flies away from the rest of his face, clattering to the floor and falling still before Balto’s eyes. The stallion scrambles upwards, standing feebly as blood pours from the wound in his side, both a mixture of his own and Corin’s.
His breath comes in quick spurts, as if his lungs were ready to give up and collapse.
Aravis stands unharmed, and though Balto thought she would be staring down the beast that has just annihilated her family, her venomous eyes are poised on him instead. His blood (<i>how very little was left</i>) runs cold beneath her ominous, ravenous stare. He has forgotten all about the ferocious behemoth of a tiger that stands to the back of him now, stained with the fresh blood of the corpses that lay haphazardly across the cave’s floor, growling incessantly.
Silence engulfs the cave, and for a while the only sound is the tiger’s threatening rumble and Balto’s terrible wheezing breath, eyes wide and rolling white.
An ear-splitting scream breaks the silence from above as Corin’s once dead body now writhes within the vines that hold him - and then, they all begin to move. Aravis is unphased by their moans and attempts to climb to her, her red stare looking at Balto expectantly. Finally, Corin’s body breaks free from the vines and clatters to the ground, snapping sickeningly against the stone. Head sprouting stalactites and completely bent in an unnatural way, Corin positions himself beside Aravis.
Balto watches in pure fear as some of them rise (<i>the ones who still had legs</i>) - Rilian (<i>jawless</i>), Caspian (<i>throat sliced open and still profusely spilling</i>), Ambrose (<i>shattered skull, with bulging eyes</i>) - to join Aravis. Some of them still attempt to get to her - Jadis (<i>separated spine, dragging herself with her two front legs</i>), Shasta (<i>right foreleg completely missing from the shoulder, torn from its socket</i>), Bree (<i>the spirited yearling with all four legs snapped, hobbling on sickening crunches as she still attempts to use them</i>), and then lastly his sweet Eridi (<i>opened up from the belly, innards tangled within her mangled legs</i>). Even the body of Hwin finds its way into the horde, the smell of burnt and decaying flesh filling the cave as the headless chestnut arrives.
The stallion lets out a cry of despair, which is met with blank stares of the undead and Aravis’ deadly splintering voice.
<I>‘I gave you a choice,’</i> says Aravis, her voice acidic and eerily monotone. <i>‘You betrayed us—now suffer the consequences.’</i>
She is no longer Aravis (<i>was she ever?</i>) but instead becomes the intense red glow that he had seen earlier. It vibrates with power and sends a chill throughout the cave.
But then -
<b><i>“NO!”</b></i> The tiger roars. <i><b>“This soul is mine!”</b></i>
The light from the tiger is golden in color, brilliant and bold within the darkness and the bright red of Aravis. Without much thought (<i>or much choice</i>), Balto had begun to try to move away from the group of undead and from Aravis’ bold red light, stumbling upon the cave floor in attempts to flee into the darkness - but the tiger’s light is in the way, blinding and white-hot, and strikes the stallion right in the gaping hole in his chest. <BR><BR><center> -- <font color=777777><BR><i>once the king of beasts but now they feast<BR>on thoughts beneath his vacant crown.</center></font></i></a></center></font></table></center>