"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
She is angry. Furious. Her wrath radiates in the air around you before she even arrives. And when she does, you can see her for the vengeful creature she is. A goddess. Tales do her no justice, nor do they tell the full truth. Tales are always just that… tales.
But you had killed her creature, and she is not pleased.
It does not matter whether you had summoned another to do your bidding. It does not matter if you had not laid one hoof on him yourself, or punched your way through his guts. Either way she knows - it was you. You are the reason her creature is dead, and she wants nothing more than to take the price of it from your skin.
She appears as something different to all who behold her - whatever they find most pleasing and fearsome. Her voice echoes strangely, as though many are trying to speak at once, a cacophony of sound. Her language is ancient and impossible to understand, but somehow she makes her will known to you.
You have killed my creature, she seems to say. And for that you must pay your due.
She looks at the body of the large crab (Carcinus, his name seems to echo in your mind), and a moment later the thing dissolves much as the twins had before. It is nothing more than a trail of stardust now, whisked away into the sky by unseen hands to twinkle for eternity in the heavens.
When she turns back to you, there is a dark promise in her impossible gaze.
Between one blink and the next, she has taken you (put you back together, made you whole and healed - she is wrath, but she is fair). When you open your eyes once more, you are in a pit. Above you she stares pitilessly (is she smiling? Frowning? It is hard to tell, her features are not quite like anything you are used to). But in that gaze, you find either death or salvation.
She is offering you something.
Slay the beast, and I will return you where you belong, she seems to say. It is easy enough, is it not? But when you turn, you find whatever powers you possess bound, wings and horns and armor gone as if they had never existed. You are bare, only yourself and your wits. Before you stalks a lion, massive and primitive and gorgeous. Deadly. It had not been there a moment ago, but it is now. Slay the beast, she had said. And you know you have no other options.
Welcome to round three warriors! You have defeated Carcinus, but in so doing, you have brought upon yourself the wrath of Hera. As punishment, she has taken you away and thrown you in a pit with the Nemean Lion. Now you must defeat it to go home.
Hera has healed you of any injuries or wounds, but in turn has removed from you every trait you possess. You are to fight the Lion as nothing more than yourself. The design and layout of the pit are up to you (are there stones? Sticks? Trees?). Your goal is simple however - kill the Lion. Oh, but one small problem… his skin is impenetrable.
Good luck!
@Obscene and @Chel have been eliminated. Hera tries to take you, but something goes wrong. Instead you end up back in Beqanna with only a constellation marking to tell your tale. You can pick from Gemini, Cancer, or Leo for your marking.
Notes:
Your post must end with the Lion’s death (I know, but the gods love death).
The Lion’s skin is effectively impenetrable and cannot be pierced.
Hera has bound all of your traits, including your physical ones. They are gone completely. But, on the bright side, she has healed you of any injuries you sustained in the last couple rounds.
Please keep your posts under 900 words. Again, going a little over is fine, just not a lot.
Temporary defects will be given if you fail to respond. If you need to drop out, just let me know and you won’t receive a defect.
This is the final round! Have fun! I’m loving everyone’s creativity.
Deadline for this round is Friday, July 30th at 11:59:59 PM CST.
The horrible Undead, raised by magic and blood mixing in the seawater that swallowed them, tear Carcinus to pieces, but Sintra, half-eaten, losing blood and consciousness as the shallow surf swirls around her, cannot watch for long. Her vision grays out and the tumbling roar of the ocean in her ears becomes a dull hum, and then she falls back into the woolen black embrace of Death. Unlike in her homeland where Death is nearly just another sort of Life, in this place, it’s nothing, not even darkness or silence. Perhaps the Men here have an Afterlife, and maybe even the animals, but she is not part of this world and her soul would not know where to go, or perhaps is not inclined to find the Way.
Inclination, though, does not matter to Hera. There is nothing at all, and then there is Hera, burning bright against Sintra’s sluggish brain. Fury crackles across her livid brow like electricity, it makes her glow like a dying star, casting light against the backdrop of Nothing and Nowhere, and Sintra, unwillingly aware of the goddess, looks instinctively away. Her stilled heart has no strength to face divine rage. She accepts the blame readily, though, almost eagerly. Her fault. Yes. That black head nods stiffly. The iridescent rainbows that coat the Undead are enough to damn her in anyone’s eyes. It does not matter that she is sorry, that she had meant to be the only one that died. It does not matter that the gods are the ones that brought her here in the first place, because the gods will always do as they please and she, mortal and powerless, will always be the one that is punished.
Dull, reverent, acceptance is not the companion of bravery. Fear thrills across Sintra’s skin, cold fingers stroking her skin and her throat and clenching her heart in a boney, crushing fist. Her breath trembles when she draws it, quickly and unevenly, into lungs that a moment ago were full of saltwater and still burn with the Life that billows into them again. Again.
She’s whole again, but strange. Normal and strange, her skin opaque, flecked grey-blue like her dam but littered with golden scars. One long-missing eye has been replaced (she cannot see, but, like the god-healed scars, it is a golden orb that flashes in the bright Mediterranean sun) and the span of her vision takes her aback. Only for a moment. Only long enough for her to see the arena, to see the lion and the thunderstorm of Hera’s dazzling, disorienting face.
Slay the lion, comes the voice that rings in her hidden bones, and you can go home.
Sintra does not need to see her heart to know how it quails at this demand. She is tired of killing, and there is so little reward in the promise of home. The golden cat stalks forward, brazen and unafraid, and the sun-bright hairs of his mane are full of terrifying music when he shakes his head, when he lifts it in the air and draws in the scent of her flesh. He is hungry and confident, as monsters are, and as tall as the roan mare whose attention he commands.
No need to rush, his gait suggests, tail slipping lazily through the air, deadly promise in his fangs. He does not charge her when she looks away, when she finally tears her eyes away from his unbreakable skin and casts about the ring for a plan, an escape, a way. The sides are steep and slick without an entrance or exit – which is no impediment to the gods, but a death sentence to a frightened mare – the ground within torn up by cruel claws, littered with rock and bone and a few well-scratched pomegranate trees for shade. He does not charge but continues the measured, inexorable approach, knowing that there is no escape and he need only avoid her hooves until she is too tired to use them.
The roan draws back until the scarred trees scrape against her flank and their fruit-laden boughs drape across her neck and back. There’s a sense of safety here, an unwarranted one, she knows, but it blossoms in her chest even as the lion and Hera’s fury grow ever larger and ever closer. Her gaze, violet and gold, flicks between goddess and monster, master and servant both reveling in her destruction. Sintra does not want to go home. She does not want to kill the lion or the crab or the men. Hera’s anger over Carcinus does not match the pledge that hangs over the lion’s neck, and if she were not so tired, then the little mare might be more suspicious of it. It would not make any difference, though. She will not kill the lion, she will not even try. Her bright teeth close only on the bitter flesh of hanging pomegranates, sweet juice stains her lips like blood as she tips her head up, offering him an unspoiled view of her delicate throat, of the windpipe he crushes, of the deep arteries his teeth find and pierce. Tears like seawater and gold spill across her dark cheeks and blood, like dark wine, pulses from her ruptured throat. Nobody else needs to die today, she is a willing sacrifice; repentant, and full of sorrow.
Tirza doesn't feel guilty for killing the crab even when someone comes to condemn her for it. She recognizes this is a deity without having seen one before (perhaps the eagle had been one, perhaps not) - all she sees is a being wreathed in the same bright flames that decorate her skin, crowned in the galaxies she's scorned all her life. If she could see the face of this goddess through the blinding light, Tirza doesn't doubt she would see snake eyes - everything she loathes (her parents) and everything she loves (the colours that bind her and her siblings) in one neat package.
Here to punish her for not standing by and allowing herself to be killed.
A soft hiss escapes her but she doesn't look away, not even to watch the crushed remains of Carcinus turn to stardust like the twins. They are all dead, not worth even a spare thought.
And then a blink and she's in a pit. Roots and sharp rocks add texture to the narrow, sandy walls. Her hooves splash in water when she shifts around and she is distracted from noticing she's now whole and back to her natural age by the voice of the goddess. Slay the beast and she’ll be returned home? Easy enough, this young and rash mare thinks. What’s one more monster?
Until she turns to see the lion - until she reaches for the powers she's known all her life and those she does not yet understand. Tirza realizes she's going to have to do this with nothing. Rage pulses through her but she doesn't dare take her eye off of the beast before her to glare at the goddess. She had stomped on that crab but that isn't going to work for this massive lion.
Despair tries to sink in too but Tirza never was very good at giving up. She backs up, away from the lion, and remembers the water around her hooves as she sloshes through it. Notices now the level is rising.
Hera set a trap but she placed it too close to the sea. Perhaps the water just adds a fun element for her to watch - but it also gives Tirza an idea. The lion is large, yes, but her head is still higher. If she can avoid being clawed to death long enough... perhaps the beast will drown.
The pit they're in is narrow and Tirza can see a bend behind her but she has no way of knowing whether there is more or if it's a crescent-shape and ends right there. She can feel the growl from the lion as a tremble through the ground, telling her she has no time to plan. It's either move or stand here and die. So she turns and she hears the snarl behind her when she does - as though her movement was the thing that finally allowed the lion to attack.
The fire-painted mare surges as fast as she can through the water that's now up to her knees, splashing and cutting herself on sharp rocks that line the bend of the pit as she squeezes through. Her blood mixes with the water but she ignores this pain. The space opens up a little again after the bend and she glances back to watch the lion navigate that same bend. The rocks catch on his shoulder but there's not even a scratch or a drop of blood.
Not exactly encouraging, but then Tirza doesn't have teeth or claws of her own to try to break through that skin anyway. She only has the water to count on, which is now rising up her legs.
She turns back around to see that there is a wall just a few feet ahead of her. The pit is indeed crescent shaped as she feared - not the beginning of a labyrinth she could use to bide her time.
Out of time, Tirza turns to face the lion - striking out at it when it lunges for her. Both of their movements are sloppy in the rising water but the cat only seems to be focused on one thing - her. The water churns with their movements as they clash together. In the chaos they trade places a small number of times and Tirza's back and shoulder are torn open from the lion's sharp claws. The beast is between her and the earthen wall when she strikes a hard blow on its head with her hooves.
Tirza does not hesitate to take advantage of the dazed lion, fueled by such a strong desire to live, striking again and watching as the beast involuntarily inhales a gulp of water as it struggles between her, the water, and the end of the pit. The level continues to rise and she fends off the frantic movements of the lion as best as she can. It becomes submerged and she rears - bringing her folded legs down on its back to keep it beneath the brown, sludgy surface. She received more wounds as it struggles but each roar brings more water into the beasts lungs and soon the movements stop altogether.
When he resurfaces, his body is soaked and limp - the only movement from the current of the water as Tirza now tries to not drown as well.
He is tired, Gravitas.
Tired when the goddess’s wrath finds him standing there on the beach, sides heaving as he stares, dead-eyed, at the monstrous crab.
Still, his lungs burn and his knees tremble from the effort of fighting for his life and he understands, somehow, that he will be made to fight for his life a second time.
(I am too tired, he wants to tell her, I cannot possibly.
Please simply kill me. Take my life to pay my dues.
And if you want to show me mercy, please tell my sisters that I tried but it was not enough.)
But this goddess is a fair goddess, is she not? Because before she spirits him away from the beach and into the belly of some other dangerous thing, she restores him. The exhaustion is drained from his body, his breath is returned, and he feels as if he has been born anew. He blinks and he is alive again. Not only alive, but humming with life. Though the diamonds are gone and he is only a horse. Only a horse.
Perhaps, though, he can survive death a second time.
He is not a fool, Gravitas. He knows that a horse is no match for a lion. But he’d found a way to defeat the crab, had he not? The lion stalks him from the opposite end of the pit, teeth bared. The noise it makes is supernatural, something he feels in the marrow of his bones rather than something he hears. It chases tremors down the length of his spine, hitches his breath.
He has to think fast.
He glances around the pit.
Trees standing in a cluster in the center of the pit, thick, woody vines draped between them. Boulders scattered across the mostly barren landscape. Patches of scrub gras.
He will have to strike with everything he has, he knows that, and hope that he catches the lion with enough of a blow that he breaks something. But even that will likely only slow it down, he thinks. But there’s no time to think. No time at all.
His pulse thunders wildly in his ears and he is an easy target, standing there in the center of the pit while a predator circles. And then pounces, teeth and claws bared. He spins on his forelegs and kicks out with bone hindlegs and… nothing happens. His hind feet collide with the underside of the lion’s belly but do not break the skin. The collision reverberates up into his own hips, jars his own teeth, and he lurches away as quickly as he can. It does not so much as slow the lion down and panic surges through him as he springs away from the large cat with every ounce of speed he can summon.
It becomes a foolish, breakneck game of chase as he tears around the perimeter of the pit, praying that he doesn’t break a leg as he tries desperately to formulate a new plan.
This is no ordinary lion. He will not be able to defeat the beast through brute strength alone. His stomach twists with the memory of how he had surrendered to the crab and he considers, briefly, doing that here.
Will the goddess tell his sisters that he’d tried even if he died a coward’s death?
It’s on his second circuit (and the cat is gaining on him quickly) that he catches sight of them again: the vines. He does not have a lot of time to wonder if this will work or not because he can almost feel the cat’s claws skimming past his heels as they run. He ducks sharply toward the center of the pit where the copse of trees stands, flinging back his head as he passes beneath a vine, catching one between his teeth and holding it hard and fast as he continues to run with everything he has. Mercifully, it wrenches free from the tree on one end and is pliable enough to resemble a rope and his heart leaps in his chest as he turns sharply on his hindlegs, effectively clotheslining the lion with the vine.
The lion stops short, letting out a deafening roar as Gravitas leaps over its great back to wrap the vine around its thick neck. The lion struggles valiantly, but Gravitas turns to face the beast, pulling hard on the vine with his teeth. The other end of the vine has not pulled loose from the tree and he uses the leverage to tighten the pressure on the beast’s neck. It writhes and twists and Gravitas uses its moment of distraction to rear up and strike out, to knock it off its feet and onto its side. He continues to strike at its head and pull at the end of the vine still held securely between his teeth as the lion fights for both air and freedom.
And he does not go still until the lion goes still.
He does not stop fighting until he has slain the beast.
I need you to be a monster which is to say, I am trying not to love you
He has barely begun his trek back to the beach when she appears.
She is thundering and splendid and his first urge upon beholding her is to kneel. Because she is a monster, a goddess, and she is the kind of thing he has always been so set to worship. And in his normal life, the life that feels increasingly distant, perhaps that is what he would have done. But in this life, he is cut and burnt and just so damn tired, so he stays upright, watching her, trying to decipher what could possibly come next.
She speaks and he can’t understand the words, yet the language seems to reverberate inside him nonetheless. The sky doesn’t have to speak for you to know a storm’s coming. You must pay, she says, in the language that vibrates in his bones, and he hangs his head, sighs. Hasn’t he paid enough? His mouth still burns from swallowed seawater, and his skin is blackened in places, an awful angry pink in others. Drowned and burnt, all in one day.
She looks at the crab – Carcinus, he knows now, and it’s worse, knowing the name of the thing you killed – and it too turns to stardust. Rapt wonders if his body will have such an honor, to be memorialized in the stars.
(It’s at this thought that he realizes how close that idea really is. How closely he has flirted with death today, and his adventure is not yet done.)
She looks at him, then, her eyes dark and terrible – but beautiful too, as so many monsters are – and he once again is struck with the urge to kneel. His legs are shaking with the desire for it.
Or maybe that’s just exhaustion.
She makes a small motion, mouths a word he cannot hear, and he feels his body begin to heal anew, the familiar itch of wounds closing, skin growing to replace the burnt ash of him. He closes his eyes to savor the feeling of being whole, or closer to it.
When he opens them, he’s in a pit, and she is watching him.
“What do you want?” he asks. He would give her so much. Slay the beast, she says – or doesn’t say, but he knows this to be true, and I will return you to where you belong.
“I’m not a fighter,” he says, but she is silent.
“Please,” he says. The plea goes unnoticed.
(To enter the lion’s den is to put oneself in a dangerous or difficult situation. Rapt has entered the proverbial lion’s den many times. He has laid himself before monsters of different kinds, let them do what they will to him. He has carried children his body was not built to carry. He has done any number of dangerous and difficult things in his life, but it’s not until now that the phrase truly springs to life in his head.)
(A caveat: he did not so much enter this den as he was placed here. Or was thrown to the lions, as it were. A less common saying, but a more appropriate one.)
The lion snarls. He, too, is beautiful and terrible. But not a monster. Just a normal predator. And Rapt is ordinary prey. It’s an absurd relief, but his body was made to outrun teeth and claws – easier to recognize this enemy than a tentacled beast, or a giant crab.
Of course, this primal recognition does little good, because the goddess did not say outrun the beast. She did not even say outlast the beast.
No, she said slay the beast.
Rapt looks around the pit, and another phrase strikes him – the belly of the beast. To be in the middle of a dangerous place. This is the most appropriate phrase, both figuratively and – perhaps soon – literally.
The pit is hard-packed dirt, with a few dead trees, a handful of rocks. The kind of place you suppose befits fighting for your damned life in. But none of it is useful to him. There is no burning pyre to lead the lion to. There is only Rapt, and oh, what a poor weapon he is.
The lion moves easily, and Rapt is entranced, for a moment, at the ripple of muscle beneath its shoulders. The set of its huge jaws. A fine beast. A thing made to hunt. To kill. It is larger than a typical lion, and Rapt thinks of how easily his flesh would fit in its mouth.
It makes the first move, lunging toward him, claws outreached toward his hindquarters. Rapt runs, and feels a faint tug as the lion’s claws snag a few hairs from his tail. It strikes again, and this time Rapt kicks out, trying to strike the lion. It roars, jaws opening terribly wide, and Rapt lunges forward and away again.
It goes on like that – the lion attacking, Rapt running. Sometimes he strikes out, but it never seems to damage the lion. His own flesh is torn, blood streaking his palomino coat. His healing does nothing here, not even the intermittent flashes he’d had on the beach. No, he is terribly, painfully vulnerable here.
When the idea comes, Rapt wonders if he’s given up. Because it’s insane. Suicidal.
Maybe his only hope.
He faces the lion. He stares at it like he’s not afraid, even as his heart thunders in his ears, and all he really feels is fear. He rears up, as if he is a great and terrible thing. The lion opens its mouth to roar again, and this is where Rapt strikes.
His foreleg plunges into the lion’s open mouth, the soft flesh of its palate. He drives forward, shoving his hoof deeper, into the belly of the beast, and the lion’s jaws shut and then there is a terrible, crushing pain. Rapt screams, and keeps shoving forward, choking the beast on his own body, forcing his hoof and flesh and god-knows down its throat.
The lion twists and thrashes and bites and Rapt still shoves forward. He both feels a terrible pain and barely feels his leg. He doesn’t know what that means.
The lion crumples to the earth, and Rapt crumples with it. There is blood leaking from its mouth, but Rapt doesn’t know whose. He tries to move his leg and can’t. He wonders if he’ll die before the goddess can keep her promise. Assuming she even intends to.
Maybe he, too, will just be stardust.
which is to say, I am still dreaming of kissing your claws
Oh, Galadriel, you are solemn as you die. You never thought you'd go quietly but as your left lung wheezes with the weight of being pierced by a cracked rib, you find you have no will to fight death. Your once furious eyes flutter with the gentle stillness of eternal rest; and as you go, you release a last breath with one resounding, peaceful hum . . .
But those eyes do not flutter fast enough, no. You catch sight of the glimmering, furious deity just as the last reaches of air exhale out of your mouth--huhhhh, you suck the shakiest breath of this millennia back into your wavering lungs, the adrenaline enough to bring your violet eyes open enough to realize you have done something horribly, horribly wrong.
There is no protestation as the shimmering goddess commands you. You cannot fight her whims just as much as Carcinus (she forces the name of the crustacean to repeat in your mind, to irreversibly implant the damage you have done to her) could not fight yours. You barely register the trail of stardust that appears almost silly compared to the might of monster. You blink slowly. You manage half-breaths. You wonder if this is all death-delusion, some trick of the mind. Or if this is hell, now, and you have infuriated the gods enough to spend all of eternity dying on this beach.
In the half-second span between your breaths, all of this universe changes, again. You are whole, Galadriel. Oh, so completely and gloriously whole--you must celebrate, you must breath in one full breath--
But the deity--"Hera, do not forget it," she whispers as she disappears--has other plans for you. Dread fills your belly on instinct. A boulder builds perilously on the cliff of your stomach. You slow-blink again, but this time as your eyes adjust to the cave's dim light, you realize something is terribly wrong.
Is this how you wish me to die? You cast your eyes to the sky and think Hera, Hera, Hera, do not give me this second chance only to waste it in minutes. But the gods are divine, immortal, and entirely impartial. You mean less than the lowest human to them. Even with your powers--which you are so cruelly stripped of now--they do not value your thick muscle to the sinewy, lean curve of their beloved heroes.
A lesson, Galadriel. Will you learn it?
You chose to ignore the lion, instead wallowing in self-pity and begging a goddess that barely watches this battle she staged herself. A mistake. The maned creature is much larger than the lions of your homeland, sleek and muscular in a way none of Beqanna's shifters could ever dream of achieving. The creature launches toward you, jaws wide open and claws out-stretched; and before you can allow yourself a shriek of fright, you lurch to the right and into a shadowed, tightly-knit copse of trees. You don't stop until you've woven several trees deep. You can see the light of the other side winking through the end of the copse but still, you think, this will save you some time.
For a few moments you listen for the crashing chase of the maned predator, but nothing comes. You think that odd, but you eventually press toward the other side. You know that you cannot hide forever. (Oh, Galadriel, you foolish girl. Do you not question the lack of pursuit from the monster tasked with killing you?)
Through the trees, you finally step onto the dusty ground of the surrounding pit. To your left is a boulder three times your height. A gray stone you did not notice amongst your panic and the shadows. A narrow path lies between the boulder and the raging rapids of an underground river. You do not hear your opponent around the corner, so you consider the path before you: stay here, between the walls of the pit, the frothing water, and the dark trees, or move forward into more open air.
You move forward, Galadriel. That's all you've ever done, isn't it? Move forward so blissfully blind? So caught up in yourself?
As you step delicately close to the boulder, a roar sounds. But you are too late, for the creature leap as it roars and lands atop your shoulders. At first, you writhe and think you can withstand the pain of large claws tearing into your shoulder and withers. You slam your body into the rock with all your might, but that only serves to daze you. It's when the lion bites into your neck that you fall to your side, breath leaving your body with the sudden force of your tumble.
And suddenly, the weight is gone. Your eyes flutter like they did in their death-shudders, and you hear the pitiful squeals as the lion paddles uselessly against the rapids. In and out you breath once again, your back hanging a few inches over the edge.
It was luck, just as it was the two times before. None of this was entirely of your own plan.
And, so, Galadriel, you learn as Hera laughs and applauds at your simplicity: you will only ever be a fickle, sour-faced girl.
There is a moment where Aela breathes and releases everything.
The Kraken continues to wrap its multiple appendages around Carcinus and the crab manages to scream as the giant octopus wrenches him apart. The sound of his cracking shell reverberates deep - down towards the depth that Aela's new companion had risen from - and the palomino lets go of the fear that had been holding her in place.
She reeks of seawater. The salt sticks to her skin and her pale mane has started to curl against the elegant curve of her neck. Tired and feeling as if the bottom of the ocean still lingers in her step, Aela wearily manages her way up the beach. The striped mare lets the water lap against her legs; she lets her hooves sink into the sand. Her blue eyes lift towards the distance, looking towards the encampment. The men have dissipated. The legions are gone, returned to their tents and their comforts.
Even Castor and Pollock fade into the back of her mind, much like the stars they had become.
Rest is all she wants.
Looking towards the horizon, something shimmers to the forefront of her mind. It shimmers much like the light had refracted off the waves but Aela knows immediately that this is different. This is strange and wonderful and terrifying; this is something terrible and she shivers in anticipation of it. Magic prickles against her spine. The crab is nearly devoured but the goddess fixes her Immortal gaze on Aela; she is drowning again.
Never relenting in the face of fear, Aela fixes the Goddess with a stare of her own.
The battle, the crustacean - they all fall away by the message that the powerful entity gives. The two stare at each other - Hera and Aela - and as understanding occurs. Slay the beast, the deity commands. All it takes is a blink of magic and Aela is restored. Her energy is restored and had her Magic been, the palomino would have glowed. The beach is gone, swept away, and replaced by a stalking lion. Aela watches it, moving as the creature does so that she doesn't linger too close. The message from Hera had been clear: kill this monster and return to Beqanna.
Her gilded ears flick, catching what little light remains and Aela continues to study the beast. She takes note of its stride, its claws, and the jaws that snarl a warning at her. The palomino keeps attempting to feel something from the feline; trepidation, desire, hunger. But there is nothing. No matter how Aela keeps tugging and trying to bait the creature like she would any other prey, it is like before with Carcinus. There is no emotion for her to find and Aela knows that she will have to do without.
Glancing around the pit that she has found herself in, Aela keeps surveying her surroundings.
It's bare and almost spartan in its construction. Trees line the outskirts of this supernatural grove. They circle around the pair and the young mare can feel Immortal eyes boring down on her. Hera is no longer in sight but she is watching. A feeling that Aela is familiar with and she continues to move away from the pacing predator, careful to keep her distance from him. She keeps looking. Kill this beast, but how? Aela has no claws and with no way to pierce his skin, what can she do?
But Aela has come too far to die here.
There is still a grand plan for her and it doesn't involve her ending in this pit.
The lion increases his chase and Aela spirits away, taking advantage of all the stamina and grace of her storm-summoner ancestors. Her hind limbs kick up and towards the beast, only resulting in pain for each time she strikes him. The lion snarls again, ready for the hunt to be over. It leaps and she screams, a whinny that echoes against the trees and... Aela looks for a way out. There, in the farthest corner, lingers a pile of boulders. Perhaps it will take her back to the blood-soaked beach. Perhaps it will lead her back to Beqanna.
Kill the beast, Hera had commanded.
(Nobody commands Aela.)
She wants to run but she is no coward.
The skin couldn't be broken but what of its bones? At the very least, what of its jaws?
At a breakneck pace with the lion on her heels, Aela kicks and squeals and then makes her way towards the rock pile. It is out of place in what feels like a sacred place but she asks no questions. She begins to climb, up and up and up while the lion protests her efforts behind her. It's only the sight of a tree limb jutting out from the rock pile and Aela sees the benefit twofold: a place to step and if she pushes hard enough, perhaps the rocks will tumble.
And as she goes higher, braces against the trunk of the dead tree, she pushes.
Pushes and pushes until the wood groans and the rocks stir.
They suddenly all fall away, Aela bleeding and a leg trapped under the rubble. Her head spins. As the dust cleared away, everything is still. Even the lion.
It lay with its maned head bent back at an unnatural angle, teeth still bared for the kill.
