they all go into the dark; ALL

[Leokadia]

ashes, ashes,
we. all. fall. down.

What calls? The child turns her head towards nothing, listens with ears straining towards nothing. Eyes are white and blind with vision, an image planted in her mind that shows her the vast, colorless, twisted Pangea. The vision stretches, pulls, sends her mind flying toward a chestnut creature that she must destroy. She has been commanded, but she does not heed because she cares or understands or believes the strange stallion is a danger...

Into her veins spills what she will one day call lust--though it is blacker than the desires that drive women into the arms of men--and her flesh sings with tension and need. That song dulls the soreness in her muscles and helps her ignore the minor sprain in her right wing from her fall. Her first attempt to launch herself skyward is a failure, she stumbles not expecting the sting from the bloodied abrasion on her right shoulder. Baring up she lunges forward again and surges skyward with a shout. The ground falls away and she is racing towards violence, keen eyes sweeping the world below in search of a chestnut aberration on the bleached ground.

Beyond her wings, the cremello girl is without any special ability. While she does not look long for the flurry of attackers and the death-sentenced Rhonen, she circles once overhead looking for an avenue of attack. It’s madness below, vicious attackers, a few foolhardy defenders. Her head throbs with the lingering command to destroy the stallion, and while she isn’t afraid to land in the mired earth around the frenzy she does hesitate to drop down and put herself into the crush of bodies and then be unable to take off again. She has no choice, but might as well make us of her one ability while she can.

Closing her pinions tight Leokadia drops from the sky, barreling towards the chaos around Rhonen. When she throws her wings again it is feet above her target, her teeth snap at air, but her hooves slash at the chestnut stallion, though they are small hooves the force of her dive puts a punch behind each of them. Pumping her wings hard she manages to pass over the crazed knot but she isn’t strong enough to return to the sky and the proximity of the gnarled tree makes her strokes falter. Tipping, the filly drops out of the air, another crash, though this time mercifully into mud. Grey mud, someone’s blood, both stain her fine pale hide, and turns her sweet face filthy, her pale eyes like those of a wight as she rises and turns back toward Rhonen. She pulls wings, thick with mud, in against her body and scrabbles through the thick filth heedless of what might befall a child, not even a year grown, in a blood-hungry mob like this.

She is dodging hooves and teeth when she lunges closer, snapping at anyone who gets too close too her, but they aren’t here for her. They are here for him and Leokadia is a small fury in the writhing mob, but she looks for purchase on the stallion’s thick hide with teeth and hooves just as eagerly as all the rest.

Leokadia