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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


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    [open quest]  [ROUND 3] crimson blood on my skin
    #11

    COR

    The warmth of his sire’s spilled blood disappears as the darkness closes around him.  He floats and there is no warmth, no light, no feeling, and no pain.  It is glorious, this blackness that is devoid of all the cacophony of battle and betrayal he’s only just survived.  But it doesn’t last.  Seemingly in the next heartbeat, the heavy fog lifts and he is back on the warfield.

    Cor rolls his shoulders, tests his movements and muscles and is relieved to find they are restored to their former health.  His breath, too, comes easily and without the telltale stabbing pain of broken ribs.  Great, he thinks, his eyes darting around him, repaired and ready to what ends now?  Very quickly, the question is answered for him.

    He steps out from between the pillars this time.  Or rather, the Plains version of himself does.  Cor wonders if he is similarly handicapped without his shapeshifting.  “Mother never told me I have a twin,” he calls out by way of greeting, knowing that pleasantries would be useless here.  “What do you say, want to skip this part and get acquainted at the meadow instead? Grab a squirrel or two?  We can share?” 

    The Plains imposter grins lopsidedly in his identical face before lowering his head.  Cor knows what is coming next.  He’s been sizing him up since he saw him, and he knows a shift when it is about to happen.  The imposter melts from horse to lion effortlessly, snaking his head further down and breathing in the scent of his opponent.  He is built for hunting in the open stretch of plains and he charges Cor without hesitation, his big paws eating up the solid ground as he nears his prey.

    Cor fights his instinct to flee at first.  He swallows the rising fear in his throat and lowers his head and horns, bracing himself against the impact.  But he’s not used to being hunted.  He’s always been the predator stalking his prey, fearless against the clutches of dismemberment and death.  Both his shifting and immortality have always been his shield against such mortal terrors, but they’ve left him in this blood-soaked place.  Now, he’s like any other prey creature helpless against the ruthless jaws of the abyss.  He doesn’t like the feeling.

    Cor loses his nerve at the last second and leaps to the side.  He kicks out at the lion’s left side as he jumps to the right, managing to land a blow on the feline’s shoulder.  Imposter Cor yowls at the contact but pivots easily to chase his retreating form.  The stallion tries to get to the pillars, intending to use them as a barrier to slow the cat down, but the lion is at his haunches in a few short strides. 

    He wraps his forearms around Cor’s rump, securing his position by digging into his flesh with his claws and trying to bite into his back.  The horse can feel the predator leaning over him, trying to shift more of his weight over Cor’s back to try to bring him down to the ground. He gasps in pain and bucks as hard as he can several times in succession, attempting to dislodge his unwelcome tagalong.  Cor feels his hindquarters snap the lion’s jaw closed with the force of his movement. It slides partially off of him, raking ribbons of skin down both sides of his flanks.  He takes the brief hesitation to spin around, this time lowering his horns and standing his ground with shaking legs. 

    The gold of the lion’s gaze is impassive as it regards him.  It is the assured hunter’s confidence of a kill to come.  Cor knows the look well and he means to drive it from his face.  So, too, does he mean to drive the beast back.  He takes a few steps forward and the lion complies in reverse.  It seems to be working until it doesn’t.  The lion swats a powerful paw at his horns, pushing Cor’s head to the side and leaving him exposed and vulnerable for the span of a heartbeat. 
     
    It turns out, a heartbeat is all the time it takes.

    The predator lunges and clamps its jaws around Cor’s neck, his canines sinking in to the horse’s jugular vein.  The stallion buckles, falling to his knees and scrambling against the hold.  But it is futile.  His own blood warms him this time.  It leaves him quickly, much too quickly, as the darkness comes to fetch him again.


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    #12
    A grin, vicious and beautiful, sits on Jude’s lips when the darkness takes her. One moment she is blinking and the next she is floating in nothing. The aches of her battle leave her body one by one, little blips of red hot pain bursting in crescendo and then suddenly dissipating. She likes the way her body tingles as the feelings disappear. Her pleasantries are cut far too short, though—for magic drags her back to the same battlefield as before.

    Jude faces the pillars and before she can even blink, a doppelganger steps from behind the black one. A familiar simper sits on the other’s lips, and her hips sway like she has nary a care in the world.

    “We used to think that flamingo was such a unique insult that it was endearing, didn’t we?” other-Jude ponders, casting lazy purple eyes up at the dark sky. She lets out a short, pensive huff, then rolls her eyes back to real-jude and adds, “But I don’t think that anymore, and I know you do. So!”

    The doppelganger rushes forward, flaring her wings and lifting just high enough in the air to throw her pumping knees at real-Jude’s face. Antlered-Jude stands her ground and merely ducks her head, digging her hooves into the ground. The aggressor, not expecting real-Jude to react so easily, strikes her front hooves into her back. Real-Jude gasps but uses the pain to fuel her momentum when she launches forward, head down. Her antlers connect with fake-Jude’s back legs just as her wings try to swing her upward. They collide, ivory points entering the flesh and bone of fake-Jude’s legs. The attacker screams and falls backward, the bones in her wings snapping as they hit the ground. Real-Jude’s antlers slide out of fake-Jude’s skin as she falls.

    There is only a moment of fake-Jude recuperating for real-Jude to react, so she barely takes a breath before pushing forward off of her back legs. The winged-Jude is on her back before antlered-Jude, finally drawing in a breath after it was knocked out of her. She attempts to pump her legs and roll to the side, but real-Jude’s aforementioned push-off allows her to land on one of fake-Jude’s wings. Another scream rings out as bones crack, but real-Jude cuts it off by once again crushing a creature’s esophagus.

    “Huh,” Jude muses as she peers down at the doppelganger’s glassy lavender eyes. She barely feels a thing.
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    #13
    “She set fire to all the things that held her back,
    and from the ashes she stepped into who she always was.”


    Darkness swallows her up, and she lets it. It takes away the physical pain, and it takes away Voracious – but not the memories.

    When she blinks open her bright pink eyes to the red plains again, she is still seething.

    The sight of who steps through the threshold is the only thing that makes her racing mind stop.

    She blinks, confusion visible on her face as she stares at what she thinks might be a reflection. It is her, clearly, but not as she is now – it is her from before she had entered this hellish dome, without the antlers.

    Aislyn does not stop to ponder the hows or the whys; she does not ask questions, just as she had hardly given pause to why Voracious was attacking her. Perhaps someday she would learn how to calculate a situation before slipping so easily into the bloodbath, but today is not that day. Still simmering from her previous battle, it does not take much heat to bring her to a boil.

    She attacks first, not giving her opponent a chance. Having seen Aislyn coming at her with her head lowered, the bright-eyed imposter skitters sideways, attempting to leap and evade as the dull-tipped tines are aimed directly to her barrel. Aislyn’s intent was to of course just plow into her and knock her off balance, but similar to what had happened to her when Voracious tried the same thing, she only manages to hardly snag the other girl’s hip as she slips past.

    Her opponent, however, seems almost abnormally fast and powerful. The imposter version of herself seems hardly bothered by the glancing blow and she spins abruptly, and Aislyn catches only a flash of black and white skin to her left as the other mare goes air-born in a rear, her dark hooves striking towards her shoulder. But Aislyn, though not as supernaturally quick as her opponent, is nothing short of athletic. Compact without being overly bulky – her mother’s arabian pedigree lending a delicate grace to her otherwise wild, feral build – she rolls away on her haunches to the right. By the time the other’s front hooves have touched ground is just when Aislyn delivers a powerful double-barrel kick directly into her chest.

    She drives her back until the other mare manages to create a gap between them that is large enough that Aislyn is forced to spin and face her to not lose track of her movements. They are both glistening in sweat – something that Aislyn finds surprising in the other, since a part of her was convinced that she was not even real; that she should not be able to sweat and bleed that way Aislyn herself does.

    Breathing hard, her eyes trained on her opponent’s every movement as they stalk in a mirroring circle around each other, she lowers her head when she sees the flinch of muscle that indicates she is about to lunge at her. They pass each other shoulder to shoulder, and where the imposter-looking mare elevates her hindlegs in a kick, Aislyn lowers her head to slam her antlered head at her exposed underside.

    Again, her goal had simply been to knock her off balance. When the other mare stumbles and slips, her outside hind leg sliding to the side in a fast, jerking motion, Aislyn is confused by the sickening pop that she hears. She does not realize that the sheer force of the mare’s weight and power had torqued her pelvis during the slip in such a way that it had broken. And she certainly does not realize – does not see – that when the bone so violently broke that it managed to sever one of the main arteries that ran close enough to it.

    All she can do is watch as the other form staggers and falls to the ground; watch as the pupils grow impossibly round and wild with something that she thinks might be fear, but knows it cannot be, because this thing that she has been fighting is not real.

    And yet, it is obvious when the life flickers and fades – when the muscles stop twitching and the legs stop jerking.

    She feels nothing when she stares at what is essentially her own corpse on the ground, though she knows she should. She wills her heart to twist, for guilt to bleed into her, but nothing comes. Just an impossible silence as she stands in the blood-drenched dome.

    aislyn.


    750 words exactly
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    #14
    There she stands, ink eyes still looking over the lifeless body of her child. While other mothers would probably mourn in this situation, she snickers and gives Nagas body a final glance before turning away and pushing her lifeless head away with her hind hoof. A short calm, an interlude, takes hold of the red dome around her, and she feels her body begin to heal from her last battle. At first she was certain this was only a dream, but the pain from her injuries was far too real. This was the work of magic.

    The interlude is brief, and she can feel a rumble underfoot, and the sound of cackling breaks the silence. Though it is not coming from herself, instead, the awful sound had come from the slender form between the stones. As a streak of lightning crackles and splits across the stormy sky above them, a flickering bright light is cast over the creature before the crone. She knows her...for it is her. Though unlike her current horned form, this Shadowmere is still frail in mind and without horns. The clone let's out a shrill scream and begins to charge forward like Naga did.

    Our old mare cracks a smile across scared lips and allows herself to be attacked. She wants to see how strong she really is. The clone barrels down teeth bared and goes for her face. Shadowmere's eyes narrow and she hisses in pain as her own self bites her cheek, tearing away a large patch of hair.

    "Show me your POWER!" she screams to herself with a fire burning in her eyes.

    The clone gets up on her hind legs, front hooves striking out in a frantic paddling motion as she batters at Shadowmere's shoulders and neck. But our crone takes a few fast steps back and spins on her haunches and slams her front hooves into the bloodstained ground, sending both her hinds directly into her doppleganger's stomach as hard as she possibly could. The other Shadowmere screams and crumples to the ground. She walks up to her cowering self on the ground, spitting at her. The clone hisses and scrambles back to her feet and charges forward again, turning as the real Shadowmere meets her charge with horns facing her foe like a knight with a lance. The doppleganger throws her hinds at Shadowmere's face, but she is kicking blindly, aiming just too far to the right and the tips of shadowmeres horns cut deep along her gaskin and up to her flank. The real crone then rears up and comes down hard into the doppleganger's spine with a disgusting cracking sound. The other Shadowmere let's out an awful, pained cackle once again as she falls to her knees. The real crone let's a snicker slip through her scarred lips.

    You...you are weak...but no longer. I now known my power. And you shall know now too."

    The other Shadowmere tries to scramble to her feet, cackling uncontrollably as she struggles. But our true self is too fast, she rises into the air and comes down with a sickening crunch. Her own fractured skull lies in a pool of her own crimson blood. She breathes heavy, once again cackling to herself in an uncontrollable fit. This was no dream, and she knows now, that she had this in her all along. She was no weakling, she no longer needed to hide behind some gifted being to do her work for her. She is as strong as she is cunning. She dips her crowned head to kiss the cheek of her own crushed face as she whispers sweetly.

    "sweet dreams…"

    And just like that, the battle ends...but she is unsure if the dome will yet release her. As she stands tired and bloodied, she still raises her crowd head high, a look of determination in her eyes. She was still willing to meet any other challengers this place was ready to throw at her.
    ..........

    Word count: 662
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