they screamed loudly enough to blind the stars
The shadow beast screams as the young queen connects with it, expanding the wound caused by the acid blood and gouging, tearing it. Its grip looses and able to breathe freely once more, the horned queen clicks her approval at the young one for a fine blow.
Frantic and angry, the beast can surely feel that it is not going to escape. Its movements become wild, erratic. The smallest of the trio lunges to strike and misses, a hiss escaping it as the beast strikes out again. When that clawed hand moves to the smallest of the trio, it does not connect with its armoured hide this time. It passes through that domed head and what it grasps and yanks out is not something that can be quantified or seen.
But it is felt.
A scream escapes that one and it - she - falls to her knees. Something that is almost concern ripples through the eldest queen but her black eyes are on the wounded beast. One battle at a time and it is as though she can smell the end of it on the air. Her attention is focused and cannot be shaken. That knife tail flicks in the shadows as this monster surges forward, accidentally grazing the fallen mare and slicing a thin, curving cut down her back where there is no armor now to protect her.
The blood that flicks from that tail as it moves up and away from the writhing figure on the ground is red and utterly mortal.
Two battles are happening simultaneously.
The first with the beast, the demon, and now a pair of monsters instead of a trio. The horned one snaps silvered teeth, grasping at slippery flesh and tearing further what has already been injured by acid and the crown of the other. It’s attempting to keep it between her and the other queen, so they can trade blows. So they can end it. A curved horn catches in and almost removes one of those clawed hands, severing whatever passes for tendons in such a creature and it hangs there, limp and useless.
The second battle is an internal one with a mare that is no longer a monster. The first coherent thought in her entire life is that of pain. There is still acid blood on her neck from where the creature had sliced and it burns, her skin sizzling as it is eaten away in holes and chunks. This pain drowns out what she would feel over the slice down her back. Chasing that thought is an instinct she has never felt before - one to run. To get away from the scuffle happening. Because she knows without thinking about it that as soon as the creature is dealt with, these armoured monsters will be hungry. And she cannot trust that the horned queen (her mother, this new brain implants the word with a weight to it) will recognize her now.
With difficulty she rises.
And then without the weight of her domed head, without the armor, without her tail as a counter balance, she falls. As clumsy and as dumb as a newborn foal, it takes this mare several tries and then she stumbles away into the forest - hitting tree after tree as she does without her hunter’s instincts to guide her in the darkness.
RIPLEY AND NOSTROMO
twenty-eight eaten to date |
@[Nexu]
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