The stillness unnerves her.
It forces her focus down to the singular, even as the number of faces increases around her. She wants to look at all of them, but she can’t. She can’t tear her eyes away from the vacant spot where she’d seen a goat only a moment ago. Now, there is no creature with too many horns and far too many eyes watching her with an impassive but nearly-tangible intelligence, and she doesn’t understand how it is possible. How can an animal be there one second and gone the next? How can the world grind to a halt around them while they continue to walk on its surface, seemingly unaffected?
How can they stop the clock from ticking ever closer to their own extermination?
Finally, Titanya forces herself to turn away. If the world is indeed ending and these horses are to be her compatriots of the apocalypse, it would behoove her to learn everything she can about them. She notices instantly the way some seem drawn to others, the ease at which alliances form, birthed from the pre-existing politics of their dying land. She realizes that this may be a hindrance to her, the fact that she comes from between the kingdoms rather than from within. It doesn’t matter who her parents are because their union had been a secret; her very life had been intended to go unnoticed and therefore unquestioned. It is a hurdle she will have to breach rather quickly, though. The young girl locks eyes with an even younger girl, black and white like her but in a different design. Even she’s not sure what use the filly will be in the impending chaos. A part of her wants to protect the other girl (the part that kept Terran’s mouth away from every stone and stick he came across). A part of her wants to keep the tobiano close in case she needs someone to outrun and outmaneuver. She’s not sure she can fully embrace that part of herself, though, as much sense as it makes to her.
The sabino is mulling over her other options still when it happens. Eyes appear like gemstones, glowing faintly in the corner of her gaze. She knows even before she turns (and she turns rather quickly) that she hadn’t imagined it before.
This time she will not be denied.
Titanya stares openly at the odd creature. It is a curious thing, certainly, but not frightening in the least. A sudden vulnerability overtakes her, flushing away the remainder of the anger she’d felt before. The creature reads her soul with its plethora of eyes; that same, impassive intelligence seeing all that she’s ever kept hidden. She should be angry, perhaps, but she finds a strange comfort in the weight of that gaze. As if she could bare all beneath her flesh to it without consequence. As if she could be broken down to the cellular level (to the organelles and beyond even that, to the elements and the atoms borrowed from broken stars) and analyzed at the highest magnification.
She’s so distracted at the naked exposure of her mind, so torn between holding the gaze of seven different eyes that she doesn’t notice the goat’s feet have moved. When the creature steps onto the rock, however, the force of the blast has her gasping from the shock of it. She moves before she even realizes what she is doing, instinct driving her to pull back before any portion of the shattered stone can hit her. The others seem just as startled as her. They each react to the unexpected blast in similar fashion, creating distance between themselves and the odd but once-harmless bovid. It’s only then that Titanya spots the other stones scattered about the clearing. She sees the alien symbols etched into the surfaces but cannot study them further; the goat has disappeared again.
After the explosion, they all settle into the unnerving silence of before. This time, though, it doesn’t last long. The young mare doesn’t even have time to look at her fellows before the laughter sounds into the near-distance. Much later, upon reflection, she’d find herself missing the silence. Because the owner of such a voice (of such incessant, triumphant glee) cannot be anyone she’d like to come across. It brings the promise of pain and suffering, of loss and loathing. She shudders, but as the horse – Conquest – comes into view, she notices something else.
At last, the world seems to begin again.
The limbs of the trees quake with his arrival; leaves fall in a flurry all around the clearing, putting into motion the stock-still landscape they’d all been tossed into. The promise of violence dangles in the dangerous air. Conquest. Her eyes widen as the name repeats over and over in her mind. Conquest. They straddle the line of peace and war; seconds drag on like hours as they wait for something…
Conquest.
… and then they come behind him. His horde, his army of all manner of distorted beasts. Some are as familiar to her as the face of her brother, (the wolves that roam between the lands, opportunists like her family) but others she has no name for. All are different, though. All have been sculpted by the hand of a murderer and capable of such viciousness themselves. Conquest. And she’s not sure if it is a statement or a promise. Will this decaying, flayed creature move onto Beqanna if they don’t stop him here? One look into the stallion’s eyes provides her with an answer. White-hot rage bubbles to the surface of her skin again, because she will not allow it to happen. Not while Terran is out there alone and unprotected. Not while her mother roams the mountainsides as a broken shell of her former self. She can tell that Beqanna is only the start to Conquest’s war-path. Deep within her bones, all the way to the thick, fatty marrow, she knows that he wants her downed. He wants all of them to genuflect before him, to bend their heads and pray at his feet. And in a moment, he reveals the only way he can possibly be stopped.
“The Seal!”
She puts it all together in her head. Titanya whips around, searching desperately for fragments of the goat’s stone. If the thirteen horses can find and reunite the pieces, perhaps they can put an end to a possible future in which chaos reigns supreme. The big grey warrior bounds off before any of the others, making her way behind the line of contestants. The sabino has half a mind to follow her, but noticing how the monsters begin to stalk the other horses, she stays her feet. Surely, whatever the grey mare is planning will benefit them later on – perhaps she’s spotted more fragments and means to guard them. Whatever the case, Titanya takes a deep breath before plunging into the melee herself. It is absolute madness as the bodies of friend and foe (though she can’t tell the difference most of the time) surround her. She sees the black and white filly square off with a badger. She watches, briefly, as Conquest circles back from his following of Lagertha and places his muzzle on Hickory. She wants to go to the older mare’s side (sure that the woman is about to die, as helpless before the rotting god as she is) but she is stopped by an obstacle of her own. The mutated wolf heads for the retreating form of the young Rhonen. She is halfway between them, though, and she means to take advantage of that fact. The beast's singular gaze turns on her when it realizes how much easier a take she would be.
The one-eyed wolf snarls as it jumps in front of her. Its teeth and the row of spines along its back glitter even in the weak light. She’s never considered her own death before (thought it was a long way off, at least) but now, she knows it will come with her next breath. And the certainty pisses her off more than anything ever has. Titanya backs up and rises into a rear. Her hindquarters quiver with the effort, but the wolf keeps coming on. At the height of her rear, he lunges, open-mouthed and slavering. “I…” she begins, letting gravity and momentum drive her feet down and towards the leaping wolf. For a brief second, she thinks she will miss. But the resounding crack of hoof on skull tells a welcome story. His body sags as he falls to the ground, unconscious. “…don’t think so,” she says as she weaves around his prone form, not taking a chance on the monster waking up.
The young mare means to move away as quickly as possible, but when she looks up, she is startled to see Conquest only a few feet away. He slinks away from Esileif with far too much familiarity and not enough malice. And when his haunting, yellow gaze locks with hers, she knows she will not escape. Titanya tries, anyway, but he comes up behind her. “Be mine,” he says, his voice a violent percussion in the relative quiet of purgatory. No, she thinks. No, I will not kneel. I will not bow. But she is not so sure. How easy would it be to give in? Why resist when he could fuel her fire? Why fight when he could provide her with enough kindling to last a lifetime?
Then she burns.
He moves alongside and latches onto her breast, his teeth passing into and marking her all at once. But something else develops, too. Her chest swells to an abnormally large size, puffing out and expanding until she thinks it will surely pop. And all the while, her body temperature rises as fever overtakes her. She doesn’t know that Conquest has passed a devastating bacterial disease onto her. All she knows is that he moves away after his attack and leaves her to her suffering.
A flash of silver shines in the grass just ahead of her. Part of the seal, she presses her teeth together against the pain. Already, though, her movement has been restricted. She hobbles over to it as best she can, wincing at the sting of the fever on her skin. There is a small group standing close by (two mares and two stallions), some bleeding and one hobbling on three legs. Before she can make her way to them, though, she has to get her fragment. When she reaches the shard, she gingerly reaches down with her muzzle, her mind reeling with the heat pulsing within her brain. But just as her teeth close over the piece, a mutated lizard darts in front of her. Titanya pulls back for a moment, but the monster moves on towards the small group. She wants to chase it and crush it beneath her feet (the satisfying sound of the wolf’s skull cracking still reverberating in her ears) but she is too dizzy to imagine herself capable. “Watch out!” She calls to them instead and lifts the remnant of the seal in her mouth. Slowly, amidst all the commotion around her, she carries it over to Cinzia, Weaver, Rhonen and Warship. She hears the young man’s comment but she cannot find it in herself to laugh. Instead, she seethes at the way he is correct. They are totally and completely screwed, but they are no longer alone in whatever comes next. She thinks she’s told them this, but her mind grows hazy with the fever that now seems to incinerate every cell in her body. She forgets what she’s said and what has been said in her mind. All she holds onto is the bit of the seal pressed between her teeth. All that matters is that she’s helped stop the end of the world – she only hopes it is enough.
Titanya
OOC: Titanya jumps between the one-eyed wolf and Rhonen (who is moving away and doesn't see the wolf stalking him). After knocking it out, she is chased by Conquest, who has just finished his pact with Esileif. Conquest's bite leaves her infected with the bacteria that causes Pigeon Fever (which causes a swollen chest, fever and lameness). After spotting a piece of the seal, she makes her way towards Cinzia, Weaver, Warship and Rhonen - all opposed to Conquest. Feel free to use her as long as she isn't injured beyond repair! =)