The fever threatens to burn away her thin hold on the present.
It makes her slow and sluggish; she stumbles towards the small group with the stone barely held in her mouth. Only the cool, polished feel of it against her tongue reminds her where she is, reminds her of what she must do in order to stop the world from ending. The stone, she thinks, swaying, I must reunite my piece. But even as she worries it will slide from her grasp (and once it falls, she knows she will not have the strength to find it in the greyed grass again), she can feel it melting into her. Her tongue tingles as it absorbs into her, a taste of magic she won’t soon forget. At the same time, though (and perhaps by the same magic), she can feel her body healing. Her chest deflates to an only slightly embellished size. Her feet respond to the directions she gives them. Best of all, her thoughts feel cleaned of the mud they had seemingly been dragged through before.
When she emerges from the haze of her own body, Titanya wonders if the others have been affected much the same. The world flashes before she can find out. The monochromatic purgatory becomes a kaleidoscope of familiar colors. She sees the green of the hills, the pale blue of a cloudless day – but the landscape is all too quickly reverted back to the shades of its first palette. All of the fragments are gone, she finally realizes, absorbed into the bodies of those who had carried them. She notices, too, that some of the horses have disappeared entirely. Cinzia vanishes into the lifeless air from her place only yards away from the sabino. It is alarming to see and not be able to react. And while she didn’t know the winged mare (knew only that she opposed Conquest, which was enough affirmation of the woman’s character), she hopes she has been absolved of this madness rather than thrust into more.
Because the madness does not stop all around them, even if the broken seal has found a home within the remaining horses.
The fighting rages on in the clearing, despite their small victory. The mutated, hellish creatures lunge at the equines who battle back as best they can. The smell of blood fills the air until she thinks she can taste it, tangy and coppery – like the magic passing through her tongue, but altogether more grounded and earthy. Only Conquest seems fazed. It is his sudden stillness that draws her attention away from the group she stands near (Warship, Rhonen, and Weaver). It is his gaze that she follows until she sees what he has seen.
The lamb.
The seal he prepares to stand on.
BOOM.
The blast doesn’t startle her as much as the first had. Its effect, however, is another matter entirely. Shards of the seal fly into the air like so much shrapnel. This time, she anticipates that there will be more violence. This time, when the thunderous beating of the hooves of yet another overlarge equine nears the clearing, she is ready. Conquest, too, seems ready to reengage in the coming battle. His minions shake off their first injuries and prepare for more.
Titanya gives a final, dubious look towards her three close compatriots and enters the chaos once more. She had seen the now-familiar sheen of a seal fragment arcing through the air after the explosion. It had crashed into the grey earth further away from the others than she’d like to go, but she’s thankful to have seen a piece at all. It is more of a head start than she’d had before, at any rate. So the black and white paint moves off at a canter, shaky at first, but becoming steadier the further she goes as Conquest’s curse wanes. She realizes she cannot completely skirt around the more tightly-packed group of monsters. Her fragment has landed to the left of the amorphous mass, and to reach it, she will have to be either quick or forceful.
Already, the too-many and too-few sets of eyes watch her travel across their view field. When one breaks away, she sees it in her peripheral vision, heading straight for her. War, it seems to say, though she’s not sure if it is the creature or another. War. She shudders, because the ground is shaking more than ever and whatever is out there is very close. When she turns to meet it, she thinks it will be the great warhorse coming to take her on. Instead, she sees the one-eyed wolf she’d battled before. “Not dead then, I guess?” His one eye does not blink as it locks on her moving form. His lips curve wickedly, as if he is grinning at her words. She doesn’t want to risk a fight she might lose, not when the piece of the seal is more important. If she can get to it before the wolf reaches her…
She dodges heavily to her left, her chest heaving with the effort, when the canine leaps into the air. He misses her by inches, and without hesitation, Titanya canters on. She can hear him hit the dirt hard, but he recovers quickly and pursues her hasty advance. Damnit, the young mare curses at her inability to throw him off. But the fragment is so close now that she can see the way the grass bends around and cradles it. She can almost feel it disappearing as she touches it, can feel her own relief at its inaccessibility once she has it safe. But all of a sudden, she can feel something else as well.
The hot, humid breath of the warhorse sends shivers down her neck. He moves in front of her and stops, forcing her to do so as well. “War,” he says by way of greeting. “It is magnificent, is it not?” Sounds of pain from her fellows and pleasure from the monsters fills the air around them. She cannot look away from War, but it is impossible not to be aware of everything happening in the clearing regardless. She doesn’t tell him what she thinks of it; she is sure he already knows. “It is inevitable.” The fragment is just behind him, but the squeezing fear in her stomach tells her that she will forever be a foot too short of it. This is where War and chaos will take her, his eyes promise her. This is to be her grave – not that there will be any bones or flesh to bury. But that fear meets with her eternally-burning anger somewhere in her trachea.
It combines and she combusts.
“NO!” His red, fiery stare gives away nothing (as any soldier worth his salt shouldn’t). She sees him move, but it is too late. War leaps forward and presses alongside her, his larger body nearly overtaking her own. She screams when his teeth find purchase in the soft flesh of her croup. She doesn’t expect the sharpness of a predator’s bite. And when he begins to grind his jaws, tearing away her skin and revealing the shiny pink of muscle underneath, she is certain she will die. Titanya’s own vision burns red, then. She did not ask to come here, a pawn on a board far beyond her comprehension. And while she had acquiesced to restoring the balance undone by that damned, persistent lamb, she refuses to let Death claim her in order to do so. She will live or she will take down any in her way with her.
The girl musters all her remaining energy and bucks against his bite. It’s satisfying to hear War’s teeth clattering inside his skull from the force of her rebellion, but the added few inches of his teeth into her back is less welcome. Pain explodes from the point like the seal, radiating throughout her body and down into each of the limbs. She wonders if he’s hit a nerve (wonders if she’ll have freed herself only to be paralyzed forever – might as well give myself to Death in that case). But somehow, it has worked. War disengages and takes a step away from her. Without hesitation, Titanya bursts forward. Blood streams down her hindquarters freely; a crimson, glossy skirt she wears to receive her prize. She bends her neck to the fragment, hungry for the taste of it on her tongue. War cannot let her go so easily, though. He sends a well-placed kick that lands on her left haunch at the same time that the seal absorbs into her. The force of it sends her sprawling forward. Her knees buckle and she collapses to the ground. She’s not sure she will be able to get up again, at least not before the creature of sevens returns to produce more pandemonium in this peculiar place.
The rhythmic cadence of approaching hoofbeats has her stirring from her place on the ground. She grimaces, trying to heave her wounded body up in some semblance of readiness for attack. “Go away. Find someone else to hassle you shit-eating piece of – “ But instead of War or Conquest returning for another round, Titanya finds the other black and white girl running towards her. She wonders what hell the small group has seen. More importantly, she wonders if they’ve had their own successes finding fragments of the wasted, second seal. “Oh,” she says as an apology. But she follows Weaver’s gaze to an untouched seal nearby. Right away, she understands. “Keep the bug-eyed lamb away. Got it. Good thinking.” And she stumbles forward, bleeding and sore, to help.
Titanya