watch your tongue or have it cut from your head,
save your life by keeping whispers unsaid.

     The air was thick with bloodlust, various parts of the land tainted with a crimson trail as the many mourn their loved ones and avenge their untimely ends. The inescapable frigidity of winter had since descended, as brutal as the war that waged on, many deciduous trees now barren with their spindly, winding branches exposed and naked to the eye. Autumn had been a dry one, with nary a single drop of rain having fallen since it had begun. The air was often thick with humidity, moist and suffocating, and now seemingly overnight it was now fraught with ice. His mouth felt dry and his lungs felt as if they themselves were coated in a sheen of frost, but the heat of his churning, pounding heart kept his blood thick. 

     He had kept himself at bay; he was not built of what warriors were made of - though he was nary something to scoff at. At nearly seventeen hands tall, with his four unusual forelegs and two hindlegs unusually angled and tainted by their eerie appearance and his dark, unwavering gaze, he was a formidable force unto himself. He more often preferred intimidation, as his visual impact was often enough to frighten anyone in his midst, but too much blood had been spilt -too much violence had risen. The lives of his brothers and sisters were threatened, and no one and nothing was safe from the inevitable carnage. He no longer could remain the neutral diplomat. There was a war to be fought.

     He had not denied himself the opportunity to protect his dwelling, his home when Zuclopenthixol had uttered his unorthodox, nearly flawless plan. Though he had tried to remain at the sidelines, he knew what had to be done, and what better way to justify senseless murder than with a war brought to his own land?

     And so he waited, cloaked by the shadows of the darkened skies and the thick, snow capped foliage that sheltered him. A chill coursed through his vertebrae as he lie in wait, his breath a warm puff amidst the icy air. He listens, a distant warcry telling him of the bloodshed to come, and he rises - his thick wings of critlin raise him above the pines, his dark compound eyes searching through the shadows for movement. He hears it long before he sees it - the rustling of a panicked, frightened dappled female as she darts through the lingering fog, desperate to find solace and safety in the brush. Evolet, though he would likely never come to know her name.

     He rises higher, his thick but flattened wings moving with an unearthly speed. He sweeps in, brushing the tops of the pines with his spindly legs, an anxiety growing deep within the pit of his belly as he follows her, surrounds her, circles her. At last, she arrives at the clearing - the briefest of reprieves from the otherwise unwelcoming darkness of the woods - and that is when he seizes his moment. He drops suddenly, his four forelegs outstretched towards the ground as he propels himself at her from the sky, his weight falling with immense force as he makes contact with her curving spine. His wings spread in the last moment, slowing his fall incrementally as he bears down on her with his own weight, crushing her into the soft soil below. His six limbs can feel her spine curve and shatter beneath the impact of his dead weight, and he revels in the way she squeals and gasps out in breathless pain. She recoils beneath him, fragile and unable to move, paralyzed by the force of his attack.

     He can see the terror and torture in her eyes as she lies still, helpless and terrified, and he thinks for a moment on his impending fatherhood - the small mass of life that lingers and grows within Speck's belly. He thinks of how it would be to have his own daughter, to see such fright in her own eyes - and for a moment, a pang of restlessness throbs within his chest. He hesitates no more. He takes her out of her misery in four solid movements, compounding his unusually sharp talon-like hooves into her flesh and skull as he ends her life, her blood dribbling thickly down the length of his legs as it splatters up onto him.

     He knows not her name; only her identity as the enemy. His gaze pieces together fragments of her now shattered cranium, studying her lifeless body for a long moment before he takes flight again. Death is the very price of war, and though he has to remind himself that she is an intruder on the land he shares with many, he cannot shake the uneasiness that follows a first kill.
     

elysium

no mercy from the edge of the blade,
dare escape and learn the price to be paid.