I tried to sell my soul last night
Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He had been a warrior once. A true warrior, whatever the fuck that meant. But in all senses of the word, he had been one. It’s laughable now to imagine how he had once tried to suppress his emotions to allow him to fight better. Had moved with a purpose and grace even he struggled to match anymore. He’d stood for something once.
But life had passed and he had died countless times. His purpose had eroded, and with it any sense of belonging he’d ever had. Now he wanders, an eternal drifter, doomed to wake day after day, to live life after life while the world moves on without him.
It’s no wonder he’s in a foul mood.
He doesn’t realize he’d been spoiling for a fight until the other stallion moves to leave with alacrity. Scowl deepening, he watches with a deadened expression. He doesn’t try to take advantage of the sudden clarity, but then, as though the fates were grinning above them, an amorphous shadow separates itself from the rest, sickly eyes gleaming as an unpleasant chittering (one that grates across the eardrums) escapes it’s indistinct maw.
He recognizes it immediately. It is unlikely to be the same one that tore it’s way from his shoulder, but at the moment, it hardly matters. Hadn’t he just been wishing for monsters to fight?
In the breathless heartbeats after the other stallion distracts it with his well-timed curse, Ashhal has pinned his ears and charged. Wings flaring in aggression, he plows into it, teeth snapping and hooves striking. The things are impossible to read (he remembers now fighting them in the nether-realm, the undulating movements difficult to predict as they had overwhelmed him), but it is only one.
Claws rip across skin as the chittering reaches a new ear-splitting intensity. But then, as quickly as it had come, it is gone. Ashhal isn’t certain whether it had been surprised by his willingness to attack rather than flee, if it had been satisfied by the taste of his blood, or if it merely went to recruit help.
Blood dripping from his neck and shoulder, Ashhal turns to stare at the other stallion with a stony black gaze. “You think it’ll be back?”
It would likely mean their deaths if it did and the pair of them remained. But Ashhal had never been particularly frightened of death.
@[Tarian]