Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Despite the massive size of its most-recent shape, the Curse knows that Mazikeen is at an advantage. She is not limited to living creatures; her abilities extend into the past, when the world was a larger place.
The Curse might have ducked beneath the paw of a grizzly or even a polar bear, but the massive paw that pins down its feline body is larger than its entire blue head and there is no ducking that.
No ducking, but it does manage to sink sharp teeth into the bear’s foreleg before Mazikeen bites back. The Curse is struggling to get away, writhing beneath the bear’s paw like a rabid thing, but it’s not quite fast enough. The bear’s teeth find the point of its shoulder, but even as it watches the flesh hang from the bear’s teeth it feels the wound close and heal.
When it manages to extract itself, and stand panting a few yards away, the Curse considers its options.
Brute force?
Hamstring and kill her slowly?
Venom?
She puts up a good fight, but the Curse does not enjoy battle the way that its host does. There are better ways to expend energy. (It also does not enjoy things that are not quickly won, and Mazikeen will not be easy to defeat despite the inevitable outcome).
“I could do this all day,” it says rather than lunge forward again. A lazy stretch, one that reveals its bloodstained but undamaged skin. Its shoulder glows brightly, the navy skin she’d torn away replaced by a self-lit cremello, and the claw marks made as it struggled free add stripes to his back and belly.
It won’t do this all day though, because there is always the possibility that someone else might come across them. The appearance of an iridescent blue whale shark - however brief - is not a typical sight in the Hyaline mountains and someone might come to investigate.
That someone will probably be an ally of its opponent, given Mazikeen’s position as Alpha. The Curse dislikes being outnumbered more than most other things, so it begins to circle her (still as a leopard).
Then it sits and stares, and she’ll feel it behind her eyes. It needs only a moment, plucking the image from her mind, and then it smiles.
The Curse appears to shift into the shape of a horse. Instead, it grows even smaller, a tree-hopper that quickly crosses the slope toward Mazikeen and shifts to a banana spider near her hind feet.
The horse is only a vision, but it runs toward her with the same intensity as the Curse would. Its eyes - one blue and one orange - are bright with rage, and though Malik’s hooves are far too small to damage the bear, it clearly intends to try.
Knowing that the brief glimpse it had gotten of the twins might not be enough to mimic the boy perfectly, the Curse acts quickly, biting with tiny and deadly fangs into whatever part of her leg it can reach.
@[Mazikeen]
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Gale
