Gale
started under neon lights, then it all got dark
i only know how to go too far
Mazikeen becomes stone, and the bolt of lightning shatters against now-impenetrable skin, splintering off and hissing with steam when sparks rebound against the monster’s watery wings. Gale’s mouth opens in a furious shriek, voicing the monster’s frustration at the miscalculated attack. Control of the elements is less useful against an opponent with the ability to mimic them, it quickly learns. But there are other methods of attack, other ways to hurt her, and hurt her quickly before someone comes to answer her screaming.
A thunderbird explodes from the stone, so bright that its eyes clamp shut, and the Curse feels the watery impact of her talons on its liquid chest. It feels the lightning she brings in each bit of its watery form, as the electricity dances between the bits of salt and debris. The silvery school of fish light up for an instant, then sink - dead - toward where the Curse’s heron-like feet stand beside the bodies of its children.
The wings the monster had tried to wrap around Mazikeen become the coils of a colossal navy snake instead, its head a massive thing that drops down from above to swallow her whole. The instant before it can, something cuts and burns at its outdoor coils, and instead it snaps at that, pointed fangs and attention now entirely on the pale filly that stares the monster down even as it continues to try and crush Mazikeen by constriction
Myrna’s eyes are wide and terrified, illuminated in the dark night by bloody horns that burn with white fire. They grow wider still when the thing calls her: “Viszla,”in a strange hissing voice and the girl realizes in one terrifying instant exactly what her mother and brother had meant when they said there were dangerous things in the world outside Hyaline.
It is the Searcher, she realizes, recognizing it even after the long absence, even without having ever seen its face. But this is a more terrifying face than she’d expected, and her legs had begun to tremble the moment she met its glowing blue eyes. It had never looked at her before, only at her mother and Malik. But it sees her now and Myrna feels cold horror at the realization that she is what it had been searching for.
“Momma,” she pleads, but the words are barely more than a whisper. She wants nothing more than to shrink in on herself and cry till everything is okay again, but her bones are locked into place and the tears fall silently from her dark eyes.
This is the child that she had hidden from it, the Curse realizes. She’d given her another name, an effective shield so simple that it sends furious lightning down the sides of the Curse’s coiled navy body, illuminating the air. Yet just before it can finally crush the air from Mazikeen’s lungs - afterward intending to abandon this body and take Viszla’s instead…
Something Happens.
The world around them goes white.
Then black.
Malik opens his eyes, rubbing at his throat with the black spotted paw of a leopard.
“Mom?” he says, his last thought having been recognition of the white mare as she stepped into the clearing. Myrna turns at the sound, her blue eyes having been fixed on the place where the thing had been. “Malik?!” She squeals, having seen him bled out and lifeless what felt like only an instant ago. Only…
“Where’d he go?” Malik asks, voicing the same concern that consumes his sister. The thing had cut his throat just moments ago and now it is just gone and he is alive?
“Did you get him, Mom?” just as Myrna asks: “Who’s Viszla?”
@Mazikeen
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