01-25-2020, 03:58 AM
<center><div style="width:400px; padding:30px;font-family:times;font-size:12px;line-height:14px;background:#FFFFFF;color:#000000;text-align:justify"><center><i> “She set fire to all the things that held her back,
and from the ashes she stepped into who she always was.”</center></I>
Darkness swallows her up, and she lets it. It takes away the physical pain, and it takes away Voracious – but not the memories.
When she blinks open her bright pink eyes to the red plains again, she is still seething.
The sight of who steps through the threshold is the only thing that makes her racing mind stop.
She blinks, confusion visible on her face as she stares at what she thinks might be a reflection. It is her, clearly, but not as she is now – it is her from before she had entered this hellish dome, without the antlers.
Aislyn does not stop to ponder the hows or the whys; she does not ask questions, just as she had hardly given pause to why Voracious was attacking her. Perhaps someday she would learn how to calculate a situation before slipping so easily into the bloodbath, but today is not that day. Still simmering from her previous battle, it does not take much heat to bring her to a boil.
She attacks first, not giving her opponent a chance. Having seen Aislyn coming at her with her head lowered, the bright-eyed imposter skitters sideways, attempting to leap and evade as the dull-tipped tines are aimed directly to her barrel. Aislyn’s intent was to of course just plow into her and knock her off balance, but similar to what had happened to her when Voracious tried the same thing, she only manages to hardly snag the other girl’s hip as she slips past.
Her opponent, however, seems almost abnormally fast and powerful. The imposter version of herself seems hardly bothered by the glancing blow and she spins abruptly, and Aislyn catches only a flash of black and white skin to her left as the other mare goes air-born in a rear, her dark hooves striking towards her shoulder. But Aislyn, though not as supernaturally quick as her opponent, is nothing short of athletic. Compact without being overly bulky – her mother’s arabian pedigree lending a delicate grace to her otherwise wild, feral build – she rolls away on her haunches to the right. By the time the other’s front hooves have touched ground is just when Aislyn delivers a powerful double-barrel kick directly into her chest.
She drives her back until the other mare manages to create a gap between them that is large enough that Aislyn is forced to spin and face her to not lose track of her movements. They are both glistening in sweat – something that Aislyn finds surprising in the other, since a part of her was convinced that she was not even real; that she should not be able to sweat and bleed that way Aislyn herself does.
Breathing hard, her eyes trained on her opponent’s every movement as they stalk in a mirroring circle around each other, she lowers her head when she sees the flinch of muscle that indicates she is about to lunge at her. They pass each other shoulder to shoulder, and where the imposter-looking mare elevates her hindlegs in a kick, Aislyn lowers her head to slam her antlered head at her exposed underside.
Again, her goal had simply been to knock her off balance. When the other mare stumbles and slips, her outside hind leg sliding to the side in a fast, jerking motion, Aislyn is confused by the sickening <i>pop</i> that she hears. She does not realize that the sheer force of the mare’s weight and power had torqued her pelvis during the slip in such a way that it had broken. And she certainly does not realize – does not see – that when the bone so violently broke that it managed to sever one of the main arteries that ran close enough to it.
All she can do is watch as the other form staggers and falls to the ground; watch as the pupils grow impossibly round and wild with something that she thinks might be fear, but knows it cannot be, because this thing that she has been fighting is not real.
And yet, it is obvious when the life flickers and fades – when the muscles stop twitching and the legs stop jerking.
She feels nothing when she stares at what is essentially her own corpse on the ground, though she knows she should. She wills her heart to twist, for guilt to bleed into her, but nothing comes. Just an impossible silence as she stands in the blood-drenched dome.
<div align=right><font color=B6385F><b>aislyn.</b></font></div></center>
750 words exactly
and from the ashes she stepped into who she always was.”</center></I>
Darkness swallows her up, and she lets it. It takes away the physical pain, and it takes away Voracious – but not the memories.
When she blinks open her bright pink eyes to the red plains again, she is still seething.
The sight of who steps through the threshold is the only thing that makes her racing mind stop.
She blinks, confusion visible on her face as she stares at what she thinks might be a reflection. It is her, clearly, but not as she is now – it is her from before she had entered this hellish dome, without the antlers.
Aislyn does not stop to ponder the hows or the whys; she does not ask questions, just as she had hardly given pause to why Voracious was attacking her. Perhaps someday she would learn how to calculate a situation before slipping so easily into the bloodbath, but today is not that day. Still simmering from her previous battle, it does not take much heat to bring her to a boil.
She attacks first, not giving her opponent a chance. Having seen Aislyn coming at her with her head lowered, the bright-eyed imposter skitters sideways, attempting to leap and evade as the dull-tipped tines are aimed directly to her barrel. Aislyn’s intent was to of course just plow into her and knock her off balance, but similar to what had happened to her when Voracious tried the same thing, she only manages to hardly snag the other girl’s hip as she slips past.
Her opponent, however, seems almost abnormally fast and powerful. The imposter version of herself seems hardly bothered by the glancing blow and she spins abruptly, and Aislyn catches only a flash of black and white skin to her left as the other mare goes air-born in a rear, her dark hooves striking towards her shoulder. But Aislyn, though not as supernaturally quick as her opponent, is nothing short of athletic. Compact without being overly bulky – her mother’s arabian pedigree lending a delicate grace to her otherwise wild, feral build – she rolls away on her haunches to the right. By the time the other’s front hooves have touched ground is just when Aislyn delivers a powerful double-barrel kick directly into her chest.
She drives her back until the other mare manages to create a gap between them that is large enough that Aislyn is forced to spin and face her to not lose track of her movements. They are both glistening in sweat – something that Aislyn finds surprising in the other, since a part of her was convinced that she was not even real; that she should not be able to sweat and bleed that way Aislyn herself does.
Breathing hard, her eyes trained on her opponent’s every movement as they stalk in a mirroring circle around each other, she lowers her head when she sees the flinch of muscle that indicates she is about to lunge at her. They pass each other shoulder to shoulder, and where the imposter-looking mare elevates her hindlegs in a kick, Aislyn lowers her head to slam her antlered head at her exposed underside.
Again, her goal had simply been to knock her off balance. When the other mare stumbles and slips, her outside hind leg sliding to the side in a fast, jerking motion, Aislyn is confused by the sickening <i>pop</i> that she hears. She does not realize that the sheer force of the mare’s weight and power had torqued her pelvis during the slip in such a way that it had broken. And she certainly does not realize – does not see – that when the bone so violently broke that it managed to sever one of the main arteries that ran close enough to it.
All she can do is watch as the other form staggers and falls to the ground; watch as the pupils grow impossibly round and wild with something that she thinks might be fear, but knows it cannot be, because this thing that she has been fighting is not real.
And yet, it is obvious when the life flickers and fades – when the muscles stop twitching and the legs stop jerking.
She feels nothing when she stares at what is essentially her own corpse on the ground, though she knows she should. She wills her heart to twist, for guilt to bleed into her, but nothing comes. Just an impossible silence as she stands in the blood-drenched dome.
<div align=right><font color=B6385F><b>aislyn.</b></font></div></center>
750 words exactly