[private] i'm baptised in your name, mazikeen

[Mazikeen]

“NO!” Mazikeen roars as the creature slips past her and to the colt. She twists after it, striking out with her mouth in an effort to pull it off of him, pull it away. Slick, shadowy skin comes away in her teeth and the beast turns to her - retaliating with claws that collide with the burning ring of fire. It looks back at the boy, as if it knows which of them is the safer target, but it’s wrong. Mazikeen would have fought to protect herself (hell she would have fought just for the sake of it) but seeing the creature descend upon the colt awakens something else entirely. She can feel it. The rage she thought she lost, the frenzy, billowing up inside of her like a dry forest catching flame. Without her shifting to feed on, it feasts on her fear - and there is plenty of that to go around. She surges towards the creature, her next mouthful tearing more slick shadowy flesh away. She bullies and stomps and pushes herself back between the colt and the creature - trying to get him out of harm's way - and once she has there is a brief moment where she faces the featureless creature. Where orange eyes burn into that shadowy face. Then like the crack of thunder, that moment breaks and they both move. Mazikeen strikes with her hooves, too lost to rage to feel the sadness that comes with remembering where her lessons came from, No noise escapes her, no more feral screams after that one word. She’s silent in her fury as she fractures one of those twisting arms with a well-aimed strike, even as she feels fangs drag down her side. The pain catches fire too and Mazikeen loses herself to the trading of blows. Until, finally, the creature does not move. Until she fractures its skull with her hooves and sees it disappear into the earth like the others. Her right foreleg gives out with the impact and she stumbles. It is only then that she notices the tendons have been severed there. When she turns her head to find the colt, she feels the gashes in her neck that are bleeding freely. Sees the skin and muscle that has been torn from her side and now hangs, revealing several ribs. Her fire aura begins to flicker as the pain begins to eat its way into the forefront of her mind. There is barely a patch of her body free from blood and her head begins to swim. But her gaze looks desperately around for the colt and she asks “Are you okay?” She is able to remain standing on trembling legs for enough time to hear the answer before her next step brings her hard into the ground and the fire extinguishes. Mazikeen had survived death once and been so sure it was not possible for her. She couldn’t heal but she could endure. She’s losing too much blood too fast this time - she cannot even focus beyond the very real certainty that she is dying. She is livid about it, but there's a sense of peace too - at least she killed it first. At least the colt will survive. The ground feels like it is tilting beneath her and her eyes roll into her head. Images flicker through her mind but the last thing that she sees there as she slips into darkness is the contrast of a blood-red marking on white feathers.

@[Selaphiel]