M A X E N C E

ALL THIS BAD BLOOD HERE // WONT YOU LET IT DRY

 
The fleeting heart within the lion had not ceased to quake nor soften it's quiver since his roars had cried out over all of Solterra, his rallying cries seeming to remain unheard by it's natives. They wished to remain scattered to the wind like ash? Thin not just in numbers but around their every rib too? Perhaps it was just he, the soldier, who had until so recently fought, wished and dreamed for something more of his own country that now he wished to see out the same efforts in the wasteland he had found himself coming to call his new home.
The Solterrans though; they were less than enthused. An olive branch he had offered them, A call for purpose and unity, yet they had knocked it from his outstretched palm. 
Despite whatever rumors had been circulating there was still no such sovereign ruling in Solterra - this was something that Maxence would endeavour to change, and as he sought to continue his riling he would also continue his efforts to nudge the woman known as Avdotya toward the throne. She of all the desert dwellers he had met remained the only one who seemed at all fit to shepherd them.

It had been with haste and in a flurry of furious feathers that Maxence flew east and then south, never deigning to look below the clouds until he was nearing the central peak of the continent and was certain that he was far from the borders of that Solis-forsaken dustbowl. Were fury and frustration not already consuming him, perhaps Maxence would find himself once again in a fugue state of anger at the state of the clouds and how thick they were - there was no way he was to know what dwelt beneath. It reminded him far too much of the winter of his youth - just the taste and choke the cloud cover provided was enough to cause his teeth to grit as his canons sunk below the cloud line in a hopeful bid, praying that they were sinking to more sky and not into a disguised forest.

Dropping below the hood of clouds to view an altogether different landscape from the one he had set off from, Maxence was greeted by a pleasant view of field and flower - and even then, a king. 
Maxence was usually one to listen in on gossip and any information he could soak from his surrounding, though still he had next to no clue that the gruff man he approached was the newly crowned sovereign of Denocte. The airs of this gentleman were just that; gentlemanly. There was no entitlement nor any kind of insufferable cast-down stare. This man who stood before him, one of jingling coins and a lofty round head appeared a true and genuine soul at first appearances, though still, Maxence still could see the irritation upon his face and how the need for sport twitched over his skin. 

"What sparked your fuse?" Maxence came to smirk through his withered yet handsome face, allowing his dark hooves to gingerly step in calculated, criss-crossed steps "I see you are in the need for sport". Even were he not Maxence would challenge this man anyway.

So it was with a swipe with his two front hooves that he began his assault, the kind that was less calculated than he would have liked (and already he was internally growling at himself for making such a mistake). Easily this was corrected as he took his aim once more, this time aiming his right-front hoof for that of his opponent in an attempt to sweep it out from underneath him - it was from there that the commander strode forth, pushing all the weight of a giant through his hind quarters as he plotted to entirely bowl the bay gyspy over to the heath and grass below.