Glory hums in her veins like an angelic trumpet as she waits beneath the arches of the Colosseum. She lets it sink into her marrow, and sinew, and into each black space between her feathers. It fills her as much as it settles something cracked and tremulous underneath her skin. And when she takes her first step onto the blood-soaked sands her magic rises higher and coats her skin in a flush of golden dew-light. 

The roar of the crowd echoes louder than the steady drum of her own heart in her ears. Today the crowd seems full of lions instead of horses, each snarling with their jagged teeth and their empty bellies. Amaunet imagines herself as queen of them all.

Here there are no nobles or street-rats. There is only blood (on the sand, on their skin, and between their teeth like seeds instead of iron). There is only dominance and submission.

Furious instinct settles deep into her muscle when she spots the bay waiting in the center of the sands. A memory races across her mind like spider lighting, there and gone faster than she can hold it. She does not bother to try to find it again, not with the trumpet bellowing in her blood and the gluttony for violence reminding her that her stomach is empty (painfully so).  All she gives him is a smile on the side of feral and full of teeth. It is the only warning he will get from her.

With a snap of her wings, loud enough to leave the crowd choking on their inhales, Amaunet explodes into the madness of her wrath.

Only her magic can hear the roar of the crowd and the harsh beat of their hooves on the stone as they chant and bellow for blood, and blood, and blood. It devours their urgency and lights embers beneath each inch of muscle and between every hollow bone in her wings. Her skin glows softly as a dawn sun as she races towards him in a strange mix and flight and charge. The shine of her magic on her skin is barely visible in the hot furious sun. Perhaps it is both a blessing and a curse for the bay stallion to see only a mare racing at him instead of something golden and holy.

Dust billows up from the tips of her hooves as she races across the sand. Her lips pull back from her teeth as she snarls in a sound that is more predator than horse (more monster than mortal). The curl of his neck, where it begins from the point of his withers, becomes her sole focus as every drop of her violence narrows onto that point of his form. She throws every ounce of her weight into the contact as she tries to bury her teeth into the hard bone and sinew there. The sound her wings make is more growl than birdsong as she pushes herself forward with them.

No part of her knows how to relent or go gently. Not now, not with the hunger coiling snake like in her belly. And every line of her form as she tries to devour him seems to sing: submit until your knees start to bleed.

The crowd starts to rise as they descend into a feverish fury (encouraged perhaps by the pure savageness of her brutality). Amaunet pushes harder against him, her magic eating the blood lust and turning it to rage.  



@Dune

She falls into the heady thrill of blood-lust like a stone rolling down a hill. It washes over her in waves as she tastes the fermented copper of his blood. It drags her into the belly of it when she feels his muscles tremble beneath the furious weight of hers.

Amaunet wants more, and more, and more. She descends fully into that black belly of the beast, and the bottom of her violence, when she feels him rise (like a lion, like a stag, like a thing knowing it's going to die) against her attack. Her bones quiver under the weight of him, and her wings snap and curl like claws instead of feathers as she seeks any purchase at all against him. The glow on her skin turns to a flush, all dewdrop gold instead of sun-golden.

The crowd feels like something dense, and deep, and more shadow than form, around them. Their roar  turns dull in her ears as he lunges for her wing joint. Every inch of her focus narrows again. This time she is all prey animal, all sparrow in the air, when she rears back out of his reach. Her wings thrust forwards to help her lunge backward. The movement is still a chaotic tangle of feathers, legs, and muscles screaming abuse (they are too close for it to be more graceful than desperate).

But the intent behind it, one she knows from years of fighting in the pits, infuriates her. Wrath rises instead of caution.

And even as she feels his teeth latch on to the muscle just below her wing joint, and feels his push and drag against her like a noose, she hardly feels anything but the battle-cry echoing on her lips when she screams. Her brassy cry rings in the now almost-silent crowd. Most of them know enough of her, and enough of the pits, to know that it's a death-knell of a song.

Amaunet rides the adrenaline wave, as she leans into this new point of contact between them. The tug of his teeth makes pushing that wing against him painful. Instinctively she leans away from the tug of pain (later it will be near crippling). But even as she tries to pull the soft point of her shoulder out of his hold, she swings her teeth towards the fleshy curl of his crest (or if he pulls way as she hope it'll be an eye that she aims for). Her hooves slid into to the sand as she seeks purchase for her attack and she tries not to blink hard against the sting of the sand rising up around them in furious clouds.

Belatedly she wonders if her blood tasted of fermented copper and iron as his did. Or did she taste like war, and fury, and all the things that will leave him stained in the wake of her?



@Dune

There is a moment, before the gong, where she fluctuates between something civilized and something monstrous, grotesque and hungry (so, so hungry). There is a memory of dust and iron hanging on the back of her teeth when she scrapes her tongue against the ivory. Every drop of her blood hums like a tuning fork struck against a bell-chime. The gold of her gaze turns molten, and furious, and more like a solar flare than a look.

She snarls with teeth, and a spit, and blood dotted on her lips like embedded rubies.

I could devour you, that look of teeth, rubies, and spit says, and you would beg me for the blackness of my touch.

Her wings rise, rise, rise at her sides as he pulls away. Her shadow stretches long, and low, and of a black as thick and dark as oil. That looks waivers between language, fury, and a wrath deep as the sea. The bone of her jaw aches as her teeth drag arcane lines down the muscles of his neck. And the look in his eyes, that hint of darkness calling her home, sends her careening over the cliff side of memory.

By the time he turns to rear she is already curling her wings forward like twin scythes. Her body curls backward with the movement. Dust billows around them, turning her glow to sunset instead of solar flare. His hooves find only feathers instead of flesh. Feathers flutter down around their hooves and land in a pattern that will haunt her dreams. The wounds on her shoulder ache with the force of her movement and she welcomes the sting and burn. It settles her from the cliff side and bleats lamb-like against her hunger.

Whatever is left of the monster she's almost become, blinks and retreats as the gong vibrates deep into her aching bones.

But when the dust settles, and they pull away from each other, their shadows still stretch long and low to meet each other. Her golden gaze still flickers and flashes like a solar flare reaching for a star-dream. And her smile still speaks of teeth, and rubies, and spit.  



@Dune

The gong is still echoing in her ears like a roaring sea of steel. The sounds makes it almost easy to forget the ache of her wounds and the patterns of her feathers strewn around her like leaves in autumn. She wonders if they could consider it a forfeit if she lunged forward again to pick off pieces of his flesh. Would they stop her? Would they only bellow again for more blood, more violence, more gluttony as Solterrans are oft to?

Surely one bit of him for each feather of hers in the dirt is a fair price to pay.

When she turns it is by halves-- one wing curling towards him like a claw and the others towards the crowd like a banner of furious flight. Between the two she seems a thing strained between civility and wildness. The blood curling a half moon below her eyes and the lines of it painted on her from the battle shines the color of fire. She smiles below the fire-shine and each of her teeth are just bones, mortal and fragile beneath the feral glow of her chaos.

When he goes, as hounds do into the silence and the dark,  Amaunet laughs and takes to the skies.

Only those who know her well will notice the wavering weakness of her mighty wings. Only they might notice way her glow seems duller, and duller, and duller as her blood drops on the crowd like holy rain.

Amaunet does not make it far before she has to land. But it is enough to know that to the crowd she seemed more god than girl in the wake of battle.


@Dune