Thana blinks and sees only rivers of blood crawling across the ground like snakes. Every blink, every flicker of darkness, the blood sparks and stings at her mind like lightning. It keeps the wrath coiled just beneath the surface of her skin with roots burrowing into every inch of sinew. Her hollow horn aches, and hungers, and bellows like a sentient crown burrowed into her brow.
Blood. It is calling for blood, and violence, and evisceration.
Hour, by minute, by second, she descends into the madness of it. The horror, the rage, the incandescent burning of a black-hole, it all consumes her.
The woods can barely hold her now.
When the forest starts to sound like bones in a storm, and the earth bellows at her feet, it is not Ipomoea's Thana that turns her heard towards the sound like a lion. And it is not his unicorn around which death starts to blossom like spring. It is not even Thana that races into the darkness with trees bowing above her on rotten roots and a desert demon galloping at her side.
The monster-that-was-made crashes through the thorny copse, with swamp moss rising like blood in the divots of her hooves. The beast-that-will-devour-this-world turns her head towards the two stallions with their teeth and swinging knife. The end lowers her sentient, ravenous crown. She blinks and there is only blood, and lightning, and war gone supernova, in her form. With a slip she descends into the belly of it-- this revelry of gore, and teeth, and blade, and need.
She sings a war-cry as she goes down, down, down.
Eligos sings with her and maybe it's a growl, or a howl, or a lowing at the iron moonshine of blood. Maybe it's the only song another monster-who-was-made knows to sing. Whatever it is... the birds fall silent at the chill of it. They know. They know. They know.
They turn away.
She does not know if the roaring of the forest is from her rage or Ipomoea's. But it does not matter as her magic opens wide and gnaws at the birch, and oak, and vine. There is nothing simple about her rage as she crashes into the gray stallion. She does not feel the bruise already growing beneath her skin like a night sky or the ache of her chest as she drives him away from Ipomoea. All she can feel is the hollow drumming of her horn as she drives it towards his fragile, mortal skin.
Eligos lunges at the stallion's hip. He tries to hold on with fang, and claw, and hunger. He tries to drag him down into the dirt.
Thorns scratch at her skin. But it doesn't matter, not when her teeth taste blood, and iron, and arrogance. The beast-that-will-devour-this-world revels in the intimacy of this-- this tongue, and blood, and skin blooming open like roses. She lingers in it. She purrs.
The forest floor withers with the stallion, with each drop of his blood another leaf and root turn to dust. This copse starts to turn black as it putrefies. The flies gather in like disciples of their reaper.
He has no magic for her to drink. But this will do. For now, this will do.
She does not take her teeth from his skin. Each hum of her heart has her holding on harder, and harder, and harder. A million cuts from his blade will not pull her away from the hot ache of his life. Not until there is nothing left to devour.
And the monsters-who-were-made sing in splendor as they start to feast.
