[Judged] COUNTING BODIES LIKE SHEEP

[Seraphina]

S E R A P H I N A

in the absence of everything
ABSTAIN FROM FEAR

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Though her attack strays from its intended target, she felt a rush of satisfaction as her hooves assailed the stallion’s sides, staining the inky black of his coat bright red. It wasn’t a satisfaction derived from bloodlust or a desire to make him suffer, because Seraphina couldn’t care less about either. The feeling was baser than that, a sort of survival instinct spurred by adrenaline and experience. It didn’t take him long to recover from her assault, however, and he was soon barreling towards her, ramming his shoulder into her own. Although the stallion wasn’t much taller than her, Seraphina was considerably slimmer in spite of her musculature, built for endurance and speed rather than brute force and bulk. She recognized his intentions a split second before he made contact and, grimacing, tried to brace herself because she’d been left with neither the space nor the time to dodge him. He hit her straight-on, and, despite her best efforts to the contrary, Seraphina found herself thrown back by his superior mass.

As she lurched back into the pocked soil, she tried – and failed – to keep her balance, blindly struggling to avoid the holes. She felt her right hindquarter falter, and stumbled back several steps, a burning pain spreading the length of the leg. Her expression was impossible to discern, but, as she struggled to regain her balance, Seraphina shifted her weight to her other legs. From experience, she judged that she had torn a ligament; she’d gotten off relatively lightly, considering that a misstep on such uneven ground could break a bone and leave her permanently maimed, but it would take time to heal. This left her strapped with an unfortunate stipulation for the remainder of this spar, if she didn’t want to irritate the injury further. He continued to try to drive her backwards, resorting to snapping at the air just in front of her face, but Seraphina did not flinch away from his jaws. She didn’t move, didn’t react, didn’t even blink.

Was he fool enough to think that she would fear him?

Seraphina snapped back at him without missing a beat, lips curled back over teeth bared into a wolfish snarl. She had seen the face of death time and time again as a girl thrown out onto the battlefield, all her childish innocence be damned. Despite his demonic visage, despite the injury on her leg, Seraphina felt neither fear nor pain; she was a weapon, and not even a broken weapon felt anything at all. She was lighter, less intimidating, and forced into the worse position by far, but Seraphina had been trained to fight as though she were suicidal, with no concern to whether she lived or died – she fought to win, even if it left her body cold in the end. What did one more dead body matter when battles were fought upon hundreds upon thousands, hulking mountains of corpses with ghostly pale eyes piled up in heaps of torn flesh and broken bones because their fellows hadn’t the time to bury them? A small dash of silver, frail and youthful enough to evoke a pang of sympathy from the soldiers that hadn’t yet found themselves young, wouldn’t matter a thing at all once the moment was past. She was no longer a warrior or in a war, but the war wouldn’t leave her behind so easily, even as it became her business to navigate the difficult, tangled bonds of peace. Even that was just another war to fight; the soldiers were just armed with another kind of weapon.

There was nothing in her expression but perfect, collected calm as she lunged forward amidst his shoving and heaving, forcing all her weight to her front legs; she attempted to slip them among his own and, jerking, to trip him, if only to give her enough time and space to retreat to more stable footing. All the while, she thrust her head forward to snap viciously at his throat, trying to grab any skin that was within her reach as more of a distraction than anything. Seraphina was throwing pebbles at the metaphorical giant, and she knew it, but if she was lucky it would hold his attention while she tried to displace him.

If not, she would fall back again, surprisingly lithe through the agonizing, throbbing pain in her leg. Acknowledging it made the skin around her collar burn, so she swallowed it down; so long as she ignored it, the hurt didn’t exist.

@

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Summary: Seraphina is pleased that she gets a hit in. (It doesn’t last.) Ammon rams her straight-on, and she ends up getting pushed back into the gopher holes & stumbles, tearing a ligament in her right hind leg. She snaps back at Ammon because she’s not impressed by his attempts to intimidate her, then attempts to lunge forward and knock his front legs out from beneath him so that she can get away from him, snapping at his neck wildly to try to distract him all the while.

Attack Used: 1
Attack(s) Left: 0
Block Used: 0
Block(s) Left: 1
Item(s) Used: N/A

Response Deadline: October 5th
Tags: @Ammon, @kay, @inkbone, AND @Sid