CW for violence and mild gore

As a child, Fell had felt unyieldingly different. He never encountered anyone who seemed to have anything in common with him, least of all his violence. When he was young, the violence was the only thing he could share with anyone else, because it was the only thing that could speak for itself.

And no one had ever reciprocated, until now.

As an adult, Fell has rarely found a kindred soul among the largely pacifist population of the islands. Dreadstag, Raegar, now Solomon’s mare — each one brings him a little bit of peace, odd as that sounds. They are different in the way that they fight. It’s not out of fear, or obligation, or anger (although anger more often than not accompanies). There is something else in the way they collide against him, an enjoyment of the brutality all by itself. In the moment, it gives him energy and passion, and afterwards, it brings him calm.

The creature inside of him rears its head in euphoric frenzy as the blue roan mare digs in her heels and gets ahold of his mane. In her grip on his mane she has also caught part of his ear. She refuses to back down or even shift positions, pressing relentlessly forward against him even as they thrash and batter against one another on the uncertain, slippery pine needles. Fell’s mouth gapes open, silently snarling, his teeth crashing together in any attempt to grab the flesh of her throat. His ear screams with pain and the cacophany of their battle, and Fell cannot pull away or move very much without worsening the bloody agony, so he snaps at her neck — what he can reach — while his fury climbs and climbs.

Something in him breaks at the pain in his ear, and with a gutteral roar, Fell wrenches himself away. He is engulfed in flames of pain and rage, consumed by them. He does not care about the agony it causes him to summon his broken voice, for it doesn’t hold a candle to the excrutiating bonfire that is his left ear. She says something to him, her voice husky and inviting, but it slips right through his head and he retains none of her words. He yanks his head up, free from her jaws at last, and screams into her face.

It is then that he realizes: Solomon’s mare holds his ear in her teeth. The black velvet of it is slick and shiny with blood, the hooked tip curling upward like a mocking smile. A fresh wave of pain stabs into the cartilage that remains. She has left just enough for the ragged scrap to poke visibly from the mess of his mane, about half, maybe less.

His eyes widen, and then suddenly both of their front hooves are back on the ground. The fight in him is suspended, briefly, like the ocean receding in the moments before a tsunami; and then he is hit by the wave.

The rage that takes hold of him is incomprehensible. He lunges for the roan mare with his teeth and his hooves, not caring about the further damage he is doing to himself in the process. He throws himself at her in a flurry of brutality, and he remembers what she had said: aren’t you going to play with me?

Play with me. Play with me. The words ignite him, but even as he is sent into an unstoppable frenzy, the words do not cease. They spin in his mind, dizzying, deafening, and the shock from his torn ear carry them like leaves in a whirlpool. Hypnotic. Nauseating. He realizes that he has once again reared high up on his hind legs, but this realization comes as a sickening vertigo, and the ground is suddenly both so far away and rushing quickly to meet him. His front hooves strike solid mass, but it isn’t Xiomara’s hide that they sink into, rather the cold black dirt of the bay; and then his knees buckle, and he sinks down even further. His chest will crash against the roan mare’s if she does not back away, but the fight has left him, and he will lean against her almost intimately before his knees strike the forest floor. The tsunami of rage has receded, hollowing him, washing him clean, and the sudden emptiness leaves him vulnerable. Fell kneels before Xiomara, his legs trembling, his head bowing low to the ground, which swims before his eyes like gritty black water.

FELL

stallion. 16hh. black. marwari x. Rougaru x visurix.