The pitiful cries of the young stallion he’d battered to the ground were easy enough to ignore, but the unstoppable force of the behemoth known as Tyr was not. Pain racked through his body as all that weight came colliding into him, taking his dark legs out from under him and throwing him off the murderous course he’d been on. Psychedelic hit the ground with a loud grunt of all the air that was forced out of his lungs, heard a strange crack, but only felt tight pressure, not realizing it’d come from a broken rib. It’d happened so fast he was left briefly blinking amongst the pain and his own flailing limbs as instinct pushed him to get up, knowing death came easily to a horse who lay beneath any hooves that might rain down.
It could’ve been Persephone (only given Psychedelic’s altered state-of-mind) who was interjecting this time where she’d been unable to before, keeping Psychedelic from murdering Sabra in the Forest. It wasn’t; only Psychedelic’s altered sense of time and place would make him initially think that. There were no towering pines or crisp, earth-scented air around them. It was shifting white, gold sands and sticky, humid air; it was thick hanging vines like ropes and tall palm trees that exploded at the tops with their foliage. He blinked a few more times.
Get up, bastard. Came an angry, male voice, and Psychedelic picked his cheek up off the sand to let his confused gaze snap from Talya’s panic stricken face, to the unknown young stallion he’d already knocked over, and at last to the force that’d knocked him off his murderous path. He blinked again. No recognition came across his gaze; he should’ve known immediately who this stallion was, they’d been at one another’s throats for years before Psychedelic’s madness shifted the former Lagoon boss’s priorities. Maybe, if he did, despite the situation he might’ve had himself a good laugh at this turn of events. In madness, he might’ve been amused to know this damnable brute was the one standing here now, ready to end it all.
There is no one to save you today
“I don’t know who the fuck you are,” Psychedelic wheezed with struggled breaths as he stumbled to pull himself upright as requested, lips pulling into a faint line of pain before his ears turned back and he turned slowly, facing the large stallion before he glared, “but-” before he could finish whatever smartass remark he was going to spit out, that hellish fiend was upon him again. The dark and gold stallion squealed, and the sound split the air angrily, then raised his body upright and briefly blotted out whatever sunlight might’ve reached the older stallion. Instinct pulled Psychedelic up as well, despite the complaint from his ribs at stretching – the adrenaline hid the sharpest pains, enough for him to ignore and not leave himself a dummy, standing by helplessly for the attack.
This fight was unlike the countless others he’d had in his life; even different from any past engagement he and Tyr had tangled in. Psychedelic tried to get himself away from those snapping jaws, but the slightest second of mistiming the attempt to evade Tyr let the large stallion clamp his jaws determinedly right around Psychedelic’s throat. White flashed the overo’s eyes with brief panic as pressure was applied with all the force Tyr could muster, and the world whirled and snapped as the large stallion shook him. The irony of seeing the world in blurs, the same way Sabra had before her grandfather took her from this world, was completely lost on Psychedelic. In those last few seconds there was nothing he thought of, not even of the man snapping his neck and crushing his windpipe, other than Talya.
When his body slumped to the sand below, he was still breathing, but barely. It rattled out of him with a sound that would set anyone who heard it on edge, knowing what it meant: each breath he took was about to be his last. His vision blurred on the thick legs in front of him and he tried to move, but found he couldn’t, only managing a pitiful twitch and spasm of a few of his muscles before he coughed out, “Talya…” and his lips moved, tried to work, nothing came out… and then… “I…”
And a sigh. The last air from his lungs.
Psychedelic was dead.
|
