Posted by brz. ZAKR on August 12, 2008, 11:51 am
71.245.170.139
-Shakespeare
Yes. Luckily for Zakr, he wasn’t Air.
He was coldly indifferent to Mab’s spiting Fire – it could throw a temper tantrum and stomp its foot for all he cared. His Earth was unshakable, his stride confident even in the icy rage of the storm. The palomino was moving carefully, but he used his Earth to his advantage, and the ground beneath his hooves briefly became less icy, only to return to its former state as he passed over it at a careful trot. Zakr surveyed Blitzkrieg with the arrogant, disaffected air that he always maintained, and gave Mab only the briefest of glances before the battle began. She and her petulant Fire did not concern him.
Once the dance began Zakr kept an eye on the smoking mare at all times, and although the driving rain impeded his vision slightly it wasn’t at all hard to pick out the fiery, steaming mare. She was following him like most horses who have the first attack, but hell if Zakr was going to allow her burning body anywhere near his sides. He had the advantage of speed, which she seemed so quick to forget in all of her glorious hymns about her own strengths, and he kept it in reserve, his muscles coiled like taut springs, and his Earth held him steady.
And there it was. Mab hadn’t touched his side, Zakr made sure of that, but he saw her turning her hind end to him and if that wasn’t a giveaway to the impending attack than his name wasn’t Zakr. The Earth horse was fast, but in these conditions even his element couldn’t get him away in time; so he did the logical thing. He did not give in to the urge to bolt; instead, Zakr swung his hind end to the right even as he moved forward in careful but quick steps, effectively drawing his body away from Mab’s hooves. The ground was treacherous beneath her feet, no doubt, but beneath Zakr it supported him. He was brother to the Earth, and it would not fault him.
One white-hot hoof struck his side, right in the middle of his rib cage. Zakr had effectively assumed such an angle that the blow was glancing; but his skin burned beneath it and her hoof steamed in the rain. He stumbled to the side, absorbing the hit, the water from the sky sliding over the burn mark and somewhat soothing it even as smoke rose from the impact. A glimmer of something may have entered his eye; Zakr shook it off. He was all cold indifference, coolly complacent as he kept his brown eye on Mab’s smoldering form as she took time to return from her first attack.
It is perhaps unnecessary to explain the effects of Cante Peta, since Mab has already done that; suffice it to say that Zakr met it with his usual snide disaffectedness (yes – even as his heart was seized with unbearable heat and his blood boiled within his veins, the part of his mind that was not paralyzed with pain was viewing it all with rebellious indifference). The part of him protesting the instinctual urge to flee blindly and possibly injure himself, the part that rebelled against the panic that threatened to overwhelm him (and would have overwhelmed a lesser horse), was the part that saved Zakr. Because apparently, turning him into a fine cut of barbeque steak wasn’t enough – Mab attacked physically on top of it. Through the pain that roared through his body in vicious seizures Zakr kept one agonized eye on his opponent, the logical, emotionless part of his mind never forgetting that they were still in the thick of battle. He stumbled to one side, his Earth, frantic at the fire that tumbled through him, tried ever harder to keep his hooves steady beneath his frame. Zakr stumbled to the right and waved his left foreleg as Mab attacked, as if hailing a taxi. This motion, which the Fire-mare could not have foreseen, caused a glancing blow to the knee joint and nothing more. His foreleg was moving too much for her to aim her lumbering mass at the small target, and as Cante Peta fled from his body Zakr shook his head and placed as little weight as possible on the injured limb.
His body still shook with the aftermath of the pain, but his cold hunter’s mind forced him to focus on his adversary. He was no longer the victim; although his side was burned and bruised and his left foreleg would stand little weight, Zakr was every inch the cold-blooded hunter, the wolf seeking his prey with his disaffected saunter and level gaze.
He moved slowly at first, feeling out his muscles and tendons as they recovered from the super ability. All that remained was a slight ache throughout his body and the feeling of a fever – which was actually pretty nice, since it was so damn cold outside. His muscles wouldn’t seize up because of the cold, instead remaining pleasantly toasty, and the only injuries Zakr had to worry about were the two physical attacks Mab had dealt him.
Zakr favored his left foreleg but still had the advantage of speed. Thoroughbreds are infamous for being able to run and in some cases win whole races on one or several severely injured legs, and Zakr’s wasn’t even a crippling injury. He approached her left side at an angle that was slightly less than perpendicular to her shoulder, and without fanfare or flourishes Zakr lifted his weight slightly and drove his right foreleg into the back of her left foreleg, aiming no higher than the middle of her cannon bone but continuing straight down the leg as gravity, his weight, and his own strength combined to deal her a savage blow. Bone, tissue, sinew, tendons, ligaments – they all fell beneath the destructive entity that was his jagged hoof. Zakr rose to deal her another blow, should time permit; as Mab sought to escape his attack, Zakr sought to continue it, and as long as she was within his vicinity he would continue to rise and fall, rise and fall – like the ebb and flow of the tides and the push and pull of the moon. His Earth was unshakable, his stance unyielding, his aim unerring.
Zakr ended the battle with a cow kick to her left hind leg. The attack came no later than a millisecond after the end of the first, so that it might seem simultaneous to the unobservant spectator. The target was perfect; Mab, giving in to reason, logic, and instinct, should hypothetically have moved, in some way, away from Zakr’s first attack. But even as the fire mare removed her foreleg from his vicinity she would be presenting her hind leg fully. It was just how pivots worked. The cow kick was also perfect because of his injuries; he was able to, unlike in a rear or buck, distribute his weight between hind and fore, and the cow kick cost him little injury and no balance. His left foreleg twinged awfully, hard as he had tried to keep weight off of it, and the burn mark in the shape of a hoof on his bruised rib cage stung every time a drop of rain struck it. The heat from his muscles slowly ebbed out of his body and the cold managed to penetrate it.
Zakr was done here.
earth ii
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