Blitzkrieg: I THOUGHT I COULD COUNT ON YOU FOR DISTURBED LYRICS! (JUDGE)

Ozymandias's attacks had gone wildly awry -- do they ever not? -- but he is not dissatisfied with the result. He had thought Kurai too fast and nimble for him to hope for landing two attacks on the same limb; that by dumb luck he achieved just that might slow Kurai down. The soil cries in ravenous triumph as the lightning stallion's blood drips and slowly, much too slowly, beginning to slake its thirst. He hears the maggots celebrate their feast with each additional blow and rending of flesh. Landing from his final assault he still swings his haunches away, giving him a split second of distance and an excellent vantage point to watch Kurai's body wrench and uncoil into a kick.

It is only an instant that he has to react. Kurai is fast. Ozymandias is not. He had attempted to become parallel, but he was a bit shy of it; in a moment of desperation in the face of the coming hooves, he pushes even farther towards that goal. His mud coating might help him a little bit, but they certainly won't draw the sting and resounding concussion from Kurai's kick. The lower hoof connects with and slides across the well-muscled outside of his gaskin, its wake briefly pink before beginning to bleed, while the higher hoof misses his stifle by bare centimeters and instead socks him unpleasantly in the gut. Fortunately, here there are no ribs and no organs, and the sheer geometry of his body prevents it from being a structurally destructive blow, but his breath catches and his amber eyes roll with pain.

Stupefy bewilders him, and for a moment Ozymandias is convinced that it is sly, sniveling Lightning itself that has stolen the breath from his lungs. His world rolls and infuses him with brief, intense vertigo, and he wanders dangerously close to panic before a very simple fact drags him back to reality: his feet have not moved. Earth still holds him, and from here, rationality returns.

There is plenty of time for Ozymandias's mind to stabilize, for his searching Earth to sense his slow-moving but nonetheless extremely dangerous (as was becoming increasingly apparent) opponent. For once in his life, the brash red stallion is rational, feigning that confusion still has its suffocating hold while he searches the light-torn world for his black foe. It is Kurai's decision to walk that saves Ozymandias. He stumbles as though dazed in the grips of Stupefy, each spasmodic step readjusting his stance, shifting so that the angle at which Kurai approaches is forced to slim itself to thirty, maybe even twenty-five degrees. Kurai rears, an attack he had so recently chastised as being compromising, and Ozymandias times his counter until Kurai reaches the peak of his ascent.

Wrenching his back unpleasantly with the suddenness of his buck, Ozymandias throws his haunch into the air. He does not kick, because that's not the point, not to mention his injured hind leg would be displeased; the point is that swamp monster yak butt will be knocking into Kurai's belly at the very highest moment of his rear. Combined with the footing, which begged so insistently for the black stallion's flesh, there is a small chance that he actually lose his balance and fall.

But Kurai is a warrior, and Ozymandias could not count on his balance to fail. Kurai's striking right hoof lands on the far side of Ozymandias's spine, in front of his hip, jarring his entire ribcage and peeling away a ribbon of flesh in the process. The pain, sharp and demanding, leaps mercilessly across his side, but it is certainly less than the back-breaking blow Kurai had intended. Landing would not be comfortable for either of them; Ozymandias would have to bear some weight on his injured hind, though he would minimize it as much as possible, and Kurai would find his injured foreleg folded and crushed between the bodies of furious Earth and bitter Lightning.

Anyone that ever depended on Ozymandias to act wisely was making a very kind -- and perhaps dangerous -- assumption. And then Stupefy fades, and Ozymandias's pain continues to intensify. Well played indeed, nightmare.