What It Is

You have a goal. It thrums in every beat of your heart, a red, red song: Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance. Not just vengeance, but justice. Dominion. Ruin. If your mind wanders, all you need to do is recall the ruined landscape the Rift made of Helovia. Recall the glory of your grandmother's silver light on the ice and snow. Recall the soft mist and distant voice of the sea out past the World's Edge. All gone, now. You're going to punish this place. You're going to find every one of its beating hearts and rip them out and pulverize them until bleeding out is all the Rift knows. But despite your best intentions, you've achieved nothing yet, and nothing is all you'll have if you to continue to dream. You need to work. You need to teach Savera, too, harder things than lying and making up stories. But for now, you're alone: just you, fit and dark and already a little damp with sweat as you make circuits around the lake, racing your reflection in the ice, occasionally beating your stunted wings. You need to build up your endurance. Your lung capacity, your flight muscles, everything. Difficult to do alone. Breath pushing hard from your chest, you pause. Hoof prints surround you, several circuits around the frozen waters outlined in the snow. Just a warm up, really. You need something to push you a little harder. Someone like — Not your mother. You thought of your mother, but not her anymore. She isn't here. She isn't greater than you now. She is.... in the past. You need to conquer something new. Something fierce. Your head lifts and your eyes sweep the sky, hungry. It's an empty vault of pale, pale blue above you. Clear and terribly cold, but you don't feel much cold with the blood surging under your skin. It's quiet, this place. Peaceful, even. “Come ON!” You thunder at it, and your hind limbs jet your body up to perform a little hop, hooves churning up snow. Your tail thrashes, and you still, snorting, begging something to try you. countdown to selfdestruct

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Open spar :)