fury and blades

Eira... She’d heard about the Green Labyrinth, listened to the winds which gossiped about foul creatures lurking between the grim mists and bamboo, heard the tales retold by strangers about a solitary demon that prayed upon the helpless and hapless, that strayed into his lair. It was for this reason the journey north west from the comfort of the rainforest had taken her so long; Eira was horribly afraid of the Magnus Metus that lurked within. Her grey skin, lost beneath the wool of a coat that would not shed, was trembling awfully as her tired, sunken eyes surveyed the looming ridge of vegetation through the sheets of endless rain. This was it… Lightning cracked in a fierce collaboration of sound and light, aiming yet another blow toward the rash-eaten back leg, deadened with static energy. She knew, for the voice in her head had explained mere days after her descent into the Rift, that the only way to be rid of the curse, was to challenge this faceless nightmare and presumably come out of it alive. “This is hopeless…” she breathed unhappily to the little Eriucla who had unknowingly become somewhat of a sounding board for her thoughts; it was true though, goodness only knew how she - the little, emaciated waif - would stand tall before a monster purged from hell. “I wonder if I’ll die.” A figure loomed in the mist ahead, taller and by all accounts confident in their stride. Eira’s small, soft ear (the other harboured her friend), flicked forward with interest. Could she maybe follow that stranger in? Black cloven hooves thumped forward beneath the bent swing of her lean legs and she hastened towards the point where the metal-clad horse had vanished from view. Leafy spears towered intimidatingly above and the swirling presence of dingy western mist gathered about her hesitating, rotting frame. The scent of the other lay thick upon the air. In an uncharacteristically bold move, Eira pushed off after the other at a clumpy, clumsy canter… A glint of light in the shadows ahead suggested that the mare she was tracking was nearby. The young orphan wondered about her confidence - the fact that fear seemed not to overbear her flavour like it surely did her own. Soon enough, she had followed to what appeared to be the gaping, sinister-looking mouth of a cave… While her company stood battle-ready before it, Eira slid along the wall of the corridor which had led them there, ears laid nervously backwards, dark-blue eyes bulging with worry and scrawny, sickly frame as small and inconspicuous as she could hope to achieve. “We have to be brave now, little fairy. It’ll be ok.” "I am a book of snow, a spacious hand, an open meadow, a circle that waits, I belong to the earth and its winter."

- Pablo Neruda, Winter Garden

Eira is facing him too :3 thank you Sky