Off the edge of the map

I'm no hero and I'm not made of stone

There was a sharp stab of pain across the left eyelid, her teeth gnashing against his face with satisfying force, and suddenly her own body was rebelling against her as a will that was not her own forced the knees to bend. Gasping in outrage Erthë struggled against the command but was powerless to stop Rikyn from forcing his will upon her, and with her white legs soiled by mud and filth she found herself glaring up into his screaming face, so close that his spit splattered across her nose and the force of his breath made her frosty curls ripple.

Blood trickled slowly from the shallow gash. There was no pain;he only noticed that she had been hurt when the hot crimson obscured her vision. Annoyed she tried to blink it away, but it just kept filling her gaze with red and eventually the little mare simply closed the eye and let the blood run, startling bright against her pale hide. Humiliation burned within her where she knelt, the helpless rage turning her eyes black and filling her ears with pointless noise that nearly drowned out the tirade he spat out over her. Erthë felt her blood run hot within her, searing the veins with a battle madness she had not known she possessed - a heritage from some ancient ancestor perhaps, more acclimated to war and savagery than her mother's gentle vagabonds - and she snarled wordlessly as she strained against the magic command that held her down.

"I refuse to be a part of it for as long as it is his" she said, and knew the truth of her words as they fell like hot coals from her lips, singeing the air with their intensity. "Sooner would I wrest it from him and put another in his place! No one is safe as long as he exists, neither you nor I nor either of our children. You know this, Rikyn, you have to know! I don't care what you think of me or what you call me, nor will I care if you never say a word to me again!" Actually, that might be a relief, come to think of it... "But if you do not oppose him, you might as well join him. There is no middle ground here, no room for clever tricks or ruses. Do you think a deceiver will allow himself to be deceived?"

Feeling the compulsion fade, Erthë wrested herself up on her feet again and stood there, quivering with barely contained rage as she tried to hold the larger horse in place through force of will and by his gaze alone. Splattered with rain and mud and blood, she was still beautiful in her intensity, like a ferocious elemental of fire and ice - small and fragile, filled to the brim with raging forces beyond her control  and ready to shatter or explode at the lightest touch. But Erthë was no pure spirit, was no hero clad in frost and flame, had no power beyond what she grasped with her own hands. She was merely a mortal girl, barely old enough to leave her mother, hardly ready for the burdens of parenthood or indeed prepared for the consequences of defying a god.

The only thing she really had going for her was stubbornness and determination, and those two forces had kindled a fanatical gleam in her eyes as she backed away from the older stallion, giving him space enough to leave if that was what he really wanted.

"With him, or against him, Rikyn? Hurry hurry, I'd make up my mind quickly if I were you, or someone else will do it for you."

Right or wrong, I can hardly tell
I'm on the wrong side of heaven and the righteous side of hell

The silence that followed seemed much longer than it probably was. Erthë waited with mounting tension for a reply, but when long moments had passed and none were offered, the little mare snorted and turned away, more disappointed than she wished to let off. She was never sure what exactly she wanted from Rikyn. From the moment they first met they had been at odds with one another, chafing and battering one another like two cogs out of sync, polar opposites doomed to repel rather than attract. Yet somehow they kept bumping into each other and every time Erthë found herself prodding the stallion for weak spots, teasing and prodding as if searching for... what? Weak spots? Good sides? Some small silver lining to his thundercloud that might make him worth her time? She wasn't sure, and it annoyed her to be looking for them, as much as it worried her that she found several and refrained from pushing them.

What did it say about her, and about him? What had they even been to each other, in the past?

For now, she almost regretfully had to consider them as enemies. At least for the time being, at least until she knew whether his complacency against Kaos was a threat to her and her plans...

Erthë shook her head as she walked away from the stallion, off into the unknown. It was such a shame that they would never be more than strangers.