APOCALYPSE || Red Ausk's Run

The crying awoke many in the area, but one in particular was truly aroused. A large silvery iron Wher stood in the opening of his shaded rock outcrop, his eyes already dancing with purple. His breathing started to increase, making his severely scarred hide shimmer in the light. Scars lined his face, his neck, and down to the tip of his tail. He was an older Wher, but he was wild. Softly, the iron stood from his spotting area, growls shaking his chest. He could hear the red. He could feel her in the area. He wanted her. He would get her! The Iron waited a few more moments, locating the red through the searing sunlight, then took off after her crimson hide. Deep growls shook his throat with every stride his massive legs took.
Grr.Rrrrrrr Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgrrrrrr SSSSSSSSsssss His throat echoed as he ran. He was unbounded, purely wild, but if he was to be named? He was Grrsk, The iron of many fights.
Grrsk’s mind echoed with Ausk’s chants, making his mouth water with longing as he kept increasing his pace. His silvery nose flared, and his eyes were absorbed by a deep, lustful purple, while his muscles rippled under his scarred hide. He could see the red, more like crimson, wher. Her hide was bright under the sunlight, almost blinding to the Iron as he ran after her. If this red had run at night, Oh Grrsk would have no issues keeping a sight on her, but in this light, Grrsk’s eyes burned and tried to shut against the strain. He would not give into the light, though. He was a Wher, a wild wher. He was Grrsk! He had won many battles in the past, and many runs, so this was just one more challenge, a chance to prove himself to the world! He was the strongest of them all! He would prove this to the red. She deserved only the best, only the strongest! Only the strongest had strong wherets, only the strongest Wherets survived!
Grrrrrrssssss! GrrrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrrrr sssssshhssssssssss! He growled as he ran, forcing his eyes to stay open and to stay locked onto the red as she ran. His growls grew in intensity, daring all of the other males in the area to challenge him to the red. This red was strong, too strong for the others! Only HE, Grrsk, was strong enough for her!

Down from the Weyr, beside the blue lip of the ocean, sat an enormous, foul-smelling sand dune. Tall enough to withstand fitfull Autumn breezes. Wide enough to bury a draybeast. But not deep enough to keep the shrieking Red from its builder's head.

At the first sharp demand the sands twitched, tumbling off the mound's flanks as the wher at its core jerked awake. A large snout previously exposing only its flat, stone-like tip plunged outward by a couple inches, giving the wher room to flex his nostrils wide. One of the nasal openings had an odd shape, entrance pinned to the side by a fishhook locked in the skin. He snuffled at the sea air with such vigor as to nearly tear the his nose back to its rightful form. Then he stopped, and tried to withdraw his head back to the dark safety of the earth.

But the mistress of the Run remained with him. He began to thrash in his shelter. He knew it was not the right time. He wanted nothing to do with this...nonsense! But even as he wished against it, his legs pushed him up, and his lumpy wedge-shaped head burst from the dune with all the unneeded fervor of a Hatchling fresh out his shell. The wher released a howl of his own: the sun was just as bad as he thought. Not just blind. Not just hot. It stabbed into his eyes and lanced straight through his brain. He teetered out of his disintegrating house and wobbled his first few steps toward the distant woodlands.

His head smashed into a raised rock outcrop. Slosk gurgled assent and turned around, lowering his bruised ego and crawling for the broken dune. He could not see anything. He could not see his own facets rolling rich violet, and bursting open full spectrums beneath that. He was so busy groping for shelter that he did not realize he had turned around till his nose blunted against the stone again. The wher went still. The leading edges of his wrinkled wings spasmed outward. His shriveled tail slapped the ground with misdirected vengeance.

He rose all the way back onto his feet. He leaned forward and ground his face against the stone, his chorus of embedded metal hooks squealing. With more force, he dashed his hard skull against the wall of stone. He did not break, and the pain gave him a competitor for the crippling star above. Gathering his legs beneath him, Slosk vaulted smoothly onto the outcrop. His ragged jaws hung open as he turned his head one way, then another, before loping into a purposeful charge toward the forest. He still did not think this was a good idea, but think and want did not seem to be getting along today.

Maybe it was payback for the last Run having been announced right beside him, but he had to skirt the edge of the Weyr for some time before he even came within sight of Ausk and her other suitors. He kept trying to duck his head, keep himself blind in exchange for relief from the daylight. So it was that the tip of his nose caught on a log, followed shortly by the rest of him, and Slosk somersaulted over his own body with a rusty squawk.

His pale belly offered to Rukbat like a flag of surrender, the weary wher took a breath to whine further-- but a wetness in his throat restrained him. The pounding of muscled legs cleared him at both sides, and when one lean limb punched the dirt just beside him, his immense jaws snapped hard on it...and took only air. Chase or die. Slosk returned to his feet, his steps airy and swift despite what knocks the fall had tasked him with. Rather than pursue the other males, he began veering, sensing a curve in the Red's path. Sensing was all it was. Estimating. Even seeing, he could make no sense of his picture beyond Avoid This and Chase That, where That was a blur of blood on his horizon. He was quiet. Stealthy, maybe. Stealthy as a giant written in scorched metal hide could be. His mouth hung open, just as ready to bite through her at the interception point as to roar his would-be victory. Like his fellows in lust, he was losing himself to Ausk's broadcast. Winning her required becoming her.

As the trees took her captive, she turned to see her followers. Three irons and a brown was what she saw with her impaired eyes, and she scream to them, her throat burning with the shrill noise. She pressed onward through the trees, low to the ground and breathing like the feral creature she was. The net of branches above them created a mosaic of light and dark on the forest floor. One second she could see fine, and the other her retinas felt as though Rukbat were cauterizing them. She was blind to the lust, however, and she didn't care. She could take the pain. If the males could not, then she would not tolerate them. Already she hungered for their verdant blood. She could taste it in the back of her throat.

Her feet hit the ground like an earthquake each time, stomping down the earth and crunching any leaf or twig that lay there. She raced through brittle branches, her hide laced with miniature scratches. The pain she felt was on she wanted to inflict on each of the four males following her. Who did they even think they were? They weren't trying hard enough! They blundered through the forest. They were clumsy! They had too feel her - hear her, not see her. She screamed again, a signal of her location. She had turned right. Bushes snapped from the force she plowed through them with.

Then, she suddenly stopped, a fierce battle cry tearing from her lungs. The trees were not so close here; the sunlight burned through to the whers' eyes. Blind, Ausk turned around and collided with the first male she could. She had hoped it would be that scrawny brown, Nadysk. He was pitiful! Too small! He could try, but Ausk hated him. She hated all of them, and it gave her great satisfaction to sink her fangs into the iron she had slammed into. She tore at the flesh, tasting the ichor on her tongue and teeth. The wild Grrsk had been her victim. She shrieked in his ear, loud enough to possibly disorient him, and turned and fled again. She was heading back the way she had came - the males would have to work fast to turn around.

She swallowed Grrsk's blood as she pounded through the forest. It gave her warmth and a hunger for more. The red bellowed. She would drain them all of their blood. Every last drop would be her prize. They should be honoured! She would kill them all and take their bodies for her own! She, Ausk, the queen of Rukbat's fire! ALL AUSK'S. AUSK KILL. AUSK BREAK! In her frenzied, blind bloodlost, she lost her footing and raked against a tree. It tore the first layer of her red skin off her side. She wailed as pain stabbed her in the ribs, but kicked off the tree and kept on going. Nothing would stop her! No trees, no pain, no sunlight! Not even these males would.

Audren had backed into her room. She stood in the far corner like a beast, hunched over and eyes flaring with every primal emotion. Nadya and Hustafer were standing there, both of them the objects of her lust and her hatred. She wanted both of them. She wanted to subject them to all the pains and pleasures she could think of. Nadysk and Husk. Nadya and Hustafer. All theirs. She let out a deep, lusty groan, still staring the both of them down from her corner. Ausk still hadn't chosen, and Audren still wasn't completely sure. Her strong emotions barraged her mind like hammers to an anvil. They hurt. She could barely contain them. It would only be a little longer, though... That she knew. That she felt.

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Slosk felt better. Not better. Stronger. He was close to Ausk. She turned him strong. He would eat Rukbat. He would consume Ausk. Pain was a gift. It turned him sensitive. Smelling the blood. Hearing the screams. Thoughts swift as steps. So close. So close so close so close.

From the start, Slosk's purple facets had housed little red stars at their centers. But now the light from each bloody point criss-crossed over his eyes, netting them with lust of a different color. The returning corridors of leafless canopy scratched shadows along the forge-hot iron of his body. His muzzle tipped toward the tree splashed with blood and skin, and he joined Ausk in dashing off a sacrifice, a patch of hook-riddled hide from the flank of his snout. The wild was silent. Gleeful. Blind still, and tiring-- but not before Ausk! And his opponents he no longer recognized. The sun was enemy enough.

Slosk hurtled over an incline caked with dead leaves, and they kicked up behind him like a wildfire as he skidded down the black-soiled slope. Crushing, crunching, twisting in the air around him, while he stomped and hissed his talons across the occasional rock. Killing sounds. Invigorating, blaring noises that surged through his ears like his own racing ichor. Short-cut: he split his hind claws as he leaped off the hillside. Wrinkled wing membranes shot through with veins of mineral color drew taut, and the Iron beat his stunted limbs against the warm wind as he landed again. He cupped the air and used it to pivot, twirling to the east like a wher half his size. Had the sun been posted there, he would gladly face it. For facing the sun was the same as facing Ausk. She was barreling toward him. Short-cut!

For the moment while his wings were still furling back to the sides of his spine, and his front feet were still descending to the earth, Slosk did not Chase. The leaves he had stirred up billowed around his settling form. There was another slope to his left, trapping all on their course, the wet path, unless they preferred the plummet down the incline to a more distant bed of Autumn decay. Ichor speckled the soil as Slosk's head dropped low, his body flattening to minimize air resistance, every part of him burning with some agony or another. Layers of twitching muscle tightened up his legs, and he shoved the ground away.

Every so often his hard feet and broken claws touched down again and wrote the story of his effort into the packed mud. Whers could not fly, but each stride felt like a wingbeat for how much closer it brought him. What it would mean if he hit her, and then her other suitors crashed in from behind, Slosk did not consider. But he wanted the clash. He wanted to collide with Ausk, and crack his claws and fangs and skin against hers. Laces of ichor winged off the side of his jaw as he lifted his shoulders, mantling his wings and raising all his instruments of murder to meet the Red Queen.

As Nadysk ran, blind but determined, his competition flickered into view beside him. All Irons. The Brown curled his lip in disguist. How unoriginal! Kings they were, perhaps, but they were all the same. A Wher as unique as Ausk deserved something better. The Irons were bigger than him and barreled through the trees, snapping off splinters as they crashed by, but Nadysk’s size was an advantage rather than a drawback. While the others smacked sickeningly against the trunks of the trees, Nadysk was able to avoid the ones that he could see in the patches of shade. He was faster than them- more agile- and he was moving ahead.

When Ausk stopped however (he could hear her skidding to a halt and then utter a fierce cry. Maybe the very front was not where he wanted to be just then. Skidding, Nadysk changed his course hurriedly, missing the wrath of the Red Queen by a very small distance. It was one of the wilds, instead, that was rewarded with her fangs. Though Nadysk would have been ecstatic to have Ausk tear away at him, he knew he needed to preserve himself until she was ready to settle down with her chosen prey; Here, Ausk attacked just out of anger.

As he heard her spend away, Nadysk charged after her, eager to pass all the heavy, clumsy Iron beasts that ran after the object of his desire. As he passed the unbounded that had been attacked, however, the Iron lashed out at him, dragging him down in his anger at being injured by Ausk. Nadysk let out a surprised and pained roar as Slosk sunk his teeth into his shoulder. He turned to snarl furiously at him, getting free only to be met brutally with the Iron’s claws.

Back in Audren’s room, Nadya let out her own cry. Though there was no blood, her shoulder throbbed and her ribs stung. Holding herself, she looked at an invisible foe with hatred and anger in her eyes, hissing menacingly under her breath. How dare it? How dare that filthy, unbounded creature hurt her lifemate? Had she been out in the woods with them she would have attacked the Iron, though it would have cost her her own life. Nobody messed with Nadysk. No one. But this was his battle- there was nothing she could do from where she was. Instead, she swayed closer to Audren, her anger complimenting her desire.

Neither of them were going to give up. True to his hide, Nadysk had heart and courage. Gathering his wounded limbs, the Brown pushed forward. He was behind now, but he would catch up, even with his injuries. He would catch up. He did. He had the fleeting urge to barrel into Slosk, but Ausk outshone him easily, leaving the thought far behind. Besides, revenge wasn’t in his nature. Now, so fueled with lust and fury, he would act on it if ever, but there were far more important things at hand. Ausk- stampeding through the acid sunlight, leading them on. Their will was nothing- they had to obey.

For one snarling moment, Husk fought. The pain was almost minor, compared to what he'd already suffered - the bumps and jars and scrapes, the tears along his sides, places where thorns had dug into his hide, and over it all, the agony of sunlight in his eyes. Ausk's teeth only made him angry, and he roared, twisting around to fight back.

But then the red had chosen, and she hadn't chosen him. Even a length of separation was enough to let the urgency ebb - not greatly, no. For one perilous moment the iron was ready to ignore Ausk's command, to refuse to leave, to make her accept him.

But he did not, and the moment passed.

Panting, growling in frustrated discomfort, Husk started back for the safety of the Weyr, for the comforting darkness beneath it. He did not whimper or whine; he endured the pain of his injuries. But he left in peace. The Chase had been short, but fierce, and he had done well to keep up even as well as he had, given his slow start. Ausk had Chosen, and if there was to be one proper thing about this run, it would be Husk respecting that choice. The wild iron with all the hooks in his hide had won, and he, Husk, had not; it was that simple.

In Audren's room, Hustafer was suddenly left reeling, his wher's lust draining out of him. The pain didn't, not entirely - that still pounded in his head. But the sudden absence of that rage, and that overwhelming need, left him dizzy.

He took a few moments to catch his breath, and then he slipped out, easing the door shut behind him. There in the corridor he paused, leaning against the wall, stone cool against bare skin that suddenly felt overheated.

Shards. His head hurt, parts he didn't actually have hurt, and even if Husk had abandoned his lust, Hustafer was still feeling the echoes of it. But this was not a good time to be trying to find some replacement company; he needed to get back to sleep, shard it.

You did good, buddy, the man sent to his bonded, pushing upright with a sigh and starting back for his room. C'mon home and rest up. The wher sent a grumble back at him, but kept plodding forward as fast as he dared, the better to get out of the sharding sun as soon as he could.

Hustafer kept walking, feeling his way along. He'd be following his own advice, that was for sure.