[In the wilds of the mountain frontier on which her stable master had founded his trade, Hayame had gone up against the most formidable beasts known to man. She has cowed men, hunted jinba, exterminated boars, and even taken down a hole-less bear, but that... that had not compared to the creatures that existed in Horos.
And those creatures could not be compared to the thing that shuffles out of the darkness towards them. Her remaining eye darts about wildly, at first unable to identify the thing's head as the glowing pulse blurs in her vision, but as she quickly adjusts to the sudden light, as the voices (voices she's heard before, even if not so many times as to pick them out by precise name) pry open her skull and invade her mind...
It's a skull, suspended in a messy clump of crystal. Just a skull, no flesh, no other bones, just root and creaking wood and... the very earth beneath their feet shifting under her hooves.
The roots.]
Liem, get on my back-
[Hayame had born a rider just once in her entire life. When the armed jinba of her master's stable reached their physical maturity, they were saddled and bridled as if they were Armless, they were ridden by the grooms that had raised them to think they were special, better than the made-more-bestial members of their own kind... and they were reminded that they would always be a single failure away from the flensing post and the potential life of sale as a mount. She had hated the feeling of weight on her back, the dig of ankles into her flank, the pull of reins and the pinch of metal at the corners of her mouth that made her eyes burn with unshed tears of humiliation, and she'd sworn that would never happen to her again, but-]
Now- !
[The earth is moving. They had passed through a relatively large, treeless clearing not minutes past, so if they could just get back there, somewhere with less roots in the soil and more room for both of them to wield their bows... She extends her arm in an urgent thrust towards him, her hand open in offer for his to assist in pulling him up and over her withers.
He has seconds to make his choice before she's off at a dead gallop.]
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And those creatures could not be compared to the thing that shuffles out of the darkness towards them. Her remaining eye darts about wildly, at first unable to identify the thing's head as the glowing pulse blurs in her vision, but as she quickly adjusts to the sudden light, as the voices (voices she's heard before, even if not so many times as to pick them out by precise name) pry open her skull and invade her mind...
It's a skull, suspended in a messy clump of crystal. Just a skull, no flesh, no other bones, just root and creaking wood and... the very earth beneath their feet shifting under her hooves.
The roots.]
Liem, get on my back-
[Hayame had born a rider just once in her entire life. When the armed jinba of her master's stable reached their physical maturity, they were saddled and bridled as if they were Armless, they were ridden by the grooms that had raised them to think they were special, better than the made-more-bestial members of their own kind... and they were reminded that they would always be a single failure away from the flensing post and the potential life of sale as a mount. She had hated the feeling of weight on her back, the dig of ankles into her flank, the pull of reins and the pinch of metal at the corners of her mouth that made her eyes burn with unshed tears of humiliation, and she'd sworn that would never happen to her again, but-]
Now- !
[The earth is moving. They had passed through a relatively large, treeless clearing not minutes past, so if they could just get back there, somewhere with less roots in the soil and more room for both of them to wield their bows... She extends her arm in an urgent thrust towards him, her hand open in offer for his to assist in pulling him up and over her withers.
He has seconds to make his choice before she's off at a dead gallop.]