sins of the father

[S p e c t r a]

He remembered the lessons well. These frail-bodied creatures were beneath them, and he, with a slighter build than his father, had a lot to prove. He was nothing like them. If he took after his mother, he couldn't say; his memory of her was so foggy and distorted that it might have been a dream. Raised until weaning age by a surrogate who didn't particularly care for him, his sire had been the one to teach him the cruel ways of the world. Khepri, once-great and bitter, had been sure to impart the value of strength and violence in getting one's way. Leaner and faster than his sire, with a predisposition for stealth over flashy exhibition, they could not have been more different. Where Khepri had bulk and brawn, Vader was balanced and aerodynamic. His sire's disappointment was palpable. Nor did he make much effort to hide his disdain for the colt's preternatural abilities. When Vader appeared at his side without a sound, unnaturally unnoticed until he was close, the larger brute startled and muttered his displeasure, calling him "that demon child". The strange lines on his legs and silver sheen to his eyes drew suspicious looks from everyone, his father included. But Khepri's looks differed, as though he understood exactly what was wrong with the colt and half-regretted it. He had the son he'd always wanted, but at what cost?

If his father didn't quite love him as he was, it certainly didn't keep him from burdening him with the legacy of a warrior he could never hope to match. Khepri was self-made, brutalized into a fighter who demanded respect with blood and carnage. The Weaklands seldom saw his ilk, but the barren land was safe enough training ground for his too-soft son. Had he protected him too much? Would he have thrived better with other colts his own age to spar with? In the end, Khepri had decided stories could not do for Vader what real-life experience could. And so he had sent his only son south into the much-disdained captive territory to learn more of dominance and power. To become the stallion he ought to be. Vader fretted over the possibility that there simply wasn't a leader inside of him, no weapon, no strong stomach and stoic heart. He didn't want any of this, and he hated himself for not wanting it.

This place was no stranger to bones, but the young stallion found that the corpses far outnumbered the living now. Perhaps it was preferable that way. He remembered the first time Khepri had brought him here, a first lesson in how to kill an adversary. It was something he was meant to look forward to, and he had, until faced with the reality of the thing. How was he meant to look at someone and choose to take their life away? His reluctance had, of course, been a grave disappointment to his sire, who was determined to raise a fierce and ruthless killer. Backing out was simply not allowed. If he was to be his father's weapon, he was going to have to get used to how long it took to beat and tear the life out of another. It just didn't come naturally to him. Was it meant to feel like this, sickening and gut-twisting, leaving him shaky and weak with the memory of pulped flesh and gore? Was true strength powering through that feeling, transcending it? Or was its very existence proof that he was every bit the disappointment his sire suspected? He was not strong enough yet. He had to harden himself and kill his weaker instincts. Fear was the way to power, and without power death would come on swift wings.

Vader placed one dark-feathered hoof onto a blanched skull and leaned into it, feeling it splinter under his weight. He felt powerful here, and that ought to be enough. Instead the place just left an empty ache in his gut. He longed for the frozen solitude of the North, but this was where he was meant to prove himself a true conqueror. What was there to aspire to but to rule, to be mighty and feared? With a shriek, he reared above the dessicated corpse, slamming his hooves down on what remained of its ribs and spine. He thrashed and beat it with frenzied blows, cracking and breaking pieces until the sound and sensation no longer made his skin crawl. Breathing hard, he kicked the fragmented skull away and tried not to think that this had been someone once. Who were you? Did you matter to the one that killed you? The thought that it could have been one of his, and he didn't even know, made his stomach turn. He often tried to find the place from memory, but his recollection was eclipsed by the screaming, the dry sobs in his throat, the wet thumps as kicks began to cause real damage. He shuddered and scattered the bones further. It didn't matter; these creatures didn't matter. They were but practice dummies for real fights. One day he would slay a proper Northerner, and his father would be proud.

The sound of an approach from the nearby dry creekbed, parched earth cracking, made tension leap back into his form. The shadowy youth bared his teeth, ears flattened. "Watch it, or you're next!" he snapped, whirling about.

[Dawn]

Sometimes she dreamed of an alternate universe. Another world, where she'd grown up a dutiful daughter, found herself a handsome man, and settled down in a herd. She had a foal at foot within a year, a beautiful child of her own to raise with love, and they all lived happily ever after. Black Velvet would wake from dreams like this feeling uneasy, knowing that the existence she'd just dreamed about was the one that would have happened, had she not left the South. It was not a bad life, that was for certain, and it fit well with plenty of mares - just not her. And one day, she would have got tired of wandering the free lands. She would have stilled her limbs, become sedentary, and slowly allowed boredom to become her new reality. Out of desperation to avoid this outcome, she made the choice to set forth and see the world, starting with the Weaklands. But once a Captive, she could no longer escape. She quickly learned how serious the Drafts were about guarding their borders, and while they had been more than willing to let her in, allowing her to leave was another matter altogether. It was lucky she'd been caught by one of them in a good mood, who was content to remind her of her folly and then send her on her way. Later, she realized she'd received a comparative slap on the wrist, after seeing the truly awful things done to others who tried to escape. It was all very upsetting, and at first Velvet grieved for those whose murders she witnessed, but after a while, the sad truth is that you just become used to it. When violence is all around you and there is nothing you can do, it becomes an everyday occurrence no longer worthy of note. Knowing what she knew now about the Weaklands, would she still have chosen to leave the protection of her home? She liked to think so. Every day she woke, she was thankful for her life, knowing that today might be the day her body becomes a body. You don't think like that in the South, where you take pretty much all things for granted. Since coming to the Weaklands, Velvet had witnessed death, insanity, murder, rape, and suicide. She'd been thirsty, hungry, exhausted, and in pain. All these things she thought she'd known in the South were amplified by at least twice as much here. She'd never felt more alive before she became one of the Captives. Perhaps it was a sick way to get your thrills, but Velvet never wanted the cushy life. She was impatient with the idea of love, and liked the challenge of fending for herself. Having everything she needed right there at her hooves was boring, and though staying alive was a lot more difficult here, she was reasonably content.

In theory she was content, but currently, not so much. Velvet lay stretched out on her side, her dark coat baking in the harsh Weakland sun. Flies crawled brazenly over her prone form, but she made little effort to remove them, apart from a twitch of her skin or tail. She was desperately dehydrated, and having found yet another creek dried up, the Morgan cross simply decided to take a nap, rather than go to the effort of continuing to search. Ribs peeked through her dusty coat, a headache kneaded her skull, and no matter the temperature, she always seemed feverish. In the back of her mind, Velvet knew she was not far from death. The illness had started with a slight cough and progressed to muscle tremors, light sensitivity, and a crippling migraine that would not go away. Now she spent her days not far from a water source, nibbling on whatever dry sustenance she could find. This time, though, she'd misjudged her wanderings and got lost. Now she had to start from square one to find water, and good luck finding water that wasn't contaminated by upstream corpses, either. Ah well. She wasn't easy to kill, as she'd proven time and time again. If she was really desperate, she could always dig deep down below the surface of the land, where she knew she could find a little bit of moisture. It was her last resort because she hated the thought of sucking mud, but hey. If it kept her alive so she could have another day with this migraine, so be it. This illness tired her, but Velvet wasn't ready to give in so soon.

A raucous noise caused her to flinch, and she waited for it to stop, but it didn't. On and on the splintering went, and Velvet found herself gritting her teeth in frustration. What the hell are you doing, tripping over every bone in its body? Are you really that fucking retarded? When she could take it no more, she raised her head and laboriously launched herself to her feet, her head swinging sideways and shoulders cringing down as the full weight of her headache oscillated through her. Her caramel eyes beheld the furious form of an inky youth, tall and well-muscled, but still with a coltish look about the lines of his body. He was in the process of punting the ruined skull of the corpse he molested far away from himself, as though he could no longer stand to look at it. Velvet took a step forward, and the stranger whipped around in surprise, ready to tear into her next. With faint amusement, Velvet realized he hadn't even known she was there. Laying the way she had in the dry creek bed, she must have appeared to him as just another recently deceased corpse whose skeleton time had yet to strip. In response to his acidic words, Velvet cocked her head to the side, studying him closely. She didn't think he would actually hurt her. If he would, he'd be out there kicking around living equines rather than preying on those already dead. "Is that really necessary? In case you haven't noticed, our kind isn't very common these days. Plus, I like to think I'm more fun alive than dead." She indicated with her muzzle to the skeleton on the ground, which resembled a white picket fence run over by a tractor and then fed to a shredder. "What was their crime?"

[S p e c t r a]

The little mare eyed him skeptically, and Vader bristled. She ought to have been running for the hills by now, but evidently he didn't cut a menacing enough silhouette. Either his youth was still too apparent, or she could smell the weakness on him, knew there was hesitation in his heart and not the bloodlust of a true Northerner. Offended as he was, he considered showing her otherwise—but was there much point, with a being as starved and sickly as she? It had to be obvious he would win. What could he possibly have to prove in crushing her? And yet it irked him that she did not see him as he ought to be seen, that he failed to make the proper fear-inspiring impression. Was he not big enough? Time had proven so far that he would not accrue the same showy musculature as his sire. He was long-limbed but fairly plain in comparison, the shadowed darkness of his coat broken only by shards of white at his feet, a snip on his muzzle, and a few stranger markings mostly hidden from view: the small spots on his withers, and the fine line than ran from the top of each foreleg to end below the knee, and the subtle crescent moon hidden high on his inside right hind. Even when he stood still, it was hard to get a clear picture of the small identifying marks, and certainly few, if any, would have the background to guess at what they might mean.

Vader himself had no idea. He was difficult to notice unless he made an effort to be, which meant he was typically the one accidentally sneaking up on others and not the other way around. Despite feeling a little overlooked, it had been a good way to avoid trouble until his sire had pointedly told him to handle things 'like a man' and stop slinking about. His natural stealth was not a much-acclaimed skill set in the North, where everything had to be seen or heard to be important. He had to work against himself for every scrap of recognition, but it was worth it to at last see some approval from his superiors. How could he have such fear and resentment of his homeland and still yearn so deeply to be accepted among them? The North was a well-oiled machine, albeit thrown into chaos since the sickness that had hit during his colthood. If he didn't fit the mold that had worked for so many others, that had built such strong fighters out of soft, compliant fools, then surely he was doing something wrong. Perhaps Khepri was right, and all he needed was a real fight to awaken the true killer in him. But he'd never really had a good enough reason to really throw himself into a fight. Nothing besides fear of the consequences if he didn't. His father hadn't taken his attempts to back out lightly. Sometimes his shoulder still ached from the memory of the beating.

Perhaps the tantrum had been the thing to reveal him as a torn and imperfect warrior. He was but a child, smashing up toys because they no longer had use to him. No wonder even a mare as dirty and bedraggled as she didn't think much of him. He would be laughed out of the North if they saw him now. She looked half-dead, ribs showing through her dull coat, and still she didn't find him the least bit intimidating. When she spoke, he realized she was younger than she looked. it was hard to tell under the dirt and malnourishment. She had a bit of spark to her, countering his threat with ease and showing a sliver of the rhetoric that had likely kept her alive so far. He wondered what exactly she did to entertain the meaner drafts who came her way. Was her wit truly that sharp, or– he dismissed that train of thought outright. He certainly hoped something like that wasn't expected of him. He hardly knew how to talk to mares, since there were not many in training, and his sire had done a good job of warning him away from any fillies growing up. Looking away, he furrowed his brow at the shattered bones. This was a life, he thought, Flesh and blood and breath. Nausea stirred in the pit of his stomach again, and he stepped gingerly back from the mess. Even if this wasn't his kill, a couple of the skeletons littering the wastes were put there by his blows. It might as well be.

'I don't know,' he almost admitted, and perhaps the lost look on his face said it for him. He stomped and tossed his head, shaking off the weight of his hobbled empathy. The weak died. The strong survived. He knew which one he ought to be, had to be. "Weakness, impertinence, does it matter?" he spat, "You're all just plague rats not even worth the dirt you crawl in. You are but stepping stones for the greats who ascend upon your piled corpses. You should be afraid."

[Dawn]

Velvet tried to read the expression on the young warrior's face, but she couldn't seem to focus properly on him; every time she got close, his features blurred, like a poorly adjusted focus on a camera lens. She must be even sicker than she'd thought if her vision was flickering like this. Dimly, she was aware of the colt's dissatisfaction with something, though what it was remained a mystery to her. His body language was poised like that of an irritated cat, and he was looking at her, really looking at her, as if she were a cut of meat not quite up to standard. Velvet fought down the urge to shiver, feeling the sudden drop in temperature around her - or was it her imagination? In her fevered state, the chill was a welcome relief, but it also alarmed her that some of her senses seemed to be misfiring. Mentally she shook herself. Pull yourself together. She was going to need all of her wits if she hoped to survive this encounter with the young Northerner - who on further inspection, really did seem tempted by the idea of using her as a living chew toy.

She had an idea of what might be causing offense to him, and her entire being railed against it. His ego was not her problem. Velvet was not proud, but she didn't see why she had to pander her behavior to gratify his frail sense of self-worth. She was Southern born and bred, and had spent most of her life doing what she liked and going where she pleased. There was still a streak of freedom in the carefree little mare, who had never recognized a master in her lifetime. She wasn't afraid of the Northerner, not yet, but she did acknowledge the fact that he could destroy her as easily as that skeleton if he chose to. Therefore, he did demand a certain amount of respect, and Velvet had to decide quickly if she wanted to try to salvage the situation here. The dark chocolate lady allowed her head to droop a few inches, hoping he would take her behavior as the sign of submission it was. She would do no more, nor would she cower in fear like he probably wanted her to. If he chose to punish her for her impertinence, there was nothing stopping him, and in her weakened state, she would not be much of a challenge. Velvet was banking on the idea that he would allow his common sense to win over his bloodlust, for it was very true that most of the Weaklands population had been wiped out from the plague. Killing her would satisfy the itch for an hour or two, but ultimately would only hurt him in the future, for there would soon be no victims left to pursue.

Of course, if he did choose to spare her, that raised another host of questions, such as whether or not he would see her as a walking uterus. If he chose to breed her to create more Weaklanders, well, that was another situation Velvet would try to avoid, for she had no intention of being a mother just yet. She highly doubted she would even be able to bear his weight, and if this colt had any brains in his head, he would see that it would be unwise to try. No, Velvet's best bet was to keep him talking, don't make him think too hard, and let him believe he was in control of the situation here. It was really the first time she'd tangled with a hostile Northerner, but she had witnessed others and their situations from afar. There were many ways one can approach this, and many more that one can screw it up, too. She'd already made her first mistake by not feeding his ego, however petty it may be. If she wanted to live to see the next day, she could not afford to make any more.

It seemed that her words had hit a chord in the dark stranger's mind. Velvet was able to see his face now, and there was a moment of uncertainty that flitted across his visage, almost like he was really considering what she had to say. It was so brief that she was almost unsure that it had happened. Then an overreactive stomp of a feathered hoof and a flick of his head dismissed the expression, replacing it with hardened resolve. The monster was back again, and it hissed at her with passion, like a slap in the face. Velvet did not react to his words, although she was unsettled by the venom and utter hate she heard within them.

She brought her ears forward, her head level with her chest as she gazed up at the homicidal male standing before her. "Is that what you are? A great? Well, if you'd like to ascend on my corpse, I don't think it would be much of a victory. If you don't finish me off, a few days will. That hardly counts," she croaked, her voice raw from an overly dry throat. "Who taught you all of these awful ideas? I am as equine as you are. I even have a name ... which you should probably know before you attempt to hurt me." A halfhearted smile tugged at her lips. These were probably her last words, for she wasn't doing a very good job of convincing him not to attack her. Then again, the idea of dying didn't scare her. Not much did. "I'm Black Velvet, but please call me Velvet. My parents obviously had grand illusions about the proper lady I would become, but it looks like I disappointed them on that count." Perhaps she was being too bold to speak to the young soldier thus, but this was the kind of adventure she'd been longing for. And if she struck out ... well, she would go down swinging.