The wolf stumbled, bringing up a stiff paw to rub at her eyes, waiting for the stinging to stop and the black spots to fade away.

Her ears twitched, picking up as Mother shouted - the cougar was dead! - and she panted a grin, but there was also a dog screaming, and she stumbled back, shaking her head. Too loud, too loud!

The wolf shook herself, attempting to cast away the yelling, to throw hallucinous spores into the air and distract the remainders of Rift's army so that she and Elderberry and Mother could escape. But perhaps she was too rattled, as instead she found herself facing the dead bodies of her family, not in the Chrysalises but laid out on the ground, Gems torn out.

Her fur stood on end, and she whirled, racing into the forest as her family screamed into her ears.

*exit Jay

Only Jayberry turned to run, whipping past her, fur on end, leaving behind the gems of the family. Blackberry was torn. She wanted to go with her, or at least wait for Elderberry to come as well, but if she stayed, Pride would surely kill her. She didn't know if she could defeat him.

If she stayed, she died and Pride killed her children. If she left, she lived and Pride killed her children. Either way, she realized that, unless Pride showed any sort of mercy, which Blackberry highly doubted, Huckleberry, Cloudberry, and Yewberry were dead.

Her rage turned to despair as she surveyed the battle field. Rift was gone, yes, as was the other cougar, and the little deer. But equal numbers of her children had been so wounded they would have died. This battle should never have happened.

Jayberry was safe, at least, but she needed Elderberry too. She would leave without him. She couldn't. So she started forward, racing towards Pride. She didn't notice the little green rat thing on Elderberry's leg and so assumed that Pride was the main concern. As she shot past her son, she honked back, "Leave, Elderberry! Go now! Get out of here!"

As she reached Pride, she jumped up, flapping her wings to gain altitude, before trying to score her talons across his face. "You won't take my son!!"

Battle Report
Pride takes a hit from Elderberry and is stunned for the round.
Oliver curls up and screams.
Envy has joined the fight, jumping onto Elderberry's leg, although he tries to shake them off.
Blackberry tears open Sebastian's throat and he retreats into his chrysalis as well.
Jayberry tries to distract everyone left, but it backfires and she flees in terror.
Blackberry tries to distract Pride, ordering Elderberry to go home.

Only Blackberry, Pride, Oliver, Elderberry, and Envy remain

@Pride

Pride--even in the midst of combat--noted that Jayberry had fled, and his rage ran even hotter. When Blackberry had the gall to turn back, to attack again, he felt that rage turn to satisfaction. Bloodlust. He felt the talons tear at the flesh of his face for a second time, and he reared, switching his antlers quickly downward in an attempt to impale the goose. But he didn't leave it to chance; he used his magic, trying to shove her violently toward his head at the same time that he thrust forward. He was no fighter; he could have impaled her on a sharp branch just as easily, but she had done him the service of flying directly at his antlers.

He carried that momentum downward, to slam his antlers--goose hopefully fully impaled, as he'd intended--into the dirt; to thrash to and fro, pinning and goring her. He thought nothing of the blood running down his face, nor of Envy or Elderberry nearby.

His intent--his entire focus--was to kill.

He had no time to see the irony.

Oliver continued to cower.

He was not helpful in any way. He knew that the Bloodberries were the aggressors--but he wasn't a fighter. He wanted them to see reason, to stop.

Some distant part of him recognized that he could, at least, stay quiet and hidden and slink out to mend (as best he could) any wounded left behind later. He fell silent, still cowered down in the bush, stilling his screams and whimpers and doing his best (and failing) to ignore his own pain.

He concentrated on his own magicka, feeling it flooding through him--warm and reassuring. The worst of the pain faded. Sharp agony turned to dull but aching throbs, and he exhaled heavily.

Oliver dared to cast a glance up over the bushes, and saw the fight still raging; he didn't intervene, and no longer begged for them to stop.

They were not listening.

At least Jayberry was gone-... for better, or for worse.

@Elderberry

As Elderberry began to buck and kick beneath it, Envy feared they they'd get whiplash if they kept on holding on. So instead they let go and felt themselves thrown, tumbling to a halt on the soft mosses of Eridanus' soil. Their tail whipped, their breaths sharp, quills trembling as they thought about what else they could do. And then there was the goose, striking out towards Pride.

The cause of all this, the one who they hated and feared more than anything else. And she hadn't noticed them.

Envy felt hate curling in their gut, their breaths quickening, freezing in place.

They felt rage brewing inside of them for all the hurt she'd caused them... but equally, anger that she had been the one to give them the new body that they so loved, the greenness of their fur, and even their crown. They felt their jaw tighten. Quills shivering, they combed through all they knew, all the magic that they'd ever seen.

But more than anything else, Pride was theirs.

She had no right to touch him.

They came to a decision, finally, and reached for their magic, driving their paws into the earth as they tried to create that strange rift that they'd learned from Reseda and Pride, opening a black hole between Envy, Blackberry, and her idiot spawn... The wound in the air would take its time to open, but they could already feel the pressure gathering, the power seething through every inch of their being.

So that, immediately after Pride had finished his attack, she would be yanked to her death.

They felt the explosive force of their anger fueling them, and first the air around them began to tug with a violent wind that threatened to sweep them off their paws, but they pressed themselves low to the ground and hung on with paws that could fix on anything.

Envy shrieked over the din of howling winds, and held themselves where they were, even though with every passing moment they felt it becoming harder to hold themselves down.

"Remember me, goose?!"

Then the black hole opened, suddenly and violently, leaves and stones and rocks all tumbling towards the void they had made, and consumed.

Speech. Thought.

Elderberry's head lifted as his mother called out to him, commanding him to leave. And in that moment he hesitated, beak half-parted. He had finally found someone to fight, the thing that he'd been looking for and craving for so long. And then his mother was attacking Pride. The hybrid closed his beak and finally bowed his head. He could not refuse an order, not from his mother and leader. He couldn't betray his family for the sake of one last thrill.

He turned away, and was about to lift his hooves and gallop off into the forest when the wind began to lash at his feathers, and he whipped around to see the small green creature yelling as the air in front of it trembled. Elderberry hovered where he was, a sudden feeling of dread prickling in the feathers along his back.

Again, that hesitation; it wasn't in his nature to simply run from a challenge, but his mother's words rang out again. His heart pounded, and suddenly the hybrid felt himself yanked forward, and almost off of his feet. He let out a bellow, and tried to escape the void that pulled him towards it, struggled desperately to obey. He drove hooves into the ground, thrashed and struggled and reared, but suddenly was forced onto his knees as he was dragged towards the ever-widening black hole.

The moosegoose screamed until his lungs ached, but there was no escaping the King's magic.

Elderberry felt every bone breaking, felt his lungs crushed as he was compressed into an infinitely tiny space. His screams devolved into gurgles, but not a drop of blood emerged from the hole. And then, after that, there was a horrible, horrible silence.

-exit elderberry-

---

"When I speak."

When I think.

As her claws scourged across Pride's face, she felt the stag shift. Suddenly she was faced with his antlers and she knew what he was going to do. Immediately, she began to fly away, closing shut the teeth on her stomach, but his magic was already pulling her down. She felt it push her against his antlers, although mose of them were stopped by the guard on her chest, she still felt some branches pierce other parts of her belly. She honked and struggled to get herself off as blood began to run down her sides. As he slammed her to the ground, the antlers stabbed deeper into her.

There was a sound behind her, a sound that cause a great surge of fear and horror and she knew. She knew she had to go. If she stayed, she would die, if she hesitated, she would die. So she grabbed onto Pride's antlers with her talons, ripped herself off of them, and used him as a ledge to jump off of, flying in the other direction of the sound.

The wind began pulling her back barely a second later and she fought against it with all her strength. The strength was so terrible that her entire backside began to scream with pain. Feathers were ripped away, the skin torn apart and, as she was pulled back. A horrible, crushing pain smashed down on her tail and she screamed. She dove towards the ground and grabbed at the grass with her claws, a surge of strength flowing through her body and she shot off, away from the black hole.

She dared to glance back at the magic that had erupted in the center of the battle field as she flew away and the world froze. She saw everything. The black hole, the tiny space of the crushing void pulling everything within it, everything in its path. She watched as Elderberry struggled to escape, she watched as he was pulled in and hear his scream, heard it descend into gurgling, heard the horrible cracking and crunching as he was crushed, and she watched him disappear as he became nothing.

Horror rose in her throat but it hadn't yet registered. She almost let go of her grip on the ground but her own instincts kicked in just in time. She launched herself forward, away from the battlefield, without Elderberry running at her side. The surge of strength that had come with terror gave her what she needed to escape the horrible, tearing winds that threatened to throw her into the same pit that had destroyed her son.

At last, she was out of reach of the black hole's influence and escaping through the trees, getting as far away as she could from the battlefield.

Away from the place where her beloved son had died.

*exit

Battle Report
Upon scratching Pride's face, he tried to use magic to stab her with his antlers. It did damage, although her stomach teeth protected her from the worst of the blow.
Oliver uses magic to heal himself a bit.
Envy opens up a black hole and Elderberry is dragged into it. He's crushed into nothing as Blackberry watches.
Blackberry barely manages to escape Pride and Envy, although she loses her tail before she's able to flee.

The Bloodberries are now gone. The battle is over.

Strewn across the field are the chrysalis of Rift, Enka, Sebastian, Cloudberry, Huckleberry, and Yewberry.

@Pride

The stag immediately leapt to give chase, but for a moment, he paused. Pride turned to Envy, his face running with blood. It stung, and made it hard to see, but he didn't care about that. When the adrenaline wore off it'd hurt, undoubtedly, but now was not the time.

"Impeccable timing," he said simply, with a grateful nod. "We have to chase her, you realize. We have to finish this. Otherwise she will just come back, and she will do it again. If we go now, we can catch her. We know where she's going--and she's injured. She's leaving a trail of blood. If you can follow it--we can kill her."

If not, perhaps she'd lead them straight to the black wolf.

"I am going to follow. Do you want to gather allies, first, or go chase them to their foul nest? If they aren't there--we destroy it. Reclaim it from their filth." His usually-soft voice was harsh with hatred--discordant against his melodic tone.

@Envy

The weasel held on, struggling to keep their magic under control for as long as they could. They saw in awful detail it dragging the hybrid to its doom, and heard his screaming demise and the crunching of his bones. And for a moment, there was a disconnect between what they saw and what they felt. The weasel, themselves, was soon being yanked from their position and tugged forward, paws digging into the earth as they tried to remain.

But as they saw the goose flee, they finally let go of it, and everything came crashing in.

There was a low and hollow boom as the hole in the air disappeared, and with it, any trace of Elderberry that remained save for a sliver of small blue gem that came tinkling to a rest on the ground.

The weasel felt sickness rise, bitter bile rising in their throat as the horrible crunching, squelching sounds of death replayed in their mind, over and over again. The screams of agony and his gurgling demise, They looked around, at the ruins of the battle that they'd reached far too late, and up at Pride, his face running with blood. Pride nodded their way- he spoke-- but the words felt distant and muffled.

Their eyes, wide and haunted, fixed on him.

The hybrid had been the villain here. He had been attacking Pride, and Envy had come to his rescue. But the terrible, agonizing means of his death, was something worse than anything the Bloodberries had ever done. And it had been Envy that had done it. Envy had killed, horribly and violently. What have I done...

They stared at Pride, opened their mouth to reply and---...

Instead, the weasel retched, arching their spine as their empty stomach heaved, spewing a mess of clear greenish fluid out onto the ground.

They stared at it, shivering violently, eyes wide and watery. They struggled to regain control of their breaths, their sides heaving and nose running. They opened their mouth to respond, but found their shrill voice cracked. "I... I'm c-coming." they choked out, loping forward and clambering up one of his hind legs. They struggled to keep themselves from trembling, from the horrified sobs emerging as they settled down behind his neck, hoping that he wouldn't comment, hoping that he wouldn't stop. But more than anything hoping that he wouldn't remind them what they'd just done. "Let's go."

Speech. Thought.

@Pride

Pride glanced sharply at Envy. Were they-... throwing up?

Had they been injured? Was it their illness?

To Pride, what had happened to Elderberry was terrible--but he had left them no choice. They were murderers, nothing more, and they had to die by any means necessary in order to protect the rest of the caves. He thought nothing of it, not now; the nightmarish scene might haunt him later but at the moment, it was coldly pushed aside as distantly as were his own bleeding wounds.

"Are you all right? Injured?" he asked, past the blood streaking his own face. Blackberry's talons had pulled ragged lines down that pristine pelt.

Pride ignored it, as he did everything else. He was single-minded, now.

We have to finish this.
Though he would stop and turn back if Envy were injured, for now he started off--bolting toward Tunnel N, though careful not to dislodge the weasel on his armored back.

exit Pride
@Envy