( *Hugs Shaf* xc )

The mongrel began to run away, and she felt the rustling of the wind against her forelegs and she followed it, feeling the red rush in her bones, the desire to tear and feel the screaming against her skin, and she ran after her, feeling laughter bubble up from within her breast, the terse fear rippling from her prey like sweet silent music. Bella wanted more, needed more, needed to taste the fear at its peak before she took the creature's life.

"Come come, doubtless you can do better than that," She called after her with the last vestiges of her telepathy, and though her eyes lost sight of the thing, she could hear it scrabbling away for its life. "I will find you, broken little star, and I will eat you whole."

And through following the sound of claws against stone and feeling the tendrils of the silent screaming in the mongrel's mind that she could still sense with the fraying leftovers of her claws she'd set in her prey's head, she found her, panting and afraid against a wall, and Belladonna advanced on her slowly and pridefully, smiling slowly, her shadows under her feet and her belly and those pouring from her eyes writhing and hissing for blood.

"Ready to die?" She said, without moving her mouth.

Ashtoreth wasn't dying, nor was she about to die, no, she was already dead. She was a piece of meat, about to be beaten to a pulp and licked up by the Mistress' beautiful, sickly smile-- and there was no escaping it. She strained to reach up the wall one last time, trying to summon the strength to fly, to escape, but her wing only hung limply at her side, pain turning her vision blind white. She opened her mouth, a gasping wheeze of a scream as her body collapsed.

There was no playing dead, but if it was the only thing that could save her, then she would act as dead as her corpse already was. Perhaps that was what the world wanted, for her to give up and play the part of her act. Except every part of her was wild panic, and if it was not for the way her body was shaking with every effort to move, perhaps the game of cat and mouse would have continued.

As it was, the world spun around her. She felt light headed, delirious, as the hissing whispers of Belladonna reached her mind, brushing threats into her unraveling mind. Her mind answered back, weakly, fractured;

Confused, delirous, yeses, and nos, and pleases, frantic thoughts of mothers and fathers and sisters, so far away. So long ago. All alone. Did it matter if she was ready, when she was already dead? Her eyes stayed wide open as she stared at the ghostly white doe, pupils rolling back as her consciousness slipped. Her body convulsed, shock striking her hard and fast, barely hanging on to the moment.

The little star went limp.

@Belladonna (acck sorry for the delay on this tag,, it's kinda old so if you wanna end it we can, just lemme know)

She watched the broken mongrel shiver and quake, felt her shattered voice in her head pleading without coherency, and she swallowed the mutt's pain, shivering with it. Belladonna would make this little piece of filth pay for what she'd done to her beautiful ears. She'd drag her soul through hell over and over again, keeping her on the verge of life till she was nothing more than a frothing, seizure-induced pile of suffering.

She placed on hoof on the still little body, rolling her over onto her back, seeing shallow breaths come and go. Good, good, she wasn't quite dead yet....she wasn't through with her yet.

Now let's see...she could go into the whelp's head while she dreamed, couldn't she? That foul little owl she'd killed had done so, so it mustn't be too hard of a task. The filth would learn that there would be no escape from her, even in sleep, even in death.

A flash of grey caught her eye, and she looked up with a snarl. Off down the hallways she'd chased the rat, two children stood shoulder to shoulder, identical, and through her blinding need for revenge, she remembered them. One of them was talking, hesitance in her stance, and Belladonna turned towards them, teeth bared.

She couldn't hear them or understand them, so she cut them off instead, her words slurred given the fact that she couldn't hear anything she said. "This is my prey."

"I will kill anyone who gets in the way."

The rhinos kept talking, and they were even taking tentative steps towards her, and she made a wordless sound of snarling rage at them which made them both flinch. These fucking rhinos should know their place! "I saved your lives," She said slowly. "From that panther demon. Don't you recall?"

They came closer to her, still shoulder to shoulder, taking strength from one another, and as they came closer, the one word she could gather from their lips was 'Father.

"I own your pathetic excuse for a Father," She sneered. "He answers and listens to me and me alone, and if I want to kill someone, I kill someone."

She tried to reach out into their minds, to actually hear what the hell they were even saying so that she can get these two bloody children to leave, but as she reached, Clover's whispered touch filled with hatred and shivering rage stayed her hand and let the threads of the spell snarl, and it backlashed onto her. She recoiled from it and screamed, her eyes shut tight and her head tossed back from the blinding pain in her head.

"LEAVE ME BE!" She screeched at them, glaring through slitted eyes. The look of horror upon their faces failed to do anything but made her more mad, and they stumbled over each other to leave and run away. Fucking cowards, the lot of them.

Once those children left, she stared at the still body of the mongrel still lying there where she left it. Leave it to Clover that she would pick the very last fucking minute to keep her from doing what she wanted to do. Every single extended reach into the mutt's mind was met with sheer, blinding pain, and Clover's touch.

She snarled again and kicked the mutt into the wall. She couldn't just outright kill the mutt, it wasn't enough of a death for it, not after what it did to her ears. It deserved to suffer, and a certain someone didn't want her to do that.

So with a sneer and a huff, she turned away. She would find the mutt again, and she would make her regret being alive.

[exit Belladonna]

The world danced around the broken child. There were hoofprints that shook the earth, her body to dead to the world to react. She didn't even try to resist at this point, but the muddled screams made her feel as though she was dreaming. Desperate, she reached out at anything she could grab, but nothing responded. It was like being in an immense tar pit, unable to even struggle.

Time passed, slowly but surely. Ashtoreth found rest in the solitude of her esoteric corner, the world having slipped away. Consciousness did not come for a long, horrific time-- but even when it did, the little star wasn't sure if she was in reality. Her body did not move when she awoke, though she felt pain nothing else seemed real.

If she wasn't sure of it before, now she found confidence: she was dead. It was the only answer she could find in the dark, oppressing shadows of Orion. Sleep grasped around the child once more, until she was ready to fight against the underworld.

;; ash exit