She finally clears the tree line, and captures her first glimpse of the fort. It looks like they have broke the mountain, impaling it and excavating its guts out like a kill. She walks through, eyes wide, ears apart, marvelling at the rows upon rows of men and beasts, tents and crates, guns and carts, snorts and shouts. It is like everything is trying to clamber over each other, but at the same time, everything is sorted in neat, straight rows.
They reach the top, right at the very top, and Satan slips from her hold. She swirls her head around and looks at the sight she is beholding. For beyond the fort, is the slopes, and beyond them is the cleared plains, and past that is the forest's foreshadowed presence and past that still, is the cliff's cuffs and mountain's mangled backbones. She has never been is such a high place, at least not one that gave her a view. At least not while she was without those blasted blinkers that shut off her eyesight.
She and the young thing stand patiently as the human's confer with the man who presides at the very top.
Watching crows peck about a ways off, the sharp, harsh sounds of Satan reached her ears. Flicking back to him, she studied his face, trouble, agitation...betrayal? Just watching him pace and cough words at the other men make her stomach hiss and tail twirl and churl in anxiety. Satan. Satan. She watches him jab his finger and slap a consoling hand away, she watched as he spins and stalks for her.
Oh, joy! She feels him, all his turmoil pouring into her, she feels his strong hands grip the horn of the saddle, his strength enough to snap the spine of whatever were unfortunate enough to be in his grasp. It was lucky the saddle was a dead thing. She, on the other hand, was very much alive. She buzzed while preparing for him to lunge up onto her back. She felt like a barrel of fuel, and he a dancing spark. She had to hold her muscles back from catapulting forward, she chomped at her bit and tossed her head, her forelock coming over her eyes.
She paid no mind, all her worldly attention was on the man, now having just touched down on her back. She wanted to surge like a a rouge wave, like vomit from a poisoned man's throat, like a unruly swarm of salmon down the rapids.
But he held the reins tight and sore against her tongue. He was not ready to go, he still had one last threat to make.
"Do not follow me."
He lessened the reins, pressed his legs tight around her and with that, it felt like the gates at the races courses had just just snapped open. She charged off, down the wide road of before, Satan's body moving with her, he was running too, his heart was as hot as hers.
They crossed the river and into the forest, she desperately tried to stay to the vein like trails that mapped throughout the undergrowth of the forest, but at the speed he was digging from her, every now and again she would over shoot a turn.
The adrenaline, the desperation. She knew exactly what this was even though she had never the pleasure to be in one.
This was not simply a chase, one of which the fancy mount's bragged of. A fox chase, horns sounding, running after the shimmering bodied of the hounds. This was more, this was great, this was leagues away and several raw emotions removed.
This was a hunt.
For blood, for power, for death and bodies.
Satan was back.
No mercy.