The Beast

There are many kinds of pain, but the stallion concluded that, tonight at least, the feeling of having your foreleg mauled by a set of daggered teeth was definitely one of the worst pains.

That feeling of rows of white daggers piercing the flesh and vein, the sensation of agony that explodes throughout ones being. The poor stallion's blood gushes out of his punctured skin and either out onto the earthly floor, or into the very mouth of the beast mauling his foreleg. In the midst of his loud cries he might catch a glimpse of the beast's eyes, those two yellow spheres that momentarily glare right back at him, filled with a lust for blood, filling him even more with fear of death.

The would-be victim's basic survival instincts kick in, and he summons all his strength to swing his other foreleg right into the creature's face. It is enough to make the beast release its hold on the stallion, eliciting a yelp of pain and surprise as it reels back from the hit. The stallion, his leg now free from the beast's razor grip though bleeding and hurting, has bought himself only a few seconds to move as far away from the creature as he can. And so he does just that.

The pressure he puts on his injured leg as he sprints as fast as he possibly can away from the scene of the attack brings nothing but pain and more pain, but the stallion ignores it; his mind blocks out the agony and instead tells him to just tolerate it, to keep running and put more distance between himself and that beast. Twigs snap beneath his hooves and leaves rustle as he steps on them. The blood drips from his wound, a crimson reflection of Luna's moon above mirrors in every droplet of red.

Has the beast recovered at this moment? Has it given chase so that it may finish its task, sating its hunger with the stallion's flesh, quenching its thirst with the stallion's blood? The stallion does not know, nor does he wish to even so much as glance behind him to see. He is near the end of the forest, and he sees the lights of the houses of his hometown ahead. His leg feels close to snapping off from the strenuous work he has put it through, but just a little longer, a little further now. Please, Celestia. Please, Luna. the stallion prays in his thoughts. Please let me live long enough to see my beloved wife again

The princesses of the Sun and Moon must have heard his prayers tonight, for indeed it is a few moments later that the stallion clears the forest border, shooting out from amid the trees and onward towards the nearest pony-inhabited house he sees. Exhaustion is quickly setting in, and the blood he has lost from his leg wound no doubt contributes to his weariness. But he staggers to the door, falling upon the steps underneath a dimly lit door light.

In his position right now, that light might as well be heaven to the stallion, as his eyes close, blacking out from tiredness and blood loss. Before his vision completely fades to darkness, the stallion manages to see the door of the house open, and a set of hooves standing in the open doorway...

The stallion awakens to the warmth of the morning sun shining through the window of an unfamiliar room. As his eyes adjust to the light, he sees himself garbed in patient attire, and the foreleg which had been mauled by his beastly assailant the night before is bandaged, and the pain, while still present, has been numbed significantly, most likely through pain sedatives.

As he confirms his surroundings, the stallion's attention is quickly drawn to the doorway of his room. There, a mare he recognizes all too well stands in the gap between his room and the hallway, looking back at him with a mixed expression of concern, dread and relief. The stallion smiles weakly at her and she runs towards him, embracing him in a hug as tears soak the fur of his shoulders. The stallion winces as his mare accidentally touches a sore spot while burying her head deeper into his chest, and she quickly releases him while spouting apology after apology at him.

The stallion manages to calm her down. She tells him she awoke to a couple of town guards on the doorstep of their home, and how frightened she was after receiving word of his hospitalization, and how she knocked both of the guards aside as she rushed to be at her husband's side. With a blush of embarrassment she reminds herself to apologize to the guards later on.

The stallion simply chuckles and smiles at her little episode. He assures his darling that besides a few aches and, jokingly, a near-death experience, he will be fine. He tries his best to believe his own words in his mind.

The stallion soon learns that he's very quickly become the talk of the town. Many ponies have heard of what happened the night before, how he was found on the doorsteps of the local gossip mare. She was the first to find him in his exhausted bloodied state, and after waking up nearly the whole neighborhood with her shrieking an ambulance was rushed to the scene shortly afterwards.

His wife asks him to recount the previous night's events, her curiosity getting the best of her. The stallion clears his throat, and recalls how he had been returning home from his trip to the neighboring town on the other side of the forest. He recalls how late it had begun to get as he approached the forest, and so hurried along the forest path. As the night fell upon the forest, and a full moon peered out from the clouds, the stallion started to hear a collection of snarls and growls around him. He stumbled around trying to see what was making those noises, worried whether it was a timberwolf, or perhaps a cockatrice. His attacker had then sprung out from behind some bushes, and his now bandaged foreleg told his wife the rest of the tale for him.

The creature that attacked him was wolf-like in appearance, as the stallion puts it, with sharp teeth as white as the moonlight on that night, and it sported claws sharp enough to cleanly cut through the trunks of trees. He speaks of its fur, messed and flowing like

But, as the stallion reflects upon his encounter with the beast, he remembers something else about that night, something most peculiar about the beast that attacked him. For there was a strange sense of familiarity about the creature. He recalls that when he saw its eyes, he had not only seen the blood thirst in its gaze, but something...else. Like, as if he somehow knew this creature from somewhere before.

But how could that be possible? Never before had the stallion met such a ferocious creature before in his life until that fateful encounter. So how could he swear to feel a connection with something so frightening and dangerous? Yet still, the feeling was thereThe stallion wonders if the night's events have affected his thinking or something, but his mare shushes him, telling her beloved to simply lie back in bed and rest as she embraces him again in a comforting hug and a gentle nuzzle.

The stallion didn't notice the droplet of blood that dribbled from his mare's mouth.