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"It won't hurt long."

The tiny, cracked whisper seemed out of place in the stillness of the clearing. Before, it had been bustling with life and the sounds of other animals within the forest... before the tiny, blood-stained foal had picked her way forth from the shadows. It'd been pure luck that she'd managed to catch the little sparrow underneath her hooves; the creature had been taken unaware and, in its sudden panic upon realizing there was a much larger creature in the area, had flown wildly and gotten itself tangled up in a bush. She'd quickly wrested it from its prison with her teeth, but the terrified animal had hurt one of its wings and could do little more than flop about.

It seemed so natural to position her silver hooves on either side of the bird's body, even pressing down on the injured wing with a morbid sort of fascination. The creature shrilled and shrilled with pain, panting harshly through its gaping beak. Sacrifice unconsciously twitched her own wings, but her delight with the sounds drowned out any sort of sympathy she might have felt. It was suffering, this little bird, and there was likely no chance that it would recover... She hadn't meant to hurt it originally, but with each painful spasm that shook its tiny body... Well, she was having more fun than she could remember.

The filly lifted a hoof and gently settled it atop the bird's downy fluff, still watching with bright-eyed interest. Only she could cease its pain. A crunch, the feel of something warm and wet, and the terrified twittering vanished. Sacrifice stared at the bloody tufts of feathers and bone with a macabre fascination before she shifted. Fresh blood... The iron tang was startlingly sweet to her senses, compared to the dried, encrusted stuff that constantly coated her body. And now the little bird was gone.

"You don't have to hurt anymore." She murmured to herself, feeling the rotten-something inside her swell with vindictive pleasure. She had helped it... and who knew such a feeling would feel so nice? The young filly idly shifted away from the bloody mess she'd made, apparently unphased by the fact that she was out here all by herself. She saw her sister and brother on occasion, and sometimes her 'mother' and 'father'... but there was no sort of real attachment to them, no bonding that made her feel dependent on their existance. There wasn't anything wrong with being alone, was there?

She hadn't been paying attention--the grating rasp caught her off guard and made her freeze, sullied limbs rigid until she could place the sound. Him. The one that smelled so like her, so seeped with Death's rotting breath until he wore it like a second skin. But, he knew her name, and he was technically her father although she'd never seen his face. The heavy helm that obscured his entire head gave him the appearance of something more monstrous and distant, like some unapprochable deity, and Sacrifice always found herself torn between awe and unease in his presence.

Dinner. Yes, he would come on occasion with food that kept she and her siblings well fed, but they had also learned to begin to fend for themselves. The pleasure in his voice was something she was unused to and she rustled her blood-soaked wings, cating a glance back to the remnants of the bird. "It was hurt. I fixed it." The filly murmured almost distractedly to herself, watching the bloodied bits of cloth that clung to her father's hindquarters. He'd brought food? Unless he thought she was going to eat the birdy, too... She considered it, faintly licking her lips.

"It wanted to live." She continued casually, as though talking about something like the weather, "But it doesn't need to. There wouldn't have been anything good about staying alive, anyway.... I helped it." She seemed almost... proud? Proud that she'd finally established some way to keep herself busy as she mindlessly wandered.

"You haven't been here." Sacrifice noted hesitantly, not sure why she spoke it aloud. "Where do you go when you go away?"

The baleful red gleam of her eyes froze in its shy tracing of the older, much more powerful male when he spoke, having been trying to analyze him as though to pick out any trace or resemblance between them. Their scents, the splattered blood, their wings... but who was she, in the face of this creature? In the face of her mother? True, she held her mother's markings, but Sacrifice felt almost like an intruder--possessing traits and genes that both made her part of the family, and set her apart. But then he rasped at her, said the single, vital conclusion that she herself had reached about her purpose and existence in this place.

"Our duty..." She answered him in a hushed tone, enthralled and delighted. She wasn't wrong. Her father had just confirmed that it was natural and right to think this way, to serve as bloodied angels that rescued those who did not understand the danger they were in. Even if that servitude undoubtedly led to death. Her nostrils were flared with excitement--the most emotion the young filly had displayed so far--and she all but pounced on the rabbit offered to her, tearing into it without restraint.

Her feeding only came to a pause when she was again forced to struggle over the meaning of The Red Pyramid's words, searching for the truth. To get away, he visited her and the others... To what ends? "I don't understand." She sounded bitterly disappointed with herself, frustrated by a concept she could not grasp as easily as the first. Her lapse again into silence allowed her to become distinctly aware of sounds of familiar movement. One of her siblings? Sacrifice flicked her ears for a moment, then quickly made to devour the rabbit's heart. Oh, she would share... but she'd devour the best parts for herself before it was too late.