[PRP] The wheel of suffering (Samsara and Hayagriva)

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Whatever is born is impermanent and is bound to die.
Whatever is stored up is impermanent and is bound to run out.
Whatever comes together is impermanent and is bound to come apart.
Whatever is built is impermanent and is bound to collapse.
Whatever rises up is impermanent and is bound to fall down.
So also, friendship and enmity, fortune and sorrow, good and evil, all the thoughts that run through your mind- everything is always changing.

((This RP is for Samsara and Hayagriva only. What occurs here is simultaneous with these RPs: Murder of hope, Bloody nails and broken hearts. For more information, see this thread. Warning warning warning! The RPs listed here will be of a dark and violent nature. Soquili deaths may will occur! ))  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

"You should have known this day would come!" Samsara snarled. "You should have known I'd never let you have peace!" Her mind, so chill and centered up until now, grew more and more full of feral rage the closer she came to her father. It had been too long that she'd been trapped in this vicious cycle with him. She was sick of feeling his eyes upon her and sick of remembering the pity and condescension in his voice.

Even though she called herself reborn, part of her would still be that pathetic insecure yearling as long as her father still lived. She had no choice but to still his heart from beating if she was ever to be free. If not, then the wheel of suffering would always turn.

She sprang, reaching to rake her claws across her father's shoulder.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Hayagriva cried out in pain when his daughter's claws caught him and twisted away from her to avoid further attack. "This is the last time, Samsara!" He bellowed to her. "No more!" There had been so many years of anguish and hurt since she lost her life and became a monster. Haya had lost a lot in those years. He no longer had the same optimism or the same joy in life. He no longer trusted so easily or recovered so fast.

The wheel of suffering had to stop, but it would claim at least one more victim before it did. He was going to kill Samsara. Something within him died forever at that realization.

He swung around to kick with his back legs and simultaneously slash through the air with his tail. Such a blow would instantly shatter bones if it hit fully, which of course, it didn't.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Nimbly, Samsara dodged the brunt of the blow. The tail grazed across her back but she ducked to avoid the worst of it. "You've defeated me with that tail every time I've fought you," she growled. "Do you really think I wouldn't learn how to defeat it?!" She had forced Svanbjorn to practice with her until they were both teetering on the edge of exhaustion. Over and over again her kalona minion had swung that tail at her until she learned how to avoid and counter it. She wasn't going to get caught the same way again.

She sprung backwards lightly, staring at him and daring him to charge recklessly. A wicked grin crossed her face, and she inclined her head to where the Mahapadma were grappling tooth and claw with the Padmapani just a few strides away. "How many of them do you think will die because of you, Father?!"  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Haya didn't take the bait. He inched toward her slowly, watching for sudden attacks. She wanted him to get angry and do something stupid. Her words had hit home and angered him as they were meant to, but he wasn't going to get himself killed over it. "The only one that died because of me... was you." His voice grated out through clenched teeth. His daughter. His dear, dead daughter.

"I should have watched over you and tried to understand you better. It was my fault that you didn't feel at home in the Padmapani, so it was my fault that you were away from the herd and got turned." He had spent many anguished nights imagining the night she had been turned into a monstrosity. If only he had been there, he liked to think. He could have driven away Oyohusa and still have had a daughter to cherish and love.

"But if anyone dies today..." What a terrible if that was. "If they die, it is no one's fault but yours."  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Samsara brandished her fangs at Hayagriva. She hated every word he said. It was nothing but condescension, mourning the loss of a daughter that he had been driving away since her foalhood. Everything that had happened to her was his fault, but he didn't deserve to wave it away so easily. "I kill them for you!" she spat. "I kill them all for you!" He was growing closer but she still didn't move. Her claws dug into the ground as if she wanted to make it bleed.

"You should have embraced what I was! You should have embraced what I've become!" Her own unanswered emotions threatened to bubble to the surface. These weren't the devouring hate of the skinwalker, these were the cries of something inside her that still hurt. "We aren't cursed, we are blessed! We are blessed with the desire to hunt and kill! You've denied yourself and then you denied me. You denied Adour too, and she also still lives to curse your name!" There was a secret left hidden now thrown in his face. Her sister, Adour. She was believed dead by all but Samsara. Only she knew the truth... and now her father did too.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

"Adour's alive?!" Haya was shaken to the core. The last time he had seen Adour she had been only a foal. He could still remember the agony at thinking she was dead, and the rage that he had unleashed upon her caretaker thinking that she had failed his daughter. The death of Adour had been one of the great turning points in his life, what had drawn him to join the Padmapani herd and set him on the path to becoming Protector Heir and an elder. He had carried the weight of her death on him for so long that it had become a part of him.

If Samsara was anything, she wasn't a liar. She had never falsified information to give him pain and with the spontaneity of her statement he didn't think it was a lie. Adour was alive. He could still find her and beg forgiveness. He could-

Haya cried out in pain as Samsara struck him.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

So absorbed was her father by the unexpected news that it was as if he forgot that there was still a raging skinwalker practically at his feet. Samsara allowed him to have his brief moment of awe, but no more than that. She was as quick as a snake when she pounced upon him and she wrapped her arms around him in a deadly embrace. Her claws dug into his shoulder and his neck and she bit furiously at his spine.

She tore long bleeding grooves through his skin and her teeth dug in deep with each snap of her jaws. The old sad Samsara disappeared again, drowned by skinwalker fury and bloodlust.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

His body felt like it was on fire. Haya roared and bucked as his daughter ripped at him. He used his head as a weapon, swinging it on his neck like a club to pound at Samsara. He brought his face dangerously within range of those teeth and claws but didn't have the time to stop and think of an alternative. His back arched and the back half of his body rose up into the air. Supple as a bowstring, he snapped his hooves back to the ground, only to kick them up into the air again.

The jerking movements had their desired effect. With one more thrashing buck, he knocked Samsara from her perch on his back. His blood arced through the air at the force of her departure, but the terrible tearing was gone.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

In vain, Samsara reached back toward her father even as she spun in the air away from him. At the last moment her feline instincts took hold of her and twisted her body mid-air to land on her feet. The force of her landing reverberated through her paws and up her legs. For the moment, she was unable to respond.

In the brief respite from battle while Haya was busy recovering his bearings and Samsara was recuperating for the next attack, Samsara turned her attention to the other battlers. Her Mahapadma were not doing as well as she'd like. Zulian was damaging Scythe but the others looked like they were genuinely stalled by the Padmapani defenders. What a shameful showing. Bristling her fur, Samsara snarled orders at them.

"Svanbjorn! I don't care if there are two of them! Get one out of the way and kill the other! Daimhin! Either get cut by her sword to hurt her or get cut by my claws when you fail! Rosiotti, stop flying by her and do some real damage!"  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Haya was in a lot of pain. When he hung his head to catch his breath blood trickled down his face to drip off his chin. The ground around him was splattered in red and parts of his flank were practically painted in the horrible shade. More than in body, he was exhausted in spirit. Though he knew he'd have to kill Samsara, his body did not want to make those motions. He panted and gasped while Samsara shouted orders to her minions.

There was Padma, probably about to get knocked over and maybe even about to get a broken bone. Nirvana and Glissando were barely saved from execution by Bari, strangely useful in her insanity. Even Scythe... Haya's eyes filled with deep sadness when he saw his father fighting the tiger skinwalker. Even though his age couldn't have made it easy, Scythe was keeping back what was probably the most dangerous attacker out of all of them.

Haya shook off his blood and struck at Samsara's exposed back. Pain for pain. That was how things worked between them.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Samsara pulled herself out of the way of Haya's attack but only barely. He wasn't as fast as he had been before, the injury was slowing him down already. She thought about a quick counterattack but decided against it. Her panther form was meant for quick and targeted attacks, like she had used to bloody him before. Now that he was injured, she could afford to trade in some of the speed for power. Dashing away from him to give her the space and time she needed, Samsara transformed.



She burst out of her panther skin and back into her true form. Her wings unfolded during the transformation as if she was emerging from a chrysalis. She shook herself off briefly and strands of black fur floated through the air. She scraped the ground with a hoof and snorted out her nostrils. She was ready for anything her father might launch at her.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Haya's jaws snapped shut but Samsara had already dashed out of his reach. Her intent was obvious and Haya had to steel himself to not look away when she undertook her nauseating transformation. Haya found this form of hers even more unnatural than her feral one. As a panther, his mind could deceive itself into thinking she was just some wild animal. Now he was visually assaulted with the sacrilege that Samasara was.

He preferred her in this form for fighting purposes, even if it made his stomach churn. He didn't have to scrape the ground to attack her and her movements were easier to read. Though one hoof almost slipped in a mud wet with his own blood, Haya attacked her once more. He whipped his tail at her in quick succession, trying to keep the beast at bay.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

Samsara shut her eyes to protect them as the tail buffeted her face and shoulders. Once, not too long ago, she wouldn't have been able to stand her ground against even a basic attack like this. She had since been reborn several times, each incarnation of herself harder and stronger than the last. She had been a weak flutter mare, then an inexperienced and ineffective skinwalker. Finally now, she was at her apex. She accepted the blows that he gave her and with a massive beat of her shimmering wings, she sprung into the air above him.

Frozen in that moment in time, she hung in the air above him with her wings outstretched, her back curved upward so that her downward facing head and tail formed a perfect crescent of her body. Samsara saw this as if she were an outsider. This was not a battle they had or would fight only once. This was a conflict that they had carried out from life to life, rebirth to rebirth, world to world. How many times and with how many faces had she and Hayagriva fought like this? Perhaps they had been humans once, or snarling wolves, or soaring falcons, or even a pair of snakes, endlessly pumping their venom from one into the other, interlocked in a never-ending circle.

Certainly, in those thousands of incarnations they both alternated in victory and in defeat. Samsara was determined to make sure that in this life, she was the winner in their cycle of conflict. She let herself fall toward him, beating her wings not to fly now, but to batter.  

[Revolutionary Roniel]

This was an attack Haya had never seen before. Her wings came from both sides and he was effectively blocked in. He told himself that they were only flutter wings and couldn't possibly do much damage, but the stinging slaps he received from them were painful even still. He was more confused than hurt in that whirlwind but he had no idea how to block or counterattack. To make matters worse, some sort of glittering powder was falling from her wings, making him sneeze and his eyes water.

Half-blind and with a burning throat, Haya decided that enough was enough. He thrashed out wildly with his tail, hooves, and head. It wouldn't take much to upset her out of the air and when she was back on the ground he'd be able to fight her like he was familiar with.