The serpent saw me screaming towards it and dove to avoid my attack. My horn glowed with a deep blue light and an incandescent beam of purest energy lanced down into the water, instantly boiling it to steam. Clouds of scalding vapour rose into the air and I banked steeply to make another pass as the thing thrashed to the surface, letting out a hideously loud cry. With a flap of my wings, I passed over the serpent again and again, the intense beam bringing the ink black lake to a bubbling heat the creature desperately tried to escape from. I laughed aloud at its hopeless struggles to get away, my horn blasting the water into scalding death, corralling it into the oncoming white fog.

The collision was delectable, I felt as much as saw the serpent trying to pull itself onto the ice to escape the boiling water, then realising, too late…it was trapped. The fog surrounded the creature, slowing it movements, turning its innards to solid ice.

I alighted upon the frozen mass, slowly advancing on the vile thing, my head held high, my wings spread wide. A display of power and dominance over my fallen foe. I had mastered it and it knew, I could see it in those pitiless eyes, the realisation that its end had come.

A fierce need for sustenance flared up from inside me and I growled low and hungrily at the serpent. Its eyes followed me as I circled it, thick white mist dripping from between my teeth. I inhaled. A warm sensation filled me, sweet and fulfilling. I closed my eyes and breathed in again, warmer this time, full of energy, full of life. It was…delicious. A taste I had never known before, so….so wonderful ! How had I never experienced this before ?! I breathed in, again and again until I was sated. Shaking my mane as the ecstasy subsided, I opened my eyes and looked at the now empty husk of the lake serpent before me. Its lifeless eyes, dead, in the truest sense of the word.

Part of me was horrified at the sight, at what I had done to another living creature. The other revelled in the destruction of what I had wrought. The damnable beast had wounded my mate, killed one of her sisters. It had dared to attacked me….it deserved death, and I was happy to oblige. I paused, a memory of a glowing pair of red eyes… “My….mate…..”.

An impact on the ice behind me signalled Far Sights arrival, “Equestrian ! Where is my daughter ?!”.

“Follow !” I cried, launching into the air, skimming over the ice until I reached the wall I’d created to protect her. Ember and her sister were already there with Shadow, clicking and whinnying in agitation. I gently reached out and gathered her up in my
forelegs and with a blast of air from my wings, propelled us toward the shore of the Beyond.