Silenced (Demigod Story)

Like a Dark Horse

“What is that?” I whispered to Dan.  He came from behind the hedge and froze when he saw the creature.

To a normal mortal, it looked like a black Mustang.  Too bad, being a demigod points out all of the wrongs of the picture.  The legs of the horse had muscles that were off scale.  The nostrils of the horse were way to big, and when the horse opened its mouth that were full of unusually sharp teeth, it made a sort of a monstrous roar/neigh kind of sound.  The horse reared, kicking its front legs out showing how sharp the hooves were.  I started to back away, but Dan put his hand on my shoulder and whispered “Don’t move. There is no way that we could outrun this thing.”

I nodded slightly, tears started to gather in my eyes like a river that was about to overflow.  The horse ignored us as it trotted to the body of the dead.  It lowered its head, and I thought that it was sad that its owner had been killed.  Instead, it put its mouth on her neck, than bit on it like it was an apple.  The thick tissue of the neck was not hard for the horse to chew.  I wanted so badly to barf right there, but I didn’t have much to get rid of in my stomach.  I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see any more of the blood and bones, but I could still hear the crunching of it.

There was no point in running because it would get the horse’s attention.  We stood there, feeling completely helpless.  That was until I got an idea.  I focused on roots growing through the ground and slowly wrap around the horse’s legs.  The horse paid no attention, eating the owner as if she was oats.

When the roots were wrapped tightly enough, I started to back up again.  The horse noticed and lifted its head to look at me.  The golden eyes of the horse were exactly like the kind of Niobe.  The horse started to walk toward me, ripping its legs out of the roots like the roots was just toilet paper.

“Oh crap,” I muttered, taking my dagger out of my boot.

Thankfully, before the horse could get any closer, an arrow was shot and hit the horse’s eye.  I turned my head in the direction of where the arrow was shot from and saw that it was from Dan.  He didn’t seem fazed by his amazing shot and started to run, nocking another arrow in place.  Dan turned around to shoot again, this time he aimed at the chest.  The arrow made it to the horse, but instead of the horse falling down, it just poofed into dust.

We stopped running, taking deep breathes.

“What the heck was that?” I panted.

“It was a horse,” Dan claimed.

“I don’t need to be from the horse capital of the world to know that horses are herbivores.  They only eat plants and that thing ate a human!” I stressed, running my fingers through my hair.

“A flesh-eating horse,” he offered as an explanation.  “Would you like the scientific name?”

“No, I want to forget what I just saw,” I grumbled.  I really hated to think that a woman was killed by me and then partly eaten by her own pet.  “Let’s just go back onto the side walk and then keep walking.”