Ever since the unfortunate night I would never get back spent in the company of a hunter I couldn't deny I didn't hate, it would seem I had adopted some of his work. Leave it to a blonde Scandinavian to shunt his work onto another; then again, I couldn't deny that I wanted to see just what this were-horse was about. Frost had a reputation that hadn't missed me â€" not many tales of supernatural creatures gone awry did â€" and curiosity had struck me with a vengeance. It wasn't as if Azrael had been particularly explicit in his description of the dreaded were-horse, he left enough to the imagination that I had concocted a fairly vivid idea of what I thought the were-horse might be like. Frost, I guess. Maybe white or gray with a lighter colored muzzle, long whiskers, and oh. Right. Short and fat. With a name like Frost, I could only imagine that the individual bearing the moniker had to be a joke. As if to encourage me to believe this, Azrael had opted out of confirming or negating my thoughts.

Seriously. What the fuck did the council need with a were-pony?

Prey animals were easy to intercept and to prepare to catch. While their instincts were most often intact, I had a feeling that this were-pony might be something of a textbook prey animal â€" stupid but aware, and easy to deceive. I'd prepared a host of illusions to thwart the unassuming equine, though I had yet to derive some kind of plan that related to what the were-pony actually turned up as. The beast Azrael had been tracking wasn't a pony at all... mother fucker. He could have at least let me know I might need a little more energy than a child trying to climb onto an angry pony. Ornery and twisted, ponies had nasty little habits but they weren't behaviors that couldn't be cured with a little extra oomph. This, though? Frost was actually rather large, looming in the window of the shop as if the breakfast that was being consumed had been made especially for him. Entitled fucker.

As if Frost had heard the very antagonizing thoughts that had been reeling in my brain, his ears pricked forward to pinpoint the source of the illusion: me. The darkness of the illusion evaporated as he began to see through it, his perception of the woven imagery pulling the strands of my magic apart at the seams so the true interior of my shop was exposed. Uncovered, Frost gave me a moment of mild surprise where I could lose control of my Shadow, and it would trot out the window to venture towards the were-not-so-pony. His aggravation grew, rather obviously, in the evident form of his irritable stamping of that furry leg that would have looked so much more natural on a pony.

Almost as irritably as the stallion acted did the Shadow sail through the air with a remarkable grace before falling in what would have been a tangible heap had it not been an ethereal being. If it was possible to embody anger or irritation as a vice, surely the Shadow would have split and the vice or sin would have stalked towards the were-pony, ready to enact some kind of penance for what the pony had done.

"Actually, I'm hilarious. It says so in my file."

If only I knew how to keep as quiet as the Shadow did. Once the words were out of my mouth, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps the pony might be able to inflict some kind of damage on the Shadow â€" I don't know how, honestly, just that it was damage I wasn't sure I could reverse. How do you try and heal a ... shadow? Momentarily lost in that abstract thought my attention wasn't focused on the angered pony, much to my later chagrin. While I was pondering if Serafina might have some penchant to healing ethereal beings and not simply ghosts, the pony (yeah, fuck you Frost) managed to dislodge the front door of the shop from it's tired hinges.

"That's not a new move, Studmuffin. Try something original."

Without a thought (okay, that's not true, there was at least a thought) towards my safety or the safety of my Shadow, I retaliated the pony's behavior by erecting a makeshift corral around him utilizing the remnants of the door he'd so graciously kicked in. Once he was secured, the Shadow began it's characteristic creep across the wall towards the opening that the pony â€" pea brained pony â€" might not have noticed yet. And with a great flourish did the Shadow morph into several smaller beings that wielded more strength than I would as a tangible, humanoid being. The little Shadows crept into the corral to hoist Frost onto their little tiny Shadow shoulders and begin carting him towards a particularly dangerous section of the shop that housed a variety of battle axes and maces... Uh, maybe I should have been worried. When the Shadows deemed it proper, the little beings deposited Frost's pony body to the ground with a sickening force before adhesively coming back together. The Shadow, what with the pony being immobilized briefly, clambered onto the back of the pony and wove it's spindlelike fingers into the pony's mane in order to prepare for a second 8-second ride, characteristic of rodeos.

What the fuck was this, a supernatural rodeo?

"Fancy that, I think this is funny. Did you know they made a TV-Show about your kind? It's called My-Little-Pony."