The call of his queen roused him from a fitful sleep, the boy becoming a man blinking the half daze from his eyes to begin his short walk to where the sound had ushered from. He arrived into the circle of mostly strangers apprehensively, bruises still bulging from where the black mare had maimed him in his savage assault on her, and the marks of the other winged bitch who’d come to save her, as well. It hadn’t all been him though, had it? He’d wanted to walk away. That was the last thing he remembered before he woke up in the midst of all that chaos with the other wench who’d arrived, poking her nose into he and Ricochet’s business like she had any right at all.

Why was he so ruffled by this second mare saving the other he had fully meant to obliterate? Perhaps because he was upset that he had not been the one to save her to begin with.

Shaking his head to clear it of it’s repeating thoughts, he focuses in on the black mare as she makes her announcements, his eyes lingering on the pendant from which the night seemed to endlessly bloom. At least he always knew when Mirage was around the Edge – at some point, the day had ceased to arrive with her, as if the Moon herself had pinned a cloak of stars on the dragon woman’s shoulders and sent her out to guard the World’s Edge with her blessing.

It made him jealous. But his love of the woman was not tarnished in this ugly emotion – it was the shame he felt, answering her call, arriving to stand in her circle of innocent do-gooders with the marks of his sin still laced all across his flesh.

He had not known of this Thor, and so he was not moved by his loss. The mention of the spider web stallion, however, brought to mind a face, and it was one that was whole, without wings or a horn; despite the sickness he felt with himself and these very ideals, his heart swelled to know that he had picked a place led by two horses who had been chosen by dragons. Perhaps it was comfort that etched itself into his heart then, to know that the lessons of Nieque could prove true at least in the government of his chosen home.

His eyes flitted towards the black stallion who spoke next, a man with a green bonded (smaller than Niddy, but weren’t most?) who had been at the building of the wall with a glass plow. He made mention of the unicorns to the north, a group which interested the boy quite heavily – they were, to say the least, the definition of the perfect enemy. A band of unicorns who thought that all should wear horns?

He nearly scoffed. Let them try to glue one onto his head. He’d kick them into the sea.