_{Some say you're trouble, boy Just because you like to destroy All the things that bring the idiots joy} Well, what's wrong with a little destruction?

Pain drains; he walks without sight. Beside him the filly breathes and her dark presence floats, obedient, subservient like he wishes—he pays her no mind. He focuses on his hooves and moving them, taking one step at a time as he descends down the stifling cavern. It is better than the cold of his home, it’s true, though it reeks of the sweat and stink of hordes of others. He has grown to detest their presence deeply, a poisonous ether that feeds the root of his grotesque sapling psyche, that kindles the beastly fire in his breast. He doesn’t pant, for he won’t reveal that weakness. Instead he holds his breath, painfully, his lungs expanding in an agonizing way as he controls his breathing.

The walk is longer than he remembers, and the pain is real. She really snagged him with that horn of hers; the adrenaline in his system has vanished, for the excitement of his discover of her has ceased. He can feel the aches and pains of his body—the stress she has caused him, physically and mentally, by the purity of her idiocy. His breathing is steady, because he forces it to be so. It will take him some time to forgive her for her foolishness—he will find a way for her to repay him, and settle her debt to his nerves.

Finally, the chamber of his empire opens itself to him. There stand the walls of curious markings and suspicious scratches, framing a story he does not know, a tongue he cannot see yet; there sits the pool beneath the pale shadow of the walls, crystalline and serene, welcoming its grey-eyed prince with open arms. His eyes are locked on the waters that churn gently in the twilight; the filly prowls the basin, a nervous wolf pup, a cautiously skittering arachnid, and Reginald lets her. He does not care, for the waters of the pool invite him, and his chest does throb--his pelt is sticky with too many different kinds of blood and dirt.

The long-limbed princeling clambers into the waters, disregarding the filly’s announcements and observations as he wanders into the water. It isn’t deep; he kneels, laying his body into the tepid, pristine waters, and he rolls himself, washing the grime and the sweat from his limbs. It penetrates his shaggy fur; he feels it trickle on his skin. The cut on his chest stings at the water contacts it, but the overwhelming relief he feels as the dust particles leave his open wound are superior to his hurt. The wound is clean; it won’t infect; he breathes easier.

He feels the stickiness on his face ebb away—though there is no trace of opaque black in the crystalline water as he peers into its depths. The black blood has not washed away; it has simply ceased existence, for the pool as erased all traces of whatever putrid sickness decided to cling to Reginald. Intrigued, his grey eyes lift to the spider—to Jorogumo-- and see that she gazes at him, focused and determined, a very different creature from the erratic idiot he encountered on the surface. He lifts his brow at her; he does not return her smile. “The water’s fine,” he mutters with disinterest, climbing out of the pool—wondering what would happen if she wander into the spring. Was she not the progenitor of the rancid blood—is she not some wasted specter spoiled by the darkness of decay? Will she simply cease existence if she touches the surface?

Or…?

@[Jorogumo]
"talk talk talk"