There is a rousing in the confines of her oiled chest, a prickle of discontentment and demand which appeals for her attention. It is a peculiarly, discomfiting sensation, one that she is not familiar with, but one of which she associates with the menacing desire to safeguard her mongrel. What is this? Surely not care nor worry for a stranger, who sleeps upon the earth like the dead? Her amber eye weeps and glints eerily, the flash of a golden coin turning tail over heads, and there is the usual rasp over her lungs inhaling and exhaling, grinding against one another unpleasurably. Has Confutatis, the vehement queen of corpses, lost her touch with the darkness of reality? No, certainly not; she is Oblivion-daughter, monster of the shadows, lady of bleak omens and approaching murder.

Nares quiver in their exhale, her breathing an irking lambaste on injured lungs, and acid drips and drizzles from her pitch jaws, hissing as they make contact with midnight earth. Audits flick, one twisting in semi-circle away to the approaching clatter of hoofbeats, the other a mast listening to the whispered words of which interrupt the silence laying thick and heavy, pressing on eardrums in the bizarre way quiet does.

"Confutatis," is her answer, a most ambiguous and elusive answer, a soft hiss which carries over rock and stone. There is a rich pause, in where the twists of her fractured mind carry out brief argument, and the Inari snarls and snaps playfully at the skull-faced harlot's hocks. "I am here to ward away what shall not aide you." It is not a pleasant answer, nor meant to comfort; it is a statement, brazen and bold, iron ringing beneath the velvet illness of her murmur. It stands in the no man's land, the intent undecipherable, a carefully crafted promise of which there is no truth nor lie.

Then there is interruption, meddlesome teeth sinking in not her soul but the tattered remains of one, chewing in a most bothersome way.

Sinister eyes turn to rest upon shadow, deeper and more solid than the rest of the obnoxious darkness, and the mongrel springs to his paws, lips curling into a sneer which matches his companion's embittered emotions. She does not recognize it- no, indeed- for how is she to remember one stallion amongst few in a night washed with tumultuous thunder and raging rain? But she does not like the way he speaks to her so, his audacity and his commanding tone. Ears flick and bind to skull, crest curling, a bothersome toss of her skull. "Who are you?" The bitch's voice peals out clear and strong, fragmentations hammered to sword which cuts, eyes narrow in mistrust. "Insistences are unseemly when directed to beasts of which are guardians in these corpse-infested times."

And yet another approaches- either the greatest fool or simply in denial, for she seems totally unaware of Confutatis' presence. Onyx skin shivers over taut muscle, head drawing up erect, lips curling into cruel leer.

"I was not aware that shadow devours the wits of the living. Do you not realize the herds are in tatters, girl? The gods have forsaken us, and without them, we will not last. Former matters of allegiances and alliances are trivial compared to our plight- for we shall fester here beneath the earth, deplete our food sources until the young shrivel and the old wilt, and then we die with all the beauty of dim-eyed husks."