_{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?

The prince has come far; the flight away from the tunnels, upon the sun-kissed, snow-covered surface carried him on the warm breath of his own fatigue; he felt the innermost layers of his coat drenched in the carefree sweat of his excursions. Now, however, the trade-wind of his triumph is stunted; he grows cold in his bones; something flutters within his breast. He gasps; the wind has been taken from his lung. Whatever ambrosia sustaining him has finally drained from his chalice, and he is as weak as ever, for the breeze drifts across his back and he feels it trace his coat, the subtle lumps of his spine that etch into his hide. Rapidly, he feels the cold he cannot stand; he feels the clinging snow on his fetlock when before he ignored it. He scowls, hard; he turns and there is a metallic stench, a fell, curious wind that descends upon him.

It is a shadow that stalks, a specter who dons the skull of an equine creature. He blinks passed the blinding white of sun-soaked snow; no, this is no shadow. All that stands before him is a mare as black as the darkest night, her face tattooed with a foreboding image indeed. Something slinks from the mare’s back, and the grey eyes tear away from the ruined vista of mare to discover it; a flea-bitten runt of a creature, gnawing on some insignificant. Reginald snaps his gaze back to the mare; his breath freezes as he surveys her. She smiles; he recoils from such an abomination. Her mouth is destroyed; a foul odor drifts toward him, something cloying and unhealthy; his knees tremble.

He backs a step away from her as she speaks a rattler’s voice. “Brave”, he calls her. He furrows his brow; considers her words; shakes his head. “No,” he mutters, unable to tear his gaze from the hide of scars, the pale, clouded eyes of decay. “No, I’m not brave…I just do what I like.” He does not think himself a hero for sneaking passed his family, for wandering away from his mother, dodging his brother, and escaping the shadow of his father. He shrugs his thin shoulders, suppressing a grimace as her scent assaults him again; it slides down a restricted throat, and he feels his chest tighten in a way he has not felt in some time. It is detestable; he cannot stand this feeling of faintness—it is an unbreakable thing.

Reginald turns his back on the mare, steps carefully over the golden, frothy pool of his claim stake. He stalks the perimeter of the brilliant rotunda; the marble underfoot is free of snow, and he is able to investigate it further, to see the brilliant artistry in the polished stonework. Stone pleases him; it fails to capture his interest in this moment, however. “This is mine,” he says suddenly, and grey irises tear from the floor and back to the mare who surveys him, returning his own calculating stare, “and when I’m older, everyone will know it’s mine.” The mare fascinates him—he cannot fathom his attraction. In all ways she is detestable. She smells of a carcass, she wears the scars of a mad berserker, she is female and there gambols a rat of a companion creature, a mirror of its mistress in every grungy way.

“….Who are you?” he asks suddenly; his curiosity bursts forth in a stronger voice as he turns toward her, ears forward, eyes burning with that voracious demand for discovery that he possesses. He stands as proud as always, head held high, tail curled behind him as far as he can will it to curl, breathing in her horrid stench and swallowing it for the time being, for he is not weak, and she interests him.

"talk talk talk"