Events had not unfolded in a way the dark stallion had anticipated. For starters he was haunting the landscapes of Helovia quite aimlessly, unable or perhaps unwilling to settle his mind on any one goal or purpose; simply roaming, stopping when the legs grew tired and tolerated company whenever his loneliness grew too intense to stomach. When anger at the world, at himself, at others or anger just because clouded his judgment he took it out on whoever might be nearby, whether innocent wildlife, rude equid or the features of the land itself. Many a tree had been left ravaged and bleeding after encountering the unbreakable diamond of his trident, to weep their autumnal tears in lament of beauty lost...

Yet this vagabonding lifestyle was not what Morir had been dreaming of when he exiled himself from his old herd. It hadn't been a part of his plan to become a hermit, withdrawn and solitary as a ghost of the past - and neither had he desired this persona of someone cruel and fearsome that was growing steadily more attached to him. Was it the grim mask made of death and decay he wore that made him such? He wouldn't put it past plausibility to consider a ghostly elk to be haunting him, shoving him off an intended path in order to instead exact revenge for desecrating its remains... He didn't feel as though someone else was controlling his actions however, leaving the theory with a feeling of slight paranoia. What was he really doing then? Could it be that this brutal, unfeeling and reckless personality was his true nature, so different from the sensitive colt that had hidden behind his mothers rump whenever a stranger came by, ready to shed tears at a moments notice if a harsh word was spoken? It was true that he had changed since he lost his parents, true that he had learned to swallow emotion and wear a mask of indifference in the face of cruelty, but the extent of this change had even the hellion startled.

Now he stood before the shrines of the gods, a mute shadow looming above the broken temples as light from both heaven and earth danced across his hide, lost and confused. He didn't try to speak to them; they were not gods of his, even though he once had thought himself in the presence of the Lady Luck herself in her guise of dark days and veiling mists. He would not set aside the spirits he had been taught to worship and fear; he simply felt calmer when standing here, surrounded by the churning heat of the earth and close to something that was bigger and more eternal than himself.

Swept up in his own thoughts, the twice-crowned stag payed little heed as the sound of light footsteps alerted him to the arrival of another. He was not bothered, not today; he simply curled the long, tasseled tail around a leg and shifted slightly, intentionally allowing a split hoof to scrape over stone such that a clacking sound spread throughout the air... he wouldn't want to startle whoever it was that had come to pray, and inadvertently create a situation where bloodshed was required. He shuddered to think what the high lords of the lands would think of that.

Unless they were bloodthirsty and craved sacrifice? He hadn't considered that...

@[Erebos]

"I embrace the thorny rose to my chest and
fall into the crimson sea
I continue dancing upon the
piled bodies until I die"