How many times am I meant to fail?
How many times must I misinterpret?
What is there to be said, or done,
in the face of nothing?
What am I to do, or say,
if I become nothing?




Sunset woke the pair as powerful forces. In spite of the storm Ashamin pressed forward. He could not spend another night locked away inside his cave, tending to his fire and trying to forget about the mirror at his back. He could not bear to face that failure, again.

And so he had kicked his fire into quiet for the time being, and he had gone to the hot springs, as if they would heal him of the malady that was divine rejection. And he had placed his forehooves in that deep bright water until he feared they would burn. He thought about bringing some sort of purity to his body through a pain that reached the soul. But even that had done him no good--even that had left his companion calling for him, begging for him to go home.

It did seem a bad omen, that weather. And the haruspex swore, as he walked east and away from those bitter hot pools and geysers, that every damned flake was coming straight from the distance, beyond Helovia. Even more, as what little of the sky ahead could be seen through the falling white turned from orange to purple then black, he Felt it.

The change, the threat, and the war of the mirror was coming. Soon, this whole world would change.

Time brought him, snow-soaked but burning with a passionate energy that kept weariness at bay, to stand at the entrance of a mossy cave. It smelled of damp desertion, or something else. Darkness, death, maybe. He didn't know the difference, anymore, between anything like that. As the wounds from his fight with Zandora had slowly healed, and as those mending bones had at last afforded him the mobility to leave his den of locked away wisdom, he had begun to lose the sense of optimism that he was quickly becoming associated with. The anniversary of his father's death had passed, and he had worn the same white cloth that now lay over a pile of tinder in his cave about his face, and he had been reminded: in all places, there was death.

Even now, standing a dark silhouette that would not break himself from shadow, watching the youthfulness of one apparently so keen on a fight that he could not tear himself away from its thrill even in the midst of a storm, he could not forget death.

For a time the buck watched silently, his companion shivering at his side, as chunks of wood scattered and filled the cave. There was a strange violence to the act, an almost frightening one. Ashamin frowned, exchanging a quick glance with his companion, and then let his tail strike the cave.

First, the sparks on his coil travelled to the snow. They skittered across it, electric, and leapt to ice on the walls, to that cool ring of a frozen pond at the young stallion's back. Feebly their remains bit at the damp bark--achingly, they died out. But it had been enough to make an entrance, and so Ashamin stood in the threshold, waiting for a turn of the head, a recognition from this stranger, this youth he'd never seen before. He spoke like he had authority. He spoke like he had a streak of shadow, writhing in his breast. If nothing else, he spoke.

"Looking for a fight, are you, boy?"

ASHAMIN