He had told her she was a protector.

That towering brute with the twisted horn and the scars that painted his body like so many hateful kisses, he had told her that she was a protector. With those baby blues and that commanding presence, he had settled the mantle of fierce warrior and sacrificial lamb upon her shoulders. She could feel the weight there; the crushing presence of her herdmates' lives, of the responsibility that lay before her in an endless stream. 

The hope that she represented as a tiny flare lashing out against the ceaseless black.

The banshee knew nothing of sacrifice, but she was familiar with ferocity, and so with the giant at her back, she might just have an inkling to become something more; and it was with those ideals and pressures that she stared unflinchingly at a ghost materialized from the past. He spoke her name, all at once mocking and curious, with those amber eyes drilling holes into her core. She almost laughed at the notion, for no matter how deep the monster would dig, he would find nothing but ashes beneath that beautiful ivory skin.

Teeth clenching, the muscles that coiled about her rump and shoulders felt near to tearing from tension as Orithia struggled not to choke on her own venom. It was only the soft voice of the Dragon's child that broke the trancelike rage in the desert rose's heart. Turning her head toward the gold-dusted mare, the blushed woman took in the muted grandeur that shone beneath the stranger's skin. Hair the shade of opals dripped to the earth in thick, shining strands as wings dappled with the sun's own lips sprung from her back. With eyes the color of riches, the Throat mare was nothing if beautiful.

And it was her beauty that posed the biggest threat.

Turning her attention back toward the blood washed benehmoth, Orithia's glare only became more vehement as she saw herself in the kindly innocence that practically poured off of the Throat woman. There, in those naïve eyes the shade of a desert sunset she had found the leggy yearling who had played with Taht and laughed in the wind. She would be damned if another victim would be borne of her actions. She would be damned if this monster lived to see another day without surveillance. Stepping closer to the towering plainswalker, Orithia forced the wedge between his body and that of the silver-haired mare to widen before speaking through the disgust that layered her tongue.

"Let me tell you something, mabonde uchafu," She spat the slur, her body trembling with barely checked animosity, "You are a danger to every beautiful thing. It is in your very nature to destroy anything innocent and good." Pushing against his shoulder with her chest, the desert rose gritted her teeth, waves of emotion threatening to blot out reality, "The World's Edge has a King that stems from your kind and he'll know how to handle you. Until then, you cannot be trusted around anything or anyone," She gazed pointedly at the Throat mare, "that is worth something."

Stretching up so that her lips brushed at the plain's stallion's cheek, the pale medusa let her voice fall in pitch, forcing intimacy into her tone without so much as a blink, "Uumalah was just practice, do you truly think that if a city could not staunch the flow of my massacre, you could? I will find you if you flee and I will make the destruction of Uumalah look like child's play. Do you understand, my sweet mabonde uchafu?" She pressed her lips to his neck in a kiss that dripped poison and promise before pulling away and beginning the long trek back to the World's Edge and the comforting presence of her monarch.

"Aren't you coming, uhuni?"