"BITCHES GET STUFF DONE." -tina fey

The painted pegasus struggled against the cold and bitter wind on her way back towards the Edge. The weather was unkind today.  She was being pelted with little bits of snow and ice and she swore she could feel her wings growing heavier with each wingbeat. I should have stayed near the damn volcano, she thought bitterly.  The last thing she wanted to do was have to walk from the coast all the way back home, but that was looking more and more likely.  Blessedly, she caught a pinprick of light on the horizon.  A fire, perhaps?  

As she grew closer, still fighting the weather, she saw that the glow emanated from underground.  Defeated and near-frozen, she landed and made her way to the enticing glow.  She’d never seen this place before, and could only hope that it would provide some respite from the cold.  That’d be the last time she’d take a journey overwater in a snowsquall.  She pulled her wings as tightly against her body as possible and wove her way through the strange cave, eventually finding others had seemingly had the same idea.  It was warmer down here, but surely not just the idea of defrosting brought everyone to this place? 

It was only then that she saw it.  What it was, she had no idea, but apparently no one else seemed concerned.  Iona, however, was immediately wary.  What the eff was that.  And what did it it have?  Her green eyes narrowed and her mouth set in a straight line,  but she said noting. 

Iona was familiar with magic.  Magic had been all too common in Nocturne.  It became a currency of sorts and it corrupted easily.  Those who couldn’t master the magic, or didn’t earn it, often bartered pieces of their very soul for enhanced abilities, which lead them to display vivid markings, unnatural markings.  It was a sign of the damned marking the newly-damned.  Tainted, they called them.  There was an incredible amount of stigma against these tainted creatures, that’s part of what inspired the war that tore Nocturne apart.  

While Iona could appreciate magic, and she’d be the first to admit she missed the magic she used to wield so freely, she’d always be wary of it.  That and the fact that she still wasn’t familiar with Helovia’s brand of magic.  While the system certainly didn’t seem as easy to corrupt as Nocturne’s had been, she knew that nothing was perfect.  There would always be those who wielded magic too freely and who used it to bend others to their will.  Oh Iona.  Ever the realist. 

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